StephenKMackSD's Blog

Mr. Janan Ganesh celebrates the inevitable decline of The Welfare State and it’s misbegotten, indeed mendacious origins, and it’s political/ethical defeat in terms of ideas and practice, a bit too soon. He invokes History as a political actor in a way that some, even he, might find uncomfortably Hegelian, even enlisting the geological ‘tectonic movements’ and Hobbes’ Leviathan in his arguments. His essay is cock-a-block with usable historical metaphors. The usual stance of Neo-Liberal apologists is to attack the proven failure of ‘Socialism’ and ‘Social Democracy’, while utterly and quite rightly ignoring, all in the name of self-serving political myth-making, the rather egregious failure of ‘Free Market Economics’ in 2008.

The empirical evidence of American and European economies still floundering after the collapse of the ignoble fantasy, of that self-correcting Market, are everywhere, except to ideologues. Five years of waiting for the mirage of recovery to manifest itself, aided by an enlightened Austerity is not long enough?

But Mr. Ganesh, true to form,chatters on about welfare and pension spongers and celebrates the Queen Bee of that collapsed mythology, Mrs. Thatcher, and her collection of Political Romantics masquerading as Economists. And in the process celebrates the inevitable victory of the Austerians as Mr. Krugman calls them. The victory of the Neo-Liberals in the politics/economics of America and Europe has been disastrous and it just continues to worsen. No answers from Mr. Ganesh, except a kind of loathsome political fatalism.

Political Observer

It’s Sunday morning and I’ve just made coffee and sat down. What better way to wake up than to read Ross Douthat’s column for, today, April 7, 2013 titled The Secrets of Princeton? Mr. D. has his secret decoder ring that his granddad gave him, it still works!

It’s really hard to think of Mr. D. as some sort of populist, all that suave Catholic Conservatism in a lather over, well here’s a quotation illustrative of his mood:

“Every elite seeks its own perpetuation, of course, but that project is uniquely difficult in a society that’s formally democratic and egalitarian and colorblind. And it’s even more difficult for an elite that prides itself on its progressive politics, its social conscience, its enlightened distance from hierarchies of blood and birth and breeding.” 

Well, the beginning of this saga is one Susan Patton who gives dating advice to upper crust woman about using their time at ‘elite universities’ to find that well heeled ‘perfect mate’. Because ,of course, it’s impossible not to think of women as only dependent on men for their life’s fulfillment. The Career Woman, celebrated and dammed in so many Hollywood films as to be archetypal (Ginger Rogers, Lady in the Dark, 1944), is an enemy of long standing in the Conservative Pantheon. Which century is Mr. D. living in? You know, the 19th! But what is surprising is that this has the distinct aroma of  kind of potted Marxism, well sort of. Maybe Mr. D. is just flirting?

Mr. D.’s vocabulary is awash in words like: meritocracy, upper class, elite, egalitarian, hierarchies, that perennial troika: blood, birth, breeding, Ivy League, Social Capital, Multicultural, and that old standby noblesse oblige. It’s all in the way that he stirs all this shit up, that makes the difference.

The mention of discrimination in Asian and working class whites in admissions to ‘elite universities’ is a fitting demonstration of Mr. D.’s concern, indeed, commitment to equality? I’ve had my coffee and my dose of Conservative Reality heavily lace with the manufactured  indignation. My perfect Sunday morning!

Sincerely yours,

Myra B.

P.S.Please, don’t forget to follow me on HeddaAndLouellaAreDead.com

Ross Douthat’s latest meditation on Gay Marriage, titled Marriage Looks Different Now,is full of the same old bromides, but rearranged and framed by the debate of half a generation ago, Frum vs Sullivan, circa 1997, and the statistics from the Marriage Project, according to the narrative constructed by Mr. D., an academic think tank dedicated to the mature human life achievement of marriage. The natural state of the mature bourgeoisie is marriage. This sounds reminiscent of the once ascendent Freudians. One just might conjecture that defining humanity and it’s practices has not been resolved by a tradition of Philosophers, nor the journalistic hacks of our unenlightened present.
One might just observe that freedom means freedom: to associate freely as a matter of volition, sometimes with institutional safeguards and sometimes without. The right to make contract is a legal right, while it’s religious dimension is subject to the strictures of the hetero-centric Abrahamic Tradition. Poor Mr. Douthat can’t separate the obligations of the civic from the religious. Perhaps, the origin of his benighted patriarchal theo-politics?

Political Observer

David Brooks is a pundit that can’t keep from putting his foot in his mouth:
“The progressive budget in the House seems to have been written by people hermetically sealed in the house of government. They work in government. They represent public-sector workers. They seem to have had little contact with private-sector job creators and no idea about what factors might play in their thinking. It’s a reminder that while Republicans may embarrass on a daily basis, many progressives have lost touch with what actually produces growth and prosperity.”
The ‘Free Market’ was a destructive failure, followed by the equally failed ‘Austerity’:one economic theology followed by another. One might ask the most pertinent question: who are the ‘private-sector job creators’? Another question: where are the ‘jobs’? Obscene profits on Wall Street, and a totally sluggish job market, Mr. Brooks seems to be suffering from his own bought with hermeticism.

Old New Dealer

In another time in America, when there was an actual ‘Left’, that ‘Left’ would have called David Brooks a Capitalist Stooge! But even the staunchest New Dealer would wince at this maladroit attempt to rewrite history:
“Today, liberalism seems to have changed. Today, many progressives seem to believe that government is the horse, the source of growth, job creation and prosperity. Capitalism is just a feeding trough that government can use to fuel its expansion.”
As if the New Deal was not about the power of government to help save Capitalism from it’s own self-destructive greed, and utter lack of civic responsibility. But unfortunately the New Democrats have discarded that old New Deal Liberalism for the the trappings of the winners, Neo-Liberalism. Just call this breathtaking re-write, by Mr. Brooks, what it is, Austerity propaganda! The current societal laboratory for the failure of that Austerity is Great Britain.
Almost Marx          

The rallying cry of Conservatism whether it be in turn of the century Vienna or America 2013, is the pernicious threat of Decadence. And Moral Decline is it’s most pernicious expression: the decline of ‘hetero marriage’ and the advent of ‘gay marriage’ is the point of no return, in Mr. Douthat’s world.

In a time when many eyes are on the arguments before The Supreme Court, Mr. Douthat is stoking the fires of Hetro paranoia, with his observations on the sorry state of marriage, now mind you, we’re speaking of that old standby Man, woman, child. Human institutions are eternal and unchanging,(like the Church?) at least in the world view of Conservatives like Mr. Douthat, but the rest of the country and world are redefining themselves and their principals. While raising children without the putative stability of marriage. Whether the results be good, bad or indifferent. Not to mention that Conservatives are the staunch defenders of prenatal life and the primary impediment to enlightened social policy, that could enrich and encourage that life after birth.

Mr. Douthat is an experienced , indeed, perennial propagandist but like King John who bid the tides to stop, his propaganda is for naught. Except as a fascinating ethical/political relic.

Political Cynic

I think an observer of the opinionating of Mr. David Brooks just might readily look at his essay How Movements Recover, in which he reaches back to the Donatist movement (Heresy) in early Christianity, he references Peter Brown’s biography of Augustine, as a movement of reaction and defense compared to the embrace of the spiritual creativity and openness of Augustine. The interpolation of Brown through Brooks might meet with some deserved skepticism!

I’m reading James J. O’ Donnell’s Augustine: A New Biography and quite frankly, the portrait that Mr. O’Donnell creates of Augustine is one of a failed public career, reinvigorated by a crass self-promoter and opportunist, in the world of the church, who battled the heresy’s of Arianism and Donatism. He even managed to anger that other old Christian fraud Jerome. In fact Jerome’s letter, pages 93-96 of Mr. O’Donnell book,is withering in it’s unalloyed contempt for the theological/political machinations of Augustine.

But never mind, this is just a tedious, convoluted and intellectually pretentious introduction to Mr. Brooks genuflection in the direction of the latest occupant of the papal throne, Francis I. Mr. Brooks’ view is, as usual, myopic and avoids any mention of the pope’s involvement with the Argentinian Junta and the torture of two priests, that will haunt Jorge Mario Bergoglio, even as he pays homage to the saint of renunciation and service to the poor. Mr. Brooks’ worship of male power is perennial.

Queer Atheist

You must grant Ross Douthat credit for being a dependable Republican myth-maker, there are other words for his particular endeavors, but let this mildest descriptor stand as adequate. You could call this essay by another title, ‘The Iraq War: A gift to the Democrats’ if you allowed yourself to engage in an extreme political cynicism. Mr. Douthat demonstrates no such scruple. Continue reading →

Ross Douthat’s essay of March 16, 2013 titled What the Church Needs Now is, of course, rhetorically framed as a defense of Catholic authoritarianism. The primacy of justified male authority is the central concept of the precipitously declining patriarchy, here synonymous with Catholicism, unable to confront it’s own complicity, in the world wide child sexual abuse crisis, and the cover up by the actors and institutions of the Catholic church.

Mr. Douthat recently stated on Left, Right and Center that there was no ascertainable link between priestly celibacy and epidemic sexual molestation by priests. The moral dislocation, indeed the schizophrenia, of this Catholic/Conservative intellectual on the subject of justified male authority has produced this defense of the Church: submission to authority as key to salvation, ‘renunciation’, ‘chastity’,’solidarity’ as primary to religion and foundation to social stability. The key to which is the Family, exclusively represented by a man and a women and the centrality of procreation. I have chosen this particular paragraph of his essay because it so clearly states his Conservative Catholic defense of religion, his religion. Note too, his concern with the declining birth rate. Decadence, the subversive menace of the Hegemon.

“Religion without renunciation has obvious appeal. But its cultural consequences are not all self-evidently positive. Absent ideals of chastity, people are less likely to form families. Absent ideals of solidarity, more people live and age and die alone. The social landscape that we take for granted is one that many earlier generations would have regarded as dystopian: sex and reproduction have both been ruthlessly commodified, adult freedoms are enjoyed at the expense of children’s interests, fewer children grow up with both a mother and a father, and fewer and fewer children are even born at all.”

Political Observer

Imagine Professor Muller as the central character in Granville’s Juggler of Universes, but instead of planets he juggles the leaden cliches of Neo-Liberalism, reinforced by the Social Darwinism of the Present, known as Sociology. Now the Sociology of the Present reifies pre-given assumptions of the Politics of Now, while celebrating the values of an ‘objectivity’ in thrall to ideological fixity.

One might compare this exercise in Platonic Ideas to the high flown chatter that David Brooks produces twice a week at the New York Times. Yet Professor Muller outdistances the Conservative Sage of The Good Grey Times with a more inflated intellectual pretension and even less enlightenment.

Capitalism and Inequality, no! But Glory to our Capitalism, yes! As title for this little travelogue laced with quotes from Marx, Engels, and the redoubtable Political Romantic masquerading as Economist Friedrich Hayek. He ends his essay with a literary nod to Chernyshevsky and a long quote from ‘ the greatest American student and practitioner of political economy, Alexander Hamilton’.

The temptation to quote the ideas of Professor Muller has to be resisted,in sum his position could be described as being: I am the middle term between the waring left and right. But if the left and right are simply the factions of Neo-Liberalism, the contested political territory is utterly narrow. Again, Professor Muller offers the well worn cliches of a failed and failing Neo-Liberalism.

Political Observer