There's No Alternative

because it's too amazing, right

The Trump administration is making mistakes, as it operates with a sense of urgency: going fast and breaking stuff. There will be some things to reconsider, and some moves to reverse. The news assures me that this is the most horrible crisis in the history of the universe, and anything like an NPR or a New York Times op-ed section have become nervous breakdowns as media product — a daily parade of worst-evers. But the whole reason I don’t care is that I’ve been alive during the last twenty years. And so this kind of framing (click this link to play the video, if you must)…

Runs into the fact that I live in a state that’s governed by Democrats, in a county that’s governed by Democrats, in a city that’s governed by Democrats, and I can see. When I drive around, I can see what the alternative is — materially, immediately, right in front of me:

Democrats: getting shit done. No, but literal shit. On the sidewalks.

Lately the mayor of Los Angeles has been in Sacramento, asking for a teensy bit of help with her whoopsies.

So all day, every day, surrounded by dysfunction, I see the people who created the dysfunction warning that the federal government is now being run irresponsibly. I don’t pretend perfection in the current administration, but for crying out loud, I most certainly claim shamelessness in its opponents.

In the New York Times over the weekend, retired federal judge and obvious lunatic J. Michael Luttig issued an urgent warning that Trump is forcefully expressing public criticism of the courts and questioning the legitimacy of their decisions, which is unconscionable and a huge crisis:

If Mr. Trump continues to attempt to usurp the authority of the courts, the battle will be joined, and it will be up to the Supreme Court, Congress and the American people to step forward and say: Enough….

If the president oversteps his authority in his dispute with Judge Boasberg, the Supreme Court will step in and assert its undisputed constitutional power “to say what the law is.” A rebuke from the nation’s highest court in his wished-for war with the nation’s federal courts could well cripple Mr. Trump’s presidency and tarnish his legacy.

Not mentioned:

Also not mentioned:

So:

1. THE SUPREME COURT IS COMPLETELY ILLEGITIMATE AND THEY’D BETTER LOOK OUT OR ELSE WE’LL…

2. Uh, I mean, how dare Donald Trump criticize the courts, this is a CRISIS.

You take this seriously if you feel like it. I decline.

Taking all of the madness and condensing it into its purest form, The Atlantic. It’s always The Atlantic.

The actual claim in this extraordinary piece published on Tuesday is that government is a victim of its own success, having become so effective and capable that people are too pampered and feel entitled to more:

Or maybe the expectations of the global public have ceased to track with any realistic idea of government capacity. Contemplating the recent anti-incumbent turn, I have found myself returning to a conversation I had a while back with Ricardo Lagos, who was the president of Chile from 2000 to 2006. He told me that while in office, he had wooed a dissatisfied constituency by channeling substantial resources to a poor neighborhood in the outskirts of Santiago, Chile’s capital. “We built a housing complex and made sure that public services like water, electricity, and health were available and reliable,” he told me. And yet, when election time rolled around, the voters of that neighborhood turned away from Lagos and supported the opposition.

“I was flabbergasted,” he told me, “and decided to find out for myself what had happened. I met with a group of community leaders and was expressing my surprise and singling out the hundreds of houses we built when one of the neighbors told me, ‘Yes, Mr. President, we know what you did, but this is all about parking spaces. The houses are nice, but we don’t have any parking.’”

Lagos was stunned. Public housing in Chile had never included such middle-class trappings as parking. But his constituents were getting wealthier, and as they did, their expectations ran ahead of his government’s ability to deliver. This problem is not Chile’s alone. In many countries, expectations rise faster than government capacity, governments look hapless, and the resulting public discontent makes the countries harder to govern.

See, government works so well that it gives the peasants a bunch of stuff, and then the peasants get resentful, because their appetites expand. They want even more stuff, so they get mad at the people who gave them all the stuff, for not giving them endless extra stuff. That’s why people were mad at, say for example, Joe Biden. He was too damn good, and it made us petulant.

Not mentioned:

A twenty year war with the Taliban that ended with a Taliban victory.

Regime change in Iraq, Libya, and now Syria that led to serious violence and instability.

A federal government with just short of $37 trillion in debt, well above GDP.

The relentless growth of homelessness in the progressive bellwether state.

And so on. Name your own examples. So, chess with a pigeon, the people who have no successes on their record knock over all the pieces, shit on the board, and strut around like they won the game. Why can’t Trump be responsible, like the decision to overthrow Muammar Qaddafi, or wise, like the Affordable Care Act?

If Orange Man Bad, what on earth is the alternative? What’s on the other side of that bet? Ultimately, I think our problem is cultural rot that creates a political problem, and it’ll require a generational, bottom-up solution. Government doesn’t fix us, we fix us, at which point we’ll be in a position to fix government. This: “The causes of these phenomena are multiple and complex, but implicated in these and other maladies is the breakdown of the country's bourgeois culture.”

Actual depiction of the current state of contemporary mainstream culture

But the immediate political element of any potential course correction right now is only found in one place, and it’s amazing and very orange and the best ever, believe me, everybody says so. In the near term and from government, where else could it possibly come from? Who in the governing class is good at it? “President Gavin Newsom.” If Trump sucks, who doesn’t? What would you propose as an alternative? SMOD isn’t an option for current polling, by the way.

We are where we are. Keep going. Victories will come. Line up against whatever team David French and Norm Eisen are playing for, and run whatever play is available.