Blackcap Blog

Published at 12:44 on 25 March 2019

* No knowing, orchestrated collusion by the Trump campaign, that could plausibly be demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt to a judge and a jury, that is.

There is, however, a big puzzle piece that simply doesn’t fit right: why did Mueller catch so many people in and closely connected to the campaign lying about their connections to Russia? It doesn’t make sense: why like to an investigation (exposing yourself to being prosecuted for perjury), if you have committed no crime?

There are a number of plausible explanations, some that are fairly innocent, some otherwise. (In the latter category, what if Mueller almost found enough to prosecute the campaign for illegally colluding, but not quite?) Absent as full as possible a release of the report, we will never have any idea how to explain this discrepancy. It is for this very reason that a full release is desirable.

Beyond that, all of us in the anti-Trump crowd should put a lid on the whining. The whole reason for investigating was that we didn’t know enough and thought that there probably, but not definitely was serious dirt to be found. Mueller didn’t find the expected dirt, most likely because that dirt simply doesn’t exist. Sometimes, gut feelings end up being wrong. Deal with it.

This is, after all, why societies that worry about becoming repressive don’t automatically punish wrong-doers on mere suspicion, but instead require evidence, evidence that must typically be uncovered via investigation. An investigation is not a conviction.

On top of all that, there are many other reasons for which Trump should be opposed, and many of those reasons are more likely to be fruitful and convincing campaign material. Trump’s personal faults, as bad as they are, have never ranked terribly highly. Consider this poll, for example.

One of the reasons the opposition failed to unseat Berlusconi for so long in Italy was that they were too preoccupied with Berlusconi himself, instead of the conditions that had prompted many to vote for him. So can the “Russia, Russia, Russia” crap and move on to more fruitful avenues of criticism.

Published at 07:08 on 16 March 2019

Exhibit A is the new consensus that a sitting president cannot be charged with crimes.

Exhibit B is how the Trump Regime deferred to Boeing, grounding the troubled 737 Max series of jets days after even third-world backwaters without precisely stellar records of aviation safety did.

Published at 18:49 on 13 March 2019

First, the Leave campaign cheated. They lied, and they peddled foreign influence. Cheaters in sports get stripped of any titles their cheating played a role in. Why shouldn’t cheaters in politics suffer a similar fate, particularly given how the consequences of their cheating can be vastly more severe?

Second, decisions shouldn’t always be irrevocable. We’ve all done things we regret, only to back out as best we can and admit we were wrong for making what hindsight showed to be a wrong decision in the first place. Sure, some decisions are intrinsically hard to undo, but why should that be used as an excuse for making all decisions artificially difficult to undo?

Hold another referendum. If it fails, try as hard as possible to shit-can the whole misadventure. In such a case, it’s likely the rest of the EU will go along with Britain’s wishes; the trade disruption caused by a Brexit would hurt the Continent, too.

Published at 10:12 on 8 March 2019

Some points:

1. Yes, she did use the phrase “allegiance to a foreign country.”
2. Accusations of dual or conflicted loyalty have an ugly history behind them, to the point of being a standard trope in antisemitism.
3. Yes, the phrase was part of one sentence of a larger speech, the rest of which did not exhibit antisemitic rhetoric.
4. Point (3) is less relevant than it may seem. There’s a long history of political gaffes being ripped out of larger context and getting repeated over and over. This is hardly the first case. It’s a standard occupational hazard of being a politician.
5. There’s basically two options at play here, neither of which make Ms. Omar look particularly good:
   1. She said what she said because it reflects her true inner biases; i.e., she’s a bigot.
   2. She said what she said because she didn’t know better; i.e., she’s an ignoramus.
6. The Republicans have been far worse; just witness how little they did over the years as Steve King evolved into being an outright fascist.
7. The resolution that passed was a pretty good one. It acknowledged the generally bad record of bigotry in the House in recent years and condemned it in general, instead of simply singling out a possibly bigoted left liberal and being silent on all the other instances.
8. It proved a political masterstroke as well, because the Republicans, being a party of re-branded fascism, could not stomach the idea of condemning bigotry in general—and are now on record for it.

Might this all end up proving that being a somewhat bickersome “big tent” party is in the Democrats’ best interest? Consider that the resolution that was brought up and passed was nobody’s first choice: The left wing of the Democratic Party didn’t want any criticism of any one of their own, and the right wing wanted something that only went after this particular instance of bigotry. In the process of bickering and squabbling the Democrats came up with… a political masterstroke that neither faction would have come up with on their own.

Published at 11:06 on 7 March 2019

First, If your blood pressure rose at the mere mention of the phrase “left-wing authoritarianism” in the title, then I suggest it’s time for you to calm down and give this article a read; it’s likely to be particularly important.

Second, this post references one I made about a month ago. If you’re unfamiliar with it, I suggest you read it first.

That earlier post concluded thus:

So there’s my answer. Like many answers, it begs a question: what can we do about it? I could now go on to answer that, but instead I think I’ll close and let the reader think about it for a while.

Such a conclusion carried an implicit promise of a follow-up at some time in the future. It is now time to get on with that follow-up.

The 20th century’s worst tyrants called themselves socialists. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot all chose to label themselves in this way. And now that the 20th century has given way to the 21st, we have a tyranny (sorry, but if you look at the full picture of all the repression there, that’s the only thing it honestly can be called) in Venezuela that has also chosen to apply this label to itself.

Yes, in many cases, particularly that of Hitler, cogent arguments can be made that the self-proclaimed “socialist” tyrants lied when they made this claim: they failed to empower the working class, instead empowering states and parties that oppressed all unfortunate enough to be living under their misrule, workers included. Also, there are plenty of self-proclaimed “socialist” or “social-democratic” parties all over the world that have had collective centuries in power without instituting tyranny.

However, tyrants have still chosen the “socialist” label, and have done so over and over again. When something happens that repeatedly, it’s hard to shrug it all off as mere unlucky coincidence.

The answer, I think, is that “socialism” is a uniquely useful fig-leaf by which to attempt to disguise and legitimate tyranny. Socialism has generally been seen in a positive light by most people. Many Americans will doubt this, but most Americans have a highly-unrepresentative exposure to what socialism means; in most other nations, the history of the label has been nowhere near as consistently pejorative.

But it goes beyond that. Socialism not only has a generally positive connotation, it denotes an ideology which often claims:

1. Economic inequality is the main problem in capitalist society, and
2. The state can and should be used to dismantle capitalism.

Point No. 2 makes socialism an exceptionally useful mantle for dictators to claim, as they can then claim to be wanting increased state power not for the sake of themselves and their cronies, but to liberate society from capitalist oppression. Point No. 1 then comes in to distract the public from valuing liberty, since so much ideological attention is being paid to battling economic inequality.

And that, in a nutshell, is why left-wing authoritarianism has been such a recurring problem. The solution, then, is to reject the premises that have been proven to be such pitfalls, and to replace them with better premises.

Premise I: The Classic Liberals Have a Point on the State Being Dangerous

The State is dangerous. All of the worst genocides of the 20th century were performed by State actors. All of them. The oft-repeated quote incorrectly attributed to George Washington has proven itself true time and time again:

Government is not reason, it is not eloquence — it is force. Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master; never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

Classic liberals, particularly the followers and fellow travelers of organizations like today’s Libertarian Party, are of course being two-faced here: they are typically blind to the interplay of state and corporate power, and almost always blind to the oppressiveness of corporate power. That their present-day prescriptions for society would almost certainly prove oppressive is not, however, a refutation of the claim that State power is a dangerous thing. Both State and corporate power are dangerous. Which brings us to….

Premise II: The State vs. Capitalism Is a False Dichotomy

The State in fact helped to create capitalism, in the U.K. by passing Inclosure Acts that destroyed communal property, using State force to drive rural peoples off their land and into the new industrial slums the capitalist class was building. In the New World, States used imperialism and genocide (conducted by armies in their employ) to drive indigenous peoples from their lands and create “new” spaces for capitalist class society to expand into.

More importantly for opposing capitalism in the here-and-now, it is a false dichotomy to assert that government and capitalism are the only possible options. Capitalism has only been around for 350–400 years; the State for 5,000. Even 5,000 years is a distinct minority of the time of human existence, and living beings in general have been organizing themselves into ecosystems (on decentralized, hierarchy-free bases, with no leaders or ruling classes) for literally billions of years.

In fact, these leaderless structures have proven themselves to be vastly more long-lasting and stable than human-created hierarchical ones, which all tend to self-destruct due to ecological collapse within a few centuries or millennia.

There are better ways, ways that are neither capitalist nor state. Just pick health care: why should capitalists or government be the only answers? They don’t have to be!

Premise III: Lack of Liberty, Not Lack of Equality, Is the Real Problem

In fact, economic inequality is best understood as a special case of a deficiency in individual liberty. Those born into poverty (through no choice of their own!) have less choice and opportunity in their lives than those born into affluence. Poverty violates the individual liberty of those born into it.

Capitalism is oppressive, not because under capitalism some workers’ state doesn’t own the means of production, but because the average capitalist firm is approximately as open a society as the average fascist state. In fact, the capitalist firm served as Mussolini’s model for his fascist state, which he called the corporate state. Don’t ensure that the state owns the means of production. Instead, ensure that the workers who work in them do.

Will recognizing the dangers of the state and promoting greater liberty as a core goal be a magic bullet that prevents a self-proclaimed “socialist” government from going rotten? Probably not: there are no such magic bullets. But it offers a hell of a better chance than the more typical recipe of attempting to promote economic equality via greater state power.

Published at 07:35 on 1 March 2019

Relations have never been good between the two, but they’ve recently degraded significantly. It started when India bombed Pakistan in retaliation for a terrorist attack that India claimed Pakistan was involved in.

At that point, any sane US administration would have scolded India in a way that made the Indian government worry about the future of its trade and other relations with the USA if they didn’t cool it. But of course, we don’t have a sane chief executive, we have an incompetent fascist who sees right-wing nationalists like India’s ruling BJP to be natural allies. So of course the fascist idiots came down squarely on India’s side.

Given how both India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons, and given how this is the most serious conflict between the two since they nuclearized, this is positively frightening. Thankfully, Pakistan seems to be acting conciliatory in recent hours (they’ve unilaterally announced they will release the pilot of an Indian military plane they shot down), but this whole thing could still easily escalate out of control and precipitate a most horrifying outcome.

Published at 11:09 on 28 February 2019

Disclaimer: Nothing in the following entry should be construed as claiming the Democrats are equally as evil as the Republicans, and that therefore it does not matter who wins the 2020 election. Clearly, both stances are false. In the short term, there is significant value in unseating the Republicans from power as much as possible. However, it is also simultaneously true that the two sides have much in common, and this in and of itself both poses a threat and severely limits the ability of the system to self-correct using its own institutions (e.g. electoral politics).

One side wants to increase state power so they can use force to maintain the traditional white, male, capitalist hierarchy. The other side wants to increase state power so they can use government action to limit the worst abuses of capitalism, and in general to pursue a fool’s paradise of utopia via the crafting of the perfect set of regulations with which to (micro)manage everyone’s lives. The scenario recently posted here of a Democratic president using emergency powers to get what he or she wants (and the resultant precedent this would establish) is all-too-possible.

The two sides disagree strongly on how state power should be used, but they both agree that it should be not only used, but increased significantly. Any support for the Democrats must be given with eyes wide open and in full knowledge of this inconvenient fact. Both parties are enemies of liberty, and both should be seen as such.

Published at 17:45 on 27 February 2019

In an article penned on the eve of Trump’s emergency declaration, conservative Trump critic Rick Wilson writes:

He’s also opening a door that Republicans will regret walking through if and when executive power changes hands: When future President Biden, President Castro, President Harris or President Warren can’t get push their agenda through Congress, they’ll be able to do an end-run on the Constitution, claim emergency powers and cite Trump’s precedent to justify it.

The rub is, it goes far beyond just Republicans living to regret this ugly thing, should it survive court challenges. Suppose the next Democrat acts precisely as Wilson fears. Then what? It won’t end there; far from it! The only constant in politics is change. A right-winger will get into the White House soon enough, and with this whole “the president can rule by decree via emergency powers” business by then established even more firmly by precedent.

What happens then? Most likely, something that makes Trump look like a harmless little fuzzball in comparison. Be afraid, be very afraid.

Both that, and the earlier issue with a Democrat running rampant with unrestrained executive power, make me somewhat hopeful that the Supremes will slap this thing down. The Court does have a conservative majority, but it is mostly conservatives that predate Trump (and Gorsuch has already shown himself willing to rule against the president that appointed him).

Published at 08:15 on 15 February 2019

My prediction is that it’s not going to go very well for him. It’s an extreme measure, you see, and it sets a dangerous precedent. Because of how extreme it is, it’s going to be challenged in the courts:

1. Texas property owners will challenge it because it threatens to result in their property being confiscated via eminent domain. Texas has more privately-owned land along the border than any other state, and the border there is along a river, meaning a wall threatens to cut farmers and ranchers off from a source of water in an arid or semiarid climate.
2. The usual suspects (i.e. liberals) will of course litigate it.
3. Congress, particularly the House of Representatives, will litigate as well. Congress has standing in this case; the state of emergency is an attack on the clearly-enumerated constitutional powers of Congress.
4. When it ends up in the Supreme Court, even the right-wing justices are unlikely to see it in as charitable a light as Trump’s Muslim ban. The sole exception is Kavanaugh, who might be enough of a Trump puppet to go along with it. That means the best case outcome for Trump in the Supreme Court is probably an 8–1 loss.

More on the Supremes: The conservative justices are unlikely to be fans of the measure because of the precedent it sets: they don’t want a future Democratic president using states of emergency to bypass a Republican congress. (If left unchallenged, this would probably happen sooner rather than later, because divided government has been the rule, not the exception, since the 1970’s.)

That latter reason means that some GOP senators are likely to find their spine and oppose the state of emergency in the Senate, when the House sends the Senate a resolution disapproving of it. So it’s going to sew discord within the president’s own party.

This all proves, once again, that Trump is not an evil genius. If he were an evil genius, he would have avoided setting all sorts of traps for himself on the border wall issue. He would have taken some budget funding more border barriers, probably one funding them more generously than what Congress just passed (because a solidly Republican Congress would have passed it), as a sign that the wall is being built, and would have strutted around and proclaimed victory, probably with a victory speech along an existing stretch of border wall.

Published at 08:14 on 2 February 2019

Northam’s reaction proves his superiority to Kavanaugh.

Kavanaugh lied about and denied his past. When confronted with the evidence, Northam confessed it and expressed contrition for it.

Northam’s reaction proves his superiority to Trump.

Trump expressed no contrition about the Access Hollywood tapes.

The Democrats’ reaction proves their superiority to the Republicans.

There’s already been widespread condemnation of Northam and calls for him to resign from his own party. Contrast with widespread support for Kavanaugh and attacks on his accusers on the Republican side. Contrast with how Republicans stuck with Trump after the Access Hollywood tapes came out.

It’s not just his conduct in medical school.

Northam’s nickname while at Virginia Military Institute was “Coonman.” That not only shows the yearbook photo wasn’t an isolated incident, it points to which of the two figures in it he probably is.

It’s a shock it took so long for the above to be discovered.

Ralph Northam has run in elections since 2007. An old yearbook isn’t that obscure a thing. It’s a standard campaign tactic to go digging for dirt on your opponents. So, it’s a mystery that it took so long for this thing to come to light.

Northam is toast.

He’s still refusing to resign, but given how widespread the calls for his resignation are, he won’t last.