The Witness Chronicles January 17, 2024

Pragmatic perspectives on US politics, global issues, and climate change

Photo by Robert Gareth on Unsplash

Two pieces today, one on the Iowa caucuses and why they really don’t matter, a different view on reading the results. I also have a view on the situation in the China and east Asia region which may be getting lost in the frenzy over domestic politics.

But first, a reminder that this kind of writing requires a lot of time and, frankly, a lot of experience. I try to retain a sense of balance in an unbalanced world in my writing. As crazy as it seems, I remain a cautious optimist coming from an old school liberal POV. Not a lot of us out there.

If you find any value in this, I’d ask that you consider two actions. First, share and comment, especially sharing. Americans are experiencing news fatigue and I’m trying to encapsulate a lot of what I read and what I think might be going on.

The second action is to seriously consider supporting me and my work financially via a paid subscription. I won’t insult your intelligence by reminding you a monthly payment is no more than one coffee in a cafe. Instead I offer the opportunity to Buy Me A Coffee, which is really a crowdfunding site that makes it easy to support artists when you feel it.

Links below.

This year, 2024, is a momentous one both in the US and across the globe and we have a responsibility to witness what is going on and be involved, if only on a local level. That’s why this is called The Witness Chronicles. It’s my pleasure to have you as a reader.

Martin

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Did Iowa Matter? No. But There is Light at the End of This Tunnel

We now enter the endless dissection and analysis, ad nauseum

Political watchers are in for an exhausting year of speculation and silly data analysis on a microscopic scale, and it started last night at the Iowa Caucuses, an impossible event for the rest of the country to understand in a state that is far from representative of anything.

Much ado about nothing.

Yes, Trump won handily. So what? Did we expect anything different? He will be the Republican candidate in the 2024 presidential election, at least the candidate of the majority of Republicans who are choosing political apocalypse for their party.

Suppose he wins it all. The Republican Party will completely cease to exist, subsumed by a man whose ambitions have nothing to do with parties or conventional thinking. Certainly not by patriotism or reverence for democracy.

Or suppose he loses. Because in his mind that is simply not possible, he will continue his campaign of whining and crying and being the ultimate victim, for one reason: because it keeps him in the public eye. The man is an addict, a new kind of addict, or a very old one based on your reading of history.

He must be the center of attention, at any price. This is not news to anyone who has paid any attention to the arc of his life. 

In case you believe Trump is still somehow a part of the Republican Party, consider that he has agreed to none of their conditions for participation, has ignored debates because he does not need them, and has his own faction in the House of Representatives, the Freedom Caucus, who see themselves as warriors for Trump at any cost.

Including blocking any meaningful governing by the rest of their own Party. So where does this leave us now in the frigid days of January 2024?

With one strong party and two related but increasingly divided parties, a weak three party electorate. And this is a problem for both Trump and the GOP.

It has always been assumed a third party would put Trump in office by sucking moderate and independent voters away from Biden and the Democrats. It does not seem to have dawned on the geniuses that Trump might scare his own people into a kind of paralysis that seems destined to get worse as the year wears on.

Republicans voters are not all rabid MAGA, although in Trump’s mind they must be. Iowa is a state with few cities, none large, and Trump did not do well in those areas. Half of the caucus voters did not vote for Trump and that half are all Republicans in an extremely conservative state.

And no other candidate showed signs of breaking into a real competition with Trump. Haley and DeSantis basically split the rest because those voters had to vote for someone. They voted against someone instead.

Caucuses are a peculiarly public form of voting. Voters must attend discussion meetings in person, take stands, and then vote within their group. But the rest of the country voted in a way that is significantly different. It is private.

Think about a hypothetical couple, conservative and on the surface pro-life. They likely spend time with others like themselves who share their worldview. But imagine the woman in the couple isn’t so sure about abortion and the way it has been impressed on her by peer pressure.

When she gets into the voting booth, those peers are not there and she can do whatever she wants. And maybe she listens to her conscience and votes pro-choice.

It happened in Kansas, of all places, a red state bastion of conservatism. Those women voted in a referendum to block the state government from imposing a harsh abortion ban that essentially refuted women’s rights.

It wasn’t even close, which tells us that a lot of men, who might talk the talk in a group, privately had other beliefs. And in the privacy of the voting booth, expressed them.

As the year wears on and we are constantly exposed to the image of Donald Trump in courtrooms ranting, raving, and giving speeches, and his attorneys hatching stalling tactics, the glow may wear off. Trump himself is the source of this big problem for his party.

He has no self control. He will not stop his schtick and he will stomp any advisors who try to get him to stop. His legal team is a revolving door of lawyers who despite making money, eventually realize they have a client who won’t take their advice, even if it helps him.

The man did not get four federal felony indictments with 91 charges by following any sane advice, and in his mind he has no reason to believe he should do anything different.

So, we enter the actual election next week with New Hampshire primaries, another small population state but not one comparable to Iowa or the nation. It has no large or even medium cities, and the population is not dominated by those who call themselves evangelical Christians, even if they do not attend church, as in Iowa.

New Hampshire will ultimately mean little too but at least voters can vote their minds, not what they think others want them to do.

But watch the splits in the Republican Party. They do not represent a passion for Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis. They represent a fear and lack of respect for Trump.

And don’t forget the Democrats, who are showing a low key but impressive solidarity against Trump. For once they know that united they can win over a divided Republican/Trump Party.

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China, Taiwan, Japan, and North Korea

There are things bubbling over across the Pacific

Here in the US, the beginning of the primary season is sucking a lot of the air out of the room, with the remainder going to the Middle East’s burgeoning war. But there are things going on in Asia that deserve our attention in a global economy we depend on, for a lot of things.

Taiwan elected a new president who is widely seen as a strong advocate for continued independence. China’s Xi Jinping is tripling down on cleaning out corruption in the military and economy, strictly limiting any remaining freedoms and moving back to a pure authoritarian state dedicated to the military and his absolute power. Japan is investing far more in its military for the first time since losing WWII, with an eye directly upon China and North Korea.

To be clear, the Japanese build up is defensive as they see their region getting more active militarily.

And North Korea this week dropped any pretense of reunification with the South and said what we all know, that they seek dominance over the region.

On top of all this, both China and North Korea have serious long term economic issues. China’s economy is growing at its slowest pace in 23 years and the problems with huge markets like real estate have yet to really hit their real numbers and long term consequences. Korea has basically no economy outside of weapons trade with Russia, which has its own financial problems.

For many dictators like those in Korea and China, war looks like an economic solution. In China, Xi’s obsession with Taiwan seems to be driving all his actions, including a renewed effort to enforce an ideological state built on old and extremely unsuccessful Maoist dogma and a huge military build up.

It’s an understatement to say the region is unstable. At some point the US is going to have to choose whether to officially commit to Taiwanese independence, which seems inevitable but would be totally disruptive. But we have our own domestic battle brewing for democratic freedoms.

It appears that Japan is gearing up to defend its own waters and outlying islands if war starts to break out and with their buildup, two opposing blocs are forming, Taiwan, US, and Japan on one side, China and North Korea on the other.

Smaller Southeast Asian nations are gradually aligning with one bloc or the other.

The crazy thing is that these countries are all interlinked economically, and those links are critical to each economy. The two largest economies on the planet are on each side. Yet they are each dependent on the other.

It seems that Xi in China and Kim in N. Korea are not dealing with the economic reality of all this sword rattling. Any aggression could shut down their outside connections with the world and they are in no place to handle existence without outside resources.

It’s not a small issue. People are starving in North Korea, and China is importing food, much of it from nations that might cut them off with sanctions if they start a conflict. Like the entire planet, they are experiencing environmental catastrophes on a huge scale, including flooding, typhoons, drought, and fires.

Ironically, China is also facing a shrinking population as their poor economy, lack of jobs, and increasing autocracy keep their people from even thinking about having families. In North Korea there is speculation that their birth rates are stagnant, in part because severely malnourished mothers often cannot have children, even when forced to try.

Japan has similar population problems with a population heavily skewed to the elderly, empty housing, and younger people not having children.

In the long run, a shrinking global population should help us fight climate change. But in poorer countries, children are assets that can be put to work to help grow the economy over time. 

Here in the US we learned, belatedly, during the pandemic, just how interrelated our economy was with that of China and Asia in general. Shutdowns there meant major disruptions in our supply chains and US manufacturers began to realize the extent of intellectual property theft being carried out on a nationalized scale.

Biden wisely pushed through the bipartisan Chip Act that stripped China of access to advanced semiconductors and invested hundreds of billions in moving chip manufacturing and other critical tech back to the US. 

Only a decade ago, when Xi was first consolidating personal political power, China was still growing rapidly, was becoming a more open society, and had a capitalist layer that was allowed to do business with the west without so many restrictions.

But that led to widespread speculation, especially in real estate, and the corresponding corruption that goes with easy money, and an economic castle made of sand, which eventually collapsed. Xi does not seem to understand modern economies and takes a collective approach to planning, an approach which failed miserably in the last century.

My topic this year as an opinion writer and observer is to witness the events of this pivotal year, 2024, and try to see what the world might look like if the dust ever clears. Right now there is so much instability politically and economically, across the globe that doing so is virtually impossible.

And there is a card in the deck that none of these players are seriously dealing with, an existential challenge, global climate change. We are essentially at the 1.5 degree C warming threshold we hoped to hold off till 2030 (a wholly made up goal likely pushed by oil and gas interests to stall change) and it is barely 2024.

No one gets a pass from Mother Nature, regardless of economic or military power. We can’t fight climate bombs nor can we buy our way out of harm.

What we can do here in the West is move away from corrupt authoritarianism and elect leaders who don’t pretend we can shut off the world. We all live in the same sealed system and it is obvious that events and choices made on the other side of the planet have immediate and major effects here.

Foreign policy isn’t about us vs them, it’s about working together in the face of shared potential for global destruction. Unfortunately regimes built on autocratic leadership don’t lend themselves to dealing with the global problems we face today, existential problems.

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