Blackcap Blog

Published at 21:54 on 18 September 2021

Just take this story as an example. In 2015, a Seattle capitalist adopts an egalitarian pay scale at his business, and he gets raked over the coals by right-wing voices for it. Rush Limbaugh all but wished for the guy’s business to fail.

Capitalism is the economic system of classic liberalism. Under classical liberal doctrine, what sort of pay scale Dan Price chooses to adopt for his business quite literally is not Rush Limbaugh’s business. A properly pro-capitalist opinion would be to basically have no opinion, other than that it is within Dan Price’s property rights to do that.

Clearly, there is some motive operating here other than one of defending the individual rights of the capitalist. There is evidently a positive wish for society to be unequal and unjust, with the few enjoying luxury while the many struggle.

The standard defenses of capitalism are only being made because those making them assume capitalism will work out in such a way. The instant it fails to do so, what a capitalist does with his own business ceases to be a mere issue of personal freedom and suddenly becomes a matter of concern for society at large.

This is in fact one of the things John Dean (a conservative, by the way) discussed in his 2006 book Conservatives Without Conscience. The conservative ideology, based on skepticism about human nature and the complexity of society, often leads conservatives to oppose efforts at changing society. The opposition is because one firmly believes said change to be risky and likely to be ultimately counterproductive to its stated goals.

That is one reason for opposing change. The other reason is because you actively like a world of privilege and injustice, because you believe that you or the group you are a member of will end up on the privileged side of the deal. That’s a pretty ugly set of beliefs, and one that is difficult to argue for as such. Far easier to get the outcome you want (an unchanged and unjust society) by professing to be a concerned conservative. Conservatism is thus intrinsically vulnerable to being hijacked by authoritarians.

It goes a long way to explain how the Republican Party got to where it is today.

Published at 17:07 on 17 September 2021

The protests tomorrow will fall far short of the worst fears. The reason is precisely the same as the one why there was no significant violence at Biden’s inauguration. Re-read that post in case you need a refresher on basic insurgency dynamics.

The one exception is that there might be clashes between the fascists and counterprotesters. Even if there are, things will fall far short of the assault on the Capitol we saw on the 6th. The Capitol is going to be very well defended.

Published at 09:48 on 16 September 2021

Look, we already knew that Milley had conspired with Pelosi against his Commander in Chief. That he also instigated contacts with China to help forestall a war between two nuclear-armed superpowers thus falls squarely into the Not a Surprise category.

And yes, there are real questions about the constitutionality of it all. But, that serves more as an indictment of the entire system than it does any of the actors in it. If the system’s own mechanisms actually worked to limit the abuses of the presidency, Trump would have either been convicted and removed from office after being impeached, or his Cabinet would have invoked the 25th Amendment against him.

In the face of neither thing happening, can anyone really blame Milley for engaging in constitutionally dubious conduct? Can anyone argue with a straight face that it would have been better to have a nuclear war than it was to bend the rules?

It all goes to show how difficult it is to maintain good conduct when inside a fundamentally rotten system.

Blame the system, not the actors. Yes, this goes for Trump as well. He deserves blame for whatever he did, but what he did is nowhere near as concerning as the fact that the system failed to use the formal mechanisms that it did possess to restrain Trump and hold him accountable.

Published at 07:57 on 15 September 2021

I am in general not optimistic about the Democrats’ chances next year. My rationale is rather simple: in recent decades the party that took the White House always does badly in the immediately following midterms. Couple that with Democratic-leaning voters’ tendency to show up poorly for midterm elections, and the conclusion seems foregone.

Newsom’s unexpectedly strong victory against the recall in California offers the Democrats some hope, however. It shows that the Democrats can learn how to campaign based on fear of what the other side might do. Like it or not, negative campaigning works and fear is a powerful motivator.

Democrats’ historic refusal to employ both tools is part of the reason why they tend to underperform in elections. If they can copy on a nationwide level what was done in California, add that to how we are in unprecedented times and something unprecedented (in recent decades, anyhow) might just emerge as a midterm election result.

If so (and it is important to note that qualifier, this is all far from certain), this would likely serve as a stinging rebuke of the GOP’s strategy of embracing the principles of fascism.

Published at 10:34 on 11 September 2021

There have already been a number of observations from Establishment sources comparing the lack of unity today to the unity of twenty years ago, and bemoaning this fact.

Inasmuch as the current state of affairs is undesirable because it prevents responding to a national crisis, they have a point. Just look around at the current mess being caused by the inability to unite around the clear facts of COVID-19 as proof.

It is not nearly so simple as that, however.

The unity of a generation ago was badly contaminated by an imperialist mindset that the ruling elite had spent decades cultivating, for purposes of mustering public support for the Cold War. That period of history had clearly ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Empire, resulting in a politics that was largely drifting and looking for a purpose.

Cold Warriors found the prospect of a demilitarized USA alarming and were busy strategizing how to prevent it, even so far as concluding that their project would likely be a difficult struggle “absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”

Well, twenty years ago today, they got their catastrophic and catalyzing event, and they exploited it to the max. They were quite successful in ginning up public support for a robust military and a muscular foreign policy, to the point of launching two wars.

The first war had an insufficient casus belli: It was not necessary to invade and occupy Afghanistan in order to apprehend Osama bin Laden, who at any rate was not even in Afghanistan when he was dealt with. He was in Pakistan, and he was dealt with via measures that fell short of subjecting Pakistan to a wholesale war and occupation.

The second war was launched on a total pack of lies, and served to help distract attention and resources from the first (as it was always obvious it would).

So much for the Establishment’s right wing. The Establishment’s left wing might not have much liked what the right wing was doing, but they didn’t really do much to oppose it, either. It was the standard Democratic Party playbook of bringing knives (butter knives at that, we wouldn’t want to hurt anyone) to gun fights.

So, as is typically the case, the right wing was allowed a needlessly easy victory, and its view of what to do in response to 9/11 prevailed, despite what a poor response it was.

There is a funny thing about inconvenient facts: they don’t magically go away if you ignore them and try pretend they don’t exist. The wars were doomed to go badly from the get-go, and the one in Afghanistan went particularly badly.

That which was intended to secure the place of the American Empire in the 21st century has ended up weakening it, quite possibly fatally. Perhaps more pertinently for the present moment, none of the above process made the Establishment look very good.

In a pre-Internet world, that might have provoked a very beneficial moment of political reckoning. But this is a world of information bubbles, and such bubbles have proven to be beneficial to the rise of fascistic, right-wing populism.

Add the media-bubble problem to a right-wing base upset at its own Establishment, and here we are. The current lack of unity that George W. Bush bemoaned today at Shanksville is thus not completely his fault, but he is far from blameless in it all.

Published at 07:52 on 26 August 2021

Not only have longer-term issues doomed the West in Afghanistan, so have shorter-term ones. In particular, the shorter-term ones probably doomed the West to a chaotic and awkward evacuation of the sort we are seeing right now. See this Twitter thread for the details.

Published at 11:42 on 16 August 2021

An Intelligence Failure of the First Order

I expected the Taliban to prevail (they prevailed in about a third of the country prior to the withdrawal, after all). I did not expect them to prevail so soon. Neither did the intelligence community.

My oversight can be excused. I am just some random guy with a blog; any failures in my analyses carry exactly zero national security import. The so-called experts should have known better.

Biden Has Egg on His Face

Yes, his predecessor had the idea of withdrawing in defeat first. So what? Trump had lots of other ideas, and Biden promptly tore the policies based on those ideas up when he got into office. Biden, not Trump, is president now. Biden, not Trump, made the ultimate decision to withdraw. The buck stops in the Oval Office.

The question now is how much this will hurt Biden. Hurt him it will, of that there is no question. The only question is how much. One thing working in Biden’s favor is that most Americans don’t give a shit about foreign policy. The Republicans are going to try and make this stick, and unlike the Democrats, the Republicans actually do have effective propagandists. But they will still be swimming against the tide of a public that generally does not give a shit.

The Real Losers Are the Afghan People

Many of them do not yet realize how much they have lost. Like most of the Third World, Afghanistan’s population skews young. Many of them don’t have personal experience living under Taliban rule. They now will.

The biggest losers are the Afghans that for one reason or another threw their lot in with the West. Actually, that wording has some problems. For some of them, there really was no choice. If you were a feminist, or LGBT, Fate herself had chosen to throw your lot in with that of the Western modernizers. But that is of little consequence when it comes to the consequences that those Afghans will now suffer at the hands of their new, brutal overlords.

Get Them Out!

As much as possible, we need to ensure that those in Afghanistan who want to get out, can get out. Every country that participated in the invasion, particularly the USA, needs to welcome as many Afghan refugees as humanly possible. Any quotas or paperwork that get in the way need to be shoved out of the way.

Although the general goal should be retreat, it is acceptable (and almost certainly necessary) to maintain some military presence for purposes of managing the evacuation. Make it clear to the Taliban that their lives will be much simplified if they cooperate with the evacuation, then honor that deal by promptly leaving once the evacuations are complete.

Published at 14:47 on 15 August 2021

Some random observations, in no particular order:

Not a Surprise

Anyone surprised by this simply has not been paying attention. The USA and its allies have been set to lose this one basically ever since Day One, when the war was launched, largely under laughably false pretenses, by a deluded nation in narcissistic awe of its own military might.

Well, One Surprise

That surprise is just how quickly the domestic opposition to the Taliban suddenly evaporated and blew away in the gentlest of breezes. I expected Kabul to fall, but maybe in about a month’s time, not today. I was genuinely surprised when I heard the news this afternoon.

The Afghan People Really Did Not Support the US-Backed Government

I mean, come on, the West in general and the USA in particular showered vast amounts of military aid on the (now former) government of Afghanistan. If, given all of that, virtually zero opposition was mounted to the Taliban, this cannot but show how little support for that government there was.

This is a general statement, of course. Some Afghans really did support the government. There just were not very many of them, and their support did not run very deep, else the Taliban would have run into more fighting on their way to victory.

This Is a Win for Fascism

Make no mistake, the Taliban do qualify for the epithet “Islamo-fascist.” None of my observations above imply that the Taliban are anything other than an arch-reactionary gang of authoritarians. Afghanistan will now become markedly less free. There is nothing to celebrate about a group like the Taliban taking power.

Who Has Learned What?

That is now the question we must ask. Has the USA learned anything about the limitations of empire? Have the Taliban learned anything about the limitations of holding power in a single landlocked, impoverished Third World nation?

If the answer to both of these questions is in the affirmative, some sort of stable coexistence is possible: The USA will refrain from invading again, and the Taliban will refrain from provoking the West into invading by supporting groups that commit acts of major terrorism against Western nations.

If not, then we have not seen the end of Western military actions in that part of the world.

Published at 10:52 on 8 August 2021

Oh yes they can, and the lack of appreciation for this brings up one of the things that has so often galled me when the subject of freedom comes up.

Let us first discuss how vaccine mandates can increase freedom:

1. They increase it for those who are medically unable to receive (or to much benefit from) being vaccinated, due to health conditions that they were born with or which they acquired through no fault of their own. (Real-world vaccine mandates are not universal; they do have exemptions for the minority who are incapable of tolerating vaccines.) Why should such unfortunate individuals have their freedom compromised by those who refuse to cooperate in a collective effort against a common enemy of humanity? How is this state of affairs in any way “freedom?”
2. They also increase it for the rest of us. If vaccine mandates had existed, the Delta variant would not be spreading as much as it is. Had it not been spreading so much, mask mandates would not be coming back, and normal, vaccinated folks like me wouldn’t be having to bother with those damn masks and other restrictions yet again. (And yes, they annoy and inconvenience even those of us who find them worthwhile.) How is the current state of affairs in any way “freedom?”

It’s not just COVID-19 vaccinations, by the way. It extends to other areas of human behavior. Take air pollution, for example: How is it “freedom” for people’s ability to get out and be active to be impacted by bad air quality? Why is the “freedom” to drive polluting cars or profit from polluting factories the only “freedom” that routinely gets brought up when the issue of air quality regulations gets discussed? Get it straight: better air quality increases personal freedom for many.

Or how about indoor air pollution and smoking? It used to be considered “pro-freedom” for smokers to be able to light up in any indoor space: offices, stores, airports, aircraft, buses, etc.: smoking was allowed in all. How on earth was this “freedom” for those of us who are allergic to smoke and physically sickened by it? How was it “freedom” for those who simply didn’t want to stink of smoke to be made to stink of it? Why was (yet again) the only “freedom” that was routinely brought up the “freedom” to impose costs on others without their consent?

Make no mistake: there is also a cost in freedom to be paid when regulations and other standards of conduct are instituted. I am not disputing that. What I am disputing is unquestioned implicit assumption that this is the only side of the balance sheet worth considering. It is also an issue of individual liberty when one individual’s freedom to swing his fist impacts another individual’s freedom to not have his face punched.

It goes beyond regulations and impacts the development of positive policies as well. Consider, for example, universal health care. That typically requires taxes or other mandates to support, and those taxes do deprive the taxed of the freedom to spend that money on things other than taxes (or to save it). But the result frees people from having a run of medical bad luck drain their life savings, thereby destroying much of their freedom. It also frees children from the oppression of having the accidents of birth and inheritance determine the health care they get. Universal health care creates greater freedom for many. Any reasonable, balanced debate on health policy simply must include this fact. Yet in the USA, all too often it does not. The enemies of universal health care often get a monopoly on playing the freedom card.

One-sided characterizations of freedom are, in a word, a dangerous pitfall. Badly-warped concepts of “freedom” breed societes with badly warped value systems that in turn breed badly warped public policies.

Published at 21:59 on 6 August 2021

There are plenty of graphics like the following one circulating on social media:

If true, such statistics are shocking. A significant number of major cities where over half of households face eviction? That’s a major, major social crisis in the works! And the source is a US Census survey, not some dubious polling outfit one has never heard of.

Turns out, not nearly so much. Here is the actual household pulse survey data from the US Census Bureau. Note the caption: “Percentage of adults living in households not current on rent or mortgage where eviction or foreclosure in the next two months is either very likely or somewhat likely [emphasis added].” Not the percentage of all adults, just the percentage who are already behind. Here is a related set of data showing those who are behind and have little hope of ever catching up.

Take Mississippi, one of the worst states, for example. 12.3% of adults live in households that are behind, and of that number, 60.5% are at risk of eviction. The actual fraction of adults in the overall population at risk is therefore more like 60.5% of 12.3%, or 7.4%. That’s still not an insignificant number, but it is far less than 60.5%.