Newspaper Reader wonders about Oxbridger snobbery, but also about the rise of Vance via Peter Thiel political manipulation, and the manuscript of Hillbilly Elegy by many hands!

stephenkmacksd.com/

Jun 20, 2026

Editor: I will just highlight some of the almost ‘literary crticism’, or more acurately that dependable Oxbridger condescension, as the preferred critical methodology. Though the reader and or listener of Vance’s self-serving chatter is echoed by his critical reviewer. Though the reader is pulled into the vortex of the mendacity, of both the author and the critic!

Culture | Resurrection on the page

J.D. Vance’s second coming

“Communion”, his latest book, shows how the vice-president fails to notice his own vices

Jun 19th 2026

Communion. By J.D. Vance. Harper; 304 pages; $35. William Collins; £20

J.D. Vance is a very godly man, as his very godly new book makes very clear. He goes to church; he is polite to priests; and he has read the Bible (twice, even the dull bits). He tries to be a very godly man in his life, too. He prays to God in intense italics to make him a “good dad”; stars out naughty words like “p***y”; and he ends his book with the word “Amen”. For him, actions matter because, as he says, quoting the Gospel of Matthew in yet more italics, “By their fruits ye shall know them”.

However if ye shall read “Communion”, the vice-president’s religious memoir, ye shall probably also feel a little confused. For which of the fruits of Mr Vance shall ye know him by? Shall ye know him as the man who prissily stars out words like p***y? Or as deputy for Donald Trump, a man who once boasted that he could “grab [women] by the pussy”? Shall ye know him as the person who predicted Mr Trump might be “America’s Hitler”? Or as the man who—as he does here—calls Mr Trump’s words “moral”? It is hard to tell.

Mr Vance used to be far simpler. This is his second literary coming; his first, published in 2016, was “Hillbilly Elegy”. Its title nodded at romantic poetry, but there was little romance here. For page after page, he chronicled the lives of the left-behind in America’s rust belt: people without jobs and with opioid habits. Its heroine, for him, was his grandmother, who he called “Mamaw”—but do not imagine her as a granny in the apron-and-apple-pie vein. When her husband irritated her, she poured gasoline over him, “lit a match, and dropped it on his chest”.

For Americans, the book’s hero was Mr Vance. Just as medieval readers were inspired by stories of saints who did battle with demons and then won eternal life, so modern ones were heartened by how Mr Vance had done battle with his own demons and drug-addicted relatives to ascend to secular sainthood—or, at any rate, a place at Yale Law School. After Mr Trump was elected in 2016, “Hillbilly Elegy” became a sensation—selling over 5m copies worldwide—and it made his name.

Mr Vance’s second coming was always going to be harder. This is not wholly his fault. Virtue, as Milton and Dante discovered, is much less fun than vice: everyone reads “Paradise Lost”; no one bothers with “Paradise Regained”. Everyone knows Dante’s “Inferno”; his “Paradiso” is an also-ran. St Augustine managed a good conversion memoir, “Confessions”, in the fourth century, but he seasoned it with ample sin, having prayed for God to make him good “but not yet”.

God made J.D. Vance good a bit too soon for “Communion” to be much fun. “Hillbilly Elegy” is filled with family tragedy, violence and uncles who do invigorating things like attacking their enemies with electric saws. By its end, however, Mr Vance is ensconced among the elite where his greatest discomfort is attending drinks events with lawyers. At these, he is first baffled by butter knives (surely that’s what index fingers are for?) then starts to doubt the meaning of life. (Lawyers can do that to a man.)

For a time, this is fine: he fills his days with work, ambition, atheism and friends. Then, as he marries and settles down, the God-shaped hole (or, arguably, given Mr Vance’s ambition, the political poll) attracts him to religion. God was not utterly alien to him: his relatives had bashed Bibles as well as each other—but he had never been devout.

Initially he is unsure on denominational differences, except that “Catholics kneeled more and the Pentecostals had better music”. At first his faith feels so anodyne it is almost Anglican: he calls Christianity “my new interest”, as if it were chess or yoga; reads a lot of C.S. Lewis; and is inspired by that great theological thinker, Aslan the lion. St Augustine this is not.

In the end it is Catholicism, with its offer of bells, smells and Satan, that most appeals. Soon he is going to confession (“like therapy, but with less whining and more guilt”), befriending priests and reading Thomas Aquinas. He was baptised in August 2019; today he evangelises with the zeal of the convert.

He quotes the archaic King James version, at length, deplores “false idols” and champions traditional motherhood. Most startlingly, he wants to weaken the traditional American separation of church and state.

But for all the fervour, his faith feels very erratic. At one point he states that Christianity demands “a constant evaluation of trade-offs”, as if Jesus were an ecclesiastical economist rather than, as Catholics believe, the son of God. When covid-19 breaks out, he realises that food might run short, so he buys “enormous bags of rice and flour” and “one thousand rounds of ammunition”. It is almost like reading about the loaves and the fishes.

Editor: The final paragraphs of this Economist Reader’ evaluations are as unimpressive as is J. D Vance political rise to power: via a well placed political actor like Peter Thiel! The cutivation of powerful political actors is indespensable!

Mr Vance is a good writer, but “Communion” is a confusing book. Which Mr Vance is he? The one who bangs on about God’s grace? Or the one who treats people like Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky—a man in need if ever there was one—with a deplorable lack of grace? He keeps repeating, “By their fruits ye shall know them”. Yet by the end of this book, ye shall probably not be much the wiser as to who J.D. Vance is, or was.

Or, most worrying of all, who he shall next become. Though even if he does ascend to the presidency, he may find that fruit is bitter, too. For, as his beloved Matthew says, “What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

https://www.economist.com/culture/2026/06/19/jd-vances-second-coming

stephenkmacksd.com/

Jun 20, 2026

Janan Ganesh celebrates the decline of the Welfare State at The F.T. by Political Observer

Posted on April 7, 2013 by stephenkmacksd

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

Janan Ganesh celebrates the decline of the Welfare State at The F.T. by Political Observer

Newspaper Reader.

stephenkmacksd.com/

Jun 20, 2026

Ian Ward of ‘POLITICO Nightly’ offers a diagnosis of JD Vance, as a possible contendor for ‘Reagans Welfare Queens’ ?

Posted on December 26, 2025 by stephenkmacksd

Political Observer

stephenkmacksd.com/

Dec 19, 2025

---

…

Similarly, some researchers have found that foreign-born Americans are slightly more likely native-born ones to express cold feelings toward Jews, though the same researchers stress that the difference is very minor and does not establish a causal link between foreign birth and antisemitic sentiment. Perhaps more significantly, Vance’s attempt to pin rising antisemitism to immigration conspicuously overlooks the role played by openly antisemitic figures on the right — people the white-nationalist commentator Nick Fuentes, who recently sat down for a friendly interview Vance’s close ally Tucker Carlson — in boosting anti-Jewish views.

But it’s fair to assume that Vance isn’t making these comments in the spirit of actually identifying the multivalent causes of these problems. Instead, they’re best understood as Vance’s attempts to manage an increasingly fractious coalition. And as windows into Vance’s own understanding of the primary fault lines dividing the Republican Party, his recent comments are actually quite illuminating.

Vance, who has readily stepped into the role of mediator between MAGA’s various competing factions, seems to have identified the cost-of-living crisis and the rise of antisemitism as two of the major issues splitting Trump’s coalition — with good reason. On the cost-of-living issue, the administration is increasingly coming under fire from populist conservatives who claim that Trump has focused on foreign policy issues at the expense of addressing the affordability crisis at home. Trump has struggled to come up with a compelling rejoinder to this line of critique, instead waffling between assuring voters that he’s taking the cost-of-living crisis seriously and dismissing “affordability” as a “Democrat scam.”

Similarly, the administration has struggled to address the growing divide on the right between stalwart supporters of Israel and “America First” critics of the U.S-Israel alliance — a group that also includes out-and-out antisemites like Fuentes. Trump’s response to this fissure has been to float ambiguously above the fray, publicly doubling down on his support for Benjamin Netanyahu’s government while also reaffirming his backing of Israel critics like Tucker Carlson — a posture has left both camps feeling unsatisfied. Vance, meanwhile, has stayed mostly quiet on the controversy.

At the same time, Vance seems to be betting that opposition to immigration remains the one stance that can unite a movement that is otherwise divided over economics, foreign policy, tech and AI policy, healthcare, the Epstein disclosures and more. Linking these more divisive issues back to immigration offers one strategy for smoothing over the fault lines. It also allows the administration to claim progress on issues where the GOP lacks consensus: If immigrants are causing the housing crisis, then what does it matter if Republicans don’t have a plan for building more housing so long as Trump ramps up his mass deportation efforts?

The risk for Vance is that voters will see through this maneuver and demand more direct plans to address issues like housing costs and stagnating wages, beyond whatever benefits are provided by the administration’s immigration crackdown. But if Vance’s recent appearance in Pennsylvania offers any indication, that’s a danger he’s willing to two-step around. “Why did housing get so expensive, double in price during the Biden administration?,” he asked. “It’s because Joe Biden let in 20 million illegal immigrants who took homes that ought by right go to American citizens.”

Newspaper Reader.

stephenkmacksd.com/

Jun 19, 2026

ESSAY

The End of the U.S.-Israel Alliance

By Joshua Leifer, a columnist for Haaretz.

It would seem that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accomplished what his predecessors could only have dreamed of: U.S. and Israeli fighter jets flying tandem over Tehran, Israeli officers ensconced in U.S. Central Command’s Florida headquarters. Since the days of David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s leaders have sought backing from the world’s preeminent superpower, which they hoped would guarantee their state’s survival into perpetuity. None could have imagined the level of cooperation currently on display. If one were to wake up the Old Man, as Ben-Gurion was known, from his otherworldly slumber in the sands of Sde Boker, he would surely delight in the news.

Appearances, however, can be deceiving. In one sense, the U.S.-Israel relationship is at its apogee. Viewed from another angle, it has already entered a period of terminal decline. The political, ideological, and sociological pillars on which the so-called special alliance rested for most of the last half-century have begun to collapse. The Israel-advocacy complex—the network of lobbying groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Jewish communal organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League, and Christian Zionist groups such as Christians United for Israel—was once a juggernaut on Capitol Hill. In today’s climate of hyperpolarization, it has started to falter, challenged first by the progressive flank of the Democratic Party and now increasingly by the neoisolationist faction of the MAGA coalition.

Public opinion has shifted dramatically. Less than half of Americans now say U.S. support for Israel is in the national interest; for the first time, Americans also view Palestinians more sympathetically than they do Israelis. Nor is it any longer a given that Americans and Israelis hold a common set of cultural and religious values. As the United States has become less Christian and more diverse, Israeli society has become more traditionalist, its public culture more insular. On both the U.S. right and left, antisemitism has also begun to seep from the margins into the political mainstream, seen by growing numbers of people, especially among the young and disaffected, as a marker of anti-establishment bona fides in populist times.

These shifts were well underway before the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023. But Israel’s subsequent destruction of Gaza, its blockade and starvation of the devastated territory, and spiraling settler violence in the occupied West Bank—all livestreamed over social media for more than two years—greatly accelerated them, generating an anti-Israel backlash that has become a ubiquitous feature of contemporary U.S. politics. If indeed the joint U.S.-Israeli war on Iran constitutes the apex of the special alliance, what follows will be the fall…

…

Le Monde

stephenkmacksd.com/

Jun 19, 2026

Vance’s stark warning to Israeli leaders: ‘Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel’

By sharply criticizing Israel, accusing it of blocking the agreement signed between Washington and Tehran on June 17, the US vice president exposed a lasting rift between the two countries.

By Luc Bronner (Jerusalem, correspondent)

Published today at 12:58 pm (Paris), updated at 1:00 pm

4 min read

Lire en français

The break was spectacular, sudden and deep. During a press conference on Thursday, June 18, US Vice President JD Vance delivered a harsh and almost threatening message to Israel, a longtime ally. “Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time. And he happens to be the head of state of the world’s superpower. If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally I have left,” Vance warned. He was referring to criticism from Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, two far-right ministers, regarding the memorandum of understanding signed with Iran on June 17.

As if that warning were not enough, Vance went even further, criticizing Israel beyond just its government, using words that will resonate for a long time: “The problem for Israel is not Donald J. Trump. And anyone in Israel who thinks their biggest problem is the president of the United States needs to wake up and smell the reality of the situation that country is in,” Vance emphasized. In other words, Israel has been able to wage a war of annihilation in Gaza for two years, killing more than 73,000 Palestinians (according to Gaza’s health ministry), without provoking any US reaction. But criticizing or threatening a deal signed by Donald Trump is off limits.

This episode will leave its mark. The reality check is especially harsh for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has built his strategy around his personal relationship with the current US president, using it as leverage for military power and as a political asset in the upcoming fall elections. His close relationship with Trump allowed him to push hard to convince the United States to launch a large-scale strike on Iran at the end of February, a goal he had long hoped to achieve from an American president.

But Trump, more unpredictable than ever, changed course several times on Iran before ultimately signing the memorandum of understanding that is widely seen as extremely favorable to the Islamic Republic, a regime he had previously predicted and wished would collapse when launching the offensive.

Aggressive outbursts

As a result, facing the risk that Netanyahu might try to derail the process – as he has done in the past, notably in Gaza – Trump issued a series of aggressive (”You’re fucking crazy”) and threatening (”Without the US, there would be no Israel”) statements. But in the medium term and at the strategic level, the break is most significant and concerning for Israel.

Support for Israel has been a constant in US foreign policy for decades, regardless of the president’s political affiliation, and even more so after the attack carried out by Hamas on October 7, 2023. “There is no greater friendship than the one between Israel and the United States,” Netanyahu has repeatedly said.

Militarily, except for a period when Joe Biden temporarily suspended the delivery of offensive munitions intended for use in Gaza, cooperation has never been smoother.

After the launch of the joint military operation against Iran on February 28, military experts competed in superlatives to praise the bond between the two militaries. Operationally, they shared Iranian airspace to bomb as many targets as possible. In response to Tehran’s retaliation, which involved more than 600 missiles fired at Israel, the US activated its air defense systems. Israelis saw this as integration; Vance sharply reminded them on Thursday that it was, first and foremost, dependence: “Over the last three months, two-thirds of the defensive weapons that have protected your homeland have been built by American hands and paid for by American tax dollars.”

Difficult situation

Iran suffered considerable damage but did not yield. Its strategy worked, especially in recent weeks: by pushing Israel to respond to Hezbollah’s attacks by bombing Beirut, and thus jeopardizing ongoing negotiations, Iran drove a wedge into the historic alliance between Americans and Israelis. As a result, Netanyahu faces a difficult situation on the Lebanese front, where his army occupies a zone about 10 kilometers deep along the entire border.

The deal signed between the US and Iran, from which Netanyahu was completely excluded, calls for a halt to hostilities and respect for Lebanon’s territorial integrity. For now, this remains wishful thinking: the ceasefire has never been implemented. Thursday night saw particularly violent clashes, with four Israelis killed and at least 25 people killed by bombings in Lebanon, which led to the cancellation of talks scheduled for Friday in Switzerland between Iran and the US.

Netanyahu said he refused to withdraw his army from southern Lebanon “because this zone is the barrier between Hezbollah terrorists and our citizens and communities,” he explained. His electorate, whipped up for years by promises of “total victory,” would not forgive him. He’s meanwhile tried to calm tensions with US leaders, avoiding any public criticism. “The fight is not over, and other challenges await us. They require discernment, a determined defense of Israel’s security interests and, at the same time, preserving our vital relationship with our American friends, who have stood by us in this fight, a partnership we deeply appreciate,” Netanyahu said on Thursday, while inaugurating a highway segment in the West Bank designed to accelerate settlement expansion.

Vance’s words are illuminating to Israelis who refused to acknowledge the strategic dead end of all-out war. Israel has continued to isolate itself over the past two years, implicitly or explicitly dismissing criticism as a form of antisemitism. It lost the support of many political leaders who had expressed their outrage after the October 7 attacks. More seriously and lastingly, it lost public opinion, especially in Europe and the US. “Israel just met the America that comes after Trump,” summed up Zvika Klein, editor-in-chief of the English-language daily Jerusalem Post, on Friday morning.

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2026/06/19/vance-delivers-stark-warning-to-israel-donald-j-trump-is-the-only-head-of-state-in-the-entire-world-who-is-sympathetic-to-the-nation-of-israel_6754664_4.html

https://manhattan.institute/event/2026-hayek-lecture

stephenkmacksd.com/

Jun 18, 2026

Douglas Murray in Conversation with Sean McMeekin,

Winner of the 2026 Hayek Book Prize

The winner of the 22nd annual Hayek Book Prize is Sean McMeekin, for his book To Overthrow the World: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism (Basic Books, 2025). McMeekin will be interviewed by Douglas Murray, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor of City Journal.

This year’s lecture is particularly timely. Dr. McMeekin’s scholarship shows how socialism has failed horrendously every time it has been imposed, just as Friedrich Hayek predicted.

Thursday, June 4, 2026

6:00 PM – 6:30 PM Reception

6:30 PM – 7:30 PM Program

7:30 PM – 8:00 PM Closing Reception

Racquet & Tennis Club

370 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10022

Dress Code

Male members and guests are required to wear jackets, dress shirts, and ties. Female guests are required to wear clothing meeting similar standards. Guests in jeans, sneakers, or other similarly casual attire will not be admitted.

Newspaper Reader

---

John Gray and Critical Review consider Hayek

Posted on August 7, 2015 by stephenkmacksd

For a challenging and insightful essay on Hayek see John Grey’s essay here:

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/07/john-gray-friedrich-hayek-i-knew-and-what-he-got-right-and-wrong

For a more complete examination of Hayek as thinker,writer,economist see this issue of Critical Review titled Hayek:The Good, The Bad,The Ugly.

http://www.criticalreview.com/crf/current_issue25_34.html

Political Observer

---

The Mises Institute wants to send you a free book on Hayek!

Posted on October 9, 2025 by stephenkmacksd

Political Observer offers……….

stephenkmacksd.com/

Oct 03, 2025

Editor: Reader don’t waste your time, with tired old and shopworn Neo-Liberal dogmas!! Jeffery Friedman (Editor) and his experts offer critical evaluations, not just carefully modulated aplogetics, that eventuated in the 2006-2008 Economic Collapse !

Critical Review: Hayek the Good, the Bad, the Ugly (Volume 25, Nos. 3-4, 2013) Paperback – January 1, 2013

by Jeffery Friedman (Editor)

The easy to read Table of Contents, offer The Reader titles, their authors.

Political Observer.

Discussion about this post

Newspaper Reader

stephenkmacksd.com/

Jun 18, 2026

Newspaper Reader.

Newspaper Reader.

stephenkmacksd.com/

Jun 17, 2026

Bret Stephens

Iran Found Trump’s Bone Spur

June 16, 2026

Editor: it’s hard to make sence of Bret Stevens latest hysterical ditribe on Iran? Such is its swift and cartooish screecing about Iran, that reminds the reader of lame pastisch of Walt Disney, a little too much? But probably the reader might just surmise that Stephens riffed on his usual cobbled together themes, that failed to hit the mark?

Iran’s military leaders have greeted the cease-fire agreement with President Trump as a triumph, crowing that “through the imposition of their divine and iron will” they had “humiliated American and Zionist enemies.”

Mostly, they’re right.

Mostly, because it’s worth remembering that the current regime in Iran is far less formidable than it was before the Hamas assault on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Back then, Iran had potent allies and proxies in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and Yemen. Its nuclear program was intact and steadily accumulating ever larger quantities of highly enriched uranium. It had a powerful military-industrial base, a weak but functional economy and a government that — for all its repressiveness — was internationally recognized as legitimate.

Today, much of that is either gone or diminished. Iran is no longer within sprinting distance of a bomb. Its ally in Syria was deposed. Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis have lost much of their fighting strength. The Iranian rial is the world’s most worthless currency. The leadership rules an unhappy population that — outside of die-hard loyalists — would almost certainly overthrow it if given the chance. Its latest ballistic missile salvo against Israel failed to land a serious single blow. Its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz strained, but did not strangle, the world’s energy markets.

Editor: Stephens finally ignites his diatribe with this sentence pragment ‘evil, ambitious regime’ !

Those are real achievements against an evil, ambitious regime. Yet the outcome of war rarely rests on a tally of relative strength. War is a contest of wills. And in that contest, the hard men of Tehran appear to have scored a decisive victory over the vain man of Washington.

Editor: Mr. Stephens writes as a Zionist there can be no mistake about his loyalties!

I write this as someone who supported the war from the outset and hoped to see Trump carry it through to a decisive result: if not regime change, then at least a deal in which Iran would be forced to relinquish all of its enrichment capabilities and access to the Strait was unfettered. Those goals were well within the president’s reach, particularly if he had continued to attack Iran’s military-industrial infrastructure until it agreed to terms, rather than conducting most of the negotiations after the fighting had mostly stopped.

Editor: Stephens diatribe is awash in victimhood! For a person who has lived a highly privileged existant, this is the pureist expression of self-serving agitprop!

…

The worst betrayal, however, is of Americans who supported the war — not only neocons like me but also most of Trump’s MAGA base — because we believed that Iran, which has waged a 47-year war against us, posed an increasingly intolerable threat to our security and vital interests.

This cease-fire neither ends nor eases that threat; it hardens and magnifies it. It removes the one point of U.S. leverage over Iran — the naval blockade of its ports — before there’s any negotiation over its nuclear program, which the Iranians will almost surely drag out until Trump is out of office. It reminds the world of the adage that while it can be dangerous to be America’s enemy, it is fatal to be its friend. And it gives Iran’s leaders something even more vital: The confidence that, whatever Trump may threaten, they can withstand the most any American president or Israeli prime minister can throw at them.

There’s a word for this: debacle. Not because the war, for all its costs or errors of execution, was a mistake. It’s because this pretense of a peace is an act of geopolitical self-harm that will haunt our standing in the world for years to come.

Newspaper Reade

Jürgen Habermas joins the Propaganda Chorus.

stephenkmacksd.com/

Jun 17, 2026

On the Political Apotheosis of Emmanuel Macron, Episode XXXIII: Jürgen Habermas joins the Propaganda Chorus. A comment by Almost Marx

Posted on May 27, 2017 by stephenkmacksd

Nothing quite prepares the reader for this declaration by Mr. Habermas:

Jürgen Habermas: I have been entrusted with the honour of saying a few introductory words about the subject of our conversation between our distinguished guest Emmanuel Macron and Sigmar Gabriel, our foreign minister who recently rose like the proverbial phoenix from the ashes. Both names are associated with courageous reactions to challenging situations. Emmanuel Macron has dared to cross a red line hitherto untouched since 1789. He has broken apart the entrenched configuration of the two political camps of right and left. Given that it is impossible in a democracy for any individual to stand above the parties, we are curious to see how the political spectrum will be reconfigured if, as expected, he is victorious in the French election.

http://www.eurozine.com/rethinking-europe/

The ‘as if ‘here is one of the central myths of the Neo-Liberal Dispensation: the ‘political reality’ that somehow the divide between ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ can be overcome- has been overcome by the particular political genius of Emmanuel Macron. This from an April 20, 2017 Eurozine interview of M. Macron conducted by Habermas and Sigmar Gabriel. The Mont Pelerin Olympus is echoing with hosannas.

Where is the Habermas of July 2015?

Speaking about the bailout deal for the first time since it was presented on Monday, the philosopher and sociologist said the German chancellor had effectively carried out “an act of punishment” against the leftwing government of Alexis Tsipras.

“I fear that the German government, including its social democratic faction, have gambled away in one night all the political capital that a better Germany had accumulated in half a century,” he told the Guardian. Previous German governments, he said, had displayed “greater political sensitivity and a post-national mentality”.

Habermas, widely considered one of the most influential contemporary European intellectuals, said that by threatening Greece with an exit from the eurozone over the course of the negotiations, Germany had “unashamedly revealed itself as Europe’s chief disciplinarian and for the first time openly made a claim for German hegemony in Europe.”

The outcome of the negotiations between Greece and the other eurozone member states, he said, did “not make sense in economic terms because of the toxic mixture of necessary structural reforms of state and economy with further neoliberal impositions that will completely discourage an exhausted Greek population and kill any impetus to growth.”

Habermas added: “Forcing the Greek government to agree to an economically questionable, predominantly symbolic privatisation fund cannot be understood as anything other an act of punishment against a leftwing government.”

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jul/16/merkel-gambling-away-germanys-reputation-over-greece-says-habermas

That ‘privatization’ was not just symbolic, but the usual concerted attack on the Welfare State, using the bankrupt vehicle of Austerity as Neo-Liberal cudgel. Even in this Habermas lacks the necessary candor. See this report by Gillian Tett in the Financial Times titled ‘A debt to history?’ that reports on an after dinner speech by economic historian Benjamin Friedman, dated January 15, 2015. A telling excerpt, that puts the notion of German financial probity into a proper historical perspective :

The mandarins settled comfortably into their chairs, expecting a soothing intellectual discourse on esoteric monetary policy. But Friedman lobbed a grenade.

“We meet at an unsettled time in the economic and political trajectory of many parts of the world, Europe certainly included,” he began in a strikingly flat monotone (I quote from the version of his speech that is now posted online, since I wasn’t allowed to take notes then.) Carefully, he explained that he intended to read his speech from a script, verbatim, to ensure that he got every single word correct. Uneasily, the audience sat up.

For a couple of minutes Friedman then offered a brief review of western financial history, highlighting the unprecedented nature of Europe’s single currency experiment, and offering a description of sovereign and local government defaults in the 20th century. Then, with an edge to his voice, Friedman pointed out that one of the great beneficiaries of debt forgiveness throughout the last century was Germany: on multiple occasions (1924, 1929, 1932 and 1953), the western allies had restructured German debt.

So why couldn’t Germany do the same for others? “There is ample precedent within Europe for both debt relief and debt restructuring . . . There is no economic ground for Germany to be the only European country in modern times to be granted official debt relief on a massive scale and certainly no moral ground either.

“The supposed ability of today’s most heavily indebted European countries to reduce their obligations over time, even in relation to the scale of their economies, is likely yet another fiction,” he continued, warning of political unrest if this situation continued.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/927efd1e-9c32-11e4-b9f8-00144feabdc0.html?ft_site=falcon&desktop=true

The Germans, like Merkel and Habermas, engage in the exercise of politically motivated self-willed forgetting. History made to measure.

Macron self-presentation is as prophet of the Rational Center:

The chief risk is of fatally weakening the very governments that are actually pursuing reforms. Because as long as these countries are in the grip of this inequality, the reforms are too slow to yield results that are politically and socially noticeable, and then it’s the reformers who are in the wrong. And that plays into the hands of populists and extremists.

The key word ‘reform’ is the the rhetorical place holder for Macron’s Neo-Liberalism Lite: that acts the part of ‘Political Enlightenment’ in the face of a ‘stalled’ Europe, rather than a ‘stalled world economy’, in the watershed of the catastrophic failure of the ‘Free Market’ and its successor ‘Austerity’ and that produced that vexing ‘stall’. Notice too that Macron appropriates the notion of ‘inequality’ into his Neo-Liberal Lite propaganda. Macron adopts Thomas Piketty in his attempt to rescue ‘Europe’. Fillon’s prescription for France was Speed & Shock, Macron’s is Neo-Liberalism on Political Prozac. The ‘animal spirits’, the unslakable greed of the Trinity of Hayek/Mises/Friedman, in the view of political opportunist Macron, just needs some necessary consciousness raising. And to this end Macron’s appropriates the notions of ‘social justice’ and ‘redistribution’ re-expressed as ‘distribution’ and ‘fairness’.

As for Macron as political opportunist, see Simon Kuper’s essay of May 17,2017 titled ‘The chill behind Emmanuel Macron’s charm’ at The Financial Times:

Emmanuel Macron watches a smartphone video of an egg cracking on his forehead at a campaign event. He ­guffaws, then plays the video again. “It didn’t hurt. It came from a long way, did you see?” he marvels to his wife Brigitte and an aide. “The guy got lucky.”

The scene is from Emmanuel Macron, les coulisses d’une victoire (“Behind the scenes of a victory”)‚ a fly-on-the-wall documentary of his campaign that screened on French TV after he was elected president. It’s the most intimate portrait I’ve seen of a political leader. After the artificiality of the campaign, we’re starting to get to know Macron better. He’s a remarkable chap. But there is also something chilling about him. One man who knew him well for many years told me: “He seduces everyone. And then he kills.”

The key to Macron is that he is what the French call a grand séducteur. He quickly learnt that his charm could get him whatever he wanted. Almost every schoolboy fantasises about seducing his sexy high-school teacher. Macron did, even after Brigitte initially turned him down.

He also got used early to being the smartest person in the room. That doesn’t mean he has an original intellectual mind. He twice failed the entrance exams for the Ecole Normale Supérieure, France’s most cerebral “grande école”. But he’s a polymath who quickly absorbs everything from Rossini’s operas to Hegel. His father, a neurologist, had applied his brain more discreetly: his most cited academic article is on sneezing in cats. However, Macron’s charm required larger outlets. After writing his master’s thesis on Machiavelli, he got rich fast as a banker, then absorbed enough economics to be named finance minister.

Like his political ancestor Tony Blair, who walked into Downing Street 20 years ago this month, Macron is an actor at heart. (He met Brigitte when she taught him drama.) Watch the online video in which a journalist hands him a copy of Molière’s play The Misanthrope, a favourite of Macron’s, and suggests he mug up the opening scene so they can perform it together in a week. No, replies Macron, let’s do it right now. And he does, from memory: “Leave me, I beg of you . . . ” He also used to have ambitions of performing as a pianist.

https://www.ft.com/content/464df34e-3a48-11e7-ac89-b01cc67cfeec

Nothing quite prepares the reader for this utterly surprising, not to speak of candid contribution, from Sigmar Gabriel:

I think that before we succeed in doing what Professor Habermas has just called for, namely winning majorities for an extension of European competencies, we first need to change a few narratives. Because politics begins with saying what’s right. At the moment we like pointing at people who produce fake news – but there are also some bits of fake news that have become established here over the last thirty years, maybe even longer. The first bit of fake news is that Germany is the packhorse of the European Union: We are the net contributors! We are the ones who support everyone else! Unfortunately this is a story that has been told for decades, in politics, in the media, in the economy – pretty much irrespective of who happens to be in power at any given time.

Whenever the financial structure of the European Union has been discussed, we have always stuck to the standard cross-party view that we have to reduce our net contribution – the balance of which incidentally comes to about twelve billion euros. So whenever I’m told – correctly – how important the European project is, twelve billion euros isn’t a figure that blows me away. In the German federal budget we pay more for far less important things. That’s why first of all we must stop this narrative of Germany as the packhorse of the European Union. Ultimately it serves only to pander to people’s alleged national interests. The upsurge in nationalistic feeling that we’re currently seeing is not the beginning, but the result, of thirty years of false narratives. The root of the problem is purely national narratives in the member states of the European Union, particularly in our country. Whereas the truth is that Germany is the chief profiteer, indeed the net beneficiary, of the European Union.

One of the most prominent of the arguments, or better yet, points of propaganda during the 2014 Greek Crisis, was the promulgation of notions of The Virtuous Norther Tier vs The Profligate Southern Tier: The Germans vs. The Greeks. This, in its various iterations, became the touchstone of Anti-Greek Propaganda in the respectable bourgeois Western Press. Ms. Tett’s essay simply eviscerated the legitimacy of that rhetorical pose, at least for the well read.

Where does Mr. Gabriel take his dissenting argument, no matter how carefully it has been denatured? ‘False Narratives’, carefully presented as a blind to the notion expressed as the exercise of German Largess as EU Hegemon. The 4 Time Defaulter in the 20th Century, has not learned its lesson, nor practiced the kind of enlightened stance as argued by Prof. Friedman, but now assumes the role of ‘Leadership’ founded on a half-truth: Germany as benefactor of the EU. On the question of ‘Solidarity’ Mr. Gabriel remains committed.

So, to conclude, one more point on the topic of solidarity – which is a concept that, as a social democrat, I know something about – solidarity means acting responsibly, both towards oneself and towards the community one belongs to. This responsible action is what it’s all about. And I am quite sure that if we pursue this narrative we will also obtain the majorities we need to put it into practice.

On the question of reform of the EU, into an actual and functional democracy, instead of a Cartel, that is in sum a Federalism of Technocrats, remains out of the imaginative reach of this trio. What the reader must settle for is a ‘Franco-German New Deal’. So the German Hegemon must make way for the ‘Franco-German Hegemon’?

Almost Marx

http://www.eurozine.com/rethinking-europe/

What can this puerile Headline Mean ? Political Observer on “glorious failure” ?

stephenkmacksd.com/

Jun 16, 2026

This first paragraphs of the Economist Essay plays by the rules, that are discarded at moments when political actors, are not actual political actors, but don usable disguises that ape actual political actors, that are nemeless but are projected by self-serving dishonest atribution.

ON FEBRUARY 28TH hundreds of American and Israeli warplanes took off simultaneously to launch the opening salvo of their war on Iran. For 40 days the two allies’ military partnership was intense and close. But as Donald Trump and Iran’s leaders this week reached an agreement that would extend the ceasefire and bring their war to an end, the nature of that partnership has shifted. Israel has been shut out of the negotiations with Iran. Judging by the details of the accord (Israel hasn’t received a copy) that have emerged so far, it deals with few if any of Israel’s concerns

Editor: Here is where things begin to fall apart. Reader think of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s Red Shoes, when in the final act a peace of scenery, or erent Play Bill come to vivid life before the audiences eyes, as if by an act of self-ill? The Economist writer/writers lack of the vision of Powell & Pressburger Élan and Vivacity. But reader I offer a selection of the attempts to capture an essence, that whithers before the gaze!

…

The outcome for Israel is, as one of the country’s diplomats in Jerusalem describes it, “a glorious failure”.

…

Iran retains the capability to fire ballistic missiles at Israel, the rest of the Middle East and beyond. The agreement with America is not expected to refer to Iran’s ballistic-missile programme at all.

…

Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, insisted that troops would remain in the “security zones” that Israel captured in southern Lebanon over the past three months, but Iran is demanding that an Israeli retreat should also be part of the deal with America.

…

An Israeli official who was previously stationed in Washington said that “a large part of the problem is that we no longer have the same kind of relationship with America in which officials spoke openly to each other at all levels.

…

A few voices in Israel’s defence and intelligence establishment warned their generals of this discrepancy in the first days of the war. They suggested that Israel must be more realistic about its aims. But their bosses were swept away by the success of early air strikes and supported Mr Netanyahu through 40 days of war.

…

Israel has failed to achieve its strategic goals. It has damaged its crucial ties with America, as well as its relations with Arab countries that regarded it as an ally against Iran.

…

That said, none of his challengers yet has an alternative strategy on Iran. Leaders of all the main opposition parties were just as gung-ho when the war began. For now their criticism of Mr Netanyahu is that he failed to deliver results, not that he launched the war. “We desperately need a new Iran policy,” one military planner observes. For now Israel has no prospect of getting one.