StephenKMackSD's Blog

I have spent the last three days reading Mr. Kaplan’s 24 page rambling screed , ‘The Coming Anarchy‘, at The Atlantic published  in 1994, just to become familiar with his writing, and found a font of American white male paranoia about the Other:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/02/the-coming-anarchy/304670/

This exercise in the paranoia of The Hegemon, our enemies are everywhere, is part of the debate in America that included Huntington’s ‘Clash‘ , Fukuyama’s ‘The End of History and the Last Man’ and that cornerstone of Conservative Sociology ‘The Bell Curve’. Huntington tipped his hand, a bit later in his career, as seer of the fact that America was surrounded by Civilizational Enemies, but more particularly by the Mestizo Hordes,south of our borders, about to engulf American Anglo-Protestant virtue in his Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity. Mr. Kaplan and his philosophical/historical/political allies are of the Neo-Conservative Declinism School of historiography: the marriage of the Staussians and the epigones of Schmitt.    

The operative metaphor of “fated to lead” offered by Kaplan, extemporizes of the central theme of European Colonialism’s ‘mission to civilize‘.  Parag Khanna review features the idea  of ‘East Coast “universalists” as being out of touch with the rest of America. The question occurs, is it Kaplan’s or Khanna’s idea?   The actual term for these ‘East Coast “universalists” is political cosmopolitans, Parag Khanna should know this term!

Yet the reader who confronts the empirical evidence of this weekend , January 28 an 29 2017, at airports across America, in the wake of Trump’s presidential edict/order, to halt refugees/travelers, even Green Card holders, from selected Islamic States, to enter or re-enter America, seems to put that notion of American as ‘fated to lead’ into startling perspective, except to the politically myopic. The potential facts of wall building, and the blockage of the free movement of travelers, threatens the very Free Market Ideology that the Financial Time celebrates as the sine qua non , raison d’etre of The West. Or has Kaplan simply intuited the sea change, from Liberal Internationalism to American Nativism, and tailored his historically informed geographical speculations to the Dismal Age Of Trump?

Publius

https://www.ft.com/content/db84bd6a-e243-11e6-9645-c9357a75844a

@Larchmont @Lund

Larchmont, I do find your reading of the political present fascinating, in its own way. It offers the Trump Party line without its necessary political context. Both you and Mr. Ganesh write in a style that is a pastiche of the feuilleton, refraction meets refraction. Except that Ganesh’s iteration is awash in his almost world weary cynicism of the hipster and his milieu of The City. What might the reader do with the empirical evidence of the politics of America since, say 2006?

The Democrats took the House in 2006 and Obama won the presidency  in 2008. But then in 2010 Obama lost the House: so much for the viability of ‘Hope and Change’. Its shelf-life was about 18 months. And even after his victory in 2012, Obama lost the Senate in 2014, the Republicans now controlled both Houses of Congress.

So what might the reader speculate about the time that Trump, and his allies in the House and the Senate, have to enact their Corporatist Agenda? Given the demonstrable fact of the impatience, indeed the fickle character, of the American Electorate.

After Randian political opportunist Paul Ryan finishes with Social Security and Medicare and his Privatization/Vouchers schemes. As companion to the notion of ‘Alternative Facts’, those enthusiastic supporters of Trump will find it hard to resist the revival of the New Dealers, in the Democratic Party: if the corrupt New Democrats can be successfully purged from the Party. Or the Greens offer an alternative to the failed Neo-Liberal paradigm offered by both mainstream Parties.

@Lund has cogently and succinctly described the new political atmosphere in America, as unwelcome as you find it. Also consider the fact that 46.9% of eligible voters did not cast ballots in the 2016 election. If anything that fact, and Trump’s exercise of political nihilism and his Caudillo style might just create an almost ‘revolutionary situation’. Even if that sounds like an exercise in hyperbole, in 2014 Trump seemed unimaginable!

Regards,

StephenKMackSD

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

Reply #2

@Larchmont @StephenKMackSD @Lund

Larchmont, thank you for your comment. The fault of Obama was a total failure to live up of his proclaimed ‘Hope and Change’, that ended up being the same old Neo-Liberalism, draped in empty but edifying rhetoric. Attuned to the aspirations of an electorate ripe for something resembling hope, after 8 years of the bungler Bush The Younger, and his keepers/handlers Cheney and Rumsfeld, not to speak of the porcine Architect Karl Rove, the precursor to guttersnipe Andrew Breitbart.  In fact Obama’s one and two were, in sum,  the Bill Clinton Administrations 3 and 4. The ‘Decline’ you mention was/is the fact that the codified Neo-Liberalism ended in economic catastrophe. You should be thanking all those New Democrats and Republicans, who are dues paying members of the one true American political party: The Property Party, as Gore Vidal named it!

And thank you for your ‘sic passat gloria mundi’ as indicative of your stylistic/intellectual flourish, while for me the quote should be the more apocalyptic Fiat justitia ruat cælum!

Regards,

StephenKMackSD

Mr. Ganesh strikes a comic pose in his latest essay: He assumes the guise of that pearl clutching, porcine dowager Margaret Dumont, who is both attracted and repelled by the comic anarchy of The Marx Brothers. She is smitten with Groucho’s roguish banter and can’t seem to tear herself away from his attentions. Mr. Ganesh is enamored by Pop Culture and its Rock Idols, and the rise of the Populists who are both creatures of the mob, and subject to the vicissitudes of popular taste. Yet he discards his not so fleeting romance with the ephemera of popular taste in both politics and Rock Idols to write this aphorism, in praise of the good grey men of respectable bourgeois politics, with just a dash of cynicism to sweeten his weak decoction.

By the time reality is through with them, a reputation for dull competence will be precious stock in politics. The trick is not to forfeit it in the meantime for the transient glamour of the street.

American Writer

https://www.ft.com/content/304df3ba-e15a-11e6-9645-c9357a75844a

@BLEX @Benign Brodwicz

The self-congratulation, indeed hubris of the religious apologist, meaning in this case the Christian branch of the benighted Abrahamic Tradition, is unsurprising! The only thing that saved Christianity from its own provincialism was a heavy infusion of the ideas of the  thinkers of Greece and Rome, that you hold in your sovereign contempt! Without that you would still be torturing and then burning heretics like Giordano Bruno.  Or just silencing scientists like Galileo. Thomas Aquinas’ model was Aristotle.

And as for this fragrant bon mot‘…neoliberalism has emotionalised and thus de-politicised its critics.’  Read Wendy Brown’s ‘Undoing the Demos: Neo-Liberalism’s Stealth Revolution’ for one of the most devastating critiques of your sacred, untouchable  Neo-Liberal Economic Theology:

http://www.zonebooks.org/titles/BROW_UND.html

Or read ‘Hayek : The Good, the Bad ,the Ugly’

http://www.criticalreview.com/crf/current_issue25_34.html

StephenKMackSD

http://on.ft.com/2k7VDSS

Headline: The Tempting of the Media

For this reader of Mr. Douthat’s latest political intervention, I am strongly reminded of that 1977 American best seller, ‘The Totalitarian Temptation’ by  Jean-François Revel. This book, an exercise in verbose anti-communist polemics, was in dire need of a ruthless editing! That editing would have made this a collection of connected essays worthy of reading and re-reading.

If only by the use of the term ‘temptation’ as a singular ruling idea, employed in the  title. Except that Douthat was born in 1979 and perhaps missed Ms. Revel’s book. Mr. Revel was incapable, in his exercise of a well practiced indignant polemic, of imagining the very possibility of Perestroika and Glasnost. Yet is was realized, if even momentarily, by Gorbachev’s vision that he shared with many other ‘Reformers’. See ‘Voices of Glasnost’:

Utterly inconvenient for both the Old and New Cold Warriors, and Francoists like Douthat.

In Mr. Douthat’s political melodrama the protagonist is Trump, as ‘destroying of norms’, and his adversary, in his clumsy narration, is the American Press that they will become as he, destroyers of truth, in the name of an inherent political nihilism. He casts the critical press in the role of Trump’s opposition tempted by untruth.

As the press eases into covering President Trump, however, I have a different worry. Mainstream journalism in this strange era may be freer than the fearful anticipate, but not actually better as the optimists expect. Instead, the press may be tempted toward — and richly rewarded for — a kind of hysterical oppositionalism, a mirroring of Trump’s own tabloid style and disregard for truth.

This mirroring is a broad danger, applying to more institutions than the press. Trump comes to power as a destroyer of norms, a flouter of conventions, and everyone will be tempted to join the carnival — to escalate when he escalates, to radicalize whenever he turns authoritarian. The cycle of norm-breaking that began with Robert Bork’s defeated nomination or Newt Gingrich’s ascent (depending on your politics) may escalate on both sides of the aisle. Left-wing protest movements will be tempted more easily toward both absurdity and violence. Deep state institutions will be tempted to become more restive and politicized. Politicians will be tempted, like Marco Rubio talking about Trump’s manhood on the campaign trail, into surrendering their dignity in an effort to be at home in Trumpland.

Notice that Neo-Confederate/Originalist Robert Bork still retains his status as sacrificial offering to ‘Liberal Hypocrisy’. In Mr. Douthat’s speculations Mr.Bork shares with Trump the status of ‘norm-breaking’, instead of his actual status as defender of Dixiecrat Racism, as codified and white-washed by the Federalist Society: its Originalism as a defense of white male privilege/power. In sum, that Originalism is a radical political nostalgia. Its political corollary was The Southern Strategy of Nixon. And his successor Reagan, in his Neshoba County Fair speech, that was the first speech after receiving his nomination. Reagan voiced his unstinting support for ‘States Rights’. The Reaganites were adroit at the uses of political symbolism, and the ability to dismiss their critics, by denying its operative power. Also note the appearance of porcine Robespierre Newt Gingrich as an integral part of the virtuous Reactionary Pantheon.

In the role of Cassandra, Mr. Douthat stumbles as he points to the Journalistic temptation of ‘hysterical oppositionalism‘,‘alarmist journalism‘,‘liberal-leaning mainstream outlets‘ and the fact that that ‘Journalism’ will commit the political crime of  ‘it often does a demagogue’s work for him.‘ The  whole of Mr. Douthat’s essay echos, in its own verbose way, William Safire’s catch phrase written for Spiro Agnew : ‘nattering nabobs of negativism’. Mr. Douthat’s historical ignorance, allied to his fealty to his reiteration of one of the rhetorical actors in the  Christian Melodrama : temptation being the  key concept, to an understanding of the why of Journalism’s  attempt to thwart the exercise of Republican Virtue will fail. Given the fact of Trump’s demonstrated political nihilism, Mr. Douthat’s apologetic remains in the arena of New York Times political chatter.

Political Reporter

Headline: Painful truths: psychologists unpick the ethics of empathy

Sub-headline: Why putting yourself in others’ shoes can sometimes be a poor moral guide

The headline and the sub-headline are indicative of a publication that worships at the alter of  the Neo-Liberal Trinity of Hayek/Mises/Friedman, with a lesser position being occupied by Ayn Rand as protector and advocate for Greed. Is it surprise to be read Mr. Julian Baggini’s review of three books on ‘Empathy’ with just the merest mention of Hume? Or any of the thinkers of a very long tradition.

The ‘as if ‘ here is that we, the readers, are the windowless monads of Leibniz, or something akin to that imaginary creature. And that we are somehow strangers to the human world, in which the exercise of ethical judgement is beyond our ken. If our journey here on earth has taught us anything of worth, our misapplication of ’empathy’ is learned the hard way, by too many applications of ’empathy’ when it was unwarranted. Those hard lessons do not preclude the exercise of empathy, when we fell that it is deserved, even when we discover it is undeserved, again and again: it is part of valuable life lessons. Not to dwell on the negative, we see, we experience our ethical actions ,as not within an economic frame, but in actions based on our judgement, our experience. Not to speak of a faith based on our evolving rationalism wedded to our evolving sensibility.

Also unmentioned is the Adam Smith’s ‘Theory of Moral Sentiments’:

http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/305940/the-theory-of-moral-sentiments-by-adam-smith/9780143105923/#

Or even D.D. Raphael’s book ‘The Impartial Spectator: Adam Smith’s Moral Philosophy’

http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199213337.001.0001/acprof-9780199213337

Mr. Baggini seems properly skeptical of the value of ‘Brain Scans’ and the contribution that ‘Science’ can make to ethical decisions. Its unclear what exactly ‘Rational Compassion’ might be, other than the ethical territory explored 250 years ago by Smith and carefully explored and explicated by Mr. Raphael.

Philosophical Apprentice

https://www.ft.com/content/0f3e15c2-dc07-11e6-86ac-f253db7791c6

The most important ‘meeting’ at Davos  was the one between Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger in 1929. See Peter E. Gordon’s book ‘Continental Divide’ for the particulars of this truly momentous meeting/debate, between the two most prominent German philosophers of their time.

That ‘meeting’ is beyond the interest of Mr. Rachman, but he seems very impressed with the whole spectacle of Davos 2017, and the mutterings, overheard conversation, or just off the record comments of the participants, to one of the media’s respected pundits.

Like Mr. Wolf, Mr. Rachman expresses a muted hysteria about the end of ‘the Atlantic alliance’  in his essay. Yet the German economic powerhouse headed by Merkel, and Germany’s economic capo, the European Central Bank, seem to be in a much better position to defend themselves, from the mythical, not to speak of the looming Russian hordes, about to invade Europe, at least as narrated by Samantha  Power, Victoria Nuland, and the rest of the Clinton surrogates and their Neo-Conservative allies. The fact that America does not want to relinquish its foothold in Europe, can be attributed to the simple fact that America is an Empire, and it won’t let go of its claimed protectorate.

You can only marvel at the speech by Huckster Arianna Huffington on Gender Equality, praised in a tweet by @UN_Women, who failed to check Ms. Huffington’s record for exploiting both genders. The fact that her ‘citizen reporters’, at Huffington Post were unpaid isn’t important enough.

And who can forget Tom Friedman interviewing John Kerry? Friedman is that improbable, yet happy combination, of the obsequious, of sanctimonious pretension, the sagacity of Mrs. Malaprop, and the timing of a Borscht Belt comic on the skids:

Mr. Rachman would have written a more believable, more reasoned essay, had he followed and listened to Sec. Kerry, he is a believable  advocate/salesman for the Obama Neo-Liberal agenda, and the shopworn notion of America as the indispensable nation.   Instead Rachman extemporizes on the perpetual theme of The Financial Times: decline and decadence the twin shibboleths of a shopworn Conservatism. The reader of Rachman’s essay would benefit from viewing the Kerry interview to its end.

Political Observer

https://www.ft.com/content/73cc16e8-de36-11e6-86ac-f253db7791c6

In Martin Wolf’s essay of Jan 17, 2017, he engages in the intellectual plunder of Benedict Anderson’s path-breaking  book ‘Imagined Communities’to frame his Ne0-Liberal hand-wringing. His seemingly perpetual state of mind and spirit. And the Tribalism that afflicts us, even in the crisis ridden political present of ‘aggrieved nationalism’.*   But this could or might be checked by commerce. Except that that ‘commerce’ has done nothing of the sort.

Another way exists to achieve prosperity: commerce. The balance between commerce and plunder is complex. Both require strong institutions supported by effective cultures. But war requires armies, underpinned by loyalty, while commerce requires security, underpinned by justice.

https://www.ft.com/content/5c7c6a26-db0a-11e6-9d7c-be108f1c1dce

But judge the final sentence:  ‘But war requires armies, underpinned by loyalty, while commerce requires security, underpinned by justice.’ This last part of the sentence is  breathtaking myopic on its face : while commerce requires security, underpinned by justice.’ The reality that the Chinese are better more profitable and efficient Capitalists than anyone in the  ‘West’, is a fact that cannot be overcome, even by the wan propaganda here at The Financial Times.

But the ‘Imagined Communities’ are under threat from the practice of commerce itself, as it undermines this sense of that ‘Imagined Community’, conceived as an independent singularity. Mr. Wolf has yet to realize that Cosmopolitanism, the notion of a ‘World Community’ in the Age of the Internet, is already a fact. Ulrich Beck’s trenchant idea of ‘global domestic politics’, as part of the fact of an actual ‘Re-imagined Community’ eludes the grasp of a thinker moored where? The answer is not reliant on the  un-moored status enunciated by Teresa May, but on the notion of ‘identity’ as a pluralism of ‘identities’, as argued by Amartya Sen in his Identity and Violence. We can be British, European, Labour, Tory etc., etc.

I find Mr. Wolf’s ‘defense’ of his conception of pluralism to be too little to late, woefully tardy, after the unstinting  advocacy of Neo-Liberalism, that has been the Party Line of this newspaper, since the rise of both Thatcher and Reagan and the glaring object lesson of the Economic Collapse of 2008, and the economic doldrums visited upon us into 2017.

It used to be that Capitalist Apologists would point to the Soviet Union as the primary example of an egregious Utopianism gone wrong. For those with open minds ‘Voices of Glasnost’ presents a collection of vivid, compelling  and revelatory portraits of ‘Communist Reformers’. Can the reader count on such a  publication featuring portraits of Neo-Liberal Theologians?

For a well written and argued alternative to Mr. Wolf and the Financial Times Capitalist Apologetics, read Wolfgang Streeck’s 2014 essay ‘How Will Capitalism End’:

https://newleftreview.org/II/87/wolfgang-streeck-how-will-capitalism-end

* Is ‘aggrieved nationalism’ the replacement for ‘The Rebellion Against the Elites’ Party Line at The Financial Times?

Old Socialist

This is how the president of New America pronounces on the possibility of Trumpism: ‘The world awaits America’s new social contract’. The ‘as if’ here is that Trump and his team of Corporatists are capable of even entertaining the mere notion of a ‘social contract’. For the American people this is destined to become the realization of Trump Nihilism. Allied to the unslakable ambition of the lupine Paul Ryan. Undeterred by that reality, Slaughter’s use of History, and the windy abstractions of the Policy Thinker, are employed to try to soften the blow of Trump’s un-reflective political opportunism, by wreathing it in policy laurel.

The political evolution/maturation of Ms. Slaughter from bellicose policy thinker allied to the Neo-Conservatives/New Democrats, to her Feminism, that has led to her status as Political Philosopher has been instructive. I can’t exactly pinpoint what that notion of  ‘instructive’ is or resembles, although the example of Trump looms large. If that even resembles cogent argument, rather that an example of intuition: the blend of reason and sensibility?

American Writer

https://www.ft.com/content/144718c0-dce3-11e6-86ac-f253db7791c6

Since the departure of gossip queen Tina Brown, The Daily Beast has come under the partial leadership of Neo-Con Michael Weiss, and it shows.  Leslie Gelb, a former Clinton employee/protege, is also disappeared.  While still  employed is  New Democrat Michael Tomasky, a vocal Clinton fellow traveler, which amounts to Neo-Conservatism Lite. The newest addition to The Daily Beast’s menagerie is Matt Lewis. His latest essay:

Headline:Betsy DeVos Fight Demonstrates Donald Trump’s Serious About Changing Washington

Sub-headline: At its heart, her nomination is about a changing America, and a proxy war coming to a head in the U.S. Senate.

In Mr. Lewis’ world view Betsy DeVos is of ‘ A revolutionary leader will have to balance pushing school choice with making the trains run on time.’ Call Ms. DeVos and her ilk the unholy matrimony between Corporatism, an American idiosyncratic version of Fascism, and the deeply reactionary politics of The Theocons ,as Damon Linker describes in his book. The alliance between God and Mammon, in American life, is a remarkable example of American political/religious ingenuity, destined for ignominious failure. Or to put it the most vulgar terms Jesus and Ayn Rand are not political bedfellows.

In Mr. Lewis’ ebullient pre-inaugeration mood, celebrating the victory of  Trump, and the DeVos hearings as the opening of a  ‘proxy war’, he forgets Obama’s loss of the House in 2010, and the loss of the Senate in 2014. To judge from the 2010 defeat, the ‘Hope and Change’ political mantra had a short lived popularity with the electorate, and the 2014 loss of the Senate, can be, and is viewed by ‘Conservatives’ like Lewis, to be a repudiation of the whole of his presidency. Judging from the discontent of those coal miners , how much time can Trump count on? Is 2018 the date? If the  New Democrats can dig themselves out of the wholesale corruption they are steeped in, probably too much to ask. Are the Greens finally to come into their own, as the natural alternative to New Democratic corruption?

Old Socialist

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/01/18/betsy-devos-fight-demonstrates-donald-trump-s-serious-about-changing-washington.html