Leader Cannot Fail, He Can Only Be Betrayed

Almost as soon as America began its latest round of military strikes on Iran a sizable number of GOP officials have sought to frame Trump's decision as coming at the behest of Israel. From the outset, it seemed obvious to me why the GOP was taking this approach -- "it gives them a ready-made escape hatch if things go south".* It is impossible for Republicans concede that Trump did wrong. But it is possible to argue that he's been misled or betrayed. And so it struck me as inevitable that "[w]hen, in however many months/years, the GOP tries to run from this calamity, the line they will take about where they went astray will 100% be 'we were dragged into this by the Jews.'"

One should obviously read the Joe Kent resignation letter -- which contends that the Iran War (and the Iraq War, and America's intervention in Syria) all occurred at the behest of "Israel and its powerful American lobby" -- in this light. It gives Kent far too much credit to treat him as an isolationist naif who foolishly believed the "Donald the Dove" talk. Kent has no history of non-interventionism (he has a well-known history of bigotry and neo-Nazi associations). But as petroleum prices skyrocket, global trade routes are snarled, and the war labors under massive domestic unpopularity, the number of conservatives looking for a parachute is rapidly rising even as conspiratorial antisemitism is rapidly becoming the dominant force in conservative politics. Kent's resignation is not principle, it is opportunism -- he's looking for how best to flee his sinking ship.

But how can one do that, without committing the one absolutely unforgivable sin in conservative politics? Well, if one reads the letter, it is very careful not to blame Donald Trump. He is still wonderful. He is still a great man. Alas, he has been coaxed against his better judgment into this disaster by (((them))). They lie, they deceive, and Trump was caught in the middle. This framing was inevitable; it's the only way to metabolize viewing the war as a disaster while retaining the MAGA cult of personality. After all, if Trump is a God-like figure, who could possibly sway him off the righteous path other than those practiced in deicide?

And of course, what goes for his lackeys goes infinite for Trump. He will never admit error and misjudgment. There always must be someone else to blame. And Israel, for a host of reasons, makes for a very attractive "someone". We're already seeing a marked shift in Trump's tone on Israel, criticizing the latter's strike on the South Pars Gas Field in Iran. To my ears, that's laying groundwork. The worse things get, or the more this war gets blamed as an anchor on the economy or GOP polling numbers, the more we can expect to see Israel become the prime villain in a stabbed-in-the-back narrative. Anyone who thinks Trump is incapable of or even reluctant to turn on his erstwhile friend and ally isn't paying attention. As always, the notion that Israel would come out ahead in a world where liberal democratic values were supplanted by ethno-nationalist authoritarianism was fanciful.

None of this, to be clear, means that Israel shouldn't be accountable for its own choices. It also made a choice to go to war with Iran, and it can't hide from responsibility for the ensuing fallout. Israel is responsible for Israel's choices, and America is responsible for America's choices. But of course, the defining feature of MAGA-era conservativism is a complete and absolute refusal to take responsibility for anything. It must be someone else's fault. And when the time comes to stop claiming credit and start assigning blame, you can be very sure that Israel and those associated with it (i.e., Jews) will be top of the list. It can't go any other way.

* As I also observed, it is less clear -- by which I mean it is entirely clear -- why certain Democrats also acceded to this framing, as if the prospect that Donald Trump might make reckless warmongering decisions was some sort of bizarre anomaly only explicable via external intervention.

Portland: America's Last Bastion of Normalcy

In my congressional district, local media is now projecting that Janelle Bynum has ousted incumbent Republican Representative Lori Chavez-Deremer. As terrible as election day was on the whole, I am grateful that I'll be represented by a Democrat in Congress once again, and I'm glad my neighbors made the right choice in sending Bynum to Congress.

Meanwhile, across the river in Washington state, Democratic incumbent Marie Gluesenkamp Perez has won her rematch against Republican challenger Joe Kent. This was a result that thrills and honestly confuses me. Perez's 2022 victory over Kent was one of the night's bigger upsets, largely chalked up to Kent being basically a White supremacist. But clearly the lesson of 2024 is that that's no longer any object, and if you told me ahead of time that election night would see a broad-based "red shift" compared to 2020 I would have been dead certain that Perez was absolute toast. So why exactly did this nut crack? I don't have an answer to that,* and I acknowledge that Perez has annoyed Democratic leadership before. But she seems to have some ideas of how to present progressive priorities in a way that speaks outside of our current base (e.g., her championing of "right to repair" laws, or pairing student loan debt relief with "dollar-for-dollar ... investments in career [and] technical education"), and she is a voice worth paying attention to going forward.

Needless to say, both Bynum and Perez bucked a pretty terrible national trend. As most of the country embraced the chaos and the void, the single, solitary exception was the Pacific Northwest. Here, we rejected crude reflex and base instinct. And it's not just the local congressional races. In the Portland mayor's race, we didn't pick the woman who thinks the law doesn't apply to her just because she's "progressive", and we didn't pick the man who wants to execute the homeless because he promised "law and order". Our new mayor is going to be Keith Wilson, whose major appeal in the field, from my vantage point, is that he seemed like a normal, good guy making reasonable efforts to resolve the problems in front of our city. That shouldn't always be enough, but in the field we had it was better than all the alternatives.  In my city council district, I felt like we had a plethora of good candidates to choose from, and the three winners all were among my top six picks. Here too, I'm very happy with the choices offered and choices made, and none of them seem (yet, anyway) like kooks, cranks, or gadflies. I'm optimistic that they will be diligent and attentive public servants when they enter office, and again, that's not something I take for granted anymore.

It is, of course, quite off-brand for Portland to be America's avatar of normalcy. Locally, we're more used to embracing our "weird" identity, nationally, our reputation is something like that of a post-apocalyptic drag show. "Normal" is not historically our forte.

But for my part, I am so, so happy that this is the city my wife and I have chosen to build our life in and raise our child in. Portland is a great city. It is full of great people, great beauty, great resources, great activities, and great values. I'm under no illusions that anywhere, blue states included, will be "safe" in the coming years. But there are very few places I'd rather be than here, and if you're looking for a new place to call home, I'd encourage you to look our way.

* One thing I will say, and someone inundated with ads for the Perez/Kent race, is that Kent went 100% all-in on anti-trans fearmongering. The result was Perez likely expanding her margin of victory in an otherwise red wave year. Take from that what you will.