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Americans' Pessimism Disconnects From Objective Reality

At the risk of being called an elitist or worse, there are times I can only conclude that many Americans are none too bright and/or cannot look behind the lies being churned out daily by Donald Trump, his  Republican enablers, Fox News, and the modern day Pharisees among evangelicals and Christofascists.  Sadly, much of the mainstream media merely parrots these lies and never points out the total falsity of most of the right wing lies.  A case in point is the funk many Americans are in when it comes to the state of the economy.  All objective data indicates that America's economy is doing very well overall. Yes, residential mortgage rates are significantly higher, yet they are still half of what they were in the early 1980's.  And yes, inflation remains an issue but it has fallen sharply even as wages have increased.   Sadly, rather than look at those really to blame for higher prices - oil companies and much of the large corporate food industry which have increased prices and are enjoying record profits - much of the public blames the Biden administration despite the fact that inflation has been a global phenomenon.  Perhaps the only ones with cause to complain, but not about the economy are evangelicals/Christofascists who see more of the public rejecting their mythical Bronze Age beliefs and white supremacists who see advances of black and brown people as a threat to their white privilege.   A column in the Washington Post looks at the real state of the economy. Here are excerpts:

The start of the new year is often a time of optimism. But look at surveys from the past few months and you will find that strikingly high numbers of Americans — sometimes around three-quarters of those polled — think America is on the wrong track. This profound sense of despair is perplexing because I don’t find much objective data to support it.

The U.S. economy grew an astonishing 5.2 percent in the third quarter of 2023, and the International Monetary Fund expects growth for last year to be 2.1 percent, which is substantially better than in other advanced Western economies such as Canada, Germany and Britain. Inflation is dropping sharply, real wages are up and manufacturing employment is experiencing a boom. It is hard to find another country where so many measures are pointing in the right direction.

The broader picture is even more positive. As I write in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, the United States has been besting its competitors in various crucial metrics for a while. The Financial Times did an analysis of the many ways in which the United States’ economy could be compared with Europe’s, and it found that in per capita growth, the United States has been “outperforming” Britain and the euro zone for 20 years and has “dwarfed” the economies of Spain, France and Italy.

The U.S. technology sector dominates the world in a way that no country ever has. The value of the top 10 U.S. technology stocks is now greater than the value of the entire stock markets of Canada, Britain, France and Germany combined. The United States is the world’s largest producer of oil and gas. It has the healthiest demographics of any advanced country, and it takes in around 1 million legal immigrants a year, which ensures that while Europe and Japan are expected to slowly sink in population, the United States will continue to grow.

The world sees what Americans do not. The latest Pew Research Center survey on the topic shows that the United States is now viewed more favorably than China in 22 of 24 countries. When asked who contributes to peace and stability around the world, the United States or China, the margins are huge in crucial Asian countries. In Japan, it is 79 percent to 14 percent; in South Korea, 74 percent to 13 percent; and in India, 70 percent to 33 percent — all in Washington’s favor.

I know that many will raise the numerous global crises — the bloody stalemate in Ukraine, the tragic war in Gaza, the dangers over Taiwan. Others will concede the positive points but argue that U.S. domestic politics overwhelms them all. Our deeply polarized society will be paralyzed by Donald Trump’s looming court cases, a crazy election that will follow and a possible constitutional crisis over the results.

All of this is true. America has serious problems. What nation doesn’t? But it has gotten through these kinds of crises before, and I am confident it will again.

Last summer, Nikki Haley tweeted, “Do you remember when you were growing up, do you remember how simple life was, how easy it felt?” She was aping Trump’s central message, which is that he will make America great again.

So, let’s go back in time to those heady days, 50 years ago — to 1974. The United States had just suffered its first major military defeat in Vietnam. The Soviet Union was widely thought to be on the offensive around the world. The German chancellor resigned after an espionage scandal. Spain was still in shock from the recent assassination of its prime minister by Basque terrorists. Israel was barely recovering from a near-death experience in the Yom Kippur War, forcing its prime minister, Golda Meir, to resign. The Arab oil embargo roughly tripled the price of oil, leading to a novel combination of slow growth and high inflation that was described as “stagflation.” . . . . Oh, and Watergate had upended the political system. To escape impeachment, the president of the United States resigned in August 1974 — a first in history. Ah yes, the good old days, when life was simpler.

The truth is, the United States has the power and capacity to tackle today’s crises — perhaps even more so than it had in the past. But it needs to regain a sense of perspective and, above all, regain confidence in its own enormous strengths.

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Politically Desperate Republican Plutocrats

For America's plutocrats and financial and investment markets there are two never ending goals: (i) ever lower taxes, and (ii) domestic stability and stability with America's allies and trading partners  do that business and financial markets can flourish.  For  decades this was accomplished by backing and electing Republicans who would push a reverse Robin Hood agenda to cut social programs so taxes could be lowered while playing to politicians who used the culture wars to dupe the working classes into voting against their own economic interests out of fear of the culture war bogeymen and those deemed "other."  As a column in the New York Times lays out, for a long time this formula worked but now is threatened by Donald Trump and his MAGA cultists dominated by right wing evangelicals/Christofascists, white supremacists and would be fascists who are so extreme and so radicalized that they are willing to burn down America's institutions that have helped maintain the financial markets stability for the most part for decades.  Hence the desperate efforts to find a presidential candidate other than Trump who is loved by the MAGA base but promises extremism and instability if elected.  The beneficiaries of this effort to date have been Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley but the effort is failing.  Here are column highlights:

All Wall Street wants is a good hypocrite — someone who can convince the Republican base that he or she shares its extremism, but whose real priority is to enrich the 1 percent. Is that too much to ask? Apparently, yes.

If you’re not a politics groupie, you may find the drama surrounding Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, puzzling. Until recently, few would have considered her a significant contender for the Republican presidential nomination — indeed, she arguably still isn’t. But toward the end of last year, she suddenly attracted a lot of support from the big money. Among those endorsing her were Jamie Dimon, the head of JPMorgan Chase, a new business-oriented super PAC called Independents Moving the Needle and the Koch political network.

If this scramble sounds desperate, that’s because it is. And it looks even more desperate after Haley’s recent Civil War misadventures — first failing to name slavery as a reason the war happened, then clumsily trying to walk back her omission.

But there is a logic behind this drama. What we’re witnessing are the death throes of a political strategy that served America’s plutocrats well for several decades but stopped working during the Obama years.

That political strategy was famously described by Thomas Frank in his diatribe “What’s the Matter With Kansas?,” which drew criticism from some political scientists but nonetheless seemed to capture a key political dynamic: Wealthy political donors wanted policies, especially low taxes on high incomes, that were generally unpopular; but they could get these policies enacted by supporting politicians who won over working-class white voters by appealing to their social conservatism, then devoted their actual energy to right-wing economics.

Thus in 2004, Republicans mobilized socially conservative voters in part by organizing referendums banning gay marriage; then, having won re-election on social issues and the perception that he was strong on national security, President George W. Bush proceeded as if he had a mandate to privatize Social Security. (He didn’t.)

This strategy didn’t always succeed, but it worked pretty well for a long time — until the G.O.P. establishment lost control of the base, which wanted genuine extremists, not business-friendly politicians who just played extremists on TV.

If I had to identify the moment it all went wrong, I’d point to a largely forgotten event: Eric Cantor’s shocking June 2014 primary defeat by an obscure Tea Party challenger. Cantor, the House majority leader, was so deeply embedded in conservative economic ideology that he once marked Labor Day by celebrating … business owners. By booting him, Republican primary voters in effect signaled that they no longer trusted that kind of figure.

And then, of course, the 1 percent-friendly establishment was unable to block the rise of Donald Trump who, whatever else you may say about him, is the real thing when it comes to extremism. But Trump was more a consequence than a cause of the Republican unraveling.

At the beginning of 2023, however, the big money thought it had found a way to resurrect the old strategy. Wall Street, in particular, believed that it had found its next George W. Bush in the form of Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who was supposed to offer a Trump-like appeal to the Republican base while in reality being mainly a defender of elite privilege. The campaign contributions data reveal just how all-in Wall Street went for DeSantis. Even though his campaign is now in free fall, the financial industry has given far more to DeSantis in this election cycle than to anyone else, including President Biden.

But it was all wasted money. Part of the problem is that DeSantis turns out to be a terrible politician. At the start of 2023, betting markets considered him the Republican front-runner; now he’s a punchline.

Beyond that, DeSantis wasn’t playacting at being a cultural and social extremist. . . . Hence the last-minute pivot to Haley. But the slavery contretemps reveals why this pivot has very little chance of succeeding.

Haley went off the rails basically because she was trying to avoid antagonizing the G.O.P. base, which hates anything that hints at social liberalism. A politician who admits that slavery caused the Civil War, or that climate change is a real threat, or that Covid vaccines are safe, just might be a little bit, you know, woke. Yet the big money doesn’t want politicians who are genuine extremists. Haley failed to walk that tightrope; probably nobody could.

What’s so striking to me is the political obtuseness of big money. Any moderately well-informed observer could have told big bankers that a MAGAfied Republican Party isn’t going to nominate anyone who might make them comfortable. Someday, perhaps, reasonable people will once again have a role to play within the G.O.P. But that day is at least several election cycles away.

For now, rationality has a well-known Democratic bias. And throwing money at Nikki Haley won’t change that.

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Republicans Think Women Are Gullible Idiots

Ever since Republicans and their evangelical/Christofascist party base achieved their dream of overturning Roe. v. Wade  - with the help of Donald Trump's far right appointees to the U.S. Supreme Court - Republican candidates have been battered by their party's anti-abortion stances and have underperformed in elections in 2022 and 2023.  That specter of similar results in 2024 have Republicans grasping for a gambit to lure back woman voters without ceasing their efforts to make abortion illegal nationwide and take the nation back to the 1950's, if not the early 1900's.  One of the strategies is to tell women that while Republicans seek to strip all women of access to abortion, they want to boast that they are leaving women with the right to use contraception.   Never mind that the evangelical/Christofascist base of the party and Justice Clarence Thomas, the high Court's most corrupt member, want to see Griswold v. Connecticut (which gave married couples the legal right to use contraception) reversed.   And meanwhile even GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley has endorsed a nationwide six (6) week abortion ban which would strip women of access to abortion before they typically even knew they were pregnant.  The take away is that Republican's view women as simple minded, gullible idiots.  A  a piece at Vanity Fair looks at  this bizarre GOP marketing ploy (another piece at the magazine looks at Nikki Haley's support for a six week abortion ban).  Here are highlights:

Something you’ve probably heard by now is that the Republican Party’s decision to decimate reproductive rights—and celebrate the overturning of Roe v. Wade like it was the greatest thing to ever happen to America—has not gone over great with voters. The 2022 midterm elections, which were supposed to be a red tsunami for the GOP, were anything but: Democrats picked up a seat in the Senate and Republicans just barely took back the House, with voters in critical states citing abortion as the most important issue of the day. A year later, the right to an abortion was enshrined in Ohio’s state constitution; Kentucky voters reelected pro-choice governor Andy Beshear; and Democrats took control of Virginia’s state legislature, preventing the GOP governor from limiting abortion moving forward, which he’d planned to do. The results were unambiguous: The American people want abortion rights.

Now, with the 2024 election less than a year away, what are Republicans running for higher office to do? According to GOP strategist and Donald Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, the answer is simple: make their campaign slogan something like, “Yeah, we took away your reproductive rights, but, hey, we’re letting you keep contraception, and that’s something!”

Politico reports that Conway plans to tell Republican lawmakers that the key to big wins this year is to focus less on the gutting of abortion access, and more on vocally supporting access to birth control, the logic apparently being that people will be grateful for what they can get (and too dumb to notice what they’re not getting). “You’ve got a fair number of Democrats saying that they want an alternative to [Joe] Biden and [Kamala] Harris, or they may sit it out,” Conway told Politico. “He’s especially bleeding young voters, who you would think would be animated and interested to hear about [contraception], and who are in the prime of their years and choosing to conceive or not to conceive.” Using an extremely strange analogy, Independent Women’s Voice CEO Heather Higgins told the outlet, “Republicans are like your uncle, who really loves you and loves the women in his family, but he’s bad about showing it.

Both Conway and Higgins cited polling showing that more than eight in 10 independents and more than eight in 10 pro-life respondents agreed that, “Given the current political debate about abortion, it is more important than ever that women have access to the most modern and effective contraception method of their choice regardless of where they live, how much it costs, and where they receive health care services.” Of course, most Americans support abortion being legal to some degree, but neither Conway nor Higgins are telling GOP politicians to craft their policies and messaging around that. The two also don’t appear to be talking much about the fact that in 2022, just eight House GOP members voted in favor of the Right to Contraception Act, which would suggest that Republican lawmakers don’t actually support access to contraception, despite what they’ll be told to tell voters.

Speaking to The Daily Beast, Republican senator Lisa Murkowski, one of the few people in her party who actually supports access to contraception and abortion, said she was skeptical the plan would work.

“Does this help? Does a focus on contraception make Republicans well with women on the issue of abortion?” Murkowski asked. “I think that remains to be seen,” she said. For her part, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesperson Nebeyatt Betre told the outlet it absolutely won’t work, saying that no amount of “fancy marketing will change this fundamental truth: House Republicans have consistently pushed legislation to crack down on both abortion and contraception access in their assault on women’s reproductive freedoms.”

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Trump Fans the Myth of "Christian" Persecution

One of the many, many lies promoted by evangelicals and Christofascists - and their self-prostituting Republican politicians - is that Christians in America are being persecuted "for their faith."  As often noted at this blog, the reality is that there is NO ongoing persecution of Christians in general or by the Biden administration and Democrats.   Indeed, the only things that have happened over the years is that (i) more and more Americans are unwilling to allow these typically false Christians to inflict their beliefs on the larger society, and (ii) civil rights legislation and court rulings have eroded the undeserved privilege long enjoyed by Christianity over other faiths and targeted segments of society including non-white and LGBT individuals.  As we move closer to the 2024 elections, Donald Trump is once again promising far right "Christians" - most of whom are Christian in name only in my view - that he will allow them to persecute others and trample on the rights of other citizens and play to their persecution complex arising from limits place on their ability to discriminate against and harm others.  A piece in the New York Times looks at Trump's pandering to this ugly demographic and the lies he is spreading as part of this effort.  Here are column highlights: 

Donald J. Trump has repeatedly tried to appeal to Christian voters in recent weeks by accusing the Biden administration of criminalizing Americans for their faith.

On multiple occasions this month, Mr. Trump has claimed that President Biden has “persecuted” Catholics in particular. Mr. Biden himself is Catholic. “I don’t know what it is with Catholics,” Mr. Trump said during a rally in Coralville, Iowa. “They are going violently and viciously after Catholics.”

Mr. Trump repeated similar comments days later at another rally, in Waterloo, and in a video posted before Christmas he said that “Americans of faith are being persecuted like nothing this nation has ever seen before.”

The message fits into a larger theme for Mr. Trump, who — facing criminal charges in relation to his bid to say in office after losing the 2020 election and criticism for praising strongmen — has tried to paint Mr. Biden and Democrats as being the real threat to democracy.

Experts say they are unaware of any data to support the idea that Catholics in the United States are being persecuted by the government for their faith — let alone at record levels.

“In terms of the evidence, I find it to be pretty hard to kind of support the idea that there’s a concerted, marked increase in a particular kind of Christian targeting,” said Jason Bruner, a religious studies professor at Arizona State University and historian who studies Christian persecution.

Instead, Mr. Bruner said, it’s most likely that Mr. Trump is extrapolating from cases — say, churches that faced penalties for congregating during the Covid pandemic or anti-abortion activists who have been charged with crimes — to suggest a systemic issue.

“There’s a long history of discrimination against Catholics in the United States, from the framing way through the 1970s,” said Frank Ravitch, a professor of law and religion at Michigan State University. “And if anything, it’s probably better now in terms of nondiscrimination than it ever, probably, ever has been.”

Mr. Trump’s claims, Mr. Ravitch said, show “such an incredible blindness to the history of anti-Catholicism in the U.S.”

Advocates who track Christians fleeing persecution around the world note that the Biden administration has been gradually increasing the number of refugees admitted into the United States after the number dropped precipitously during the Trump era. At the end of fiscal year 2023, the country recorded about 31,000 Christian refugee arrivals — about half of all refugees and the highest number recorded since fiscal year 2016.

The Justice Department has initiated an increasing number of criminal prosecutions under a law that makes it a violation to interfere with reproductive health care by blocking entrances, using threats or damaging property. In at least one case, a defendant’s family claimed he was arrested by a “SWAT” team, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation said that was not the case.

The law is called the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances, or FACE, Act and was enacted in 1994. Federal prosecutors have used it to initiate 24 criminal cases, involving 55 defendants, since January 2021, according to the Justice Department.

While a majority of those cases have involved acts at facilities that provided abortion services, prosecutors have also used it to charge several individuals who supported abortion access and targeted Florida centers that offered pregnancy counseling and abortion alternatives.

Mr. Trump omits that such arrests are not for “pro-life” activism but for specific actions, including violence, that prosecutors argue were attempts at blocking access to or interfering with reproductive health care services. . . . three men were accused of firebombing a clinic in California; one recently pleaded guilty.

Mr. Trump’s claims about the use of “SWAT teams” may be a reference to the 2022 arrest of a Catholic activist in Pennsylvania. . . . . Republican lawmakers have criticized Mr. Houck’s arrest by armed agents, but the F.B.I. has rejected the claim that it used a SWAT team and said its tactics were consistent with standard practices.

“There are inaccurate claims being made regarding the arrest of Mark Houck,” the F.B.I. said in a statement. “No SWAT team or SWAT operators were involved. F.B.I. agents knocked on Mr. Houck’s front door, identified themselves as F.B.I. agents and asked him to exit the residence. He did so and was taken into custody without incident pursuant to an indictment.”

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said during a September congressional hearing that he was “appalled” by the memo and that “Catholics are not extremists.” He called suggestions that the government was targeting Americans based on their faith “outrageous,” referencing the fact that his own family fled Europe to escape anti-semitism before the Holocaust.

In a statement this week, the F.B.I. reiterated, “Any characterization that the F.B.I. is targeting Catholics is false.”

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