Five Questions That Could Help Us Understand What the Hell is Going On

(Week Ending September 27 Edition)

I have questions. There are things about the world I do not understand. Maybe you can help me answer them. Certainly, there are answers out there and we would be better off if we found them than if we continue to stumble along without them.

Note: There are always questions like this. This is just this week’s set of them. Well, some of them. I have lots of questions.

Here we go…

• The Israeli bombardment of Lebanon combined with the toll taken by the Israeli weaponization of Hezbollah pagers and walkie talkies has, as of this writing, brought the region to the brink of a wider regional war. Nearly 500 people are dead and roughly the same number are wounded. There are plenty of questions one could ask about all this. Like: Who’s are the suckers who believed the Israeli argument that they were “escalating to de-escalate” was more than just obfuscatory hoo ha? Or: What are the Israelis trying to achieve? Do they really think a series of strikes or even an all out war will make them safer? Has that ever worked in the past? But the biggest question of them all on my mind at the moment is: Why now? Why did the Israelis choose this moment to escalate? Is there a tactical or strategic reason? (My guess is no.) Or is it a distraction from the fact that the hostages are still in Gaza, we are no closer to a ceasefire thanks to Hamas and the Israeli government in roughly equal parts, and that Netanyahu has an appetite for crisis at the moment because it keeps him in office and it may have the secondary effect of negatively impacting the political chances of Kamala Harris (as Bibi is MAGA through and through). Or is there another reason?

• Mark Robinson has to be the vilest candidate since Donald Trump. Recent revelations have included that he has called himself a “black Nazi,” that if given the chance he would like to own slaves, and that he though Martin Luther King was a commie. Oh and there’s all the porn stuff too. He’s going to lose. He may lose by enough that he pulls down Trump’s totals in North Carolina to the point Trump loses there. But he remains on the ballot. He will be the candidate. He has resisted calls to step down. And Trump has not denounced him. Now, maybe that makes sense since as bad as Robinson is, his crimes and abuses and character flaws pale in comparison to those of the party’s felonious, traitorous, omnidisgusting leader and presidential nominee. A couple of Republicans have been critical of him. But the vast majority of Republicans have not. So, my question is, if the core of the MAGA movement are evangelicals, exactly what evangelical denomination in it that no longer believes in 10 commandments, the Bible, fundamental values or, and perhaps this is most important here, burning in hellfire for all eternity?

• A bunch of reporters and commentators are in high snit over the assertion that Kamala Harris is treating them like the cool kids used to treat them in high school which is to say she is ignoring them. They assert she is leaving key questions unanswered that only they have the capacity to ask. Setting aside for the moment that this is nonsense and that she has laid out a far more detail policy platform than her opponent…and that the whole thing is just a cry for attention or, on the part of the bozos who say this is making them sit on the fence in the choice between our competent capable VP and a serial criminal monster rapist…a question comes to my mind. As big questions go, shouldn’t these folks being asking why the Democratic nominee actually feels like she does not have to speak to many legacy media outlets? Is that a more important question and one that has changed the complexion of American politics? It could be that they are no longer relevant. It could be that they have squandered their credibility. But if they’re so keen on understanding this race (and their future career options) shouldn’t they figure this out?

• A good question was posed this morning on Twitter by Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic Policy and Research. He asked “Have there been any stories in any major media outlets describing what Donald Trump's plan to deport 10-20 million people might look like?” He noted in a separate Tweet that since this is Trump’s top policy proposal and one that could have a rather substantial social impact, legit media outlets ought to be doing deep dives into what it might look like. Not only would such deep dives (or even shallow dives) reveal that what Trump seeks would be impossible and illegal even trying to implement it would cause massive social unrest. 20 million people is one in 16 Americans. Every community in America would be impacted. Who would implement it? Who would decide who gets rounded up? What would we do with the millions who were rounded up while thousands upon thousands of court cases about their futures were adjudicated? What kind of social pushback would there be? What kind of violence? MAGA types like to cite an Eisenhower era precedent called “Project Wetback” (they probably like to cite it because it has a racist name). But while that program reportedly grabbed 1.3 million people, the real number according to experts is probably 300,000 or less and of those there is absolutely no data on how many actually made their way back into the U.S.

• I saw a piece this morning in a respectable publication trying to plumb the mysteries of what they called “MAGAnomics.” What they meant was things like the impossible but almost certainly bloody and inhumane round up of migrants cited above, the Trump tax—his tariff on all imported goods that would cost average folks thousands, his proposal to eliminate Fed independence, tax cuts for billionaires, etc. Why do editors and journalists think that presenting wild, impossible, dangerous, lunacy as if it were “policy” serves anyone but Trump? This is like suggesting that serial bank robbers are engaged in “aggressive” forms of wealth redistribution and alleviating social inequities. This is sophistry mixed with bad journalism and reckless judgement. Why?

Well that’s enough to get started. There will be more questions every day. Because, well, after all, we live in on a very odd planet at a really fraught moment and among us there are lots of folks whose actions defy easy explanation.