This election is a test of how well cynics and charlatans can capture millions of votes vs. how millions of us can open our eyes, get off our comfortable keisters and vote. Thanks for your insight and excellent writing Charlie!
Very good piece, as always! I am dismayed at Trump's lack of consistency and authenticity when it comes to maintenance of the forest floors of our nation. Where's the love? I listened to one podcast and am now onto number two. Thanks to you and Jacki!
Hurricanes, floods and tornadoes. Disasters all. But none so great as the fate of our country if Americans can’t open their eyes on November 5 to the very real potential disaster looming for us all. It’s terrifying. Excellent article, Charlie.
Great stuff, as usual. It pains me, however, to say that, in spite of himself, DJT has backed into the right answer NATO for two reasons that he certainly did not and could not have come up with himself:
1. As a recovering European comparativist, I heard the lament of "why can't the US be more like Europe?" several times a week in the carrels. A lot of this is policy choices and, it must be emphasized, racial/ethnic diversity or the lack thereof (see, e.g., Great Society happening when the foreign-born population was at an all-time low, and the welfare state retrenchment in Europe in part because the benefits go to non-whites). But a big part of it also is that the US solved the guns and butter dilemma for Europe/Canada/Antipodes. Those countries have been able to spend on generous welfare benefits without running massive deficits in large part because they've been able to under-invest on defense. The Russo-Ukraine War has underscored the drawbacks of that strategy--even in the face of a surprisingly minor threat, European countries have to go hat-in-hand to the US for help--but that's a trade-off they've gladly made. For the US, has it been worth it? Maybe 1949-91, but since then? I'm not sure it has, especially given the FOMO I get as a Scandinavian-style Social Democrat.
2. Like with #1, let me present my bias: with Gore Vidal dead, I may be the last true Westphalian on planet earth. But I presented a paper years ago at ISA-NE called "Constraining Whom? Testing the 'After Victory' Hypothesis," in which I took apart G. John Ikenberry's theory that the US created these international institutions to restrain itself voluntarily from exercising its ridiculous amount of power. While dealing with the UN, the admittedly crude regression analyses I ran showed precisely the opposite--that it entrenched and enhanced US hegemony. NATO and the Bretton Woods institutions only more so--you only wonder what Germans were thinking ca. 1948 as the US built all these military bases in their country and said, "if you don't have X amount of greenbacks in the Bundesbank at any given time, well, bad things could happen."
This election is a test of how well cynics and charlatans can capture millions of votes vs. how millions of us can open our eyes, get off our comfortable keisters and vote. Thanks for your insight and excellent writing Charlie!
Very good piece, as always! I am dismayed at Trump's lack of consistency and authenticity when it comes to maintenance of the forest floors of our nation. Where's the love? I listened to one podcast and am now onto number two. Thanks to you and Jacki!
Yes, as usual, an interesting post. And I'm loving the podcast!
Hurricanes, floods and tornadoes. Disasters all. But none so great as the fate of our country if Americans can’t open their eyes on November 5 to the very real potential disaster looming for us all. It’s terrifying. Excellent article, Charlie.
Great stuff, as usual. It pains me, however, to say that, in spite of himself, DJT has backed into the right answer NATO for two reasons that he certainly did not and could not have come up with himself:
1. As a recovering European comparativist, I heard the lament of "why can't the US be more like Europe?" several times a week in the carrels. A lot of this is policy choices and, it must be emphasized, racial/ethnic diversity or the lack thereof (see, e.g., Great Society happening when the foreign-born population was at an all-time low, and the welfare state retrenchment in Europe in part because the benefits go to non-whites). But a big part of it also is that the US solved the guns and butter dilemma for Europe/Canada/Antipodes. Those countries have been able to spend on generous welfare benefits without running massive deficits in large part because they've been able to under-invest on defense. The Russo-Ukraine War has underscored the drawbacks of that strategy--even in the face of a surprisingly minor threat, European countries have to go hat-in-hand to the US for help--but that's a trade-off they've gladly made. For the US, has it been worth it? Maybe 1949-91, but since then? I'm not sure it has, especially given the FOMO I get as a Scandinavian-style Social Democrat.
2. Like with #1, let me present my bias: with Gore Vidal dead, I may be the last true Westphalian on planet earth. But I presented a paper years ago at ISA-NE called "Constraining Whom? Testing the 'After Victory' Hypothesis," in which I took apart G. John Ikenberry's theory that the US created these international institutions to restrain itself voluntarily from exercising its ridiculous amount of power. While dealing with the UN, the admittedly crude regression analyses I ran showed precisely the opposite--that it entrenched and enhanced US hegemony. NATO and the Bretton Woods institutions only more so--you only wonder what Germans were thinking ca. 1948 as the US built all these military bases in their country and said, "if you don't have X amount of greenbacks in the Bundesbank at any given time, well, bad things could happen."