Easy Sunday: Tipping point.

I feel like I have been here before. 

--   This feels like 1999-2000, and the internet bubble is at the top.

--    It feels like 2008, before everything fell apart.

Warning the CEO

"So, what you're telling me is that the music is about to stop."

Artificial intelligence platforms want to charge what it costs them to run their service.  Artificial intelligence users are now treating AI as expensive overhead, not a freebie, and they are starting to shop. 

The era of magical thinking is over.

Friday's Wall Street Journal had this story:

Gifted link to the story

Somebody is going to need to pay for the electricity, the data center construction and operation, all those chips, all the programming and data, and all the investment that has been driving the U.S. economy for this year. Artificial intelligence platforms have initial public offerings ready to launch. Investors buying those IPOs want to see that AI companies make money. 

My $20/month subscription to Claude, an AI platform, is switching to a new payment model, and there is something about "token credits."  Apparently, Claude is going to start charging me what I cost them. I have heard of professional high-volume users of AI who are paying $10,000/month in fees for tokens. Of course, those users are beginning to shop, and China has a much, much cheaper alternative.

I like the price I pay for AI when I use Google, or Apple maps, or when I say, "Hey, Siri." The price is free, or nearly so. That may be the long-term equilibrium price for AI. 

I could see that something was very wrong with the mortgage and housing markets in the several-year buildup to the Great Financial Crisis. TV ads were urging people to buy houses with 110-percent financing. That is, people with no money would be given $50,000 cash to buy a $500,000 home and borrow $550,000 and start making mortgage payments. Once house prices failed to go up, those buyers would not be able to make their payments, nor could they sell their house at a price high enough to pay off the mortgage. The business model for "free money" in mortgages was unrealistic and dangerous. 

The business model for cheap artificial intelligence was unrealistic and dangerous, too. We are entering a period of dislocation where the business needs of providers and users of AI need to come into sync. We are in a mark-to-market moment, that moment when the artificial price ends, and buyers and sellers clear the market by paying the real price for something. 

Today's Easy Sunday post includes a movie clip and transcript from the movie Margin Call. It is the scene where the top executives of the investment bank initiate their own mark-to-market fire-sale of mortgage bonds. The music of magical money built on mispriced mortgages had ended. Click below to see a nine-minute clip. Sit back. Enjoy. This is history. We entered a rough patch in the economy, and people got badly hurt, but most of us survived, and here you are on a mid-summer Sunday.

I have also excerpted a bit of the dialog.

Click here

Sullivan is the quantitative expert who described the precarious situation for the investment bank. 

Tuld is the CEO of the bank.

Sullivan: Well, we have to hold these assets on our books longer than we might ideally like to.

Tuld: Yes.

Sullivan: But the key factor here is, these are essentially just mortgages, so that has allowed us to push the leverage considerably beyond what you might be willing or allowed to do in any other circumstance, thereby pushing the risk profile without raising any red flags. 

Tuld: Now -- thank you, Mr. Sullivan. Sit down. What I'm guessing your report here says -- and give me some rope here -- what I'm guessing it says is that considering the, shall we say, bumpy road we've been on the last week or so, that the figures your brilliant co-workers up the line ahead of you have come up with don't make much sense any more, considering what's taking place today.

Sullivan: Actually, not what's taking place today, but what's already taken place over the last two weeks.

Tuld: So, you're saying this has already happened.

Sullivan: Sort of.

Tuld: Sort of. And, Mr. Sullivan, what does your model say that that means for us here?

Sullivan: Well, that's where it becomes a projection. But, um --

Tuld: You're speaking with me, Mr. Sullivan.

Sullivan: Well, sir, if those assets decrease by just 25%, and remain on our books, that loss would be greater than the current market capitalization of this entire company. 

Tuld: So, what you're telling me is that the music is about to stop, and we're going to be left holding the biggest bag of odorous excrement ever assembled in the history of...capitalism.

Sullivan: Sir, I'm not sure that I would put it that way, but let me clarify. Using your analogy, what this model shows is the music, so to speak -- just slowing. If the music were to stop, as you put it, then this model wouldn't be even close to that scenario. It would be considerably worse. 

Tuld: Let me tell you something, Mr. Sullivan. Do you care to know why I'm in this chair with you all? I mean, why I earn the big bucks?

Sullivan: Yes.

Tuld: I'm here for one reason and one reason alone. I'm here to guess what the music might do a week, a month, a year from now. That's it. Nothing more. And standing here tonight, I'm afraid that I don't hear a thing. Just...silence.

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Field Report: Denise Krause reports a lead in Oregon Senate District Three campaign

Denise Krause released a poll showing she  leads her Republican opponent, Brad Hicks.

Krause leads Hicks 50 percent to 41 percent, with 8 percent undecided.

The poll showed she had better name recognition than Hicks, with over two-thirds of voters recognizing her name compared to 50 percent recognizing Hicks's. 

The poll showed that 94 percent of self-identified Democrats support her. She led Hicks with independent voters, 50 percent to 32 percent.

It is a small poll and an early snapshot, but it suggests a good starting point for her general election campaign, so it made sense for Krause to release the results. She is setting the frame for voters that she is a good fit for the district and the natural, default choice in this light-blue district. She belongs. She isn't the interloper. She can be displaced, of course, but she is communicating that she represents a graceful handoff of the office from Democratic incumbent Jeff Golden. 

The poll was conducted by GBAO Strategies, a K Street, Washington, D.C., polling firm. They surveyed 400 district voters from June 29 - July 1. The margin of error is 4.9 percent at the 95 percent confidence level. It was funded by SEIU, a public employee union.

Krause general election kick-off event

Krause gained name recognition and grassroots support by spearheading initiatives to increase the number of county commissioners from three to five, to make them nonpartisan, and to cut their pay in half from the current $150,000-a-year range. The initiative petitions got the 10,000-plus signatures quickly, but two of the three initiatives lost due in part to well-funded opposition from the incumbent Republican commissioners and their Republican donors. The commissioner-pay-cut initiative easily passed, but did not go into effect because the number of commissioners was not increased.

Krause showed unusual ability to gain grass roots support and to recruit and motivate volunteers. In the primary election that Krause won, three other candidates had structural advantages over her. Kevin Stine was an 11-year Medford City Council member; Cristian Mendoza Ruvalcaba received over $150,000 from the Oregon Nurses Association; and Tonia Moro had the public endorsement of Jeff Golden. Krause won anyway. 

Democrats hold a six-point registration advantage in Senate district three, and Golden held the seat for two election cycles. Kamala Harris won the district in 2024 by over 12 points. Donald Trump has become significantly less popular in the 20 months since the November 2024 election, which is a drag on Republican candidates down-ballot, and should further help Krause. Trump's centrality to the Republican brand creates a dilemma for Republican candidates, including Hicks and Oregon gubernatorial candidate Christine Drazan. Republican candidates who stray from Trump are rejected soundly by fellow Republicans, but a candidate who is closely aligned with Trump motivates Democrats and tilts non-aligned voters away. Voters know the score: To be a Republican in good standing, one must be on Trump's team. That will be a drag for Hicks.

Krause won the Democratic primary in a five-person race, winning a plurality with 35 percent of the vote. Some of the supporters of Tonia Moro, who came in second in the primary election, have resisted supporting Krause, and have urged Democrats to cast a vote for a spoiler candidate. On Monday evening local Democrats have scheduled a Zoom meeting to endorse candidates. Krause said she hopes to consolidate her support by being the sole endorsed candidate of local Democrats.

Local voters are accustomed to Republican candidates spending stupendous amounts of money in this small media market. Four years ago, the Republican candidate spent over $1.1 million in ads in his losing campaign against Golden. Republicans may spend more this year. The PAC funded with a $3,000,000 donation by Phil Knight donated $180,000 to Hicks. I will have a closer examination of candidate donations in a future post, but the size of the money being collected by Oregon PACs to elect Republicans is indicated by the fact that Knight's PAC to elect Republican state legislators shows monthly income from interest alone on yet-unallocated money of $10,689 in May, and $11,025 in June. Hicks will be very, very well funded. 

It is not clear to me that spending that money for Hicks and against Krause sends any message other than the fact that the Republican establishment of businesses and MAGA Trump-supporters prefer the Republican candidate, and that they are throwing their money-weight around, making their candidate a pawn of their policy goals. I consider that a losing message, so the more they spend, the better for Krause. However, I acknowledge that this is a minority opinion. In politics, as in the number of divisions in an army in combat, the general consensus is that more is better.

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"Shakedown."

"I saw her again last night
And you know that I shouldn't
To string her along's just not right
If I couldn't I wouldn't
But what can I do, I'm lonely too
And it makes me feel so good to know
You'll never leave me."

       Dennis Doherty, of the Mamas and the Papas, 1965

My Canadian friend, Sandford Borins, called what Trump did to Canada a "shakedown."

Trump did what he was famous for doing to his vendors and contractors. He bankrupted them by stringing them along, getting them to do work for him fronting the cost. Then, the work finished, he would refuse to pay, telling them to sue him to try to collect. Trump would threaten to keep potential payment tied up in litigation for a decade. His lawyers would tell vendors to settle for a big discount. Something is better than nothing. 

Trump just did this to Canada. Canada built a bridge connecting the U.S. and Canada, expecting to collect toll revenue from it. At the last minute Trump said he wanted the U.S to get half the revenue, otherwise he wouldn't open the bridge at the U.S. side. Trump has leverage. The money was spent. Canada is stuck. The U.S. can screw Canada, and they are still stuck. They can never leave North America. 

Americans knew Trump's character and history when we elected him. This isn't just Trump being Trump. This is the USA doing this. This is on us.

American readers need to hear how a Canadian feels about this.

Sandford Borins is a college classmate. He is Canadian. He is Professor of Public Management Emeritus at the University of Toronto. He writes about Canadian politics and Canada-U.S. relations in his own website at https://sandfordborins.com, where this post appeared yesterday. He and his wife, Beth Herst, recently published a book, Public Representations: Screen Stories, Narrative, and the Public Sphere, which explores how popular screen stories represent and interact with politics, governance, and the public sphere.

Sandford Borins and wife Beth Herst

Guest Post by Sandford Borins

Should We Have Accepted the Bridge Shakedown?

I have been following the conflict between Canada and the US about the Gordie Howe Bridge for several weeks. It may seem like yesterday’s news, given the Trump Administration’s most recent threats of retaliatory tariffs to take effect on August 19 and possible wildfire-based tariffs or sanctions. But the bridge is important, both for the issues the outcome of the conflict raises and what it says about the current state of the relationship between Canada and the US.

I will look at three issues. First, did the Government of Canada have grounds to compel the Trump Administration to open the bridge? Second, what did agreeing to the Trump Administration’s shakedown cost Canada? Third, should we have agreed to the shakedown or taken some other course of action?

A Worthless Signature?

The 2012 Agreement to build, finance, and operate the bridge was signed by the Government of Canada and the State of Michigan and two of its agencies. The Obama Administration strongly supported the project, and it co-operated in planning the US Customs toll plaza and border infrastructure. But it did not sign the agreement. In hindsight, it would have been better if the Obama Administration had signed an agreement that committed all parties to operate the bridge as soon as construction was finished. Perhaps neither the Harper Government nor the Obama Administration could have imagined that a subsequent counterparty government would refuse to open the bridge.

The absence of such an agreement made it easier for the second Trump Administration to hold the bridge hostage. That said, the second Trump Administration has refused to honour treaties previous administrations, including the first Trump Administration, have signed. The Canadian Government would have had a better legal case if the Obama Administration had made a written commitment, but legal remedies are slow.

What Did the Shakedown Cost?

The terms of the agreement between Canada and the US have just been posted on the bridge website. Financially, the essential point is that for the next 15 years, 50 percent of net revenues, defined as tolls minus operating costs will go to a fund “solely controlled by the Government of the United States.”

I used ChatGpt to estimate what this will cost Canada (in Canadian dollars). The operating cost of the bridge is approximately $100 million. The Government of Canada paid the entire cost of the bridge, incurring $6.5 billion in debt. Assuming an amortization period of 35 years and using the long-term interest rate of 3.95 percent paid by the Canadian Government, annual debt service cost is $350 million.

Let’s assume that tolls cover operating cost and debt service but no more. ChatGPT estimates that tolls of approximately $20 per passenger car and $100 per truck would generate the necessary revenue, and these tolls seem reasonable.

The net present value of debt service (repayment of principal and interest) over 15 years is approximately $4 billion. A 50-50 split of the debt service gives Canada $2 billion and the US $2 billion. The shakedown is costing the Government of Canada $2 billion in today’s dollars over its 15-year term. We don’t know if this change in the original agreement will be renewed 15 years from now, or if both parties will revert to the original agreement in which Canada would get all of the net revenue until the debt has been retired.

How significant is $2 billion? One measure relevant to the relationship between the US and Canada is that the US would like Canada to buy 88 F35 fighter jets at a lifetime cost of $28 billion. $2 billion would cover the cost of 6 F35s. Why not reduce the F35 order by 6 off the top?

A second aspect of the agreement is that major toll rate adjustments, for example “toll rates falling below the average of comparable regional crossings” will require the agreement of the Trump Administration. The intent here is to protect the Maroun family – owners of the Ambassador Bridge (the “comparable regional crossing”) and major donors to Trump – from being undercut by lower tolls on the Gordie Howe Bridge.

Should We Have Agreed to the Shakedown?

Prime Minister Carney has not said much while his government was negotiating. I agree that it is not appropriate to negotiate in public. Now that the negotiation is complete, he owes the Canadian public an explanation. If the House of Commons were in session, this would be an obvious topic for grilling the government. Even so, I expect Carney would say little, claiming the bridge agreement is part of ongoing trade and security negotiations with the US.

When it became clear last February that the Trump Administration was planning extortion, the Carney Government could have planned to resist. Trump is doing poorly in the polls, the midterm elections are a little more than three months away, and Michigan is a battleground state. The Carney Government could have refused to negotiate, and Michigan Democrats would have blamed the unopened bridge on Trump. As a reader of this blog suggested to me, the Carney Government could have opened the toll plaza on the Canadian side to emphasize the point. The Trump Administration might have responded by blockading the lanes of the bridge leading from the US to Canada, but that would have only dramatized Trump’s refusal to open the bridge. If I were in Carney’s oxfords, I would have refused to negotiate before the midterm elections.

If we needed any more proof of what the Trump Administration is about, the Gordie Howe Bridge has provided it. Bullying and extortion are their modus operandi. If this agreement is an example of what Mark Carney’s “nice guy” approach gets us, we must try something else. Gordie Howe – the original Mr. Elbows – would understand.

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Communists! Communists!

Republicans have settled on the wrong smear.

I don't think "communist" lands. 

     "The Bolshevik takeover of the Democrat Party is in full swing and communism is on the ballot this November. Against freedom. Make no mistake about that. The lines have never been more clear in an election."  

    Steve Scalise, GOP House Majority Leader, standing beside Speaker Mike Johnson

Mike Johnson used the same language. 

The question before Congress is whether we will preserve our constitutional republic OR chart a fundamentally different course that leads us down the ROAD TO COMMUNISM.

Trump leaned back to Soviet days when he called Democrats "hardcore, godless communists."

America's pundits and headline writers noticed the point of attack. 

--  "GOP REBOOTS THE RED SCARE AS YOUNG DEMOCRATS EMBRACE SOCIALISM"

--  "GOP 'RED SCARE' AS REPUBLICANS ATTACK DEMOCRATS AS 'COMMUNISTS.'

Republicans are making Zohran Mamdani the face of the Democratic Party, and then defining him as a communist. There are problems with this message. Mamdani is not a communist, and he has established a brand as a happy, smiling guy with a populist people-friendly set of policies. 

 

He describes his policies as the continuation of FDR and New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. The policies that he is becoming known for are keeping in place the tough-on-crime police commissioner, fixing potholes that needed fixing, initiating free bus routes that speed up bus movement, and making daycare free for preschoolers. The message isn't about control. It is about livability and government for the people. It isn't a scary message.

There is a "tell" in the GOP decision to call Mamdani a "communist" rather than a Muslim. Mamdani's position on Israel is less sympathetic to Israel and more sympathetic to Palestinians than is the average American's. Americans are rethinking how we feel about Israel because Israel has squandered the goodwill and trust it had coming into this century. Attacking Mamdani for not embracing Israel would position Republicans as being uncritical of Israel, and that position is no longer tenable for Republicans.

Democrats are feeling their way on how to create their own post-Trump brand. They will probably raise taxes. Democrats are deciding what kind of tax on billionaires -- or at least multi-millionaires -- Americans will accept. Coming into this decade, tech billionaires were understood to be visionary successes. Elon Musk invented a cool electric car; Bill Gates was a philanthropist; Jeff Bezos was an angel investor in The Washington Post. The bloom is off that rose. Elon is a visionary still, but a wild man with a chain saw, a dozen children, and too much money to throw into elections; Gates has an Epstein scent on him, and Bezos prioritizes pleasing Trump, not preserving a great newspaper. Technology is addicting our kids, artificial intelligence will take our jobs, and the billionaires are building data centers that demand tax breaks. It won't hurt Democrats to be called a "communist" for taxing billionaires.

Trump has muddled the case against "socialism." Trump is a big government politician, who demanded government get a share of prominent businesses. Trump doesn't oppose "industrial policy." He likes rewarding businesses that support him. The public doesn't care about whether something is publicly-owned, partially-publicly-owned, or fully private. It cares about whether it is efficient and cheap. 

"Communism" is a poor line of attack. Democrats will be in  political trouble if they fail to raise taxes on billionaires and attempt income redistribution. 

The weak spot for Democrats is not the change they might enact. It is the change they do not enact when they have the chance. Democrats can't get stuff done.

The GOP's best approach would be to criticize Democratic rule-bound inefficiency. They cannot build houses. They cannot build a high-speed rail in California. They could not stop flagrant border crossing by immigrants. They want to argue over set-asides for minorities, for college admission quotas, for reparations, for trans athletes, for project-stopping salamanders, for environmental rules that keep environmental projects from being built, and for high state income taxes to pay for public employees. Democratic cities have had homeless encampments on streets for year after year. No wonder people are leaving high-tax blue states to move to low-tax red states. Portland, Oregon, may lose the Trail Blazers to Nashville, Tennessee for goodness sake. Losers!

Trump, for all his many, many faults, represents a "get it done" tone. He does change badly, crudely, cruelly, corruptly, but he represents action. He did what Biden did not: He stopped the flow of immigrants across the southern border.  Action means change. 

I think the political vulnerability of Democrats is the opposite of an attack on Mamdani. Mamdani might change things. He might get stuff done. That is the brand Democrats should want.

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Trump is a Messiah for the 21st Century

Christianity is hard. It goes against human nature.

Donald Trump gives Evangelical Christians an excuse to be Christian while also being their natural selves.

Loving your neighbor is hard enough. Loving your enemy defies human nature. It also defies human nature to give all one's money to the poor, or to turn the other cheek when one is slapped by an enemy, or to volunteer to walk a second mile if one is ordered to carry a burden for a mile, or to clothe and feed strangers. or to welcome refugees. Jesus preached a message of profound selflessness, empathy, and generosity.

Trump's does not claim to be selfless or kind to strangers. Trump says that when someone hits him, he hits back 10 times harder. He eliminated USAID food and medicine to the poorest people on earth. In both his personal life and his policies as president, he proudly calculates what's in it for him and he tries to maximize that. He speaks a message of profound selfishness, lack of empathy, and personal aggrandizement.

The mythmaking and imagery surrounding Trump portray him as a modern-day, improved version of Jesus the Messiah, beloved by a broad group of Christian Evangelicals. Trump is the anointed one, tight with Jesus and protected from assassins by God.  

The image below of Trump-as-Jesus, Trump-the-healer, Trump-the-compassionate-caregiver received a lot of attention, and most of it was negative.

That image seemed wrong. Trump posted blasphemy. It was criticized as wildly presumptuous to present himself as a Jesus-like healer. Trump did something unusual: He backed down and deleted the image. 

It was, indeed, the wrong image, but not because it was presumptuous. It was wrong because it was off-brand for Trump. Trump leads a movement of Christian nationalism, not by being that old-fashioned Jesus: Mr. Nice Guy. That Jesus is soft and feminine in nature. He ultimately loses, tortured to death. (Yes, that Jesus rises from the dead and rises to heaven, but that mostly happens briefly and off-stage. On earth he is the victim. The iconic image is Jesus on the cross, suffering, losing on purpose for us.)

Trump is the movement leader for Evangelical Christians, winning an overwhelming proportion of their votes. Trump is the defender of the faith. 

Trump is a kick-ass leader, an aggressive, masculinized Messiah, the savior and liberator of oppressed Christians. The old Jesus empathized with losers; Trump is the Messiah for winners. The images around Trump are ones of superhuman strength -- Rambo Trump and Superhero Trump -- but also ones of menace and fierce cruelty. 

The Truth Social page has these images today:

Trump expresses a view more consistent with human nature that has evolved to have survived amid external dangers and intra-group competition. We cooperate some, but we also compete and we look out for ourselves. We squabble with our neighbors and fight our enemies. We look out for ourselves and maybe our families. The Jesus of 2000 years ago preached a message to live. Trump has an easier one: take what you can. 

Yesterday I wrote that the centerpiece of conservatism was not liberty. It was defense of laws that protected hierarchy. I quoted Wilhoit's Law: “There must be in-groups the law protects but does not bind, and out-groups the law binds but does not protect." 

Trump gives politically conservative Christians a faith leader who clicks into place both their religious identity and world view, a relief from the old Jesus who kept preaching unreasonable, unwelcome ideas of radical generosity.  Trump cuts aid to the least of these brothers of Jesus, the hungry, sick, impoverished, the immigrant, the refugee. The old Jesus advocated for those losers. Trump advocates for Evangelical Christians -- not those Pope-addled ones --  the American Protestants who formerly were unquestioned as the top of the religious hierarchy. They are threatened with displacement by Latin American Catholics and secular humanist multiculturalism. Evangelical Christians wanted a defender to re-establish the traditional hierarchy. Put Christian prayers back in schools. Deport Muslims. Bar refugees and asylum-seekers from the wrong places. 

Trump has a more appealing message for Evangelical Christians than did Jesus. 

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The un-equal protection of the law

The motto on the Supreme Court building is a big fat lie.

Equal Justice Under Law

We don't have equal justice. This Supreme Court doesn't want equal justice. A great many Americans don't want equal justice. 

They want justice that is tilted in their favor.

Wilhoit's Law:“There must be in-groups the law protects but does not bind, and out-groups the law binds but does not protect.
          Francis Wilhoit, America political scientist, 1920-2010.

There is a reason liberals don't understand Trump-supporting conservatives. We are talking past each other. Liberals don't quite realize that conservatives have a different idea about the real structure of society and the purpose of government. Liberals think Trump contradicts conservative values; in fact, he expresses them. The Declaration of Independence isn't conservative. Conservative is a philosophy that believes there is a natural hierarchy within society, and that political power should be used to resist the demands for equality from oppressed groups. John C. Calhoun, the South Carolina senator, said that the notion of all men being equal "is the most dangerous of all political errors."

Liberals think human equality is fair and just. Abraham Lincoln said we are a country dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments put it into the Constitution. Liberals think that everyone pretty much agrees with that, including conservatives.

Liberals are wrong.

Conservatives have in the back of their minds, and sometimes the front, that some people are entitled to power and status and some people are not. This caste of privilege is usually color-coded, Whites above "Colored," but not always. It can be capital over labor, the majority religion over the minority one, native-born over immigrant, or high-status job over low-status job. Still, this is America, and over the centuries race has been central to our politics, and there is a region of the country -- the South -- where hierarchical thinking has been most prevalent.

In America, going back centuries, the law has worked to protect White, native-born Americans and to bind enslaved Blacks, Native Americans, Chinese, Japanese, and the law is now binding immigrants from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Muslim countries. The law ignores or has a light touch when the offense involves the powerful injuring the weak. Trump pardons white-collar criminals who defrauded customers. White-collar crime generally is sentenced leniently. Wall Street bankers crashed the economy with fraudulent mortgage bonds, but they received bonuses, not jail. White-on-Black crime is prosecuted and sentenced more leniently than the reverse.  

During the decades starting with the rights-agitation of the mid-twentieth century, when federal law attempted to enforce equality, conservative Americans adopted a libertarian, small-government policy. That has changed. Liberals are confused by the apparent reversal in position by conservatives who now support Trump's statism, including state involvement in women's reproduction and heavy-handed ICE enforcement. Liberals misunderstand conservatives. There is no contradiction, because conservatism was not about protecting liberty. It was about the direction of the bite of the law. When Big Government worked to enforce equality, conservatives resisted it. Now that Big Government enforces hierarchy, they are OK with it. 

Liberals' "No Kings" demonstrations seemed silly and hyperbolic to conservatives. Kings! For goodness sake, Trump doesn't want to be a king. But a monarchy is the expression of patriarchal hierarchy, where the king has no constraints of law because he is the law, yet also immune from its bind. That is the constitutional structure under Trump as clarified by the Supreme Court. Liberals' visceral reaction is that this is profoundly wrong. Conservative voters see it and accept it, so long as the president is Trump. He is the leader, and the laws he enforces protect the right people and bind the others.

Trump's war on DEI is a central part of his appeal to conservatives. Being "conservative" is not about small government, fiscal responsibility, free enterprise, rules-following, and electing people of high character. If it were, Trump would be anathema, because he is a big-government, budget-busting, business-partnering, rule-breaking person of flagrantly bad character. So conservatism, whether conservatives quite realize it, is about something else. Trump's presidency shines a bright light on that.  Conservatism is about re-establishing hierarchy.

[Note; For further reading on this subject, I recommend this Substack post by Ben Wheeler:
https://benwheeler.substack.com/p/liberals-dont-understand-conservatives]

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Unloved America

"R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Find out what it means to me
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Take care, TCB
Oh (sock it to me, sock it to me. . . .)"
         Otis Redding, 1965, revised by Aretha Franklin 1967

In his Oval Office speech on Thursday, President Trump began by saying "that our country is safer, stronger, and far wealthier than it has ever been before" but that he inherited a disaster from the prior administration.

We had transgender for everybody, men in women's sports, crime ravaging our cities, and the whole world was laughing at us as a nation, but not anymore. Two years ago, our country was dead. Now, we are the hottest country anywhere in the world. America is respected like we have never been respected before.

This is familiar positioning for Trump's speeches. His inauguration speech in 2017 described "American carnage." By August he was bragging about how great things were in America, describing it as a "turnaround." My blog posts at the time complained that Trump was just presiding over the same rebound improvement from the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 that Obama presided over.

I wrote in grudging praise of Trump's messaging: Trump was doing what Obama did not do: Claim personal success for a turnaround.  

The title of that post was "Trump Sells." What Trump was saying was objectively, measurably untrue, but Trump shaped the narrative because he seemed so confident and spoke in superlatives. 

Trump is using the same before-and-after narrative about national greatness. Money is a motivator for Trump, but being admired for his greatness is even more central. After all, that is the slogan: Make America Great Again. Trump hungers for respect. Alas, there is no room for another face on Mount Rushmore.

Click: 36 seconds

Trump drew surprised laughter from United Nations diplomats when he spoke to them in 2018:

In less than two years my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country [pause, then audience begins laughing. another pause] I didn't expect that reaction, but that's OK.

Pew Research evidence indicates that Trump is objectively dead wrong in saying we are "respected like never before."

We are perceived unfavorably; we are considered unreliable, inconsiderate, and disruptive to peace and stability. 

Moreover, the direction of respect trends down:

Trump probably believes what he is selling. He understands respect to mean being feared, not being liked or trusted or considered reliable. In Trump's view, it is a dog-eat-dog world of eternal conflict and zero-sum negotiation, and has always been so once the illusions are stripped away. Being a reliable trade or defense partner means that other countries understand our mutual interest. We do things so they needn't. That made us the rich uncle, the patsy, taken advantage of by everyone. It is better to be unpredictable and sometimes vicious. Better to be an unleashed dog with a record of biting friends and neighbors than it is to be considered well-behaved. Trump could turn on anyone, and not just snarl threats against Canada for having wildfire smoke enter the United States. Trump can and does impose arbitrary tariffs, disrupt established cross-border supply chains, switch sides in the Ukraine-Russia war, threaten to seize Greenland, start a war with Iran, confiscate Venezuelan oil, and float a balloon of charging a 20 percent fee for ships exiting the Strait of Hormuz. 

Trump is consistent with this theme, and it gives him substantial political traction among his coalition of voters. Trump perceived and amplified a feeling of grievance and displacement that was coincident with the presidency of Barack Obama. Minorities were taking advantage of Whites. Immigrants were taking advantage of native-born Americans. Women were taking advantage of men. Democrats, the news media, Muslims and other non-Christians, socalled-experts, trans people, dog-eating Hatians, homosexuals, and college-town woke progressives are taking advantage of "regular Americans." Trading partners and NATO allies are just another iteration of the theme. The home team was picked on.

Donald Trump thinks that he and his supporters are finally getting the respect that they deserve. If Trump personally, and the USA as a country, has to be unlikable to get that respect, so be it. 

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