What Tucker Carlson’s Spin on World War II Really Says

What Tucker Carlson’s Spin on World War II Really Says

The Atlantic - Politics by Megan Garber / Sep 6, 2024 at 3:16 AM//keep unread//hide

In the movie The History Boys, based on Alan Bennett’s play, a student wins a scholarship to Oxford with the help of an argument he makes on an entrance exam: Hitler, he claims, was “much misunderstood.” As fiction, this is mordant comedy—a mockery of the particular type of arrogance required to twist the tragedies of the Holocaust into personal gain. But now the satire has come for our news cycle.

In a long and meandering interview on Tucker Carlson’s show this week, the podcaster Darryl Cooper offered musings about the “mythology”—the heroes, the villains, the plot, the moral stakes—of World War II. In his version, however, it is Winston Churchill who has been much misunderstood. Churchill, Cooper told Carlson, with dramatic flair, “was the chief villain of the Second World War.”

The claim is wrong, in every sense. The gravity of its error was highlighted by a resonant coincidence: Around the time the interview was posted, Alternative for Germany became the first far-right party to win a German state election since the Nazi era. The past is never dead, the old line goes; it is not even past. But Cooper and his enthusiastic host, these history boys with microphones, were not talking about history—not really. They were talking about themselves. They were treating World War II as a branding exercise. And this was, though not surprising in the context of Carlson’s show, a new nadir.

Consensus reality relies on consensus history. In this time of fragile facts, one point most people have been able to agree on is that Hitler was a bad guy. But the time for consensus is over, Cooper implied. Instead, as a phrase in the title of his episode summed things up: “Winston Churchill Ruined Europe.”

What becomes clear during the interview, as Cooper makes his convoluted case (“maybe I’m being a little hyperbolic,” he allows at one point), is that the true villains of his story are not, in the end, Hitler or Churchill, Axis or Allies. Instead, they are the culture warriors of the present: the woke, the mobs, the ruling class—the people who will be offended by claims such as “Winston Churchill Ruined Europe.” And the true heroes, consequently, are those who dare to say the unsayable. “There are just certain things you’re not allowed to question,” Cooper told Carlson, as he questioned the “myths” of World War II. (“Literally, it’s a crime to ask questions?” Carlson replied, before answering his own query: “Yes.”) One might not go to jail for the myth-busting, Cooper allowed; still, “you might have your life ruined and lose your job.” (“You might absolutely go to jail in this country,” Carlson countered.)

If your aim is to offer a clever reading of history rather than a true one, World War II will serve you well: Its excessive documentation is fertile ground, giving you many cherries to pick. It will provide the fodder you need to suggest that the Holocaust was, essentially, an unfortunate accident. And then it will allow you, if you choose, to treat the suffering of the people of the past as evidence for your own victimhood. You can take the accepted narrative and rewrite it.

In other contexts, Cooper and Carlson might have decried such an approach—an archly postmodern attitude in which all facts are relative, all orthodoxies suspect. But history boys need their straw men. And Churchill was the war’s true villain is less an argument than a provocation: a contention that, when World War II is mapped onto Hallin’s spheres, Hitler’s villainy should be relocated to the realm of legitimate controversy. It should be moved there because it is one of those things that you are not allowed to question. “Darryl Cooper may be the best and most honest popular historian in the United States,” Carlson’s show announced, in promoting the interview. “His latest project is the most forbidden of all: trying to understand World War Two.”

“Forbidden”—the stuff of perfumes, of clothing, of heterodox educational institutions—makes sense as branding. The forbidden is exotic. The forbidden is brave. The forbidden can transform history boys into men. And it can do all that from the comfort of one’s personal podcast studio.

History, from such a distance, is easy. Carlson and Cooper can talk about being arrested for questioning orthodoxies with no fear of that actually happening. They can traffic in the mystique of the “forbidden” with no reference to the many things—books, ideas, people—that bear the real risk of being banned. They are free to speak their mind. They are free to do so, indeed, because of the actions of people who did not have the luxury of treating the Holocaust as a thought exercise. The influencers can, if they choose, interpret others’ indignation as their victory. They can brag that they have “weakened the narrative” about World War II. They can choose not to wonder what their questioning really amounts to. “History nowadays is not a matter of conviction,” a teacher in The History Boys announces. “It’s a performance. It’s entertainment.” His students still have time to age out of such arrogance, the film implies. Or at least they should.

IF YOU'RE CERTAIN THAT THE GOP'S ELECTION FRAUD NARRATIVE IS FALSE, DON'T HEDGE

IF YOU'RE CERTAIN THAT THE GOP'S ELECTION FRAUD NARRATIVE IS FALSE, DON'T HEDGE

No More Mister Nice Blog by Steve M. / Sep 6, 2024 at 3:39 AM//keep unread//hide

There's a story in The New York Times by Alexandra Berzon about the Republican argument that significant numbers of undocumented immigrants are voting in American elections, and voting exclusively Democratic. The piece is a mixed bag. The headline is good:

Republicans Seize on False Theories About Immigrant Voting

"False" is good. "False" is unambiguous. But here's the subhead:

Activists, party lawyers and state officials are mobilizing behind a crackdown on a supposed scourge of noncitizens’ casting ballots. Voting rights advocates say the effort is spreading misinformation.

"Supposed" is skeptical, but it's a retreat from "false." And then the two-sentence structure of the subhead suggests that there realy is room for disagreement.

A few paragraphs in, Berzon tells us:

There is no indication that noncitizens are voting in large numbers. And yet the notion that they will flood the polls — and vote overwhelmingly for Democrats — is animating a sprawling network of Republicans who mobilized around former President Donald J. Trump’s false claims of a rigged election in 2020 and are now preparing for the next one.

This is accurate as far as it goes -- but this framing, which is standard for the mainstream media, provides a huge opening for Republicans. Non-citizens aren't voting "in large numbers"? What does that mean? Does it mean they are voting in fairly significant numbers, but Democrats want us to let it slide because the numbers aren't "large"?

As one Times reader says in the comments:

The important phrase, routinely underplayed by both sides, is "in large numbers." The Right want us to believe that illegal voters turn out on election day in innumerable hordes, while the Left (as in this article) discount "large numbers" dismissively, as if small numbers were nothing to worry about. But US elections are almost always won by a razor thin minority. Even a couple of thousand votes either way can and does make all the difference. In such circumstances, even small numbers are a major concern.

But it's not true that "US elections are almost always won by a razor thin" margin. In 2022 House elections, the average margin of victory was 28.9 percentage points. In that year's Senate elections, it was 19.6 percentage points.

Yes, we've all been told that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election because of close wins in several battleground states. But "close" meant a 10,457-vote margin of victory in Arizona, an 11,779-vote margin in Georgia, a 20,682-vote margin in Wisconsin, a 33,596-vote margin in Nevada, an 80,555-vote margin in Pennsylvania, and a 154,188-votes margin in Michigan. These margins go unmentioned in Berzon's story.

Now, how many votes by undocumented voters are there? Many, many paragraphs into the story, we're told this:

A recent analysis published by the Cato Institute, the libertarian think tank, found that the number of votes cast by noncitizens discovered through state audits in 2016 ranged from three in Nevada, out of over a million votes cast, to 41 in North Carolina, where nearly five million votes were cast.

Many more paragraphs later, we're told:

One researcher, Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, an immigrant rights group, recently reviewed the Heritage Foundation’s data and found just 68 documented cases of noncitizens’ voting going back to the 1980s. And although the current frenzy is focused on undocumented immigrants, only a small fraction of those cases — just 10 — involved people living in the country illegally.

Voting by undocumented immigrants at this level couldn't possibly have tipped any of Biden's close states to Trump, even assuming that every undocumented voter voted for Biden. (It's an article of faith on the right that undocumented immigrants who manage to vote always vote Democratic, but this assertion is always presented without evidence.)

Yet although these numbers make it clear that Republicans who campaign against voting by undocumented immigrants are targeting a problem that barely exists, Berzon "balances" these statistics with Republican propaganda:

Republicans argue that even one illegal vote is too many and that the data is not capturing the scope of the potential problem given the millions of undocumented immigrants in the country.

What does "the potential problem" even mean in this context? Researchers have looked at the actual problem, and it's not a problem.

Cleta Mitchell, whose Election Integrity Network organized the July conference call of activists, said she believed that the “vast numbers of illegals” in the country represented a “huge threat to the integrity of our elections.”

But it clearly doesn't! Berzon's numbers make that clear.

“I’m sure you would agree that every illegal vote cancels a legal, citizen’s vote — so that even one such vote is a problem for democracy,” she said in an email to The Times.

Yes, it's a problem -- a tiny, tiny problem that's not affecting the outcome of elections.

And yet Republicans are given even more column inches to make their bad-faith case:

Conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation and the Public Interest Legal Foundation have tracked alleged instances of noncitizen voting, some of which turned out to be wrong. Even small numbers can decide tight elections, they say....

But number this small aren't deciding tight elections.

Readers who read to the end of the story will come away understanding how flimsy the GOP's evidence is:

In 2019, Texas’ secretary of state, David Whitley, claimed he had identified nearly 100,000 noncitizens on the rolls and demanded that many produce proof of citizenship. Subsequent lawsuits and examination by voting rights advocates showed that the review was based on faulty methodology: The list included many people who had once submitted immigration documents to obtain a state identification. But they had since become naturalized as citizens, making them lawful voters. Mr. Whitley resigned amid blowback from the episode.

The key point is that Republicans can't point to a single election in which there's documented evidence of voting for Democrats by non-citizens in sufficient numbers to change the electoral outcome, and that should be Berzon's lede. That should be the lede of every journalist who writes about this. The supporting evidence should be the vast discrepancy between the actual number of voter-fraud cases and the victory margins in the elections Republicans are challenging.

The evidence is all on one side. No responsible journalist should treat a GOP "fraud" crusader as in any way credible.

Holy shit. THIS IS MASSIVE. By Shaiel Ben-Ephraim

@academic_la

Liberal Jews have been under vicious attack by conservative Jewish accounts for months now. Telling us daily we are not real Jews, and are kapos. We all felt like its intensity made no sense. We are in the middle of a wave of antisemitism, and why any Jew would go out of their way to split us right now. The occasional divisive comment is natural. But a full-blown campaign to drive us apart?

The DOJ filing on the Russian practice of creating 'doppelgangers' gives us an idea of what is happening here. It explains how several Russian companies are "impersonating legitimate news entities and unique media brands created by Doppelganger to covertly spread Russian government propaganda." Their goal is to "bolster pro-Russian policies and interests, and influence voters in the U.S. and foreign elections without identifying, and in fact purposefully obfuscating, the Russian government or its agents as the source of the content."

The filing includes a reference to a project specifically designed to target Jews and Israelis: "Consistent with other Doppelganger campaigns explicitly targeting the United States, this Israel-related campaign would involve the creation of a media brand, targeted advertising to spread content, the publication of articles in legitimate media, and an operation involving the widespread posting of social media comments impersonating Israelis. A separate SDA document provided an example of how to pose as an Israeli and disseminate fake articles and comments presenting an unattributed Russian narrative through comments on social media."

The document gives the Russian plan for doing so in detail: "At present, the situation in the state of Israel seems very favorable for launching a major project aimed at influencing public opinion. The goal of such influence is to rip Israel out of the general Western anti-Russian agenda and to create a sustainable public opinion which would deem neo-Nazism and dictatorship in Ukraine, rendering aid to neoNazis, and, therefore, the escalation of the conflict by the West and helping anti-Russian political emigration unacceptable."

The campaign calls to target Jewish left-wingers: "The left-wingers demand, in addition to other things, that Israel expend refugee admission from Ukraine (including the ones without a confirmed Jewish origin), and provides the Ukrainian refugees with living accommodations and employment, as well as expands financial aid to Ukrainians.  The left-wingers also support the so-called “Great Aliyah”, i.e. mass emigration of liberally minded Jews from Russia. Among such "Russian" Jews are celebrities like  and others. The leftists support their repatriation and anti-Russian political activities, despite bribery scandals associated with issuing Israeli documents to some of them.

They then explain why they prefer to work with Jewish and Israeli right-wingers: "Unlike the left-wingers, the right-wingers support the current government of Israel, stand up for reduction of aid to Ukraine, want the government to focus on internal problems and impose more stringent policy on refugees."

They also show approval of Netanyahu: "The right-wingers also want better relations with Russia (despite of existing controversies). , the current head of Israeli government, is considered a "friend of Putin".  A special attitude towards Russia and the President of Russia is characteristic of the right and moderate in Israel. Thus, for example, the former Prime-Minister of Israel ’ last interview includes a description of his negotiations with the Russian President in spring of 2022 and literally overflows with compliments addressed to the outstanding, perceptive, and wise Russian leader. "

There is a Russian plan to divide the Jewish people. We see it in action here every single day. Beware. They are trying to divide and destroy us.

ANTI-TRUMP REPUBLICANS SHOULD BE ROOTING FOR THE RIGHT-WING MEDIA TO LOSE, TOO. By Steve M.

Wednesday, September 04, 2024

Politico Playbook tells us today that some Republicans who are publicly loyal to Donald Trump are secretly hoping he'll lose:

Some of the Republicans wishing for a Trump loss include long-standing GOP figures throughout the nation who bleed red and wouldn’t dare to say this publicly but who are more than ready to move on from the Trump era.

We're told that free-market conservatives don't like Trump's protectionism, abortion opponents don't like his reproductive-rights flip-flopping, and defense hawks don't like his opposition to internationalism. Elsewhere at Politico, Jonathan Martin makes the Trump haters' case: Republicans are likely to win the Senate this year, which would constrain a Kamala Harris presidency; it would be easier to run as a Republican in 2026 with Harris in the White House; and Trump is really annoying:

He’s incoherent on abortion rights, unable even to appear at a cemetery without creating a political mess and is so bothered by those who’ve suffered the wounds of war that he slights Medal of Honor recipients. And, running against a female opponent, he’s pushing blowjob jokes about her and his last female opponent.

And that’s just the last two weeks.

This is to say nothing of Trump’s routine self-sabotage, mocking his advisers’ attempt to keep him on message, refusing to learn the basics of issues over nine years after he entered politics and making little effort to appeal to those in his own party who are uneasy with him.

The counterargument is so obvious that even Chris Cillizza gets it:

There is zero interest among the party base to abandon the national populism of Trump.... The party is all about sticking it to the man and giving the finger to the media these days. And the base seems to like it just fine thank you.

It amazes me that almost a decade into Donald Trump there are still Republicans out there who think that somehow this is a blip, an anomaly — that all they need is one more election and then everything is going to go back to “normal.”

THIS is normal now for the Republican party. And will be until Trump dies — and possibly much longer than that.

And besides, the Republican Party is the way it is right now for reasons that go way beyond Trump. Martin is wrong about this:

Republicans vastly underperformed a promising midterm in 2022 in part because of below-replacement-level figures [Trump] elevated. And they may lose winnable races again this year — think the Senate race in Arizona and governor’s race in North Carolina — because Republicans have become overly captive to candidates in his image.

The Republican Senate candidate in Arizona is Kari Lake, who positioned herself as a Trump clone in her failed gubernatorial race two years ago and is doing the same this year in a Senate race she seems to be losing. But the party's gubernatorial candidate in North Carolina is Mark Robinson, whose rise to prominence had nothing to do with Trump.

Just after the 2018 mass school shooting in Parkland, Florida, Robinson delivered an angry pro-gun speech at a city council hearing in Greensboro, North Carolina. Here's what happened then:

... a clipped version of his speech exploded across conservative messaging apps and social-media feeds.... Mark Walker, a Republican who represented Greensboro in Congress, shared the video on Facebook and racked up millions of views, which Robinson estimates helped his own following double overnight. Within the week, a private car was chauffeuring Robinson to Winston-Salem for an interview with Ainsley Earhardt and Brian Kilmeade on Fox & Friends. “How can we follow you on social media,” asked Earhardt, “and will you ever run for office?” Robinson replied blushingly that he and his wife, Yolanda Hill, had discussed a bid for elected office, but for now he was focused on completing his bachelor’s degree in history from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro.

That calculation began to shift after the National Rifle Association cast Robinson in a commercial featuring video from his speech. “Anyone who is concerned with holding onto the Second Amendment, I absolutely think they should join the NRA,” he said solemnly. The organization flew him to Dallas for its May convention, where President Donald Trump was a speaker. The commander-in-chief did not stop by Robinson’s green room, but Robinson flew home dazzled and started to parlay his underground celebrity into appearances where GOP voters might take notice.... Robinson was fêted by conservative media and gun groups so often — the World Forum on Shooting Activities flew him to Nuremberg, Germany, and gave him an award — that he quit his job at Davis Furniture, a manufacturing plant in nearby High Point.

He ran for lieutenant governor, and won -- but now he's trailing in the governor's race and is on the defensive about multiple scandals and his own inflammatory remarks.

Trump didn't make Mark Robinson a star. Institutions that pre-dated Trump made him a star: Fox and the rest of the right-wing media, along with the NRA and the rest of the gun lobby. And that's the GOP's real problem.

Donald Trump isn't the sole reason that the Republican Party is extreme and unpalatable to many middle-of-the-road voters. The party began its modern era of intolerance in the days of Ronald Reagan, but the extremism metastasized under the influence of talk radio and then Fox News. Now add the podcasts, news and opinion websites, and social media accounts (as well as entire social media platforms), and you've got a well-oiled rage-inducing machine that urges GOP base voters to hate everyone who isn't a right-winger in good standing (whatever that means at the time). Politicians who tap into the rage inevitably succeed, at least in Republican primaries and deep-red states and districts. But normal people are alienated. Republicans can win nationally under these conditions, but just barely.

Trump won't go away no matter what. Martin writes, again incorrectly:

... the more decisively Vice President Kamala Harris wins the popular vote and electoral college the less political oxygen he’ll have to reprise his 2020 antics; and, importantly, the faster Republicans can begin building a post-Trump party.

But Joe Biden's popular-vote win in 2020 was by the second-largest margin of any presidential election in this century. It didn't matter. Even if Harris exceeds Biden's vote margin, Trump will say the election was stolen, and the majority of his voters will believe him. They'll believe him because the right-wing media will amplify his message.

Republicans who are tired of Trumpist tactics should seek to deprive their own media outlets of oxygen. I don't know how that would work, but it's clear that those outlets will continue practicing the politics of rage, paranoia, and conspiratorialism long after the next president is inaugurated. That means Donald Trump or a Trump imitator as the 2028 GOP nominee, and it means more Mark Robinsons in other races. That's the future, unless serious changes are made.

Posted by Steve M. at 12:38 PM 

Note to Corporate Media: You Don't Have to Act Like Trump and Vance Are Serious People. By Rude Pundit

Read time: 6 minutes

Sept. 4, 2024

Let us say, and why not, that Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz is asked about his GOP counterpart and declares in an interview, "JD Vance's whole purpose in this world is to blow goats." When asked what he means, Walz could clarify, "I mean that Senator and Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance has one reason for living, and that's to suck goat dick. His entire life would be unfulfilled and he will be miserable if he doesn't fellate goats on a regular basis. And I mean the whole act. From gently tongue-bathing the goat's enormous testicles to bring it to full erection and then going down on that straw-sized dick until it ejaculates in his mouth. A goat dick-less JD Vance has no real value system or meaning in his life and he would have chosen a path to misery."

How should the major media outlets react to such an absurd thing? Would CNN ask Vance if Walz is correct? Would they have a panel discussion on the idea that orally pleasuring goats is Vance's purpose? Would commentators on the left quickly agree with Walz and insist that Vance's lack of blowing goats clouds his judgment and the only way he can be a contributing member of society and not some sad goatless dude is to take the goat jizz regularly? Would other Democrats praise Walz for being brave enough to say the truth about Vance and goat blowing? 

The answer is "Of fucking course not." It would be treated as deranged and baffling, as sign of Walz's unfitness for office and of the depravity of Democrats. The condemnation would be general and widespread, including from Democrats, likely leading to Walz being forced to drop off the Democratic ticket. Oh, sure, there would be some of us (me) who would defend Walz for being fucking hilarious. But we know that the outragegasm would be unending, and no reporter would ever let Harris or any Democrat get away with not constantly responding to it. Some things are beyond the pale, and they should be. There should be some things that politicians say that are disqualifying. 

Like, I dunno, maybe being on record constantly that women only have value and worth in American society if they breed. See, it's not just that JD Vance has said and keeps saying shit like that a woman who emphasizes her career is a "miserable person who can’t have kids because [she] already passed the biological period when it was possible." It's that the Most Important Newspapers and other media treat Vance and Donald Trump like they are Very Serious People with Very Serious Ideas that need Very Serious Consideration when, actually, no, they absolutely do not. Anyone espousing a philosophy that says that women who don't give birth to children are innately unhappy or that people without kids don't have a serious stake in the future of the world is an obvious fool and kind of a dick. 

We don't need reporting about how saying such nonsense affects voters. We need journalists saying that none of that is true and no one should believe it. It's that recent canard that if you have one person saying it's raining and the other person saying it's not, it's the journalist's job to open the goddamn window and tell everyone what's real. If someone is saying completely untrue shit, it's actually objective reporting to say that what they're saying is completely untrue shit. And it's completely valid to question other Republicans about what Vance has said and not let them get away with avoiding whether or not they think "the whole purpose of the postmenopausal female" is to help take care of grandchildren.

Last Thursday, in another of his rambling bullshit sessions, this time for the poor suckers in Potterville, Michigan, Trump went on a rant using the lie about transgender women at the Olympics: "You see the boxing in the Olympics, two transitioned people, they transitioned from men to women, did you see? Fighting, a young, beautiful Italian boxer, top boxer, they thought big things from her. And then bing. A left jab, just a jab. She go, 'Whoa, what? I just got hit with a horse.' Again, bing. She said, 'I’m out.' She quit. She couldn’t take it. Two punches. The second one likewise got into the ring with a couple of very talented women, just beat the hell out of them. They both won the gold medal, shockingly."

Trump likes to say that all of his incoherent, disorganized storytelling is called "the weave" by English professors and he says it has a point. Let me assure you, as an English professor (no, really), it's not called that. The only weaving is Trump creating fiction out of lies and the point is to spread hateful propaganda. News media should report that he's lying and then figure out if it's intentional or if he's fucked in the head or both.

There is no realm where this or anything Trump says needs to be taken seriously except as evidence of how delusional he is. And also how confused. In that same speech, without anything that anchored it to what he had been talking about, Trump seemed to swing into talking about his 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton: "And look, we did something that they’re very angry about. We beat somebody that should have been beaten in an election that we weren’t anticipated to win. But I thought we were going to win, because I came to Michigan the night before. We had 49,000 people. She came to Michigan the night before because she was told she may lose it. And this was an upset, so they had a fast tour. She had like 300 people. I said, 'Why would we lose?' We had the crowd you wouldn’t have believed it." 

Prior to this he was talking about electric cars and then, I think, President Biden at the Democratic National Convention. After this he introduced a soldier who was there supporting him. At no point did he mention Clinton. "She" in that quote is simply not defined. Can you show me a single moment from Biden where his brain seemed to leap to something so out out of context it was like he was giving another speech? No, you can't. 

The fact that the GOP ticket consists of an elderly man plainly declining mentally and a guy who lies about women in order to enslave them to childbirth and child care is the story that needs to be covered and simply isn't. And if it turns out that JD Vance is blowing goats, yes, that deserves some mention, too.

(Note: At the beginning, am I comparing having children to goat fellatio? Yes. Yes, I am.)

(Note 2: You are so right. I could have gone with couch-fucking. But, to me, that joke is played out, like a loveseat with too many secret sex holes.)

(Note 3: Yes, there is a cynical side of me which says that, of course, CNN would act like goat-blowing is now worthy of discussion because we'd all click on the clips of that panel to watch odious Scott Jennings talk about how goats need love.)

(Note 4: I couldn't figure out where to put this line, but I liked it, so here it is: "When Walz is asked if he would do anything to help JD Vance blow goats, like buy him a goat or bring him to a goat farm, Walz can put up his hands and say, 'Whoa, whoa, let's not get carried away.'")

A thread about what is wrong with the influence of Elon Musk and other tech billionaires. By Daron Acemoglu

Post

Daron Acemoglu

@DAcemogluMIT

A thread about what is wrong with the influence of Elon Musk and other tech billionaires. Another thread about content moderation will follow later this week.

Obviously, the problem isn’t that Musk is expressing his opinions, which is his freedom of speech. It isn’t that Musk has turned into a big supporter of Trump. It isn’t even that Musk is posting AI-generated fake images of Kamala Harris: https://cnn.com/2024/09/03/media/elon-musk-x-kamala-harris-trump-misinformation/index.html

My concerns are more sociological and political economic.

My starting point is that in any society some individuals have more, much more power than others. Once upon a time, this may have been linked to physical strength or military prowess. Today, it is often related to what Simon Johnson and I called “persuasion power” in Power and Progress. 

https://amazon.com/Power-Progress-Thousand-Year-Technology-Prosperity/dp/1541702530/

Persuasion power is rooted in status or prestige: those with greater status can more easily persuade others. Where status comes from and how unequally it is distributed vary greatly across societies.

In the United States, status became linked to money and wealth, and income and wealth inequality skyrocketed. This meant a very steep status hierarchy.

That is problematic for several reasons.

First, status – and relatedly persuasion power – are largely zero-sum affairs. More status for somebody means less status for another. A steeper status hierarchy makes some people happy, and others unhappy and dissatisfied. Investment in zero-sum activities is often inefficient and excessive, as compared to investment in non-zero-sum activities. Compare, for example, the social value of spending money on pure gold multi-million-dollar Rolex watches versus spending time to learn some new skills. Both may have intrinsic values for the investors (due to the beauty of the watch and the pride of acquiring new knowledge). But, on the whole, the first type of investment signals that you are richer and more able to undertake conspicuous consumption, and it can easily get out of hand – with people spending huge sums in order to edge ahead of others they see themselves in competition with. The second type of investment, on the other hand, increases your human capital also contributes to society. The first is largely zero-sum the second is largely non-zero-sum.

Second, there are evolutionary and social foundations for linking persuasion power to status and prestige – it is individually rational to learn from people who have expertise and it is reasonable to link this expertise to success. This type of learning is also good for communities, because it enables them to coordinate on certain best practices.

https://amazon.com/Secret-Our-Success-Evolution-Domesticating/dp/0691178437/

But when status gets linked to wealth and wealth inequality becomes very large, this social justification is lost. Consider the following thought experiment. Who has greater expertise on carpentry? A good, master carpenter or a hedge fund billionaire? If we think about it this way, we would probably conclude the former. But when wealth becomes status, we may start attaching more and more importance to views of hedge fund billionaires on carpentry. This example was purposefully simple and sharp. Let’s take another one to see why the “wealth is status” social equilibrium is problematic. Whose views on freedom of speech you want to attach more importance to? A tech billionaire or a philosopher who has grappled with ethical questions related to the freedom of speech?

Third, even more problematic is the fact that in most societies, wealth inequality has an arbitrary dimension. Take Wilt Chamberlain and Lebron James. We may argue endlessly about which one is better, but clearly, they were both exceptionally talented basketball players. Chamberlain is estimated to have had a wealth of $10 million at the time of his death. Lebron James’s wealth today is estimated at $1.2 billion. These different outcomes are largely arbitrary. Chamberlain happened to live at a time when there were sports stars did not get compensated as much. This is partly about technology (everybody can watch Lebron James today), partly about norms (we’ve have made it much more acceptable for people to be paid hundreds of millions of dollars), and partly about taxes (if the US today had the kinds of tax rates that it had in the 1950s, it would not generate such large wealth inequality). Similarly, if the tech sector did not become so central to the economy and did not have a winner-take-all aspect (which was also partly a choice of how we organize several markets and sectors), tech billionaires would not have become so rich. Bill Gates or Elon Musk are not any wiser because they are taxed less. But they have much more wealth because they are taxed so little. But then in a “wealth is status” social equilibrium, their status and social influence multiplies because they are taxed so little.

Fourth, there is something even more pernicious which Simon Johnson and I explored in Power and Progress using the example of Ferdinand de Lesseps. In fact, we thought this was so important that we devoted the first full chapter, Chapter 2, of the book to it. Lesseps gained tremendous status in late 19th century France, coming to be identified as the “Le Grand Français” (the great Frenchman), because of his success (and luck) in successfully completing the Suez Canal. He showed great skills in convincing politicians both in Egypt and France and some foresight in seeing that maritime international trade would become very important. He was also tremendously lucky in that his hopes that technological solutions to the way that he wanted to build the canal (without locks, which was initially impossible because of the amount of digging excavation that would be necessary) were developed just-in-time to save the project. But then what did Lesseps do with this prestige? He became reckless, unhinged and cocky, pushing the Panama Canal project in an unworkable direction, which ultimately led to the deaths of more than 20,000 people and to financial ruin for many more (including his own family). Persuasion power also makes you unrestrained, which can be socially dangerous and disruptive. Simon and I thought that Lesseps’s story was relevant precisely because the same dynamics were being played out with many tech leaders today.

Fifth, some very rich people choose not to use the status conferred on them by their wealth to centrally influence critical debates (think of Warren Buffett). Some like Bill Gates or Elon Musk do. It follows as a corollary of what I have argued so far that this is not desirable, because their status is excessive, and they are now influencing key social choices beyond their expertise. It is not tech billionaires’ fault that US policy is fueling massive inequality (though they benefit from it handsomely and many of them then use their status in order to keep taxes low and regulations light). But it is their responsibility if they start misusing the huge status that this wealth inequality affords them. It is their responsibility if they turn into bullies and start punching down on people who disagree with them, because they themselves start believing that everybody should respect their opinion on every topic. It is absolutely their responsibility if they use their platform for further polarizing society.

Finally, if we are in such a situation the last thing we want is to give even bigger forums – for example, in the form of their own social network – to these people who already have excess status and influence, and this is doubly true if they have a tendency to punch down.

10:30 PM · Sep 4, 2024

Even a Harris Transition Would Be Challenging. By Matthew Yglesias

Trump’s chaotic transition planning is getting a lot of headlines, but same-party handoffs are fraught in their own way.

September 1, 2024 at 12:00 PM UTC

Matthew Yglesias is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A co-founder of and former columnist for Vox, he writes the Slow Boring blog and newsletter. He is author of “One Billion Americans.”

If she wins, Kamala Harris will face one of the rarest tasks in American politics: the same-party presidential transition. Although it wouldn’t be as chaotic as the transition her opponent appears to be planning, it would come with its own set of challenges — both professional and political.

Outgoing presidents are almost never succeeded by a fellow party member who won the election. This is mostly a coincidence (Richard Nixon, Al Gore and Hillary Clinton all came extremely close), but it’s happened only twice in the last century: George H.W. Bush succeeded Ronald Reagan in 1989, and Herbert Hoover took over from Calvin Coolidge in 1929.

In theory, a same-party transition should be easier than a partisan turnover. In practice, it’s more fraught. Precisely because a partisan transition involves a large gap in policy perspectives, there’s nothing personal about people losing their jobs. Joe Biden didn’t “fire” Donald Trump’s cabinet, he just became president.

But suppose Harris wins and really wants to put in place her own EPA chief or Interior secretary, but Deb Haaland or Michael Regan are reluctant to leave. Then she’d have to fire them, which would be awkward both personally and politically. That’s why Ken Duberstein, Ronald Reagan’s chief of staff, sent a letter in 1988 asking Reagan’s political appointees to tender their resignations after the election so that Bush would be able to start with a clean slate. The problem, as Andy Card later recalled, is that many of them didn’t do it.

What’s more, new presidents tend to rely on people with experience from prior presidencies. Even Trump brought back many who’d served in some capacity in the Bush administration, while the Biden team is full of Obama veterans. Three members of Reagan’s cabinet, including the attorney general and the Treasury secretary, were retained by Bush, while Coolidge’s secretaries of State, Treasury and Labor served under Hoover.

Given this reality — as well as today’s charged political climate — there is a certain logic to not asking Biden appointees to resign.

Technically, presidential appointees remain in place until they resign or are fired, which means that if Harris kept Biden’s people around, she wouldn’t need to confirm new ones.1 This is an appealing option if Republicans win back a majority in the Senate.

The last time a newly inaugurated president lacked a Senate majority was, again, 1989 — when politics was much less partisan and polarized. In 2025, it might be extremely difficult to get anyone confirmed. So instead of asking for resignations, Harris might find herself begging people such as Merrick Garland, Janet Yellen and Lloyd Austin to stay in office.

I know from reporting on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 transition planning that she essentially had two blueprints: one to be used if Democrats retook the Senate, and one if Republicans retained control. I do not know if Harris’ contingency planning has reached that level of detail, but I do know that she has had far less time to get a transition team organized, and that trying to plan two transitions simultaneously takes a lot more time.

Meanwhile, Biden has been strikingly indecisive on a number of personnel matters. Essentially nobody has been fired from any significant role, and vacancies at Housing and Urban Development, Agriculture, and Veterans Affairs haven’t been filled. Within the White House, there are a handful of senior advisers who wield significant influence but lack defined portfolios, and agency officials tell me it’s often not clear who exactly is in charge of what.

Last but by no means least, the stakes of all these personnel changes will be elevated because Harris’ factional positioning inside the Democratic Party is unclear, maybe deliberately. Since she didn’t need to win a party primary, she wasn’t forced to run the usual gauntlet of interest-group demands. That’s mostly a plus, but it could give small-bore personnel decisions outsized ideological significance.

The impulse to avoid getting bogged down in detailed discussions of policy arcana has served Harris well so far. But deferring decisions now only raises the stakes of choices later. And there are few decisions more consequential than the ones a president-elect makes about personnel. Kamala Harris’ transition could be far more difficult than it appears.