StephenKMackSD's Blog

Prof. Tooze engages in an interpolation of the Anderson arguments, so the reader of his ‘review’ of ‘The H Word’ is somehow supposed to accept that the ‘Liberal Order’ is an historical actuality, rather than a usable intellectual construct, in the service of Neo-Liberal apologetics. An example:

Once again, by the time it was theorised, hegemony was in crisis. As the Bretton Woods monetary system collapsed, stagflation set in. Was this an inevitable side effect of America’s loss of leadership? Did the world economy really need a dominant centre? With Europe recovered from the destruction of the war and with Japan booming, might co-operation and co-ordination not be enough? That is precisely what Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and their followers in Europe — Helmut Kohl, Bettino Craxi and, eventually, François Mitterrand too — would deliver. As America’s position was relativised, what emerged was not chaos but something more all-pervasive: liberal hegemony reborn in the form of the market revolution or, as we have learnt to call it, neoliberalism.

Does the above paragraph represent the thoughts, the ideas of Prof. Anderson or, again , the interpolations of Prof. Tooze? The reader of Prof. Anderson always knows where he stands, on his thoughts and ideas, and his interpretations of the historical data. Would that Prof. Tooze was as transparent a writer. Note the position of Neo-Liberalism in this paragraph, last, and that its appearance, in the argumentative frame, is in the lower case: so as to relegate it to the rhetorical territory of near irrelevance.

Prof . Anderson’s ‘American Foreign Policy and its Thinkers’ is for want of a more accurate descriptor an historical/political tour de force. Prof. Anderson’s candor is always evident! Prof. Tooze’s ‘review ‘ of ‘The H Word’ for some reason reminds me of ‘The Age of Fracture’ by Daniel T. Rogers. The book is brilliant in its first seven chapters, and then sinks into a rather disheartening academic playing it safe, in his epilogue.  The pressing question that arose, in my mind, upon reading the first seven chapters of Rogers’ book was: how could/should/might a political/moral actor conduct them-self in light of the insights that Rogers offers in those chapters? Also, how can ‘The Age of Fracture’ determine such pressing moral and political questions/quandaries?

I’m sorry to say that Prof. Tooze’s ‘review’ is tinged with an apparent, disappointing, yet carefully modulated mendacity.

Political Observer

https://www.ft.com/content/2367a896-29b5-11e7-bc4b-5528796fe35c

Of the usual Sullivan Political Free Association, I choose the section in which he opines on the French election , with some asides.

Read first Mr. Sullivan’s May 1, 2016 essay here :

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny-donald-trump.html

This essay partakes of the usual Straussian intellectual strategy, of self-serving rhetorical bloat, as the in-order-too, of wearing the readers attention down to the point of producing a usable intellectual/critical fatigue. This ‘art of confusion’  is practiced by both Fukuyama and Kagan,  when the publishing periodical is friendly.

You will see Sullivan’s  ‘prediction ‘ that Trump may win the presidency in 2016. Aided by among others Eric Hoffer. Now Mr. Sullivan isn’t acquainted with Mr. Hoffer’s own temptation towards the authoritarianism of Lyndon Johnson: Mr. Hoffer was one of the only ‘public intellectuals’ that LBJ could find to support his murderous political adventurism in Vietnam. Mr Sullivan relies on not just his own historical ignorance, but the ignorance of his readers. Mr. Sullivan does not count on the fact that some of his readers remember Mr. Hoffer, in the very negative way for his vocal support for the Vietnam War, and his kowtowing visit to the Whitehouse. This puts Mr. Hoffer’s judgements on Fascism in a dubious light, except to those unacquainted with the  American history of that era, Mr. Sullivan being one among many.

Then watch this October 24, 2016 interview of Mr. Sullivan by Brian Williams, in which he supports, a support awash in disdain, if not outright contempt, Mrs. Clinton. It’s just 4: 43 seconds long, hardly time for a Sullivan windup and pitch, given the logorrhea of his May essay!

http://www.msnbc.com/brian-williams/watch/andrew-sullivan-on-why-he-s-now-for-clinton-792816707665

Sullivan’s Cassandra like prescience on Trump as political inevitability in May, and his October ‘Conversion’ to Mrs. Clinton render his political predictions null set.

All this leads, in a roundabout way, to Mr. Sullivan’s support for Macron in the French election, as the Neo-Liberal Golden Boy: who stumbled badly and was outsmarted by the dread Le Pen, at a Whirlpool factory in Amiens that is about to be closed, as reported at The Financial Times. The careful reader will read the comments section, this section of the newspaper is often times more informative and enlightening that the actual news story/propaganda/editorial : a Greek Chorus to the Financial Times Melodrama :

https://www.ft.com/content/6e7d30d8-2a7f-11e7-9ec8-168383da43b7

American Writer

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/04/sullivan-maybe-america-wasnt-crazy-to-elect-donald-trump.html

Among the collection of cliches that Mr. Ganesh repeats, and or reworks, for the occasion of his essay, published on April 24, 2017: these first two stand out as demonstrative of  a purposive misdescription, and historically tinted mendacity.

Mr Macron stands for openness against closedness.

Macron is like Obama in that he offers the promise of change: ‘openness’ , and quite candidly offers the mirage of The Free Market, a new phenomenon in French politics? His is not the Speed and Shock of Fillon, but simply a less austere version of that political mirage.

The period between his birth in 1977 and the crash has entered the record as the Liberal Age.

That ‘Liberal Age’ is a fictional creation of Mr. Ganesh. In 1975 Thatcher became the Leader of the Opposition, and in 1976 Reagan began his campaign for president using the notorious ‘Welfare Queens driving Cadillacs’ i.e.  unapologetic racism: both of these events were the harbingers of the soon to be Neo-Liberal Age. The facts of history places Ganesh’s assertion of a ‘Liberal Age’, into the arena of a self-serving re-writing of history, named propaganda!

Then Mr. Ganesh hints at the political present by this act of backward historical projection, in this sentence fragment:

Voters were sick of postwar corporatism but-…

The collapse of Keynesianism, as Western economies and their Imperialism reached the point of slow motion fracture and or collapse,  led to the mirage, that Hayek and his allies presented, as an answer to the Road to Serfdom of the Soviets.  As a feudalism based on the singularity of ‘The Market’ , as the answer to every question that presents itself to an electorate. Mr. Ganesh lacks the necessary historical knowledge, and honesty, to even confront the fact that, the rise of the dreaded Populists, can be traced directly to the collapse of Neo-Liberalism’s dogmas translated into political policy and action

Then he presents a long and self-satisfied defense of ‘The Cult of Personality’, as the key to the politics of the present. First presenting Tony Blair, and then Macron, and his Neo-Liberalism Lite, as its central political actors. In sum, Mr. Ganesh is just another Stalinist!

Almost Marx

https://www.ft.com/content/bc9b3f4a-28c6-11e7-9ec8-168383da43b7

The Whirlpool Visit will become, for both candidates and observers of that process, emblematic of the French Campaign : Macron, a Free Market apologist/Rothschild Banker/Elite Educated technocrat, first meets with the Union, and then promises,when the political heat is at full blast, to help the about to be fired workers, that he might assist them to negotiate a better ‘severance package’, while he is being booed.

In the news story Macron  assures  the crowd ‘that arguing his government would use the free market for the benefit of all.’ This sounds like an echo of Macri’s Argentinian Austerity that has proven to be such a hard sell, to put it mildly. Or even like the Party Line of the New Democrats, not to forget Obama called Macron to give his political blessing to the campaign.
And then dunderhead Attali, points in the proper Neo-Liberal direction,  a riff on that  old Schumpeter standby  ‘creative destruction’? With sad-sack Ferrand bringing up the rear, with too little too late. Its almost comic except that lives are at stake. And Le Pen is meeting with the workers! The FT reporters/propagandists called Le Pen’s political maneuver an ‘ambush’ , but really just that old British standby called one-upmanship.

The Financial Times presents the latest polling data that project Macon is at 61%. A few more of these kinds of displays of the complete ignorance, not to speak of utter tone deafness, about the lives of actual voters by Macron, and his poll numbers will sink like the proverbial stone, and rightly so. Or should the reader wait for a Le Pen victory on election night, and have the ‘technocrats’ of the  Neo-Liberal Press wonder, or more like agonize, as to the why of the loss of their Golden Boy Macron?

But wait the French Political Melodrama plays on as a comedy, based on the canny use of  ‘corrective optics’ as political handlers call it :

A few hours later, Mr Macron turned up at the factory gate. His staff said it was at the unions’ request, not because of Ms Le Pen’s visit. But the impression of being upstaged by a rival more in tune with an angry public has added to Mr Macron’s wobbly start to the final 10 days of campaigning

…

The former Rothschild banker was given a rough ride by Whirlpool workers who chanted “Macron get out” and “Marine president” as black smoke wafted from burning tyres. Earlier in the day, Ms Le Pen had been taking selfies with beaming employees under a blue sky.

Nonetheless, Mr Macron spent 45 minutes talking to crowd, insisting that shutting down borders, as Ms Le Pen had promised, would do more harm than good. “I am not going to make any false promises. I will not engage in demagoguery.”

Tensions abated slightly after the centrist politician vowed to force Whirlpool’s management to agree to better severance conditions and said he would fight to find a buyer for the appliances factory.

https://www.ft.com/content/6e7d30d8-2a7f-11e7-9ec8-168383da43b7

Political Reporter

The reader of Mr. Gapper’s latest essay can’t help but smile, or even chuckle, at his British Exceptionalism, and its focus on The City as the wellspring of the myth of British Prosperity, but only for very select population of that capital city. And his singing the praises of the presumed winner of coming French election Emmanuel Macron, a leader whose historical moment has come. Although the Speed and Shock Neo-Libralism of Fillon, would have been the preference of The Financial Times and it stable of like minded ‘reporters’.

M. Macron is a man without a party structure with which to govern, but in the political fantasy Mr. Gapper spins, using Tony Blair’s successful bid for the 2012 Olympics as its argumentative fulcrum. Although Blair like Bill Clinton has become the object of widespread contempt for rank opportunism. Mr. Gapper’s fulcrum relies on an outdated political nostalgia.  Mr. Macron becomes the hero of a France about to enter into the hallowed precincts of Neo-Libralism Lite. Gapper describe Macron as a centrist technocratic leader, instead of just another product of the French educational aristocracy, who is identified as the winner of the June election: foresight or wishful thinking?

The sobering fact that Fillon and Mélenchon, each at a little over 19% each of the vote,  combined with the power of the rest of the contenders, in that election, all have the power and the necessary political structures in place to stymie that ‘Reform’. That Macron may offer, which is sure to offend the political sensibilities of the ‘coddled French workers’, the present and soon to be mythical enemy of the forward march of Neo-Liberalism à la française.

Although nothing quite compares with the unintentional comedy of this headline, and sub-headline on the same page as the Gapper essay. Authored by the redoubtable Poisonous Dandy Janan Ganesh.

Macron shows how political talent can trump the zeitgeist

For liberals the way back to power can happen in a flash with a class act

https://www.ft.com/content/bc9b3f4a-28c6-11e7-9ec8-168383da43b7

Committed Observer

https://www.ft.com/content/bbf10244-29b3-11e7-bc4b-5528796fe35c

http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo3637657.html

https://books.google.com/books/about/Jean_Monnet.html?id=cAWLQgAACAAJ

StephenKMackSD

Any political cliche not articulated in this essay is just an oversight, to the apotheosis of Macron! Made apparent in the glut of ‘news stories’ vying for the attention of readers of this newspaper. This inane headline a glaring example, which could be used to describe almost any front runner, in hindsight :

The irresistible rise of Emmanuel Macron

That collection of cliches: the revenge of victims of Globalization i.e. ‘The Rebellion Against The Elites’, the defense of the Neo-Liberal Order, rather than that propaganda staple of the post war ‘Liberal Order’, and the political fiction of Macron as ‘Centrist’. While he is defined by the Neo-Liberalism Lite of The Clintons,Blair and Obama:  Macron’s recent, highly publicized conversation, with the former president establish his credential as an ersatz Centrist/Neo-Liberal!  That ‘Center’ has been corrupted by the Free Market fiction, that began with the political rise of Thatcher and Reagan, that reaches into the political present. Political myths produce more finely honed myths, in the interest of the temptations of the end point of attaining political power.

In the mood of celebration, here at The Financial Times, the question that is avoided at all costs is how is Macron to govern, without a party structure, if he is elected ? How can a reader be sure that Le Pen won’t win, given that the American polls announced that Clinton would be the winner and were proved to be wrong, even though she won the popular vote: do the French have an institutional impediment to too much democracy like the Electoral College? This election makes evident the fractious nature of French politics: Fillon and Mélenchon both getting 19% of the vote as just an example. Macron’s projected  Neo-Liberal ‘reforms’ will lead to trouble. That is a given!

Old Socialist

https://www.ft.com/content/3ee0885e-286b-11e7-9ec8-168383da43b7

I, like a great many, will read the comments on the French election results at The Economist, The Financial Times, The New York Times, the American political gossip sheet Politico, and for a change of pace, the journalistic sink hole of The Daily Beast. But take the opportunity to read the informative, not to speak of revelatory essay by Chris Bickerton, on Macron and the decline of the Socialist Party, as a political force in French life. He makes his arguments concisely, cogently, there is no rambling melodramatic chatter, as the framing device adopted by the the Neo-Liberal apologetic press.

https://thecurrentmoment.wordpress.com/2017/04/24/macron-is-a-symptom-of-frances-problems-not-a-solution-to-them/

Macron will now become the political darling of that press, as Obama once was, until his his ‘Hope and Change’ devolved into more of Neo-Liberalism Lite.

StephenKMackSD

May,Thatcher and Erasmus : all three the children of Protestant clergy. Should the reader make a connection between the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, as in Max Weber’s book? And the professed Neo-Liberalism of the writer, Mrs. Thatcher, Ms. May?

Can a person be a Christian and also regard The Market as the ruling singularity in the life of humanity, as Hayek did? Of course, its called compartmentalization, that beggars the question of religious/political consistency. Mrs. Thatcher made a habit of passing out copies of Road to Serfdom like this manifesto were Gospel. Have I gone too far? probably.

Is Ms. May’s faith more ‘malleable’ than the Iron Lady, not made for turning? No her politics are about her pragmatism, or shall we call it opportunism? Aided by her Rovian advisor Lynton Crosby, who like his mentor, Karl Rove, recognizes the wisdom of winning. American philosopher Henry Russell “Red” Sanders captures the essence of Rovian Political Practice with his ‘winning isn’t everything, its the only thing’.

In her political practice Ms. May demonstrates, with a stunning clarity, where her allegiance is pledged. The Anglican political virtue is mere window dressing. On the question of Theos and it politics, this wiki entry supplies part of an answer.

‘Theos was launched in November 2006 with the support of the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and the then Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, and maintains an ecumenical position. Since that time, Theos has established itself as a respected voice on faith and society issues. The Theos office is based in Central London.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theos_(think_tank)’

Political Observer

http://www.economist.com/blogs/erasmus/2017/04/thatcher-may-and-god

I found Sudhir Hazareesingh’s essay insightful, informative and learned, while not as valuable as his Spiked interview:

http://www.spiked-online.com/spiked-review/article/the-french-mind/19507#.WPoToWe1vIW

Mr. Hazareesingh’s repeating of the notion that Macron is, somehow, ‘Progressive’ puts my estimate of his expertise on the French political/historical/philosophical panorama  into a kind of limbo. Macron, by any estimation, is the idiosyncratic French expression of Neo-Liberalism Lite: that in America are/were The New Democrats, via the Democratic Leadership Council, and the New Labour of Tony Blair. Not to speak of political poser Arianna Huffington’s Friedmanism, as somehow being ‘Progressive’! Hers was one of the many front organizations, that pitched successfully the notion of the ‘Hope and Change’ sloganeering, that devolved into an unstinting advocacy by Obama, for the Corporatist TTP and TTIP. Such is the wayward definition of the ‘Progressive’ in the ‘West’.

Macron believes in the myth of French Exceptionalism i.e. the leader of The Enlightenment, and also partakes of the political nostalgia for national greatness, that is  the Le Pen trademark, as her political platform widens as the election draws near.

Committed Observer

https://www.ft.com/content/52a1d67c-2500-11e7-a34a-538b4cb30025