I don't mean "oops, I locked my keys in my car because I'm frazzled and having a chaotic day, so I call myself stupid," stupidity. No, I mean, "wow, the airbag light in my car just flashed, so I think I'll test the airbag by driving as fast as possible into a brick wall," stupidity.
I mean STUPID with a capital S, and all the rest of those letters. Darwin Award-worthy stupidity.
OK, so I write this pretentious, little blog. In my real life, I'm, like, a political science professor. They pay me to give lectures, write books, 'n shit. Weird, right? What kind of political scientist am I? I am a game theorist. Game theory is a subfield of economics, actually. It is an application of "rational choice theory," in which we begin with the premise that individuals are "rational actors" who make decisions that maximize their utility based on their circumstances and expectations of what others will do, and some fucking shit about "equilibrium" and blah, fucking, blah. You don't care about that. The thing about game theory is, um, it doesn't tend to work all that well with stupid people. Stupid people will do stupid things, and not maximize their utilities.
Days like today make me wonder what the hell I'm doing with my life.
Aside from drinking coffee and typing into the void... At least coffee provides meaning, right? See? I'm not a nihilist.
So here we are. The government is entering a "shutdown." Meaning what? Appropriations have run out. Congress hasn't appropriated more money, with presidential approval, so federal workers can't be paid. Furloughs. Starting with the least-essential, people don't show up for work, and the longer it goes on, the more the cuts get to the bone, etc. Read the more elaborate descriptions elsewhere.
Why is this happening? Because Donald J. Trump is very, very stupid.
A few days ago, I wrote a brief comment about the Trump Foundation, and the fact that Trump is the most corrupt politician in American history, by far. The easiest way to put his corruption in perspective is to think about how much you have forgotten, and how bad that stuff is. However, his corruption is also so egregious that it can be easy to forget that he is also, as I have pointed out before in these specific terms, the dumbest motherfucker in political history.
A few brief reminders on shutdowns. First, you "win" a shutdown by getting the other side to take the blame. Donald Trump insisted that he wanted the blame in the meeting with Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Useless Dipshit. On camera. Dumbest motherfucker in political history. Second, if you want to get something out of a shutdown, you need to be willing to deal. Trump refuses to deal. Dems offered wall funding for DACA a while back, and Trump said no, despite claiming he wanted DACA written into statutory law, and wall funding. The whole point for Trump is to get something for nothing, which makes victory impossible. You need to give the other side a way to agree, if you want to win. And finally, timing. When your side is about to lose a chamber of Congress is not when you have leverage.
So, why did this happen? Basically, Fox News and the rest of the conservative media called Trump a pussy. Remember that line from the 2016 campaign about how it would be a bad thing to have a president you can bait with a tweet? To quote Buckaroo Banzai, wherever you go, there you are. Here we are.
OK, so what happens? Here are the theoretical possibilities:
1) Trump caves. He does this a lot. Why? Fox News and the conservative commentators are basically right. Trump is just a loud-mouth who can't back anything up.
2) McConnell uses "the nuclear option" to let the Senate pass "wall" funding without any Democratic votes.
3) Senate Democrats cave and vote for Trump's stupid, fucking, bullshit "wall" funding.
Let's keep in mind that we are a couple of weeks away from a new House of Representatives. That affects the dynamic here, and is part of why Trump is being so fucking stupid about this. McConnell has indicated that he doesn't want to go Number 2. Ever wonder about that look on his face? He just doesn't want to go Number 2. He has said so.
He has very little time to change his mind in a way that would matter because once Nancy Pelosi gets the gavel in the House, and a new Congress starts, it doesn't matter. The House would have to pass Trump's stupid, fucking wall funding again, and that wouldn't happen. So, McConnell holds it in for a couple more weeks to preserve what remains of the filibuster for when the Democrats get a majority in that chamber (he has his eye on the future, and fully intends to filibuster everything), because he doesn't give a shit about the wall. See how that (metaphor) works? Nuclear option, getting rid of the legislative filibuster, always and forever, just so that Trump can get a few scraps of a fake wall? No. McConnell won't do that. There isn't enough to gain. If he thought that the stakes were banning abortion entirely, now and forever, would he do it? Maybe. For a symbolic stunt like this? No fucking way. There's no payoff. Mitch is smart.
That brings us to 1 and 3. A battle of stupidity. OK, so remember that the Senate Democrats are currently led by a gentleman to whom I refer as "Useless Dipshit." Senator Useless Dipshit (D-NY). I do not respect that man. So, is it possible that enough Senate Democrats peel off and vote for Trump's stupid, fucking wall because the caucus is "led" by Useless Dipshit? I doubt it. I don't think even he can fuck this up. I could be wrong, but even that guy isn't incompetent enough to snatch defeat from the jaws of this victory. Of course, these are the Democrats we are discussing, so...
The issue is that Senators don't really need leaders that much. Who might peel off? Manchin? Maybe. McCaskill might have done it if she were sticking around, likewise Heitkamp, but having lost, they no longer have incentives to play nice with Donny. This gets into a tricky area of research-- the retirement effect. Legislators who retire, lose, whatever... their voting patterns don't tend to change that much after they no longer face electoral pressure. But they do change a little. If McCaskill or Heitkamp were sticking around, I'd say there was a slight chance of them flipping, but now? That chance goes from low to zero. That's what I mean by a little effect.
But even then, where would the GOP go? There was no way they'd get to 60, regardless of how useless and shit-dipped the Democratic "leader" of the Senate is. Not on a demand for wall funding with nothing in return, which Trump won't offer because the whole point is to show Fox News that he's not a pussy. And if any of them did start getting twitchy, Nancy Pelosi would come in, and start kicking ass. What power does she have in the Senate? Formally, none, but she's just that badass.
That leaves 1. Trump and Number 1. It'll happen, on video, and Putin won't be able to suppress it. Why? Because McConnell won't abandon the filibuster for something that doesn't matter to him, and the GOP won't find enough Democrats to get to 60 when Trump demanded the blame for a shutdown.
Trump will cave. He got baited into it. Because he's fucking stupid.
It is that very same stupidity, combined with arrogance in a perfect Dunning-Kruger shitstorm that led to Mattis stepping down in a way that has terrified the world.
Yes, the President of the United States is stupid. And that is why the government is in partial shutdown. That is why the Secretary of Defense resigned in protest, in a way that set the world on edge.
Stupidity is dangerous. Stupidity is why we are in a trade war, which is part of the reason the markets are in turmoil. Stupidity has destroyed one of the two major political parties in the United States. Stupidity is infecting the other party, too. (I'm planning tomorrow's post on stupidity in the Democratic Party, but events may get in the way. I've had something planned for a while...)
Fermi's Paradox. How big is the universe? How many opportunities are there for life to evolve? How many opportunities are there for advanced civilizations to develop, given all of that? Now, have we encountered any? No. No conspiratorial bullshit about alien abductions, or any of that on this blog. Science only on The Unmutual Political Blog, as compelling as Lyndon LaRouche occasionally is. Fermi's Paradox is the supposed mathematical contradiction between the number of advanced civilizations that can be estimated to exist in the universe and our inability to find them.
One possible answer to Fermi is that the intelligence required to develop technology that would make a civilization detectable would also allow a civilization to destroy itself. What will it take for humanity to, if not wipe itself from the earth, set itself so far back as to be nothing more than some wisps of evanescent signals? Blink and you miss them, on the grand, cosmic scale? Climate change, antibiotic resistant bacteria... some fucking moron president who decides that if he doesn't nuke someone, Fox News will call him a pussy?
Yes, it's a gloom-and-doom post. The shutdown is basically meaningless, in the scheme of things. Trump will cave. He is a pathetically stupid, little thing who will be forced to back down. That frustration, though, will only grow as Nancy Pelosi takes the gavel of the House of Representatives. James Mattis will no longer be in the Cabinet as any kind of a check on Trump's worst impulses. One can legitimately ask whether or not we should stay involved in Syria. I truly have no opinion on that, and while I know for a fact that Trump made the decision on impulse, with no thought whatsoever, I could make a logical case for what he did.
Stupidity, though, is real. And a danger. A few federal workers won't get a paycheck because little Donny Trump wants to show Fox News how bigly his hands are. That's minor. What is a big deal is the unfathomable stupidity that leads a person to make such a decision.
And he is the most powerful person in the world.
Given the structure of my music posts, I don't get to use one of my favorite musicians very often. Here's some bonus music. Richard Thompson with "Mr. Stupid."