I’m really exploring the space of newsletter generation lately — Friday was a speed run in the afternoon, and this one is after the kids have gone to bed and I’ve gotten into a nice Australian Cabernet. You probably won’t notice a difference, but so far this way is certainly more enjoyable.
Thoughtlessly Pulling Out Jenga Blocks
Anyone who purports to be a conservative nerd [or who purports to be a regular listener of Jonah Goldberg’s podcast] is familiar with G.K. Chesterton’s parable of the fence, which basically goes like “A group of students and their teacher come across a fence in the woods. Seeing no obvious use for the fence, the students want to tear it down. But the teacher tells them that only after they understand the fence’s intended purpose can they discuss tearing it down.” It’s a good reminder of the conservative [temperamental, if not always political] inclination toward intellectual humility and not making drastic changes to institutions not fully understood. It’s similar to remodeling a house and taking out a wall before verifying whether it’s load-bearing — you can do severe and long-lasting damage if you come in swinging a sledgehammer without knowing that you’re doing.
One of the things that I personally find so unappealing about populism generally and Trumpism in particular is this idea that We the People [or Trump singularly] have special insight into how government should be ordered. Especially in his second term, Donald Trump has been taking a proverbial sledgehammer to the federal government with at-best insufficient understanding and in many cases outright hostility.
Trump’s firing of Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, Dr. Erika McEntarfer, is such an action — and I think it’s more one of outright hostility than simple hubris or ignorance, though why limit ourselves, y’know?
We can quibble about what to call Trump, but firing a non-partisan data nerd for producing data that embarrasses the president is…well, it’s something. As I’ve written before, I don’t like using the term “fascist” to describe Trump because “fascist” implies some sort of considered political philosophy. Donald Trump, meanwhile, has written more books than he’s read [which is to say, he’s put his name on books that other people have written for him, and he’s read zero] and he’s famously impulsive and short-sighted. But he certainly has authoritarian instincts that lead him to some real Soviet [or, if you prefer, Banana Republic] outcomes. Like, literally.
To refresh your memory, this is what he said on Friday:
It’s important to note that this is the exact opposite of the truth. While it’s true that the BLS overstated job growth under Joe Biden early last year, it released the revisions in August, which was obviously before the election. And then, the week of the election, the BLS announced that a mere 12,000 jobs had been created in October. These are not the actions of a government agency who was attempting to skew economic numbers to favor Kamala Harris. So, either Trump is lying or his too uninformed to know better [I’m open to persuasion on either count], but what he is saying is simply untrue.
On Friday, I rattled off some quick thoughts about how this might have some adverse effects on the economy that actually make Trump’s political standing worse than if he’d done nothing — one of the reasons that the United States is viewed by the world [until recently, anyway] as the most stable economy in the world is the transparency and reliability of our economic data. But if people can’t trust our economic data [and why would they after this?] it can cause hesitance in investment, which can cause slower economic growth, etc. Beyond that, it can cause economic issues in ways that aren’t immediately obvious. Similar to how we were never quite sure when our zero percent interest rates would catch up to us — turns out it was 2021 — we could later look back at this moment as a turning point in the economy.
But for all of Trump’s vanity, people don’t really decide their approval of the economy based on government-provided economic numbers. It was frustrating for many Democrat political analysts in 2024 when the economic numbers were better than public sentiment gave them credit for, but people don’t care if the paper says that the rate of inflation is lower if prices are still 10% higher than they were a couple of years ago. Similarly, Trump firing the BLS commissioner and installing some toady who will proclaim every month that Comrade Trump has produced the most bountiful beet harvest isn’t going to matter if hiring numbers are actually anemic and people notice businesses closing in their community.
It’s sort of ironic because trying to convince people that low quality items are actually high-class has been Trump’s entire business model, so it’s kinda funny that he’s trying to sell a mediocre economy as a well-oiled machine. [Though to be fair, if he can convince most of the Republican party that the 2020 election was stolen when it so obviously wasn’t, maybe it’s not so heavy of a lift to convince them that the economy is great when it’s actually in recession.]
What worries me is that he’s aggressively pulling blocks out of the Jenga tower because he doesn’t know how anything works. The dude has been president for a total of four and a half years and all he’s learned about the inner working of the federal government in that time is that he can trash it worse than previously understood. And if it all comes crashing down, there’s a sizable contingent of his party that will insist the urine on their pants leg is actually raindrops.
Dirty Pool and a Political Arms Race
Late last month, Republicans in the Texas state legislature unveiled a redistricting plan for their federal congressional districts that is a thinly-veiled [if it’s veiled at all] attempt to gerrymander out of existence up to five districts currently held by Democrats.
Normally, state legislatures redistrict their states the year after the census reapportions the House — in this case, 2021. So it’s already unusual for a state to attempt redistricting a mere four years after the previous one, but the Trump administration is worried [rightly, we can assume] about the prospect of Republicans holding the House in 2026, and the Department of Justice notified Texas Governor Greg Abbott of concerns that Texas’s current districting may be unconstitutional. [Because we all know how seriously the Trump administration takes the Constitution.]
In the abstract, I don’t have a problem with a state legislature deciding it wants to issue new congressional districts at any time they choose. It’s a political process that should be performed by a political body, and I prefer state legislatures — who are most accountable to the voters of their state — perform those functions instead of, say, a “non-partisan” redistricting committee that doesn’t face voters. [I also contend that there’s no such thing as a “non-partisan” redistricting committee, because redistricting is by definition a partisan act.]
But even if I grant the premise that the Texas legislature has the right to redraw their congressional districts at any time they like, it can still be bush league for them to do it in this manner. It may not violate the law, but it violates political norms and traditions in this country that keep this whole endeavor from spiraling out of control [and I dunno if you’ve noticed recently, but we could use all the help we can get in that regard]. The entire point of political norms is that you don’t provide your opponents with a weapon that could be used against you later, sort of a Mutually Assured Destruction. Because while Republicans may be riding high in Texas now, it’s not likely to remain that way forever. [Insert here the usual admissions about the gerrymandered districts in Democrat-controlled states.]
In response to the Texas effort, there have been rumblings that blue states, most commonly California, could engage in their own highly-partisan off-year redistricting efforts [though I’d be curious to see how much more political juice Democrats can squeeze out of that proverbial orange]. And I generally oppose such efforts — “eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind” and all that — but the one version that I would support is the suggestion that California could pass a redistricting plan with so-called “triggering language,” which basically says that “this legislation will only take effect upon such time that Texas passes its redistricting plan.” That seems like a good way to check political ambition without being the aggressor. [We saw a similar effort prior to the 2024 election when Nebraska tried to do away with their electoral college apportionment by congressional district, which routinely gives the Democrat presidential candidate one elector in the otherwise dark red state — Democrats in Maine threatened to do away with their similar system that usually gives the Republican an electoral college vote in an otherwise solidly-blue state. Nebraska backed off its effort and the status quo prevailed.]
But to me, this raises interesting questions about respecting political norms in this, uh, divisive era. Norms say states shouldn’t redistrict in years that don’t end in “1.” But norms also say that the FBI Director serves a 10-year term. Does anyone seriously believe that the next Democrat president should keep Kash Patel around at the FBI for the sake of norms, after Trump fired his predecessor [which itself was a violation of norms]? I don’t. That may be one of the few times when two wrongs actually do make a right.
The problem is, I don’t trust any of the current political players to make the right choice when faced with such a dilemma. I worry that it’s a political arms race all the way down.
Not for Nothin’
Few things make me eye-twitchingly angry these days, but the news this week that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has canceled half-a-billion dollars’ worth of grants and contracts for mRNA vaccines is such a thing.
For one thing, mRNA vaccines are one of the most promising areas in medicine today — not only did they help get us past the COVID pandemic, but they also show promise in things like cancer treatment. But now we’re eviscerating the research into this promising area of medicine because the president, and his HHS Secretary, supported by millions of Luddites who react to medical advancement like Frankenstein’s monster reacts to flame, are conspiracy theorist cranks.
But it also just reminds me of the absolute shitshow that we saw during the COVID pandemic. I think I suffer from some sort of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder related to 2020 — not because I, or anyone close to me, suffered greatly from COVID, but because so many people that I previously respected [or at least had considered functional adults] turned into raving lunatics and belligerent assholes. It was the damnedest thing. Here I was, thinking that the biggest part of self governance was being a responsible citizen, but when faced with the necessity of being a responsible citizen [usually for the first time in their lives] a great many of the people who professed to be on my political team suddenly reverted into insolent children. What started out as “we should probably do our part to ensure that we don’t become vectors of a deadly disease for which there is no vaccine, treatment, or cure” turned into performative refusal to do any such thing, spiteful ingestion of livestock dewormer, comparisons of mitigation measures to the Holocaust, and pretending to forget that we know how vaccines work. And then a million Americans died and a cadre of red-hatted jackasses shrugged and started arguing about how many died with the disease or from it. I knew we had entered a particularly boorish era in our politics, but I didn’t realize until then just exactly how boorish it had become. And I’m just angry about the years of medical discovery of which we’re depriving ourselves for no other reason than a non-insignificant minority in this country are belligerent cranks who couldn’t pass 10th grade biology. Obviously I still have a bit of resentment over it.
I’ve given up on thinking that there will ever be some sort of reconciliation around that little slice of our history, but personally I’m not sure I can ever forgive those people.
Occasional Trivia
Answer from last time:
Category: Rock and Rollers
Clue: Frank Beard, the drummer for this Texas trio, is somewhat ironically the only member who does not sport a signature beard.
ZZ Top
Today’s [tonight’s] clue:
Category: Movie Monsters
Clue: Also known as the Gill-Man, he was played by Ben Chapman; with underwater scenes performed by Ricou Browning.
Dispatches from the Homefront
My kids have been taking turns dealing with this weird summer cold for the last could of weeks, which seemingly doesn’t have any symptoms other than a persistent cough that can sometimes devolve into a coughing fit. Now my older daughter is a bit of a vomit-ophobe — as I was at her age — but for some reason, ever since her sister was born, she’s been convinced that any time her sister coughs more than once that she’s going to throw up. We have no idea where she got this idea; her sister nor anyone else in her life, to our knowledge, has ever coughed so much that they vomited. …until this week. My younger daughter was enjoying a snack at the pool when she had a little coughing fit, during which she gagged on a piece of granola bar, which caused her to barf a little.
Now, you try telling an almost-six-year-old that her sister coughing until she vomits a bit “doesn’t count” because she was eating. So not only has her anti-vomit neurosis skyrocketed to new heights, but we can never use our main argument of “that’s never happened!” ever again.