Brothers Judd Blog

If two New Hampshire men aren't a match for the Devil, we might as well give the country back to the Indians. -Stephen Vincent Benet (1898-1943)

Anglospherics

Identitarianism

INCOMPETENCE IS THE SOURCE:

Identity Politics as Ersatz Religion: a review of American Awakening: Identity Politics and Other Afflictions of Our Time By Joshua Mitchell ( Jeffrey Folks, 12/24/23, University Bookman)

As Mitchell sees it, there is only one path back from the “debilitating pathology” of identity politics. It is for a community of thoughtful individuals to build, or rebuild, a society of honest “face-to-face” relationships and a “politics of competence,” and thereby restore a society in which individuals are judged on virtue, merit, and conduct rather than affiliation with one or more distinct identity groups. In this view, the rehabilitation of society depends on the actions of well-intentioned individuals to oppose identity politics in the public space…

The author probes deeply into the pseudo-religious origins of identity politics, and he demonstrates convincingly how widely this new ideology has spread across American society and Western society in general. An important point in Mitchell’s argument is that identity politics exists only in those societies that were once Christian but where Christian belief has lapsed, thus demonstrating that identity politics is in fact an ersatz form of religious scapegoating. Also important is the insight that, unlike Christianity, in which believers achieve forgiveness of sin through the intercession of the scapegoat figure, in identity politics the grievances of self-proclaimed victims can never be resolved. The model of Civil Rights protest has been hijacked and applied to a seemingly endless series of complaints, all of which obtain relief at the expense of some other group, only in time to be scapegoated by some other complainant. It goes without saying that the endgame of identity politics is an authoritarian society in which each identity group competes for recognition and relief, and in which the social cohesion that Tocqueville once highlighted as a crucial element of American democracy is replaced by distrust, isolation, and competition.

It is precisely the failure of personal “virtue, merit, and conduct” that drives such folk to submerge themselves in group Identity and victimization.

Dragon Has No Teeth

AND RUNNING OUT OF PEOPLE:

China’s Economic Engine Is Running Out of Fuel (YI FUXIAN, 12/22/23, Project Syndicate)

[H]owever appealing to China’s leaders Lin’s economic forecasts may be, they have proved wildly wrong, not least because they fail to account for China’s bleak demographic outlook. Both a higher median age and a higher proportion of people over 64 are negatively correlated with growth, and on both points, China is doing far worse than the three countries to which Lin compares it.

When Germany’s GDP per capita was equivalent to 22.6% that of the US, its median age was 34. In Japan and South Korea, the median age was just 24. After those 16 subsequent years of strong growth, the median age in the three countries stood at 35, 30, and 32, respectively. Contrast that with China, where the median age was 41 in 2019, and will reach 49 in 2035.

Likewise, at the beginning of the 16-year period to which Lin refers, the proportion of people over 64 in Germany, Japan, and South Korea was 8%, 5%, and 4%, respectively; at the end, it stood at 12%, 7%, and 7%. In China, that proportion was 13% in 2019 and will be 25% in 2035. In the 16 years after the proportion of people over 64 reached 13% in Germany (in 1966) and Japan (in 1991), these economies’ average annual growth was only 2.9% and 1.1%, respectively.

Moreover, in Germany, Japan, and South Korea, the labor force (aged 15-59) began to decline in the 12th, 38th, and 31st years after their per capita GDP equaled 22.6% that of the US. China’s began to decline in 2012.

If one imagines China’s economy as an airplane, the 1978 launch of the policy of reform and opening up would have been what ignited the fuel – the young workers – that enabled the economy to take off and fly at high speeds for three decades. But, in 2012, the fuel began to run low, causing the plane to decelerate.

Instead of adjusting to their new reality, the Chinese authorities – heeding the advice of economists like Lin – continued to lean on the throttle by investing heavily in real estate, thereby creating a massive property bubble.

Republican Liberty

THANKS, MITCH!:

Brett Kavanaugh Could Strike Killer Blow Against Donald Trump (Ewan Palmer, 12/21/23, Newsweek)

In a 7-2 vote, the Supreme Court said that former Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.’s office can be allowed to request Trump’s financial records as part of an investigation into the former president’s real estate company, The Trump Organization.

“Pop quiz: Which sitting SCOTUS justice wrote this in a 2020 case? ‘In our system of government, as this Court has often stated, no one is above the law. That principle applies, of course, to a President,'” Vance posted.

“Would it stun you to learn the answer is…Brett Kavanaugh, concurring in the judgment, in then-Manhattan DA Cy Vance’s bid for Trump’s tax and financial papers?”

No. The Federalist Society is conservative, not MAGA.

Dragon Has No Teeth

YOU WOULD BE TOO IF AMERICA WERE ILLIBERAL:

Why are so many young Chinese depressed? (Nancy Qian, 12/21/23, the Strategist)

China’s high youth unemployment rate and increasingly disillusioned young people—many of whom are ‘giving up’ on work—have attracted much attention from global media outlets and Chinese policymakers. The standard narrative is to associate the problem with the country’s recent growth slowdown. In fact, the issue goes much deeper.

The rise of youth depression has been decades in the making, and owes much to China’s rigid education system, past fertility policies and tight migration restrictions.

Israel/Palestine

THERE’S A REASON SO MANY JOURNALISTS HAVE BEEN KILLED:

The case of al-Shifa: Investigating the assault on Gaza’s largest hospital (Louisa Loveluck, Evan Hill, Jonathan Baran, Jarrett Ley and Ellen Nakashima, December 21, 2023, Washington Post)

But the evidence presented by the Israeli government falls short of showing that Hamas had been using the hospital as a command and control center, according to a Washington Post analysis of open-source visuals, satellite imagery and all of the publicly released IDF materials. That raises critical questions, legal and humanitarian experts say, about whether the civilian harm caused by Israel’s military operations against the hospital — encircling, besieging and ultimately raiding the facility and the tunnel beneath it — were proportionate to the assessed threat.

The Post’s analysis shows:

The rooms connected to the tunnel network discovered by IDF troops showed no immediate evidence of military use by Hamas.


None of the five hospital buildings identified by Hagari appeared to be connected to the tunnel network.

There is no evidence that the tunnels could be accessed from inside hospital wards.

Israel/Palestine

WELCOME HOME, MR. PRESIDENT:

Reports: Hamas seeks release of Marwan Barghouti in any hostage deal (MEMO, December 22, 2023)

Barghouti, 64, a member of Fatah’s Central Committee, is most favoured to chair the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA), according to Palestinian opinion polls.

He was arrested by Israel in 2002 and handed five life sentences.

Barghouti “can change the face of the Palestinian Authority,” the newspaper said. Despite his imprisonment, Barghouti enjoys strong support and has been able to affect events on the ground in the occupied West Bank.

Republican Liberty

THE TEXT IS A STUBBORN TASKMASTER:

How Gorsuch made the case for banning Trump from the ballot (LISA NEEDHAM, DEC 21, 2023, Public Notice)
·

The Colorado Republican State Central Committee (CRSCC) intervened in the lawsuit, arguing that any determination about Trump’s qualifications to be on the ballot interfered with the party’s First Amendment right of association to choose its candidates. However, putting aside the whole insurrection issue, the United States Constitution sets out several conditions that have to be met for a person to be qualified to run for president. You must be a “natural born citizen,” at least 35, and have lived in the United States for at least 14 years. The CRSCC’s position, the Colorado Supreme Court pointed out, would allow them to place anyone on the ballot even if they didn’t meet these constitutional qualifications.

Trump also tried to argue that he is not barred from running for office because he’s an insurrectionist but only from holding office as an insurrectionist. This is absurd on its face, and the Colorado Supreme Court was able to dispose of that argument thanks to Justice Neil Gorsuch.

Really.

Back in 2012, Gorsuch was a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. In that capacity, he wrote the panel opinion in Hassan v. Colorado. Hassan, a naturalized citizen, sued Colorado, arguing it was required to put him on the presidential ballot even though he was not a natural-born citizen and was therefore not constitutionally qualified to run for president. The Tenth Circuit ruled against him, with Gorsuch writing that states have “a legitimate interest in protecting the integrity and practical functioning of the political process” and that because of that, they can “exclude from the ballot candidates who are constitutionally prohibited from assuming office.” It’s that quote that makes its way into the Colorado Supreme Court opinion.

End of History Latin America

THANKS, GUS!:

Why Chile Couldn’t Bury Neoliberalism (Juan David Rojas & Geoff Shullenberger, December 19, 2023, Compact)

Chile’s aborted attempt to rewrite its constitution is a cautionary tale for all of those seeking a radical break—whether from the right or from the left—with the “end-of-history” consensus known as neoliberalism.

Until 2019, Chile was regarded as the pinnacle of Latin American development and a testament to the benefits of free-market economics. To be sure, the model erected by Pinochet and the Chicago Boys—the University of Chicago-trained economists tasked with implementing a radical overhaul of the economic order—eventually restored Chile’s macroeconomic stability following the inflationary chaos unleashed under Salvador Allende’s socialist government. This stabilization allowed the country to attract investment and achieve impressive rates of growth. But the reforms also brought about catastrophically high unemployment, which would have been difficult to sustain under democratic rule. Eventually, the resulting discontent led many Chileans to vote against keeping Pinochet in power in the 1988 referendum that ended his rule.

The irony is that the fruits of the Chicago Boys’s neoliberal reforms came mainly under the stewardship of Pinochet’s democratic successors. After two decades of political turmoil and economic pain under Allende and Pinochet, Chile witnessed an economic boom in the 1990s thanks to high commodity prices. Democratically elected presidents also secured trade deals that had previously eluded the pariah dictatorship. GDP growth averaged 7 percent a year, and per capita GDP doubled by 2010—the year Chile became the first South American country to join the OECD.

The biggest problem with neoliberalism is that, singularly, it works. Yopu can’t have a clash of civilizations when there is only one.

Sovereignty Uncategorized

KURDISTAN IS A NATION:

Revisiting the Erasure of Kurdish Identity in Syria: Growing up as a Kurd in the country was a scarring experience for children that included the denial of one’s own name (Ronahi Hasan, December 20, 2023, New/Lines)

The Kurdish people, estimated at 45 million by the Kurdish Institute of Paris, have never recognized what they consider the artificial boundaries that divide them across four nation-states — Syria, Iraq, Iran and Turkey — and have struggled to form an independent state of their own since the Sykes-Picot Agreement in 1916.

Under this agreement, western Kurdistan was definitively separated from northern Kurdistan and became part of the newly formed state of Syria. These changes made Kurds in Syria the largest non-Arab ethnicity. The Kurds hoped for a degree of freedom and coexistence in modern Syria. What came instead was the opposite: Successive Syrian governments, under the direction of the Baath Party, have continued their cruel treatment of the Kurds.

Kurds have a distinct culture, language (Kurdish) with many dialects, and history. We have a rich cultural heritage, with unique traditions in music, dance, clothing and cuisine. While the majority of Kurds are Sunni Muslims, there are also Kurdish communities that practice Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Yarsanism, Yazidism, Alevism and Judaism.

Kurdish society places a high value on hospitality, honor and tribal ties, and extended families often live in close-knit communities. The Kurds have a complex history marked by periods of autonomy and resistance against various ruling powers.

The Kurdish problem stands as one of the most intractable and enduring conflicts in the Middle East, perhaps even in the world. Kurds remain politically, culturally and economically ghettoized within the boundaries of Turkey, Iran, Syria and, until recently, Iraq. While the Kurds in Iraq have achieved far-reaching self-rule in the Kurdistan Region, whose autonomy was written into Iraq’s constitution in the post-Saddam Hussein era, even Kurds in Iraq still face an uncertain future, as issues like the future status of Kirkuk and other disputed territories remain unresolved.

“Li ser xeta” and “le bin xeta” are two Kurdish phrases rooted in our minds. Kurds in Syria call the Kurdish regions in Turkey “li ser xeta,” which means above the line; that is, north of the Syria-Turkey border. By the same token, we call the Kurdish areas in Syria “le bin xeta,” meaning below the line. We grew up using these two phrases to protect our sense of belonging and to reject what we consider the artificial lines that divide our land.

The most important fact about the Israel/Palestine conflict is that it is not distinct.

Russia

THERE IS NO BEAR IN THE WOODS:

The Russian Air Force Is Dying a Slow and Painful Death in Ukraine (Peter Suciu, 12/18/23, National Interest)

Russia saw two of its jets lost in just 24 hours over the past weekend, including one that was reported to have been shot down by its own forces in the skies over Ukraine.

Since launching its unprovoked war against Ukraine nearly two years ago, the Russian military has seen a significant number of combat aircraft lost in the fighting. The most recent aircraft destroyed included a Sukhoi Su-34 fighter bomber that was targeted on the ground at a Russian air base in an early morning raid on Sunday. Later that same day, a Sukhoi Su-25 fighter jet was shot down over the Zaporizhia region in eastern Ukraine on Sunday per Business Insider.

Kyiv claimed it wasn’t responsible for the downing of the latter aircraft.

“I can confidently state that it was not the Ukrainian air defense that shot down the Russian Su-25 attack aircraft! These were clearly the coordinated actions of Russian anti-aircraft troops, for which the entire Ukrainian people sends them great thanks!,” Mykola Oleshchuk, Commander of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said in a post on the social messaging app Telegram.

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