Foreign policy is a dirty business; I don't like writing about the culture wars, but I'm doing it again
Biden might be traveling to Saudi Arabia sometime soon. This comes despite Biden’s justifiably harsh words about the Saudi government during the campaign. He was absolutely right to say there is nothing redeeming about them. Their human rights record is atrocious by any measure.
His potentially going there is part of an effort to patch things up in light of the surge in oil prices since Russia invaded Ukraine. As much as I dislike the Saudi government, I understand why Biden is going there and he should do it. Pragmatism beats idealism just about every time and in no area is that more true than in foreign policy.
I doubt there has ever been a US president who did not wind up sharply going back on at least one major foreign policy campaign promise. The most important thing right now with respect to oil prices is to get them down. We need to use less of it and eventually move away from it altogether, but that is a much longer-term project. There is no contradiction between pushing for more oil now and caring about climate change. Making energy expensive is no way to build support for clean energy.
With Russia being excommunicated from large parts of the world economy, oil production has gone down, which has pushed prices up. In the US, oil companies are not drilling at a higher pace because their investors do not think prices will remain high and are afraid they will get burned again. That is the market at work and arguably it is a market failure given that it is producing a bad outcome. I jokingly wrote about how we should nationalize the oil and gas industry to drill more, but the only way they likely will start drilling fast is if they are guaranteed a profit like utilities are. That would be a huge departure from letting the price of oil be determined by market forces. It would also be a big departure from the mantra of the government shouldn’t pick winners and losers, but nobody actually believes in that consistently anyway.
In the case of Saudi Arabia, it is not the market at work. They are a part of OPEC and coordinate how much they will produce. That often has little to do with supply and demand and much more to do with its members’ wants. Higher oil prices are good for them up to a point. A big fear of all of theirs is that they could completely lose control of the price of oil. That is probably part of why OPEC has agreed to raise oil production for the months of July and August and may produce even more in the months ahead. That will certainly be a dominant thing Biden discusses with the Saudis if he goes there.
Doing all that is sadly necessary. We use oil on a huge scale and cannot have its price spike by so much so fast. Russia needs to be punished for what they have done in Ukraine. They need to be a pariah and their oil and gas industry needs to be crippled. That is a goal of Biden’s and I agree with it 100% percent. If that works out, their economy will be will be handicapped indefinitely. That is what they deserve. I hope in the future they look back with envy at the good old days of the USSR.
Achieving that goal requires doing business with awful people so as to minimize the economic pain here and in Europe from it. The Saudi government certainly counts as awful people, as do almost all the governments in the Middle East. But Putin is a much bigger evil and so working with them is a necessity right now. Foreign policy has long been messy and will always will be like that. Winning World War 2 required an alliance with Stalin. Fighting the USSR necessitated appealing to China. Crippling Russia will require working with the Saudis and other bad governments like the UAE, Qatar and maybe Iran and Venezuela.
Longer-term though we will really need to stop using oil. That is the only reason the US has to care about Saudi Arabia or anywhere in the Middle East. They offer literally nothing else. Not only would moving away from oil be good environmentally, but it will also mean no longer having to finance the Putins of the world. With the exception of Norway, there is not a single petrostate that I would say is good. Virtually all of them are dictatorships and/or corrupt.
As long as oil is used it will empower petrostates. It is a global commodity whose price is determined by events that happen all over the world. It is not determined by market forces in most cases. A vast majority of the oil in the world is controlled by governments. It is subsidized around the world heavily to the point where in places like Saudi Arabia it is almost free and is seen as a birthright. Being at the mercy of global forces far beyond one country’s control is not unique to oil, but being at the mercy of a cartel of dictatorial regimes is. Moving away from oil will mean never having to plead with a murderous dictatorship to increase production.
I hope to see a world one day where OPEC collapses because it is no longer relevant. Even if OPEC still exists, if the US and its allies no longer have to care about that crowd that probably works, too. Literally, the only reason OPEC matters is because of oil. Their member countries just happen to be located in parts of the world where a natural resource in high demand is also located. None of them did anything to make that happen nor have they created anything of value. Without oil, they have absolutely nothing at all and the dictatorial regimes propped up by it would probably collapse very fast.
The woke crowd is the new religious right
When I was in high school, the religious right was at its peak in terms of cultural power and influence. That crowd was everywhere all the time and was preachy, scolding, condescending, judgmental and obnoxious. Sure, they were pushing for laws I did not like, i.e., banning gay marriage, but what was especially irritating were their efforts to monitor and police everyone’s lives and scold those who did not follow their idea of what a righteous life should be.
You could see it everywhere. I remember that crowd going after Teletubbies because one of them apparently was gay and going after SpongeBob for supposedly supporting “the homosexual agenda.” I remember them demanding the FCC go after TV channels if there was nudity or someone said a bad word. I remember them demonizing gay people, people who used contraception or smoked marijuana and people who had pre-marital sex as being devoid of morals. It was annoying and pissed off many people, including plenty who are religious themselves but did not care to be lectured on morals 24/7.
It was around the time I was in college during the late 2000s where the tide really turned. Gay marriage became more accepted as did gay rights in general. The war in Iraq turning out to be a disaster I think also helped turn the tide, particularly since religious right adherents were among its biggest proponents. George W Bush was a part of that crowd and his leaving office radioactive probably played a role in their decline, too. The final nail in the coffin was their supporting Trump and proving that all of their claims to care about morality were a joke.
Since the late 2000s, marijuana has been legalized in many states. Public opinion is now strongly in favor of it. Opposition to contraception is all but non-existent. In 2011, gays were allowed to serve openly in the military and in 2015, gay marriage became legal nationwide and rather than being met with a backlash it was met with a shrug and everyone mostly moved on. It was around that time when many of the culture war issues of today showed up, most notably the fight over gender identity. I do not think that was a coincidence. The fight over gender identity has replaced gay rights as the new big fight in the culture wars although that will probably change soon assuming Roe v Wade is reversed. In a way it is good because the stakes are so much lower, but it has reversed the roles of the right and left in the culture wars.
As regular readers of this blog probably have figured out, culture wars are not my forte at all. Not only are they vastly less important than economic issues, but most of the issues involved in the culture wars cannot be solved legislatively. My aversion to culture wars and culture warriors is why I did not care for the religious right and I do not like the woke crowd. In fact, the woke crowd reminds me exactly of the religious right, just a secular, left-wing version of it.
The similarities between the two are remarkable even though on the surface they could not be more different. Like the religious right, the woke crowd is preachy, scolding, condescending, judgmental and obnoxious. They just do all that on different things. While the religious right usually went after people and things in the name of morality, the woke crowd usually does it in the name of safety or being inclusive. Never mind the hilarious irony of a movement being all about inclusivity going after anything or anyone who does not agree with them 100%, but I digress.
Many of the same people and things that the religious right went after the woke crowd now goes after. Examples include Bill Maher, Dave Chappelle and Harry Potter. The religious right went after them for their supposed lack of morality while the woke crowd goes after them because they or their author said something about transgender people or some other “marginalized” group that was not 100% perfect. Like the religious right before them, the woke crowd alienates many people who support all kinds of causes that they are supposed to be about. There are many out there, myself included, who want to be inclusive and who support substantive policies like criminal justice reforms and civil rights laws, but do not like to be preached to about how they are not pure enough.
Below are some examples of just how similar both crowds are.
Religious right: You had pre-marital sex?! You have no morals.
Woke: You watched Dave Chappelle?! You’re a transphobe.
Religious right: You’re gay?! You’re a sinner.
Woke: You ate at Chik-Fil-A?! You’re a homophobe.
Religious right: You watched a movie/show with nudity?! You’re bad.
Woke: You watched a movie/show that didn’t have any/enough (pick your favorite “marginalized group") people in it?! You’re not being inclusive.
Those examples might sound like a caricature, but I promise people have said all those things. I’ve been on the receiving end of some of them. What they all share in common is the people saying those things were being obnoxious asses and annoying everyone around them. Maybe people who say those things are unhappy in their own lives and just want to bring everyone down with them, I don’t know. What I do know is that just as the religious right needed to get over themselves, so does the woke crowd. Someone said or did something that was not 100% to your liking? Get over it. You had to hear or see something you did not want to? Too bad, that’s life.
Culture war aggressors are bad
Both the religious right and the woke crowd love to judge others. Leaving people alone is the antithesis of what they are about. It is also what makes so many people dislike them. HL Mencken famously joked (I am paraphrasing here) that a Puritan is someone who suspects someone else is having a good time. You could just as easily substitute religious right or woke for Puritan.
This has nothing to do with any specific policies, but, on a personal level, people want to be left alone. They want to live their lives as they please. That means they want to watch the movies and shows they like without being judged. They want to eat where they want, read the books they like, have hobbies that they enjoy and to be left in peace. They are not interested in being “educated” about any of it and do not like being lectured about their choices being immoral or not inclusive.
If someone eats at Chik-Fil-A, good for them. The same is true if they watch Dave Chappelle or any other comedian who makes jokes about “marginalized groups." If someone has pre-marital sex, smokes marijuana or watches a movie/show with nudity, that is their prerogative. People want to live their lives as they please and not be bothered about it. If someone disapproves of those things, that is their right and they are entitled to live their lives as they please. But do not judge others for living differently and mind your own business.
I am not much of a fast-food eater, but I love Chik-Fil-A nuggets and their waffle fries are to die for. I do not agree with their ownership’s politics, but I do not care either. Gay marriage is here to stay and they cannot do anything about it. If you enjoy their food, keep enjoying it. If you like someone’s movies, shows or music, keep liking it, no matter their politics. Filtering out everything you like or do based on whether you agree with someone’s politics is a great way to make yourself miserable. If that is how you choose to live your life, that is your decision, but do not think that makes you morally superior to anyone.
Prior to wokeness becoming a thing, it was the right who was guilty of not leaving people alone. Today, it is often the left who is guilty of that. To be sure, culture war aggressors on the right are very much around, but they tend to talk in a less religious and preachy way than they did before. Much of their current strength on issues like transgender athletes arguably comes from the left pushing the envelope further than where most people are right now. It is natural for a movement that wins over and over again to keep pushing until they overreach. The left won many culture war battles, most notably gay marriage, and has kept pushing forward ever since. But they have become victims of their own success, especially groups who were dedicated to advocating for gay rights. Since they won the major battles, they are now struggling for relevance and are looking for any last thing they can find to fight over. The NRA is going through that same thing, having won all the major battles on guns, which is probably why they have become a giant grift.
These things come and go in cycles and I am sure the roles will reverse soon enough, but for now wokeness is a real problem in the places where it has influence and is responsible for many once great organizations like the ACLU becoming embarrassments. One hope I have and am fairly confident of is that wokeness is just a passing phase and will die out. While the religious right had some strong electoral appeal, wokeness has virtually none. Outside of a few circles, its appeal is non-existent, including among a vast majority of Democrats. If it was popular among Democrats, Elizabeth Warren would have been the nominee in 2020. A movement that limited could continue to exist in some form, but its influence will likely diminish fast, especially if it is blamed for electoral losses. But I really do not want to have to endure another right-wing culture warrior president to get there.