StephenKMackSD's Blog

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

The panic of ‘The Elites’ is just reaching a slow simmer:

Headline: Coronavirus ‘medicine’ could trigger social breakdown

Sub-headline: Jacob Wallenberg tells governments to consider economic threat from crisis

‘Jacob Wallenberg has warned governments to weigh the economic threat from coronavirus more heavily or risk depression, social unrest and a potential lost generation.’

https://www.ft.com/content/3b8ec9fe-6eb8-11ea-89df-41bea055720b

Mr. Luce after much convoluted hand-wringing over Trump’s incompetence, mendacity etc., arrives at his actual central concern: the ebbing power of the Hegemon. (The precipitous collapse, of the Neo-Liberal Swindle, is left for another political occasion.) :

The second threat is to America’s global power. The virus originated in China. But it will probably do more damage to the US. It is China, not the US, which is shipping ventilators to Europe, Africa and central Asia. China’s “face mask” diplomacy is breathtakingly opportunistic. But it meets a need.

America’s abdication of leadership is an act of self harm, which threatens to make it an object of mockery. There are no do-overs on pandemics. Mr Trump’s response to the coronavirus is worse than a crime. It is a mistake.

Mr. Luce ends with these jejune paragraphs, in the face of Trump’s moral/political nihilism, writ on a breathtaking scale!

Political Observer 

https://www.ft.com/content/6a639c58-3c69-4bc6-8ab2-c194b3d04278

P.S.What can a reader say to this Luce declaration? That the imperatives of ‘The Market’ must give way to the imperatives of The Public Good? Neo-Liberalism’s sine qua non that the ‘Wisdom of the Market’ is the singular knowledge – does the antithetical nature of the ‘Market Singularity’ and ‘The Public Good’ represent a case of Berlin’s incommensurables?

Material is going to the highest bidders, who are not necessarily those most in need. Mr Trump’s passivity reflects what he is hearing from chief executives rather than governors, who know what their hospitals lack. States are competing with each other for scarce goods. Another of America’s great strengths, its vibrant private sector, is therefore becoming a weakness.

Never has Political Melodrama, cliche and understatement been so successfully wedded? Mr. Ganesh’s opening paragraph: 

Addressing a traumatised nation, the US president fumbled. His Oval Office speech lacked command and old doubts resurfaced about his fitness for the role. Much of Washington sensed that a man elected in good times (while losing the popular vote) was out of his element in a crisis.

The video of the revered Anthony Fauchi’s almost laughter, during the Trump Press Conference, and  him covering his face, with his free hand, speaks louder than any exclamation.

Mr. Ganesh widens his melodramatic frame with the additions of political actors, Boris Johnson is not absent, but is obliquely referred to by his place holder ‘Britain’s ruling Conservatives’, followed by Neo-Liberal under siege Emmanuel Macron. 

Much of it is a nervous public’s reflexive deference to authority. In a crisis, there is no solace in the thought that one’s leaders are derelict, even if the facts invite exactly that conclusion. Note that Britain’s ruling Conservatives are also scoring well with voters. So is President Emmanuel Macron of France. Given their divergent response to the virus (in timing, if not content), all that links these governments is the fact of being governments.

What follows is Mr. Ganesh’s speculations on, and citations of Trump’s political missteps,   that fails to address the ebbing away of the credibility of The New Democrats: first Mrs. Clinton’s ‘basket of deplorables’ , then its wholesale investment in the fictional  ‘Russia-Gate’ followed by ‘UkraineGate’ , both  simply collapsed, and then were promptly forgotten. Except the clear demonstration of Joe Biden’s corruption. The purchase of sinecures for his son Hunter, lie fallow, for the political moment. 

Those years of MSNBC propaganda, and its hysterical mouthpiece Rachael Maddow, have now found a new compelling obsession, that is fact based, The Pandemic. With Carnival Barker Trump as the villain, they midwifed. The New Democrats and their ‘fake news’ has cost them dearly, yet the cognitively impaired Biden is the presumptive candidate for president. Could my selective history of the New Democrats help to explain Trump’s high ratings? Yet it is a contributing factor, that Mr. Ganesh doesn’t even allude too. There is no need for overt historical revisionism, the News Cycle is just a endless repetition of imprint and erasure.   

Political Observer

https://www.ft.com/content/296f2c82-6e86-11ea-9bca-bf503995cd6f

Title Mr. Rachman’s latest essay  ‘The Myth of Globalism Under Threat’. When all else fails melodrama! Not forgetting that Rachman’s faith in ‘Globalism’, recalls to me the long forgotten Eric Hoffer, and his book ‘The True Believer’. 

‘Globalization’ is, in fact,  Neo-Liberalism writ large. In sum , the Corporatization of the World, that puts the governance, control of the Nation State, in the hands of a Corporate Technocracy, who supplant the role once played by political office holders, to write ‘Laws’ like NAFTA, TPP, TTIP that replace, to use shorthand, Democracy with the rule of *Technocracy.
The propaganda that Mr. Rachman enunciates is that ‘Globalism’ is our ‘Radiant Future’ to borrow the title from Aleksandr Zinoviev novel. But the Social/Economic/Political Engineering of Monnet’s Cartel, the Common Market, that ‘evolved’ into to the E.U., was exposed as a complete fraud, by former Eurocrat Bernard Connolly’s ‘The Rotten Heart of Europe‘.
Add to that the stark lessons of the Greek Crisis. Not to forget Brexit, as one of the precursors of the faltering Capitalist Collectivism, know respectably as the E.U. and the pseudo-utopian ‘Globalism’.
Another way to think about this ,in fitting analogical terms, is compare this to the rise of Monotheism in answer to the a faltering Paganism, if that isn’t …

Nationalism/Paganism vs. Globalism/Monotheism could describe the outlines of a  New Paradigm? to vulgarize Thomas Kuhn.

*Note that Walter Lippmann’s ‘Liberalism’ was based on a faith that Technocrats were a check against too much Democracy! 

Political Observer

https://www.ft.com/content/644fd920-6cea-11ea-9bca-bf503995cd6f

Headline: The crushing burden on Mnuchin’s shoulders

Sub-headline: Treasury secretary enters war against Covid-19 with handicaps, but he’s all America has got

First the melodramatic headline and sub-headline, and then this bit of political kitsch:

No one has ever thought of Steven Mnuchin, the US Treasury secretary, as Hercules. But circumstances have thrust Atlas on his shoulders.

Note that Atlas was a titan, condemned to hold up the celestial heavens for eternity.

Followed by these two paragraphs, featured players in Mr. Luce’s stilted economic melodrama: Larry Summers,Tim Geithner, Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke and Jason Furman, these players inspire zero confidence! 

The only comparable moment is the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash. “Then we had to encourage people to go out and shop and buy and boost economic activity,” said Lawrence Summers, who was Mr Obama’s senior adviser. “Today the job is to put the economy in a coma without doing harm to people so as to keep people apart. It is arguably an even bigger challenge.”

Three of the key figures in 2008 — Tim Geithner, chair of the New York Fed, Hank Paulson, the US Treasury secretary, and Ben Bernanke, chair of the US Fed — wrote a book about how to handle financial crises called First Responders. It says nothing about a pandemic. “I looked through it the other day and realised no one imagined this situation,” said Mr Furman. “Mnuchin has no road map.”

This, an example of hurried notes on the back of an envelope journalism. Mr. Luce ends his dramatic vignette, that aspires to be much more, with this bit of political fatalism.

Like it or not, America is heading into war on a disease with the Treasury secretary it has. 

Political Observer

https://www.ft.com/content/96199d62-6ae0-11ea-800d-da70cff6e4d3

My reply to Mr. Luce:

Sir, it is my distinct pleasure to unmask the apologists for the Neo-Liberal Swindle, in it various iterations, permutations. That my polemics, such as they are, bring a kind of culinary distaste to one of such eminence is my reward. Look upon the fact, that I have provided you with an outlet for your high dudgeon, as an opportunity to scold one the lesser beings, who dares to address you as an equal.
In melodramatic terms , I am an insolent chimney sweep ,and you ,the Edwardian gentleman who pass on a public street, and exchange pleasantries. 
Regards,
StephenKMackSD      

Barry Goldwater, who won his first election contest, in a Mayor’s race, based upon the lie of the infiltration of ‘gangsters’ into civic life! This is the best that Mr. Ganesh can muster? He tries to mask his ignorance of American political history, with the mere mention of Goldwater without , what to name it , selective quotation of scraps of a pseudo- pragmatic political history , that doesn’t quite find the mark? I watched as the the ‘Goldwater Cabal’ purged the ‘Liberals’ at the Cow Palace in 1964! Mr. Ganesh has a nodding acquaintance with American history, yet his gift for stylistic flourishes can’t quite mask that reality.    

Quoting Mr. Ganesh at his most Delphic is always …It fairly sings!

We are in the early stages of one of history’s periodic discontinuities in economic thought. The sharpest, perhaps, since the Opec oil crises that elevated the free-marketeers in the 1970s. Readers will suggest the crash in 2008, after which a biography of John Maynard Keynes announced the “return of the master”. Well, it was fleeting. Before long, there were fiscal retrenchments around the western world. In the US, there was the Tea Party movement, the neutering of President Barack Obama by a Republican Congress, and his successor’s raid on the administrative state. The laissez-faire right was not much less ascendant in 2017, say, than in 2007.

The ‘Welfare State’, and its vigorous Public Health component, is making a ‘comeback’ in the face of a Pandemic, in the watershed of the collapse of the bankrupt Neo-Liberal Swindle. And an utterly bankrupt Political Class: Republicans & New Democrats!

Even Vulture Capitalist and Posh Boy Romney is a ‘Socialist’, now?  He still pines after the elusive presidency! He’s a Republican Joe Biden, sans the advanced case of the predations of old age, although not withstanding an unslakable political ambition, allied to his vacuousness, in sum an iteration of Republicanism Past? While noting that Romney lacks the authentic kind of political uprightness, and integrity, of his father George Romney!   

Final question: What happened to the mythical ‘Self-Correcting Market’ Neo-Liberals?

Political Observer

https://www.ft.com/content/198135c8-6912-11ea-a3c9-1fe6fedcca75

Headline: The Political Media’s Blurred Reality

Sub-headline:How market pressures and professional hubris have undone campaign journalism

Mr. Shapiro manages to make American Politics as practiced in 2020, sing like a Pop Tune, at the bottom of the charts, of another Age. In his description of the role of the supine corporate press coverage, of the presidential politics of recent memory, the jejune manages to retain its ennui producing thrall. Now Mr. Shapiro manages to mildly scold his fellow practitioners:

The truth is that while the demand for political stories is nearly inexhaustible, the supply chain is often short of new information or insights. So the story of 2019, in particular, was a tale of hot takes and takedowns buttressed by evanescent evidence. Through it all, reporters and pundits alike blithely ignored the evidence that most Democratic voters (even in Iowa and New Hampshire) weren’t paying attention. Campaign coverage before the Iowa caucuses probably would have spread far fewer misconceptions if the political press corps had taken two-week breaks each time the news slowed down. But, of course, there was cable TV airtime to fill, relentless online deadlines to meet, and front-page real estate to grab.

But with a full cast of the corporate dullards that appear on television and the internet with numbing regularity: Mika & Joe its  dull-witted Power Couple!  He’s in Hollywood Reporter or Variety territory! Show Business is the ruling ethos of Corporate Media Empires! Recall the good old days of Henry Luce?   

Now there is the politically canny mentions of ‘political scientists John Sides and Lynn Vavreck point out in The Gamble, their academic study of that year’s election…’ and Pete Hamby’s wrote in a 2013 paper for the Shorenstein Center at Harvard, and ‘In The Boys on the Bus, Timothy Crouse’s enduring portrait of the chain-smoking reporters covering the 1972 campaign, but how indicative of Mr. Shapiro’s selective memory that Joe McGinniss’ book ‘The Selling of the President 1968’ does not qualify! 

Its not that Mr. Shapiro lacks a certain gift for gussying up the political actors of America’s Corporate Press, with some literary flourishes, garnishing that good scolding – I’m speculating that his novel is gathering dust in that bottom drawer? But the Corporate Press is just that, a servant to America’s political class and its Property Party, Gore Vidal’s trenchant characterization, with two wings the Republicans and the New Democrats. Mr. Shapiro’s ‘insights’ are of a loyal citizen of this ‘press brigade’ of  that Property Party!

Old Socialist 

https://newrepublic.com/article/156822/political-media-failure-2016-2020-elections?utm_content=buffer553bc&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer