1. Greg Lukianoff and others write,
A December 2019 survey by the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group showed that, in both parties, about one in five partisans felt violence against the opposing party would be at least “a little” justified if their party lost the election; about one in ten felt there would be “a lot” or “a great deal” of justification for violence. Meanwhile, comparing ANES survey data from 2016 and 2018, the number of Americans who said violence was “not at all” a justifiable means of pursuing political goals declined 10% in two years, from roughly 82% to 72%.
2. Politico reports about an interview with Hillary Clinton.
“Joe Biden should not concede under any circumstances because I think this is going to drag out, and eventually I do believe he will win if we don’t give an inch and if we are as focused and relentless as the other side is,” Clinton said in an excerpt posted Tuesday.
And let’s be frank about this and call this by its name: this is very Weimar. The center has collapsed. Armed street gangs of far right and far left are at war on the streets. Tribalism is intensifying in every nook and cranny of the culture. The establishment right and mainstream left tolerate their respective extremes because they hate each other so much.
4. An interview with Vicky Osterweil, author of In Defense of Looting.
Ultimately, what nonviolence ends up meaning is that the activist doesn’t do anything that makes them feel violent. And I think getting free is messier than that. We have to be willing to do things that scare us and that we wouldn’t do in normal, “peaceful” times, because we need to get free.
[UPDATE] At Bloomberg, Niall Ferguson argues against the trope that we are becoming like Weimar Germany.
Trump, whose worldview and political style are so much closer to vintage American nativism and populism that I have the utmost difficulty understanding why any educated person would liken him to Hitler. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: You don’t need the Weimar Republic to explain the appeal to many American voters of immigration restriction, tariffs and a culture war directed against a “globalist” elite — not to mention the loosest monetary policy in American history. That recipe is the essence of American populism. It has almost nothing in common with interwar German fascism, which was about racial persecution and ultimately annihilation, economic autarky and actual war (hence all the uniforms and jackboots).
3) Rittenhouse likely has a valid self-defense claim and will probably be acquitted. Also, protecting private property is not vigilantism and is fully legal. Google the castle doctrine for more info.
4) Irony alert: the book on looting is copyrighted.
“They (Rittenhouse’s lawyers) argue that Rittenhouse soon became concerned about protesters injured in clashes with police, and went to provide first aid at a gas station. As he was returning to the mechanics shop after providing aid, he found that police formations had blocked his way, so he returned to the station.”
Rittenhouse’s own lawyers say he left the location where he claimed he was invited to protect. It was past the curfew. He was at a gas station no one invited him to. He will have to argue he was standing there with a long rifle and was still sufficiently physically accosted to shoot people dead.
a) rendering first aid does not = vigilante justice, no matter how far you want to stretch the definition.
b) as far as I’m aware, it’s still perfectly legal to cross state lines. I actually recently did so without incident.
c) open carrying a long rifle is not illegal in Wisconsin nor is it here in beautiful North Texas.
d) I’m not implying that what he did was prudent or wise. But, what I am saying is that his actions are well within the means of a valid claim of self defense.
“Sufficiently physically accosted.”
The people chasing him (some of them at least) has guns as well. People with guns are capable of physically accosting other people with guns. I wouldn’t rule out the possibility he’s guilty of manslaughter depending on who in particular he shot, but self defense seems plausible. From what I’ve read, in the videos he wasn’t the first to open fire, and one of the people chasing him that he shot was armed. It’s possible he did something to provoke the mob, but everyone he shot was during the videos when he was already being chased, so it’s unlikely said mob can claim to have been chasing him in self defense.
Tom, do yourself a favor and actually go watch the videos of Rittenhouse. They are widely available and you don’t have to rely on what other people have told you about that night, including Rittenhouse’s lawyers. No reasonable person can watch those videos and not realize that the people chasing him that night intended him harm.
Yancy – If you reread what I wrote, I didn’t make any claim that he would be found guilty. I made the point that he wasn’t defending any property as claimed. Bob seems to enjoy making up reasons why this happened.
It is unfortunately true that someone can explicitly seek conflict, inject themselves into it, then shoot someone, and stand a decent chance arguing self defense in this country.
On the other side, a second set of idiots on the street appear to have actually tried to grab this idiot’s gun.
This story is a disgusting metaphor for the whole summer, actually, and there is nothing good about any of it. It is not a story to explain any side’s point of view.
“It is unfortunately true that someone can explicitly seek conflict, inject themselves into it, then shoot someone, and stand a decent chance arguing self defense in this country.”
That’s not even a remotely accurate depiction of the law of self defense.
This incident is definitely not a metaphor for the summer. In fact the reason it is so discussed is its uniqueness.
Bob – once again, you are arguing something I didn’t claim. I wasn’t even directly responding to your answer. And it is a very accurate description of what Rittenhouse actually did that night.
Just A Question – Are you confused about what a metaphor is? Uniqueness matters why, exactly?
Implicit in the claim that this was a metaphor for the summer is the lie that there has been widespread escalation on “both sides”.
Tom DeMeo: [Rittenhouse] wasn’t defending any property as claimed.
You’re sure of that?
“Newly uncovered footage shows Kyle Rittenhouse bringing a fire extinguisher to the scene of the (literal) dumpster fire in Kenosha the rioters started, to help put it out.”
https://twitter.com/MarkDice/status/1299804984926564352
“It appears he handed it off to someone else, who put out the (literal) dumpster fire, causing the rioters to begin confronting the peace keepers, resulting in Joe Rosenbaum charging at Kyle Rittenhouse trying to take his gun (eye witness who spoke with police confirms).”
https://twitter.com/MarkDice/status/1299805752018706432
“It is unfortunately true that someone can explicitly seek conflict, inject themselves into it, then shoot someone, and stand a decent chance arguing self defense in this country.“
First, that is at best a debatable and probably false characterization of events (you leave out the part about being chased by armed attackers), and second, it is not unfortunate. The law clearly allows for the possibility self defense even if you provoke conflict if you cease to be a threat to the other party. If you insult or even attack someone, then run away, the person doesn’t get a free 20 minute period where they get to hunt you down and kill you with impunity. Once they’re clearly no longer a threat, you can’t legally attack them. I don’t see that as unfortunate, it seems like the way things should be in a civilized society.
Bob – those are all insultingly irrelevant points. He shot two people dead. The only issue is whether he had a right to claim self defense or not. Your reference to the Castle doctrine was clearly wrong, according to his attorneys. Your reference to protecting private property was clearly wrong, according to his attorneys. You don’t seem to care.
Many apologies for being insulting! However, I was wondering if you could please educate us on the law of self defense? When lethal force justified and when is not justified? How would you apply it to this case?
Lastly, if you’re looking for a short cut, I’m more than willing to make a wager on the ultimate outcome. And, I’ll give you the spread and then some. Let me know. I haven’t had this much fun since you fools voted against me in Zimmerman or Ferguson.
@Tom DeMeo
My willingness to bet in favor of Rittenhouse will remain open indefinitely. Please let me know if you change mind. I’ll give you whatever odds or terms that you’d like. The problem with you over educated folks is that you think because you are an expert in topic (A) that this somehow magically translates to being an expert in unrelated topic (B).
And, if you don’t understand the justification for betting, classic post below:
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/11/a-bet-is-a-tax-on-bullshit.html
Ferguson is mostly right about Weimar analogies, which people take much too far. However, in ordinary usage it merely translates as ordinary, centrist people getting freaked out by leftist excess and rapid social changes and thus provoked into siding with the right when framing itself as the party representing the opposition to such changes. Note that it’s not always a conservative, traditionalist opposition, though that is likely the normal default position.
My view is that these incidents (on the right and left alike) are quite rare and incredibly overblown because of media and especially social-media attention. They are not “Chesnut’s first shots at Fort Sumter”. Certainly on a per-capita level they are orders of magnitude less than typical levels of political violence in countries undergoing genuine upheaval or insurrection, and the same could be said in comparison to ordinary crime or disease (e.g., cv19 deaths probably 4 orders of magnitude higher, excess conventional crime-related homicides attributable to a general decline in policing effectiveness, likely 2 orders more).
In a way, the rarer the are, the most important they seem, because there is only one focal point for which there is Aumann common knowledge of general awareness, which is precisely the condition that triggers intense instincts of social psychology. People want to talk about it because they know that everybody else knows about this one thing, and thus it can command attention far in excess of its merits and drive the news cycle because it drives traffic and generates clicks. (Martin Gurri call your office).
That is the real danger of such events. It is not that they are going to set off tit-for-tat killings in escalating numbers and intensity, but that they will corrode the functioning of the criminal justice system as people on juries abandon the duty of neutrality and become more loyal to ethnic and partisan solidarities, and thus embrace nullification when the defendant is someone perceived to be on their side. “Kyle ‘rhymes with mistrial’ Rittenhouse” is already a meme.
A trickling-up of prison-gang politics means many more holdouts and mistrials, and this will have positive feedbacks because each mistrial of big cases will get a lot of media attention, only serving to amplify consciousness of the social normalcy of the new tactic. Defendants will refuse to plea bargain, but the system is already processing as any jury trials as it can, to which defendants have an absolute constitutional right, and to unanimous verdicts at that.
Here’s the thing. It is much, much easier to be a holdout when you look at your fellow jurors not as ordinary, decent people such as yourself, just trying to come to the correct and neutral determination according to the law, but instead as hated members of the enemy camp in the cold civil. You might not even like or feel much solidarity with the defendant, but you hate the other team so much you can’t bear to agree with them about anything, including a verdict.
In Singapore they just got rid of juries altogether, but LKY had two advantages: legal authority to do it, and a judiciary perceived as professional and trustworthy to make fair and neutral determinations. We don’t have either of those. So …”solve for equilibrium”.
Arnold, the Old Guard of the Dem Party has colluded with the Radical Left. Let us call it the Anti-Trump Alliance (ATA) since its immediate target is to get rid of Trump by any means. The analysis should focus on ATA because the probability of violence escalating and leading to a civil war depends largely on what the Radical Left does before, during, and after the election, and what they can do to some extent depends on what the Old Guard does before the election.
Remember that ATA is the Old Guard’s recognition of its previous failures to overthrow Trump. Yes, the means used by the Old Guard during the past 4 years didn’t work. Last June, they opted for colluding with the Radical Left to spread protests and riots knowing their potential for violence, as well as disrupting the election by supporting the vicious in-mail voting and other vicious tactics like relying on anonymous sources to circulate lies through their complices in the press and social media. Since last June, we have seen that the Old Guard can hardly contain the Radical Left that has realized that there is a window of opportunity because state and local governments can stop the use of force against them by Trump. What you are going to see the next 55 days is an increasing militarization of Trump’s supporters to do the work that the National Guard and other federal forces cannot do. None can anticipate how much the tension will escalate until November 3, but you better keep your eyes on the ball, that is, on what happens in the large cities where the Radical Left feels protected by a vicious Old Guard desperate to overthrown Trump by any means.
At this stage, the only way to prevent an escalation is for the Old Guard to make clear that ATA is terminated immediately. Unfortunately, Biden and Harris are puppets and their bosses are hidden, praying that Trump makes gross mistakes and loses the election by himself.
Who are their bosses? Why choose Harris as a puppet? Dangerous, no?
Let me explain first the case of KH. She has always worked for her bosses, starting with Willie Brown. Two of my daughters (one dead now, the other still in the SF where she worked with KH) knew her more than 10 years ago, and they didn’t like her because despite being an ambitious young politician she was too submissive (the kind that marks you for the rest of your life). Most politicians don’t like to be VP (and much less to be a loser VP candidate), but the submissive doesn’t care and assumes that somehow will survive the stigma and after 4 or 8 years will be able to become President. Beyond her submission, I don’t think KH has any special ability or charisma to win later her Party’s nomination for President (remember how poorly she performed in the primaries). For this election, she was chosen VP because if she took over the Presidency, she’d be manipulable. (She reminds me of the story of Isabel Perón: she was nominated as VP of Juan Perón for the October 1973 election. Although Perón was dying, he won by a large difference, and in July 1974, Isabel became President. She was overthrown by the military in March 1976. It was a very transparent operation because her adviser J. López Rega was well known to be the boss).
Now, the question is who controls Old Joe. Please remember that his record is very clear: when he was at his best (around 1990), he always was “too flexible” in his positions, and in the past 20 years at best he was a decorative figure (was Obama concerned about his ability to mess things up?). His daily agenda has been and still is quite light since the strategy is…..[fill the blank]. I assume that both Tom Perez and J. O’Malley Dillon are responsible for the agenda and they prepare it in accordance with the demands of the politicians, the union leaders, and last but not least the financiers. Find the names of the main characters of each of the three groups, and you will know the bosses.
No, there is no “colluding” between “the Old Guard of the Dem Party” and “the Radical Left”, any more than there was “collusion” between the Trump presidential campaign and the Russian government. There is a lot of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” sentiment, because both find it easy to believe that Donald Trump is a despicable enemy. There is political calculation and, I’m sure, a lot of cynicism.
Talk of puppets and bosses and conspiracies makes things so simple. But it’s factually wrong. And it eats away at social capital, makes people less able to actually solve problems. It reminds me so much of Marxist bullsh*t and, alas, seems to be becoming increasingly popular with people who consider themselves conservatives or “on the right”.
Sorry, Roger. Too little too late to argue for the return of good manners. Maybe 50 years ago, it’d have worked. Any doubt, please ask Clarence Thomas and remember that the Joe Biden –acting on behalf of Ted Kennedy– was responsible for the grotesque, last-minute attempt to destroy Thomas. Since the rejection of R. Bork’s nomination, the process of approving SC judges nominated by a Republican president has become a travesty of good manners.
Indeed, I disagree with you about ATA. It’s the typical collusion case that we teach when we apply game theory to the study of the structure, behavior, and performance of suppliers.
It is never too late to argue for truth.
Joe Biden and Ted Kennedy were colleagues. Both wanted to defeat Clarence Thomas, just as they had both wanted to defeat Robert Bork. They both realized, as just about all Senators do now, that SCOTUS is a group of nine philosopher-kings who cannot be over-ruled and cannot be removed. The right people on the Court will implement your preferences; the wrong people will frustrate them. So they did what they could to keep off people who would frustrate them. Yes, “a travesty of good manners.”
It took Republicans a little longer to realize the importance of nominations. I wondered at their naivety when so many of them went along with the characterization of Ruth Bader Ginsburg as “moderate” during her confirmation hearings. By the time Merrick Garland was nominated, they knew how much was at stake.
Sorry, you are not arguing about the truth. You want other people to behave according to your rules.
For decades, Ted Kennedy was the Vito Corleone of a major faction of the Dem Party. Joe Biden was one of his assistants.
You are absolutely right that I want people to behave reasonably.
I liked this recent article by Robert Wright, Tips for Avoiding a Civil War.
Regardless of the level of coordination, the “political calculation” of the Democratic party has been to:
1. Politicize and stage impeachment simply to overturn an election.
2. Consciously dismantle voting safeguards.
3. Refuse to protect the people of areas they control from violence because it seem(ed) beneficial to their electoral prospects
Basically, the Democratic Party “platform” seems to be a cynical threat. Vote us into power and we’ll maybe curb the excesses of the mob we incited. Don’t, and it’s “Death to America”, it’s proof that the election is illegitimate, and we’ll burn it all down.
The peaceful transfer of power pursuant to elections is one of the finest achievements of the British Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the American Founding. Now it is under root and branch attack by left which has no use for democratic (lower case “d”) decision making except to the extent it can be used to lend legitimacy to their agenda. If we are in a state of war, it is pursuant to a declaration of war by the progressives against that constitutional norm.
Matt Taibbi’s takedown of Vicky Osterweil is worth reading. “… they matter because everyone, including especially Democratic Party politicians, is afraid of the fallout that comes with telling them to shut the fuck up.”
One thing that I would like to understand:
Many of the rioters appear to be white middle/upper class college graduates. Also, far more females than I would have ever expected.
What’s up with that or maybe I’ve just misperceived it? Any insights ASK readers? I feel ignorant on this one.
FWIW – also trying to understand if the 1999 WTO riots in Seattle have anything to tell us.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/reason.com/2000/02/01/seattle-surprise-2/%3famp
Revolutions always start among the privileged classes (“middle class” in old school jargon, which presupposes that most people are “lower class”). Revolutions occur when a subset of the middle class convinces enough of the lower class that they want to abolish the class system*. If it’s successful, the upper class goes up against the wall, some of the middle class moves up, and the rest of the middle class rises or falls a bit depending on political ties. The lower classes meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
*Any society more than about 20 people inevitably gives rise to the beginnings of social classes, and trying to abolish them never works (although you can change the faces and the selection criteria). It should go without saying that the rioting college students have no desire** to become factory workers, let alone subsistence farmers. As the old Soviet joke goes, “Under capitalism man exploits man. Under socialism, the opposite is true.”
** nor, if we’re honest, ability
Many of the rioters appear to be white middle/upper class college graduates. Also, far more females than I would have ever expected. What’s up with that or maybe I’ve just misperceived it?
Young college graduates are members of the Precariat, a social class marked by downward mobility, indebtedness, and meager career prospects. Peter Turchin would also point to them as symptoms of “elite overproduction.” Basically there are more college graduates than there are jobs in the Professional Middle Class to justify the level of debt entailed in getting a degree in the current year. They lack wealth and real skills, but they are ideologically correct, and believe they should be employed on that basis.
Thanks…interesting. Is this under appreciated and under reported or just a passing phase?
Passing phase? Maybe.
But certainly not unique to either this point in time or this country. You might get some insight on this artifact by looking into the lives and backgrounds of Ulrike Meinhof and Andreas Baader, and what was called at that time (and place), the “Chic Left”.
The Wikipedia entry on the “Red Army Faction” will explain further. It almost reads like a current “news” story.
I agree, though I’d call them the “underwater class” (“precariat” sounds like they’re barely holding on, when they’ve actually fallen off). They don’t have marketable skills that would place them among the lesser elites (e.g. dentists) or even upper working class (accountants*, etc.). They do have student loans, non-dischargeable in bankruptcy, that prevent them from being able to get by in the lower working class. They have negative equity in human capital terms.
*I would have been one of them except that I got my unprofitable education in the 90s when it was affordable. I later retrained as an accountant at a community college and now have a modestly paying but rather secure job.
Not sure what Ferguson is getting on about with reference to “vintage populism.” Populism was born in the USA with the formation of The People’s Party in 1892 at the national level. James B. Weaver was the party’s candidate that year and he won over one million votes, carried Colorado, Kansas, Idaho, and Nevada, and received electoral votes from Oregon and North Dakota. The party, however, failed to make further gains, in part because of fraud, intimidation, and violence by Southern Democrats.
Weaver campaigned on a fairly leftist platform of public ownership of railroads, telephone and telegraph companies; free coinage of silver; a graduated income tax; and “All land now held by railroads and other corporations in excess of their actual needs, and all lands now owned by aliens should be reclaimed by the government and held for actual settlers only.” https://wwnorton.com/college/history/archive/reader/trial/directory/1890_1914/12_ch22_04.htm
This sounds much more like Biden, actually like Corbyn.
It was only much later that the term “populism” began to to be associated with the exploration of the elite class’s abuse of common people, a theme that would find formal roots in public choice theory.
“ the loosest monetary policy in American history. ”
Maybe I’m being pedantic but this is one of the scarier sentences in the excerpts because it’s so clearly wrong and yet so widely believed. One reason witch hunts get out of hand is because the accepted premise about how to resolve them is based on eliminating mythical threats which can’t be addressed because they don’t exist.
I assume both sides would find this sentence uncontroversial. And they generally blame loose money for different problems. It comes from the Feds stupid communication tool of equating low interest rates with loose money. What does everyone think interest rates would be under a gold standard? 10%? No. They’d be low. Like now. Because monetary policy is perpetually tight now. It’s the things everyone agrees on that get you. For example, the idea in 2008 that mortgage lending should be greatly curtailed. Hugely popular. That was probably largely responsible for the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011. But since the wrong thing was universally popular, OWS was tilting at windmills. The social fabric is fraying because of the wrong things everyone agrees on.
It’s possible there’s a semantic issue here. Many people think ‘loose monetary policy’ means something like low interest rates or big increase in money supply, as a matter of definition, but that doesn’t mean that the prescription regarding monetary policy is fixed. E.g. someone who has that definition in mind might say, “how right or loose monetary policy should be depends on NGDP projections. Right now monetary policy is very loose, but it should be even looser.” That position is indistinguishable from market monetarism other than that it has a different definition of ‘loose.’
That said, if I remember right Ferguson was a big inflation hawk back during the recession, so unless he’s done a 180 (which many people have done these last 4 years; see Judy Shelton), it’s likely he is indeed saying monetary policy is too loose.
For some reason (and I could be wrong): I don’t see a lot of people being terribly concerned about monetary policy right now. Due to the low interest rates, the work from home crowd gets to refi or upgrade. They are thrilled! The rest of us, on average, have basically no understanding of monetary policy and will only start clamoring if/when inflation actually starts to be visible and impactful.
Also, there seems to be a fairly bipartisan consensus on fiscal policy, which can be summed up as: “spend, baby spend.” Is there literally anyone against this except for a few cranks like myself?
I thought Niall Ferguson’s article was quite interesting. An important point he makes is that in the 1930s, there was “substantial support for the Nazis in the military, the senior civil service and the universities.” That is very different from our current situation, where there is exceedingly little support for Trump in those quarters.
Essential reading for skeptics:
https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/09/somethings-happening-here-democrats-laying-foundation-for-action-with-their-post-election-day-doomsday-warnings/
FYI, the author is an old law professor at Cornell University and some weeks ago the barbarians attempted to cancel him. He challenged them and survived.
And to complement that reading, read this WSJ editorial published last night:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/will-courts-pick-the-next-president-11599518640?mod=hp_opin_pos_2
The Bolshevik consolidation of control from 1918 to 1920 during the Russian Revolution may make a better analogy than the Weimar. Now reading Ivan Bunin’s Cursed Days and the similarities are striking. This passage could have been written about the elite embrace of BLM:
“It’s a terrible thing to say, but it’s the truth: if it were not for the misfortunes of the folk, thousands of our intellectuals would be profoundly unhappy people. How else could they have sat around and protested? What else would they have cried and written about? Without the folk, life would not have been life for them.”