Is it my imagination or have we gone from a phase in which the only humor was irony to people being unable to recognize irony with blinding speed? I’ll give examples. If DA Alvin Bragg’s argument that Donald Trump engaged in illegal election interference holds up, then he’s engaging in illegal election interference. And if Trump isn’t exempt from the suit, then he wouldn’t be, either? Or if Jack Smith’s argument is correct and upheld, every living or future president would likely be subject to criminal suit?

I’m really, really not a Trump supporter. I’ve never voted for him and never will. I think he’s a shmuck unworthy of being president. But the irony of these suits is astonishing.

You might be interesting in this piece at UnHerd by Kat Rosenfield:

Between the chanting, the dancing, and the… well, whatever this is, it’s hard to blame the kids for wanting to join what is, for all intents and purposes, a party. It’s also hard to blame them for being somewhat bewildered when the party ends with their own university calling the cops, who in turn force them to disperse with a fire hose. It’s not just the brutality; it feels like a breach of contract. As writer and academic Tyler Austin Harper has noted, Columbia and others like it explicitly highlight their histories as incubators of political activism with the express purpose of attracting a particular type of young person, the kind for whom protesting and partying seem like one and the same thing.

I suspect that this is why these events have the feeling of performance, or even parody: a photogenic, vibes-based facsimile of radical activism instead of the thing itself. It’s not just that their ostensible goal of “divestment” — in this case, from ETFs that include shares in businesses with ties to Israel — is a categorical impossibility; a number of the campus demonstrators will openly admit that they neither know nor care what specific policies they’re demonstrating against. What matters is, they’re part of something, a tradition of campus activism that dates back a hundred years. For the students who are drawn to Columbia’s “Social Justice university” branding, protesting is less about results than participation, a sort of institutionally-sanctioned Larp, like one of those interactive team-building exercises where you get to solve a murder, or escape from prison — or, in this case, hunt a witch.

I wonder if it would surprise her that that is what the Vietnam War protests of the 1960s were like as well. Speaking as someone who was there and lived a half block from one of the universities most notable for the protests, right next door to one of major organizers, there were precious few protesters who were actually opposed to the war. There were lots who were opposed to the draft or, in other words, they were motivated by self-interest. And for others it was just something to do. I can’t speak for every protester at every demonstration at every university but that’s what I saw at my alma mater.

I subscribe to a newsletter called Tangle. Recently, Tangle interviewed recently retired Republican Colorado Congressman Ken Buck and I wanted to pass along a small passage from the interview:

We have some huge problems that we need to deal with — spending, immigration, you name it. And Republicans — the other side does it too — but Republicans are lying to the American public. The election wasn’t stolen. We don’t have political prisoners from January 6th. We have criminals who were assaulting police officers and destroying federal property.

Those kinds of lies I think undermine our credibility and our ability to deal with some of the most serious problems. So I announced that I wasn’t running for reelection. And as I got back into America and started talking to people, not in campaign mode but really listening to what they were saying, people believe we have the worst two major party nominees in modern history.

which at the very last provides some food for thought. Here’s another snippet:

We have a problem with how we elect members of Congress — the House, the Senate, governors, state legislatures. And the problem is that someone can win a primary with 34% of the vote. [Ed: Buck means “34%” of the total electorate, but the majority of one party] You know and I know that the primary vote is low anyway to start with, but they win that low vote with 34% of the vote, and then because they’re in a deep red or a deep blue district, they win the general election.

The result of that is that we get these people who have no background, who have no business making policy for the United States of America, and what they focus on is getting reelected and making themselves a social media star in a way that is harmful. It’s harmful because they are publicly attacking particular members. It’s one thing to have a policy debate on social media. It’s one thing to have a policy debate on TV or radio. It’s another thing when you attack a particular member.

It isn’t exactly what I wanted but I’m too lazy to keep tinkering with the right instructions.

A considerable amount of today’s commentary is about the case before the Supreme Court. From The Hill:

Former President Trump has a busy day in court Thursday as his New York hush money trial collides with presidential immunity arguments before the Supreme Court.

David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, has retaken the stand in Manhattan where he continues providing a timeline of his agreement to bury bad news about Trump during the then-candidate’s 2016 campaign.

Meanwhile, in Washington, the high court is hearing oral arguments in a historic case that weighs the limits of presidential immunity, which Trump is arguing makes him safe from prosecution in his three other criminal cases.

Amy Howe at SCOTUSBlog:

In the final argument scheduled for its 2023-2024 term, the Supreme Court will hear argument on Thursday in former President Donald Trump’s historic bid for criminal immunity. The question before the justices is whether Trump can be tried on criminal charges that he conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The court’s answer will determine not only whether Trump’s trial in Washington, D.C., before U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, originally scheduled for March 4 but now on hold, can go forward, but also whether the former president’s trials in Florida and Georgia can proceed.

Jury selection is currently underway in a Manhattan courtroom, where Trump is being tried on charges that he broke state law when he made a “hush money” payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels so that she would remain silent about her alleged affair with Trump as the 2016 presidential election approached. But Trump, the first president to be criminally prosecuted, was not yet president when the alleged conduct at the center of that case occurred.

Trump was indicted last summer on four counts arising from Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the U.S. Capitol. Trump, the indictment contends, created “widespread mistrust … through pervasive and destabilizing lies about election fraud” and then perpetrated three criminal conspiracies to target “a bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election.”

Presidents are already immune from civil suit for acts taken as president. This case is about criminal suits. The challenge for the SCOTUS will be to define exactly when a president is immune from criminal suit without making presidents completely above the law. If they’re not extremely careful, expect every living and future president to be on trial for something.

You may find it surprising but I tend to agree with the claim in Robert Kagan’s recent Washington Post op-ed—for the MAGA Republicans freedom is not an objective or at least it is subordinated to other subjectives:

For some time, it was possible to believe that many voters could not see the threat Donald Trump poses to America’s liberal democracy, and many still profess not to see it. But now, a little more than six months from Election Day, it’s hard to believe they don’t. The warning signs are clear enough. Trump himself offers a new reason for concern almost every day. People may choose to ignore the warnings or persuade themselves not to worry, but they can see what we all see, and that should be enough.

How to explain their willingness to support Trump despite the risk he poses to our system of government? The answer is not rapidly changing technology, widening inequality, unsuccessful foreign policies or unrest on university campuses but something much deeper and more fundamental. It is what the Founders worried about and Abraham Lincoln warned about: a decline in what they called public virtue. They feared it would be hard to sustain popular support for the revolutionary liberal principles of the Declaration of Independence, and they worried that the virtuous love of liberty and equality would in time give way to narrow, selfish interest. Although James Madison and his colleagues hoped to establishment a government on the solid foundation of self-interest, even Madison acknowledged that no government by the people could be sustained if the people themselves did not have sufficient dedication to the liberal ideals of the Declaration. The people had to love liberty, not just for themselves but as an abstract ideal for all humans.

Americans are going down this route today because too many no longer care enough whether the system the Founders created survives and are ceding the ground to those, led by Trump, who actively seek to overthrow what so many of them call “the regime.” This “regime” they are referring to is the unique political system established by the Founders based on the principles of universal equality and natural rights. That, plain and simple, is what this election is about. “A republic if you can keep it,” Benjamin Franklin allegedly said of the government created by the Constitutional Convention in 1787. This is the year we may choose not to keep it.

Where I disagree is that I don’t believe the issue is limited to a single party or even a single group within one party. Just to cite one example, recently in the oral arguments for Murthy v. Missouri Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warned that freedom of speech (or, actually, of the press as well) could “hamstring” government action:

“Some might say that the government actually has a duty to take steps to protect the citizens of this country, and you seem to be suggesting that that duty cannot manifest itself in the government encouraging or even pressuring platforms to take down harmful information,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson told Benjamin Aguiñaga, the Louisiana solicitor general. “I’m really worried about that, because you’ve got the First Amendment operating in an environment of threatening circumstances from the government’s perspective, and you’re saying the government can’t interact with the source of those problems.”

Actually, it all stands to reason. Officials are not elected based on their support for freedom of speech, of the press, or the other freedoms in the Bill of Rights. They are elected based on their promises to provide security and material benefits.

And to respond to Justice Jackson the “institutions established by the Founders” are intended to hamstring government.

It all reminds me of a quote from a play (I don’t recall which one): “Freedom is the most important thing to me. After I’ve eaten.”

I should add that I have some problems with Mr. Kagan’s framing of the contrast between liberals and anti-liberals. They can be summed up in one question: is compelled speech liberal or anti-liberal? I think it’s anti-liberal but many of those who support that anti-liberal viewpoint are not Christian nationalists.

Much of the essay is about Christian nationalism and I honestly have no idea how great a threat Christian nationalism constitutes but I think he has his history wrong. Like many Americans today he has little understanding of the relationship among government, society, and religion as envisioned by the founders. Suffice it to say that I doubt that the founders could have imagined religion being banned from the public square as many secular Americans want to be the case today. It would be interesting to know how they reconcile that with states having established churches twenty years after the adoption of the Constitution.

While I acknowledge that there is a tension among government, society, and religion, I think that it is in the very nature of religion to inform the views of adherents. Consequently, it cannot be banned from the public square entirely. How it affects government and the law may be constrained to some extent by law including Constitutional amendments. Eschewing that path is either mistaken or nihilistic.

Rather than dwelling on this I will merely observe that the first moment that verifiably true speech was held as damaging, we had already abandoned the institutions established by the founders. There’s no going back at this late date even if a majority of Americans wished it.

I have been very busy with work and, as I’ve said before, blogging is basically a reactive medium and there hasn’t been much to react to.

The Washington Post is absolutely convinced that we can boost the U. S. economy by importing minimum wage and sub-minimum wage workers. They’re written an editorial on the subject and now their columnists are beginning to join in the charge. That makes perfect sense as long as you only look at one side of the ledger. When you look at the costs as well as their earnings, it’s quite obvious it makes no sense. If we were importing families of professionals, we’d be fine. Families of minimum wage workers, not so much. And then there’s the housing! Where are they going to live? The housing units we’re building are not for low wage workers.

I genuinely wish the various writers who are absolutely convinced that Russia is poised on the brink of invading all of Europe would actually make a case for that. The only way I can see of arguing that is to consider only Ukraine and extrapolate from that. When you even look at the recent past, just the last 35 years, it actually makes a pretty good case that Russia’s concern about NATO expansion is well-founded. NATO has gone from being a defensive alliance to I don’t know what.

I’m not following Trump’s legal woes particularly closely because a) I don’t care much about Trump and b) even when the verdicts come down the outcomes are far from assured.

Re-authorizing FISA? I think that civil service reform is a much higher priority. FISA should only be re-authorized with stringent penalties for abuses. How do you you accomplish that without serious civil service reform?

I was chatting with my nextdoor neighbor the other day. She’s about as regular a Democrat as you can find and she thinks that Mayor Johnson is a total loss as mayor. A lot of Chicagoans want to recall him. As I’ve said before I think we need a Constitutional amendment allowing any elected official to be recalled. Here in Illinois just about the only elected official we can recall is the governor and that isn’t even mandatory. That was part of the special “Get rid of Rod Blagojevich” reform of about 15 years ago.

I’m typing this while in a meeting. I wish I didn’t have to show my face at these meetings. It would make it a lot easier to concentrate while writing.

Now that the House has passed a Ukraine aid bill and its passage in the Senate seems assured, it appears that the insufficiency of U. S. aid will decline as a likely excuse for Ukraine’s ability to retake territory that Russia has seized from it over the course of their now two year war. However, as Robert Clarke observes at RealClearDefense:

While complex and advanced systems like tanks, armored personnel carriers, and sophisticated anti-air weapons are important for Ukraine’s ability to fight back, the United States is struggling just to produce enough of the relatively simple artillery ammunition that Kyiv relies on to push back Russian front lines. In early 2023, American factories were producing just over 3,000 155mm artillery shells a month. As Ukraine’s needs became more apparent, factories surged production — working overtime to up production to 28,000 a month, or 336,000 a year. Ukraine fired 6,000 shells a day during its counteroffensive, and could need over 2,100,000 shells a year to maintain the kind of high intensity effort that failed to push back Russian forces last year. These hard realities lead many to question the feasibility of Ukraine retaking the rest of their territory from Russia.

Taking old inventories of munitions off the shelf is one thing. Producing new munitions at the enormous pace at which Ukraine is expending them is something else again. That doesn’t simply require funding. It requires entire supply chains.

Deindustrialization, demilitarization, and consolidation have their costs. We could transition to a wartime footing and start rebuilding our capacity but that, too, would take time and would entail such pain that it’s unlikely to happen in an election year.

I wonder what excuse we’ll use now?

I encourage you to read Daniel Bessner’s article at Harper’s Magazine, “The Life and Death of Hollywood”. In it he crafts a narrative of an industry in which there was a Golden Age of “prestige television”, roughly 1995-2015, during which:

TV had become a place for sharp wit, singular voices, people with vision—and they were getting paid.

It was the era of Frasier, The West Wing, Mad Men, The Sopranos, and Breaking Bad. The article has a considerable amount of information about Hollywood’s structure and inner workings. He attributes the decline from the heights of 20 years ago to a number of factors:

• Consolidation
• Deregulation
• Financialization
• Pursuit of international audiences
• Changes in how the product was produced

But the business of Hollywood had undergone a foundational change. The new effective bosses of the industry—colossal conglomerates, asset-management companies, and private-equity firms—had not been simply pushing workers too hard and grabbing more than their fair share of the profits. They had been stripping value from the production system like copper pipes from a house—threatening the sustainability of the studios themselves. Today’s business side does not have a necessary vested interest in “the business”—in the health of what we think of as Hollywood, a place and system in which creativity is exchanged for capital. The union wins did not begin to address this fundamental problem.

Currently, the machine is sputtering, running on fumes. According to research by Bloomberg, in 2013 the largest companies in film and television were more than $20 billion in the black; by 2022, that number had fallen by roughly half. From 2021 to 2022, revenue growth for the industry dropped by almost 50 percent. At U.S. box offices, by the end of last year, revenue was down 22 percent from 2019. Experts estimate that cable-television revenue has fallen 40 percent since 2015. Streaming has rarely been profitable at all. Until very recently, Netflix was the sole platform to make money; among the other companies with streaming services, only Warner Bros. Discovery’s platforms may have eked out a profit last year.

His prescriptions are, somewhat unsurprisingly, given his analysis of the problem for the federal government to step in and break up the media conglomerates and for reregulation to prevent their re-establishing themselves. I would completely agree with one of his prescriptions: actual creators (rather than the companies that employ creators) should hold full copyrights to their works. I would add that I believe the terms of such copyrights should be for 25 years or until the natural death of the creator, whichever comes first.

While the author’s contribution is valuable, I think he’s ignoring some fundamentals. First, supply and demand. When the first screenwriters union was founded in 1921 there were fewer than 20 members. The relatively small number of screenwriters remained the norm for decades. Today the Writers Guild of America has more than 10,000 members.

Second, Hollywood is obsessed with making pictures that Americans don’t want to see. Rather I think they’re making the pictures they want to make with the stories they want to tell and the messages they want to send. When they make pictures that Americans do want to see, e.g. Barbie and Top Gun: Maverick, they do well and people are even willing to go to the theater to see them.

Third, when you can make a quality production with an iPhone and a personal computer and whose production costs can be crowdsourced I think that Hollywood is doomed. The only thing keeping it afloat is a lock on distribution and streaming is weakening that lock.

Finally, when everything is a spin-off, reboot, remake or otherwise derived from something made before and smart, creative dialogue is actually an impediment to the work’s being suitable for the overseas market, generative artificial intelligence might actually be a better fit for writing those works than real live writers.