StephenKMackSD's Blog

The reader just has to wonder at Ms. Tett’s thinking that Americans aren’t completely familiar with ‘Breitbart News’ ! We did witness the scurrilous attack on the person and  career of Shirley Sherrod by Andrew Breitbart in July 2010. Breitbart demonstrated that the twin pillars of the ‘altright’ were/are racism and cowardice! Aided by incompetent propagandizing, and an American Press that failed to do their job of exposing this hack!

Steve Bannon is just the natural successor to the notorious Breitbart, but don’t forget the respectable Republican racists: Nixon of The Southern Strategy, or Reagan of Welfare Queens driving Cadillacs, and his notorious Neshoba County Fair Speech that opened his 1980 campaign: I believe in States Rights, the coded racism of the Dixiecrat. Just miles from where Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner were murdered! Or recall the Willie Horton ads of Bush The Elder and the unmourned Lee Atwater?

What remains outside the acceptable rhetorical parameters  of Ms. Tett’s attempt to ‘understand‘ the racist politics of ‘altright’ Bannon,  is a complete want of honesty or candor of the why of Bannon and Trump! Because this is The Financial Times, the complete collapse of politically codified Neo-Liberalism in 2008 is avoided at all costs.  And the fact that Americans are hurting financially because of that collapse, and the failure of the dogma of The Self-Correcting Market: at least two reasons for the rise of Trump and Bannon.

Robber Capital is doing just fine, but most Americans are struggling, not to speak of a whole generation of young people working at Starbucks, Walmart or Target. Where I shop the age demographic is from the very young to the elderly.

Call Ms. Tett’s ruminations on Mr. Bannon near sycophantic, after all, practicing journalism today its all about maintaining access to powerful political figures. The wise gambit is to adopt the attitude of the courtier!

What can the ‘Left’ learn from Bannon? That ‘Left’ can be defined, in FT terms, as the New Democrats, who, if they want to get elected, need to return to their New Deal roots. The utterly corrupt Clinton/Obama coterie must go and make way for the Warren/Sanders New Dealers. The only real question is how long that might take: 2018, 2020, 2024?

Old Socialist

https://www.ft.com/content/c2272b5e-8794-11e7-bf50-e1c239b45787

Mr. Sullivan’s screeching political hysterics become more acute with each successive week! Who and where is the ‘Left’ he inveighs against? The Boston Police and the city’s Mayor? Free Speech is important, and the why of the censorship exercised by both the Boston city and its Police department should be fully investigated by a Grand Jury: will the Boston City Attorney or her equivalent take such a step?

There is no ‘Left’ in this country, it was purged by Sullivan’s political precursors: the Nixon/Mundt/McCarren/McCarthy axis, with the active collaboration of the Schlesinger/Niebuhr ADA Democrats, in the late 40’s and the 50’s. Sullivan’s unashamed, in deed, unapologetic ignorance of American history is on full display, for an audience whose historical memory reaches back to Reagan, or at least to The Reagan Mythology.

His rhetorical strategy is to take his political demons out for a walk in the sun, each week, and await the praise of his worshipful followers. I could only stomach the first of his usual trilogy of jejune political moralizing.

Political Cynic

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/08/the-boston-rally-and-the-lefts-intolerance-of-free-speech.html

In Mr. Kafka’s review of Mr. Crews’ Freud biography, Kafka seems doubtful of Crews’ motives for giving Freud his final sendoff ! Quoting from the partisans/practitioners of contemporary Psychoanalysis, whose careful re-interpretations of that shopworn mythology, in the name of the rescue of the central insights into human behavior- those central insights not articulated, but hinted at, as the insights exercised by the Psychoanalyst. By way of a psychological metaphysic possessed by that omnipotent therapist. But that Analyst no longer being in possession of the Scientific framing provided by Freud’s Clinical Studies, that have been proven to be of no credible value, by more than two generation of scholars: this fracture of credibility is the central why of Crews’ doubt, he being among the many. Given this, why is the resort to a capacious , not to speak of a self-serving metaphysic, exercised by a benevolent Psychoanalyst at all surprising ?

But Crews’ final thoughts on Freud provide the answers, the reasons for the latter part of his long career as thinker and advocate in the Humanities: which Kant articulated as the self-emancipation from tutelage.

Says Crews: “Apart from any intellectual fuss that somebody like me could make, the system has been dying on the vine for decades. So that now, really, psychoanalysis survives in humanities departments not for any reason that one would call scientific or empirical but because the psychoanalytic way of thinking is conducive to discourse production, devoid of constraint.”

And what of the millions who have claimed some benefit from psychotherapy?

“Of course psychotherapy can be useful,” he replies. “It’s useful precisely to the degree that the patient’s contemporary situation is acknowledged and thoughtfully addressed. What’s questionable is therapy that’s designed to wrench the case into conformity with ‘deep’ prearranged ideas about the nature of the mind. Insofar as psychoanalysts have moved away from that paradigm, they may be doing just fine. But then, shouldn’t they stop citing Freud as their ultimate authority?”

goo.gl/ZNXv2g

American Writer

If Mr. Stephens isn’t baiting the New York Times readership as being not just complicit, but of being the active agents of America’s Decline, he called its descent into ‘moral chaos’ as having  its locus in the year 1968 : self-serving  philosophical/moral/political dishonesty is the cornerstone of the Straussian coterie’s penchant for the Big Lie, as political cover for the predations of its political actors.

The regular reader of Mr. Stephens will be surprised that of his many talents as thinker, cogitator and as Grand Inquisitor,  he is also an imaginative Armchair General. In his latest essay he echoes the voices of the Soviets and the British Imperialist’s Party Line:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/24/opinion/on-afghanistan-theres-no-way-out.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region&_r=0

The dismal, murderous fate of the Occupier is utterly familiar territory to Zionist Apologist Mr. Stephens. Given the failed Neo-Liberalism of the Clintons, Bush The Younger and Obama, and the rise of the Tea Party Zealots, is America’s precipitous decline into the idiosyncratic Fascism of Trump and Trumpism a surprise? Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilizations’  is expressed in our political present as ‘The War on Terror’ .

As domestic background to the mendacious, criminal rule of our fragile Empire,  America’s Second Civil War makes its bloody, episodic return in Ferguson and Charlottesville. The historical fact : ‘The Civil Rights Era’ was simply a pause in the battle between the Union and the Confederacy, as it lives in the political present.

Committed Observer

Headline: Emmanuel Macron’s hopes of a grand euro bargain are misplaced

Sub-headline: French president risks undermining his programme for economic reform at home

That ‘economic reform’ of France was even  the subject of Mr. Bret Stephens’ May 5, 2017 essay, he being the latest addition to the Neo-Conservative coven at the New York Times, is worth a reading. The intellectual habit of mind of the Neo-Con is premature triumphalism.

Mr. Sandbu elides from his essay Macron’s ‘Jupertarian Politics’, but simply hints at his hubristic political model, and that the reforms of French Labor Laws must not be abandoned, in the interest of his grand designs for a re-invigorated EU, under the leadership of a Macron/Merkel/Schäuble troika. Is Macron the natural inheritor of the European Federalism of the unelected Technocrats of Jean Monnet? Allied to the delusional Grand Politics of De Gaulle?

Mr. Sandbu shouts ‘Stop’ to the limping Macon Neo-Liberal juggernaut, called en Marche. Mr. Sandbu as dramaturge, makes the central conflict of his melodrama, that between domestic labor law reform, as an integral part of Macron’s ‘Jupertarian’ delusions, and the equally dubious project of the re-invigoration of the EU Cartel, which is, prima facae, undemocratic to its core. Neo-Liberalism is not, nor has it even been interested in Republicanism, nor the thriving of Democratic Institutions. Its obsession, with the temperature taking of the God of the Market, makes it the arch-enemy of those Republican/Democratic institutions and their traditions, no matter how imperfectly realized! That God of the Market collapsed in 2008,as did its companion deity The Self-Correcting Market: due to its wholesale thievery.  Both are still on the critical list,  except to its legion of nurses, like Mr. Sandbu, who acts as apologists for the twin failures, and use the possibility of a full recovery of their patients, as the cornerstone to their agitprop.

Take these paragraphs of Mr. Sandbu essay:

On the domestic level, Mr Macron has shown an uncanny ability to overcome the perceived trade-off between efficiency and solidarity that has bedevilled French economic policymaking. He recognises — and more importantly, clearly communicates — that limbering up the economy can make it more, not less, protective of ordinary people.

Hence his moves as economy minister to tear down regulatory barriers that cushion insiders, but relegate ever more people to an outsider status of precarious work or no work at all. Hence, too, the scaling up of labour market deregulation slated as the top priority for Mr Macron’s first year as president.

The plans are right, the will seems strong, and if he and his government obtain the reforms they want, the economic rewards will be significant — and France’s influence in Europe and the world will be enhanced as a result.

The ‘limbering up of the economy’ is the clumsy euphemism for its Neo-Liberlization and the use of the word ‘bedevilled’ is another euphemism for the fact that Mitterrand’s surrender to the Dark Side, the embrace of the Free Market Dogma, was just a baby step. What is really needed is the total emancipation of France’s from the thrall of Socialism! The key to success for Macron’s ‘Jupertarian Politics’ is predicated on internal Neo-Liberal Reform.

What Mr. Sandbu leaves out of his carefully massaged propaganda is that Macron was elected with an almost 38% rate of spoiled ballots , white ballots and abstentions, not to mention his political status as ‘the lesser of two evils’.

What follows is a description of ‘Macron’s Folly’ in melodramatic terms. Macron must ‘reform‘ France before all else. Mr. Sandbu last two sentences are instructive of what might just be dubbed ‘The Macron Neo-Liberal Imperative’

Mr Macron must not put his domestic reforms at risk of being weakened by his European initiatives.

An economically thriving France will be strong in Europe, fiscal discipline or not. But a domestic economic promise undermined by a European distraction will make France fail both at home and abroad.

Old Socialist

https://www.ft.com/content/de225ddc-865f-11e7-bf50-e1c239b45787

The reader can always count on The Atlantic to provide what? The hand wringing chatter of Neo-Con David Frum, as he passes himself off as ‘Wise Republican Elder’? That position is  already occupied by porcine Newt Gingrich, from his perch at ‘Fox News’. That perch had to be considerably reinforced so Newt could comfortably take up his residency.

Also think of The Atlantic’s participation in The Aspen Ideas Festival, that Koch Brothers sponsored parade of intellectual/political /economic hacks. In one of America’s most celebrated acts of public mutual masturbation, starring such luminaries as David Brooks, Thomas Friedman and Arianna Huffington, and a cast of equally impressive bought and paid for Public Intellectuals.

Not to forget the purchase of The Atlantic by Mrs. Steve Jobs, another Silicone Valley billionaire courting bourgeois political respectability?

But here the reader is confronted with the conundrum of The Game of Thrones, examined by Spencer Kornhaber, David Sims, and Lenika Cruz. Surely a topic worthy of the Atlantic’s Brain Trust!

Headline of the essay: Is Game of Thrones on Thin Ice?

Sub-headline:  Three Atlantic staffers discuss “Beyond the Wall,” the sixth episode of the seventh season.

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/08/game-of-thrones-season-7-episode-6-beyond-the-wall-roundtable/537363/

When I was growing up, in Lynwood, California, Watts on one side, Compton and  Long Beach just south, and to the east Downey. My younger brother Philip and I would mow the lawn, take out the trash, and sweep up the flowers, from the Jacaranda tree, which to us seemed endless, from the front sidewalk and the path to our front door. Our sweeping, during the summer, was twice a day, if my mother insisted, as she always did.

We finished our chores and passed my mother’s grooming inspection, hair combed and more importantly, neck and ears washed. An absolute must! We collected our 30 cents. (A candy bar cost 6 cents at the show, a very important consideration for a 7 year old!) So we were candy-less! and we walked a block to Long Beach Blvd. and The Arden Show. We saw Martin and Lewis occasionally but what we really liked were films like This Island Earth and Forbidden Planet: Anne Francis swathed in a gauze swim suit, swimming in a pool, while Leslie Nielsen questioned her, on her father Walter Pigeon’s terrible secret about the Krell of  Altair IV.  All of this much more important than the dull witted clowning of Martin and Lewis. Not to speak of Robbie the Robot as featured player, in this Sci-Fi melodrama. And the old recycled serials from the forties, like Commander Cody Sky Marshal of The Universe.  Or Superman, who was an obvious phony, because the star wasn’t George Reeves, of  television fame.

For my brother and I, our entertainment preference , more an obsession, was Sci-Fi.  The Day the Earth Stood Still was our urtext,  in its many re-releases, and the subject of endless conversations, steeped in wonder,  at the possibility of the existence other life forms, in the age of Nixon/McCarthy Cold War paranoia of the political ‘Other’. That ‘Other’, perfectly cast as lead player, was the very exotic looking Michael Renne, the epitome of the suave sophisticated British gentleman:  my brother and I were two California kids in mid-20th America, the very definition of naiveté.

We were the first generation of television addicts; we even turned on the T.V. set and watched the test pattern, on Saturday mornings, before the broadcasts day began. I don’t remember where my parents were. We now live in an age dominated by this noisy unwelcome guest 24/7.   For Philip and I, Martin and Lewis were the annoying prelude to what we came to see, a vision of a future. Not knowing that that vision was conceived by the apologists for the American National Security State, the American Movie Industry, that helped make Martin and Lewis equal to the ‘circus’ of the ‘bread and circus’ of that State!

Old Socialist

https://www.ft.com/content/4ae17454-3499-11e6-bda0-04585c31b153

The regular reader of feuilletonist Janan Ganesh is offered more book chat, as bookend to his essay of August 14,2017 ?

Headline: What the summer book choices of the elites reveal about politics

Sub-headline:  Three titles dominate and, if you look closely enough, a single idea connects them

https://www.ft.com/content/71ea472c-80d5-11e7-94e2-c5b903247afd

Headline: The two faces of the 1 per cent

Sub-headline: The public elite nurse constant material worries, the private elite worry that they are not very interesting

https://www.ft.com/content/99b1de70-8330-11e7-a4ce-15b2513cb3ff

@AB thank you for your comment.
‘Just because you religiously reference old FT articles like you’re writing a Family Guy episode doesn’t make you sophisticated.’ Yes, I do reference old FT articles. Religiously, no! The reason is obvious, I am a regular reader of this newspaper, and those references were germane to the issue. Then, the Family Guy non sequitur- you put the spurs to your rhetorical mount and were immediately thrown from the saddle. In sum, your argument descends in to a collection of personal insults, not to speak of public shaming, two of the hallmarks of the anti-intellectual, the Know-Nothing. For this kind of polemic you have a gift, yet it is no substitute for actual argument. Even though it has a limited appeal, it would have been more effective had you been able to infuse your screed with humor. Or, was that what the Family Guy reference was meant to accomplish? If so it fell with a thud!

StephenKMackSD

http://on.ft.com/2idITx1

Mr. Stephens can’t resist the continuing temptation of baiting the readership of the New York Times. To that reader, Obama plays the role of ‘Liberal’, rather than what he is politically, a Neo-Liberal i.e. a New Democrat. In sum, Obama is Heroic when compared to the utterly vulgar Carnival Barker Trump. But the reality is that the whole of America’s political class is in a state of political/moral collapse. As I write this, on August 18,2017, the comments on Mr. Stephens’ polemic have reached 1211.

Headline: Trump, Obama and the Politics of Evasion

His polemic is consistent in repeating the Neo-Conservative Party Line, as it evolves from his pen: he riffs on his theme as the expression- like the lawyer in America’s ‘Law Courts’ his ‘guiding principal’  is his self-serving mendacity, allied to his worship of the Bitch Goddess! Not to speak of the natural bellicosity of the Armchair General, a grand tradition in the life world of Neo-Conservatism. In this episode of the American Political Melodrama, Obama is the object of Mr. Stephens’ scorn and contempt, while Trump plays the role of the bearer of reason. The world turned upside down, the hallmark of the political Straussian.

Almost Marx