StephenKMackSD's Blog

The Second American Civil War is just evolving as the ‘norm’ , in our country, with the bad actors The Proud Boys, the Boogaloo Bois, and the Political Class’ favorite Antifa– Mr. Luce ‘conjures’ QAnon, as the epitome of what fuels Trump and Trumpism: not just in extremis, but as the American variant of Political Islam, al-Qaeda. Mr. Luce trades on the Orientalists tropes exposed by Edward Said, that have metastasized, since 9/11, into an over-ripe political toxin.

Mr. Luce’s fear-mongering, at such a pitch, leaves this reader to speculate about this pundit’s desperation, to seem relevant, or even prescient, in an evolving collection of political moments, that seems out of reach of rational descriptors, thought.

Look at the pre-revolutionary situation in America: the murder, by criminal police, of black people, political protesters, BLM and others, attacked by those same police, mass evictions due to the political class’ indifference, to the lesser being who cannot match Corporate Power and influence. In California wildfires burning out of control, smoke so thick that it blots out the sun…

Political Observer 

https://www.ft.com/content/fd781ff9-93bc-422a-8eee-55a0749a5f25

In America, the  two houses of Congress, The Senate and the House of Representatives, not to speak of the Electoral College, are the checks against ‘too much democracy’ of The Founders. The Good Grey Mr. Walter Lippmann advocated a cadre of technocrats, as another effective check against that menace. The rise of these ‘Experts’ brought wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and The War On Terror. The cost of this latest  exercise in the murderous insanity of the experts : 

Headline: At Least 37 Million People Have Been Displaced by America’s War on Terror

Sub-headline: A new report calculates the number of people who fled because of wars fought by the United States since Sept. 11, 2001.

At least 37 million people have been displaced as a direct result of the wars fought by the United States since Sept. 11, 2001, according to a new report from Brown University’s Costs of War project. That figure exceeds those displaced by conflict since 1900, the authors say, with the exception of World War II.

The findings were published on Tuesday, weeks before the United States enters its 20th year of fighting the war on terror, which began with the invasion of Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001; yet, the report says it is the first time the number of people displaced by U.S. military involvement during this period has been calculated. The findings come at a time when the United States and other Western countries have become increasingly opposed to welcoming refugees, as anti-migrant fears bolster favor for closed-border policies.

The report accounts for the number of people, mostly civilians, displaced in and from Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines, Libya and Syria, where fighting has been the most significant, and says the figure is a conservative estimate — the real number may range from 48 million to 59 million. The calculation does not include the millions of other people who have been displaced in countries with smaller U.S. counterterrorism operations, according to the report, including those in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali and Niger.

…

Who can forget John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge other best-selling books:

The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America, of 2004

God Is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith is Changing the World . 2010

If there ever were two more stalwarts of the bankrupt tradition of The Economist’s ‘Liberalism’ it its these two propagandists. For a telling history this newspaper, and of their particular brand of toxic politics, see: 

Liberalism at Large: The World According to The Economist by Alexander Zevin

https://www.versobooks.com/books/3090-liberalism-at-large 

The Wake Up Call, John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge latest reactionary polemic,  in the guise of a commentary on the pandemic: Mr. Ganesh employs the help of Mr. Garrett Jones’ “10 per cent less democracy” , that does not so much as make an argument, as state a belief, or more plainly, enunciates an ideology, that is the worldview of both Conservatives, of what ever hue, and Neo-Liberals who are presiding over the Economic/Political collapse, in the present. The origins of which are in the failed policies of the very experts that Mr Ganesh doesn’t quite praise, as the voice of political reason, but merely a check on ‘too much democracy’. Mr. Ganesh is guilty of the political crime, of trivialization,  in a time of grave political/civic crisis! 

Political Skeptic 

https://www.ft.com/content/f68c13a4-1130-49d5-b3c6-2270711d819e

 Ms. Foroohar, in her essay,  on the deteriorating relations between China and Trump, offers some thoughts on the fate of Neo-Liberalism, or have I misread? 

Headline: China wants to decouple from US tech, too

Sub-headline:Washington’s restrictions have only sped Beijing’s development of its own ecosystem

…

Certainly, it sounds simpler than what the US is now trying to do, which is rebuild the supply chains it has spent the past several decades outsourcing to the East. That is the advantage of having a coherent national industrial policy, as China does. The US abandoned such planning decades ago with the rise of neoliberalism, which held that capital, goods and labour should flow freely without any government restriction.

The problem is that the free market first approach doesn’t work quite as well in a crisis. Right after the pandemic began, for example, I interviewed the chief executives of numerous apparel companies, who were ready and eager to retool to make masks in order to fill the shortage in hospitals. They were the ones prodding the White House to help them co-ordinate these efforts, rather than the other way around. Nobody in the administration had a clue about what manufacturing resources might be immediately available to fill the PPE gaps, or how to better deploy them in a crisis.

…

https://www.ft.com/content/371e139e-df4d-4ef8-9ed9-a92b97543af6?segmentid=acee4131-99c2-09d3-a635-873e61754ec6

Political Observer 

In the watershed of the complete collapse of The Mueller Report & Schiff’s well rehearsed Mini-Series, that produced Stars Vindman and Fiona Hill – while the political longevity of this melodrama was non-existent. The release of the original testimony secured that well deserved fate!
‘Russian Interference’ is now the lingua franca of the Anti-Trumpers, in this case Joe Biden’s ‘Richard Nixon’, Kamala Harris.

Democratic vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris warned Russian election interference could hand US President Donald Trump another four years in the White House.

In an interview with CNN’s State of the Union, Ms Harris said she believed Moscow would attempt to interfere in the 2020 presidential election in the same way that US intelligence agencies say it did in 2016.

“I am clear that Russia interfered in the election of president of the United States in 2016. I serve on the Senate Intelligence Committee,” Ms Harris told CNN.

“We have published detailed reports about exactly what we believe happened. And I do believe that there will be foreign interference in the 2020 election, and that Russia will be at the front of the line.”

Pressed to answer if Russian interference could cause the Democratic ticket to lose the election, Ms Harris responded: “Theoretically, of course, yes.”

…

https://www.ft.com/content/e23fd41a-61f5-471b-a45c-41e5b8fbd32a

The ‘as if’ here is that America’s record on internal interference in the politics of other nations is ? America ‘sanctions’ , or just invades, and occupies, those nations who would resist its hegemonic ambition. And  enlists its coterie of well financed NGO’s, to heighten their internal subversion.  

Ray McGovern briefed presidents on National Security issues:  

Headline: Ray McGovern: Catapulting Russian-Meddling Propaganda

Sub-headline: The New York Times is leading the full-court press to improve on what it regards as Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s weak-kneed effort to blame the Russians for giving us Donald Trump. 

The fresh orgy of anti-Russian invective in the lickspittle media (LSM) has the feel of fin de siècle. The last four reality-impaired years do seem as though they add up to a century. And no definitive fin is in sight, as long as most people don’t know what’s going on.

The LSM should be confronted: “At long last have you left no sense of decency?” But who would hear the question — much less any answer? The corporate media have a lock on what Americans are permitted or not permitted to hear. Checking the truth, once routine in journalism, is a thing of the past.

Thus the reckless abandon with which The New York Times is leading the current full-court press to improve on what it regards as Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s weak-kneed effort to blame the Russians for giving us Donald Trump. The press is on, and there are no referees to call the fouls.

The recent release of a 1,000-page, sans bombshells and already out-of-date report by the Senate Intelligence Committee has provided the occasion to “catapult the propaganda,” as President George W. Bush once put it.

…

RAY McGOVERN: Catapulting Russian-Meddling Propaganda

 

The Financial Times not just content with Harris’ hysterical Anti-Russian diatribe, has published this political stenography: 

Headline: Russian troll farm makes US comeback

Sub-headline: Internet Research Agency said to be behind leftwing website was also active during 2016 election

After the FBI tipped off Facebook that the obscure leftwing website Peace Data was a clandestine front for Russia this week, the site’s anonymous administrators responded the only way a troll knows how: by brazenly posting through the scandal.

“We’re assured that Peace Data became a victim of a collaborated provocative effort from Facebook and FBI who want to shut up independent leftwing voices prior to the presidential elections and to disguise it with the fight against made up Russian threat,” the trolls wrote in a lengthy post riddled with grammatical mistakes and clunky Russian syntax.

Researchers say Peace Data, a small group of about a dozen accounts that hired unwitting American freelancers, is the first known attempt this year by people linked to the Internet Research Agency, the infamous St Petersburg troll farm, to meddle in the 2020 US election.

  The US says the IRA is funded by Evgeny Prigozhin, a caterer-turned-warlord known as “Putin’s chef”, and indicted 13 of its employees for their attempts to interfere in the 2016 election. 

…

https://www.ft.com/content/447724b0-bc98-4690-a150-674f451d1b3e

The Left-Wing is the perennial bad actor, and or ‘dupes’, dating back, at least, since the Republican Party deemed ‘The New Deal’, ‘A Generation of Treason‘ in the late 1940’s. The New Democrats have embraced a political variant of that strategy, based on the failed, but potent propaganda residual, from Media’s morning till night coverage, of  The Mueller and Schiff manufactured political crises.

American Skeptic 

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

______________________________________________________________

 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

…

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!