The Darkest Hour is Just Before the Dawn

The times they are a’gloomy. That’s what people seem to believe, at least.

But the U.S. economy grew at a 4.9% annual rate in the fourth quarter of 2023, the national unemployment rate is at 3.7%, and employers are still hiring. Inflation remains above recent historical averages, but at slightly north of 3.5% per quarter sits well below its levels of one year ago.

The data from Europe isn’t quite as bright. UK and Eurozone inflation is trending above U.S. levels and economic growth and the job market are weaker. But still, at this time last year, a broad consensus of economists were predicting a deep European recession alongside a shallower U.S. recession in 2023.

So, why all the glum faces?

Greymantle believes that people of the West and in the wider world have become primed for disaster by the events of the last 20-odd years. There always seems to be another financial crisis or war or terrorist attack or climate-related disaster just around the corner. People are on edge. Period.

And now the ugly war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip has raised its ugly head, triggered by Hamas fighters’ bloody incursion into Israel on October 7 and their slaughter of some 1,400 Israeli civilians. The prices of gold and oil are spiking and equity markets are swooning. Plenty of people Greymantle knows are taking it as a sign that everything is about to get worse – again.

Because I’m a realist, I can’t deny the possibility that conditions in general could, in fact, be about to get somewhat worse. Hey – my stock portfolio is in the crapper right now. I’m feeling it.

The remainder of 2023 could indeed turn out to be a mulligan stew. Donald Trump seems to be leading the Republican primaries, Congress can’t pass a budget, the House GOP recently elected a new Speaker after three weeks of inter-party chaos. The list goes on.

However, a fatalistic belief that things are just going to get worse is not what Greymantle chooses to embrace at this moment, because I actually see quite a few silver linings among the grey clouds. If one looks to a bigger picture than one’s Twitter (excuse me, X) feed and the cable news headlines, there are some signs that things may not turn out as badly as we conceive they might.

2023 HAS PRESENTED PLENTY OF SETBACKS FOR ‘THE BULLIES’

If you see the forces of chaos and authoritarianism on the march everywhere, take comfort from the fact that their forward march is hardly proceeding unimpeded. In fact, ‘the Bullies’ as I like to term these authoritarians, both foreign and domestic, are encountering resistance everywhere.

Let’s spend a minute taking stock of the setbacks suffered by the Bullies in 2023 to date:

• Russia’s offensive against the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut on the winter/spring 2023 eventually succeeded in taking the city, but at a cost of over 20,000 dead or wounded Russians. The campaign exhausted Russian strength on the northeast front, with little to show for it.
• The strains of the Bakhmut Campaign and other military setbacks resulted in the Wagner Group Mutiny – the first mutiny of Russian military forces since World War I. The mutiny was short-lived, but for a few days seemed to threaten the senior Russian political leadership.
• As a result of the rebellion, Putin was obliged to ‘rub out’ his former ally, Wagner Group leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, and arrest and imprison his best general, Gen. Surovikin. We should mourn the fates of neither of these two cold-blooded killers. Putin now contends with deep ultranationalist discontent in Russian government, the military, and society at large.
• Poland’s Law-and-Justice Party right-wing coalition lost the October 2023 national elections. The right-most party was decimated at the polls, and a new center-left coalition will soon take power. This will smooth out relations between Poland, the EU, and Ukraine.
• Donald Trump’s legal problems deepen. He is facing 91 indictments across several jurisdictions. While he continues to soar in the GOP polls, the spectacle of one former ally after another flipping on him in court his bad news for the man, and his movement.
• The recent mayoral election in Franklin, TN, offered some anecdotal evidence of the further weakening of the MAGA movement in its red-state heartlands. Incumbent GOP ‘normie’ Mayor Ken Moore won re-election in a landslide, taking 80% of the vote tally, against insurgent GOP MAGA activist, Gabrielle Hanson, who embraced support from neo-Nazis and was credibly accused of making a series of George Santos-style fibs on the campaign trail.

None of these event individually means that Russian President Putin has been fatally weakened at home, that Ukraine will win its independence war against Russian (this is the true nature of the conflict), or that Donald Trump is completely spent as a political force. But taken together, they are evidence of a fragile stabilization of the choppy political trends of recent years.

CENTER-LEFT PUSHBACK AGAINST ‘WOKENESS’ IS ACTIVATING, AT LONG LAST

Other signs of a move toward stability and normalcy, and a belated pushback against the bullies, is also becoming evidence on the center-left, with increased grass roots and professional pushback against what we’ll call ‘Wokeness’ but might be better termed “social justice ideology, or SJI’.

Whether it’s parents in Canada, feminists in Scotland, or board members of charitable foundations or universities, there seems to be a growing realization that Wokeness, like MAGA, has made too many advances in recent years, and is long overdue for a pushback in the places it calls home.

CASE IN POINT: THE DOWNFALL OF NICOLA STURGEON

The downfall of Nicola Sturgeon, the former party leader of the Scottish National Party, in February 2023, is a case in point. Though the factors contributing to Sturgeon’s downfall were many, including a toxic culture within the SNP that stifled dissent and punished dissenters, a major factor behind her decision to finally resign her position under pressure was her uncritical embrace of so-called ‘gender ideology’, which might be defined as the belief that whatever sex a person believes him or herself to be must be unconditionally accepted base on their self-belief, rather than their biological sex.

This belief had become fashionable and passionately embraced by a fair number of prominent figures in the arts, entertainment, and left-of-center politics since 2010. The SNP leadership glommed onto it with particular fervor in the 2017-2021 period. One result is that a number of male criminals ‘identifying as’ i.e. claiming to be women were placed in women’s prisons in Scotland on their say so alone, despite the fact that two such convicts had a history of committing rape and other sexual offenses against women.

This proved too much to bear for many of the SNP’s feminist and other center-left followers, triggering demonstrations in Scotland in late 2022 and early 2023 that, among other things, called for Ms. Sturgeon’s removal as SNP leader. Ms. Sturgeon eventually obliged her detractors, resigning her position on Feb. 15, 2023.

Sturgeon faces a number of legal actions against her claiming, among other things, that she falsely accused her predecessor, Alex Salmond, of several trumped-up charges of financial crimes and sexual harassment of women in the SNP. Mr. Salmond has been acquitted of all charges through a number of separate court proceedings in the UK.

COMEUPPANCE FOR THE HORSESHOE-HEADS

The SNP is something of a political oddity in the Western world, being both nationalistic, separatist, and to some extent an ethnic party, while at the same time having a fair number of hard-left political positions stemming from Marxism, identification with anti-colonial struggles, and feminism. It’s something of a mixed bag in its belief system, but generally combines hard-left with hard-right political stances.

If the SNP represents an example of horseshoeing in the political world, voters in Scotland and the UK generally seem to have awakened to the fact of its extremism. Two SNP seats went other parties in 2023, one to Labour through a by-election and one SNP officeholder defected to the Tories. The SNP is polling far behind Labour in advance of the 2024 UK general election. A massive electoral defeat of the SNP would serve as a come-uppence for Ms. Sturgeon and her clique of bullies at the top.

Elsewhere in the West, there are signs of ever-growing pushback against the promotion of ‘gender-affirming care’ for children exhibiting symptoms of gender dysphoria, with an upsurge of local and regional protests and challenges in the Canadian provinces.

In Australia, voters rejected the ‘Voice’ campaign to amend the Australian constitution to create a new body to advise parliament on Indigenous (i.e. aboriginal) issues by a 61-39 percent margin. While less a straightforward defeat of Indigenous rights than it might appear on the surface, the ‘Yes’ campaign floundered because it failed to embrace the prospect of legislating some of the desired changes, relying instead on making a major constitutional change all at once via plebiscite.

Elsewhere, center-left anti-Woke publications such as Quillette, UnHerd and Tablet continue to thrive and increase their number of subscribers, indicating there is an untapped market for ideas and commentary critical of SJI on the political left.

THE HAMAS-ISRAEL WAR IS LIKELY TO BE AN INFLECTION POINT

In the midst of this atmosphere marked by both gradual and sudden shifts in the political and cultural capital held by various forces has come a world-shaking thunderbolt: the new war between Hamas and Israel triggered by Hamas militants’ bloody attach on Israel of Oct. 7. The attack, as readers will already know, resulted in the deaths of some 1,400 Israeli civilians and the taking over over 200 Israeli and American hostages (about 25 hostages are US citizens).

Literally no informed military observer of the Middle East expected the assault to occur. The Israelis were taken completely by surprise. For Israel, it is a 9/11-type moment.

Israel’s counter-attack on the Gaza Strip, now in its early stages, is stirring the pot of global power politics and revealing deep fissures between and within states and political groupings, particularly in the West, but also elsewhere.

Divisions within the Western Left are particularly illuminating. I’m not going to take up space here describing what has transpired since Oct. 7. Suffice it to say that many progressive and liberal Jews are experiencing a deep sense of shock after having seen the level of support for not just the Palestinian cause, but also Hamas, among people and groups on the Left they had regarded as stalwart allies just weeks before. The scent of betrayal is in the air.

Because of the deep historic interweaving of the American and British Jewish communities in a variety of social and political movements and ’causes’ of the Left, the events of October are likely to represent an inflection point in intellectual and popular discourse and inter-Left political alliances.

Greymantle’s main observation on the likely fall-out is that many left-leaning American Jews are going to desert a number of progressive causes and shift their organizational acumen, funding preferences and polemical power towards the moderate wing of the Democratic Party. A pivot away from the progessive hard-left is beginning, at least where the American Jewish community is concerned.

This doesn’t mean that certain progressive politicians and organizational actors won’t continue to enjoy good relationships with and open support from American Jews. AOC, Richie Torres and Bernie Sanders have all made balanced statements in the past three weeks and generally taken positions more favorable to Israel than to Hamas. They and others like them stand within the ‘sanitary cordon’ that some progressive actors and groups are trying to erect within progressivism and the Democratic Coalition against open support for Hamas terrorism.

But the damage has been done. And given the prominence of the Jewish community in Hollywood, the media, finance, the legal profession, organized labor and various political and civic groups, it seems quite likely that a real ‘shadow war’ on the American left is likely to be joined, with big shifts in fundraising and cancellations within and between organizations likely to accelerate, rather than die down, in the next two to three years. In fact, the struggle commencing now is likely to last for a generation.

WILL THE REPUBLICANS BENEFIT?

One pertinent question is: Can the Republicans accrue some benefit from this situation? Will there now be a “Jexit” from the Democratic Party toward the GOP?

Greymantle thinks the answer is a pretty clear “no”, at least in 2024, and probably beyond.

Why not? For the simple fact that the GOP in its current form has become an extreme right-wing party, rather than the center-right party it was in the 1980s and 90s. And with only two major political parties in America, there is no other choice for broadly left-leaning voters. The party of a former president who has embraced men like Nick Fuentes and Kanye West, among other notorious far-right figures, is simply unlikely to attract many Jewish voters, outside of the most cynical Netanyahu followers in the US.

Particularly if Trump is the Republican nominee for President in 2024, I think Jewish voters will stay away from the Republican ticket and support Mr. Biden’s reelection. Once Trump is out of politics and if – and it’s a big if – the GOP can return to something a bit closer to its former center-right roots, then there is a slight possibility of its benefit from this internicine inter-left feud. But for now – no.

A greater likelihood is that progressive-leaning Jewish Americans gravitate to the Greens or the new Forward Party or some other third party grouping, rather than move to the GOP. But, at this point, Greymantle thinks the most likely result will be an intense struggle on the American Left and within the Democratic Party to remove and marginalize some of the most ‘Woke’ or ‘SJI’ elements from positions of influence and to start pushing back more overtly against several elements of ‘Wokism’.

HOW LATE AND HOW DARK IS THE HOUR?

To some readers, Greymantle’s comments above may seem only like evidence of a ‘nibbling around the edges’ of what really ails society and politics in the West and elsewhere.

If some organizations on the Left and grass-roots voters are finally pushing back against SJI, then what of it? The ideology remains deeply ensconced within the highest reaches of academia and the media, and has crept into the heart of corporate America. The anti-Woke forces could easily be crushed in the years to come, making matters worse.

On the foreign front, Ukraine and Western militaries are running short on ammunition, and are not prepared to wage a three-front war against China, should the People’s Republic decide to launch an invasion of Taiwain in 2024. Such a move would surely spark World War III. Where would we be then?

And what of Trump? Isn’t he still the most likely GOP nominee in 2024? Aren’t President Biden’s poll numbers more or less in the proverbial ‘crapper? How is the old boy going to win an election with wavering support from progressives and diverse groups young people, against a maniac who has made the opposition party into a political cult?

I’d be lying to you if I did not agree that all of the facts above are deeply concerning.

It’s pretty clear that we are living through dark times, with a number of key outcomes completely uncertain. Added to these concerns are the rising U.S. national debt, the fact that Medicare and Social Security are heading toward insolvency within a decade, and the deep, deep polarization of U.S. political life, as well as politics in several other key Western countries, most worrisomely Germany.

But I would also be lying to you if I told you that I see only dark clouds, or believe that the hour is just too late for there to be a good outcome.

DON’T BELIEVE THE POLLS

To begin with, Greymantle doesn’t believe the polls.

The polls in 2016 showed Hilary Clinton winning the election by 2-3% points the month before the election, and we know how that turned out. The polls in 2020 also showed Biden and the Dems winning a landslide. While Biden won a convincing victory (unless you are a GOP kook and believe the election was ‘rigged’) the Dems performed less well in Congress and the States. While less wrong than in 2016, the poll numbers were pretty questionable in 2020.

That unhappy history makes Greymantle leery of current polling data showing Biden’s approval rating at 45% and GOP voters’ approval of Donald Trump at 60%. I just don’t believe either number.

While Democratic support for Biden is a bit soft, it’s explained mostly by his age and the general tenor of the times, which is broadly unsettled. In a race against Trump for the White House, though, Democratic and Independent voters are going to rally around Biden – be sure of that. People don’t want to return to ‘the Crazy’ of 2019-2020. People want to forget 2020, the last year of Trump’s presidency. Even his supporters want to forget 2020. Only a few real nuts want to go back in time.

THE U.S. ECONOMY IS OUTPERFORMING

Secondly, the U.S. economy is doing pretty well, unemployment is low, and mega projects of various kinds are popping up all over the country. These include the big Intel chip factory in Ohio, the widening of I-70 in Missouri, Blue Oval City and the Titans stadium in Tennessee, and a batch of big other industrial projects around the country.

On top of that, the state governments themselves are in good financial shape compared to the U.S. federal government. Since 2020, Idaho has been upgraded to ‘AAA’, Michigan has been upgraded to ‘AA+’ and New Jersey has been upgraded to ‘A+’ by credit rating agency Fitch Ratings. Fitch’s main competitors, Moody’s and S&P, have also upgraded the debt ratings of several state governments. The reasons are simple: state government debt is down, rainy-day fund balances are up, pension liabilities have mostly stabilized, and revenue growth trends since 2018 have been strong.

Do voters care? Probably not, in the abstract. But they can readily appreciate the practical effects of stronger state and local government finances. Teaches are getting raises, sometimes for the first time in many years in states that were among the most fiscally pressured. The same is true for state troopers and government employees. K-12 school districts are hiring, as are public works depts. The threat of layoffs is distant for the time being. Staffing levels are up across the US.

In aggregate, these developments should make for a more contented population. And maybe they are, but we are just not seeing it yet in the polling data or in the fever swamps of social media. But real contentment tends to favor incumbents, and Joe Biden is an incumbent president, with all the powers of the presidency and its ‘bully pulpit’ at his command.

Does this mean that his job is safe? Definitely not. He will face a formidable challenge next year. And for certain, the next six months are gonna be tough for a variety of reasons.

A TOUGH SIX MONTHS AHEAD

Ukraine is set for another hard winter marked by increasing Russian missile and drone strikes on critical public infrastructure. The Israel-Hamas War is going to be very bloody and generate a lot of ugly headlines. There could be terrorist attacks on Americans, including on U.S. soil.

Expect more budget brinksmanship in Congress by the Republicans, now led by the slightly-more- capable-than-Kevin-McCarthy Mike Johnson. That could lead to some additional financial market turbulence and Ukraine might get stiffed on funds, in the short term.

The worst ‘known unkown’ of all involves the U.S. banking sector. There have been earnings warnings and rating downgrades aplenty in the last eight months. A shift from a low interest rate to a high interest rate environment is never a pretty picture for the banking sector. The last thing President Biden needs is a banking panic and a big bailout of the banks. Congress with Mike Johnson in the House Speaker’s seat would actually be very unlikely to appropriate funds for such a bailout.

A Republican failure to stabilize the banks in 2024 would be their ‘imaginary revenge’ on those dastardly Satan-worshiping Democrats for creating COVID-19 so that Trump would lose the 2020 election (before they fixed things against Trump even further by ‘rigging’ the election).

Haha. I am only joking here. The really scary thing is that about 50% of Republicans actually believe this kind of nonsense.

Because of the sheer amount of ‘kookery’ now present in politics and society, you can pretty much count on at least some actors in positions of authority to behave completely irresponsibly, and to fan the flames of chaos and antipathy wherever, and whenever, they can.

Oh, and of course, we can count on plenty of mass shootings in America between now and next May. That’s just a given.

THE DARKEST HOUR IS JUST BEFORE THE DAWN

So, suffice it say, the months of November through April are going to be a pretty weird and a pretty tough time for a lot of people. Especially if you are Lebanese, Israeli, Ukrainian, Russian or a resident of the Gaza Strip. It’ll be tough for Hamas fighters, too. But like, good. Fuck ’em.

But here is a short list of reasons why things are more likely to turn out okay by mid-spring:

• Dig those 3Q jobs and GDP growth numbers. Growth in 4Q is going to hold up more nicely than a lot of folks expect. Household savings are still pretty high. People are gonna splurge for the holidays, global crisis or no.
• The Federal Reserve is about done raising short-term rates. It will communicate that message again and manage to calm down the markets by Christmas.
• Mike Pence is out of the GOP race and can now ‘stand outside the tent pissing in‘ in the immortal words of Lyndon B. Johnson.
• Anti-Trump Republicans are starting to coalesce around Nikki Haley.
• Expect two more Republican contenders to bow out before the first primary. I put my money on Chris Christie and Doug Burgum.
• Asa Hutchinson and Tim Scott will bow out AFTER the first primary. Scott is a weasel and will point his followers to vote for Trump. Hutchinson will encourage his supporters towards Haley.
• Gov. Ron DeSantis will bow out after the second or third GOP primary and throw his support behind Haley. Uber-weasel Vivek Ramaswamy will stay in until after Super Tuesday in a servile attempt to drain votes away from Haley so that Trump can win. It won’t work.
• At that point, it’s a toss up. I have no idea whether Haley or Trump will win the one-on-one matchup that will be Super Tuesday in early March. I pray to God it’s Haley.
• Much of the above will have been coordinated behind the scenes by a group of big GOP donors and strategists. So, it will be coordinated, but not ‘rigged’ in the sense that no primary voters will actually be cheated of their choice. The voting will be clean, but the behind the scenes moves will be pretty highly synchronized.
• Trump will be convicted of at least one time carrying serious prison time by late April. Very few of his followers will actually riot in support of him.
• Ukraine will survive another winter, albeit with terrible pain and sacrifice. By the end of March, a squadron of Ukrainian pilots flying F-16s will be ready to go into combat.
• If Trump is not the GOP nominee next year, then his friend Vladimir Putin is F-U-C-K-E-D.

If a lot of the above list feels like wishful thinking to you, well, fair enough! This is my damn blog, I can think wishful thoughts if I want. But…Greymantle’s predictions about the 2022 midterms were pretty damn spot-on, and I called the 2021 off-years pretty darn accurately, too. Oh, and I did predict that Russia was going to invade Ukraine in December 2021. So, my track record…ain’t bad.

Two final thoughts. It’s going to be really close, but I think that Brandon Presley is going to take the Mississippi governorship from Tate Reeves. That’s right – a Democrat is going to win in Ole Miss. And he is going to win advocating for Obamacare – for Medicaid expansion. If those are not the sounds of a figure on a White Horse galloping in the direction of Donald Trump, then I don’t know what is.

Let’s go, Brandon (Presley)!

My last thought is more of wish. As the Israel-Hamas fighting escalates, I hope the U.S. college campuses light up with protests and major unrest not seen on campuses since the late 1960s. I want the country to see who these pro-Hamas kids really are. Let them set buildings on fire. Let them topple statues. Let them burn books. And let President Biden denounce them for it, and let the police sweep in and arrest all the little firebugs.

I hope there are counter-demonstrations, too, by groups of students in opposition to out-of-control ‘Wokeness’ and the importing of a destabilizing Third World style of politics into the U.S. And if the two groups of students clash, then may the ‘Wokesters’ get the living shit beaten out of them.

Happy Halloween!!!!!!

Until next time, I remain –

Greymantle