Thread by @RadioFreeTom

This piece by @michaelbd (h/t @andrewmichta) is a lot more sensible than the Mead piece on the same subject: Whether the pandemic is going to empower nationalism and populism. But there's still a paradox at the heart of all these arguments. /1

nationalreview.com/2020/03/corona…

Namely, the paradox that a crisis that is making us rely more on globalized goodies like rapid info, the expert and scientific establishments, the internet, and virtualized work is somehow going to wind the clock *backward*. This still feels like populist wishcasting. /2

But MBD's piece is a lot more honest than Mead's in admitting that populists are trying to retcon the pandemic to seem like it's the fulfillment of their warnings - as if they were psychic about not relying on Chinese made surgical masks. They weren't. /3

The flaw, I think, is that the sensible idea of "rely less on China" - something a globalist cuck like me has been advocating for 30 years - is somehow the same as "therefore globalization is bad." Those two things are related, but they're not the same. /4

If you decide to rely less on China and more on, say, Vietnam or Thailand, you're not really unwinding globalization, you're just tidying up your supply chain and making it more consonant with liberal (!) values. But that's not populism, that's just prudence. /5

And none of that is going to bring back manufacturing. Why? Because American consumers won't pay for stuff made by expensive American labor. "We'll build factories!" isn't going to happen - unless you think we're headed for socialist autarky, which would (sort of) solve this. /6

That is, you could force companies to take less profit and submit to wage and price controls. (Ask Nixon how that worked out.) But that's not going to happen because Americans, rich or poor, won't tolerate it. So the answer is - globalization, but less China? Okay by me. /7

Anyway, kudos to MBD for admitting, in a way Mead wouldn't, that most populists are just trying to figure out how to make this moment work for them. I suspect all this will pass because, again, most ppl understand jack-squat about globalization; they just want cheap stuff. /8x