Blackcap Blog

Published at 11:08 on 13 May 2025

Suppose, just for sake of argument, that all the stuff J.B. Pritzker recently said in New Hampshire is sincere and not just hot air and politicking. What then?

Well, first he’s just one Democrat. He speaks for himself, and nobody else. And yes, while he’s not the only one, what is being done here is to cherry-pick Democrats. Overall, and in the aggregate, it is a party that has been a willing co-participant in the USA’s transition to an authoritarian, fascist (or at least quasi-fascist) state.

Realistically, what hope is there for that trend changing, for no apparent good reason, in the near future, just because it is politically convenient? Let’s be realistic here: it is somewhere between slim and none.

So even if JBeefy is serious, and even if he gets to the White House (and he is definitely running, even though he hasn’t officially announced it yet), it will be just him and a few other exceptions that prove a general rule. It is pretty obvious that, overall, the general rule will prevail.

And if it is just hot air and politicking? Basically the same result, just with a little less sturm und drang, that is all.

So J.B. is irrelevant.

He is irrelevant, that is, so long as action is mostly limited to voting for the self-proclaimed “opposition” party and/or candidate.

Until the none-of-the-above movement of which I have written earlier emerges, elections are more irrelevant than most think. But if such a movement emerges, it might be able to hijack the Democrats and use them to serve its end, in much the same way as Trump hijacked the Republican Party.

Will it happen because Democrats are opportunists and want to pander? Yes. Will it happen in spite of Democratic Party insiders’ attempts to contain, manage, and minimize it? Yes. Will those insiders have to be fought for true control? Yes.

But it doesn’t matter so much. A Democratic Party that does the right things for insincere reasons, does the right things against the wishes of its operatives, is still ultimately doing the right things.

But just voting alone will not and cannot make this happen.

Published at 12:23 on 8 May 2025

Sometimes, you can tell a lot from a name.

This was certainly the case for Leo XIV’s predecessor. The instant the name “Francis” was uttered, it became obvious to anyone with even a passing knowledge of Catholic history what sort of pope he would probably be.

It’s not nearly so obvious, but I think think the name “Leo” might be similarly telling. The last pope to take this name was instrumental in developing many of the contemporary social teachings of the Catholic church, particularly those with respect to the rights of workers.

In choosing a name that is both traditional and associated with reformism, this pope might be saying that he will be less of an innovator than his predecessor, but is still very much grounded within the more liberal tradition of the Catholic church, and will defend those aspects of church doctrine.

We shall see.

And yes, this is all more in the vein of damage avoidance than anything. But damage avoidance is not nothing. Imagine the harm someone like Cardinal Erdő (Hungarian, staunchly traditionalist, closely allied with the neofascist government there) could have done as pope.

Update: Leo XIV is now on the record as having his name choice inspired by Leo XIII’s social teachings.

Published at 11:25 on 8 May 2025

Which is about the best that could be reasonably hoped for.

Here’s what the Associated Press had to say about him (scroll down) pre-conclave (he was considered a contender, although not a top one).

Published at 09:46 on 29 April 2025

And it happened pretty much why I said it might.

It’s clear what happened the moment you look at the results and compare them to what happened in 2021:

Party	2021	2025 (Preliminary)
Liberal	32.62%	43.6%
Conservative	33.74%	41.4%
Bloc Québécois	7.64%	6.4%
New Democratic	17.82%	6.3%
Green	2.33%	1.2%

Despite being widely-heralded as the losers of this election, the Conservatives actually increased the number of votes they received, and significantly so. To give you an idea how significant a 41.4% vote share is, that is better than the Conservatives ever received under the leadership of Stephen Harper, a three-term Conservative PM. You have to go back to Brian Mulroney to find a Conservative party leader that did better at the ballot box than Poilievre just did.

The above is doubtless why, despite having just lost both the election and his own seat in Parliament, he has announced his intention to stay on as party leader. (But it’s not entirely up to him. Justin Trudeau really wanted to remain the leader of the Liberals, and we all know how that one played out.)

The rub is, lots of Bloc, Green, and particularly NDP voters practiced strategic voting, voting against what they least wanted (i.e. Pierre Poilievre becoming PM), instead of voting their normal party preference.

Despite winning, the Liberals won’t have a majority of the seats. This means that should they so choose, the minor parties could cooperate with the Conservatives and vote to bring the government down.

It is my view that this is precisely what they should threaten to do unless the Liberals agree to pass election reform (most likely some form of ranked-choice voting), that enables voters to vote their preference without having to pay the cost of an outcome they regard as particularly averse. One of the rules of politics is that if you have power, use it.

Published at 10:01 on 23 April 2025

Timothy Snyder seems quite sure that it will come, and Trump fascists will exploit it.

His essay is incomplete, though. It fails to mention the possibility of left-wing, anti-Trump terrorism. Or, should I say, politically-motivated crime, since that is basically what “terrorism” is. “Crime” is of course itself a political term, as it merely means anything the government has proclaimed to be a crime.

It doesn’t even have to involve violence in the normal sense, i.e. violence against people. Vandalism of Tesla property is now being called “terrorism” even though vandalism has traditionally been considered a property crime, not a violent crime. Of course, that doesn’t stop politically-motivated vandalism from being labelled “violence”, either.

The above all just goes to show how politically-charged common terminology is. Even the Associated Press, normally regarded as one of the better mainstream news agencies (to the point that it is currently engaged in a court battle with the Trump regime), is getting in on the game.

Anyhow, don’t dismiss the possibility of some real terrorism on the Left, as Snyder apparently does in his essay, seeing as how he simply doesn’t mention it. Margaret Killjoy is considerably more honest in her recent essay that touches on the same subject.

However terrorism comes, if it comes, Trump is likely to exploit it. And if it comes in the form of left-wing terrorism, Trump is particularly likely to exploit it. However, it might not come. Contrary to popular mythology, the American populace, especially the more left-leaning parts of it, is remarkable in particular for its docility.

This makes left-wing terrorism less likely, but it makes a backlash more likely should it happen, because many otherwise opposed to Trump will side with the fascists if it does. Gotta take a firm moral stand against “violence,” after all, even if nobody gets hurt in the “violence” and the State is engaging in far worse actual violence.

As Killjoy points out, this would be a strategic error. Trump wants to create a fascist state regardless of what the Left does. Trump exists in the context of a nation with an exceptionally docile and acquiescent Left. Just compare the USA with the likes of France and Greece when it comes for the propensity for unrest to emerge in response to outrages from the Right, or with what the Left was doing in Germany, Italy, or Chile before those countries underwent fascist transitions in the 20th century.

Yet it is the USA that is presently undergoing a transition to fascism, not France or Greece. If a docile Left actually prevented fascism, we would not be where we are today.

To sum up: If fascists try to take freedom away, some people will attempt to resist it. The resistance will not be 100% coordinated and optimized. Some elements of it might choose tactics you (or I) disagree with and/or regard as unstrategic. The root problem is, however, not the resistance. It is the fascism.

I don’t know what to do about this other than to point it out. To fall for the whole “the Left provoked fascism” garbage is basically the same thing as a battered wife falling for her abusive husband’s lie that she is forcing him to hit her, and that she needs to try to be a better wife.

Published at 09:21 on 22 April 2025

The title of this entry is an Italian saying that literally translates literally to “with every death of a pope,” and idiomatically to “once in a blue moon.”

Well, it happened, and it was inevitable. And odds disfavour the next pope being as liberal as the current one is, simply based on the pool of most likely candidates. My hope is that he’s at least not going to be a raging fascism-abetting reactionary who goes around loudly praising the likes of Trump, Netanyahu, Putin, and Orbán.

Published at 07:44 on 19 April 2025

Even many moderate-to-conservative types like David Brooks seem to be getting it. Brooks didn’t openly use the r-word (revolution) but he did recently call for “a comprehensive national civic uprising,” which is basically a form of revolution (if you think armed struggle is the only revolutionary tactic, think again).

Now, will we actually see it?

Published at 13:36 on 18 April 2025

Just stop with all the fantasies of accountability to come.

Just stop talking about trials in The Hague for the disappearances to El Salvador. Just stop talking about impeachment. ‘Cuz it ain’t gonna happen.

We’ve seen this before. No one save for a relatively few nobodies got prosecuted for what happened on 6 January 2021. And those nobodies have now all been fully pardoned.

Only a few nobodies got prosecuted for what happened at Abu Ghraib, for that matter. Nobody got held accountable for lying the USA’s way into the Iraq war, even when the liars resorted to illegal retaliation like revealing the role of Joseph Wilson’s wife as a secret CIA agent.

While we’re on the subject of lying one’s way into wars, nobody got held accountable for lying the USA into the Vietnam War or lying the USA into expanding that war into Cambodia (an act directly responsible for creating the power vacuum that the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime soon filled), either.

It’s pretty damn obvious why someone like Trump eventually showed up on the scene. Decades, and I mean decades, of US history point to a precedent of a president being able to do, well, basically whatever the hell he wants to do. And get away with it. The Supreme Court merely made de jure what anyone with a brain could see was already de facto.

So please, liberals, stop it. Even if you manage to pull a rabbit out of a hat and defeat Trump electorally in the next few cycles, in the big picture, it won’t change a damn thing. Nobody will get more than the lightest of slaps on the wrist, the Right will come roaring back yet again, and the next time will make this time look like they were just pussyfooting around.

Yeah, yeah, sure Lucy. This time the Democratic Party establishment won’t pull the football away. Just stop it.

And stop talking it being the Right as the ones who have trouble acknowledging reality. Their belief that their Führer can do whatever he wants and get away with it is, unlike your fairy tales of accountability coming from within the system, actually a plausible belief.

Unless…

Unless, that is, you get realistic.

Unless you open your eyes and see the Democratic Party and Establishment liberalism for what they actually are: not as any sort of actual opposition to the USA going fascist, but as willing co-participants in the process.

I don’t mean all liberals (or all Democrats) here. Many are in fact sincere in being revolted by fascism. I hope the liberals reading this are.

But I am not talking about individual beliefs; I am talking about the role of Establishment liberalism and the Democrats overall, in general. And that role has (again, overall and in general) been the role of willing co-participant.

I am sorry if this conclusion stings, but it is really the only logical one in light of amply demonstrated historical facts.

We need to acknowledge that the Democrats are not going to do jack shit about the fascist trend in the USA, unless there is some serious pressure from below. Alternate, non Democratic Party-affiliated, grassroots organizing needs to be done, with the aim of rendering the country ungovernable unless accountability happens.

Maybe even some pressure that plans to impose its own form of independent, non-governmentally-sanctioned accountability on the fascists. Because maybe that’s the sort of threat it will take for official accountability to happen.

And if you doubt this, I suggest you need to read more about labour activism and how workers got greater rights in the USA in the early 20th century (clue: it wasn’t entirely peaceful and law-abiding).

And if you don’t want to do such organizing, well, you don’t have to and I can’t make you.

Just shut up and cut the crap about accountability. Because, if so, it ain’t coming.

Published at 14:50 on 14 April 2025

In a move whose significance is being overlooked by many, China’s leader recently came openly out in favour of working with the EU, to the exclusion of the USA, in defence of “…international fairness and justice and international rules and order.” This is both highly significant, predicted here, and very much good news, as it is probably a precondition for turning back the fascist tide.

In more good news, Spain seems to get it as well, while the fascists seem too addled by too addled by groupthink and leader worship to realize the full import of what is happening.

Now, this is Trump we are talking about, so that policy could well (and probably will, and to some degree already has, with the temporary tariff exemption for certain electronics goods) turn on a dime, but that is only of limited significance.

1. China knows that the U.S.A. is unreliable, and will not soon forget it.
2. The U.S. economy is certain to be damaged by the trade wars. A fascist regime that damages itself early on is less a threat than one that makes a strong start.

From a political dark arts perspective, my hope is that this all results in a generalized Sinophobia amongst the Trump right, which would help lock China in as an anti-Trump world power. The world needs an anti-Trump world power, and China is the most logical actor to become such a power.

Note finally that this process might take a while to complete. It’s not as if the current state of China-EU relations is all sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows. That, however, is mostly the lingering result of a world order that is now squarely receding in our rear-view mirror. The logic of a strategic partnership will, I hope, prove itself too strong to ignore.

Published at 09:57 on 9 April 2025

It is amusing to see all the Trumpsplainers trying to hypothesize why Trump is doing what he is doing, when simply observing all the easily-observable facts and applying Occam’s Razor yields a far simpler and far more logically consistent explanation.

Trump has no hidden master plan with respect to trade policy. He’s not a man of great intellect. He’s the sort of intellectually and morally compromised individual that only a bourgeois society, in thrall to capitalism and possessed of a need to rationalize the power that capitalists have, could elevate to a position of great power.

Trump is exactly who he appears to be: a child of privilege, born into great wealth, whose entire life has taught him — correctly — that in a bourgeois society there is no true rule of law, that the wealthy and powerful are not bound by the laws that bind lesser people.

Trump’s inherited class privilege got him out of having to serve against his will in Vietnam. It got him a degree from an Ivy League school. It got him a huge head start in business. Once in business, he used that class privilege to repeatedly shaft his suppliers, and to repeatedly evade any serious consequences for doing so.

It is Trump’s power as capitalist, the authoritarian leader of the capitalist firm with near absolute power to fire employees at will, that got him his most famous byline during his career as an actor playing a capitalist on television.

His entire life has taught him that he can do whatever he wants, follow his whims wherever they lead him, and not only evade personal consequences, but exist in a society where huge numbers nevertheless still continue to admire him and celebrate his power.

Another characteristic of Trump is his inflated ego. This is amply-demonstrated by his numerous statements boasting of his own imagined great skills. He always thinks he is the smartest guy in the room.

Although himself a capitalist, he doesn’t always personally adhere to capitalist orthodoxy, which is pretty much squarely behind free trade. He probably would, if he were better at reasoning things out and following logical implications. But he’s not the brightest bulb in the chandelier of society. (He just thinks he is.)

For whatever reason, he has long been a big fan of tariffs. That many very smart, very bourgeois, very pro-capitalist economists think otherwise is irrelevant. That even most apolitical economists think otherwise is irrelevant. That even many left-leaning economists think otherwise is irrelevant. The consensus of social scientists, like the consensus of any sort of scientists, is irrelevant. He’s sure he’s the smartest guy in the room, after all.

Trump is so much a fan of tariffs that he once called himself a “tariff man.” He once went so far as to quip that trade wars are good and easy to win.

By virtue of assuming power in a sick republic that has amassed ever-growing power into its presidency and which has never held a president accountable to the law, Trump now has the power to create tariffs. So tariffs there are.

Last time, Trump was never fully prepared to rule. He actually was surprised he won in 2016. He never seriously planned to win, so he had no ideas (before winning) of who to assemble into an administration.

So when he won, he was forced to wing it. A lot of the folks he assembled weren’t the greatest, but a few key ones were actually competent. And even the mediocre ones could usually recognize a truly moonbat when they saw one. So his worst ideas tended to get stalled, slow-walked, and watered down.

Not in 2024. He knew he could win because he had won once before. He had plenty of helpers and followers who knew he could win and who came up with plans for what to do if he won. He assembled a team of unquestioningly loyal sycophants. There is no pushback from within this time.

So tariffs there are, and tariffs there will continue to be until Trump himself decides to change course. And Trump is now more insulated from reality than ever, so tariffs there might continue to be for some time, despite how much harm they are causing.

There is no 3D quantum chess strategy. There is just a narcissistic fascist with great power acting on his personal whim. Nothing more, nothing less.

As to what happens next, I am sure top capitalists are trying to twist Trump’s arm and get him to reconsider his policies. Who knows, they might even be successful. Trump could declare victory, citing a willingness on the part of trading partners to negotiate, and turn off the tariffs.

Then again, he could persevere; he is more insulated from reality than he ever was. This trade war could be to Trump as the Ukraine war is to Putin. Note that Putin is still in power despite how much worse than planned his Ukraine war has gone. But also note that Putin had consolidated power a lot more before he embarked on his Ukraine misadventure.

If he perseveres, expect the fascist playbook to be followed: his regime will blame the resulting economic problems on immigrants, transpeople, and others it has chosen as its scapegoats. And, the USA being the morally compromised society it is, the scapegoating may well prove to be successful.

If you’re looking for predictions, “Trump will continue to do whatever his whim dictates” is not a very good predictive theory. I suspect this is why so many pundits are avoiding this most obvious of theories.

But it doesn’t matter. The world does not organize itself around making life easy for pundits. There is no secret strategy.

Update: Well, that didn’t take long. Looks like the capitalists persuaded him to put most of it on hold… for now (or until his whim takes him in another direction).