An explosion of violence fueled by hate

Over at Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall recently took note of the fact that political violence has been on the rise over the last couple of months. For example, 

• the terrorist attack in New Orleans,
• the cybertruck explosion in Las Vegas
• the shooting of the United Healthcare CEO
the biggest collection of homemade explosive devices in the FBI's history was found at a home outside Norfolk, Virginia.

Noting this country's long history of political violence, Marshall tried to unravel the threads of what is going on. He suggests that it is a general disinhibition for violence that is the culprit. 

I was reminded of something President Biden said a couple of years ago.

Hate never goes away. It only hides.

White supremacy and hate-fueled violence have no place in America. pic.twitter.com/zGySbv3NGl

— President Biden (@POTUS) September 20, 2022

Hate never fully goes away. And when given any oxygen,  it comes out from under the rocks. In the last few years, we've given it too much oxygen in our politics, in our media, and on the internet. Too much hate, all for power and profit. Too much hate that fueled extremist violence, that's been allowed to fester and grow.

Twenty years ago, Derrick Jensen wrote something similar in his book, "The Culture of Make Believe" (emphasis mine).

Several times I have commented that hatred felt long and deeply enough no longer feels like hatred, but more like tradition, economics, religion, what have you. It is when those traditions are challenged, when the entitlement is threatened, when the masks of religion, economics, and so on are pulled away that hate transforms from its more seemingly sophisticated, "normal," chronic state—where those exploited are looked down upon, or despised—to a more acute and obvious manifestation. Hate becomes more perceptible when it is no longer normalized.

Another way to say all of this is that if the rhetoric of superiority works to maintain the entitlement, hatred and direct physical force remains underground. But when that rhetoric begins to fail, force and hatred waits in the wings, ready to explode.

That's why it is important to note that, in response to the recent incidents of violence, Trump and his enablers are responding with even more hate. 

They're too busy blaming the violence on their usual targets - Biden, immigrants, DEI and public schools - to notice the facts of each case. 

But as Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) said, it goes even deeper than an attempt to level blame. He tweeted that Trump is "going to use episodes of violence to justify his crack down on immigrants and his attack on dissent - whether the facts line up or not." He followed that up with this prediction: 

In the coming days, watch for autocracy-fetishizing MAGA figures who call on Trump to use "emergency powers" or "domestic war powers" (i.e. some form of martial law) to confront domestic terrorism.

They aren't out to destroy terrorists. They're out to destroy the rule of law.

— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) January 3, 2025

So here's the pattern: Unleash the hate by rhetorically giving it oxygen. When it leads to violence, use that as an excuse to declare martial law against both immigrants and any form of dissent. 

I hope to god that I'm overreacting. But Murphy is hardly the hair-raising type. To add to the alarm, Bret Bair recently said that he's been told to expect "shock and awe" on day one of Trump's presidency. As a reminder, here's what it looked like the last time a presidential administration used that phrase:

MAGA's view of masculinity is not natural or normal

At the conservative publication "Washington Times," Don Feder proclaimed that "Trump’s victory marks the return of masculinity." I wondered what the heck he meant by that, so I read the piece. Apparently men like Tim Walz and Doug Emhoff don't qualify as "masculine." Neither does Joe Biden.

For the past four years, we’ve been misled by an increasingly feeble old man who hid in the White House or on the beach in Delaware. On Jan. 20, there will be a man of the house again.

The closest Feder comes to a definition of masculinity is when he writes: "Men take responsibility, whether it’s by fighting crime, guarding our borders or meeting foreign threats." It would be interesting to ask him whether women are capable of taking responsibility for those things as well. 

Amanda Marcotte captured the dilemma facing men like Feder by recognizing the larger paradox (emphasis mine).

They venerate masculinity, but cannot tell you what it is. Look closely at their manhood discourse and the contradictions are immediately apparent. They insist gender is "natural," fixed at birth, and beyond an individual's power to change. They also treat manhood as a fragile status, easily snatched away by the smallest of choices. According to Jesse Watters at Fox News, merely wishing another man "happy birthday" is enough to remove man status from a person. Manfluencer and accused sex trafficker Andrew Tate declares one emasculated for admiring a woman's beauty. As I wrote about last week, MAGA hype man Josiah Moody claims it's "gay" to have sex with your wife for pleasure. Fox News' list of foods that strip your masculinity away is long, ranging from ice cream cones to soup....

MAGA masculinity is such a hazy and contradictory concept that it mostly gets defined by what it's not: not female, not queer, not allowed to eat ice cream or say "happy birthday."

So if Trump and his enablers are masculine, but Biden, Walz, and Elmhoff aren't, doesn't that raise the question of whether or not gender DOES actually exist on a continuum? Hmmmm... 

Also, if you remember, these are the same people who went apoplectic if a liberal couldn't provide a short, succinct answer to the question, "What is a woman?" And yet, when it comes to masculinity, they define it primarily as the opposite of anything they consider to be feminine.

The truth is that boys and men are constantly being told to prove their masculinity - indicating that it is not, in fact, "natural" or "normal."

Riane Eisler - who is best known for her book The Chalice and the Blade - wrote that the underlying problem is not about gender at all.

The root of the problem lies in a social system in which the power of the blade is idealized - in which both men and women are taught to equate true masculinity with violence and dominance and to see men who do not conform to this ideal as too soft or effeminate.

The ethos of our patriarchy is this idea that dominance (often achieved via violence) is the only way to power. We're seeing this run amok these days in how MAGA describes our current political situation. In order for dominance to be effective, it must be rooted in fear and insecurity. People are seen as enemies to be defeated and subjugated. The blade is the weapon of choice.

And so the flames of fear and insecurity are fanned, while threats/hostages are made/taken in an attempt to subjugate the enemy. Any reaction other than to fight back on those terms is viewed as capitulation and derided as effeminate: "weak," "p*ssy," and not "manly enough."

Is it any wonder that, as our country struggles with this form of patriarchy as the status quo, those who are most fearful of going forward have rejected two supremely qualified women who ran for president against an old white man with heavy makeup who rambled on about a famous golfer's dick on the campaign trail? Even more ominously, is it any wonder that the president-elect is guilty of sexual assault and has nominated several other perpetrators to his cabinet?

When it comes to solutions, I am reminded that several years ago my friend Robinswing wrote a piece titled "We Can't Fix Ya."

The blackwoman has been thinking it might be time to seek out some solutions for eliminating racism. A more difficult project than I imagined.

Race is a problem for white people to solve. If black people or brown people could have made racism go away it would have long since disappeared back into the nothing-ness from which it came.

Nah, it’s on white folks to make the necessary moves to kill and bury, once and for all, the notion of race. I think in a generation or two this just might happen.

On that last sentence, my friend might have been a bit optimistic. But on the larger question, she was right. It's on white people to kill and bury racism. And after watching what happened to Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, I'd suggest that it's on men to kill and bury patriarchy once and for all. 

I'd like to personally thank men like Tim Walz who have stepped up to the plate on that one!

Trump/Putin and the end of the rules-based international order

To be honest, I'm in no mood to celebrate the new year. In addition to having to listen to MAGA nonsense over the next four years, my head is full of trepidation about a possible financial crisis, another badly-managed pandemic, and an escalating climate crisis. 

But in her usual brilliant manner, Heather Cox Richardson reminded me of another impending disaster related to Trump's re-election - and this one (like the climate crisis) has horrific long-term consequences.

She started by noting Elon Musk's public support for Germany's neo-Nazi AfD Party. In response to an op-ed Musk wrote in a German newspaper, she quoted Jens Spahn - the State Secretary of the German Ministry of Finance.

The AfD wants to leave NATO, reactivate Nord Stream 2, and is anti-US, pro-Putin and pro-Russia. Is that what the USA wants? A Germany that turns towards Russia and away from the USA?

The AfD wants to leave the Eurozone, our by far largest trading partner. We conduct ~40% of our trade within Eurozone. Without the Euro and the EU, the German economy would completely collapse.

Heather went on to link all of that to Trump's threats against Mexico, Canada, Panama, and Greenland.

Trump is not threatening our rivals, but rather is threatening our own allies in the area around the U.S. And now Musk is supporting an anti-NATO, pro-Russia party in Germany. It could be that what we are seeing is an attempt to throw away NATO and America’s influence across the globe in order to carve up the world into spheres, with Trump offering to abandon Europe to Russia while the U.S., run by the DOGE faction of the Republican Party, officially takes control of a U.S.-centric sphere.

This is precisely where Putin's agenda is headed. To understand, it is important to know that his overarching ambition is to overturn the "rules-based order" that was established after World War II and return to the "great powers era." Gabriel Glickman described the two pillars of the "rules-based order."

After World War II, an elaborate financial network — from lending institutions like the IMF to a currency valuation system — was established to increase economic cooperation between countries. This was done to prevent the harmful economic competitiveness that caused the Great Depression and created the conditions for the rise of fascism...

As the postwar period transitioned to a competition between capitalist and communist nations, military conflict between powerful countries became more likely. NATO was established in 1949 as a form of collective security that could deter Soviet militarism. This was the second pillar of the international order, along with institutions like the United Nations that promoted diplomacy over war.

When Richardson writes about carving the world up into spheres, abandoning Europe to Russia while the U.S. takes control of our sphere, she's describing Putin's dream of a return to the "great powers era."

This is the conflict that is central to Putin's invasion of Ukraine. He is attempting to show Russia's dominance in his sphere - while the Biden administration and Europe have been defending the rules-based order that protects the sovereignty of national borders. 

What Richardson is pointing out is that Trump's threats against our allies are tied to Putin's invasion of Ukraine in that they are all motivated by an attempt to overthrow the international order that has (so far) been successful in preventing World War III. 

If you want to know one of the things that keeps me up at night...there it is. 

So no, I don't feel like celebrating the beginning of 2025 where the only hope I have is that enough people wake up to the potential nightmare we're facing in order to afford us the possibility of stopping what's coming. 

But for being such a downer, I'll end with my favorite New Year's Eve song by the marvelous Bette Midler.  

Elon Musk: "Immigrants for me, but not for thee"

You may have heard that a fight has broken out on X/Twitter between the tech bros and MAGA loyalists over immigration. Folks like Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, and David Sacks want the U.S. to issue more H1-B visas for people (mainly from India) to work in their tech companies, while MAGA loyalists bought into Trump's fear-mongering about those "brown foreigners" ruining our country.

I'd like to focus on Musk's arguments because most accounts I've ready about the dust-up have missed an important point. Here's what one of his favorites posted as a summary of the argument:

So basically the right split into two factions, tech right and right right, and the tech right is like "hey we need h-1b visa people to do the jobs," and the right right was like "no you need to hire americans," and the tech right is like "but you guys are retarded," and the right right is like "well you don't train us," and the tech right is like "you can't outtrain being retarded," and while all this was going on we learned some people *really* don't like Indians.

Musk's response was: "That pretty much sums it up." In other words, he's cool with calling MAGA folks "retarded." 

When challenged by another person that there must be enough Americans to fill those jobs, here's how Musk responded:

That last paragraph sounds an awful lot like so-called "scientific racism," where group differences in things like intelligence are based on race. But of course, we already knew that Musk is a white supremacist. 

What I want to focus on is his statement that "there is a dire shortage of extremely talented and motivated engineers in America." He buttressed that argument by retweeting several articles about "the engineering talent shortage." 

What Musk doesn't want you to know is that the U.S. is currently facing labor shortages for construction workers, teachers, nurses, home care workers, firefighters, factory workers, farmworkers, police officers, etc. The biggest challenge our economy will face over the next decade is an overall labor shortage. 

Musk wants you to believe that the labor shortage affecting the tech industry is happening because not enough Americans are smart enough to fill those jobs. So he wants a special carve-out for his businesses to hire immigrants. But otherwise, he's totally cool with Trump's plan to deport 11 million immigrants that will cripple every other major industry. 

That's what happens when you make the richest man on the planet your unaccountable shadow-president.

What Trump's plan to rename Mt. Denali has to do with the economy

Our mentally unfit president-elect has spent a lot of time lately raging against U.S. allies. He's threatening to annex Canada as the 51st state, take back the Panama Canal, and buy Greenland from Denmark. Given all of that, the news that he wants to rename a mountain in Alaska after President McKinley isn't gaining as much traction. But it's worth taking a minute to see what's up with this one. 

In 2015, then-President Barack Obama visited Alaska to highlight the issue of climate change. As part of that trip, he announced that Mt. McKinley would revert to its original Native Alaskan name - Mt. Denali. Then-private citizen Donald Trump wasn't happy about that.

President Obama wants to change the name of Mt. McKinley to Denali after more than 100 years. Great insult to Ohio. I will change back!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 1, 2015

Two years later, as president, Trump broached the topic of reverting to Mt. McKinley with Alaska's two Republican senators - Murkowski and Sullivan. Here's their response:

“Lisa – Sen. Murkowski – and I jumped over the desk,” Sullivan said. “We said no, no!”

Trump, perplexed that the two Republicans wanted to keep an Obama-era decision, asked why...

“The Alaska Native people named that mountain over 10,000 years ago,” Sullivan said. “Denali, that was the name.”

Trump went on to drop the idea. Now he's talking about it again publicly.

Some will suggest that this is just one more way the president-elect is attempting to undo anything Obama accomplished. While it's probably a fools errand to try to guess this guy's motives, I suspect there's some truth to that.

But we also have to keep in mind that, during the 2024 campaign, Trump regularly brought up McKinley as the tariff guy. For example: 

We’re going to use tariffs very, very wisely. You know, our country in the 1890s was ... probably the wealthiest it ever was, because it was a system of tariffs. And we had a president — you know McKinley, right? You remember Mount McKinley? And then they changed the name. But one of those things. He was really a very good businessman, and he took in billions of dollars at the time, which today it’s always trillions, but then it was billions and probably hundreds of millions. But we were a very wealthy country, and we’re going to be doing that now.

I would suggest that, as CEOs and finance leaders try to talk Trump out of tariffs, this focus on Mt. McKinley is yet another way to tell them he's not budging. 

In his re-telling of McKinley's record, Trump seems to have missed the ending.

What lessons should be taken from the passage of the Tariff Act of 1890, which increased average duties across all imports from 38 to 49.5 percent? Well, for one thing, with domestic prices driven up by the tariff, the measure was very unpopular. It led to a political disaster for the Republicans, who lost the House in the 1890 election in dramatic fashion, cutting the number of seats they held from 171 to 88.

Everyone but the president-elect seems to understand that the way he plans to use tariffs will drive up prices. It's almost as if Trump is determined to crash the economy. Whether or not the Republican Party is held accountable for that remains to be seen.

Wall Streeters are delusional, with a serious case of amnesia

I have to admit that the first thing I thought about when the news broke that Trump had been re-elected was to wonder how I might be affected. That could sound selfish, but I was basically following the kind of advice you hear on airplanes about securing your mask before attempting to help others. 

As with many Americans, the place I am most vulnerable is economics. But specifically, I am retired and depend on Social Security plus a small retirement fund as my sources of income. 

When it comes to the former, I would predict that, if Republicans are successful in doing anything about Social Security, it would affect future - not current - recipients. It is my retirement account that could take a hit since it is currently invested with the goal of producing growth and income. Given the fact that I'm in my "twilight years," I don't have a time horizon to make up for losses if the stock market crashes. 

Today I received an email from my financial advisors passing on what their company views as the outlook for 2025. Here's a summary (emphasis mine):

As we look to 2025, we remain cautiously optimistic. We’re cautious because no market environment is ever permanent, yet optimistic since constructive long-term technology trends are in place. Plus, potential tax policy and deregulation efforts in 2025 could provide some tailwinds — particularly from an economic perspective. While growth asset returns are not expected to be as robust in 2025, the investment environment should prove to be favorable for investors.

So they are "cautiously optimistic" that Trump's tax cuts and deregulation will contribute to a favorable investment environment. And yet they failed to mention two of Trump's most prominent campaign promises: tariffs and mass deportations.  That's the kind of financial analysis that some folks are calling "delusional."

Julia Coronado, founder of the research firm MacroPolicy Perspectives, told the New York Times that many Wall Street players have convinced themselves that Trump will only carry out the policies they support and not those they oppose, such as hefty foreign tariffs or mass deportations.

"A lot of people are using deductive reasoning and concluding that he’ll only do things that are good for the market... They can ride this wave of hope-ium through the end of January," said Coronado, who added that Wall Street's current view of Trump "feels delusional."

Even when these Wall Streeters acknowledge the way that tariffs would hurt the market, they tend to downplay whether Trump will actually implement his promises.

Barclays strategists estimated that proposed tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China - and any retaliatory actions - could drag S&P 500 earnings down 2.8%...

BofA Global Research expects a 1% hit to S&P 500 earnings if tariffs on China double to 40% while they rise to around 8% for the rest of the world, excluding Mexico and Canada. But with retaliatory tariffs, which hurt foreign sales, the earnings hit would rise to 5%, the bank's strategists wrote...

"They are trying to boost U.S. growth," Lefkowitz [UBS Global Wealth Management]

 said. "Tariffs would end up reducing it and Trump tends to focus on how the market is performing. For that reason, the market has been downplaying so far what we have heard on tariffs."

None of them ever mention the impact mass deportations will have on the economy.

But it gets even worse. Not only are these Wall Streeters delusional, they appear to have amnesia when it comes to deregulation - as Chris Hayes explained.  

So whether it's tariffs, mass deportations, or deregulation, all of the things Trump has promised to do will have devastating effects on the economy, as well as the stock market. 

My conclusion is that it's time to tell the financial advisors to take their "cautious optimism" and have a seat. A storm is coming and its time to batten down the hatches.

Our entire economy could hinge on whether Trump is too incompetent to implement his plans.

Somebody has been making a list and you can bet that we'll be checking it twice.

But Trump's biggest promise didn't make that list. He repeatedly blamed almost all of our economic challenges on undocumented immigrants and promised to deport them all. 

This week Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee reported that the president-elect's plans would not only fail to make our economy stronger, they would actually make things a whole lot worse. The title of their report says it all: "Mass Deportations Would Deliver a Catastrophic Blow to the U.S. Economy."

Depending on how many immigrants are deported, these mass deportations would: 

• Reduce real gross domestic product (GDP) by as much as 7.4% by 2028,  
• Reduce the supply of workers for key industries, including by up to 225,000 workers in agriculture and 1.5 million workers in construction,
• Push prices up to 9.1% higher by 2028, and
• Cost 44,000 U.S.-born workers their jobs for every half a million immigrants who are removed from the labor force.

They also noted that Trump's plan "would cut $23 billion in funds for Social Security and $6 billion from Medicare each year because these workers would no longer pay into these programs."

As a marker, Democrats pointed out that, when it comes to GDP, "the economy shrank by 4.3% during the Great Recession." Deporting 11 million undocumented immigrants would more that double that.

What the report didn't address is that, in addition to those catastrophic results, it would cost the federal government over $300 billion to implement Trump's plan. For some perspective, that is about twice the annual budget of the entire Department of Homeland Security.

All of that happens if Trump is able to deliver on the biggest promise he made during the 2024 campaign. It could be that this one goes the way of his 2016 promise to "build the wall and make Mexico pay for it." In other words, the malevolence of Trump and his minions (ie, Stephen Miller) could be overwhelmed by their incompetence. 

So how does that feel America? Our entire economy could hinge on whether or not the next president is too incompetent to implement his plans. Jeeze!