He's Baaack!
He's Baaack!
Donald Trump and the Law of Merited Impossibility.
I haven’t had a chance to catch up with last night’s TNB yet, but the video replay is here and the podcast version is here.
I hear it was a good show!
1. November 14
Many people are saying—in the media, the fake-news media, but also some good media—that Donald Trump is going to make an announcement on November 14.
We don’t know exactly what he’s going to say. But it’ll be a very strong announcement. And I think people are going to be happy with it. It’ll be historic. Maybe the biggest thing to ever happen in American politics. Something we’ll all remember for a very long time.
Top aides to former President Donald Trump have been eyeing the third week of November as an ideal launch point for his 2024 presidential campaign, sources familiar with the matter tell CNN.
Two sources said Trump’s team has specifically discussed November 14 as one possible announcement date, which would come less than a week after the midterm elections and just days after the former president’s youngest daughter Tiffany is due to be married at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
This person cautioned that no date has been locked in and Trump could move up his desired announcement date – or push it back – depending on how Republicans fare in the elections on Tuesday and the availability of venues.
Once upon a time, Rod Dreher came up with what he called The Law of Merited Impossibility. The law goes something like this:
The subject of X comes up.
Some people object to X.
Other people, who are not pro-X, but are anti-anti-X, insist that X is ridiculous, that no one is talking about X, that X will never happen, and that anyone warning that X may come to pass is a crank.
Time passes.
The anti-anti-X people become pro-X. They now insist that X must come to pass. Will inevitably come to pass. That anyone who is not onboard with X is a crank.
Dreher’s shorthand was: People will tell you a thing can never happen and that you’re crazy to worry about it—right up until they tell you that this thing must happen.
Dreher was talking about progressive policies—same-sex marriage, trans issues, etc.—but this dynamic holds pretty well for institutional conservatism in the time of Trump.
If I had a nickel for every time I’ve been told:
Why do you make everything about Trump?
He’s the past; why aren’t you focused on the future?
Once Trump loses, he’ll slink away and Republican voters will move on.
He’s never going to run for president again.
If he did run for president, he couldn’t win the nomination because the Republican field is so strong. DeSantis!
And I am telling you, as sure as I sit here, that by August of 2024, all of the people who said those things to me will be saying:
He’s not really that bad. It’s just some mean tweets.
The Democratic alternative is worse.1
The institutions will prevent him from doing anything really bad. Remember: That little protest failed to overturn the election.
It’s just one more term. After those four years, he can’t run again and the party can finally move on.
Sorry, you have to vote for Trump.
The only real question is whether or not the members of Conservatism Inc. will enjoy a transition period between Trump’s announcement and nomination during which they can pretend to favor DeSantis or Youngkin (but not Pence or Cheney, obvi).
2. Political Violence Is a Wildfire
We care about political violence for both moral and practical reasons. The moral reason is that democracy can’t function when people and/or their representatives are under physical threat.
The practical reason is that political violence cannot be controlled. It’s not a weapon. It’s a wildfire. And once it breaks containment, no one has any idea where it will spread or when it will stop.2
Yesterday the Carolina Journal reported that on October 14, someone fired gunshots at the home of the parents of Pat Harrigan.
Harrigan is the Republican running for North Carolina’s 14th district.
We don’t know anything else about the incident yet—maybe it was an accidental discharge. Maybe it was unrelated to politics.
Here’s what we do know: Harrigan’s kids were at the house at the time, staying with their grandparents.
So if this was a politically motivated act, it’s only by the Grace of God that these children weren’t murdered.
I think we assume that, since most of the political violence over the last seven years has originated from the right, then it will be contained to the right.
Maybe. But historically, that’s not the norm. Political violence eventually creates retaliation, which feeds escalation. It would not surprise me at all if the attack on Harrigan’s family home came from the left. Because the embers are floating on the wind. Fires eventually spread.
I have been a real hardass in the comments over the last three weeks because of this. And I want to underline it again here:
Be civil. Don’t call people names. Don’t even use insulting nicknames for public figures. Don’t dehumanize people.
Look at what’s happening out there in the world: Read this long Reuters investigation on the threats being directed not even at politicians, but at civil servants just trying to carry out the basic business of governing.
Taking political violence seriously means confronting it, condemning it, and making double-sure that you’re not saying something that could contribute to it.
And what I want us doing here, together, is the opposite: I want us modeling how we should talk to one another, and about others, in ways that are healthy.
You guys are the nicest, most thoughtful, and most serious group of readers I’ve ever had the privilege to write for and on the whole, this is the best community I’ve seen on the internet. So this isn’t me chastising. It’s me saying thank you and keep it up.
In his Orphan X books, Gregg Hurwitz has a mantra: How you do anything is how you do everything.
How we talk to each other here is how we’ll carry ourselves out into the world.
3. Substack Chat?
Which brings us to one final question:
Substack has rolled out a new feature called “Chat,” which I don’t fully understand, but seems to be (1) Like a private-Twitter feed where you guys would just get . . . me; and also (2) Like a private group DM, where you could all talk to each other in your replies to me.
Is this something that would interest you at all? It takes place within the Substack app so I’m not sure how many of you use that. And also maybe this community is too big for it to be fun? I’m haunted by our last AMA experiment.
Anyway, I wanted to ask you guys if this sounded like something worth experimenting with. Let me know your thoughts in the comments?
And help me get a sense of where we are on this stuff by answering three quick polls:
It will not matter who the Democratic alternative is. The Dems could nominate the Romney-Ryan ticket and you’ll have to vote for Trump.
I want to attempt a subtle distinction. No one who commits political violence is right in the head. But there are acts of violence which are primarily caused by mental health and then there are acts of violence which are primarily motivated by politics.
For instance: The guy who shot Steve Scalise seems to have been a crazy guy who was motivated by political grievance. The guy who shot Gabby Giffords seems to have been a crazy guy who was motivated by the voices in his head.
This distinction is worth making because we need to understand that mental illness will always be present at a certain level in the population, and we have a lot of guns in this country, so there will always be some political violence. Our aim as a society is to lower the temperature so that no one is motivated to commit violence for political reasons.
Although not related to your current column, I did want to write about "school choice" a misleading label. I wrote the following in May, 2014:
In recent years we have seen the rise of the charter school, a generally private educational institution exempt from most state laws and regulations, but which, nevertheless, receives public funds, and is viewed as a competitor or alternative to the traditional public school. How did this come about and is it a good idea? For me, a more relevant question is whether charter schools should be publicly supported? And for me, the answer is no.
The idea of public education perhaps should be traced to Charlemagne (742-814 C.E.). Although academies and schools certainly precede Charlemagne’s reign, the idea of compulsory education emanating from the governing authority did not exist before to my knowledge. Charlemagne, in his Capitulare de Litteras Colandis (787), requires clergy to teach reading and writing to the community. Charlemagne says, “Take care to make no difference between the sons of serfs and freemen so that they may come and sit on the same benches to study grammar, music, and arithmetic.” Quite amazing for his time that one may say that the period scholars would label as the “dark ages” ended with Charlemagne. Charlemagne recruits teachers from England and Ireland, and among them is Alcuin the Latinist, who had already founded schools and a great library in York. Alcuin teaches at the royal palace where Charlemagne and his family attends classes, thereby leading by example that royals were not above learning. By the 12th century, the liberal arts are developed (grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy). The idea of the university (from the Greek universitas – assembly of students) forms. Although there were academies with specialized subjects such as medicine and law, for the first time the predecessor to the modern university is created; a place devoted to a disciplined and systematic form of study not unlike that found among the classic Greek philosophers.
In America, the idea of compulsory education and public education grows over time and by 1900, 34 states had compulsory schooling laws, only four of which were in the south. By 1910, 72% of American children attended school and by 1918, every state required students to complete elementary school. A significant reason for public schooling was a response to the influx of immigrants and schooling was a means to establish social cohesion and shared learning leads to a shared culture.
There is a great benefit to a nation that has an educated populace – both politically and economically – and, thus, it is in a nation’s best interests to make education available to its citizens. Public education, that is, government making elementary and high school education freely available to all and compulsory for all, is in the best interests of a government and an investment well worth making.
With as large a compulsory public school system as we have in America, there will be some schools that perform better than other schools. There can be myriad reasons for differences in performance and the usual culprits are differences in resources and the socio-economic backgrounds of students. Although Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers, The Story of Success, that the achievement gap in educational performance between rich and poor is more a function of the availability of educational stimuli during vacations rather than school’s failure to educate. Schools as scapegoats seems prominent in aspects of society and certainly in politics. The cry of schools failing our young people is common, even though we rarely analyze whether and the extent to which such statement is true or not or the causes of poor learning.
One argument in favor of charter schools is that they will create innovation and foster competition and, thus, be an engine to drive improvements in all schools. The idea is that if parents can choose the schools for their children, local schools will need to provide better education or go out of business. The flaw in this argument is that public schools, unlike private businesses for profit, do not have profit as their purpose, but, rather, the education of all persons who are entitled to attend the school. Public schools must do their best to educate the children who enter their doors. Unlike quality control managers who can dispose of inferior materials, a school cannot jettison students who lack the skills necessary for learning. No one questions the benefits of adopting best practices, and innovation in the field of education is helpful, but the draining of resources from public schools to charter schools hinders or prevents the public school from adapting new methods. However, little innovation seems to be occurring in charter schools.
While some charter schools may provide specialized education or curriculum, most charter schools are intended to provide at least as good or better education than traditional public schools and to deliver such education more cost effectively. Whether charter schools deliver a better education is a hotly debated topic. A posting on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_schools_in_the_United_States, states the following:
According to a study done by Vanderbilt University, teachers in charter schools are 1.32 times more likely to leave teaching than a public school teacher. Another 2004 study done by the Department of Education found that charter schools "are less likely than traditional public schools to employ teachers meeting state certification standards." A national evaluation by Stanford University found that 83% of charter schools perform the same or worse than public schools (see earlier in this article). If the goal is increased competition, parents can examine the data and avoid the failing charters, while favoring the successful charters, and chartering institutions can decline to continue to support charters with mediocre performance. [Footnotes omitted.]
Some of the rise of charter schools is because of a clash of religion and culture and the fear that public schools fail to teach “right” values.[1] Thus, in some areas, charter schools are parochial schools in disguise. An article by Zack Kopplin, Texas Public Schools Are Teaching Creationism, at http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/01/creationism_in_texas_public_schools_undermining_the_charter_movement.3.html, begins as follows:
When public-school students enrolled in Texas’ largest charter program open their biology workbooks, they will read that the fossil record is “sketchy.” That evolution is “dogma” and an “unproved theory” with no experimental basis. They will be told that leading scientists dispute the mechanisms of evolution and the age of the Earth. These are all lies.
The more than 17,000 students in the Responsive Education Solutions charter system will learn in their history classes that some residents of the Philippines were “pagans in various levels of civilization.” They’ll read in a history textbook that feminism forced women to turn to the government as a “surrogate husband.”
Responsive Ed has a secular veneer and is funded by public money, but it has been connected from its inception to the creationist movement and to far-right fundamentalists who seek to undermine the separation of church and state.
Infiltrating and subverting the charter-school movement has allowed Responsive Ed to carry out its religious agenda—and it is succeeding. Operating more than 65 campuses in Texas, Arkansas, and Indiana, Responsive Ed receives more than $82 million in taxpayer money annually, and it is expanding, with 20 more Texas campuses opening in 2014.
Charter schools are not a panacea of educational innovation and excellence. There is little if any public oversight. Charter schools should be viewed as another form of private school available for those who wish to avail themselves of it. It is illogical for government to subsidize charter schools just as it would be illogical for government to subsidize other forms of private schools.
Voucher programs, that is giving vouchers to parents who may then use them to lessen the cost of enrollment in private schools is an indirect form of subsidy for charter and other private schools. A voucher program is sometimes said to be giving parents greater choice (and who isn’t pro-choice, at least, in education), but this distorts the question to be addressed.
Government rightly provides for a public education and all citizens may freely avail themselves of it. However, all citizens may opt out of the public school system for other alternate school choices, i.e., private schools, but the government need not and should not subsidize such choice. It is not a question of giving citizens more choices (citizens already have all these choices). Rather, it is a question of who pays for such choices. The government is saying, in effect, “you may send your children to the community public school at no cost to you. However, you are free to send your children to a private school and, if you do so, you will be responsible for the cost of attendance at that school.”
People send their children to private schools for many reasons – perception of better education; better curriculum; greater activities; religious focus; greater resources; status; etc. But, regardless of the reason, taxpayers should not subsidize such choice.
[1] See, e.g., Anderson, Jeanne, “The Revolution Against Evolution, or ‘Well, Darwin, We’re Not in Kansas Anymore,’” 29 Journal of Law and Education (July 2000).
Jonathan - I have always been a Democrat nearly at the left edge of acceptable thought in the USA or beyond, for example, that communism would be a great system if human beings were less selfish, and will work one day for the entire human race when we are adults. I joined The Bulwark as a paid member because of my contempt for DJT and everything he stands for - himself, maybe his family if they toe the line, anything else? My experience here on thebulwark.com has renewed my faith, at least partially, in the possibilities of the goodness of the human race. We can get along, make sacrifices when needed, see what will work and be the best for all of us. I thank you, JVL, along with Charlie, Mona, Tim, all of you who feel like a new family to me. Keep up the good work!
Tim Carmell, Anniston, Alabama