StephenKMackSD's Blog

Perhaps,Mayor de Blasio sees Broken Windows Policing as failed i.e.both in terms of the legacy of Stop and Frisk and possibly as the back door for making up municipal budgetary shortages by means of issuing of tickets with hefty fines. Not to forget the Mayor’s lack of a faith in what the Economist swears by, the Neo-Liberal license to steal from public funds: Charter Schools. The price tag 136 million, as of May 5,2014!

Charter Schools Gone Wild: Study Finds Widespread Fraud, Mismanagement and Waste

This essay, heavy with political melodrama:’The blue thread frays’ was an opportunity not to be wasted by The Economist, about a mentally ill man with a gun, who made a readily politically exploitable statement about police, that could/did serve many ideological purposes, not the least of which was to attack a Mayor with whom The Economist has issues. To protect and to serve does not empower a policeman or a police force with the right to take a life for selling single cigarettes, nor to defend by the back door Stop and Frisk and it’s mendacious legacy! This essay wasn’t Journalism but ideologically fueled political polemic, against a mayor who The Economist judges to be a Leftist: the most loaded word in the American political lexicon. Call this essay a shameful exercise in political pandering, to an audience carefully attuned to the political crimes, real and imagined, of that Left.
Political Skeptic

http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21637418-bill-de-blasios-first-year-city-hall-ends-turmoil-blue-thread-frays

Mr. Strauss needs a much better lawyer! Mr. Rosen, opening his essay on Strauss, with his long and ennui inducing comments on Mr. Bellow’s novel Ravelstein was cunning literary padding. Mr. Bellow wrote the same novel many times, Ravelstein being one of the many iterations of his literary practice. Call Ravelstein by it’s rightful name, the fictional biography of a arch manipulator/propagandist.  With a guest appearance by a fictionalized Strauss. But a much more aggressive defense should be mounted: because Mr. Rosen leaves out of his collection of book titles the work of German scholar Heinrich Mieir , a Strauss specialist and editor of his collected works.
Carl Schmitt and Leo StraussThe Hidden Dialogue:

http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo3637206.html

Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem:

http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/philosophy/political-philosophy/leo-strauss-and-theologico-political-problem?format=PB

These two books don’t deal specifically with Mr. Strauss’ politics per say but offer insights into the esoteric/exoteric reading of the philosophical tradition: a reader might see this as intellectual permission to ‘read’ that tradition ideologically? and his defense/advocacy of the authoritarian Plato’s Noble Lie ( The City and Man). Perhaps the crux of the Strauss debate situated in it’s American context, rather than in philosophical/theological milieu of the Strauss/Schmitt rapprochement: although both had decided authoritarian political sympathies/allegiances. Enter stage Right the Neo-Cons, more than willing to exploit the concept of the Noble Lie in positions to wield influence on the powerful.

Almost Marx

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/athens-the-midway-defending-leo-strauss-11859?page=show

C.R.’s whole thesis is that things weren’t so bad in the Thirties, and provides the carefully massaged, relevant statistical data to prove it. Yet why is the collective memory of that time so suffused with anguished recollections, thoughts of want,hunger and political desperation? Mr. Orwell’s reportage being just one instance of that collective memory. This being The Economist should we immediately surmise the worst: Left wing propaganda?
Economics is really Political Economy not the self-reifying statistical models identified as ‘science’ in this essay and comments section, as the only valid form of commentary on the abject failure of the Neo-Liberal economic model: the long march toward The Road to Serfdom was led by Thatcher the Milk Snatcher.
For some valuable background on that Political Economy see Amartya Sen’s introduction to Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments the 250th anniversary edition published by Penguin Classics ISBN 978-0-14-310592-3.
The Free Market was part of the model constructed by Hayek that was based on four cornerstones:Freedom, Free Markets, the Entrepreneur and Risk, that was supposed to replace the notion of the commonwealth: the shared fate/destiny of a set of political/ethical/economic actors. Hayek’s ‘philosophical quartet’ collapsed under the weight of the absent virtue of that Entrepreneur! See Never Let A Serious Crisis Go To Waste by Philip Mirowski for a revelatory, unsparing examination of Neo-Liberalism :

Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste
From the rise of Thatcher/Reagan to the economic collapse of 2008 is barely a generation, succeeded by another political/economic mirage called Austerity, as answer to Hayek’s Economic Theology gussied up as ‘Science’.

Almost Marx

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/12/public-spending-britain#comments

Imagine the temerity of a mere waiter attempting to arrest Oxbridger Tony Blair for war crimes: it almost has about it the kind of Beyond the Fringe comic brio! The estimable Jonathan Miller and crew could have done it handily.
Poor Tony! his life is one extended political/ethical melodrama. Never has the political opportunism at the center of rise of New Labor been so amply demonstrated by a paradigmatic figure than by Tony Blair. He’s not a character from Dickens but rather from the political novels of Disraeli or even the high political melodrama of the Palliser novels. Yet he does not win the sympathy of the readers, of this almost even-handed essay, when it descends to a regrettable although predictable political bathos:

That is a shame, for his mission to fight against fundamentalism needs all the resources and energy it can get. He has considerable talents, which he is prepared to devote to his cause, just as he energised a moribund Labour Party and made it a more powerful political force than the largely retrograde instincts of Ed Miliband, its present leader, could have done. Yet the main asset that any former politician has is moral sway, and because Mr Blair has forfeited so much trust, he has far less credibility than he should have. Some contrition or regret among those ironclad certainties would serve him and his cause better. The late Mo Mowlam, an outspoken minister in the Blair government, was on to something when she observed early in his reign that “the trouble with Tony is that he thinks he’s fucking Jesus.” Mr Blair has plenty of the Messiah’s self-belief and sense of mission. He could do with a dash of his humility as well.

Political Cynic

http://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21636603-celebrated-abroad-and-reviled-home-former-prime-minister-struggles-fulfil

Mr. Douthat’s augmentative attack on the monster of Political Correctness is carefully embellished for maximum effectiveness? Note that he places the cyber-attack on Sony in an American political context: one might ask how is the presumed attack by Korean hackers, in retaliation for making their dear leader and North Korea the object of ridicule, related to Mr. Douthat’s straw man argument. Call him the political/literary stepchild of Mrs. Malaprop?

OF course it had to escalate this way. We live in a time of consistent gutlessness on the part of institutions notionally committed to free speech and intellectual diversity, a time of canceled commencement invitations and C.E.O.s defenestrated for their political donations, a time of Twitter mobs, trigger warnings and cringing public apologies. A time when journalists and publishers tiptoe around Islamic fundamentalism, when free speech is under increasing pressure on both sides of the Atlantic, when a hypersensitive political correctness has the whip hand on many college campuses.

Followed by the bathos of a carefully calibrated exercise in self-pity:

As a conservative, you take for granted that these institutions are often political monocultures — that the average commencement speaker, like the average academic, will be several degrees left of center, that Silicon Valley isn’t the most hospitable place to be a religious conservative, that when Hollywood gets “edgy” or “controversial” it’s usually a right-wing ox that’s being gored.

Political Skeptic

Mr. Luce in his race to meet his deadline simply appropriates/reinterprets Mr. Niall Ferguson’s decline of the West political fatalism, decline/degeneration, and places it within the rhetoric of a question framed by glib yet vacuous pop psychology: is the west clinically depressed? He practices armchair psychology with a quick succession of metaphors: Today’s pessimism, miserabilism, technological revolution,personal freedom the west’s creed, our gloom that he posits as the pervasive psychological condition of the west. It’s simply not a maladroit description of the present quandary of the west but a defense of the utterly failed western experiment with Neo-Liberalism. From the rise of Thatcher/Reagan to the economic collapse of 2008 happened in less than a generation. All this chatter about the return of prosperity is so much window dressing. A quote from the essay is instructive:
‘It would be tempting to say yes. The average westerner lives far longer, is far less affected by war and has vastly greater choice than any people in human history. To be alive and free ought to be a giddy privilege. Perhaps we are so historically ignorant in our bliss that we do not appreciate what we have. Maybe something deeper, the continuous distraction of technology, perhaps, has so altered our neural wiring that we are less capable of appreciating what is under our noses. Or perhaps we are so unimpressed with the quality of public life nowadays, we suffer that misery that can come only from self-knowledge. All are types of depression. Each, in one form or another, has been suggested as an explanation for the west’s gloom. None strikes me as a killer diagnosis.’
After this praise for the ‘west’ and cynical dismissal of ‘self-knowledge’ as the crux of misery, it is quickly followed by the rise of others e.g. China and India,then comes the assertion that the west is growing old i.e. the onset of political sclerosis. In the Free Market mythology equaling shrinking risks brings shrinking rewards, for the risk averse pool of entrepreneurial actors, if any. The ‘grey lobby’ enters as anti-political actor: Tea Party,UKIP, National Front i.e. ‘western gerontocracy’. And mercifully enters the final player in this shopworn psychodrama, the greedy, the selfish ‘baby boomer’. The reader realizes more of Mr. Luce’s political/moral concerns than of the clinical disposition of the west in this essay.
Political Skeptic
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/e6fa9024-86b6-11e4-9c2d-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=intl#axzz3Mdic2ZRn

Mr. Ash is adept at glibly articulating the American/E.U. Party line on Ukraine. Garnished with a bit of cheer leading for the Coup Government, combined with a misbegotten wish that Putin will some how come round, this is pure fantasy! Mr. Ash’s piece resembles the essays of Mr. David Brooks at the New York Times, in that some of the historical markers are recognizable but it looks like a territory re-imagined in service to ideological ends.

Perhaps, when the blessings of Austerity finally hit home: the slashing of pensions in half and an attempt by NATO to place ABM’s on the Russian border, this low level war with fully ignite, to the joy of Victoria Nuland and her husband Robert Kagan.

But here is the piece de resistance:

‘Putin Inc. needs a new and different model. But over his 15 years in power, the regime has appeared unwilling or unable to tolerate the kind of radical reforms now needed, because they likely challenge the very underpinnings of the regime itself.’

The positing of a volte face by Mr. Putin into the ranks of the Neo-Liberal Austerity fold out ranks his earlier exercise in wish fulfillment. I write this on Thursday December 18, 2014, President Obama has announced a plan, an agonizingly timid plan, to normalize relations with Cuba after a half-century of a destructive hold over from the Cold War. The lesson we might draw from this could include both sides in the low level war over Ukraine ( the dangers of imperial adventurism as practiced by America and Russia?), except that a low level banking technocrat with ‘skin in the game’ and an ascertainable ideological myopia seems to miss what might be most relevant,compelling in the question of Ukraine: how many human lives will the American/E.U. alliance sacrifice to their hegemonic ambition?
Political Skeptic
http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2014/12/17/hello-2015-having-failed-in-ukraine-russia-will-turn-inwards/

I read with interest Mr. McCarthy’s review of The Power of Market Fundamentalism, as I had found the book on Amazon, and it was quite outside my price range. Even facing that impediment, my interest was still active, and I was happy to find a link to Mr. McCarthy’s review on my twitter feed. And this quite thorough indeed compellingly well written review will lead me to an eventual purchase of a used copy of this book.

I purchased instead a copy of Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste by Philip Mirowski at the Verso web site:

http://www.versobooks.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=never+let+a+serious+crisis+go+to+waste&commit=%C2%A0

I’m on page 120 and finding it challenging and quite rewarding reading on the rise of Neo-Liberalism and it’s some thirty year dominance of the discourse of Political Economy in American politics. I came to this book after reading the issue of Critical Review volume 25 numbers 3-4 2013 titled Hayek: the Good, The Bad, The Ugly. An informative collection of essay on the ubiquitous epistemology/constructs/ideas/propaganda of Mr. Hayek.

As much as I enjoyed Mr. McCarthy’s review, I was struck by the comment or rather the near hysterical screeching reply of BMerker. It reads like a pastiche of the Cold War rhetoric of the Nixon/Mundt/McCarren/McCarthy political alliance wedded to the Tea Party Economics of Rep. Paul Ryan: the merging of Rand and Hayek scrubbed clean of it’s unapologetic atheism. It was quite a jarring experience to read the carefully considered and well written review against an obvious propaganda assault.
http://bostonreview.net/books-ideas/michael-mccarthy-block-somers-market-fundamentalism-karl-polanyi

StephenKMackSD

Mr. Luce in his essay titled ‘Too big to resist: Wall Street’s comeback‘ his rhetorical mood is subject to some breathtakingly wide swings in assigning blame for the 2008 Financial Crisis, and what he predicts will be the next Crisis, enabled by the persuasive power of the redoubtable Mr. Jamie Dimon, aided by a supine, purchasable congress. A thoroughly complex story reduced in his essay to the mention of major economic/political actors, yet the dismal failure of Neo-Liberalism, of the Free Market hegemony is never even put to question: Hayek’s irrational faith in the ‘wisdom of the Market’, as guiding principle that rendered the idea,not to say the practice, of the institutions of the commonwealth and it’s civic,legal,political, ethical holism moot. The blind faith in that Market as historical/economic singularity and it’s manifold popular vulgarizations is left utterly untouched, as source of our present political/economic dilemma. Although Mr. Luce does his best at scolding the culpable, while adroitly maintaining his well established credentials as defender/advocate for that very Neo-Liberalism.

Political Skeptic

You have to credit Mr. Ross Douthat with persistence, or more accurately, with an unrelenting ideological fixation with the behavior of the lowers orders of political humanity: the working class. By which he means those shiftless poor who won’t, out of moral recalcitrance, adopt the morality of it’s betters. Mr. Douthat is really sounding the moral smugness of Reagan and his obsessions with ‘Welfare Queens driving Cadillacs’ which he alluded to in his 1976 presidential bid, and those ubiquitous out of wedlock children . Except that Mr. Douthat shifts the focus to the ‘working class male’ another maladroit code word for the morally feckless black male.

The second, by Binyamin Appelbaum, looked at the decline of work itself among less-educated men, and the forces driving this decline: low wages and weak job growth, the availability of safety-net income, the burden of criminal records, and the fraying of paternal and marital bonds.

 

The ‘availability of of safety-net income’ is the code word for welfare chiseling, not very hard to interpret this, you need only look to the code words and phrases among all the rhetorical garnish to Mr. Douthat’s essay. Add to this ‘the burden of criminal records, and the fraying of paternal and marital bonds’ to round out the right wing rhetorical engagement with the poor: the Black Family in Moral Crisis as rehearsed by a reactionary political moralist.

Almost Marx