StephenKMackSD's Blog

“Bill Maher” When will this ‘Once Rebel’, now just the comic voice of a collapsed Neo-Liberalism, and its Con-Man-in-Chief Obama & the utterly loathsome Hillary, retire to the Comedy Old Folks Home? Like that other un-funny ‘Comic’ Jerry Seinfeld. It makes you almost long for the days of all those Borscht Belt graduates, like Myron Cohen, Jackie E.  Leonard, Sam Levenson. Not to forget the contributions to the Comic Art of Mort Sahl, Shelley Berman, Jonathan Winters, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, and Tom Lehrer, and the redoubtable Lenny Bruce!
‘Bill of Eternal Smirk’, just like Bob Hope! Both got rich and became ‘Stars’ of a medium that trades in Mediocrity, allied to a necessary political conformity!

Sincerely yours,

Myra Breckenridge

P. S. As the reader can tell, I had spent too much time in front of that Black & White screen, in the 1950’s and ’60.  And in darkened Movie Theaters, Parker Tyler was my muse. I’ve since freed myself from the salacious biography/fiction written by Gore Vidal, to live in Studio City. Near the once enchanted back-lots of Hollywood , now turned into Shopping Malls and parking garages, with the rest of the wanna-be Actors/Starlets that those Talent Agents passed by! To riff on Nietzsche ‘I am Eternal’ 

Yours,

M.B.        

Headline: Inside Bill Ackman’s $2.6bn big short

Sub-headline: Hedge fund chief bets on stockmarket recovery after profiting from coronavirus sell-off

Dan McCrum and Ortenca Aliaj chronicle, in all its gripping economic melodrama, the triumph of the grey-haired genius boy Mr. Ackman. The reader is almost transported to a pastiche of the Marvel World of the late, lamented Stan Lee, with the aid of sexy graphs, and the nearly breathless tone of awe of McCrum/Aliaj. Give credit where credit is due! Mr. McCrum and Mr. Aliaj write with verve, and manage to maintain both dramatic tension, and to almost transmogrify the jejune. Quite a feat!   

Two sentences stand out:

‘Mr Ackman declined to comment for this article.’

‘The coronavirus hedge marked the first time that Pershing Square had wagered in credit default swaps since the financial crisis.’

https://www.ft.com/content/70a5566c-5c02-4dcd-9360-c2b0001f2f29

Political Observer

Not even a mention of Pedro Sánchez’s essay in The Guardian of Sunday April 5, 2020 ?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2020/apr/05/europes-future-is-at-stake-in-this-war-against-coronavirus

The end of the E. U., and its single currency, in the Age of The Pandemic, is gaining momentum , or is that too mild a descriptor? Perhaps ‘Hyper-Drive’ , laden with Hollywood Scientific Kitsch suits the compression of time experienced in the wake of Covid-19?

Who can recall the battle between The Virtuous Northern Tier vs The Profligate Southern Tier of the debates, of a not too distant past, through the wrong end of a telescope?

Go to YouTube and The Duran, for an enlightening discussion of the very questions Mr. Gideon Rachman seeks to explore, with his Neo-Liberalism leading the way, while the rest of us watch the slow-motion collapse of Monnet’s Utopia!

StephenKMackSD

https://www.ft.com/content/b809685c-77de-11ea-af44-daa3def9ae03

______________________________________________________________

My reply to Juan 

Thank you for your reply.  Sánchez wasn’t the only one ignoring warnings, but he is  ‘ And his financial projects are just crazy, as they are designed by the same people who organised the ruinous Venezuelan economy.’  Is the EU about the shared political/economic fate of Europe? Or is it about Germany :the Virtuous Norther Tier’s Saint and Spain as the Profligate Southern Tier’s Sinner? In a Telenovela about a Political/Economic Calvinism of the Saved and the Dammed? 
The ‘Venezuelan economy’ and ‘Communists’ the obligatory bad actors in your maladroit dramaturgy. 
Regards,
StephenKMackSD 

Has this newspaper moved to The Left, with Covid-19 as its goad? Schumpeter’s ‘creative destruction’ ,that Mr. Thornhill makes the centerpiece of his intervention, in the face of the massive, and largely unsupervised bail-out of American Capital, passed by both Houses of Congress, is somehow an expression of that ‘creative destruction’? After the passage of this legislation both houses of Congress adjourned. 

The question that Mr. Thornhill never addresses is exactly which Capitalist enterprises  will experience that hallowed ‘creative destruction’?  

Extensive quotation of The Great Man Kissinger : 

Henry Kissinger, the grand old man of US strategic thinking, has argued that the latest crisis is triggering a political and economic upheaval that could last for generations. “Nations cohere and flourish on the belief that their institutions can foresee calamity, arrest its impact and restore stability,” he wrote last week.

“When the Covid-19 pandemic is over, many countries’ institutions will be perceived as having failed. Whether this judgment is objectively fair is irrelevant. The reality is the world will never be the same after the coronavirus.”

Always hedging his bets, The Great Man opines that‘Whether this judgment is objectively fair is irrelevant.’  Kissinger Associates’ clientele are the very persons, and institutions, that will be rightfully blamed, as they were all co-conspirators in the Neo-Liberal Swindle: that sent Manufacturing jobs overseas, in the name of  cheap labor, and greater profits. Thus exacerbating the Covid-19 Pandemic, and the dire need for Respirators, and other vital material, that is stunningly obvious!

The return of The Welfare State, in its various iterations, and its political corollary the return of the shared fate of civic virtue, is a fait accompli! 

Mr. Thornhill makes a valuable contribution, in his link and brief quotation from  The Enlightened Economy, Prof Mokyr. The contribution offered by Tim Rogan’s ‘The Moral Economists: R. H. Tawney, Karl Polanyi, E. P. Thompson, and the Critique of Capitalism’ is an invaluable contribution to this debate! 

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691173009/the-moral-economists

‘The dynamism of the market’ is the purest mythologizing. The largest and richest Corporations hold massive profits overseas:

Fortune 500 Companies Hold a Record $2.6 Trillion Offshore

Old Socialist 

https://www.ft.com/content/6d944c62-77f0-11ea-af44-daa3def9ae03

Think of Stephens distopian view of the future,  as speculation in the political present, to unleash his penchant for fear mongering, garnished by comforting political kitsch. Think of that David Lynch’s classic Hollywood dreck ‘Blue Velvet’, as a bloated rhetorical example of the Sadism/Kitsch binary, that Stephens freely adapts, to make his point. But that point , to this reader, is about Neo-Conservative nihilism, or more aptly, its status as a modern day death cult! Look to the headline and sub-headline of essay: 

Headline: Covid-19: A Look Back From 2025

Sub-headline: In which the coronavirus has changed almost everything.

The usual fascination with collapse, decay and decadence of Conservatism, of the kind that Opus Dei and the politics of Francoism reflect, all tarted up via the mendacious re-write man of the History of Philosophy, Leo Strauss, and his coterie of hysterical defenders.  

Note that Mr. Stephens’ almost literary speculation is firmly anchored in our present moment of crisis, and that the political actors, in his precis, remain unchanged, even though five years have past. So view his brief sketch of his possible literary speculations, as his maladroit way of pronouncing, in his necessarily disingenuous way, on the actuality of our historical moment. Stephens, in his usual perverse way, demonstrates the value of hindsight as exercised in a pseudo-literary speculation ?  The Then/Now is muddied to Stephens political advantage?   

And like the Neo-Conservative he is, and remains, despite the respectable bourgeois cover of The New York Times, the Enemies of American are the same: Russia, China and Iran. The large cast of familiar names adds the necessary verisimilitude, to his political/literary miniature. An since this is The New York Times, the necessary balm of kitsch is supplied by this  homespun paragraph: 

Not everything was bleak. Adults read more books, paid closer attention to their spouses and children, called their aging parents more often, made more careful choices with their money, thought more deeply about what they really wanted in life. In time, that kind of spiritual deepening will surely pay its own dividends.

Political Observer

Should it surprise any regular reader of The Financial Times, that it features two of the most prominent, not to speak of mendacious, defamers of Jeremy Corbyn, as somehow credible, on any given subject, after the public record of their mendacity is readily available? The curious reader just needs to check the back issues of this newspaper, for that confirmation.     

Rabbi Sacks opines on the place of Faith in the face of The Pandemic, in full self-congratulatory tribalist mode, that is usual for the adherents of the benighted Abrahamic Tradition. 

Headline: Former chief rabbi Jonathan Sacks on faith amid the crisis

Sub-headline: He explains why this is ‘the moment of moments for faith communities’ and shares his love of music

https://www.ft.com/content/20544a40-73ab-11ea-95fe-fcd274e920ca

Margaret Hodge’s notorious comments on Corbyn ‘a fucking antisemite and a racist’ , not to speak of the continuing exercise of her mendacity, extensively reported on in a sympathetic Corporate Press. 

Headline: From Corbyn to Keir Starmer: the battle for the heart of Labour

Sub-headline: The FT follows prominent Jeremy Corbyn critic and veteran MP Margaret Hodge as the opposition searches for a new leader. What kind of Labour party does the country now need? She joins the campaign trail and interviews key Labour figures including Alastair Campbell, Owen Jones, and Jess Phillips about their hopes and fears

https://www.ft.com/video/4d28a6b6-f1ca-4249-87a0-62011ff43ad8

Keir Starmer is the New Tony Blair? With the  ‘return to normalcy’ of New Labour , in sum ,Thatcherism Lite,  how might the Party frame its policies, in reply to Johnson’s bungling of the Covid-19 Crisis?

The political landscape in America is changing with every passing day, with Bernie Sanders’ star rising to new heights, while the New Democrats continue to prop up an absent Senile Old Joe. While Capitalism continues its collapse, and the Senate and House are in recess, The Pandemic grows!

Old Socialist

I just have to wonder at the utterly bankrupt Andrew Sullivan’s latest moralizing essay, and its first paragraph:

“There is no wealth but life,” the great critic John Ruskin once wrote. You can hear that faith in the words of Andrew Cuomo, whose Catholic upbringing still clearly reverberates in his soul. “If it’s the public health versus the economy, the only choice is public health,” Cuomo tweeted. “You cannot put a value on human life. You do the right thing. That’s what Pop taught us.” That’s why American soldiers never leave a fellow behind, why American doctors never abandon a patient, and why American rescuers and first responders go beyond the feasible and reach for the impossible.

A telling quote from John Ruskin, followed by die-hard Neo-Liberal governor Andrew Cuomo, as the epitome of ‘Catholic Virtue’, that ‘pop’ taught us’, a list of American Soldiers, Doctors and First Responders and their respective virtues. All of these moral actors, under the rubric of American Virtue, as an expression of exclusivity, or more pointedly of American Exceptionalism, of the Frank Capra School of American History. 

Its easy to quickly run out of patience with this moralizing fraud: he spent his moral capital on his enthusiasms for ‘The Bell Curve’ and the War in Iraq! He now makes war on those who don’t conform to his Politics: he’s the Roy Cohn of the political present, and  part of a cadre of political dullards, who write for Corporate Media. Read the rest of his essay at your own risk! 

Sincerely yours, 

Myra Breckenridge 

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/andrew-sullivan-how-to-live-with-the-coronavirus.html

Neo-Liberals, your ersatz Utopianism is not just in decline, but is on the Critical List! The Pandemic signals the revival of the long dormant notion, that the Nation State, as conceived in the Age of Enlightenment, and its sine qua non of the shared destiny of its citizens, now asserts itself in the face of catastrophe?

The first rescue package, a gift to the Plutocrats, with the ‘Lower Orders’ getting a pittance, will soon be followed by more of the same? Will The Property Party be more generous in the coming months of a crisis, as it deepens and the body count rises, not to speak of an utterly faltering, perhaps even collapsing Capitalism? The questions abound! 

Take credit where credit is due. you’ve had a long a prosperous run, but it has come to screeching halt, as The Pandemic wreaks its havoc across to globe! Your maladroit project of Social Engineering was the precursor to the political villain you so despise, President Trump. Will Thatcher’s notorious sloganeering of ‘TINA’ be redefined in the face of catastrophe? 

Mr. Luce paraphrases Neo-Con Francis Fukuyama:

 The real division, as Francis Fukuyama has argued in The Atlantic magazine, is between competent and incompetent states. Freedom-loving America was as late in waking up to the threat as repressive China. By contrast, liberal democratic Germany and authoritarian Singapore reacted early and well. What divides success from failure, argues Fukuyama, is “trust in government”.  

‘Trust in government’ is quite a leap from Mr. Fukuyama’s 2013 essay titled ‘The Decay of American Political Institutions’:

The Decay of American Political Institutions

In which he attacks the very history of American social/economic/political reform from Teddy Roosevelt onward.  Self-Serving mendacity defines Neo-Conservatism, the natural inheritance from Philosophical Fiction writer Leo Strauss. 

Old Socialist 

https://www.ft.com/content/0dcf6d1b-c43f-485e-80b5-46337b70e6c0

Headline: The tragedy of two failing superpowers

Sub-headline: To address the pandemic, China and the US must not only function. They must function together

https://www.ft.com/content/ea1563e8-725f-11ea-ad98-044200cb277f

Just to focus on one paragraph of Mr. Wolf’s latest encyclical heavily garnished with graphs/charts.

The fundamental American principles of democracy and individual freedom remain attractive to many around the world, despite the global rise of populist autocracy. The vigour of its private economy may yet save us all. But today the US is losing its reputation for elementary competence, already badly battered by its long list of futile wars and the financial crisis of 2007-09. Parts of government, notably the Federal Reserve, remain effective for now, though who knows what would happen in a second Trump term? But the fundamental capability of the often despised “administrative state” — the bulwark of any complex urban civilisation — really matters. At these times of crisis, its absence is lethal. A government at war with science and its own machinery is now very visible to all.

 

There is no ‘tragedy’, this place holder is the fictional creation of Mr. Wolf , or should it be named the care and maintenance of bourgeois political respectability? Subject to historical erasure is the collapse of The Neo-Liberal Swindle, that attacked the very institutions of The Welfare State: a strong manufacturing base, unionized workers, and a vital Public Heath component. The dismantling of that Welfare State , in America, was piecemeal, so some of its most vital institutions, like Social Security remained in place. The Strong State , the sine qua non of the Neo-Liberal coterie, with the help of Bill Clinton, per example:  The Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, brought an the end of New Deal protections! And economic catastrophe followed.  This just a rough historical sketch. Look to ‘the global rise of populist autocracy’ as the product of that collapse. See Philipp Ther’s ‘Europe Since 1989: A History’ that explores Neo-Liberalism’s malign utopianism in Central Europe.   

Contra Mr. Wolf’s  melodramatic framing , The Pandemic will focus our attention on the fact that America needs to rebuild its Manufacturing Base, unionized workers and a robust Welfare State. Relying not on Corporatist ‘Trade Deals’, but on a revival of the Democratic Nation State as essential. Allied to strong treaties, with other states, not written by Corporate lawyers, but by democratically elected legislators, with the approval of voters !

Political Observer

Mr. Ganesh’s literary overlay, Dickens vs. Orwell provides that frame, on power of The Pandemic is stylistically – I can’t compare it to Tom Wolfe’ s ‘snap, crackle, pop’ -for it is too sophisticated, in its way. And reaches an ersatz sumptuousness , almost reminiscent of Henry James. With a better sense of the imperatives, of the necessity of brevity, for a Boulevardier, who writes for a Newspaper as an avocation.

What Mr. Ganesh’s misses, avoids, or seeks to hide, under his almost elegant prose, is that it is not the ‘Social Contact’ that will be rewritten, but that The Neo-Liberal Age has come to its final moments on the World Stage. And what is to replace it is a new iteration of the Welfare State. The proof is the massive bail-out, read gift, for Corporations, and in America a measly $1200 for the lesser beings! 

The Political Melodrama is sharpened by the fact that  Sens. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.), James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Richard Burr (R-N.C.) sold their stocks in light of insider information:

Four senators sold stocks before coronavirus threat crashed market

Not to speak of other Senators lecturing on the Senate floor, the fact their constituencies, the potential recipients of that $1200,  will experience a moral sloth,  an instance of the perennial Capitalist Puritanism. Sen. Bernie Sanders replies with withering contempt. But watch the video, till a Republican Senator, offers a scolding to Sanders, wreathed in faint praise.

Old Socialist 

https://www.ft.com/content/18591596-6f5a-11ea-89df-41bea055720b