Some housekeeping first, then a savory potpourri for the week before Christmas: There will be no Wise Owls podcast this week, due Mr. Ellis’s rotator cuff in the shop for repair—we’ll return for a Sayonara to 2023 next week. But—and this could never be considered merely a replacement—your Sanitymeister will be featured on old friend Andrew Sullivan’s Dishcast this Friday. We discuss everything from Gaza to politics to Andrew’s culinary habits (shocking!) to the importance of The Crown. Link to come. However, there needs be a final seasonal reminder, then we’re off to the races…or racists, as the case may be. Last chance:
Soft Landing
Sully and I found ourselves in a mercifully brief discussion of economics, a subject I view dimly from a distance. We appear to be in the midst of a Soft Landing, a near-mythical event in which Macro-Economic manipulation saves us from a Recession after a period of Inflation. I gave Joe Biden some credit for this on the podcast, but noted that the soft landing was made necessary by the inflation unleashed, in part, by federal stimulus after the Covid pandemic—a period in which Biden, unlike Clinton in 1993 and Obama in 2009, eschewed the advice of Lawrence Summers and bowed to the stimulating impulses of his more liberal advisers. Andrew pointed out that Obama was criticized for not pushing enough cash into the economy after the 2008 Wall Street debacle—but I rejoined that Obama has never gotten enough credit for getting us out of the rut so quickly after the Big Casino hucksters nearly brought the whole tent down.
Economics is just too complicated for most economists, and certainly for me. I believe the sainted Hayek (the Austrian adept Fredrick August, not Salma) once said that the impact of government on an economy is that of a breeze on a tree. Government can have an impact with vast Keynesian actions during, say, a Depression—though FDR needed World War II to get us out of the 1930s ditch—but in cases like 2008 and the post-Covid bloat, the levers to be pushed and pulled are too subtle for amateurs like me to understand. Kudos then to Biden and especially Fed Chairman Jay Powell who have brought forth this apparent rainbow unicorn. (Caveat lector: Powell was an old neighbor and friend of the Sanity Family Circus, a wise and exceedingly decent guy who occasionally took my advice on music, but never on economics, thank the Lord.)
Low Joe
We are told by The Washington Post that the President is bummed by his polls. He should be, for reasons I’ve burdened you with too many times. I will say this, though: his current dip may have something to do with the courage he’s shown on the situation in Gaza. As Bret Stephens writes in the Times:
A Harvard-Harris poll conducted this month finds that 44 percent of Americans ages 25 to 34, and a whopping 67 percent of those ages 18 to 24, agree with the proposition that “Jews as a class are oppressors.”
Yikes! Never trust anyone under 30.
A caveat here: The Harris poll is a creature of the formerly sane Mark Penn, once an excellent pollster and political thinker, but now a major figure in the No Labels heresy. So any Bad-Biden polling from his shop should be taken with a larding of skepticism. AND YET…
Of real concern are Biden’s numbers in Michigan, where the bottom has fallen out—in part, I imagine, because of the antipathy of the large Arab community there.
Poor Biden: he has run an honorable, careful foreign policy. He has not sent American troops into foolish wars, a low bar—but maybe not so much, given the idiot carnage of my lifetime. And yet, he finds himself stuck on the periphery of two unwinnable wars: in Ukraine and Gaza. One hopes they will be resolved in 2024. (And there’s a straw in the wind on the Palestinian side, one that is hopeful but currently unacceptable to Bibists, that I’ll discuss in a future post.)
And finally, the most recent New York Times/Siena poll has Biden up on Trump by two points, which is meaningless, within the margin of error and a year too soon—and even then, without the state-by-state data necessary for credibility—but a glimmer of holiday cheer nonetheless.
And Speaking of Biden…
It should be noted here—you’ve probably already forgot—that the Republicans in the House of Representative voted unanimously to pursue an impeachment inquiry against the President. Now it’s true that the Biden family has proved a skeevy bunch of buckrakers—but that distinguishes them not at all from the Trumps, or most other presidential families. And there is no evidence here, as this question by the estimable Colorado Democrat Joe Neguse revealed:
“What is the specific constitutional crime that you’re investigating?” Neguse asked Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa.).
“Well, we’re having an inquiry so we can do an investigation to compel the production of witnesses and documents,” Reschenthaler said.
Neguse, who served as a House prosecutor during President Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial, pressed again: “And what is the crime you’re investigating?”
Reschenthaler responded merely, “High crimes, misdemeanors and bribery.” It was a reference to the constitutional threshold for impeachment, not a specific offense.
“What high crime and misdemeanor are you investigating?” Neguse asked.
“Look,” Reschenthaler said, “once I get time, I will explain what we’re looking at.”
Even for a newsletter like this one, conceived in the spirit of the Marx Brothers— "There ain’t no Sanity Clause”—this is fecklessness of the very lowest order, unworthy even of a Star Chamber proceeding in Freedonia, let alone the world’s oldest and most successful democracy.
As Philip Bump wrote in the Post:
[Speaker Mike] Johnson does not seem to understand that it is a vampire inquiry, dead for some time but still wandering around the political right, infecting new people with nonsense.
And withering in the sunlight.
To boldly appropriate a rather wonderful cultural expression: True dat! (As an American, I am vehemently in favor of creative cultural appropriation of all sorts.)
What makes the situation rather painful for me, though, is that every one of the Republican members of the bipartisan For Country caucus, former active duty members of the military with whom I sup from time to time, voted for the impeachment proceedings. I know many of these folks; they are solid citizens, a real source of optimism for our country. And yes, I understand the threat of a wingnut primary challenge is the greatest of all in current politics, and I would not want to lose any of our 30 caucus members for standing courageously, on principle, in this case, but I do wonder what Adam Kinzinger would have done if he were still a member of the House. And I do wonder when Adam’s coming back.
Orange Excrescence
I have left Trump below the fold here because I just refuse—well, sometimes—to let him make hay over the Democrats’ pathetic efforts to bring him down. Latest news: comparing him to Hitler doesn’t work. Yes, his comments about immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country” are Hitlerian and about as un-American as you can get. But the forces of Sanity have pursued this wild pig too far down the ravine: from calling Donald authoritarian, to dictatorial, to fascist, to Mussolini and now to Adolph himself. Trump loves this stuff. He is saying to his supporters and to the vast swath of Americans who pay only intermittent attention to politics: Can you believe these dingbats are comparing me—old, potty-mouthed, p-grabbing, tangerine demogorgon me—to Adolph Hitler? Bring it on!
Along these lines, I found the Colorado Not-So-Supreme Court’s effort to block Trump from the state’s primary ballot more of the same, counterproductive fol-de-rol. But…a whisper of possibility from the Old Testament: If the Colorado case is going to the real Supreme Court, could not the Naughty Nine pull a Solomonic caper: toss the Colorado case, but agree to Jack Smith’s contention that Trump can be tried for crimes committed while he was President?
I believe Trump must be defeated by the ballot, not the courts, but the Fake Electors case really was a witting effort to overturn the government of the United States. And I’d love to see Trump in a jumpsuit. Orange can be the new orange.
Final Word
From Bret Stephens:
In the early 1920s, the most important scientist in Germany was Albert Einstein, the most important politician was Walther Rathenau and the most important philosopher was Edmund Husserl. All Jews. They wound up exiled, murdered or shunned. Today, the U.S. secretaries of state, Treasury and homeland security are Jewish, as is the majority leader in the Senate and the president’s chief of staff.
Too often in Jewish history, our zenith turns out to be our precipice. Too often in world history, that precipice is also the end of free society itself.
Joe, Joe, Joe! I know it's in style to disparage Biden and his administration, but c'mon! Sometimes when you sit down and review the results of past experiments you can come up with an analysis that indicates what NOT to do, and then do the right thing. That's what our guy Biden has done - put the money where it does the most good, our people, and go after the infrastructure that broke, aggravating the issue. Making sure that folks can thrive before worrying about the banks and fat cats' pocketbooks was the right moral and ethical approach. And as long as you celebrate failed economic theories, Joe, and continue criticism of the most enlightened public policies in the last 70 years no one is going to see the light. I urge you to take 'Yes' for an answer, talk about the fact that, finally, we seem to be on the right track. Don't believe your lyin' eyes? To paraphrase an old saw, a society that relies on esoteric, flighty, un-supported economic philosophies while eschewing plumbing as a lowly pursuit will have neither economies nor plumbing that will hold water.
I’m struck by the quote you shared at the end. To me, the necessity of Bret Stephens to make and share this comparison is another sign of the derangement of political radicalism that afflicts our culture and society in this moment. Thankfully we don’t have outright antisemitism coming from our institutions but we are witnessing a toleration of antisemitic energy from students and young voters that is being rationalized as support for anti-colonial resistance, anti-war, etc. This sentiment was always inevitable within the radical left ideas that have, as you were saying on Andrew Sullivan’s podcast, “straitjacketed” much of the mainstream media and universities. I hope that this anti Jewish sentiment makes enough of an impression on Jews and non Jews, many of which are appalled at this energy, that wokeness and the capitulation to everything politically correct undermines our values and degrades our tolerant and liberal society.