Blackcap Blog

Published at 08:36 on 7 November 2024

My predictions on the likely fate of the Biden presidency four years ago were mostly wrong.

Biden did in fact get his Senate majority, so he was able to enact policy for the most part the proper way, via passing bills through Congress. He actually did pass a fair amount of reforms to increase the power of the working class, which logically is exactly what he should have done to try and chip away at Trump’s base of support in the White working class.

But it doesn’t matter. Biden still failed.

His biggest failure was not directly his failure, but the failure of the Attorney General he appointed: Merrick Garland turned out to be a staunch traditionalist, but the tradition he was particularly staunch about preserving was the American führerprinzip that a president must be above all written law. So Garland dragged his feet about indicting Trump Federally until it was too late.

It was the historic mission of the Biden administration to deal a mortal blow to Trumpist fascism, and the Administration failed in that mission.

Maybe some in the Administration knew the brewing failure, maybe none did. Again, it doesn’t matter. Suppose some did, and Biden was sympathetic to their point of view. He had at that point painted himself in a corner: he campaigned against Trump’s politicization of the Department of Justice, and had promised a hands-off policy. So it was ideologically very difficult for Biden to twist Garland’s arm or threaten him with dismissal and replacement.

Which brings us to a darker and more ominous corner: the Democrats have painted themselves, since 2020, as the enemies of insurrection against a leader with an electoral mandate. Well, Trump now has a clear electoral mandate, and he is about to embark on policies for which a measure of insurrection is the morally justified response.

Even as Trump pardons the January 6th insurrectionists, he will willingly crack down hard on any unrest that arises in response to anything he does. A transition to authoritarian rule is then
by far the most likely result.

And all because the Biden Administration failed in its historic mission of crushing fascism.

Postscript: Jonathan V. Last has an analysis that comes to basically the same conclusions I just did above.

Published at 21:12 on 6 November 2024

1. Come up with strategies for protecting the vulnerable, the ones American fascism is most likely to harm, e.g. transpeople, immigrants, and non-human living things (this is not a comprehensive list, and is not in any particular order).
2. Come up with a set of moral principles and guidelines for whatever action(s) you will take. I am not going to tell you what those princples must be, that is for you to determine for yourself. Then write those principles down for future reference.

Published at 22:51 on 5 November 2024

They just called Pennsylvania for Cheeto Mussolini. So Trump won again. More later.

Published at 12:59 on 24 October 2024

Will He?

Over a month ago I wrote that the odds favoured Harris winning. I still think so, although not quite so much given how the polls have slipped some since then.

Despite that, however, I will point out that the polls are not infallible, particularly in this era of smart phones and generally unpublished numbers, which greatly complicates the job of polling. The past two presidential elections, the polls did underestimate the level of support for Trump. If that pattern holds, the USA is indeed f*cked. But it won’t necessarily hold. It is just as plausible that after two cycles of underestimating support for Trump, the pollsters have this time overcompensated for their past errors, and are now overestimating Trump support.

The long and short of it is that we don’t know for sure and it’s going to be close. But why so close?

The Nichols Theory

Anti-Trump conservative Tom Nichols has a theory. Tom Nichols is also wrong, or more accurately, incomplete. Some people are voting for Trump for exactly the reason Nichols stated, i.e. as an “act of social revenge.” Some, but not all.

Nichols retired from his job as a college professor and now spends a significant amount of time on X (formerly Twitter), where no small amount of fascist trolls exist. Those individuals are indeed explained by Nichols’ theory (and of course they show up commenting on his posts a lot, so he notices them).

However, there are a lot of people — not all of them necessarily even particularly right wing, at least not by domestic U.S. standards — who just think that, for whatever reason, the concerns about Trump that Nichols, myself, and many others have aired are simply overblown. I have run into quite a lot of these individuals. They don’t want to burn it all down. They just don’t believe Trump is that big a deal. Nichols’ theory does not explain these people. These individuals tend not to be enthusiastic about Trump either way, so they do not feel motivated to comment on Nichols’ tweets.

What might explain them? The most likely answer is not so easy for a conservative like Nichols to swallow (and it explains the trolls, too).

The Other, More Systemic Reason

There are, quite simply, a large number of Americans who entered the Trump era already pre-indoctrinated to accept fundamentally fascist political values. So when a fascist descends his golden escalator and appears on the political stage, his ideas just don’t seem that odd or threatening to them.

I first started getting truly concerned about this around 20 years ago, during the run-up to the Iraq War. There were just so many bald-faced lies getting thrown about. There was just so much disregard for the truth. There was just so much official malfeasance in pursuit of the goal of foreign intervention. And the media and the Democrats were so disgustingly milquetoast when it came to calling the Republicans on it.

It was at that moment that I realized the core problem of bourgeois democracy, particularly in a military superpower: because it’s still a procedural democracy, and the politics of the ruling elite do not serve the public interest, you must indoctrinate the voting public, else those voters will revoke your electoral mandate.

And it turns out that there really isn’t a whole lot of difference between the amount of indoctrination to needed get voters to support imperialism and class rule under procedural democracy, and the amount of indoctrination needed to get voters to support fascist politics. I saw the danger looming then, and I really see it now.

Rule by presidential fiat? What’s the big deal, that’s gone on for decades when it comes to presidentially-ordered military interventions. Nobody pays attention to the Constitution when it calls for Congress to approve declarations of war, so why should any of the other parts of it matter so much?

Massive domestic military deployments against illegal aliens? Why not, the military gets deployed against foreigners in foreign lands all the time, why not against foreigners who aren’t legally supposed to be here?

Suppress left protest movements? Hey, we back client states that do so all the time! If “stability” is good there, why not here as well?

Decades of bipartisan propaganda to get voters to support high military spending, oppressive imperialist politics, economic inequality, and class privilege are merely so many chickens that have now come home to roost.

And it gets even easier to happen if, as in the USA, your political culture is imbued with no small amount of exceptionalist rhetoric. Democratic decline becomes something that afflicts only other, lesser nations. It can’t happen here. We’re special.

Trump is no aberration; he is the logical conclusion of a system that was rotting from the inside for a long, long time.

Published at 20:24 on 1 October 2024

Vance was a classic slimy pol who knew what needed to be said at a given moment… and said it, regardless of whether or not he actually believed it. In fact, it is hard to say exactly what Vance actually believes.

Unlike Trump, Vance has self-control, and managed to exercise it. Nobody with half a brain who follows how much Vance has changed his tune depending on a given situation found it remotely plausible. The rub is, many voters are idiots without so much as half a brain, so it probably was an effective strategy.

Walz, when faced with a Trump fascist, chose to mostly play Minnesota Nice. Make no mistake: that is who he was faced with; a Trump fascist by virtue of political calculation (as opposed to true conviction) is still a Trump fascist. He could have gone for the jugular a number of times (on democracy, on Vance’s lies regarding his stances on abortion, on Project 2025, etc.), but he mostly chose not to.

It is precisely this nauseating tendency to meet evil with weakness that just irritates the living fuck out of me when it comes to liberals. But I digress.

Walz also just generally came off as weak and unsure, stumbling over his words a number of times and repeatedly checking his notes.

But, Walz didn’t self-destruct like Biden did in the first debate and Trump did in the second, and it was a Vice-Presidential debate, not a Presidential one, so the net effect on the polling needle will probably be small, possibly immeasurable.

Published at 15:44 on 29 September 2024

I have, to my knowledge, never written about this, despite my having grown up Roman Catholic.

The above means that this in a sense affects me personally; however, it really doesn’t affect me personally, since neither I nor (so far as I know) anyone close to me was ever directly affected by child sexual abuse in the Church. The closest it got to me was one parish I was a member of as a child of age six having one of its priests (this was long enough ago that it was common for multiple priests to be assigned to a single parish) suddenly depart the parish under a cloud. That particular priest, Fr. Mark, was responsible for ministering to children.

The Church has historically had no role whatsoever for openly queer Catholics. Sexual orientations other than heterosexual and cisgendered have been considered evil and sinful, period. This has changed some in recent decades, but there is still very little role for queers in the Church.

Approved life paths in the Church have historically been limited to heterosexual marriage and family life, or if “called,” to pursue a vocation in the Church. Given that, it is pretty obvious where queer Catholics, uninterested in heterosexual marriage, have traditionally tended to end up. The lack of interest in heterosexual family life gets interpreted as the “calling.”

A friend of mine who dropped out of seminary reports that a large majority (I believe he said 70% or more) of his fellow seminarians were gay. Those who don’t drop out (nowadays a distinct minority) end up becoming clergy.

I have written before of why I do not personally consider myself gay, and my incompatibility with gay male subculture. But that’s just me. Most queer men are gay, and have the typical (i.e. irrepressibly strong) male sex drive. Put it all together and you have a real problem: men with strong sex drives and no acceptable official outlet for them.

Parish priests do, of course, have some unofficial outlets available for them. They can visit gay sex clubs or cruisy parks, public washrooms, and/or highway rest areas. They can masturbate. Or they can take advantage of their ready access to underage boys, priests having traditionally being trusted to work unattended with children.

To reiterate, that’s a real problem.

It is made all the worse by there being a shortage of priests. Because of course there is. The sexual revolution gave queer Catholics other more honest options for living, and most of us have availed ourselves of such options. What’s left is the worst of the closet cases… and a persistent and growing shortage of priests.

So when the Church hierarchy learns of yet another pedophile priest in their midst, they have every incentive to cover it up, because reporting the priest’s crimes to the authorities would exacerbate the already severe shortage. So of course there are recurring sex scandals in the Roman Catholic Church. It would be a surprise if, given the general parameters outlined above, it was any other way.

Published at 15:46 on 26 September 2024

This is but one example of why. And it is also a disaster for: accuracy (it can’t even admit when it doesn’t know an answer); intellectual property rights (it is based off unauthorized use of content created by others, which the AI engines then charge for access to; and even from a purely business standpoint (it is merely the latest tech bubble, as most AI ventures are running a loss and burning through VC funding).

Published at 09:00 on 16 September 2024

Those who deny the peaceful transfer of power to others should not be surprised when others deny the same to them.

No, it doesn’t help the situation. It is more likely to help Trump than it is to help Harris, but it is more likely yet to help neither and to quickly get buried in the fast-moving news cycle, just like the last assassination attempt (which got a lot closer to achieving its goal) did. Assassination attempts don’t have a good track record of achieving their desired goals, but they are not surprises in the current political context, either.

Those who deny the peaceful transfer of power to others should not be surprised when others deny the same to them.

To look at it from an Eastern philosophical perspective, it’s karma. The one who threatens violence on others himself becomes a victim of violence.

Or, to look at it from a more Western perspective, it’s norm erosion, something self-professed conservatives used to be concerned about. But Trump is a fascist, not a conservative.

• Conservatism is not about inciting a putsch to stay in power.
• Conservatism is not about stringing together bald-faced lies demonizing immigrants and minorities.
• Conservatism is not about clinging to those lies even after they are shown to be lies, because at least the lies rally your base, the ends always justifying the means.

Fascism, by contrast, is all about norm erosion. The Nazi Party enthusiastically did all of the above (well, their putsch was to get into power, not to stay in it). Fascism is all about the ends justifying the means.

And, not surprisingly, they tried to kill Hitler, too. Multiple times.

In a further historical parallel, it seems that Ryan Wesley Routh is a disgruntled conservative. At least one of Hitler’s erstwhile assassins, Claus von Stauffenberg, was a disgruntled conservative.

Those who deny the peaceful transfer of power to others should not be surprised when others deny the same to them.

Published at 20:04 on 10 September 2024

She did exactly what she needed to do: goad Trump into ranty old man mode.

The problem is, she also came across looking very much like she was doing just that. Would have been a significantly more effective tactic if she had been more subtle about it, then the ranting would have appeared unprovoked and thus been more jarring.

Overall though, Trump did do damage to himself, albeit not as much as he would have if Harris had been more subtle.

An imperfect win is still a win. Sure beats a self-immolation like what happened in July.

Published at 10:40 on 10 September 2024

It will be one of:

1. No substantive change, or
2. Trump inflicts significant damage on himself.

It is unlikely to be either candidate significantly burnishing their candidacy. It is unlikely to be Harris damaging herself. It is unlikely to be either candidate directly damaging the other to any significant degree. This is because the candidates are mostly known quantities and the voters have mostly made their minds up.

The only wildcard is whether and how effectively Trump can keep a lid on his ranting, rambling old man mode, which has been manifesting itself to an increasing degree in recent months. If he can, he will prevent further damage to his cause.

If he can’t, he will damage his cause. He’s been ranty and incoherent in his own rallies many times recently, but that’s his rallies, attended by his loyal base, the folks he wouldn’t lose support from even if he shot someone in broad daylight on Fifth Avenue. This time, however, more than that base will be watching and paying attention. In the worst case, it could be self-inflected damage that approaches the damage Biden did to himself last July.

I was initially skeptical that Trump could keep a lid on it. And I’m certain that he can’t do so in general. But the debate is a mere 90 minutes. There is a chance he could keep a lid on it that long.

Harris’ job, therefore, is to try and trigger that mode in Trump. She needs to pay as much or more attention to how she says things as what she says. Goad Trump without it being immediately transparent she is goading him. This should be possible, given Trump’s general nature (but if Trump resists being triggered, he resists doing damage to himself).

If Harris successfully does the above, she will by her own actions increase her chance of winning, but she will have done so as a result of getting Trump to tarnish his. It will, in the final analysis, be more what Trump said than what Harris said. Hence my phrasing in the list above.