StephenKMackSD's Blog

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Timothy Snyder, Leon Wieseltier,Bernard-Henri Levy were the head line acts for this propaganda fest, probably sponsored by The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, or from Victoria Nuland’s spare change, left over from the five billion spent on the overthrow of the legitimate Ukrainian regime. Add to that the ‘moral support’ of fellow travelers Michael Ignatieff and Samantha Power, notorious R2P zealots. With an assist from the Daily Beast’s Lake/Rogan/Kirchick Neo-Conservative chicken-hawk coterie of hysteria mongers.
The New York Review of Books has been Mr. Snyder’s publisher of choice since he began writing his essays about the Ukrainian Coup. It’s not so much about the decline in political standards at the NYRB, but about the historically exercised bad judgment in the choice of Isaiah Berlin as intellectual/moral standard bearer. Whose Liberalism based on the historical reality i.e. facts of political/ethical incommensurables, led to a kind of political fatalism or even paralysis, in the face of the political status quo, as an acceptable inevitability. While Sir Isaiah’s had a penchant for currying the favor of the powerful, he blocked the academic appointment of Isaac Deutscher, so much for the ‘Liberal’ notion of freedom of thought.

http://standpointmag.co.uk/books-october-13-feud-of-the-cold-warriors-robert-wistrich-isaac-and-isaiah-cold-war

Political Observer

https://www.nytexaminer.com/2014/05/the-aptly-named-anne-marie-slaughter/

Five possible influences on Ms. Slaughter’s career seem evident:

In the Law: in the paradigmatic figure of Holmes. Misogynist,misanthrope and committed Social Darwinist, via his reading during one of his convalescences, of Spencer’s Social Statics and Darwin’s Origin. One could safely say that the Civil War was the ruination of the man. His standards of conduct: careerism, political opportunism and a stunted or even non-existent moral sensibility.

In the History of American Foreign Policy: The figures of Kissinger and Brzezinski. Both men ruthless, murderous and unapologetic. Add to this a bit of the anguished melodrama that George F. Kennan can provide, to Ms. Slaughter’s acts of public contrition.

In current Foreign Policy: the Rice/Nuland Neo-Conservative alliance that financed the Ukrainian Coup. And very importantly, U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power, R2P zealot and her ally and intellectual mentor Michael Ignatieff .

This is just a sketch of a possible set of arguments in the examination of the influences in Ms. Slaughter’s public career. Although Mr. Breyman’s devastating polemic does not need comment, it got me to thinking about what those influences might be. Congratulations to Mr. Breyman on a powerfully argued and superbly written essay!

StephenKMackSD

You might begin your exploration of the ‘Piketty Panic’ by beginning with the book itself, or short of that, you could begin with the ten part essay at the Economist posted by R.A. of London. This is really worth the time to read and study, if you are not going to read the book. This set of essays is of the highest caliber . The first part of this essay cycle:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/02/book-clubs

After you’ve read this enlightening cycle of essays you might consult this essay, again from The Economist, that reflects a frontal attack  on the policies that Capital advocates:

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21601512-thomas-pikettys-blockbuster-book-great-piece-scholarship-poor-guide-policy

You might also read this from the Financial Times by Robert Shrimsley titled ‘ The Nine Stages of the Piketty bubble’, a satire that utterly misfired, or insult laden polemic, hard to tell which:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/2d492786-cf90-11e3-bec6-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=intl#axzz30aJuZqpT

You must read the Krugman essay at the New York Times:

And the essay that Krugman links to, in his NYT essay, by James Pethokoukis at National Review titled The New Marxism:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/374009/new-marxism-james-pethokoukis

But the piece de resistance of the ‘Piketty Panic’  is this David Brooks essay from the New York Times titled The Piketty Phenomenon. In it the panic transforms itself into ugly political paranoia. A marvel, of it’s kind.

Political Observer

Mr. Brooks is of course angry and defensive when he reviews The Piketty Phenomenon. But the anger and defensiveness manifests itself as that shopworn Conservative old saw: envy of the rich. The beating heart of the middle class, the professionals, is envy of the privileges of the rich.That middle class i.e. those Left Wing Progressives hold in their inmost being an animus toward the rich,in fact, it is the ruling pathology, that Mr. Piketty’s book simply reinforces: thus the enthusiasm for it’s theses. And true to form, Mr. Brooks trivializes the ‘Phenomenon’ as equivalent to Beatlemania.The power of Mr. Piketty’s book to utterly transform the national conversation on inequality has generated in Mr. Brooks a pathetic sarcasm wedded to desperate invective.

Political Cynic

I read the Mr. David Brooks essay when first published on April 7th 2014 titled ‘What Suffering Does‘ and I re-read it today and found it full of trite pseudo-philosophical chatter, laced with a kind of relish of the theological obsession with the argued reality of human suffering as the estate of humankind.

One could imagine that Mr. Brooks might postulate that suffering is both redemptive and crushing to the spirit: a kind of baroque pastiche of Calvinism: that the works of humankind are as nothing when the theology of the Free Market isn’t strictly adhered to, as the singular ideal and ruling principle of the human endeavor.The intuition of the subjective mode of revelation of the Free Market has been lost. He might argue, as the cause of the economic collapse of 2008 and the continuing failure of Capitalism to right itself, suffering has become the experience of most but not all Americans. 

But we return from the realm of imagination to one arresting thought expressed by Mr. Brooks in his essay:

First, suffering drags you deeper into yourself. The theologian Paul Tillich wrote that people who endure suffering are taken beneath the routines of life and find they are not who they believed themselves to be. The agony involved in, say, composing a great piece of music or the grief of having lost a loved one smashes through what they thought was the bottom floor of their personality, revealing an area below, and then it smashes through that floor revealing another area.

One wonders how the loss of a loved one and the struggle to compose a great piece of music some how express an equivalence? The thought of Mr. Brooks abounds in such vexing conundrums. Notice too, the utterly superfluous garnish of the Paul Tillich paraphrase.

Political Cynic

Transcript of Mr. Brooks’ comment:

‘DAVID BROOKS: And, let’s face it, Obama, whether deservedly or not, does have a (I’ll say it crudely) but a manhood problem in the Middle East: Is he tough enough to stand up to somebody like Assad, somebody like Putin? I think a lot of the rap is unfair. But certainly in the Middle East, there’s an assumption he’s not tough–’

Mr. Brooks is adroit at the first order concerns of a New York Times pundit, cultivate bourgeois political respectability. So, he places, at a distance, his reluctantly uttered accusation in the rhetorical realm of conjecture, with the inference that many are thinking the same thing, even those inside the Obama Administration. But the moralizing duty falls onto the broad shoulders of Mr. Brooks.

Political Cynic 

‘The Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. military and American intelligence agencies have quietly pushed the White House in recent weeks to deny a new Russian surveillance plane the right to fly over U.S. territory. This week, the White House finally began consideration of the decision whether to certify the new Russian aircraft under the so-called “Open Skies Treaty.” And now the question becomes: Will the spies and generals get their way? ‘

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As much as I respect Chrystia Freeland, I must say that she totally ignores American and E.U. meddling in Ukrainian political affairs. The exact same thing she condemns the Dictator Putin for! According to reliable sources America spent 5 billion dollars to subvert a duly elected government, aided by 100 million from the E.U. The American front group was the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy an utterly notorious Neo-Conservative organization. A mention of fellow traveler Victoria Nuland and her husband Robert Kagan seems completely appropriate as the meddlers who aided, birthed this ‘revolution’. Continue reading →

One approaches the David Brooks essay of April 3, 2014 titled Party all the Time with a certain amusement at the ludicrous assertion that somehow campaign finance reform should be abandoned, for a strategy of increasing the power of Parties and therefore weakening the power of PACs. As Mr. Brooks argues it, this, the important, indeed, the salient lesson of McCutcheon: Mr. Brooks is a master at changing the uncomfortable political subject, by injecting this kind of self-serving red herring into the debate. A illustrative quote:

In their book “Better Parties, Better Government,” Peter J. Wallison and Joel M. Gora propose the best way to reform campaign finance: eliminate the restrictions on political parties to finance the campaigns of their candidates; loosen the limitations on giving to parties; keep the limits on giving to PACs.

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