StephenKMackSD's Blog

You have to give Mr. Signorile credit for his work for Gay Equality while recognizing that his tactic of ‘outing’ prominent public persons as gay was redolent of Robespierre’s political practice of public denunciation or even, more contemporaneously, with the political practice of Joe McCarthy. The point being that ‘homosexuals’ were existentially incapable of the exercise of morality, of ethically based civic practice and most importantly that they were deviants from the majority heterosexual behavior/practice/custom. Mr. Signorile openly traded on that closely held belief, in the name of it’s opposite.

As an author about to launch his book tour, Mr. Signorile trades on his expertise, meaning that he entertains no second thoughts as to strategies and methods of the past? As I experienced my ‘coming out’ it was about a through going re-examination of the whole of my existence, of my moral/ethical/political and sexual practices and beliefs over a span of time. Reconsideration and re-examination of my beliefs and practices has become a part of how I live my life.  Was it Socrates or Plato that said that the unexamined life is not worth living?  This whole essay reads like a press release.

Queer Atheist

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/04/07/michelangelo-signorile-on-outing-aids-and-why-gay-sex-is-the-final-taboo.html

Haven’t read Mr. Frum for quite a while ! One conjectures, is a book in the works? But Mr. Frum proves his value as a Bush Apologist, as this essay demonstrates. But not without some rhetorical sideswipes at Ms. Clinton, and her practice of personal/political self-exceptionalism.

One is reminded of the Financial Times essayist Edward Luce, whose rhetorical practice is expressed in a set of conjectures that usually opens his essay. As a reasonably well informed reader in the area of American political practice, one wonders at both Mr. Frum and Mr. Luce’s ability to produce what appears as self-serving myths, that express the ascertainable realities of American politics, as a function of their perceptions of reality, to look at these comments in the most charitable light.  One can see that those perceptions, in the form of political commentary, are really a function of a kind of sub rosa public relations. Their are more candid descriptions of this practice, yet one can see that Mr. Luce practices an apologetics for a foundering Neo-Liberal Paradigm, and Mr. Frum hopes to ingratiate himself to a future patron?

Philosophical Apprentice

It’s probably too much to ask that Mr. Luce face the terrible fact that we now live in a Post-Neo-Liberal world, or more simply the utter decline of that spent political delusion, still in it’s death rattle : witness the rise of Syriza and Podemos, or most importantly in this instance Mr. Garcia, or Hanukkah Harry as Mayor Emanuel dubbed him in their debate. His Honor is a part time Borscht Belt comic!

Instead Mr. Luce offers the reader political melodrama:’a battle of Thatcherite intensity’ as in ‘Sooner or later it must pay its bills.’ a place holder for a political analysis based in the empirical, or even just an exercise in the anecdotal. Mr. Luce adds fuel to his bonfire: ‘Mr Emanuel has five weeks to save his job — and the future of Chicago’s public finances.’ Mr. Garcia can’t postpone the reality of a city in need of Neo-Liberal rescue: just increase the level of Austerity as antidote to the preceding attempts that failed to deliver the desired result. That in it’s essence is the Luce incantation, with the addition of Public Sector Union as one of the villains and the Daily Dynasty’s cowardice/enabling of those Unions and their rapacious political allies. Mr. Luce constructs a modern Neo-Liberal Mystery Play.

Political Observer

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/6c6fc0f6-be77-11e4-8036-00144feab7de.html?siteedition=intl#axzz3WX9C4LFB

Where else, but at The Economist, would a shopworn Neo-Liberal like Mayor Emanuel receive plaudits for his snappy one-liners, and his slavish recitation/practice of the cliches, of the utterly failed economic/political paradigm of that same Neo-Liberalism? Where else might the curious reader find such editorializing in favor of His Honor: at WSJ,The National Review or even at the Weekly Standard? With each new question comes another!
Here is a news story in the IBT on the Mayor and his relationship with the Cook County Circuit Court’s choice to oversee the coming election, Langdon Neal. Call it the byzantine politics of Chicago, even before the Daley Dynasty? Here is a revelatory long quote from the story:

‘If Chicago’s first mayoral runoff in history ends up razor close on April 7, the city will be relying on a purportedly independent arbiter to oversee any recount. But that arbiter, the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, is chaired by a politically-connected lawyer whose firm has received secret city lobbying contracts from incumbent Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration. After receiving those contracts, the chairman has already used his power to boost the mayor’s allies against anti-Emanuel challengers in other municipal elections.

Board chairman Langdon Neal was appointed to his position by the Cook County Circuit Court, not by any city official — a structure that is supposed to preserve the board’s independence from candidates for municipal office. However, the laws establishing the election commission do not prohibit Neal from getting contracts from the mayor, whose election he will oversee. How much he has made from those contracts remains a closely guarded secret: the Emanuel administration has denied an open records request for the terms of the deals, refusing to respond to International Business Times within the timeframe mandated by Illinois law.

The only details that have been disclosed are in city lobbying records, which show that Neal’s law firm, Neal & Leroy, was awarded three lobbying contracts from Chicago Public Schools, the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, and the Public Buildings Commission of Chicago at the beginning of 2012. Neal himself was listed as a lobbyist for the agencies in the city’s disclosure database in 2012, and the most recent city records show Neal is registered as a lobbyist for the agencies in 2015. All three agencies that gave Neal & Leroy lobbying contracts are controlled by Emanuel’s appointees.’
http://www.ibtimes.com/chicago-elections-chief-got-lobbying-contracts-rahm-emanuels-adminstration-1869898#.VSFWkhEb8bo.twitter

All this makes Mr. Garcia almost look like another Illinois politician , Abe Lincoln.

Political Observer

The Reactionary Political Template remains the same across generations: The Salem Witch Trials, the Palmer Raids, the utterly shameful Japanese Internment and last, but not least, the political rise of McCarthy and his allies whose slogan was ‘a generation of treason’. Here is that very idea in one word: capitulation in Ms. Rubin’s essay, and for those of us old enough to recall, absent any readers of history, this is more of the same of the Cold War chatter that dominated debate over any negotiation, any treaty with the Soviet Union. Just a small adjustment as to persons,  places and  historical time, and the demands of this shopworn formula are met.  That implacable enemy that could not reason, nor exercise a kind of self-interest common to human beings, are not the Soviets but the Iranians: they are the ideological monsters of this historical moment! While not forgetting the resurgent Russian Bear!
Besides Ms. Rubin’s rather subdued propagandizing, add to the mix the Nihilist Republican’s pronouncements of ideological solidarity in opposition to the president: Senator Tom Cotton and his forty six colleagues. No surprise! But those Republicans have made a wager on the 36.6 % of the American electorate that voted in 2014, the slimmest of political margins, to say the least. Recall the ham handed Impeachment of Bill Clinton as another model of Republican Nihilism: with each passing week the President’s popularity rose in direct proportion to that manufactured political melodrama. As Sen. Cotton, protege of Harvey Mansfield and William Kristol, pursues his quixotic crusade against the Iranian Treaty and the President, his ignorance, self-willed or otherwise, of the political fate of Speaker Gingrich and a host of Republican and Democrats, who cast their lot with those dismal manufactured political theatrics, is a snare which will eventually lead to a heavy political cost: a victory for the Democrats in 2016?

Political Observer

You have to credit Mr. Lake with a certain consistency. Just a cursory reading of his latest essay demonstrates that if you are old enough to recall the Cold War, the strategy is the same as his historical precursors, except that instead of Soviet ideological irrationalism and endemic immoralism, he rhetorically situates Iran in the lead role as number one enemy. With the addition of Prof. Trita Parsi as ally of the charming but poisonous Javad Zarif. Call this low grade Political Melodrama! Is Mr. Lake accusing Prof. Parsi, who travels under Iranian, American, and Swedish passports, of treasonous activity? As proof of Mr. Lake’s animosity to Prof. Parsi here is a long quote from the Wikipedia entry on Prof. Parsi, that is instructive of Lake’s predisposition:

‘In 2007, Arizona-based Iranian-American journalist Hassan Daioleslam began publicly asserting that NIAC was lobbying on behalf of the Islamic Republic of Iran. In response, Parsi sued him for defamation. As a result of the lawsuit, many internal documents were released, which Washington Times national security correspondent Eli Lake stated “raise questions about whether the organization is using that influence to lobby for policies favorable to Iran in violation of federal law.” The documents included e-mail correspondence between Parsi and Mohammad Javad Zarif, then Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations.[6] E-mail correspondence of Daioleslam said, “I strongly believe that Trita Parsi is the weakest part of the Iranian web because he is related to Siamak Namazi and Bob Ney… I believe that destroying him will be the start of attacking the whole web. This is an integral part of any attack on Clinton or Obama.”[9][10]

In September 2012, a U.S. federal judge John D. Bates threw out the libel suit against Daioleslam on the grounds that “NIAC and Parsi had failed to show evidence of actual malice, either that Daioeslam acted with knowledge the allegations he made were false or with reckless disregard about their accuracy.” Bates also wrote, “Nothing in this opinion should be construed as a finding that defendant’s articles were true. Defendant did not move for summary judgment on that ground, and it has not been addressed here.”[11] ‘

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trita_Parsi

‘ “Nothing in this opinion should be construed as a finding that defendant’s articles were true. Defendant did not move for summary judgment on that ground, and it has not been addressed here.”[11] ‘

The last line of the quoted passage of Judge Bates’ opinion is again instructive as to the animosity that Mr. Lake still holds for both Prof. Parsi and Javad Zarif. Mr. Lake is, to this day, as this essay clearly demonstrates in another political context, making utterly dubious claims that hark back the mendacious tactics of the McCarthy/Nixon/Mundt/McCarren quartet!

Political Skeptic

Here are four paragraphs from Mr. Douthat’s March 28, 2015 essay that seem more pertinent than his analysis of the difference between the ‘Pax Americana’ model of Foreign Policy and the ‘offshore balancing system’. Title it Douthat’s Potted History. The point of this potted history is firstly not to upset the bourgeois Sunday morning New York Times readers, and secondly to give a politically convenient reading of ‘history’: to produce a more muted, sanitized form of ideologically charged propaganda.

Since the Cold War, and especially since 1991, the Pax Americana idea has predominated in our foreign policy thinking. But in the Middle East, there has been no real evolution toward democracy among our network of allies; instead, their persistent corruption has fed terrorism and contributed to Al Qaeda’s rise.

Hence the Bush administration’s post-9/11 decision to try to start afresh, by transforming a rogue state into a regional model, a foundation for a new American-led order that would be less morally compromised than the old.

That order did not, of course, emerge. Instead, it took all the king’s horses and all of David Petraeus’s men just to hold Iraq together; a different bad actor, Iran, ended up empowered; and the old problem of repression led to the Arab Spring and the civil wars that followed.

Sticking to the Pax Americana model after these developments would have required keeping American troops in Iraq for decades. It might have forced us to choose between bombing Iran and extending a Cold War-style nuclear umbrella over most of the Arab world. And there still would have been no easy answers about how to deal with corrupt allies, or with the zealots who move in when they fall.

The last two paragraphs of his essay are the summation of this lengthy policy explication/meditation, that reaches as far as this practitioner of Foreign Policy Metaphysics is capable of moving the conversation:

If we could actually escape Middle East entanglements entirely, even that “something worse” might be less costly to the United States than trying to sustain the Pax Americana. And if we had a trustworthy hegemon in the wings to replace us, all of this might be moot.

But in the world as it exists, what we have is an administration that wants to believe it’s getting us out, but a region that’s inexorably, inevitably pulling us back in.

In sum, we are not just fated to be an Empire, it is our responsibility, our burden. Sound familiar?

Political Skeptic

The opening paragraph of Ms. Rubin’s latest essay, On an Iran deal, reports of concessions galore  is carefully framed as imaginative reconstruction/speculation as the in order too of  placing blame on the French, for leaks from the P5+1 negotiations: one can see that the valuable lesson from her column on Anders Behring Breivik has to some extent chastened our writer, almost! This is quickly followed by Wall Street Journal ‘report’ based on ‘say people close to the negotiations’ and ‘these people say’, a Murdoch publication unfriendly to President Obama?  The next quote is from David Albright, founder and president of the Institute for Science and International Security, his quote appears to buttress Rubin’s position, but here is a telling quote from 2009 from his organization regarding Iran:

A June 2009 posting on ISIS argued that “we do know that a lasting, military solution to Iran’s nuclear program is not realistic. This leaves diplomacy as the best route to bring about a suspension of Iran’s uranium enrichment program, regardless of who holds Iran’s presidency.”^[11]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Science_and_International_Security

Then comes an Associated Press report based on ‘officials have told The Associated Press.’ More speculation from anonymous sources. And then a quote from an e mail from the Israel Project, in essence an American public relations firm i.e. Israeli apologists. The essay continues in this vein until it’s end, with the caveat that brevity is not Ms. Rubin’s strong point: as if a torrent of words will make up for the utterly partisan character of her hectoring essay. This phrase captures the letter and spirit of her essay, ‘ the president’s cockeyed scheme of appeasement.’

I’ve just finished reading The Georgetown Set by Gregg Herken, although it reads more like a compendium of historically sophisticated gossip, one comes to the realization that the Old Cold Warriors, like the Alsop brothers and the Bundy brothers among others: the Wasp Ascendency, believed that the Soviets were men, always men, who were incapable of rational thought, but animated politically by ideological fixations rather than a rationalist apprehension of events allied to self-interest. Ms. Rubin shares that nihilist ethical/political belief with her policy precursors.

Political Realist

‘Much has happened in between; mass deregulation of international banking, technological advancements in trading, and the use of the World Bank (and the IMF and various central banks) to subsidize bank led speculation by submitting weak countries to austerity measures or ‘bailouts’, thereby prioritizing payments to bondholder clients of mega-banks over economic stability. The Big Six banks in the US, a subset of the 30 G-SIBs (global systemically important banks) enjoy a magnitude of government, central bank and multinational entity support that would have been unimaginable back then.’

http://www.nomiprins.com/thoughts/2015/3/23/presidents-bankers-the-neo-cold-war-and-the-world-bank.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

C.R. does a workman like job in his essay NIMBY’s in the twenty-first century of Piketty Bashing, briefly sharing the stage with other ‘Left Wing’ intellectual celebrities:  ‘… Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s leather-jacket wearing finance minister, Naomi Klein and Russell Brand…’  although in a more muted tone, with Mr.Matthew Rognlie acting as economic wunderkind, who challenges a portion of Piketty’s complex analysis of contemporary inequality. But please note this unsurprising last paragraph of C.R.’s essay:

Just how inconvenient Mr Rognlie’s argument is for Mr Piketty’s overarching narrative is a matter of perspective. The latter certainly did not make housing wealth the central theme of his bestselling book. But a story in which a privileged elite uses its political power (albeit through the planning system) to create economic rents for the few fits Mr Piketty’s argument to a tee. Well-off homeowners may for the moment be more responsible for rising wealth inequality than top-hatted capitalists or famous hedge-fund managers. But their NIMBYism is a very Piketty-like phenomenon.

Note the role reversal from the ‘… top-hatted capitalists or famous hedge-fund managers’,   characters straight out of the comics of several generations ago,  to ‘well-off  homeowners’ who now become the main protagonist/enemy in this episode of The Piketty Melodrama.

Almost Marx