Within a certain range of public sentiment. 1/

When public opinion gets sufficiently out-of-whack relative to the assumptions made by the gerrymanderers, when “efficiently” distributed reliable partisans start to turn less than reliable, it’s like a financial crisis. Safe seats turn speculative, everything becomes fluid. 2/

The flow of control is from the public to Congress to outcome. They’ve rigged things so the public needs to be pushed unfairly to extremes before Congress’ insulation is overcome. But the public might be pushed by events well beyond those extremes. /fin

no. i’m not trusting them. i think they are utterly craven. they will do only what they are forced to do. i’m saying the only way out is such public anger at this administration that these craven members of Congress are forced to do the right thing. 1/

Congress is supreme under our Constitution. you don’t go into a fascist takeover attempt with the Congress you wish you had, but it’s Congress, ultimately, on whose action or acquiescence the tale will turn. /fin

i think some are true believers, but the vast majority of even Republicans are just trying to hide in a corner. they know a lot of this shit is wrong and terrible, they think if they express that in any meaningful way they’ll get primaried with infinite MuskBucks at the very least. 1/

(for beyond the very least, consider that Murkowsi video that recently went viral.) /fin

Project 2025 was an often self-contradictory grab-bag of weird extreme ideas from all over the R coalition. Lots of them are getting catastrophic trials! But it was never a coherent, disciplined plan to do much of anything. 1/

There is, definitely, a lot of voter suppression and undermining of elections. We should definitely be worries about that, and about right-wing takeover of media (but then, we are living more the consequence than the threat of that now). 2/

Andreeson is no wiser or more capable than Musk. Musk has this theory that if they control the information systems they can durably control the government, he’s exfiltrating data and having his kids inject chokepoints he controls. 3/

But that theory is wrong. If the information systems won’t do what Congress compels because Musk has ransomwared them, he’ll be threatened with prison and unlock the doors. The whole theory is as worthy of taking seriously as the one LLMs are ready to operate the government. Both risible. 4/

Ultimately all that matters in our system is Congress. Congress is supreme. Right now Congress is abdicating. The whole game is mobilizing the public to mobilize Congress in a positive direction. /fin

it’s true a “deep state” means the ship of state turns slowly, acts as a kind of low-pass filter on the effect of political decision making and remaking, and therefore in a certain sense “restrains democracy”. 1/

but it also helps immunize the polity from the consequences of political noise, short-lived passions, momentary errors, accidentally electing a mad king. 2/

genuine democracies don’t naively presume that popular passions are always perfect. they build institutions that give effect to values and interests durably expressed by the public, but frustrate controversial sharp turns unless they persist and recruit broad consensus. 3/

with apologies to Mencken, democracy is not when the people get what they want good and hard, but when government is responsive to the people but able to distinguish signal from noise, without any king or higher authority arrogating the role of deciding what’s signal. 4/

it’s the institution. /fin

anything human is subject to variations of context, but "ceteris paribus", i think overall experience suggests that running indefinite trade imbalances is harmful to welfare. 1/

one channel is the politics that arise at breakdown. another channel is loss of tradables knowhow and capability for the deficit country. 2/

i can think of mitigations. for the US (at least until recently), the special role of the dollar, and the fact all debts are dollar denominated, reduces susceptibility to crisis and so harm through the first channel. 3/

other deficit countries enjoy this resilience to the degree they borrow in their own currencies, although absent a special international role, borrowers in their own currency usually eventually face limits from lenders. 4/

the sapping of tradables activity is something a wise government could overcome, by for example using fiscal flexibility foreign debt accumulation provides to sustain nonmarkets research and resilience organizations that sustain activity in tradables domains on largely a noncommercial basis. 5/

but in practice that kind of thing gas been very rare, and demands a lot of good calls by the state in terms of judging what capabilities to sustain and subsidize without market guidance. /fin