StephenKMackSD's Blog

If Mr. Ferguson, in his latest column for Newsweek titled The Incredible Shrinking Superpower, dated December 12, 2011, and his political allies weren’t so busy plotting a propaganda strategy for the attack on Iran, in the name of the safety of the world community, we might, in the ‘West’, in the name of self-interest cultivate a relationship with Mr. Putin, on the basis of political realism or cynicism, as you choose, to act as a broker for a peaceful settlement of the vexing Iran nuclear question. But then Mr. Ferguson and his allies are philosophically committed to war as the only workable solution to any given problem, no matter the cost in human life, a reflection of his defense of imperialism and it’s murderous legacy as somehow politically and ethically tenable. This essay was sharply drawn, a bristling polemic and very readable, a tribute to the rhetorical abilities of this premier political necromancer.

Political Cynic

Any person or organization that thinks that she or he, or they, can freely disagree with the policies of the apartheid state of Israel, or their American allies, and utter those thoughts or arguments in any public forum. Now comes, the hysterical,shrill proclamation of righteous indignation at this prima facie demonstration of hatred and intolerance, with the political intent of shaming the author or authors into silence.Coming from those who have an institutional investment in a very proscribed political notion of tolerance, as being located in supine acceptance of the given: the unchallengeable rightness of Israel as a priori and by definition indemnifying the American Likudniks from critique.

Political Cynic

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/picturegalleries/8896155/Style-your-garag…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po8EimwKCwE&feature=player_embedded

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po8EimwKCwE&feature=player_embedded

The great piano virtuoso Arturo Benedette Michhelangelli is said to have arrived at concert appearances just as the curtain rose, and to play the entirety of his concert in his overcoat. Here is David Brooks in his latest essay at The New York Times titled The Wonky Liberal of December 6,2011, imitating Mr. Michhelangelli: in the sense that here is our pundit dressed to go out for an evening, with his overcoat on, tapping away at his old, refurbished IBM Selectric I, you know he is a Conservative, but he really can’t resist the feel of this miracle of last centuries technology, and he learned to type on one just like it .He found a man in town that actually sells refurbished typewriters of all kinds.

The center of this particular essay is based on statistics provided by The Center of Progressive Reform, or more directly, on how that information should be interpreted. And it’s unsurprising data that President Obama and the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, headed by Cass Sunstein, have been very friendly to ‘reform’ of business regulation, tilted in the direction of relaxed rather than restrictive government interventions. And on cue, enter the ‘Left’ to provide the necessary antagonists to this, the enlightened reform, although Mr. Brooks doesn’t spare the critics on the ‘Right’ ,either, for their charges of ‘Socialism’. It is a celebration of the moderation of President Obama’s position on regulatory issues, and a proclamation of Mr. Brooks’ assent to that moderating practice. Although one could identify that Moderation as defined by parameters introduced by Reaganism and adapted by the New Democrats , who thirsted after power, so much so, that they willfully forgot the imperatives that fueled the Party for nearly fifty years: rationalized as modernization or as staying competitive with the winners. The Market being the ultimate test of economics, as well as the practices of governance.

Mr. Brooks acts as if his readers are incapable of interpreting this, or any political document, without his interpolation being determinative. He re-enacts the Conservative worldview that renders null the seminal ideas of Emmanuel Kant, of the self-emancipation from tutelage and the self-responsibility that inheres in freedom. Conservatism is about authority wielded in the name of superior knowledge: making questions to that constituted authority verboten. Mr. Brooks makes just that argument, in a rhetoric softened by it’s tone of the mean between the two extremes, and it’s asserted self-evident rightness.

Political Observer

All my readers must remember the elegant prose,the thought of that dear Hollywood wordsmith Joyce Haber, and her many contributions to our national discourse.( If your reading this, do not pretend that you don’t know this writer and her exalted status, in the pantheon of American Letters.) A part of that singular contribution is the power stratifications of The A List, The B List etc. Enter the Foreign Policy honcho Mr. Leslie Gelb, who freely adapts Ms. Haber’s social/political metric, to his prescient examination of the job prospects, of the many contenders for positions that will open up, post the 2012 election. Of course, this all takes place with the aid of his editor, the illustrious Tina Brown, her husband or even an unpaid Ivy League intern, garnishing his leaden prose with maladroitly inserted one liners. This is amusing, but not in the way intended by the editor. To my regular readers who need some diversion from our grim political condition, see Mr. Gelb’s latest essay, it might just provide a diverting cognitive dissonance, amid the squalor of our collapse.

Sincerely yours,

Myra B.          

Day by day we see the cumulative evidence of the failure of Capitalism and the concomitant victory of authoritarian principles and practices of governance,these essays are highly instructive:

Detroit in a hostile takeover bid at the CBS News web site. An attempt by Governor Rick Snyder to cancel valid public sector union contracts, using the economic crisis as rationale for precipitate authoritarian action: the reduction of a once great city, to the status of vessel, by a more powerful and corrupt Free Market political radical.

From Occupation to “Occupy”: The Israelification of American Domestic Security by Max Blumenthal, a report on the siege mentality of the Apartheid State of Israel and the importation of the technology of repression to America, and some it’s domestic political consequences.

The We-Are At-War mentality by Glenn Greenwald, an essay on the continuing legacy that the War on Terror and it’s Neo-Conservative enactors that have become permanently installed in the thinking and actions of established governmental agencies,even the actions of the New Democrat,President Obama.

Paying attention to Zizek’s recent comment about the loss of the automatic legitimacy of the system, starkly contrasted with the ancient concept of the cultivation of civic republican virtue: we are in a crisis that has been precipitated by the failure of Capital to demonstrate any civic responsibility, in fact to simply manifest thievery on a vast scale, without any legal penalty. The perpetrators are walking as free citizens, while their political allies destroy what is left of The New Deal, in the name of ‘Reform’ along the line of institutional peonage of the middle class. All this is taking place while social unrest grows exponentially, as a function of that failed Market paradigm. And the rise of a repressive,militarized police force and the neutralization of Habeas Corpus protections, in the name of National Security, by way of the ticking time bomb argument, and the conformist and craven politicos of the U.S. Senate. We are in deep trouble as a nation, as a republic, as a people. Let me posit an old question, in a new context: What is to be done? Who will answer this question, our Chernyshevsky, our Tolstoy, our Lenin, our Nechaev? Or will the Republic be suffocated from within by it’s elected protectors? 

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