The Dive - 3/1/22

Peter Juul

Mar 01, 2022

Quote of the Month

“The flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood

This Eastertide call into mind the men,

Now far from home, who, with their sweethearts, should

Have gathered them and will do never again.”

- Edward Thomas, In Memoriam (Easter 1915)

My Recent Writing:

What I’m Reading:

1. How Putin’s war against Ukraine forced America and Europe to defend their values

Why you should read it: In The Atlantic, contributing editor George Packer writes that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine forced the United States and its European allies to reckon with the fact that their national interests remain bound up in the survival of their democratic values in places like Ukraine.

“In the short six months between the fall of Kabul and the invasion of Ukraine, the triumph of one idea was eclipsed by the appearance of another. The wars that followed 9/11 ended for Americans on August 31, 2021. They ended with relief and bitterness and the sense that the United States would now have to learn restraint—that we lacked the ability, the will, and the means to involve ourselves in the affairs of other countries. Pax Americana was over, and so was the 20 Years’ War, and now it was time to turn inward and address our own considerable problems… This view was widespread across the political firmament. The progressive version leaned pacifist, the reactionary version was nationalist, and in the center a new ‘realism’—a hungover awareness of limits—prevailed. This realism reminded bruised, exhausted Americans that our national interests should be narrowly defined, and that other great powers, including Russia, have interests of their own that need to be respected.”

"In giving the order to invade Ukraine, Putin made nonsense of a raft of apologists who had, until the last hour, continued to believe that Russia could be satisfied with concessions, that it was acting out of ‘legitimate security concern.’ Putin didn’t start this war because of NATO expansion, or American imperialism, or Western weakness, or the defense of Christian civilization, or any other cause that directs blame away from the perpetrator. In 2014, Ukrainians staged what they called a ‘Revolution of Dignity’ in Kyiv, and they’ve been struggling ever since to create a decent country, ruled by laws and not by thieves, free of Russia’s grip. That country was so intolerable to Putin that he decided to destroy it… Ukraine is where the battle for democracy’s survival is most urgent. The fate of democracy here turns out to be connected to its fate there. Putin understands this far better than we do, which explains his dogged efforts to exploit the fractures in American society and further the institutional decay, and his use of Russian-backed corruption in Ukraine to corrupt politics in America. The West’s years-long underestimation of his intentions and the stakes in Ukraine showed a failure of understanding and a weakening of liberal values.”

Why it matters: “Now Putin, along with his patron and enabler, Xi Jinping of China, has pushed into American and European faces a truth we didn’t want to see: that our core interests lie in the defense of those values. To be realist in our age is not to define American interests so narrowly that Ukraine becomes disposable but to understand that the world has broken up into democratic and autocratic spheres; that this division shapes everything from supply chains and competition for resources to state corruption and the influence of technology on human minds and societies; that the autocrats have gained the upper hand and know it… If this conflict is a new cold war, it’s one that the autocracies have been pursuing energetically and the democracies have been loath to accept. Until the past few days, the West seemed unwilling to confront Putin in a way that would hurt enough to make him regret his aggression. While Russian troops massed along Ukraine’s borders, European leaders showed little enthusiasm for any sanctions against Russia that might cost their people in commodity prices and financial disruption, and themselves in popular support… Since last Thursday, Ukrainian resistance to invasion has shamed and inspired much of the world. Protests that were absent during the Russian buildup throughout February now fill the streets in cities from Sydney and Tokyo to Berlin and Bern—even in St. Petersburg and Minsk. Over the weekend the European Union imposed devastating banking sanctions on Russia. Most remarkably, Germany ended its decades of nonintervention and declared that it will send military equipment to Ukraine. Even perpetually neutral Sweden is arming the Ukrainians. This sudden, energetic unity of the democracies shows the reserves of power that can be brought to bear against the autocracies without going to war.”

2. Putin’s “reckless gamble” on war in Ukraine

Why you should read it: On his personal Substack journal, British strategy scholar Lawrence Freedman argues that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine should be seen for the reckless gamble it is, one based on arrogance, overconfidence, and political objectives founded on delusions.

“Though the Russians may eventually prevail in battle the first day of the war confirmed what has always seemed likely – that whatever the military victories to come this will be an extraordinary difficult war for Putin to win politically… One of the main reasons why wars can turn out badly, even when they have been launched with confidence, is underestimation of the enemy. The sort of optimism bias that leads to predictions of early victory depends on assumptions of a decadent and witless opponent, ready to capitulate at the first whiff of danger. Putin’s unhinged rant of a speech on Monday [February 21] and his subsequent statements along with those from his courtiers have helped us understand not only his preferred rationale for war but also why he thinks he can win. If it is the case, as Putin has consistently claimed, that Ukraine is a non-state, an artificial creation, with a government that is illegitimate and controlled by Nazis, then it would not be surprising if he also supposed that ordinary Ukrainians would not fight hard for such an entity. They might even, as the Russian Ambassador to the UN suggested, greet the incoming Russian forces as liberators.”

“For those of us who have long wondered why Putin would embark on an aggressive war the core puzzle has been what he could hope to achieve politically. A limited campaign in Eastern Ukraine made some sense as it would carve out an area that could be sustained and defended over time. The current scale of operations makes less sense because it essentially requires regime change in Kyiv. In Iraq and Afghanistan the US and the UK learned through bitter experience how difficult this can be. Put simply even relatively authentic leaders with strong local roots (and it is not obvious that Russia has any of those available) that have been put in place by foreigners have limited legitimacy and will soon be relying on the occupying force to sustain them in power… The point about wars (and I have studied many) is that they rarely go according to plan. Chance events or poorly executed operations can require sudden shifts in strategy. The unintended consequences can be as important as the intended. These are the pitfalls surrounding all wars and why they should only be embarked upon with good reason (of which the most compelling is an act of self-defence).”

Why it matters: “The decision to embark on this war rests on the shoulders of one man. As we saw earlier this week Putin has become obsessed with Ukraine, and prone to outrageous theories which appear as pretexts for war but which may also reflect his views. So many lives have already been lost because of the peculiar circumstances and character of this solitary individual, fearful of Covid and a Ukraine of his imagination. At times in democracies we lament the flabbiness, incoherence, short-sightedness and inertia of our decision-making, compared with autocrats who can outsmart us by thinking long-term and then taking bold steps without any need to convince a sceptical public, listen to critics, or be held back by such awkward constraints as the rule of law. Putin reminds us that that autocracy can lead to great errors, and while democracy by no means precludes us making our own mistakes, it at least allows us opportunities to move swiftly to new leaders and new policies when that happens. Would that this now happens to Russia.”

3. How the war in Ukraine sounds the death knell for globalization as we know it

Why you should read it: In a column written before the imposition of worldwide sanctions against Russia, Wall Street Journal columnist Greg Ip observes that the war in Ukraine has its origins in Kyiv’s desire to join the European Union - a development that Putin viewed as a greater threat than Ukrainian NATO membership.

“The 2013 trade dispute [in which Russia blocked Ukrainian exports after Kyiv signed an association agreement with the EU] illustrates that the growing schism between Russia and the West is as much a fight about the rules that govern the global economy as it is about military alliances and missile installations… Mr. Putin rejects that vision [of globalization]. To him, economic integration ought to reflect geographic, cultural and strategic ties. ‘Ukraine and Russia have developed as a single economic system over decades and centuries,’ he wrote last year. ‘We are natural complementary economic partners.’ Ukraine and Russia are like Canada and the U.S. or Austria and Germany, ‘close in ethnic composition, culture …language,’ with “conditional, transparent borders,” he wrote.

“In the past decade, as Mr. Putin’s unhappiness with the EU and NATO intensified, the West grew disillusioned with trade. The benefits to eastern Europe and China seemed to come at the expense of Western workers. Economic integration didn’t make Russia or China more liberal; they doubled down on autocracy and state capitalism… The WTO has been unable to stop this and in some ways enabled it. When Russia barred Ukrainian goods from transiting through its territory to other markets, normally a violation of trade rules, the WTO ruled Russia was within its rights on national security grounds. ‘All the trading rules are just going to break down,’ said Jennifer Hillman, a former WTO official now at Georgetown University. ‘Everyone will say I can do anything I want in the name of national security.’”

Why it matters: “Mr. Putin may yet succeed in reconstituting the Cold War regime of Eastern and Western economic blocs. Even with Ukraine, though, his Eurasian Economic Union would be an economic flyweight of little importance to other countries except in commodities… And unlike during the Cold War, when China was poor and economically isolated, it is now huge and deeply integrated with the rest of the world.”

4. How China is inadvertently building a world order in opposition to itself

Why you should read it: Tufts University professor Michael Beckley notes in Foreign Affairs that China’s behavior on the international stage has begun to provoke a countervailing international coalition of nations opposed to Beijing’s ambitions - and that these developments are building a new international order.

“The international order is falling apart, and everyone seems to know how to fix it. According to some, the United States just needs to rededicate itself to leading the liberal order it helped found some 75 years ago. Others argue that the world’s great powers should form a concert to guide the international community into a new age of multipolar cooperation. Still others call for a grand bargain that divides the globe into stable spheres of influence. What these and other visions of international order have in common is an assumption that global governance can be designed and imposed from the top down… The history of international order, however, provides little reason for confidence in top-down, cooperative solutions. The strongest orders in modern history—from Westphalia in the seventeenth century to the liberal international order in the twentieth—were not inclusive organizations working for the greater good of humanity. Rather, they were alliances built by great powers to wage security competition against their main rivals. Fear and loathing of a shared enemy, not enlightened calls to make the world a better place, brought these orders together. Progress on transnational issues, when achieved, emerged largely as a byproduct of hardheaded security cooperation. That cooperation usually lasted only as long as a common threat remained both present and manageable. When that threat dissipated or grew too large, the orders collapsed. Today, the liberal order is fraying for many reasons, but the underlying cause is that the threat it was originally designed to defeat—Soviet communism—disappeared three decades ago. None of the proposed replacements to the current order have stuck because there hasn’t been a threat scary or vivid enough to compel sustained cooperation among the key players.”

“Step back from the day-to-day commotion [of global affairs], however, and a fuller picture emerges: for better or worse, competition with China is forging a new international order… As China burns down what remains of the liberal order, it is sparking an international backlash. Negative views of the country have soared around the world to highs not seen since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. A 2021 survey by the Pew Research Center found that roughly 75 percent of people in the United States, Europe, and Asia held unfavorable views of China and had no confidence that President Xi Jinping would behave responsibly in world affairs or respect human rights. Another survey, a 2020 poll by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, revealed that about 75 percent of foreign policy elites in those same places thought that the best way to deal with China was to form coalitions of like-minded countries against it. In the United States, both political parties now support a tough policy toward China. The EU has officially declared China to be a ‘systemic rival.’ In Asia, Beijing faces openly hostile governments in every direction, from Japan to Australia to Vietnam to India. Even people in countries that trade heavily with China are souring on it. Surveys show that South Koreans, for example, now dislike China more than they dislike Japan, their former colonial overlord… The United States and its allies have awoken to the danger: the liberal order and, in particular, the globalized economy at its heart are empowering a dangerous adversary. In response, they are trying to build a new order that excludes China by making democracy a requirement for full membership. When U.S. President Joe Biden gave his first press conference, in March 2021, and described the U.S.-Chinese rivalry as part of a broader competition between democracy and autocracy, it wasn’t a rhetorical flourish. He was drawing a battle line based on a widely shared belief that authoritarian capitalism poses a mortal threat to the democratic world, one that can’t be contained by the liberal order. Instead of reforming existing rules, rich democracies are starting to impose new ones by banding together, adopting progressive standards and practices, and threatening to exclude countries that don’t follow them. Democracies aren’t merely balancing against China—increasing their defense spending and forming military alliances—they are also reordering the world around it.”

Why it matters: “The architecture of the new order remains a work in progress. Yet two key features are already discernible. The first is a loose economic bloc anchored by the G-7, the group of democratic allies that controls more than half of the world’s wealth. These leading powers, along with a rotating cast of like-minded states, are collaborating to prevent China from monopolizing the global economy… The second feature of the emerging order is a double military barrier to contain China. The inside layer consists of rivals bordering the East China and South China Seas. Many of them—including Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam—are loading up on mobile missile launchers and mines. The goal is to turn themselves into prickly porcupines capable of denying China sea and air control near their shores. Those efforts are now being bolstered by an outside layer of democratic powers—mainly Australia, India, the United Kingdom, and the United States… Viewed individually, these efforts look haphazard and reactive. Collectively, however, they betray a positive vision for a democratic order, one that differs fundamentally from China’s mercantilist model and also from the old international order, with neoliberal orthodoxy at its core. By infusing labor and human rights standards into economic agreements, the new vision prioritizes people over corporate profits and state power. It also elevates the global environment from a mere commodity to a shared and jointly protected commons. By linking democratic governments together in an exclusive network, the new order attempts to force countries to make a series of value judgments and imposes real penalties for illiberal behavior. Want to make carbon-intensive steel with slave labor? Prepare to be hit with tariffs by the world’s richest countries. Considering annexing international waters? Expect a visit from a multinational armada."

5. How the Biden administration sees competition with China

Why you should read it: Washington Post foreign policy columnist Josh Rogin details the Biden administration’s internal debates and thinking about China policy.

“To the surprise of many in Washington and Beijing, the Biden administration has largely followed Trump’s lead, keeping U.S. policy toward China on a more competitive — if not confrontational — footing, an approach now favored, in varying degrees, by lawmakers in both parties and likely to last as long as China continues its great leap backward. Restraining China is now a multi-administration, bipartisan strategy that stands among the most important foreign policy adjustments since the end of the Cold War…Since Xi came to power in late 2012, the Chinese Communist Party has been expanding its military, intensifying internal repression and taking steps to undermine the Western-led system of free trade, rule of law and universal rights. Now, after decades of believing that China might someday fully join the multilateral economic system created after World War II, most U.S. officials no longer imagine that China can be more like us. Instead, the goal is to defend an international system that is under attack, protect the interests of the United States and its allies, and fight for the values that underpin our fundamental humanity against authoritarianism. [Advocates of competition with China within the Biden administration] represent a centrist foreign policy establishment that is regarded with deep suspicion by both the far left and the far right in American politics. They are trying to cement a long-term strategy toward China that can weather whatever administration comes next, and they know their time in power is short.”

"One big change in the U.S. approach [to China] was to do away with ‘linkage.’ No longer would China’s participation or progress on issues of common interest such as climate change or North Korea be grounds for Washington to grant concessions on other fronts… To the Chinese leadership, however, it made little sense to work with Washington on, say, the climate, while the Biden administration was attacking Beijing on Hong Kong or Taiwan. It wasn’t long before Biden officials [like climate envoy John Kerry] charged with reaching solutions on multilateral matters found themselves unable to make progress on any front. Those officials, in turn, often argued internally against many of the tougher policies… The tactical differences between officials inside the Biden team are not to be confused with the more fundamental objections of some progressive Democrats, who view Biden’s tougher line with Beijing as a path toward more defense spending and inevitable conflict. In a June Foreign Affairs essay titled ‘Washington’s Dangerous New Consensus on China,’ Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) advocated a relationship based on cooperation, not conflict. His arguments dovetail with those in official Communist Party propaganda: Don’t blame China’s aggression for the downturn in relations; blame the United States.”

Why it matters: “Year Two of the Biden presidency might bring answers to some of these [open] questions [about China policy]. The Biden team says China is welcome to become a responsible leader in the current international system. But its actions are meant to cement a bipartisan consensus that can last for several presidencies — and disprove the contention that autocracies are better at long-term planning than democracies. If the competitors succeed, they could help preserve allied security, prosperity and public health. ‘Our intention is to prevail in this competition with China,’ a State Department official said. ‘Let’s just be very clear about it. It’s a competition, and we intend to win it.’”

6. Why we need deregulation in order to fight climate change

Why you should read it: Breakthrough Institute executive director Ted Nordhaus contends in the Wall Street Journal that America needs a good dose of environmental deregulation in order to be able to build out new carbon-free energy sources and infrastructure at scale and speed.

“Across the country, foundational laws established in the 1960s and 70s to protect the environment are today a major obstacle to efforts to build the infrastructure and energy systems that we need to safeguard public health and save the climate. Though the Biden administration and Democrats currently propose to spend close to a trillion dollars on low-carbon infrastructure and technology, there is little reason to believe the U.S. is capable of building any of it in a timely or cost-effective way… Indeed, far from clearing a path for the construction of a low-carbon, clean-energy economy, Democrats and environmentalists propose to add still more bureaucratic and regulatory requirements to the already Kafkaesque process of building any major energy or infrastructure project. President Biden’s landmark executive order on environmental justice, for example, has directed every federal agency to screen all new infrastructure and clean-energy spending for disparate racial impact while carving out 40% of all spending for marginalized communities. Congress, meanwhile, has produced complicated formulas to guide its proposed new clean-energy investments in order to encourage the use of union labor and to achieve various other wage and occupational outcomes.”

“The implications are daunting for efforts to make progress against climate change. To reach ‘net-zero’ greenhouse gas emissions over the next several decades, the best current modeling suggests that the U.S. will need to triple its existing transmission infrastructure for electricity in order to carry power from wind and solar farms and other renewable sources. Yet, over the last decade, the U.S. hasn’t constructed a single major new transmission line… Environmentalists have long argued that tackling climate change will require regulations to discourage fossil-fuel use, such as a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade program. In reality, there is no plausible path to a low-carbon economy without a serious deregulatory program. Today’s thicket of environmental regulation at the federal and state levels thwarts permitting, siting, construction and operation of virtually every class of new infrastructure and technology. There are simply too many veto points and opportunities for obstruction, at too many procedural and jurisdictional levels, to conceivably embark on a rapid mission to remake the nation’s energy economy.”

Why it matters: “Will there be environmental costs to clearing away the detritus of decades of environmental regulatory policies? Without question. Some ill-conceived projects will get the green light, and those projects may have a negative impact on local environments. But we have a range of other legal tools to protect our most valuable environmental resources, from federal authority to protect public lands to the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act… We aren’t going to regulate our way to a thriving low-carbon economy and a more stable climate. America needs to get back to building again.”

7. Why “tech exceptionalism” has to end

Why you should read it: Yaël Eisenstat and Nils Gilman of the Berggruen Institute attack the notion of “tech exceptionalism” in Noema Magazine, arguing that Big Tech is no different than any other well-regulated industry - Silicon Valley ideology to the contrary.

“…Silicon Valley in recent decades has managed to build an anti-regulatory fortress around itself by promoting the myth — rarely stated plainly, but widely believed by tech practitioners — that ‘tech’ is somehow fundamentally different from every other industry that has come before. It is different, the myth says, because it is inherently well-intentioned and will produce not just new but previously unthinkable products. Any micro-level harm — whether to an individual, a vulnerable community, even an entire country — is by this logic deemed a worthwhile trade-off for the society-shifting, macro-level ‘good’… This ideology [of tech exceptionalism] contributes to the belief that those who choose to classify themselves as ‘tech companies’ deserve a different set of rules and responsibilities than the rest of private industry.”

“Silicon Valley came to maturity and dominance during this anti-regulation era and imbibed the swelling libertarian ethos that predominated from the 1980s onward. In this context, regulation became the enemy of ‘innovation,’ which soon emerged as the byword for ‘tech’ as a whole… In any other industry, the sorts of harms produced by Big Tech would long ago have spurred the standard response: government regulation. But the tech titans and their stalwarts have shielded themselves by resorting to two basic arguments — really, rhetorical strategies — to fend off the regulators. First, many in the tech world insist that whatever harms technology creates, it is more than outweighed by the good in the present…The second argument hinges on the idea that as-yet-unrealized, perhaps-undreamed-of future innovations will more than offset any harms of today’s technology. This idea of tech exceptionalism has largely inoculated the industry from the same rules long applied to others. ‘Tech’ in this sense refers not to an industrial segment, but an attitude toward the future.”

Why it matters: “Why does this matter? First, so-called tech companies’ posture toward the future became a way of making a financial claim. Tech companies, startups especially, weren’t to be assessed financially on the basis of actual revenues in the present, but on the basis of the revenues that they might make in the future as a result of innovations yet to come. This meant that companies that positioned themselves as ‘tech’ firms got to trade at multiples of existing revenues that far outstripped those enjoyed by ‘incumbents,’ who were presumed to be plodding, technologically-deficient dinosaurs… But the designation of a firm as ‘tech’ has another subtle effect that is arguably even more important than the financial benefits that accrue to its investors. The term implies that, for regulatory purposes, the social costs of these firms’ present activities should be weighed not against the benefits they currently produce, but those they promise in the future… Beyond the myriad legislative and regulatory debates, one basic principle should be straightforward: Facebook and other social media companies must be regulated on the basis of protecting against the harms they create. Instead, we have allowed them to continue to amass power, wealth and control over much of our daily lives, while granting them immunity from responsibility for potential harms under the premise that the upsides of innovation far outweigh any potential downsides and should therefore not be stymied by government intervention.”

8. Why is Matt Damon shilling for cryptocurrency?

Why you should read it: In the New York Times Magazine, contributing writer Jody Rosen attempts to explain just why celebrities like Matt Damon are shilling for speculative financial tech investments like cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (aka NFTs).

“We are used to hard sells from advertisements. But few are as audacious as this one [featuring Matt Damon], which suggests that the act of clicking on Crypto.com — an app that can be used to trade Bitcoin and other digital currencies, as well as NFTs — is a feat equivalent to inventing the airplane. The commercial began airing in October, and in recent weeks it went viral online, where it received the response reserved for especially flagrant pieces of (to use the preferred term) cringe. In the press and on social media, commentators mocked Damon’s ‘zombielike’ presence and assailed the ad as ‘shameless’ for implying that glory awaits those bold enough to gamble their savings in a volatile unregulated market… The burden of spreading that gospel [of crypto] has been placed on the beefy shoulders of Matt Damon, whom Crypto.com hired as its ‘brand ambassador’ in advance of a $100 million global marketing push. Damon is just the latest A-list star who has taken to hawking crypto. Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen have appeared in commercials for the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, a Crypto.com competitor in which they have an equity stake. On Twitter, Reese Witherspoon is a vocal booster (“Crypto is here to stay”), and Snoop Dogg, an NFT aficionado, offers investing advice (“Buy low… stay high!”).

“There is something unseemly, to put it mildly, about the famous and fabulously wealthy urging crypto on their fans. Cryptocurrencies, after all, are in many cases not so much currencies as speculative thingamabobs — digital tokens whose value is predicated largely on the idea that someone will take them off your hands at a higher price than it cost you to acquire them. Entertainers and athletes have ample money to risk in speculative bubbles; their millions of admirers don’t have that luxury and may be left holding the bag when a bubble bursts. Last June, Kim Kardashian promoted the little-known token Ethereum Max on Instagram; after her post went up, the value of Ethereum Max cratered, dropping by 98 percent. (A resulting class-action lawsuit accuses Kardashian and other Ethereum Max promoters of aiding and abetting a ‘pump-and-dump scam’; her attorney describes the allegation as ‘without merit’ and says they will ‘defend the action vigorously.’) In a recent article in the online magazine Slate, the actor Ben McKenzie, writing with Jacob Silverman, characterized the shilling of crypto by celebrities as ‘a moral disaster’… The cryptocurrency industry’s marketing efforts are focused on young people, especially young men. Surveys have shown that some 40 percent of all American men ages 18 to 29 have invested in, traded or used a form of cryptocurrency…Damon offers a particular kind of appeal to that demographic. His star power is based on brains and brawn; he can recite magniloquent phrases while also giving the impression that he could fillet an enemy, Jason Bourne style, armed with only a Bic pen. In the ad, his words are high-flown — all that stuff about history and bravery — but they amount to a macho taunt: If you’re a real man, you’ll buy crypto.”

Why it matters: “We live in troubled times. The young, in particular, may feel that they are peering over the edge, economically and existentially. This ad’s message for them seems to be that the social compact is ruptured, that the old ideals of security and the good life no longer pertain. What’s left are moonshots, big swings, high-stakes gambles. You might bet a long-shot parlay or take a flier on Dogecoin. Maybe someday you’ll hitch a ride on Elon Musk’s shuttle bus to the Red Planet. The ad holds out the promise of ‘fortune,’ but what it’s really selling is danger, the dark and desperate thrills of precarity itself — because, after all, what else have we got? You could call it truth in advertising.”

9. Why Democrats just can’t get anything done these days

Why you should read it: In the New York Times, Georgetown University history professor Michael Kazin extrapolates from current Democratic political and policy travails to make the case that the root cause of the party’s failings resides in the absence of an organized, working-class movement with “a message that can unite ordinary Americans across racial lines.”

“But Democrats have a problem that has bedeviled their leaders on and off ever since shrewd political bosses from Albany and stalwart Jeffersonians from Virginia founded what would become the party roughly 200 years ago. They lack a social movement of working people that could turn passive support for universal social programs into a force large and vocal enough to enact lasting change. Over the past decade, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter and the Resistance have come and gone without achieving systemic reforms that reshaped this nation or rectified the durable injustices that plague it. That is because none of those movements had what the party needs: a message that can unite ordinary Americans across racial lines… Without such a movement, hopes for a transformative age of reform are likely to be stillborn. Throughout American history, political elites have never started fundamental policy changes on their own; they need a well-organized force of discontented, determined citizens to make them do it.”

“A second lesson to take away from this history [of 20th century progressive politics] is that the most durable progressive programs Democrats enacted not only aided the great majority of Americans, no matter their race, but were also perceived to be helping everyone… In crafting most of the signature bills of the Great Society, [President Lyndon B.] Johnson, a different kind of Southern Democrat, neglected a primary lesson of the New Deal, the genesis of his own political career. Under Roosevelt, Democrats had enacted measures that established programs like Social Security they could credibly claim served the needs of the most citizens. But the most widely publicized measures Johnson signed, with the exception of Medicare, were described as benefits to minorities who were poor and disproportionately nonwhite. The president and his aides argued that the better-off majority should back these programs more out of sympathy than solidarity… The strength of the current Democratic coalition — unlike its predecessors under Wilson, Roosevelt, and Johnson — does not reside in the bottom half of the income scale. Its core voters sit at the poles of the social and educational hierarchy: well-educated professionals at one end and poorer people of color at the other…But there is little overlap among the main demands of these movements or among those who devote their lives to fighting for them. No contemporary movement has the size or political clout of the unions that helped finance Democratic campaigns in their liberal heyday — and advance their legislative priorities.”

Why it matters: “Still, progressive politicians who consistently talk about class inequality can win, even in red areas. Sherrod Brown, a stalwart champion of unions who has made fighting for ‘the dignity of work’ his signature issue, has been elected three times to the U.S. Senate in increasingly Republican-friendly Ohio. So has Montana’s Jon Tester, who has proposed a bill to bar corporations that lock out their employees during labor conflicts from receiving tax breaks, deductions, or credits… Lacking the kind of mass movement that catalyzed reform surges in the past, it’s hardly surprising that Mr. Biden and his party have disappointed many of their voters and themselves. Such pressure must come mainly from outside Washington — from ordinary working people and their family members, particularly those disgusted with both parties but who retain the ability to spark the kind of citizen activism on which progressives have always relied.”

Odds and Ends

What the legend of the “Ghost of Kyiv” tells us about how myths spring up during war…

Gail Halvorsen, the famed “candy bomber” of the Berlin Airlift, dies at age 101…

What happened when there was a fire aboard the Mir space station a quarter-century ago…

How archaeologists made a “once in a lifetime” discovery of an ancient Roman mosaic beneath a South London construction site.

The many iterations of Sparta, from the days of the Homeric epics to the “modest but bustling town” of the present day…

What I’m Listening To

More sleaze metal songs and power ballads from the Peacemaker soundtrack, including:

“Apologize,” a 2009 power ballad by the Last Vegas.
“House of Pain,” another power ballad by 1980s hair metal band Faster Pussycat.
“Rock & Roll (Is Gonna Set The Night On Fire), a hard-charging number from Pretty Boy Floyd.

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The Dive

The Dive - 3/1/22

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