StephenKMackSD's Blog

‘… I think it’s fairly certain that he and other members of the family were genetically predisposed to a fairly severe form of Asperger’s syndrome,…’

Dr. Lindqvist thank you for your comment. Congratulations are in order: you intuit/diagnose, across time and space, the disorder of Asperger’s syndrome, not just for Mr. Wittgenstein, but for the other members of his family! Truly astounding exercise in what?

Your comment reminds me of the now very dead vogue of the Psycobiography, once practiced – I still have my copy of Robert Soucy’s ‘Fascist Intellectual: Drieu La Rochelle’, a model of this kind of ‘biography’ based on the purest speculation, using the psychoanalytic method confected by Sigmund Freud. The only provisos are that the ‘analysand‘ is no longer in the presence of the ‘psychoanalyst’, so the very ‘reciprocity‘ that is the cornerstone of the ‘psychoanalytic method’ is rendered null. Your attempt to diagnose Ludwig and family long distance has the staying power of the Psycobiography, with nothing like empirical evidence, or the liberal use of the Freudian incantations, to back up your wan attempt at publicly shaming me, for my breach of decorum: my attack of the ‘Aspies’. Call this appellation by its name, kitsch!

Please read the books I’ve mentioned in my comment. Ludwig was ‘boorish’ in his behavior towards others whom he thought of as ‘less than he’, which amounted to almost everyone i.e. sociopath. And had the Augustinian self-hatred of the ‘text book’ closeted gay male: internalized homophobia is the toxic product of ‘the closet’.

StephenKMackSD

Revolutionizing Ourselves: Wittgenstein’s Politics

The reader has to admit that Mr. Luce,as always, has an ‘elite’ view of the American Political landscape: he accepts the political feints of President Trump as part of a long term strategy, instead of what they might be, sewing the seeds of political chaos. And observing which of his feints takes root in the minds and thoughts of both the Commentariat and his voter base. Or even just for the satisfaction of being the catalyst that continually keeps his opposition in a state of politically exploitable confusion.

While Mr. Luce is otherwise engaged, here are some news stories that describe the actual American political landscape: the next two news items for the  John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei’s  Washington political Gossip, Sheet Politico:

Headline: Ryan disappoints his friends with Obamacare replacement bill

Sub-headline: Close allies in conservative policies circles found little to love with the GOP’s health care proposal

By Eliana Johnson  03/08/17 05:20 AM EST

‘House Speaker Paul Ryan has long been the darling of conservative policy wonks. But on one of the biggest days of his political career, when House Republicans released their much-anticipated Obamacare replacement, many of Ryan’s closest friends in the conservative intelligentsia expressed disappointment — if not outright dismay — with the legislation bearing the speaker’s imprimatur.

Indeed, virtually every prominent conservative health care expert — precisely the sort of ideological allies who have backed Ryan in the past — panned this legislation.’

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/paul-ryan-obamacare-replacement-conservatives-235810

Are these the rules that Ms. Slaughter uses to treat her underlings? Like her secretary or the lowly word processor? What Ms. Slaughter prescribes is for meetings at a certain corporate level. Because her series of steps takes valuable time and energy, when the dissemination of the Party Line is what most of these meetings are about. The Boss will lay claim to any good ideas that others produce in these meetings: no one, who has lasted in a corporate setting, for any length of time, knows that this about the power of the Boss! Ms. Slaughter’s strategy is still based the authoritarian power of the Boss! Her strategy, in sum, is really about politeness and the recognition that everyone might have some valuable input, regardless of gender identification! The ‘as if’ here is that the corporate setting is about  some notion of freedom of expression. My second grade teacher, Miss Cheever, at Lindbergh Elementary, taught us and helped us to practice politeness, in the classroom and on the playground. I’m sure I’m not the only reader who can look to teacher,mother, father and the school setting, as our training ground for recognizing the value of the expressions of others. If only we will will recall these lessons as primary!

StephenKMackSD

https://www.ft.com/content/b09e7f2c-fea0-11e6-8d8e-a5e3738f9ae4

In this episode of The American Political Melodrama Robert Kagan continues in his role as Porcine Spartan. He is tumescent over the possibility that Putin interfered with the American election. Based on the ‘evidence’ provided by the utterly lawless National Security Agencies!
Like the bad propagandist/apologist he is, Kagan studiously ignores the American Tradition, inaugurated by the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, that the whole of the Western Hemisphere was its Sphere of Influence. After WWII, the hegemonic ambition of this nation state became the American Empire: the world encircled by American military bases. A partial list of America’s victims: Korea,Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and almost of the all the nations states south of America’s border with Mexico!
Any opportunity, to bring to fruition the political nihilism of Neo-Conservatism is the sine qua non of this armchair general: the end game is a war with Russian revanchism, personified by Putin as the New Stalin.
Look to the comic book logorrhea of Leo Strauss, who re-wrote the ‘History of Western Philosophy’,  M.F. Burnyeat dubbed Strauss a ‘Sphinx Without a Secret’ in 1985, yet he remains a persistent presence in American intellectual life!  As the model that Kagan adopts as his ‘standard’: self-serving intellectual mendacity the ruling practice of both Strauss and Kagan. Only at the Washington Post, the Kagan penchant for intellectual bloat is held in check, by the exercise of long standing editorial standards of a newspaper whose column inches have value, even in the Age of the Internet.

Philosophical Apprentice

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/republicans-are-becoming-russias-accomplices/2017/03/06/8616c2f4-027a-11e7-ad5b-d22680e18d10_story.html?utm_term=.0f3944dff99d&wpisrc=nl_opinions&wpmm=1

Strobe Talbott is one of the very last of the once celebrated WASP Ascendancy: the Bundy Brothers, the Alsop Brothers and even George F. Kennan , chronicled in the gossip masquerading as history of  ‘The Georgetown Set’ by Gregg Herken and ‘Joe Alsop’s Cold War’ by  Edwin M. Yoder, and even by default in ‘The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy: Brothers in Arms’ by Kai Bird.

Mr. Talbott is now president of Brookings Institution a purveyor of American Exceptionalist propaganda, in all of its iterations. He has called himself ‘Russia Hand’ which is indicative of his self- asserted expertise in all things Russian and by definition all things Soviet, a selected section of his Wikipedia entry:

In 1972, Talbott, along with his friends Robert Reich (a fellow Rhodes Scholar) and David E. Kendall, rallied to his friends Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton to help them in their Texas campaign to elect George McGovern president of the United States. In the 1980s, he was Time’s principal correspondent on Soviet-American relations, and his work for the magazine was cited in the three Overseas Press Club Awards won by Time in the 1980s.^[2] Talbott also wrote several books on disarmament.

Following Bill Clinton’s election as president, Talbott was invited into government where he served at first managing the consequences of the Soviet breakup as Ambassador-at-Large and Special Adviser to the Secretary of State Warren Christopher on the New Independent States. After leaving government, he was for a period Director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization.^[3] He is currently the president of the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.^[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strobe_Talbott

In Talbott’s latest essay:

Headline: What Putin Is Up To

The reader can assume that as president of Brookings Mr. Talbott assumes the role of leadership, while Ms. Brandt did the actual writing. Mr. Talbott provided advice and revisions, to this essay, until it met his exacting standards. Look upon this essay as part of the evolving, while still maintaining its status as definitive, of the Party Line on Putin as the New Stalin.

Note that the American Tradition of outright subversion of other countries political processes, since the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, not to speak of the American penchant for invasion and occupation, or relentless Drone attacks at will, remains beyond the ken of both Talbott and Brandt, as shameless apologists for American Hubris.

Political Observer

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/03/putin-trump-russia-flynn-sessions-hack-kremlin/518412/#article-comments

The ‘Speed and Shock’ candidate Fillon demonstrates that the French Political Melodrama, in which Macron is the the putative winner, for now, is at an end? The Marinetti/Thatcherite offers what has proven to be an utter failure just across the Channel, but appears in the ‘vision’ of Fillon as some kind of antidote to France’s addiction to Socialism. Its ‘as if’ the hard lessons of Britain and America, from the rise of Thatcher/Reagan to the dismal political/economic present, has escaped the notice of Fillon and his aging revolutionary cadre.

See Christine Ockrent’s essay at Prospect Magazine with the headline:

‘Emmanuel Macron: candidate for a country at a crossroads’

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/emmanuel-macron-candidate-for-a-country-at-a-crossroads-france-politics#comment-40925

With ‘Alain Juppé rules himself out of French presidential race’ headline, at The Financial Times of March 6, 2017, the reader can look forward to that Political Melodrama, with a kind anxious anticipation that the American Pot Boiler ‘Dynasty’ used to inspire!

Committed Observer

https://www.ft.com/content/7de8ce92-018a-11e7-ace0-1ce02ef0def9

Mrs. Thatcher used to pass out copies of Hayek’s Road to Serfdom as if she were passing out party favors. Then came the Crash of 2008, and the arrival of the Bail Outs and the appearance of ‘Austerity’, except for all but those who engineered and apologized for the Neo-Liberal Swindle! In the spirit of the ‘Public Good’ of ‘The Welfare of the Nation’ or just the welfare of Banks and Corporations, and corrupt politicians and their Think Tank minions. Is the irony of that blindingly obvious?

It’s an interesting story, but getting back to Hayek’s book, its easy to view that book’s title as a biography of the political/economic present, instead of  intellectual hysterics about the poison of ‘Collectivism’. The response of ‘Western Governments’ to the 2008 Debacle was to put those Think Tank hacks in charge of the rescue of Capitalism, from its own mendacious practice. The Party Line was/is to dismantle the Welfare State, when it was most needed from the predations of Capitalist Collectivism: call this the bludgeoning of irony

Almost Marx

https://www.ft.com/content/9db2d1e8-002a-11e7-8d8e-a5e3738f9ae4

The unspoken declaration of Mr. Ganesh’s latest essay is: I’ve come to bury Labour/Corbyn not to praise them- I paraphrase. In the project of Neo-Liberal self-rescue, one of the most popular forms that that project takes is of misdirection. So the argument that Mr. Ganesh makes, out of his political desperation, is the descriptive headline: ‘Under Corbyn, the Labour party saunters into history’s mausoleum’ and its sub-headline ‘Its decline is a loss for the world as well as a tragedy for UK politics’.

Mark Twain  famously remarked that:‘The report of my death was an exaggeration.’ The premature news that Labour is ‘sauntering’ into history’s mausoleum’ garnished with the crocodile tears of ‘a tragedy for UK politics’ is the ersatz wit of a columnist in a desperate search for a subject.

Voila! If it isn’t ‘The Rebellion Against The Elites’, or ‘Populism’ there is always ‘The Left’ as the free floating specter, that haunts the waking and sleeping life of the Capitalists everywhere: Marx and Engels or their modern day equivalent Jeremy Corbyn?

Note just the mention of Neo-Thatcherite Tony Blair, he can be viewed in the context of Ganesh’s near funeral oration for the Labour Party as an aspirational, even an ideal political figure   If it was the heyday of print journalism, I’d say that the Ganesh’s  column was destined for the bottom of a bird cage, in the servant’s quarters of some tony London address. If in the Victorian Age, perhaps Dorian Grey’s? 

Almost Marx

https://www.ft.com/content/501e33b0-fcdc-11e6-8d8e-a5e3738f9ae4

Can the reader of his latest essay wonder, has Mr. Luce discovered the 99%? If so, it qualifies as a belated victory for the Scruffy Hippiedom of Occupy Wall Street! So much for my lapse into the hyperbolic. Mr. Luce carefully lays out the likely next steps in the Trump/Bannon project of Economic Nationalism: this notion reeks of the most unsavory historical connotations.

Over the weekend the New Democrats have chosen the respectable Neo-Liberal Tom Perez to lead the Party. For some very informative background on the contest between Perez and Ellison see this Intercept report:

DNC Chair Candidate Tom Perez’s Bank-Friendly Record Could Kneecap the Democratic Party

Why would I mention this election in regards to the Trump advocacy of an Economic Nationalist Agenda? Mr. Perez is the candidate of the Clinton/Brazil/Wassermann-Schultz, not forgetting Leon Panetta , faction of the New Democrats: a perpetuation of the ‘Old Guard’. The political corollary of the Pelosi/ Schumer congressional leadership.

How can the New Democrats hope to even mount an opposition to the Trump /Bannon political project, when they are still beholden to the utterly corrupt Clinton/Brazil/Wassermann-Schultz leadership? Who have willfully discarded the New Deal mantle of reform, in favor of being New Democrats, which is in fact a cosmetically enhanced Reaganism.

If the election of Perez tells the reader anything, it is that the New Democrats will be defeated in 2018, and if they persist in their addiction to the Clinton Neo-Liberalism, a defeat in 2020 is also very likely.

The formation of the ‘Resistance’, that has its root in the Clinton Apologists endless propagandizing, in the hope of Impeaching Trump, seems very unlikely with both Houses of Congress controlled by Republicans. The desperation of those apologists is such that Rachel Maddow condemned Jill Stein for her silence on the Russian Question:

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/02/rachel-maddow-why-hasnt-jill-stein-said-anything-about-the-trump-russia-scandal/

Even given the Russian/Trump connection, and a pending congressional investigation, led by Republicans. Trump seems to be playing into the hands of the ‘resisters’ by his banning of the New York Times,CNN and Politico from White House briefings.Trump, the Peronist, doesn’t even rely on other political actors in creating exploitable political chaos, he creates it himself by banning reporters, and posting on twitter.

Yet the New Democrats refuse to confront the fact that the Neo-Liberal Age is over, in the 9th year of the watershed of the Economic Calamity of 2008. Reform or die, that is the stark choice that the New Democrats refuse to acknowledge. Could their adamant refusal to confront reality be the predictor of the rise of the Greens?

Political Reporter

https://www.ft.com/content/7dec9a66-faa2-11e6-9516-2d969e0d3b65

Headline:Pressure builds on François Fillon to quit French contest

Sub-headline: Former favourite cries foul but polls point to defeat in first round of presidential race

February 3, 2017 

https://www.ft.com/content/592b9012-ea1a-11e6-893c-082c54a7f539

The early Financial Times’ enthusiasm for Fillon:

Headline: Amateur racing driver Fillon enters fast lane of French politics

Sub-headline: Frontrunner for rightwing presidential nomination draws on four decades of experience

November 21, 2016

https://www.ft.com/content/73741342-afe4-11e6-a37c-f4a01f1b0fa1

The debate with Juppé:

Headline: Alain Juppé tries to regain ground in French presidential debate

Sub-headline: Former favourite for centre-right nomination takes attack to new frontrunner Fillon

November 25, 2016

 

https://www.ft.com/content/2db5b07c-b29b-11e6-9c37-5787335499a0

Fillon’s Political Reprieve?

Headline: Fillon wins temporary reprieve in French embezzlement probe

Sub-headline: Investigation now unlikely to finish before presidential election

February 25,2017

https://www.ft.com/content/821fc388-fc00-11e6-8d8e-a5e3738f9ae4