My Blog Week: November 3 to November 9

A Word on the Week

Open Mouth, Insert Left Foot

The punditscape has been bestirred this week by excerpts from the upcoming book by Anonymous…who self-purports as a Trump insider. Trump’s fully co-opted followers are not expected to leap off the sofa over this one, either. Meanwhile, a lot of liberal types are falling into a bad habit. If there’s one thing 2020 will ask of us, it is: Learn to Discern the Fine Points.

We need our whistleblowers and we need our informants; these are not the same as snitches. They are usually at the mercy of the powerful, they shoulder risk for the good of their country, and they deserve protection. It echoes Fox-speech to call Anonymous a coward, and huff that nothing he (probably he) says counts if we don’t know who he is. Does that really make sense? As with the Ukraine extortion case, a report in secrecy serves to open the investigation…and that investigation has yielded more than enough evidence to make the identity of the whistleblower a side issue. By the same token, whatever news Anonymous delivers will either bear up under investigation or not. The content of the book after the identity of its author is known will be exactly the same as now. The publisher will have edited for libel, though the president is forthcoming enough in public with his erratic behavior, concerning statements, bigotry, belligerence, and really unfeasible business ideas, that it would be hard to imagine anyone’s printed words costing him materially by shocking an erstwhile supporter.

One of Anonymous’s contentions, per these previews, is worth comment, however. He apparently uses the argument that impeachment and removal of Mr. Trump will cause “disunion”. I think Americans love a circus more than we’re given credit for. Who isn’t avid to see what crazy thing happens next? And doesn’t that make for fellowship, as opposed to division? But seriously, division, disunion…these complaints seem to refer to conditions that occur when the left threatens to rise and grow militant. Meanwhile, lunatics, without encountering much complaint, have wedged fully into the Republican party, the remnants of which have rolled over…like a doggy that doesn’t care how its biscuit is divided, as long as it gets one.

Which brings us to my last call-out of the week, the striking of dismayed attitudes at the surge of Elizabeth Warren in the polls. What harm to the Democrats if she actually becomes the nominee, and tries to implement all those plans? In England, the powers-that-be can fulminate that “the people have voted”, while the tens of thousands marching in the streets somehow escape the merits of peoplehood…

In America, a similar thing. Warren is where she is because many voters support Medicare for all. They support the wealth tax. Voters, who are people, who answer polls, are the reason for this. 

So, something blunt.

I’ve said it before. If you believe that America can go back to some earlier time—the 80s or the 50s—and that the economy or the social stability of that time can be recreated, you are dreaming of eliminating millions of people from the population. We have passed the day where being able to afford something meant you could have it. Easy credit allows more of us to consume, and there are more of us altogether, but what we have to consume is finite.

We have passed the day as well when we can afford such inequality of wealth in the world. The Social Welfare State is inevitable.