StephenKMackSD's Blog

Mr. Ganesh is my favorite flâneur! He can write a feuilleton, the rhetoric of the Sunday Supplement’s decorous chatter, like no other writer in America or Britain. His only possible competition is James Wolcott , once of Vanity Fair.
As a person born in Los Angeles, two months before the Bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I long to drive its Freeways, boulevards and streets: and see its skyline as it presents itself from all its possible angles of view.

I recall my mother driving up Alameda, with the City Hall building (featured in the Superman T.V. Show, as The Daily Planet headquarters) in full view, all the way, to pick up my dad, to take him to his second job.Once the tallest building in the skyline -the Industries that lined this street, with railroad tracks all the way, with the strong odor of fuel oil and ozone. Just looking out the window… 

Or driving past Al Jolson’s ostentatious grave site at Hillside Memorial Park, Culver City , sick with the flu, in the back seat of my mom’s old two door sedan. On the way to visit Aunt Rela in Culver City, right by the Culver City Airport. 

Mr. Ganesh is quite unsurprisingly confines himself to the West-Side, the would-be Hipster’s measuring stick of what L.A. is ! South L.A. , East L.A. , Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach, Long Beach, and points south to Orange County. Or over the Canyon Streets into The Valley, its Ventura Blvd. an answer to Melrose Avenue? All these are elided from Mr. Ganesh’s essay!

 Mr. Ganesh loses my interest, as a reader with his speculation, about the fate of the Metropolis in the Age of Covid -19. Recall Fuentes’ beautiful metaphor/simile of ‘The Great Rotting Meat Pie of Madrid’ ?

American Writer

https://www.ft.com/content/21c95a41-3e33-4abb-ac67-94130b9f6972

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 In reply to Argus

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In reply to Paul A. Myers

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Raymond-Chandler

StephenKMackSD

Lecturing about ‘Violence’ as’the weapon of the stupid’ is the stance of the respectable bourgeois intellectual, out of touch with the desperation/nihilism of the have not’s!
The American Political Class: corrupt Neo-Liberals could not pass a $600 a week lifeline, to millions of unemployed! Garnished by a one time bribe of $1200. The persistent notion that these payments will encourage the ‘malingering’  lower orders : a holdover of the Corporate owned Nixon/Reagan Republicans & New Democrats: e.g. Clinton/Larry Summers, Gramm-Leach-Bliley a monument to political mendacity. 
Proud Boys/Boogaloo Bois infiltrate as ‘demonstrators’ as Antifa & BLM and loot/pillage at will.
For ‘stupidity’ look to American Foreign Policy from 1823’s Monroe Doctrine.

Mr. Bregman don’t spend your political capital on this! ‘We’ rely on you, and a host of others: Yanis Varoufakis, David Harvey, Richard D. Wolff, Mark Blyth, Thomas Piketty etc., etc. 

Regards, 

StephenKMackSD

There is noting quite like the Financial Times’ Editors political/economic romance with Emmanuel Macron! Even in the face of the platitudinous, or is it high drama?, collapse of Neo-Liberalism, precipitated by The Pandemic: the notion that the Keynesian approach, adopted by the Germans, won’t work in France. It is a foregone conclusion of the Editors, ignoring all that might render such an approach valuable, in an utterly transformed  set of imperatives and demands? In sum, workers in France are the beneficiaries of State Coddling, as it is! 

Abandoning ordoliberal orthodoxy, Germany cut value added tax and made direct payments to households to boost demand and consumption, the kind of Keynesian approach France tried for decades with little enduring benefit.

The ‘wisdom’ of Macon’s approach is narrated as not a Keynesian approach, as it might be practiced, but its expression is of a Keynesianism applied to Capital, a 20 billion tax cut for French companies.       

This time Paris has steered away from stimulating consumption directly, arguing that incomes have barely shrunk during the crisis thanks to generous job subsidies and ample household savings. Instead, Mr Macron is pursuing a structural reform agenda under the guise of stimulus. The centrepiece of his plan is a €20bn tax cut for French companies which, almost alone in Europe, have to pay hefty levies according to the value added in their production on top of heavy social charges and corporation tax. Mr Macron has long wanted to ease the tax burden on French companies in the hope of boosting investment and job creation. Now he has the fiscal space to do so.

The next step in this editorial is 

Finally, €35bn is being earmarked for social and regional cohesion, the lion’s share going to job protection, vocational training, apprenticeships and hiring subsidies. France is maintaining its furlough scheme for two years, but limiting it to sectors still badly affected by social distancing requirements and restricting it to part-time subsidies, which might help avoid a problem of “zombie” jobs.

The ‘furlough scheme’ is a guaranteed income, for those who have lost their jobs? 

By focusing on competitiveness, the green transition and human capital the French plan is coherent with the EU’s €750bn recovery fund agreed in July. Paris is counting on an EU contribution of €40bn to its stimulus. And Mr Macron is keen to show that Europe is now a help rather than a constraint.

‘Competitiveness’ is a key concept of Capitalist apologetics, it is inherent in the very nature of the human being?

‘He remains commendably committed to liberal reforms to boost competitiveness and growth.’ Its as if the idea of human and economic development, advocated by Manfred Max Neef , rather than an impossible model of ‘growth’ wedded to ‘profit’ is sustainable within a ‘green transition’ ! 

With 21 months to the presidential election, this stimulus plan is helping to define Mr Macron’s pitch for a second term. He remains commendably committed to liberal reforms to boost competitiveness and growth. But his plans will also appeal to green voters and those yearning for a more Nordic-style welfare state. He is counting on €100bn to relaunch the French economy and to revive his political fortunes. 

https://www.ft.com/content/a4048ee3-ae8b-4c03-be93-edbc4ac4ca3e

Not to forget the gilets jaunes, gilets femmes & gilets noirs are still active political participants in France!

American Skeptic 

Should the reader be at all surprised that Mr. Cass is the executive director of ‘American Compass’ ? It’s another Think Tank. The quotation from Russell Kirk leaves no doubt : 

‘”A sound economy cannot exist without a political state to protect it. Foolish political interference with the economy can result in general poverty, but wise political encouragement of the economy helps a society toward prosperity.”

Russell Kirk (1989) ‘

Or the ‘Mission Statement’ that follows this quotation, in all its platitudinous glory.

To restore an economic consensus that emphasizes the importance of family, community, and industry to the nation’s liberty and prosperity —

REORIENTING POLITICAL FOCUS from growth for its own sake to widely shared economic development that sustains vital social institutions.

SETTING A COURSE for a country in which families can achieve self-sufficiency, contribute productively to their communities, and prepare the next generation for the same.

HELPING POLICYMAKERS NAVIGATE the limitations that markets and government each face in promoting the general welfare and the nation’s security.

So the headline & sub-headline of this essay, that is awash in American Political Theologizing, is right on target? What is the Post-Trumpian Soul?  

Headline: Republican party battles over its post-Trumpian soul

Sub-headline: An ideological contest rages between Reaganite libertarians and post-Trump conservatives 

But recall Nixon’s ‘Law and Order’, ‘The Silent Majority’ while erasing his ‘Enemies List’ and ‘Kent State’, not forgetting Henry Kissinger and Vietnam! Or Ronald Reagan’s bankrupt piety ‘Morning in America’ while forgetting ‘The Contras’ and the ’76 and ’80 battle cry: ‘Welfare Queens Driving Cadillacs’ ? Bush I & II must be added to this collection, that represents the Republican Party, that is the object of Mr. Cass’ political nostalgia. All this suffused with the misbegotten spirit of Jonathan Edwards , or is it Cotton Mather ?

Mr. Cass then enters into the political thicket: 

In another era, a stable party apparatus that predated Mr Trump might be waiting in the wings. But of course, if that existed, the party would not have been levelled by the Trumpian earthquake. Instead, its strains and infirmities, so well exploited by Mr Trump, define the contours of arguments about how to rebuild. The fundamental question is this: what happens to a party beholden to free-market dogma when the market fails to deliver?

Traditionally, Republicans brought together libertarians and conservatives who both prized markets but in different ways. Libertarians regard the free market as an end unto itself, or trust that the free market will deliver the best outcome. Conservatives see the free market as a means to an end. Markets can deliver healthy social outcomes, but there is no guarantee they will. If they do not, policymakers should play a role channelling market competition to advance the common good.

In the latter half of the 20th century, when faith in markets was still richly rewarded, both sides were in general agreement. But 50 years later, economic reality had changed and the coalition began to crumble.

https://www.ft.com/content/824983ed-2a99-4c3a-a6ad-c05f54d48239

Next to appear in Mr. Cass’ essay  are Republican political luminaries:

 Jack Spencer of the Heritage Foundation, Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, Marco Rubio of Florida,  Senator Pat Toomey, Mitt Romney, Josh Hawley, Tom Cotton

The reader has to wonder about Mr. Cass’ acumen! Where is the well funded, politically connected, and supported Anti-Trump organization The Lincoln Project’ located in the American polity, so carefully described by Mr. Cass?

Home

American Skeptic 

StephenKMackSD

Headline: Shinzo Abe and his struggle with Xi Jinping

Sub-headline: The outgoing Japanese prime minister was right to reject appeasement

The Party Line on Shinzo Abe has been enunciated by Gideon Rachman, weakly framed in New Cold War melodrama. The political cartoon that accompanies this essay is awash in ‘Manchurian Candidate’ hysterical political paranoia* :

Not to forget the contribution by David Ignatius at The Washington Post:

Headline: Shinzo Abe was a better ally than we deserved

…

During a 2015 interview at his imposing office in Tokyo, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressed a humility that’s rare indeed among world leaders these days. “Politicians should be humble in the face of history,” he told me, referring to the suffering that Japan had caused Korea during World War II.

Thanks to that reticence, Abe was perhaps the world’s most successful leader in managing the erratic presidency of Donald Trump. He knew Japan’s security depended on having a good relationship with Washington, no matter who was in power. And he subtly coaxed and cajoled Trump toward sensible policies that were good for Japan, and America, too.

…

“Abe had a clear strategy for his country. Japan couldn’t succeed without the United States. It didn’t matter who the president was. He needed to work with whoever was elected,” said Michael Green, the top Asia expert in the George W. Bush administration and now a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Green has been a friend of Abe for several decades and probably knows him as well as any American.

…

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/08/29/shinzo-abe-better-ally-than-we-deserved/

What can the reader make of Kristin Surak’s essay of May 15, 2o19?

Headline: Shinzo Abe and the rise of Japanese nationalism

Sub-headline: As a new emperor takes the throne, prime minister Abe is consolidating his ultranationalist “beautiful Japan” project. But can he overcome a falling population and stagnating economy?

…

Guiding Japan through these challenges is its prime minister, Shinzo Abe. A strategic conservative, he is the heir to two powerful political dynasties: his father was a former foreign minister, his paternal grandfather an MP, and his great-uncle one of the longest-serving prime ministers. But the most conspicuous ornament in the family tree is his maternal grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, who ran the brutal conscript labour system in Japanese-occupied Manchuria. Held for war crimes, he was released before trial in 1948 and eventually became prime minister, calling – unsuccessfully – for revision of the constitution and the expansion of Japan’s military capabilities.

Shinzo Abe lacks the social skills of his extrovert grandfather, whom he lauds in speeches. Indeed, when Abe took power in 2012, few expected him to last long or accomplish much. They had seen him in the role before, in 2006, when he held on for less than a year before resigning in the face of gaffes, money scandals and parliamentary election losses, and while suffering from poor health.

His second attempt, however, revealed a newfound sense of perseverance: Abe is set to become the country’s longest-serving prime minister.

…

 

On ‘Abenomics’

… 

Distinguishing his first stint from his second is “Abenomics”, a powerful economic salvo that was to jolt the Japanese economy back to life. The combination of monetary easing, fiscal stimulus and structural reform aimed to lift inflation to 2 per cent and produce a virtuous cycle of business expansion and consumer spending. But instead, the economy performed a dead cat bounce: a small recovery, then nothing. The effect on the national debt has been far greater. It now stands at an eyewatering 250 per cent of GDP. A long-planned sales tax hike, meant to pay for the huge borrowing, is likely to be delayed again in fear it will drag the fragile economy back into recession.

…

https://www.newstatesman.com/world/asia/2019/05/shinzo-abe-and-rise-japanese-nationalism

Or this December 25, 2012 essay by  Ling Yuhuan at Global Times: 

Headline: Abe’s right-wing agenda rings alarm bells

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US influence

Unlike Abe’s last tenure, when he chose to visit China on his first overseas diplomatic trip and lifted bilateral relations out of the deep freeze caused by his predecessor Junichiro Koizumi’s annual visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, Abe’s first trip overseas will be to the US this time.

“Abe chose to visit the US first because he hopes the military clout of its ally can help deter China,” Ni noted.

The US Congress passed Friday the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2013, reaffirming that the islands were subject to the Japan-US security treaty.

The bill shows the US has “made the most explicit determination to take the side of Japan in this evolving dispute,” Vijay Prashad, professor of International Studies at the Connecticut-based Trinity College, told the Global Times.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying slammed the bill Sunday, saying the Japan-US security treaty, as “a bilateral arrangement in a special historical time,” should neither harm the interests of any third parties, including China, nor be involved in any foreign territorial disputes.

https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/752077.shtml

Mr. Rachman’s concluding paragraphs are indicative of what a Neo-Liberal finds of inestimable value: ‘a free and open Indo-Pacific’ : a place holder for the collapsed ‘Free Market Mythology’ !  

At the same time, Mr Abe has cultivated new friends — in particular, Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India. Japan is promoting a “free and open Indo-Pacific”, in which the region’s democracies work together. The implied contrast is with a closed and authoritarian Asia-Pacific that might emerge if Chinese power is uncontested.

Mr Abe has made many of the right strategic moves for his country. But he leaves office without knowing whether his efforts will ultimately be crowned with success. Responding to the rise of China is a generational challenge for Japan. Mr Abe’s successors will need luck, as well as skill, to navigate an uncertain future.

https://www.ft.com/content/84748554-62a2-4a83-8fea-fb4607e0faaa

Political Observer

*Menand spends too much space, on the utterly bankrupt belief that Lee Harvey Oswald killed President Kennedy. Its as if ,the assistant counsel for the Warren Commission, Arlen Specter’s ‘Magic Bullet Theory’ retained its status as crucial evidence of Oswald’s guilt. Or that The Church Committee findings were studiously ignored. The ‘guilt of Oswald’ was once the measure of bourgeois political respectability. Menand still tows the Party Line on this question!      

Its ‘as if’ Andy thinks that his political past will never catch up with his latest personae: 

1994:

Headline: Race, Genes and I.Q. — An Apologia

Sub-headline: The case for conservative multiculturalism

https://newrepublic.com/article/120887/race-genes-and-iq-new-republics-bell-curve-excerpt

A telling review of ‘The Bell Curve’ by Charles Lane in The New York Review of Books provides an answer to this book:

1994: 

Headline: The Tainted Sources of ‘The Bell Curve’

The Tainted Sources of ‘The Bell Curve’

The third paragraph of Andy’s essay presents himself as a tangential supporter of BLM , not to speak of, a voice of political reason, and political gradualism, as the preferred vehicle for change. Has Andy ‘evolved’ since 1994? With a highfalutin reference to Marcus Aurelius, and the dependable self-dramatizations?     

In the current chaos, I’ve come to appreciate Marcus Aurelius’s maxim that “The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.” And I have to say I’m horribly conflicted on some issues. I’m supportive of attempts to interrogate the sins of the past, in particular the gruesome legacy of slavery and segregation, and their persistent impact on the present. And in that sense, I’m a supporter of the motives of the good folks involved with the Black Lives Matter movement. But I’m equally repelled by the insistent attempt by BLM and its ideological founders to malign and dismiss the huge progress we’ve made, to re-describe the American experiment in freedom as one utterly defined by racism, and to call the most tolerant country on the planet, with unprecedented demographic diversity, a form of “white supremacy”. I’m tired of hearing Kamala Harris say, as she did yesterday: “The reality is that the life of a black person in America has never been treated as fully human.” This is what Trump has long defended as “truthful hyperbole” — which is a euphemism for a lie.

He refines his political position, in the fourth paragraph, by engaging the reader’s attention on the vexing subject of rioting and lawlessness. He proclaims himself  a ‘one issue voter’ he is for Law and Order. I recall another advocate for Law and Order:   

Headline:The ‘law and order’ campaign that won Richard Nixon the White House 50 years ago

Sub-headline: Trump has invoked the same phrase as he campaigns for Republicans

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2018/11/05/law-order-campaign-that-won-richard-nixon-white-house-years-ago/

Andy was too young, and too distant, to recall the sine qua non of the Nixon Campaign of 1968! 

‘But here’s one thing I have absolutely no conflict about. Rioting and lawlessness is evil. And any civil authority that permits, condones or dismisses violence, looting and mayhem in the streets disqualifies itself from any legitimacy. This comes first. If one party supports everything I believe in but doesn’t believe in maintaining law and order all the time and everywhere, I’ll back a party that does. In that sense, I’m a one-issue voter, because without order, there is no room for any other issue. Disorder always and everywhere begets more disorder; the minute the authorities appear to permit such violence, it is destined to grow. And if liberals do not defend order, fascists will.’

https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/the-trap-the-democrats-walked-right

And even if he has read about it, its inconvenience to his fealty to that Law and Order  political position, would render his essay null.

Political Observer

Pankaj Mishra is one of the most trenchant critics of ‘Western Civilization’ and its apologists/explicators/advocates. As the Neo-Liberal Age and Globalism , the ultimate expressions of that ‘Civilization’, continues its confusing, sometimes fast and sometimes slow, collapse.
That Mr. Luce and Mr. Sachs are the targets of Mishra’s polemical interventions, is, perhaps, in an historically reductivist way, about the revenge of the Colonized against the Colonizer? 
Perry Anderson’s comment about the function and purpose of polemic is instructive:

‘Polemic is a discourse of conflict, whose effect depends on a delicate balance between the requirements of truth and the enticements of anger, the duty to argue and the zest to inflame. Its rhetoric allows, even enforces, a certain figurative licence. Like epitaphs in Johnson’s adage, it is not under oath.’


https://www.lrb.co.uk/v15/n20/perry-anderson/diary

Philosophical Apprentice

https://www.ft.com/content/8a4dfeef-eb91-4ab5-b1f2-073373baee78

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Mr. Luce’s political erasure is about the Republican Party of :

The post WWII  politics ,  the New Deal as a ‘Generation of Treason’,  McCarthyism in its iterations.  

The mass political migration of the Dixiecrats into the Republican Party, post the Civil Rights & Voting Right Acts of ’64 & ’65.

The 1964 Barry Goldwater campaign:‘extremism in pursuit of liberty is no vice’. The purge of the ‘Liberals’ at the Cow Palace. 

The political rehabilitation of Richard Nixon in 1968: The Silent Majority & The Southern Strategy. 

The rise of Ronald Reagan in 1976 & 1980: ‘Welfare Queens Driving Cadillacs’, ‘I believe in States Rights’ 1980 Neshoba County Fair.

The election of Bush The Elder: Lee Atwater’s ‘Willie  Horton‘!    

The election of Bush The Younger in 2000: The rise of ‘The Architect’ Karl Rove & ‘The hanging chad’. 

The rise of ‘The Tea Party’ in 2009, that was the immediate reactionary precursor of Trump/Trumpism.

Mr. Luce’s History Made to Measure is a quick snap-shot, about the ever changing American present moment. That with a bit more due diligence, not to speak of political candor, could have given the reader more. 

Old Socialist 

https://www.ft.com/content/593edb26-f117-4fab-942e-c2e704567582

Who else but a Practicing Capitalist, in the Age of the Death of The Neo-Liberal  Swindle, to admonish the reader, and other persons and institutional actors, that Government can’t  fix what is not broken, but only in need of a bit of revision?

…

But government should not be tempted to meddle in the detail of supply chains. That is the job of business. As lockdowns froze trade around the globe, many companies were unable to produce goods domestically because a key component came from a single supplier in another country. Some companies had more than one supplier, but both were in the same country. Every company, as it prepares its postmortem report, needs to determine where its vulnerabilities are and remedy them. This would add robustness as protection against disaster whether it stems from a country (natural or pandemic) or a supplier (such as a fire).

…

The collapse of that Neo-Liberalism will and probably has rendered Mr. Cote’s political intervention  as mere – all this Anti-government rhetoric will be met with the specter of National Security, as it will be in political debate. 

Yet the vexing question remains what shape will the re-industrialization of America, and other state actors, take to a set of the un-knows of possible threats? This endeavor will have to be, of necessity’ on a broad front. Mr. Cote offers a reheated Cold War with China and ‘a decline in productivity’ as reason for maintaining ‘supply chains’  in his reformed version. 

This legitimate focus on local suppliers can stray into isolationism if government is involved. American arguments that pandemic responsiveness and the threat from China require the reshoring of everything now produced outside the US are misguided. They would result in a decline in productivity if the reshored functions are more inefficient than the overseas suppliers they replace.

What will the reinvigorated ‘local suppliers’ mean to Technocrats like Mr. Cote? The rebirth of Unionism will be a threat to Global Capital … if in the political present of collapse, of Renters, Homeowners and others face the  loss of  income, jobs, health insurance and domiciles as summer fades, and fall approaches.

To skip to the final paragraph of Mr. Cote’s intervention: we know one thing, that America’s Political Class, as in 2008, rescued Capital, the 1%,  from its own economic toxicity. And offered a mere $1200 to the 99% . What is clear is that Mr. Cote repeats the Party Line on the the blessings of ‘Globalization’ tinctured in the ‘Hippocratic Oath’! What is that old adage ‘Physician heal thyself’ in Luke 4:23 ? 

Productivity increases driven by globalisation are raising standards of living worldwide. We always want to smooth the rough edges of capitalism and globalisation, and we must ensure that companies have robust supply chains, but the cure will be worse than the disease if legislators respond to xenophobic impulses. It is a good time for government to remember the Hippocratic oath: first do no harm.  

Political Observer

https://www.ft.com/content/0ddd5e7d-d9ae-4bea-b59f-da147210e103