{"id":20192,"date":"2023-10-22T17:13:39","date_gmt":"2023-10-23T00:13:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/?p=20192"},"modified":"2023-10-22T17:14:26","modified_gmt":"2023-10-23T00:14:26","slug":"dysfunctional-american-politics-and-speculation-about-root-causes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2023\/10\/22\/dysfunctional-american-politics-and-speculation-about-root-causes\/","title":{"rendered":"Dysfunctional American Politics and Speculation About Root Causes"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Paul Krugman on the decline of Pax Americana;<\/li>\n<li><em>New Republic<\/em> on why the Republicans are dysfunctional: they have no policy ideas or purpose;<\/li>\n<li><em>NYT&#8217;s<\/em> Jamelle Bouie on how the Republican Party got Southernized;<\/li>\n<li>And a note about Jonathan Rauch&#8217;s <b>The Constitution of Knowledge<\/b>, which I&#8217;m reading now.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I wonder if I spend too much time on this blog commenting about current affairs that most people pay no attention to, and which may be forgotten in a month. But if SNL opens with a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=pE-BpHdYFK8\">skit about Jim Jordan\u2019s problems<\/a> getting elected Speaker of the House, as they did last night, I don\u2019t think so.<\/p>\n<p>Today, more about dysfunctional America, due mostly to one side.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2023\/10\/17\/multimedia\/16krugman1-fmlc\/16krugman1-fmlc-superJumbo.jpg\" width=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>NYT, Paul Krugman, 16 Oct 2023<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2023\/10\/16\/opinion\/columnists\/us-power-republican-party.html\">The Strange Decline of the Pax Americana<\/a><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>When Hamas attacked Israel, Republicans knew whom to blame: President Biden. Donald Trump asserted that the attack <a class=\"css-yywogo\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/homenews\/campaign\/4251334-trump-israel-wouldnt-have-to-be-prepared-under-his-administration\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">wouldn\u2019t have happened<\/a> if he were still in the White House; Mike Pence, while <a class=\"css-yywogo\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/policy\/defense\/4252726-pence-pushes-back-trump-hezbollah-comments\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">condemning Trump<\/a> for praising Hezbollah, asserted that Biden was somehow endangering U.S. interests by \u201c<a class=\"css-yywogo\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2023\/10\/07\/gop-presidential-hopefuls-reaffirm-support-for-israel-following-hamas-attack-00120481\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">projecting weakness<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Like much of what the American right says these days, these smears were both vile and infantile. No, the U.S. president isn\u2019t like <a class=\"css-yywogo\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/2014\/5\/20\/5732208\/the-green-lantern-theory-of-the-presidency-explained\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Green Lantern<\/a>, able to shape world events through sheer force of will. And Biden has, in fact, taken remarkably tough positions on foreign affairs, much more so than his predecessor.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>There&#8217;s an element of this on the other side. But only at the very fringe:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>More generally, it\u2019s striking how both the far left, which has no significant influence on the Democratic Party, and the far right, which largely runs the G.O.P., are American solipsists. They blame U.S. leaders for everything bad that happens in the world, denying foreigners any agency.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8220;But why is the Pax Americana in decline?&#8221; Krugman considers the world economy, the Covid recession, China, etc.; and gives examples of how the Biden administration has been relatively aggressive on the world stage, more so than the preceding administration was. Yet&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Yet it seems safe to say that the world no longer trusts U.S. promises, and perhaps no longer fears U.S. threats, the way it used to. The problem, however, isn\u2019t Biden; it\u2019s the party that reflexively attacks him for anything that goes wrong.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Right now America is a superpower without a fully functioning government. Specifically, the House of Representatives has no speaker, so it can\u2019t pass legislation, including bills funding the government and providing aid to U.S. allies. The House is paralyzed because Republican extremists, who have refused to acknowledge Biden\u2019s legitimacy and promoted chaos rather than participating in governance, have turned these tactics on their own party. At this point it\u2019s hard to see how anyone can become speaker without Democratic votes \u2014 but even less extreme Republicans refuse to reach across the aisle.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">And even if Republicans do somehow manage to elect a speaker, it seems all too likely that whoever gets the job will have to promise the hard right that he will <a class=\"css-yywogo\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2023\/10\/05\/us\/politics\/republicans-ukraine-aid.html\">betray Ukraine<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Given this political reality, how much can any nation trust U.S. assurances of support? How can we expect foreign enemies of democracy to fear America when they know that there are powerful forces here that share their disdain?<\/p>\n<p>Yes, the Pax Americana is in decline. But the problem isn\u2019t lack of toughness at the top. It\u2019s the enemy within.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>\\\\<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/images.newrepublic.com\/b720f4443fe5f8410232ac5249d12836c1fbbc7d.jpeg?auto=compress&amp;ar=3%3A2&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;fm=jpg&amp;ixlib=react-9.0.2&amp;w=958&amp;q=65&amp;dpr=1\" width=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>The New Republic, Alex Shepherd, 20 Oct 2023<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/newrepublic.com\/article\/176349\/real-reason-republicans-cant-elect-speaker\">The Real Reason House Republicans Can\u2019t Elect a Speaker<\/a>, subtitled &#8220;Turns out there are consequences for not having any policy ideas or purpose.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>More about the difficulties Republicans are still having electing a new speaker. Because of fissures within the party? In part.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>But there is another culprit as well. For all the talk about extremists and moderates, there are almost no concrete policy demands being discussed among Republicans. The party has a set of broad priorities, sure: Cut spending, investigate Joe Biden, and own the libs at every opportunity. But none of the factions vying for power want to actually do anything in particular. This has resulted in a conflict based almost entirely on personalities and vibes; it is no wonder that it\u2019s become intractable and endless. But this is the natural end state of a party that has long since abandoned policymaking in favor of weaponizing the government to fight culture-war battles.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The writer then goes into detail about the speakership race.<\/p>\n<p>As I&#8217;ve observed before: the Republicans don&#8217;t see any problems worth addressing (they deny the big obvious one) except for resisting everything the Democrats try do. Yet I keep wondering: what is the big picture reason for this? Do Republicans represent the faction of the US population, triggered by the civil rights laws of 60 years ago, that has gone pure reactionary and wants to stop history? And has meanwhile dived into the rabbit hole of social media conspiracy theories?<\/p>\n<p>\\<\/p>\n<p>The theme does recur. Here&#8217;s another take. The trigger for this was the recent death of Kevin Phillips, who shaped Republican strategy under the Nixon administration. (That&#8217;s Nixon in the photo here.)<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2023\/10\/15\/opinion\/13bouie\/13bouie-superJumbo.jpg\" width=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>NY Times, Jamelle Bouie, 13 Oct 2023<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2023\/10\/13\/opinion\/republican-party-southern-strategy-kevin-phillips.html\">This Is How the Republican Party Got Southernized<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cIt was Phillips\u2019s thesis,\u201d the historian Geoffrey Kabaservice recounts in \u201cRule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party,\u201d \u201cthat the Republicans could build an enduring majority by corralling voters troubled by \u2018the Negro problem\u2019 and drawing in elements that had not traditionally been part of the Republican Party: conservatives from the South and West, an area for which Phillips coined the term \u2018the Sun Belt.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#8230; Phillips was also not the first person to notice the potential of racial strife to move this process along. Barry Goldwater, the party\u2019s 1964 nominee for president against Lyndon Johnson, won five states of the former Confederacy, doing so on the basis of his vociferous opposition to the Civil Rights Act passed that year.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Phillips eventually turned against the modern Republican party, &#8220;&#8230;condemning the extremism, military adventurism and free-market fundamentalism of the George W. Bush years&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Phillips\u2019s turn against the modern Republican Party he helped create gets at what made his work significant. He didn\u2019t just identify a constellation of political, social and economic forces that could produce a durable Republican majority; he identified a social base for the right-wing conservatism that would, in short order, eclipse its ideological rivals within the Republican Party. The new Southern Republicans would be avowedly conservative, committed to the destruction of as much of the social insurance state as possible.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The writer ties this to the recent run by Steve Scalise for speaker of the House. The piece concludes,<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">A funny thing has happened as the national Republican Party has rooted itself ever more deeply in the South: The Southern style of conservative politics \u2014 hidebound, populist, staunchly anti-union and devoted to the interests of capital above all \u2014 has migrated well above the Mason-Dixon Line. We\u2019ve seen it take hold in Wisconsin, Kansas, even Maine. It should be said that Scalise\u2019s original rival for the speakership, the MAGA radical Jim Jordan, is from Ohio.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The Republican Party did not just win the white South in the years and decades after Phillips wrote \u201cThe Emerging Republican Majority.\u201d Nor did it just become the party of the white South \u2014 or at least its most conservative elements. No, what happened is that the Republican Party <em class=\"css-2fg4z9 e1gzwzxm0\">Southernized<\/em>, with a politics and an ideology rooted in some of the most reactionary \u2014 and ultimately destructive \u2014 tendencies of that political tradition.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\\<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m currently reading <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Constitution-Knowledge-Jonathan-Rauch\/dp\/0815738862\/\"><b>The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth<\/b><\/a> by Jonathan Rauch, published in 2021, which gives the best account I&#8217;ve yet read of how the infrastructures of rules, norms, laws, and practices, that underlie both science (and the broader &#8220;Constitution of Knowledge&#8221; that defines the accumulate knowledge of the human race) and the government of the United States, are being systematically undermined by the way social media subverts all those rules and norms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Paul Krugman on the decline of Pax Americana; New Republic on why the Republicans are dysfunctional: they have no policy ideas or purpose; NYT&#8217;s Jamelle Bouie on how the Republican Party got Southernized; And a note about Jonathan Rauch&#8217;s The &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2023\/10\/22\/dysfunctional-american-politics-and-speculation-about-root-causes\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservatives","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20192"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20193,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20192\/revisions\/20193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}