What Happened Today: January 9, 2023
Brazilians stage their own January 6th; Pediatricians combat obesity; Larry Summers wants you fired
The Big Story
Some 1,200 supporters of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro have been arrested after protestors stormed government buildings in Brazil’s capital on Sunday in what authorities say was an attempt to overthrow the country’s newly elected president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Since the presidential election in October, which was the closest race in Brazil’s history, mass demonstrations and clashes have broken out between left and right factions as well as authorities around the country. One dedicated faction of Bolsonaro supporters has been living in a tent city in the capital, Brasília. Those protestors were joined by thousands of others who rampaged through Congress and the presidential palace for roughly three hours on Sunday before police could regain control.
“These vandals, who we could call ... fanatical fascists, did what has never been done in the history of this country,” said Lula, who’d been away on an official trip to São Paulo state when the initial fighting broke out. Lula has been critical of Bolsonaro for inflaming election fraud conspiracies among his followers. However, during his own campaign, Lula alleged without evidence that his opponent would rig the election.
Two days before his term ended on Jan. 1, Bolsonaro left Brazil for a suburb outside of Orlando, Florida, putting some distance between himself and at least four ongoing legal probes into his potential crimes or corruption while in office. Presumably tweeting from Florida, Bolsonaro broke his silence six hours after the attack began on Sunday, saying the destruction of government buildings “crosses the line.” President Biden described the uprising as an “assault on democracy and on the peaceful transfer of power,” though he stopped short of using his unilateral power to deport Bolsonaro, as several lawmakers have called for already. Speaking to Reuters on Monday, an unnamed consular official suggested that Bolsonaro is likely in the United States on an A-1 visa, which is typically given to heads of state. It would allow him to stay indefinitely, since he arrived days before it expired.
In the Back Pages: Germany’s Apokalypse Now
The Rest
→ The American Academy of Pediatrics, the nation’s largest trade organization representing pediatricians, said on Monday that obese children age 12 or older should be considered candidates for new weight-loss medications, while severely obese children 13 or older should be evaluated as candidates for bariatric surgery. A significant pivot from the AAP’s previous 2007 guidance—which advised pediatricians to treat obese children with a moderate wait-and-see approach in the hopes that children would essentially grow out of their condition—the new protocol suggests doctors intervene as they would with other chronic diseases as soon as a patient is deemed to be obese. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the body mass index, which is used to measure excess body fat, was found to have doubled among children, with about a fifth of all Americans under 18 currently considered obese. Though early obesity is linked to a litany of serious medical conditions that can develop later in life—heart disease, diabetes, and stroke included—it would seem that AAP at least finds those outcomes more concerning than any complications that could arise from the new crop of weight-loss drugs that have become wildly popular over the past several months, even though questions remain about their long-term side effects. Still, as The Scroll reported in December, the uncertainty of possible complications hasn’t slowed the growth of the weight-loss medication space, with analysts predicting a market worth $50 billion by the end of this decade.
→ As Sweden angles to get into the U.S.-led NATO alliance, it’s pushing back against member state Turkey and the growing list of demands that Ankara is making as the cost of its “yes” vote to allow the Swedes into the treaty organization. Hungary is expected to formally back the applications from both Sweden and its neighbor Finland this week, leaving only Turkey’s withheld approval from the required unanimous endorsement. But Ankara now wants more from Stockholm, including changes to extradition laws that are overseen not by the government but by Swedish courts. But even if Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan continues to drag his feet, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is already offering NATO perks to the incoming members, including protection under the crucial mutual defense clause. “It is inconceivable that NATO would not act if the security of Sweden and Finland was threatened,” Stoltenberg said this weekend.
→ While pediatricians wait and see how well the pills and surgery throttle the childhood obesity crisis, Americans generally are willing to try anything to shed pounds, including whole-body electrical muscle therapy, known as EMS, the latest exercise craze. EMS promises that 20 minutes of body shocks while working out is equivalent to the health benefits of two hours of electrocution-free conditioning. With more than 400 locations nationwide now offering the EMS experience, which can run as high as $135 in premium gyms, electro-fitness enthusiasts say the extra jolt to muscles while working out forces them to tone up faster than they would otherwise. Proponents of EMS point to some small studies that have found similar improvement, while critics quickly point to others where results are more mixed and to some European researchers who suggest the therapy is dangerous for internal organs. Still, Americans are plunking down cash to beat their belt-loop blues: Katalyst Interactive offers its at-home EMS getup for $2,300.
→ Some 29 people were killed after Mexican military and national guards launched a dramatic daytime strike in the city of Culiacán on an armored convoy ferrying Ovidio Guzmán, the son of former cartel head Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. The junior Guzmán had assumed an executive role in the family’s Sinaloa drug cartel after his father was taken into custody by U.S. forces several years back. Ovidio Guzmán and 21 of his associates were arrested in the effort that saw more than 3,000 soldiers, paratroopers, and other forces deployed against the formidable cartel army. Following Guzmán’s capture, the cartel army retaliated with strikes of its own across the region, burning buses, blocking streets, and attacking an airport. With the majority of the fentanyl supply coming in from Mexico through ports of entry along the southern U.S. border, U.S. officials have been calling on Mexico’s leaders to do more to thwart the drug trade’s leading traffickers—Guzmán included. Apprehending the young cartel leader comes just days before President Joe Biden’s scheduled visit to Mexico City later this week.
→ The Trump administration ban on bump stocks following the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting was struck down on Friday by a U.S. appeals court. The Fifth Circuit opinion in the 13-3 decision found that “tremendous” public pressure notwithstanding, the move to ban the bump stocks—devices that shooters can use to quickly fire off rounds from semi-automatic guns—was one that had to come from Congress and not the president’s desk. Though federal regulators had interpreted an existing law banning machine guns as sufficient in banning bump stocks, U.S. Circuit Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod said the law was not crystal clear on how it applied to bump stocks. In a dissent, Judge Stephen Higginson suggested the majority had devised a logic “to legalize an instrument of mass murder.”
→ Quote of the Day:
“It’s just a roommate generation now, where people are staying with their parents, living in the basement, or just shacking up with friends longer because home prices and rents have both gotten so far out of hand.”
That’s from Glenn Kelman, the CEO of real estate brokerage company Redfin, who says the ongoing economic volatility across the housing market will only get worse before it gets better. That might end up being a good thing for the crowded regal estate sector, where 1.5 million realtors compete to sell the nation’s available stock of 5 million homes. The glut of too many realtors who poured into the business during the pandemic has made deals as tricky for the agents as for potential buyers, who are still finding themselves priced out of houses because of poor supply and continuously rising interest rates. Rental prices have finally started to slacken, with rents down in 90 of the largest 100 cities as of December, which has made renting, or taking on roommates, a more appealing alternative to the meshugas of buying.
→ Video of the Day:
Despite the ease with which former Treasury secretary Larry Summers could have disguised the fact that he was calling in to Bloomberg News from a waterfront perch on some lush tropical island, Summers decided to keep things real as he explained to the broadcast audience that the only real way to rein in inflation is “increases in unemployment.” Is this what they mean when they say that the cruelty is the point? One just hopes that after Summers informed Americans that the only way the political class could fix the economy was by tipping it into a bloody recession, he applied the appropriate amount of sunscreen before his 2 p.m. surf lesson down by the water.
→ Maybe those out of work across the Rust Belt can take advantage of the new agreement Deere & Co. inked with the American Farm Bureau Federation over the weekend, which now allows farmers to repair their Deere tractors and machines themselves rather than having to go to a Deere service station. For decades, farmers prided themselves on their ability to fix their equipment, but as farming vehicles and machines required more high-tech technology in recent years, Deere began requiring customers to repair the computers and other components at its service centers. That was a nice stream of revenue for Deere, but farmers were upset about the violation of their “right to repair,” and years of complaints to the AFBF finally led to the memorandum of understanding that “will ensure farmers everywhere are able to repair our own equipment,” said Zippy Duvall, president of the AFBF.
TODAY IN TABLET:
Obama’s Anti-Imperialist Fantasy Bears Bitter Fruit by Mark Dubowitz
The longer we refuse to acknowledge the mistakes of the Iran deal, the greater a price we pay
‘Xuetas’ Return to Their Roots in Majorca by Ari Blaff
Bringing a hidden piece of Spain’s Jewish history back into the light
SCROLL TIP LINE: Have a lead on a story or something going on in your workplace, school, congregation, or social scene that you want to tell us about? Send your tips, comments, questions, and suggestions to scroll@tabletmag.com.
Germany’s Apokalypse Now
The worst nightmares of Europe’s sleeping giant are coming true all at once
By Jeremy Stern
Being a Germany watcher in the early 21st century can often feel like being an expert on ancient Greece: You kind of missed all the exciting bits. Alas, that seems to be changing. At the same time an economic cyclone is threatening to wreck one of the world’s more deceptively combustible societies, Germany is also emerging as the fulcrum of Vladimir Putin’s strategy to salvage his war in Ukraine by breaking Western solidarity—a gambit that now involves a credible nuclear weapons threat. For a country with an almost uniquely pathological fear of inflationary shocks, populist politics, and nuclear technology, the winter of 2022 is shaping up to be a horror show.
What is currently grist for German nightmares may also turn out to be a genuine tragedy for the entirety of Europe, as well as the United States. For several decades, Germany was able to build strong domestic cohesion, a solid social welfare system, and limited income inequality on the back of a strong manufacturing sector and competitive exports. This kept unemployment low, wages stable, and politics bland. Their high quality of life often came at the expense of poorer members of the eurozone, but few Germans could argue with the result: the world’s fourth-largest economy and one of its most steady and apparently sane political societies.
But the last two years, and the last seven months in particular, have revealed this model to be something of a Ponzi scheme. The entire German system, it turns out, depended on a never-ending supply of cheap Russian gas, immaculate just-in-time Chinese supply chains, and ever-expanding foreign markets. No other country bet more on the end of history, and we all know how that turned out.
Until the end of September, there had been widespread speculation that Chancellor Olaf Scholz was willing to trade sanctions relief in exchange for a revival of the halted Nord Stream gas pipelines. Now that the pipelines have exploded, the loss of the cheap energy that underpinned modern Germany is all but irreversible. Meanwhile, the Chinese market is becoming tighter and more hostile, even as Chinese firms have started to outcompete German firms in everything from cars to machine tools. Because Germany depends so disproportionately on foreign markets, remains ideologically committed to large savings surpluses, and suppresses wages to keep exports competitive, Germans themselves cannot consume enough of what they make—while German workers make things that are especially vulnerable to inflationary pressures. Baseline inflation forecasts for Germany are now in double-digitterritory. Steel, fertilizer, chemical, and toilet paper plants are shutting down or on the brink of closure, and German automakers are threatening to shift more production to places like South Carolina and Alabama. The anger and frustration of a large number of increasingly nationalist voters—the worst fear of the German establishment, for obvious reasons—has benefited the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which now polls as the most popular political party in all five states of the former East Germany.
In response to all this, Berlin resolved last week not to reverse course on nuclear power or invest in economic modernization—both of which remain poisonous in German domestic politics—but to embrace a 200-billion-euro national energy subsidy that whipped a majority of the European Union into a frenzy. By opposing an EU price cap while unveiling a surprise domestic relief package to keep its own voters warm and its factories from shutting down, Germany was seen as sabotaging EU state aid programs, efforts to build a unified response to the energy crisis, and attempts to ensure that poorer member states can bid for gas on a level playing field—the union’s core reasons for existing. The German national subsidy, which has since been slightly downscaled, could still make energy more expensive for its neighbors—none of whom have forgotten that Germany’s two big contributions to Europe over the last 15 years have been the cult of fiscal austerity and dependence on Vladimir Putin.
Berlin has taken a Wilhelmine attitude to its allies’ fury. At a meeting of EU leaders last Friday, Scholz dismissed Polish, Italian, and other provincial frothing about his subsidy—which he refers to, approvingly, as a “double ka-boom”—as simple “misunderstandings.” Economy Minister Robert Habeck meanwhile recently appeared to accuse the United States of war profiteering by putting Germany in the position of having to buy expensive U.S. liquefied natural gas exports, now that its rightful cheap Russian gas is spilling into the ocean.
The fact that German politics and diplomacy, for the first time since reunification, are starting to become less banal, less consensus-driven, and less fanatically conformist doesn’t have to be a bad thing. But these are troubled waters. For 150 years, the wealthiest, most populous, and most powerful country in Europe has struggled to pursue its own interests without also destabilizing the continent. In all of German history, in fact, there have been only two periods of relative stability: in West Germany after 1945, when Bonn balanced between Washington, Moscow, and Paris; and after 1990, when a reunified Germany pursued its interests in Central and Eastern Europe without frightening its Western allies by anchoring itself in NATO, the EU, and the euro. A political commitment to a kind of high-minded, respectable cowardice was also a part of this balancing act, as well as a cultural commitment to wearing permanent sackcloth and ashes by way of apology for two world wars and the Holocaust.
Angela Merkel’s plan was to recalibrate Germany’s delicate balance to accommodate—and benefit from—a rising China, a supposedly restored Russia, and an increasingly unstable United States. In her vision, while Chinese markets expanded, the EU single market would continue to serve as the primary destination for German exports while Brussels would function as a force-multiplier for German power—giving the helpful impression that Berlin was tightly bound by alliances, its ambitions properly subsumed in multilateral institutions. That plan is now kaput.
Instead, Germany is approaching what would be a worst-case scenario for the Western alliance: a more or less unaligned, frightened, and insecure behemoth floating in the middle of Europe. Far from the realization of some long-held dream, this kind of geopolitical independence would be more terrifying for Germans than for almost anyone else. Contemplating the simultaneous calamity of an inflationary spiral, an industrial collapse, a blackballed Russia, a recalcitrant China, an anti-German Europe, a lunatic United States, and a potential nearby nuclear attack, the last thing Germans want is to feel they must now create and secure their own destiny.
But where, exactly, are they supposed to turn? Not to the United States, whose own president has been telling anyone who will listen that America is indeed an election away from succumbing once and for all to “semi-fascism” and white supremacy, and that an “out of control” Supreme Court may soon ring down the curtain on American democracy. Even a more objective assessment than Biden can be expected to deliver still leads Germans to similar conclusions. To American complaints about Germany’s current account surpluses and austerity policies, Germans respond that America’s $5 trillion pandemic stimulus is starting to look like a policy blunder of generational proportions. To accusations of cretinous energy policy, Germans point out that the United States is currently suppressing domestic oil and gas production while making itself a supplicant of petrostates it is simultaneously sanctioning and threatening. Memories of the Biden administration having to beg the Taliban for help withdrawing from Afghanistan after 20 years of incoherent U.S. engagement remain fresher in Europe than the administration wants to admit, and don’t inspire confidence in its (or any administration’s) ability to make consistent, competent decisions.
Nor do the Germans seem as optimistic as they once did about the EU. Discontent with Berlin and Paris is rising among smaller European states, and the Franco-German partnership itself, which once gave “Europe” a semblance of coherence, seems to be breaking down. Not even China inspires as much optimism in the German imagination as it did only a year or two ago. “It’s about maintaining the status quo for as long as possible,” as a diplomat close to the Chancellery recently explained the rapidly shrinking ambitions of Berlin’s China policy. “If you have to pull out from China at some point in the future, you pull out. But until then, you make as much money as you can.” With so much of Northern, Central, and Eastern Europe moving closer to the United States as a result of the war in Ukraine, Merkel’s strategy of working through the EU to play Washington and Beijing against each other seems off the table for good.
Read the rest of Jeremy Stern’s analysis here: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/germany-apokalypse-now
Germany's policy towards Russia was always questionable and, in the last 10 or 12 years, unpardonable foolishness. But then again, we had our and the West's energy independence within our grasp only a few years ago -- only to throw it away under the current Vegetable-in-Chief.
(And now they're trying to ban natural gas and gas stoves?)