Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 68.  Sunrise is 7:03 AM and sunset 7:03 PM for 11h 59m 57s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 96.3% its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Parks and Rec Board meets at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1935, Adolf Hitler orders Germany to rearm herself in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. Conscription is reintroduced to form the Wehrmacht.

What would happen if Whitewater’s rightwing populists got everything they wanted?  

As always, a reminder: the politics of the city government and school district matter less than genuinely charitable efforts to uplift this community.  I’ve held these views for years. See An Oasis Strategy (2016) and Waiting for Whitewater’s Dorothy Day (2020).

To the extent that government has any money left after providing for the basic services of the community, that money should be directed as though it were a charitable effort. See Local Public Policy as if Charitable Assistance (2020). 

And yet, here Whitewater is, after the Great Recession, opioid epidemic, economic stagnation, repeated incidents of sexual harassment, a pandemic, and another recession. Neither longstanding boosterism, nor the recent advocacy of (toxic) positivity from the school district offers any effective remedy for the community.  If Whitewater’s public officials want to be taken seriously, they’ll need to begin thinking, speaking, and acting seriously.  See Whitewater’s Local Government: Always Literally, Not as Often Seriously

For it all, one finds that bad goes to worse: a faction of rightwing populists now ludicrously presumes that it has a concoction that will have Whitewater up and at ’em.

No, and no again.

Jan-Werner Müller nicely summarizes the character of these populists:

The obvious one is that populists are going to claim that all other contenders for power are fundamentally illegitimate. This is never just a disagreement about policies or even about values, which after all in a democracy is completely normal, ideally maybe even somewhat productive. No, populists always immediately make it personal and they make it entirely moral. This tendency to simply dismiss everybody else from the get-go as corrupt, as not working for the people, that’s always the pattern.

Then, second, and less obviously, populists will also suggest that anybody who doesn’t agree with their conception of the real people, and therefore also tends not to support them politically—that with all these citizens you can basically call into question whether they truly belong to the people in the first place. We’ve seen this with plenty of other politicians who are going to suggest that already vulnerable minorities, for instance, don’t truly belong to the people.

Rightwing populism has only a series of ill-considered grievances, and scores to settle. They’ve no sound economics, and even less of anything beyond that.

Now, as one can guess, any temporary alliance between the development men and the rightwing populists has the transactional types telling the populist types to tone it down a bit, to speak in vacuous business jargon to sound more reasonable. A creature’s fundamental nature doesn’t change simply because it’s quieter for a bit.

It speaks loudly to the arrogance and indifference of the development men to Whitewater’s ordinary residents that they’d hold open the door to those who not long ago supported every excess of Trumpism. Pride and greed are not good policy, but are instead bad traits.  It’s an old saying, still useful, that hubris invites Nemesis. 

Not long ago, these special-interest business types talked about bringing newcomers to the city.  No one will move to a Whitewater dominated by Trumpists; there are already plenty of Trumpist dystopias nearer to any possible newcomer than Whitewater is.  Whitewater’s comparative advantage lies in being different from these degraded places, not in becoming another one. 

Many communities face a challenge from rightwing populism, but not all towns are equally hardy and resilient.  An affluent and academically successful community would weather Trumpism far better than Whitewater. That kind of successful community might quickly throw off the Trumpists the way an otherwise healthy person recovers from an infection.

A community that’s already ill would find itself battling disease after disease at the same time.

After all that’s happened, and because of the failure of community leaders bolster the private rather than the political, Whitewater now faces a political challenge that would set her back still farther from prosperity and good order.  Struggling communities that fall into rightwing populism (viz., Trumpism) stay down. We’ve had cold conditions these many years, but rightwing populism will bring only an ice age.

Doubt not: there is a serious critique of the status quo to be made.  Know well: the rightwing populists are among the last people anywhere to offer that serious critique.

See also the series WHITEWATER’S LOCAL POLITICS 2021 and from this week Energy and Exhaustion & Conservatism v. Conservatism.

Putin’s Road to War (full documentary) from FRONTLINE:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 56.  Sunrise is 7:04 AM and sunset 7:01 PM for 11h 57m 02s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 91.3% its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Common Council meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 44 BC, Julius Caesar is assassinated.

 Whitewater once had three kinds of conservatives (traditional, transactional, and populist), but she effectively has only two types (transactional and populist) now.  Whitewater’s traditional conservatives have faded into political irrelevance.  They were once the backbone of Old Whitewater, but by the mid-teens another conservatism, a populist one, rose quickly and replaced the tired and fading traditional types.

Fundamentally, the populist conservatives aren’t conservative at all. They’re energetic, motivated opponents of a traditional outlook.  They don’t want to conserve – they want to overturn. Emotional, thin-skinned, and contemptuous of established institutions, they’re not working to repair.  They’re working to tear down and, afterward, replace with something, anything so long as it advances them over others.

They are not, however, the only rightwing faction in town. Transactional conservatives, a smaller but well-positioned group of rightwing developers and business types, have outlasted the traditional conservatives and now find themselves in an alliance with the rising rightwing populists. The transactionalists fancy themselves financial savants, but the backbone of the group rests on second-generation landlords.  (Plainly and accurately stated: the rental sector isn’t a modern development, tenancy having been around as long as history itself, and it’s not part of a modern knowledge economy.) In any event, they’ve worked these years to dominate town politics, but for it all Whitewater remains a low-wage economy.  See A Candid Admission from the Whitewater CDA, Whitewater’s Still Waiting for That Boom, and Reported Family Poverty in Whitewater Increased Over the Last Decade (note well: that’s family and child poverty).

These men have done well for themselves, but they’ve done nothing for individual and household incomes.

Credit where credit is due: they have successfully managed every previous political alliance to their advantage. They’ve effectively co-opted those with whom they’ve made deals (including some on the center-left). Such an alliance is something like the old commercial about a roach motel: you can check in, but you won’t be checking out.

The alliance between the populists and the transactionalists won’t last.  Either the populists will give up their ambitions to overturn existing arrangements, or they will discard the transactionalists if they achieve those ambitions. Rightwing populism as a movement only sustains intensity through ever-greater extremism; the transactionalists can only manipulate local politics through a stability that allows them to satisfy their own business ambitions. The populists are crudely appetitive, and the transactionalists are transparently acquisitive, and these are different impulses.

It’s a partnership of convenience now, but in the end only one of these factions will endure.

See also the series WHITEWATER’S LOCAL POLITICS 2021 and yesterday’s Energy and Exhaustion.

Tomorrow: What if They Got Everything They Wanted?

Fly through Gaia probe’s catalog of Milky Way stars:

Good morning.

Monday is Pi Day, and in Whitewater it will be mostly cloudy with a high of 56.  Sunrise is 7:06 AM and sunset 7:00 PM for 11h 54m 06s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 85.2% its visible disk illuminated.

 Whitewater’s Plan and Architectural Review Commission meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1942, Anne Miller becomes the first American patient to be treated with penicillin, under the care of Orvan Hess and John Bumstead.

 In three weeks, Wisconsin communities will elect candidates for municipal, county, school board, and judicial posts. While the date of the election is the same for all, the composition and character of the electorate varies by community.

Although candidates and their ardent backers in communities may be excited equally, their constituents are not. Some communities, like Mequon-Thiensville, have seen (Fall 2021) and still see (Spring 2022) energized electorates (posts on this topic: 1, 2, 3). (In M-T, the tensions has been between kinds of Republicans, but in other places red or blue majorities are motivated simply as their predominant  factions.)

To look at Whitewater, having come through a long series of afflictions, and see (or expect) widespread political enthusiasm is simply mistaken. Whitewater has passed the point at which local government can remedy what ails the city.  It is certainly true that local politics can make conditions in the city worse, but there is little chance whatever that Whitewater’s city council or school board can make conditions much better.

(Preventing even worse candidates from taking office is, however singular a motivation, still important.) 

There are some fine people in government, but far too few.  See Administration, Council, and the ‘Tenth Man Rule’ and Whitewater’s Major Public Institutions Produce a Net Loss (And Why It Doesn’t Have to Be That Way)

What matters most?  See An Oasis Strategy and Waiting for Whitewater’s Dorothy Day.

Some years ago, a libertarian critique of local politics, as at FREE WHITEWATER, would have held open, implicitly, the prospect that local officials  might alter their course and become part of meaningful improvement for the community.  And so, and so, a critique of local politics a decade ago understandably sought to counsel a better course through restrained and responsible government.

That’s simply not possible now: there are some, but too few, sensible local officials; some challengers are, candidly, both ignorant and comically spiteful.

Under the circumstances, one shouldn’t wonder that many residents have greater concerns than politics. They’ve been disappointed, and too many of those now entering politics are disappointing.

A serious critique reminds that a political course will not be the source of the city’s betterment.

It is valuable to write of our present politics and politicians (including also the proposals and conduct of full-time city and district leaders) as a first-impression history of these leaders’ actions. I’ve neither interest nor confidence that anything written here will be seen as advice for government. This libertarian never has, and never will, represent government and its officials.

So many who’ve come along over the years since 2007 (when posting at FREE WHITEWATER first began) have desperately wanted a place in government, a seat at a political table, to be in the center of political affairs. Nad yet, and yet… government has never been the highest place, and to sit at government’s rickety table is to be poorly seated.

Residency – mere residency – is the highest status, all else being subordinate and instrumental. What a shame it is that so many striving men and women in this town haven’t grasped this simple truth.  They’ve misspent years on a lesser pursuit.  A shame and sadness, truly.

The energy of a few (notably reactionary) candidates reflects neither the energy nor priorities of many residents.

There’s more to write about Whitewater’s political condition this spring, but always with the understanding that politics hasn’t, and won’t, meaningfully improve conditions.  For the city, it’s enough (and necessary) simply to avoid a worse politics that slithers through the community.

See also the series WHITEWATER’S LOCAL POLITICS 2021.

Tomorrow: Conservatism v. Conservatism.

A new tool to decipher ancient texts: