StephenKMackSD's Blog

To refresh the readers memory, here are three examples of the Anti-Corbyn propaganda from the British Press.

The first is from The Economist that uses a Soviet Socialist Realist painting of Lenin, with the face of Corbyn superimposed over the face of Lenin. A pictorial illustration of Corbyn’s ‘radicalism’ as equal to Bolshevism: pure political hysteria mongering! The second from The Good Grey Times.

The third example is by New Labour hack Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian, that attacks Corbyn as an Anti-Semite:

Add to the campaign of the defamation of Corbyn, by Labour Friends of Israel

https://www.lfi.org.uk/

This provides some necessary background to Mr. Foer’s second hand animus toward Corbyn. Support for BDS, in Foer World, is synonymous with Anti-Semitism. The ‘right to exist’ is one of the favorite tropes of the Zionist State, and its apologists, except that ‘right’ is not ‘granted’ to Palestinians.

The first paragraphs of his essay are instructive, that ‘Corbynism’ is a political contagion unwelcome in  Foer’s America: 

Even though the polls always suggested the likelihood of Jeremy Corbyn’s defeat in yesterday’s British elections, his continued presence as the head of the Labour Party filled me with a great sense of foreboding. The local press excavated from Corbyn’s not-so-distant past videos that revealed him to be, at best, indifferent to anti-Semitism: as he vouched for the moral character of an imam who had accused Jews of drinking the blood of children; as he championed a mural artist who’d painted a cabal of hook-nosed bankers; as he accused Zionists of lacking “English irony.” When confronted with these statements—there are plenty more—he tended to express irritation rather than contrition.

A venerable political party that poses as the enemy of racism was suddenly and demonstrably rife with it. From the other side of the Atlantic, it was hard not to entertain the anxiety that something similar might plausibly happen here, and soon: In the leftward shift of the Democratic Party, a strain of Corbynism might implant itself.

As I have turned over this worry—the fear that the populist left might replicate the sins of the populist right—my concerns have usually been allayed by the fact that the American version of Jeremy Corbyn is Bernie Sanders. The two resurgent relics of the ’70s left have ascended in tandem—and their ascents have exposed subtle (but crucial) moral and ideological distinctions.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/12/why-bernie-sanders-no-jeremy-corbyn/603550/

Next Foer compares Corbyn and Sanders beginnings as ‘dissidents’ refracted through Foer’s Neo-Liberal lens.

The reasons to lump Corbyn and Sanders together are obvious enough. During the prime of their political careers, they were both dissidents howling at the neoliberal consensus. Decades of defiance left them as the lone, rumpled tribunes of an ideology that had supposedly been vanquished by history. But when the financial crisis of 2008 stoked raging indignation against the prevailing order, the zeitgeist unexpectedly gusted in their direction. Everything that had held them back—their righteous indignation, their indifference to artifice, their political isolation—suddenly propelled them forward.

The catastrophic collapse of the Neo-Liberal Swindle, rendered the politics of Thatcher/Reagan, and their Trinity of Hayek/Mises/Friedman, as tutelary spirits- whose Temple is now the rubble of The Gig Economy. The notion of ‘Decades of defiance left them as the lone, rumpled tribunes of an ideology that had supposedly been vanquished by history.’ can evoke nothing but derision in the Age of Trump, and the play-acting dull-wittiness, allied to opportunism, of Boris.

Does ‘At the core of Corbyn’s foreign policy is an obsession with Israel, which has manifested as incessant sneering about Zionism.’ Support For BDS is not ‘sneering’ !

Headline:Jeremy Corbyn Endorses BDS Movement in 2015 Footage

Sub-headline: In video filmed in Belfast, U.K. Labour leader says the movement is ‘part and parcel of a legal process that has to be adopted’ Corbyn has since maintained he opposes a blanket boycott of Israel

https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/jeremy-corbyn-endorses-bds-movement-in-2015-footage-1.6389090

The remainder of his collection of borrowed animus, and rehabilitated political cliches, is Mr. Foer’s calling card. And the reason for his long time employment by bourgeois political journalism’s publications.

Old Socialist

The copy of ‘Anti-Piketty’ arrived in the post of yesterday. I had ordered both ‘After Piketty’

and ‘Anti-Piketty’

in order to read both books in tandem, or essay by essay, that shared the same themes, concerns, criticisms/praise.
Just paging through ‘Anti-Piketty’ offered some insights offered by the editors  Emmanuel Martin , Nicolas Lecaussin, Jean-Philippe Delsol: 

Part 1. An Apocalyptic Vision

The empirical and theoretical work of an author is inevitably marked with a vision. It is important to discuss that vision to form a complete critique of the author’s work and thereafter to better understand those empirical and theoretical choices.
As with Karl Marx, the vision that permeates the work of Thomas Piketty is decidedly pessimistic about capitalism. Class struggle is always in the background: society is in conflict, and what A gains is lost by B. In such a society, the rich are “the
wicked” side of the story. The idea that the poor can enrich themselves through capital accumulation—the tool of domination of the rich—is nearly taboo in Piketty’s world. The fact that the poor are already enriched by the market economy obviously doesn’t fit in with the rest of the vision.
Part 1 of this volume therefore offers a critique of Thomas Piketty’s vision—a vision in which reductions in various inequalities are hidden, a vision which is tainted by an anti-rich bias, a
vision which does not serve the poor.

____________________________________

Section 1. No Declining Inequality?

Thomas Piketty pictures a world caught in an unstoppable
spiral of enrichment of a minority, at immense cost to the majority. While the 1 percent of rentiers accumulates fortune in a snowball effect, what becomes of the 99 percent? In reality, are the
99 percent becoming poorer? Are they so badly off? This section looks at the phenomenon—unprecedented in history—of the enrichment of the masses, notably in the form of extended life expectancy and access to consumption and education.It attempts to offer a realistic vision about the evolution of types
of inequality, which is a lot less pessimistic than Piketty’s

https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/anti-piketty.pdf

The near hysterical defensiveness of the editors is palpable in the first two sections quoted. The text in the two quoted paragraphs, that I have put in the bold font, offers the notion of the enrichment of the masses by way of ‘The fact that the poor are already enriched by the market economy obviously doesn’t fit in with the rest of the vision.’ ,  ‘extended life expectancy‘, and ‘access to consumption and education’ : the last is a function of the Market Economy, yet ‘access’ is wholly dependent on the purchasing power of the ‘consumer’, reducing the person to the status of a function within that Market.   As one considers the issues, ‘extended life expectancy’ is dependent on the ability of the ‘consumer’ to purchase medical and dental insurance and the ability to pay for life saving drugs like Insulin.

Old Socialist

P.S.

A recent Martin Wolf review of The Great Reversal by Thomas Philippon offers an opportunity to read a Capitalist Apologist, reviewing another member of that Club, on the failure of Capitalism to live up to the singular ideal of ‘Competition‘.

Headline:Why the US economy isn’t as competitive or free as you think

Sub-headline: Martin Wolf reviews ‘The Great Reversal’ by Thomas Philippon

…
Over the past two decades, competition and competition policy have atrophied, with dire consequences, Philippon writes in this superbly argued and important book. America is no longer the home of the free-market economy, competition is not more fierce there than in Europe, its regulators are not more proactive and its new crop of superstar companies not radically different from their predecessors.

…

https://www.ft.com/content/97be3f2c-00b1-11ea-b7bc-f3fa4e77dd47

What might Emmanuel Martin , Nicolas Lecaussin, Jean-Philippe Delsol make of the deviationism of  both  Mr. Wolf and Mr. Philippon? Not to speak of the Financial Times for publishing this attack on one their Articles of Faith?

Old Socialist

In the TLS of November 29,2019, that just arrived in the post yesterday in San Diego , California: I found the list of contributors to  ‘The Books of the Year’ a bit thin, as most of the writers I most admire were ignored, or are now dead. Except for Frederick Raphael who never disappoints , his ‘The Benefits of Doubt’ published by Carcanet is an example of his critical mind/sensibility, to follow the ‘Books of the Year’ theme.

What stood out for me was Sociologist Andrew Scull’s praise for R2P zealot and recent Kissinger acolyte Samantha Power’s book ‘The Education of an Idealist’. 

ANDREW SCULL

Samantha Power’s The Education of an Idealist (William Collins) is an unusually engaging political memoir. Before joining the Obama campaign and subsequently becoming the youngest ever ambassador to the United Nations, Power was a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for her work on genocide. She is a much better writer than the average politician, and her life – her immigration from Ireland, her complicated upbringing, her reporting from Bosnia, and her career in Washington – is a fascinating one. Power is an excellent storyteller, with a deft touch with anecdotes and a nice sense of humour. She is, besides, unusually candid for a politician, and her behind-the-scenes reportage of Obama’s well-intentioned but not always wise foreign policy decisions is compelling, as is the contrast between the seriousness of that administration’s approach to the world and the criminality of the current one.

https://beta.the-tls.co.uk/articles/books-of-the-year-2019/

 

Prof. Scull almost follows the Party Line, except for this last telling sentence that veers close to dissent, but carefully engages in political self-correction. I’ve taken the liberty of rendering this sentence in bold script above.

Ms. Power is part of a coterie of women who have emerged in the area of Foreign Policy: Madeline Albright, Condoleezza Rice, Hillary Clinton, Anne Marie Slaughter, Susan Rice, Victoria Nuland, and even star witness in the Impeachment Hearings Fiona Hill: this coterie suffers from the same near hysterical bellicosity equal to that of their male fellow travelers – the alliance between the ‘Liberals’ and the ‘Neo-Conservatives’ has emerged as the Political Center in Foreign Policy, and even in a thoroughly Neo-Liberalized   domestic policy.

Political Observer

Niall Ferguson repeats the stale Party Line of the failing alliance between the Neo-Liberals and the Neo-Conservatives ! ‘Deadlocked Democracy’ is his political extemporizing on this theme. This has become the momentary article of faith for the editors of The Financial Times,  expressed as ‘no good choices’ :

Headline: Britain’s fateful election offers no good choices

Sub-headline:The main parties have abandoned the centre. A realignment is needed

https://www.ft.com/content/d4868a48-169d-11ea-9ee4-11f260415385

Bagehot* of The Economist frames the British election as ‘Truth has been the first casualty’ , followed by an illustration of the kind of defamation The Economist editors practiced against Corbyn, early in his political ascendancy:

Headline: Truth has been the first casualty of Britain’s election

Sub-headline: An epidemic of lying is proving corrosive to liberal democracy

https://www.economist.com/britain/2019/12/07/truth-has-been-the-first-casualty-of-britains-election

Surprise! This trinity of propaganda outlets were central political actors in their campaign to codify Neo-Liberalism’s Social Darwinism, posing  not just as ‘Economic Theory’, but as the Moral Imperative of Freedom! The collapse  in 2008 ,has not dimmed the fanaticism of the acolytes of this nihilistic hybrid.

The Gig Economy: The watershed of their thwarted ambition, wedded to their  greed and mendacity, and sharing in the American blood-lust equaling Perpetual Wars of Empire, familiar British territory:  The Midwives of Boris find it impossible to face their individual and collective responsibility for assisting in his ‘political birth’. While the utterly incompetent Mrs. May plays the role uninspired caretaker.

In Britain Corbyn has been defamed by all three of these publications. Not to mention political fiction writer Jonathan Freedland’s unfounded charges in The Guardian, of Anti-Semitism!  Corbyn, a Democratic Socialist , is the enemy of a ‘Liberal Tradition’ based upon a fiction of political/moral virtue, that has been maladroitly stitched together: Liberalism’s murderous history, presented by its advocates/apologists as both virtuous and ineluctable – the historical antidote to this mythology is offered by ‘Liberalism: A Counter-History’ by Domenico Losurdo

Old Socialist

*Here is Bagehot’s (Adrian Wooldridge) CV as posted at The Economist:

Noo Saro-Wiwa reports on the interview of Hillary Clinton, and her daughter Chelsea, conducted by Mary Beard on November 10, 2019. The discussion focuses upon their book,The Book of Gutsy Women: Favorite Stories of Courage and Resilience’.  Saro-Wiwa follows the Party Line on Clinton as Feminist. Yet the Clinton’s passed Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act in 1996.

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) is a United States federal law passed by the 104th United States Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton. The bill implemented major changes to U.S. social welfare policy, replacing the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program with the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program.

The law was a cornerstone of the Republican Party‘s “Contract with America,” and also fulfilled Clinton’s campaign promise to “end welfare as we know it.” AFDC had come under increasing criticism in the 1980s, especially from conservatives who argued that welfare recipients were “trapped in a cycle of poverty.” After the 1994 elections, the Republican-controlled Congress passed two major bills designed to reform welfare, but they were vetoed by Clinton. After negotiations between Clinton and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, Congress passed PRWORA and Clinton signed the bill into law on August 22, 1996.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Responsibility_and_Work_Opportunity_Act

This was just a integral part of the Clinton’s Neo-Liberal Reforms that was a frontal attack on poor women of  color. The fulfillment of Reagan’s ’76 racist campaign tag line, ‘Welfare Queens Driving Cadillacs’?  Noo Saro-Wiwa hasn’t done her home work on Mrs. Clinton, which renders her Feminist propagandizing on her behalf, in the ultra-respectable, not to speak of intellectually highfalutin, Times Literary Supplement,  appear just like another bourgeois magazine, Vanity Fair’s glossy chatter comes to mind. Some telling quotes from this essay:

“This book is for everybody who gets discouraged or gets knocked down and needs to figure out how to get yourself going again”, said Hillary. “We’re in a bit of a … struggle going on right now in our country.”

…

Beard mentioned the American swimmer Diana Nyad (b. 1949), who at the age of sixty-one swam from Cuba to Florida through shark-infested waters. Beard asked, “Was she gutsy or stupid?” Hillary responded: “I feel like I swim with sharks all the time”.

…

As Hillary pointed out, the development of women’s rights, from Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) to the present day, has been very quick in broad historical terms. “This is really blink-of-an-eye history, and I don’t think we can take it for granted.”

…

Playing devil’s advocate, Beard asked whether it was right to present these women as “irremediably gutsy”, their vulnerabilities hidden away. We don’t give enough space to the people who can’t spend their whole lives being resilient. In Hillary’s view, it is important to note that everyone has ups and downs. “I’m on a campaign against perfectionism. Young women think they have to look perfect, act perfect.”

…

The conversation moved on to the media’s fixation on women’s wardrobes at the expense of their opinions or policies. Chelsea aired her frustrations on the issue: Hillary had to wear dark blue trouser suits on the presidential campaign trail just to stop the press conversation from drifting towards her appearance. Beard, who has experienced her fair share of body shaming, was more blunt about her situation: “So effing what?”, she exclaimed, to a roar of laughter from the audience.

…

“The way I reacted when that happened to me”, said Hillary,

was to ignore it. And ignoring it because … given how people’s brains work, if a woman looks like she is agitated or upset she often is viewed as not being able to handle it whatever it is, so … when I was being stalked on stage during the second debate I’m trying to answer questions about health care and immigration and the economy and my mind is going, ‘What is he doing?’

And you know, I did entertain whirling around and saying, ‘Back up, you creep – you’re not going to intimidate me’. I did think about that, but I also then sort of played out in my head … the news, you know, the political press saying, He got to her, he rattled her; look at that, she’s gonna, you know, stand up to whatever, Putin – and she can’t take Donald Trump stalking her? Hmm, that doesn’t seem too presidential. It’s a really hard choice … When people try to denigrate you and undermine you, pay no attention whatsoever.

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/swimming-with-sharks-clinton/

An actual Feminist would have never supported ‘ Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act’ but a Neo-Liberal political opportunist would and did! The Clinton pose as Feminist is pure fiction, confected after the fact of her support for a Reaganite political agenda, under the rubric of reform. To also ignore her Neo-Conservative Foreign Policy, her alliance with Clapper and Brennan in the Russia-Gate hoax is to subject history, to the most violent kind of  re-write!

Old Socialist

@NYT front page du 5 décembre 2019 Anti-Macron, grèves anti-néo-libéralisation en France: en respectable bourgouise parle! #Un euphémisme comique?
‘Les troubles posent un nouveau défi à M. Macron, dont le style de gestion descendante a suscité des critiques.’

Vieux commentaires socialistes

Here is a collection of would be telling, or better yet, wan attempts to offer ‘insights‘ on the Democratic candidates, still in the running. Well before the first Primary in February 2020. The Villain in this retelling is the favorite Financial Times’  Straw-Man ‘The Left’, in sum, the actual Left-Wing Social Democrat Sanders. Ersatz ‘Progressive’ Warren, and the rest of New Democrats, who have grown as stale as guests, who have overstayed their welcome. ‘Centrism’ in the American political present is defined as the alliance between the New Democrats/Neo-Liberals and the Neo-Conservatives.

Gone, for the moment, is Mr. Ganesh’s acidulous style, replaced by attempts at political commentary, framed as aphorisms, or its second cousin:

Mr Obama had astronomical star power.

The left’s takeover of the Democratic party is proving to be much slower and patchier than anticipated.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the left’s coming force in Congress, is not all that typical of the party’s base, and nor is The Daily Show.

…then the revolution can wait for another time.

The biggest flops have been perceived careerists who seemed to affect left-wingery after years of subtler politics.

Mr Buttigieg means his Emmanuel Macron-ish technocracy.

The left still has all the social conditions to win.

It is hard to believe that a candidate so attuned to modern class schisms has already had her moment.

If the left still has a chance, though, it is not the overwhelming one of such recent hype.

The idea that Americans are being forced to choose between left and right extremes, like the luckless British, not only draws a spurious equivalence between Mr Trump and Ms Warren, it ignores all the pickings in between.
No longer. They hate him so much as to make them prudent.

https://www.ft.com/content/477f37a2-167b-11ea-9ee4-11f260415385

Make note that Ganesh’s links to Martin Wolf’s review of The Great Reversal: How America Gave up on Free Markets, by Thomas Philippon, acts the part of the Anti-Piketty, continuing the Anti-Leftism theme. Harvard University Press has published both Piketty books: ‘Capital in the Twenty-First Century’ and ‘Capital and Ideology’ and Philippon’s ode to competition, under threat from the Robber Baron’s of the 21st century.

Old Socialist

____________________________________________________

@doc martin

Thank you for your comment. Your argumentative rigor, in your posts below, amply demonstrate  your facility and eloquence of its own! My favorite: ‘ Why I saw the dem party left me (ACLU type who recalls going to a McGovern rally)’. James Pinkerton never let go of his animus to Sen. McGovern, even in the early 2000’s he was still offering up his political bile, as if it mattered.

You even inspired  @ALM to this bit of maladroitly re-engineered school yard taunt, for @FT’s reactionary readership: ‘Has the Socialist Worker removed the option to comment on its website? A dialog showing a permalink to the comment.’
Best regards,
StephenKMackSD

Headline: Michael Bloomberg: the magnate shaking up the 2020 election

Sub-headline: Money on top of his success as New York’s mayor make a formidable candidate despite a late start

https://www.ft.com/content/90cadb44-11eb-11ea-a7e6-62bf4f9e548a

Should the reader look at the candidacy of Mr. Bloomberg as a frontal attack on the ersatz Leftist, nee New Democrat, Warren, and an actual Left-Wing Social Democrat Sanders? Is the speculation that Obama and Bloomberg may have made alliance, as the in-order-too of checking a ‘Left’ takeover of a party still mired in Neo-Liberal self-delusion, post 2008? The Fate of American hangs in the balance equals made for Television political melodrama!

How fitting that John Micklethwait co-author of ‘The Right Nation’, ‘The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent The State’, ‘God Is Back:How The Global Revival Of Faith Is Changing The World, is Bloomberg’s editor, not to speak of former editor-in-chief of The Economist. A Hoover Institution association is here, though it seems to have lapsed:

https://www.hoover.org/profiles/john-micklethwait

The lily-white hands of an Oxbridger insures what? Should that give the reader a clue of the politics of this ‘privately held financial, software, data, and media company.’ If ‘Mike’ is such a ‘Centrist’ , then that reader can conclude, that the political center, in America, is as skewed to the Right as it has ever been. Joshua Chaffin does a workman-like job of writing this ‘news story’ that should have appeared as an editorial endorsement, or have I missed that?

Here is the good grey Times endorsement of ‘Mike’ framed as a ‘pep up’ in the presidential race:

Headline:The Times view on Michael Bloomberg entering the Democrat race: Billionaire’s Row

Sub-headline: The media magnate and philanthropist has only a slim chance of winning the nomination, but should pep up the race for the US presidency

Again Bloomberg is presented as an antidote to Leftists Warren and the  Political Apostate Sanders and billionaire Tom Steyer. In true Oxbridger hysterical Anti-Left rhetoric is a pronounced riff on Obama’s Anti-Leftism.

Mr Bloomberg will present himself as a champion of the centre ground vacated by many of the Democrat frontrunners, including Bernie Sanders, the senator from Vermont, who has tweeted that billionaires “should not exist”. Another Democrat rival, Elizabeth Warren, mobilises her supporters by hitting out against the unfairness of income inequality. She wants an “ultra-millionaire” tax. One of the Democrat contenders, Tom Steyer, is himself a billionaire and is campaigning on the need for America to beef up taxes on the rich. In this overheated and one-sided discourse, wealth not poverty is the problem. For them, countering the rich 73-year-old white male president with a very rich 77-year-old white male rival is an absurdity.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-times-view-on-michael-bloomberg-entering-the-democrat-race-billionaires-row-6v05sdv6w

Recall that Obama didn’t rhapsodize about  Franklin Roosevelt but about Ronald Reagan as transformational :

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/ref/us/politics/21seelye-text.html?source=post_page—————————

Both The Financial Times and The Times are not true believers in Bloomberg’s candidacy, but will take what is on offer! ‘Stop and Frisk’ was the offspring of The Manhattan Institute’s ‘Broken Windows Policing’. Read Judge Shira A. Scheindlin’s exit interview in the New York Times, for her withering comments on Bloomberg and Ray Kelly:

Headline: Departing Judge Offers Blunt Defense of Ruling in Stop-and-Frisk Case

…

She would never forget, she said, seeing a front-page photograph in a newspaper the day after she released her ruling, showing Mr. Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, as she put it, “looking like two angry white men.”

“They seemed out of touch with the issues that the communities cared about,” Judge Scheindlin said. “They didn’t seem to understand the impact of these policies on real people and real neighborhoods and real communities and the detrimental impact it was having, even on policing. And that’s the point. They didn’t seem to get it. It was all about fear — New York would blow up.”

…

 

Old Socialist

P.S. The final paragraph of The Times endorsement of Bloomberg’s candidacy is instructive.

Mr Bloomberg is a full-square Democrat on gun control and climate change, a multilateralist and business-friendly. He may be worth $54 billion, but he is not a son of privilege. And in the topsy-turvy world of contemporary politics, where tribal allegiances are worn thin, he may yet stand a sliver of a chance. American politics can only benefit from listening to what he has to say.

This screen shot of a Times report from November 29, 2019  The Times has finally caught up with one of its columnist:

The above from November 13, 2019 that links to this Economist interview of November 7, 2019. On Russia :

…

My idea is not in the least naive. I didn’t by the way talk about a “reset”, I said it might take ten years. If we want to build peace in Europe, to rebuild European strategic autonomy, we need to reconsider our position with Russia. That the United States is really tough with Russia, it’s their administrative, political and historic superego. But there’s a sea between the two of them. It’s our neighbourhood, we have the right to autonomy, not just to follow American sanctions, to rethink the strategic relationship with Russia, without being the slightest bit naive and remaining just as tough on the Minsk process and on what’s going on in Ukraine. It’s clear that we need to rethink the strategic relationship. We have plenty of reasons to get angry with each other. There are frozen conflicts, energy issues, technology issues, cyber, defence, etc. What I’ve proposed is an exercise that consists of stating how we see the world, the risks we share, the common interests we could have, and how we rebuild what I’ve called an architecture of trust and security.

…

What guarantee does he need? Is it in essence an EU and a NATO guarantee of no further advances on a given territory? That’s what it means. It means: what are their main fears? What are ours? How do we approach them together? Which issues can we work on together? Which issues can we decide no longer to attack each other on, if I can put it that way? On which issues can we decide to reconcile? Already, sharing, we have more discussions. And I think it’s very productive.

https://www.economist.com/europe/2019/11/07/emmanuel-macron-in-his-own-words-english

It is hard to be patient with Macron, who is the self-appointed leader of Europe with a vision, while he still violently tries to suppress the continuing rebellion, that has disappeared from the Corporate Media, which approaches it 56th weekend of demonstration, as I write this. In this portion of the Economist interview he sounds just like a respectable ‘Bourgeois Liberal’. For the Neo-Liberal ‘The Market’ is the sine qua non. ‘The Community’ is  a political prop. Macron is selling himself. Hoping that his audience will forget, that in final vote in the French election, 36.5% of the voters rendered their ballots ‘spoiled’ or otherwise ‘uncountable’ !

…

Europe was built on this notion that we would pool the things we had been fighting over: coal and steel. It then structured itself as a community, which is not merely a market, it’s a political project. But a series of phenomena have left us on the edge of a precipice. In the first place, Europe has lost track of its history. Europe has forgotten that it is a community, by increasingly thinking of itself as a market, with expansion as its end purpose. This is a fundamental mistake, because it has reduced the political scope of its project, essentially since the 1990s. A market is not a community. A community is stronger: it has notions of solidarity, of convergence, which we’ve lost, and of political thought.

…

Old Socialist

Mr. Ganesh is a quick study, with all it attendant historical lacunae starkly evident.His collection of historical personages is tailored to impress a reader with his knowledge of American history, as his own.  Some book recommendations: the Gaddis biography of Kennan and a collection of critical evaluations in the Journal of Cold War Studies.  https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/JCWS_a_00401?mobileUi=0&.

Add to this list The Georgetown Set: Friends and Rivals in Cold War Washington by Gregg Herken, Joe Alsop’s Cold War: A Study of Journalistic Influence and Intrigue by Edwin Yoder and the indispensable Walter Lippmann and the American Century by Ronald Steel. Not to forget another  essential , American Foreign Policy and Its Thinkers by Perry Anderson. 

Mr Ganesh brings his stylistic aplomb, not to speak of his casual misanthropy, to confect his bricolage of references, in his latest essay on how the Republican right must learn to love ‘The Deep State’ -should the Republicans learn to love that entity, like The New Democrat Hillary Clinton and her  ‘Deep State’ allies Clapper, Brennan,with FBI stalwarts Comey and Mueller?

In praise of the unsung bureaucrat, besides Mr.  Michael Lewis latest and soon to be BestSeller: one of those unsung bureaucrats is Ray McGovern who has an essay worth the readers time, and close attention, on one of those bureaucrats Fiona Hall:

Headline:Ray McG0vern: The Pitfalls of a Pit Bull Russophobe

Sub-headline: Like so many other glib “Russia experts” with access to Establishment media, Fiona Hill, who testified Thursday in the impeachment probe, seems three decades out of date.

RAY McGOVERN: The Pitfalls of a Pit Bull Russophobe

Political Observer

https://www.ft.com/content/e517bb14-10f5-11ea-a225-db2f231cfeae