Maybe I’ll adopt this one just for PWI.
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Love him or hate him, this is very, very funny. We’re going to have to keep our sense of humor. How Trump’s nationalism went over in the Netherlands.
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I like Bret Stephens.
The Wrong Kind of Crazy
What Trump could learn from Nixon about keeping enemies off balance.
By Bret Stephens
Jan. 30, 2017 7:10 p.m. ET
Leonard Garment, White House counsel in the Nixon administration, once got some useful advice from then-National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger about how best to deal with nosy Soviet diplomats trying to divine the inner workings of the 37th president’s mind.
“If the chance comes your way,” Mr. Kissinger advised Garment in 1969, “convey the impression that Nixon is somewhat ‘crazy’—immensely intelligent, well-organized and experienced, to be sure, but at moments of stress or personal challenge unpredictable and capable of the bloodiest brutality.”
What would later come to be known as Nixon’s “madman theory” of international relations is not mad. An easy-to-predict president will also be easy to outmaneuver. An adversary who knows the limits of an administration’s policy, or of its appetite for risk, will quickly establish his own zone of impunity. Just think of Ho Chi Minh and LBJ, Khomeini and Carter, Putin and Obama.
One of the promises of Donald Trump’s presidency is that it might restore some of the right kind of crazy to U.S. foreign policy, just as the Nixon administration did with the 1973 nuclear alert, which stopped the Soviets from intervening in the Yom Kippur War. A good early sign was Mr. Trump’s phone call with Taiwan’s president in December, followed by his public musings about the negotiability of the one-China policy. If Beijing wants to use ambiguous means to dominate the South China Sea, why shouldn’t Washington hit back with ambiguous devices of its own?
Perhaps the new administration will find its way back to this type of apparent guilefulness. Because so far all we’ve seen from President Trump is the wrong kind of crazy: capricious, counterproductive, cruel and dumb.
So much was evident with the president’s refugee ban on Saturday. And with Steve Bannon’s elevation to the National Security Council, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s demotion from it. And with the announcement Wednesday that Mexico would pay for the wall. And with the withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal on Monday and the aggressively protectionist themes of his inaugural. And with his performance at CIA headquarters. And with his incontinent fixations on crowd size and alleged voter fraud.
Come to think of it, nearly the only thing the president did in the past week that conveyed any appearance of measure and moderation was his phone call Saturday with Vladimir Putin—itself another instance of the wrong kind of crazy.
The problem here starts with the failure to appreciate Mr. Kissinger’s point that the madman theory must be predicated on an assumption that one is sane. It’s supposed to be about moments of crisis, not everyday governance. And its intended targets are supposed to be America’s enemies—the Soviets, in Garment’s case—not friends like Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto.
The theory of crazy is also a theory of cunning, of throwing your domestic and foreign opponents off balance. Imagine if, instead of the refugee ban, the administration had announced the intention to fast-track the immigration applications of the thousands of interpreters who helped U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, even as it subjected all other applications to greater scrutiny. That would have been good crazy, a reminder that Mr. Trump could honor his political promises even as he honored America’s Muslim friends.
Above all, the right kind of crazy requires sufficient ambiguity to provide room for political and diplomatic maneuver. With Mr. Trump, it can sometimes be hard to tell whether his utterances are serious or in jest—a semi-ironic pose that served him well in the campaign. But so far, what this administration has mainly managed to do is paint itself into corners, where it either has to back down or double down. That’s crazy of a particularly dangerous sort.
Maybe I’m misreading the administration’s intentions. It may be that its idea of crazy is to throw half the country into a state of semi-constant apoplexy, to the point of national exhaustion with its own outrage. But I doubt it. A proper theory of crazy requires a presumption of smarts that nobody in this administration has yet earned. Like Sigmund Freud’s cigar, sometimes crazy is just crazy.
So what is the Trump administration to do? A few suggestions: Invite the ambassadors of Poland, Ukraine and the Baltic states to the White House this spring, to solemnly commemorate the 77th anniversary of the Katyn Forest massacre. Issue a statement welcoming the Chinese New Year by quoting the poetry of imprisoned Nobel Peace Laureate Liu Xiaobo. Quietly move the U.S. Embassy in Israel, merely by changing the shingle of the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem.
If the president wants to stun his critics into amazed silence, this would be the good kind of crazy. It isn’t yet too late.
Write bstephens@wsj.com.
@loppar, putting this here since the Trump thread has taken some tangents. This made me think of the Atlantic article you put up, How to Build an Autocracy in the US . A bit less dark, but pretty sobering in some of the parallels. I hope it’s all wrong, of course. It ties in some European history, undermining of our institutions… And no, I don’t usually follow German newspapers.
I’ve read Timothy Snyder’s last book “Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin”. He knows what he’s talking about.
I literally agree with all the points he’s made in the interview and have written something along those lines about the dismantling of the Weimar republic and how everyone expected Hitler’s pivot to the center:
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I’ve been thinking about this topic again as we’ve watched the Catalan Independence movement in Spain. Really quick overview by the BBC for anyone who hasn’t been following. I didn’t know anything about this until I last month.
The history in more detail.
Also, as a followup.
The video below is Jon Haidt, the writer of the original article When and Why Nationalism Beats Globalism, talking here with Nick Clegg in the UK. Funny and engaging, talking more about Nationalists and Globalists what underlies these values.
The entire debate is here. I’m partway through now. Fantastic.
Just an excerpt as a teaser if you’re not sure you want to commit the time.
This one is an 11 minute clip from the debate above.
I watched the excerpt. Very interesting. I then googled his article When and Why Nationalism Beats Globalism. From the article:
"[Political scientist Karen Stenner] published a book called The Authoritarian Dynamic, […] Her core finding is that authoritarianism is not a stable personality trait. It is rather a psychological predisposition to become intolerant when the person perceives a certain kind of threat. It’s as though some people have a button on their foreheads, and when the button is pushed, they suddenly become intensely focused on defending their in-group, kicking out foreigners and non-conformists, and stamping out dissent within the group. At those times they are more attracted to strongmen and the use of force. At other times, when they perceive no such threat, they are not unusually intolerant. So the key is to understand what pushes that button.
The answer, Stenner suggests, is what she calls “normative threat,” which basically means a threat to the integrity of the moral order (as they perceive it). It is the perception that “we” are coming apart"
Here is where I find myself disagreeing with what Haidt was putting forth in the video. Essentially, he was asserting that the ‘global elitists’ were inadvertently responsible for pushing the authoritarians’ forehead-buttons with their (the globalists’) aggressive pursuit of open borders, unchecked immigration, anti-assimilation attitudes, etc. By and large, I do not think that is the case (at least not here in the US). Rather, I believe that ‘pushing the forehead button’ has been an intentional act on the part of the GOP electoral machine–their go-to technique since its first instantiation as Nixon’s Southern Strategy. They started pushing it then, and have been steady riding that button ever since.
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It’s been so long since I started this thread, I had to go back to read the original artical again as well, including the part you quoted.
Haidt would mostly agree with you (and Stenner) in that both sides can be authoritarian. It’s been awhile since I read The Righteous Mind, and I can’t remember what he says about the history of the GOP there. I wish I had a hard copy of it, because it’s harder for me to quickly find things in my Kindle version. If I can find it I will let you know, or if he talks more about it in the full version of that talk.
He’s not really placing blame on one side. It’s more a matter of seeing why people aren’t speaking the same language, or are misunderstanding each other. Certainly he not describing the the average Conservative as motivated by racism or xenophobia, at least in 2017. He would disagree with you if you’re saying that “status quo” Conservatives are primarily motivated by "pushing"an authoritarian button on Liberals (not that some don’t delight in it).
It’s more a matter of seeing that there are fundamental values that differ between the groups. Liberals operate almost entirely on the Care/Harm axis in his research. Conservatives have a hard time understanding why Liberals don’t care about some of the same things. That kind of thing.
I like that he mentions Libertarians in the first few minutes of the main lecture, in a positive way. We’re probably the least likely to have an authoritarian button at all. 
_
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I’m wondering if any of you have been following the situation in Poland. It looks like they may be setting the stage for a civil war.
This was a startling article about the nationalist Law and Justice party rewriting their history. @loppar, I’ll tag you.
From the article,
Poland’s Law and Justice party accuses Mr. Walesa of putting the nation on the path to a technocratic republic they consider corrupt, elitist and insufficiently Polish. The recasting of Mr. Walesa from hero to traitor has accompanied attacks on independent institutions, from courts to the media. The European Union and the U.S. have rebuked Polish authorities for weakening democracy.
…In the years that followed, the Kaczynski twins said Mr. Walesa and his pro-European successors had betrayed the revolution. They alleged that an alliance of liberals and former Communists were attacking Polish traditions and ignoring past crimes while enriching themselves.
They founded Law and Justice in 2001 to set things right. They said Communists who had escaped judgment would be chased down and their newfound fortunes questioned. The new party called for an end to what it perceived as imposition of liberal European values. The Catholic Church would return to the center of Polish life.
It’s a bit long, but if anyone would like to read the article in it’s entirety, please let me know and I’ll copy it here for you.
They hate communism but want a socialist pope to be the center of their lives? There’s a Polish joke in there somewhere.
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At Polish Nationalist movements.
I came across an image of these young Poles carrying a banner with a red circle and slash mark over a swastika and the same red circle with a slash over the hammer and sickle. At first, I thought “right on!” I strongly dislike communism and fascism. The swastika and hammer and sickle both stand for millions dead for me. Then the WSJ did this piece in November about the growth of this fringe movement. It looks like white nationalism, antisemitism, anti refugee…
@loppar, @Jewbacca. Check out how they’ve blamed the Syrian crisis on Jewish financiers. Go figure.
The march, organized by a group called the National Radical Camp, underscores the rightward politics of a growing section of Polish youth. The Radical Camp presents itself as the heir to a 1930s fascist movement of the same name, which fought to rid Poland of Jews in the years just before the Holocaust. A second group, All Polish Youth, also named after an anti-Jewish interwar movement, co-organized it.
The Radical Camp has been holding independence-day marches since 2009. Until several years ago, it struggled to attract more than a few hundred people. In the past three years, it has become the largest independence-day occasion in Poland, and one of the largest nationalist marches of its kind anywhere in Europe. Saturday’s was expected to be the largest ever. Police estimated the crowd at 60,000.
“It’s getting more and more vicious,” said Jakub Skrzypek, 25, one of about a dozen counterprotesters standing behind a banner that read “We Are Polish Jews” and surrounded by police. “We are really in fear.”
The Radical Camp’s followers argue, on their social-media accounts and in their literature, that the influx of Syrian refugees into Europe is part of a conspiracy driven by Jewish financiers, who are working with Communists in the European Union to bring Muslims into Europe, and with them, Shariah law and homosexuality.
The group has regularly held events to mark a 1936 pogrom against Jews. Its symbols were displayed on a banner that appeared over a bridge in Poznan, reading: “Pray for Islamic Holocaust.”
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was proven to be a fraud before the Holocaust happened yet Hitler and others believed it to be true because it stated the truth according to them (conspiracy theory logic). The Protocols were actually written by the Russian secret police yet 100 years later they are still believed by many.
RIP Gregg…
I have seen them a million times, every time was incredible, save for the last time. After they unceremoniously dismissed Dicky Betts, the music lacked a smoothness and spacy undertones that only Dicky could add.
When Dicky and newly added Derek Trucks (RIP Butch) traded licks on Elizabeth Reed or Mountain Jam, it was this subtle tickling of the spine that was mesmerizing. What struck me about Derek was not only his youth, but in his youth knowing when not to play. He could raise something to a crescendo and right before it gets grating he backs off…Unlike Carlos Santana who would fine that grating point and drill down…
Nope. Unfortunately, this is the new breed of authoritarianism in which you don’t need a curfew and jackbooted thugs in the streets. You’ve got the economy - with the economy booming (GDP tripled in the last 25 years), Crossfit/yoga classes, exotic vacations, chia lattes and Netflix, who’s supposed to fight this civil war? The middle and upper middle class voters?
People live to generalize from anecdotal evidence - and the majority of Poles see that their wages grow and that from a ridiculed nation that provided Western Europe with plumbers and contractors they went into an attractive destination for migrants (white and Christian), with over one million Ukrainians doing shitty jobs in Poland that the Poles themselves are now too rich to do.
So what if the government seems a little unhinged? Look at the economy. What if the’re banning abortions? The economy. What if they’re trampling the rule of law and destroying the independence of the judicial branch. The economy. With Russia at the doorstep and the EU migrant crisis, don’t we have something else to do that worry about some petty stuff. Nobody blew themselves up in Warsaw, that’s for sure.
This is the reasoning behind the proverbial frog being slowly cooked.
Well, the Law and Justice Party copied the Bannon playbook perfectly, ensuring that their positions are sufficiently vague (and often contradictory) that the entire rightwing spectrum as well as the religious voters can credibly claim their voice is being heard.
You want old school 1930s antisemitism harking back to the dictatorship of marshal Pilsduski? You’ll find enough outrageous statements to believe that’s what they’re after. You want a more religious vibe, a new Jerusalem, the bastion of Christendom and the last true beacon of European civilization defying the godless hordes from the East and West? Gotcha. Or maybe simply a no frills white-collar “I’m not a racist but” anti-refugee platform? Sure, why not. Or even straightforward nationalism. That as well. Everything to everyone, that’s their motto.
Sadly, this seems to be the favorite antisemitic trope of the alt-right, not confined to Poland. A few weeks back I took advantage of some unseasonably warm weather and trained at the local open air gym when a ginger haired Irishman struck up a conversation and after some small talk commended me (?) on how all kids in the nearby playground are white. After this he went full raj and explained how we mustn’t let the Jewish bankers flood Europe with Muslims and the “demographics is destiny” stuff.
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The polish nationalists get the worst press possible.
But the country is nothing like portrayed in the media.
Antisemitism is resurging because, frankly, Isreal projects power way beyond its weight class. It’s simply a natural backlash to the decisive actions of philosemitism and zioinism that shaped the last decades to a good amount.
It’s almost shameful how openly a minority can exploit their media monopoly and decide that any form of critique is intolerable.
Antisemitism is not resurging, it has continued to exist as it has for centuries. It’s just that periodically the antisemites get bold enough to openly publicize their ignorance. Your post is an example of this phenomenon.
What kind of ignorance I am suffering from?
Maybe you simply lack perspective.
The west enjoyed, after struggling with the bloc for so long and finishing strong in the 80s almost a generation of sheer, uncontested power. Such unbridled pax americana meant that culturally, nationalism was on its way out as everybody was busy partying. Now, we have to pick up the burning pieces everywhere.
Sadly enough, the world is a complex edifice of chaos. Things are in flux yet principles of causality can be discovered. I can’t say for sure in what direction our western culture will unfold into. But we can absolutely evince many maladies and syndromes of our corruption. I wish it was simpler and we could simply point fingers at a group. It doesn’t work that way. But there are absolutely groups that can be identified to have their own agenda and a common history.
Russia has a tumultuous history that most Americans don’t understand.But they DO understand from their guts, and rightly so, that wether hostile or not, it is at least a powerful empire with a very tangible agency that is by definition often cross with the US.
A dullard like you would have had no problem with me talking shit about Putin. Just mentioning rather plain facts about another people gets you agitated, however.
The phenomenon of antisemitism will not go away and hide under the mattress anymore because certain problems that could be waved away like annoying flies (“who cares if they run the banks, maybe they are just competent” and that idiot was me, too, btw) are now crashing the bedrock of our societies.
Just one example: Israel has an ethnostate that builds walls, meticulously researches the genome of its people, sterilizes african migrants it can’t deport, deports those it can to Europe as “refugees”, and pays its citizens handsomely to sniff out those it can’t find.
Yet almost all of them outside of Israel not only advocate but fight for a globalised world and for the destruction of the west.
With the internet and the media monopoy broken those issues will be addressed sooner or later. Because it’s not antisemitism but common sense.
Never mind him. He’s a 20 something know it all twat.
The new breed of leftist that doesn’t need to know anything to know that you are wrong. He doesn’t know it yet, but he’s actually the jack booted thug he complains about.
I’m sure you have a… solution.
Wow, an internet tough guy, how rare. Tell me how the Jews are the source of all of our problems.
And if we are going to be honest, I have to say that it’s obvious you are poorly educated and semiliterate. Are you American because it seems like English is your second language?