Politics

Kemmerer, Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney has the political brain of a sucked egg, as her egregiously self-destructive decision to join her Democratic colleagues in voting to impeach President Trump following the events at the US Capitol on January 6 showed. In terms of personability and charm, Cheney is the Republican equivalent of Hillary Clinton. And in a state with a population of 581,024 people spread across 97,914 square miles where politics has always been something like a family affair, she is very much an outsider, even a stranger. Born in Madison, Wisconsin, she lived in the Cowboy State for only a year or so when she was a sixth- and seventh-grade student in the 1970s.

It’s becoming spooky season, by which I mean not Halloween but elections — at least in Virginia and New Jersey, which have gubernatorial races. They are, incidentally, two of the three states I’ve lived in (I’m in Virginia now; the other one was Maryland). National elections have ceased to be fun for some time now, and I’m not sure my own state’s gubernatorial race is going to be much better. I’m supposed to choose between a washed-up former governor and a businessman-turned-political-neophyte who enthusiastically hawks his endorsement by the businessman-turned-political-neophyte who last occupied the White House.

The West’s humiliation in Afghanistan has an older brother: climate change. As siblings, the two share characteristics, most obviously an inability to confront unwelcome facts. In Afghanistan, there was a large constituency led by the Pentagon invested in the mantra of proclaiming progress in the fight against the Taliban. Climate has its own industrial complex of NGOs, climate scientists, renewable energy lobbyists profiting from the energy transition, eager helpers in the media, and politicians posing as world saviors. Energy experts tell us renewable energy is cheaper than building new fossil fuel power stations. If they’re right, why did China build the equivalent of more than one large coal plant a week last year?

Oscar Wilde said, of the death of Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop, that ‘you would have to have a heart of stone to read...without laughing.’ It was hard not to feel the same way today, as pictures of last night’s Met Gala were released to a curious international public. The point of the event, where tickets sell for a suitably jaw-dropping $30,000, is nominally to raise money for selected good causes, and to mark the opening of the museum’s major costume exhibition. Yet every year, the invited celebrities become more absurd, and their outfits more demonstrative and performative.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez looked radiant on the red carpet at the Met Gala. She looked elegant too, at least until she turned around. But this is show business. And that, after the last 18 months, is reassuring: this is still America. Also still American is the message that she delivered at the Met through the medium of a decorated wedding dress. It’s an important one, about class and the future of this country. And no one in politics since Donald Trump is better placed to deliver it. Ocasio-Cortez is proof that the prosperity gospel lives. Like an old-time starlet equipped only with moxie and a major in Theater Studies, she has risen to the top. It is only right that she shares her success with her public, just as the stars of the Depression years shared theirs.

Some conservatives did themselves no favors by exaggerating the threat of election irregularities in California’s Tuesday recall election. Tomi Lahren of Fox Nation claimed on air that: 'The only thing that will save Gavin Newsom is voter fraud.’ A New York Times news story promptly labeled concerns about the election as 'baseless allegations’. But regardless of the recall outcome — which Gov. Newsom is favored to survive — we shouldn’t dismiss concerns about the shift California and other states have made to all mail-in elections at the expense of the traditional secret ballot. Two elec­torates in places with some 40 mil­lion peo­ple each — Cal­i­for­nia and Canada — will vote this month.