Matt’s Marvelous Mailbag seeks to provide marginally adequate answers to much better questions about politics, economics, social life, theology, or any potpourri you see fit to have answered. Send questions to mailbag.bereans@gmail.com.  

Another week, another mailbag! And apparently the return of our beloved Sr. Schwartz to the blog. I’ve been informed not to expect this too often, but I’ll take it when it comes. Anyway, we’ve got some good questions for this week, so let’s hop to it shall we?

Q: Daniel asks: “Thoughts on the California, Fair Pay to Play Act?”

A: This may be one of those few times where I think California actually did something right. The justification that is always given for not compensating college players is that money will somehow corrupt the game, as if there’s magical purity that surrounds it. I’m not so sold on that narrative. The NCAA has plenty of dirt and sludge in its cogs, and I’m hesitant to say that college players aren’t being compensated anyway. Ever seen some of the facilities that college football teams get to use? They. Are. Mansions. Remember that compensation doesn’t necessarily have to be monetary. Student-athletes can receive ungodly amounts of non-monetary compensation in the form of these grand facilities, tutoring, meals, and etc.

So, ultimately, all I think this is really doing is just bringing down the facade surrounding the compensation fight. If the players are going to get compensated one way or another, let’s at least stop putting up these little traps for them. It’s better this way, and I highly doubt this will irrevocably corrupt the college game. Also, there’s this argument going around that this gives California an “unfair advantage.” Well, yes…your point? If you also want to attract more students to your colleges, then you pass a law like this too.

Of course, we’ll want to see if this hits some sort of legal roadblock along the way, but if we’re just throwing out opinions on the law itself, I am in favor of it.

Q: Daniel also asks: “Thoughts on the NBA/China ordeal?”

A: I don’t have much to say here other than I think the NBA is absolutely in the wrong to kowtow to China like this. Yes, I realize there’s a large market in China, but do you have to play the censor game with your member teams? It has been amusing in one respect to watch different coaches around the league try to answer questions on this deal. Most of them tend to give some sort of, “Ya, it’s a thing, and it’s complicated” answer, which is about what I would expect them to say. They’re basketball coaches, not political commentators; I doubt they really care that much about it. But some of them have gone so far as to actually turn the situation on its head and blame the US for its past. Eh, no…I reject your plot twist. If you look at the US right now and China right now and conclude moral equivalence, I think you’ve lost the plot.

Q: Daniel finally asks; “Thoughts on the US/Syria ordeal?”

A: There’s just a lot of ordeals going around right now, aren’t there?

Talk about the swiftest way to make literally everyone upset. Democrats are upset because Trump did something, and they are in “oppose everything to the point of incoherence” mode. Republicans are upset because we’re giving the Kurds over to the wolves. Kurds are upset because …well, potential genocide among other things. Turkey isn’t all that gleeful either because tensions are high right now anyway, and Trump keeps hinting that he may just throw a monkey wrench in the gears at some point via sanctions or a returned military presence. I think the non-interventionists may be the last happy souls left on this issue, though they’re always upset about some pedantic nonsense anyway, so who cares.

As with many foreign imbroglios, it comes down to this for me. Whether or not, we should have been doing something in the first place, we are where we are right now. Should we have armed and allied with the Kurds? Wrong question; we did, and now we have certain responsibilities that flow from that decision. One is to not let the Kurds be slaughtered by the Turkish government. Another is to not leave a power vacuum where ISIS can refill the void (they still have several thousand fighters on the field, mind you). Plus, as National Review pointed out, we’re not really pulling our forces out of the area so much as we are re-positioning them to be less in the way of Turkish-Kurdish confrontation. Bottom line: I think Trump messed up on this one.

Q: Sam asks: “Should we view Trump’s actions more from a campaign strategy standpoint or from a policy standpoint? How are the two related and how closely should they be related?

A: Well, in a better world (not a perfect one because then we’d have no need of governance), we’d be safe in assuming that politicians were always acting out of deep-felt convictions informed by research, data, and a healthy grounding in what is metaphysically right. We quite obviously do not live in that world, but neither do we live in a world of complete and total cynicism either. What works for the campaign is not always the thing that gets immediately placed at the forefront of importance.

For Trump, I think we have a mix of genuine conviction and campaign talking points. I don’t think he cares that deeply about his judicial nominations, hence why some reports have basically suggested that the Federalist Society is steering the ship on that front, which is perfectly fine with me; I like the Federalist Society. To the extent that he does care about them, he does so because he likes winning a confirmation fight. I’m also not fully convinced that he is genuinely concerned with a certain policy on health care or the debt fight or entitlements. There as well, he seems to just want to make a deal. Where I think he is convinced is on trade issues, immigration/border issues, and abortion. Note: I don’t think that means he lacks any convictions at all on other issues, but I think he’d probably be more malleable on the first points.

A Final Reflection:

Reports came out this week that Trump sent a formal letter to Congress saying he would not cooperate with the impeachment proceedings. I’ve taken the liberty of sketching out of what I think the actual letter looked like, regardless of media spin…

Hey, the news is depressing as it is. We gotta have some fun every now and then.