This quote from the originator of the ‘Southern Strategy’ Richard Nixon demonstrates that Mr. Ganesh needs to immerse himself in American political/cultural history, instead of parading his utter ignorance of that history as some kind of what?  An Enlightened stance on the danger of ‘Identity Politics’ and citing the Neo-Straussian Mark  Lilla, masquerading as a ‘Liberal’? His political mentors, two notorious Neo-Cons, Daniel Bell and Harvey Mansfield. Despite the notion of ‘lip service’ that places these pronouncements on the indivisible nation into the category of the dubious !

The difference is that racial politics was, for the most part, implicit. It was a matter of coded language and suggestive television advertisements. At no point did either party stop paying lip service to the ideal of an indivisible nation. “They are black, they are white,” said Richard Nixon, even, of his “Silent Majority” in 1968. “They’re native and foreign born.”

‘Identity Politics’ is the name used by the defenders of  ‘White Male Privilege’ that has ruled the ‘West’ for millennia! But it is also the name for any  politics that the advocates of that privilege don’t like. It is a simplistic shaming technique, to identify those ‘outside the political mainstream’ because politics ,here, is reduced to a tribalist endeavor: insider vs. outsiders.

Look to the recent Financial Times propaganda tool of ‘The Rebellion Against the Elites’ as a once usable tool, that failed to arrest the dreaded ‘Populist Menace’. Gone is the coruscating cynicism of Ganesh Past, as the reader confronts the new incarnation of Ganesh Present, as Political Prophet:

The dread for the republic is that neither reversal ever happens, and the future is fragmentation.

Old Socialist

https://www.ft.com/content/1541a2f0-a063-11e8-85da-eeb7a9ce36e4?tagToFollow=b1d025bc-56d5-4420-ae8c-49c0c02cc816

‘Nick Hanauer is a Seattle-based entrepreneur and venture capitalist, and the founder of Civic Ventures, a public-policy incubator.’

Its Summer and America’s favorite Political Gossip Sheet opens the ‘Floor’ to another ‘Greedy Capitalist’ to lecture the all and sundry members of the Democratic Party, on how they should proceed, after the Trump win. By the way ‘public-policy incubator’ is the Madison Ave. merde stand in for Think Tank,

Mr. Hanauer does not know of, nor does he practice, brevity in this ‘naming and shaming b.s.‘. But the fact is that the Neo-Liberals took over the Party in 1992! And after the Depression of 2008, are loath to give up control of the Party , while it ebbs away in electoral contests outside the Clinton coterie’s reach! A ‘Revolution from below’ that puts Hillary and her minions in a bad light, they need no help in that department, even though Hillary won the popular vote in 2016 by 4 million votes. Think of Mrs. Clinton whining to her staff, they weren’t going to let me have it, or some such locution awash in self-pity: think Aeschylus, Aaron Sorkin, or the long forgotten chronicler of D.C. politics Allen Drury?  
Mr. Hanauer screed is reminiscent of what Matt Miller, writing for the Washington Post editorial page and hosting NPR’s ‘Left, Right and Center’, used, at one point in his political career, to preach about ‘The Radical Center’. Mr. Miller’s political career ended in a lost  political contest for a House seat, and he went to work for an Investment House, surprise! Not that others didn’t opine on the subject, in their desperation to seem politically relevant i.e. Tom Friedman at the New Your Times.

But what Mr. Hanauer is preaching about is Ronald Regan’s , if I recall correctly, 11th Commandment : not to speak ill of another Republican. Just updated for the Democratic Party experiencing an ‘identity crisis’ after the  loss in 2016. The truth that Mr. Hanauer must face is that the Neo-Liberal must go, and what are in essence the New Dealers must take their place. Mrs Clinton and her allies will not let go, so its going to be a long and divisive fight for the ‘soul’ of the Democratic Party, to frame it in terms of Political Theology.  Mr. Hanauer should return to his Thing Tank and hire ghost writer.

Political Observer

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/08/14/democrats-must-reclaim-the-center-by-moving-hard-left-219354

Mr. Bromwich manages to avoid the current political hysteria ,or simply to mute it, therefore making it more palatable to the reader, than the Corporate Media hysterics.He even manages to shame these political actors, yet at the same moment to exercise a kind of restrained iteration of the current Party Line.

Much of the damage to US politics over the last two years has been done by the anti-Trump media themselves, with their mood of perpetual panic and their lack of imagination. But the uncanny gift of Trump is an infectious vulgarity, and with it comes the power to make his enemies act with nearly as little self-restraint as he does.

Mr. Bromwich’s Bill of Attainder includes Trump’s appointment of Scott Pruitt to the EPA, and his successor Andrew Wheeler both products of an utterly corrupt American Corporatism. Next in order of consideration is Iran, and the Wars of Empire: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, all fully endorsed by the New Democrats, led by ‘tougher than any man in the room’ Mrs. Clinton. An utter inconvenience to Mr. Bromwich’s reserved indictment.

But the patient, indeed, doubtful reader of this writer’s judgement is taken aback by this deviation from the Party Line:

Russia remains the obsessional concern. Not wanting to restart the Cold War might seem one of the few good ideas attributable to Trump, no matter how he came by it, but the pride of the Democrats is invested in pushing him towards renewed conflict: stiffer sanctions, cyber implants, enhanced deployments and joint military exercises with Nato – nothing (it is said) should be ‘off the table’. American commentators lack even a minimal awareness of the circumstances of the eastward push of Nato after 1990. President George H.W. Bush, in return for a united Germany, had promised that Nato would expand ‘not one inch eastward’; and the evacuation of this pledge in the years that followed, under Clinton, the younger Bush and Obama, has rightly been considered a betrayal by every Russian leader from Gorbachev to Putin.

History intrudes itself into a subject not mentioned, but the constant sub-text of the Anti-Trump coterie’s agitprop : The New Cold War fomented by Mrs. Clinton, her minions, and the perpetually bloodthirsty Neo-Conservatives, who have a continuing political romance with her jingoism, expressed by the notion of her ‘toughness’. History is again utterly inconvenient, Mr. Bromwich should be congratulated for this moment of clarifying honesty. A long quote from the virtuous martyred American political saint Lincoln adds more historical depth.

Next in order of appearance are political hysterics Senator Joe McCarthy and Congressman Adam Schiff. Then to Patrick Buchanan and his :

‘Many Putin actions we condemn were reactions to what we did. Russia annexed Crimea bloodlessly. But did not the US bomb Serbia for 78 days to force Belgrade to surrender her cradle province of Kosovo? How was that more moral than what Putin did in Crimea?’

By this quotation from Mr. Buchanan, identifies Mr. Bromwich as an Apostate to the current New Cold War Mythology!

Next in line are considerations of the Republican Party’s ‘collaboration’ with Trump and the utterly preposterous , but  self-congratulatory notion of the ‘Resistance’. Recall  the quote from Goya: ‘The sleep of reason brings forth monsters’ !

Mr. Bromwich then opines that:

Police, for the most part, haven’t yet shown a pro-Trump disposition, and Democrats should want to keep things that way. Among officers of law enforcement at all levels, Trump’s role as an instigator of popular disorders is the strongest point against him.

The years 2016 and 2017 have escaped the political memory of Mr. Bromwich, in which 2600, mostly black people, were murdered by police in America, without one conviction in a court of law. The Police have already rendered a verdict. The ‘Broken Widows Policy’ of the Manhattan Institute,  has evolved into a siege mentality- the domestic corollary of the War on Terror. A  bourgeois pundit like Mr. Bromwich dare not go that far in his Apostasy.

The first part of Mr. Bromwich’s ends with the ‘Democrats’ and the feckless dullard Comey, playing a new role as FBI Hero, straight out of the manufactured lore of  movies,radio and television propaganda, spanning generations. The scandal of the FBI Crime Laboratory remains unmentioned in Mr. Bromwich commentary:

See John F. Kelly author of Tainting Evidence : Behind the Scandals at the FBI Crime Lab on C-Span address here of July 10, 1998:

https://www.c-span.org/video/?110728-1/tainting-evidence

And read this Atlantic news story on the same issue here:

Headline: CSI Is a Lie

Sub-headline:  America’s forensic-investigation system is overdue for sweeping reform.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/csi-is-a-lie/390897/

Comey shares in J.Edgar Hoover’s political paranoia about ‘The Left’ as the embodiment of the political evil, as opposed to the virtues of American Centrism.  His handling of the Clinton e mails demonstrates his political maladroitness, but confirms his faith in his sense of duty to Truth, no matter the political costs. For the lazy, but entitled, Mrs. Clinton and her allies in the National Security Sate apparatus, Brennan and Clapper it was a betrayal that could not be countenanced. But adds  to the gloss of Mrs. Clinton as victim, of the scheming of Trump and his Russian Overlord Putin.

Political Observer

https://www.lrb.co.uk/2018/08/09/david-bromwich/american-breakdown

August 17, 2018

I have decided not to write a Part Two on Mr. Bromwich’s essay. But I feel I must comment on one  part of the remainder of his polemic, in which he lauds James Comey as FBI Hero:

Comey’s memoir has now surpassed the combined sales of Michael Wolff’s portrait of the Trump White House, Fire and Fury, and Hillary Clintons’s election elegy What Happened. The book, written in an idiom identical to the one he uses in interviews and press briefings, is clearly the work of an un-ghosted author, and it contains passages most unusual for an official memoir:

There is a place I have visited on the coast of North Carolina where two barrier islands come close together. In the narrow passageway between them, the waters of the Atlantic Ocean meet the waters of the huge and shallow sound that lies behind the islands. There is turbulence in that place and waves appear to break even though no land is visible. I imagine that the leaders of the Department of Justice stand at that spot, between the turbulent waters of the political world and the placid waters of the apolitical sound. Their job is to respond to the political imperatives of the president and the voters who elected him, while also protecting the apolitical work of the thousands of agents, prosecutors, and staff who make up the bulk of the institution. So long as the leaders understand the turbulence, they can find their footing. If they stumble, the ocean water overruns the sound and the department has become just another political organ. Its independent role in American life has been lost and the guardians of justice have drowned.

This depth of formal piety cannot be faked; the passage shows the burden (as Comey sees it) of maintaining constitutional and legal restraints on Donald Trump.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/2018/08/09/david-bromwich/american-breakdown

There is nothing new here, Mr. Bromwich follows the Party Line, on this whole scandal, except that the tone is more measured, a bit less dominated by hysteria. But absent is the elegant rhetorical framing to add a certain depth, in sum, he descends into the demotic.    Bromwich  expresses faith in Comey based on an excerpt from his book. ‘This depth of formal piety cannot be faked; ‘ call this dubious!  A selection of Mr. Comey’s tweets leaves no doubt, that he is the natural successor to  J. Edgar Hoover’s Anti-Left hysteria mongering , not to speak of his historically verifiable record of active persecution of Leftists !

Political Observer

Extra!Extra! Read all about it!!!

Andy Divine on Trump and the ‘enlightened Saudi Prince’, Trump & the Mueller investigation, Corbyn & Anti-Semitism!
Mr. Divine’s specialty is fully realized political hysterics: Andy delivers the goods! ( Walter Winchell & Lee Atwater turn in their graves!)

Extra!Extra! Read all about it!!!

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/08/saudi-arabia-trump-human-rights.html

Political Observer

Uber and Lyft ,and the others cited in this article, are Taxi Services not ‘ride-hailing services’ and are regulated in the Public Interest by the City of New York. Something the Financial Times can’t seem to grasp! But theses companies, backed by the deep pockets of the Silicon Valley Robber Barons: and their electronic trinkets produced in the sweat shops of Asia, where the workers commit suicide. Their Enlightened Capitalism Model is predicated on these Sweat Shops, and gouging their customers for the latest iteration of their trinkets. As the discarded toxic junk is dumped in the Third World : these are the model citizens, tax evaders on a grand scale. Who have the ability to buy television time to propagandize against the Public Interest. And in favor of ‘The Free Market’ even as that Mythology is in near total collapse, except for that notorious 1%.

These two quotations from the Uber executives, makes plain that these representatives of that Silicon Valley clique, are acting in the Public Interest of the under-served. When did the Public Interest enter into the vocabulary of  the Robber Barons of  Silicon Valley. I’ve worked with these Engineers, the human factor is utterly absent from their consciousness, they don’t live on a planet peopled by other humans!

…

“These sweeping cuts to transportation will bring New Yorkers back to an era of struggling to get a ride, particularly for communities of colour and in the outer boroughs,” said Joseph Okpaku, Lyft’s vice-president of public policy.

Josh Gold, an Uber spokesman, said: “The city’s 12-month pause on new vehicle licences will threaten one of the few reliable transportation options while doing nothing to fix the subways or ease congestion.”

https://www.ft.com/content/18cd0ada-9b5a-11e8-9702-5946bae86e6d

Political Observer

Mr. Ganesh doesn’t offer much in his latest essay. But this one word quote from the Foreign Policy technocrat Richard Haass: ‘Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations suggests “abdication”, …’ What is happening is that the  technocrats, from the Think Tanks and Universities ,that think of themselves as the ‘experts’, that possess a special kind of knowledge, indeed, look upon themselves as the Vanguard of American Foreign Policy, have been ignored by Trump. And they resort to not very sophisticated taunts like ‘Isolationist’: they will not be ignored! : their special status is not to be questioned by the Know-Nothing Trump.

Trump resembles Peron, with a very important difference: Peron let his underlings stir up political dissension , and then he entered the picture as Caudillo, to set things on their proper course. Trump simply goes on twitter, and barks like the dog he is, and then the howling, from the respectable bourgeois sector of Policy Experts, and just ordinary people begins. He responds in his brief and dull-witted provocations- a strategy that is repeated endlessly.

Trump has made the notion of acting in a Presidential Manner obsolete! His utter vulgarity, offends the carefully groomed Policy Technocrat’s sense of what a President should be. He is the Ring-Master that he played on ‘The Apprentice’, cobbled together by the careful editing, in post-production: master shots inter-cut with close-ups, that is the sine qua non of Reality Television: one static shot becomes the narrative continuity , enlivened by actions in the close-ups. Reality is the act of creating it.

Political Observer

https://www.ft.com/content/e7e66f86-9aed-11e8-ab77-f854c65a4465?tagToFollow=ad00c9db-000f-34c6-907d-9f2df72a11f2

For the readership of this newspaper with a memory longer than last week, this newspaper and its writer/hirelings have been Anti-Corbyn, since he began his rise in the Labour Party, as the alternative to the ruling Blairite faction. The Party Line at the Financial Times evolved from the ‘Rebellion Against The Elites’ , to the ‘Populist Menace’ , and now the hue and cry about Anti-Semitism! I read the hysterics of the priggish Mr. Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian and the comments on Ken Livingstone, which was the first iteration of this manufactured ‘crisis’!

But the obvious answer to the ineluctable rightness of the IHRA definition of Anti-Semitism, advocated, or better yet demanded,  by the Financial Times editorial writers-   the Labour Party can and is responsible for creating a definition of its own. That includes the very real fact that BDS and Anti-Zionism do not constitute Anti-Semitism. Look to the sanctions on apartheid South Africa as the paradigmatic case!

And the right of Palestinians to a state,  to the exercise of political civic self determination, and even the Right of Return, must the stated unequivocally in any such statement of Labour principals, about not just Anti-Semitism, but about the imperatives of Human Rights in this historical moment.The ‘Two State Solution’ is dead! What are the possible alternatives? Who is asking this question?

The Tories and New Labour, have found common cause in the hysterical defamation of Jeremy Corbyn. The failure of each of these Thatcherite Parties has led them into a self-serving political nihilism, that cannot be undone. Such is the level of this crime!

Old Socialist

https://www.ft.com/content/f2420a36-9966-11e8-9702-5946bae86e6d

The IMF mantra of ‘Austerity’ has never worked ! Macri will go through the motions:

“It has become clear that Macri wants to focus the fiscal cuts on spending, without backtracking on commitments to lower taxes, especially on agricultural exports,” said Daniel Kerner, an analyst at Eurasia Group, a risk consultancy. Measures include caps on public sector wages and a freeze on hiring new employees, a further reduction in energy subsidies, and cuts to less urgent infrastructure projects.

The ‘Party Line’ on ‘Austerity’ is to cut spending and lower taxes: its called Neo-Liberalism not ‘Liberalization’! In sum, it is to make war against what is left of the Welfare State and replace it with ‘Market Discipline’. You don’t need to be Keynes to see the hackneyed, indeed, dull witted repetitive solution that the Neo-Liberals offer.

Look to the faltering Jupertarian Program  of Macron: he whines about the public funds wasted on the undeserving,  as reported in the pages of The Financial Times , via his staff. While he spends as lavishly like Louis XIV!

Cutting taxes is a way of ‘priming the pump’  or so the propaganda dictates, although the record of the failure of this ‘methodology’ was manifested in Argentina’s original default. Macri is the opening of Act Two of Argentina’s new default, that will be repeated in Act Three. Some how the appearance of a Eurasia Group technocrat does not surprise, as Ian Bremmer is Corporatist, held in high regard by the organs of its dissemination. Mr. Kerner continues his explanation/defense of Macri’s balancing act:

“The belief is that any break in contracts or agreements would further sour investor sentiment and hurt any chance of better [economic] conditions next year,” Mr Kerner added, pointing to concerns in the energy sector, where Mr Macri has upset executives by rowing back some of his liberalisation agenda.

One ruddy-cheeked farmer answers any question the reader might have regarding Macri’s program. Add this to the rolling strikes by truck-drivers- it looks like Act Three is just about to begin, the house lights flicker, to call the audience back to their seats.

As for the explosive issue of export taxes, memories of the disruptive conflicts a decade ago — and the farming lobby’s ultimate victory — remain vivid. “Nobody else has to pay export taxes, so why should we?” asked one ruddy-cheeked farmer at the fair, losing his composure at the mere idea. “After what happened in 2008, politicians know what happens when farmers are unhappy.”

Old Socialist

https://www.ft.com/content/9016cb56-94ef-11e8-b67b-b8205561c3fe

@Thinkofitthisway

Thank you for your comment. ‘… and your solution is what?’ I did not saddle,once again, the Argentine people/nation with another installment of IMF debt, linked to the near impossible markers of their Austerity Regime, set by the IMF. After the ‘Austerity Lite’ of Macri’s , less than a year and some months elapsed, before the near free-fall of the peso! A new de Kirchner already exists, and will be trust or choose to taker take her or his place in the new unfolding of this melodrama.

The failure of Macri’s weak interventions means that the ‘stronger medicine’ of the IMF are demanded! Market Discipline has never worked: look to the 2008 Depression and our dismal world, after the crime of the Neo-Liberal Swindle’s immiseration of both the Working Class and the Middle Class. Read Wendy Brown’s ‘Undoing the Demos : Neo-Liberalism’s Stealth Revolution’ for a history of this economic/political nihilism! this in answer to your :

‘Ranting against Neo-Liberalism is all good and well (and not terribly original by the way) without suggesting anything to get Argentina live within its means is not helpful.’ I supply to the Financial Times readers an alternative view of its Neo-Liberal propaganda.

Vulture Capitalist Paul Singer purchased the Argentine Debt  for $117 million and made  $2 billion for himself and his confederates:

Headline: How one hedge fund made $2 billion from Argentina’s economic collapse

NEW YORK –When Paul Singer’s Elliott Capital launched a 15-year battle to wrestle billions out of Argentina for lapsed debt payments, it wasn’t the first time the hedge fund had taken on a foreign government.

But few engagements have turned into such a high-profile international scuffle.

In order to collect the decade-old debt, Singer’s fund tried to claim money deposited by the country’s central bank in the U.S. and Europe. And it sought to seize two satellite launch contracts between Argentina and SpaceX.

Elliott Capital’s arguably most audacious scheme came in 2012, when the Argentine navy’s proud three-masted tall ship pulled into the port of Tema in Ghana with more than 250 crew members on board, recent graduates of the Escuela Naval de Argentina participating in an annual training session. The Libertad was worth a fraction of what the hedge fund claimed that it was owed, but the 100-meter ship quickly became a chip in an international fight over billions in old debt.

Elliott Capital persuaded a Ghanaian court to seize the vessel so it could collect on its debt. Argentinian officials would lash out at Elliott as “unscrupulous financiers” and after more than two months the ship was released.

Four years later, though, Elliott Capital and several other hedge funds and creditors are about to get their satisfaction.

…

The Argentine government agreed to a settlement that would allow Singer’s fund to walk away with $2.4 billion for bonds that the government had failed to pay on, according to court documents. The bonds had a face value of $617 million, but had been purchased for about $117 million, according to an analysis of court records by Martin Guzman, a postdoctoral research fellow at Columbia University Graduate School of Business. Argentina’s Senate is scheduled to sign off on the deal this week.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2016/03/29/how-one-hedge-fund-made-2-billion-from-argentinas-economic-collapse/?utm_term=.ef819f930dbb

Regards,

StephenKMackSD

Mr. Payne in the second and third paragraphs of his essay offers an evaluation of Mrs. May’s failed ‘vision’ for Tory politics, when she was elevated to replace the bungling and  bulling Mr. Cameron.

…

Back in the summer of 2016, the country had voted to leave the EU, David Cameron had scuttled off and there was no plan for what should happen next. Mrs May emerged, pledging not only to honour the result but to tackle the “ burning injustice” that flows beneath society. She offered hope, in nigh biblical terms, to the quiet corners of the electorate often taken for granted.

Mrs May’s address has entered folklore. Partly because it was unusually empathetic; partly because it articulated a fresh blue-collar strain of conservatism that fitted the moment. One Labour shadow cabinet minister fretted privately: “If she does all the stuff promised in that speech, we are really screwed.”
…

‘One Labour shadow cabinet minister fretted privately:…’ when in doubt cite an anonymous source , that the reader has no ability to check against the political record. But the ‘Reforming’  Mrs. May simply disappeared. To the regret of her party members? Brexit is the political crisis, that will not be overcome by anything but bold and decisive action, across the British political spectrum, Mrs. May is unable to cobble together such an alliance.

Mr. Payne offers not a remedy for Brexit, but for a national revitalization of Britain. Brexit is the political catastrophe brought on by Cameron’s incompetence and the will of the electorate. How inconvenient!

When Westminster returns from sunning itself, MPs will go on arguing about the most prudent form of exit. But imagine if more of their energies were devoted to matters at home. We need a bold new constitutional settlement that moves towards a more federal UK and devolves power closer to the people through the elected city mayors. MPs should come up with a decisive economic plan to revive coastal and provincial towns by combining education and skills with sweeteners such as better regional railways. Reforming business rates might aid decaying high streets. The broken property market needs to be fixed with a mass building scheme.

Mr. Payne becomes, out of argumentative necessity, prescriptive:

To address the anger that led voters to support Brexit, the government should be more honest about the trade-offs between taxes and public spending. It should also draw up a new migration policy focused on filling skills gaps, not hitting arbitrary targets. The chancellor would seek a “square deal” for capitalism, inspired by Theodore Roosevelt, to tame the excesses of corporatism. A focused industrial strategy would target emerging technologies such electric cars and artificial intelligence.

It has escaped Mr. Payne’s  attention that Mr. Corbyn offers, not a political riff on Teddy Roosevelt, but if we are to adhere to an American political context , a New Deal in the mold of Franklin Roosevelt. But wait! here is Mr. Payne in comic mode:

…

There is also a philosophical problem. Mrs May appears to have forgotten why she came to power. The Tories exist to conserve what is best about Britain.

…

And as always, Mr. Payne offers the dependable fear mongering of a Financial Times hireling , in his final paragraph: linking to a Financial Times essay, about the clear and present danger of Tommy Robinson, English Defense League founder, supported by both Bannon and Ukip.  The manufactured  Anti-Semitism  Crisis of the Blairite faction of New Labour, in its campaign against Corbyn, remains unmentioned in Mr.  Payne’s essay, it is held in reserve for use on a more pertinent political occasion.

Once the UK stumbles out of the EU next March, Britons will ask: what has changed? If Mrs May (or whoever succeeds her) has no answer, the fed up will turn to nastier alternatives on the fringes. With every passing day and missed opportunity, that danger rises.

Old Socialist

https://www.ft.com/content/ef83b896-9950-11e8-ab77-f854c65a4465

Reading Ms. Kakutani’s essay/fable titled ‘Deconstrution industry: Issues with truth in modern American’ in the July 27, 2018 print issue  and ‘Trump and the truth: Michiko Kakutani explores the issues with truth in modern America’ in the online version,of the TLS demonstrates the folly of both condensing a book into an excerpt, and pointing to the guilt of Paul de Man and his Post- Modern fellow travelers, as precursors to Trump.

And using: ‘As David Lehman recounted in his astute book Signs of the Times (1991)’ I purchased Mr. Lehman’s book through The Readers Subscription many years ago and read it, until I discovered through reading it, that it didn’t qualify as a book that was worth my time and attention. Call this book worthy of publication in a newspaper, except that the topic could have never qualify as ‘general interest’ and Mr. Lehman’s writing, considered retrospectively,  shares with Ms. Kakutani an American intellectual provincialism. Post-Modernism as the other of American Rationalism.

Some quotes from her condensation are worthy of quotation and comment:

Leaders like Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr and Barack Obama viewed America as a work in progress – a country in the process of perfecting itself.

…

The Trump campaign depicted itself as an insurgent, revolutionary force, battling on behalf of its marginalized constituency and disingenuously using language which strangely echoed that used by radicals in the 1960s. “We’re trying to disrupt the collusion between the wealthy donors, the large corporations, and the media executives”, Trump declared at one rally. And in another he called for replacing this “failed and corrupt political establishment”. The Trump campaign depicted itself as an insurgent, revolutionary force, battling on behalf of its marginalized constituency and disingenuously using language which strangely echoed that used by radicals in the 1960s. “We’re trying to disrupt the collusion between the wealthy donors, the large corporations, and the media executives”, Trump declared at one rally. And in another he called for replacing this “failed and corrupt political establishment”. More ironic still is the populist Right’s appropri­ation of postmodernist arguments and its embrace of the philosophical repudiation of objectivity – schools of thought affiliated for decades with the Left and with the very elite academic circles that Trump and Co. scorn.

Ms. Kakutani attributes to Trump, and his minions, an intellectual sophistication that does not exist. While ignoring the verifiable fact that Trump was the protege of  the Right-Wing guttersnipe Roy Cohen. Lying was the metier of Mr. Cohen, not to speak of hysterical propagandizing, that renders Ms. Kakutani’s claim null: ‘More ironic still is the populist Right’s appropri­ation of postmodernist arguments and its embrace of the philosophical repudiation of objectivity – schools of thought affiliated for decades with the Left and with the very elite academic circles that Trump and Co. scorn.’

Trump and Trumpism is about the practice of a kind of  Cold War American Know-Nothing Politics, renewed and practiced by the nihilist/opportunist Trump, not about Post-Modernist thinkers and their attack on ‘Truth’. In this Ms. Kakutani echoes the Canadian political charlatan Jordan Peterson Anti-Post-Modern hysterics. But this whole argument and its presentation is not just beyond the interest, but beyond the ken of Trump and his minions.

A simpler explanation for Trump might begin its narrative with Ronald Reagan, and his embrace of the Free Market Myth,  that began with Margaret Thatcher’s enthusiasm for Hayek’s ‘The Road to Serfdom’. In 1992 the New Democrats were about the Neo-Liberal agenda, as the road to power as they jettisoned The New Deal in favor of Reaganism Lite. The passage of Grammy-Leach-Blilely in 1999, was the crowing moment of Reaganism, enacted by a Pseudo-Democrat. The Depression of 2008, and its dismal aftermath, and the failure of the central myth of Neo-Liberalism, the Self-Correcting Market to manifest itself: allied to the fact that both Republicans and New Democrats were/are still in the thrall of this failed belief system, are the more likely reasons for Trump that Ms. Kakutani’s essay doesn’t even broach. Not to forget what the Neo-Liberal Obama contributed to this, first in the appointment of the incompetent hack Larry Summers, and then the dismal Simpson and Boles!

Ms. Kakutani’s knowledge of  Post Modernism, as revealed by this essay, is not just inadequate but more pointedly inexcusable, as is her lack of knowledge of American political history. These books offer a more historically informative point of view on Post -Modernism: ‘French Theory’ by Francois Cusset, ‘The Origins of Postmodernity’ by Perry Anderson, ‘French Philosophy of the Sixties’ by Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut. And I will recommend  Daniel T. Rodgers’ ‘Age of Fracture’ with the caveat that the Epilogue of his book doesn’t do justice to its preceding chapters, which has many insights to offer- the want of courage of Professor Rodgers, to speak boldly and candidly about how the political actor might conduct herself in this Age of Fracture is what is absent from this very good book, whose writer lacks the courage to  be what an Emeritus Professor can be: a true philosopher!

American Writer

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/private/trump-truth-michiko-kakutani/