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

__________________________________________________________

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

An investigation is opened after the death of a man during his custody in Lille-Sud this Sunday. He was arrested in the night from Saturday to Sunday when he was about to commit a break-in theft, rue Delespaul, in Lille. Placed in police custody, he was found unconscious in his cell in the morning. The circumstances of his death remain to be clarified. The autopsy which has just been carried out concludes with a “death of natural or toxic origin” indicates the parquet floor of Lille, but additional examinations have been requested.
The circumstances of the death remain to be clarified
The young man who died in police custody is undocumented; we therefore do not know for the moment how old he is, or even if he is major or minor. It is also unknown whether he lives in Lille or its region.

A source close to the file says that the young man saw a doctor, as the procedure requires, just after his arrest around two in the morning. The doctor would not have considered his state of health incompatible with a placement in police custody, indicates the Lille prosecutor’s office. Police officials are being heard.

The Lille prosecutor’s office, in charge of the case, rules out “any traumatic or suspicious cause” to explain the death of the young man, in view of the various elements collected so far (hearings of police officers, video surveillance of cells, and results of the autopsy , which concludes with a death “of natural or toxic origin”). However, additional expertise is still in progress.

…

Almost half of Mr. Rachman’s essay was devoted to Polling Numbers, but he, then, admonishes his readers, about the fateful lessons offered by 2016. And quoting Debbie Dingle. He offers his readership this bit of – what to call it? It doesn’t even qualify as political myopia:

The Democrats initially reacted to defeat in 2016 with determination to engage with the woes of the white working-class.

https://www.ft.com/content/78e01581-65e4-4229-ab65-30958a091a94

Hillary Clinton even before the election was screeching about Russian Interference in the American Election:

September 6, 2016  

Headline:Hillary Clinton Accuses Russia of Interfering With U.S. Election

MOLINE, Ill. — Hillary Clinton accused Russian intelligence of interfering with the American election, implying that President Vladimir V. Putin viewed a victory by Donald J. Trump as a destabilizing event that would weaken the United States and buttress Russian interests.

“It’s almost unthinkable,” Mrs. Clinton said on Monday, referring to what she called recent “credible reports about Russian interference in our elections” and citing a hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s emails in July.

“We’ve never had the nominee of one of our major parties urging the Russians to hack,” Mrs. Clinton said in a news conference. “I want everyone — Democrat, Republican, Independent — to understand the real threat that this represents.”

The comments, Mrs. Clinton’s most extensive yet on one of the more unusual subplots of the presidential campaign, came after a Washington Post report that United States intelligence and law enforcement agencies are probing a wide, covert Russian effort to disrupt the presidential election.

…

This ‘Russian Interference’ produced two American Melodrama’s The Mueller Report and the Adam Schiff Three Ring Circus. Both dismal failures, even as they were the focus of American Media’s fawning attention. Even the Senate Report, of over a thousand pages, recently released…   

Nor did the reader need to be reminded of the latest books, on the American reporter’s  shifting taste in political analysis, in its various iterations, as the some-how touchstones of a political present: 

The book Hillbilly Elegy has been replaced on bedside reading tables by White Fragility. 

Perhaps, in the World of Political Pundits, and the scribblers who present themselves as the descriptors, of the latest confection of the Political Phenominologists, seems to lose  potency, in the accelerated time of the evanescent political moment?

On ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ the  J. D. Vance’s memoir read this L.A. Review of Books essay by Florence Dore, J. D. Connor, Dan Sinykin:

Rebel Yale: Reading and Feeling “Hillbilly Elegy”

…

 The runaway success of Hillbilly Elegy means that it is now firmly established as the single most popular attempt to understand the “cultural crisis” underlying Trump’s victory. Rather than urging Americans to read it, as so many of its first reviewers did, we now need to examine why we’ve bothered and what we’ve taken from it.

…

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/rebel-yale-reading-feeling-hillbilly-elegy/

What is the possible commonality between a memoir of self-emancipation and a book about racism? A description of the shifting character of the political focus of one political pundit? The L.A. Review of Books team provides a clue: 

…

 Hillbilly Elegy’s presence on student bookshelves is but one sign that Thomson has it wrong. Hillbilly Elegy isn’t so much “resonating beyond traditional elites,” as justifying elitism under Trump.

We can begin to understand the book’s subtle plug for elitism when we consider the appeal on college campuses for a book about “hillbillies” and “rednecks.

…

Or has Larry Summers enthusiasm for ‘Hillbilly’, been a deciding factor for Mr. Rachman? 

‘“Reading about @hillbillyelegy is not the same as reading it. Anyone wanting to understand Trump’s rise or American inequality should read it.”

On ‘White Fragility’ reviewed by John McWhorter

The Dehumanizing Condescension of White Fragility

The popular book aims to combat racism but talks down to Black people.

…

Reading white fragility is rather like attending a diversity seminar. DiAngelo patiently lays out a rationale for white readers to engage in a self-examination that, she notes, will be awkward and painful. Her chapters are shortish, as if each were a 45-minute session. DiAngelo seeks to instruct.

She operates from the now-familiar concern with white privilege, aware of the unintentional racism ever lurking inside of her that was inculcated from birth by the white supremacy on which America was founded. To atone for this original sin, she is devoted to endlessly exploring, acknowledging, and seeking to undo whites’ “complicity with and investment in” racism. To DiAngelo, any failure to do this “work,” as adherents of this paradigm often put it, renders one racist.

As such, a major bugbear for DiAngelo is the white American, often of modest education, who makes statements like I don’t see color or asks questions like How dare you call me “racist”? Her assumption that all people have a racist bias is reasonable—science has demonstrated it. The problem is what DiAngelo thinks must follow as the result of it.

DiAngelo has spent a very long time conducting diversity seminars in which whites, exposed to her catechism, regularly tell her—many while crying, yelling, or storming toward the exit—that she’s insulting them and being reductionist. Yet none of this seems to have led her to look inward. Rather, she sees herself as the bearer of an exalted wisdom that these objectors fail to perceive, blinded by their inner racism. DiAngelo is less a coach than a proselytizer.

When writers who are this sure of their convictions turn out to make a compelling case, it is genuinely exciting. This is sadly not one of those times, even though white guilt and politesse have apparently distracted many readers from the book’s numerous obvious flaws.

…

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/dehumanizing-condescension-white-fragility/614146/

That these two best sellers  just garner a mention, in passing,  from Mr. Rachman,is evidence of their momentary status as touchstones, in the American political melodrama, that have now faded, but provide an almost highfalutin background, for unimaginative political prognostication.  

Philosophical Apprentice 

______________________________________________________________

In reply to Elliott

Headline:Biden frames 2020 as a fight between light and darkness

Sub-headline: The Democratic nominee wants this presidential contest to be about character

Crime Bill Joe & the California Attorney General ,who sent the parents of truant children to jail, Kamala Harris: not quite the characterization as presented in the political gush by Mr. Luce. But this has to be the most jejune expression of Mr. Luce’s particular brand of political kitsch:

‘But when the choice is reduced to personality opposites — an ageing Luke Skywalker versus Darth Vader — the strangest bedfellows fall into line’. 

It aspires to the standards of one of those Cecil B. De Mille Biblical Epics. But the dull-witted George Lucas, and his Star Wars movie serial Transcendentalism  & Luce’s kitsch, a marriage made in Public Relations Nirvana! 

StephenKMackSD     

https://www.ft.com/content/16d5d779-aef0-4b8c-baca-fab73cf0d243

______________________________________________________________

 Replying to WesteringHo

The whole of America’s Political Class midwived Trump! The very notion that Trump is a political anomaly is the purest bunk! He is the political creature of the utterly collapsed Neo-Liberal Swindle, and the two Parties, that made that Swindle possible, yet still can’t admit their collective culpability! 
There is no ‘Rule of Law’,  but there are the imperatives of The American National Security State, and its legislative and jurisprudential servants. 
The very notion of some kind of ‘Restoration’, as we sink further into the status of a failed State…
Biden gave a speech riffing on ‘Light’ vs ‘Dark’ , it was impressive for its recitation of political cliche, framed in that old American standard  Political Theology: Cotton Mather tinctured in Jonathan Edwards?
The New York Times was awash in Biden euphoria, even the the self-proclaimed America Political Prophet, David Brooks, sang from the same hymnal.
Regards, and thank you for your comment
StephenKMackSD         

How did I miss this essay by Mr. Ganesh? The only reason that I became aware of it was a tweet from Daniel Larison.

Headline: The lost virtue of doubt

Sub-headline: Sceptics such as the late Brent Scowcroft are the world’s unsung heroes

This sentence of Ganesh’s belated Funeral Oration for Scowcroft, stands out for its sheer irrelevance, to anything resembling argument: suffused with self-serving jargon, that relies upon an ungainly attempt at political hyperbole/paradox, gone wrong. 

Obituaries of the aide to four presidents, who died this month, describe a career of radical prudence.

The first question the reader must ask is how to define ‘radical prudence’ ? It being mere rhetorical interior decoration: Ganesh as Mario Praz? 

In Ganesh’s telling Scowcroft attains near mythic status as an Enlightened Man of The Right:

He helped to winkle the last US troops out of Saigon. He discouraged western triumphalism as the Berlin Wall fell. He advised friends against the invasion of Iraq. And all of this as a man of the right. It was a life spent averting and undoing the mistakes of true believers, to vastly more resentment than thanks.  

After a brief snippet from Graham Greene the reader encounters this meditation on the danger ‘fervent belief’ as opposed to ‘one belief system’ :  

The greatest public calamities do not stem from any one belief system, but from fervent belief itself. The Iraq war remains a haunting case in point but the crash of 2008 also fits the pattern. More or less plausible ideas — about the self-correcting nature of markets, about the competence of elites — were held too blindly, until the reckoning came. In the end, we fashioned technical solutions to both misadventures, but the source of the problem was always conceptual. For the want of doubt, the world burnt.

Has Mr. Ganesh overcome New Labour’ s Thatcherism Lite and its Iraq War enthusiasm? Or in an American context, Republican and New Democratic ‘Free Market’ enthusiasm and the shared War Mongering?      

A segue to The Real World:

Headline: Brent Scowcroft Never Hated His Enemies

Sub-headline:His realist approach to global affairs came straight from “The Godfather.”

James Stavridis is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is a retired U.S. Navy admiral and former supreme allied commander of NATO, and dean emeritus of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He is also an operating executive consultant at the Carlyle Group and chairs the board of counselors at McLarty Associates.

James Stavridis offers a more sober evaluation of his adviser Scowcroft:

Scowcroft, who had served as national security adviser for Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, spent a couple of hours with me and laid out a detailed geopolitical picture. Reflecting on his time served in half a dozen presidential administrations, the general provided a balanced, sensible and practical approach to take with both the Russian Federation and our European allies. As we concluded our lengthy talk, he patted me on the shoulder and said: “You’ll do well over there, Jim. Don’t let the Russians get under your skin.” 

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-08-10/brent-scowcroft-never-hated-his-enemies?srnd=opinion&sref=bfOwbK4O

Another ‘insight’ into the Scowcroft World View and Methodology from Stavridis: 

A second quality was his unemotional, analytic approach to the world, sometimes called realpolitik. Scowcroft earned his spurs around former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and took Kissinger’s place the first time he became national security adviser. When he told me not to let the Russians get under my skin, he meant to stay calm and be the adult in the room. As Don Corleone puts it in Mario Puzo’s “The Godfather”: “Never hate your enemies — it affects your judgment.”   

If only Mr. Ganesh were a reader! He wouldn’t commit this extemporizing on the themes of the political present, of the falling apart of the Neo-Liberal Swindle, exacerbated by Covid-19, and the utter failure of America’s Political Class to act ‘as if’ they cared. The manifestations of that collapse as it unfolds in that present. Mr. Ganesh fills out his essay with pseudo-philosophic chatter, about one man’s ‘tentativeness’ and ‘ambivalence’ as somehow offering a key to political behavior.   

The want is still there, in new and strange forms. This summer, celebrities, writers and academics have tried to re-establish respect for the freedom of expression. As a tactical fix in censorious times, it is indispensable. But it is a tactical fix. The deeper problem is the absolute certitude that drives the silencing behaviour in the first place. No one who is tentative or ambivalent in their beliefs is going to cancel anyone, much less hurt them. Intolerance is not a misguided expression of these people’s dogma. It is a natural outcome of it. The point is to coach them into new habits of mind, not just new manners.

https://www.ft.com/content/de843f6e-0be1-4667-8a9f-f397cf840e72

Mr. Ganesh rambling essay continues with walk-ons by Henry Kissinger, John le Carré, Robert Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Theodore Roosevelt. And ending with this coda: 

The insinuation is always that there is something timid and anti-chivalric about not committing to an epic cause. The more this stigma holds, the more prone our societies become to errors of enthusiasm. It is a kind of systemic risk. The way out is to heroise the doubters.

Old Socialist  

Headline: Russia says it is ready to provide Belarus with military support

Sub-headline: Up to 200,000 people protest in Minsk as Kremlin give its backing and Nato says it is ‘closely monitoring’ situation

https://www.ft.com/content/0f860c07-fc3b-4efb-8807-ff13950ce588

How obvious can this repeat of Ukraine be? All that is missing is Neo-Con ghoul Victoria Nuland, passing out chocolate chip cookies to the ‘Freedom Fighters’ !
In geopolitical terms, just look to the fact that Belarus shares a common border with Russia. The ‘NATO multinational presence’ is just the ersatz cover, for more New Cold War attacks against Putin’s Russian, at its periphery. 

The discontent of this state’s populous, should not be minimized, but note just who might be the potential political players: NATO, FDD, The Atlantic Council, American backed NGO’s and other wealthy New Cold Warriors, are the same actors that subverted the duly elected government of Ukraine.    
The question that remains is what will Putin do, to the check this further encroachment of the American Empire’s obvious, continuing encirclement of Russia? The Anti-Russian Hysterics are a political/moral toxin: proceed with caution is an antithetical strategy to these zealots.   

Old Socialist 

Headline:On Being a Biden Conservative

Sub-headline: It’s about upholding your principles at the expense of your politics.

Mr. Stephens can always be depended upon for proclaiming his political/moral uprightness, that equals the voice of political reason. Like his fellow traveler David Brooks. That ‘Biden Conservatism’ is equal to that of  George H.W. Bush’s conservatism. Recall that ‘Thousand Points Of Light’ merde? Or even the Lee Atwater Willie Horton racist hysteria of 1988? Or Bush The Elder checking his watch during the ‘Debate’ with Bill Clinton and Ross Perot? Mr. Stephens depends on the cultivated , not to speak of a self-willed political ignorance, of his readers, in the political present:

 … 

  
Whatever else he does, Biden won’t expend his political capital belittling, demeaning and humiliating other Americans. He won’t treat opponents as enemies, or subordinates as toadies, or take supporters for fools. Joe Biden is the Democratic equivalent of George H.W. Bush — another ambitious vice president who believed in loyalty and decency more than in any particular set of ideas. History remembers the senior Bush’s presidency well.

…

More of  Stephens’ hyperbolically expressed political/moral self-congratulation: 

… 

To be a Biden conservative isn’t easy. It’s about upholding your principles at the expense of your politics, and embracing mediocrity to ward off malevolence. Above all, it’s about curbing your enthusiasm. If that isn’t conservative, what is?

Old Socialist