MWI Weekly 9.23.2022
This week: Trump in court, Putin’s problems, hacking China and a matter of faith. And . . . swipe right?
After reviewing our metrics, it's become clear the Friday delivery day is best for our weekly newsletters. So, we're going to continue to send them out on the last day of the week going forward. We're also going to continue posting the General Newsletter to our social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
We've also gotten some significant and valuable feedback on the format. For some recipients, the images and graphics cause the emails to load slowly or improperly (it all depends on the email clients they use, as well as their security software). For that reason, we're going to go back to the "clean" style we used for most of the summer.
To be honest, it's a little easier on the eyes, and easier to work with on the production end, too.
As to timing, most recipients are opening them later in the day, often in the evening, or even over the weekend. We're sending this one out in the early morning time slot we've been using, but starting next week we'll send them out around 2 p.m. ET on Friday afternoon, give or take.
Hopefully, all that amounts to the most user-friendly way of going about it. As always, any feedback or suggestions are more than welcome. Simply email me at my director's email address if you have anything to let us know about, any comments or contributions, or anything to say at all. We look forward to hearing from you.
Now . . . I wonder if anything big happened this week . . .
Chaos the Magnificent
Well, now wasn't that a silly question.
As much as I wish we could simply ignore him (or better yet, he'd just go away), there's no avoiding the Trump Saga as it enters yet another phase. Which I'm sure is exactly the way he likes it; the former president is nothing if not from the "no publicity is bad publicity" school (something he may be regretting at this point).
But no matter. We can't simply wish away the mess he's gotten us into (which more than a few people saw coming) in this extended sequel to his four seasons as the star of Celebrity President. So, it's probably better to just deal with it. Besides, the issues we're facing are becoming increasingly fundamental -- which is unsurprising, given the amount of authority and discretion we've invested in the office he once held.
We have an upcoming piece from founding member Hank Thayer on our Members Blog addressing some of the questions surrounding fascism, totalitarianism and authoritarianism which we'll post this weekend. Hank does a good job of looking at the issues from an historical perspective, so check for it (I'll include it in next week's newsletter, too).
For today, I'd rather look at the action in the courts. Needless to say, it hasn't been pretty for the ex-president.
On Tuesday, the special master his own legal team recommended basically took them to the torch, politely, and then on Thursday filed an order requiring Trump's lawyers to formally disclose which documents they believed the FBI may have planted. Essentially, he told them to put up or shut up.
In between, a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit likewise incinerated Judge Aileen Cannon's original opinion, although the scope of their jurisdiction in the case, and their ruling, were limited to the question of classified documents. They did the work judges are supposed to do, methodically applying the relevant case law and constitutional principles and coming to what can only be described as the only correct decision.
Now, to be clear, for the most part Trump's travails are his own problem (we're not even going to get into his business issues in New York). To us Whigs, the important takeaway is how well the courts have functioned in dealing with the law and the Constitution in these matters, notwithstanding Judge Cannon's handling of the case. It's been remarkable, and heartening.
It's also been incredibly fast. Judge Dearie immediately set some aggressive deadlines for handling his side of the matter, holding his first hearing within days -- one which he handled with his own particular brand of "responsible dispatch" -- and getting things firmly on track in just 44 minutes. For their part, the 11th Circuit came down with a comprehensive, fully reasoned 29-page opinion just 24 hours after Trump's lawyers filed their final brief.
In other words, they're not playing around.
They're also not playing favorites. News stories always seem to point out, unfairly, which president appointed which judge, something it's fair to assume Trump (and a lot of other people) believed would have some significance. In the case of Judge Cannon, they may be right. But for the most part -- and this is true throughout the vast majority of the federal judiciary -- and leaving the obvious questions of judicial and political philosophy aside, it's been nothing but professionalism all the way through.
And that's incredibly important. Ultimately, it's the province of the courts to say what the law is. They're the last stop. If they are as partisan and politicized as the two elected branches of government (we'll discuss the Supreme Court as a political actor elsewhere) we're in very serious trouble. At least for now, they're proving they're not. And that means the vitally important role the courts play in holding chaos at bay remains intact.
It's a state of affairs we should be desperately determined to maintain.
How Do You Say Escape (It's побег)
Meanwhile, speaking of chaos and desperation, trouble of another kind is brewing in Russia. With his offensive not only stalled, but reeling, Putin suddenly finds himself short of manpower. So effective has the Ukrainian resistance been, and so inept has Russian leadership, tactics and strategy proven to be, losses on the front have been nothing short of catastrophic.
How catastrophic, we can't be sure as we peer through the proverbial fog of war. But we know they're bad enough for Putin to have ordered a "partial mobilization" of 300,000 reservists to replenish the ranks. And it's not going over well.
It's also not likely to do much to help him win his war. As the good people at ISW/Critical Threats point out, even as the Ukrainians have largely paused (likely they planned to, and are just winding up to throw another punch), Russian forces have proven utterly incapable of retaking the initiative, let alone any of the conquered territory they've lost -- which amounts to almost all their gains since March:
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 22 | Critical Threats
None of which is lost on the Russian people themselves, especially the men aged 18 to 60 who are subject to the callup. Their interest, unsurprisingly, in becoming cannon fodder in the Donbas is exactly zero. Which has led many of them to make the very intelligent choice to get out while they can, any way they can, before they get nabbed and thrust into an underequipped, undertrained, poorly led unit and sent to Ukraine to die.
And the Russian units are, by all accounts, all of those things. It's a marked contrast to our own military, which puts a premium on the lives of our soldiers and organizes our forces accordingly. We put an emphasis on technological superiority and effective maintenance. We train relentlessly in the art and science of combined arms warfare. We have an all-volunteer force of committed citizens serving their country of their own volition. And we have a highly educated, highly skilled officer corps thoroughly steeped in the fundamentally humanistic values of our Republic as well as the nuances of their profession.
Russia has none of those things, does none of those things, and is none of those things.
Moreover, whatever modern weapons and equipment the Russians had at the beginning of their invasion have largely been expended -- and shown to be not very good to begin with. The Ukrainians learned very quickly how to destroy even Russia's newest armor. Russian airpower, which, at least on paper, should have been the decisive factor at the beginning of the war, has barely been a factor, and losses have been far more severe than anyone anticipated whenever they've tried to use it.
Despite state control of most of Russia's media, enough information has filtered through to the populace to make the losses in the west common knowledge among the people, whatever they may feel compelled to say in public or when interviewed by the press. One only need to see the scenes at train stations and bus depots as conscripts are hauled away, or the conduct of the new soldiers themselves, to have proof of that.
Whether that means we've reached a turning point remains to be seen. But it's clear, this is the time to ramp our support for Ukraine and put them firmly on their front foot, for good. And make no mistake, it's in our own interest, not only geopolitically, but economically. For instance, the reintroduction of Ukraine's farm products, especially wheat, onto the global market will directly affect the prices we pay at the grocery store, a key driver of the inflation impacting us all.
So, to paraphrase Churchill, while we may not be at the beginning of the end, the end of the beginning is clearly behind the Ukrainians. We need to continue, and increase, our support, and not relent until the job is done. Their bravery and determination will take care of the rest. Slava Ukraini.
The Church Ladies -- and Men
One of our newest members, Daniel Nardini, is an accomplished journalist, among many other things. He's led a remarkable life (I'll leave it to him to fill in the details as time goes on), including being an eyewitness to some historic events -- the riots in South Korea and the Massacre in Tiananmen Square, most notably.
He's also the author of six books, including his account of those awful hours in China on June 4, 1989, in The Day China Cried.
The rest of his work is available directly from his publisher, Xlibris, and on Amazon Books as well as through Barnes and Noble:
Daniel Nardini | Barnes & Noble® (barnesandnoble.com)
Daniel is now semi-retired, but still writing full-time and sharing his stories. One of them is his account -- and a rather painful personal one -- of religious intolerance in his community in rural Illinois: Outcast — Modern Whig Institute
As Whigs (specifically, Modern Whigs), respect for each other's faith, or lack thereof, is a fundamental value. And to be clear, despite our unwillingness to condone the more extreme positions which seek to completely eliminate faith from the public square (my own faith informs my political views), we are firmly committed to the separation of church and state as a legal and constitutional matter. Our country was created as a secular mechanism of governance, not a theocracy.
Daniel's experience points up how a failure to understand that last point can bleed into our social relations and poison them. Faith should be a glue of human community, not a wedge to separate the in from the out. Our standard should be decency toward each other. We should all be judged, solely and exclusively, on the content of our character.
Bits and Pieces
Finally, a few other interesting things came up in the past seven days. One is a story about a little payback for some of the nefarious business China has gotten up to over the past few years. It turns out, we're pretty good at it ourselves:
US Agency Hacked China’s Telecom Networks, Global Times Says - Bloomberg
I'm sure they were hopping mad about that one.
In a new Substack publication by the Dispatch, author Nick Catoggio (better known as the blogger Allahpundit, most recently on Hot Air) offers an excellent analysis of the dynamics of Trumpism as an introductory post (Hank Thayer hits some of these themes in his upcoming piece for us, too):
Suckers and Fighters - by Nick Catoggio - Boiling Frogs (thedispatch.com)
Our own National Gazette will be on Substack, by the way. We just don't have quite enough writers to launch it yet. But we're close.
And finally, an attempt to put together a "conservative" dating app has run into, shall we say, some problems. Which may mean young people aren't quite as interested as being stuck in the bubble as their older compatriots:
Women Turned Off by Billionaire Peter Thiel's Conservative Dating App The Right Stuff (thedailybeast.com)
So maybe, just maybe, there's hope for us after all.
And with that, I wish you a safe and fun weekend. As always, it's a pleasure to be at your service. See you next week.
Kevin J. Rogers is the executive director of the Modern Whig Institute. He can be reached at director@modernwhig.org. ___________________________________________________________
The Modern Whig Institute is a 501(c)(3) civic research and education foundation dedicated to the fundamental American principles of representative government, ordered liberty, capitalism, due process and the rule of law.
