News Story of the Day: Well, despite being surrounded by war hawks, it seems President Donald Trump’s pledge to exit Syria is coming to fruition. Various reports, citing officials on the ground, suggested that the U.S. has started the process of withdrawing troops and hardware from the country, only a few weeks the White House made the announcement.
This will certainly perturb the left and the neoconservatives.
Good Trump!
Chart of the Day: The U.S. labor market has been roaring since President Trump entered the Oval Office. Amid tax cuts, regulatory reforms, and a pro-business environment, companies are increasing the number of workers and a growing number of Americans are re-entering the workforce. Right now, the biggest hurdle for firms is filling open positions.
Here is a chart that looks at last year’s U.S. job market:
Illustration of the Day: This is a great message for new parents out there:
Quote of the Day: Glenn Greenwald writes about the alliance between the left and neoconservatives (something that has been well documented in the era of Trump):
While Democrats were more or less evenly divided early last year on whether the U.S. should continue to intervene in Syria, all that changed once Trump announced his intention to withdraw, which provoked a huge surge in Democratic support for remaining. “Those who voted for Democrat Clinton now said by a 42-point margin that the U.S. had a responsibility to do something about the fighting in Syria involving ISIS,” she wrote, “while Trump voters said by a 16-point margin that the nation had no such responsibility” (similar trends can be seen among GOP voters, whose support for intervention in Syria has steadily declined as Trump moved away from his posture of the last two years – escalating bombing in both Syria and Iraq and killing far more civilians, as he repeatedly vow to do during the campaign – to his return to his other campaign pledge to remove troops from the region).
This is, of course, not the first time that Democratic voters have wildly shifted “beliefs” based on the party affiliation of the person occupying the Oval Office. The party’s base spent the Bush/Cheney years denouncing War on Terror policies such as assassinations, drones and Guantanamo as moral atrocities and war crimes, only to suddenly support those policiesonce they became hallmarks of the Obama presidency.
But what’s happening here is far more insidious. A core ethos of the anti-Trump #Resistance has become militarism, jingoism, and neoconservatism. Trump is frequently attacked by Democrats using long-standing Cold War scripts wielded for decades against them by the Far Right: Trump is insufficiently belligerent with U.S. enemies; he’s willing to allow the Bad Countries to take over by bringing home U.S. soldiers; his efforts to establish less hostile relations with adversary countries is indicative of weakness or even treason.
At the same time, Democratic policy elites in Washington are once again formally aligning with neoconservatives even to the point of creating joint foreign policy advocacy groups (a reunion that pre-dated Trump). The leading Democratic Party think tank, the Center for American Progress, donated $200,000 to the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute and has multi-level alliances with warmongering institutions. By far the most influential liberal media outlet, MSNBC, is stuffed full of former Bush/Cheney officials, security state operatives and agents, while even the liberal stars are notably hawkish (a decade ago, long before she went as far down the pro-war and Cold Warrior rabbit hole which she now occupies, Rachel Maddow heralded herself as a “national security liberal” who is “all about counterterrorism”).
All of this has resulted in a new generation of Democrats, politically engaged for the first time as a result of fears over Trump, being inculcated with values of militarism and imperialism, trained to view once-discredited, war-loving neocons such as Bill Kristol, Max Boot and David Frum and former CIA and FBI leaders as noble experts and trusted voices of conscience. It’s inevitable that all of these trends would produce a party that is increasingly pro-war and militaristic, and polling data now leaves little doubt that this transformation – which will endure long after Trump is gone – is well under way.
Tweet of the Day: Good question!
How many times does John Bolton have to be publicly repudiated and humiliated before he resigns? https://t.co/iPKN3lLzSc
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) January 11, 2019
Video of the Day: If you didn’t see it on ECN a couple of years ago, then we will report this superb Learn Liberty video that takes a look at marginal tax rates in the 1950s and 1960s. This is an insightful clip.
Leave a Comment