Another Turn Of The Screw - Part 2

 (A Continuation Of My 1/27 Posting)

Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theories

               Conspiracy theories have always been with us in America, but they've grown in number and intensity in recent years. They seem all-pervasive nowadays on both the right and the left.  And they've gotten a bad name too because so often they drift off into the most outlandish fiction. In most people's minds,  conspiracy theories have become inextricably bound up with kookishness. The fastest and laziest way to discount a narrative threatening one's own ideas is to label it a "conspiracy theory".

               Yet real conspiracies do occur. In fact, much of modern human history can be said to have originated in conspiracies because political movements, wars and revolutions usually arise from behind-the-scenes machinations.

               I'm going to suggest a conspiracy theory here for which I have, in one of our era's newly-fashionable catch phrases, "no evidence". I'm presenting it because for me it's the only way that's starting to make a degree of sense in explaining the chaotic and seemingly contrived pattern of events that now engulfs us.

               Our Democrats, while always eager to mock rightwing  conspiracy theories, have been only too happy to buy into the notion that Vladimir Putin somehow stole the 2016 election away from Hillary Clinton and handed her rightful prize over to Donald Trump.  The Republicans, for their part, myself included, have lampooned this proposition as a perverse mix of sour grapes and fancy.

               However, what if the Democrats were actually onto something?

Russia And China

               The Mueller Investigation was originally designed to probe possible collaboration between Trump and the Russian government in defeating Mrs. Clinton. And while nothing actionable was uncovered that in the end threatened Trump's presidency - they had to come up with a totally different angle to initiate the first impeachment - Mueller's sleuths did turn up numerous instances of contacts between Trump's organization and the Russians. There was never reason to believe the Russians were really on Trump's side,  but they indeed seem to have been busy beavers during the months leading up to the 2016 election. What were they doing?

               Another potentially relevant development has to do with China and the growth of that nation's espionage and influence-buying in this country in recent years. The arrest of the chairman of Harvard University's chemistry department last year for secret and illegal contacts with China should have been an eye-opener for all of us. It was a weird story. It follows a couple of decades of accelerating reports of Chinese spy activity and technology theft mostly targeting American defense-related research. The Harvard story was surely the tip of an iceberg.

               Moreover, given the expansion of China's geopolitical aspirations, there's no reason to consider China's ambition as being limited to the technology sphere. They're bound to be examining ways to target our social and political institutions as well.  In this endeavor they would share common cause with Russia.

               There have in recent years been countless reports of highly sophisticated computer hacking campaigns aimed at stealing the personal data of individual Americans. The mysterious stories always imply the involvement of foreign governments but then stop there. It's never evident what such intrusive state actors might actually have in mind.

Science Of Subversion

               During the Cold War years I read quite a bit about the Soviet Union and about the early days of communism. Marxist-Leninism was the Soviet Union's official ideology, and it was a self-described body of "scientific" doctrine focused on analyzing and advancing "class struggle" in capitalist countries. This was, of course,  Soviet-speak for subversion of foreign governments.

               One of the Soviets' early triumphs after consolidating their own power under Joseph Stalin was in assuring success of the Maoist revolution in China.  They performed a singular feat in grafting the Western and industrial-oriented theories of Karl Marx onto what was at the time China's primitive agrarianism. The two nations were hardly natural bedfellows, but they established a formidable alliance that disrupted the geopolitics of the latter half of the twentieth century. Formally, they stuck to their ideology and did it all in the name of "worldwide proletarian struggle".

               Today neither Russia nor China remain communist countries in any respect that Marx, Lenin or even Mao would have recognized. Russia has abandoned the ideology and China has radically transformed it. Both nations, however, retain those elements of their "communist"  DNA that still serve their purposes. They remain dedicated to state dominance over their own societies,  and they manage aggressive foreign policies aimed at extending their influence abroad. Powerful intelligence agencies are the primary institutions they have developed for pursuing these objectives.

               Following the Russian Revolution, Vladimir Lenin established what came to be known as the Third Communist International, or Comintern. The Comintern maintained the fiction of proletarian internationalism but was always in fact an instrument of Soviet foreign policy focused on the destabilization of target governments. Fearful of antagonizing his WWII allies, Stalin disbanded the Comintern in 1943, but in doing so he was only biding time. Following the War's triumphant conclusion, he re-invigorated the Comintern's activities but now without any pretense of "international" decision-making. He took direct control of the Comintern's apparatus and subsumed it into the Soviet intelligence service which, shortly after Stalin's death in 1953, emerged as the notorious KGB.    

               The KGB was literally everywhere during the Cold War years. The KGB kept a tight lid on disloyal tendencies domestically within the Soviet Union, and its agents did their best to infiltrate and control any foreign organizations which appeared vulnerable and in position to advance Soviet interests around the world. They suborned journalists and bribed government officials in western nations, including the United States. In "third world" countries,  they armed guerrillas and helped launch "wars of national liberation" aimed at installing Soviet-leaning  governments in Latin America, Africa and Asia.  In pursuing their objectives, the KGB  employed the full range of dirty tactics, including disinformation,  forgery, blackmail, assassinations and false-flag attacks.

Deep Cover

               One of the more sophisticated techniques the KGB developed was in deploying "deep cover" agents into target countries, most importantly the United States. These people were trained at special schools in the Soviet Union to speak, look, act and even think like Americans. Their accents became flawless. They were then dispatched to the U.S. with no missions initially other than to take root somewhere, make friends, get jobs and learn how to blend in. Once they were in place long enough to have established verifiable identities, a process that took years,  they were normal American citizens for all intents and purposes. They could then be activated and deployed as needed to implement covert actions assigned to them by strategists in Moscow.

               The TV series "The Americans" that ran for 6 series on the FX channel in the early 2000's dramatized this program. The storyline was fictional, but the background for it was most assuredly the real deal. In the show, two agents - a man and a woman - infiltrate into the U.S, marry, have two children, build careers, establish personal relationships, all while maintaining contact with their KGB controllers and eventually executing missions.

               This was a reasonably accurate depiction of how the KGB "illegals" program actually functioned within the United States.

               When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and communism was repudiated, the KGB would seem to have lost its raison d'etre. It's loyal personnel, however, needn't to have feared, because one of their own was coming to power within Russia. Vladimir Putin was a KGB man through and through, and he of course knew all about the "illegals" program and would have fully appreciated its value. The KGB was disbanded once again but not really. Most of its people were redeployed into the newly-established Federal Security Service (FSB) and several other Russian intelligence agencies that went on performing their traditional work. 

               The deep-cover cells implanted into the United States would initially have been left high and dry by the Soviet implosion, but the agents had self-supporting  lives here, and it seems likely most of them would have remained in place,  albeit probably without much direction in the beginning. However, once Mr. Putin had consolidated his power within the new Russia, it seems virtually certain he would have re-established control over them via his Foreign Intelligence Service, or SRV, which - analogous to the American CIA - is charged with coordinating espionage and direct action campaigns outside the Russian Federation.

My Conspiracy Theory

               One of the characteristic patterns of KGB destabilization campaigns in the old days was to identify disruptive factions on both sides of the political spectrum within target nations and to seek out ways to encourage them both. During the 1960's, for example, operating mainly through the Soviet Union's Cuban proxies, the KGB was able to influence the American so-called "New Left" of the day, and there was some evidence they succeeded at the same time in planting  agents  within extreme right-wing groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party. The objective of such both-sides-against-the-middle campaigns was always to frighten a nation's population with the specter of violent chaos surrounding them and make them lose confidence in their own government.

               Such campaigns are, of course, difficult to implement successfully, and timing is everything. One of Marxism's key analytic phrases is "correlation of forces", which refers to the delicate balance of political power operating at any point of time in a nation. Marxist practitioners study the correlation of forces always with the objective of identifying the optimal timing for revolutionary action. They know that if they move too soon, they're in danger of being be crushed, and if they wait too long, their moment will have passed. In Russia, for example, the 1918 birth of the Soviet Union occurred when it did because Vladimir Lenin and his Bolsheviks understood that the time was exactly right for the quick push that was soon to topple the floundering Kerensky government.

               Fast-forwarding to our own era, it's my theory that both the Russian and Chinese intelligence agencies have been analyzing the correlation of forces in the United States very carefully now for a long while. And I believe that sometime prior to Donald Trump's arrival on the national political scene,  they concluded that the time was ripe for them to expand their influence in this country.

Is Trump A Russian Agent?

               True revolution was obviously too ambitious a goal, and not really the point anyway,  but their objective would rather have been gaining sufficient influence in America to force its disengagement from those parts of the world where America's meddling presence was interfering with their own ambitions. For the Russians, this would mean primarily the former Soviet republics, an area they call their "near-abroad"  and the infuriating loss of which Mr. Putin blamed primarily on the United States. For the Chinese, it would mean, for now, primarily Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the South China Sea. The Chinese want a free hand in these potential hot spots, and as a rising hegemon,  they no doubt see themselves as laying groundwork needed eventually to gain a free hand elsewhere as well. They want to force America into minding its own troubled business closer to home.

               Donald Trump is most certainly not a Russian agent as some of the zanier speculation emanating from our political Left has suggested. However, both the Russians and the Chinese would have recognized two aspects of Trump's orientation that must have looked promising to them. The first, obviously, was his isolationism, which would tend to restrain American adventurism abroad.  Secondly, it would have been clear to them that Trump, if elected, would become a polarizing force. If they could encourage violent factions to take to the streets here, he could be counted on to respond aggressively, if only through his trademark inflammatory rhetoric. Domestic instability would distract America from goings-on outside of its borders.

               There was always something a little fishy about the unrest that started gaining steam in so many American cities around the time of Trump's election. There was a pattern to the events. Most of the disorder seemed to be triggered by killings of black men in confrontations with police. Historically, there was nothing unusual about such killings because it is the job of police to patrol high-crime areas, and high crime areas in the U.S. are populated by disproportionate numbers of the young black males. In such environments, violent confrontations are inevitable and have always occurred.

               What has changed, however, is the ubiquitous presence of cell phone cameras.  Journalists on the spot are no longer needed for there to be a video record of protests and street violence. Reporters compiling their stories for the evening news or the Internet can count on a wealth of dramatic footage coming their way courtesy of  bystanders only too happy to upload memory cards for the benefit of an encouraging newshound. What once might have been a story for the back pages of a local paper now makes national and even international news.

               A vicious circle then ensues as video footage, which gets repeated continuously for days and even weeks on end,  provokes outrage in other cities and triggers more police confrontations and additional videos. The dynamic thus established becomes the social analogue to a nuclear chain reaction, and from the perspective of professional political saboteurs, it's manna from heaven. All that's required for them is to have a few agents  planted in organizations who haunt urban trouble-spots and to assign them standing orders to inflame any violence materializing around protest activity. This is pretty easy work for professionals who have funding and know what they're about.

               Posted YouTube videos are instructive because they display the standard pattern that's been at work, which is for relatively small groups to break away from a larger demonstration and attack bystanders, set fires, invade buildings, smash windows, etc. Who are these agitators? There seems to be nothing spontaneous about their behavior. They're methodical, good at what they do, and they appear to be following protocols.

               Even fishier than the urban unrest, of course, was the so-called "right-wing insurrection" that occurred in Washington on January 6. One theory that afterwards became fashionable in some conservative circles is that Antifa had infiltrated the Trump rally and that is was actually their operatives who initiated the Capital invasion. While this idea was always a little far-fetched,  videos make it clear what prompted it.  Here too a very small group broke away from the much larger rally, which had until then had been enthusiastic but peaceful. The agitators carried incendiary signs and Confederate flags that looked like stage props positioned there for the benefit of cameras. The crowd of masked invaders had  the look of an Antifa mob, but wearing different costumes and shouting different slogans.

               However, it's unlikely that Antifa itself has the wherewithall to have executed such an action. In my opinion, conservatives who voice this theory are missing the deeper underlying pattern that may be at work. It's my opinion that superficial resemblance between the Capital riot and an Antifa action probably reveals the presence of a hidden third party that is manipulating both groups. This third party, if it exists, is likely to be a foreign intelligence agency or a coalition of such agencies charged with creating disorder in America's homeland.

               Russia and China are the two most likely manipulators, with Iran possibly functioning as a subsidiary player.  Long-hidden sleeper cells may have been turned loose to blend into the action and give it on-the-ground authenticity.           

And Where Does This Leave Us Now?

               If this speculative theory has substance, the implications are unsettling. It would mean that a new international Cold War is already well underway of which Americans are largely clueless. What's worse is that we're all playing into the hands of our adversaries by lining up exactly where they want us, which is at one another's throats. Liberals seethe with hatred for Donald Trump and nowadays pretty much anybody perceived as being to the right of Hillary Clinton. Conservatives mirror all this and see the wicked George Soros lurking behind any public figure questioning any of their positions. Both sides are coming view compromise as betrayal, and political problem-solving is on its way out the window.

               The strength of Democracy is, of course,  precisely in its ability to broker compromise and nurture mutual respect among people with differing, and sometimes sharply differing, worldviews. Democracy and free speech are coessential, and one can't survive without the other. People who respect one another actually want to hear from the other side because the very definition of mutual respect is in the understanding that the other side may have something useful to say. Only fools believe that they themselves have all the answers.

               Our international adversaries hope to turn us all into fools because fools are easily manipulated. Furthermore, they fully understand the self-reinforcing strength that a functioning democracy provides to any nation enjoying it. Democracy and free speech therefore have to be undermined if the target nation is to be made vulnerable.

               If my speculation here is accurate, it becomes a legitimate function for our own intelligence agencies to root out foreign agents among us and to short-circuit the dynamic they have set into motion here. The problem is that such exercises easily morph into witch hunts,  and witch hunts must be avoided because they fuel the very fires they try to dampen. Hence, while our intelligence agencies have a job to do, they must be guided by law and proceed with extreme caution.

               As individual citizens, about all that any of us can to is to understand that mutual suspicion and hatred work against all of us.

               In times like these we therefore need to be bending over backwards to understand the difference between true enemies -  meaning the willful saboteurs - and other people whose worldviews simply differ from our own.

Another Turn Of The Screw

                     If our Democrats can be relied on for one thing anymore, it's for overplaying their cards. In Poker, overplaying a bad hand can sometimes be smart because you have nothing much to lose and the bluff might work. For a good hand, though, overplaying is always foolish because it can minimize the gain from a sure win.

                    The Democrats have been holding lousy cards now for the past four years and overplaying them like a gang of drunken sailors. Their abortive first impeachment campaign and their wildly overwrought opposition to Brett Kavanaugh's supreme court nomination, for example, came a cropper but in the end probably cost the Dems little that wasn't already gone for them. However, now Trump's behavior leading up to the appalling spectacle that occurred in Washington on January 6 has handed the Democrats a dream hand to play. Yet they're going about it as though nothing has changed. They continue to overplay even when simply laying out their cards would be enough to secure the winnings.

                     They've actually impeached Trump a second time just as he was on his way out the door.

                    At a time when the nation should be focusing on the familiar American ritual of an optimistic transfer of power, our Democrats have chosen the time to hurl down another gauntlet. They've bogged the country down in a squabble over the constitutionality and even the simple logic of impeaching a president who's already out of office.

                    So is this crazy, or what?

Why Are The Democrats Behaving This Way?

                    Well, maybe it's not really as crazy as it appears. For one thing, should they actually convict him this time, it would be like a silver stake in his heart forestalling any ghoulish resurrection in 2024. He would be constitutionally precluded from running. However, the Dems know that once again he's unlikely to be convicted, and there seems to be something more strategic underway here. They surely realize that they've become dependent on Trump, and that anti-Trump frenzy has become their Party's unifying force

                    With their 4-year dream now fulfilled and him actually gone, they must be feeling the first pangs of the dangerous identity crisis that looms before them. Keeping Trump in the picture for a while longer is necessary for them to perform the illusionist's trick of locking the audience's attention to one spot while the real action is happening elsewhere. The American public will keep fighting about Trump both during the Senate trial and private court battles that will follow his probable exoneration. The media will dwell exhaustively on all this, and Steven Colbert will continue telling jokes about it. In the meantime, the Dems can start testing the levers of power and figuring out which elements of their now-openly socialist agenda they might actually start putting into place.

                    They still need to be careful about this because they know their grip on power remains tenuous and that disastrous mistakes will come easily if they accelerate too abruptly. They also have a problem with Joe Biden, who is a placeholder for them but who can quickly become a liability should he start fumbling his lines too routinely or interacting directly with the public. His inaugural speech was good, but only because he rehearsed it exhaustively. He can't think on his feet anymore. The Democrats need immediately to begin laying groundwork for the next transition once he is out of the picture. This is likely to occur fairly soon.

                                         On the Other Side Of Chaos

                   My God though, what about the Republicans? Having suffered their own identity crisis four year ago, they thought they had resolved it by stepping into lockstep behind Donald Trump. Now look where they are.

                   I don't know who it was who laid the trap that was sprung in Washington on January 6, but Trump leapt happily into it and took down with him into the chasm much of what remains of the old GOP. If the Republicans were thinking strategically right now, their senators would vote en masse to convict Trump in the Senate. He's already made clear his intention to beat impeachment and return in 2024. This implies a possible third-party run that would knock the Republican base asunder. If they could muster any semblance of political competence, the Democrats would then have a clear field upon which to consolidate power.

                    The Republicans are demoralized and bereft of leadership right now. Like the Dems, they have no real political platform anymore.

                    The entire political class has learned from their respective voters that few people have the attention span today to care much about policy issues or even ideology. We're in the Internet Age, and the power of hyper-linking has turned us all into thrill-seeking click addicts. Our thoughts have begun to mimic our computer screens in the sense that nothing achieves much in the way of coherence before a new headline or picture steals away our focus. All that seems to matter is fast theater and vicarious political blood sport. Trump was good at both, which explains his rise to power, as are certain of the leading Democrats and many of the secondary players on both sides.

                    But Trump is gone and the Republicans have no one out front now around whom to rally. Mike Pence is the closest thing to a viable leader the party has, but VPs rarely sustain political careers after leaving office. Pence, despite his admirable display of backbone on January 6, excites no one,  and his association with Trump will pull him under the political waters like a hundred pounds of iron hanging around his neck. 

A Nostalgic Throwback

                    With both parties thus in disarray, it's hard to see stability in our future. People all along the political spectrum have regarded the past four years as a kind of surrealistic circus in which any horror can come screaming down out of the ceiling at any time. Everyone is on edge and seeking to blame the other side for everything that's wrong. If only the other side could just be made to go away, everything would be fine again and America could get on with the business of nurturing prosperity and happiness.

                    However, both sides can't go away. And one side alone can't dictate the peace.

                    President Biden's inaugural ceremony was an attempted throwback to the days when Americans knew how to put aside their differences briefly and welcome in a new era. His speech was good and mostly conciliatory. The unspoken message was that with the Grinch now gone, good people on both sides can join hands again. Country singer Garth Brooks had been invited to perform in a nod to the gentler side of Trump's redneck base. Republican John Roberts administered the Oath of Office, and Trump's VP Mike Pence sat nearby as a respectful onlooker. This all seemed safe and good.

                    Yet there was a hollowness to the event. Part of the problem was the specter of Covid hanging in the air. Masses of flags stood in place of all the people who should have been thronging the National Mall. Masks and social distancing drove the event's optics. The deeper discomfort, however, stemmed from the fact that all of this was occurring at the very site where exactly two weeks earlier rioters had broken into the Capital building and forced our nation's lawmakers into hiding. Pence himself had been rhetorically threatened with "hanging" because he refused to block certification of Biden's win.

                    Thus was Inauguration Day teeming with all the troubling currents of the present moment. The question we have to ask is why is everything in such a hash right now? What's really going on? The economy is in surprisingly good shape, making allowance for the pandemic, and the state of international relations seems to be offering up no more hobgoblins than what's normal.

What's Really Going On Here?

                    On the watershed date of November 9, 2016, the morning after Trump's unexpected victory in that year's election, I wrote the following:

"There's no telling where all this goes now, although foreshadows of the likely future could be seen already in the early morning hours in the radical fever swamps of Berkeley and Oakland, where gangs of protestors emerged as though on the search for riot police with whom to engage. The ranks of these people are likely to grow in the months ahead, and it seems only a matter of time before some of the nastier elements among Trump's supporters, themselves also now newly energized, choose to come out of hiding to offer battle." (American Counterpoint 11/9/16)

                    I remember the eerie feeling of that morning. I was happy enough to realize that Hillary Clinton was not going to be our president for the next four years, but I hadn't voted for Trump either. Instead, I had cast a wistful vote for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, about whom I knew little and who obviously had zero chance of winning. It was a protest vote. What disturbed me that morning was the foreboding of what might be in store for us now. Leftwing zealots already in the streets looked like a bad sign.

                    And so it was.

                    What soon commenced was a seemingly endless series of violent incidents in cities all over the country - New York, Ferguson, Cleveland, Charleston, Chicago, Baton Rouge, Sacramento, Louisville, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and many, many others, in which police shootings or arrests of black men, whether justified nor not, triggered mass protests often followed by looting and rampage. It was though a time machine had taken us all back to 1968. The "Black Lives Matter" movement emerged from this, and an organization was founded by three women - Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi - who have described themselves as "trained Marxists", even though they try not to draw attention to their ideological background. The prefer to be seen as "protest leaders".

                    Peaceful and pretty Portland Oregon, of all places, became an epicenter for violence because it served as headquarters for the leftwing Antifa group. These are the guys who started showing up around town decked out in black clothes and black masks well before the pandemic made such attire fashionable. With astonishing speed, what had started out as a seemingly ragtag bunch of "protesters" suddenly had a nationwide network that was dispatching operatives as far away as the New York City subways. They specialized in smashing windows, blocking traffic, threatening outdoor diners, chanting vulgarities, and beating up anybody who tried to take pictures or talk back to them. They could often be seen in the streets "battling fascism" side-by-side with their BLM brethren.

                    I had for some time been wondering what could have happened to the supposedly formidable right-wing militia and street-fighter types who one might have thought would be coming out in force to counter these folks, as I had predicted in my 2016 article. Inexplicably, for the time being the Left seemed have a near-monopoly on political violence.

                    Well, that surely did change this month. The people in the red caps were suddenly front-and-center in Washington. The media had given no more than desultory coverage to the leftist violence that had been convulsing our cities for so long, but now they had evidence for a more conducive narrative. This was not protesting or even just rioting. This was rightwing insurrection, and the media was all over it with superlatives. This was the story they had been waiting for.

                    The Washington spectacle, of course, indeed did go a big step beyond anything else happening previously. The January 6 crowd wasn't there just to smash windows, but rather to short-circuit the constitutionally-mandated certification of a lawful election. This is a key democratic process, and the Democrats and the media were, up to a point, right to highlight its sanctity and the foul nature of any attempt to interrupt it.

                    But at the same time, there was something off about the whole thing, something that didn't quite add up.

                    The main problem is that it's not at all clear how it was allowed to happen. Tens of thousands of angry people were expected to be in Washington for Trump's "march", and Trump himself had announced it was going to be "wild". Something was surely getting ready to happen. Yet for some bizarre reason, capital security on the day was minimal. When questioned about this anomaly, the head of the Capital police force said that they weren't expecting trouble because past Trump rallies, while boisterous, had always been peaceful. While true enough, this answer was risibly thin. The gang that actually penetrated the capital building was a small group splintering off from the much larger demonstration. Attacking the very heart of American democracy as they were, they never should have been able to make it through. And yet they did.

                    Why?

(To be continued soon in another posting)

America's Cold Civil War

                Donald Trump should concede the 2020 election now and facilitate a normal transfer of executive power.

               It's not that he doesn't have a point regarding possible fraud in this election.  Christopher Krebs' assertion notwithstanding,  the 2020 election  is unlikely to have been "the most secure in U.S. history",  and the more dogmatically our Democrats echo Mr. Krebs' avowal,  the more open to question it becomes.  Circumstantial evidence pointing to possible fraud is significant, and Trump could hardly be expected to ignore the issue.

               It should not be forgotten that Hillary Clinton herself in August of this year advised Joe Biden, should he appear to have lost the election, not to concede "under any circumstances". Her rationale was that Republicans would, in her words, have attempted to "mess up absentee balloting". Mrs. Clinton is as well-positioned as anyone in the country to know how possible this was going to be. She was also no doubt fully aware that her own party's operatives were poised to exploit exactly the same vulnerability  should it prove necessary. Trump is justified in wondering if such skullduggery is indeed what just cost him this election.

               All that said, however, circumstantial evidence accounts for nothing in court, and it's already clear that's about all Trump has to go on. This doesn't mean game-changing fraud didn't occur, but simply that it can't be proven conclusively. And proof is all that matters in the end. 

               The bar is, as it should be, extremely high for anyone attempting to overturn a called election. America is already showing disturbing signs of resembling a supersized banana republic,  and a chaotic transfer of power at this stage in our history would carry that dynamic to an embarrassing new level. The consequences for our political future would be devastating, and our ballyhooed reputation as Democracy's global champion would be gone.

               The immediate problem is, of course, that most of the key players don't really want an end to the banana republic stuff. They're all addicted to it. The Democrats, egged on by their left wing, are by now so accustomed to perpetual shaming and inquisition that they would feel politically naked if they had to depend on their ideology  alone for winning public support. They require outrage and enemies in order to sustain momentum.

               Donald Trump, for his part,  has over the last four years grown comfortable in his role as persecuted martyr. He knows that even out office, his detractors are going to  continue hounding him in court under whatever pretext they can uncover.  It would be simply a continuation of the impeachment process that seemed like such an empty can for them at the time,  but that in fact served the purpose of giving them much-needed unity of purpose. Trump has, in my opinion, always been more interested in attention than in political power anyway, and even out of office he can go on courting attention as long as he can remain at the center of inquisition. Rather like Hillary Clinton, the only thing in life he really fears is irrelevance.   

               Most importantly, the media has profited handsomely by endlessly fanning the flames of political discord. Celebrity pundits are not going to return easily to the roles of flat-footed reporters. Hence, they, the Democrats, and Donald Trump are all motivated by the same need, i.e.,  to keep the hostile extravaganza running. Even with the mantle of the Presidency in hand, Joe Biden will continue to be, as he is now, little more than a political sideshow. He's too ineffectual and a little too boring to be of much interest to anyone.   

               However, the general public is growing tired of the whole thing. Speaking for myself, I'm sick to death of it, and I know I'm not alone. Both Trump's cult and the anti-cult arrayed against him are going to start losing steam now. The media will soon discover that fanning dead embers will never re-start a fire.

So Where Does All This Leave The Republicans?

               Most people seem to have forgotten that Trump was never really a Republican. His ideological grounding has always been wobbly, and as recently as 2008 he identified more or less as a Democrat, voicing half-hearted support for Mrs. Clinton in her contest against Barak Obama. He didn't seem to be paying much attention to the Republicans in those days.

               However, he soon recognized the opportunity opening up for himself in that hapless party,  and in 2009 he registered there.  By the time 2016 rolled around, he had taken over the Party "like a bottom-feeding sea creature taking up residence in an abandoned shell", if I might be permitted here to quote myself (American Counterpoint, 5/10/20). Trump formed an alliance of convenience with traditional Republicans but neither his heart  nor theirs were ever really in it.  When he used the Party's infrastructure to clobber Mrs. Clinton in that year's election, Republicans were pleased but still wary of him. They never really forgave him for his repudiation of free trade, his isolationism, his fiscal imprudence, nor his tolerance for big government. They also mistrusted his shoddy friends and his weird personality.   

               At this point, in my opinion, the only viable strategy for the Republicans is to re-affirm their party's traditional values and cut their ties with Donald Trump. He was never really one of them, and they should now allow him to drift back to wherever his shallow roots can find a point of attachment.

               The problem for them is, however, they no longer have a viable political base without the voters he energized. He was able to take over the empty shell of the party precisely because it had indeed become empty. Without him, the shell probably becomes vacant again .

               I wish I could see a constructive forward path Republicans right now, but I'm struggling with the task. It's aspirational values are:  responsible hard work, self-reliance, economic freedom, fairness,  pragmatism, and defense of liberty internationally, all political principles that must remain as focal points for any program I'm willing to support.  I want to believe that the American public is ready to embrace these values again too if a responsible  champion can step forward. However, I'm not optimistic. The party  might survive, but only if leaders emerge who are able once again to articulate Republican precepts in a manner that has resonance for voters.

               So far as I can see, such leaders are not among us at the present time.

And What About The Democrats?

               While Democrats are trying their best to celebrate their 2020 victory, the insightful ones are troubled because they know how embarrassingly shallow it was. For one thing, they actually managed to lose ground in the House of Representatives,  thanks to the antics there of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the other unapologetic leftists whom the Dems, revealingly,  have allowed to become  their party's public face.

               Even more troubling for traditional Democrats has to be that,  in an effort to disguise their party's leftward lurch,  they lined up behind a man who was probably the weakest presidential candidate in America since Alf Landon.  Absolutely no one seemed able to muster more than tepid enthusiasm for him, and even that was largely feigned. Voters turned to him because he promised to put an end to Trumpism, and they could imagine him perhaps on a good day to be something like what he once was.    

               Given Biden's physical and mental debilities,  he may well not make it through his term. This sets the stage for what is probably going to be yet another turbulent transition in the very near future. It's symptomatic of the party's deep cynicism that they have knowingly subjected the country to the risk of this destabilizing scenario.

               The Democratic Party, like the Republican Party,  has pretty much lost its identity.  What was once the "party of the common man", dedicated to a fair deal for everyone, has today evolved into the party of upper-middle class sophisticates,  shallow Hollywood celebrities, and hedge fund billionaires, all dedicated to little more than strident outrage and the cult of victimhood. It's all quite odd. They have massive funding, outspending the GOP by 2 to 1 in this extravagant election,  but no viable political platform. In 2020, all that has really animated them was rabid anti-Trumpism. With Trump nearly out of the way now, that soon will be gone too. What's left?

Death Spiral for America's Two-Party System

               Both of our major political parties are, in my judgment,  in a precarious state. Trump may have just facilitated the final death throes of the Republicans, and the radical socialists are in the process of accomplishing the same for the Democrats. 

               The purpose of political parties in a democratic system  is to facilitate collaboration and to help keep the human proclivity for conflict within constructive  bounds. Their method is promoting cooperation among various interest groups who have different priorities but who have enough in common to allow for mutual tolerance. They build coalitions among themselves to pursue their objectives and defend against  other groups perceived by all to be the bigger threat. Hence, parties are by their nature unstable and prone to fragmentation when the allied groups no longer feel their own goals being addressed within the confines of the confederation.

               The roots of today's parties can be traced back to the early days of the American republic, but the modern parties both took shape in the chaotic years following the Civil War. They have since morphed repeatedly and today bear little resemblance to their original incarnations, even though Republicans occasionally brag about their role in liberating black Americans, and Democrats sometimes talk as though they imagine themselves still to be representing the nation's hardworking yeomen.  

               It's my guess that our parties are probably entering into another period of shape-changing,  albeit with new and troubling undercurrents that will add alarming twists to the process. Trump voters are mad as hell, and probably not particularly interested in being saddled much longer with the stuffed suits of the old GOP. On the other side of the great divide, the radical left is no doubt eager to get on with shoving Joe Biden out of the way and finally making clear what their real agenda for the country is.

               This is obviously an explosive configuration that bodes ill for our future.

 Cold Civil War

               Financier Barnard Baruch in 1947 coined the term "Cold War" to describe the deadly tension that ramped up between the U.S. and the Soviet Union when WWII's end ruptured the alliance between the two nations. In the new nuclear age, hot war was too horrible for anyone to contemplate, and yet war it seemed to be once again right on the heels of the one just ended. So "Cold War" became the metaphor that defined the geopolitics of the next four decades. The two sides entered into conflict all over the world, but mutual dread of the consequences resulting from true total war forced them to pull their punches until the Soviet Union finally threw in the towel in 1991.

               Now today in the United States Cold Civil War seems like an apt metaphor to describe the sorry condition into which our national dialogue has descended.

               Sometime prior to the election, Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin on  national television said the following:

“Shunning, shaming these people (i.e. Republicans) is a statement of moral indignation that these people are not fit for polite society.… It’s not only that Trump has to lose, but that all his enablers have to lose. We have to collectively, in essence, burn down the Republican Party. We have to level them because if there are survivors, if there are people who weather this storm, they will do it again.”

Ms. Rubin is not some obscure blogger or an Antifa spokeswoman. She is a mainstream journalist writing for a major American newspaper. Talk about dog whistles!  If we alter the contemporary references here, these words could have emanated from the mouth of Joseph Goebbels. She imagines herself to be speaking metaphorically, but political metaphors invariably reveal deeper thinking.  They will do it again!  No survivors allowed!

               Even the writers of Teen Vogue  are fulminating in adolescent fury about "progressive ideas".  One Kandist Mallett cries out that these wonderful ideas  "always get shafted"  when Democrats compromise with anybody. So please, Mr. Biden, no compromising!

               Out of curiosity I did a quick google search yesterday to find out if the Communist Party USA was still in business.  Indeed it is! While still steeped in their lugubrious nineteenth century doctrines,  and still hungry for "struggle", and "people's revolution",  these folks have updated their look and feel. The posted articles are full of ebullient election chatter and complete with the latest news about Pennsylvania and Georgia. Fully aware of what's happening on the left wing of the Democratic Party, they've endorsed Joe Biden! They know he won't be around for long.

                Antifa and BLM, operating as our modern-day American brownshirts, will remain in the streets, knowing no distinction between celebration and riot.

               I don't know what's going to emerge on the Republican side at this point, but I fear the reaction to all this.  Some Dems have been loosely and irresponsibly throwing around the word "fascist" for the past four years. They've aimed it at Trump and anybody else showing the temerity to question their doctrines.

               I fear the day may be approaching when they learn what a real fascist looks like. I really don't want to be around on that day.

America's Crashing Clown Car - Part 3

(A Continuation My 5/27 and 5/10 Postings)

A Storm Of Money

          Many Republicans are, and should be, embarrassed by the fact that for all their posturing about budgetary discipline, it's been under their presidents that much of the fiscal profligacy has occurred in recent decades. They have tended perversely to embrace tax cuts and high defense spending at the same time, without showing much more real interest than their Democratic colleagues in limiting the growth of entitlement programs or the size of the nation's costly administrative bureaucracy. Ronald Reagan's budget director, David Stockman, in 1985 even resigned in protest at this hypocrisy. Stockman's gesture achieved little, however, as Reagan's Vice President George Bush was elected his successor and continued in much the same vein.

          It was only when Democrat Bill Clinton came into office that the long running economic expansion initiated under Reagan began throwing off enough tax revenue that the seemingly permanent deficit began to shrink. In 1998, the deficit actually turned to surplus for the first time in a generation and remained there for the last three years of Clinton's presidency. This embarrassment of riches even got to the point where some economists fretted that a shortage of Treasury securities loomed and potentially threatened the stability of the banking system.

          They needn't have worried. Bush's son George W. was waiting in the wings, and his presidency brought about a return to sharply rising deficits and the consequent renewed supply of Treasuries. Furthermore, his presidency ended with a scary financial crash in 2008 that was followed by a severe and prolonged recession.

          Barak Obama, his successor, entered office in the midst of this mess and ushered in four years of trillion dollar-plus deficits. While his policy was on one level engineered to stimulate the doddering economy, it did so by throwing money around to political constituencies who had been clamoring for it all along anyway. The Democrats, now in control of the Presidency and both houses of Congress, felt finally free of fiscal constraints. They started behaving like happy weight-watchers who had just been told it was healthy to gorge at their favorite smorgasbord.

          Obama was a widely-admired President - even I liked him - but his actual policies were never as popular as Party stalwarts believed. His coattails quickly wore thin and the Democrats lost control of the House in another two years, and then the Senate four years after that. The resulting legislative gridlock meant that trillion-dollar deficits seemed like a thing of the past, although deficits remained high both in absolute terms and as a percentage of GNP.

Trump Arrives 

          Donald Trump always had the instincts of a crony-capitalist and he was never in the least bit serious in his occasional throwaway lines about cutting deficits. During his 2016 campaign he even let slip the notion - surely unvetted by his advisors and probably even by Trump himself prior to the parting of his lips - that he would eliminate the debt aggregate itself during the spectacular eight years of his approaching two-term presidency!

          Orthodox Republicans quickly had cause to join their Democratic friends in bemoaning the President's lies. He never had any problem whatsoever with either big government or its associated debt burden. What actually started happening the day he assumed office was a resumption of the upward sloping deficit trend line. It in fact took only three years for the budgetary shortfall once again to cross Obama's famous trillion-dollar mark, and this while the economy remained strong and before COVID-19 blasted onto the scene!

          When the virus did hit, all stops were kicked loose. No politician of either party seemed ready to express any skepticism regarding the scale of expenditures needed. Even AOC herself in March had warm words of praise for the President's early covonovirus proposal, albeit with the hastily-considered proviso that her Party planned to "bump it up a little". Dem radicals appeared stunned into momentary comity as the enemy President was suddenly suggesting outlays that exceeded what only months earlier had been the stuff of their own fondest dreams.

          The dust is as of yet still far from settling on all this, but current estimates suggest that the 2020 deficit will approach $4 trillion, nearly quadrupling estimates that only earlier in the year had already been sounding over the moon. Furthermore, no one is seeing much light at the end of this tunnel, and fairly optimistic consensus guesswork has those trillion-dollar-plus budgetary holes continuing out about as far as the academic eye can see. Far from being scaled back or even stabilized, the debt aggregate appears to be growing at an accelerating pace.   

The Siren's Song 

          Economists have never agreed about deficits. They have no consensus formulas telling them when a fatal line is being approached. Conservatives have always talked about all deficits as reckless steps down the primrose path to hyperinflation. Liberals on the other hand, citing Keynes, have regarded them as policy devices necessary for heading off downturns, albeit mostly ignoring his caution about their use during expansionary periods. Generations of serious policymakers have indeed treated deficits as tools, while keeping a wary eye on their dangers if pushed too hard.

          Serious policymakers, however, are being crowded aside in the current environment. Desperate times breed desperate ideas.

          There is a relatively new school of economic thinking that styles itself as Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). Its spokespeople include Randal Wray, Bill Mitchell, Warren Mosler, Stephanie Kelton, and others. MMT's central idea - not an idea at all really, but a simple fact - is that all the world's central banks, including America's Federal Reserve, are now free of gold or any other fixed standard. These banks can thus at any time create unlimited quantities of new money, and always stand ready to do so whenever the volume of maturing debt exceeds the roll-over capacity of bond markets. Short of irrational political interventions, default is thus rendered impossible. Debt is nothing to worry about and neither are deficits.

          I became aware of these writers a number of years ago and took comfort in the knowledge that hardly anybody seemed to be taking them seriously. However, I remember thinking at the time there would be hell to pay one day should they ever start finding ears within the Democratic Party. Left-fringe ideas for unlimited government could stop sounding so silly if those show-stopping funding constraints could just be made to disappear.  

Have You Heard The Good News? 

          Well, MMT has now proclaimed these constraints to be illusions, and the Party's suddenly-prominent neo-socialists have indeed opened their ears to the good news. Bernie Sanders and AOC have both publicly embraced MMT, seeking to rescue it from the cold waters of crankishness and to reel the what-me-worry theory into the warm political mainstream. Proposals for omnivorous programs like their Green New Deal and Medicare For All are being positioned for the first time as doable schemes. Indeed, they can be paid for without even raising taxes, and hence does MMT shore up this most common angle of attack against the new socialism. It all sounds great.  

          I'm not trying to belittle the MMT theorists. They are in fact sophisticated analysts with a sound grasp of how our monetary system works. Most of them are primarily academics, but some also have pragmatic real-world experience. Warren Mossler, for example, is a hedge fund founder and automotive engineer. He also once operated a broker-dealer, and this experience provided him an insider's perch overlooking Fed operations and the mechanics of the American monetary system. He has a deeper understanding of this stuff than most economists or politicians of any persuasion. Hence, when he talks about the ease of money creation, he knows exactly what he's getting at, as do most of his MMT colleagues.

          The problem with these folks, however, is that having understood the power of unlimited governmental authority, they have allowed themselves to become seduced by it. It's not surprising then that they're now finding common cause with our neo-socialist politicians, who have long been enthralled by the promise of government free of impediments. Perhaps tongue-in-cheek but revealingly, Mosler titles his web homepage "The Center Of The Universe". And in the style of a true self-referencing zealot, he's even proclaimed a doctrine he calls "Mosler's Law", which goes: "There is no financial crisis so deep that a sufficiently large fiscal adjustment cannot deal with it". No wonder Bernie and AOC are coming to love this guy and his colleagues.  It wouldn't surprise me if Trump too, lover of HUGE things that he is, might himself be secretly falling under MMT's spell. With the power of unlimited money, his great accomplishments could be written in the stars for all eternity.  

The Deadly Cost Of Free Money 

          Economic life, however, is not so simple. All developed economies are sprawling systems functioning via a virtual infinity of moving parts. No person, party, philosophical faction or government can see any more than a small fraction of the whole picture. However, no entity at any level is forced to operate completely in the dark either, because they have small points of light to guide them in their decision-making. These lodestars are prices, which in theory allow all players in the system to acquire goods and services they need in a manner that optimizes supply and demand. Stuff in relatively short supply is expensive, while anything flowing freely out of mass factories or God's green earth is cheap. Furthermore, for many goods and services, high prices stimulate production which then lowers prices again and contributes to general abundance.

          This is bedrock free market dogma, and the problem with it is that, while prices generally do perform their allotted function, the job they do is imperfect due to the many distorting factors that are at work. As our liberals would correctly point out, extreme disparities of wealth pervert pricing because uber-rich consumers buy more stuff than they need and thus make it more expensive and less available for everybody else. Liberals, like many conservatives, would also make the case that big, inefficient corporations add to the problem, since they often undertake wasteful mass projects that exceed their managerial capacity. They consume resources and drive up prices often without adding enough value to compensate.

          What liberals generally fail to acknowledge, however, is that seen in this light, governments behave like the biggest corporations of all. Often with good intentions, they undertake the kind of mass projects to which only governments can aspire, but that even the best of managers would be unable to control effectively. The purpose that budget constraints serve is to limit the ambition of government program managers and their allied politicians to initiatives they have at least some hope of being able to administer.

Our Achilles Heel 

          Hence, when the Socialist-MMT alliance proclaims budget constraints to be illusionary, they draw attention to the Achilles Heel long hidden in plain sight at the heart of our economic system. This is that the Fed's capacity for unlimited money creation has deadly potential if ever coupled with our government's unlimited capacity for high-cost experimental problem-solving.  

          Dollars dumped lavishly and carelessly into medical care, direct transfers, environmental and energy projects, infrastructure and just about any other imaginable program or subsidy would destroy the vital pricing signals that allow our system to function. These points of light, these lodestars, would grow progressively dimmer until decision-makers at all levels would find themselves reduced to operating blindly. This is what happens when central banking excess undermines an economy's mechanism for rational pricing.

          This already dangerous problem then becomes explosive when we consider that America's Fed is not just any central bank, but is the source of the mighty U.S. dollar. As the world's primary reserve currency, the dollar is the modern monetary equivalent of gold, and the bank wielding the power to spin it out of thin air is able to operate like a cabal of alchemists. Former French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, paraphrasing his predecessor Charles de Gaulle, characterized the dollar's power as America's "Exorbitant Privilege". 

          Looked at in this light, it is not all that hard to understand why chronic deficit spending has not yet led to ruinous inflation. America's bonds are forward contracts on its currency, and the world has for generations accepted this currency as though it were equivalent to gold.  By thus absorbing  our excess dollars, the global economy protects us from what would otherwise be the inflationary consequences  of  our monetary policy.

          The problem is that the rest of the world is not as gullible as we have apparently come to believe. Our fellow nations will not go on receiving dollars into their own monetary reserves if it becomes apparent to them that we are blowing our precious currency out the door like confetti.

          What our neo-socialist politicians, now encouraged by their MMT brain trust, are advocating is nothing less than the selfish and reckless abuse of America's Exorbitant Privilege.

Are We At The Tipping Point? 

          Even though economists have no formulas warning them when the monetary tipping point is approaching, the framework for considering the question is actually pretty simple. For nations, as for corporations, almost any debt burden is manageable so long as the debtor's resources are expanding. This is why, in the corporate world, leveraged buyouts (LBOs) can succeed for cases in which the target company is growing steadily. A seemingly insurmountable debt burden becomes progressively smaller in relative terms over time, until eventually the healthy firm easily absorbs its servicing cost.

          The situation is not so sanguine, however, when the firm encounters business adversity and begins to shrink. Under these circumstances, the arithmetic reverses itself and debt looms ever larger relative to the declining cash flow available to service it. If the pattern persists, bankruptcy is the only possible end game.

          Now, as the MMT folks love to point out in their lectures, nations aren't corporations and do not file for bankruptcy. Assuming debt that is denominated in their own currency, nations can and will always create new money to service it and hence technically can never default. The problem for nations occurs when the volume of new money necessary for this purpose begins to undermine the currency's value and the debt gets repaid in money that has lost its purchasing power. This point becomes the functional equivalent of bankruptcy.

          Now let's get back to the current COVID-19 crisis. Everyone seems aware of the fact that our economy is in some trouble, but I have to wonder if people are really coming to grips with how truly cavernous the hole is that has just belched open in front of us. The recent trillion dollar-plus deficit projections still assume a fairly robust economy. Yet what we are now experiencing is not only not a robust economy, nor even a normal recession, but the first stage of a deep and probably sustained depression. No one knows yet what the numbers are going to look like, but some estimates suggest that GDP could drop as much as 9% in the current year - exceeding the worst of the much ballyhooed "Great Recession".  And it will keep dropping if the economy is unable to re-open out of fear for the virus.

          The current U.S. federal debt aggregate is around $25 trillion and is now more than 100% of GDP. This ratio does not in itself have to represent an impossible burden, but quickly does so if the depression we're in sustains itself and our tax base continues to shrink.

          It's not completely far-fetched at this point to think of the U.S. economy as the sovereign equivalent of a corporate LBO. And like a leveraged company encountering a slump, the U.S. entering a depression will find that even its existing debt burden will grow relatively bigger and bigger with time.   

          And the existing debt burden is unfortunately only the starting point. In addition to the routine deficits now accumulating at a trillion-plus each year, a host of other potential claims beckon: 

• State and local governments are grappling with their own budgetary holes, some of them quite severe.
• State unemployment funds are already failing, and more are threatened if jobs don't come back and temporary furloughs become permanent.
• Public and private pension funds, which became a scary focal issue during the last recession, will again face shortfalls should stock market lose its currently inexplicable buoyancy.
• Our banks, while better capitalized than in 2008, may start to totter again.  

       

           All of these entities will appeal for federal subsidies as needed to ensure their survival. And it's not in Trump's nature, nor that of Congress, to resist such pleas. 

          Oh, and one more thing, interest on the federal debt - already a material budget item - threatens to explode when the bond and money markets awaken to the fact that inflation risk is not so non-existent as everyone seems to assume nowadays. And when inflation does return, it is likely to accelerate quickly, even in the midst of the economic downturn.

          The debt resulting from all these factors will be monetized because there is no practical alternative. Higher taxes cannot pay for it even if there was political will to attempt this option.

          The Fed is universally recognized as the backstop now for everything, and it will not hesitate to do whatever is needed to avoid systemic collapse. And why not, when the necessary money can be created in seconds by a few keystrokes entered into the the Fed's omnipotent computer system?

          I lack both the expertise and the stomach to add all this stuff up, but as Bob Dylan explained to us half a century ago, you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. 

 This certainly sounds like a tipping point to me. 

  And we intend to hold a Presidential election in the middle of it all? 

America's Crashing Clown Car - Part 2

(A Continuation my 5/10/20 article. 

The following was originally posted on 5/17/20 but inadvertently deleted. We're reposting it here  with today's date. The reference in Keith's 5/21 piece is to this article.

Where Are The Democrats Heading? 

            The Democrats' presidential primary campaign has been a struggle between its left wing and its traditionalists. The Party has a problem, however, in that while it's radicals are providing the political force vitale, the Dems' only hope of winning the election seems instead to be in renouncing extremism and presenting a more moderate image to the public. Their debates have been awkward affairs in which the two sides have danced around one another in an effort to keep the radical energy alive and somehow still establish a winning framework for the election.

            The Party has chosen to allow their young NY congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to become the public face for the rising generation of Democrats, and she seems proud of how far out onto the left fringe she has been able to skate. The Party, always prone to hero worship, has even seen fit to bestow upon her one of their coveted three-letter acronyms, usually reserved for their icons. Though barely out of her twenties, she is now "AOC" and stands in the revered company of FDR, JFK, RFK, MLK, and LBJ. Someone is certainly busy marketing her career, and she has become a superstar.

Uncle Bernie 

            Bernie Sanders is a pivotal resource for the Party right now. His avuncular and sometimes even lovable persona reassures the public, even though his politics are extreme by the standards of any past political norms in America. This is, after all, a man who in his youth was a vocal fan of the old Soviet Union and who more recently has had words of praise for the Chavista Government still running Venezuela,  despite horrific evidence there of how his political principles play out in the real world. He has performed invaluable service to the radical wing of his party simply by mainstreaming the term "socialist", which historically had always been a third rail for politicians in this country. It is that no longer.

            Many of his followers today are young enough to be his grandchildren and few of them have the historical knowledge to question Uncle Bernie when he tells them it's now OK to be a socialist. He tempers the reality by describing his ideology as "democratic socialism", although not many seem to pick up on this as the a contradiction in terms it is. If the "Bernie Bros" were familiar even with fairly recent history, they would realize that the thuggish Mr. Chavez wrapped himself up that same Orwellian banner.

            Sanders is, of course, only a transitional figure. His age and poor health have always precluded any serious chance for him to win the Party's nomination this year. However, he holds the power singlehandedly to cost the Democrats this election should he urge his followers to bolt the Party or even simply stay away from the polls. He's not a stupid man, and his objective all along cannot have been actually to win the Party's nomination, but rather to gain control of its direction.

Enter Joe Biden 

            It was revealing, after all the bitterness transpiring between the rival camps, how quickly Sanders swung into line behind Joe Biden as soon as his erstwhile rival appeared to sew up the nomination. Such sudden warmth can only mean that the behind-the-scenes deals had already been made between the two camps. The leftish faction will control the Party's agenda and substantially populate any future Biden administration. The easy rapprochement also probably means that the neo-socialists will own the now all-important choice of his running mate. Everyone knows that, should Biden be elected, his VP might soon look forward to an important promotion.

            Joe Biden is a decent man who has always represented the best the Democratic Party has to offer. While left of center, he's shown respect for his opponents and earned theirs in return. He is, however, a shell of himself at this point and can hardly string five words together without losing his train of thought. He has dementia and would, if elected, be incapable of exerting much will of his own. He would be tightly controlled by the real powers behind his Presidency, who would not be moderates.

            The Party strategists certainly realize the potential disaster they face throwing a man in his condition into the rough-and-tumble of a Presidential campaign. It is my belief that right now they are surely racking their brains in an effort to bring another candidate forward to replace Biden. This jarring development would be highly dangerous for their Party and for our country, but they may well choose to risk it. They will be unwilling to sacrifice a victory that, once again as in 2016, they believe to be now within their grasp.

Election In A Firestorm 

            So what we have this year then is a Presidential contest between a blowhard opportunist on one side, and either a broken man or a last-minute mystery candidate on the other. This burlesque was already taking place against a backdrop of anger and general cynicism, but a new destabilizing factor has now emerged. The COVID-19 pandemic has created a primal emotional panic everywhere and, as an oddly under-appreciated side effect, suddenly forced the national unemployment rate to the highest level ever recorded by the Bureau Labor Statistics. Unemployment is now higher than even during some years of the Great Depression.

            In past generations, national crises have generally united Americans in the fight against a common enemy. Predictably, what's happening now instead is intensifying partisan warfare. Whatever one thinks of Trump's actions so far in combating the emergency, there is absolutely nothing he could have done that would have avoided the bitter attacks being leveled at him by his opposition. Any correct move would have been quickly overlooked in the eagerness to throw light on his next mistake.

            Following Rahm Emanuel's famous advice, our Democrats are seeking leverage from the current crisis and not letting it go to waste. In the vanguard is the strident young AOC, who seems to be taking her cues from the Leninist playbook and it is calling for something akin to a general strike. Once again, the nation's vital energy is being sucked away into the vortex of ugly politics at the very time it's most needed for rational problem-solving.

The Minefield Between Now And November 

            While it is probable that the viral pandemic itself will be receding six months from now, my judgment is that its economic impact will by then be only gaining traction. Small to mid-sized businesses are the lifeblood of our economy, and many of them are being forced to shut down and to furlough their employees. And of those shuttered companies, many will never re-open, leaving employees and operators alike stranded and angry.

            To address the problem, Trump and Congress are suddenly on common ground in their desire to pour oceans of money on it. They're debating only about whether to spend a lot or a whole lot or a whole lot more. And given the magnitude of the collapse, even most free-market advocates are agreeing that massive governmental action is called for now. Most understand that the current implosion is not a normal economic downturn that might reasonably be expected to self-correct. This is instead analogous to a medically-induced coma that requires electro-shock therapy to restore functionality.

            Pushing the metaphor a little further, however, the critical question becomes whether the sick body has the vitality anymore to withstand such treatment.

            The federal budget deficit has been a political bugbear for generations now. Deficit spending has been with us since the earliest days of our republic, when Alexander Hamilton, against strident opposition, forced through federal assumption of the states' Revolutionary War obligations. Part of Hamilton's vision was that this sweeping act would bind them all to the economic development of the new nation, and it worked. Federal debt, once a bitterly controversial idea, has been with us ever since except for a few years during the 1830's when President Andrew Jackson triggered a depression by paying it all off.

Sword Of Damocles 

            Afterwards, the budget deficit ebbed and flowed over the years, but the trend line has been ineluctably up. The consequent debt aggregate has kept expanding. The deficit spiked sharply during the 1930's as government battled the Great Depression and spiked even higher during the WWII years. The great economist John Maynard Keynes provided a theoretical framework explaining why all this was OK at the time, and our politicians - who have their own reasons for embracing federal expenditures and tax cuts - responded warmly to Keynes' way of thinking.

            What they conveniently overlooked was Keynes' proviso that deficits were constructive during economic downturns, but not during expansions, when surpluses were needed as a means both for keeping inflation at bay and holding the aggregate debt down to a manageable level. No responsible economist has ever argued that debt could spike up and up forever without eventually destroying the economy and the currency.

          The only serious debates have been over how to identify and avoid that tipping point.