StephenKMackSD's Blog

Can there be any doubt that Macri’s ‘Neo-Liberalism Lite’ has been an utter failure! Was the peso in near free fall the first indicator, that de Kirchner would be returning to office, in her very adroit political trompe l’oeil as vice-president? The ‘judgement’ of the ‘technocrats’ at the IMF has proven to be in the category of the non-existent.
Or should the reader look to the firing of Alfonso Prat-Gay in 2016, as the signal, ignored by those very ‘technocrats’?

Headline: Argentina finance minister axed on economic uncertainty

Sub-headline: President requests resignation of Prat-Gay due to ‘differences’ in department

https://www.ft.com/content/2d82da08-cb8c-11e6-864f-20dcb35cede2

The ‘experts’ that Mr. Mander presents are impressive, except that the current employers of his coterie might offer a clue as to the economic/political loyalties?

…

‘said Fernanda Vallejos, an economist and congresswoman for the province of Buenos Aires,’

…

‘said Martín Redrado, a former Argentine central bank governor.’

…

‘said one veteran observer.’

…

‘warned Daniel Marx, a former finance secretary’

https://www.ft.com/content/05bb622c-443f-11ea-a43a-c4b328d9061c

Political Observer

Headline:America Needs a Miracle

Andy Divine long ago lost the privilege of commenting on ‘race’ with his publication of this essay adapted from ‘The Bell Curve’ :

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

Andy’s surmise is that his contemporary readers , in the provincial world of New York Magazine, haven’t read it, and are probably indifferent on the matter. This audience addicted to being seen at the latest restaurant, becoming ‘fans’ of the ‘hottest’ television programs, the latest gossip or photos from the utterly vacuous world of the Kardashian’s, and the Sex Diaries essays, that proves that we can all can aspire to be our own Candace Bushnells! At the time of my reading of Mr. Divine’s commentary had 50 comments, some of which were quite impressive but here is my favorites:

dptrue 5 HOURS AGO

Andy has made many self- reinventions -from Thatcherite, to Neo-Conservatism, to Neo-Liberal. But its always the same arrogant pronouncements. This time he presents the  possibility of redemption:

Headline: America Needs a Miracle

Hope comes from two books: Ezra Klein’s ‘Why We’re Polarized’ and Christopher Caldwell’s ‘The Age of Entitlement’ . As a former reader of Mr. Caldwell at The Financial Times:

https://www.ft.com/stream/c27d57f9-4c55-3732-a557-612fd13d8ba0

I found his columns, if not just incomprehensible ramblings , a complete muddle of free floating chatter , in sum without argumentative anchor. But his book ‘Reflections on the Revolution In Europe: Immigration, Islam and The West  is reviewed at The New York Review of Books: The Big Muslim Problem! by Malise Ruthven (Pay Wall) is revelatory of Mr. Caldwell’s, what to call it?

The Big Muslim Problem!

Mr. Kline is not ‘Left’ but is a Liberal, in sum the kind of ‘guest’ always welcome on Corporate Media. And because of that, the perfect stand-in for the ‘Left’ in Andy’s World. While Andy has spent his time proselytizing  about these books, offering the mirage of redemption, he has missed the momentary ascendance of the Romney/Murkowski/Collins political alliance, that was about to render the solid Republican Majority in the Senate Impeachment Trial moot?

Political Observer

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/01/andrew-sullivan-america-needs-a-miracle.html#comments

There is no more appropriate place for Edward Luce than ‘The Swamp’ ! He supplies the usual ‘horse race’ handicapping of the approaching Iowa Primary as if by wrote, its a well traveled rhetorical path for Corporate Media ‘reporters’ . He then, like the good teacher, has a list of recommendations to his readers. Not surprising they are his colleagues and fellow travelers, except for Anne Applebaum who is a Neo-Conservative  in Liberal Drag. This disguise is favorite of politicians/thinkers like Christina Freeland, Michael Ignatieff ,  Samantha Power and Timothy Snyder.

‘The Swamp’ a shared responsibility between Luce and Rana Foroohar. And perhaps because she is the least senior member of the Financial Times staff , she engages in, what is not surprising, the use of an anonymous inside source, whose information proves that Sanders is unfit for the Presidency:

I’ve heard from people very close to Sanders (including some who campaigned with him last time around) that he is totally authentic, and yet completely ill equipped to work with others. To quote one person from that former team, “he can’t really be in a room with more than three people at a time”. And that’s coming from someone who is deeply committed to Sanders policy prescriptions. Not good for a future president.

According to the Corporatist Mythology Sanders isn’t ‘a multi-tasker‘! The most necessary talent for any employee in American business. Should the reader recall Reagan’s penchant for snoozing? or Nixon’s law breaking, or his drinking problem?

The above was just the windup for Foroohar, who then attacks Millennials as natural Socialists:

That said, these aren’t ordinary times. Millennials want wealth redistribution. Sanders is promising it. He may be the one to bring them out — and bring out the existential fight within the party that the Republicans have already gone through. As for Des Moines, I’m giving it a miss . . .

Political Observer

https://www.ft.com/content/778ab682-43ae-11ea-a43a-c4b328d9061c

_____________________________________________________________

In reply to Paul A. Myers

Isn’t Gavin Newsome the perfect Democratic candidate that the Party is looking for? The Democrats haven’t had a near ‘charismatic’ candidate since John Tunney.  The two ‘stars’ of that Party Feinstein in her last term, a Clinton stalwart, and Boxer attacking Sanders from the periphery of retirement?

This from Neo-Con Bret Stephens:

‘Barbara Boxer minces no words when it comes to describing the people usually known as the Bernie Bros — a subset of Bernie Sanders supporters who hope to take over the Democratic Party and remake it in their image.
“There is so much negative energy; it’s so angry,” says the former four-term Democratic senator from California. “You can be angry about the unfairness in the world. But this becomes a personal, deep-seated anger at anyone who doesn’t say exactly what you want to hear.”
I ran into Boxer earlier this week and got to talking about a superb report in The Times by my colleagues Matt Flegenheimer, Rebecca R. Ruiz and Nellie Bowles: “Bernie Sanders and His Internet Army.” The piece briefly mentions a 2016 incident in which Boxer went to Nevada to try to unify the party after Hillary Clinton defeated Bernie Sanders in the state’s caucus.’

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/opinion/sanders-bernie-bros.html

Stephens gives reactionary Republicanism a bad name, but he can’t resist defaming Sanders. ‘Socialism’ is the dirty word in American Politics, while we exist in the ‘Gig Economy’ that followed the Depression bought on by the collapse of the Neo-Liberal Swindle of 2008.

Newsome performing those  ‘Gay Marriages’ as Mayor of San Francisco had my ‘fellow’ ‘Gays’ in a state of rapture, a bit hyperbolic, but not by much. Its too bad he is Old Money, although he almost meets the lowest possible standard for ‘dashing’ in Hollywood terms.
Always enjoy reading your comments!
Regards,
StephenKMackSD

https://www.ft.com/content/778ab682-43ae-11ea-a43a-c4b328d9061c?commentID=06bf60b6-bf13-4720-8115-7be2a1541c08

As as an accomplished, indeed a querulous practitioner of the feuilleton, for the uninitiated a definition : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feuilleton.

Mr Ganesh’s penchant for Pop Culture references is matter of his immersion in the vicissitudes of that cultural/political product: Christian Bale’s performance as the redoubtable Dick Cheney in ‘Vice’ acts as his framing device for his meditation on ‘Small Government Republicans’ – just a slight but necessary digression – Neo-Liberalism demands a ‘strong state’ as the sine qua non of its success, this the most elementary building block of this political/ethical regime.

Should the ‘Unitary Presidency’ be credited to John Yoo ?  Or at least its ‘codification’ with the help of his brother Christopher S. Yoo?

This book is the first to undertake a detailed historical and legal examination of presidential power and the theory of the unitary executive. This theory—that the Constitution gives the president the power to remove and control all policy-making subordinates in the executive branch—has been the subject of heated debate since the Reagan years.

To determine whether the Constitution creates a strongly unitary executive, Steven G. Calabresi and Christopher S. Yoo look at the actual practice of all forty-three presidential administrations, from George Washington to George W. Bush. They argue that all presidents have been committed proponents of the theory of the unitary executive, and they explore the meaning and implications of this finding.

This publication is available on the following link(s):

• http://www.amazon.com/The-Unitary-Executive-Presidential-Washington/dp/0300121261

The above provided by : https://politicalscience.yale.edu/publications/unitary-executive-presidential-power-washington-bush

The reader is just one paragraph into  Mr. Ganesh’s essay and we are deep into the territory of his ideological map of misreadings, or is it cultivated ignorance, of the most specialized kind?

The third paragraph offers this:

When the Senate acquits Mr Trump in the coming weeks, partisan fealty will be the main reason. That, and what Michael Gerson, the former speech writer to George W Bush, calls “understandable cowardice”. Republicans who believe that Mr Trump has a case to answer also know that he will turn his tweets, his voters and his donors on any who defy him.

With the collapse of ‘Russiagate’ followed closely by the ‘Impeachment’ of Trump by Pelosi, Schiff, and Nadler, and its maladroitly confected ‘evidence of presidential wrong doing’ , a monument to Schiff’s political hysteria: he is the reincarnation of Joe McCarthy and his notorious ‘list of names’ .

Look to the House star witnesses Sondland , Vindman and Fiona Hill as part of the central evidentiary linchpins of the case against Trump. In nearly 30 hours of ‘testimony’ as exemplary of Schiff clear evidence of a misbegotten dramaturgy, held together by well timed strategic leaking of what the Corp. Media characterizes as ‘Bombshells’: in service to a re-invigoration of the case. Note that the two weeks of secret hearings gave Schiff ample opportunity to cobble together his Presidential Abuse Melodrama, that satisfies an utterly  uncritical Press, suffering from an advanced case of ‘Trump Fatigue Syndrome’. A ‘Press’ that is complicit in the rise of Trump, as are the Republicans and The New Democrats!

The newest ‘event’ is this melodrama is  the possibility that Republican Senators Romney,Collins and Murkowski will breach the long forgotten 11 th Commandment, and vote for Impeachment!

So much more to say, yet I won’t quite commit the crime against the readers patience committed by Mr. Ganesh, or at the least my crime is just a misdemeanor.

American Writer

https://www.ft.com/content/8bac9b2c-41f0-11ea-bdb5-169ba7be433d

After finishing Domenico Losudro’s  Liberalism : A Counter-History , which is a history and polemic against a nihilistic political/civic mythology: and its perpetrators of colonialism, slavery,the indentured servitude of the ‘lower orders’, not to speak of the genocide against native peoples . Liberalism’s salesmen Locke, de Tocqueville, Mill, Spencer, the list of bad actors embraces almost all the prominent thinkers of the Enlightenment, and their precursors and natural inheritors . This presented in a relentlessly compelling narrative. Losurdo book is a negative revelation.

While waiting for my print copy of Alexander Zevin’s Liberalism at Large: The World According to the Economist ( I had downloaded the e-book from Verso, but I am a reader of books!) As a reader of the Economist- regular and irregular – I was an avid reader of a history of this ‘newspaper’, although the e-book is inhospitable to my retrograde sensibility.

While waiting for Professor Zevin’s book to arrive in the mail,  I looked at my book shelf, on my way into my room, and saw Ernest  Samuels one volume edition of his biography ‘Henry Adams’ in one of the corners, of the top shelf. One of the expressions of my curiosity, allied to my unslakable intellectual/literary ambition. Perhaps Kant’s imperative of ‘dare to know’ has been my unknown point of reference?

My copy of Prof. Zevin’s book arrived, while I am on page 228 of ‘Henry Adams’ . It reads like a novel, whose main character is Adams, and a host of others personages great and small. While I am nearing 75 years, I read Adams as his 48 year old self, in Samuels telling , who has lost Clover, and seeks to rebuild his life, by way of his history writing, that has become a chore, his ambition has reached an ebb? While surrounded by a coterie of women, as the temporary replacements for Clover.

I think I have, maybe, five good years left, in which to read, think, and write. Am I a fool to believe in a future for myself?

Where might this essay by J. C. Levenson ,The Etiology of Israel Adams: The Onset, Waning, and Relevance of Henry Adams’s Anti-Semitism,  fit into the portrait of Henry Adams, provided by Samuels? Checking the index, pages 315, 316, 320, 321, 346, 405, 455 are the page numbers on which Anti-Semitism is given as a subject.

Two quotation from page 405 of the Samuels book are illuminating:  Bernard Berenson on Henry Adams:

‘We had much in common , but he could not forget that he was an Adams and was always more embarrassed than I was that I happened to be a Jew’

Henry Adams on Bernard Berenson:

‘As usual, I got more information from Berenson than from the rest, and yet Berenson , – well! Berenson belongs to the primitives’ 

Given the above, as a kind rhetorical snapshot of my state of mind, if that describes it accurately…

I had seen Edward Luce’s interview with Chrystia Freeland in The Financial Times of  January 24, 2020, and decided to continue reading Samuels’ biography, as a better investment of my time. Note the economic metaphor. 

Why would I associate Chrystia Freedland with Anti-Semitism?

Headline:Why Is This Canadian Foreign Minister ‘Proud’ of Her Family’s Nazi Past?

Sub-headline: Chrystia Freeland apparently blames Russian disinformation for her grandfather’s Nazi editorials that described Poland as ‘infected by the Jews’

When asked at a press conference on March 6 about the allegations that her maternal grandfather was a Nazi collaborator, Chrystia Freeland, newly appointed Foreign Minister of Canada, former journalist and a writer, a master of words, found only clumsy sentences to deliver what would have earned no more than a ‘C’ in a high school debate class.

“It’s no secret that Russians do not like you and banned you from the country,” began the question. “Recently, there has been a series of articles in pro-Russian websites about you and your maternal grandparents, making accusations that [your grandfather] was a Nazi collaborator. I’d like to get your view—is this a disinformation campaign by the Russians to try to smear you and discredit you, which they have a tendency to do?”

With a poorly-camouflaged expression of pain on her face, Freeland replied:

“It’s public knowledge that there have been efforts—as U.S. intelligence sources have said—by Russia to destabilize the U.S. political system. I think that Canadians and indeed other Western countries should be prepared for similar efforts to be directed at us. I am confident in our country’s democracy and I am confident that we can stand up to and see through those efforts.”

“I don’t think it’s a secret,” she continued, “American officials have publicly said—and even [German Chancellor] Angela Merkel has publicly said—that there were efforts on the Russian side to destabilize Western democracies, and I think it shouldn’t come as a surprise if these same efforts were used against Canada. I think that Canadians and indeed other Western countries should be prepared for similar efforts to be directed at them.”

…

Why Is This Canadian Foreign Minister ‘Proud’ of Her Family’s Nazi Past?

Freedland wan attempt to put the onus on Putin, as an explanation for her grandfather’s politics was assisted by a ‘reporter’s’ question framed in the New Cold War mythology of Putin The Terrible!

Freedland was once a part of a coterie led by, the now politically irrelevant Michael Ignatieff,  as advocate of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) along with Samantha Power:

Headline:  The Moral Logic of Humanitarian Intervention

Sub-headline: Samantha Power made a career arguing for America’s “responsibility to protect.” During her years in the White House, it became clear that benevolent motives can have calamitous results.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/16/the-moral-logic-of-humanitarian-intervention

The interview of Freedland conducted by the Financial Times pundit Luce doesn’t quite meet the standard of the reverence, laced with cynicism, allied to a maladroit, flatfooted comedy, of his ‘Kissinger Interview’ . Out of all the chatter, carefully orchestrated by Luce, to avoid potentially embarrassing questions, this reference to Porcine Spartan Robert Kagan informs the reader that there is no political difference between the under attack  ‘Liberals’ and Neo-Conservatives.

Freedland cites The Jungle Grows Back, a book by Robert Kagan, the American author. “I believe that public support has to be constantly cultivated,” she says. “We need to keep watering the garden. The fact that you ran four times last week doesn’t mean you don’t have to run four times this week to stay healthy.”

https://www.ft.com/content/f4f88f32-3b83-11ea-a01a-bae547046735

American Writer

January 25, 2020

@Freakus
Thank you for your comment. But @Buckley’s Ghost has provided a reply. Its last sentence seems to lack a certain decorum, but provides a quote from  Obama, or at least provide a usable paraphrase.
Your definition of the ‘marginal voter’ is exactly that, your definition. If you had read Brooks’ notion of ‘Theyism’ , it has no author,  but is of the product of the zeitgeist. In sum, Brooks’ denial of intellectual/political responsibility!
Ganesh’s straw -man of the ‘marginal voter’, shares in Brooks’ denial of responsibility.   It also serves a second rhetorical purpose: to construct an argument in which the ‘marginal voter’ shares the lead role in his political melodrama with Sanders, that equals a propinquity of political irrationalisms: ‘Socialism’, and ‘Social Justice Warriors’: one of the primary Myths of Jordan Peterson: who has faded from the political scene, like his long dead, invented enemy, the ‘Marxist Post-Modernists’ .

StephenKMackSD

https://www.ft.com/content/99048c50-3cf8-11ea-b232-000f4477fbca?commentID=11b3238f-3f09-491a-858e-ffe81f5266a7

Headline: America is still waiting for a true populist

Sub-headline: The marginal voter wants universal healthcare and higher taxes, but also tighter borders

Mr. Ganesh is a bit late in posting  his Anti-Sanders essay. although not quite as crude, not to speak of less hysterical, than Lowry’s, or as dull-witted as David Brooks’ entry.
Rich Lowry’s essay in the National Review:

Headline: ‘Bernie Is Not Normal’

‘Sanders does indeed have his charms. He’s sincere, consistent, and inarguably himself. He now has a step on frenemy Elizabeth Warren in the leftist lane in the primaries because he’s not as painfully calculating as she is. But make no mistake: Sanders is a socialist continuing his takeover attempt of the Democratic party to forge what he aptly calls a political revolution. He may be more polite than Trump, but he’s wildly outside the mainstream and a clear and present danger to the public welfare.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/bernie-sanders-would-fundamentally-change-america/

And ends with this, that resorts to a concept utterly alien to ‘Conservatism’ ‘the public welfare’ :

‘Sam Leith is literary editor of The Spectator’ what better credential for this hatched-job on Harry ? Its shameless a-historicism, a monument to the publishers David and Frederick Barclay commitment to the Royals, as the subject of a necessary Feudal Nostalgia, that holds together this former Empire?
Its as if the arresting object lesson of Diana had been subject to a maladroit Stalinist erasure? Or should I resort to my own childhood remembrance of  Princess Margaret and Group Captain Peter Townsend romance , as a story of the failed aspiration to freedom of a Royal, who lacked the courage to marry for love? My remembrance steeped in American newspaper/television melodrama of the time?

Princess Margaret became a Jet-Setter who spent a life , not unlike the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, in utter aimlessness, allied to cynical bitterness, expressed as anger over being treated as if she were not Royalty, by the lesser beings who dared to address her as an equal! Keeping company with Movie Stars like Jack Nicholson, and Patrician Rebel Gore Vidal, were her paltry compensation for her lack of courage.

StephenKMackSD

https://www.ft.com/content/148df920-3b81-11ea-b84f-a62c46f39bc2

In a week in which Rich Lowry, editor of National Review opined on Bernie Sanders:

Headline: Bernie Is Not Normal
…
Sanders does indeed have his charms. He’s sincere, consistent, and inarguably himself. He now has a step on frenemy Elizabeth Warren in the leftist lane in the primaries because he’s not as painfully calculating as she is. But make no mistake: Sanders is a socialist continuing his takeover attempt of the Democratic party to forge what he aptly calls a political revolution. He may be more polite than Trump, but he’s wildly outside the mainstream and a clear and present danger to the public welfare.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/bernie-sanders-would-fundamentally-change-america/

I have skipped to the final paragraph, in which  Mr. Lowry resorts to the moral/political argument against Sanders, that cites him, as a  ‘a danger to the public welfare’ , which is utterly out of character, for an American Conservatism marinating in the ‘Free Market Ideology’. That scorns the very notion ‘the public welfare’ as an utter irrelevance: in fact the Trinity of Neo-Liberals Hayek/Mises/Friedman, assisted by Political Romantic and dull-witted pamphleteer Ayn Rand, are the natural enemies such bourgeois conventions.

David Brooks offers this refracted paranoia, as a legitimate critique of Sanders in The New York Times:

Headline: The Bernie Sanders Fallacy

Sub-headline: No, Virginia, there is no class war.

This is a golden age for “Theyism.” This is the belief that there is some malevolent, elite “they” out there and “they” are destroying life for the rest of us.

There is Donald Trump’s culture-war Theyism: The coastal cultural elites hate genuine Americans, undermining our values and opening our borders. And there is Bernie Sanders’s class-war Theyism: The billionaires have rigged the economy to benefit themselves and impoverish everyone else.

Note the puerile rhetorical framing of the sub-headline! Journalistic Kitsch!  From the Economic Collapse of the Neo-Liberal Swindle in 2008, and its issue The Gig Economy. Readers don’t need self-proclaimed Political Prophet David Brooks, to revert to type as Capitalist Apologist: protege of Wm. F. Buckley Jr.! Nor to quote American Enterprise Institute hack Michael Strain, to provide tutelage to we lesser beings – That 2008 Collapse and that Gig Economy are the starkest of object lesson about Capitalist Greed!

As Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute puts it, capitalism is doing what it’s supposed to do. It’s rewarding productivity with pay, and some people and companies are more productive. If you improve worker bargaining power, that may help a bit, but over the long run people can’t earn what they don’t produce.

The final paragraphs of Mr. Brooks’ Capitalist Apologetics reverts to Public Moralizing in the manner of Mr. Lowry. With the caveat, that when all else fails, we must cede to the wisdom of ‘successful executives’.

But if you want to deal with our real problems, stop the us/them warfare and start dealing with productivity inequality.

Successful executives are doing what’s best for their companies, gathering as much talent as they can. This isn’t evil. It’s not exploitation.

The job of public policy is to make it easier for everybody to do what successful people are doing. Productivity is the key to national prosperity. Every time we increase productivity for one person, we all thrive a little more, together.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/16/opinion/the-bernie-sanders-fallacy.html

Those successful executives: Tax Evader Tim Cook of Apple, Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein, and a host of other thieves and liars: whose unslakable greed brought the Collapse of 2008 to fruition, and were ‘bailed out’ by the American People.  While millions lost their homes, and life saving to these thieves. Obama’s de facto pardon of these crooks establishes his status as a Neo-Liberal opportunist!  Mr. Lowry and Mr. Brooks are the political callobos, not to speak of  dull-witted apologists,  for these Plutocrats: who attack a Left-Wing Social Democrat Bernie Sanders as a political aberration!

Old Socialist

I always imagine Andy Divine as Waldo Lydecker in his bath, typing his latest column, while being interviewed by detective Mark McPherson, in that Preminger Hollywood kitsch, Laura! Preminger never made another ‘film’ that matched its melodramatic excesses. Waldo as a ‘straight man’ in love with Laura looks as comic as it is!
Andy is only mildly interesting when at full hysterical cry. This week’s set of political observations are a testament to Andy at his most jejune.

Political Observer