StephenKMackSD's Blog

I was quite surprised to look at my e mail this morning and find four notifications from your Comments Moderator. It has been weeks, or even some months since I’ve commented on you internet site. I find it a bit comic that it has taken this much time to find, and then remove my offensive comments from your web site. A sophisticated software application could be the solution!

I can imagine this scene: Oxbridger underling, a relative new hire, with a PhD in English Literature (her thesis was on the arcane topic of food in the plays of Shakespeare) with a minor in Hayek Studies, is assigned the task of searching and reading all my comments. My writerly ego isn’t so inflated as to wish that task on any one person, especially such a reader. Whose judgement as to the nuances of your Terms of Use has brought me to the point of four reprimands, at once, and even the suspension of my comment privileges?

Am I properly chastened by your e mails? Well, my ego, in this instance, comes to my rescue. I think your Moderator has missed completely my tart comments on Rahm Emanuel, which easily fits into the abuse category of the breathtaking pseudo-legalese of  your Terms of Use.

Regards,

StephenKMackSD

It is perfectly appropriate that Mr. Ganesh should frame his comments on the ‘failed civil libertarians’ with reference to the latest Bond film.  Ian Fleming’s books were adapted to the screen using all the craft that the motion picture industry is capable : lush settings, alluring yet dangerous women, the crafty implacable agents of a terrifying secret organization, and British Übermensch James Bond in the lead, a proper misogynist in the mold of Mr. Fleming himself. All of it garnished by the latest in gadgets and utterly unattainable automobiles, appealing to the adolescent that is just below the surface of the  Male, in the age of the internet.

Mr. Ganesh elides from his attack on those benighted ‘Civil Libertarians’ the collective historical watershed of the Cold War, The Clash of  Civilizations and the War on Terror: this collection adds up to suspicion raised to the tenth power.  All this is not mentioned in Mr. Ganesh’s exercise in scorn, which has its it’s place in the armamentarium of the polemicist, yet in the political pundit looks, not just out of place, but appears as the absence of historical thought. Since the end of World War II fear of an unseen enemy has  replaced a politics based on rational evaluation of risk. Publications like The Financial Times and others have used and thoroughly abused this fear mongering to rationalize a host of  anti-democratic policies. Mr. Ganesh ignores that benighted history and replaces historical analysis and consideration with the trivializing word otiose, meaning serving no practical purpose or result. Mr. Ganesh defends the British National Security State with a variety of political thought, that takes its cue from the very Bond film he subjects to his wan analysis.

Political Skeptic

https://next.ft.com/content/a9bd2f9a-8152-11e5-8095-ed1a37d1e096

As the Republicans continue their self-destructive trajectory, Mr. Frum proves his talent for producing political bile, in place of something resembling incisive commentary, on The Republican horse race.
The line up of these tired old faces is a stand in for diversity, the ersatz, the cliched chatter of the No-Nothings. After the latest Benghazi hearings, Hillary campaign contributions jumped appreciably: Trey Gowdy, and his political confederates doing their best to trip up this old political fox Hillary fell flat. How long will the Republicans practice this self-destructive nihilism?
The election of Jacobin Paul Ryan as Speaker answers that question. The notion that Boehner was a political rationalist, and Ryan will be his successor makes the power of secret Freedom Caucus, composed of forty members, not just apparent, but that makes very clear that  a radical minority is in charge of the Party. A secret tribunal now clears all candidates for House Republican positions? Secrecy implies acting with an impunity that anonymity brings, and is antithetical to democratic process.

Mr. Frum takes too much relish in his portrayal of Mr. Bush as weak, a kind of echo of what many say of Obama. Neo-Cons put great faith in masculine bravado and bluster, even when Hillary talks tough: recall the Kristol/Golberg celebration of Mrs. C.’s toughness of last year?
Who can forget the dire warnings that the McGovern Radicals had taken over the Democrats in 1972? Call this one of James Pinkerton’s political obsessions, that he repeated as if it were a revealed truth. Except that the harsh truth that the Jacobins have taken over the Republican Party is beyond the ken of Mr. Frum. As Henry Ford observed, history is bunk. I’d add, even if it’s manufactured history.

Political Reporter

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/10/jeb-bush-struggles/413014/

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At what point do the Neo-Liberals come clean about the Neo-Liberal/Austerity/Economic Doldrums theology as a demonstrable failure? Asking for honesty from a grifter is probably like believing in the a fore mentioned theology. Mr. Ganesh is a political fabulist who inhabits the literary husk of Calvino, tellingly absent the charm and metaphysical whimsy, which makes our author’s essay seem like an exercise in what? I once in these pages compared Mr. Ganesh to Derrida, but after reading his Psyche, and pondering the question, I find that Kierkegaard as the vexed, even perverse, yet worshipful acolyte of Hegal, seems a more apt characterization of Mr. Ganesh. He is the ersatz philosopher and practicing writer/politician.

Does the notion that Austerity needs to applied with due regard for equality of distribution, among an economically diverse population, and with dispassion not to speak of equanimity -how does the failure of this trio as practiced since the Crash of 2008 make anything like political sense, or even approximate political rationality? Mr. Ganesh answers none of these pressing questions, but supplies the reader with points of argument that can lead to a political pragmatism that is a simulacrum that mimes political fairness, almost.

Political Observer

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/3873525a-7997-11e5-933d-efcdc3c11c89.html#axzz3piMkkTNY

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Call this essay a collection of political cliches of the present political orthodoxy, stunning the reader with the ability of a Think Tank pundit to confect a history of the Present Declinism. Not to be confused with that stolid German Spengler, but with the historically tarted up writing of Niall Ferguson, with just a tantalizing bit of Samuel P. Huntington’s cultural pessimism not to speak his rampant xenophobia, to add just a bit of zest to the proceedings.

Here are some of these gems taken out of the argumentative context. The very first paragraph is an exercise in argumentative self-serving myopia. Title this paragraph ‘The West is innocent of any blame’.

‘Russia’s deployment of forces to Syria is its most significant direct military intervention in the Middle East since the end of the second world war.

This assertion can’t even stand the most cursory examination i.e. America’s invasion and occupation of Iraq is the most glaring example of the ‘most significant direct military intervention in the Middle East since the end of the second world war.‘ !

The next assertion is again a ludicrous pseudo-apologetics, for Western imperialism, not to speak of American catastrophic political meddling:

It will further destabilise a region that is characterised by misrule, sectarianism, regional rivalries and four civil wars that have killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions.

President Putin’s ‘gambit’ in Syria is the proof of Western i.e. American power in decline, using the stand in of ‘the postwar international order’ :

President Vladimir Putin’s gambit is only the latest indication that, after 70 years, the postwar international order is fraying. The US, the country around which the postwar order was constructed, still has a strong hand but it often plays that hand poorly.

The American invasion of Iraq then becomes the focus of this made to measure history:

In the past 15 years, its global approach has fluctuated. President George W Bush pursued a muscular grand strategy aimed at imposing America’s will on the world. His invasion of Iraq is one of history’s finest own goals

The last sentence of this paragraph is astounding in it’s reckless ideological reading of the Bush Administration’s catastrophic invasion and occupation of Iraq! Read it again:

His invasion of Iraq is one of history’s finest own goals.

The next part of this paragraph is as astounding as the quote from above:

By contrast, President Barack Obama has run a reality-based foreign policy. But he did not merely learn the lessons of the Bush presidency; he overlearnt them. His unwillingness to act forcefully at crucial moments has weakened the deterrent effect of US power.

The not so subtle idea of Obama’s Foreign Policy weakness, lack of resolve, and other such such maladroit locutions, is the continuing theme of this essay. The whole of the argument represents the fact that the Neo-Cons,Liberals and the R2P zealots have philosophically merged into the Party of War: of endless war using ‘The Middle East’ as its proving ground, for a ‘new  international order’ predicated on the argued weakness, indeed the fecklessness President Obama, made concrete in the following:

By contrast, President Barack Obama has run a reality-based foreign policy. But he did not merely learn the lessons of the Bush presidency; he overlearnt them. His unwillingness to act forcefully at crucial moments has weakened the deterrent effect of US power.

Then Mr. Fullilove adopts the rhetorical role of Cassandra with this admonition that turns into an exercise in prescience:

The recent history of US policy — both its mis-steps and its changeability — raises questions about whether Washington will continue to act as the global hegemon. To those who relish the prospect of a more modest American presence in the world, I say: be careful what you wish for.

His attempt to play Cassandra falls a bit flat as he echoes the tone of the hectoring schoolmaster.

If you’ve been a patient reader up to this point in your reading, you are rewarded with this homily:

Now, when European leaders come upon an unpleasant scene, for example, a neighbour set upon by an aggressor — like the priest and the Levite with the Good Samaritan — most of them prefer to pass by on the other side.

For those with the forebearance to read this transparent propaganda till its end, this is what awaits you in this vulgar melodrama: Russian Revanchism, the rise of a ruthless Nuclear Iran, a dull revamp of that old chestnut of The Yellow Peril, a favorite of Mr. Ferguson, a walk on by Global Warming, The European Refugee Crisis, all of this ended in the  celebratory mentions of Cold Warrior heroes Dean Acheson and Harry Truman. No need to look further for the ideological roots of this essay, nor it’s author. A grueling 912 words! Patience grasshopper!

Political Observer and Almost Marx

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/6d1f9f9a-78b1-11e5-a95a-27d368e1ddf7.html#axzz3paPyN6Zw

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A reader has to wonder at Rep.Paul Ryan’s status at The Financial Times  as the least objectionable of the Jacobins. His ‘Budget Proposals’ are now consigned to the richly deserved obscurity of bad propaganda. The Rule of The Forty leaves 433 unaccounted for, and consider that in the American Republic the names of the Representatives that make up the Freedom Caucus are secret. How can doing the public’s business be done in secret?

Is Rep. Ryan the only viable candidate for the job? If so, the paucity of leadership candidates demonstrates a troubling fact about the Party. A Party that since 2008, that has not governed, but obstructed the president at every turn, the government shutdown being it’s political desperation move. Look at the Benghazi Hearings for how ineffective this Republican Circus has been: Ms. Clinton’s donations jumped appreciably after her appearance. One can only wonder what Rep Gowdy and his fellow Party members expected? Ms. Clinton gained in campaign contributions:

Donations have been flooding into campaign coffers over the past 13 hours since her testimony in front of the House Benghazi committee wrapped late Thursday night, thrilling Clinton fundraisers on the eve of a weekend-long finance committee meeting that couldn’t have come at a better time. According to communications director Jennifer Palmieri, the hour between 9:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. last night was their best fundraising hour of the campaign to date.

Rallying in Virginia Friday, Clinton said her campaign had broken the 500,000 donor mark, meaning she has gotten over 100,000 new contributors in October alone. The campaign then added that over half of the donations it received on Thursday were from new contributors, and that 99% of them were less than $250.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/10/hillary-clinton-campaign-benefits-benghazi-hearing-215107

How can Rep. Ryan rescue the Party from it’s penchant for perpetual self -defeat?

For a refreshingly insightful essay on Rep. Ryan see Amanda Marcotte’s essay at Alternet, first published at Salon, the title and sub-title are instructive. ‘Paul Ryan’s ‘Family Values’ Are that Only Elite Families Have Value:Paul Ryan isn’t a hypocrite. He just sees a family life as a privilege for the elite, instead of a right for all.’ A telling paragraph:

But this whole incident is a reminder that what is wrong with Ryan’s libertarian-inflected conservatism goes far deeper than mere hypocrisy. In fact, I’d argue that Ryan isn’t really a hypocrite at all, but that this move to preserve his family time is a perfect distillation of the Ayn Rand-constructed worldview he has, where all the goodies are reserved for the elite and the rest of us can go hang. And by “goodies,” I don’t just mean NFL tickets and first class plane tickets every weekend. Increasingly, the Republican worldview is one where even basic things like love, connection, and other basic human needs are being reclassified as privileges that should only be available to the wealthy.

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/paul-ryans-family-values-are-only-elite-families-have-value?akid=13598.253719.b10X54&rd=1&src=newsletter1044574&t=4

Political Reporter

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/f01fc878-7197-11e5-ad6d-f4ed76f0900a.html#axzz3pPG8RzKR

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StephenKMackSD

@Cuibono

Thank you for your insightful comment!

Your name explains much: ‘cui bono: a principle that probable responsibility for an act or event lies with one having something to gain’ . I don’t think Cynic is the most applicable descriptor for you. Yours is a political realism, without the necessary  filter of bourgeois political respectability, that rules the hermetic world of  pundits, in print and on television.

The problem with Ms. Clinton engaging in a political attack on Sen. Sanders is that it will have to carefully crafted, so that it appears as a politically rational critique of his ‘populism’, in contrast to her more moderate gradualism, while cultivating her credentials as ‘tougher than any man in the room’ i.e. her bellicosity in Foreign Policy: while maintaining her status as the champion of a more restrained, but still politically potent Neo-Liberalism. If she is elected, look for an about face on the TPP born of an agonizing reappraisal. Americans are fed a steady diet of political melodrama. Look no further than the pages of The Financial Times!

Best regards,

StephenKMackSD

http://on.ft.com/1Ru69gG

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Mr. Luce can’t let go of his credentials as a thoroughgoing establishmentarian. His look at the Democratic contest and his obvious choice of front runner Hillary makes that clear, she presents herself as Presidential. Which means that she and her team are adroit practitioners of effective Public Relations/Propaganda.

As for Mr. Biden, he is a New Democratic hack whose impending retirement from American politics is most welcome. With one important caution: it is reported that Biden acted as very important oppositional  voice to Clinton’s perpetual bellicosity: Ms. Clinton needs to prove that she is ‘tougher’ than any man in the room. This penchant is a dangerous one. If you need proof, the careers of both Victoria Nuland and foreign policy technocrat Anne-Marie Slaughter are the starkest of object lessons. And don’t forget the praise coming from Jeffrey Goldberg and William Kristol as indicative of what? These two Neo-Cons set a standard of political conduct that is prima facie suspect.

Sen. Sanders is the anti-Hillary: he is a ‘Populist’ , which is enough to give The Financial Times and it stable of commentators nightmares. Those bad dreams are then translated into perpetual political hysterics. He is by no means a perfect candidate, but he has enlivened the Democratic race, and made the stolid Neo-Liberal Ms. Clinton pay attention to that dreaded ‘Populism’. His ability to generate millions of dollars from small donors has been instructive of the power of Sen. Sanders’ message.

Political Reporter

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/de55c26e-782c-11e5-933d-efcdc3c11c89.html#axzz3pIlzb81s

One reads, in awe, of Mr. Ignatieff’s praise of the return to democratic values, of adversaries rather than enemies, to the political process of Canadian state. Good luck to Mr. Trudeau in his endeavor to restore a necessary civility. Yet a glaring object lesson exists, for the political realist, in the recent history of Europe, that Mr. Ignatieff and his R2P allies practiced with all the political dishonesty, even the self-serving mendacity that he criticizes in the political behavior of Mr. Harper: the Western sponsored Coup in Ukraine and the incitement of a New Cold War. His enthusiastic allies in the press were, to name but two, The New York Review of Books, home of the cult of Isaiah Berlin ( Mr. Ignatieff being one of its primary acolytes) and Eurozine. Born here was the myths of Russian revanchism and Putin as The New Stalin, repeated in all the respectable bourgeois publications, as a matter of received truth: it was as if all those publications, print and internet became, like the New York Times, propaganda conduits for the American National Security State.Perhaps, at this point, the reader should recall the Berlin apothegms regarding incommensurables, which at this point acts as a stand in for political hypocrisy and or the more complimentary notion of political pragmatism?

Political Realist

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/95d0cdf4-770a-11e5-a95a-27d368e1ddf7.html#axzz3pDdZNmS5

Mr. Ganesh demonstrates that the enemy of the political winner is the inability to conceive the possibility that the opposition can win. Call it the myopia of the winner.

Given the rise of Corbyn, or someone like him, Mr. Cameron puts his political capital behind Austerity, but an Austerity that only affects the poor. How perverse must your political judgement be, to attack the very people who can deliver political victory to the ‘un-electable’ Mr. Corbyn?

‘And David Cameron has an embarrassment of riches. Since renewing his premiership in May, he has already revised or delayed legislation to satisfy his own dissenting MPs. His plan to cut tax credits, income supplements for the low-paid, is being resisted by colleagues and newspapers, including proudly rightwing ones.’

What is relevant to the future of the Tories is to recognize that Neo-Liberalism is a spent force, and that the attack on the poor is an invitation to defeat. No amount of internal dissent can save a Party, that is still invested in Austerity exclusively aimed at the disadvantaged. Again the myopia of the winner!

‘…Conservative squabbles can deprive Labour of any relevance it has left after electing the unelectable Jeremy Corbyn as leader.’

‘There is such a thing as an optimal level of dissent: too little and the official opposition fills the vacuum, too much and things fall apart.

This last pronouncement truly demonstrates the myopia of the winners. Look at the American election of 2008 as a telling counter example!

‘People do not vote for hope and vision, but for the lesser evil.’

I can say that what appears most puzzling about Mr. Ganesh’s style of argument is that he appears to be a student of Derrida!

Political Reporter

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/2e14b53c-7416-11e5-bdb1-e6e4767162cc.html#axzz3p6wxwjBV