Trump is the Symptom. We are the Illness.

David Brooks, resident conservative(ish) editorialist for the New York Times, used his column a few weeks ago to take Never Trumpers and “The Resistance,” groups with which he associates, to task in the aftermath of the Soleimani killing.

Donald Trump is impulse-driven, ignorant, narcissistic and intellectually dishonest. So you’d think that those of us in the anti-Trump camp would go out of our way to show we’re not like him — that we are judicious, informed, mature and reasonable…. But the events of the past week have shown that the anti-Trump echo chamber is becoming a mirror image of Trump himself — overwrought, uncalibrated and incapable of having an intelligent conversation about any complex policy problem.

Brooks gets a lot right, and an honest self-assessment by those both Right and Left who place themselves athwart the president would be as illuminating for them as it is unlikely.

But he misses one key point in his argument – a misunderstanding that prevents him or anyone in his intended audience from actually getting to – and fixing – the root of the problem.  The mistake is in the title of the column itself, “Trump is Making Us Stupid.”

American democracy is a consumer-side, not supply-side, industry.  As Jonah Goldberg writes, “Bad followership yields bad leadership, because in a market-based democracy, the customer is always right.” If the one nationally-elected leader we have is “impulse-driven, ignorant, narcissistic and intellectually dishonest,” it is because that is what we the American consumer demands – through our votes, our cable-news viewership, our social-media followership, and our own behavior.

America today is a place where the feelings that comfort us the most are of hatred and outrage; a time of “negative polarization” when the height of the love we feel towards each other is determined in inverse by the depth of the hatred others feel towards others that we hate too. 

Brooks speaks of the “echo chamber” that reflexively erupted at news of Soleimani’s death, and this is because we have self-Balkanized ourselves into echo chambers that confirm what we already believe.  Far from bridging geographic, religious, and social divides, the advent of the internet and cable news has made it far easier for us to isolate ourselves from those who are different than ever before. We can watch entire networks that tell us exactly what we want to hear twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. So too can we friend and follow those who are just like us to the point that those who aren’t are not real people at all, but caricatures and boogeymen constructed from our own worst prejudices.

From this, loathing and outrage become natural and affirming and, since we associate with those who feel exactly like we do, social capital and social cohesion are built through immediate, unthinking expressions of loathing and outrage to greater and greater levels towards those who don’t – expressions which we like and retweet and comment on in like manner.  It’s a mutually-reinforcing and -escalating vortex of sound and fury.

Decades from now historians will puzzle over how a society who lived at literally the best time to be a human being ever could be so discontented and acrimonious with each other that advice columns were needed for family members of different political beliefs to peacefully sit at the same table together on holidays.

As much as we might comfort ourselves otherwise, Donald Trump did not cause this phenomenon – he is the logical result of it. 

For years now, one half of America has increasingly despised the other half and the other half has requited: the Progressive Left viewing people on the Conservative Right, in the words of Barack Obama, as so “bitter” and “frustrated” that they can only “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them.” The Conservative Right, in turn, after years of feeling like their way of life has been dumped upon by cultural elites on the Progressive Left, has been waiting for someone who treats everybody on the Left (and Right) who disagrees with him the same way the Left has treated them. 

Our contempt both drives us apart and brings us together.  No longer can we listen and think beyond what we already know, because to do so might be to admit that those we’ve conditioned ourselves to disdain might actually come from a valid place, or, God forbid, be right about something.

All that was left then was for Donald Trump – a reality tv star who views all attention, good or bad, as good attention; who thrives in controversy and uproar – to walk in a wide-open door at a time when both sides were looking for someone to confirm what they already believed about the other.  Cometh the hour, cometh the man.

Call it “stupid” or whatever term you choose, but Trump did not make us this way. He merely reflects what we had already become.

Too Big To Govern?

Latest at The Federalist: 

“...national government and politics has become a zero-sum game, and whatever the result, each loss, real or perceived, alienates half of America. After so many decades of this, the one thing everyone on both sides can agree on is that “our government” has been “hijacked” by someone or something else, and that we no longer have control of our own lives and futures. If you want an explanation for the sense of alienation that fueled Trump to victory, look no farther.

These bitter grapes of wrath are what centralization hath wrought.”

Whither the Legislative

"The Congress had ample opportunity to pass the comprehensive immigration reform package that I wanted as I wanted it.  They did not do so, and have thus forfeited their right to legislate.  In their failure to make a law, they have ceded the right to make a law to me and me alone."

President Obama will not say these words tonight when he announces his executive order effectively granting legal amnesty and the concurrent privilege of guest-worker status to millions of individuals, but his actions logically -- indeed necessarily -- imply this sentiment.  What he has said, time and time again, is that because Republicans in the legislative branch of government have not legislated on this matter, that he has a responsibility to act.

The argument contradicts not only what he himself has argued up until this point, but the logic of our constitutional order and the separation of powers at its heart.  The right to legislate belongs to the legislative branch.  It says so self-evidently in name and, even more explicitly, in the black ink of the Constitution's very first article.  A co-equal branch of government heretofore by law, the rationale implicit in the president's imminent action reduces the Congress to a subservient body who must act according to the executive's will or be superseded.  If the president's assumption of legislative power tonight is justifiable, then the legislative branch serves at the pleasure of the executive.

One label for conduct apropos to this -- the executive disregarding and assuming the legislative power -- has made more appearances that any other in the course of history.  That label is "tyranny".  The president's decree will be met with a litany of adjectives, both condemnatory and laudatory, but none will have a historical resonance surpassing "tyranny".  As has been written, legislative power is a "right...formidable to tyrants only."

The most adverse significance of this abrogation will not be felt tonight, in the coming weeks, or even in the next few years.  Presidential acts that trespass upon the limits of the constitution, while done by one president of one party at one time, tend to become bipartisan and habitual as the years progress.  Once this rubicon is crossed, the odds of the president's successors acting in an identical vein increases exponentially.

One of these successors will eventually be a Republican.  They will enact a new law by executive order, and they will justify it on the grounds that a Democratic Congress did not pass a law that said-Republican president desired.  When Democrats howl in protest, as they will, declaiming the president as an unrepentant shredder of the Constitution, they will undoubtedly disregard the fact that the precedent for such usurpation was created by one of their own.

The Age of Obama

Nearly five years after the crash of '08 employment still hasn't returned to pre-recession levels, yet the president's legislative focus, as is becoming typical to his presidency, is on something other than the economy.  In his first term it was Cap & Trade and Obamacare, now it is the old stalking horse of "comprehensive immigration reform."  It has passed the Senate, probably will not pass the House, and either way it will not fix the immigration problem (it will probably exacerbate it long-term) and it certainly will not help the economy (we do not suffer from a paucity of cheap labor).  Nothing continues to be done to encourage economic growth and job creation -- or to address the reasons both are so negligible -- and the economy continues to limp along on the "new normal" of stagnation and malaise. 

The Age of Obama, at its core.

"Modernizing" the Church

I am no Catholic, but I could not help but get petulant when, in the context of the recent papal conclave, commentators throughout American media waxed sanctimoniously of the Catholic Church's need to "modernize".

The task now before the Church -- the Holy, (small "C") catholic church -- is the same one that has been before it since the Ascension: to preserve and promote truth, specifically that essential Truth that determines and gives meaning to human existence -- the Grace and Salvation provided by Christ's Death and Resurrection.

This Truth is not true in one period and untrue the next. It stands outside past, present, and future; outside antiquity, modernity, and futurity; outside of every temporal consideration altogether. It is transcendent. The Church was instituted by Christ to "make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit". Outside of this the Church is without purpose. It is nothing.

It makes no logical sense then to say that an institution must change with the times when that institution's sole reason for being is to connect each passing life to the one Thing that stands outside of time and creation. Those who speak of the Church's need to "modernize" speak as if it is some brand that must continuously shift its meaning to gain a larger market share.

The Church is emphatically not this. It is the communion of saints, the promoting vehicle of the Gospel here on earth, the entity responsible for calling us from the finite to the infinite -- from this world to the "world without end."

No, the Church should not "modernize". It can't. The modern soon becomes the arcane. Always has, always will. Truth -- the Gospel -- stays the same. It is to the Church to seek, uphold, and promote It. It must do this in our present "modern" age and in all the modern ages to come.

Post-Sequester

The safe assumption is that the sequester will happen March 1st. Even if Speaker Boehner were inclined to accede to more tax hikes, his rank-and-file would bludgeon him with his own gavel were he to even suggest it.

It is not like it matters anyway. Far from engaging leaders of Congress as is necessary, the president is running around the country attempting to politically shame Republicans into bending to his will again. The campaigning never ends and the governing never begins.

Yes, the sequester will happen, and when it does the president and his friends may come to regret their predictions of cataclysm. For a country that runs annual deficits north of a trillion dollars with over $16 trillion in debt, the sequester is but a drop in the bucket. Those it will touch are in the Beltway. For those of us outside the Beltway the sun will rise the next day and life will go forward unchanged.

Having proven to be a false prophet of doom once, how credible will the president then be when he beats his breast and gnashes his teeth over the next looming budgetary crisis -- contrived budgetary crises being his preferred method of (demagogically) operating? What will be left for him to stand on when there is a precedent that government spending can indeed be cut without entailing a national disaster?

Post-sequester disaster is not what has to worry the president. Post-sequester normalcy should. If government can be cut without the sky falling down on us all the president will be shown to have no clothes.

The Sequester

The looming sequester threatens to hoist the president by two of his own petards.

As Republicans are all too happy to remind him, he proposed the sequester during the 2011 debt ceiling negotiations. Assured that Republicans would never be able to swallow defense cuts, he was undoubtedly convinced that the impending threat of them would give him leverage in future budget/spending battles with Congress.

The $1.2 trillion in cuts also provide a ready-made rebuttal to his own counter-proposal of cuts mixed with tax increases. He has always called for a "balanced" approach to deficit reduction. Taxes were raised by hundreds of billions of dollars -- with no attendant spending reductions -- to avoid the fiscal cliff. Proportionality then dictates that the revenue hikes from last time be balanced with expenditure reduction this time.

Liberalism, Conservatism & the Coming Fiscal Crisis

The import of American liberalism from the New Deal to Obamacare has been the creation, expansion and preservation of the welfare state. It is this state that has put us over $16 trillion in debt and counting. Such GDP-surpassing levels of obligation are unsustainable and will precipitate an economic crisis. Witness Europe.

Liberalism will not be able to respond to this fiscal-based crisis because its entire programs is the creation of the welfare state whose unaffordability is the genesis of said crisis. Liberalism has created this crisis, they have no response to it other than to ignore it altogether. When ignoring it is no longer an option they will be left sputtering.

Witness Europe again. Even as Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and (less directly) France teeter on the edge of economic collapse and the destruction of the entire European project, there are no real efforts at meaningful reform, only feeble requests for perpetual bailouts and debt integration.

When the contagion crosses the pond the Left, unable to respond to a catastrophe of their own making, will meltdown in exact concurrence with the economy.

It will then be to the Right to redress what the Left hath wrought.

2nd Term Expectations

As President Obama officially begins his second term, it's important for his loyal opposition to have appropriate expectations.

The republic's present debt combined with its unfunded liabilities spell out national ruin. The level of taxation necessary to bridge that gap would bring the same result. Comprehensive reform of the entitlement leviathan -- the conductor of our red ink train -- is the solution, the only solution.

Someday -- probably when both our treasury and credit are depleted -- this conclusion will be inescapable.

That day will not be in the next four years.

If it was not already, the president's thinly-veiled paean to the welfare state on Monday made clear that any notion of reform beyond sophistic lip-service is dead-on-arrival. President Obama views himself as a White Knight of sorts, the figure that will not only consolidate the New Deal and Great Society but transform the American republic into a European-esque social democracy.

That we could become this is possible. That we could remain this for very long is delusional.

As one European state after another teeters on the edge of fiscal abyss, the upshot of emulating the European model is evident, or at least it should be. If facts are "stubborn things", as John Adams once said, then simple math is more stubborn still. It is inescapable: you cannot spend more than you take in forever, especially not at the yawning levels that we've begun to. You can only borrow so much. As a wise Iron Lady once said, "eventually you run out of other people's money."

As the self-regarded heir of FDR, President Obama denies this -- and he always will. Seeking to duplicate the New Deal, he cannot escape from the fact that he doesn't enjoy the post-war (often illusory) surpluses his progressive predecessors did. (Ironically, in vainly trying to recreate what progressives of yesteryear did, the new progressive prince is himself quite reactionary.) The man and the moment are not one and the same.

With the force of a Democratic senate and his own presidential veto, he can and will enjoin the country in this delusion for the next four years.

Republicans cannot change this. For the next quadrennium America will continue full speed ahead towards the cliff and into oblivion.

What they can do is make the argument. Convince a country that needs convincing that there is a better way. The GOP can position themselves so that when the next opportunity comes -- when President Obama has returned to Chicago and is writing about himself again -- the crisis can be averted and the futures of current generations and generations to come can be restored.

The task then Republicans can commend themselves to is not a quixotic quest to reform with Barack Obama, but to try and seize the broom needed to clean the Augean Stables he will leave in his wake.

Civilization & the State

Civilization is replete with problems. The state can solve very few of them. It can be and is the source of a great deal more.

The '05 Seahawks vs. the '12 Seahawks

Any argument that the '12 Seahawks are better than their '05 predecessors should be neither made nor heard until this team equals (and hopefully exceeds) the latter's postseason accomplishments.

But as they try and do just that a couple of items to keep in mind.

THE 2012 SEAHAWKS ARE COMPLETE IN ALL THREE PHASES:

In total offensive production there is scarcely a comparison between the two. The '05 NFC Champions led the NFL all year on the strength of MVP Shaun Alexander racking up yards and touchdowns with Matt Hasselbeck making defenses pay with cruel efficiency when they sold out to stop Alexander.

This year's offense has not come close to matching the volume of that output. They weren't built to. Where they have compared to '05, especially in the 2nd half of the season, is in efficiency. Football Outsiders gives them a weighted DVOA of 31.2%, #1 in the NFL. The '05 offense finished with a 26.2% weighted DVOA, good for 4th in the NFL.

There is scarcely any comparison between the respective defenses. The '05 squad ranged from average to opportunistic, reflected in their dead-in-the-middle 16th defensive DVOA ranking. This year's team ranged from dominant to very good, ranking 4th in defensive DVOA. They also finish the season tops in the NFL and in franchise history in scoring defense.

The '05 teams special teams unit was satisfactory, ranking 20th with a DVOA of -.08%. This year's special teams unit is elite, ranking 3rd with a DVOA of 5.7%. Their respective coverage units rank in the top half of the league, Jon Ryan pins opposing offenses deep within their territory as a matter of course, and Leon Washington is a threat to turn every punt and kickoff into six points.

The 2012 Seahawks surpass the 2005 team in everything but total offensive proficiency, a chasm bridged by both unit's comparable efficiency ratings. On defense and special teams there is no comparison -- '12 clearly surpasses '05. All three units of this year's team rank among the top five in the NFL. The '05 offense is the only unit on that year's team that could make the same claim.

The 2012 Seahawks finished the season with a DVOA of 38.3% and a weighted DVOA of 46.6%, good not only for the top ranking in the NFL but the sixth best DVOA rating ever. The 2005 Seahawks finished with a meager-by-comparison team DVOA of 28.4% and weighted DVOA of 26.2%, the third and fourth best finishes that year respectively.

THE 2012 SEAHAWKS PLAYED A TOUGHER SCHEDULE:

Aside from the usual disrespect given to the Seahawks, the '05 squad's seamless run through the regular season was almost universally discounted because of the ease of their schedule. Their opponents had a .457 winning percentage. The 'Hawks beat the 11-5 Giants thanks in no small part to three missed game-winning field goals. They beat a 14-2 Colts squad that rested some of their starters (most importantly Peyton Manning) for a majority of the game.

The Seahawks' opponents this year had a winning percentage of .500 with wins against the 12-4 Patriots, the 11-5 Packers, the 10-6 Vikings, the 10-6 Bears (on the road), and the 11-4-1 49ers. They went 5-1 against teams that finished the season with a winning record and they owned the highest strength of victory in the NFL.

The main disparity between the two strength of schedules is the strength of the NFC West. None of the three other NFC West teams in 2005 finished with more than six wins. The 'Hawks basically picked on the handicapped, going 6-0 against divisional opponents.

In 2012 the NFC West was arguably the toughest division in football. The 49ers, a preseason favorite to make the Super Bowl, went 11-4-1 a year after going 13-3 on their way to the NFC Championship game. The 8-7-1 Rams showed exponential improvement under Jeff Fisher and finished with a 4-1-1 record against the division. The 5-11 Cardinals jumped out to a 4-0 start on the strength of a Top-10 defense before succumbing to historically porous quarterback play.

The difficulty in playing the NFC West was reflected in the Seahawks' 3-3 record, splitting the home-and-home season series with all three of their divisional opponents.

The 2012 Seahawks finished with a worse record than in '05, but they played a markedly tougher schedule and performed better against teams that finished with a winning record.

THE '05 SEAHAWKS WERE A VETERAN TEAM:

In 2005 the Seahawks entered their seventh year under Mike Holmgren and were at the very top of their win curve. Matt Hasselbeck entered the year as the teams' starting quarterback for the third consecutive season. Steve Hutchinson was entering his prime, offensive veterans Walter Jones, Shaun Alexander, Robbie Tobeck, Chris Gray, Mack Strong, Darrell Jackson, Joe Jurevicius, and Bobby Engram were on the outer fringes of theirs. Ditto Grant Wistrom, Chartric Darby, Bryce Fisher, Andre Dyson, Kelly Herndon, Marcus Trufant, Marquand Manuel and Michael Boulware on defense. Linebackers Lofa Tatupu and Leroy Hill would never again match the success they enjoyed that year in their rookie seasons.

The 2012 Seahawks were among the league's youngest. Obviously there was Russell Wilson, a rookie 3rd Round pick that started all sixteen games at quarterback. They ended the year with a third-year left tackle, fourth-year center, rookie right guard (a converted defensive tackle out of the seventh round), and a third year split-end.

Youth was especially prevalent on defense. Starting safeties Earl Thomas and Kam Chancellor were in their third years; starting cornerbacks Brandon Browner and Richard Sherman their second. At linebacker a rookie started 16 games at middle-linebacker, a second year player started fifteen games at strong-side linebacker, and sophomore Malcolm Smith earned a preponderance of the reps at weak-side linebacker by season's end. Rookies Bruce Irvin, Gregg Scruggs, and Jeremy Lane played meaningful roles as well.

The youth of this roster is surpassed only by its talent, reflected in the fact that they went 4-4 in the first-half of the season, 7-1 in the second. Struggling to find consistency in September and October, a young Seahawks team led by a rookie wunderkind at quarterback began impressing its will upon opponents in November and December. They now enter the playoffs having posted the third best regular season record in franchise history and are winners of five straight. Given no choice but to acknowledge what is happening, national analysts are universally declaring the Seahawks to be "the hottest team in football" and "the team nobody wants to play in the playoffs".

In comparing regular season performances, the 2012 'Hawks compare very favorably to '05, especially when considering their youth and strength of schedule. The regular season is not where legacies are made though.

The post-season is.

Seven years ago the 'Hawks proved their doubters wrong by besting the Redskins (that year's "hottest team" entering the playoffs) in the divisional round and by dominating the previously iron-hot Panthers in the NFC Championship. (I won't put any 12 through reoccurring pain by mentioning subsequent events.) In so doing they immortalized themselves in franchise history and in the hearts and minds of every 12th Man.

To reach equal and hopefully greater heights this Seahawks team will have a much steeper climb. They won't enjoy the benefit of a first-round bye or home-field advantage. They will have to win at least two, most likely three games on the road. They will ultimately have to beat teams with elite quarterbacks and rosters at the top of their win curves. Essentially, to surpass the 2005 Seahawks they will have to beat teams that fit the same profile of the 2005 Seahawks: Elite, veteran, in-their-prime rosters at the top of their win curves.

A daunting task, but this team has the talent and determination to not only earn the recognition they deserve, but seize it from the unwilling clutches of everyone across the country that has discounted them when they haven't been ignoring them altogether.

Do that and they surpass the '05 team without question.

Do that and they leave the football world sputtering and stumbling as they try to explain what they never took the time to foresee.

Do that and they become immortal.

GO 'HAWKS.

Against STL

Sunday against St. Louis presents another opportunity to demonstrate we have become the elite kind of team that prepares and plays at the same level week in, week out. As Hawkblogger points out, there are many potential traps set out this week that could very easily ensnare a lesser, talented-but-inconsistent team.

Avoid them. Prepare this week for the Rams like this week and this opponent are the only ones that matter -- because they are. Tune out the good feeling from spanking the 49ers. Ignore the national plaudits that have begun to come. Disregard any concern for who has to beat who, playoff seedings, and potential match-ups next week.

We are the only opponents the Rams have left. Relevant for the first time in years, they would love nothing more than to knock the "hottest team in football" down a peg. They would love to be the only opponent to knock the Seahawks off at CenturyLink Field. They would love to go undefeated against the NFC West, a division putatively owned by the 49ers and Seahawks.

This is their shot. The only game left. The only game that matters.

Treat them the same way, Seahawks. The one thing better than three consecutive dominating performances is four consecutive dominating performances. Avoid the traps. There is no one else but the St. Louis Rams. Beat them.

Sunday is another chance to excel. Take it. Be elite.

Go 1-0.

GO 'HAWKS.

This Fiscal Cliff & That Fiscal Cliff

The largest issue confronting the United States in the immediate and long-term is debt. The largest drivers of that debt are entitlements, especially Medicare, whose growth outpaces both that of the economy and of government revenues.

This is the "fiscal cliff" the republic faces, not the putative one being discussed currently.

The president is ignoring this. His proposal to raise taxes four percentage points on a minuscule segment of the tax-base will tackle our debt level in the same way a fat guy tackles his weight problem by getting a haircut. It is not an attempt to reduce the debt crisis. It is either political posturing, an attempt to impose some abstract notion of redistributive fairness on the wealthy, or some sort of amalgamation of the two.

Speaker Boehner is not going to get any meaningful reform of entitlements here because President Obama is making clear -- in deed, not word -- that he has no interest in pursuing meaningful reform. He and the Left will continue to "defend" entitlements until they collapse under their own weight.

The best the House GOP can do is to trade some insignificant hikes on an even smaller portion of the tax base than the president originally proposed in exchange for minor spending reductions and minor adjustments to the growth of Social Security and Medicare. These may not be a lot, but unlike the president's tax proposals, they are not nothing either. As Avik Roy argues, it is well past time that Republicans start "making small changes to entitlements today that pay big dividends in future decades."

Get some important concessions, make a little progress, and do not diminish your ability to make some more progress on another day.

"Not Really" Black

Rob Parker's comment today on ESPN's "First Take" that Robert Griffin III is "not really" black logically implies that the color of an individual's skin defines certain ways that person is supposed to think and act.

Not only does this kind of perspective exacerbate gratuitous stereotypes but it reflects the same kind of racial determinism (albeit from a different direction) that the abolitionist and civil rights movements strived decades to eradicate.

If America is to be a place where each is judged by their character and not their skin color, then Mr. Parker's view that someone must behave a certain way to be authentically black is no more permissible than the belief that blacks or anyone else are inferior because -- and only because -- of the color of their skin.

The Next Step

Elite teams go 1-0 week in, week out. Regardless of opponent, venue and the extraneous, they remain consistent. They tune out the noise, they focus on the task at hand, they win as a matter of course.

The Seahawks have not attained that level of consistency -- they have only begun to hint at it. Consecutive victories at Chicago and at home against Arizona are significant, especially the former. But this team has yet to string together three wins in a row. At best it has been two steps forward, one step back.

No more of that. No steps back. Keep making steps forward. You do that by winning on a neutral field in Toronto this Sunday against Buffalo. Lose that eminently winnable game and much, if not all of the good feeling and accomplishment from the last two weeks is erased. Win it and you have a three game winning streak (two on the road), a guaranteed winning season, a stranglehold on a playoff spot, and possibly a chance to play San Francisco for the division championship the following week on your home field.

We've proven that we can take care of the best and worst the NFL has to offer at home. We've proven that we can take the field on the road and beat one of the league's better teams against a plethora of adversity in Chicago.

What we need to prove -- and can prove on Sunday -- is that we are able to consistently win on the road against inferior opponents. That is a different beast altogether. The NFL's elite do it as a matter or course. Young, talented and inconsistent teams routinely struggle with it.

Sunday at Buffalo is our next, possibly last chance in 2012 to abdicate the latter characterization and assume the former.

It is the next step.

It is the hardest step.

GO 'HAWKS.