StephenKMackSD's Blog

To quote Henry Ford ‘history is bunk‘! An actual historical preamble, to Mr. Luce’s recitation of the commonplaces of the political present, awash in the corporate media ‘horse race mentality‘, might read like this:

From the mass migration of the Dixiecrats to the Republican Party in ’64 & ’65 in response to the passage of both the Civil Rights & The Voting Right Act’s, followed by Nixon’s ‘Southern Strategy’ to Ronald Reagan’s notorious Neshoba County Fair speech, that opened his 1980 Campaign: ‘I believe in ‘States Rights’!

I believe in state’s rights; I believe in people doing as much as they can for themselves at the community level and at the private level. And I believe that we’ve distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended in the constitution to that federal establishment. And if I do get the job I’m looking for, I’m going to devote myself to trying to reorder those priorities and to restore to the states and local communities those functions which properly belong there.

http://neshobademocrat.com/Content/NEWS/News/Article/Transcript-of-Ronald-Reagan-s-1980-Neshoba-County-Fair-speech/2/297/15599

Not to speak of his ’76 campaign’s notorious ‘Welfare Queens driving Cadillacs’, the full story on Linda Taylor ,that Welfare Queen: Here is a portion of Josh Levin’s insightful essay:

Headline:The Welfare Queen

Sub-headline:In the 1970s, Ronald Reagan villainized a Chicago woman for bilking the government. Her other sins—including possible kidnappings and murders—were far worse.

…

The plural of anecdote is not data. The plural of the craziest anecdote you’ve ever heard is definitely not data. And yet, the story of the welfare queen instantly infected the policy debate over welfare reform. Sociologist Richard M. Coughlin notes that in 1979, AFDC families had a median of just 2.1 children and a very low standard of living compared to the average American. In 2013, Bureau of Labor Statistics data continue to bear out the stark economic gap between families on public assistance and those who are not. Linda Taylor showed that it was possible for a dedicated criminal to steal a healthy chunk of welfare money. Her case did not prove that, as a group, public aid recipients were fur-laden thieves bleeding the American economy dry.

Even so, Ronald Reagan regularly dusted off the welfare queen’s lurid misadventures, arguing that rampant fraud demanded decisive government action. In pushing for welfare reform as president in 1981, he told members of Congress that “in addition to collecting welfare under 123 different names, she also had 55 Social Security cards,” and that “there’s much more of [this type of fraud] than anyone realizes.” The recent debate over cuts to the federal food stamp program, too, has featured Republican claims that we can save $30 billion by “eliminating loopholes, waste, fraud, and abuse.”

In truth, Reagan wrung savings out of the federal welfare program by slashing benefit levels and raising eligibility requirements. And with regard to today’s food stamp cuts, as Eric Schnurer explains in the Atlantic, “none of the savings actually come from fraud, but rather from cutting funding and tightening benefits.”

…

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2013/12/linda_taylor_welfare_queen_ronald_reagan_made_her_a_notorious_american_villain.html

Bush The Elder’s ‘Willy Horton’ racist hysteria. Bush The Younger was just actively hostile. Juan Cole offers insight on Bush father and son here:

Headline:George W. Bush & GOP Lack Standing to Bash Trump for Racism

Sub-headline No racism and bigotry, no Bush presidency.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/10/20/george-w-bush-gop-lack-standing-bash-trump-racism

Mr. Luce frames his defense of the political status quo, Nancy Pelosi, by the weak rhetorical devise of ‘the younger radicals’ ,not just once but twice. Placing ‘The Squad’ , an example of American political thought, safely in the confines of its perpetual dull-witted political metaphors.

Never fear the New Democrats will nominate another Mrs. Clinton, rendering this pronouncement of Mr. Luce in the category of self-serving fiction!

He is literally pushing Democrats towards an extremist corner.

This reader can think of only one ‘radical’ currently running, that is Bernie Sanders,who remains a viable but unwanted candidate,by the Clinton coterie, who control the levers of power in the party.

Mr. Luce offer his final thought on Trump, not as what he is, the fulfillment of the de-evolution of the Republican Party, but a political creature who transcends the very facts of the history of the Republican party.

Such is the logic of Mr Trump’s interventions. They are incendiary, dangerous and un-American. But that is no guarantee they will fail.

The currently expressed political wisdom is that only a ‘Centrist’ can win against Trump. That ‘Centrism’ is represented by the current alliance between the New Democrats and the Neo-Conservatives: never has such a toxic alliance in American politics existed? Think of the alliance between the Nixon/Mundt/McCarren/McCarthy Republicans and the Cold War ‘Liberals’  Reinhold Niebuhr, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and the ADA.

Political Observer

https://www.ft.com/content/ab24c5bc-a874-11e9-b6ee-3cdf3174eb89

Just a small sample of Andy’s Bill of Attainder against Fellow Neo-Liberal Nancy Pelosi:

…
I know that aggressive oversight, especially impeachment hearings, is a politically fraught decision, full of risk. I know the polls suggest it splits the country and, by her own expert counting, divides the House Democrats as well. I know her party won the House in 2018 by focusing on health care, rather than Trump. I think that should be their focus next year as well. But fortune favors the brave. If she doesn’t act against a serious threat to the Constitution, voters will infer that the Democrats don’t actually believe there’s a threat. If she lets this president own the narrative, as he keeps doing, Democrats will end up following his story rather than their own.
…

The next  vexing question to be considered is the precipitous drop in Labour popularity,  the reason offered is the ‘Labour Antisemitism Scandal , Andy offers the Panorama ‘documentary’ on the BBC as evidence against Corbyn and his political fellow travelers:

…
On Wednesday, the BBC broadcast a documentary featuring eight Labour Party officials, who complained that their attempt to identify and remove anti-Semites from the party was interfered with by Labour’s top leadership. Thirty more whistle-blowers are testifying for a pending independent investigation of the party leadership’s conscious protection of Jew-haters.

“The testimonies of whistleblowers confirm what we have suspected for some time,” said the Jewish Labour Movement in a statement. “The culture and scale of antisemitism within the party has been perpetuated and exacerbated by those at the very top.” Left extremism, in other words, has eclipsed left radicalism and hobbled the viability of the party. All the promise of 2017 has evaporated.

…

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/07/andrew-sullivan-its-time-for-pelosi-to-stop-coddling-trump.html

Here are two critical reviews of that ‘documentary’:

Headline: With Panorama’s hatchet job on Labour antisemitism, BBC has become pro-Tory media

Sub-headline : Score-settling may make for lively TV, but it is execrable journalism

By Jonathan Cook

It is difficult to describe as anything other than a hatchet job the BBC Panorama special this week that sought to bolster claims that the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn has become “institutionally antisemitic”.

The partisan tone was set from the opening shot. A young woman whose name was not revealed tearfully claimed to have been abused with antisemitic taunts at a Labour Party conference.

The decision not to disclose their interviewee’s identity is understandable in the circumstances. It would have discredited the whole narrative Panorama was trying so hard to build.

The woman’s name is Ella Rose, a senior official in the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM), an organisation representing Jewish and non-Jewish members of Labour at the forefront of attacks on Corbyn. Rose has a secret past too: she once worked at the Israeli embassy in London.

Self-fulfilling prophecy

Two years ago she and other JLM officials were exposed collaborating with Shai Masot, an Israeli embassy official. He had to be hurriedly removed from the UK after an undercover Al Jazeera documentary showed him plotting with activists in the Labour and Conservative parties to discredit British politicians seen as a threat to Israel.

Most observers believe that Masot was operating within the embassy, as part of Israel’s strategic affairs ministry, which in turn has been running black ops against western critics of Israel. Corbyn, we can safely assume, is high on that list.

…

https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/panoramas-hatchet-job-labour-antisemitism-bbc-has-become-pro-tory-media

______________________________________________________________

 

Headline: Labour raises ‘serious concerns’ about a major BBC propaganda offensive about to be aired

The Labour Party has raised “serious concerns” about a major propaganda offensive airing on 10 July on BBC One.

By James Wright

“One-sided narrative”

The opposition party is preparing to complain over the new Panorama episode entitled Is Labour antisemitic?. It told the Sunday Times:

We have serious concerns about how they have used taxpayers’ money to produce this programme. Rather than investigating antisemitism in the Labour Party in a balanced and impartial way, Panorama appears to have predetermined its outcome and created a programme to fit a one-sided narrative.

A spokesperson for Panorama told The Canary:

The Labour Party is criticising a programme they have not seen. We are confident the programme will adhere to the BBC’s editorial guidelines. In line with those, the Labour Party has been given the opportunity to respond to the allegations.

“Shoddy reporting and overt political bias”

But the record of John Ware, the journalist behind the programme, is raising concerns. In a previous Panorama episode on Jeremy Corbyn in September 2015, Ware claimed that the Labour leader had attended an event in Cairo that called for violence against British and US troops. In other words, he suggested that Corbyn himself had advocated attacks against British forces. Yet Corbyn was actually in Islington, London; and there is no evidence behind this claim.

In response, the BBC claimed that Corbyn’s team “didn’t offer any response or proof that he did not attend the conference”.

At the time, a leading scholar on the BBC – Tom Mills – took down the programme’s “shoddy reporting and overt political bias” in openDemocracy. Mills said:

Interspersed with condescending ‘vox pops’ with Corbyn supporters were interviews with luminaries of the Labour right, who were free to offer their apparently authoritative analysis unchallenged by the programme’s presenter, the veteran broadcaster and former Sun journalist, John Ware.

The BBC, meanwhile, claimed that the episode “clearly reflected the growth of support for his campaign within the party, union members and activists”.

But, in the new Panorama episode, will Hare inform viewers that accusations of antisemitism in Labour reportedly relate to 0.1% of the party’s 540,000-strong membership? Will Hare let people know that academics at the Media Reform Coalition concluded that corporate media reporting on Labour and antisemitism has been a “disinformation paradigm”? Given that the BBC played a leading role in not only the so-called disinformation paradigm but also the 2016 coup against Corbyn and the general demonisation of progressive views, that seems unlikely.

“Pro-Israel”

Concerns about Ware go beyond his previous conduct towards Corbyn. The Muslim Council of Britain, for example, has branded him “an agenda-driven pro-Israel polemicist”.

In 2013, the Electronic Intifada was highly critical of Ware’s portrayal of the state of Israel as the victim of Palestinian aggression in BBC documentaries. Yet it’s Palestine which is under Israeli military occupation. And despite the persecution and segregation of Palestinians living in Israel itself, Ware has said that Arab citizens in Israel “could become a fifth column” (the enemy within).

This apparent bias is problematic. Former Labour MP Clare Short summed up the connection between Israel’s occupation of Palestine and accusations of antisemitism in Labour on BBC Newsnight:

What’s happened is there’s been a widening of the definition of antisemitism to include criticism of Israel. Then, anyone who’s sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians is called antisemitic. That is what’s happened.

In September 2018, the Labour leadership adopted a definition of antisemitism that – some say – risks blurring the line between criticism of Israel and antisemitism. 24 Palestinian organisations, trade unions and networks are highly critical of the IHRA definition:

…

https://www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2019/07/08/labour-raises-serious-concerns-about-a-major-bbc-propaganda-offensive-about-to-be-aired/

Andy’s last issue for consideration was Stonewall, and the actual role that Drag Queens played , in which he lauds the virtues of  Neo-Conservative war  mongering  writer James Kirchick ‘It takes the fearless gay writer, James Kirchick, to note that all of this is untrue.‘ And shames the ‘almost Stalinist in its conscious altering of history to comport with current ideology. The denizens of Stonewall, and the overwhelming majority of the rioters, were cis white gay men.’

Andy remains committed to his anti-left hysterics in his characterizing of the  ‘almost Stalinist…comport with current ideology  that the media hasn’t bothered to query very much’

Myra Breckenridge

Only three examples, its a slow week! As Niall Ferguson is on vacation in some exotic clime! Or just enjoying the pleasures offered in the Versailles Dining Room, at the Hoover Institution, where 1929 went to live.

Old Socialist

Mr. Luce begins his homily on ‘The Splintering of the West’ presided over by the Know-Nothing Trump, with the full co-operation of an utterly bankrupt Republican party, and The New Democrats dragging their feet, in reply to this political enfant terrible’s tantrums, with this comment on Kim Darroch’s resignation:

Spare little pity for Kim Darroch, Britain’s outgoing ambassador to the US. He leaves Washington with plaudits from fellow diplomats and will enjoy life after the Foreign Office. It is rare that someone whose career has been terminated so abruptly emerges with an improved reputation.

Craig Murray actually worked for/with Amb. Darroch and offer insights that put Mr. Luce’s comments on the ambassador … Luce is too busy engaging in a pseudo-Hegelian   World-Historical Political Metaphysics of Crisis , ‘The Splintering of the West’, to attend to less pressing, mundane questions:

…

Darroch’s scathing assessment of Trump is no way out of line with the mainstream media narrative and it is interesting – but exactly what I would expect of him – that Darroch shares the neo-con assumption that Trump’s failure to start a war with Iran over the drone take-down was a weird aberration. The leaks neither tell us anything startling nor obviously benefit any political faction in the U.K. So what was the motive?

…

Kim Darroch is a rude and aggressive person, who is not pleasant at all to his subordinates. He rose to prominence within the FCO under New Labour at a time when right wing, pro-Israel foreign policy views and support for the Iraq War were important assets to career progress, as was the adoption of a strange “laddish” culture led from No. 10 by Alastair Campbell, press secretary of former Prime Minister Tony Blair. This culture involved swearing, football shirts and pretending to be working class (Darroch was privately educated). Macho management was suddenly the thing.

At a time when news management was the be all and end all for the Blair administration, Darroch was in charge of the FCO’s media department. I remember being astonished when, down the telephone, he called me “******* stupid” for disagreeing with him on some minor policy matter. I had simply never come across that kind of aggression in the FCO before. People who worked directly for him had to put up with this kind of thing all the time.

…

https://consortiumnews.com/2019/07/10/the-simple-explanation-for-the-betrayal-of-britains-envoy/

Political Observer

https://www.ft.com/content/f58b0e62-a370-11e9-a282-2df48f366f7d

@Dr Wu @Ed Luce, FT

Thank you both for your comments. It is always a pleasure to comment on my, almost favorite, Posh Boy Luce, the selection, here at @FT , is extensive. Since I write polemics my hyperbole:

Luce is too busy engaging in a pseudo-Hegelian World-Historical Political Metaphysics of Crisis , ‘The Splintering of the West’, to attend to less pressing, mundane questions:

Should be taken in the spirit that it is given. Mr. Luce’s idée fixe on ‘The West’ as under attack from Russia, China, Iran, North Korea invites a burlesque, framed by the reliably gaseous Hegelian vocabulary. ‘The West’ has been busy over centuries creating/cultivating its own enemies. The pose of moral/political virtue – history can’t mitigate this self-serving fiction?

What publication, I’ve given up on The Economist, that seems to have forgotten what it once was, would publish my comments, that exist on the rhetorical plane of  ‘… to speak frankly, you are spectacularly full of crap.’ ? Mr. Luce agrees with your comment, the power of one lone dissident voice, to evoke a single word of assent to your comment …

Trump is about a rebellion against the whole of the American Political Class: the toxicity you point to is about the whole of that class, not just the Republicans.

Craig Murray’s comments on  Kim Darroch are not ‘gossip’ as you characterize them, but a report on his personal interactions with the ambassador. The insights offered by Murray are valuable in that they place Darroch squarely in the vulgarizing world of New Labour:

Kim Darroch is a rude and aggressive person, who is not pleasant at all to his subordinates. He rose to prominence within the FCO under New Labour at a time when right wing, pro-Israel foreign policy views and support for the Iraq War were important assets to career progress, as was the adoption of a strange “laddish” culture led from No. 10 by Alastair Campbell, press secretary of former Prime Minister Tony Blair. This culture involved swearing, football shirts and pretending to be working class (Darroch was privately educated). Macho management was suddenly the thing.

Darroch is not some virtuous figure brought low by Trump, as Murray points out. The leaks are probably the work of a subordinate, who had simply had enough of Darroch’s insufferable arrogance!

Best regards,

StephenKMackSD

‘ Now that the war in Iraq is over, we’ll find out how many people around the world are capable of facing unpleasant facts.’

https://www.weeklystandard.com/david-brooks/the-collapse-of-the-dream-palaces

What to make of Mr. Brooks’ assertion in 2019? In the present, America is an Occupying power in Iraq, the white phosphorous attack on Falluja, Abu Ghraib and an American embassy that is 104 acres in size, are historically verifiable facts.

The embassy has extensive housing and infrastructure facilities in addition to the usual diplomatic buildings. The buildings include:[10]

Six apartment buildings for employees
Water and waste treatment facilities
A power station
Two “major diplomatic office buildings”
Recreation, including a gym, cinema, several tennis courts and an Olympic-size swimming pool
The complex is heavily fortified, even by the standards of the Green Zone. The details are largely secret, but it is likely to include a significant US Marine Security Guard detachment. Fortifications include deep security perimeters, buildings reinforced beyond the usual standard, and five highly guarded entrances.[citation needed]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embassy_of_the_United_States,_Baghdad

Not to forget Sec. Powell’s  pivotal UN speech, about non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction, Sec. Rice’s looming  ‘mushroom cloud’  and Judith Miller’s New York Times propaganda. Brooks makes up his list of heretics, whose collective abode were those  ‘dream palaces‘.

There is first the dream palace of the Arabists.

Then there is the dream palace of the Europeans.

Finally, there is the dream palace of the American Bush haters.

Mr. Brooks’ literary invention of Joey Tabula-Rasa allows him to add a strategic distance between his bellicose sensibility, and that of 20 year old Joey T-B. Who is a manufactured political naif, whose uncritical acceptance of the Wise Political Elders judgement is an inept propaganda device.

 Invent a representative 20-year-old, Joey Tabula-Rasa, and try to imagine how he would have perceived the events of the past month.

This essay was written for an audience of Weekly Standard readers looking for a set of political rationalizations for the ‘Iraq War’ : an endeavor of the now defunct Project for a New American Century. Its Statement of Principals and its signatories:

June 3, 1997

American foreign and defense policy is adrift. Conservatives have criticized the incoherent policies of the Clinton Administration. They have also resisted isolationist impulses from within their own ranks. But conservatives have not confidently advanced a strategic vision of America’s role in the world. They have not set forth guiding principles for American foreign policy. They have allowed differences over tactics to obscure potential agreement on strategic objectives. And they have not fought for a defense budget that would maintain American security and advance American interests in the new century.

We aim to change this. We aim to make the case and rally support for American global leadership.
As the 20th century draws to a close, the United States stands as the world’s preeminent power. Having led the West to victory in the Cold War, America faces an opportunity and a challenge: Does the United States have the vision to build upon the achievements of past decades? Does the United States have the resolve to shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests?
We are in danger of squandering the opportunity and failing the challenge. We are living off the capital — both the military investments and the foreign policy achievements — built up by past administrations. Cuts in foreign affairs and defense spending, inattention to the tools of statecraft, and inconstant leadership are making it increasingly difficult to sustain American influence around the world. And the promise of short-term commercial benefits threatens to override strategic considerations. As a consequence, we are jeopardizing the nation’s ability to meet present threats and to deal with potentially greater challenges that lie ahead.

We seem to have forgotten the essential elements of the Reagan Administration’s success: a military that is strong and ready to meet both present and future challenges; a foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes American principles abroad; and national leadership that accepts the United States’ global responsibilities.
Of course, the United States must be prudent in how it exercises its power. But we cannot safely avoid the responsibilities of global leadership or the costs that are associated with its exercise. America has a vital role in maintaining peace and security in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. If we shirk our responsibilities, we invite challenges to our fundamental interests. The history of the 20th century should have taught us that it is important to shape circumstances before crises emerge, and to meet threats before they become dire. The history of this century should have taught us to embrace the cause of American leadership.

Our aim is to remind Americans of these lessons and to draw their consequences for today. Here are four consequences:

• we need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global
  responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future;
• we need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values;
• we need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad;
• we need to accept responsibility for America’s unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.

Such a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity may not be fashionable today. But it is necessary if the United States is to build on the successes of this past century and to ensure our security and our greatness in the next.

…

Elliott Abrams, Gary Bauer, William J. Bennett , Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Eliot A. Cohen, Midge Decter, Paula Dobriansky,Steve Forbes Aaron Friedberg, Francis Fukuyama, Frank Gaffney, Fred C. Ikle, Donald Kagan, Zalmay Khalilzad, I. Lewis Libby, Norman Podhoretz, Dan Quayle, Peter W. Rodman, Stephen P. Rosen, Henry S. Rowen, Donald Rumsfeld, Vin Weber, George Weigel, Paul Wolfowitz 

https://web.archive.org/web/20050205041635/http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm

Mr. Brooks’ evolution/de-evolution from Neo-Conservative war monger, to a self-appointed Political/Moral Prophet, with his books , riffing on the themes of an ersatz  Sociology made to measure: The Social Animal, The Road to Character and The Second Mountain places this essay, in a past that Mr. Brooks might find inconvenient? Although, like the adroit grifter, he might characterize this essay as a part of his moral/political evolution to his current point of enlightenment.

American Writer

Before reading Mr. Douthat’s appraisal of the Williams’ candidacy, the reader should first go to this YouTube video, by New Progressive Voice ,that analyses in depth how the women of ‘The View’, treated Marianne Williamson.

Mr. Douthat commentary on Williamson, is just a bit more sophisticated than the ‘View’ coterie, and their open contempt of Williamson, but not by much:

…

Certainly in the eternal pundit’s quest to figure out what a “Donald Trump of the left” would look like, a figure like Williamson is an interesting contender. If Trumpism spoke to an underground, often-conspiratorial populism unacknowledged by the official G.O.P., Williamson speaks to a low-on-data, long-on-feelings spirit that simmers just below the We Are on the Side of Science and Reason surface of the contemporary liberal project. As Alex Pareene wrotefor The New Republic after her weird but weirdly compelling debate performance:

If the superficial version of “Democratic Trump” resembles him aesthetically, the proper version would be closer to his opposite: Not just female but powerfully and unabashedly feminine, aiming her message not at the raging car dealer dad but the anxious Wellness Mom. …

And while it is fun to scoff at her hokey spiritual woo and self-help bromides, it is easy to forget that hokey spiritual woo and self-help bromides are extremely powerful and popular among a massive subset of Americans, many of whom represent the exact sort of voters who decide Democratic primaries.

The post-debate polling, however, shows no Williamson surge — and my sense is that the path to a New Age answer to Trump would require a candidate who crosses racial boundaries more easily than Williamson (meaning, basically, Oprah), and a Democratic rank-and-file more alienated from their party leaders than today’s Democratic voters seem to be. Trump arose in the aftermath of both a failed establishment-Republican presidency and then the failed Tea Party insurgency; by comparison the Democratic Party still regards its last president fondly and regards itself as the country’s natural governing coalition, requiring no gambles on the power of Pure Love.

…

‘ “Donald Trump of the left” ‘ is nothing more than a libel against Williamson! She, masquerading as a ‘contender’ in a contest, whose rhetorical life exists in the political desperation of well paid scribblers, with nothing to say, except to declare their own moral/political vacuity.

But the concluding two paragraphs of the Douthat essay provide ample proof, that Douthat is steeped in the belief that women are lesser beings, in constant need of male tutelage, in order to function as complete beings. In sum, Williamson is ‘weird’, a kind of political spectacle, as object lesson, that proves her status as inferior being, un-moored from the essentialism of male tutelage.

But pending that synthesis, Democrats as well as curious onlookers should be glad to have Williamson onstage for at least one more round of weirdness. Even if most mystically inclined liberals aren’t going to vote for her, she speaks for a larger constituency than many of her rivals, and her warnings of spiritual crisis are at least as relevant to an America beset by addiction, suicide and atomization as any of Elizabeth Warren’s white papers.

It would take the entire course in miracles to put Williamson in the White House, but she’s right about one big thing: There’s more to heaven and earth, and even to national politics, than is dreamed of in the liberal technocrat’s philosophy.

 

Political Observer

Headline: Poor Ivanka: pity the children of privilege

Sub-headline: Why the First Daughter and scions of the rich and powerful deserve our sympathy

Kitsch-meister Ganesh proves that he hasn’t lost his touch for turning a silk purse into a sow’s ear: voila! Ivanka Trump as ‘Poor Little Rich Girl’ . The part was better played by Gloria Vanderbilt, who became an arbiter of style, and a Brand Name. Not to speak of a memoirist of note.

Mr. Ganesh describes his  ‘evolution’ on the vexing question of ‘pity the privileged‘ :

Once, I would have been at the head of the mob, evil-eyed and foaming. But I have come to know enough of these scions to understand the sadness of their lot. Here are three reasons to pity the privileged.

1.The first is pressure.

2.The second curse of privilege is ennui.

3. the guilt?

I put a question mark by the third ‘reason’ because the enumeration comes to an abrupt halt- the ‘pity the privileged’ argument seems to lose its rhetorical forward drive. Yet with such evocative rhetorical players: Christopher Hitchens, Forrest Gumpishly, Bildungsroman, Lenten, this feuilletonist reaches a not so startling aporia.

Political Observer

https://www.ft.com/content/229c2050-9dac-11e9-b8ce-8b459ed04726

P.S. Seeing Ivanka, former member of Trump’s Apprentice coterie, trying to chat with the self-important leaders of ‘The West’ , demonstrates a comic pathos that Mr. Ganesh’s politicized apologetic fails to even approach!

This interview with Putin began the Financial Times’ defensiveness about  ‘Liberalism’:

After a lengthy shaming of Putin , for lives lost in the ‘Middle East’ ,with no mention of American murderous political adventurism, since The War on Terror was declared by Bush The Younger in 2003 , the reader is presented with these two paragraphs:

…

The Russian leader detects a shift in the political balance of power from traditional western liberalism to national populism, fuelled by public resentment about immigration, multiculturalism and secular values at the expense of religion.

“Have we forgotten that all of us live in a world based on biblical values?” asks Mr Putin, dismissing Karl Marx’s dictum that religion is the opium of the masses. Similarly, in the Russian president’s view, liberal ideology has “outlived its purpose”.

…

Fragmentation characterises the world of 2019. In response, Mr Putin casts himself as a cheerleader of globalisation alongside his increasingly close ally, President Xi Jinping of China. It is an improbable role for Russia and China, but one vacated by the US under President Donald Trump, who has made “America First” his mantra.

https://www.ft.com/content/2880c762-98c2-11e9-8cfb-30c211dcd229

The 2014 annexation of Crimea is also mentioned, but not a word about the American, via NATO, and the EU financed Ukrainian Coup.  The natural conflict between America and China is described by Graham Allison, an American Political Technocrat as Thucydides’s trap. How enamored these technocrats are of their Grand Narratives, in fact its a rhetorical disease process.

Headline:Year in a Word: Thucydides’s trap

Sub-headline: The thesis that rivalry leads to war captures the attention of Washington and Beijing

Professor Graham Allison first used the phrase in print in a 2012 article in the Financial Times, in which he argued that “the defining question about global order in the decades ahead will be: can China and the US escape Thucydides’s trap?” He elaborated on the concept in a book, Destined for War (2017), in which he examined the historical precedents of rivalry between established and rising powers: in 12 of 16 such cases, the rivalry ended in conflict. He concluded that “China and the US are currently on a collision course for war”.

https://www.ft.com/content/0e4ddcf4-fc78-11e8-aebf-99e208d3e521

The interview is interesting in itself, but the obvious political bias’ of Barber and Foy, provides  the Financial Times with a pretext for an  ‘editorial reply’ on the vexing question of Liberalism, as Putin presents it as having  “outlived its purpose”.  Their reply to Putin, the Editorial Board can’t quite contain its political hysteria, under the rubric of ‘work harder to defend values and address discontent’. Yet the question remains, where is the evidence for this argued work harder , defend values and address discontent?

Headline: No, Mr Putin, western liberalism is not obsolete

Sub-headline: Mainstream US and EU politicians must work harder to defend values and address discontent 

There is an air of triumphalism in Vladimir Putin’s claim — in an interview with the Financial Times this week — that liberalism is obsolete. Since returning as Russian president in 2012 Mr Putin has sought to undermine the liberal western order. Yet his victory cry is hollow. Liberal, market-based democracy remains the organising principle in most non-petrostate countries with the highest living standards — and vital to the dynamism that generated their prosperity. Mr Putin’s statement is a signal, nonetheless, that western politicians must step up efforts to defend liberal values against the challenge from populist nationalists.

That challenge is real. The post-cold war global dominance of America and the EU, and the system they represent, is over. The challenge also comes partly from within. Mr Putin’s comments chime with those of both east and west European nationalists such as Marine Le Pen, Viktor Orban and Matteo Salvini; or of Steve Bannon, onetime consigliere to US president Donald Trump — and of Mr Trump himself. Indeed, with his tariffs and contempt for multilateralism, the US president is arguably a bigger threat to the liberal west’s cohesion than his Russian counterpart.

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https://www.ft.com/content/34f3edc0-9990-11e9-9573-ee5cbb98ed36

 

Next in line in defense of ‘Liberalism’ is  Martin Wolf :

Headline:Liberalism will endure but must be renewed

Sub-headline: It is a work in progress, not a utopian project

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The root word in liberal is liber, the Latin adjective denoting a free person, as opposed to a slave. Liberalism is not a precise philosophy, it is an attitude. All liberals share a belief in individual human agency. They trust in the capacity of human beings to decide things for themselves. This belief has radical implications. It implies the right to make their own plans, to express their own opinions and to participate in public life. These attitudes were realised in the system we call “liberal democracy”.

Liberals share a belief that agency depends on possession of economic and political rights. Institutions are needed to protect those rights — independent legal systems, above all. But agency also depends on markets to co-ordinate independent economic actors, free media to allow the spread of opinions, and political parties to organise politics. Behind these institutions are values and behaviours: the distinction between private gain and public purpose needed to curb corruption; a sense of citizenship; and belief in toleration.

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I have been selective in my quotation Mr. Wolf ‘s essay, while not ignoring its opening paragraph steeped in the wisdom , or just the risible cliches of a system, Liberalism, that capitulated en mass to Neo-Liberalism: its political creatures New Labour and The New Democrats, that has collapsed of its own mendacious practice! Putin is the necessary impetus to Wolf ‘s defense of that utterly defunct ‘Liberalism’.

“There is also the so-called liberal idea, which has outlived its purpose. Our western partners have admitted that some elements of the liberal idea, such as multiculturalism, are no longer tenable.” Thus, did Vladimir Putin claim to be on the right side of history, in a remarkable interview with the Financial Times. But, as Mark Twain might have said, the report of liberalism’s death is an exaggeration. Societies based on core liberal ideas are the most successful in history. They need to be defended against their enemies.

https://www.ft.com/content/52dc93d2-9c1f-11e9-9c06-a4640c9feebb

Next in order of consideration is the political greenhorn Janan Ganesh, commenting on ‘Liberalism’ in the current Democratic Party’s over crowded field of Neo-Liberals masquerading as Liberals, in sum a collection of Clinton Surrogates.

Headline: Populists beware: liberalism can be a fighting creed too

Sub-headline: America has become more tolerant since the election of Donald Trump, not less

In 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement came into effect, the US ceased its economic embargo on Vietnam after two bitter decades and Madonna swore like a sailor on the David Letterman Show without sinking either her career or his. Such was the belle époque of liberalism. We can only imagine how much kinder people were to outsiders than they are now.

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https://www.ft.com/content/42f27330-9cb8-11e9-9c06-a4640c9feebb

‘ Such was the belle époque of liberalism.’ Mr. Ganesh’s talent for evocative hyperbole, as the in order too of his cliche mongering. Does it evolve/devolve , via the use of credible statistical evidence, into the last three paragraphs of self-serving political chatter illumined by the notion of ‘Militant Liberalism’? Mr.  Ganesh’s  ignorance of American Politics Past, in the use of the term ‘Radical Center’ , by pundits and thinkers trying to present themselves as politically potent, was in fact, a clear demonstration of their verifiable political eclipse.

Still, it should trouble populists that righteous energy, a resource they used to monopolise, is spilling to the other side. The smarter among them will listen to what liberals are intimating: we can do anger too.

Liberalism’s enemies have always had it down as a pale and watery thing. Italy’s strongman-saluting Futurists called it “utilitarian cowardice” a century ago. Clerical authoritarians thought it too decadent to withstand them.

But just because a philosophy envisions a looser society, it does not itself have to be held in a loose way. There is such a thing as militant liberalism. If it is a coming force, there was nothing inevitable about this. It was inadvertently awakened by populists. Those who despise liberalism might yet be the making of it.

https://www.ft.com/content/42f27330-9cb8-11e9-9c06-a4640c9feebb

Old Socialist

Mr. Stephens @soledadobrien has your number! But the paraphrase of Sen. Dirksen… , some of us watched ‘The Ev & Charley Show’ on network news, back in the day!

‘Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, authors of ‘The Coddling of the American Mind,” that Party Line was  enunciated, in the last Century, by the old political hysteric Alan Bloom, in his ‘Closing of the American Mind’ , featured rhetorical player,  Rock and Roll is addling the minds of our youth.

Now deservedly forgotten, this classic of political paranoia was steeped in  Starussian mendacity, if that isn’t a tautology! Like Imhotep in the old Horror film ‘The Mummy’  reanimated not by the “Scroll of Thoth”, but a new team of political hysterics Lukianoff and Haidt! Who have reanimated the Bloom cadaver for the New American Century.

Sincerely yours,

Myra Breckenridge

Headline: Globalisation is dead and we need to invent a new world order

Sub-headline: A book excerpt and interview with Michael O’Sullivan, author of “The Levelling”

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Mr O’Sullivan: Globalisation is already behind us. We should say goodbye to it and set our minds on the emerging multipolar world. This will be dominated by at least three large regions: America, the European Union and a China-centric Asia.

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https://www.economist.com/open-future/2019/06/28/globalisation-is-dead-and-we-need-to-invent-a-new-world-order?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/globalisationisdeadandweneedtoinventaworldorderopenfuture

Read Mr. O’Sullivan’s CV, that is not just instructive, but confirms who he is and what he represents :

‘Michael O’Sullivan is the Author of The Levelling.

Until May 2019 he was a CIO and Managing Director of Credit Suisse in the Private Banking & Wealth Management Division, based in Zurich. He was Chief Investment Officer for the International Wealth Management Division. He joined Credit Suisse in July 2007 from State Street Global Markets. Prior to joining Credit Suisse Michael spent over ten years as a global strategist at a number of sell-side institutions and has also taught finance at Princeton and Oxford Universities. He was educated at University College Cork in Ireland and Balliol College in Oxford, where he obtained M.Phil and D.Phil degrees as a Rhodes Scholar. He is an independent member of Ireland’s National Economic Social Council.

https://finance.knect365.com/fundforum-international/speakers/michael-osullivan

Like a good Neo-Liberal O’Sullivan avoids  the mention of the complete collapse of the Neo-Liberal system in 2008-this is utterly verboten political/economic territory. The Party Line of The Economist and their  technocrat/oligarch interviewee share a verifiable political/economic propinquity.

The Economist: What killed globalisation?

Michael O’Sullivan: At least two things have put paid to globalisation. First, global economic growth has slowed, and as a result, the growth has become more “financialised”: debt has increased and there has been more “monetary activism”—that is, central banks pumping money into the economy by buying assets, such as bonds and in some cases even equities—to sustain the international expansion. Second, the side effects, or rather the perceived side-effects, of globalisation are more apparent: wealth inequality, the dominance of multinationals and the dispersion of global supply chains, which have all become hot political issues.

How telling is it that the Levellers  are shown as victims of Cromwell and the Grandees, and that he mentions ‘Change UK’ ,  but not the very real possibility, that the next Prime Minister will be Jeremy Corbyn, and that a cadre of reformers, within the Labour Party, that is seeking the wholesale overturning of the Thatcherite New Labour!

Second, they are interesting for the way the movement was countermanded and then snuffed out by the military leader Oliver Cromwell and the Grandees (the elites of their day). Like so many idealistic political start-ups, the Levellers failed. This should encourage the growing number of new political parties, like Change UK and new candidates to be worldy-wise in how they approach the process of political reform and change.

‘Change UK’ was Neo-Liberal , in sum Anti-Corbyn:

Headline:How Change UK crashed and burned

Sub-headline:New centrist party hoped to remake politics but failed to match Brexit party — or Lib Dems

https://www.ft.com/content/f33596da-87a2-11e9-a028-86cea8523dc2

Is the quick demise of ‘Change UK’ the point of O’Sullivan’s admonition to be ‘worldy-wise in how they approach the process of political reform and change’ ?

The argument progresses, eventuates or just devolves into the positing of two types of societies: Leveller-type and Leviathan-type societies.

As the world evolves along the lines of Leveller-type and Leviathan-type societies, it is possible that in some countries, such as Russia, a Leviathan-like approach—that is, order in exchange for reduced democracy and rights—will be the accepted way of life. In other countries, most interestingly China, as its economy loses momentum and evolves, there may be a growing tension between groups holding the Leviathan view (supported inevitably by Grandees) and opposing Leveller-like groups (who favor equality of opportunity and a multiparty system). The role and views of women, especially in China, and of minority groups like the gay community will be pivotal.

This historically dull-witted binary is the political destiny of human kind? ‘A New World Order’ as posited by O’ Sullivan, will appeal to the Neo-Liberal’s of American Corporate Journalism: The New York Times, Washington Post etc. and America’s desperate elected  political class, to act as intellectual veneer, for their policy proposals, steeped in xenophobia, bourgeois respectable racism and rampant sexual hysteria. And a politics in American re-defined by the Rucho et al, v.  Common Cause  et al  decision of the Supreme Court that allows partisan gerrymandering to be unencumbered in its exercise.

The emergence of a new world order, based on large regions and coloured by Leveller and Leviathan modes of governance, echoes several periods in history. The challenge in the next few years will be for Leviathan-oriented nations like China to maintain economic stability so that rising unemployment, for instance, does not break the “Leviathan contract”. Equally, the challenge in Leveller countries will be to maintain open, fraternal societies in the face of political and potentially economic volatility.

Old Socialist