StephenKMackSD's Blog

The cult of the worship of the blastocyst, the embryo, the fetus as constituting human life, not just it's elementary beginnings, and therefore providing a window on the perception of sacred core of humanity, has become a standard moral position, of the political irrationalism of Conservative Catholics and their Fundamentalist allies. That the moral position of the advocates of life can be succinctly described as men lecturing women on morality is reflective of paternalism, in an unapologetic form. It seems that men in the conservative world don't take seriously the moral agency of women. One can measure this lack of faith in that agency by the quality of lecture in the commentary of conservative intellectuals like Ross Douthat. His essay The Democrats’ Abortion Moment starts with a 'thought experiment' provided by philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson. It deserves to be quoted in full:

“Imagine, wrote Thomson, that you awoke to find yourself lashed to a famous violinist. The violinist suffers from a lethal kidney disease, and because only your blood type can save his life, his admirers have kidnapped you and looped your circulatory systems together. If you consent to remain thus entangled for nine months, he will make a full recovery. Disentangle yourself, however, and he dies.

Thomson suggested that a woman facing an unintended pregnancy is in a similar position. Her body is effectively being held hostage, and while carrying the unborn life to term might be a heroic act, it cannot be required of her, any more than you could be required to meekly accept your fate as a prisoner of the violinist.”

Professor J.J. Thomson's grotesquely cartoonish, even utterly irrelevant,'thought experiment' whether in support of abortion or not, is so much garnish to Mr. Douthat's effort to place the spotlight elsewhere, rather than squarely on Todd Akin and his Know-Nothing theology.(Note the salient fact that Professor Thomson is a woman, who uses a very sophisticated, if monstrous, analogy as a 'thought experiment' that opens Mr. Douthat's essay, proving, without doubt, that a woman is capable of demonstrable moral agency and argument.) And the hold that that theology has on the Conservative moral imagination, and by definition the Republican Party. The point of conception and the resulting fertilized egg are in that moral universe a 'person'.

Let us move to the more revelatory aspect of the politics of Mr. Douthat's essay which might be described as being an adaptation of Rovian Politics: misdirection being it's first rule. Mr. Akin's remarks about 'legitimate rape', meaning in fact forcible rape, were absolutely in line with the Republican political theology. Mr. Douthat's essay points to the Democrats and away from Todd Akin's ideological pronouncement. A net plus, in terms of misdirection, although not very effective. The second rule of Rovian politics is to attack the strengths of your opponent. One might speculate that the members of the Democratic Party believe that women are capable of exercising their autonomous moral agency, without the guidance of men: not to say that a woman would not seek the advice of someone she trusts, man or woman. One could also say that the modern Republican Party is peopled with bible based Christian Fundamentalists, among other Conservative and Christian factions. Catholics like Mr. Douthat are some of the most vocal supporters of the Republican Party, because of it's Pro-Life politics and it's exaltation of male power: a corollary of the Catholic Church's exclusively male hierarchy. Here is the last sentence of Mr. Douthat's tortured piece of maladroit propaganda, chock-a-block with the stale political/moral posturings of Conservative thought, and casting himself as the mean between the two extremes of Todd Akin, as Conservative radical, and President Obama as Left wing radical, on the issue of abortion, and framed on that burning question of the political moment, according to Mr. Douthat and his political allies:

“ Hence the dangerous (for liberals) question lurking beneath the surface of the Akin controversy. If the Republican nominee for Senate in Missouri is an extremist on abortion, what does that make the president of the United States?”

Queer Atheist

The great crusade of the Free Marketeers in the wake of economic collapse of 2008 and the subsequent demonstration of the indefatigable thievery of Capital is to manufacture a usable political hysteria about the 'debt crisis'. Now, if the economy was performing at pre 2008 levels, would there even be a question? Add to that another question: why is Capital performing so poorly? Where is the self-correcting market of contemporary Conservative lore and legend? Like Chicken Little, David Brooks can't stop himself from announcing, in his usual cheap moralizing tone, that the sky is falling: the ever growing debt, while ignoring the continuing crisis of Capital itself as a cancerous growth that continues to do it's dirty work unimpeded. No, no Mr. Brooks will have none of that nonsense, it would interfere with his attempt to set the terms of political debate. The Ryan Budget and Simpson-Bowles Commission could simply be separate iterations of the mirage of austerity or another example of the Neo-Liberal swindle. At the center of Mr. Brooks' essay is a minor quibble with Rep. Ryan, in that he did not support Simpson -Bowles which takes center stage in this collection of political conjectures that lead to the conclusion that David Brooks exercises a knowledge that leads to a cul de sac, although argued with a certain aplomb. Mr. Brooks never stops being brilliant even when it leads to a dead end.

But let us not tarry, here, in the last two paragraphs is the anticipated denouement of the essay:

“In the real world, leaders have a dual consciousness. They have a campaign consciousness in which they argue for the policies they think are best for the country. But then they have a governing consciousness, a mind-set they put on between elections. It says: O.K., this is the team the voters have sent to Washington. How can we navigate our divides to come up with something suboptimal but productive?

Paul Ryan has a great campaign consciousness, and, when it comes to things like Medicare reform, I agree with him. But when he voted no on the Simpson-Bowles plan he missed the chance to show that he also has a governing consciousness. He missed the chance to do something good for the country, even if it wasn’t the best he or I would wish for.”

The governing and the campaign consciousness: the master ideas, the summa of Mr. Brooks labors might be considered as elementary. But as one contemplates the Republican Party and it's addiction to a notion and practice of political purity, in the now ascendant Tea Party ideology, casts Rep. Ryan's failure to endorse Simpson-Bowles as ideologically consistent politics, of a very proscribed kind. Having not one iota of relevance to governance, which has been discarded as not politically usable, while obstructionism is adopted as a strategy of defeating President Obama, by blocking any attempted melioration. Politics is about the art of the possible, that is based on the good faith of all political actors. The campaign to defeat Obama is about the foreclosure of politics into a strategy of the pursuit of victory through political nihilism. We could most productively view Mr. Brooks' critique of Rep. Ryan as an attempt to burnish his credentials as a thoughtful conservative with his liberal readers.

Almost Marx

Mr. Brooks returns from vacation with his essay Guide for the Perplexed, an assertion of his political reasonableness, for a brief rhetorical moment he models a kind of ersatz centrism reinforced in the readers mind, by the inclusion of a link to Third Way, a think tank, the name affirms it's political usefulness. The question of 'Entitlement Reform' the euphemism for dismantling the remains of the New Deal in the Neo-Liberal vocabulary is the issue. And the rising cost of Medicare is the salient question for Mr. Brooks. 'Entitlement' is the insulting and demeaning term that somehow the benefits of Social Security and Medicare are unearned and undeserved. 'Entitlements' rob the next generation and hobble our efforts to assist the the poor, feed the hungry and repair our decaying infrastructure: Should we call this what it is, a pandering hypocrisy aimed at liberal readers? And please don't tell me that Mr. Brooks did not attack Social Security, because the two are inextricably linked; anything not linked to 'market forces' is Neo-Liberal heresy. Here Mr. Brooks asks the pertinent question:

“ So when you think about the election this way, the crucial question is: Which candidate can slow the explosion of entitlement spending so we can devote more resources toward our future?”

There are no surprises when reading Mr. Brooks, the terminus of this question takes up the remainder of his essay, all of which is a carefully and artfully garnished tribute to the 'surprising passion' of Mitt Romney.

“When you look at Mitt Romney through this prism, you see surprising passion. By picking Paul Ryan as his running mate, Romney has put Medicare at the center of the national debate. Possibly for the first time, he has done something politically perilous. He has made it clear that restructuring Medicare will be a high priority.

This is impressive. If you believe entitlement reform is essential for national solvency, then Romney-Ryan is the only train leaving the station.”

There is no hysterical appeal to the political theology of the Tea Party but a calm appeal to the exercise of public reason by a responsible public actor: Grover Norquist scrubbed clean of the political taint of economic extremism and political purism.

Here is the key to the wisdom of Romney/Ryan:

“Moreover, when you look at the Medicare reform package Romney and Ryan have proposed, you find yourself a little surprised. You think of them of as free-market purists, but this proposal features heavy government activism, flexibility and rampant pragmatism.”

The voucher is the answer. Yet serious questions remain, for some readers.

“ This system would provide a basic health safety net. It would also unleash a process of discovery. If the current Medicare structure proves most efficient, then it would dominate the market. If private insurers proved more efficient, they would dominate. Either way, we would find the best way to control Medicare costs. Either way, the burden for paying for basic health care would fall on the government, not on older Americans. (Much of the Democratic criticism on this point is based on an earlier, obsolete version of the proposal.)”

“Process of discovery” acts rhetorically as a stand in for an article of faith for Conservatives,even the New Democrats, the wisdom of the market. Seen in the light of the economic crash of 2008 and subsequent occurrences, merely confirm a viable suspicion that 'The Market' is simply incapable of making anything resembling sound, ethically based political decisions. That strains, even explodes the parameters of a mere descriptive mechanism, such is the hold of this moral/political chimaera.

“You’re still deeply uncomfortable with many other Romney-Ryan proposals. But first things first. The priority in this election is to get a leader who can get Medicare costs under control. Then we can argue about everything else. Right now, Romney’s more likely to do this.”

One grows tired of Mr. Brooks as incense bearer at the alter of Austerity! The Market and Capital, under the rubric of the exercise of responsible citizenship, might busy themselves with the real business of producing the number of well paying, secure jobs that will bring this country back to it's once prosperous state. Let the discussion of 'Entitlement Reform' take place within the context of that national endeavor.

“All of which causes you to look over to the Democrats and wonder: Why don’t they have an alternative? Silently, a voice in your head is pleading with them: Put up or shut up.

If Democrats can’t come up with an alternative on this most crucial issue, how can they promise to lead a dynamic growing nation?”

One can say with a note of regret and despair that the New Democrat President Obama is a Neo-Liberal, and as such is a Free Marketeer, with a window dressing of New Deal Liberalism: a modified welfare state exercised within the framework of that market, both Simpson-Bowles and the ACA demonstrate that Conservatism, quite conclusively. So the choice for the voter seems clear: do we want a destructive austerity led by Rep. Paul Ryan, steeped in the belief of American economic decline and the demonstrable failure of Free Market economics, or a conservative New Democrat who is also attached to a modified but equally unjustified faith in the current economic theology?

Political Observer

Niall Ferguson reminds his readers in his essay Obama's Gotta Go, in both Newsweek and on the Daily Beast, that he was a good sport, a good loser in the 2008 election. No more Mr. Nice Guy, is his assertion, tied to the usual layer of inflated Ferguson egoism and self-aggrandizement: it's a package deal. There are the usual characters that inhabit the manufactured Ferguson Political Melodrama; The failed wobbly liberal incompetence of Barack Obama is, at this point, the protagonist and villain of the piece. Although some observers of the political practice of President Obama would deem it a moderate conservatism, but that will not do for the polemical intent of Mr. F. The stalled economy, rising debt and the pernicious Affordable Care Act play their parts in this diatribe, that acts as an indictment. About the political decline of the Republican Party, into the dead end of nihilist ideological purity, is a subject of no interest, yet the parade of Robespierres that have taken over the party, day by day, brings it's trajectory to the margins of American life into unsavory focus. Mr. Ferguson is a Conservative thinker and as such has made a contribution toward the victory of that very particular iteration of Conservative philosophy, some would call it unrecognizable, indeed a destructive hybrid, or more pointedly, a kind of Manicheanism. I must not in my analysis and my haste forget other important characters mentioned by our dramaturge (there are many, but I will select the most important) : Simpson -Bowles, The Arab Spring, the economic rise of China, that will exceed American success, a re-imagined Yellow Peril (a favorite, even a stock character) and of course Mr. F.'s current political romance with Rep. Paul Ryan. Now, mind you, Mr. F.'s support for the Romney/Ryan ticket seems predicated on his adoration, there is no other word for it, of the economics of Rep. Ryan, not to mention that Mr. F. has met and talked with him, and assures his readers of his probity and virtue. For the skeptics, like myself, an antidote to Mr. F.s apologetics, his enthusiasm can be found in Matt Millers collection of essays on Rep. Paul Ryan's economics and in Paul Krugman's column of August 19, 2012 titled An Unserious Man. For further insight, see Paul Krugman's reply titled Unethical Commentary, Newsweek Edition to Mr. F.'s essay.

Political Observer

If you thought that the summer hiatus of August offers no political interest, here is a story at the respectably conservative Economist titled 'When insurgents are incumbents'. It offer a window on the search for ideological purity that obsesses the Republican Party of 2012: to such an extent that the moderate conservative Senator Richard Lugar was defeated in a recent Indiana primary election. Doing the peoples business is then relegated to a minor role, while the ideological purity exemplified by the political theology of the Tea Party and of the ruthless Mr. Grover Norquist is ascendant. One wonders when the American electorate will tire of the Manichean principles that dominate it's political discourse, and to the political nihilism of this collection of Robespierres, that has and will crush the heretics, no matter where they hide, even if it be in the very bosom of the Party? The story at the Economist concentrates it's analytical energies on the horse race with ideological issues taking a role along side of the contest between David Schweikert and Ben Quayle, of the redrawn sixth congressional district of Arizona. It is all boringly familiar, except for those attuned to the ideological and moral imperatives that animate the Republican Party in 2012. The candidate's web sites are filled with pictures and videos of community and political supporters, while written positions are brief, minimal, as in positions on issues of concern to voters. The thank yous for attended events and support are effusive. Here it is in all it's detail and it's essential themes of a contest for likability, trust and above all else, political purity.

Political Observer

Mr. Joshua Trevino has a penchant for repeating the cliches, the tropes of American Conservatism, by way of Samuel P. Huntington, Bush The Younger and the muscular present day American Fundamentalist Christianity. Add to that list of precursors the names of Leo Strauss and his sub rosa ally Carl Schmitt. With a kind of unctuous self-congratulation, Mr. Trevino tell us – and be reminded elegantly- that he is displaying and arguing self-evident truths. His essay titled Too Good to Win, Is the West Losing the War appears on The Brussels Journal website, that advertises itself as 'The Voice of Conservatism In Europe'. This was originally a speech before delivered to the California Republican Jewish Coalition (RJW) on Saturday, 21 June 2008. Mr. Trevino manages to touch on the deeply held beliefs, even the prejudices of his audience, he is nothing if not politic. The audience is Jewish, Conservative, Republican, Neo-Conservative, American Likudnik? Or is the last sentence a glaring tautology? And more importantly is the label American Likudnik Anti-Semitic? I'll have to leave that pressing question for another occasion. To those who find this collection of the hackneyed, the shopworn less than edifying, he will dismiss your comment as irrelevant or worse. When angered, Mr. Trevino reverts to childish taunt, his poise and self-satisfied rhetorical elegance deserts him and a pathos, of sorts, takes the lead.

Day One of his Politics begins on September 11, 2001. He celebrates the American Wound as the genesis of his fable of the benevolence of the American Hegemony, and the mendacity and bad faith of 'The Muslim World', with assurances of his knowledge of the benighted political/existential and geographical spaces that comprise that construct. But the real story here is Mr. Trevino's touching and revelatory re-imagination of his nine year old self, discovering the political truth and magic of Ronald Reagan. It has all the heart warming sentimentality of the dull black and white of a 1940's Hollywood movie, and the lethal, pernicious nihilism of the Republican Party of our own age.

Political Observer

Helen Gurley Brown is dead. The world is in mourning. The lady who set sixties American aflame with her runaway bestseller, Sex and the Single Girl, that was turned into a forgettable, but profitable and popular, Hollywood movie starring Natalie Wood and Tony Curtis, was an exponent of the ambitious career girl of another age.The questions, then, were how to succeed in a male dominated world using your feminine wiles, while maintaining that femininity – tall order! The celebrated age of Mad Men,at least for those nostalgic for their lost power and prestige, where men ruled the roost and called the shots on who got promoted, and who got fired. It was a simpler age. Helen reeked the ethos of the corporate self-promoter circa 1950. She was a climber in the age of the climber,corporate and social. No apology needed, she was just one of many.(The humiliation of the Depression ruled the aspirations of a generation.) Don't confuse Ms. Brown with her contemporary Betty Friedan, whose bestseller The Feminine Mystique shared that bestseller list with her book. No old line leftist,she never attacked masculine privilege, she practiced a kind of knowing accommodation, that used the assertion of male power as a fulcrum to gain hard won advantage, via the use of her femininity and her ability to know her antagonist's weak points. Disguised as feminine chatter about the importance of owning the perfect 'little black dress' etc., and the soft-core porn covers for her magazine Cosmo, that, by the way, cemented the position of the push up bra in the American fashion vernacular, she was the precursor to the two great titans of contemporary American publishing, Tina Brown and Arianna Huffington.
Sincerely yours,
Myra B.

Hey, it's Myra B. here. Just got around to reading my favorite conservative columnist, David Brooks. The title of the essay of August 2, 2012 is The Credit Illusion. Mr. B. is most pathetic when attempts to be funny. It always seems like a misfire, if you know what I mean. His literary cover is a letter addressed to an advice columnist called Mr. Opinion Guy, from a letter writer who identifies as Confused in Columbus. Well, as they used to say sixty years ago on T.V., hilarity ensues. Except that this essay can't quite make up it's mind to be funny or just be the same old tired moralizing that is a staple of his regular opinionating. So he does a bit of both, with dismal result. It sounded like a Sam Levenson routine from sixty years ago. Mr. L's stand up routines, he a former public school teacher with a penchant for a brand of hectoring comedy, now utterly and thankfully passe: sometimes producing cringing laughter in mid-afternoon audiences on the Arthur Godfrey Show, as I recall. Except, that Mr. L. had such appeal, because he would become hopelessly tickled, by his own routine, and he would laugh with a kind of appealing embarrassment, that made him an audience favorite. 
Mr. B's resort to 'humor' is occasioned by President Obama's comments on the dependence of all citizens on the infrastructure, both human and material, that supports capital endeavors. Of course, Mr. Brooks can't pass up an opportunity to mildly lampoon, as that assertion of self-evident, but politically usable truth telling, can't be passed up. The life path of the bourgeois white male is carefully described and foreshortened to the point of caricature. Mr. B. in print has none of the appeal of Mr. L. on that twenty one inch black and white screen of yesterday. The force of personality is the lesson of both Hollywood and television, alas for Mr. B. print captures his mundane chatter with dismal fidelity.
Truly yours,
Myra B.            

http://www.ullsteinbuchverlage.de/ullsteinhc/buch.php?id=17789&page=suche…

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Mr. Leslie Gelb continues to trade on the shopworn assumption that a reader of his foreign policy essays will find his stance, as outsider, credible. It pushes it to the point of fracture. Consult his impressive C. V. for confirmation of his establishment credentials. Yet he still continues to use this rhetorical pose as the starting point for his latest piece at The Daily Beast titled Kofi Annan’s Exit: Why Obama Should Lead From Behind In Syria. Outsiders don't receive e mail from members of the President's staff, or at the least, don't mention that communication to their readers, if they feel bound to protect their public image as outsider. What does the play of the notion of the insider/outsider duality contribute to an act of advocacy, of argumentative clarification? Perhaps, the political notion of the expert and of expertise has now reached a point of exhaustion in the public mind. Once an article of faith in policy circles, Mr. Gelb trades upon the oscillation between the decline in respect for experts/expertise and the insider/outsider dyad to enhance the reception of his opinionating. Mr. Gelb presents himself in the role of rational political thinker, the mean between two positions and their arguments political and moral, The Neo-Conservative and Liberal interventionists in the matter of the bloody and protracted Syrian civil war. Mr. Gelb advocates a policy of 'leading from behind' for President Obama. The political framing of our exhausted moral/economic/political capital in Iraq and Afghanistan and the myriad fronts of drone 'warfare' are the unmentioned background of this essay. Leading from behind is insider language, the jargon of the foreign policy adept. It describes, in an obtuse way, the very notion and practice of diplomacy. The question of the countries nearest to the war zone having a vested interest in a peaceful resolution to the conflict seems self-evident, to the point of the absurdly simplistic. We can view Mr. Gelb's opinionating as valuable in two ways: as the self-serving political propaganda of a shadow member of the Obama administration,and as the product of one of the architects of a failed foreign policy, that fostered and rationalized the successive Assad regimes as part of an ad hoc defense of Israel.

Political Observer