Obama: Reviving Conservatism

I think that Obama is working to revive moderate conservatism. But conservatism was intellectually bankrupt by the time of the Reagan administration. Even its economics, formerly its intellectually strongest area, has been discredited. There is no way to do to revive conservatism--it is dead. Obama has brought something to life, but it is a zombie. As the moderate conservative policies have failed, which they have consistently done, the Democrats prove unable to abandon the failed policies, and align themselves more and more with the radical reactionaries, and cause more and more pain.

Barack H.H. Obama. Who knew?

[Revised for clarity 2010.09.07]

"The hope that I saw is a prince of Hed?"

One source of hope seems to me likely to be the South. In ten years time, the BP oil disaster, and perhaps other environmental failures, will probably radicalize the South. A green South? How surreal!

Deadlock

[based on my comment on Brad Delong's journal]

I think US national policy has returned to its habitual deadlock. It's not clear to me that this deadlock will be broken in less than a decade. Obama is not likely to be succeeded by someone more liberal, after all, and, while there are some promising new liberal Senators, it will take years before they develop real power.

I am trying to imagine a ten-year depression. It is hard even to think about it. And yet--what will prevent it?

Blogging has been sparse lately. I have started a new job and have far less time to spend on amateur political science. I have several longer pieces I am interested in writing, but I have little heart for it. If we are, as seems to me likely, entering a ten-year period of political deadlock and economic stagnation, then I am writing for the long-term, and it seems to me I can make more difference doing other things.

Croak on the New Aristocrats

It is not enough, seemingly, to be rich and powerful beyond the wildest dreams of any wealthy class in previous history: the new aristocrats must reduce all who are not members of their class to abject poverty.

Fast cars, tequila, and nukes

Over on Charlie Stross's blog I croaked, "I've decided that nuclear power has the same effect on hominid male thinking as fast cars, tequila, and firearms." And someone replied, "I see nothing wrong with fast cars, tequila, and firearms. Sorry, what was that about?" So this is my answer.

These things all seem to be magnets for obsessions in men. Obsessed men pursue them regardless of how much damage they do. I am struck by the way the mostly men who love these things are convinced that their love is an expression of maturity. The W. Bush administration policy-makers, in love with violence, believed they were "the grown ups," and they seem to have been in fact teenage boys who never got over it. Sitting in the wreckage they have made, they still proclaim that they know better.

It is not adult behavior to implement risky technologies to sustain a too-large population. It is not adult behavior to pretend that, no matter what stresses hominids put on their planetary ecology and their planet's chemical and energy systems, they are immune to the consequences.

Croak!

Progressive Echo Chamber: Paul Krugman

On Republican electoral strategy:

If this sounds familiar, it should: it’s the same formula the right has been using for a generation. Use identity politics to whip up the base; then, when the election is over, give priority to the concerns of your corporate donors. Run as the candidate of “real Americans,” not those soft-on-terror East coast liberals; then, once you’ve won, declare that you have a mandate to privatize Social Security. It comes as no surprise to learn that American Crossroads, a new organization whose goal is to deploy large amounts of corporate cash on behalf of Republican candidates, is the brainchild of none other than Karl Rove. ***

Croak of the Day: bmaz on the BP Oil Disaster

But you know what hasn’t worked? The big top hat, the little top hat, the giant sippy straw, the blow out preventer, toxic dispersant sold by a BP subsidiary and the top kill and junk shot BP blathers about are laughable on their face. The solution ideas to date have been straight out of the Wile E. Coyote Acme School of BP Profitology.--bmaz, Dr. Sludgelove: Or How I Learned To Stop Junk Shotting And Love Teh Bomb