Sometime around 1990, while Japan was still doing well, I recall Robert Reich posing the this question to audiences:
Would you prefer the US grows at 3% and Japan at 4%, or the US grow at 2% and Japan lower than teh US?" (I paraphrase and teh numbers are only approximate to illustrate the issue.) He noted that audiences preferred the latter, that the US maintain economic superiority over Japan. Now his audiences where low information Trumpists, but rather educated Americans. Nevertheless, they were prepared to scarifice their better increase in teh standard of living to ensure Japan did no eclipse the USA.
I contemporary conditions, this implies that Americans would prefer to raise tariffs and reduce Chinese imports to try to hobble China's economic growth. Interestingly, I am not sure that I would disagree with this in China's case given their anti-democratic stance and possible aims for eventual global hegemony. So maybe I would, given the chice, punish myself if it hurt China more. If China was a democratic country with a similar global; view as ours, then I would not, as it would take over the role from the USA in a Pax Sinica, much as the Pax Americana took over Britain's role as a Pax Britannica.`]
I wonder what Buchanan's reaction would have been is someone had turned a hose on him as an aduly, perhaps in a white minority part of town. Would he have laughed along with those holding the hose?
I sometimes wonder whether heterosexual, conservative, Christian Germans had very similar thoughts to Buchanan as the Nazis crept towards power in the late 1920s. What did they think when Hitler became chancellor? Were they as oblivious to the actions of the Party as the Höss family living next to the Auschwitz concentration camp in the movie "Zone of Interest". Did the survivors in the ruins of Berlin change their attitudes when they received the helping hand of the Marshall Plan, or were they quietly supportive of a revival of the Nazi Party?
I thind this in the piece so chilling:
"The one true Church was emphatically one during Buchanan’s childhood. It entertained no doubts—none, at least, that he ever heard of from his father. School did not alter these notions…."
I am so reminded of this part of Oliver Cromwell's quote: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken." that counters binary certainties and lack of doubt. And yet this from the man who became a Puritan, whose Protectorate government was like a theocracy, and repeated the earler attempts to extinguish Catholicism, especially in Catholic Ireland. Any doubts he might have had about his righteousness seems to have been lost by then.
I don't understand the desire to punish. My youth up to graduation from High School was spent living at the margins of the economy, in a broken home, bouncing from one public housing to another, from one family member to another, from one school to another from one shack to another. In almost every step of the way in my life, society lowered a ladder and reached down to help me up.
I have lived through the enshitification of the rethuglican party and am amazed how it got to where it is now.
I have also lived through the tail end of the Great Depression, WW2, Cold War, Korea Vietnam and all the other stupid wars and yet in an ever expanding economy that provides things I couldn't have dreamed of in High School.
Still no flying cars. The cars are near but not yet. Drone copters are leading the way.
Here I am living with a beautiful talented woman who owns and flys an airplane, water skis, snow skis, rides her horse and scuba dives. Also living in a 1 million dollar house and millions of liquid assets. Most of that due mostly, to luck and circumstance.
As I said, initially, I don't understand the desire to punish.
Why might you think Wills' remarks were stupid? Around Buchanan's followers, he points to a dynamic we saw then and see today. Self-perceived outgroups oppose policies that would benefit them because another despised outgroup would benefit from them as well. These folks will not enter a "big tent."
I don't recall Buchanan eliciting a lot of love. Aggrieved people perceived that he would fight for them. That's a component of Trumps' following, of course. Unfortunately, it's not the only one. That Trump is loved by a core of his followers is a different problem in a different time, about which we could say much. It doesn't mean Wills was wrong about 1992.
Maybe we could put the reflexive worrying about anti-semitism on ice until after the IDF has wrapped up their ethnic cleanse of Gaza. "We fully support Israel." Etc etc etc.
Amazingly insightful of the unboundedly stupid!
Sometime around 1990, while Japan was still doing well, I recall Robert Reich posing the this question to audiences:
Would you prefer the US grows at 3% and Japan at 4%, or the US grow at 2% and Japan lower than teh US?" (I paraphrase and teh numbers are only approximate to illustrate the issue.) He noted that audiences preferred the latter, that the US maintain economic superiority over Japan. Now his audiences where low information Trumpists, but rather educated Americans. Nevertheless, they were prepared to scarifice their better increase in teh standard of living to ensure Japan did no eclipse the USA.
I contemporary conditions, this implies that Americans would prefer to raise tariffs and reduce Chinese imports to try to hobble China's economic growth. Interestingly, I am not sure that I would disagree with this in China's case given their anti-democratic stance and possible aims for eventual global hegemony. So maybe I would, given the chice, punish myself if it hurt China more. If China was a democratic country with a similar global; view as ours, then I would not, as it would take over the role from the USA in a Pax Sinica, much as the Pax Americana took over Britain's role as a Pax Britannica.`]
I wonder what Buchanan's reaction would have been is someone had turned a hose on him as an aduly, perhaps in a white minority part of town. Would he have laughed along with those holding the hose?
I sometimes wonder whether heterosexual, conservative, Christian Germans had very similar thoughts to Buchanan as the Nazis crept towards power in the late 1920s. What did they think when Hitler became chancellor? Were they as oblivious to the actions of the Party as the Höss family living next to the Auschwitz concentration camp in the movie "Zone of Interest". Did the survivors in the ruins of Berlin change their attitudes when they received the helping hand of the Marshall Plan, or were they quietly supportive of a revival of the Nazi Party?
I thind this in the piece so chilling:
"The one true Church was emphatically one during Buchanan’s childhood. It entertained no doubts—none, at least, that he ever heard of from his father. School did not alter these notions…."
I am so reminded of this part of Oliver Cromwell's quote: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken." that counters binary certainties and lack of doubt. And yet this from the man who became a Puritan, whose Protectorate government was like a theocracy, and repeated the earler attempts to extinguish Catholicism, especially in Catholic Ireland. Any doubts he might have had about his righteousness seems to have been lost by then.
I don't understand the desire to punish. My youth up to graduation from High School was spent living at the margins of the economy, in a broken home, bouncing from one public housing to another, from one family member to another, from one school to another from one shack to another. In almost every step of the way in my life, society lowered a ladder and reached down to help me up.
I have lived through the enshitification of the rethuglican party and am amazed how it got to where it is now.
I have also lived through the tail end of the Great Depression, WW2, Cold War, Korea Vietnam and all the other stupid wars and yet in an ever expanding economy that provides things I couldn't have dreamed of in High School.
Still no flying cars. The cars are near but not yet. Drone copters are leading the way.
Here I am living with a beautiful talented woman who owns and flys an airplane, water skis, snow skis, rides her horse and scuba dives. Also living in a 1 million dollar house and millions of liquid assets. Most of that due mostly, to luck and circumstance.
As I said, initially, I don't understand the desire to punish.
Why might you think Wills' remarks were stupid? Around Buchanan's followers, he points to a dynamic we saw then and see today. Self-perceived outgroups oppose policies that would benefit them because another despised outgroup would benefit from them as well. These folks will not enter a "big tent."
I don't recall Buchanan eliciting a lot of love. Aggrieved people perceived that he would fight for them. That's a component of Trumps' following, of course. Unfortunately, it's not the only one. That Trump is loved by a core of his followers is a different problem in a different time, about which we could say much. It doesn't mean Wills was wrong about 1992.
Because he thought it was just Buchanan taking advantage of Republican Base dislike for George H.W. Bush, and not anything much deeper.
Maybe we could put the reflexive worrying about anti-semitism on ice until after the IDF has wrapped up their ethnic cleanse of Gaza. "We fully support Israel." Etc etc etc.