All along Trump has been the candidate of the military. The other two power centers of
the power triangle , the corporate and
the executive government (CIA), had gone for Clinton. Trump, as the Pentagon's proxy, defeated Hillary the CIA proxy --
Moon of Alabama,
Oct 21, 2017
The real Donald Trump has been exposed. The man who promised a sensible and non-interventionist Middle Eastern
policy and a reset with Moscow has now reneged on both pledges.
His nitwit United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley has
directly linked Russia and Syria for punishment by the omnipotent Leader of the Free World lest anyone be confused.
The unconscionable attack on Syria based on the usual unsubstantiated allegations has shifted the playing field dramatically,
with the “new sheriff in town” apparently intent on proving he is a real man who can play hardball with the rest of them.
...my thesis is not that
the current American political system is an
inspired replica of Nazi Germany’s or George
W. Bush of Hitler. References to Hitler’s Germany
are introduced to remind the reader of the
benchmarks in a system of power that was
invasive abroad, justified preemptive war as a
matter of official doctrine, and repressed all opposition at home — a system that was cruel and racist in principle and practice,
deeply ideological, and openly bent on world domination. Those benchmarks are introduced to illuminate tendencies in our own
system of power that are opposed to the fundamental principles of constitutional democracy. Those
tendencies are, I believe, “totalizing” in the sense
that they are obsessed with control, expansion,
superiority, and supremacy.
“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action”
― Ian Fleming
It's not so simple, unfortunately. At the last presidential election in 2016,
the only choice citizens had was between two "insane rats".
They logically chose the one who lied better,
promising to change US policy - which he has not done.
After three following event there is no doubt that Thump became a neocon stooge with the only foreign policy initiatives of
his own that can be attributed to his own impulsivity and lack of international experience. Those three event are
as following
The initial conversion happened just three month after inauguration and full evolution into neocon took slightly more
then a year.
It is true that like Obama before him Mr. Trump was somewhat nontraditional candidate. Like Obama he was a "clean slate
candidate " -- a person without substantial political baggage. Which hunted Hillary Clinton all along the way. So his electorate
(like Obama electorate before) was able to project their wished into him (without any justification; lured by just value election
promises), which increased his chances of victory. He was also non-traditional candidate in several more minor aspects:
In his fund-raising;
In support for atypical for GOP candidate positions on trade and on protection of
Social Security and
Medicare;
Minimal advertising;
Seemingly arbitrary election strategy, that devoted from traditional Republican platform in many ways and was tilted toward Paleoconservatism:
against globalization, neocon dominance in Washington and, especially, past and present warmongers in the Department of State (personally
Hillary Clinton),
Opposition to the intervention and costly wars of neoliberal empire expansion, especially if beneficiaries of the US efforts
are "third parties". Call for NATO countries to increase their share and some doubts about usefulness of this military
block.
But his election victory was just a sign that Pentagon (which supported Trump) and CIA (which supported Hillary Clinton) clashed
in the fight for top seat in government. Pentagon won, and CIA now needs to face consequences, despite vicious counterattack of remnants
of Brennan troops and CIA controlled media.
They unleashed Russiagate witch hunt which rivals McCarthyism. In May 2017 managed to install the special prosecutor Mueller. Even
earlier, in November, 2016, they launched a color revolution to depose Trump
(The Junta Expands
Its Claim To Power). The CIA owns the large swats of the US MSM, and without an effective propaganda arm, the military might face
another Vietnam.
Still the level of influence of military in Trump cabinet is really unprecedented, even in comparison with Eisenhower administration:
The military will demand its due beyond the three generals now in Trump's cabinet.
With the help of the media the generals in the White House defeated their civilian adversary. In August the Trump ship
dropped its ideological pilot. Steve
Bannon went from board. Bannon's militarist enemy, National Security Advisor General McMaster, had won. I
stated:
Trump's success as the "Not-Hillary"
candidate was based on an anti-establishment insurgency. Representatives of that insurgency, Flynn, Bannon and the MAGA voters,
drove him through his first months in office. An intense media campaign was launched to counter them and the military took control
of the White House. The anti-establishment insurgents were fired. Trump is now reduced to public figure head of a stratocracy
- a military junta which nominally follows the rule of law.
The military took full control of White House processes and policies:
Everything of importance now
passes through the Junta's
hands ... To control Trump the Junta filters
his information input and eliminates any potentially alternative view ... The Junta members dictate their policies to Trump
by only proposing certain alternatives to him. The one that is most preferable to them, will be presented as the only desirable
one. "There are no alternatives," Trump will be told again and again.
With the power center captured the Junta starts to implement its ideology and to suppress any and all criticism against itself.
So Congress finally passed a budget. It’s a blockbuster—$1.3 trillion, or around four thousand dollars for every man, woman,
and child in the U.S.A. Basically it is a compound made up of (a) anything Leftist Democrats could wish for, and (b) anything
that the
Jeb
Bush wing of the Republican Party, and that wing’s
Big Business donors (but I repeat myself), could wish for. But how about the things that sixty-three million of us voted for
in 2016, awarding the Presidency to Donald Trump?
Some of that in such a colossal budget, doesn’t there? After all, Donald Trump is
President, isn’t he? He signed off on this thing, doesn’t he?
...This budget bill is, in short, a middle finger to President
Trump. Its larger message: populism is no match for the Deep State. The contest is an unequal one. It’s almost cruel the way the
congresscritters—Chuck Ryan and Paul Schumer, Nancy McConnell and Mitch Pelosi—it’s almost cruel the way they are grinning and
chuckling and high-fiving among themselves over how easy it’s been to kick sand in the President’s face.
...I see Trump there on my TV screen, in my newspaper, on my Twitter feed; but I don’t see Trumpism. Where is it?
A friend has an adjective he deploys to describe Trump: “anticompetent.” A merely in-competent ruler, my friend
says — like the child rulers who sometimes took the throne in old dynastic monarchies — could skate along without doing much harm
by relying on advisors. Trump goes beyond that to anti-competent, sabotaging himself at every turn, taking advice from Deep Staters
who sneer him behind his back and detest the people who voted for him.
In this sense, classic neoliberalism was/is the ideology of the emergent transnational capitalist class which has planned and
constructed an architecture of global governance in response to threats from national capital, from nationalists of various flavors
and from the Left. In way it was similar to Trotskyism with its dream of Global revolution and creation of global socialist
state (Permanent Revolution). Classic neoliberalism also strives to global dominance and used "regime change" operation often
in the form of wars or color revolutions to convert the states into neoliberal domain. Since 90th the USA is waging
multiple wars and "regime change" operations directed to this purpose (Yugoslavia, Georgia, Ukraine, Iraq, Libya, Syria,
Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, etc)
National neoliberalism brakes with classic neoliberalism in several important categories and first of all in its treatment of
global elites and globalization. It does not view the US elite as "the first among equals." It clearly stipulate the primacy of the
USA elite and favorable for the USA forms of globalization as a priority and is really to wage a trade war to achieve those
goals. And it is ready to engage in the trade wars to achieve the stated goals. that's why forces that support 'classic
neoliberalism" launched color revolution with the goal to depose Trump. With several neoliberal countries joining domestic US forces
(among them UK was probably the most important player)
National neoliberalism is the term that was probably the first introduced by Sasha Breger Bush in his December, 2016 article
Trump and National Neoliberalism
Many writers and pundits are currently framing Trump’s election in terms of a dispossessed and disenfranchised
white, male working class, unsatisfied with neoliberal globalization and the insecurity and hardship it has
unleashed—particularly across regions of the United States that were formerly manufacturing powerhouses (like
the Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin, four states believed to have cost Hillary
Clinton the election). While there is much truth to this perspective and substantial empirical evidence to
support it, it would be a mistake to see Trump’s election wholly in these terms.
"What
Trump’s election has accomplished is an unmasking of the corporate state."
Trump’s election is in some ways a neoliberal apex, an event that portends the completion of the US
government’s capture by wealthy corporate interests. While in my opinion Trump’s election does not signal
the beginning of a rapid descent into European-style fascism, it appears to be a key stage in the ongoing
process of American democratic disintegration. American democracy has been under attack from large and wealthy
corporate interests for a long time, with this process accelerating and gaining strength over the period
of neoliberal globalization (roughly the early 1970s to the present). This time period is associated with
the rise of powerful multinational corporations with economic and political might that rivals that of many
national governments.
In terms of the political consequences of these trends in the U.S., certain thinkers have argued that
the U.S. political system is not democratic at all, but rather an “inverted totalitarian” system. Political
commentator Chris Hedges notes: “Inverted totalitarianism is different from classical forms of totalitarianism.
It does not find its expression in a demagogue or charismatic leader but in the faceless anonymity of the
corporate state.” Citing the American political theorist Sheldon Wolin, Hedges continues, “Unlike the Nazis,
who made life uncertain for the wealthy and privileged while providing social programs for the working class
and poor, inverted totalitarianism exploits the poor, reducing or weakening health programs and social services,
regimenting mass education for an insecure workforce threatened by the importation of low-wage workers.”
Our inverted totalitarian system is one that retains the trappings of a democratic system—e.g. it retains
the appearance of loyalty to “the Constitution, civil liberties, freedom of the press, [and] the independence
of the judiciary”—all the while undermining the capacity of citizens to substantively participate and exert
power over the system.
In my view, what Trump’s election has accomplished is an unmasking of the corporate state. Trump gives
inverted totalitarianism a persona and a face, and perhaps marks the beginning of a transformation from inverted
totalitarianism to totalitarianism proper. In spite of this, it makes no sense to me to call the system toward
which we are heading (that is, if we do not stand up and resist with all our might right this second) “fascism”
or to make too close comparisons to the Nazis. Whatever totalitarian nightmare is on our horizon, it will
be uniquely American. And it will bear a striking resemblance to the corporate oriented system we’ve been
living in for decades. Indeed, if the pre-Trump system of inverted totalitarianism solidified in the context
of global neoliberalism, the period we are entering now seems likely to be one characterized by what I call
“national neoliberalism.”
Trump’s Election Doesn’t Mean the End of Neoliberalism
Trump’s election represents a triumph of neoliberal thinking and values. Perhaps most importantly, we
should all keep in mind the fact that Americans just elected a businessman to the presidency. In spite of
his Wall Street background and billionaire status, Trump successfully cast himself as the “anti-establishment”
candidate.
This configuration—in which a top-one-percenter real estate tycoon is accepted as a political
“outsider”—is a hallmark of neoliberal thinking. The fundamental opposition between market and government
is a central dichotomy in the neoliberal narrative.
In electing Trump, American voters are reproducing this
narrative, creating an ideological cover for the closer connections between business and the state that are
in store moving forward (indeed, Trump is already using the apparatus of the U.S. federal government to promote
his own business interests). As states and markets further fuse in coming years, this representation of Trump
and his administration—as being anti-government—will help immunize his administration from accusations of
too-cozy relationships with big business. Trump’s attempts to “drain the swamp” by imposing Congressional
term limits and constraints on lobbying activities by former political officials will also help to hide this
relationship. (Has anyone else noticed that Trump only addresses half of the “revolving door,” i.e., he plans
to limit the lobbying of former politicians, but not the political roles of businessmen?)
"Whatever totalitarian nightmare is on our horizon, it will be uniquely American."
Trump’s Contract with the American Voter, his plan for the first 100 days in office, discusses policies
and programs many of which are consistent with neoliberal thinking. (I understand the term “neoliberalism”
to emphasize at its core the importance of private property rights, market-based social organization, and
the dangers of government intervention in the economy.) Trump’s plan redirects the activities of the U.S.
government along the lines touted by neoliberal “market fundamentalists” like Milton Friedman, who advocate
limiting government’s role to market-supportive functions like national defense (defense stocks are doing
very well since the election) and domestic law and order (Trump’s proposals have a lot to do with altering
immigration policy to “restore security”). Trump also plans to use government monies to revitalize physical
infrastructure and create jobs. Other government functions, for example, health care provision and education
as well as protecting the environment and public lands, are open for privatization and defunding in Trump’s
agenda. Under Trump, the scope of federal government activities will narrow, likely to infrastructure, national
defense, and domestic policing and surveillance, even if overall government spending increases (as bond markets
are predicting).
Trump also seems content to take neoliberal advice in regard to business regulation (less is best) and
the role of the private sector in regulating itself (industry insiders understand regulatory needs better
than public officials). Trump’s plan for the first 100 days specifies “a requirement that for every new federal
regulation, two existing regulations must be eliminated.” As of the time of this writing, his selection of
cabinet appointees illustrate a broad willingness to appoint businesspeople to government posts. As of mid-December
2016, a Goldman Sachs veteran, Steven Mnuchin, has been appointed Secretary of the Treasury; billionaire
investor Wilbur Ross has been appointed Secretary of Commerce; fossil fuel industry supporter and Oklahoma
Attorney General Scott Pruitt has been appointed as EPA administrator; and fast-food mogul Andrew Puzder
has been appointed as Secretary of Labor. Trump’s business council is staffed by the CEOs of major U.S. corporations
including JP Morgan Chase, IBM and General Motors. To be fair, the “revolving door” between government and
industry has been perpetuated by many of Trump’s predecessors, with Trump poised to continue the tradition.
But this is not to say that neoliberalism will continue going in a “business as usual” fashion. The world
is about to get much more dangerous, and this has serious implications for patterns of global trade and investment.
Trump’s Election Does Mean the End of Globalism
The nationalism, xenophobia, isolationism, and paranoia of Donald Trump are about to replace the significantly
more cosmopolitan outlook of his post-WWII predecessors. While Trump is decidedly pro-business and pro-market,
he most certainly does not see himself as a global citizen. Nor does he intend to maintain the United States’
extensive global footprint or its relatively open trading network. In other words, while neoliberalism is
not dead, it is being transformed into a geographically more fragmented and localized system (this is not
only about the US election, but also about rising levels of global protectionism and Brexit, among other
anti-globalization trends around the world). I expect that the geographic extent of the US economy in the
coming years will coincide with the new landscape of U.S. allies and enemies, as defined by Donald Trump
and his administration.
Trump’s Contract with the American Voter outlines several policies that will make it more expensive and
riskier to do business abroad. All of these need not occur; I think that even one or two of these changes
will be sufficient to alter expectations in business communities about the benefits of certain cross-border
economic relationships. Pulling the United States out of the TPP, along with threats to pull out of the Paris
Climate Agreement and attempts to renegotiate NAFTA, is already signaling to other countries that we are
not interested in international cooperation and collaboration. A crackdown on foreign trading abuses will
prompt retaliation.
Labelling China a currency manipulator will sour relations between the two countries
and prompt retaliation by China. As Trump goes forward with his anti-immigration and anti-Muslim rhetoric
and policies, he will alienate the United States’ traditional allies in Europe (at least until Europe elects
its own nationalist and xenophobic leaders) and communities across the Global South. The U.S. election has
already undermined performance in emerging markets, and bigoted rhetoric and policy will only increase anti-American
sentiment in struggling economies populated largely by people of color. Add to this the risk of conflict
posed by any number of the following: his antagonizing China, allying with Russia, deploying ground troops
to stop ISIS, and pulling out of the Korean DMZ, among other initiatives that seem likely to contribute to
a more confrontational and violent international arena. All of this is to say that Trump will not have to
intervene directly in the affairs of business in order to nationalize it. The new global landscape of conflict
and risk, combined with elevated domestic spending on infrastructure and security, will bring U.S. business
and investment back home nonetheless.
National Neoliberalism and State-Market Relations
Fascist states are corporatist in nature, a state of affairs marked by a fusion of state and business
functions and interests, with an often significant role for labor interests as well. In the fascist states
on the European continent in the 1930s and 1940s—systems that fall under the umbrella of “national socialism”—the
overwhelming power of the state characterized this tripartite relationship. Political theorist Sheldon Wolin
writes in Democracy, Inc. in regard to Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy (as well as Stalinist Russia),
“The state was conceived as the main center of power, providing the leverage necessary for the mobilization
and reconstruction of society”.
By contrast, in Trump’s America — where an emergent “national neoliberalism” may be gradually guiding us
to a more overt and obvious totalitarian politics — we can expect a similar fusion of state and market interests,
but one in which the marketplace and big business have almost total power and freedom of movement (I think
that labor will do poorly in this configuration). State and market in the U.S. will fuse further together
in the coming years, leading some to make close parallels with European fascism. But it will do so not because
of heavy handed government dictates and interventions, but rather because domestic privatization initiatives,
appointments of businessmen to government posts, fiscal stimulus and the business community’s need for protection
abroad will bring them closer. Corporate interests will merge with state interests not because corporations
are commanded to, but rather because the landscape of risk and reward will shift and redirect investment
patterns to a similar effect. This may be where a budding U.S. totalitarianism differs most starkly from
its European cousins.
Of course it helps that much of the fusion of state and market in the United States is already complete,
what with decades of revolving doors and privatization initiatives spanning the military, police, prison,
healthcare and educational sectors, among others. It will not take much to further cement the relationship.
Reaction of supporters of "classic neoliberlsim" ont he arrival of "national neoliberalism": a color revolution against
Trump
National neoliberalism rejects "classic neoliberalism" variant of globalization, while not rejecting globalization as a whole.
Looks like Trump is deliberately running country into some kind of isolation. And I do not know what is the plan but it looks
like the policy somewhat similar the set of policies the USA adopted during the 1920s. Although the USA is now much more powerful
(and interconnected) and can dictate its will to more countries, including EU. But somebody said "The U.S. is reduced to a
schoolyard bully who beats up his gang members because their former victims have grown too big." .
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/12/24/trump-and-national-neoliberalism ):
The nationalism, xenophobia, isolationism, and paranoia of Donald Trump are about to replace the significantly more cosmopolitan
outlook of his post-WWII predecessors. While Trump is decidedly pro-business and pro-market, he most certainly does not see
himself as a global citizen. Nor does he intend to maintain the United States’ extensive global footprint or its relatively open
trading network.
In other words, while neoliberalism is not dead, it is being transformed into a geographically more fragmented
and localized system (this is not only about the US election, but also about rising levels of global protectionism and Brexit,
among other anti-globalization trends around the world). I expect that the geographic extent of the US economy in the coming
years will coincide with the new landscape of U.S. allies and enemies, as defined by Donald Trump and his administration.
The exit from "classic neoliberalism" highway into the set of "roads less traveled" under Trump looks
impulsive, but it is not. It is part of historic transformation of neoliberalism after the crisis of 2007. That's why it
generated such a fierce resistance and attempt to state a color revolution against Trump by forces supporting "classic
neoliberalism" (with some foreign countries, notably GB participating on the side of the US plotters) I think neoliberal
revolution (or counterrevolution, if you wish) that we experienced and which have led to the dissolution of the USSR is enough for
the lifetime on one person. Now we have a color revolution against Trump here in the USA.
After the collapse of the USSR the consensus was that a new American century arrived, and the whole world would be better off for
it. The USA looked like the sole superpower for at least another century. 27 years later we have a major economic crisis of
neoliberalism as well as the crisis of neoliberalism as a social system in the USA (abstracting from petty war between factions of
the US elite, NeoMcarthysim is the way to patch the divided society. And for awhile it works.
What Gore Vidal called "United
Stated of Amnesia" might bite the USA later as the collapse of the neoliberal US empire probably will resemble the
Great Depression or the collapse of the USSR on a new level. Or, worse, the European conflagration of 1914-1918. Along with lack
of interest in history, the deep provincialism of the US politicians is a serious threat. Take Haley, or Pompeo.
In any case, Trump election does signified "the end of the beginning" of neoliberal globalization (as in Churchill's quote "This is
not the end, it is not even the beginning of the end, but it is perhaps the end of the beginning.").
The end of cheap oil might signify "the beginning of the end".
The author is a very fuzzy way comes to the idea that neoliberalism is in essence a Trotskyism for the rich and that
neoliberals want to use strong state to enforce the type of markets they want from above. That included free movement of
capital goods and people across national borders. All this talk about "small government" is just a smoke screen for naive fools.
"... The second explanation was that neoliberal globalization made a small number of people very rich, and it was in the interest of those people to promote a self-serving ideology using their substantial means by funding think tanks and academic departments, lobbying congress, fighting what the Heritage Foundation calls "the war of ideas." Neoliberalism, then, was a restoration of class power after the odd, anomalous interval of the mid-century welfare state. ..."
"... Here one is free to choose but only within a limited range of options left after responding to the global forces of the market. ..."
"... Neoliberal globalism can be thought of in its own terms as a negative theology, contending that the world economy is sublime and ineffable with a small number of people having special insight and ability to craft institutions that will, as I put it, encase the sublime world economy. ..."
"... One of the big goals of my book is to show neoliberalism is one form of regulation among many rather than the big Other of regulation as such. ..."
"... I build here on the work of other historians and show how the demands in the United Nations by African, Asian, and Latin American nations for things like the Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources, i.e. the right to nationalize foreign-owned companies, often dismissed as merely rhetorical, were actually existentially frightening to global businesspeople. ..."
"... They drafted neoliberal intellectuals to do things like craft agreements that gave foreign corporations more rights than domestic actors and tried to figure out how to lock in what I call the "human right of capital flight" into binding international codes. I show how we can see the development of the WTO as largely a response to the fear of a planned -- and equal -- planet that many saw in the aspirations of the decolonizing world. ..."
"... The neoliberal insight of the 1930s was that the market would not take care of itself: what Wilhelm Röpke called a market police was an ongoing need in a world where people, whether out of atavistic drives or admirable humanitarian motives, kept trying to make the earth a more equal and just place. ..."
"... The culmination of these processes by the 1990s is a world economy that is less like a laissez-faire marketplace and more like a fortress, as ever more of the world's resources and ideas are regulated through transnational legal instruments. ..."
Hardcover: 400 pages
Publisher: Harvard University Press (March 16, 2018)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0674979524
ISBN-13: 978-0674979529
From introduction
...The second explanation was that neoliberal globalization made a small number of people very rich, and it was in the interest of
those people to promote a self-serving ideology using their substantial means by funding think tanks and academic departments, lobbying
congress, fighting what the Heritage Foundation calls "the war of ideas." Neoliberalism, then, was a restoration of class power after
the odd, anomalous interval of the mid-century welfare state.
There is truth to both of these explanations. Both presuppose a kind of materialist explanation of history with which I have no
problem. In my book, though, I take another approach. What I found is that we could not understand the inner logic of something like
the WTO without considering the whole history of the twentieth century. What I also discovered is that some of the members of the
neoliberal movement from the 1930s onward, including Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, did not use either of the explanations
I just mentioned. They actually didn't say that economic growth excuses everything. One of the peculiar things about Hayek, in particular,
is that he didn't believe in using aggregates like GDP -- the very measurements that we need to even say what growth is.
What I found is that neoliberalism as a philosophy is less a doctrine of economics than a doctrine of ordering -- of creating
the institutions that provide for the reproduction of the totality [of financial elite control of the state]. At the core of the strain I describe is not the idea that we
can quantify, count, price, buy and sell every last aspect of human existence. Actually, here it gets quite mystical. The Austrian
and German School of neoliberals in particular believe in a kind of invisible world economy that cannot be captured in numbers
and figures but always escapes human comprehension.
After all, if you can see something, you can plan it. Because of the very limits to our knowledge, we have to default to ironclad
rules and not try to pursue something as radical as social justice, redistribution, or collective transformation. In a globalized
world, we must give ourselves over to the forces of the market, or the whole thing will stop working.
So this is quite a different version of neoliberal thought than the one we usually have, premised on the abstract of individual
liberty or the freedom to choose. Here one is free to choose but only within a limited range of options left after responding to
the global forces of the market.
One of the core arguments of my book is that we can only understand the internal coherence of neoliberalism if we see it as a
doctrine as concerned with the whole as the individual. Neoliberal globalism can be thought of in its own terms as a negative theology,
contending that the world economy is sublime and ineffable with a small number of people having special insight and ability to craft
institutions that will, as I put it, encase the sublime world economy.
To me, the metaphor of encasement makes much more sense than the usual idea of markets set free, liberated or unfettered. How
can it be that in an era of proliferating third party arbitration courts, international investment law, trade treaties and regulation
that we talk about "unfettered markets"? One of the big goals of my book is to show neoliberalism is one form of regulation among
many rather than the big Other of regulation as such.
What I explore in Globalists is how we can think of the WTO as the latest in a long series of institutional fixes proposed
for the problem of emergent nationalism and what neoliberals see as the confusion between sovereignty -- ruling a country -- and
ownership -- owning the property within it.
I build here on the work of other historians and show how the demands in the United Nations
by African, Asian, and Latin American nations for things like the Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources, i.e. the right to
nationalize foreign-owned companies, often dismissed as merely rhetorical, were actually existentially frightening to global businesspeople.
They drafted neoliberal intellectuals to do things like craft agreements that gave foreign corporations more rights than domestic
actors and tried to figure out how to lock in what I call the "human right of capital flight" into binding international codes. I
show how we can see the development of the WTO as largely a response to the fear of a planned -- and equal -- planet that many saw
in the aspirations of the decolonizing world.
Perhaps the lasting image of globalization that the book leaves is that world capitalism has produced a doubled world -- a world
of imperium (the world of states) and a world of dominium (the world of property). The best way to understand neoliberal globalism
as a project is that it sees its task as the never-ending maintenance of this division. The neoliberal insight of the 1930s was that
the market would not take care of itself: what Wilhelm Röpke called a market police was an ongoing need in a world where people,
whether out of atavistic drives or admirable humanitarian motives, kept trying to make the earth a more equal and just place.
The culmination of these processes by the 1990s is a world economy that is less like a laissez-faire marketplace and more like
a fortress, as ever more of the world's resources and ideas are regulated through transnational legal instruments. The book acts
as a kind of field guide to these institutions and, in the process, hopefully recasts the 20th century that produced them.
This is a rather
interesting look at the political and economic ideas of a circle of important economists, including Hayek and von Mises, over
the course of the last century. He shows rather convincingly that conventional narratives concerning their idea are wrong. That
they didn't believe in a weak state, didn't believe in the laissez-faire capitalism or believe in the power of the market. That
they saw mass democracy as a threat to vested economic interests.
The core beliefs of these people was in a world where money, labor and products could flow across borders without any limit.
Their vision was to remove these subjects (tariffs, immigration and controls on the movement of money) from the control of the
democracy-based nation-state and instead vesting them in international organizations. International organizations which were by
their nature undemocratic and beyond the influence of democracy. That rather than rejecting government power, what they rejected
was national government power. They wanted weak national governments but at the same time strong undemocratic international organizations
which would gain the powers taken from the state.
The other thing that characterized many of these people was a rather general rejection of economics. While some of them are
(at least in theory) economists, they rejected the basic ideas of economic analysis and economic policy. The economy, to them,
was a mystical thing beyond any human understanding or ability to influence in a positive way. Their only real belief was in "bigness".
The larger the market for labor and goods, the more economically prosperous everyone would become. A unregulated "global" market
with specialization across borders and free migration of labor being the ultimate system.
The author shows how, over a period extending from the 1920s to the 1990s, these ideas evolved from marginal academic ideas
to being dominant ideas internationally. Ideas that are reflected today in the structure of the European Union, the WTO (World
Trade Organization) and the policies of most national governments. These ideas, which the author calls "neoliberalism", have today
become almost assumptions beyond challenge. And even more strangely, the dominating ideas of the political left in most of the
west.
The author makes the point, though in a weak way, that the "fathers" of neoliberalism saw themselves as "restoring" a lost
golden age. That golden age being (roughly) the age of the original industrial revolution (the second half of the 1800s). And
to the extent that they have been successful they have done that. But at the same time, they have brought back all the political
and economic questions of that era as well.
In reading it, I started to wonder about the differences between modern neoliberalism and the liberal political movement during
the industrial revolution. I really began to wonder about the actual motives of "reform" liberals in that era. Were they genuinely
interested in reforms during that era or were all the reforms just cynical politics designed to enhance business power at the
expense of other vested interests. Was, in particular, the liberal interest in political reform and franchise expansion a genuine
move toward political democracy or simply a temporary ploy to increase their political power. If one assumes that the true principles
of classic liberalism were always free trade, free migration of labor and removing the power to governments to impact business,
perhaps its collapse around the time of the first world war is easier to understand.
He also makes a good point about the EEC and the organizations that came before the EU. Those organizations were as much about
protecting trade between Europe and former European colonial possessions as they were anything to do with trade within Europe.
To me at least, the analysis of the author was rather original. In particular, he did an excellent job of showing how the ideas
of Hayek and von Mises have been distorted and misunderstood in the mainstream. He was able to show what their ideas were and
how they relate to contemporary problems of government and democracy.
But there are some strong negatives in the book. The author offers up a complete virtue signaling chapter to prove how the
neoliberals are racists. He brings up things, like the John Birch Society, that have nothing to do with the book. He unleashes
a whole lot of venom directed at American conservatives and republicans mostly set against a 1960s backdrop. He does all this
in a bad purpose: to claim that the Kennedy Administration was somehow a continuation of the new deal rather than a step toward
neoliberalism. His blindness and modern political partisanship extended backward into history does substantial damage to his argument
in the book. He also spends an inordinate amount of time on the political issues of South Africa which also adds nothing to the
argument of the book. His whole chapter on racism is an elaborate strawman all held together by Ropke. He also spends a large
amount of time grinding some sort of Ax with regard to the National Review and William F. Buckley.
He keeps resorting to the simple formula of finding something racist said or written by Ropke....and then inferring that anyone
who quoted or had anything to do with Ropke shared his ideas and was also a racist. The whole point of the exercise seems to be
to avoid any analysis of how the democratic party (and the political left) drifted over the decades from the politics of the New
Deal to neoliberal Clintonism.
Then after that, he diverts further off the path by spending many pages on the greatness of the "global south", the G77 and
the New International Economic Order (NIEO) promoted by the UN in the 1970s. And whatever many faults of neoliberalism, Quinn
Slobodian ends up standing for a worse set of ideas: International Price controls, economic "reparations", nationalization, international
trade subsidies and a five-year plan for the world (socialist style economic planning at a global level). In attaching himself
to these particular ideas, he kills his own book. The premise of the book and his argument was very strong at first. But by around
p. 220, its become a throwback political tract in favor of the garbage economic and political ideas of the so-called third world
circa 1974 complete with 70's style extensive quotations from "Senegalese jurists"
Once the political agenda comes out, he just can't help himself. He opens the conclusion to the book taking another cheap shot
for no clear reason at William F. Buckley. He spends alot of time on the Seattle anti-WTO protests from the 1990s. But he has
NOTHING to say about BIll Clinton or Tony Blair or EU expansion or Obama or even the 2008 economic crisis for that matter. Inexplicably
for a book written in 2018, the content of the book seems to end in the year 2000.
I'm giving it three stars for the first 150 pages which was decent work. The second half rates zero stars. Though it could
have been far better if he had written his history of neoliberalism in the context of the counter-narrative of Keynesian economics
and its decline. It would have been better yet if the author had the courage to talk about the transformation of the parties of
the left and their complicity in the rise of neoliberalism. The author also tends to waste lots of pages repeating himself or
worse telling you what he is going to say next. One would have expected a better standard of editing by the Harvard Press.
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Anybody interested in global trade, business, human rights or democracy today
should read this book.
The book follow the Austrians from the beginning in the Habsburgischer empire to the beginning rebellion against the WTO. However,
most importantly it follows the thinking and the thoughts behind the building of a global empire of capitalism with free trade,
capital and rights. All the way to the new "human right" to trade. It narrows down what neoliberal thought really consist of and
indirectly make a differentiation to the neoclassical economic tradition.
What I found most interesting is the turn from economics to law - and the conceptual distinctions between the genes, tradition,
reason, which are translated into a quest for a rational and reason based protection of dominium (the rule of property) against
the overreach of imperium (the rule of states/people). This distinction speaks directly to the issues that EU is currently facing.
The EUP is cutting its own throat trying to bully China. I see the move was made as soon
as Blinken arrived and began spreading lies about both Russia and China. I know China and
Russia would like these rogue nations to uphold their honor by obeying the UN Charter, but it
seems too many have caught the Outlaw US Empire's disease and now want to return to their
Colonial ways. If the EUP ends up trashing the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI)
with China, many individual European nations are going to be very angry. China won't mind if
that's what the EUP does as is explained here :
"After China announced sanctions on 10 individuals and four entities from the EU as a
countermove to EU's unilateral sanctions against China, some people from the EU reacted
strongly, claiming China's countermeasures were "unacceptable." The European Parliament
canceled a meeting on Tuesday to discuss the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) with
China. Some members of the European Parliament warned that the lifting of Chinese sanctions
should be a condition to promote talks on CAI. Voices that support to block the agreement in
an attempt to punish China have been hyped by some anti-China forces.
"Yet those forces should be told that the CAI between China and the EU is mutually
beneficial, rather than a gift from the EU to China. If the European Parliament wants to
obstruct the deal, taking it as a bargaining chip in interactions with China, it should first
reach a consensus among European countries. If they all agree, let's just take it as
negotiations between China and the EU never took place last year. But don't blackmail China
with the case. China despises such ugly deeds."
China's saying essentially that it will forego the benefits of trade if it isn't properly
respected and doesn't care if the EU's dire economic condition worsens because it can't stand
up for itself in the face of the world's #1 Bully, which is exactly the same line Russia has
taken.
It is not just Jens Quisling, half (or more) of the European political elite are USA
proxies.
Take for example the European green parties.
I am pretty sure that the Dutch green party is at its core a NATO/military intelligence
operation. It was created as a merger of three parties, all of whom had a distinct pacifist
and socialist signature. The new party, GroenLinks ("GreenLeft") has forgotten all of that
and has limited itself to churning out Big Climate slogans. The party leader is an obviously
hollow puppet in the image of Justin Trudeau. His opinions are handed to him by advisors in
the shade.
A few years ago, an MP for GroenLinks, Mariko Peters was enthousiastically
promoting more military missions in Afghanistan. She was also a board member of the
"Atlantische Commissie", the local Dutch chapter of the Atlantic Treaty Organisation
(the USA chapter is the more well-known Atlantic Council). If you study her antics and
associations more closely, it is pretty obvious that there is nothing green or left about
this lady and that she is an obvious atlanticist diplomat/spy type.
Currently, there are no political parties in the Netherlands that are critical of NATO.
This used to be very
different not even a very long time ago.
What the article does not mention is the association, reputedly for a six-figure salary)
of former Grüne luminary Joschka Fisher to the Nabucco pipeline project (competing with
ns2). Fischer is also a member of the council on foreign relations and a founding member even
of the European chapter ECFR.
The historic Trump presidency emasculated globalism Pat Buchanan notes how the elite
Bush-type Republicans have been silenced Patrick J. Buchanan By Patrick J. Buchanan Published
November 26, 2020 at 6:39pm Share on Facebook Tweet P Share Email Print In the first two
decades of the century, President-elect Joe Biden's choice for secretary of state supported
U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen. He was an ever-reliable liberal
interventionist.
This same Antony Blinken could spend the first years of a Biden presidency helping extricate
our country from the misbegotten wars he championed. What establishment Democrats like Biden
and Blinken helped to do in previous administrations, they will likely now have to undo.
Who effected this sea change in national thinking?
Donald Trump. Much that was said and believed before he came down the escalator in 2015 is
no longer said or believed by the majority of Americans.
And no institution has been more altered than the Republican Party.
How I beat election fraud in America's most corrupt state TRENDING: Employees melt down
after learning company is publishing prominent conservative Jordan Peterson's book: Report
George H.W. Bush's vision of a "New World Order," launched at the after-party of his Gulf
War victory, died with his presidency.
George W. Bush's crusade for global democracy to "end tyranny in our world" has been
forgotten. Bush Republicans no longer speak for the party on foreign policy, trade or
immigration.
NATO will never be the same again after Trump rudely demanded that freeloading nations pay
their fair share of the collective defense or the Americans would pack up and come home from
Europe.
Former Defense Secretary Gen. James Mattis may call for the ash-canning of the phrase
"America First." He will fail. For, as both national motto and national policy, the slogan has
put down roots in American soil because it comports with the will of the silent majority.
Whatever the establishment believes, in the clash between nationalism and globalism,
globalism has lost America.
Moreover, the world is going this way.
Does not Xi Jinping put his own country first as he claims for China all the waters and
islands for hundreds of miles into the East and South China seas? Does not Vladimir Putin put
his own country first as he seeks to bring back under Moscow's wing the former republics of the
Russian federation?
Does not President Erdogan put Turkey first as he sends arms and troops to pursue his
country's interests in Libya, Syria, Cyprus, the South Caucasus and the Eastern Mediterranean
in clashes with Greece?
What does Bibi Netanyahu put first, if not his own country, Israel?
If country and nation are not first in the hearts and minds of Americans, what should
replace them? Some nonexistent New World Order? The U.N.? NATO? A multilateral caucus of global
institutions?
Under Trump, economic nationalism has displaced free trade globalism as the trade policy of
the party and government.
The GOP elite that backed Bill Clinton on NAFTA, supported a new transnational World Trade
Organization, invited China to join the club and accorded Beijing most-favored-nation trade
status is now silent.
Tariffs to force open foreign markets and punish predator-traders who take advantage of
American workers have replaced the free trade fundamentalism that had been dogma since Dwight
Eisenhower's days.
Nor is the Republican Party likely to return to free trade, as long as "China First" is the
undeclared policy pursued by the nation that has now displaced us as the world's leading
manufacturing power.
The George Bush-John McCain Republican Party was for amnesty for illegals and open borders
for new migrants. Today's GOP supports the deportation of illegals and the 30-foot Trump Wall
on the Mexican border.
"... "They've got a set of Republican waiters on one side and a set of Democratic waiters on the other side, but no matter which set of waiters brings you the dish, the legislative grub is all prepared in the same Wall Street kitchen." ..."
"... we can see that 2016 candidate Trump was relatively Trumpist but President Trump was less so. Salaries for the bottom 25% of workers did have the highest rate in increase during his term (through 2019). But in 2020, candidate Trump almost completely rejected Trumpism and ran as an ruling class establishment stooge. ..."
"... Trumpism is not a revolutionary ideology in the correct sense of the term. It is an incrementalist approach that seeks to better the material conditions of the working class but within the current capitalist power structure. ..."
"... The ruling class strategy in the US is to decorate with masks of "diversity" the ugly visages of class dominance. Thus Obama's and soon Kamala's pro-ruling class policies cannot be criticized for fear of being abused as a "racist". ..."
"... Trumpism relies on labor markets to improve the material conditions of the working class. A tight labor market necessarily transfers wealth from the rich to the poor in the form of decreased profits for the rich through increased salaries for the poor. ..."
"... Trump the ruler was presented with the greatest gift a border-loving Trumpist politician could ever ask for: Covid-19. But instead of exploiting this crisis like Viktor Orbán did in Hungary, Trump stabbed Trumpism in the back by turning himself into a useless libertarian during the crisis by refusing for example to push a law that requires home manufacturing of all critical supplies and in never closing the borders properly. He acted like a narcissistic clown in the early days of the crisis and deserves to lose just for that reason. ..."
"... So US racism is fully owned and perpetuated by the ruling class: wealthy oligarchs (including Trump), the media, Wall Street, CIA, FBI, the military industrial complex, multi-national corporations, Silicone Valley Tech, Hollywood, etc. Where there is power there is racism, where there is powerlessness there may be bigotry but not racism. The above lineup of ruling class racists, except for Trump, is the Biden coalition. The ruling class goal is to place an "enlightened person" mask over naked and rapacious ruling class greed and oppression. ..."
"... Under Biden, globalization will once again increase the pace and amplitude of the immiseration of the working class, resistance to the dominant economic paradigm will only grow on both the progressive left and the popular right. ..."
"... In a sense the Biden presidency will be a reactionary movement in that they will be trying to restore the pre-Trumpism political order. This will only further cement the soundness of Trumpism as an ideology. ..."
"... The bottom has no political or economic leverage, and isn't navigating to a position of strength. For example, the "bottom" is currently accepting placebo identity-politics as pacifier. The "bottom" is still searching for an "easy button" solution rather than taking a deeper look at oneself and the layout of the chess board at the macro level. ..."
"... Within an environment of worker scarcity, automation is a positive trend and helps lessen inflationary pressures. The problem with the US is that there is not enough automation because of cheap and docile labor. Compare a meat packing plant in Denmark which is highly automated compared to a US plant, which is packed to the brim with cheap imported labor. Much of the Covid crisis in the US and UK is brought about by sweatshop-style working conditions. ..."
"... It's grotesque to learn that Kamila Harris's relatives are connected to Uber/Lyft. Prop. 22 getting approved in California is another sign of propaganda/big money effectiveness ..."
"... Trumpism stands in opposition to globalization; whose goal is worker abundance which necessarily drives wages down and increases oligarchic wealth. US led imperialism, especially in the Middle East is also a necessary feature of globalization. ..."
"... Here too I would make a modification. Neo-liberalism and globalization aren't about worker "abundance" but rather worker "disposability." Again, if the idea is to create an abundance of workers, driving down market share, then why make finding work so complicated? Why be against strong education systems which would create new workers. Why shut down factories here in the US only to open them in Korea? Why lock up so many Americans for petty offensive, removing them from the willing work force. ..."
"... I would argue that the heart of neo-liberalism is a class structure that places "the establishment" as not just important in the grand scheme of things, but completely indispensable to an individual. And part of that self-aggrandizement is the subjection of every one else. "I am worth more than a thousand of you." Thus, why I must get 2-million-dollar bonus (even after bankrupting the company) and a post on the new re-org chart while everyone else gets a pink slip and watch their hard-earned pensions disappear in chapter 11 proceedings. ..."
"... But it does speak to how disposable workers are to upper management. You are hired for X, and when X is done you are automatically laid off. Why would you waste time giving such an employee training of any sort? Let alone benefits or perks. ..."
"... What is inexplicable is when unions attack Trumpist attempts at macro-scarcity through the use of national borders. A united Union/Trumpist front is required against ruling class interests. Struggling for worker scarcity does not mean one "hates" the workers the ruling class is importing in order to create worker abundance. ..."
"... Neoliberalism is Capitalism's attempt to remove the fetters on profits that exist within the power of a nation-state. Worker abundance is just one of many Neoliberal goals. Borders are a huge fetter to capitalism's basic mission of maximizing profit by producing commodifies with the cheapest labor and selling them to the wealthiest consumers. ..."
"... This is a very important aspect of precarity. Reducing work competition for jobs to increase wages is only half the job, stopping financial predators is the other half, imo ..."
"... Without immigration or outsourcing or even automation, the predators will find still other ways to break labor. We are seeing it with identity politics. ..."
"... I would argue that Bernie and Tulsi are "Trumpism adjacent" in the larger sense of Trumpism. ..."
"... If Trumpism as an ideology is going to flourish, Tulsi in particular will play a critical role in this. The simplest way to see this is that when the ruling class smears someone as a "Russian asset" what they are really doing is recognizing them as a Trumpist threat. ..."
"... precarious (adj.) 1640s, a legal word, "held through the favor of another," from Latin precarius "depending on favor, pertaining to entreaty, obtained by asking or praying," from prex (genitive precis) "entreaty, prayer" (from PIE root *prek- "to ask, entreat"). ..."
"... The notion of "dependent on the will of another" led to the extended sense "risky, dangerous, hazardous, uncertain" (1680s), but this was objected to. "No word is more unskillfully used than this with its derivatives. It is used for uncertain in all its senses; but it only means uncertain, as dependent on others " [Johnson]. Related: Precariously; precariousness. ..."
"... Questiones Disputatae ..."
"... contra, sed contra, ..."
"... When investigating the nature of anything, one should make the same kind of analysis as he makes when he reduces a proposition to certain self-evident principles." ..."
"... Vista Hermosa residents like Luna are troubled by a 2019 environmental rollback by the state, AB1197, that exempts homeless housing developments in the City of Los Angeles from the mandates of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Arguably California's broadest environmental law, CEQA requires builders to assess the environmental impacts of new development and find ways to avoid or mitigate them. ..."
"... The political will to rollback CEQA has continued into 2020. In January, Assemblyman Miguel Santiago, who represents District 53 bordering Vista Hermosa, introduced a new piece of legislation, AB1907, to further expand CEQA exemptions to now include all affordable housing. ..."
"... "a giant suction pump had by 1929 to 1930 drawn into a few hands an increasing proportion of currently produced wealth. This served then as capital accumulations. But by taking purchasing power out of the hands of mass consumers, the savers denied themselves the kind of effective demand for their products which would justify reinvestment of the capital accumulation in new plants. In consequence as in a poker game where the chips were concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing. When the credit ran out, the game stopped" ..."
We have to carefully distinguish between two very different concepts, both based on the word
"Trump". First there is "Trumpism" which is an ideology. The overarching idea behind Trumpism
is to make the GOP a working-class oriented party. The key policy aims of Trumpism are worker
scarcity and anti-imperialism. Worker scarcity is achieved through immigration restriction and
protectionist trade policies. So together, we have the Trumpist Trinity, anti-immigration,
trade restriction, and anti-imperialism. This is the ideology that Trump ran on and rode to
victory in 2016. This is the idea. Unions exist to create micro-worker scarcity. Borders can be
used to create macro-worker scarcity which is far more powerful. And E-verify can be far more
effective than a bombastic wall.
Trumpism stands in opposition to globalization; whose goal is worker abundance which
necessarily drives wages down and increases oligarchic wealth. US led imperialism, especially
in the Middle East is also a necessary feature of globalization. Invade the World / Invite the
World.
The US has always featured two political parties that serve ruling class interests; Huey
Long described it thusly,
"They've got a set of Republican waiters on one side and a set of Democratic waiters
on the other side, but no matter which set of waiters brings you the dish, the legislative
grub is all prepared in the same Wall Street kitchen."
Trumpism attempts to force one group of waiters to get their grub from the working class'
kitchen. This is obviously an ambitious goal.
Now comes a crucial distinction. In addition to the ideology of "Trumpism" there is "Trump",
the man and his brand. At best there is an extremely tenuous relationship between Trumpism and
Trump. Now to some extent this is natural as ideas never remain pure for long when poured into
the cauldron of reality. With that in mind, we can see that 2016 candidate Trump was
relatively Trumpist but President Trump was less so. Salaries for the bottom 25% of workers did
have the highest rate in increase during his term (through 2019). But in 2020, candidate Trump
almost completely rejected Trumpism and ran as an ruling class establishment stooge.
Now of course Trump is an oligarch and so he is a member of the ruling class. But within
oligarchy, the only people who can challenge the existing order are oligarchs. He committed
massive class treason in 2016 in order to serve his narcissistic need for recognition and
power. In no way should Trump be idealized as altruistically caring about the working class.
Trumpism was nothing more than a means to an end. Trump's end is and always will be Trump, not
Trumpism per se. But none the less Trump exploited and brought to life Trumpism and his motives
for doing so are irrelevant.
Trumpism is not a revolutionary ideology in the correct sense of the term. It is an
incrementalist approach that seeks to better the material conditions of the working class but
within the current capitalist power structure. It posits a class struggle ideological
superstructure which is radical opposition to the globalist ruling classes insistence on an
identitarian (politics of race, sex, etc) perspective. The ruling class strategy in the US
is to decorate with masks of "diversity" the ugly visages of class dominance. Thus Obama's and
soon Kamala's pro-ruling class policies cannot be criticized for fear of being abused as a
"racist".
Trumpism's non-revolutionary aspect is similar to social democracy, as was championed by
Bernie Sanders in 2016 (in 2020 Bernie unfortunately fell to the dark side of identitarian
politics, which are necessarily the enemy of class politics and the most effective class
warfare tool in the ruling class' tool box). The key difference is that Trumpism relies on
labor markets to improve the material conditions of the working class. A tight labor market
necessarily transfers wealth from the rich to the poor in the form of decreased profits for the
rich through increased salaries for the poor.
In fact far from there being any contradiction between Trumpism and social democracy there
is a mutual dependence between them. The public education, health, and support institutions of
social democracy are can only be supported and revitalized by a prosperous working class. The
key idea of Trumpism is that the state asserts its borders to create labor scarcity. The great
problem of Trumpism is that the state is everywhere a tool of ruling class oppression. Borders
are the battle lines of the struggle.
Trump the ruler was presented with the greatest gift a border-loving Trumpist politician
could ever ask for: Covid-19. But instead of exploiting this crisis like Viktor Orbán
did in Hungary, Trump stabbed Trumpism in the back by turning himself into a useless
libertarian during the crisis by refusing for example to push a law that requires home
manufacturing of all critical supplies and in never closing the borders properly. He acted like
a narcissistic clown in the early days of the crisis and deserves to lose just for that
reason.
The ruling class response to Trumpism is identitarian politics: noble ruling class lords
screaming that the dirty peasants are racist. What the US ruling class must always do is
project their racism onto the peasants, who white or black, both suffer economically from
racial oppression. Mao Tse-Tung gave this astute analysis of US racism:
In the final analysis, national struggle is a matter of class struggle. Among the whites
in the United States, it is only the reactionary ruling circles who oppress the Negro people
. They can in no way represent the workers, farmers, revolutionary intellectuals and other
enlightened persons who comprise the overwhelming majority of the white people. At present,
it is the handful of imperialists headed by the United States, and their supporters, the
reactionaries in different countries, who are oppressing, committing aggression against and
menacing the overwhelming majority of the nations and peoples of the world. We are in the
majority and they are in the minority.
So US racism is fully owned and perpetuated by the ruling class: wealthy oligarchs
(including Trump), the media, Wall Street, CIA, FBI, the military industrial complex,
multi-national corporations, Silicone Valley Tech, Hollywood, etc. Where there is power there
is racism, where there is powerlessness there may be bigotry but not racism. The above lineup
of ruling class racists, except for Trump, is the Biden coalition. The ruling class goal is to
place an "enlightened person" mask over naked and rapacious ruling class greed and
oppression.
Under Biden, globalization will once again increase the pace and amplitude of the
immiseration of the working class, resistance to the dominant economic paradigm will only grow
on both the progressive left and the popular right. Previously elections in the US were
between center left and center right factions fighting for the right to serve the ruling class.
Looking at 2020 from a bird's eye perspective, roughly speaking the Biden coalition is most
progressives, the center left, and many elements of the center right (elements close to the
Bush family). The Trump coalition is portions of the center right and the popular right. The
ruling class was going to be fine whatever the result, but a Biden presidency constrained by a
GOP Senate is ideal in some ways to the ruling class.
A key strategic objective of the ruling class is to keep the left and right at each other's
throats. Trump helped them achieve this rigid politically binary goal despite occasionally
flirting with political fluidity during the 2016 campaign where his similarities to Bernie
Sanders were unmistakable. In contrast, anti-ruling class progressives and popularists have to
find a way to combine their forces and energy in opposition to the ruling class and not in a
pointless stalemate of playing "socialists" vs; "fascists", a battle whose only possible winner
is the ruling class.
One of the most interesting outcomes of the 2020 election is the specter of Latinos
embracing Trumpism. From an economic point of view this makes total sense. Immigration
restriction will benefit first and foremost the material conditions of the Latino working
class. Also Trump's macho populist persona works well within Latino culture. Not to mention
many Latinos despise blacks and so the whole BLM phenomenon helped push Latinos onto the Trump
train.
California is a now a de facto one-party state but that conditions are ripe for the rise of
a popularist yet macho, Latino based, Trumpist style political faction to oppose the
cosmopolitan urban Democratic hegemony. Back in the 60's, Cesar Chavez was endeavoring to
increase the QUALITY of Hispanic life in the US by increasing the salaries of farm workers
through a strategy of worker scarcity.
Ruling class institutions, threatened by the potential of having portions of their wealth
transferred to poor peasants, created an organization called "La Raza" as an alternative to
Chavez. La Raza wanted QUANTITY, they wanted more and more Latinos to build up their base of
political power.
And all the better if these Latinos stayed poor: not only do their ruling class paymasters
stay happy, this would also keep the Latino masses dependent on their identitarian political
leaders. So one of the key outcomes of the 2020 election is that in ever larger numbers,
Latinos are rejecting Quantity of Latinos and opting for Latino Quality of life.
And so in order to further Trumpism, Trump, who is acting as a fetter upon it, must go.
In a sense the Biden presidency will be a reactionary movement in that they will be trying
to restore the pre-Trumpism political order. This will only further cement the soundness of
Trumpism as an ideology.
But Trump as a leader is a much more mixed bag. New Trumpists will arise, for example Tucker
Carlson or podcaster Joe Rogan. 2024 will be a great year for Trumpism because this time Trump
will not be running it; and that may allow many progressives to join the train, especially in
light of how much hippy punching they are about to endure from the coming Biden synthesis of
Neolibs and Neocons.
Nice essay. I especially liked the differentiation between Trump and Trumpism.
I'd be interested to hear what your vision of the platform (main objectives) might be for
this new Trumpism party.
I still question whether top-down politics of any stripe is really going to address the
underlying economic and biosphere issues we're facing. Why? Because:
the top-down political economy is dedicated to maintaining status quo (with emphasis on
status & wealth), and
the bottom-up people who want things to change seem to want someone else to do all the
changing
most of our big problems arise from the disconnect between what we must do as a species
in order to survive and what we're currently, actually doing as individuals
When a Zen-like party emerges, which encourages its adherents to understand themselves,
seek "right" action (accurate situational analysis yielding a well-crafted strategy), and do
right action, I'll get interested in politics again. For now, we're just treading water in a
strong current that's headed to a bad place.
The Zen plan is no panacea, though. That path involves great risk (e.g. lots of failures)
and hard work. Pay's not that good, either.
Top-down vs. bottom-up are not necessarily contradictory and can in successive waves
contribute to social change in an increasingly self-reinforcing manner. Bottom-up change
influences top-down change (often through the opposition forces' malignant top-down
overreaction) which intensifies bottom-down change: so on and so on.
I would describe the main objectives for Trumpist party as the development of "Green
Trumpism". The moral imperatives associated with the climate crisis would be used as a
catalyst for Trumpist labor scarcity through the means of a Green Reindustrialization. The
process of globalization is one where production is severed from consumption. Production is
moved to cheap labor countries with terrible environmental standards. Capitalists produce
dirtier commodities while increasing their profits. This process must be reversed. If the
first world wants to consume then they must produce.
First world population growth is a critical factor in exasperating the climate crisis. All
of this growth can be linked to immigration, usually people from low consuming nations moving
to high consumption nations. These migration flows must be reversed.
Globalization requires imperialist power to enforce the safe transport of commodities
produced in far flung regions of the world. As globalization declines, so will necessarily US
imperialism.
yes, bottom-up and top-down would interact, if only the bottom-up was happening. It's
not.
The bottom has no political or economic leverage, and isn't navigating to a position of
strength. For example, the "bottom" is currently accepting placebo identity-politics as
pacifier. The "bottom" is still searching for an "easy button" solution rather than taking a
deeper look at oneself and the layout of the chess board at the macro level.
Using the climate crisis as driver for econ change is the Great Hope, and the top 1% is
hip to the game. They have and will continue to block meaningful change. Keep in mind that
just stopping the daily damage to the environment will render much (most) of our industrial
and household infrastructure obsolete. Nobody's ready to take that on, and that's the
implication of actually effective Green policy.
Right now, across the political spectrum, "green" consists of "what's convenient" instead
of "what's necessary". This is the individual-ethic bankruptcy I've alluded to elsewhere:
it's endemic from top 1% to bottom-est of the bottom.
You made a few statements I don't agree with:
"Capitalists have dirtier / more destructive production than (others)." 1st world production
is cleaner than in other places, and that 2nd and 3rd world production often happens in
non-capitalistic scenarios. Dirty production happens where dirty production is tolerated.
Another statement you made: "globalization has to stop / be reversed". Dunno about that
one. Globalization has resulted in production moving to cheapest-input locations. Like China.
Globalization will stop only when cost-of-inputs is leveled, and we're decades away from
that, and a whole lot more pain for the Developed world. Slow barge, that one.
Your essay doesn't address the effect of automation on household or societal economics.
Automation is not a reversible trend, and it's accelerating. The focus on the "where" of
production might not yield the HH economic benefits you're hoping for.
Some fairly different strategies need to be developed at the household level in order to
address the problems we face. Would you consider using the household as the pivot-point of
your new econ strategy rather than using industry and government?
Americans can exert more power with their consumption choices than their choices at the
ballot box. So certainly the household is a crucial pivot point.
Green tariffs can overnight level cost-of-inputs. Climate change provides a powerful moral
incentive to co-locate US consumption and production.
Within an environment of worker scarcity, automation is a positive trend and helps lessen
inflationary pressures. The problem with the US is that there is not enough automation
because of cheap and docile labor. Compare a meat packing plant in Denmark which is highly
automated compared to a US plant, which is packed to the brim with cheap imported labor. Much
of the Covid crisis in the US and UK is brought about by sweatshop-style working
conditions.
The question on automation is that somehow "the people" have to have a slice of the
profits and thus benefit from the process. A Yang-style UBI would need to go hand in hand
with increased automation.
I agree with the uselessness of the current Green movement. It is typically just used as a
tool to attack perceived opponents. But a Green Trumpism would no doubt both address the
climate crisis and help alleviate economic inequalities.
"The ruling class was going to be fine whatever the result, but a Biden presidency
constrained by a GOP Senate is ideal in some ways to the ruling class."
Yeah – there will be a lot of Biden disappointment amongst Us the majority –
this Precariat. A true Green New Deal would offer lots of employment opportunities here in
the USA – and would seem ideal for either party to embrace. Divided government won't
achieve it – the ruling class – and both parties – with short sighted heads
up their asses won't embrace it anyhow.
Regardless, Trumpism seems a fail except for a vast mob angry/scared/confused voters- and
some tax break aficionados. It's not just Biden/Harris won't deliver – but Tucker
Carlson, Joe Rogan, Ted Cruz, or whichever clever one runs in 2024 , won't deliver either,
and Trumps wall is a fiasco. If still effective propaganda..?
It's grotesque to learn that Kamila Harris's relatives are connected to Uber/Lyft. Prop.
22 getting approved in California is another sign of propaganda/big money effectiveness
– and We the People being tricked once again. I got lot's of mail showing
photos and quotes of regular working people embracing Prop 22 VOTE YES! save our jobs –
it passed easily.
Overall: Still glad to see Trump himself out of the White House – the clever
SOB.
This is a good essay. But I still have a few issues with it.
The key policy aims of Trumpism are worker scarcity and anti-imperialism. Worker scarcity
is achieved through immigration restriction and protectionist trade policies. So together, we
have the Trumpist Trinity, anti-immigration, trade restriction, and anti-imperialism. This is
the ideology that Trump ran on and rode to victory in 2016. This is the idea. Unions exist to
create micro-worker scarcity. Borders can be used to create macro-worker scarcity which is
far more powerful. And E-verify can be far more effective than a bombastic wall.
I would modify this to say "worker exclusivity", that only a narrow class of workers can
be tapped for specific terms of employment. When discussing the subject with those on the
rights, they are far more concerned about immigrants "taking their jobs" then they are of
building a scarcity of workers to gain a market share over employers. Let's not forget that
"Trumpian" is still fervently anti-union, even though this would be a good way of
generating "micro scarcity" as you put it. Being anti-union would be counterproductive to
worker scarcity.
Assuredly, "worker scarcity" makes a certain degree of sense. And I can easily see how
you came to that conclusion. But I fear you still give "trumpisim" too much credit in that
they have specific goals that they are attempting to achieve, and thus conceive of logical
steps to that goal.
I would argue that the right doesn't have goals in the same perspective as we on the
left may seem them. What we might think of as "goals" are better described as ideological
commandments that must be obeyed at all cost, and ignoring all consequence. As you noted
yourself. Trump's wall would do little to impede immigration. A better e-verify system
would be far more effective. So why ignore e-verify while being completely for the wall?
Because the wall is a visible simple of defiance against immigration that conservatives can
march back and forth in front of brandishing their 2nd amendment right. You can't do that
for a government policy.
Trumpism stands in opposition to globalization; whose goal is worker abundance which
necessarily drives wages down and increases oligarchic wealth. US led imperialism, especially
in the Middle East is also a necessary feature of globalization.
Here too I would make a modification. Neo-liberalism and globalization aren't about
worker "abundance" but rather worker "disposability." Again, if the idea is to create an
abundance of workers, driving down market share, then why make finding work so complicated?
Why be against strong education systems which would create new workers. Why shut down
factories here in the US only to open them in Korea? Why lock up so many Americans for
petty offensive, removing them from the willing work force.
I would argue that the heart of neo-liberalism is a class structure that places "the
establishment" as not just important in the grand scheme of things, but completely
indispensable to an individual. And part of that self-aggrandizement is the subjection of
every one else. "I am worth more than a thousand of you." Thus, why I must get
2-million-dollar bonus (even after bankrupting the company) and a post on the new re-org
chart while everyone else gets a pink slip and watch their hard-earned pensions disappear
in chapter 11 proceedings.
Of course, unlike much of the right, neo-liberalism does have a goal-oriented
methodology. So, creating "worker abundance" to force down individual worker market share
certainly makes sense. But is it true? It doesn't capture the full cynicism of typical
neo-liberal thinking. For creating so much worker abundance, plenty of neo-liberal aligned
employers still managed to complain about worker "allocations" (the idea that certain
employment sectors face chronic worker scarcity.) Indeed, current "plug-n-play" employment
patterns have made filling many positions nearly impossible because no one ever has the
right qualifications for a specific job without training. I have seen engineering jobs go
empty for years because they can't find "prior experience for proprietary development
project." (face palm.).
But it does speak to how disposable workers are to upper management. You are hired for
X, and when X is done you are automatically laid off. Why would you waste time giving such
an employee training of any sort? Let alone benefits or perks.
Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I will attempt to respond to your points.
Ruling class elements of the GOP attack unions in order to minimize worker micro-scarcity.
What is inexplicable is when unions attack Trumpist attempts at macro-scarcity through the
use of national borders. A united Union/Trumpist front is required against ruling class
interests. Struggling for worker scarcity does not mean one "hates" the workers the ruling
class is importing in order to create worker abundance.
This is to accept the ruling elite's identitarian frame, which boils down to: class struggle is racist. What this basically boils
down to is that the ruling class is benevolent and kind and loves purely altruistically to
import little brown workers while evil workers hate them because they are taking their jobs.
Oligarchs + cheap labor immigrants = good. Workers militating for their class interests =
bad. The key goal for Trumpism is to flip these equations.
Worker abundance necessarily means job scarcity from the worker's point of view. This
makes workers desperate and willing to accept lower wages. This has been happening for the
last 40 years at least since the end of the Cold War, if not a little sooner. Worker scarcity
means job abundance, from the worker's point of view. This means plenty of options because
management has to bid up salaries to attract workers.
Neoliberalism is Capitalism's attempt to remove the fetters on profits that exist within
the power of a nation-state. Worker abundance is just one of many Neoliberal goals. Borders
are a huge fetter to capitalism's basic mission of maximizing profit by producing commodifies
with the cheapest labor and selling them to the wealthiest consumers.
Nation-states can also
impose regulations (environmental, worker, etc) which also limit capitalist profit. Free
trade allows corporations to relocate factories to nations with the lowest salaries,
environmental and worker protections. For those jobs that cannot be transferred, Prop 22 is
the thin edge of the neoliberal wedge that is constraining the nation-state from protecting
workers.
I understand restricting immigration and anti-globalism as a means to increase US workers
leverage in raising wages in jobs and in better political representation. This addresses the
physical world of work.
Left unaddressed, and equally important imo, is the fact that US business and economy is now
largely financialized; much of the greatest wealth comes from unregrulated or restrained
predatory financial practices, from rentierism, from tolls and fines and fees.
This
financialization is every bit as important as the physical conditions you list in the rise in
precarity, maybe even more so at this time. How, for instance, would only physical
restrictions have changed the financial outcomes of the 2008 mortgage bank frauds and
financial crisis, the outcomes of ratings agencies giving bogus ratings to junk bonds,
changed the exorbitant rise in medicine prices, etc?
This is a very important aspect of
precarity. Reducing work competition for jobs to increase wages is only half the job,
stopping financial predators is the other half, imo
O could have stopped the bank predators in 2009-10, but chose not to. In his own
words:
+++ Without immigration or outsourcing or even automation, the predators will find still other
ways to break labor. We are seeing it with identity politics.
Beware of the UBI: it simply greases the wheels for more privatization instead of public
goods and infrastructure, similar to how vouchers and charters gut a public school
system.
Financialization is the necessary result of globalization's destruction of Fordism: which
is the interdependent role of worker and consumer. In order to increase profits, Ford doubled
his workers' salaries so that could serve him as consumers as well as workers.
Globalization
seeks to increase profits even further by disassociating the worker and the consumer. Work is
off-shored to low wage countries, whose leaders intentionally damp down local consumption.
This paradoxically means the soon to be immiserated western worker is still called upon to
play the role of global consumer of last resort.
At the same time, huge waves of profits are
washing over Wall Street. And so temporary speculative bubbles are created that serve two
purposes. First false wave of prosperity brought on for example by a real estate boom tamps
down any worker resistance towards the new economic order. Secondly the seemingly "free
money" created by speculation allow western consumption to continue.
So necessarily a Green Reindustrialization will force Wall Street to stop chasing
speculative squirrels and to instead concentrate on financing the new clean plant that will
help alleviate the climate crisis.
Rogan likes to do long form interviews across the political spectrum, but he has
consistently been a fan of Bernie and Tulsi. Author is Confusing the medium with the message.
Not the same.
I would argue that Bernie and Tulsi are "Trumpism adjacent" in the larger sense of
Trumpism.
If Trumpism as an ideology is going to flourish, Tulsi in particular will play a
critical role in this. The simplest way to see this is that when the ruling class smears
someone as a "Russian asset" what they are really doing is recognizing them as a Trumpist
threat.
Trumpism in its highest form will mean a reconciliation of the non-identitarian left
and right. For example, white identitarians like Richard Spencer have abandoned Trumpism.
I think that one of the most important considerations is that there needs to be a
coalition of sorts – between the working class Trumpian base and the Left (primarily
Generation Y and X). It shares one thing, they are both victims of the Establishment,
neoliberals, and urgently need change.
One image has always been very important to me. Note the distribution of socially
conservative, economically left wing voters.
The major challenge facing Democrats today is that race, gender, identity politics, and
religion appear to trump economics, at least as far as politically engaged primary voters
go. The old-line Democrats were an economic liberal party with socially conservative and
socially liberal wings (the social liberals, in fact, were in a minority). The new
Democrats are a socially liberal party with an economic conservative wing (neoliberals) and
a progressive economic wing. They all agree on social issues. They are loath to compromise
on open borders (which is what the existing immigration dysfunction de facto gives us),
transgender bathrooms, making room for pro-life members, or gay married couples' wedding
cakesbecause those are the only issues that hold their economic right and economic left
together.
I don't think that the Democratic Party in its current form is viable for the left.
So the price of a new New Deal majority would be to let Democrats welcome abortion
critics and opponents of mass immigration, so long as they favored a higher minimum wage,
less "synthetic immigration," and a pause on globalization (which facilitates international
labor arbitrage). In the words of John Judis:
I think that we would end up with the following compromise.
1. The economically left, culturally right agrees to accept global warming, end the wars,
and "socialism" like universal healthcare), and to offer legal immigrants along with
minorities a shot at the middle class
2. The economically left, culturally left agrees to compromise on immigration, globalization
(think put a strong emphasis on re-industrialization and de-financialization), and social
issues (think abortion, guns, defend the police, etc).
Interestingly, the American Conservative has an article lambasting Trump as well.
"The ruling class goal is to place an "enlightened person" mask over naked and rapacious
ruling class greed and oppression."
Maybe the same can be said of placing a "socially conservative" mask. We need to be
cautious in positing the possiblility of a multi-ethnic, multi-racial conservative movement
that somehow manages to be "nationalist, anti-cosmopolitan, anti-immigration" but still
serves the interests of the multi-racial, multi-ethnic, religiously diverse, working class
populace that's already here.
Implementing worker scarcity will necessarily further the economic interests of the
multi-racial, multi-ethnic, religiously diverse, working class populace that's already
here.
Just as implementing worker abundance necessarily furthers the economic interests of the
multi-racial, multi-ethnic, religiously diverse, RULING class populace that's already
here.
Great write up.
While I generally agree with your characterizations, I will also throw out there ..in no
particular order..
1) luckily , trump and his "legion of doom" aren't competent enough to draw on the "larger
picture" you've outlined here to maximize his effectiveness by using these natural
advantages, in their plot of self aggrandizement luckily for us americans/ the trump is his
own worst enemy.
2) ejecting trump from trumpism is a path to greater success for the right and
fascism/corporatism, which some "smart" people will surely weave into their future plans and
models. And the corporatists,be they from the republican side of the aisle, or the democratic
side will surely carry forward with this opening in american politics.
because trump does have to go the professionals of deception can mold that wisp of smoke into
any shape they want but it won't stay for long and doesn't hold up to any scrutiny . it isn't
real..It isn't even a chunk of clay
3] the problem of trumpism, or "conservative republican politics", or "democratic party
politics" is that they all necessarliy MUST be a lie in progress. NONE of the political
duopoly can go into "truthland" . it is their kryptonite. So all have agreed to never enter
and call it a no go zone
And the fact that everything about our political situation is "fact free",at least in the
sense that any facts used are only used out of context to keep a truer understanding from
happening; hasn't stopped anyone yet and isn't likely too any time soon so too bad for
everyone. .we'll call that a draw.
The 30,000 foot description of yours not withstanding, that type of over arching layers of
this onion, is something for planners to incorporate in "the con" as it needs to be.. but is
above the paygrade of most political actors , who work at rousing the rabble
4) I don't see actual agency of the people . what people want to do has nothing to do with
what is going to happen usually, if the elites want something to happen, they provide the
opinions and the votes.. "deserve" has nothing to do with it.. and "our reality" is just an
illusion.
So over layering a description of bigger forces, over the chaos that has been created to keep
this "hegelian dialect" in place , is again for those at a higher pay grade in the
process..
Too many chefs ruin the meal but hey ,it's our gruel and we have nothing else to eat , for
the moment and maybe less later, if they get their way.
"Post-truth" is dystopian. It's a luxury to live at a distance from unpleasant realities.
If a society can sustain a population/segment so far up their own **** then you've "arrived"
in a sense.
However, dystopia sounds better than the crises that lay ahead. It's the unavoidable hard
landing that worries me.
Maybe truth works like wealth: The first generation discovers the truth. The second
generation teaches the truth. And the third generation fakes news.
The Democratic Party doesn't want to come to terms with the fact that they deserve as much
blame as the GOP for the predicament the working class finds itself in.
They chose under Clinton to repeal Glass Steagall, sign free trade agreements, and bring
China into the WTO. Under Obama, those policies largely continued. Under Biden, all signs
indicate that this will still continue.
I think the brutal reality is that the upper middle class is willfully ignorant of what
the precariat faces. Public health authorities, while understandably trying to contain the
pandemic, are not the ones who are going to see their lives destroyed. The working class was
doomed either way, either by being disproportionately hurt by the coronavirus (they can't
work from home) or from long-term unemployment (they've suffered more as a percentage of
total jobs lost). In other words, they don't have a stake in keeping the lockdown and may see
opening up as a lesser evil.
Likewise, the Liberals who are in secure upper middle class white collar jobs tended to
act disdainfully when working class people protested the lockdowns. I'm not saying the
protestors were right, but many are people who put their lives into their work, such as small
business owners. Evidently, subsidies were needed at the very least.
In this regard, the GOP might have more hope than the Democrats, barring a Berniecrat
takeover of the Democrats, which is looking less likely. That said the GOP still has a huge
right wing apparatus that would have to be overcome for a "real populist" (ex: someone who
actually cared about the well being of the working class) to take over.
One advantage might be that younger people are overwhelmingly left wing economically, so
as Generation Y and Z become a bigger share of the electorate, things may change.
Likewise, the Liberals who are in secure upper middle class white collar jobs tended to
act disdainfully when working class people protested the lockdowns. I'm not saying the
protestors were right, but many are people who put their lives into their work, such as
small business owners. Evidently, subsidies were needed at the very least
To this day, they still get outraged for the same reasons. If you so much as point out
what you just wrote–not being anti-science but simply the hardship lockdowns cause and
how it needs to be properly addressed–at best you'll be called scientifically
illiterate. At worst you'll be accused of being an evil rich person who wants to kill grandma
to make the stock market go up.
While some of the protests may have been astroturf, not all of them were. If you're a
small-business owner facing the prospect of losing everything you've worked for and basically
being told "you're on own" of course you will be angry. Likewise, if you're an employee and
can't work from home, of course you will be stressed out about losing your job. This is the
real "economic anxiety" and it is no laughing matter.
for the real small business owners, and the individuals who can't work .
they ought to feel pissed
after all . a fraction of the trillions that are earmarked for wall street, could have "paid
their bills"..at least for a year . and then the "citizens" would be getting something
tangible for the debt being incurred in their name by the duopoly.
All the people realizing "someone" is getting bailed out and it isn't them
I was puzzled by the victory of Prop. 22 in California. This is a state which has huge
Democratic majorities, and normally rubber-stamps all union-sponsored legislation.
Uber and Lyft threatened that if Prop. 22 did not pass, they would either stop operations
or would lay off 75% of their temp workers.
(not unlike an employer threatening to move to China if their workers form a union.)
They also threatened that ride prices would at least double, and wait times would greatly
increase.
The average voter may have put their own self-interest ahead of any class loyalty.
Final note: the gig workers did get a few benefits out of AB 5, things granted by Uber and
Lyft to buy some goodwill.
Comments welcome! I do not live in CA so I am just guessing on this. It was an important
vote.
Prop 22 is going to be the most important result of the 2020 election, not Trump
v Biden or control of either legislature.
I've been very puzzled by the result too as it passed handily and wasn't really close. I
don't live near CA either, but I did read that among other misleading tactics, the Prop 22
proponents gave delivery bags to restaurants that use these gig delivery services so that the
delivery drivers would be dropping off meals to people in Yes on 22 bags, which made it seem
like prop 22 would be beneficial to gig workers if you didn't look into it much.
So on the one hand there was the intent to deceive. But then I think that if I heard about
these dirty tricks 3,000 miles away, surely CA voters must have known about them too.
The depressing thing is that maybe a lot of people did know exactly what Prop 22 was all
about and decided they liked the idea of a permanent underclass always only minutes
away at the touch of a button to do the things they can't be bothered with for a
pittance.
The fact that so many of the gig company execs worked first in the Obama administration
and are now heading back to the Biden administration with dreams of scaling up prop 22 is a
very ominous portent.
I voted NO on prop 22, but a mailer I received from the YES side may show why it
passed.
It has text with "by 4-to-1, app-based drivers overwhelmingly prefer to work as
independent contractors".
The pictures of smiling workers on the mailer are all minorities (Asian, Hispanic,
Black).
I'd suggest a small percentage of CA voters actually use Uber/Lyft, so am inclined to
believe voters did not vote to preserve their own self-interest.
The "YES" mailer lists 5 advantages for the drivers, "guaranteed hourly earnings for
app-based drivers", "per mile compensation toward vehicle expenses", "medical and disability
coverage for injuries and illnesses", "new health benefits for drivers who work 15+ hours a
week", and "additional safety protections for app-based drivers"
The mailer lists groups supporting it, NAACP, California Hispanic Chamber of Commerce,
Consumer Choice Center, The Latin Business Association, Black Women Organized for Political
Action, California Small Business Association, California Senior Advocates League.
I remember a prior YES on 22 mailer had support from Mothers Against Drunk Driving..
The "YES" group spent about 12x more than the No group (188 million vs 15million)
I saw a lot of pro Prop 22 advertising and nothing against it. The ads were all sleek,
full of cheerful drivers with big smiles, and easily the best made ads of 2020. I knew that
there was something bad about the proposition, but until just a few days before the election
I couldn't tell you why. All my mental bandwidth was on the national elections and not on
parsing the various state propositions like I normally would. This time it was all on
something else.
If a poli-sci/poli-econ geek like me was having some problems with truly understanding
this extremely effective, slickly made campaign of manufactured consent, what does that say
about the many, often financially and/or socially overwhelmed, California voters who would be
much like me? I think that the overlords had the perfect situation for getting the
proposition passed.
"but the (GOP) party needs to reverse its positions on taxing the wealthiest, punishing
and preventing the expansion of organized labor, reversing their position on outsourcing
manufacturing, and addressing economic precarity"
And I need to become 6'4″, handsome, young and athletic.
Indeed why would they reverse when the Dems agree with them on all of it. What the above
article doesn't get is that the true ruling class response to precarity is simply to make
sure voters have no options to address it. We are in a class war, not a battle between
political parties. Any promises Biden made to the poor will blow away like smoke once in
office. He is on the record saying that billionaires are swell folks.
Lambert linked an interesting article yesterday in Water Cooler that talked about cycles
in history and the ingredients of high social unrest. The subject is historian Peter
Turchin
He has been warning for a decade that a few key social and political trends portend an
"age of discord," civil unrest and carnage worse than most Americans have experienced. In
2010, he predicted that the unrest would get serious around 2020, and that it wouldn't let
up until those social and political trends reversed. Havoc at the level of the late 1960s
and early '70s is the best-case scenario; all-out civil war is the worst.
The fundamental problems, he says, are a dark triad of social maladies: a bloated elite
class, with too few elite jobs to go around; declining living standards among the general
population; and a government that can't cover its financial positions.
Turchin is saying that social instability is not just the result of high inequality but
also of a bloated ruling class that is itself insecure because there aren't enough PMC jobs
for all those college graduates and their credentials. Thus in our case the political parties
have come to be dominated by these middle class concerns with the poor almost entirely out of
the picture and dismissed as racist deplorables who probably deserve their fate. As the
article says this sociological theory of history is controversial but at least worth
considering.
A good, broad, liberal arts degree, or something like it, can be useful in many kinds of
jobs, if the jobs exist . Much of the high skilled, high paying jobs have all been shipped
overseas, and the remaining good paying jobs increasingly are office jobs requiring not only
a masters degree, but good social connections, and at least saying only goodthoughts to get
and keep.
It use to be that there was plenty of diverse work. If you failed at getting tenure or
that job at the bank, or the government position you wanted, there was plenty of good work
requiring only some education, intelligence, and drive. Having the kind of degree and
connections that someone in the modern PMC would merely be very useful, not a requirement for
a good life. Bur now we have too many people having the exact education needed to get the few
remaining good jobs in the few safe fields, and unlike fifty years, failure means
destitution, not disappointment.
And yet claiming that this class war exist, which is supposedly immiserating increasing
numbers of Americans ever higher up the class chain, is all deplorably racist, sexist,
homophobic, and transphobic I am reliable informed. /s
It is unsettling to see writers who I have been reading for years, even decades, start
saying that it is racism or bigotry, and only that, which explains the Bad Man. One doesn't
have to be a Marxist to make a connection with the increasing poverty and corruption under
both parties over the past forty or fifty years with President Trump. Yet, many refuse
to.
It does make me wonder what it is that I am blind to.
I agree,
the class war is a better way of seeing things.
all the symptoms and externalities the class war provides are the things the parties use as
fodder issues for their respective bases but all the duopoly can provide is more of the same
. "their way" their culture . their rules . their precedents their history..
this is how they seem to win they teach the children to think their" way".
Then what else will happen in the future
people continually adopting patterns that already exist.
They have created a culture . and we all know how people are treated by their neighbors who
are "counter-culture"
It becomes a self reinforcing narrative, where the hive keeps the status quo because they
want to .
We keep supporting systems that are there to control us rather than recreating systems that
help .. like we are "supposed" to or something.
James P. Yep. That paragraph has some giant "ifs" in it that caught my eye as I was
reading. The likelihood of Republicans sponsoring legislation to repeal "right to work" laws,
which tend to be in Republican-dominated states, is almost nil. Further, a party that is
opposed to any tax increases, no matter what need has to be addressed, isn't going to change
course. Another "if" is relying on someone like the egregious Tom Cotton, as mentioned, for
leadership about legislation.
I am sure, though, that you are already on your way to becoming a beefcake model and
internet influencer.
It's going to take some time for this article to sink in. Words like precariat and
precarity are fairly new concepts, at least for me and my automatic spell checker. What is
the etymology of this word and what are it's conceptual dimensions. I know what precarious
means and I can see how using it as an adjective works. But if it's going to be a key term I
want to know more about it. Accordiing to a quick search, the etymology is:
precarious (adj.)
1640s, a legal word, "held through the favor of another," from Latin precarius "depending on
favor, pertaining to entreaty, obtained by asking or praying," from prex (genitive precis)
"entreaty, prayer" (from PIE root *prek- "to ask, entreat").
The notion of "dependent on the will of another" led to the extended sense "risky,
dangerous, hazardous, uncertain" (1680s), but this was objected to. "No word is more
unskillfully used than this with its derivatives. It is used for uncertain in all its senses;
but it only means uncertain, as dependent on others " [Johnson]. Related: Precariously;
precariousness.
So what is striking in reading it's etymology is that it is defined as something
"dependent, uncertain, risky, dangerous, hazardous." This characterizes many areas of life.
With respect to contemporary life in the area of economics, I certainly see it all around me
and in the news headlines, in the instability of good long-term paying jobs with benefits. In
politics, I certainly see the risks, dangers, and hazards, especially in the highly
militarized nature of foreign relations. But looking at the term from the perspective of a
"social scientist" does it explain the antecedents that lead to this condition and is it
operational in the sense of breaking it down into more rudimentary terms and
relationships.
I am reading St. Thomas Aquinas' book "On Truth" and although the style of Questiones
Disputatae , with its contra, sed contra, and style is archaic and hard to
follow, it provides a good way of centering dialogue. In Question one of Article 1, the
formal reply to the stated Article of "What is Truth?" states:
When investigating the nature of anything, one should make the same kind of analysis
as he makes when he reduces a proposition to certain self-evident principles."
Since this term "precarity" is new to me, I don't think I have a good handle on how to use
it outside of a descriptor. Does it explain anything? And maybe I'm just asking too much of
the word. Maybe it's just meant as that, a simple characterization whose underlying causal
relationships are to yet be determined and examined.
I've seen precariate be described as a combination of precarious proletariat.
While one could argue the position of the proletariat is always precarious, I do think the
are times in history which are more precarious than others, and what we see now is certainly
one (climate change impacts, opioid/alcoholism, covid19 pandemic, ever increasing inequality,
globalization of manufacturing, health care for profit in the US, increasing cost of housing
and education, no doubt many more)
Nice piece generally and which kinda validates a feeling I've had generally that
"uncertainty is increasing" which is often bad for people in so many ways – uncertainty
among the "entitled" can be highly damaging to polling (in addition to all the points raised
in the article). The elephant in the room is of course interpreting polling results. For
example 70% Democrat at a precinct/state/national level is consistent with an infinite number
of explanations: at one end we have "strong means" (meaning these are "solid" votes) and at
the other we have "very weak means but big variances" (meaning these votes are subject to all
sorts of factors like news items, real or manufactured, etc). We can't "know" which universe
we're in .Unless we conduct a secondary survey to give a "second line in the x-y plane" to
see where it intersects the main one ..then we know whether the 70% is driven by means or
variances or some combination.
The likelihood function for all "limited dependent variable models" – discrete
choices like voting – has a term that is multiplicative in means and variances. Thus
"70%" could mean any of a HUGE number of things. Those of us experienced in interpreting
these data can rule out the "dumb" explanations .but we are still left with a number of
"possible explanations". If we don't actively talk to voters, do a lot of qualitative
research etc, then we can't begin to limit the number of "possible solutions" further. I have
had little experience in applying the methods to polling so I rely a lot on sites like NC to
give "insights from the ground". It is a pity polling institutions don't. YouGov were on the
right track in 2017 but bottled it due to collecting data for their "second line" in a poor
way. It's a pity – if they collected data in better way they'd be far and away the best
polling organisation. Though the downright lies told by Trumpites that Lambert has
highlighted remain a problem – I do have ideas how to address this but they go way
beyond the scope of the site and like I've said before, I think pushing MMT etc is a better
use of resources (even though it pains me personally not to have my own "hobby horse"
championed, hehe).
But I personally think increased variances are a fact of life and reflect the article's
point that uncertainty in life is hurting everyone.
Uncertainty and fear are increasing because the kick-the-can strategies are starting to
look really wobbly, and the fights for survival and hail-marys (like MMT) are being trotted
out.
The velocity of change has increased, and the rate of adaptation appears to have somehow
actually slowed down. Just exactly the wrong response at the wrong time.
One commenter above poked fun at the term "precarity" – said it was a $10 gimmick
for the word "poor".
A while back Mark Twain said a "cauliflower is a cabbage with a college education".
Precarity is a college-educated middle class "information worker" who is "feeling
poor".
The effects of automation and globalization are moving up the class ladder. The ship's
sinking and the water's already flooded 3rd class berths (rust belt and flyover), and is
about 1/3 of the way into the 2nd class cabins.
Agree or disagree with Andrew's Yang's proposal for a universal basic income, I think he
is definitely on to something when he talks about the ramifications of automation and machine
learning, though he isn't the first person to point it out.
Some people are simply not aware–it's not that they necessarily don't care, they
simply just don't know–while others are in denial or don't care.
Regardless of where a given person falls, I do agree that with Yang and others that say
dealing with this economic reshaping will be of the key challenges–if not the most
important challenge–of our time.
reshaping our monetary system is one of the biggest hurdles in reshaping our economic
present.
Monetary reform efforts like the modern day "chicago plan" as was described in the bill
proposed in congress in 2011/2012 112th congress HR 2990
open the door to creating money debt free, and permanently which could pay off the national
debt, and fund policies like single payer health care and even "citizen dividends", that are
really just ways to inject money into the economy, rather than starting the injection of
money into the economy on wall street , like now.. https://www.congress.gov/bill/112-thcongress/house-bill/2990/text
In sharp contrast, Trump may have appeared indifferent to the gravity of the coronavirus,
but his persistent calls to reopen the economy addressed the precarity issue, as they
appealed to many workers whose livelihoods were being destroyed by the pandemically induced
government restrictions placed on economic activity.
The average worker up through October does not have Covid and may not know anyone of
working age who does have Covid ..but they do have a job, and if the job must be done
in-person they know they were vulnerable.
"Keeping the economy open" is more urgent to them than defeating Covid through
lockdowns.
This is a big reason why Trump even kept this election close.
In America, the authorities who order lockdowns cannot simultaneously order financial
relief. This created a tragic class divide on fighting the pandemic.
These days the members of the media tend to be dominated by the upper middle class who
attended elite colleges and probably don't even understand the meaning of precarity.
Therefore to them it seems perverse to object to lockdowns and elaborate precautions that the
work from home set can more easily deal with. In the old days newspaper reporters rose
through the ranks and came from small town newspapers and were more in touch with the general
society rather than journalism schools.
I live in California and was surprised to learn here that Harris opposed prop 22. While
the Pro campaign carpet bombed the airwaves with ads, I never saw any CA leaders raise a
voice in opposition or attempt to explain why this would be bad for working people. Never saw
any mention, other than in the state election booklet, that the prop introduced a huge
supermajority needed to repeal it, making it effectively impossible to remove once passed.
Didn't see any out of state money funding ads despite it being obvious that success in
California would lead to adoption in other states.
Well Harris does all support and oppose M4A depending on who shes talking to and when
she's saying it, so there's that. I suspect any disagreements she may express over prop 22's
passage are crocodile tears at best.
Her and every other leader who takes positions on many issues but not on this one. Perhaps
they saw polling and thought it best instead to add to the strategic underground reserves of
dry powder.
Great piece. One effect of spreading precarity–and I will use the term more loosely
to encompass not only economic precarity, but also the increasing sense of pervasive dread
and fear experienced by so many across all walks of life–is that living in this state
increases one's susceptibility to both totalitarian ideologies and to drives for war against
some perceived enemy. To me this explains the shadow of "law and order" hard nationalism
coming from the far right, the more extreme variants of identity politics on the left, and
the terrified push for censorship and "full lockdown" coming from the neoliberal center.
Unfortunately the billionaire class and their pets in the media see all of this as a
potential cash cow rather than a serious danger. Given their stranglehold on the national
discourse and their control of the most effective means of mass organizing (social media),
I'm not sure it is possible to reverse the trend early enough to prevent some kind of major
conflict. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try!
P.S. To avoid any confusion, when I disparagingly refer to "full lockdown" I mean an
authoritarian lockdown without accompanying benefits for workers and with "papers please"
checkpoints and penalties. The worst kind of lockdown, where people are both unable to
support themselves and are actively prevented from doing so. In my opinion people who push
for a hard lockdown before benefits/compensation can be arranged are unintentionally
advocating for such a position; the compensation will never come.
Heck, I've seen comments (generally not on this site) admiring what China did and
lamenting the fact that it can't be done here in the United States.
I sure hope these are troll accounts and not real people in this country, especially not
real people on the left. If these are real people, we are in more trouble than I thought.
A government with the power to literally weld people's door shut, which is what China did,
can do a lot of other scary things.
Yes, like get on top of a virus (and achieve the highest level of economic growth in human
history, and produce incredible poetry, and so on). And as I'm not 'in this country,' I
believe I'm not 'real people.'
I have seen the same thing and have had the same concerns. I do think there is more
dishonest disruption/manipulation and trolling going on than we are aware of. It's at the
point where I automatically assume that most social media accounts are not taking an honest
position. I hope I'm right, because if I'm wrong then humanity is absolutely terrifying.
The corporate imperialism status quo isn't terrifying enough for you? Oil and gas seeping
out through the land under and around "affordable housing" because CEQA doesn't count on
those properties doesn't terrify you? Flint's water crisis doesn't terrify you?
The throngs of human beings thrown out onto the street by Upgrading slumlords and
developers doesn't terrify you? Overlords talking with straight faces about excess and
surplus humans and ramming Prop 22 through doesn't terrify you?
There's a big difference between "humanity is OK, but the small slice that rules us is
terrible" and "humanity is in deep shit because we're mostly terrible." The first implies a
solution, the second what? Hope for a benevolent AI overlord to emerge?
Read my post again. I said that I automatically assume that most accounts posting terrible
stuff are bots. There are accounts that say awful things about almost any and every topic
imaginable. The number of them is so huge that if these are real people and not
bots, then people may indeed be largely terrible. But I assume they are bots.
https://popularresistance.org/affordable-housing-developers-set-their-sights-on-former-toxic-oil-fields/
DeSmog blog Vista Hermosa residents like Luna are troubled by a 2019 environmental rollback by the
state, AB1197, that exempts homeless housing developments in the City of Los Angeles from the
mandates of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Arguably California's broadest
environmental law, CEQA requires builders to assess the environmental impacts of new
development and find ways to avoid or mitigate them.
The political will to rollback CEQA has continued into 2020. In January, Assemblyman
Miguel Santiago, who represents District 53 bordering Vista Hermosa, introduced a new piece
of legislation, AB1907, to further expand CEQA exemptions to now include all affordable
housing.
I'm reminded of the excellent post by Anne Amnesia in May 2016, (yes, when Obama and Biden
were still in office, and the White House was just a huge gleam in Kamala's way too sparkly
eyes, given the massive poverty, incarceration and inequality in California, as she
successfully ran for California Senator and will have not completed even one term)
Unnecessariathttps://morecrows.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/unnecessariat/
A very brief excerpt (it's long and meaty), emphasis mine:
In 2011, economist Guy Standing coined the term "precariat" to refer to workers
whose jobs were insecure, underpaid, and mobile, who had to engage in substantial "work for
labor" to remain employed, whose survival could, at any time, be compromised by employers
(who, for instance held their visas) and who therefore could do nothing to improve their
lot. The term found favor in the Occupy movement, and was colloquially expanded to include
not just farmworkers, contract workers, "gig" workers, but also unpaid interns, adjunct
faculty, etc. Looking back from 2016, one pertinent characteristic seems obvious: no matter
how tenuous, the precariat had jobs. The new dying Americans, the ones killing themselves
on purpose or with drugs, don't. Don't, won't, and know it.
Here's the thing: from where I live, the world has drifted away. We aren't
precarious, we're unnecessary. The money has gone to the top. The wages have gone to
the top. The recovery has gone to the top. And what's worst of all, everybody who matters
seems basically pretty okay with that. The new bright sparks, cheerfully referred to as
"Young Gods" believe themselves to be the honest winners in a new invent-or-die economy,
and are busily planning to escape into space or acquire superpowers, and instead of
worrying about this, the talking heads on TV tell you its all a good thing- don't worry,
the recession's over and everything's better now, and technology is TOTES AMAZEBALLS!
The Rent-Seeking Is Too Damn High
If there's no economic plan for the Unnecessariat, there's certainly an abundance for
plans to extract value from them. No-one has the option to just make their own way and be
left alone at it. It used to be that people were uninsured and if they got seriously sick
they'd declare bankruptcy and lose the farm, but now they have a (mandatory) $1k/month plan
with a $5k deductible: they'll still declare bankruptcy and lose the farm if they get sick,
but in the meantime they pay a shit-ton to the shareholders of United Healthcare, or Aetna,
or whoever. This, like shifting the chronically jobless from "unemployed" to "disabled" is
seen as a major improvement in status, at least on television.
I was surprised Prop 22 passed because it was not doing well in the polls for most of the
pre-election period. It seemed Californians were solidly against it. Then, perhaps 4-6 weeks
before the election, I noticed a dramatic change in messaging. Suddenly the ads were touting
that if Prop 22 passed, Uber and Lyft drivers would receive health care benefits. I assumed
that this was deceptive messaging designed to turn the vote around. Here is what Kaiser
Health News says about the benefits:
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20201029/App-based-companies-pushing-Prop-22-say-drivers-will-get-health-benefits-Will-they.aspx
Looks like it worked. I guess there's no penalty for this sort of deception, or at least, no
enforcement of a penalty.
So, I have CSPAN on at the moment. They're streaming the DC #MillionMAGAMarch
#StopTheSteal SuperSpreader rally.
The over-the-top vitriol is rather breathtaking. The angry ignorance is depressing.
They're "not gonna allow the Steal." They're gonna "be warriors." "Trump WON! Trump WON!
Trump WON! Trump WON! "
The Occam's Chainsaw "logic" is on full display.
Meanwhile, yesterday's new U.S. Covid19 case count was more than 184k, 1.6m for Nov
1-13.
No argument there. I started an Excel sheet, w/ transcribed JHU data commencing Oct 1st
(thru yesterday). The exponential upward trendline in the graph has an R-sq of 0.91. (an
iterative 7-day moving avg is also illuminating.)
Of course, it'll go up until it no longer does. And, "new cases" incidence rates comprise
but one facet of interest.
If you're struggling but aren't sick (yet), economic concerns win out. No big surprise
there. 70 million people are fighting a return to austerity and a technocratic "Great Reset"
that was devised without their input. They see it as literally fighting for their lives and
livelihoods. The new admin can ignore this at their own peril. (Too bad Trump didn't actually
solve any of their problems, but at least he gave them his attention, more than anyone else
has done in decades.)
Many people have to choose between the certainty of being unable to pay their bills, if
they stay home, versus the unknown risk of contracting COVID if they work.
Staying home is luxury a lot of people just don't have–even pre-COVID it was very
common for people in low-wage jobs that don't provide sick-leave to show up to work sick. It
wasn't because these people are evil or wanted to get anyone sick but rather because if you
don't work you don't get paid.
Precisely. The rent isn't going to pay itself, and people are scared about their future.
Covid isn't an obvious terror like Ebola, so people weigh the risks and decide in favor of
their economic security. If we were like some of the more advanced countries in the world,
they wouldn't have to make this choice, but here we are.
"at least he gave them his attention, more than anyone else has done in decades."
Hmmm last time I looked Bernie Sanders was paying attention and proposing solutions since
at least 2015. Nice how you just erased him and the millions who voted for him.
You're right. Trump is the only primary-winning candidate who paid attention to
the working class in recent memory. Bernie was obviously a million times better than Trump
because he was sincere, he had a plan, and he would have followed through. But he got
screwed.
I'm becoming a bit weary of reading that politicians like Trump are "exploiting anxieties"
about poverty and unemployment, as though such anxieties were unreasonable and the problems
didn't really exist. The trouble is that "responding to voters' concerns about their lives"
doesn't have quite the same dismissive overtones. The supercilious assumption that people who
are afraid of losing their jobs are being "exploited", whereas people being urged to vote on
gender lines aren't, seems very strange. Is anyone really surprised that people are more
worried about how much money they have than about which gender they are?
Understand people's problems, devise reasonable solutions, communicate your plan to the
voters, and follow through on your promises. It sounds so easy, doesn't it but good luck
trying it with the media and parties working together against you at every turn. Pull up
those bootstraps!
Thanks. We are going to find out how the velocity of the vote is slower than the velocity
of hunger.
"Civilization is about 3 meals thick." John Brockman, ex-con.
We are not together and the people in power don't want to give the people without, food
money. Two more and 3 more months of disease as hunger and death knock at more and more
doors. Evictions pick up apace.
Cormac McCarthy dystopia. No country for anybody.
The economic theory attributed to Warren Mosler and popularized by Stephanie Kelton is the
last idea. If it is a Hail Mary then so be it. If it doesn't work, isn't put to work, mankind
itself is doomed.
Public health care authorities understandably directed their policy responses toward
pandemic mitigation, and the Democrats largely embraced their recommendations. But they
remained insensitive to the anxieties of tens of millions of Americans, whose jobs were
being destroyed for good, whose household debts -- rent, mortgage, and utility arrears, as
well as interest on education and car loans -- were rising inexorably, even allowing for
the temporary expedient of stimulus checks from the government until this past August
I agree and worse this dynamic is playing itself out again–talk about whether
President-elect Biden should institute a lockdown is bringing out the "lockdown now, worry
about the consequences later" mentality again.
While I'm not sure Biden personally regards the millions of those who cannot work from
home, but aren't considered essential, collateral damage, there are clearly a segment of
Democrats who do–I've even seen it on Facebook among people I know. It provides further
proof that the Democrats, as Thomas Frank and others have astutely noted, have become
predominantly the party of the college-educated upper-middle class.
While I'm not denying the severity of the pandemic, the consequences of business shutdowns
and subsequent layoffs are very real and not something to be laughed at or minimized,
especially if Democrats want to have a future among those who are less affluent.
The globalists found just the economics they were looking for.
The USP of neoclassical economics – It concentrates wealth.
Let's use it for globalisation.
Mariner Eccles, FED chair 1934 – 48, observed what the capital accumulation of
neoclassical economics did to the US economy in the 1920s. "a giant suction pump had by 1929 to 1930 drawn into a few hands an increasing proportion
of currently produced wealth. This served then as capital accumulations. But by taking
purchasing power out of the hands of mass consumers, the savers denied themselves the kind of
effective demand for their products which would justify reinvestment of the capital
accumulation in new plants. In consequence as in a poker game where the chips were
concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellows could stay in the game only by
borrowing. When the credit ran out, the game stopped"
This is what it's supposed to be like.
A few people have all the money and everyone else gets by on debt.
Most of today's problems come from the 1920s.
Financial stability had been locked into the regulations of the Keynesian era.
The neoliberals removed them and the financial crises came back. https://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/banking-crises.png
"This Time is Different" by Reinhart and Rogoff has a graph showing the same thing (Figure
13.1 – The proportion of countries with banking crises, 1900-2008).
After the 1930s, they wanted to ensure those times would never return and put things in
place to ensure they didn't.
The neoliberals have been busy stripping them away.
What did the economists learn in the 1940s? http://delong.typepad.com/kalecki43.pdf
In the paper from 1943 you can see ..
They knew Government debt and deficits weren't a problem as they had seen the massive
Government debt and deficits of WW2.
They knew full employment was feasible as they had seen it in WW2.
After WW2 Governments aimed to create full employment as policymakers knew it could be done
and actually maximised wealth creation in the economy.
Balancing the budget was just something they used to do before WW2, but it wasn't actually
necessary.
Government debt and deficits weren't a problem.
They could now solve all those problems they had seen in the 1930s, which caused politics to
swing to the extremes and populist leaders to rise.
They could eliminate unemployment and create a full employment economy.
They could put welfare states in place to ensure the economic hardship of the 1930s would
never be seen again.
They didn't have to use austerity; they could fight recessions with fiscal stimulus.
The neoliberals started to remove the things that had created stable Western societies
after WW2.
"If I thought voters were racists who want basic economic security and the other party was
offering them racism but not economic security, I would simply try offering economic security
but not racism rather than offering them neither." -Ed Burmilla https://twitter.com/edburmila/status/1324420903409692673
We stepped onto an old path that still leads to the same place.
1920s/2000s – neoclassical economics, high inequality, high banker pay, low regulation,
low taxes for the wealthy, robber barons (CEOs), reckless bankers, globalisation phase
1929/2008 – Wall Street crash
1930s/2010s – Global recession, currency wars, trade wars, austerity, rising
nationalism and extremism
1940s – World war.
We forgot we had been down that path before.
Right wing populist leaders are only to be expected at this stage.
Why is Western liberalism always such a disaster?
They did try and learn from past mistakes to create a new liberalism (neoliberalism), but the
Mont Pelerin Society went round in a circle and got back to pretty much where they
started.
It equates making money with creating wealth and people try and make money in the easiest
way possible, which doesn't actually create any wealth.
In 1984, for the first time in American history, "unearned" income exceeded "earned"
income.
The American have lost sight of what real wealth creation is, and are just focussed on making
money.
You might as well do that in the easiest way possible.
It looks like a parasitic rentier capitalism because that is what it is.
Bankers make the most money when they are driving your economy into a financial
crisis.
What they are doing is really an illusion; they are just pulling future spending power into
today.
The 1920s roared at the expense of an impoverished 1930s.
Japan roared on the money creation of real estate lending in the 1980s, they spent the next
30 years repaying the debt they had built up in the 1980s and the economy flat-lined. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YTyJzmiHGk
Bankers use bank credit to pump up asset prices, which doesn't actually create any
wealth.
The money creation of bank credit flows into the economy making it boom, but you are heading
towards a financial crisis and claims on future prosperity are building up in the financial
system.
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-bulletin/2014/money-creation-in-the-modern-economy.pdf
Early success comes at the expense of an impoverished future.
Let's get the basics sorted.
When no one knows what real wealth creation is, you are in trouble.
We want economic success
Step one – Identify where wealth creation occurs in the economy.
Houston, we have a problem.
Economists do identify where real wealth creation in the economy occurs, but this is a
most inconvenient truth as it reveals many at the top don't actually create any wealth.
This is the problem.
Much of their money comes from wealth extraction rather than wealth creation, and they need
to get everyone thoroughly confused so we don't realise what they are really up to.
The Classical Economists had a quick look around and noticed the aristocracy were
maintained in luxury and leisure by the hard work of everyone else.
They haven't done anything economically productive for centuries, they couldn't miss it.
The Classical economist, Adam Smith:
"The labour and time of the poor is in civilised countries sacrificed to the maintaining of
the rich in ease and luxury. The Landlord is maintained in idleness and luxury by the labour
of his tenants. The moneyed man is supported by his extractions from the industrious merchant
and the needy who are obliged to support him in ease by a return for the use of his
money."
There was no benefits system in those days, and if those at the bottom didn't work they
died.
They had to earn money to live.
Ricardo was an expert on the small state, unregulated capitalism he observed in the world
around him. He was part of the new capitalist class, and the old landowning class were a huge
problem with their rents that had to be paid both directly and through wages.
"The interest of the landlords is always opposed to the interest of every other class in the
community" Ricardo 1815 / Classical Economist.
They soon identified the constructive "earned" income and the parasitic "unearned"
income.
This disappeared in neoclassical economics.
GDP was invented after they used neoclassical economics last time.
In the 1920s, the economy roared, the stock market soared and nearly everyone had been making
lots of money.
In the 1930s, they were wondering what the hell had just happened as everything had appeared
to be going so well in the 1920s and then it all just fell apart.
They needed a better measure to see what was really going on in the economy and came up with
GDP.
In the 1930s, they pondered over where all that wealth had gone to in 1929 and realised
inflating asset prices doesn't create real wealth, they came up with the GDP measure to track
real wealth creation in the economy.
The transfer of existing assets, like stocks and real estate, doesn't create real wealth and
therefore does not add to GDP. The real wealth creation in the economy is measured by
GDP.
Real wealth creation involves real work producing new goods and services in the economy.
So all that transferring existing financial assets around doesn't create wealth?
No it doesn't, and now you are ready to start thinking about what is really going on
there.
Economists do identify where real wealth creation in the economy occurs, but this is a
most inconvenient truth as it reveals many at the top don't actually create any wealth.
Hide what real wealth creation is, and pretend it's making money, and this problem goes
away.
@shylockcracy Solmeimani, he hasn't started any shooting wars. Sanctions are undeclared
wars, and Trump's sanctions help US corporations, most of which are globalist anyway. Same
shit different pile.
The last US Presidents who were mildly anti-Zionist were turfed out of office and
assassinated. All of the branches of the USG are (((occupied territory))) and have been for
decades, as was noted by George Wallace in the 1960s.
Trump's redeeming qualities are few and far between, but getting out of "free trade" deals
and reduced immigration, whether legal or illegal, are a big finger in the eye of the
globalists. Other than that, it appears as if he is the only one serious about cleaning up
vote fraud. If the Demicans are caught out, they will shut down the Republocrats fixing in
retaliation, until a new scam is figured out.
Like the petrodollars, WTO better known as globalization, was formed in 1995 after the
fall of Eastern blocks ,to dominate and control the world trade in US fiat currency specially
when China with her cheap skilled labor was to become major world manufacturers of goods.
Basically like oil America agreed not to impose tariff on goods they consumed if you trade
and exported on their fiat currency which costed US nothing to produce. Obviously unlike oil
trade this globalization of trade in US dollar could not work, since unlike oil trade America
couldn't politically dominated and control the good manufacturing countries, like it could,
with small oil producing countries. The period of free trade in goods and energy is coming to
an end, therefore US needs to lower her standards of living, or to go to major wars with
other resources hungry powers to continue colonizing the third world resources and labor.
Either way the end result will be the sam as for, not so Great Britain, ottomans, Spanish,
Persian empires, the only obvious difference shorter empire.
The American Revolution was a catastrophe for its economy, which had to endure decades of
reconstruction. In order to neutralize the threat of the British Empire, it stroke multiple
trade deals with it.
The USA is home to the father of protectionism: Alexander Hamilton. He stated that a
national industry in its infancy should be protected from its more mature competition. The
USA followed his advice and protected its nascent industry from the British threat.
When the British Empire begun to degenerate, the Americans used the cheap British capital
in excess in the financial markets to build up their infrastructure, specially their
railways. Australia did the same.
The Founding Fathers did what they had to do in order to protect their country and make it
flourish. When the ideology of the time stated they shouldn't, they invented a new ideology
that stated they should. And the could: when the British and French tried to destroy the USA
through a sea embargo, they responded in kind (Embargo Act of 1807) and prevailed; they did
not cave in to the then imperial powers.
So, I don't understand why so many Americans are offended with China. The capitalist world
tried to keep China poor and as a raw material exporter, sweatshop conglomeration. China
didn't accept this, and decided to fight back. The result is here for all of us to see.
"Today the Department of State is updating the public guidance for CAATSA authorities
to include Nord Stream 2 and the second line of TurkStream 2. This action puts investments or
other activities that are related to these Russian energy export pipelines at risk of US
sanctions. It's a clear warning to companies aiding and abetting Russia's malign influence
projects and will not be tolerated. Get out now or risk the consequences".
Pompeo speaking at a press conference today.
CAATSA -- Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act
So Russia and Turkey are "adversaries" of the USA?
In what way?
Do these states wish to wage war against the USA?
Is it adversarial to United States interest to compete economically with the hegemon?
Who cares? Really, is Pompeo still scary? If he has a functioning brain, he should realize
that all these blatant efforts to reserve markets for America by sanctioning all its
competitors out of the picture is having the opposite effect, and frightening customers away
from becoming dependent on American products which might be withheld on a whim when America
wants political concessions. 'Will not be tolerated' – what a pompous ass. Sanction
away. The consequence is well-known to be seizure of assets held in the United States or an
inability to do business in the United States. That will frighten some into submission
– like the UK, which was threatened with the cessation of intelligence-sharing with the
USA (sure you can spare it?) if it did not drop Huawei from its 5G networks. But others will
take prudent steps to limit their exposure to such threats, in the certain knowledge that if
they work, they will encourage the USA to use the technique again.
The good news is that the unstoppable juggernaut of globalization has fallen to it's
knees. Countries and societies around the world will have to look at ways they came become
independent and self sufficient,at least to some degree. It's like "War of the Worlds"
really, the best effort of humanity to contain the plague fails, but a random natural
occurrence saves humanity from the brink of destruction. Hopefully some real scientists will
be allowed to mitigate the medical disaster, but one thing is for sure, the grand plan of
turning everyone into a nomad competing for pennies on the international market, for the sole
benefit of the richest among the rich, is dead. Some really hard times are coming for the
international nomads/ parasites, and hopefully humanity will move to some more beneficial
culture, and have a real chance to survive as a species, in the long term.
@Rev. Spooner bout the Bill of Rights or the Constitution or community. Those are a joke
to people whose money is made transnational.
The lumpens who have never traveled out of their state have no concept of geographic
dimensions. They have never even left home. They think everyone is as patriotic as them and
will fight and die for their country and their community.
I assure none of the elite care a whit. Penthouses look the same from Manhattan to
Tokyo.
Ask the Boers in South Africa or Polish in Detroit who did not "sniff the wind" in
time.
The guy who has a gun loaded in his pocket as an insurance policy has a plan and it does
not end well for the person who hit him.
The elites have two or three passports, own businesses overseas, own houses.
"... Moreover, people do distinguish between needs and wants. Americans need to eat, but they mostly don't need to eat out. They don't need to travel. Restaurant owners and airlines therefore have two problems: they can't cover costs while their capacity is limited for public-health reasons, and demand would be down even if the coronavirus disappeared. This explains why many businesses are not reopening even though they legally can. Others are reopening, but fear they cannot hold out for long. And the many millions of workers in America's vast services sector are realizing that their jobs are simply not essential. ..."
"... America's economic plight is structural. It is not simply the consequence of Trump's incompetence or House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's poor political strategy. It reflects systemic changes over 50 years that have created an economy based on global demand for advanced goods, consumer demand for frills, and ever-growing household and business debts. This economy was in many ways prosperous, and it provided jobs and incomes to many millions. Yet it was a house of cards, and COVID-19 has blown it down. ..."
In the 1960s, the US had a balanced economy that produced goods for both businesses and
households, at all levels of technology, with a fairly small (and tightly regulated) financial
sector. It produced largely for itself, importing mainly commodities.
Today, the US produces for the world, mainly advanced investment goods and services, in
sectors such as aerospace, information technology, arms, oilfield services, and finance. And it
imports far more consumer goods, such as clothing, electronics, cars, and car parts, than it
did a half-century ago.
And whereas cars, televisions, and household appliances drove US consumer demand in the
1960s, a much larger share of domestic spending today goes (or went) to restaurants, bars,
hotels, resorts, gyms, salons, coffee shops, and tattoo parlors, as well as college tuition and
doctor's visits. Tens of millions of Americans work in these sectors.
Finally, American household spending in the 1960s was powered by rising wages and growing
home equity. But wages have been largely stagnant since at least 2000, and spending increases
since 2010 were powered by rising personal and corporate debts. House values are now stagnant
at best, and will likely fall in the months ahead.
Mainstream economics pays little attention to such structural questions. Instead, it assumes
that business investment responds mostly to the consumer, whose spending is dictated equally by
income and desire. The distinction between "essential" and "superfluous" does not exist. Debt
burdens are largely ignored.
But demand for many US-made capital goods now depends on global conditions. Orders for new
aircraft will not recover while half of all existing planes are grounded. At current prices,
the global oil industry is not drilling new wells. Even at home, though existing construction
projects may be completed, plans for new office towers or retail outlets won't be launched
soon. And as people commute less, cars will last longer, so demand for them (and gasoline) will
suffer.
Faced with radical uncertainty, US consumers will save more and spend less. Even if the
government replaces their lost incomes for a time, people know that stimulus is short term.
What they do not know is when the next job offer – or layoff – will come along.
Moreover, people do distinguish between needs and wants. Americans need to eat, but they
mostly don't need to eat out. They don't need to travel. Restaurant owners and airlines
therefore have two problems: they can't cover costs while their capacity is limited for
public-health reasons, and demand would be down even if the coronavirus disappeared. This
explains why many businesses are not reopening even though they legally can. Others are
reopening, but fear they cannot hold out for long. And the many millions of workers in
America's vast services sector are realizing that their jobs are simply not essential.
Meanwhile, US household debts – rent, mortgage, and utility arrears, as well as
interest on education and car loans – have continued to mount. True, stimulus checks have
helped: defaults have so far been modest, and many landlords have been accommodating. But as
people face long periods with lower incomes, they will continue to hoard funds to ensure that
they can repay their fixed debts. As if all this were not enough, falling sales- and income-tax
revenues are prompting US state and local governments to cut spending, compounding the loss of
jobs and incomes.
America's economic plight is structural. It is not simply the consequence of Trump's
incompetence or House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's poor political strategy. It reflects systemic
changes over 50 years that have created an economy based on global demand for advanced goods,
consumer demand for frills, and ever-growing household and business debts. This economy was in
many ways prosperous, and it provided jobs and incomes to many millions. Yet it was a house of
cards, and COVID-19 has blown it down.
"Reopen America" is therefore an economic and political fantasy. Incumbent politicians crave
a cheery growth rebound, and the depth of the collapse makes possible some attractive
short-term numbers. But taking them seriously will merely set the stage for a new round of
disillusion. As nationwide protests against systemic racism and police brutality show,
disillusion is America's one big growth sector right now.
"... Russiagate became a convenient replacement explanation absolving an incompetent political establishment for its complicity in what happened in 2016, and not just the failure to see it coming. ..."
"... Because of the immediate arrival of the collusion theory, neither Wolf Blitzer nor any politician ever had to look into the camera and say, "I guess people hated us so much they were even willing to vote for Donald Trump ..."
" Russiagate became a convenient replacement explanation absolving an incompetent political establishment for its complicity
in what happened in 2016, and not just the failure to see it coming.
Because of the immediate arrival of the collusion theory, neither Wolf Blitzer nor any politician ever had to look into
the camera and say, "I guess people hated us so much they were even willing to vote for Donald Trump ."
As a peedupon all I can see is that the elite seem to be fighting amongst themselves or (IMO) providing cover for ongoing elite
power/control efforts. It might not be about private/public finance in a bigger picture but I can't see anything else that makes
sense
Here is some theory from what I read/hear over there...No idea which side play the
informants, but so as to make some sense due the last tendences at least in Europe and the
moves y Trump and the "deep state"
According to Daniel Estulin ( and not sure whether I take him right, due his Spanish
)there is a current fight amongst the liberal financial banking elites and the old European
aristocratic elites and old ( very old )money, being the later those who lost the last WWII
by betting it all on fascism ( overtly or covertly ), and who try to redesign the world by
undoing current nation-states to then try to rebuilt and recover former European empires,
like Austro-Hungarian one ( in fact, there have been already moves these past days, even
during the pamdemic lockdown, amongst the Visegrads in this sense, on the part of Hungary and
Romania...), the IV Reich, and so on...
Trump would be, what he calls "international black", not an accident rised to power y the
deplorables, but a well planned move by those elites behind supporting him, who think the
world has become unmanageable under liberal democracy. These, what they seek, is a
middle-ageization of the world, with a hierarchical order kept tight through authoritarian
rule where, after the galloping advance of the 6th technological paradygm, about 90% of known
jobs will be lost, without time for the population to reconvert into something useful. To
justify that and advance it without intercourse of a decade or so, plus without facing any
resistance at all, the virus came, one would say, like fallen from the sky...
In the middle, are us all, the working class, the peasants, and the middle class ( upper,
middle, and low ) who never left being working class, eventhough the brainsucking by loans,
hollywood, hyperconsum through big malls cheap fashion clothes, a bit of travelling, and TV.
All disposable people....as got demonstrated during the "live exercise"....All jobs related
to services, tourism, clothing, cosmetics, will be lost if not those related to the luxury
sector, feed by the elites.
What is left for us is what got well illustrated in the hunger games, some will run to
aspire to get some crumbs, but at such price...
Of course, some amongst us, as always, are already positioning themselves as the new brown
shirts, online... and on terrain....
What all those calls for denouncing your breaking lockdown neighbor, or even the one not
clapping down at 8pm ( like authomats every day, during two months! )do you think were
for?
To test....
It is undeniable that China has made impressive achievements since the Maosits revolution to
date. BUT lets be realistic pre1973 China still a Nation with markedly 3th world living
standards, even today with a soft racist inuendos , people speak about the Chinese must adopt
better hygiene standards personally and privately.
Before 1973 China had mainly 3th world status, eversince Nixon (or Kissinger?) opened
China US Corporate Capitalists inundated Chinas economic landscape, in other words the real,
KEY bases for Chinas economic success remain USA Corporations majority perhaps more than 70%
of their industrial output, although China has wisely constraint, restrain the USA/World
FINANCIAL cartels..(Soros speclation against te yuan, ans Soros Opensociety inflkuence in
HongKong)
Can China remain stable internally with a growing well travel educated savvy middle
class, and a POOR lower working class with meager salaries, slave like labor conditions, and
oppressive political controls, that's a recipe for a social cauldron..
Will the Chinese proletariat demand more "democracy" western/eastern oriented
reforms??..
... ... ...
China has become GREAT because the USA decided to become poor a Spartan, byzantinne,
militaristic, mercenary rogue nation at service of the Globaloists ELITES which do not care
about that cosmological romantic lyrical notion of America.
@anon Lets add to the bigger picture. With regards to Israel: Exceptions don't make the
rule.
_______
The forces that off-shored the jobs, to then make wage arbitrage and become masters of the
universe, are the very same ones that are now demonizing China.
They are "international" in outlook, and the only national country that matters to them is
Israel.
In general, it is a "class" of people -sometimes called "Davos Man" who goes by other
names, such as globo-homo, ZOG (zionist world government), Ne0-Con, Neo-Liberal.
Globo-Homo couldn't resist the wage arbitrage that China represented after the Berlin Wall
fell in 1990. Clinton gave China effective MFN status in 1993. Wall Street begins Green Mail
Coercion Techniques against American industry to then off-shore jobs.
China also runs a simultaneous gambit against the U.S. by buying up TBills instead of
goods from U.S. main-street. This then insures that U.S. dollar is propped up against the
Yuan e.g. currency manipulation. The China/Wall Street Gambit is in full swing, and
globo-homo is happy.
Globo-Homo doesn't care about the destruction of American Mainstreet, because only prices
matter, and they are getting rich. China becomes the workshop for the world.
There are still elements within Globo-Homo that like their easy money derived from
ownership of transplanted industry.
If you look at today's propaganda emission center for China psy-ops you will see that it
is another mouthpiece and organ of the "international." They are festooned with neo-liberals
and ne0-cons.
Why the sudden shift, where China is the golden goose, to becoming the enemy?
Summary: There are two main enemies against American Mainstreet Labor. There is the
internal and international enemy of globo homo centered in Wall Street and London, and there
are elements within China that used Mercantile techniques to continue imbalanced trade and
theft of American patrimony and industry.
Globo homo has new marching orders, as they have belatedly realized that they got played.
The jig is up, you cannot operate the usury mechanism, do speculation, and RIG THE WORLD,
forever.
The U.S. military security state has communicated clearly, they don't like their
"international" supply chains and loss of U.S. domestic manufacturing. Globo Homo has long
used the US. military as a Golem which protected movement of ships from China's east
coast.
Atlantacist Method: Raw materials come into China by Ship, and finished Goods leave by
ship. Globo Homo ownership class takes the increment of production and wage arbitrage as
gains. Wall Street/London is a hero, main street is a zero.
The tectonic shifts and the trajectory of both countries (China and the USA) after this
epidemics end is unpredictable. "Chimerica" type of globalization was in decline before the
epidemic (Huawai, etc) and Trump badly wants decoupling from China. Somebody needs to pay for
those changes. It might well be us. So it is quite probable that those techno Nouveau
riche like us might be soon royally fleeced one way or another.
It might be prudent to have at least 300K in three bank accounts (in the USA only the first
100K are ensured) at 1% or less. Buying TIPs directly from Treasury is another option. I hope
your house is already fully paid.
BTW Marina can get half of your Social Security pension if her own is too small.
"... Authored by Joaquin Flores via The Strategic Culture Foundation, ..."
"... the declining rate of profit necessitated by automation, with the increasingly irrational policies, in all spheres, being pursued to salvage the ultimately unsalvageable. ..."
"... Because the present system is premised on a production-consumption and financial model, the solutions to crises are presented as population reduction and what even appears, at least in the case of Europe, as population replacement. As cliché as this may seem, this also appeared to be the policy of the Third Reich when capitalism faced its last major crises culminating in WWII. ..."
The coronavirus pandemic has shown that the twin processes of globalization and planned
obsolescence are deficient and moribund. Globalization was predicated on a number of
assumptions including the perpetuity of consumerism, and the withering away of national
boundaries as transnational corporations so required.
What we see instead is not a globalization process, but instead a process of rising
multipolarity and a rethinking of consumerism itself.
Normally a total market crash and unemployment crisis would usher in a period of militant
labor activity, strikes, walk-outs and community-labor campaigns. We've
seen some of this already . But the 'medical state of emergency' we are in, has effectively
worked like a 'lock-out' . The elites have effectively
flipped-the-script. Instead of workers now demanding a restoration of wages, hours, and
work-place rights, they are clamoring for any chance to work at all, under any conditions
handed down. Elites can 'afford' to do this because they've been given trillions of dollars to
do so. See how that works?
All our lives we've been misinformed over what a growing economy means, what it looks like,
how we identify it. All our lives we've been lied to about what technical improvement literally
means.
A growing economy in fact means that all goods and services become less expensive. That cuts
against inflation. Rather all prices should be deflating – less money ought to buy the
same (or the same money ought to buy more). Technical innovation means that goods should last
longer, not be planned for obsolescence with shorter lifespans.
Unemployment is good if it parallels price deflation. If both reached a zero-point, the
problems we believe we have would be solved.
In a revealing April 2nd article that featured on the BBC's website, Will coronavirus reverse globalisation?
it is proposed that the pandemic exposes the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of a global
supply-chain and manufacturing system, and that this in combination with the over-arching
US-China trade war would see a general tendency towards 're-shoring' of activities. These are
fair points.
But the article misses the point of the underlying problem facing economics in general:
the declining rate of profit necessitated by automation, with the increasingly irrational
policies, in all spheres, being pursued to salvage the ultimately unsalvageable.
The
Karmic Wheel of Production-Consumption
The shut-downs – which seem unnecessary in the numerous widely esteemed experts in
virology and epidemiology – appear to be aimed at stopping the production-consumption
cycle. When we look at the wanton creation of new 'money', to bailout the banks, we are told
that this will not cause inflation/debasement so long as the velocity of money is kept to a minimum.
In other words – so long as there is not a chain reaction of transactions, and the money
'stays still' – this won't cause inflation. It's a specious claim, but one which
justifies the quarantine/lock-down policy which today destroys thousands of small businesses
every day. In the U.S. alone, unemployment claims
will pass 30 million by mid April .
Likewise, this money appears real, it sits digitally as new liquidity on the computer
screens of tran-Atlantic banks – but it cannot be spent, or it tanks the system with
hyper-inflation. More to the point, the BBC piece erroneously continues to assume the necessity
of the production-consumption cycle, spinning wheat into gold forever.
The elites were not wrong to shut-down the cycle per se. The problem is that they cannot
offer the correct hardware in its place – for it puts an end to the very way that they
make money. It is this, which in turn is a major source for the maintenance of their dopamine
equilibrium and narcissist supply.
This is not an economic problem faced by 'the 1%' (the 0.03%) . It is an existential crisis
facing the meaning of their lives, where satisfaction can only be found in ever greater levels
of wealth and control, real or imagined – chasing that dragon, in search of that
ever-elusive high.
So naturally, their solutions are population reduction and other such quasi-genocidal
neo-Malthusian plans. Destruction of humanity – the number one productive-potential force
– resets the hands of time, back to a period where profit levels were higher. The
algorithmically favored coronavirus Instagram campaign of seeing city centers without people
and declaring these 'beautiful' and 'peaceful' is an example of this misanthropic principle at
play.
That the elites have chosen to shut-down the western economy is telling of an historic point
we have reached. And while we are told that production and consumption will return somewhat
'after quarantine', we also hear from the newly-emerged unelected tsars – Bill Gates et
al – that things will never
return to normal .
What we need to end is the entire theory and practice of globalization itself, including
UN
Agenda 21 and the dangerous role of 'book-talking' philanthropists like Gates and his
grossly unbalanced degree of power over policy formation in the Western sphere.
In place of waning globalization, we are seeing the reality of rising multipolarity and
inter-nationalism. With this, the end of the production-consumption cycle, based upon off-shore
production and international assembly, and at the root of it all: planned obsolescence towards
long-term profitability.
The Problem of Globalization Theory
Without a doubt, globalization theory satisfied aspects of descriptive power. But as time
marched forward, its predictive power weakened. Alternate theories began to emerge –
chief among these, multipolarity theory.
The promotion of globalization theory also raises ethical problems. Like a criminologist
'describing' a crime-wave while being invested in new prison construction, globalization theory
was as much theory as it was a policy forced upon the world by the same institutions behind its
popularization in academia and in policy formation. Therefore we should not be surprised with
the rise of solutions like those of Gates. These involve patentable 'vaccines' by for-profit
firms at the expense of buttressing natural human immunities, or using drugs which other
countries are using with effectiveness.
The truth? Globalization is really just a rebrand of the Washington Consensus
– neo-liberal think-tanks and the presumed eternal dominance of institutions like the
World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which in turn are thinly disguised
conglomerates of the largest trans-Atlantic banking institutions.
So while globalization was often given a humanist veneer that promised global development,
modernization, the end of 'nation-states' which presumably are the source of war; in reality
globalization was premised on continuing and increasing concentration of capital towards the
19th century zones – New York, London, Berlin, and Paris.
'Internationalism' was once rooted in the existence of nations which in turn are only
possible with the existence of culture and peoples, but was hi-jacked by the trans-Atlanticist
project. Before long, the new-left 'internationalists' became champions of the very same
process of imperialism that their forbearers had vehemently opposed. Call it 'globalization'
and show how it's destroying 'toxic nationalism' and creating 'microfinance solutions for women
and girls' –
trot out Malala – and it was bought; hook, line and sinker.
This was not the new era of 'globalization', but rather the usual suspects going back to the
19th century; a 'feel-good' rebranding of the very same 19th century imperialism as described
in J.A Hobson's seminal work from 1902, Imperialism. Its touted 'inevitability' rested not on
the impossibility of alternate models, but on the authority that flows forth from gunboat
diplomacy. But sea power has given way to land power.
In many ways it aligned with the era of de-colonialization and post-colonialism. New nations
could wave their own flags and make their own laws, so long as the traditionally imperialist
western banking institutions controlled the money supply.
But what is emerging is not Washington Consensus 'globalization', but a multipolar model
based in civilizational sovereignty and difference, building products to last – for their
usefulness and not their repeatable retail potential. This cuts against the claims that global
homogenization in all spheres (moral, cultural, economic, political, etc.) was inevitable, as a
consequence of mercantile specialization.
Therefore, inter-nationalism hyphenated as such, reminds us that nations –
civilizations, sovereignty, and their differences – make us stronger as a human species.
Like against viruses, some have stronger natural immunity than others. If people were
identical, one virus could wipe-out all of humanity.
Likewise, an overly-integrated global economy leads to global melt-down and depression when
one node collapses. Rather than independent pillars that could aid each other, the
interdependence is its greatest weakness.
Multipolarity is Reality
This new reality – multipolarity – involves processes which aspects of
globalization theory also suggest and predict for, so there are some honest reasons why experts
could misdiagnose multipolarity as globalization. Overlooked was that the concentration of
capital nodes in various and globally diverse regions by continent, were not exclusively
trans-Atlantic regions as in the standard globalization model of Alpha ++ or Alpha+ cities.
This capital concentration along continental lines was occurring alongside regional economic
development and rising living standards which tended to promote the efficiency of local
transportation as opposed to ocean-travel in the production process. As regional nodes by
continent had increasingly diversified their own domestic production, a general tendency for
transportation costs to increase as individual per capita usage increased, worked against the
viability of an over-reliance on global transit lines.
But among many problems in globalization theory was that the US would always be the primary
consumer of the world's goods, and with it, the trans-Atlantic financial sector. It was also
contingent on the idea that mercantilist conceptions of specialization (by nation or by region)
would always trump autarkic models and ISI (income substitution industrialization). Again, if
middle-class consumer bases are rising in all the world's inhabited continents as multipolarity
explains and predicts, then a global production regimen rationalized towards a trans-Atlantic
consumer base as globalization theory predicts isn't quite as apt.
Because the present system is premised on a production-consumption and financial model,
the solutions to crises are presented as population reduction and what even appears, at least
in the case of Europe, as population replacement. As cliché as this may seem, this also
appeared to be the policy of the Third Reich when capitalism faced its last major crises
culminating in WWII.
Breaking the Wheel
The shutdown reveals the karmic wheel of production-consumption is in truth already broken.
We have already passed the zenith point of what the old paradigm had to offer, and it has long
since entered into a period of decay, economic and moral destruction.
Like the Christ who brings forth a new covenant or the Buddha who emerges to break the wheel
of karma, the new world to be built on the ruins of modernity is a world that liberates the
productive forces, realizing their full potential, and with it the liberation of man from the
machine of the production-consumption cycle.
Planned obsolescence and consumerism (marketing) are the twin evils that have worked towards
the simultaneous
time-wasting enslavement of 'living to work' , and have built globalization based on global
assembly and global mono-culture.
What is important for people and their quality of life is the time to live life, not be
stuck in the grind. We hear politicians and economists talking about 'everyone having a job',
as if what people want is to be away from their families, friends, passions, or hobbies. What's
more – people cannot invent, innovate, or address the greater questions of life and death
– if their nose is to the grindstone.
Now that we are living under an overt system of control, a 'medical state of emergency' with
a frozen economy, we can see that another world is possible. The truth is that most things
which are produced are intentionally made to break at a specific time, so that a re-purchase is
predictable and profits are guaranteed. This compels global supply chains and justifies
artificially induced crashes aimed at upward redistribution and mass expropriations.
Instead of allowing Bill Gates to tour the world to tout a police-state cum population
reduction scheme right after a global virus pandemic struck, one which many believe
he owns the patent for , we can instead address the issues of multipolarity, civilizational
sovereignty, and ending planned obsolescence and the global supply chain, as well as the
off-shoring it necessitates – which the BBC rightly notes, is in question anyhow.
A policy that US allies in Europe have recently slammed as 'piracy' is set
to continue, as Washington unabashedly and unapologetically continues blocking shipments from
US soil of personal protective equipment (PPE) -- such as gowns, gloves, and N95 face masks --
which hospitals and health workers desperately need in the fight against COVID-19.
The Hill
reports that "The federal government will begin seizing exports of personal protective
equipment, or PPE, until it decides if the tools should be kept in the country to fight the
coronavirus."
The announcement was made Wednesday by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), formalizing
an existing controversial practice under Defense Production Act (DPA) which has
recently blocked millions of masks from being exported from Minnesota-based 3M to Canada.
US customs will block all respirators, surgical masks and surgical gloves from going
abroad.
Canadian leaders blasted the move as putting lives in danger, while Germany and France
described the US policy, which has seen recent interventions against shipments from China bound
for Europe, as 'piracy'.
"FEMA and CBP are working together to prevent domestic brokers, distributors, and other
intermediaries from diverting these critical medical resources overseas,"
a joint statement indicated.
"Today's order is another step in our ongoing fight to prevent hoarding, price gouging, and
profiteering by preventing the harmful export of critically needed PPE," the White House also
said in a statement. "It will help ensure that needed PPE is kept in our country and gets to
where it is needed to defeat the virus."
It appears Trump's 'America First' policy in action at a crucial time of crisis , as the US
is the global epicenter for COVID-19, now with over 430,000 confirmed cases - most in New York
state - which has witnessed hospitals running desperately low on supplies, including
ventilators.
However, foreign governments have of late essentially warned 'what goes around comes around'
. Berlin Interior Minister Andreas Geisel at the start of the week stated bluntly of
Washington's brazen policy that it
constitutes a Wild West tactic - essentially warning Europe can play dirty too.
Japan
has allocated $2.2 billion (US) of its $993 billion emergency stimulus package to help
manufacturers relocate production out of China amid the COVID-19 pandemic which began in the
communist nation. According to SCMP , $2 billion (US) will be set aside for companies shifting
production back to Japan , while roughly $223.5 million will be spent on helping companies move
production to other countries, according to
SCMP .
Under normal circumstances, China is Japan's largest trading partner - however imports from
China plummeted nearly 50% in February as the coronavirus pandemic resulted in closed factories
and unfilled orders. Meanwhile, a planned visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to Japan early
this month - the first such trip in a decade - was postponed with no date rescheduled.
It remains to be seen how the policy will affect Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's years-long
effort to restore relations with China.
" We are doing our best to resume economic development ," Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao
Lijian told a briefing Wednesday in Beijing, when asked about the move. " In this process, we
hope other countries will act like China and take proper measures to ensure the world economy
will be impacted as little as possible and to ensure that supply chains are impacted as
little as possible ." -
SCMP
China's production trainwreck has revived discussion among Japanese firms over reducing
their reliance on China as a manufacturing base - while the government's panel on future
investment recommended last month that manufacturing of high-value products should shift back
to Japan - while other goods should be diversified across Southeast Asia.
"There will be something of a shift," according to Japan Research Institute economist
Shinichi Seki, who noted that Japanese companies were already considering moving out of China.
"Having this in the budget will definitely provide an impetus." That said, certain industries
such as automotive will likely stay put.
Japan exports a far larger share of parts and partially finished goods to China than other
major industrial nations, according to data compiled for the panel. A February survey by
Tokyo Shoko Research found 37 per cent of the more than 2,600 companies that responded were
diversifying procurement to places other than China amid the coronavirus crisis. -
SCMP
@Divine
Right American conflicts with Russia are based partly on self-serving fictions of the
military industrial complex that need an enemy for their continued existence, as well as some
more realistic conflicts involving Eastern Europe and rival interests over oil prices. The US
need for hegemony, which is highly tied to the value of the dollar as a reserve currency,
further thrusts this forward and center(and indeed, into conflict with China as well). This
all is intermingled with a [fake and hypocritical] generalized rejection of "authoritarian"
governments.
China, on the other hand, has no real current conflicts with Russia – most conflicts
involve sales of weaponry and political influence over central Asian states, nothing of vast
importance at least compared to being their the target of an enormous world-spanning
sanctions order or a dedicated trade war.
Your argument has the weird self-contradiction that the CCP both is supposedly the
mind-controlling alien brain of all Asians, while at the same time, not actually benefiting
from any specific conflict with Russia. This also ignores the fact that Asians tend to
assimilate the highest by any population(at nearly 40% intermarriage
in some segments, that Chinese students in particularly no longer tend to stay in the US(
only
20% by 2017 ), and that a overwhelming part of the demographic increase by
immigration is
Indian with long historical and cultural rivalries with China. And far more than Chinese
Americans, who often engage in racial masochism(witness Gordan Chang ), Indian Americans are vastly
more active and influential in American
politics both due to cultural reasons as well as higher verbal IQ. This isn't even
hypothetical: Indian American political writers dominate National Interest articles stressing
for more hawkish Chinese attitudes and were directly contributory to renaming the South China
Seas conflict to the "Indo-Pacific region."
I do agree that the US has long since crippled its resource base. But there's no evidence
that Trump, or anyone else, is demonstrating the barest inkling of trying to resolve it(or
that it is even possible, given the bueaucratic overload and red tape of regulations). Gould
once described evolution as a "drunkard's walk" between complexity, where organisms sometimes
fall trapped inside rail tracks, unable to stumble out.
Indian American political writers dominate National Interest articles stressing for more
hawkish Chinese attitudes and were directly contributory to renaming the South China Seas
conflict to the "Indo-Pacific region."
@Anatoly
Karlin There is apparently a large colony (100.000) of Chinese workers in Lombardy, with
direct flights between Lombardy and Wuhan, so this Italian outbreak is not a coincidence.
Many Italians in Northern Italy sold their leather goods and textiles companies to
China. Italy then allowed 100,000 Chinese from Wuhan/Wenzhou to move to Italy to work in
these factories, with direct Wuhan flights. Result: Northern Italy is Europe's hotspot for
Wuhan Coronavirus
UK had a "herd immunity" strategy from the beginning. They made no real effort at
containment. British government allowed their people to become infected, and only
began to change course after public outrage.
@Felix
Keverich The large Chinese population in Italy has been completely ignored by the media,
in fact China itself seems to have been let completely off the hook. The focus is now on how
terrible Britain and the native British people are.
Someone even posted a Tweet above by a Vietnamese person trying to claim that BRITAIN of
all countries is responsible for the outbreak in Vietnam, I mean what kind of ridiculous
logic is that? Vietnam bloody BORDERS China, the origin and epicentre of the Coronavirus
outbreak, and the Vietnamese are trying to say Britain is the cause? It beggars belief.
less globalization outside North America/Europe/Japan/Australia
You are missing the point of globalization: manufacturing in cheap Third World countries
and rewarding the local compradors with a permission to migrate to the West. That's the deal,
that's what globalization is.
With NA-Europe-Japan all you get is tourism and travel. I would be surprised if we can at
this point convince Chinese and the other cheap labor countries to do the work and forgo the
hope of migration. It was a Faustian deal and those as we know end in hell.
@AP
Calm down, man and stop the stupid blaming game. It seems that your Banderite spin also
includes bashing Chinese which, on the second thought, should not be surprising as there is
only one paymaster. Perhaps you should specialize in Ukraine only and leave China to more
competent haters.
Compare Canada and Italy on Chinese residents: Canada has 5 times more Chinese than Italy
but 62 times less infection cases and 539 times less fatalities than Italy (as of March 16).
Furthermore France and UK have more Chinese than Italy.
What about tourists: In Canada 0.75 mil Chinese tourist but in Italy 3.5 mil Chinese
tourists. So it must be the tourists, right?
So compare Japan with Italy on Chinese tourists: 8.4 mil Chinese tourist in Japan vs. 3.5
mil Chinese tourists in Italy. How many cases in Japan?
So what I am trying to convey is that the expression of the epidemic in different
countries is not congruent with the number of Chinese residents or Chinese tourist.
We will never know where the patients zero (yes plural, there are many patients zero)
really came from. For various political reasons we will not be told and what we will be told
we must be skeptical about. I found interesting data about the first infected in British
Columbia that has huge rather affluent Chinese population. There were as many Iranians as
non-Iranians on the list.
In British Columbia cases 1 to 5 were from China though it does not appear they infected
others while cases 6, 7, , 12 and 14, 15, 19 were traced to Iran. Then the case 22 was from
Iran and also case 31. Case 32 was from Italy, case 35 was from Egypt and case 37 was from
Germany. So out of first 37 cases over 50% were people came form Iran, Egypt, Germany and
Italy. My point is that while Canada has huge Chinese population (1.7 mil) and gets 700,000
Chinese visitors per year it does not look like China was the main vector. In BC it is Iran
and Europe.
One should consider a possibility whether virus introduction to Iran and the Middle East
did precede its introduction in China.
Now let's return to Italy. Most Chinese tourists go to Rome, Florence and Venice. These
cities were not affected as much as Lombardy where there is not that many tourists. So we are
told that Chinese workers could carry the virus. So look at Prato (in Tuscany near Florence)
which has the highest density of Chinese population in Italy. Wiki lists 11,882 (6.32%) for
Prato while the highest absolute number is Milan 18,918 (1.43%). The numbers are probably
outdated as most likely they do not include illegal residents.
"In a single day the positive cases of coronavirus in the province of Prato have
tripled: from 7 to 21 . It is the darkest day since the outbreak began. According to
what was announced in the afternoon of today, March 11, by the bulletin of the regional
council "
"Therefore, 314 patients are currently positive in Tuscany. This is the subdivision by
signaling areas: 71 Florence, 32 Pistoia, 21 Prato (total Asl center: 124), 43 Lucca, 40
Massa Carrara, 34 Pisa, 16 Livorno (total North West Asl: 133), 12 Grosseto, 37 Siena , 14
Arezzo (total Asl southeast: 63)."
So clearly the 2nd largest Chinese community in Italy (and first in density) with 21 cases
(out of 12,246 cases in Italy) did not contribute a lot to the corona virus outbreak in
Italy.
@AP
Calm down, man and stop the stupid blaming game. It seems that your Banderite spin also
includes bashing Chinese which, on the second thought, should not be surprising as there is
only one paymaster. Perhaps you should specialize in Ukraine only and leave China to more
competent haters.
Compare Canada and Italy on Chinese residents: Canada has 5 times more Chinese than Italy
but 62 times less infection cases and 539 times less fatalities than Italy (as of March 16).
Furthermore France and UK have more Chinese than Italy.
What about tourists: In Canada 0.75 mil Chinese tourist but in Italy 3.5 mil Chinese
tourists. So it must be the tourists, right?
So compare Japan with Italy on Chinese tourists: 8.4 mil Chinese tourist in Japan vs. 3.5
mil Chinese tourists in Italy. How many cases in Japan?
So what I am trying to convey is that the expression of the epidemic in different
countries is not congruent with the number of Chinese residents or Chinese tourist.
We will never know where the patients zero (yes plural, there are many patients zero)
really came from. For various political reasons we will not be told and what we will be told
we must be skeptical about. I found interesting data about the first infected in British
Columbia that has huge rather affluent Chinese population. There were as many Iranians as
non-Iranians on the list.
In British Columbia cases 1 to 5 were from China though it does not appear they infected
others while cases 6, 7, , 12 and 14, 15, 19 were traced to Iran. Then the case 22 was from
Iran and also case 31. Case 32 was from Italy, case 35 was from Egypt and case 37 was from
Germany. So out of first 37 cases over 50% were people came form Iran, Egypt, Germany and
Italy. My point is that while Canada has huge Chinese population (1.7 mil) and gets 700,000
Chinese visitors per year it does not look like China was the main vector. In BC it is Iran
and Europe.
One should consider a possibility whether virus introduction to Iran and the Middle East
did precede its introduction in China.
Now let's return to Italy. Most Chinese tourists go to Rome, Florence and Venice. These
cities were not affected as much as Lombardy where there is not that many tourists. So we are
told that Chinese workers could carry the virus. So look at Prato (in Tuscany near Florence)
which has the highest density of Chinese population in Italy. Wiki lists 11,882 (6.32%) for
Prato while the highest absolute number is Milan 18,918 (1.43%). The numbers are probably
outdated as most likely they do not include illegal residents.
"In a single day the positive cases of coronavirus in the province of Prato have
tripled: from 7 to 21 . It is the darkest day since the outbreak began. According to
what was announced in the afternoon of today, March 11, by the bulletin of the regional
council "
"Therefore, 314 patients are currently positive in Tuscany. This is the subdivision by
signaling areas: 71 Florence, 32 Pistoia, 21 Prato (total Asl center: 124), 43 Lucca, 40
Massa Carrara, 34 Pisa, 16 Livorno (total North West Asl: 133), 12 Grosseto, 37 Siena , 14
Arezzo (total Asl southeast: 63)."
So clearly the 2nd largest Chinese community in Italy (and first in density) with 21 cases
(out of 12,246 cases in Italy) did not contribute a lot to the corona virus outbreak in
Italy.
If this started in the USA and spread elsewhere the world would have good cause to
condemn the USA and to judge any subsequent efforts by Americans to help others as "the
least they could do."
Chinese shipments of medical goods are actually to the risk of the own population, where
hospitals are still recovering. While in some ways it is a blatant PR play, its quite a
significant cost amd self-risk that goes beyond "the least they could do."
The Chinese are showing an unprecedented amount of humanity, morality and basic decency
by giving medical aid to more than half the world in genuinely useful forms despite almost
everyone shitting on them by calling this a "Chinese virus" and other garbage.
... ... ...
Here is an article about them in the New York Times. Written soon before the onset of the
plague. It would not be written now – there's too obvious a connection between open
borders, multiculturalism, and death:
As Prato's factories went dark, people began arriving from China to exploit an
opportunity.
Most were from Wenzhou, a coastal city famed for its entrepreneurial spirit. They took
over failed workshops and built new factories. They imported fabric from China, sewing it
into clothing. They cannily imitated the styles of Italian fashion brands, while affixing a
valuable label to their creations -- "Made in Italy."
Chinese groceries and restaurants have emerged to serve the local population. On the
outskirts of the city, Chinese-owned warehouses overflow with racks of clothing destined for
street markets in Florence and Paris.
Among Italian textile workers who have veered to the right, the arrival of the Chinese
tends to get lumped together with African migration as an indignity that has turned Prato
into a city they no longer recognize.
"I don't think it's fair that they come to take jobs away from Italians," says Ms.
Travaglini, the laid-off textile worker. She claims that Chinese companies don't pay taxes
and violate wage laws, reducing pay for everyone.
Since losing her job at a textile factory nearly three years ago, Ms. Travaglini has
survived by fixing clothes for people in her neighborhood. "There are no jobs, not even for
young people," she says.
Chinese-owned factories have jobs, she acknowledges, but she will not apply. "That's all
Chinese people," she says, with evident distaste. "I don't feel at ease."
:::::::::::
Lots of Ukrainians there also. They don't bring such a virus to Italy, but they bring the
virus back to Ukraine.
::::::::::
So nice PR move after killing lots of European old people. One of the sacrificed in Milan
to this virus, Vittorio Gregotti, was an architect who helped build the city. Killed by the
Chinese virus. A symbol of native Italy replaced by migration.
@Kim
The Chinese have internal natural resources and have been vigorously working world wide to
obtain rights to, develop, and extract mineral and energy resources in order to keep
production going. See the documentary Empire of Dust about Chinese getting the rights to
African resources and developing the infrastructure to extract them. Also following the
supposed "war for oil" in Iraq the oil contracts went almost entirely to China. China has a
lot of the mines for the rare earths needed in modern technological products. The largest
single mine used to be in California. A Chinese company bought and re-opened it.
In effect they already own or have contracts for what they need and are much less leveraged
than we are.
As to whether their customers can continue to pay for it, that is a different kettle of fish.
The rest of us have been running up our credit card with them. We have been paying it off by
selling off our countries piece by piece through Chinese purchases of real estate,
businesses, port facilities etc. As China has grown economically they have been developing
their internal market to reduce dependence on Wal-Mart so that might reduce the impact of
poorer foreign markets.
In any event they own a huge infrastructure in plants tooling and human expertise for making
things. Our leaders have deliberately hollowed ours out for profits and cheaper consumer
goods.
The term Globalism has been around from at least the 1960's but its origins come from Cecil
Rhodes Round Tables which were set up around 1900 as a mechanism for Rhodes and his allies from
the British and South African Oligarchs to take over the world. Globalism is another term for
Neoliberalism, which is another term for Corporatism. It is principally pushed by Fake Liberals
who pretend to be lefties, but are actually Corporatists or Corporate Fascists.
Globalism
The aim of Globalism is to transfer all power and wealth from ordinary people to a handful
of Banking Elites, Oligarchs and major Corporate CEO's. The ultimate aim is to set up an anti
democratic, authoritarian one world government where ordinary people are effectively serfs and
have no say, in a system of Neo-Feudalism. We are very nearly already there.
This is being constantly carried out by transferring ever increasing powers from elected
local governments to massive governmental Super States, such as the EU or the Federal
government in Washington DC.
A great example of a Globalist policy was Obama's Corporate Power Grab TPP and TTIP,
Corporate protectionist deals, which transferred power from elected legislatures to
transnational tribunals staffed by Corporate lawyers acting as Judge and Jury.
"Neo-libs" are NOT Centrists. They are extremist supporters of Perpetual War, Corruption,
Corporatism, Authoritarianism & the Transfer of all wealth & power from ordinary ppl to
the Oligarchs & CEOs in the top 0.01%.
The article is mostly junk. But it contains some important insights into the rise of Trympism (aka "national neoliberalism") --
nationalist oligarchy. Including the following " the governments that have emerged from the new populist moment are, to date, not
actually pursuing policies that are economically populist."
The real threat to liberal democracy isn't authoritarianism -- it's nationalist oligarchy. Here's how American foreign policy should
change. The real threat to liberal democracy isn't authoritarianism -- it's nationalist oligarchy. Here's how American foreign policy
should change.
Notable quotes:
"... Fascism: A Warning ..."
"... Can it Happen Here? Authoritarianism in America ..."
"... the governments that have emerged from the new populist moment are, to date, not actually pursuing policies that are economically populist. ..."
"... The better and more useful way to view these regimes -- and the threat to democracy emerging at home and abroad because of them -- is as nationalist oligarchies. Oligarchy means rule by a small number of rich people. In an oligarchy, wealthy elites seek to preserve and extend their wealth and power. In his definitive book titled Oligarchy ..."
"... Oligarchies remain in power through two strategies: first, using divide-and-conquer tactics to ensure that a majority doesn't coalesce, and second, by rigging the political system to make it harder for any emerging majority to overthrow them. ..."
"... Rigging the system is, in some ways, a more obvious tactic. It means changing the legal rules of the game or shaping the political marketplace to preserve power. Voting restrictions and suppression, gerrymandering, and manipulation of the media are examples. The common theme is that they insulate the minority in power from democracy; they prevent the population from kicking the rulers out through ordinary political means. ..."
"... Classical Greek Oligarchy ..."
"... Framing today's threat as nationalist oligarchy not only clarifies the challenge but also makes clear how democracy is different -- and what democracy requires. Democracy means more than elections, an independent judiciary, a free press, and various constitutional norms. For democracy to persist, there must also be relative economic equality. If society is deeply unequal economically, the wealthy will dominate politics and transform democracy into an oligarchy. And there must be some degree of social solidarity because, as Lincoln put it, "A house divided against itself cannot stand." ..."
"... We see a number of disturbing signs the United States is breaking down along these dimensions. ..."
"... The view that money is speech under the First Amendment has unleashed wealthy individuals and corporations to spend as much as they want to influence politics. The "doom loop of oligarchy," as Ezra Klein has called it, is an obvious consequence: The wealthy use their money to influence politics and rig policy to increase their wealth, which in turn increases their capacity to influence politics. Meanwhile, we're increasingly divided into like-minded enclaves, and the result is an ever-more toxic degree of partisanship. ..."
"... The Counterinsurgent's Constitution: Law in the Age of Small Wars ..."
"... The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution: Why Economic Inequality Threatens our Republic ..."
Ever since the 2016 election, foreign policy commentators and practitioners have been engaged in a series of soul-searching exercises
to understand the great transformations taking place in the world -- and to articulate a framework appropriate to the challenges
of our time. Some have looked backwards, arguing that the liberal international order is collapsing, while others question whether
it ever existed. Another group seems to hope the current messiness is simply a blip and that foreign policy will return to normalcy
after it passes. Perhaps the most prominent group has identified today's great threat as the rise of authoritarianism, autocracy,
and illiberal democracy. They fear that constitutional democracy is receding as norms are broken and institutions are under siege.
Unfortunately, this approach misunderstands the nature of the current crisis. The challenge we face today is not one of authoritarianism,
as so many seem inclined to believe, but of nationalist oligarchy. This form of government feeds populism to the people, delivers
special privileges to the rich and well-connected, and rigs politics to sustain its regime.
... ... ..
Authoritarianism or What?
Across the political spectrum, commentators and scholars have identified -- and warned of -- the global rise of autocracies and
authoritarian governments. They cite Russia, Hungary, the Philippines, and Turkey, among others. Distinguished commentators are increasingly
worried. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright recently published a book called Fascism: A Warning . Cass Sunstein
gathered a variety of scholars for a collection titled, Can it Happen Here? Authoritarianism in America .
The authoritarian lens is familiar from the heroic narrative of democracy defeating autocracies in the twentieth century. But
as a framework for understanding today's central geopolitical challenges, it is far too narrow. This is mainly because those who
are worried about the rise of authoritarianism and the crisis of democracy are insufficiently focused on economics. Their emphasis
is almost exclusively political and constitutional -- free speech, voting rights, equal treatment for minorities, independent courts,
and the like. But politics and economics cannot be dissociated from each other, and neither are autonomous from social and cultural
factors. Statesmen and philosophers used to call this "political economy." Political economy looks at economic and political relationships
in concert, and it is attentive to how power is exercised. If authoritarianism is the future, there must be a story of its political
economy -- how it uses politics and economics to gain and hold power. Yet the rise-of-authoritarianism theorists have less to say
about these dynamics.
To be sure, many commentators have discussed populist movements throughout Europe and America, and there has been no shortage
of debate on the extent to which a generation of widening economic inequality has been a contributing factor in their rise. But whatever
the causes of popular discontent, the policy preferences of the people, and the bloviating rhetoric of leaders, the governments
that have emerged from the new populist moment are, to date, not actually pursuing policies that are economically populist.
The better and more useful way to view these regimes -- and the threat to democracy emerging at home and abroad because of
them -- is as nationalist oligarchies. Oligarchy means rule by a small number of rich people. In an oligarchy, wealthy elites seek
to preserve and extend their wealth and power. In his definitive book titled Oligarchy , Jeffrey Winters calls it "wealth
defense." Elites engage in "property defense," protecting what they already have, and "income defense," preserving and extending
their ability to hoard more. Importantly, oligarchy as a governing strategy accounts for both politics and economics. Oligarchs use
economic power to gain and hold political power and, in turn, use politics to expand their economic power.
Those who worry about the rise of authoritarianism and fear the crisis of democracy are insufficiently focused on economics.
The trouble for oligarchs is that their regime involves rule by a small number of wealthy elites. In even a nominally
democratic society, and most countries around the world today are at least that, it should be possible for the much larger majority
to overthrow the oligarchy with either the ballot or the bullet. So how can oligarchy persist? This is where both nationalism and
authoritarianism come into play. Oligarchies remain in power through two strategies: first, using divide-and-conquer tactics
to ensure that a majority doesn't coalesce, and second, by rigging the political system to make it harder for any emerging majority
to overthrow them.
The divide-and-conquer strategy is an old one, and it works through a combination of coercion and co-optation. Nationalism --
whether statist, ethnic, religious, or racial -- serves both functions. It aligns a portion of ordinary people with the ruling oligarchy,
mobilizing them to support the regime and sacrifice for it. At the same time, it divides society, ensuring that the nationalism-inspired
will not join forces with everyone else to overthrow the oligarchs. We thus see fearmongering about minorities and immigrants, and
claims that the country belongs only to its "true" people, whom the leaders represent. Activating these emotional, cultural, and
political identities makes it harder for citizens in the country to unite across these divides and challenge the regime.
Rigging the system is, in some ways, a more obvious tactic. It means changing the legal rules of the game or shaping the political
marketplace to preserve power. Voting restrictions and suppression, gerrymandering, and manipulation of the media are examples. The
common theme is that they insulate the minority in power from democracy; they prevent the population from kicking the rulers out
through ordinary political means. Tactics like these are not new. They have existed, as Matthew Simonton shows in his book
Classical Greek Oligarchy , since at least the time of Pericles and Plato. The consequence, then as now, is that nationalist
oligarchies can continue to deliver economic policies to benefit the wealthy and well-connected.
It is worth noting that even the generation that waged war against fascism in Europe understood that the challenge to democracy
in their time was not just political, but economic and social as well. They believed that the rise of Nazism was tied to the concentration
of economic power in Germany, and that cartels and monopolies not only cooperated with and served the Nazi state, but helped its
rise and later sustained it. As New York Congressman Emanuel Celler, one of the authors of the Anti-Merger Act of 1950, said, quoting
a report filed by Secretary of War Kenneth Royall, "Germany under the Nazi set-up built up a great series of industrial monopolies
in steel, rubber, coal and other materials. The monopolies soon got control of Germany, brought Hitler to power, and forced virtually
the whole world into war." After World War II, Marshall Plan experts not only rebuilt Europe but also exported aggressive American
antitrust and competition laws to the continent because they believed political democracy was impossible without economic democracy.
Framing today's threat as nationalist oligarchy not only clarifies the challenge but also makes clear how democracy is different
-- and what democracy requires. Democracy means more than elections, an independent judiciary, a free press, and various constitutional
norms. For democracy to persist, there must also be relative economic equality. If society is deeply unequal economically, the wealthy
will dominate politics and transform democracy into an oligarchy. And there must be some degree of social solidarity because, as
Lincoln put it, "A house divided against itself cannot stand."
We see a number of disturbing signs the United States is breaking down along these dimensions. Electoral losers in places
like North Carolina seek to entrench their power rather than accept defeat. The view that money is speech under the First Amendment
has unleashed wealthy individuals and corporations to spend as much as they want to influence politics. The "doom loop of oligarchy,"
as Ezra Klein has called it, is an obvious consequence: The wealthy use their money to influence politics and rig policy to increase
their wealth, which in turn increases their capacity to influence politics. Meanwhile, we're increasingly divided into like-minded
enclaves, and the result is an ever-more toxic degree of partisanship.
Addressing our domestic economic and social crises is critical to defending democracy, and a grand strategy for America's future
must incorporate both domestic and foreign policy. But while many have recognized that reviving America's middle class and re-stitching
our social fabric are essential to saving democracy, less attention has been paid to how American foreign policy should be reformed
in order to defend democracy from the threat of nationalist oligarchy.
The Varieties of Nationalist Oligarchy
Just as there are many variations on liberal democracy -- the Swedish model, the French model, the American model -- there
are many varieties of nationalist oligarchy. The story is different in every country, but the elements of nationalist oligarchy
are trending all over the world.
... ... ...
... the European Union funds Hungary's oligarchy, as Orbán draws on EU money to fund about 60 percent of the state projects
that support "the new Fidesz-linked business elite." Nor do Orbán and his allies do much to hide the country's crony capitalist
model. András Lánczi, president of a Fidesz-affiliated think tank, has boldly stated that "if something is done in the national
interest, then it is not corruption." "The new capitalist ruling class," one Hungarian banker comments, "make their money from
the government."
The commentator Jan-Werner Müller captures Orbán's Hungary this way: "Power is secured through wide-ranging control of the
judiciary and the media; behind much talk of protecting hard-pressed families from multinational corporations, there is crony
capitalism, in which one has to be on the right side politically to get ahead economically."
Crony capitalism, coupled with resurgent nationalism and central government control, is also an issue in China. While some
commentators have emphasized "state capitalism" -- when government has a significant ownership stake in companies -- this phenomenon
is not to be confused with crony capitalism. Some countries with state capitalism, like Norway, are widely seen as extremely non-corrupt
and, indeed, are often held up as models of democracy. State capitalism itself is thus not necessarily a problem. Crony capitalism,
in contrast, is an "instrumental union between capitalists and politicians designed to allow the former to acquire wealth, legally
or otherwise, and the latter to seek and retain power." This is the key difference between state capitalism and oligarchy.
... ... ...
Ganesh Sitaraman is a professor of law
and Chancellor's faculty fellow at Vanderbilt Law School, and the author of The Counterinsurgent's Constitution: Law in the
Age of Small Wars and The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution: Why Economic Inequality Threatens our Republic
.
"... Neoliberalism and its usual prescriptions – always more markets, always less government – are in fact a perversion of mainstream economics. ..."
"... The term is used as a catchall for anything that smacks of deregulation, liberalisation, privatisation or fiscal austerity. Today it is routinely reviled as a shorthand for the ideas and practices that have produced growing economic insecurity and inequality, led to the loss of our political values and ideals, and even precipitated our current populist backlash. ..."
"... The use of the term "neoliberal" exploded in the 1990s, when it became closely associated with two developments, neither of which Peters's article had mentioned. One of these was financial deregulation, which would culminate in the 2008 financial crash and in the still-lingering euro debacle . The second was economic globalisation, which accelerated thanks to free flows of finance and to a new, more ambitious type of trade agreement. Financialisation and globalisation have become the most overt manifestations of neoliberalism in today's world. ..."
"... That neoliberalism is a slippery, shifting concept, with no explicit lobby of defenders, does not mean that it is irrelevant or unreal. Who can deny that the world has experienced a decisive shift toward markets from the 1980s on? Or that centre-left politicians – Democrats in the US, socialists and social democrats in Europe – enthusiastically adopted some of the central creeds of Thatcherism and Reaganism, such as deregulation, privatisation, financial liberalisation and individual enterprise? Much of our contemporary policy discussion remains infused with principles supposedly grounded in the concept of homo economicus , the perfectly rational human being, found in many economic theories, who always pursues his own self-interest. ..."
Neoliberalism and its usual prescriptions – always more markets, always less government – are in fact a perversion of
mainstream economics.
As even its harshest critics concede, neoliberalism is hard to pin down. In broad terms, it
denotes a preference for markets over government, economic incentives over cultural norms, and
private entrepreneurship over collective action. It has been used to describe a wide range of
phenomena – from Augusto Pinochet to Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, from the
Clinton Democrats and the UK's New Labour to the economic opening in China and the reform of
the welfare state in Sweden.
The term is used as a catchall for anything that smacks of deregulation, liberalisation,
privatisation or fiscal austerity. Today it is routinely reviled as a shorthand for the ideas
and practices that have produced growing economic insecurity and inequality, led to the loss of
our political values and ideals, and even precipitated our current populist backlash.
We live in the age of neoliberalism, apparently. But who are neoliberalism's adherents and
disseminators – the neoliberals themselves? Oddly, you have to go back a long time to
find anyone explicitly embracing neoliberalism. In 1982, Charles Peters, the longtime editor of
the political magazine Washington Monthly, published an essay titled
A Neo-Liberal's Manifesto . It makes for interesting reading 35 years later, since the
neoliberalism it describes bears little resemblance to today's target of derision. The
politicians Peters names as exemplifying the movement are not the likes of Thatcher and Reagan,
but rather liberals – in the US sense of the word – who have become disillusioned
with unions and big government and dropped their prejudices against markets and the
military.
The use of the term "neoliberal" exploded in the 1990s, when it became closely associated
with two developments, neither of which Peters's article had mentioned. One of these was
financial deregulation, which would culminate in the 2008
financial crash and in the still-lingering euro debacle . The second was economic
globalisation, which accelerated thanks to free flows of finance and to a new, more ambitious
type of trade agreement. Financialisation and globalisation have become the most overt
manifestations of neoliberalism in today's world.
That neoliberalism is a slippery, shifting concept, with no explicit lobby of defenders,
does not mean that it is irrelevant or unreal. Who can deny that the world has experienced a
decisive shift toward markets from the 1980s on? Or that centre-left politicians –
Democrats in the US, socialists and social democrats in Europe – enthusiastically adopted
some of the central creeds of Thatcherism and Reaganism, such as deregulation, privatisation,
financial liberalisation and individual enterprise? Much of our contemporary policy discussion
remains infused with principles supposedly grounded in the concept of homo
economicus , the perfectly rational human being, found in many economic theories, who
always pursues his own self-interest.
But the looseness of the term neoliberalism also means that criticism of it often misses the
mark. There is nothing wrong with markets, private entrepreneurship or incentives – when
deployed appropriately. Their creative use lies behind the most significant economic
achievements of our time. As we heap scorn on neoliberalism, we risk throwing out some of
neoliberalism's useful ideas.
The real trouble is that mainstream economics shades too easily into ideology, constraining
the choices that we appear to have and providing cookie-cutter solutions. A proper
understanding of the economics that lie behind neoliberalism would allow us to identify –
and to reject – ideology when it masquerades as economic science. Most importantly, it
would help us to develop the institutional imagination we badly need to redesign capitalism for
the 21st century.
N eoliberalism is typically understood as being based on key tenets of mainstream economic
science. To see those tenets without the ideology, consider this thought experiment. A
well-known and highly regarded economist lands in a country he has never visited and knows
nothing about. He is brought to a meeting with the country's leading policymakers. "Our country
is in trouble," they tell him. "The economy is stagnant, investment is low, and there is no
growth in sight." They turn to him expectantly: "Please tell us what we should do to make our
economy grow."
The economist pleads ignorance and explains that he knows too little about the country to
make any recommendations. He would need to study the history of the economy, to analyse the
statistics, and to travel around the country before he could say anything.
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Twitter Pinterest Tony Blair and Bill Clinton: centre-left politicians who enthusiastically
adopted some of the central creeds of Thatcherism and Reaganism. Photograph: Reuters
But his hosts are insistent. "We understand your reticence, and we wish you had the time for
all that," they tell him. "But isn't economics a science, and aren't you one of its most
distinguished practitioners? Even though you do not know much about our economy, surely there
are some general theories and prescriptions you can share with us to guide our economic
policies and reforms."
The economist is now in a bind. He does not want to emulate those economic gurus he has long
criticised for peddling their favourite policy advice. But he feels challenged by the question.
Are there universal truths in economics? Can he say anything valid or useful?
So he begins. The efficiency with which an economy's resources are allocated is a critical
determinant of the economy's performance, he says. Efficiency, in turn, requires aligning the
incentives of households and businesses with social costs and benefits. The incentives faced by
entrepreneurs, investors and producers are particularly important when it comes to economic
growth. Growth needs a system of property rights and contract enforcement that will ensure
those who invest can retain the returns on their investments. And the economy must be open to
ideas and innovations from the rest of the world.
But economies can be derailed by macroeconomic instability, he goes on. Governments must
therefore pursue a sound
monetary policy , which means restricting the growth of liquidity to the increase in
nominal money demand at reasonable inflation. They must ensure fiscal sustainability, so that
the increase in public debt does not outpace national income. And they must carry out
prudential regulation of banks and other financial institutions to prevent the financial system
from taking excessive risk.
Now he is warming to his task. Economics is not just about efficiency and growth, he adds.
Economic principles also carry over to equity and social policy. Economics has little to say about how
much redistribution a society should seek. But it does tell us that the tax base should be as
broad as possible, and that social programmes should be designed in a way that does not
encourage workers to drop out of the labour market.
By the time the economist stops, it appears as if he has laid out a fully fledged neoliberal
agenda. A critic in the audience will have heard all the code words: efficiency, incentives,
property rights, sound money, fiscal prudence. And yet the universal principles that the
economist describes are in fact quite open-ended. They presume a capitalist economy – one
in which investment decisions are made by private individuals and firms – but not much
beyond that. They allow for – indeed, they require – a surprising variety of
institutional arrangements.
So has the economist just delivered a neoliberal screed? We would be mistaken to think so,
and our mistake would consist of associating each abstract term – incentives, property
rights, sound money – with a particular institutional counterpart. And therein lies the
central conceit, and the fatal flaw, of neoliberalism: the belief that first-order economic
principles map on to a unique set of policies, approximated by a Thatcher/Reagan-style
agenda.
Consider property rights. They matter insofar as they allocate returns on investments. An
optimal system would distribute property rights to those who would make the best use of an
asset, and afford protection against those most likely to expropriate the returns. Property
rights are good when they protect innovators from free riders, but they are bad when they
protect them from competition. Depending on the context, a legal regime that provides the
appropriate incentives can look quite different from the standard US-style regime of private
property rights.
This may seem like a semantic point with little practical import; but China's phenomenal
economic success is largely due to its orthodoxy-defying institutional tinkering. China turned
to markets, but did not copy western practices in property rights. Its reforms produced
market-based incentives through a series of unusual institutional arrangements that were better
adapted to the local context. Rather than move directly from state to private ownership, for
example, which would have been stymied by the weakness of the prevailing legal structures, the
country relied on mixed forms of ownership that provided more effective property rights for
entrepreneurs in practice. Township and Village Enterprises (TVEs), which spearheaded Chinese
economic growth during the 1980s, were collectives owned and controlled by local governments.
Even though TVEs were publicly owned, entrepreneurs received the protection they needed against
expropriation. Local governments had a direct stake in the profits of the firms, and hence did
not want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
China relied on a range of such innovations, each delivering the economist's higher-order
economic principles in unfamiliar institutional arrangements. For instance, it shielded its
large state sector from global competition, establishing special economic zones where foreign
firms could operate with different rules than in the rest of the economy. In view of such
departures from orthodox blueprints, describing China's economic reforms as neoliberal –
as critics are inclined to do – distorts more than it reveals. If we are to call this
neoliberalism, we must surely look more kindly on the ideas behind the most dramatic
poverty reduction in history.
One might protest that China's institutional innovations were purely transitional. Perhaps
it will have to converge on western-style institutions to sustain its economic progress. But
this common line of thinking overlooks the diversity of capitalist arrangements that still
prevails among advanced economies, despite the considerable homogenisation of our policy
discourse.
What, after all, are western institutions? The size of the public sector in OECD countries
varies, from a third of the economy in Korea to nearly 60% in Finland. In Iceland, 86% of
workers are members of a trade union; the comparable number in Switzerland is just 16%. In the
US, firms can fire workers almost at will;
French labour laws have historically required employers to jump through many hoops first.
Stock markets have grown to a total value of nearly one-and-a-half times GDP in the US; in
Germany, they are only a third as large, equivalent to just 50% of GDP.
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Twitter Pinterest 'China turned to markets, but did not copy western practices ... '
Photograph: AFP/Getty
The idea that any one of these models of taxation, labour relations or financial
organisation is inherently superior to the others is belied by the varying economic fortunes
that each of these economies have experienced over recent decades. The US has gone through
successive periods of angst in which its economic institutions were judged inferior to those in
Germany, Japan, China, and now possibly Germany again. Certainly, comparable levels of wealth
and productivity can be produced under very different models of capitalism. We might even go a
step further: today's prevailing models probably come nowhere near exhausting the range of what
might be possible, and desirable, in the future.
The visiting economist in our thought experiment knows all this, and recognises that the
principles he has enunciated need to be filled in with institutional detail before they become
operational. Property rights? Yes, but how? Sound money? Of course, but how? It would perhaps
be easier to criticise his list of principles for being vacuous than to denounce it as a
neoliberal screed.
Still, these principles are not entirely content-free. China, and indeed all countries that
managed to develop rapidly, demonstrate the utility of those principles once they are properly
adapted to local context. Conversely, too many economies have been driven to ruin courtesy of
political leaders who chose to violate them. We need look no further than
Latin American populists or eastern European communist regimes to appreciate the practical
significance of sound money, fiscal sustainability and private incentives.
O f course, economics goes beyond a list of abstract, largely common-sense principles. Much
of the work of economists consists of developing
stylised models of how economies work and then confronting those models with evidence.
Economists tend to think of what they do as progressively refining their understanding of the
world: their models are supposed to get better and better as they are tested and revised over
time. But progress in economics happens differently.
Economists study a social reality that is unlike the physical universe. It is completely
manmade, highly malleable and operates according to different rules across time and space.
Economics advances
not by settling on the right model or theory to answer such questions, but by improving our
understanding of the diversity of causal relationships. Neoliberalism and its customary
remedies – always more markets, always less government – are in fact a perversion
of mainstream economics. Good economists know that the correct answer to any question in
economics is: it depends.
Does an increase in the minimum wage depress employment? Yes, if the labour market is really
competitive and employers have no control over the wage they must pay to attract workers; but
not necessarily otherwise. Does trade liberalisation increase economic growth? Yes, if it
increases the profitability of industries where the bulk of investment and innovation takes
place; but not otherwise. Does more government spending increase employment? Yes, if there is
slack in the economy and wages do not rise; but not otherwise. Does monopoly harm innovation?
Yes and no, depending on a whole host of market circumstances.
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Twitter Pinterest 'Today [neoliberalism] is routinely reviled as a shorthand for the ideas
that have produced growing economic inequality and precipitated our current populist backlash'
Trump signing an order to take the US out of the TPP trade pact. Photograph: AFP/Getty
In economics, new models rarely supplant older models. The basic competitive-markets model
dating back to Adam Smith has been modified over time by the inclusion, in rough historical
order, of monopoly, externalities, scale economies, incomplete and asymmetric information,
irrational behaviour and many other real-world features. But the older models remain as useful
as ever. Understanding how real markets operate necessitates using different lenses at
different times.
Perhaps maps offer the best analogy. Just like economic models, maps are highly
stylised representations of reality . They are useful precisely because they abstract from
many real-world details that would get in the way. But abstraction also implies that we need a
different map depending on the nature of our journey. If we are travelling by bike, we need a
map of bike trails. If we are to go on foot, we need a map of footpaths. If a new subway is
constructed, we will need a subway map – but we wouldn't throw out the older maps.
Economists tend to be very good at making maps, but not good enough at choosing the one most
suited to the task at hand. When confronted with policy questions of the type our visiting
economist faces, too many of them resort to "benchmark" models that favour the
laissez-faire approach. Kneejerk solutions and hubris replace the richness and humility of
the discussion in the seminar room. John Maynard Keynes once defined economics as the "science
of thinking in terms of models, joined to the art of choosing models which are relevant".
Economists typically have trouble with the "art" part.
This, too, can be illustrated with a parable. A journalist calls an economics professor for
his view on whether free trade is a good idea. The professor responds enthusiastically in the
affirmative. The journalist then goes undercover as a student in the professor's advanced
graduate seminar on international trade. He poses the same question: is free trade good? This
time the professor is stymied. "What do you mean by 'good'?" he responds. "And good for whom?"
The professor then launches into an extensive exegesis that will ultimately culminate in a
heavily hedged statement: "So if the long list of conditions I have just described are
satisfied, and assuming we can tax the beneficiaries to compensate the losers, freer trade has
the potential to increase everyone's wellbeing." If he is in an expansive mood, the professor
might add that the effect of free trade on an economy's longterm growth rate is not clear
either, and would depend on an altogether different set of requirements.
This professor is rather different from the one the journalist encountered previously. On
the record, he exudes self-confidence, not reticence, about the appropriate policy. There is
one and only one model, at least as far as the public conversation is concerned, and there is a
single correct answer, regardless of context. Strangely, the professor deems the knowledge that
he imparts to his advanced students to be inappropriate (or dangerous) for the general public.
Why?
The roots of such behaviour lie deep in the culture of the economics profession. But one
important motive is the zeal to display the profession's crown jewels – market
efficiency, the invisible hand, comparative advantage – in untarnished form, and to
shield them from attack by self-interested barbarians, namely
the protectionists . Unfortunately, these economists typically ignore the barbarians on the
other side of the issue – financiers and multinational corporations whose motives are no
purer and who are all too ready to hijack these ideas for their own benefit.
As a result, economists' contributions to public debate are often biased in one direction,
in favour of more trade, more finance and less government. That is why economists have
developed a reputation as cheerleaders for neoliberalism, even if mainstream economics is very
far from a paean to laissez-faire. The economists who let their enthusiasm for free markets run
wild are in fact not being true to their own discipline.
H ow then should we think about globalisation in order to liberate it from the grip of
neoliberal practices? We must begin by understanding the positive potential of global markets.
Access to world markets in goods, technologies and capital has played an important role in
virtually all of the economic miracles of our time. China is the most recent and powerful
reminder of this historical truth, but it is not the only case. Before China, similar miracles
were performed by South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and a few non-Asian countries such as Mauritius
. All of these countries embraced globalisation rather than turn their backs on it, and they
benefited handsomely.
Defenders of the existing economic order will quickly point to these examples when
globalisation comes into question. What they will fail to say is that almost all of these
countries joined the world economy by violating neoliberal strictures. South Korea and Taiwan,
for instance, heavily subsidised their exporters, the former through the financial system and
the latter through tax incentives. All of them eventually removed most of their import
restrictions, long after economic growth had taken off.
But none, with the sole exception of Chile in the 1980s under Pinochet, followed the
neoliberal recommendation of a rapid opening-up to imports. Chile's
neoliberal experiment eventually produced the worst economic crisis in all of Latin
America. While the details differ across countries, in all cases governments played an active
role in restructuring the economy and buffering it against a volatile external environment.
Industrial policies, restrictions on capital flows and currency controls – all prohibited
in the neoliberal playbook – were rampant.
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Twitter Pinterest Protest against Nafta in Mexico City in 2008: since the reforms of the
mid-90s, the country's economy has underperformed. Photograph: EPA
By contrast, countries that stuck closest to the neoliberal model of globalisation were
sorely disappointed. Mexico provides a particularly sad example. Following a series of
macroeconomic crises in the mid-1990s, Mexico embraced macroeconomic orthodoxy, extensively
liberalised its economy, freed up the financial system, sharply reduced import restrictions and
signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta). These policies did produce
macroeconomic stability and a significant rise in foreign trade and internal investment. But
where it counts – in overall productivity and economic growth – the
experiment failed . Since undertaking the reforms, overall productivity in Mexico has
stagnated, and the economy has underperformed even by the undemanding standards of Latin
America.
These outcomes are not a surprise from the perspective of sound economics. They are yet
another manifestation of the need for economic policies to be attuned to the failures to which
markets are prone, and to be tailored to the specific circumstances of each country. No single
blueprint fits all.
A s Peters's 1982 manifesto attests, the meaning of neoliberalism has changed considerably
over time as the label has acquired harder-line connotations with respect to deregulation,
financialisation and globalisation. But there is one thread that connects all versions of
neoliberalism, and that is the
emphasis on economic growth . Peters wrote in 1982 that the emphasis was warranted because
growth is essential to all our social and political ends – community, democracy,
prosperity. Entrepreneurship, private investment and removing obstacles that stand in the way
(such as excessive regulation) were all instruments for achieving economic growth. If a similar
neoliberal manifesto were penned today, it would no doubt make the same point.
Critics often point out that this emphasis on economics debases and sacrifices other
important values such as equality, social inclusion, democratic deliberation and justice. Those
political and social objectives obviously matter enormously, and in some contexts they matter
the most. They cannot always, or even often, be achieved by means of technocratic economic
policies; politics must play a central role.
Still, neoliberals are not wrong when they argue that our most cherished ideals are more
likely to be attained when our economy is vibrant, strong and growing. Where they are wrong is
in believing that there is a unique and universal recipe for improving economic performance, to
which they have access. The fatal flaw of neoliberalism is that it does not even get the
economics right. It must be rejected on its own terms for the simple reason that it is bad
economics.
A version of this article first appeared in Boston
Review
So here we are, with a global economy that's very cost-efficient but not resilient. It's wonderful that Walmart has worked
out how to order a new tube of toothpaste from China the second one is pulled off a shelf in Topeka, KS. But that means there is
no deep storage to draw upon in times of disruption to the status quo. No warehouses stocked with 12 months of future goods.
Just a brilliantly-complicated supply chain thousands of miles long that has to work perfectly for things to keep running.
As an example that drives home this point: we learned during the 2011 earthquake in Japan
that there was just one single
factory making a necessary polymer gel for the odd-shaped lithium batteries used in
smartphones and iPods. There was no backup factory.
We watched closely during that enormous crisis (which also spawned the Fukushima nuclear
disaster) as electronics companies scrambled to triage their remaining supplies and attempt to
find new sources. It was very touch and go. Vast portions of the battery-fueled electronic
industry came within a whisker of simply shutting down production -- all for want of an
esoteric polymer gel.
Yes, the most cost-effective way to make that gel was to house it all in a single plant. But
it made no sense from a redundancy and resilience standpoint.
And did 'we' learn from that experience? Nope.
Supply Chain Armageddon
The global economy is more interdependent than ever. Its supply chains are built on a huge
network of dependencies with many 'single points of failure' strung along its many
branches.
Can anybody predict what will happen next? No.
But we're already seeing early failures as Chinese plants, factories and ports sit idle from
the country's massive quarantine efforts:
China set to lose out on production of 1M vehicles as coronavirus closes car plants
China exports about $70 billion worth of car parts and accessories globally, with roughly
20 percent going to the U.S.
Feb. 5, 2020, 4:32 PM EST
By Paul A. Eisenstein
China could suffer the loss of a million vehicles worth of production as factories in its
crucial automotive industry remain shuttered until at least next week -- and likely longer in
Wuhan, the "motor city" at the center of the coronavirus outbreak.
With more than 24,000 people infected, the impact of the highly contagious disease is also
beginning to be felt by automakers in other parts of the world. Hyundai is suspending
production in its South Korean plants because of a shortage of Chinese-made parts, and even
European car manufacturers could be hit: Volkswagen and BMW could see a dip of 5 percent in
their earnings for the first half of 2020, according to research firm Bernstein.
We're predicting that these auto shutdowns are just beginning. All it takes is a single
component to be unavailable and the entire line has to be shut down.
Is China the sole source for many critical components in the auto industry? Absolutely.
Here's an inside view:
On Monday, Steve Banker and I had the opportunity to speak with Razat Gaurav, CEO of
Llamasoft. Razat had some interesting takes on the outbreak, especially as it relates to the
automotive and pharmaceutical supply chains. On average it takes 30,000 parts to make a
finished automobile.
Due to the virus, production facilities have already indicated that they will have lower
than normal parts volumes. This has left companies scrambling to make contingency plans.
During my conversation with Razat, he mentioned that inventories for most of these automotive
parts are managed on a lean just-in-time basis.
This means that, on average, companies have anywhere between two and twelve weeks of
buffer inventory on-hand for automotive parts. As production volumes are decreasing, this has
the potential to cause quite the global shortage of parts. The buffer inventory will only
last so long, and once the pre-holiday supply runs dry, the industry is going to be in
serious trouble. According to Gaurav: " Most OEMs single source components for new vehicles
and China is a large supplier of those."
"Single sourcing" is exactly what it implies. There's a single factory somewhere churning
out a single component that is absolutely vital to make a motorized vehicle. If that factory
goes away for any length of time, a new source has to be identified or – worse, from a
time and cost standpoint – built from scratch.
But this vulnerability to China-dependent supply chains is by no means unique to the auto
industry:
Last month, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission held a hearing on the
United States' growing reliance on China's pharmaceutical products. The topic reminded me of
a spirited discussion described in Bob Woodward's book, Fear: Trump in the White House.
In the discussion, Gary Cohn, then chief economic advisor to President Trump, argued
against a trade war with China by invoking a Department of Commerce study that found that 97
percent of all antibiotics in the United States came from China.
That's as close to a 'sole source' as you can get.
And to put the cherry on top: guess the name of the region in China responsible for
producing all if these antibiotics? Yep, Hubei province. With Wuhan its most important
production hub.
Can we find another source for our generic drugs and antibiotics? India, possibly. But here
again we run into the same global interdependency issue:
Another industry that is feeling the impact of the coronavirus is the pharmaceutical
industry. The average buffer inventory for the pharmaceutical industry is between three and
six months. However, this does not tell the full story. Gaurav mentioned that China is
responsible for producing 40 percent of the active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) for the
pharmaceutical world.
Additionally, China supplies 80 percent of key starting materials (KSM's), which are the
chemicals in APIs, to India . Put together, this represents 70 percent of all APIs across the
world.
India's production is directly tied to uninterrupted supply from China:
Indian generic drugmakers may face supply shortages from China if coronavirus drags on
Feb 13 (Reuters) – Shortages and potential price increases of generic drugs from
India loom if the coronavirus outbreak disrupts suppliers of pharmaceutical ingredients in
China past April , according to industry experts.
An important supplier of generic drugs to the world, Indian companies procure almost 70%
of the active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) for their medicines from China.
India's generic drugmakers say they currently have enough API supplies from China to cover
their operations for up to about three months.
"We are comfortably placed with eight to 10 weeks of key inventory in place," said
Debabrata Chakravorty, head of global sourcing and supply chain for Lupin Ltd, adding that
the company does have some local suppliers for ingredients.
Sun Pharmaceuticals Industries Ltd said it has sufficient inventory of API and raw
materials for the short term and has not seen any major disruption in supplies at the
moment.
The Indian drugmaker, however, said supply has been impacted for a few API products and
the company is closely monitoring the situation. It did not identify the products.
India supplies nearly a third of medicines sold in the United States , the world's largest
and most lucrative healthcare market.
If you're dependent in any way on prescription drugs, it would be entirely rational to chase
down whether those come from China or India and, if they are, begin talks with your doctor
about alternatives or what to do if supplies get pinched.
A Fast-Moving Situation
Look, we entirely get why the authorities and media are downplaying the covid-19 pandemic.
We really do. They feel the need to manage the crisis, which means managing the public
narrative.
But c'mon. Does it make any sense for Apple's stock price to be up while its main Foxconn
manufacturing facility is all but completely shuttered?
Fewer iPhones and Airpods being made should equate with lower future earnings and thus a
lower stock price. But no, AAPL is up handily over the past month:
And this is even crazier. Does it make ANY sense for Boeing's stock to be up $12 over the
past month? As it reported its first year (2019) of NEGATIVE orders and a completely order-free
January (2020)? No, of course not.
But those are the sorts of 'signals' that the officials believe have to be sent in order to
keep the masses from catching on that something really concerning is happening.
Unfortunately, such signals work on the masses. Higher stock prices send a powerful
comforting message that "all is well".
But prudent critical thinkers, which defines those in the Peak Prosperity tribe, can readily
see through the ruse and get busy preparing themselves for what's coming.
It's Time For
Action
The situation with covid-19 is fluid, and fast-moving. Staying on top of the breaking
developments and making sense of them for you is our primary job.
But information without informed action is useless.
After all, knowing something concerning but then doing nothing about it is merely cause for
anxiety if not alarm.
The only ways to remain calm and protect your loved ones from the threat of this pandemic
are rooted in taking smart action.
Yes, we can all hope this blows over. We sincerely wish the macro-planners all the best in
shaping the narrative and keeping the macro economy somehow functioning and glued together.
But we're going to prepare as best we can, here at our micro level because that's our duty
to ourselves, to our families, and to our communities.
Creating A Resilient Defense
Against The Coronavirus
This is a huge moment in history. The first global pandemic at a time when the world economy
is sole-sourced and completely interdependent.
Nobody can predict what will happen next. Autos, drugs who knows what the next industry to
stumble will be?
Given the ridiculously high rate of infectivity of covid-19 there's really no chance of
stopping its spread. The rate is now just a equation of time, luck, and official actions to
aggressively isolate and quarantine infected individuals and communities.
Our position affords us many experienced contacts with experts throughout the world, and
those we know with deep medical training are preparing the most aggressively right now. This
outbreak has their full attention; and that informs us that it should have ours, too.
Which is why our advice is to get busy preparing yourself now.
Particularly useful for those who have recently found their way to PeakProsperity.com, it
offers both a valuable framework to use in preparing for any disaster (including pandemics) and
then details out specific action steps to take today across all aspects of your life (i.e., not
just health & hygiene) against a coronavirus outbreak in your local area.
"... The thoughtless people who constructed " globalism " overlooked that interdependence is dangerous and can have massive unintended consequences . With or without an epidemic, supplies can be cut off for a number of reasons. For example, strikes, political instability, natural catastrophes, sanctions and other hostilities such as wars, and so forth. Clearly, these dangers to the system are not justified by the lower labor cost and consequent capital gains to shareholders and bonuses to corporate executives. Only the one percent benefits from globalism. ..."
"... Globalism was constructed by people motivated by short-term greed. None of the promises of globalism have been delivered. Globalism is a massive mistake. Yet, almost everywhere political leaders and economists are protective of globalism. So much for human intelligence. ..."
If the coronavirus proves to be serious, as it does not appear to be at the present time,
many economies could be adversely affected. China is the source of many parts supplied to
producers in other countries, and China is the source of the finished products of many US firms
such as Apple. If shipments cannot be made, sales and production outside of China are affected.
Without revenues, employees cannot be paid. Unlike the financial crisis of 2008, this would be
an unemployment crisis and bankruptcy of large manufacturing and marketing corporations.
This is the danger to which globalism makes us vulnerable. If US corporations produced in
the US the products that they market in the US and the world, an epidemic in China would affect
only their Chinese sales, not threaten the companies' revenues.
The thoughtless people who constructed " globalism " overlooked that interdependence is
dangerous and can have massive unintended consequences . With or without an epidemic, supplies
can be cut off for a number of reasons. For example, strikes, political instability, natural
catastrophes, sanctions and other hostilities such as wars, and so forth. Clearly, these
dangers to the system are not justified by the lower labor cost and consequent capital gains to
shareholders and bonuses to corporate executives. Only the one percent benefits from
globalism.
Globalism was constructed by people motivated by short-term greed. None of the promises
of globalism have been delivered. Globalism is a massive mistake. Yet, almost everywhere
political leaders and economists are protective of globalism. So much for human
intelligence.
At this point of time, it is difficult to understand the hysteria over coronavirus and
predictions of global pandemic. In China there are about 24,000 infections and 500 deaths in a
population of 1.3 billion people. This is an inconsequential illness. Compared to the ordinary
seasonal flu that infects millions of people worldwide and kills 600,000, the coronavirus so
far amounts to nothing. Infections outside of China are miniscule and appear to be limited to
Chinese people. It is difficult to know for certain, because of the reluctance to identify
people by race.
Perhaps the coronavirus is just warming up and much worse is to come. If so, world Gross
Domestic Product (GDP) will take a hit. Quarantines prevent work. Finished products and parts
cannot be made and shipped. Sales cannot take place without products to sell. Without revenues
companies cannot pay employees and other expenses. Incomes decline across the world. Companies
go bankrupt.
You can take it from here.
If a deadly coronavirus pandemic or some other one does erupt and there is a world
depression, we should be very clear in our mind that globalism was the cause. Countries whose
governments are so thoughtless or corrupt as to make their populations vulnerable to disruptive
events abroad are medically, economically, socially, and politically unstable.
The consequence of globalism is world instability.
It makes sense for rich countries elites to leverage poor backwards shithole countries to
manufacture the things they need because the elites then don't have to worry about anyone but
themselves. Globalism is wonder as it bypasses all that crazy western nonsense like jobs and
wages and society and hope and such.
Globalism is nothing more than the major central banks finding ways to dump off their
inflation which is the deflation of an ever increasing number countries which the major cb's
used to deflate their currencies. The older the cb you are the worse off yo are. From a since
A.D. perspective only the Sterling is what you have to worry. From my last fiat currency
perspective its the Venisthaler that is un doing everything.
To get more zero's you have to add more nine's. They can not be added as nausem like
people think zero's are. The compensation pool has been shrinking for centuries on end now.
Globalism is an attempt to keep the pool growing at all cost which results relentless asset
appreciation. We are out of nine's. The end result of that is hyper deflation for the man and
hyper reflation for the people. Easily provable at a store named Vons owned by the treasury
retired.
That ladies and gents is your simplified street fed explanation. I am not trying to even
remotely write out the longer technical version.
Having said that meet me at what is known as the small walmart around here, which is the
home of what does MU do, what does MU do at walmart it never gets old fame for a real life
walk thru of what globalism is and looks like. We will then progress to the "Big Walmart" not
even a mile away and I will show you what an out of control system looks like.
So we are clear of what I just said. I live in the only place in the world where when a
tourist ask you where Wal Mart is, you get your choice of size. Whats the difference you
ask??? The small Wal Mart has one main entrance, the big one has three. The lady almost
smacked the **** out of the guy I got that from when she asked what the difference was. The
hand came up. You really had to be there.
Regional trade blocks with relatively balanced resource and production capabilities make
more sense. Globalisation just lead to one country seeking to 'DOMINATE' in every sphere of
global activity, raising the threats of economic and military conflict, as clearly
demonstrated and this with the aim of global enslavement to multinational corporations, the
aim of Globalism, really sick psychopathic stuff.
Regional trade blocks relatively balanced for resource and production, provide stability
within each block and lesson competition for outside resource and commercial competitiveness,
and represents a far more long term stable structure.
Within each trade block, as it is economic rather than socio-political the original
identities of each distinct region can be preserved for the long term, so that future
generations can enjoy and share in the different cultures. Race ******** is race ********,
there is only one race and all of it's people are free to share in which ever culture they
choose or combinations there of. Whether you get to move to those regions and enjoy those
cultures will be done to your personal worth, character and ability to contribute to those
societies, just the way it will be.
Some economic blocks will be far more preferable to others and will attract higher worth
individuals (character and ability to contribute to society), the least and most desirable
will become more so as higher worth individuals move to the most preferable away from the
least preferable and make the most preferable more preferable by their active presence.
I would tip the Japan Australia one to be the most preferable for this century, the next
hard to tell (there are real deep problems in the Americas caused by the USA, the EU had an
bad immigrant problem as in they let in too many bad unvetted immigrants, Africa will be what
Africa will be corrupt and Russia China it depends upon how quickly the modernise and
socially advance, the middle of the middles south east to mid east it depends how long it
takes them to come together and religion is a real problem for them).
I've been wondering if this might be some kind of Globalist Drill. It doesn't make sense,
although there is always the potential it could become worse than it is.
I thought so, too. Strangely enough, Wuhan Chinese are now repatriated from Bali back to
Wuhan?!
Instability is a necessary condition to get more conflicts and then wars going. Weapons
production must be kept up; peace and stability would make make weapons production an
expensive hobby.
I like Moon aka Bernard or whatever but he says the EU needs slightly less regulation. This
stupid giant politically correct police state has like 66,000 laws and they pass 5,000 new
ones a year. Nanny police state fascism and all they do is steal money from the taxpayers of
Europe. It is a Central Bank ponzi scheme that is going to implode.
Most recent joke today is the EU Army which has pretty much no working tanks, planes or
ships. Who are they going to fight anyway? The Russians? God help Europe - maybe Russians and
Putin might reinstate Christianity in Europe and throw off the yoke of the CIA/MIC/Operation
Gladio-Mockingbird from USA.
The impression I'm getting from comments here is that there are still many Europeans (in the
broad sense, both EU and British) in complete denial.
Europe is in decline, not in ascension. The numbers just came out yesterday: 0.1% for the
EU (with France and Italy in recession); UK's number for Q4 are still one month away, but Q3
was also pathetic.
World trade (globalization) has grown to a halt. It's all maxed out already, there are no
more free trade deals to be made.
Germany is in de facto recession. Most worryingly, its industrial output is plummeting -
with only its services sector keeping the whole thing afloat. And we know that's not how the
German economy should work.
The UK is still a capitalist economy - free from the EU or not. It will not invest in
those fabled renewable energy sources from tide, wind etc. etc. if the profit rates are not
high enough. And they are not high enough. The only way, then, for those investments to
happen is if energy prices spike up - very bad news for the British people (which, fair to
say, could happen in or out of the EU, so this is not a Brexit question).
Many countries in Europe tried to invest in those renewable, but apart from insignificant
micro-nations such as Denmark, most failed to supplant the old sources. It was reduced to a
complementary source.
The only reason to think the European Peninsula can rise from the ashes is that it rose
from the ashes before (post-war miracle). But the post-war miracle was a very exceptional
historical period, where a lot of improbable variables aligned. It will certainly not happen
again.
The European peoples should stop with their dellusions of grandeur and accept a treaty of
Eurasian integration, with a subordinate status to Russia and China. You did it before with
the USA in 1945, you can do it again now with Russia/China. That is unexceptional in European
History, and can certainly happen again.
The Commonwealth long since ceased to have any meaning for the UK other than as a
vestige of an expropriative empire, which has been a caricature since 1942[.]
If you think that the land mass of the Commonwealth represents a kind of control comparable
to the EU then you need to study the last century[.]
In that comment you have attracted Her Majesty's displeasure. Suggest a read up of the 53
Commonwealth countries' property ownership in common law - in fee simple>radical
title > The Crown's underlying title in common law. Oh, add the thirteen
colonies prior to the American revolution found unpalatable.
Fun read from George Galloway @RT. Lot's of things independent minded folk can agree with but
pay particular attention to the conclusion / ending and give it a 1 to 10 reality rating.
Think of the absolutely absurd straight line that separates Canada from the U.S. West of
the great lakes.
Now think of that artificially imposed boundary and ask yourself, "What a stupid line,
surely that line wouldn't be able to instill any cultural differences between two artificial
constructs (nations)?"
(Anecdotally, I live in the Pac NW and every time I have ever crossed the border into
Canada it literally feels like you are entering a retiring, European state.)
And then ask yourself how it is possible one country has a national healthcare system
while the other abhors the idea. Or why the U.S. has the worst gun violence in the First
World while Canada has a 1/10th of that number.
Face it, regardless of lines on a map, a national identity still gives a people the choice
to galvanize and develop independently.
I think the EU is in for more trouble in the future than the UK. By the end of this decade,
several central and eastern European countries economies will have grown sufficiently that
their EU yearly subsidies will now become EU payments. In other words, the EU cash cow will
suddenly become a cash drain for some countries. In the meantime, France and Germany will
have the pick up the financial slack caused by Brexit. Put it all together and it seems to me
some trouble ahead for the EU.
I believe you have stated the underlying facts here -
"b is correct tho that the tendency of politicians pretending to be technocrats to
centralise in order to build a trade-able power base must be halted. otherwise the national
devolution movements become superseded by a Brussels top down pyramid management structure
where citizens are too removed from decision makers and the decision makers are too removed
from the results of their decisions."
That's the reason we have to leave the EU.
The next question is how.
The central fact here is that on a key point Brussels is absolutely in the right.
Frictionless access to the Single Market - what we have now - can only go with Dynamic
Alignment - continuing adherence to EU regulations. This fact was obscured during the
vacillations of the May Premiership and may still be being obscured.
Me, I think the "regulatory ecosystem" that the EU has evolved is unsound. It also goes
well beyond the technical setting of standards (most of which are set outside the EU in any
case) and affects matters far removed from the purely technical. But it's what they have and
it's not for us to attempt to change it.
Much of the hostility from the EU derives from the belief that as we leave we are trying
to change their system, and for our own benefit. All the fears of "Cherry picking" and the
rest. But it's not that they won't change. They can't, not without an entire recasting of
that regulatory ecosystem. That would cause chaos if they attempted to do it. Engrenage is
their watchword, the gradual accumulation of regulation and prescription, not demolition or
radical rebuilding.
In short, for the reasons you have given above, we have to leave. When we consider the
"how", we see that there is no magic solution that allows us to leave while continuing
trading as if we have not left. Out really does mean out.
So where's the problem?
We've built up a good many trade links with the 27, the EU countries. They are vulnerable
links, particularly the JIT links. It's going to take time to run down these links and
replace them with new. We have other links as well - through the agencies - that will also
take time to replace.
Such changes could take several years. If Brussels insists on that process happening
overnight the result is serious disruption. On the principle that the EU is so much larger
the calculation is that that disruption would hurt the UK much more than the EU. That is
Brussels' bargaining counter.
Whether Brussels is using that counter for punitive reasons or whether it is using it in
order to retain at least some control over the UK is irrelevant. The threat is there, however
you look at it.
Some think we should face the threat down. I do - I think it is bluff. Others think we
should not face it down - they fear it is not bluff. We wait to see which course the Johnson
administration will adopt, not forgetting that the previous UK administration, and certainly
the previous Parliament, didn't much like Brexit anyway - they wanted to stay in or close -
and we're not yet sure what Johnson's position is.
.
(Note - engrenage as it works in practice explained here)
"The affirmative task we have now is to actually create a new world order."
-- Vice President Joe Biden, April 5, 2013
"Out of these troubled times, our fifth objective -- a new world order -- can
emerge."
-- President George H. W. Bush, September 11, 1990
"We saw deterioration where there should have been positive movement toward a new world
order."
-- Mikhail Gorbachev, October 19, 2011
"I think that his [Obama's] task will be to develop an overall strategy for America in
this period, when really a 'new world order' can be created. It's a great
opportunity."
Remember it was the British that basically established political Zionism as a state back
in Palestine.
It was Trump that declared Jerusalem as the 'eternal capital' of anti-Christ Judaism.
Boris Johnson is a 'passionate Zionist' by his own proclamation.
This is about a realignment of Zionist interest in the English speaking world.
The EU wasn't going to play ball on the terms of American (and British) Zionism.
The English (KJV) world of eschatology demands a pseudo-Christianity to bow down to the
interests of anti-Christ Jewish nationalism. (It is why the U.S. Senate has passed
legislation making it illegal to criticize 'Israel' as 'anti-Semitic')
American evangelicals are being misrepresented by heretics like John Hagee and a
pseudo-Christianity that cares not for Jesus Christ at all but rather maintains a focus only
on 'Israel'. A dual covenant theology mixed with heresies galore served up in a controlled
media that doesn't allow for the recognition of Christianity as the real Israel against a
history of the destruction of ancient Israel because of their rejection of Jesus Christ as
the Son of God.
The New Testament Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen is Jesus foretelling and giving clear
reason for the destruction of anti-Christ Judaism in 70 AD.
The heresies of John Darby and Cyrus Scofield (again nearly exclusively in English) have
created everything from British Israelism to fear and anxiety hustling crapola such as Hal
Lindsey and The Late Great Planet Earth end of the world heresies.
On the basis of Christian heresy has emerged anti-Christ political Zionism and its vast
adherents in the English speaking world now realigning.
Rich countries embraced trade multilateralism when it suited them, and now they're abandoning it. That may not be such a bad thing.
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is on its last legs now that the Trump administration has blocked the appointment or reappointment
of judges to the appeals court of its Dispute Settlement Mechanism -- which is the central pillar of the 24-year-old multilateral
body.
Do I regret the demise of the World Trade Organization now that Trump is on a unilateral trade rampage? No. I always saw the WTO
and unilateralism as two faces of U.S. power deployed against those countries seeking to remake the world trading order in a more
equitable and just direction.
Multilateralism and unilateralism have, since the end of the Second World War, been alternative strategies for global hegemony
preferred by competing factions of the U.S. ruling elite.
The Democrats preferred multilateralism because they felt it would both institutionalize the U.S.'s hegemonic status in the world
trading order at the same time that it would make it more legitimate by obtaining the consent of its allies. Republicans, however,
felt that the exercise of U.S. power should be as little constrained by global rules and institutions as possible.
These two views clashed head-on in 1948 during the debate over the ratification of the Havana Charter, which would have established
the International Trade Organization (ITO). After having participated in the negotiations, the Democratic administration of President
Truman did not submit it to the Senate for ratification, worried that the Republicans would successfully block it. The Republicans
argued that ratifying the Havana Charter would be unconstitutional since no legal code could stand above the U.S. Constitution, and
that a treaty governing trade would do precisely that.
Republicans and Democrats agreed to a compromise: the much weaker General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which had little
checks on U.S. trade practices and did not bring under its ambit the global agricultural trade that U.S. corporations dominated.
With trade making up only a small part of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) then, the U.S. was not worried about the absence of strong
rules on global trade, and felt these would only harm the bottom line of its emerging transnational corporations.
Paradoxically, GATT allowed the rise of a number of formerly minor trading countries into major actors in global trade, which
would not have been possible within an iron-clad free trade regime. These were mainly economies from East Asia like South Korea,
Taiwan, and Malaysia that engaged in aggressive export policies while building up manufacturing industries protected by high tariffs
and import quotas. At the same time, by the 1970s and 1980s, trade accounted for a greater part of U.S. GDP than in the late 1940s,
and U.S. corporations wanted fewer restrictions on their penetration of foreign markets.
So Washington changed its mind in the 1980s, and both Republicans and Democrats agreed to push for a strengthened global trade
regime.
The U.S. was confident that it would benefit mainly its corporations which it saw as the most competitive in the world. The European
Union decided to join the bandwagon for a strengthened international trade regime mainly because, like Washington, it wanted to dump
its massive agricultural surpluses on developing countries.
Leading industries in Europe, the U.S., and Japan -- like the automobile, information, and pharmaceutical industries -- also had
a joint interest in preventing the emergence of new competitors from East and Southeast Asia by making the latter's liberal acquisition
of complex technologies (dubbed "intellectual piracy") a violation of trade rules, or by preventing them from using trade restrictions
to build up their industries.
The result was the World Trade Organization, which came into being in 1995. The WTO, from the perspective of U.S. interests, was
a set of rules and institutions that would promote, consolidate, and legitimize structures of global trade ensuring the hegemony
of US interests.
While free trade was the rhetoric of the WTO, the achievement of monopoly was actually the aim of the WTO's three most important
agreements.
The Agreement on Agriculture (AOA) institutionalized the dumping of U.S. and European surpluses on developing countries by forcing
the latter to end their import quotas and lower their tariffs. The Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (TRIPs) sought
to institutionalize U.S. corporations' monopoly of high technology by outlawing reverse engineering and other methods used by developing
countries to get universal access to knowledge. The Trade Related Investment Measures Agreement (TRIMs) sought to prevent countries
from imitating Japan, South Korea, and Malaysia and using trade policy, like reducing imported inputs into finished goods in favor
of local inputs, to build up industries that became significant competitors both in local and global markets.
Then, in 2003, with the heft provided by India, Brazil, and China (a WTO member since 2001), the developing countries in the WTO
were able to prevent the U.S. and EU's attempt to dismantle government protection of small farmers. They foiled attempts to tighten
the already very restrictive TRIPs Agreement, and prevented the joint U.S.-EU attempt to bring investment, government procurement,
and competition policy under the ambit of the WTO.
Following this, the U.S. abandoned the multilateral route. After the Fifth Ministerial of the WTO collapsed in Cancun in 2003,
the Republican Bush administration's Special Trade Representative Robert Zoellick warned: "As the WTO members ponder the future,
the U.S. will not wait: we will move towards free trade with can-do countries."
Over the next few years, the U.S. and the EU preferred to put their efforts into forging bilateral trade agreements or limited
multilateral agreements, like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) that was the fallback position favored by the Obama administration.
So Trump did not initiate the move back to unilateralism -- he merely brought to its climax, with his trade war with China, a swing
back to unilateralism that had begun with the George W. Bush administration in 2003.
Indeed, Trump's blocking of judges to the WTO's appellate court is simply an extension of the policy of blocking the appointment
or reappointment of judges practiced earlier by the supposedly multilateralist Obama administration. The most notorious trade act
of the U.S. under Obama was its ouster in 2016 of Appellate Body Member Seung Wha Chang of South Korea on the grounds that it did
not agree with the distinguished South Korean jurist's judgments in four trade disputes involving the U.S.
The result, the current global trading system, is a hodge-podge featuring a weakened WTO, failed trade agreements like the TPP,
stalemated or slow-moving negotiations like the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), developing country trade arrangements
like Mercosur, bilateral treaties like the South Korea-U.S. free trade agreement, and non-institutionalized bilateral and unilateral
initiatives.
This may, in fact, be the least undesirable of outcomes. For many developing countries, the era of the weak GATT regime from 1948
to 1995 was a dynamic era that left them a lot of development space owing to the lack of pressure for them to open up their agricultural
and manufacturing sectors, weak trade dispute mechanisms, and the absence of anti-development pro-developed country regimes like
TRIPs.
Instead of the chaos that neoliberal ideologues warn us against, current conditions might, in fact, be moving in the direction
of a hybrid GATT-like system that would hold out a larger space for efforts at genuine sustainable development by the global South.
Share this:
One of the principal actors in the Anti-Globalization Movement, FPIF commentator Walden Bello is the author of Deglobalization:
Ideas for a New World Economy (Zed, 2000) and Revisiting and Reclaiming Deglobalization (Focus on the Global South, 2019). He can
be contacted at [email protected]. This article originally
appeared in German in the German periodical Welt-Sichten, Nov 7, 2019
Editor's Note: Last month, Foreign Policy ran an article, "Open Borders Are a
Trillion-Dollar Idea," which advocated for Open Borders. So for all those who say, "Oh, no
one supports Open Borders," here it is in writing! Every point made by author Bryan Caplan,
an economics professor, is refutable, and, while the piece is long, we believe it's important
"for the record" to counter all of his points.
As I first read Bryan Caplan's "Open Borders Are a Trillion-Dollar Idea" in Foreign
Policy, besides disbelief, my thoughts were that this person must not get out much or must
not read much. A quote from writer Upton Sinclair came to mind as well: "It is difficult to
get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." https://progressivesforimmigrationreform.org/open-borders-trillion-dollar-mistake/
Something that no one is discussing - the US sabotage of the WTO.
At the core of recent US attacks on globalisation and multilateralism lies the fact that
under such conditions, the US is growing at slower pace than the world. This ultimately will
nean the end of the US as a superpower.
This is a strategic move coming from the US and has nothing to do with "isolationalism" or
"attempt to dismantle the Empire", as naive people here and there thought.
It is an attempt to sabotage the global economy and make sure that other countries do not
grow faster than the US.
The key point of US attacks on the WTO is that they want to remove the perks for poorer
countries. That means most of the world.
The aim is also, if this is not possible, to destroy the WTO, and return to law of the
jungle, with open bullying and trade wars, where the stronger smash the weak in trade
negotiations.
Under such conditions, the US will be able to bully most of the rest of the world into
bilateral trade deals that favout its economy. This way, it will try to save itself from
bankruptcy.
The US is trying everything possible to save itself. As i said in the past, they will try
to destroy the global economy in order to save themselves.
Under law of the jungle, the US will benefit, as it will be the biggest bully.
This also does not look good for the EU, as the US will now prefer for it to desintegrate
as it will be able to bully the different european countries one by one into better trade
conditions. This is why the US is supporting Brexit.
Money quote: "Johnson will have to work superhard on this if he is to re-create not the
Thatcher coalition but the Disraeli nation. That's what he means when he talks about "One Nation
Conservatism." That was Disraeli's reformist conservatism of the 19th century, a somewhat
protectionist, supremely patriotic alliance between the conservative elites and the ordinary man
and woman. It will take a huge amount of charm and policy persistence to cement that coalition if
it is to last more than one election. But if Boris pulls that off, he will have found a new
formula designed to kill off far-right populism, while forcing the left to regroup."
Notable quotes:
"... But just as important, he moved the party sharply left on austerity, spending on public services, tax cuts for the working poor, and a higher minimum wage. He outflanked the far right on Brexit and shamelessly echoed the left on economic policy ..."
Brexit is an eruption of English nationalism, and the Tories are now, under that shambling
parody of a drunk racist English aristo, Johnson, an English nationalist party.
IMHO this is highly questionable statement. Brexit is a form of protest against neoliberal
globalization. The fact that is colored with nationalism is the secondary effect/factor:
rejection of neoliberalism is almost always colored in either nationalist rhetoric, or Marxist
rhetoric.
Here are some quotes from paleoconservative analysis of the elections taken from two recent
articles:
While I do not share their enthusiasm about "Red Tories" rule in the UK, and the bright
future for "Trumpism without Trump" movement in the USA, they IMHO provide some interesting
insights into paleoconservatives view on the British elections results and elements of social
protest that led to them:
[AS] It is clearer and clearer to me that the wholesale adoption of critical race, gender,
and queer theory on the left makes normal people wonder what on earth they're talking about
and which dictionary they are using. The white working classes are privileged? A woman can
have a penis? In the end, the dogma is so crazy, and the language so bizarre, these natural
left voters decided to listen to someone who
does actually speak their language , even if in an absurdly plummy accent.
[AS] But just as important, he moved the party sharply left on austerity, spending on
public services, tax cuts for the working poor, and a higher minimum wage. He outflanked the
far right on Brexit and shamelessly echoed the left on economic policy . ... This is
Trumpism without Trump. A conservative future without an ineffective and polarizing nutjob at
the heart of it. Unlike Trump, he will stop E.U. mass migration, and pass a new immigration
system, based on the Australian model. Unlike Trump, he will focus tax cuts on the working
poor, not the decadent rich. Unlike Trump, he will stop E.U. mass migration, and pass a new
immigration system, based on the Australian model. Unlike Trump, he will focus tax cuts on
the working poor, not the decadent rich. It's very much the same movement of left-behind
people expressing their views on the same issues, who, tragically, put their trust in Trump.
What we've seen is how tenacious a voting bloc that now is, which is why Trumpism is here to
stay. If we could only get rid of the human cancer at the heart of it.
[AS] Trump has bollixed it up, of course. He ran on Johnson's platform but gave almost all
his tax cuts to the extremely wealthy, while Johnson will cut taxes on the poor. Trump talks
a big game on immigration but has been unable to get any real change in the system out of
Congress. Johnson now has a big majority to pass a new immigration bill, with Parliament in
his control, which makes the task much easier. Trump is flamingly incompetent and unable to
understand his constitutional role. Boris will assemble a competent team, with Michael Gove
as his CEO, and Dom Cummings as strategist.
[AS] If Johnson succeeds, he'll have unveiled a new formula for the Western right: Make no
apologies for your own country and culture; toughen immigration laws; increase public
spending on the poor and on those who are "just about managing"; increase taxes on the very
rich and redistribute to the poor; focus on manufacturing and new housing; ignore the woke;
and fight climate change as the Tories are (or risk losing a generation of support).
[RD] I have no idea why the Republicans are so damned silent on wokeness, including the
transgender madness. No doubt about it, the American people have accepted gay marriage and
gay rights, broadly. But the Left will not accept this victory in the culture war. They
cannot help bouncing the rubble, and driving people farther than they are willing to go, or
that they should have to go. It's the elites -- and not just academic elites. Every week I
get at least two e-mails from readers sending me examples of transgender wokeness taking over
their professions -- especially big business. People hate this pronoun crap, but nobody dares
to speak out against it, because they are afraid of being doxxed, cancelled, or at least
marginalized in the workplace.
[RD] My friend said (I paraphrase):
"Can you blame people for not answering pollsters' questions? Everybody is told all the
time that the things they believe, and the things they worry about, are backwards and
bigoted. They have learned to keep it to themselves. It's the same thing here. I hate
Donald Trump, but I'm probably going to end up voting for him, because at least he doesn't
hate my sons. I want a good future for every child -- black, Latino, white, all of them --
but the Left thinks my sons are what's wrong with the world
[RD] Boris (and Sully) style Toryism is better than nothing, isn't it? As a general rule,
in this emerging post-Christian social and political order, we conservative Christians had
better not let the unachievable perfect be the enemy of the common-sense good enough.
Now that Brexit
is almost certainly going to happen, I'm reposting this piece from late 2016 ,
with some minor corrections, indicated by strike-outs. Feel free to have your say on any aspect
of Brexit.
Since the collapse of faith in neoliberalism following the Global Financial Crisis, the
political right has been increasingly dominated by tribalism Trumpism. But in most cases, including the US, this
has so far amounted to little more than Trilling's irritable mental gestures . To the extent
that there is any policy program, it is little more than crony capitalism. Of all the
tribalist Trumpist groups that have achieved
political power the only ones that have anything amounting to a political program are the
Brexiteers.
The sustainability of tribalism Trumpism as
a political force will depend, in large measure, on the perceived success or failure of Brexit.
So, what will the day after Brexit (presumably, sometime in March 2019) look like, and more
importantly, feel like? I'll rule out the so-called "soft Brexit" where Britain stays in the EU
for all practical purposes, gaining some minor concessions on immigration restrictions. It
seems unlikely and would be even more of an anti-climax than the case I want to think
about.
Hidari 12.14.19 at 9:14 am (no link)
Doubtless one of the attractions of Brexit at least to those who thought it up (Farrage etc.)
is that it is a completely token rebellion: it appears to change very much while in reality
changing very little.
Only one thing:
'On the contrary, it seems pretty clear that all EU citizens will get permanent residence,
even those who arrived after the Brexit vote.'
Are we completely sure about this?
'One thing that this post missed completely is that Brexit is an entirely English project,
imposed on the Scots and Irish. That's become more and more evident, and looks sure to
dominate the days after Brexit happens.'
I kept on putting this point forward in various CT threads, getting, for some reason,
massive pushback*, despite the fact that it is obviously true and always has been. Perhaps a
colour coded map of the 'new' UK (which shows, essentially, the entirety of England as blue,
with the exception of larger conurbations), the Welsh speaking ('outer') parts of Wales as
green, essentially the entirety of Scotland as yellow, and the majority of the North of
Ireland as being green, will make that point for me.
*I'm not sure why, but I think it's something to do with an unwillingness to see that in
all four sections of the 'United' Kingdom we are seeing an eruption of nationalism: the SNP
in Scotland, Sinn Fein in NI, Plaid in Wales and of course the Tories in England, with the
Tories now functioning as, so to speak, the political wing of UKIP, or, if you want, UKIP/the
Brexit Party with the 'rough edges' shaved off.
'Liberal' intellectuals have always had a blind spot for nationalism, and have always
tended to reason that because nationalism is 'irrationalism' or whatever, that no one could
'really' think that way and that, therefore, nationalism doesn't 'really' exist. It obviously
does, as a 1 second glance at the 'new' UK map will demonstrate.
likbez 12.14.19 at 4:57 pm (no link)
Everything Trump does is consistent with regular conservatism
I respectfully disagree. It is not. Paleoconservatives hate Trump. Neocons for some
strange reason also hate Trump, although it is not clear why -- he completely folded and
conduct their foreign policy. Which is as far from classic conservatism as one can get.
I view Trumpism as specific for the USA flavor of "national neoliberalism" -- domestic
neoliberalism without neoliberal globalization, or with globalization of a different type.
The one based on bilateral treaties where stronger state can twist hands of the weaker state
and dictate the conditions -- kind of neo-imperialism on steroids ( neoliberalism always was
neo-imperial in foreign policy toward weaker states) .
The irony of Corbin defeat is that he was/is a critic of the EU imperialism, which
by-and-large is Franco-German imperialism (EU role in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Ukraine, Libya,
Syria, Greece) . The EU is not the dominant superpower, so it can't bully the US or China, or
Russia. It can do it only when dealing with lesser powers. That's why it's difficult for
anyone living inside a major EU-member to actually notice such a behavior: the desire to
crush resistance of any lesser country and to force it to abide by its very own rules,
whether the other countries want it or not.
The Blairites euphoria that the left was defeated, and neoliberalism still reins supreme
is IMHO unwarranted. Neoliberalism as an ideology is dead and that means that Labour Party in
its current form is dead as well. The same is true about the US Dems. They can achieve some
tactical successes but they can't overturn their strategic defeat.
And Brexit means more close alliance with the USA (in a form of subservience) as alone GB
can't conduct previous imperialist policies. It was punching above her weight within the EU
(with Scripals false flag as the most recent example, see Tony Kevin take on the subject
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/12/08/a-determined-effort-to-undermine-russia
) , and this opportunity no longer exists.
This year's winner is Branko Milanovic's
Capitalism, Alone: The Future of the System That Rules the World . (This is the second
Globie for Milanovic, who won it in 2016 for Global Inequality .) The book is based on
the premise that capitalism has become the universal form of economic organization. This type
of system is characterized by "production organized for profit using legally free wage labor
and mostly privately owned capital, with decentralized coordination." However, there exist two
different types of capitalism: the liberal meritocratic form that developed in the West, and
state-led political capitalism, which exists primarily in Asia but also parts of Europe and
Africa.
The two models are competitors, in part because of their adoption in different parts of the
world and also because they arose in different circumstances. The liberal meritocratic system
arose from the class capitalism of the late 19th century, which in turn evolved out of
feudalism. Communism, Milanovic writes, took the place of bourgeoise development. Communist
parties in countries such as China and Vietnam overthrew the domestic landlord class as well as
foreign domination. These countries now seek to re-establish their place in the global
distribution of economic power.
Milanovic highlights one characteristic that the two forms of capitalism share: inequality.
Inequality in today's liberal meritocratic capitalism differs from that of classical capitalism
in several features. Capital-rich individuals are also labor-rich, which reinforces the
inequality. Assortative mating leads to more marriages within income classes. The upper classes
use their money to control the political process to maintain their position of privilege.
Because of limited data on income distribution in many of the countries with political
capitalism, Milanovic focuses on inequality in China. He attributes its rise to the gap between
growth in the urban areas versus the rural, as well the difference in growth between the
maritime provinces and those in the western portion of the country. There is also a rising
share of income from capital , as well as a high concentration of capital income. In addition,
corruption has become systemic, as it was before the communist revolution.
The mobility of labor and capital allows capitalism to operate on a global basis.
Migrants from developing economies benefit when they move to advanced economies. But residents
in those countries often fear migration because of its potentially disruptive effect on
cultural norms, despite the positive spillover effects on the domestic economy. Milanovic
proposes granting migrants limited rights, such as a finite term of stay, in order to
facilitate their acceptance. He points out, however, the potential downside of the creation of
an underclass.
Multinational firms have organized global supply chains that give the parent units in their
home countries the ability to coordinate production in different subsidiary units and their
suppliers in their host nations. Consequently, the governments of home countries seek to limit
the transfer of technology to the periphery nations to avoid losing innovation rents. The host
countries, on the other hand, hope to use technology to jump ahead in the development
process.
The Trump administration clearly shares these concerns about the impact of globalization.
President Trump has urged multinational firms to relocate production facilities within the U.S.
Government officials are planning to limit the
export of certain technologies while carefully scrutinizing foreign acquisitions of
domestic firms in tech-related areas. New
restrictions on legal immigration have been enacted that would give priority to a
merit-based system. Moreover, the
concerns over migration are not unique to the U.S.
Milanovic ends with some provocative thoughts about the future of capitalism. One path would
be to a "people's capitalism," in which everyone has an approximately equal share of both
capital and labor income. This would require tax advantages for the middle class combined with
increased taxes on the rich, improvements in the quality of public education, and public
funding of political campaigns. But it is also feasible that there will be a move of liberal
capitalism toward a form of political capitalism based on the rise of the new elite, who wish
to retain their position within society.
Milanovic's book offers a wide-ranging review of many of the features of contemporary
capitalism. He is particularly insightful about the role of corruption in both liberal and
political capitalism. Whether or not it is feasible to reform capitalism in order to serve a
wider range of interests is one of the most important issues of our time.
==quote==
The Trump administration clearly shares these concerns about the impact of globalization.
President Trump has urged multinational firms to relocate production facilities within
the U.S. Government officials are planning to limit the export of certain technologies
while carefully scrutinizing foreign acquisitions of domestic firms in tech-related
areas. New restrictions on legal immigration have been enacted that would give priority
to a merit-based system. Moreover, the concerns over migration are not unique to the
U.S.
== end ==
In plain language that means the collapse of neoliberal globalization.
And again, if we do win despite all the structural injustices in the system the Rs
inherited and seek to expand, well, those injustices don't really absolutely need to be
corrected, because we will still have gotten the right result from the system as is.
This is a pretty apt description of the mindset of Corporate Democrats. Thank you !
May I recommend you to listen to Chris Hedge 2011 talk On Death of the Liberal Class At least to
the first part of it.
Corporate Dems definitely lack courage, and as such are probably doomed in 2020.
Of course, the impeachment process will weight on Trump, but the Senate hold all trump cards,
and might reverse those effects very quickly and destroy, or at lease greatly diminish, any
chances for Corporate Demorats even complete on equal footing in 2020 elections. IMHO Pelosi
gambit is a really dangerous gambit, a desperate move, a kind of "Heil Mary" pass.
Despair is a very powerful factor in the resurgence of far right forces. And that's what
happening right now and that's why I suspect that far right populism probably will be the
decisive factor in 2020 elections.
IMHO Chris explains what the most probable result on 2020 elections with be with amazing
clarity.
This lecture is part of the McMaster Department of Philosophy's Summer School in Capitalism, democratic solidarity, and Institutional
design
https://www.solidaritydesign2019.com
At first I thought the guy makes up lack of knowledge by trying to be funny. I stand corrected though: he's smart, informative
and funny as heck. Way to go!
Cant believe he missed tulsi, i actually put biden on the lower end with beto but idk thats my perspective and yes trump will
most likely win but i wanna see who's the democratic nominee because i think hes underestimating the amount of people willing
to come out for bernie
Bernie is still THE most popular candidate, despite mainstream media pretending that he is not. The skullduggery of media and
the establishment is ENDLESS - including not allowing a couple of hundred Bernie supporters to come in with their signs and shirts,
but allowing Warren supporters to do so and showing ONLY THOSE SUPPORTERS. Nice, huh?
Nixon decided to un-peg the dollar (from gold) in 1971, which was the last remaining constraint on price inflation. Currency
supply increases, which eventually become price inflation, have been the norm since. The rest of this could be plainly foreseen
with a decent understanding of Hayek's business cycle contributions.
Professor Blythe, you are outstanding. I wish that you had been my tutor in graduate school. Everything you say makes sense
perfect sense, but the plug for the #SNP . Some
British people identify as Scottish, believe themselves to be different. The same could be said of people from Yorkshire; my grandparents
hail from Bradford & Glasgow respectively. We're all British; we all rely on the South-East; to wit, London ... like it or not.
Could Scotland - sure Scots. are cannier than Greeks ... or are they - survive as a vassal state of The Berlin-Brussels Axis?
I may be old school but give me the Anglophone world every time ;).
I would love to know how you would advise Nicky Sturgeon should Brigadoon ever become a reality or will the next
#GFC be death knell of the
#EUropean experiment, putting an end -
just for now - to the British constitutional issue - ?
Blyth is wrong about Warren, HER record is thinner than Bernie's by far. She talks a good game, stands for almost nothing and
will do almost everything our corrupt establishment wants, including the MIC and other sociopathic profiteers. smdh
Globalism sounds like such a nice thing for many, it even has a nice ring to it! At least to
the naïve, whom actually believe that if the world could just get together and work out
its problems under one big umbrella, all would be great. I think most people would agree that
true free trade, coupled with safeguards to protect American jobs would be fine. The corrupted
globalism that this world has become nearly immersed in is a mechanism that, in reality, is
intent on creating a one world corporate owned planet operated under a top-down, locked-down,
political and economic management system backed up by coercion. Whew! That is a mouthful I
agree! It will be run by a partnership of the top .001% of wealthiest elites and administered
by the United Nations. International rules and laws for every single decision will nearly all
come under the auspices the United Nations. This plan has been laid out in various United
Nations publications and official policy.
President Trump has vowed to, and succeeded in some ways, to buck these one world
globalists, not to say he hasn't treated them to overly generous tax breaks since he has been
in charge! Not withstanding the prior, these one world globalists include even some of the most
prominent lawmakers in Washington D.C. far too often. The entrenched snake sales people over at
the White House lawmaking division are far too often part of the plan to decimate America
whether they believe it or not. We can only hope that a large part of them are do not realize
what the end-game is of this globalist cabal. Perhaps this is of course why we so often shake
our heads in disbelief when they utter ideas and beliefs that sound so foreign to ears,
anti-American and even scary!
So far, Pres. Trump seems to have accomplished about as much as any one president ever could
accomplish when walking into a room of entrenched den of thieves! Washington is not going to be
a part of solving the problems of globalism, for they and the globalists are in bed together.
Part of the problem remains that the establishment agenda is overrun by statists who walk in
lock-step with their leaders and party platforms even if corrupted. It is just too profitable
for them to ignore. Yet, the truth is that statism has no sense of proportion. These sometimes
well-meaning politicians, once they are put into power, knowingly or unknowingly become slaves
to their corporate owners. This is corporatocracy, and it is unsustainable. The one world
corporate pirates, comprising a collection of the largest 100 or so family dynasties, do in
fact control approximately 90 percent of the wealth of the world, hidden inside a dark web of
very complex multi-structured organizations and corporate nameplates. Such makes it very
difficult, but not impossible to truly figure out who the real owners are behind the maze. This
is perhaps the reason why I contend that President Trump, an outsider with a new direction for
America, may be our last chance. Most of these types hate Trump because he is hitting them
where it hurts on most fronts and is slowing down the globalist agenda!
Corporate socialism IS globalism. It is a growing and controlled oligarchy. As such, it
affords both the supranational capitalists, world's governments and non-elected quasi
governmental agencies to profit together as a baseball team would. Yes, working together with
one unified grand vision for the profit and powers of both. Globalism is the name. We already
see how nearly everything around us is becoming part of the so-called global order. These,
creating quid-pro-quo systems of control over the entire world economies, whom create wars for
profit, create inflation to inadvertently benefit themselves and enact so-called "free-trade
partnerships" that portend to help creates jobs here at home, only succeed occasionally of
creating low wage service jobs in large part in the parts of the world that the globalists
venture with their self-serving con-game. Limiting competition, being on the inside, having
power over others, this is what the global government and one world monopolistic corporations
are all about. The free trade agreements offer all of its members to petition, (and usually
get) allowances to get around many of the safeguards and traditional legal rules that used to
be sacrosanct in world trade. Especially as to food processing. The move toward monopolization
is perhaps the biggest motivator these have for supporting globalist (un)free trade
agreements.
What the true elite globalists (who reside in both political parties in Washington and world
power centers in particular) want is unbridled control over nearly everything in order to unite
us into a global world of subservient slaves unto them. So, what's the answer?
It is easy to witness that the far leftists often do not divulge they are socialists at all.
In recent years, this is changing, now that millions of young voters have been convinced by
their colleges and mass media outlets that socialism IS the answer. In the past, no candidate
would utter the word socialism for fear of many lost votes. Today, a surprisingly large
percentage of politicians in government are onboard. We can easily spot them if we compare
their voting records. Then compare them to the promises made when running for election! So,
before you get too comfortable with politicians who come off as infectiously kind and
compassionate while often using the words 'fairness', "world community", "social equality",
"open borders", "free trade", "globalism", "social justice" and other such pleasantly
attractive bleeding heart politicians using such catch-phrases, be careful. Although Democrats
will more often than not fall into this category of unsung globalists, many on both sides of
the isle fit the bill as well. Some more than others knowingly use these kind sounding
platforms in order to garner votes from the gullible young in particular. History shows over
and over again how gullible citizens can be duped into voting for someone they thought was a
caring politician, then come to discover they voted for a hidden socialist or communist in
fact. Although we can all agree on the responsibilities of our government as spelled out in the
Constitution, our founding fathers warned the new country that we must beware of politicians
who promise more than that great document promises.
Government / corporate partnerships, whether formal or consensual, create insanely
profitable fortunes for their owners while too often screwing over not only Americans but the
worlds taxpaying citizens and their industrialized countries as well. Who do you think the
prime contractors are who build and supply trillions of dollars of military weapons to the
huge, high testosterone American military machine? These war factories are largely owned by
billion-dollar super elites whose huge goliath corporations very often operate under a
duplicity of names that largely hides the true identities of the owners behind them. These true
owners often use layers of sub-corporations operating under various, differing names and
locations providing legal and illegal tax havens around the world. Apple pays zero US taxes for
example using such a scheme. This is just one case amongst thousands. Often the tax havens are
claimed are justified by the existence of a foreign post office box. Seldom are these caught or
fined by our U.S. authorities. When they do occasionally get caught, the fines are typically
just a miniscule part of the total savings they have accumulated over the past years.
With a little research we can find many of the same board members appearing again and again
on the rosters of the quietly interconnected mega corporations. This creates the long-time
problem of immoral collusions that often allow shifting of profits to other tax havens,
allowing American profits to go untaxed and shifting the responsibility fully onto the American
worker. Does it not make sense that a corporation that makes ridiculous record profits such as
Apple and others do, that they should pay their share? This globalist mindset of the elites
creates record profits at the expense of American workers and their spending powers.
Within our public "screwling system" as I call it, students are increasingly taught that
"globalism" is a new religion of sorts, a "cure-all" for world discourse perhaps! Those with
enough power to create massive changes in culture are behind the politically correct culture,
the green movement and most other leftist power grabs. These are often the very same
supra-national corporations and political kingpins who wish to undermine the America we
remember, its legal system while creating a monopolistic economic and totalitarian one world
state. It is wise to remember the confirmed beliefs and admissions o f the godfathers of the
one world order. Of course I am speaking of the Rockefellers, J.P. Morgan and dozens more of
the wealthiest families of the world whom have for centuries verifiably acted upon and talked
of such plans. Their heirs, as well as the new titans such as Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos (Amazon
fame), Elon Musk (Tesla) and other such billionaire or trillionaire types are nearly all on
board vocally with a one world order system of governance. I will cover this much more further
on.
For over 100 years, much of American education has been stealthily entrenched in
anti-Western "cultural Marxism" propaganda and other damaging indoctrinations (as I document
later). Public schools have long promoted the globalism lie, teaching such as the yellow brick
road towards acceptance of a one world order that delivers utopia. It is hard indeed to find a
young person today in America who still believes strongly in traditional values and ideas of
self-responsibility, detest government interference in their lives, loves the Constitution,
what it stands for and protects. They have been indoctrinated by our schools to the point that
common sense no longer matters, for honest discourse in discussions are heavily discouraged in
many a classroom. I prove further along that most of the liberal ideology being increasingly
touted by the left is borne out of a long dreamt of socialist utopia carried out by a
partnership between the corporate globalists, the U.N. and those elites who desire power over
the world. And I can guarantee to you that these are getting impatient. These, their
cohorts/devotees are those whom desire to make the choices as to everything you buy, eat,
drive, live, your job destiny, how much or how little you make, etc. etc. Most of this agenda
is not so hidden, contained already within the prime vehicle to bring about the one world order
with the United Nations Agenda 21 policies taking place around the world.
Considering that at least 50% of the world's wealth is verifiably controlled by the top 1%
consisting of only 67 of the world's wealthiest individuals (and shrinking), this is pretty
good evidence that we are essentially being controlled by a very small corporate global elite
club designed and run for the few. These stats are verified later. The pace of their
destruction is staggering.
Today, the top 200 corporations are bigger than the combined economies of 182 countries and
have twice the economic influence than 80 per cent of all humanity as I prove!
Globalism has come very far in rendering world with greatly reduced amounts of anything
amounting to a capitalistic system that comes with practical safeguards against abuses that
place too much harm to the hard working stiffs. Increasingly, we witness wage inequalities
worse than in the Great Depression. Truly, the top 10 percent earners have left everyone else
in the dust increasingly over the last 50 years. The top 1 percenters incomes during this time
has gone to the moon at the expense of the masses.
Globalism is the vehicle to achieve the elite globalist goals of a one world order,
separate, nationalistic and independent nations with their own borders must be eliminated,
which shouldn't be too much of a problem to accomplish in much of the world, especially in the
current socialist run countries in and around the European continent and America who largely
embrace socialism. What is ironic is that socialist Briton's have turn their backs on Brexit,
meant to centralize nearly all power to the elite globalists. Little did they realize that you
can't have both, at least in the long run.
The League of Nations was the precursor of the United Nations. From their beginnings, the
primary long-term reason for both of them had always been to be the primary central agency of
the world, an assemblage of the top global power brokers created to steer and carry out the new
world order which has been dreamt of for millennium. Its creation has not been, as it touts,
"to create a harmonious and peaceful world". No, the U.N.'s overarching goal has been to create
a one world government using the ploy of globalism. There are ample records dating back before
its very creation, direct from the U.N.'s own publications and top officers and founders to
support this statement which I document quite fully in order to prove that point. This UN has
with much ambition endorsed and sanctioned one world inspired leaders, corporations, groups,
agencies, NGO's and billionaires from countries all around the globe in a long term unified
vision of this new world order in order to further the one world agenda. The help that the UN
has supplied in the creation of most planned wars, coups and disruptions across the world is
well known by those who have done their homework on that subject. It is this cabal and others
that are the enemies of true freedoms, borders, sovereignty across the globe yet are completely
onboard with creating a one world government. Americanism or any other type of governance
besides their one world order. These are the a major part of the world's Deep State apparatus
who are in fact often hidden forces behind the worlds corporate powered global power
structure.
The global multinational corporatist leaders have pushed their un-free trade treaties, long
creating a horrid record of killing millions of good paying jobs across America and nearly
everywhere they venture. These stealing of good jobs have swelled the bank accounts and powers
of these globalist multinational corporations while boosting their wealth into the top 1%
largely at the expense of the masses who now work for far less. lowered wages.
The globalists new world order plan requires a complete breakdown of the required systems
that have historically allowed nation to prosper on its own merits. Sold by both parties is the
false belief that big government can fix everything. This long-running sales job actually
promotes self-interest above all, using deceptive techniques as I cover. Such a sales job
requires a break away from traditions that bind us with our neighbors and family. It requires a
growth in narcissism, self above God so much so that we can now even witiness the horrid
reality of pedophilia becoming more mainstream! Since President Trump's reign, thousands of
pedophilia people and groups have been arrested as never before! Thousand of killer gang
members have been arrested as never before, especially those inside of the MS-13 ruthless
group. This is just one of many actions by this President that leads to my belief that our new
President is holding up his end of the agreement. Like him or not, he at least is holding up
his promises.
History is replete with all the immense damages that the globalist movement has brought upon
the world. These have sold the lie that globalism is the answer to the inequalities between the
haves and the have nots. While the opposite is the real truth! The truth is now evident when
one looks at the condition of the world they have pushed upon all of us over the last many
years.
The elite new world order operatives have infiltrated all the major nations governmental
agencies, top positions of power. Led by the lure of power, connectedness, money, these are
often not aware that they are actually perpetuating a plan that is deadly for much of the world
if the globalist elites they serve should get their way. Unfortunately for these self serving
minions only are concerned with self promotion often. Yet the fact remains that political
expediency and promotions come with compliance. The heads of nearly every major country are
working together with this huge one world apparatus machine that is enclosed within the UN,
World Bank, IMF, European Union, Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign Relations, the Royal
Family, the corporation called America, and hundreds of other governmental and non-governmental
centers of power. Many of these hide behind nice sounding, humanitarian nameplates. Nearly all
the crises we see play out are ones they actually create, (of which American hegemony around
the world is a large player). For these, the ends always justify the means.
Continual non-stop conflicts around the world, of which America is often at the forefront of
are exponentially increasing. I will explain why and how America's endless war policies has
been implemented over the last many years, but I cannot divulge my take on who and what is
behind much of the openly visible powers working behind much of the news we hear.
Explained will be real, actual reasons why America has spent over 15 years in Iraq,
Afghanistan and Libya with nothing to show besides disasters and deaths, while earning a bad
reputation around the world as a bully. Be assured that the elites and banking system have made
trillions of dollars from these three examples. And lives mean little. Psychopaths don't care
about anything beyond their own desires and powers, and many of these are psychopaths indeed.
They use false justifications as a passport to sell many of their warring's and destructions.
This is globalism.
I predict that the CIA, (a globalist arm of the U.S. Government and deep state), armed with
an unlimited budget and trillions of dollars derived from their years of secret under the radar
dirty operations, are likely to be an agency to be reviewed, revamped or remodeled within the
not so distant future. The truths behind this clandestine, above the law and corrupted agency
may finally be surfacing as well. Ever since the Trump Russian collusion witch hunt also with
an unlimited budget as well both of these conducted, likely during Pres. Trump's time as
president, we should expect to witness a firestorm of controversy and change more momentous
than anything in American history, hopefully.
President Donald Trump has his work cut out, but his years in office have shown he is no
typical deep state establishment fixture of either political party! What we are now witnessing
is perhaps the most important and fateful elections in America's entire history. The results
will either allow the Republican Party to prove itself to be the party of the people, or become
impotent, simply becoming water boys for the Democrat Party, thereafter having little real
power for decades perhaps. The results of the coming elections leading into 2020, (general and
mid-terms), will in fact be the determining factor for whether America and the world reject
conservativism or falls into the clutches of a highly touted, yet untruthful liberalism that
doesn't even resemble the old party of the people that dems used to own in the far past. So, we
must ask ourselves, how did this all come to such a historic moment as we are living in?
Last, these OT comments are not truly OT. The WTO is being dismantled by Trumpian
nonfeasance in pursuit of the deliberate rejection of the very idea of international
institutions (of imperialism, as I see it, but others don't,) standing above the national
state, immunizing the market against the mistakes of democracy, providing the essential support
to make a world market.
The OP says in the title this is arrogance, presumably as violating economic science. But
all these seeming side issues are about political economy in the end. Trump wants to pretend
the US has been exploited by the old system, and pose as a nationalist. I think he just wants
to rationalize US empire, cutting costs, increasing ROI, etc.
I think Trump is getting support, primarily from the rich; also from middle strata, the kind
of people who put FOX TV on in the waiting rooms of their businesses; AKA from lower strata
led by Christianity to favor any oppressive government that will provide them support for their
efforts to police society; also lower strata ethnic groups who have slowly been turning inwards
to each other as they see a future dog-eat-dog country where the breeds of dogs have to stick
together, or perish.
In short, what the OP sees as arrogant dismissal of science I see as desperation masked with
bravado.
The headline will become operative in December, if as expected, the Trump Administration maintains its
refusal to nominate new judges to the WTO
appellate panel . That will render the WTO unable to take on new cases, and bring about an effective return to the General Agreement
on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) which preceded the WTO .
An interesting sidelight is that Brexit No-Dealers have been keen on the merits of trading "on WTO terms", but those terms will
probably be unenforceable by the time No Deal happens (if it does).
That's another manifestation of the ascendance of "national neoliberalism," which now is displacing "classic neoliberalism."
Attempts to remove Trump via color revolution mechanisms (Russiagate, Ukrainegate) are essentially connected with the desire
of adherents of classic neoliberalism to return to the old paradigm and kick the can down the road until the cliff. I think it
is impossible because the neoliberal elite lost popular support (aka support of deplorable) and now is hanging in the air. "Greed
is good" mantra, and the redistribution of the wealth up at the end proved to be very destructive.
That's why probably previous attempts to remove Trump were unsuccessful. And if corrupt classic neoliberal Biden wins Neoliberal
Dem Party nomination, the USA probably will get the second term of Trump. Warren might have a chance as "Better Trump then Trump"
although she proved so far to be pretty inept politician, and like "original" Trump probably can be easily coerced by the establishment,
if she wins.
All this weeping and gnashing of teeth by "neoliberal Intelligentsia" does not change the fact that neoliberalism entered the
period of structural crisis demonstrated by "secular stagnation," and, as such, its survival is far from certain. We probably
can argue only about how long it will take for the "national neoliberalism" to dismantle it and what shape or form the new social
order will take.
That does not mean that replacing the classic neoliberalism the new social order will be better, or more just. Neoliberalism
was actually two steps back in comparison with the New Deal Capitalism that it replaced. It clearly was a social regress.
"... Trying to head off redivision of the world into nationalist trade blocks by removing Trump via dubiously democratic upheavals (like color revolutions) with more or less fictional quasi-scandals as pro-Russian treason or anti-Ukrainian treason (which is "Huh?" on the face of it,) is futile. It stems from a desire to keep on "free" trading despite the secular stagnation that has set in, hoping that the sociopolitical nowhere (major at least) doesn't collapse until God or Nature or something restores the supposedly natural order of economic growth without end/crisis. ..."
"... I think efforts to keep the neoliberal international WTO/IMF/World Bank "free" trading system is futile because the lower orders are being ordered to be satisfied with a permanent, rigid class system ..."
"... If the pie is to shrink forever, all the vile masses (the deplorables) are going to hang together in their various ways, clinging to shared identity in race or religion or nationality, which will leave the international capitalists hanging, period. "Greed is good" mantra, and the redistribution of the wealth up at the end proved to be very destructive. Saying "Greed is good," then expecting selflessness from the lowers is not high-minded but self-serving. Redistribution of wealth upward has been terribly destructive to social cohesion, both domestically and in the sense of generosity towards foreigners. ..."
"... The pervasive feeling that "we" are going down and drastic action has to be taken is probably why there hasn't been much traction for impeachment til now. If Biden, shown to be shady in regards to Hunter, is nominated to lead the Democratic Party into four/eight years of Obama-esque promise to continue shrinking the status quo for the lowers, Trump will probably win. Warren might have a better chance to convince voters she means to change things (despite the example of Obama,) but she's not very appealing. And she is almost certainly likely to be manipulated like Trump. ..."
"... I *think* that's more or less what likbez, said, though obviously it's not the way likbez wanted to express it. I disagree strenuously on some details, like Warren's problem being a schoolmarm, rather than being a believer in capitalism who shares Trump's moral values against socialism, no matter what voters say. ..."
The headline will become operative in December, if as expected, the Trump Administration
maintains its refusal to nominate new judges
to the WTO appellate panel . That will render the WTO unable to take on new cases, and
bring about an effective return to the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) which
preceded the WTO .
An interesting sidelight is that Brexit No-Dealers have been keen on the merits of trading
"on WTO terms", but those terms will probably be unenforceable by the time No Deal happens (if
it does).
likbez 10.27.19 at 11:22 pm
That's another manifestation of the ascendance of "national neoliberalism," which now is
displacing "classic neoliberalism."
Attempts to remove Trump via color revolution mechanisms (Russiagate, Ukrainegate) are
essentially connected with the desire of adherents of classic neoliberalism to return to the
old paradigm and kick the can down the road until the cliff. I think it is impossible because
the neoliberal elite lost popular support (aka support of deplorables) and now is hanging in
the air. "Greed is good" mantra, and the redistribution of the wealth up at the end proved to
be very destructive.
That's why probably previous attempts to remove Trump were unsuccessful. And if corrupt
classic neoliberal Biden wins Neoliberal Dem Party nomination, the USA probably will get the
second term of Trump. Warren might have a chance as "Better Trump then Trump" although she
proved so far to be pretty inept politician, and like "original" Trump probably can be easily
coerced by the establishment, if she wins.
All this weeping and gnashing of teeth by "neoliberal Intelligentsia" does not change the
fact that neoliberalism entered the period of structural crisis demonstrated by "secular
stagnation," and, as such, its survival is far from certain. We probably can argue only about
how long it will take for the "national neoliberalism" to dismantle it and what shape or form
the new social order will take.
That does not mean that replacing the classic neoliberalism the new social order will be
better, or more just. Neoliberalism was actually two steps back in comparison with the New
Deal Capitalism that it replaced. It clearly was a social regress.
John, I am legitimate curious what you find "exactly right" in the comment above. Other than
the obvious bit in the last line about new deal vs neoliberalism, I would say it is
completely wrong, band presenting an amazingly distorted view of both the last few years and
recent history.
Neo-liberalism is not a unified thing. Right wing parties are not following the original
(the value of choice) paradigm of Milton Friedman that won the argument during the 1970s
inflation panic, but have implemented a deceitful bait and switch strategy, followed by
continually shifting the goalposts – claiming – it would of worked but we weren't
pure enough.
But parts of what Milton Friedman said (for instance the danger of bad micro-economic
design of welfare systems creating poverty traps, and the inherent problems of high tariff
rates) had a kernel of truth. (Unfortunately, Friedman's macro-economics was almost all wrong
and has done great damage.)
"In that context it felt free to override national governments on any issue that
might affect international trade, most notably environmental policies."
Not entirely sure about that. The one case where I was informed enough to really know
detail was the China and rare earths WTO case. China claimed that restrictions on exports of
separated but otherwise unprocessed rare earths were being made on environmental grounds.
Rare earth mining is a messy business, especially the way they do it.
Well, OK. And if such exports were being limited on environmental grounds then that would
be WTO compliant. Which is why the claim presumably.
It was gently or not pointed out that exports of things made from those same rare earths
were not limited in any sense. Therefore that environmental justification might not be quite
the real one. Possibly, it was an attempt to suck RE using industry into China by making rare
earths outside in short supply, but the availability for local processing being unrestricted?
Certainly, one customer of mine at the time seriously considered packing up the US factory
and moving it.
China lost the WTO case. Not because environmental reasons aren't a justification for
restrictions on trade but because no one believed that was the reason, rather than the
justification.
I don't know about other cases – shrimp, tuna – but there is at least the
possibility that it's the argument, not the environment, which wasn't sufficient
justification?
Neoliberalism gets used as a generalized term of abuse these days. Not every political and
institutional development of the last 40 years comes down to the worship of the free market.
In the EU, East Asia, and North America, some of what has taken place is the
rationalization of bureaucratic practices and the weakening of archaic localisms. Some of
these developments have been positive.
In this respect, neoliberalism in the blanket sense used by Likbez and many others is like
what the the ancien regime was, a mix of regressive and progressive tendencies. In the
aftermath of the on-going upheaval, it is likely that it will be reassessed and some of its
features will be valued if they manage to persist.
I'm thinking of international trade agreements, transnational scientific organizations,
and confederations like the European Union.
steven t johnson 10.29.19 at 12:29 am
If I may venture to translate @1?
Right-wing populism like Orban, Salvini, the Brexiteers are sweeping the globe and this is
more of the same.
Trying to head off redivision of the world into nationalist trade blocks by removing
Trump via dubiously democratic upheavals (like color revolutions) with more or less fictional
quasi-scandals as pro-Russian treason or anti-Ukrainian treason (which is "Huh?" on the face
of it,) is futile. It stems from a desire to keep on "free" trading despite the secular
stagnation that has set in, hoping that the sociopolitical nowhere (major at least) doesn't
collapse until God or Nature or something restores the supposedly natural order of economic
growth without end/crisis.
I think efforts to keep the neoliberal international WTO/IMF/World Bank "free" trading
system is futile because the lower orders are being ordered to be satisfied with a permanent,
rigid class system .
If the pie is to shrink forever, all the vile masses (the deplorables) are going to
hang together in their various ways, clinging to shared identity in race or religion or
nationality, which will leave the international capitalists hanging, period. "Greed is good"
mantra, and the redistribution of the wealth up at the end proved to be very destructive.
Saying "Greed is good," then expecting selflessness from the lowers is not high-minded but
self-serving. Redistribution of wealth upward has been terribly destructive to social
cohesion, both domestically and in the sense of generosity towards foreigners.
The pervasive feeling that "we" are going down and drastic action has to be taken is
probably why there hasn't been much traction for impeachment til now. If Biden, shown to be
shady in regards to Hunter, is nominated to lead the Democratic Party into four/eight years
of Obama-esque promise to continue shrinking the status quo for the lowers, Trump will
probably win. Warren might have a better chance to convince voters she means to change things
(despite the example of Obama,) but she's not very appealing. And she is almost certainly
likely to be manipulated like Trump.
Again, despite the fury the old internationalism is collapsing under stagnation and
weeping about it is irrelevant. Without any real ideas, we can only react to events as
nationalist predatory capitals fight for their new world.
I'm not saying the new right wing populism is better. The New Deal/Great Society did more
for America than its political successors since Nixon et al. The years since 1968 I think
have been a regression and I see no reason–alas–that it can't get even worse.
I *think* that's more or less what likbez, said, though obviously it's not the way
likbez wanted to express it. I disagree strenuously on some details, like Warren's problem
being a schoolmarm, rather than being a believer in capitalism who shares Trump's moral
values against socialism, no matter what voters say.
It is a particular mutation of the original concept similar to mutation of socialism into
national socialism, when domestic policies are mostly preserved (including rampant
deregulation) and supplemented by repressive measures (total surveillance) , but in foreign
policy "might make right" and unilateralism with the stress on strictly bilateral regulations
of trade (no WTO) somewhat modifies "Washington consensus". In other words, the foreign
financial oligarchy has a demoted status under the "national neoliberalism" regime, while the
national financial oligarchy and manufactures are elevated.
And the slogan of "financial oligarchy of all countries, unite" which is sine qua
non of classic neoliberalism is effectively dead and is replaced by protection racket of
the most political powerful players (look at Biden and Ukrainian oligarchs behavior here
;-)
> I think every sentence in that comment is either completely wrong or at least
debatable. And is likbez actually John Hewson, because that comment reads like one of John
Hewson's commentaries
> Most obviously, to define Warren and Trump as both being neoliberals drains the
term of any meaning
You are way too fast even for a political football forward ;-).
Warren capitalizes on the same discontent and the feeling of the crisis of neoliberalism
that allowed Trump to win. Yes, she is a much better candidate than Trump, and her policy
proposals are better (unless she is coerced by the Deep State like Trump in the first three
months of her Presidency).
Still, unlike Sanders in domestic policy and Tulsi in foreign policy, she is a neoliberal
reformist at heart and a neoliberal warmonger in foreign policy. Most of her policy proposals
are quite shallow, and are just a band-aid.
> Neoliberalism gets used as a generalized term of abuse these days. Not every
political and institutional development of the last 40 years comes down to the worship of
the free market.
This is a typical stance of neoliberal MSM, a popular line of attack on critics of
neoliberalism.
Yes, of course, not everything political and institutional development of the last 40
years comes down to the worship of the "free market." But how can it be otherwise? Notions of
human agency, a complex interaction of politics and economics in human affairs, technological
progress since 1970th, etc., all play a role. But a historian needs to be able to somehow
integrate the mass of evidence into a coherent and truthful story.
And IMHO this story for the last several decades is the ascendance and now decline of
"classic neoliberalism" with its stress on the neoliberal globalization and opening of the
foreign markets for transnational corporations (often via direct or indirect (financial)
pressure, or subversive actions including color revolutions and military intervention) and
replacement of it by "national neoliberalism" -- domestic neoliberalism without (or with a
different type of) neoliberal globalization.
Defining features of national neoliberalism along with the rejection of neoliberal
globalization and, in particular, multiparty treaties like WTO is massive, overwhelming
propaganda including politicized witch hunts (via neoliberal MSM), total surveillance of
citizens by the national security state institutions (three-letter agencies which now
acquired a political role), as well as elements of classic nationalism built-in.
The dominant ideology of the last 30 years was definitely connected with "worshiping of
free markets," a secular religion that displaced alternative views and, for several decades
(say 1976 -2007), dominated the discourse. So worshiping (or pretense of worshiping) of "free
market" (as if such market exists, and is not a theological construct -- a deity of some
sort) is really defining feature here.
...buried in Donald Trump's address is a clarion call to reject transnationalism and to
re-embrace a world of sovereign nation-states that cherish their independence and unique
identities.
Western man has engaged in this great quarrel since Woodrow Wilson declared America would
fight in the Great War, not for any selfish interests, but "to make the world safe for
democracy."
Our imperialist allies, Britain, France, Russia, Japan, regarded this as self-righteous
claptrap and proceeded to rip apart Germany, Austria, Hungary and the Ottoman Empire and to
feast on their colonies.
After World War II, Jean Monnet, father of the EU, wanted Europe's nations to yield up their
sovereignty and form a federal union like the USA.
Europe's nations would slowly sink and dissolve in a single polity that would mark a giant
leap forward toward world government -- Alfred, Lord Tennyson's "Parliament of man, the
Federation of the world."
Charles De Gaulle lead the resistance, calling for "a Europe of nation-states from the
Atlantic to the Urals."
For 50 years, the Gaullists were in constant retreat. The Germans especially, given their
past, seemed desirous of losing their national identity and disappearing inside the new
Europe.
Today, the Gaullist vision is ascendant.
"We do not expect diverse countries to share the same cultures, traditions, or even
systems of government," said Trump at the U.N. "Strong sovereign nations let diverse countries
with different values, different cultures, and different dreams not just coexist, but work side
by side on the basis of mutual respect.
"In America, we do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine
as an example for everyone to watch."
Translation: We Americans have created something unique in history. But we do not assert
that we should serve as a model for mankind. Among the 190 nations, others have evolved in
different ways from diverse cultures, histories, traditions. We may reject their values but we
have no God-given right to impose ours upon them.
It is difficult to reconcile Trump's belief in self-determination with a National
Endowment for Democracy whose reason for being is to interfere in the politics of other nations
to make them more like us.
Trump's idea of patriotism has deep roots in America's past. After the uprisings of 1848
against the royal houses of Europe failed, Lajos Kossuth came to seek support for the cause of
Hungarian democracy. He was wildly welcomed and hailed by Secretary of State Daniel Webster.
But Henry Clay, more true to the principles of Washington's Farewell Address, admonished
Kossuth:
"Far better is it for ourselves, for Hungary, and for the cause of liberty that, adhering to
our wise, pacific system, and avoiding the distant wars of Europe, we should keep our lamp
burning brightly on the western shore as a light to all nations, than to hazard its utter
extinction amid the ruins of fallen or falling republics in Europe."
Trump's U.N. address echoed Clay: "In foreign affairs, we are renewing this founding
principle of sovereignty. Our government's first duty is to its people to serve their needs, to
ensure their safety, to preserve their rights, and to defend their values."
Trump is saying with John Quincy Adams that our mission is not to go "abroad in search of
monsters to destroy," but to "put America first." He is repudiating the New World Order of Bush
I, the democracy crusades of the neocons of the Bush II era, and the globaloney of Obama.
Trump's rhetoric implies intent; and action is evident from Rex Tillerson's directive to
his department to rewrite its mission statement -- and drop the bit about making the world
democratic. The current statement reads: "The Department's mission is to shape and sustain a
peaceful, prosperous, just, and democratic world." Tillerson should stand his ground. For
America has no divinely mandated mission to democratize mankind. And the hubristic idea that we
do has been a cause of all the wars and disasters that have lately befallen the republic. If we
do not cure ourselves of this interventionist addiction, it will end our republic. When did we
dethrone our God and divinize democracy?
And are 21st-century American values really universal values?
At least Mr. Buchanan's latest column has no Establishment horsefeathers about Russian
"hacking" of our precious democracy. However, doesn't he yet realize that there's usually
something for everyone in any formal address by President Trump?
The author can pluckily show how passages (apparently written by Stephen Miller?) are
consistent with America's founding principles, and perhaps an essay like this will reach and
enlighten others. But the President doesn't understand or hold those principles, as will once
again become evident in his own words thumbed into a so called smart phone and the actions of
an imperial Establishment for which he is, at best, nothing more than an embarrassing
annoyance.
"In America, we do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it
shine as an example for everyone to watch."
Perhaps not, but we have been trying to impose (((American))) style democracy and
where/when that's not possible, puppet dictators. We claim to respect national sovereignty
but overthrew Saddam Hussein, helped overthrow Qadaffi, staged a color revolution in Ukraine,
seem to be undermining Maduro of Venezuela, are looking for ways to break the nuclear
agreement and reimpose sanctions on Iran and until recently, attempting to overthrow and
depose the duly elected leader of Syria which may still be in the works.
I guess the Jew(s) who wrote Trump's speech is hoping the world has amnesia. If Trump
truly means what he says then he will start closing our military bases and bringing our
troops home. His lofty words need to be matched by deeds.
If we ever want to overthrow any leader we just claim they are killing and torturing their
own people or possess unauthorized WMD. But if you are killing and torturing your people and
Israel likes you or doesn't feel threatened by you then we'll stand down.
And are 21st-century American values really universal values?
Should all nations embrace same-sex marriage, abortion on demand, and the separation of
church and state if that means, as it has come to mean here, the paganization of public
education and the public square?
the moral rot and spiritual sewage pumped out of ((Hollywood)) and ((Madison Ave.)) are
hardly pagan.
Paganism is a spiritual celebration of a people's blood and ancient Gods of lust,
fertility and heroism. The SJW of ((American)) culture today are the exact opposite of
paganism, as they wallow in blood-profaning 'diversity' and spiritual septic tanks of
homomania.
If freedom of speech and the press here have produced a popular culture that is an open
sewer and a politics of vilification and venom, why would we seek to impose this upon other
peoples?
it isn't freedom of speech or a free press that has produced the evils you speak of Pat,
but rather the consolidation of our press and media by the enemies of free speech. Duh.
For the State Department to declare America's mission to be to make all nations look
more like us might well be regarded as a uniquely American form of moral imperialism.
hardly moral imperialism, rather amoral imperialism.
promoting, indeed demanding moral rot and spiritual gangrene are ((America's)) exports
today, along with debt and bombs.
If Trump can somehow turn this situation around, and rein in the ((purveyors)) of hatred
and mass-murder, he'll be a modern day Charles [The Hammer] Martell. The Lion of the West,
and savior of Christendom and Europa.
An (unlikely) Second Coming of sorts, where Satan's nefarious rule is pushed back, and
humanity and Western civilization are once again free from the evils of Moloch's minion$.
Just imagine Putin in the East, and Trump in the West, and a healthy and ascendant Europe
in between, free from mass migrations and serial wars of ((imposed)) hatred and theft and
misery. Oy veh!
If a U.S. president calls an adversary "Rocket Man on a mission to suicide," and warns
his nation may be "totally destroyed,"
then it is quite irrelevant what else he says, because what's obvious is that he's
continuing his game of nuclear chicken with the North Korean regime, which is because he has
a problem with the fact that a country on the other side of a huge ocean is developing
nuclear weapons. Not very Gaullist, I think.
He was also threatening Iran, all the while lengthily admonishing Iran's leaders for their
form of government, for leading a "dictatorship", for having allegedly mismanaged their
country. This is not a Gaullist position at all, for example, quite the opposite.
At this stage trying to spin Trump utterances like that he might be a Gaullist is a complete
nonsense. His only redeeming value is that his enemies are who they are. Still as last
several months indicate Trump always ends up doing exactly what these "enemies" want.
http://patriotrising.com/2017/09/22/trump-hardly-knew-ye-bad-camelot-brief-shining-moment/
"Trump has unfortunately proven to be exactly what his detractors claimed he was; immature,
egotistical, unprincipled, vain, elitist. This certainly doesn't make most of his critics
any less offensive than they are. Indeed, that is the lone redeeming value of Trump's
administration; he continues to have all the right enemies. The threats of violence, even
assassination, from every pillar of the establishment almost make one want to continue to
defend him. Almost."
The US Multi-National Chamber of Commerce makes most of its money by arbitrage between
high price retailing to consumers in the USA and low cost manufacturing in China, et.al.. And
the C of C is nakedly buying the best Congressional GOP/RNC and DNC available and they're ALL
available.
This is called channel-stuffing. Stuff more people into the USA, get more arbitrage.
Then there's nakedly laundering payments to US corporations via "foreign aid." In every
case, the "aid" is either money to buy American weapons or such, or Uncle buys it himself and
sends it. Either way, the US Treasury borrows and spends .and US corporations collect.
In this regard, Uncle Sam is just like the typical college student or medical patient,
a means by which the supplier creates a conduit to the fruits of borrowed money.
Every bit of this grew up the last 36 years (well, it got way worse, anyway, from
poisonous seeds earlier) and it won't end until interest rates rise and choke off
borrowing.
This will happen when the Mass Mind finally awakens from a three and a half decade stupor
and realizes just what happened. Instead of empty platitudes about unpayable debts and
uncollectable pensions and future cash flows, the Mass Mind will SEE it clearly for the first
time.
Oh, the RAGE will be epic. I need to buy myself a cavern or old missile silo in which to
sit out the actions that will be animated by it.
I hope the economists and popular pundits who kept telling us debt was "no problem" are at
the head of the line when scapegoating gets REAL .
Western man has engaged in this great quarrel since Woodrow Wilson declared America would
fight in the Great War, not for any selfish interests, but "to make the world safe for
democracy."
To Wilson's credit, the logic of his argument was nationalist against imperialism. In
principle(if not in practice), he was calling for self-determination and national sovereignty
for all peoples of the world.
Wilson was NOT calling for wars to spread democracy. He was saying nations should
self-determine their own destinies and HOPEFULLY, democracy is the path they take.
In this sense. Bush and Neocons were not Wilsonian but closer to Teddy Rooseveltism that
was for empire and a World Club of Imperial Nations.
That said, Trump is a two-headed snake. Gaulle was a truly legendary leader. Trump is a
showman who has now cucked out to globalist. His rhetoric means nothing.
For 50 years, the Gaullists were in constant retreat. The Germans especially, given their
past, seemed desirous of losing their national identity and disappearing inside the new
Europe.
This makes no sense. The German Guilt in WWII was imperialism, not nationalism. They waged
war on nationalism all over Europe. They forced Poles, Ukrainians, Czechs, and etc to forgo
their identity and dissolve into German empire as helots.
Anti-Nazi struggle in WWII meant recovery of one's nation's sovereignty and
independence(though this was thwarted once again by Soviet domination of Eastern Europe).
Germans sure learned the wrong lesson. They no longer send armies to other nations, but
their message is the same to Poles, Hungarians, Greeks, and others.. SURRENDER YOUR
INDEPENDENCE AND SOVEREIGNTY AND BE RUN OVER BY FOREIGN INVADERS, this time Muslims and
Africans who are even worse than Germans.
They no longer send armies to other nations, but their message is the same to Poles,
Hungarians, Greeks, and others.. SURRENDER YOUR INDEPENDENCE AND SOVEREIGNTY AND BE RUN
OVER BY FOREIGN INVADERS,
agreed. now its more political and economic.
but to be fair, we dont know how much power Germany elites really have. how much of their
talk is really their views, vs how much is influenced from US/France/etc. do they want eu
seperate, do they want atlanticist eu-us connection?
i wonder how the demographic problems will play in the future. assuming projections are
right, slavic lands (especially between Germany and Russia) will have less people due to
fertility rates. will that be lebensraum for the new mixed society of germany?
Hey, if you don't like it "you're fired!" And you can't play football either! To think I once
was a Trump supporter Hillary or not, this guy is dangerous.
If freedom of speech and the press here have produced a popular culture that is an open
sewer and a politics of vilification and venom, why would we seek to impose this upon other
peoples?
Don't blame freedom of speech and the press for the popular culture that's an open [moral]
sewer; blame the self anointed money bag "elite" who control the press and much of everything
else whose "culture" has always been a sewer, albeit somewhat discreetly closed.
They say a fish rots from the head down, and evidently the rule has, and still does, apply
to human social systems as well.
The "why would we seek to impose this upon other peoples?" question is spot on,
however.
This is a Marxist critique of neoliberalism. Not necessary right but they his some relevant
points.
Notable quotes:
"... The ideology of neoliberal capitalism was the promise of growth. But with neoliberal capitalism reaching a dead end, this promise disappears and so does this ideological prop. ..."
"... The ex ante tendency toward overproduction arises because the vector of real wages across countries does not increase noticeably over time in the world economy, while the vector of labor productivities does, typically resulting in a rise in the share of surplus in world output. ..."
"... While the rise in the vector of labor productivities across countries, a ubiquitous phenomenon under capitalism that also characterizes neoliberal capitalism, scarcely requires an explanation, why does the vector of real wages remain virtually stagnant in the world economy? The answer lies in the sui generis character of contemporary globalization that, for the first time in the history of capitalism, has led to a relocation of activity from the metropolis to third world countries in order to take advantage of the lower wages prevailing in the latter and meet global demand. ..."
"... The current globalization broke with this. The movement of capital from the metropolis to the third world, especially to East, South, and Southeast Asia to relocate plants there and take advantage of their lower wages for meeting global demand, has led to a desegmentation of the world economy, subjecting metropolitan wages to the restraining effect exercised by the third world's labor reserves. Not surprisingly, as Joseph Stiglitz has pointed out, the real-wage rate of an average male U.S. worker in 2011 was no higher -- indeed, it was marginally lower -- than it had been in 1968. 5 ..."
"... This ever-present opposition becomes decisive within a regime of globalization. As long as finance capital remains national -- that is, nation-based -- and the state is a nation-state, the latter can override this opposition under certain circumstances, such as in the post-Second World War period when capitalism was facing an existential crisis. But when finance capital is globalized, meaning, when it is free to move across country borders while the state remains a nation-state, its opposition to fiscal deficits becomes decisive. If the state does run large fiscal deficits against its wishes, then it would simply leave that country en masse , causing a financial crisis. ..."
"... The state therefore capitulates to the demands of globalized finance capital and eschews direct fiscal intervention for increasing demand. It resorts to monetary policy instead since that operates through wealth holders' decisions, and hence does not undermine their social position. But, precisely for this reason, monetary policy is an ineffective instrument, as was evident in the United States in the aftermath of the 2007–09 crisis when even the pushing of interest rates down to zero scarcely revived activity. 6 ..."
"... If Trump's protectionism, which recalls the Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1931 and amounts to a beggar-my-neighbor policy, does lead to a significant export of unemployment from the United States, then it will invite retaliation and trigger a trade war that will only worsen the crisis for the world economy as a whole by dampening global investment. Indeed, since the United States has been targeting China in particular, some retaliatory measures have already appeared. But if U.S. protectionism does not invite generalized retaliation, it would only be because the export of unemployment from the United States is insubstantial, keeping unemployment everywhere, including in the United States, as precarious as it is now. However we look at it, the world would henceforth face higher levels of unemployment. ..."
"... The second implication of this dead end is that the era of export-led growth is by and large over for third world economies. The slowing down of world economic growth, together with protectionism in the United States against successful third world exporters, which could even spread to other metropolitan economies, suggests that the strategy of relying on the world market to generate domestic growth has run out of steam. Third world economies, including the ones that have been very successful at exporting, would now have to rely much more on their home market ..."
"... In other words, we shall now have an intensification of the imperialist stranglehold over third world economies, especially those pushed into unsustainable balance-of-payments deficits in the new situation. By imperialism , here we do not mean the imperialism of this or that major power, but the imperialism of international finance capital, with which even domestic big bourgeoisies are integrated, directed against their own working people ..."
"... In short, the ideology of neoliberal capitalism was the promise of growth. But with neoliberal capitalism reaching a dead end, this promise disappears and so does this ideological prop. To sustain itself, neoliberal capitalism starts looking for some other ideological prop and finds fascism. ..."
"... The first is the so-called spontaneous method of capital flight. Any political formation that seeks to take the country out of the neoliberal regime will witness capital flight even before it has been elected to office, bringing the country to a financial crisis and thereby denting its electoral prospects. And if perchance it still gets elected, the outflow will only increase, even before it assumes office. The inevitable difficulties faced by the people may well make the government back down at that stage. The sheer difficulty of transition away from a neoliberal regime could be enough to bring even a government based on the support of workers and peasants to its knees, precisely to save them short-term distress or to avoid losing their support. ..."
"... The third weapon consists in carrying out so-called democratic or parliamentary coups of the sort that Latin America has been experiencing. Coups in the old days were effected through the local armed forces and necessarily meant the imposition of military dictatorships in lieu of civilian, democratically elected governments. Now, taking advantage of the disaffection generated within countries by the hardships caused by capital flight and imposed sanctions, imperialism promotes coups through fascist or fascist-sympathizing middle-class political elements in the name of restoring democracy, which is synonymous with the pursuit of neoliberalism. ..."
"... And if all these measures fail, there is always the possibility of resorting to economic warfare (such as destroying Venezuela's electricity supply), and eventually to military warfare. Venezuela today provides a classic example of what imperialist intervention in a third world country is going to look like in the era of decline of neoliberal capitalism, when revolts are going to characterize such countries more and more. ..."
"... Despite this opposition, neoliberal capitalism cannot ward off the challenge it is facing for long. It has no vision for reinventing itself. Interestingly, in the period after the First World War, when capitalism was on the verge of sinking into a crisis, the idea of state intervention as a way of its revival had already been mooted, though its coming into vogue only occurred at the end of the Second World War. 11 Today, neoliberal capitalism does not even have an idea of how it can recover and revitalize itself. And weapons like domestic fascism in the third world and direct imperialist intervention cannot for long save it from the anger of the masses that is building up against it. ..."
The ideology of neoliberal capitalism was the promise of growth.
But with neoliberal capitalism reaching a dead end, this promise disappears and so does this
ideological prop.
Harry Magdoff's The Age of
Imperialism is a classic work that shows how postwar political decolonization does not
negate the phenomenon of imperialism. The book has two distinct aspects. On the one hand, it
follows in V. I. Lenin's footsteps in providing a comprehensive account of how capitalism at
the time operated globally. On the other hand, it raises a question that is less frequently
discussed in Marxist literature -- namely, the need for imperialism. Here, Magdoff not only
highlighted the crucial importance, among other things, of the third world's raw materials for
metropolitan capital, but also refuted the argument that the declining share of raw-material
value in gross manufacturing output somehow reduced this importance, making the simple point
that there can be no manufacturing at all without raw materials. 1
Magdoff's focus was on a period when imperialism was severely resisting economic
decolonization in the third world, with newly independent third world countries taking control
over their own resources. He highlighted the entire armory of weapons used by imperialism. But
he was writing in a period that predated the onset of neoliberalism. Today, we not only have
decades of neoliberalism behind us, but the neoliberal regime itself has reached a dead end.
Contemporary imperialism has to be discussed within this setting.
Globalization and
Economic Crisis
There are two reasons why the regime of neoliberal globalization has run into a dead end.
The first is an ex ante tendency toward global overproduction; the second is that the
only possible counter to this tendency within the regime is the formation of asset-price
bubbles, which cannot be conjured up at will and whose collapse, if they do appear, plunges the
economy back into crisis. In short, to use the words of British economic historian Samuel
Berrick Saul, there are no "markets on tap" for contemporary metropolitan capitalism, such as
had been provided by colonialism prior to the First World War and by state expenditure in the
post-Second World War period of dirigisme . 2
The ex ante tendency toward overproduction arises because the vector of real wages
across countries does not increase noticeably over time in the world economy, while the vector
of labor productivities does, typically resulting in a rise in the share of surplus in world
output. As Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy argued in Monopoly Capital , following the lead of
Michał Kalecki and Josef Steindl, such a rise in the share of economic surplus, or a shift
from wages to surplus, has the effect of reducing aggregate demand since the ratio of
consumption to income is higher on average for wage earners than for those living off the
surplus. 3
Therefore, assuming a given level of investment associated with any period, such a shift would
tend to reduce consumption demand and hence aggregate demand, output, and capacity utilization.
In turn, reduced capacity utilization would lower investment over time, further aggravating the
demand-reducing effect arising from the consumption side.
While the rise in the vector of labor productivities across countries, a ubiquitous
phenomenon under capitalism that also characterizes neoliberal capitalism, scarcely requires an
explanation, why does the vector of real wages remain virtually stagnant in the world economy?
The answer lies in the sui generis character of contemporary globalization that, for the
first time in the history of capitalism, has led to a relocation of activity from the
metropolis to third world countries in order to take advantage of the lower wages prevailing in
the latter and meet global demand.
Historically, while labor has not been, and is still not, free to migrate from the third
world to the metropolis, capital, though juridically free to move from the latter to the
former, did not actually do so , except to sectors like mines and plantations, which
only strengthened, rather than broke, the colonial pattern of the international division of
labor. 4
This segmentation of the world economy meant that wages in the metropolis increased with labor
productivity, unrestrained by the vast labor reserves of the third world, which themselves had
been caused by the displacement of manufactures through the twin processes of
deindustrialization (competition from metropolitan goods) and the drain of surplus (the
siphoning off of a large part of the economic surplus, through taxes on peasants that are no
longer spent on local artisan products but finance gratis primary commodity exports to
the metropolis instead).
The current globalization broke with this. The movement of capital from the metropolis to
the third world, especially to East, South, and Southeast Asia to relocate plants there and
take advantage of their lower wages for meeting global demand, has led to a desegmentation of
the world economy, subjecting metropolitan wages to the restraining effect exercised by the
third world's labor reserves. Not surprisingly, as Joseph Stiglitz has pointed out, the
real-wage rate of an average male U.S. worker in 2011 was no higher -- indeed, it was
marginally lower -- than it had been in 1968. 5
At the same time, such relocation of activities, despite causing impressive growth rates of
gross domestic product (GDP) in many third world countries, does not lead to the exhaustion of
the third world's labor reserves. This is because of another feature of contemporary
globalization: the unleashing of a process of primitive accumulation of capital against petty
producers, including peasant agriculturists in the third world, who had earlier been protected,
to an extent, from the encroachment of big capital (both domestic and foreign) by the
postcolonial dirigiste regimes in these countries. Under neoliberalism, such protection
is withdrawn, causing an income squeeze on these producers and often their outright
dispossession from their land, which is then used by big capital for its various so-called
development projects. The increase in employment, even in countries with impressive GDP growth
rates in the third world, falls way short of the natural growth of the workforce, let alone
absorbing the additional job seekers coming from the ranks of displaced petty producers. The
labor reserves therefore never get used up. Indeed, on the contrary, they are augmented
further, because real wages continue to remain tied to a subsistence level, even as
metropolitan wages too are restrained. The vector of real wages in the world economy as a whole
therefore remains restrained.
Although contemporary globalization thus gives rise to an ex ante tendency toward
overproduction, state expenditure that could provide a counter to this (and had provided a
counter through military spending in the United States, according to Baran and Sweezy) can no
longer do so under the current regime. Finance is usually opposed to direct state intervention
through larger spending as a way of increasing employment. This opposition expresses itself
through an opposition not just to larger taxes on capitalists, but also to a larger fiscal
deficit for financing such spending. Obviously, if larger state spending is financed by taxes
on workers, then it hardly adds to aggregate demand, for workers spend the bulk of their
incomes anyway, so the state taking this income and spending it instead does not add any extra
demand. Hence, larger state spending can increase employment only if it is financed either
through a fiscal deficit or through taxes on capitalists who keep a part of their income
unspent or saved. But these are precisely the two modes of financing state expenditure that
finance capital opposes.
Its opposing larger taxes on capitalists is understandable, but why is it so opposed to a
larger fiscal deficit? Even within a capitalist economy, there are no sound economic
theoretical reasons that should preclude a fiscal deficit under all circumstances. The root of
the opposition therefore lies in deeper social considerations: if the capitalist economic
system becomes dependent on the state to promote employment directly , then this fact
undermines the social legitimacy of capitalism. The need for the state to boost the animal
spirits of the capitalists disappears and a perspective on the system that is epistemically
exterior to it is provided to the people, making it possible for them to ask: If the state can
do the job of providing employment, then why do we need the capitalists at all? It is an
instinctive appreciation of this potential danger that underlies the opposition of capital,
especially of finance, to any direct effort by the state to generate employment.
This ever-present opposition becomes decisive within a regime of globalization. As long as
finance capital remains national -- that is, nation-based -- and the state is a nation-state,
the latter can override this opposition under certain circumstances, such as in the post-Second
World War period when capitalism was facing an existential crisis. But when finance capital is
globalized, meaning, when it is free to move across country borders while the state remains a
nation-state, its opposition to fiscal deficits becomes decisive. If the state does run large
fiscal deficits against its wishes, then it would simply leave that country en masse ,
causing a financial crisis.
The state therefore capitulates to the demands of globalized finance capital and eschews
direct fiscal intervention for increasing demand. It resorts to monetary policy instead since
that operates through wealth holders' decisions, and hence does not undermine their
social position. But, precisely for this reason, monetary policy is an ineffective instrument,
as was evident in the United States in the aftermath of the 2007–09 crisis when even the
pushing of interest rates down to zero scarcely revived activity. 6
It may be thought that this compulsion on the part of the state to accede to the demand of
finance to eschew fiscal intervention for enlarging employment should not hold for the United
States. Its currency being considered by the world's wealth holders to be "as good as gold"
should make it immune to capital flight. But there is an additional factor operating in the
case of the United States: that the demand generated by a bigger U.S. fiscal deficit would
substantially leak abroad in a neoliberal setting, which would increase its external debt
(since, unlike Britain in its heyday, it does not have access to any unrequited colonial
transfers) for the sake of generating employment elsewhere. This fact deters any fiscal effort
even in the United States to boost demand within a neoliberal setting. 7
Therefore, it follows that state spending cannot provide a counter to the ex ante
tendency toward global overproduction within a regime of neoliberal globalization, which makes
the world economy precariously dependent on occasional asset-price bubbles, primarily in the
U.S. economy, for obtaining, at best, some temporary relief from the crisis. It is this fact
that underlies the dead end that neoliberal capitalism has reached. Indeed, Donald Trump's
resort to protectionism in the United States to alleviate unemployment is a clear recognition
of the system having reached this cul-de-sac. The fact that the mightiest capitalist
economy in the world has to move away from the rules of the neoliberal game in an attempt to
alleviate its crisis of unemployment/underemployment -- while compensating capitalists
adversely affected by this move through tax cuts, as well as carefully ensuring that no
restraints are imposed on free cross-border financial flows -- shows that these rules
are no longer viable in their pristine form.
Some Implications of This Dead End
There are at least four important implications of this dead end of neoliberalism. The first
is that the world economy will now be afflicted by much higher levels of unemployment than it
was in the last decade of the twentieth century and the early years of the twenty-first, when
the dot-com and the housing bubbles in the United States had, sequentially, a pronounced
impact. It is true that the U.S. unemployment rate today appears to be at a historic low, but
this is misleading: the labor-force participation rate in the United States today is lower than
it was in 2008, which reflects the discouraged-worker effect . Adjusting for this lower
participation, the U.S. unemployment rate is considerable -- around 8 percent. Indeed, Trump
would not be imposing protection in the United States if unemployment was actually as low as 4
percent, which is the official figure. Elsewhere in the world, of course, unemployment
post-2008 continues to be evidently higher than before. Indeed, the severity of the current
problem of below-full-employment production in the U.S. economy is best illustrated by capacity
utilization figures in manufacturing. The weakness of the U.S. recovery from the Great
Recession is indicated by the fact that the current extended recovery represents the first
decade in the entire post-Second World War period in which capacity utilization in
manufacturing has never risen as high as 80 percent in a single quarter, with the resulting
stagnation of investment. 8
If Trump's protectionism, which recalls the Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1931 and amounts to a
beggar-my-neighbor policy, does lead to a significant export of unemployment from the
United States, then it will invite retaliation and trigger a trade war that will only worsen
the crisis for the world economy as a whole by dampening global investment. Indeed, since the
United States has been targeting China in particular, some retaliatory measures have already
appeared. But if U.S. protectionism does not invite generalized retaliation, it would only be
because the export of unemployment from the United States is insubstantial, keeping
unemployment everywhere, including in the United States, as precarious as it is now. However we
look at it, the world would henceforth face higher levels of unemployment.
There has been some discussion on how global value chains would be affected by Trump's
protectionism. But the fact that global macroeconomics in the early twenty-first century will
look altogether different compared to earlier has not been much discussed.
In light of the preceding discussion, one could say that if, instead of individual
nation-states whose writ cannot possibly run against globalized finance capital, there was a
global state or a set of major nation-states acting in unison to override the objections of
globalized finance and provide a coordinated fiscal stimulus to the world economy, then perhaps
there could be recovery. Such a coordinated fiscal stimulus was suggested by a group of German
trade unionists, as well as by John Maynard Keynes during the Great Depression in the 1930s.
9
While it was turned down then, in the present context it has not even been discussed.
The second implication of this dead end is that the era of export-led growth is by and large
over for third world economies. The slowing down of world economic growth, together with
protectionism in the United States against successful third world exporters, which could even
spread to other metropolitan economies, suggests that the strategy of relying on the world
market to generate domestic growth has run out of steam. Third world economies, including the
ones that have been very successful at exporting, would now have to rely much more on their
home market.
Such a transition will not be easy; it will require promoting domestic peasant agriculture,
defending petty production, moving toward cooperative forms of production, and ensuring greater
equality in income distribution, all of which need major structural shifts. For smaller
economies, it would also require their coming together with other economies to provide a
minimum size to the domestic market. In short, the dead end of neoliberalism also means the
need for a shift away from the so-called neoliberal development strategy that has held sway
until now.
The third implication is the imminent engulfing of a whole range of third world economies in
serious balance-of-payments difficulties. This is because, while their exports will be sluggish
in the new situation, this very fact will also discourage financial inflows into their
economies, whose easy availability had enabled them to maintain current account deficits on
their balance of payments earlier. In such a situation, within the existing neoliberal
paradigm, they would be forced to adopt austerity measures that would impose income deflation
on their people, make the conditions of their people significantly worse, lead to a further
handing over of their national assets and resources to international capital, and prevent
precisely any possible transition to an alternative strategy of home market-based growth.
In other words, we shall now have an intensification of the imperialist stranglehold over
third world economies, especially those pushed into unsustainable balance-of-payments deficits
in the new situation. By imperialism , here we do not mean the imperialism of this or
that major power, but the imperialism of international finance capital, with which even
domestic big bourgeoisies are integrated, directed against their own working people.
The fourth implication is the worldwide upsurge of fascism. Neoliberal capitalism even
before it reached a dead end, even in the period when it achieved reasonable growth and
employment rates, had pushed the world into greater hunger and poverty. For instance, the world
per-capita cereal output was 355 kilograms for 1980 (triennium average for 1979–81
divided by mid–triennium population) and fell to 343 in 2000, leveling at 344.9 in 2016
-- and a substantial amount of this last figure went into ethanol production. Clearly, in a
period of growth of the world economy, per-capita cereal absorption should be expanding,
especially since we are talking here not just of direct absorption but of direct and indirect
absorption, the latter through processed foods and feed grains in animal products. The fact
that there was an absolute decline in per-capita output, which no doubt caused a decline in
per-capita absorption, suggests an absolute worsening in the nutritional level of a substantial
segment of the world's population.
But this growing hunger and nutritional poverty did not immediately arouse any significant
resistance, both because such resistance itself becomes more difficult under neoliberalism
(since the very globalization of capital makes it an elusive target) and also because higher
GDP growth rates provided a hope that distress might be overcome in the course of time.
Peasants in distress, for instance, entertained the hope that their children would live better
in the years to come if given a modicum of education and accepted their fate.
In short, the ideology of neoliberal capitalism was the promise of growth. But with
neoliberal capitalism reaching a dead end, this promise disappears and so does this ideological
prop. To sustain itself, neoliberal capitalism starts looking for some other ideological prop
and finds fascism. This changes the discourse away from the material conditions of people's
lives to the so-called threat to the nation, placing the blame for people's distress not on the
failure of the system, but on ethnic, linguistic, and religious minority groups, the
other that is portrayed as an enemy. It projects a so-called messiah whose sheer
muscularity can somehow magically overcome all problems; it promotes a culture of unreason so
that both the vilification of the other and the magical powers of the supposed leader
can be placed beyond any intellectual questioning; it uses a combination of state repression
and street-level vigilantism by fascist thugs to terrorize opponents; and it forges a close
relationship with big business, or, in Kalecki's words, "a partnership of big business and
fascist upstarts." 10
Fascist groups of one kind or another exist in all modern societies. They move center stage
and even into power only on certain occasions when they get the backing of big business. And
these occasions arise when three conditions are satisfied: when there is an economic crisis so
the system cannot simply go on as before; when the usual liberal establishment is manifestly
incapable of resolving the crisis; and when the left is not strong enough to provide an
alternative to the people in order to move out of the conjuncture.
This last point may appear odd at first, since many see the big bourgeoisie's recourse to
fascism as a counter to the growth of the left's strength in the context of a capitalist
crisis. But when the left poses a serious threat, the response of the big bourgeoisie typically
is to attempt to split it by offering concessions. It uses fascism to prop itself up only when
the left is weakened. Walter Benjamin's remark that "behind every fascism there is a failed
revolution" points in this direction.
Fascism Then and Now
Contemporary fascism, however, differs in crucial respects from its 1930s counterpart, which
is why many are reluctant to call the current phenomenon a fascist upsurge. But historical
parallels, if carefully drawn, can be useful. While in some aforementioned respects
contemporary fascism does resemble the phenomenon of the 1930s, there are serious differences
between the two that must also be noted.
First, we must note that while the current fascist upsurge has put fascist elements in power
in many countries, there are no fascist states of the 1930s kind as of yet. Even if the fascist
elements in power try to push the country toward a fascist state, it is not clear that they
will succeed. There are many reasons for this, but an important one is that fascists in power
today cannot overcome the crisis of neoliberalism, since they accept the regime of
globalization of finance. This includes Trump, despite his protectionism. In the 1930s,
however, this was not the case. The horrors associated with the institution of a fascist state
in the 1930s had been camouflaged to an extent by the ability of the fascists in power to
overcome mass unemployment and end the Depression through larger military spending, financed by
government borrowing. Contemporary fascism, by contrast, lacks the ability to overcome the
opposition of international finance capital to fiscal activism on the part of the government to
generate larger demand, output, and employment, even via military spending.
Such activism, as discussed earlier, required larger government spending financed either
through taxes on capitalists or through a fiscal deficit. Finance capital was opposed to both
of these measures and it being globalized made this opposition decisive . The
decisiveness of this opposition remains even if the government happens to be one composed of
fascist elements. Hence, contemporary fascism, straitjacketed by "fiscal rectitude," cannot
possibly alleviate even temporarily the economic crises facing people and cannot provide any
cover for a transition to a fascist state akin to the ones of the 1930s, which makes such a
transition that much more unlikely.
Another difference is also related to the phenomenon of the globalization of finance. The
1930s were marked by what Lenin had earlier called "interimperialist rivalry." The military
expenditures incurred by fascist governments, even though they pulled countries out of the
Depression and unemployment, inevitably led to wars for "repartitioning an already partitioned
world." Fascism was the progenitor of war and burned itself out through war at, needless to
say, great cost to humankind.
Contemporary fascism, however, operates in a world where interimperialist rivalry is far
more muted. Some have seen in this muting a vindication of Karl Kautsky's vision of an
"ultraimperialism" as against Lenin's emphasis on the permanence of interimperialist rivalry,
but this is wrong. Both Kautsky and Lenin were talking about a world where finance capital and
the financial oligarchy were essentially national -- that is, German, French, or British. And
while Kautsky talked about the possibility of truces among the rival oligarchies, Lenin saw
such truces only as transient phenomena punctuating the ubiquity of rivalry.
In contrast, what we have today is not nation-based finance capitals, but
international finance capital into whose corpus the finance capitals drawn from
particular countries are integrated. This globalized finance capital does not want the world
to be partitioned into economic territories of rival powers ; on the contrary, it wants the
entire globe to be open to its own unrestricted movement. The muting of rivalry between major
powers, therefore, is not because they prefer truce to war, or peaceful partitioning of the
world to forcible repartitioning, but because the material conditions themselves have changed
so that it is no longer a matter of such choices. The world has gone beyond both Lenin and
Kautsky, as well as their debates.
Not only are we not going to have wars between major powers in this era of fascist upsurge
(of course, as will be discussed, we shall have other wars), but, by the same token, this
fascist upsurge will not burn out through any cataclysmic war. What we are likely to see is a
lingering fascism of less murderous intensity , which, when in power, does not
necessarily do away with all the forms of bourgeois democracy, does not necessarily physically
annihilate the opposition, and may even allow itself to get voted out of power occasionally.
But since its successor government, as long as it remains within the confines of the neoliberal
strategy, will also be incapable of alleviating the crisis, the fascist elements are likely to
return to power as well. And whether the fascist elements are in or out of power, they will
remain a potent force working toward the fascification of the society and the polity, even
while promoting corporate interests within a regime of globalization of finance, and hence
permanently maintaining the "partnership between big business and fascist upstarts."
Put differently, since the contemporary fascist upsurge is not likely to burn itself out as
the earlier one did, it has to be overcome by transcending the very conjuncture that produced
it: neoliberal capitalism at a dead end. A class mobilization of working people around an
alternative set of transitional demands that do not necessarily directly target neoliberal
capitalism, but which are immanently unrealizable within the regime of neoliberal capitalism,
can provide an initial way out of this conjuncture and lead to its eventual transcendence.
Such a class mobilization in the third world context would not mean making no truces with
liberal bourgeois elements against the fascists. On the contrary, since the liberal bourgeois
elements too are getting marginalized through a discourse of jingoistic nationalism typically
manufactured by the fascists, they too would like to shift the discourse toward the material
conditions of people's lives, no doubt claiming that an improvement in these conditions is
possible within the neoliberal economic regime itself. Such a shift in discourse is in
itself a major antifascist act . Experience will teach that the agenda advanced as part of
this changed discourse is unrealizable under neoliberalism, providing the scope for dialectical
intervention by the left to transcend neoliberal capitalism.
Imperialist
Interventions
Even though fascism will have a lingering presence in this conjuncture of "neoliberalism at
a dead end," with the backing of domestic corporate-financial interests that are themselves
integrated into the corpus of international finance capital, the working people in the third
world will increasingly demand better material conditions of life and thereby rupture the
fascist discourse of jingoistic nationalism (that ironically in a third world context is not
anti-imperialist).
In fact, neoliberalism reaching a dead end and having to rely on fascist elements revives
meaningful political activity, which the heyday of neoliberalism had precluded, because most
political formations then had been trapped within an identical neoliberal agenda that appeared
promising. (Latin America had a somewhat different history because neoliberalism arrived in
that continent through military dictatorships, not through its more or less tacit acceptance by
most political formations.)
Such revived political activity will necessarily throw up challenges to neoliberal
capitalism in particular countries. Imperialism, by which we mean the entire economic and
political arrangement sustaining the hegemony of international finance capital, will deal with
these challenges in at least four different ways.
The first is the so-called spontaneous method of capital flight. Any political formation
that seeks to take the country out of the neoliberal regime will witness capital flight even
before it has been elected to office, bringing the country to a financial crisis and thereby
denting its electoral prospects. And if perchance it still gets elected, the outflow will only
increase, even before it assumes office. The inevitable difficulties faced by the people may
well make the government back down at that stage. The sheer difficulty of transition away from
a neoliberal regime could be enough to bring even a government based on the support of workers
and peasants to its knees, precisely to save them short-term distress or to avoid losing their
support.
Even if capital controls are put in place, where there are current account deficits,
financing such deficits would pose a problem, necessitating some trade controls. But this is
where the second instrument of imperialism comes into play: the imposition of trade sanctions
by the metropolitan states, which then cajole other countries to stop buying from the
sanctioned country that is trying to break away from thralldom to globalized finance capital.
Even if the latter would have otherwise succeeded in stabilizing its economy despite its
attempt to break away, the imposition of sanctions becomes an additional blow.
The third weapon consists in carrying out so-called democratic or parliamentary coups of the
sort that Latin America has been experiencing. Coups in the old days were effected through the
local armed forces and necessarily meant the imposition of military dictatorships in lieu of
civilian, democratically elected governments. Now, taking advantage of the disaffection
generated within countries by the hardships caused by capital flight and imposed sanctions,
imperialism promotes coups through fascist or fascist-sympathizing middle-class political
elements in the name of restoring democracy, which is synonymous with the pursuit of
neoliberalism.
And if all these measures fail, there is always the possibility of resorting to economic
warfare (such as destroying Venezuela's electricity supply), and eventually to military
warfare. Venezuela today provides a classic example of what imperialist intervention in a third
world country is going to look like in the era of decline of neoliberal capitalism, when
revolts are going to characterize such countries more and more.
Two aspects of such intervention are striking. One is the virtual unanimity among the
metropolitan states, which only underscores the muting of interimperialist rivalry in the era
of hegemony of global finance capital. The other is the extent of support that such
intervention commands within metropolitan countries, from the right to even the liberal
segments.
Despite this opposition, neoliberal capitalism cannot ward off the challenge it is facing
for long. It has no vision for reinventing itself. Interestingly, in the period after the First
World War, when capitalism was on the verge of sinking into a crisis, the idea of state
intervention as a way of its revival had already been mooted, though its coming into vogue only
occurred at the end of the Second World War. 11
Today, neoliberal capitalism does not even have an idea of how it can recover and revitalize
itself. And weapons like domestic fascism in the third world and direct imperialist
intervention cannot for long save it from the anger of the masses that is building up against
it.
Samuel Berrick Saul, Studies in British Overseas Trade, 1870–1914
(Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1960).
Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy, Monopoly Capital (New York:
Monthly Review Press, 1966).
One of the first authors to recognize this fact and its significance was Paul Baran in
The Political Economy of
Growth (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1957).
For the role of such colonial transfers in sustaining the British balance of payments and the
long Victorian and Edwardian boom, see Utsa Patnaik, "Revisiting the 'Drain,' or Transfers
from India to Britain in the Context of Global Diffusion of Capitalism," in Agrarian
and Other Histories: Essays for Binay Bhushan Chaudhuri , ed. Shubhra Chakrabarti and
Utsa Patnaik (Delhi: Tulika, 2017), 277-317.
Federal Reserve Board of Saint Louis Economic Research, FRED, "Capacity Utilization:
Manufacturing," February 2019 (updated March 27, 2019), http://fred.stlouisfed.org .
This issue is discussed by Charles P. Kindleberger in The World in Depression,
1929–1939 , 40th anniversary ed. (Oakland: University of California Press,
2013).
Joseph Schumpeter had seen Keynes's The Economic Consequences of the Peace as
essentially advocating such state intervention in the new situation. See his essay, "John
Maynard Keynes (1883–1946)," in Ten Great Economists (London: George Allen
& Unwin, 1952).
Utsa Patnaik is Professor Emerita at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning,
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her books include Peasant Class Differentiation (1987),
The Long Transition (1999), and The Republic of Hunger and Other Essays (2007). Prabhat Patnaik
is Professor Emeritus at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru
University, New Delhi. His books include Accumulation and Stability Under Capitalism (1997),
The Value of Money(2009), and Re-envisioning Socialism(2011).
This can be called "color revolution effect". No matter what people want, the USA gets the
greater leverage after any such approval and always is the net beneficiary. The only exception
was Iran Islamic revolution, so there are some exception, but even with Iran the level of
influence of the USA on Iran economics increased, not decreases.
UK might want to look at Ukraine for the net result of the struggle for independence
althouth Ukraine supposedly was fighting againt Russia depencense not EU dependence and was
already a puppet regime under Yanukovich.
It's supposed to make Britain more independent. But it might put her at the mercy of Mike
Pompeo's Iran policy.
By unyoking London from Europe, a no deal Brexit would unleash a
titanic shift in global alliances that could strengthen Washington's hand and help it achieve
its "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran.
That's an ironic turn of events for populists in the United Kingdom, who support Brexit
because it will allow the British people to determine their own fate.
But for some in Washington, Brexit represents a golden opportunity to negotiate with a
United Kingdom unencumbered by Europe. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo admitted as much when he
was asked whether our relationship with the UK will be strengthened by Brexit.
"I think it's the case," Pompeo said Thursday on the Hugh Hewitt Show. "We'll have a clear
line with [the UK]. We won't have the EU as a middleman that has put constraints on our
capacity to do lots of good things across not only the economic sector but the security sector
and the diplomatic sector as well. I'm confident that that very special relationship will
continue to grow."
Note that Pompeo specifically mentioned "the security sector" when listing how Brexit will
help the U.S. That's of particular importance now because the Trump administration has been
pressuring European nations to back its withdrawal from the Iran deal and reimpose sanctions on
Iran
"... Western Oligarchs initially were unified with their program to keep prices stable, lower labor costs, cut taxes and deregulate. Credit Cards and low cost consumer goods at Walmart kept working families pacified as their jobs were outsourced. ..."
"... Manufacturing cannot be moved without costs. The Trade Wars and Brexit will splinter the USA and the UK. Somebody thinks they will make money out of the chaos. This is a very dangerous bet. ..."
Western Oligarchs initially were unified with their program to keep prices stable, lower
labor costs, cut taxes and deregulate. Credit Cards and low cost consumer goods at Walmart
kept working families pacified as their jobs were outsourced.
Greed got the better of the
Elite. Joe Biden's regime change crew took aim at Ukraine and ultimately Russia, once again,
to seize the resources. This restarting the Cold War and forced Russia and China to ally. The
world is at war. It just has not gone nuclear yet. A Multipolar World is a now a given. The
question is human survival.
American farmers and consumers are in so far in debt that bankruptcy or dying owing an
average of $61,000 is the only way out. Manufacturing cannot be moved without costs. The
Trade Wars and Brexit will splinter the USA and the UK. Somebody thinks they will make money
out of the chaos. This is a very dangerous bet.
With rising prices, food and medicine
shortages, and oligarchs at each other's throat, another Civil War is most likely.
>You cite without irony that U.S. is enhancing it's position by hobbling it's erstwhile
trading partners.
Not sure that's a formula for success.
Yes, point is to make others lose more that what you would lose. Thus you keep your
relative power vis a vis others even if everybody is poorer.
As of now, it did have effect - it slowed down the US relative decline in economic terms,
as the US share of the global economy was declining faster in 2010 or 2015 than today.
> Also not sure why this leads you to believe that this has the affect of slowing
transition from dollar.
Transition away from the dollar would have happened faster if the US just sat on its hands
and did nothing, as current slowing growth rates in the developing world economy suggest.
Plus not controlling the EU and Saudi Arabia means game over.
Posted by: anti_republocrat | Aug 20 2019 15:14 utc | 88
>Yes, US elites are successfully causing a slow-down, perhaps even a crash, in the
world economy. What their hubris does not allow them to see is that they're causing the
unification of much of the world against them.
See above
>and also that their weaponry and military might is of poor quality and obsolete. It
can often be defeated by low-tech counter-measures like the unguided drones the Houthis used
to attack Saudi oil infrastructure.
Yes, this is what happens under conditions of globalisation. A partial solution is to try
to stop globalisation, but still this proccess can not be fully stopped.
Posted by: Arioch | Aug 20 2019 14:53 utc | 86
>But as of today (and as it was 10 years ago, and perhaps ever since USSR collapse)
"globalisation" and "USA Hegemony" is the same! Now, of course in theory there can be Russian
hegemony or Chinese hegemony or Islamic hegemony... Maybe there would. But in the world we
live in today, USA Hegemony = globalisation. That is what we inherited form 1990-s.
It is not the same. Globalisation for example means outsourcing, which weakens the US.
Then it means China working in Africa, or the BRI. Many benefit from globalisation, and i
think that China can carry out globalisation on its own even if the US refuses to play. It
also means things such as economic convergence, and knowledge and technology difussion around
the world. Currently, it leads to the rise of the developing world, and the weakening of
relative US power, which means that it is no longer in the US interest. See the current US
attacks against the WTO, etc. It was definitely US led in 1990s, but it is no longer US
driven now.
>Teamp Trump wants to "create a world of the jungle" ? But WHAT is jungle if not
multipolarity? Tiger is challenging wolves, bulls are trumping the tiger, monkeys are
throwing nuts at everyone while cobra and python are eating them monkeys, right?
You can have various types of multipolarity, for example cooperative multipolarity, or
fragmented, walled, conflict ridden multipolarity.
The US would lose most in the first case (think about the rise of the developing world),
and will preserve the most of its power in the second case.
"Slow down its decline as much as possible," yes, but to what end? The only point in slowing
down the US decline, rather than transitioning away from Empire, would be if the US buys
enough time to beggar other economies sufficiently through covert operations(kill the BRI,
kill NS2 and TurkStream, ad nauseum) while keeping its own economy at slightly above
beggaring.
That kind of process, given the fact that much of the world is now lining up in coalitions
against the US, takes time. I have to agree with Orlov here, that it's taken 30 years for the
Empire to drive itself right to the very edge of the cliff, where the least puff of wind can
push it over.
Full Spectrum Domino , Aug 20 2019 17:01 utc |
100
@ 71 & @75
"So you are of the view that Trump is part of attempt to create a controlled demolition of
the US Empire?"
The 'controlled demolition of the US Empire' is an elaborate euphemism for re-nationalism,
I suppose. To unfold in three concentric waves.
Step 1. Trade restructuring - close the NAFTA loophole, redirect production to the NA
Trade bloc (and friendlier reciprocating markets - Laos, Vietnam, India, etc). Closer to
home, Mexico will be a huge beneficiary. Redirected supply lines are no arid macroeconomic
development. They mean the radical bestowal of prosperity in some countries and the
revocation of prosperity in others. I liken the USMCA impending wage increase in Mexico to
Fordism in turn-of-the century America. The $5 a day program minted the US middle class and
averted the central crisis of capitalism, overproduction. Anybody can build factories, staff
them with rural peasantry and create a tsunami of global deflation. Productive capacity's a
cheap trick. What bestows today's prosperity? DEMAND. Trump is asserting the previously
unasserted crown jewel of the global economy: a highly developed demand market that has
long-since traversed the middle income trap, no small feat.
The Eurasian Century will not arrive soon enough to displace US demand, not for the CCP
anyway. Hillary was to cement the terminus of the Managed Decline Arc. Woops. Xi misread
Trump. It may sound trite, but Trump's not a politician. His resume 'moves backwards'. He's
not a political class grifter who's gathering chits in career one to build a global
foundation in career 2. This is the career trajectory the Chinese have been normalized
towards. Their 11th hour adjustments in the first agreement would have been snatched by any
craven US politician and heralded as a victory. Trump defied all expectations by walking
away. There's no doubt this rattled the Chinese. Let's also not forget Trump picked this
fight as he did NAFTA renegotiation. These were settled modes of business in line with
globalist and corporatist agendas. The Eurasian Century (and belated domestic Chinese demand,
the offsetting sponge the world needed in 1999 and should have insisted upon had Clinton not
been bought off to WTO entry. This treachery, in the end, served no one except the political
classes of both nations.) The ferocity of the present China-US struggle is a direct result of
its criminal belatedness. WW3 is a possible outcome. Neither nation was well-served by this
procrastination. (Google the 1996 United States campaign finance controversy).
Step 2. A significant resurgence of US domestic productivity collapses the Triffin Paradox
which mandates structural trade deficits from the reserve currency nation. Main Street
retakes the streets from Wall Street money-changers who were only too happy to abet the trade
deficit (and make the $ the US' preeminent export) by shipping manufacturing overseas (it
wasn't 'their' jobs after all) , hollowing out the soul of the country and creating a nation
of opium-eaters. The US Chamber of Commerce (multinational mouthpiece) detests Trump. This
will ultimately lead to a relinquishing of USD reserve currency status. It was going to
happen anyway under the globalist regime, just more wrenchingly ala the Argentine
Paradox.
Step 3. What is after all the US military's paycheck? The petrodollar. A full spectrum
military answerable to a nationalized currency would hyper-inflate away overnight. The Empire
military footprint is unsustainable with a trade-rebalanced and re-nationalized USD and
absent the infinite flow of defended oil (hence the Oil Standard usurping the Gold Standard
in 1973 - the peak household income year in the US incidentally). So a receding MIC is
implicit in the Trump agenda, though too controversial to trumpet at this early juncture
--back end of term 2 maybe? Natural attrition will be tagged with this outcome. We see Soros
and Koch already joining forces to herald a new era of peace. Strange bedfellows.
In the broadest terms, the Trump theme is a tectonic and hyper-ambitious re-seating of
Main Street as the driver of the American economy. This pits him against every vested
interest on the planet. It's the ultimate counter-cycle to one-worldism and neoliberal
financialization. The globalists were done with America and ready to toss the population to a
fentanyl fog.
I prefer skirting Trump is a moron trope. Suffice to say SOMEBODY assembled the
Navarro-Lighthizer-Ross-Mnuchin trade team - the only nucleus that matters for Step 1 above.
want to sell into this market? There will be a kiosk fee. You want to call that a war? Well,
that sounds a bit histrionic. But maybe it also conveys your fear. Leveraging US demand for
geopolitical and trade advantage after decades of post-WW2 market building in devastated
nations. This policy had overstayed its efficacy from an 'America First' standpoint.
..attempt by the most hawkish and revanchist elements in the US to destroy globalisation and
create a world of the jungle, where they estimate the US will have better chances.
Posted by: Passer by | Aug 20 2019 13:34 utc
Bingo!!!
But as of today (and as it was 10 years ago, and perhaps ever since USSR collapse)
"globalisation" and "USA Hegemony" is the same! Now, of course in theory there can be Russian
hegemony or Chinese hegemony or Islamic hegemony... Maybe there would. But in the world we
live in today, USA Hegemony = globalisation. That is what we inherited form 1990-s.
Teamp Trump wants to "create a world of the jungle" ? But WHAT is jungle if not
multipolarity? Tiger is challenging wolves, bulls are trumping the tiger, monkeys are
throwing nuts at everyone while cobra and python are eating them monkeys, right?
@ Posted by: Passer by | Aug 20 2019 13:15 utc | 78
You cite without irony that U.S. is enhancing it's position by hobbling it's erstwhile
trading partners.
Not sure that's a formula for success.
Also not sure why this leads you to believe that this has the affect of slowing transition
from dollar.
It's one thing to destroy and something more complex to create.
However I don't think that the world will be better-off for Trumps creative destruction.
I don't know if it's harder to believe that such incompetence was all an accident or that
this was his intention.
Yes, US elites are successfully causing a slow-down, perhaps even a crash, in the world
economy. What their hubris does not allow them to see is that they're causing the unification
of much of the world against them, and also that their weaponry and military might is of poor
quality and obsolete. It can often be defeated by low-tech counter-measures like the unguided
drones the Houthis used to attack Saudi oil infrastructure.
Much of US GDP is either the creation of these ineffective military assets, "services"
that merely transfer wealth to the already rich or resource extraction (including the mining
of top soil and other agricultural assets) that pollutes the homeland and must eventually be
cleaned up.
Trump either understands none of this or as Arioch suggests, has no choice in which case
his bosses have no clue. If he or they did, he wouldn't be doing what he's doing. Nobody
wants to go down in history compared to Nero, Caligula or worse still, Honorius.
This is just my 2nd post to MoA. I'm reprinting my first (made just a few minutes ago to the
thread that chronologically preceded this one) as an self-introduction.
"Hi all supporters of the Syrian people and their government / SAA; and/or opponents of US
Imperialism and Zionists & Sauds. I've been a long-time reader / follower of
MoonOfAlabama; but I only just now found this site and thread. Great thanx to MOA and the
many posters contributing to helping us better understand what is happening on the ground in
Syria.
btw, born and raised in the US, I attended my first (of multiple hundreds of)
demonstrations in 1965. It was Pro-Palesitnian, Anti-Zionist. I naively went there to OPPOSE
them; and got 100% convinced of the justice of their cause. That afternoon, a female member
of the Anti-Vietnam-War Movement educated me about the nature of that conflict - US
Imperialism at its worst - and it was the combination of learning about Palestine and Vietnam
that caused me to dedicate every free moment for the rest of my life to contributing to the
struggle for peace and justice.
I than worked 40+ hours a week, 50+ weeks a year, 1965-1975 (20,000+ volunteer hours) to
help end the US Gov slaughter of 2-3 million innocents in Vietnam. And, for the past 54 years
have done all I can to support the Palestinians and oppose Zionism (and its US-billionaire
sponsors).
Kudos to all the great work by so many of you here,
Pablo"
-------
My overall position: THE PROBLEM: vis-a-vis the whole world: Capitalism (since 1550~);
Monopoly-Capitalism (since 1900~); Deathroes-Capitalism (since 2000~). vis-a-vis the US: The
US Gov was never "great"; instead, just the opposite, with 227 out of 243 years (a HUMONGOUS
SAMPLE SIZE) of wars of aggression; and 243 out of 243 years of the American super-rich
getting richer and more powerful (at the expense of the American working and poor; but
especially, at the expense of the workers and poor of the rest of the world.
CORRELARIES: Capitalism has never been reformable. Israel is one of dozens of
100%-dominated US puppet-states (same for Saudi Arabia ...). Israel does not run the US Gov
(the 585 American billionaires do!); and Israel did not do 9/11; the American billionaires
did 9/11 to: As A pretext to: Try to maintain, if not expand, their world-straddling empire
THRU never-ending, ever-expanding: wars, police states and world-wide poverty: AGAINST all
enemies (Chinese-Russian billionaires, other non-American billionaires; competing economies
and militaries; and especially against the ever-more-united non-rich peoples of the world to
liberate themselves.
N.B. I've been a 9/11 Truther since the late afternoon of 9/11 - the ENDLESS REPETITION
(of the "2nd plane crash" and the Twin Tower's demolitions) finally made me remember that
endless repetition is SOP for (US) Imperialism. It's aim is to sell the exact reverse of the
truth (so we don't believe what really was going on) thru mass brainwashing.
I am the original author of the Leaflet:
"End ALL The Wars & Police States, NOW!" (aka: "The 9/11 Truth UNITY Manifesto") -
which can be found at the above-listed URL;
Facebook site: International 9/11 Fraud Awareness Week
"... The current neoliberal order failed to suppress China development enough to block her from becoming the competitor (and the second largest economy.) ..."
"... That's why a faction of the USA elite decided to adopt "might makes right" policies (essentially piracy instead of international law) in a hope that it will prolong the life of the US-centered neoliberal empire. ..."
"... As much as Trump proved to be inapt politician and personally and morally despicable individual (just his known behavior toward Melania tells a lot about him; we do not need possible Epstein revelations for that) he does represent a faction of the US elite what wants this change. ..."
"... All his pro working class and pro lower middle class rhetoric was a bluff -- he is representative of faction of the US elite that is hell bent on maintaining the imperial superiority achieved after the collapse of the USSR, whatever it takes. At the expense of common people as Pentagon budget can attest. ..."
"... That also explains the appointment of Bolton and Pompeo. That are birds of the feather, not some maniacs (although they are ;-) accidentally brought into Trump administration via major donors pressure. ..."
"... In this sense Russiagate was not only a color revolution launched to depose Trump by neoliberal wing of Democratic Party and rogue, Obama-installed elements within intelligence agencies (Brennan, Comey, McCabe, etc.) , but also part of the struggle between the faction of the US elite that wants "muscular" policy of preservation of the empire (Trump supporters faction so to speak) and the faction that still wants to kick the can down the road via "classic neoliberalism" path (Clinton supporters faction so to speak.) ..."
It is not about the strategy. It's about the agony. The agony of the US centered global
neoliberal empire.
Trump and forces behind him realized that current set of treaties does not favor the
preservation of the empire and allows new powerful players to emerge despite all
institutionalized looting via World Bank and IMF and the imposition of Washington Consensus.
The main danger here are Germany (and EU in general) and, especially, China.
The current neoliberal order failed to suppress China development enough to block her from
becoming the competitor (and the second largest economy.)
That's why a faction of the USA elite decided to adopt "might makes right" policies
(essentially piracy instead of international law) in a hope that it will prolong the life of
the US-centered neoliberal empire.
As much as Trump proved to be inapt politician and personally and morally despicable
individual (just his known behavior toward Melania tells a lot about him; we do not need
possible Epstein revelations for that) he does represent a faction of the US elite what wants
this change.
All his pro working class and pro lower middle class rhetoric was a bluff -- he is
representative of faction of the US elite that is hell bent on maintaining the imperial
superiority achieved after the collapse of the USSR, whatever it takes. At the expense of
common people as Pentagon budget can attest.
That also explains the appointment of Bolton and Pompeo. That are birds of the feather, not
some maniacs (although they are ;-) accidentally brought into Trump administration via major
donors pressure.
In this sense Russiagate was not only a color revolution launched to depose Trump by
neoliberal wing of Democratic Party and rogue, Obama-installed elements within intelligence
agencies (Brennan, Comey, McCabe, etc.) , but also part of the struggle between the faction of
the US elite that wants "muscular" policy of preservation of the empire (Trump supporters
faction so to speak) and the faction that still wants to kick the can down the road via
"classic neoliberalism" path (Clinton supporters faction so to speak.)
This is the nature of all petty speculators. And Trump is a petty speculator, a huckster by
nature. He has a typical "rag trader mentality".
ZeroHedge comments became very critical to Trump. As they reflect certain demographic which
previously supported Trump this is not a good sign.
What is interesting that in this libertarian paradise almost nobody supports classic
neoliberal liberalization. Most support tariffs. Times definitely changes.
Of course, since President Trump has pegged the success of his Presidency on the rise and
fall of the markets, on Wednesday, as "tweets" about a "trade talks continuing" failed to lift
the markets, he resorted to more direct measures to manipulate the markets:
Via CNBC:
"Trump held the call with J.P. Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, Bank of America's Brian
Moynihan and Citigroup's Michael Corbat, according to people with knowledge of the
situation."
This, of course, was reminiscent of the call made by Steve Mnuchin, U.S. Treasury Secretary,
during the market rout last December. But most importantly, this is about the upcoming
election:
"Trump has been reaching out to corporate leaders this week amid his concerns that a
slowing U.S. economy could impact his reelection chances, according to a Thursday piece from
the Washington Post."
Hopefully, he will listen to them.
But even if the trade dispute was ended today, the damage is likely already done.
Economic growth has weakened globally
Corporate profit growth has turned negative.
Tax cuts are fully absorbed into the economy
Interest rates are signaling there is something "broken"
Yield curves are negative as "deflationary" pressures are rising
All of which is leading to rising recession risk.
In other words, while investors have hung their portfolios hopes of a "trade deal," it may
well be too little, too late.
Art Of The Deal Versus The Art Of War
This is all assuming Trump can actually succeed in a trade war with China.
Let's step back to the G-20 meeting between President Trump and President Xi Jinping. As I
wrote
then:
"There is a tremendous amount of 'hope' currently built into the market for a 'trade war
truce' this weekend. However, as we suggested previously, the most likely outcome was a truce
but no deal. That is exactly what happened.
While the markets will likely react positively next week to the news that ' talks will
continue,' the impact of existing tariffs from both the U.S. and China continue to weigh on
domestic firms and consumers.
More importantly, while the continued ' jawboning' may keep ' hope alive' for investors
temporarily, these two countries have been ' talking' for over a year with little real
progress to show for it outside of superficial agreements.
Importantly, we have noted that Trump would eventually ' cave' into the pressure from the
impact of the ' trade war' he started.
Trump will always be better than Hillary but he always folds like a house of cards in a
windstorm when he's up against the Democrats or anyone for that matter. He turned out to be a
******* giant orange *****.
I really don't know if he will win in 2020. And a lot of that is based on him screwing his
own base like farmers and gun owners. He didn't lock up Hillary, or build us a wall. He hasnt
stopped the illegals from coming over the border. And he hasnt cut off their benefits. So he
hasn't really done any of the major things he promised.
All the Democrats have to do is cheat in Pennsylvnia, Michigan and Florida and he's
finished. We end up with Pedo Joe as POTUS.
Remember when Sam Walton used to be proud of his "made in America" products...literally
saving companies from their demise by buying truckloads of their products.
Skip the Trade War....do I sound too much like Bernie if I suggest that we go after the
family that makes $100,000,000.00 per DAY off selling Chinese goods....they ARE the
storefront for China. Well, along with few dozen other retailer and etailers (like
Amazon)
...and don't give me the "they pay their taxes" BS...because the billionaire boys club
hire multi-millionaire Tax Attorneys to avoid paying taxes.
When are you people going to realize that the "trade war" isn't about bringing jobs back.
It's about the global corporations getting a better deal in China. It's about Financial
Services and US banks gaining market share in China.
Those corporations won't move jobs back here. They'll just make more in China. Those same
corporations that offshored those American jobs already got their tax cuts. Why would they
bring jobs back now. Talk about putting the cart in front of the horse.
By the way US steel had been and will continue to lay people off.
The US is running Trillion dollar plus yearly deficits with stocks up 50% since Trump took
office. This with all-time low unemployment and no inflation (bwahahahahaha).
Now imagine what the deficits will look like if things turn South.
Lance Roberts just does not get it. I wonder if he actually read the art of war. For it
was the Globalist who created what is China today with the largest transfer of technology,
capital, etc. in the history of the world.
We are now at the point of no return. The western system will either decline or it will
pull itself out of it self destruction. Make no mistake China intends to be a military power
and it is just a matter of time before China challenges USA domination. I see no way this
will be avoided at this time.
As such you will see economic conflict going forward. China will likely win this one
but it will set the stage for the continued decline of the western economic system. For the
current system of western debt and financialization of Western economies cannot sustain
itself. China still depends on this system that cannot last. So in time Globalist system will
have to reset and the relationship between Western Nations and China will change into trade
conflict.
What has been accomplished? Stolen Democrat Marxist Redistribution is all that Trump has
accomplished while getting exposed as the illiterate fraud that he is.
Corp/Fascist, CIA MOSSAD Trump was never in a "trade war". Trumps sole mission has been to
steal and redistribute, at a ongoing DEFICIT , out of the property of American People,
leaving the American People, fked. Same as it ever was!
Corp/Fascist, CIA MOSSAD Trump continues to line up all bonafide working and saving
Americans in front of his deficit debt devaluation firing squad. All he intended to do, he
has accomplished: redistributed stolen plunder and bounties and plundered all bonafide
working and saving white, black, brown, red and yellow Americans.
HK is just a trivial Maidan-like side scenario to support the US position in a trade war
that is meant to force the Chinese into submission. Since the trade war is collapsing, the
Donald Trump has to try to escalate somewhere else - in this case it's Taiwan. That really is
the only option the US culture allows him to consider. Escalation, escalation, escalation.
Very predictable strategy. Problem is, in this way the Trump puts the very existence of the
USA at risk when he tries to win against all odds against an adversary that absolutely
doesn't want to lose.
One of the things I will allow, however, is -- a lot of people are surprised we send
and we sell to Huawei a tremendous amount of product that goes into a lot of the various
things that they make -- and I said that that's OK, that we will keep selling that
product." – President Trump
Before the Great Trade War , and the endless attacks on Huawei by Trumptard and the US
Dark State, in order, to kill Huawei, many people, including myself, have not heard of
Huawei's name before, now, it is a world famous brand, thanks for the massive free publicity,
from the US War State.
Despite the total ban and blacklisting, Huawei not only survived, without a scratch, it's
revenue in 2019, actually grew an astonishing 23% .
WHY IS THE US DARK STATE SO TERRIFIED OF HUAWEI'S 5G WIRELESS TECHNOLOGY?
The US Dark State/War State/Deep State, that is the NSA/CIA/Pentagon/MIC/MSM . . . etc has
forced every western tech companies to install backdoors and malwares on their equipments,
except Huawei. They have tried to force Huawei to install those NSA backdoors and malwares,
in 2014, but the company categorically refused.
"The real issue is that nothing has changed since a 2014 report from The Register that
Huawei categorically refuses to install NSA backdoors into their hardware to allow unfettered
intelligence access to the data that crosses their networks.
All our emails, text messages, phone calls, internet searches, web browsing, library
records, . . . etc, are recorded and stored by NSA/CIA's vast servers farms.
Now, Huawei is not only the leading 5G wireless provider, but it is the only one, so far.
The other companies like Nokia and Ericsson are far behind.
5G is going to completely replace 4G and 3G. It is about 200 times faster than 4GLTE, in
download speed.
What this means is that if the world adopts the Huawei equipments and standards, it will
threaten to UNDO the US Dark State's vast global surveillance network.
This is what terrifies the US Dark State. Their vast Global Surveillance Network is the
basis of its power, and tools to enslave mankind.
There is a very good reason, why the American Founding Fathers , enacted every measures,
to protect our rights and privacy, so that we will not be controlled and enslaved by the
tyranny of totalitarian government, which is already upon us, in the form of US Dark
State/War State .
The US Dark State/Deep State/War State does not represent America. It is Un-American. It
is not the American Republic founded by our Founding Fathers, and enshrined in the US
Constitution.
The problem is that this President has no clue has to use tariffs.
If you want the jobs to come back to the USA instead of playing Asian musical chairs, you
have to slap the tariffs on every country that has low wages/benefits and no/low
environmental laws (that are enforced). If you don't, they are just shuffling factories
around.
I'm no fan of China, but tariffs only on China won't bring a single job back to the USA
unless tariffs encompass all the "beggar-my-neighbor" countries, like Mexico, China,
Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, etc.
Rather than invading countries or trying to make countries weaker, we should focus on
fixing our crumbling infrastructure, manufacturing base collapse, declining life expectancy
etc. And don't even start babbling about how Trump's China tariffs help US manufacturing. As
RedBaron correctly pointed out in his post, unless you put tariffs on all the low wage
countries, singling out China does nothing for US workers.
"... US President Trump does not do that in order to dismantle the dollar or US hegemony because of so called isolationism, as some may think. Trump does that in order to save US hegemony, implementing policies, in my opinion, devised by the US military/intelligence/science community. They now want to hamper globalisation and create fortress US, in order to bring back manufacturing and save as much as possible of the US Empire. Chaos and lack of cooperation in the world benefit the US. They now realise globalisation no longer serves the US as it leads to the rise of developing nations. Thus they no longer support it and even sabotage it." ..."
"... Trump and his trade negotiators continue to insist on China agreeing to an unequal trade treaty. ..."
"... IMO, China can continue to refuse and stand up for its principles, while the world looks on and nods its head in agreement with China as revealed by the increasing desire of nations to become a BRI partner. ..."
"... It should be noted that Trump's approach while differing from the one pushed by Obama/Kerry/Clinton the goal is the same since the Empire needs the infusion of loot from China to keep its financial dollarized Ponzi Scheme functioning. ..."
"... Russia's a target too, but most of its available loot was already grabbed during the 1990s. ..."
"... I keep going back to believing that multilateralism is a code word for no longer allowing empire global private finance hegemony and fiat money. ..."
"... The continuing practice of Neoliberalism by the Outlaw US Empire and its associated corporations and vassal nations checkmates what you think Trump's trying to accomplish. Hudson has explained it all very well in a series of recent papers and interviews: Neoliberalism is all about growing Financial Capitalism and using it to exert control/hegemony on all aspects of political-economy. ..."
"... Trump hasn't proposed any new policy to accomplish his MAGA pledge other than engaging in economic warfare with most other nations. His is a Unilateral Pirate Ship out to plunder all and sundry, including those that elected him. ..."
I will mention this again, to see what people here think, as they are intelligent people. I sent mails to Russian and Chinese
authorities about this.
"I will provide you with possible reasons behind the current trade wars and rejection of globalisation by the US. In short,
they think that they will save their hegemony, to a certain degree, that way.
There are long term GDP Growth and Socioeconomic Scenarios developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the
OECD, and the world scientific community. They are generally used to measure the impact of Climate change on the World. In order
to measure it, Socioeconomic Scenarios were developed, as the level of economic growth in the world is very important for determining
the impact of Climate Change in the future. High growth levels will obviously affect Climate Change, so these GDP estimates are
important. The scenarios are with time horizon 2100.
For more on this you can check these studies here, some of the many dealing with this topic. They describe the scenarios for
the world.
There are 5 main scenarios, or "Shared Socioeconomic Pathways". All of them describe different worlds.
SSP 1 - Green World, economic cooperation, reduced inequality, good education systems. High level of economic growth, fast
catch up of the developing world with the developed world. High level of multipolarity.
SSP 2 - More of the same/ Muddling through - continuation of the current trends. Relatively high level of economic growth,
relatively fast catch up of the developing world with the developed world. Good level of multipolarity.
SSP 3 - Regional Rivalry - nationalisms, trade wars, lack of global cooperation, fragmentation of the word, environmental
degradation. Low levels of economic growth everywhere, the developing world remains poor and undeveloped. Low level of multipolarity,
West retains many positions.
SSP 4 Inequality - depicts a world where high-income countries use technological advances to stimulate economic growth;
leading to a high capacity to mitigate. In contrast, developments in low income countries are hampered by very low education
levels and international barriers to trade. Growth is medium, the catch up process between the developing world and the developed
world is not fast. Medium level of multipolarity.
SSP 5 Economic growth and fossil fuels take priority over green world - High levels of economic growth, fast catch up of
the developing world with the developed world. High level of multipolarity.
See SSP 3. A world of rivalry, trade wars, trade barriers, lack of global cooperation, and fragmentation, will lead to lower
level of growth in the developing world, and thus a slow catch up process. Multipolarity in such a world is weak as the developing
world is hampered.
In other words, a world of cooperation between countries will lead to higher economic growth in the developing world, faster
catch up process, and thus stronger multipolarity.
Low cooperation, fragmented world, high conflict scenarios consistently lead to low growth in the developing world and thus
to the US and the West retaining some of its positions - a world with overall bad economy and low level of multipolarity.
Basically, globalisation is key. The developing world (ex West) was growing slowly before globalisation (before 1990). Globalisation
means sharing of technology and knowledge, and companies investing in poorer countries. Outsourcing of western manufacturing.
Etc. After globalisation started in 1990, the developing world is growing very well. It is globalisation that is weakening the
relative power of the West and empowering the developing world. The US now needs to kill globalisation if it is to stop its relative
decline.
So what do we see: exactly attempts to create the SSP 3 scenario. Trade wars, sanctions, attacks on multilateral institutions
- the WTO, on international law, on the Paris Climate Change Agreement (which if accepted would put constraints on the US economy),
on the UN, bullying of Europe, lack of care for european energy needs, support for Brexit (which weakens Europe), crack down on
chinese students and scientists in the US, crack down on chinese access to western science data, demands to remove the perks for
poor countries in the WTO, etc. This is hitting economic growth in the whole world and the global economy currently is not well.
By destroying the world economy, the US benefits as it hampers the rise of the developing nations.
US President Trump does not do that in order to dismantle the dollar or US hegemony because of so called isolationism,
as some may think. Trump does that in order to save US hegemony, implementing policies, in my opinion, devised by the US military/intelligence/science
community. They now want to hamper globalisation and create fortress US, in order to bring back manufacturing and save as much
as possible of the US Empire. Chaos and lack of cooperation in the world benefit the US. They now realise globalisation no longer
serves the US as it leads to the rise of developing nations. Thus they no longer support it and even sabotage it."
You ask, "The concept of multilateralism is not completely clear to me in relation to the global public/private finance issue
and I am not of faith but of questions...."
"In international relations, multilateralism refers to an alliance of multiple countries pursuing a common goal."
The key point for the Chinese during negotiations as I understand them via their published White Paper on the subject is
development and the international rules put in place at WTO for nations placed into the Developing category, which
get some preferential treatment to help their economies mature. As China often reminds the global public--and officials of the
Outlaw US Empire--both the BRI and EAEU projects are about developing the economies of developing economies, that the process
is designed to be a Win-Win for all the developing economies involved. This of course differs vastly from what's known as the
Washington Consensus, where all developing economies kowtow to the Outlaw US Empire's diktat via the World Bank and IMF and thus
become enslaved by dollar dependency/debt. Much is written about the true nature of the Washington Consensus, Perkins Confessions
of an Economic Hit Man and Klein's Disaster Capitalism being two of the more recent and devastating, and many nations
are able to attest to the Zero-sum results. The result is very few nations are willing to subject their economies to the pillaging
via Washington Consensus institutions, which Hudson just recently reviewed.
The Empire is desperate and is looking for ways to keep its Super Imperialism intact and thus continue its policy aimed at
Full Spectrum Dominance. But the Empire's abuse of the dollar-centric institutions of international commerce has only served to
alienate its users who are openly and actively seeking to form parallel institutions under genuine multilateral control.
However as Hudson illustrates, Trump doesn't know what he's doing regarding his trade and international monetary policies. Today's
AP above the fold headline in Eugene's The Register Guard screamed "Trump threatens 10% tariffs;" but unusually for such
stories, it explains that the 10% is essentially a tax on US consumers, not on Chinese companies, which provides a message opposite
of the one Trump wants to impart--that he's being tough on the Chinese when the opposite's true. China will continue to resist
the attempts to allow the international financial sharks to swim in Chinese waters as China is well aware of what they'll attempt
to accomplish--and it's far easier to keep them out than to get them out once allowed in, although China's anti-corruption laws
ought to scare the hell out of the CEOs of those corps.
The Empire wants to continue its longstanding Open Door policy in the realm of target nations opening their economies to the
full force of Imperial-based corps so they can use their financial might to wrestle the market from domestic players and institute
their Oligopoly. China already experienced the initial Open Door (which was aimed at getting Uncle Sam's share of China during
the Unequal Treaties period 115 years ago) and will not allow that to recur. China invokes its right under WTO rules for developing
economies to protect their financial services sector from predation; the Empire argues China is beyond a developing economy and
must drop its shields. We've read what Hudson advised the Chinese to do--resist and develop a publicly-based yuan-centered financial
system that highly taxes privatized rent-seekers while keeping and enhancing state-provided insurance--health, home, auto, life,
etc--while keeping restrictions on foreign land ownership since it's jot allowed to purchase similar assets within the domestic
US market.
The Outlaw US Empire insists that China give so it can take. Understandably, China says no; what we allow you to do, you should
allow us to do. Trump and his trade negotiators continue to insist on China agreeing to an unequal trade treaty. Obviously,
the latest proposal was merely a repetition of what came before and was rejected as soon as the meeting got underway, so it ended
as quickly as it started. IMO, China can continue to refuse and stand up for its principles, while the world looks on and
nods its head in agreement with China as revealed by the increasing desire of nations to become a BRI partner.
It should be noted that Trump's approach while differing from the one pushed by Obama/Kerry/Clinton the goal is the same
since the Empire needs the infusion of loot from China to keep its financial dollarized Ponzi Scheme functioning.
Russia's a target too, but most of its available loot was already grabbed during the 1990s. D-Party Establishment
candidates have yet to let it be known they'll try to do what Trump's failing to do, which of course has nothing to do with aiding
the US consumer and everything to do with bolstering Wall Street's Ponzi Scheme.
Good comment, karlof1 , i think that the attack against China is attack against the heart of multipolarity. It will be good
if b could post about the escalation of the trade war. This is important. The US clearly intends to resist multipoarity, and tries
to stop it.
If I would have had my act together last night I would have posted another link fro Xinhuanet (can't find now) about how
China wants to retain developing nation status and provides as data that the (I think) per capita GDP had gone down....gotten
worse in relation to the US per capita GDP.
I keep going back to believing that multilateralism is a code word for no longer allowing empire global private finance
hegemony and fiat money.
Passer by @30--
The continuing practice of Neoliberalism by the Outlaw US Empire and its associated corporations and vassal nations checkmates
what you think Trump's trying to accomplish. Hudson has explained it
all very well in a series of recent papers and interviews: Neoliberalism is all about growing Financial Capitalism and using it
to exert control/hegemony on all aspects of political-economy.
Thus, there's no need to sponsor the reindustrialization that would lead to MAGA. Indeed, Trump hasn't proposed any new
policy to accomplish his MAGA pledge other than engaging in economic warfare with most other nations. His is a Unilateral Pirate
Ship out to plunder all and sundry, including those that elected him.
In your outline, it's very easy to see why BRI is so attractive to other nations as it forwards SSP1. Awhile ago during a discussion
of China's development goals, I posted links to its program that's very ambitious and doing very well with its implementation,
the main introduction portal
being here .
psychohistorian @11 asked: "The concept of multilateralism is not completely clear to me in relation to the global public/private
finance issue and I am not of faith but of questions...."
karlof1 @31 covered it pretty well I think, but I want to try to answer in just a couple sentences (unusual for me).
Global private finance is driven by one thing and one thing only: making maximum profits for the owners quarter by financial
quarter. Global public finance is driven by the agendas of the nations with the public finance, with profits being a secondary
or lesser issue.
This boils down to private finance being forever slave to the mindless whims of "The Market™" (hallowed be Its name),
while public finance is, by its nature, something that is planned and deliberated. Nobody can guess where "The Market™"
(hallowed be Its name) will lead society, though people with the resources like placing bets in stock markets on the direction
It is taking us. On the other hand, if people have an idea which direction society should be heading in, public control
over finance is a precondition to making it so.
"The continuing practice of Neoliberalism by the Outlaw US Empire"
I'm not sure this will be the case anymore -
Former heads of DHS and NSA explain how the U.S. can keep Huawei at bay
"Perhaps more importantly, this proposal demonstrates one way the U.S. can reinforce elements of what the government calls
the “national technology and industrial base” (NTIB), the collection of companies who design, build and supply the U.S. with vital
national-security related technologies."
I think that 10 years from now the biggest impact from Trump will be from his cancellation
of the Iran nuclear accord and unilateral imposition of strict sanctions which the Europeans
were not able to bypass in any meaningful way due the prevalence of the US dollar in global
transactions.
There is now significant motivation in Europe and even China in creating a real
alternative to the US dollar for international transactions which bypasses US banks. If this
happens to any significant degree, it would undercut the US dollar as the world's reserve
currency, resulting in a permanent drop in its value.
Without international support, US Government deficits and trade deficits will become
unsustainable, and there will be a significant drop in the American median standard of
living.
"... Aggressive wars abroad pollute the domestic political discourse and breed hypernationalism, racism and xenophobia. The 18 or so years of war following the 9/11 attacks have seen this ostensible republic sink to new lows of behavior. ..."
"Empires in decline tend to behave badly. Indeed, whether British, French or Russian, the
twilight years of imperialism often brought brutal repression of subjects abroad, the
suppression of civil liberties at home and general varieties of brutality toward foreigners, be
they refugees or migrants.
Aggressive wars abroad pollute the domestic political discourse and breed
hypernationalism, racism and xenophobia. The 18 or so years of war following the 9/11 attacks
have seen this ostensible republic sink to new lows of behavior.
Aggressive wars of choice have ushered in rampant torture, atrocities in Iraq's Abu Ghraib
prison, indefinite detention at Guantanamo Bay, extraordinary rendition, drone assassinations,
warrantless wiretapping, mass surveillance of the citizenry...
It's all connected. The empire -- all empires -- eventually come home."
Maj. Danny Sjursen, An American Tragedy: Empire at Home and Abroad
Trump definitely contributes a lot to the collapse of classic neoliberalism. He rejected neoliberal globalization in favor of using
the USA dominant position for cutting favorable to the USA bilateral deals. That undermined the role of dollar of the world reserve
currency and several mechanisms emerged which allow completely bypass dollar system for trade.
Notable quotes:
"... US President Donald Trump's ruthless use of the centrality of his country's financial system and the dollar to force economic partners to abide by his unilateral sanctions on Iran has forced the world to recognise the political price of asymmetric economic interdependence. ..."
"... A new world is emerging, in which it will be much harder to separate economics from geopolitics. ..."
US President Donald Trump's ruthless use of the centrality of his country's financial system and the dollar to force economic
partners to abide by his unilateral sanctions on Iran has forced the world to recognise the political price of asymmetric economic
interdependence.
In response, China (and perhaps Europe) will fight to establish their own networks and secure control of their nodes. Again, multilateralism
could be the victim of this battle.
A new world is emerging, in which it will be much harder to separate economics from geopolitics. It's not the world according
to Myrdal, Frank, and Perroux, and it's not Tom Friedman's flat world, either. It's the world according to Game of Thrones
.
It made me do a face palm. Somebody thought they had separated economics from geopolitics or power…or at least they wanted
people to believe that and the jig is up.
“One reason for this is that in an increasingly digitalised economy, where a growing part of services are provided at zero
marginal cost, value creation and value appropriation concentrate in the innovation centers and where intangible investments are
made. This leaves less and less for the production facilities where tangible goods are made.”
It depends on what you mean by value.
If value is dollars in someone’s Cayman Islands tax-free account, then value is concentrated in NYC and SF.
But if we follow Natural Law (Marx or Mohammed) and define value as labor, then this is exactly wrong. A Natural Law economy
tries to maximize paid and useful work, because people are made to be useful.
The digital world steadily eliminates useful work, and steadily crams down the wages for the little work that remains. Real
value is avalanching toward zero, while Cayman value is zooming to infinity.
He’s talking more about the whims of the stock market and of our intellectual property laws. For example the marginal cost
for Microsoft to issue another copy of “Windows” is zero. Even their revised iterations of the OS were largely a rehash of the
previous software. Selling this at high prices worked out well for a long time but now the software can practically be had for
free because competitors like Linux and Android are themselves free. So digital services with their low marginal cost depend on
a shaky government edifice (patent enforcement, lack of antitrust) to prop up their value. Making real stuff still requires real
labor and even many proposed robot jobs–driving cars, drone deliveries, automated factories and warehouses–are looking dubious.
Dean Baker has said that the actual investment in automation during the last decades has slowed–perhaps because expensive and
complicated robots may have trouble competing with clever if poorly paid humans. And poorly paid is the current reality due to
population increases and political trends and perhaps, yes, automation.
And even if the masters of the universe could eliminate labor they would then have nobody to buy their products. The super
yacht market is rather small.
>the distribution of gains from openness and participation in the global economy is increasingly skewed. …. True, protectionism
remains a dangerous lunacy.
Well “openness and participation” is looking like lunacy to the Deplorables for exactly the reason given, so what is actually
on offer here?
With useful physical labor being off-shored, first world citizens should all be made shareholders in the new scheme. We shall
all then become dividend collecting layabouts buying stuff made by people we do not know, see, or care about. If they object we
simply have the military mount a punitive expedition until they get whipped back into shape. Sort of like now but with a somewhat
larger, more inclusive shareholder base. It will be wonderful!
Are you sayin’ the lefty Social Wealth Fund concept is really just another way of replicating the same old bougie program of
domination and suppression?
I’m saying that it can be and historically, and that there are and have been multi-national systems of super exploitation of
peripheral, primarily resource exporting populations, relative to a more broadly distributed prosperity for “higher” skilled populations
of the center. This has been a common perspective within anti-imperialist movements.
The argument is not without merit. Is this a “contradiction among the people” where various sectors of a larger labor movement
can renegotiate terms, or is it some more intransigent, deeply antagonistic relationship is a crucial question. The exportation
of manufacturing to the periphery is disrupting the political status-quo as represented by the center’s centrism, political sentiments
are breaking away to the left and right and where they’ll land nobody knows.
Why is Iran such a high priority for so many US elites?
I was just reading this John Helmer below, like Pepe Escobar I’m not sure who’s buttering his bread but it’s all food for thought
and fresh cooked blinis are tastier than the Twinkies from the western msm, and this thought came to mind: Iran is the perfect
test ground for the US to determine Russian weapons and tactical capabilities in a major war context in 2019. That alone might
make it worth it to the Pentagon, why they seem so enthusiastic to take the empire of chaos to unforseen heights (depts?). Somewhat
like the Spanish Civil War was a testing ground for the weapons of WW2.
1. Because it has a lot of non US controlled Oil.
2. Because it is Central on the eastern end of the silk road.
3. Because it does not kiss the US Ring bearers hand at every opportunity, and the US is determined to make it an example not
to be followed.
But consider Saudi us relations… who is kissing who’s ring?
Or consider Israeli us relations… ditto.
We’re a thuggish whore whose favors are easily bought; bring dollars or votes. Or kiss the ring.
An environmental insight here. The world stands devastated. It has reached its carrying capacity for thoughtless humans. From
here on in we have to take the consequences of our actions into account. So when it is said, as above, that the dollar exchange
rate is more important than the other bilateral exchange rates, I think that is no longer the reality. There is only a small amount
of global economic synergy that operates without subsidy. The vast majority is subsidized. And the dollar is just one currency.
And, unfortunately, the United States does not control the sun and the wind (well we’ve got Trump), or the ice and snow. Let alone
the oceans. The big question going forward is, Can the US maintain its artificial economy? Based on what?
That is a factor that seems ignored by the philosophers who are the subjects of the headline posting. It is a great oversight,
a shoe which has been released and is now impacting the floor. “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men”
Looks like the world order established after WWIII crumbed with the USSR and now it is again the law if jungles with the US as the
biggest predator.
Notable quotes:
"... The root cause is clear: After the crescendo of pretenses and deceptions over Iraq, Libya and Syria, along with our absolution of the lawless regime of Saudi Arabia, foreign political leaders are coming to recognize what world-wide public opinion polls reported even before the Iraq/Iran-Contra boys turned their attention to the world's largest oil reserves in Venezuela: The United States is now the greatest threat to peace on the planet. ..."
"... Calling the U.S. coup being sponsored in Venezuela a defense of democracy reveals the Doublethink underlying U.S. foreign policy. It defines "democracy" to mean supporting U.S. foreign policy, pursuing neoliberal privatization of public infrastructure, dismantling government regulation and following the direction of U.S.-dominated global institutions, from the IMF and World Bank to NATO. For decades, the resulting foreign wars, domestic austerity programs and military interventions have brought more violence, not democracy ..."
"... A point had to come where this policy collided with the self-interest of other nations, finally breaking through the public relations rhetoric of empire. Other countries are proceeding to de-dollarize and replace what U.S. diplomacy calls "internationalism" (meaning U.S. nationalism imposed on the rest of the world) with their own national self-interest. ..."
"... For the past half-century, U.S. strategists, the State Department and National Endowment for Democracy (NED) worried that opposition to U.S. financial imperialism would come from left-wing parties. It therefore spent enormous resources manipulating parties that called themselves socialist (Tony Blair's British Labour Party, France's Socialist Party, Germany's Social Democrats, etc.) to adopt neoliberal policies that were the diametric opposite to what social democracy meant a century ago. But U.S. political planners and Great Wurlitzer organists neglected the right wing, imagining that it would instinctively support U.S. thuggishness. ..."
"... Perhaps the problem had to erupt as a result of the inner dynamics of U.S.-sponsored globalism becoming impossible to impose when the result is financial austerity, waves of population flight from U.S.-sponsored wars, and most of all, U.S. refusal to adhere to the rules and international laws that it itself sponsored seventy years ago in the wake of World War II. ..."
"... Here's the first legal contradiction in U.S. global diplomacy: The United States always has resisted letting any other country have any voice in U.S. domestic policies, law-making or diplomacy. That is what makes America "the exceptional nation." But for seventy years its diplomats have pretended that its superior judgment promoted a peaceful world (as the Roman Empire claimed to be), which let other countries share in prosperity and rising living standards. ..."
"... Inevitably, U.S. nationalism had to break up the mirage of One World internationalism, and with it any thought of an international court. Without veto power over the judges, the U.S. never accepted the authority of any court, in particular the United Nations' International Court in The Hague. Recently that court undertook an investigation into U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan, from its torture policies to bombing of civilian targets such as hospitals, weddings and infrastructure. "That investigation ultimately found 'a reasonable basis to believe that war crimes and crimes against humanity." ..."
"... This showed that international finance was an arm of the U.S. State Department and Pentagon. But that was a generation ago, and only recently did foreign countries begin to feel queasy about leaving their gold holdings in the United States, where they might be grabbed at will to punish any country that might act in ways that U.S. diplomacy found offensive. So last year, Germany finally got up the courage to ask that some of its gold be flown back to Germany. U.S. officials pretended to feel shocked at the insult that it might do to a civilized Christian country what it had done to Iran, and Germany agreed to slow down the transfer. ..."
"... England refused to honor the official request, following the direction of Bolton and U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo. As Bloomberg reported: "The U.S. officials are trying to steer Venezuela's overseas assets to [Chicago Boy Juan] Guaido to help bolster his chances of effectively taking control of the government. The $1.2 billion of gold is a big chunk of the $8 billion in foreign reserves held by the Venezuelan central bank." ..."
"... But now, cyber warfare has become a way of pulling out the connections of any economy. And the major cyber connections are financial money-transfer ones, headed by SWIFT, the acronym for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, which is centered in Belgium. ..."
"... On January 31 the dam broke with the announcement that Europe had created its own bypass payments system for use with Iran and other countries targeted by U.S. diplomats. Germany, France and even the U.S. poodle Britain joined to create INSTEX -- Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges. The promise is that this will be used only for "humanitarian" aid to save Iran from a U.S.-sponsored Venezuela-type devastation. But in view of increasingly passionate U.S. opposition to the Nord Stream pipeline to carry Russian gas, this alternative bank clearing system will be ready and able to become operative if the United States tries to direct a sanctions attack on Europe ..."
"... The U.S. overplaying its position is leading to the Mackinder-Kissinger-Brzezinski Eurasian nightmare that I mentioned above. In addition to driving Russia and China together, U.S. diplomacy is adding Europe to the heartland, independent of U.S. ability to bully into the state of dependency toward which American diplomacy has aimed to achieve since 1945. ..."
"... By following U.S. advice, countries have left themselves open to food blackmail – sanctions against providing them with grain and other food, in case they step out of line with U.S. diplomatic demands. ..."
"... It is worthwhile to note that our global imposition of the mythical "efficiencies" of forcing Latin American countries to become plantations for export crops like coffee and bananas rather than growing their own wheat and corn has failed catastrophically to deliver better lives, especially for those living in Central America. The "spread" between the export crops and cheaper food imports from the U.S. that was supposed to materialize for countries following our playbook failed miserably – witness the caravans and refugees across Mexico. Of course, our backing of the most brutal military dictators and crime lords has not helped either. ..."
"... But a few years ago Ukraine defaulted on $3 billion owed to Russia. The IMF said, in effect, that Ukraine and other countries did not have to pay Russia or any other country deemed to be acting too independently of the United States. The IMF has been extending credit to the bottomless it of Ukrainian corruption to encourage its anti-Russian policy rather than standing up for the principle that inter-government debts must be paid. ..."
"... It is as if the IMF now operates out of a small room in the basement of the Pentagon in Washington. ..."
"... Anticipating just such a double-cross, President Chavez acted already in 2011 to repatriate 160 tons of gold to Caracas from the United States and Europe. ..."
"... It would be good for Americans, but the wrong kind of Americans. For the Americans that would populate the Global Executive Suite, a strong US$ means that the stipends they would pay would be worth more to the lackeys, and command more influence. ..."
"... Dumping the industrial base really ruined things. America is now in a position where it can shout orders, and drop bombs, but doesn't have the capacity to do anything helpful. They have to give up being what Toynbee called a creative minority, and settle for being a dominant minority. ..."
"... Having watched the 2016 election closely from afar, I was left with the impression that many of the swing voters who cast their vote for Trump did so under the assumption that he would act as a catalyst for systemic change. ..."
"... Now we know. He has ripped the already transparent mask of altruism off what is referred to as the U.S.-led liberal international order and revealed its true nature for all to see, and has managed to do it in spite of the liberal international establishment desperately trying to hold it in place in the hope of effecting a seamless post-Trump return to what they refer to as "norms". Interesting times. ..."
"... Exactly. He hasn't exactly lived up to advanced billing so far in all respects, but I suspect there's great deal of skulduggery going on behind the scenes that has prevented that. ..."
"... To paraphrase the infamous Rummy, you don't go to war with the change agent and policies you wished you had, you go to war with the ones you have. That might be the best thing we can say about Trump after the historic dust of his administration finally settles. ..."
"... Yet we find out that Venezuela didn't managed to do what they wanted to do, the Europeans, the Turks, etc bent over yet again. Nothing to see here, actually. ..."
"... So what I'm saying is he didn't make his point. I wish it were true. But a bit of grumbling and (a tiny amount of) foot-dragging by some pygmy leaders (Merkel) does not signal a global change. ..."
"... Currency regime change can take decades, and small percentage differences are enormous because of the flows involved. USD as reserve for 61% of global sovereigns versus 64% 15 years ago is a massive move. ..."
"... I discovered his Super Imperialism while looking for an explanation for the pending 2003 US invasion of Iraq. If you haven't read it yet, move it to the top of your queue if you want to have any idea of how the world really works. ..."
"... If it isn't clear to the rest of the world by now, it never will be. The US is incapable of changing on its own a corrupt status quo dominated by a coalition of its military industrial complex, Wall Street bankers and fossil fuels industries. As long as the world continues to chase the debt created on the keyboards of Wall Street banks and 'deficits don't matter' Washington neocons – as long as the world's 1% think they are getting 'richer' by adding more "debts that can't be repaid (and) won't be" to their portfolios, the global economy can never be put on a sustainable footing. ..."
"... In other words, after 2 World Wars that produced the current world order, it is still in a state of insanity with the same pretensions to superiority by the same people, to get number 3. ..."
"... Few among Washington's foreign policy elite seem to fully grasp the complex system that made U.S. global power what it now is, particularly its all-important geopolitical foundations. As Trump travels the globe, tweeting and trashing away, he's inadvertently showing us the essential structure of that power, the same way a devastating wildfire leaves the steel beams of a ruined building standing starkly above the smoking rubble." ..."
"... He's draining the swamp in an unpredicted way, a swamp that's founded on the money interest. I don't care what NYT and WaPo have to say, they are not reporting events but promoting agendas. ..."
"... The financial elites are only concerned about shaping society as they see fit, side of self serving is just a historical foot note, Trumps past indicates a strong preference for even more of the same through authoritarian memes or have some missed the OT WH reference to dawg both choosing and then compelling him to run. ..."
"... Highly doubt Trump is a "witting agent", most likely is that he is just as ignorant as he almost daily shows on twitter. On US role in global affairs he says the same today as he did as a media celebrity in the late 80s. Simplistic household "logics" on macroeconomics. If US have trade deficit it loses. Countries with surplus are the winners. ..."
"... Anyhow frightening, the US hegemony have its severe dark sides. But there is absolutely nothing better on the horizon, a crash will throw the world in turmoil for decades or even a century. A lot of bad forces will see their chance to elevate their influence. There will be fierce competition to fill the gap. ..."
"... On could the insane economic model of EU/Germany being on top of global affairs, a horribly frightening thought. Misery and austerity for all globally, a permanent recession. Probably not much better with the Chinese on top. I'll take the USD hegemony any day compared to that prospect. ..."
"... Former US ambassador, Chas Freeman, gets to the nub of the problem. "The US preference for governance by elected and appointed officials, uncontaminated by experience in statecraft and diplomacy, or knowledge of geography, history and foreign affairs" https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_882041135&feature=iv&src_vid=Ge1ozuXN7iI&v=gkf2MQdqz-o ..."
"... Michael Hudson, in Super Imperialism, went into how the US could just create the money to run a large trade deficit with the rest of the world. It would get all these imports effectively for nothing, the US's exorbitant privilege. I tied this in with this graph from MMT. ..."
"... The Government was running a surplus as the economy blew up in the early 1990s. It's the positive and negative, zero sum, nature of the monetary system. A big trade deficit needs a big Government deficit to cover it. A big trade deficit, with a balanced budget, drives the private sector into debt and blows up the economy. ..."
The end of America's unchallenged global economic dominance has arrived sooner than expected, thanks to the very same Neocons
who gave the world the Iraq, Syria and the dirty wars in Latin America. Just as the Vietnam War drove the United States off gold
by 1971, its sponsorship and funding of violent regime change wars against Venezuela and Syria – and threatening other countries
with sanctions if they do not join this crusade – is now driving European and other nations to create their alternative financial
institutions.
This break has been building for quite some time, and was bound to occur. But who would have thought that Donald Trump would become
the catalytic agent? No left-wing party, no socialist, anarchist or foreign nationalist leader anywhere in the world could have achieved
what he is doing to break up the American Empire. The Deep State is reacting with shock at how this right-wing real estate grifter
has been able to drive other countries to defend themselves by dismantling the U.S.-centered world order. To rub it in, he is using
Bush and Reagan-era Neocon arsonists, John Bolton and now Elliott Abrams, to fan the flames in Venezuela. It is almost like a black
political comedy. The world of international diplomacy is being turned inside-out. A world where there is no longer even a pretense
that we might adhere to international norms, let alone laws or treaties.
The Neocons who Trump has appointed are accomplishing what seemed unthinkable not long ago: Driving China and Russia together
– the great nightmare of Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski. They also are driving Germany and other European countries into
the Eurasian orbit, the "Heartland" nightmare of Halford Mackinder a century ago.
The root cause is clear: After the crescendo of pretenses and deceptions over Iraq, Libya and Syria, along with our absolution
of the lawless regime of Saudi Arabia, foreign political leaders are coming to recognize what world-wide public opinion polls reported
even before the Iraq/Iran-Contra boys turned their attention to the world's largest oil reserves in Venezuela: The United States
is now the greatest threat to peace on the planet.
Calling the U.S. coup being sponsored in Venezuela a defense of democracy reveals the Doublethink underlying U.S. foreign
policy. It defines "democracy" to mean supporting U.S. foreign policy, pursuing neoliberal privatization of public infrastructure,
dismantling government regulation and following the direction of U.S.-dominated global institutions, from the IMF and World Bank
to NATO. For decades, the resulting foreign wars, domestic austerity programs and military interventions have brought more violence,
not democracy.
In the Devil's Dictionary that U.S. diplomats are taught to use as their "Elements of Style" guidelines for Doublethink, a "democratic"
country is one that follows U.S. leadership and opens its economy to U.S. investment, and IMF- and World Bank-sponsored privatization.
The Ukraine is deemed democratic, along with Saudi Arabia, Israel and other countries that act as U.S. financial and military protectorates
and are willing to treat America's enemies are theirs too.
A point had to come where this policy collided with the self-interest of other nations, finally breaking through the public
relations rhetoric of empire. Other countries are proceeding to de-dollarize and replace what U.S. diplomacy calls "internationalism"
(meaning U.S. nationalism imposed on the rest of the world) with their own national self-interest.
This trajectory could be seen 50 years ago (I described it in Super Imperialism [1972] and Global Fracture [1978].) It had to
happen. But nobody thought that the end would come in quite the way that is happening. History has turned into comedy, or at least
irony as its dialectical path unfolds.
For the past half-century, U.S. strategists, the State Department and National Endowment for Democracy (NED) worried that
opposition to U.S. financial imperialism would come from left-wing parties. It therefore spent enormous resources manipulating parties
that called themselves socialist (Tony Blair's British Labour Party, France's Socialist Party, Germany's Social Democrats, etc.)
to adopt neoliberal policies that were the diametric opposite to what social democracy meant a century ago. But U.S. political planners
and Great Wurlitzer organists neglected the right wing, imagining that it would instinctively support U.S. thuggishness.
The reality is that right-wing parties want to get elected, and a populist nationalism is today's road to election victory in
Europe and other countries just as it was for Donald Trump in 2016.
Trump's agenda may really be to break up the American Empire, using the old Uncle Sucker isolationist rhetoric of half a century
ago. He certainly is going for the Empire's most vital organs. But it he a witting anti-American agent? He might as well be – but
it would be a false mental leap to use "quo bono" to assume that he is a witting agent.
After all, if no U.S. contractor, supplier, labor union or bank will deal with him, would Vladimir Putin, China or Iran be any
more naïve? Perhaps the problem had to erupt as a result of the inner dynamics of U.S.-sponsored globalism becoming impossible
to impose when the result is financial austerity, waves of population flight from U.S.-sponsored wars, and most of all, U.S. refusal
to adhere to the rules and international laws that it itself sponsored seventy years ago in the wake of World War II.
Dismantling International Law and Its Courts
Any international system of control requires the rule of law. It may be a morally lawless exercise of ruthless power imposing
predatory exploitation, but it is still The Law. And it needs courts to apply it (backed by police power to enforce it and punish
violators).
Here's the first legal contradiction in U.S. global diplomacy: The United States always has resisted letting any other country
have any voice in U.S. domestic policies, law-making or diplomacy. That is what makes America "the exceptional nation." But for seventy
years its diplomats have pretended that its superior judgment promoted a peaceful world (as the Roman Empire claimed to be), which
let other countries share in prosperity and rising living standards.
At the United Nations, U.S. diplomats insisted on veto power. At the World Bank and IMF they also made sure that their equity
share was large enough to give them veto power over any loan or other policy. Without such power, the United States would not join
any international organization. Yet at the same time, it depicted its nationalism as protecting globalization and internationalism.
It was all a euphemism for what really was unilateral U.S. decision-making.
Inevitably, U.S. nationalism had to break up the mirage of One World internationalism, and with it any thought of an international
court. Without veto power over the judges, the U.S. never accepted the authority of any court, in particular the United Nations'
International Court in The Hague. Recently that court undertook an investigation into U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan, from its torture
policies to bombing of civilian targets such as hospitals, weddings and infrastructure. "That investigation ultimately found 'a reasonable
basis to believe that war crimes and crimes against humanity."
[1]
Donald Trump's National Security Adviser John Bolton erupted in fury, warning in September that: "The United States will use any
means necessary to protect our citizens and those of our allies from unjust prosecution by this illegitimate court," adding that
the UN International Court must not be so bold as to investigate "Israel or other U.S. allies."
That prompted a senior judge, Christoph Flügge from Germany, to resign in protest. Indeed, Bolton told the court to keep out of
any affairs involving the United States, promising to ban the Court's "judges and prosecutors from entering the United States." As
Bolton spelled out the U.S. threat: "We will sanction their funds in the U.S. financial system, and we will prosecute them in the
U.S. criminal system. We will not cooperate with the ICC. We will provide no assistance to the ICC. We will not join the ICC. We
will let the ICC die on its own. After all, for all intents and purposes, the ICC is already dead to us."
What this meant, the German judge spelled out was that: "If these judges ever interfere in the domestic concerns of the U.S. or
investigate an American citizen, [Bolton] said the American government would do all it could to ensure that these judges would no
longer be allowed to travel to the United States – and that they would perhaps even be criminally prosecuted."
The original inspiration of the Court – to use the Nuremburg laws that were applied against German Nazis to bring similar prosecution
against any country or officials found guilty of committing war crimes – had already fallen into disuse with the failure to indict
the authors of the Chilean coup, Iran-Contra or the U.S. invasion of Iraq for war crimes.
Dismantling Dollar Hegemony from the IMF to SWIFT
Of all areas of global power politics today, international finance and foreign investment have become the key flashpoint. International
monetary reserves were supposed to be the most sacrosanct, and international debt enforcement closely associated.
Central banks have long held their gold and other monetary reserves in the United States and London. Back in 1945 this seemed
reasonable, because the New York Federal Reserve Bank (in whose basement foreign central bank gold was kept) was militarily safe,
and because the London Gold Pool was the vehicle by which the U.S. Treasury kept the dollar "as good as gold" at $35 an ounce. Foreign
reserves over and above gold were kept in the form of U.S. Treasury securities, to be bought and sold on the New York and London
foreign-exchange markets to stabilize exchange rates. Most foreign loans to governments were denominated in U.S. dollars, so Wall
Street banks were normally name as paying agents.
That was the case with Iran under the Shah, whom the United States had installed after sponsoring the 1953 coup against Mohammed
Mosaddegh when he sought to nationalize Anglo-Iranian Oil (now British Petroleum) or at least tax it. After the Shah was overthrown,
the Khomeini regime asked its paying agent, the Chase Manhattan bank, to use its deposits to pay its bondholders. At the direction
of the U.S. Government Chase refused to do so. U.S. courts then declared Iran to be in default, and froze all its assets in the United
States and anywhere else they were able.
This showed that international finance was an arm of the U.S. State Department and Pentagon. But that was a generation ago,
and only recently did foreign countries begin to feel queasy about leaving their gold holdings in the United States, where they might
be grabbed at will to punish any country that might act in ways that U.S. diplomacy found offensive. So last year, Germany finally
got up the courage to ask that some of its gold be flown back to Germany. U.S. officials pretended to feel shocked at the insult
that it might do to a civilized Christian country what it had done to Iran, and Germany agreed to slow down the transfer.
But then came Venezuela. Desperate to spend its gold reserves to provide imports for its economy devastated by U.S. sanctions
– a crisis that U.S. diplomats blame on "socialism," not on U.S. political attempts to "make the economy scream" (as Nixon officials
said of Chile under Salvador Allende) – Venezuela directed the Bank of England to transfer some of its $11 billion in gold held in
its vaults and those of other central banks in December 2018. This was just like a bank depositor would expect a bank to pay a check
that the depositor had written.
England refused to honor the official request, following the direction of Bolton and U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo.
As Bloomberg reported: "The U.S. officials are trying to steer Venezuela's overseas assets to [Chicago Boy Juan] Guaido to help bolster
his chances of effectively taking control of the government. The $1.2 billion of gold is a big chunk of the $8 billion in foreign
reserves held by the Venezuelan central bank."
Turkey seemed to be a likely destination, prompting Bolton and Pompeo to warn it to desist from helping Venezuela, threatening
sanctions against it or any other country helping Venezuela cope with its economic crisis. As for the Bank of England and other European
countries, the Bloomberg report concluded: "Central bank officials in Caracas have been ordered to no longer try contacting the Bank
of England. These central bankers have been told that Bank of England staffers will not respond to them."
This led to rumors that Venezuela was selling 20 tons of gold via a Russian Boeing 777 – some $840 million. The money probably
would have ended up paying Russian and Chinese bondholders as well as buying food to relieve the local famine.
[4] Russia denied this report, but Reuters has confirmed is that Venezuela has sold 3 tons of a planned 29 tones of gold to the
United Arab Emirates, with another 15 tones are to be shipped on Friday, February 1.
[5] The U.S. Senate's Batista-Cuban hardliner Rubio accused this of being "theft," as if feeding the people to alleviate the
U.S.-sponsored crisis was a crime against U.S. diplomatic leverage.
If there is any country that U.S. diplomats hate more than a recalcitrant Latin American country, it is Iran. President Trump's
breaking of the 2015 nuclear agreements negotiated by European and Obama Administration diplomats has escalated to the point of threatening
Germany and other European countries with punitive sanctions if they do not also break the agreements they have signed. Coming on
top of U.S. opposition to German and other European importing of Russian gas, the U.S. threat finally prompted Europe to find a way
to defend itself.
Imperial threats are no longer military. No country (including Russia or China) can mount a military invasion of another major
country. Since the Vietnam Era, the only kind of war a democratically elected country can wage is atomic, or at least heavy bombing
such as the United States has inflicted on Iraq, Libya and Syria. But now, cyber warfare has become a way of pulling out the
connections of any economy. And the major cyber connections are financial money-transfer ones, headed by SWIFT, the acronym for the
Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, which is centered in Belgium.
Russia and China have already moved to create a shadow bank-transfer system in case the United States unplugs them from SWIFT.
But now, European countries have come to realize that threats by Bolton and Pompeo may lead to heavy fines and asset grabs if they
seek to continue trading with Iran as called for in the treaties they have negotiated.
On January 31 the dam broke with the announcement that Europe had created its own bypass payments system for use with Iran
and other countries targeted by U.S. diplomats. Germany, France and even the U.S. poodle Britain joined to create INSTEX -- Instrument
in Support of Trade Exchanges. The promise is that this will be used only for "humanitarian" aid to save Iran from a U.S.-sponsored
Venezuela-type devastation. But in view of increasingly passionate U.S. opposition to the Nord Stream pipeline to carry Russian gas,
this alternative bank clearing system will be ready and able to become operative if the United States tries to direct a sanctions
attack on Europe.
I have just returned from Germany and seen a remarkable split between that nation's industrialists and their political leadership.
For years, major companies have seen Russia as a natural market, a complementary economy needing to modernize its manufacturing and
able to supply Europe with natural gas and other raw materials. America's New Cold War stance is trying to block this commercial
complementarity. Warning Europe against "dependence" on low-price Russian gas, it has offered to sell high-priced LNG from the United
States (via port facilities that do not yet exist in anywhere near the volume required). President Trump also is insisting that NATO
members spend a full 2 percent of their GDP on arms – preferably bought from the United States, not from German or French merchants
of death.
The U.S. overplaying its position is leading to the Mackinder-Kissinger-Brzezinski Eurasian nightmare that I mentioned above.
In addition to driving Russia and China together, U.S. diplomacy is adding Europe to the heartland, independent of U.S. ability to
bully into the state of dependency toward which American diplomacy has aimed to achieve since 1945.
The World Bank, for instance, traditionally has been headed by a U.S. Secretary of Defense. Its steady policy since its inception
is to provide loans for countries to devote their land to export crops instead of giving priority to feeding themselves. That is
why its loans are only in foreign currency, not in the domestic currency needed to provide price supports and agricultural extension
services such as have made U.S. agriculture so productive. By following U.S. advice, countries have left themselves open to food
blackmail – sanctions against providing them with grain and other food, in case they step out of line with U.S. diplomatic demands.
It is worthwhile to note that our global imposition of the mythical "efficiencies" of forcing Latin American countries to
become plantations for export crops like coffee and bananas rather than growing their own wheat and corn has failed catastrophically
to deliver better lives, especially for those living in Central America. The "spread" between the export crops and cheaper food imports
from the U.S. that was supposed to materialize for countries following our playbook failed miserably – witness the caravans and refugees
across Mexico. Of course, our backing of the most brutal military dictators and crime lords has not helped either.
Likewise, the IMF has been forced to admit that its basic guidelines were fictitious from the beginning. A central core has been
to enforce payment of official inter-government debt by withholding IMF credit from countries under default. This rule was instituted
at a time when most official inter-government debt was owed to the United States. But a few years ago Ukraine defaulted on $3
billion owed to Russia. The IMF said, in effect, that Ukraine and other countries did not have to pay Russia or any other country
deemed to be acting too independently of the United States. The IMF has been extending credit to the bottomless it of Ukrainian corruption
to encourage its anti-Russian policy rather than standing up for the principle that inter-government debts must be paid.
It is as if the IMF now operates out of a small room in the basement of the Pentagon in Washington. Europe has taken
notice that its own international monetary trade and financial linkages are in danger of attracting U.S. anger. This became clear
last autumn at the funeral for George H. W. Bush, when the EU's diplomat found himself downgraded to the end of the list to be called
to his seat. He was told that the U.S. no longer considers the EU an entity in good standing. In December, "Mike Pompeo gave a speech
on Europe in Brussels -- his first, and eagerly awaited -- in which he extolled the virtues of nationalism, criticised multilateralism
and the EU, and said that "international bodies" which constrain national sovereignty "must be reformed or eliminated."
[5]
Most of the above events have made the news in just one day, January 31, 2019. The conjunction of U.S. moves on so many fronts,
against Venezuela, Iran and Europe (not to mention China and the trade threats and moves against Huawei also erupting today) looks
like this will be a year of global fracture.
It is not all President Trump's doing, of course. We see the Democratic Party showing the same colors. Instead of applauding democracy
when foreign countries do not elect a leader approved by U.S. diplomats (whether it is Allende or Maduro), they've let the mask fall
and shown themselves to be the leading New Cold War imperialists. It's now out in the open. They would make Venezuela the new Pinochet-era
Chile. Trump is not alone in supporting Saudi Arabia and its Wahabi terrorists acting, as Lyndon Johnson put it, "Bastards, but they're
our bastards."
Where is the left in all this? That is the question with which I opened this article. How remarkable it is that it is only right-wing
parties, Alternative for Deutschland (AFD), or Marine le Pen's French nationalists and those of other countries that are opposing
NATO militarization and seeking to revive trade and economic links with the rest of Eurasia.
The end of our monetary imperialism, about which I first wrote in 1972 in Super Imperialism, stuns even an informed observer like
me. It took a colossal level of arrogance, short-sightedness and lawlessness to hasten its decline -- something that only crazed
Neocons like John Bolton, Elliot Abrams and Mike Pompeo could deliver for Donald Trump.
[2] Patricia Laya, Ethan Bronner and Tim Ross,
"Maduro Stymied in Bid to Pull $1.2 Billion of Gold From U.K.," Bloomberg, January 25, 2019. Anticipating just such a double-cross,
President Chavez acted already in 2011 to repatriate 160 tons of gold to Caracas from the United States and Europe.
Well, if the StormTrumpers can tear down all the levers and institutions of international US dollar strength, perhaps they
can also tear down all the institutions of Corporate Globalonial Forced Free Trade. That itself may BE our escape . . . if there
are enough millions of Americans who have turned their regionalocal zones of habitation into economically and politically armor-plated
Transition Towns, Power-Down Zones, etc. People and places like that may be able to crawl up out of the rubble and grow and defend
little zones of semi-subsistence survival-economics.
If enough millions of Americans have created enough such zones, they might be able to link up with eachother to offer hope
of a movement to make America in general a semi-autarchik, semi-secluded and isolated National Survival Economy . . . . much smaller
than today, perhaps likelier to survive the various coming ecosystemic crash-cramdowns, and no longer interested in leading or
dominating a world that we would no longer have the power to lead or dominate.
We could put an end to American Exceptionalism. We could lay this burden down. We could become American Okayness Ordinarians.
Make America an okay place for ordinary Americans to live in.
If Populists, I assume that's what you mean by "Storm Troopers", offer me M4A and revitalized local economies, and deliver
them, they have my support and more power to them.
That's why Trump was elected, his promises, not yet delivered, were closer to that then the Democrats' promises. If the Democrats
promised those things and delivered, then they would have my support.
If the Democrats run a candidate, who has a no track record of delivering such things, we stay home on election day. Trump
can have it, because it won't be any worse.
I don't give a damn about "social issues." Economics, health care and avoiding WWIII are what motivates my votes, and I think
more and more people are going to vote the same way.
Good point about Populist versus StormTrumper. ( And by the way, I said StormTRUMper, not StormTROOper). I wasn't thinking
of the Populists. I was thinking of the neo-etc. vandals and arsonists who want us to invade Venezuela, leave the JCPOA with Iran,
etc. Those are the people who will finally drive the other-country governments into creating their own parallel payment systems,
etc.
And the midpoint of those efforts will leave wreckage and rubble for us to crawl up out of. But we will have a chance to crawl
up out of it.
My reason for voting for Trump was mainly to stop the Evil Clinton from getting elected and to reduce the chance of near immediate
thermonuclear war with Russia and to save the Assad regime in Syria from Clintonian overthrow and replacement with an Islamic
Emirate of Jihadistan.
Much of what will be attempted " in Trump's name" will be de-regulationism of all kinds delivered by the sorts of basic Republicans
selected for the various agencies and departments by Pence and Moore and the Koch Brothers. I doubt the Populist Voters wanted
the Koch-Pence agenda. But that was a risky tradeoff in return for keeping Clinton out of office.
The only Dems who would seek what you want are Sanders or maybe Gabbard or just barely Warren. The others would all be Clinton
or Obama all over again.
I couldn't really find any details about the new INSTEX system – have you got any good links to brush up on? I know they made
an announcement yesterday but how long until the new payment system is operational?
arguably wouldn't it be better if for USD hegemony to be dismantled? A strong USD hurts US exports, subsidizes American consumption
(by making commodities cheaper in relative terms), makes international trade (aka a 8,000-mile+ supply chain) easier.
For the sake of the environment, you want less of all three. Though obviously I don't like the idea of expensive gasoline,
natural gas or tube socks either.
It would be good for Americans, but the wrong kind of Americans. For the Americans that would populate the Global Executive
Suite, a strong US$ means that the stipends they would pay would be worth more to the lackeys, and command more influence.
Dumping the industrial base really ruined things. America is now in a position where it can shout orders, and drop bombs,
but doesn't have the capacity to do anything helpful. They have to give up being what Toynbee called a creative minority, and
settle for being a dominant minority.
Having watched the 2016 election closely from afar, I was left with the impression that many of the swing voters who cast
their vote for Trump did so under the assumption that he would act as a catalyst for systemic change.
What this change would consist of, and how it would manifest, remained an open question. Would he pursue rapprochement with
Russia and pull troops out of the Middle East as he claimed to want to do during his 2016 campaign, would he doggedly pursue corruption
charges against Clinton and attempt to reform the FBI and CIA, or would he do both, neither, or something else entirely?
Now we know. He has ripped the already transparent mask of altruism off what is referred to as the U.S.-led liberal international
order and revealed its true nature for all to see, and has managed to do it in spite of the liberal international establishment
desperately trying to hold it in place in the hope of effecting a seamless post-Trump return to what they refer to as "norms".
Interesting times.
Exactly. He hasn't exactly lived up to advanced billing so far in all respects, but I suspect there's great deal of skulduggery
going on behind the scenes that has prevented that. Whether or not he ever had or has a coherent plan for the havoc he has
wrought, he has certainly been the agent for change many of us hoped he would be, in stark contrast to the criminal duopoly parties
who continue to oppose him, where the daily no news is always bad news all the same. To paraphrase the infamous Rummy, you
don't go to war with the change agent and policies you wished you had, you go to war with the ones you have. That might be the
best thing we can say about Trump after the historic dust of his administration finally settles.
Look on some bright sides. Here is just one bright side to look on. President Trump has delayed and denied the Clinton Plan
to topple Assad just long enough that Russia has been able to help Assad preserve legitimate government in most of Syria and defeat
the Clinton's-choice jihadis.
That is a positive good. Unless you are pro-jihadi.
Clinton wasn't going to "benefit the greater good" either, and a very strong argument, based on her past behavior, can be made
that she represented the greater threat. Given that the choice was between her and Trump, I think voters made the right decision.
Hudson's done us a service in pulling these threads together. I'd missed the threats against the ICC judges. One question:
is it possible for INSTEX-like arrangements to function secretly? What is to be gained by announcing them publicly and drawing
the expected attacks? Does that help sharpen conflicts, and to what end?
Maybe they're done in secret already – who knows? The point of doing it publicly is to make a foreign-policy impact, in this
case withdrawing power from the US. It's a Declaration of Independence.
It certainly seems as though the 90 percent (plus) are an afterthought in this journey to who knows where? Like George C.Scott
said while playing Patton, "The whole world at economic war and I'm not part of it. God will not let this happen." Looks like
we're on the Brexit track (without the vote). The elite argue with themselves and we just sit and watch. It appears to me that
the elite just do not have the ability to contemplate things beyond their own narrow self interest. We are all deplorables now.
The end of America's unchallenged global economic dominance has arrived sooner than expected
Is not supported by this (or really the rest of the article). The past tense here, for example, is unwarranted:
At the United Nations, U.S. diplomats insisted on veto power. At the World Bank and IMF they also made sure that their
equity share was large enough to give them veto power over any loan or other policy.
And this
So last year, Germany finally got up the courage to ask that some of its gold be flown back to Germany. Germany agreed
to slow down the transfer.
Doesn't show Germany as breaking free at all, and worse it is followed by the pregnant
But then came Venezuela.
Yet we find out that Venezuela didn't managed to do what they wanted to do, the Europeans, the Turks, etc bent over yet
again. Nothing to see here, actually.
So what I'm saying is he didn't make his point. I wish it were true. But a bit of grumbling and (a tiny amount of) foot-dragging
by some pygmy leaders (Merkel) does not signal a global change.
"So what I'm saying is he didn't make his point. I wish it were true. But a bit of grumbling and (a tiny amount of) foot-dragging
by some pygmy leaders (Merkel) does not signal a global change."
I'm surprised more people aren't recognizing this. I read the article waiting in vain for some evidence of "the end of our
monetary imperialism" besides some 'grumbling and foot dragging' as you aptly put it. There was some glimmer of a buried lede
with INTEX, created to get around U.S. sanctions against Iran ─ hardly a 'dam-breaking'. Washington is on record as being annoyed.
Currency regime change can take decades, and small percentage differences are enormous because of the flows involved. USD
as reserve for 61% of global sovereigns versus 64% 15 years ago is a massive move. World bond market flows are 10X the size
of world stock market flows even though the price of the Dow and Facebook shares etc get all of the headlines.
And foreign exchange flows are 10-50X the flows of bond markets, they're currently on the order of $5 *trillion* per day. And
since forex is almost completely unregulated it's quite difficult to get the data and spot reserve currency trends. Oh, and buy
gold. It's the only currency that requires no counterparty and is no one's debt obligation.
That's not what Hudson claims in his swaggering final sentence:
"The end of our monetary imperialism, about which I first wrote in 1972 in Super Imperialism, stuns even an informed
observer like me."
Which is risible as not only did he fail to show anything of the kind, his opening sentence stated a completely different reality:
"The end of America's unchallenged global economic dominance has arrived sooner than expected" So if we hold him to his first
declaration, his evidence is feeble, as I mentioned. As a scholar, his hyperbole is untrustworthy.
No, gold is pretty enough lying on the bosom of a lady-friend but that's about its only usefulness in the real world.
Always bemusing that gold bugs never talk about gold being in a bubble . yet when it goes south of its purchase price speak
in tongues about ev'bal forces.
thanks Mr. Hudson. One has to wonder what has happened when the government (for decades) has been shown to be morally and otherwise
corrupt and self serving. It doesn't seem to bother anyone but the people, and precious few of them. Was it our financial and
legal bankruptcy that sent us over the cliff?
Indeed! It is to say the least encouraging to see Dr. Hudson return so forcefully to the theme of 'monetary imperialism'.
I discovered his Super Imperialism while looking for an explanation for the pending 2003 US invasion of Iraq. If you
haven't read it yet, move it to the top of your queue if you want to have any idea of how the world really works. You can
find any number of articles on his web site that return periodically to the theme of monetary imperialism. I remember one in particular
that described how the rest of the world was brought on board to help pay for its good old-fashioned military imperialism.
If it isn't clear to the rest of the world by now, it never will be. The US is incapable of changing on its own a corrupt
status quo dominated by a coalition of its military industrial complex, Wall Street bankers and fossil fuels industries. As long
as the world continues to chase the debt created on the keyboards of Wall Street banks and 'deficits don't matter' Washington
neocons – as long as the world's 1% think they are getting 'richer' by adding more "debts that can't be repaid (and) won't be"
to their portfolios, the global economy can never be put on a sustainable footing.
Until the US returns to the path of genuine wealth creation, it is past time for the rest of the world to go its own way with
its banking and financial institutions.
In other words, after 2 World Wars that produced the current world order, it is still in a state of insanity with the same
pretensions to superiority by the same people, to get number 3.
UK withholding Gold may start another Brexit? IE: funds/gold held by BOE for other countries in Africa, Asian, South America,
and the "stans" with start to depart, slowly at first, perhaps for Switzerland?
Where is the left in all this? Pretty much the same place as Michael Hudson, I'd say. Where is the US Democratic Party in all
this? Quite a different question, and quite a different answer. So far as I can see, the Democrats for years have bombed, invaded
and plundered other countries 'for their own good'. Republicans do it 'for the good of America', by which the ignoramuses mean
the USA. If you're on the receiving end, it doesn't make much difference.
Agreed! South America intervention and regime change, Syria ( Trump is pulling out), Iraq, Middle East meddling, all predate
Trump. Bush, Clinton and Obama have nothing to do with any of this.
" So last year, Germany finally got up the courage to ask that some of its gold be flown back to Germany. "
What proof is there that the gold is still there? Chances are it's notional. All Germany, Venezuela, or the others have is
an IOU – and gold cannot be printed. Incidentally, this whole discussion means that gold is still money and the gold standard
still exists.
What makes you think that the gold in Fort Knox is still there? If I remember right, there was a Potemkin visit back in the
70s to assure everyone that the gold was still there but not since then. Wait, I tell a lie. There was another visit about two
years ago but look who was involved in that visit-
And I should mention that it was in the 90s that between 1.3 and 1.5 million 400 oz tungsten blanks were manufactured in the
US under Clinton. Since then gold-coated tungsten bars have turned up in places like Germany, China, Ethiopia, the UK, etc so
who is to say if those gold bars in Fort Knox are gold all the way through either. More on this at --
http://viewzone2.com/fakegoldx.html
It wasn't last year that Germany brought back its Gold. It has been ongoing since 2013, after some political and popular pressure
build up. They finished the transaction in 2017. According to an article in Handelblatt (but it was widely reported back then)
they brought back pretty much everything they had in Paris (347t), left what they had in London (perhaps they should have done
it in reverse) and took home another 300t from the NY Fed. That still leaves 1236t in NY. But half of their Gold (1710t) is now
in Frankfurt. That is 50% of the Bundesbanks holdings.
They made a point in saying that every bar was checked and weighed and presented some bars in Frankfurt. I guess they didn't
melt them for assaying, but I'd expect them to be smart enough to check the density.
Their reason to keep Gold in NY and London is to quickly buy USD in case of a crisis. That's pretty much a cold war plan, but
that's what they do right now.
Regarding Michal Hudsons piece, I enjoyed reading through this one. He tends to write ridiculously long articles and in the
last few years with less time and motivation at hand I've skipped most of his texts on NC as they just drag on.
When I'm truly fascinated I like well written, long articles but somehow he lost me at some point. But I noticed that some
long original articles in US magazines, probably research for a long time by the journalist, can just drag on for ever as well
I just tune out.
This is making sense. I would guess that tearing up the old system is totally deliberate. It wasn't working so well for us
because we had to practice too much social austerity, which we have tried to impose on the EU as well, just to stabilize "king
dollar" – otherwise spread so thin it was a pending catastrophe.
Now we can get out from under being the reserve currency – the currency that maintains its value by financial manipulation
and military bullying domestic deprivation. To replace this old power trip we are now going to mainline oil. The dollar will become
a true petro dollar because we are going to commandeer every oil resource not already nailed down.
When we partnered with SA in Aramco and the then petro dollar the dollar was only backed by our military. If we start monopolizing
oil, the actual commodity, the dollar will be an apex competitor currency without all the foreign military obligations which will
allow greater competitive advantages.
No? I'm looking at PdVSA, PEMEX and the new "Energy Hub for the Eastern Mediterranean" and other places not yet made public.
It looks like a power play to me, not a hapless goofball president at all.
So sand people with sociological attachment to the OT is a compelling argument based on antiquarian preferences with authoritarian
patriarchal tendencies for their non renewable resource . after I might add it was deemed a strategic concern after WWII .
Considering the broader geopolitical realities I would drain all the gold reserves to zero if it was on offer . here natives
have some shiny beads for allowing us to resource extract we call this a good trade you maximize your utility as I do mine .
Hay its like not having to run C-corp compounds with western 60s – 70s esthetics and letting the locals play serf, blow back
pay back, and now the installed local chiefs can own the risk and refocus the attention away from the real antagonists.
Indeed. Thanks so much for this. Maybe the RICS will get serious now – can no longer include Brazil with Bolsonaro. There needs
to be an alternate system or systems in place, and to see US Imperialism so so blatantly and bluntly by Trump admin –
"US
gives Juan Guaido control over some Venezuelan assets" – should sound sirens on every continent and especially in the developing
world. I too hope there will be fracture to the point of breakage. Countries of the world outside the US/EU/UK/Canada/Australia
confraternity must now unite to provide a permanent framework outside the control of imperial interests. The be clear, this must
not default to alternative forms of imperialism germinating by the likes of China.
" such criticism can't begin to take in the full scope of the damage the Trump White House is inflicting on the system of global
power Washington built and carefully maintained over those 70 years. Indeed, American leaders have been on top of the world for
so long that they no longer remember how they got there.
Few among Washington's foreign policy elite seem to fully grasp the complex system that made U.S. global power what it
now is, particularly its all-important geopolitical foundations. As Trump travels the globe, tweeting and trashing away, he's
inadvertently showing us the essential structure of that power, the same way a devastating wildfire leaves the steel beams of
a ruined building standing starkly above the smoking rubble."
I read something like this and I am like, some of these statements need to be qualified. Like: "Driving China and Russia together".
Like where's the proof? Is Xi playing telephone games more often now with Putin? I look at those two and all I see are two egocentric
people who might sometimes say the right things but in general do not like the share the spotlight. Let's say they get together
to face America and for some reason the later gets "defeated", it's not as if they'll kumbaya together into the night.
This website often points out the difficulties in implementing new banking IT initiatives. Ok, so Europe has a new "payment
system". Has it been tested thoroughly? I would expect a couple of weeks or even months of chaos if it's not been tested, and
if it's thorough that probably just means that it's in use right i.e. all the kinks have been worked out. In that case the transition
is already happening anyway. But then the next crisis arrives and then everyone would need their dollar swap lines again which
probably needs to cleared through SWIFT or something.
Anyway, does this all mean that one day we'll wake up and a slice of bacon is 50 bucks as opposed to the usual 1 dollar?
Driving Russia and China together is correct. I recall them signing a variety of economic and military agreement a few years
ago. It was covered in the media. You should at least google an issue before making silly comments. You might start with the report
of Russia and China signing 30 cooperation agreements three years ago. See
https://www.rbth.com/international/2016/06/27/russia-china-sign-30-cooperation-agreements_606505
. There are lots and lots of others.
He's draining the swamp in an unpredicted way, a swamp that's founded on the money interest. I don't care what NYT and
WaPo have to say, they are not reporting events but promoting agendas.
The financial elites are only concerned about shaping society as they see fit, side of self serving is just a historical
foot note, Trumps past indicates a strong preference for even more of the same through authoritarian memes or have some missed
the OT WH reference to dawg both choosing and then compelling him to run.
Whilst the far right factions fight over the rudder the only new game in town is AOC, Sanders, Warren, et al which Trumps supporters
hate with Ideological purity.
Highly doubt Trump is a "witting agent", most likely is that he is just as ignorant as he almost daily shows on twitter. On
US role in global affairs he says the same today as he did as a media celebrity in the late 80s. Simplistic household "logics"
on macroeconomics. If US have trade deficit it loses. Countries with surplus are the winners.
On a household level it fits, but there no "loser" household that in infinity can print money that the "winners" can accumulate
in exchange for their resources and fruits of labor.
One wonder what are Trumps idea of US being a winner in trade (surplus)? I.e. sending away their resources and fruits of labor
overseas in exchange for what? A pile of USD? That US in the first place created out of thin air. Or Chinese Yuan, Euros, Turkish
liras? Also fiat-money. Or does he think US trade surplus should be paid in gold?
When the US political and economic hegemony will unravel it will come "unexpected". Trump for sure are undermining it with
his megalomaniac ignorance. But not sure it's imminent.
Anyhow frightening, the US hegemony have its severe dark sides. But there is absolutely nothing better on the horizon, a crash
will throw the world in turmoil for decades or even a century. A lot of bad forces will see their chance to elevate their influence.
There will be fierce competition to fill the gap.
On could the insane economic model of EU/Germany being on top of global affairs, a horribly frightening thought. Misery and
austerity for all globally, a permanent recession. Probably not much better with the Chinese on top.
I'll take the USD hegemony any day compared to that prospect.
Michael Hudson, in Super Imperialism, went into how the US could just create the money to run a large trade deficit with the
rest of the world. It would get all these imports effectively for nothing, the US's exorbitant privilege. I tied this in with this graph from MMT.
The trade deficit required a large Government deficit to cover it and the US government could just create the money to cover
it.
Then ideological neoliberals came in wanting balanced budgets and not realising the Government deficit covered the trade deficit.
The US has been destabilising its own economy by reducing the Government deficit. Bill Clinton didn't realize a Government surplus is an indicator a financial crisis is about to hit. The last US Government surplus occurred in 1927 – 1930, they go hand-in-hand with financial crises.
Richard Koo shows the graph central bankers use and it's the flow of funds within the economy, which sums to zero (32-34 mins.).
The Government was running a surplus as the economy blew up in the early 1990s. It's the positive and negative, zero sum, nature of the monetary system. A big trade deficit needs a big Government deficit to cover it. A big trade deficit, with a balanced budget, drives the private sector into debt and blows up the economy.
It should be remembered Bill Clinton's early meeting with Rubin, where in he was informed that wages and productivity had diverged –
Rubin did not blink an eye.
"... The nationalist faction of the party played a critical role. The Greek media begun a new round of propaganda against Tsipras administration. They managed to persuade many Greeks that the agreement for the name of North Macedonia was an act of treason against Greece's national interest. And that, New Democracy, the traditional right, is still patriotic and would had never sign such an agreement. This was actually the epicenter of propaganda. Of course, the truth is that the neoliberal New Democracy would had sign whatever the Western imperialists wanted. It's ideologically identical with them, after all. ..."
The result of the recent Greek national elections will puzzle future historians for decades. The Greek voters gave a clear victory
to the conservative right party, New Democracy, which will govern with 158 seats, without the need to make any coalitions.
It could be characterized a "paradoxical" result mainly for two reasons:
First, the voters gave a clear governmental order to one of the traditional powers of the old political system, which are highly
responsible for the Greek crisis that erupted in 2010. Several top names of the new government, and even New Democracy leader, Kyriakos
Mitsotakis, have been accused of being involved in various corruption scandals, in the not so distant past.
Second, the fact that the voters elected perhaps the most fanatically neoliberal government ever. This means that Mitsotakis administration
is expected to implement the brutal neoliberal policies imposed by Greece's creditors to the letter. Recall that those policies deepened
the recession and made things worse for the economy.
It is now well-known that Greece's creditors sacrificed the country to save the banks. Yet, after nine years of brutal austerity
measures, the economy is not looking good at all. Debt has reached 180% of GDP from 120% when Greece entered the bailout program.
Banks have been bailed-out with billions and still are not lending money to real economy and especially the small-medium business
sector.
Yet, right before the election day, a New Democracy member (Babis Papadimitriou) who got elected,
suggested that the 'safety pillow' of 37 billion - which the Greek government managed to collect through the brutal
implementation of insane surpluses - should be given to the banks!
Note that Babis Papadimitriou is a former journalist worked for the Skai TV station. The station openly supported New Democracy,
and its owners are part of the oligarchy that was very displeased with the SYRIZA administration. That's because Tsipras was not
willing to succumb to oligarchy's interests.
The current New Democracy party is a product of the Greek oligarchy establishment. The party - especially after the eruption of
the Greek crisis in 2010 - has been transformed into an unprecedented and peculiar mixture of some of the most fanatic neoliberals
and some of the most fanatic nationalists.
The nationalist faction of the party played a critical role. The Greek media begun a
new round
of propaganda against Tsipras administration. They managed to persuade many Greeks that the agreement for the name of
North Macedonia was an act of treason against Greece's national interest. And that, New Democracy, the traditional right, is still
patriotic and would had never sign such an agreement. This was actually the epicenter of propaganda. Of course, the truth is that
the neoliberal New Democracy would had sign whatever the Western imperialists wanted. It's ideologically identical with them, after
all.
The bad news for the neoliberal establishment is that SYRIZA managed to maintain a significant portion of its power (31.53%).
This has brought a kind of embarrassment to the establishment because SYRIZA is still not under full control. It is not accidental
that various circles close to New Democracy were implying that apart from a clear victory, another target would be the strategic
defeat of SYRIZA. Meaning, the return of SYRIZA to its pre-crisis 3% level.
So, the establishment sense that there is a 'danger' that the party could slip again away from the neoliberal order imposed by
the power centers inside and outside Greece. Maintaining such a power, it may become a real threat to the neoliberal order again.
However, many of these things probably won't matter because now New Democracy has four years to implement the most devastating
neoliberal program, without any significant resistance. This is its sole mission. To transform the country into a neoliberal paradise
for the oligarchs and the foreign investment 'predators'. And this 'brilliant' plan will be paid one more time by the Greeks, who
will see the destruction of public health and education. The destruction of social state. The complete looting of public property.
The destruction of whatever has left from labor rights and social security.
The Greeks have just committed suicide by electing the most fanatically neoliberal government ever.
"... By Lars Cornelissen, who holds a PhD in the Humanities and works as a researcher and editor for the Independent Social Research Foundation. Originally published at openDemocracy ..."
The ongoing and increasingly intense conservative backlash currently taking place across
Europe is often understood as a populist reaction to neoliberal policy. The neoliberal assault
on the welfare state, as for instance
Chantal Mouffe has argued , has eroded post-war social security even as it destroyed
people's faith in electoral politics. Coupled with a sharp increase in inequality and rapid
globalisation, the technocratic nature of neoliberal government has angered electorates across
the continent. Wanting to "take back control" of their political life, these electorates have
turned away from traditional centrist parties and have thrown their lot in with populist
parties on the fringes of the political spectrum. Although, as Mouffe is
at pains to point out , this creates a space for both left-wing and right-wing populisms,
today it seems that especially its inward-looking, nationalistic variants are experiencing
electoral success.
To be sure, this diagnosis is by and large correct. Decades of neoliberal hegemony have
certainly served to impoverish the cultural life of many European nations. Meanwhile,
neoliberal policies of privatisation and deregulation, followed after the 2008 crisis by a
decade of blithe austerity measures, have gutted most of the institutions that previously
carried the promise of equity and security -- even if that promise was always already a false
one. The rise in jingoistic nationalism is, in this sense, without doubt a consequence of the
neoliberal era.
It would be incorrect to assume, however, that these nationalisms are somehow juxtaposed to
or fundamentally different from neoliberalism. It would be wrong, that is, to see the rise of
the so-called "new right" as a sign of neoliberalism's demise or to see the 2008 financial
crisis as marking its death rattle. Neoliberalism did not merely provide the occasion for the
rise of nationalist sentiment; rather, the latter also grew out of the former. Differently put,
neoliberal doctrine already carried the seeds of the kind of conservativism that is currently
running rampant in Europe.
The Neoliberal Network
A good place to start is the network of neoliberal think tanks and research institutes that
has served as the frontline of the neoliberal project since the 1950s. Indeed, as numerous
research studies by historians and
sociologists have shown, although neoliberalism first emerged as an intellectual movement
spearheaded by such figures as Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Walter Eucken, and Milton
Friedman, crucial to the movement's success was its effort to disseminate its ideology
strategically. Thus, after an initial phase in which these men prepared the philosophical
grounds for the neoliberal agenda, they set out to spread their ideas, forming a Transatlantic
web of intellectuals and researchers with the express objective of steadily influencing public
opinion in general and policy-makers in particular.
Among the most prominent think tanks to be erected in this way are the Institute of Economic
Affairs, founded by Anthony Fisher in 1955 on Hayek's explicit advice, the Cato Institute,
founded in 1974, and the Adam Smith Institute, founded in 1977. They are merely the most
visible core of a vast network of similar organisations, however. Whether named after
neoliberalism's pioneering theorists (a small selection: the Hayek Institut; the Hayek
Gesellschaft; the Ludwig von Mises Institute; the Walter Eucken Institut; the Becker Friedman
Institute) or given more esoteric monikers (such as the Heritage Foundation or the Atlas
Economic Research Foundation), many right-wing think tanks are of neoliberal descent. Those
whose founding predates the birth of neoliberalism, such as the Hoover Institution and the
American Enterprise Institute, were quickly absorbed into the neoliberal project. Together
these think tanks form a sprawling network of ideological entrepreneurs driven, as Anthony Fisher is reported to have
said , by the desire to "litter the world with free-market think tanks."
As the primary channels through which neoliberal ideas flow to the wider public, these
institutions make for a crucial weather vane for shifts unfolding within the neoliberal
mindset. Any attempt to make sense of neoliberalism's many twists and turns must therefore pay
attention to trends in their ideological direction and outputs. And this is where
neoliberalism's recent hard turn towards conservative nationalism becomes apparent.
Neoliberal Conservatism
Neoliberalism has always had a strong conservative streak: Hayek himself was inspired by
Edmund Burke at least as much as by Adam Smith, and such towering figures of German
neoliberalism as Wilhem Röpke and Alexander Rüstow were deeply conservative thinkers.
Conversely, Hayek in particular has exerted a considerable influence on the most recent
generation of conservative philosophers, with men like Roger Scruton, Paul Cliteur, Francis
Fukuyama, and Niall Ferguson routinely drawing upon his ideas about the market, law, and
societal order in support of their own conservatism. (The latter, as it happens, received
the Hayek
Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012.)
However, what originally remained an intellectual attraction between neoliberals and
conservatives has in recent decades morphed into something more closely resembling a synthesis.
As neoliberal hegemony reached its climax in the 1990s, its intellectual custodians began
focusing their attention on what they purported to be the failures of multiculturalism.
Decrying 'cultural relativism,' neoliberal think tanks began publishing
pamphlets that sang the praises of western culture, which their writers regarded as
inherently superior to its non-liberal (read: non-western) counterparts. They proceeded to
assert the
need to protect national identity from its dilution by
immigration and to advocate patriotism
and nationalism
as a means of consolidating such identity.
It is, then, wrong to assume that neoliberal parties or intellectuals embraced nationalism
only after the so-called "new right" was in its ascendency, as a means to win back voters or to
assuage a supposedly vitriolic and jingoistic electorate. In truth, many of neoliberalism's
ideologues had swerved firmly towards conservative nationalism well before right-wing populism
became a serious political contender. In doing so, they anticipated many of the latter's
principal ideological markers, including its conspiratorial conception of " cultural Marxism " and its
fondness for
Oswald Spengler .
In short, neoliberals had no small part in setting the stage for the recent eruption of
regressive nationalism. By peddling ethnocentric, nationalistic, and xenophobic ideas they
helped shift public opinion to the conservative right, rendering it ever more salonfähig.
A good example of this process may be found in Dutch politics, where Islamophobia entered
mainstream discourse largely due to the efforts of Frits Bolkestein, then the country's leading
neoliberal politician and author. Anticipating the Islamophobia of Pim Fortuyn and later Geert
Wilders by about a decade, he claimed
as early as 1991 that Islam is objectively speaking inferior to western culture. In so doing,
he shifted the country's national debate and gave xenophobia a gloss of legitimacy, setting the
stage for his country's sharp conservative turn in the new millennium.
A Neoliberal Brexit
Neoliberalism's influence on the rise of conservatism is not exhausted by its ideological
appeal, however. Think tanks are, after all, meant to direct policy, not just to elaborate an
ideological doctrine. By way of example, let us consider Brexit. Indeed, the neoliberals'
impact on the "new right" is nowhere clearer than in the British hard right's attempt to
enforce a no-deal Brexit.
To begin, it's worth noting that the Conservative Party's most prominent cadre of
Brexit-backing nationalists counts many explicit devotees of Hayek amongst its numbers,
including Roger
Scruton , Boris Johnson ,
Priti Patel ,
and
Sajid Javid (who called Hayek a "legend" in a 2014 tweet ). Jacob Rees-Mogg's late
father William was similarly an outspoken Hayekian, calling himself "an Austrian economist more
than anything else" in a 2010
interview and adding for good measure that he "knew Friedrich von Hayek and liked him very
much."
But neoliberalism's impact on Tory hard Brexiteers goes much further. Here again, the
neoliberal network of think tanks takes centre stage. As research done by
openDemocracy UK has demonstrated, the Conservative Party's nationalist wing maintains very
intimate ties with the Institute of Economic Affairs, which has lobbied extensively to broaden
the appeal of a hard or even no-deal Brexit. Thus it maintains very close ties with the
European Research Group (ERG), a group that represents the Party's most extreme Eurosceptics,
and has had the ear of Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, David Davis, and Jacob Rees-Mogg.
The IEA is but one of many neoliberal think tanks that are today advocating a hard Brexit.
The same is true for, amongst other, the Adam Smith Institute , the
Hayek Institut ,
the Austrian Economics Center , the
Mises Institute
, the Hoover Institute , the
Cato Institute , and the
Heritage Foundation . Whilst it's not true that all of those who work for such institutes
are Brexiteers -- indeed, the Adam Smith Institute is very open about its internal dispute
over Brexit -- it certainly is the case that neoliberalism's ideological vanguard is
contributing significantly to the justification and rationalisation of a no-deal scenario.
All of these threads seem to converge in the figure of Steve Baker. Serving as
Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union from June 2017 until he resigned a year
later over his disagreement with the government's stance on Brexit, Baker was one of his
party's leading Eurosceptical voices well before that. In 2015, he co-founded the Conservatives
for Britain campaign, which was instrumental in lobbying for a referendum on Britain's
membership of the EU. What's more, he served as Chairman of the ERG between 2016 and 2018 and
as Deputy Chairman since then. Baker is also a prominent figure in the world of neoliberal
think tanks, having co-founded The Cobden Centre (TCC) in 2010 and served as its director until
2017. A self-declared Austrian-inspired think tank, TCC is
co-directed by hard Brexiteer Daniel
Hannan , routinely posts
defences of a hard Brexit, hosts material by hard-line Brexiteers such as Nigel
Farage , Douglas Carswell ,
Michael Tomlinson , and Baker himself, and has close links to a
glut of other neoliberal,
pro-Brexit think tanks.
There is ample evidence that what is often seen as the "new right" is in fact not all that
different from its predecessor. Several decades of neoliberal hegemony have not just triggered
a backlash by the conservative right. Rather, the conservative right is a mutation of
neoliberalism, one of its many outgrowths. The left is ill served by the continued assumption
that it's fighting a new enemy, for clearly neoliberalism is still very much with us.
With regard to Brexit, I would just add that neo con think tanks, e.g. the Henry Jackson
Society, also joined their more economics focussed brethren. Brexit is a means of weakening
the EU to the benefit of the anglosphere, albeit a US led community with the UK playing
Greece to the US's Rome. They are less prominent, or shouty, but I think that is by design.
The likes of Richard Dearlove, Charles Guthrie and John Scarlett know how to play this game
and are happy to let the loud mouths, especially the colonials like Kate Andrews, Divya
Chakraborty and Chloe "low tax" Westley, or "low fact" to some, front up on air.
Steve Baker is a former Royal Air Force officer and MP for the neighbouring constituency.
He straddles both camps.
There are differences, often tensions, between the Austrians, neo cons and the likes of
the North family. Pete(r J) North's latest blog addresses that.
Indeed all confessed VOX (populist rigth, Spain) voters I know were faithful Popular Party
(conservative) voters. Anecdotic but in line with this article.
The 'New Right' are the storm troopers of the neoliberal 'New World
Order' , conjured deliberately, and painstakingly into existence as a bulwark against
the rising tide of legitimate populist revolt against the strangle hold of neoliberal
rule.
This is exactly what Jay Gould meant* when he said he could hire half the working class to
murder the other half.
It's disturbing to note how obviously Trump is stirring the embers of reactionary
sentiment that are never far from the surface of our national lack-of-character.
*It matters not if Jay Gould actually uttered these words, they describe the foundation of
right-wing power in America.
Where is this "rising tide" you refer to? In the US our supposed revolutionaries are
firmly within the Democratic party which is neoliberal to the core. While the above article
may be correct that the nationalist new right represents fake populism in the manner of Wall
Street loving Trump, there's not a lot of evidence of an anti-capitalist revolt on the left
either (Elizabeth Warren: I am a capitalist). The article linked the other day on inverted
totalitarianism hit the nail squarely. Whether left or right "There Is No Alternative" holds
sway until the house of cards finally collapses. In the meantime our current elites will go
to any extreme to keep that from happening.
The discomfort of those at the bottom results eventually in anger, and that anger looks
for an outlet.
Rather than take the chance that those angry folks might seek, and eventually find solace
in solidarity with left-oriented populism a la Bernie Sanders flavor of socialism, TPTB
nurture a perennial alternative, the empty, but effective promise to make things
'right' by force of will, and of course, violence if necessary.
If the "rising tide" of relatively informed and activist candidates did not exist, and
were not influencing the electorate, there would be fear on the part of TPTB, and so no
reason to encourage the "New Right" .
I might add, that IMHO, you are swimming in that "rising tide" by your participation here
at NC.
Guess I'm old enough to remember an actual popular tide. But as we found the tide comes in
and then it goes out. IMO in order to have another New Deal we are probably going to need
another Great Depression. The internet including this website have become a great resource
for learning what is going on. But if the plutocrats begin to bothered by it they will
institute censorship (it's already happening). What they really fear is losing their money
and therefore their power. Another economic crisis might do the job.
Whenever one attributes anything to Trump, I believe it is important to imagine him not as
the mastermind, but as the catalyst. There are countless pent up forces that are using him as
the figurehead or scapegoat around which a torrent of change coming which was previously held
back. I feel that the damage done by his presidency was coming anyway, with him now as Court
Jester leading the parade. He is the perfect hybrid of Big Brother and Emmanuel
Goldstein.
1. People are sloppy undependable cognitive agents.
2. Not to worry – "The Market" is the greatest information processor in human
history.
3. The problem is to get people to accept and subjugate themselves to the Market. This is
called "Freedom".
4. The politics of 1-3 can get a little tricky. Best not be too literal about it.
Liberty and liberal are both words that are fraught with contradiction and confusion.
Whose Liberty? Liberal for whom? That never gets parsed out because in the parsing both words
lose their meaning. They are just bricks and bats and hand grenades. Hayek reads like a
thoughtful, reasonable person. But what he believes to be effective economics always fails.
We are all current witnesses. Austrians are conservative in defense of their liberty. They
seek liberal policies and governments so they can have more individual economic freedom. And
free trade. Socialism sees it differently; socialists are, by contrast, conservative. They
believe in conserving social justice. Now we have a first hand understanding of the failures
of neoliberalism. People at the local level, and the rural, want to be included in the
liberal prosperity so they vote for more economic freedom (leave the EU); the elite and the
rich want something entirely different; they want an even less restricted government so they
can sail off and be neocolonialists. So just like the confusion over the word "liberal"
nobody asks, Brexit for whom? It makes me weary.
I'd say the neolibs are more afraid of sanders than they are of trump, so conservative
(why can't those better republicans be like us) and also that they understand labor arbitrage
requires borders and so are pro national.
Interesting perspective this about neoliberalism and the new right drawing from the same
ideological source. I would also add that Ukraine is a cautionary tale to all would-be right
wing "leaders" that you can whip citizens into a frenzy (with help from Victoria Nuland, John
McCain and a not insignificant coup warchest of $5bn) and ride the stirred up resentment of
the establishment to the presidency but unless you deliver real, socially beneficial changes
the next election you'll have your as# handed to you by a comedian, just ask Poroshenko.
Outside of the US where right wing politicians like Trump can take the credit for levers
like easy credit bidding up asset prices and the gig economy putting lipstick on the
unemployment pig to keep the deception going (the deception being that stock markets are at
all time highs, employment numbers are up etc even as wealth and income inequality are at
robber baron levels), right wing populism is hardly a viable political strategy. Once all the
immigrants have been demonized and chased out and people notice that their lives are still
stuck in an economic rut, the right wingers run out of targets to aim their vitriol at, their
rhetoric falls flat and public trust in their divisive tactics erodes.
He gets several things confused, apparently as a result of an attempt to argue that
immigration, multiculturalism and so forth are unproblematic, and only "islamophobes" would
suggest otherwise. It's very much a view from inside the Panglossian bubble. There are at
least three strands here.
Celebrations of western culture in comparison with Islam (a minority position but one which
is still found) go back a long time, mainly on the Right Christian heritage, democracy etc)
but also to some extent on the Left, where some writers fear that secularism and class-based
politics are themselves in danger.
Opposition to explicitly multicultural policies by government (not the same as living in a
society with different cultures) is largely a reaction to policies promoted by governments of
the ostensible Left, although supported for entirely cynical reasons by neoliberals as a way
of fragmenting resistance. This opposition comes from all parts of the political system.
Opposition to neoliberal policies, most obviously the encouragement of immigration by
unskilled workers from poor countries, is based primarily on the lived experience of the poor
and disadvantaged who are the main victims of immigration. (A non-negligible element of the
opposition comes from past immigrants who have settled and made lives for themselves.)
There's a very elitist argument here that people are incapable of understanding their actual
situations and require some right-wing pundit to explain things to them.
Also the article elides the fact that neoliberalism has within its DNA a subspecies of
Fabian Socialism that seems to assuage what little conciousness market fundamentalists have
about rolling back a century of bitterly won advances by the working classes (of all
erthnicities & gender identies, fixations and usages) within the insustrialized regions
by diluting them with waves of foreign people made desperate by contrived colonial wars and
climate disasters.
Does anyone believe that an Indonesian Muslim background person in Netherlands who's made a
good living suddenly wants her children to have to compete with waves of Africans for starter
jobs?
Also- we've just come off of 30 plus years of identitarian pride for all non-white people.
Which is just garbage that's come out of english departments in the elite universities. White
people have been told for about a decade now by everyone in academia and entertainment that
they're all racist trash who need to intermarry with darker people as quickly as possible to
expiate the sins of north american chattel slavery and ..muh holocaust. Somehow all the
depradations, human sacrifices, genocides and repressions of and by about every group
throughout all time are just 'whatabouttism' now. When you start scapegoating any group they
will get their back up eventually. There's nothing conservative about it. But Disaster
Capitalists are more than happy to insert themselves into the scene, supporting such causes
the same way they supported #MeToo or #BlackLivesMatter when it was a convenience. Never let
a good disaster go to waste, right?
Yes, and nary a mention of long-standing socialist (oft referred to in the U.K. as Bennite
in "honour" of the school of thought popularised by Tony Benn, but he merely expressed much
older international labour movement (note the small "l" there not a big "L") notion of global
worker solidarity) opposition to the EU.
You can say many things about socialism, Bennism and their kissing cousin Communism. But
"neoliberal" or "neoliberal antecedences" isn't one of them.
A nice try at constricting -- and thereby, one has to assume, attempting to constrain and
frame -- Brexit as being only a right wing or conservative reactionary ideal and thereby
inherently neoliberal. But that might, only might, have worked a few years ago. Too much
water has passed under the bridge and too much ideological complexity has emerged around it
now for that to wash.
@David – yes! Resistance to excessive immigration is non-ideological but based on
very human tribalism. Too many strangers in a society results in a loss of fellow-feeling and
more division. This is, IMHO, the root of much of the rot in Western societies – the
destruction of trust, aided and abetted by a ruling class that uses deception habitually to
manage the masses and divide them from themselves. Can't let the cattle figure out how we're
exploiting them!
If one views the indigenous workforce of a nation as a loosely constructed "labor union",
one only has to look at the disdain that labor unions have for strike breaking "scabs" to see
why there is resistance to excessive immigration.
At the top of the workforce pyramid, the well-paid upper crust views their costs for
domestic help and workplace staffing dropping with increased immigration..
I suspect left leaning US politicians do not allow that many voting, low wage, workers
(aka HRC deplorables) view themselves competing with immigrants for jobs, with some numerical
justification, as immigrants and their US born children constitute about 28% of US
population.
"Immigrants and their U.S.-born children now number approximately 89.4 million people, or
28 percent of the overall U.S. population, according to the 2018 Current Population Survey
(CPS). Pew Research Center projects that the immigrant-origin share will rise to about 36
percent by 2065."
Trump has tapped into this, but is doing it in a Potemkin village style, as I tell people
that Trump likes low wage workers for his properties and construction projects. His border
wall is designed for show, not effectiveness, otherwise he would enforce employer sanctions
against employing non US citizens.
Neo-liberalism seems to me to have as a logical consequence the fostering of a
Covenant-Lite approach to culture as well as markets.
The markets show that some of those Covenant-Lite Collateralized Loan Obligations are
blowing up now , distressingly reminiscent of the CDOs that wrought havoc on the world
financial markets last decade during the Crash.
Culture gets its turn, as it always does, this time through an anything-goes approach
without any moral or ethical underpinnings, of whatever nature. It should be no surprise to
anyone that there are bad actors to manipulate situations, institutions and people.
I think this is neglecting an important strand ..Neoliberalism obviously contains within
itself the resistance of the Hoi Polloi even Hayek and Mises were aware of this as far back
as the 40's.
People would chafe at the all against all hyperindividualist yer-on-yer-own orthodoxy and
seek ways to challenge the Neoliberal Order.
The Right Wing Version of such Populist insurgency is simply one that the Neoliberal Thought
Collective can more easily swallow and use towards it's own ends.
Unlike the Sanders/Veroufkas(sp-2). Melanchon(sp-2) Actual Left version of Populism, which is
the antithesis of Neoliberalism.
Look to the history of things like the CIA, and the Elite neofeudalist worldview it has
worked for from it's very beginnings .anything that smells of the Left must be rooted out and
crushed, lest it present an alternative while Right Wing Authoritarians are supported as
"Freedom Fighters" and "Liberationists" .just ignore all the corpses(or blame them on the
Powerless Left)
Neoliberalism is merely the latest(and slipperiest!) version of a Capitalist World Order that
itself is merely the latest iteration of the Ancient Regime.
The Elite, as a class, have been trying to undo the Enlightenment(often by coopting many of
it's features) since time immemorial.
The Populist Right is a useful(if dangerous) tool in furtherance of that end, while Lefty
Populism is anathema, that would undo the very foundations of their preferred Order.
Over the last two years, a different, in some ways unrecognizable Larry Summers has been appearing in newspaper editorial pages.
More circumspect in tone, this humbler Summers has been arguing that economic opportunities in the developing world are slowing,
and that the already rich economies are finding it hard to get out of the crisis. Barring some kind of breakthrough, Summers says,
an era of slow growth is here to stay.
In Summers's recent writings, this sombre conclusion has often been paired with a surprising political goal: advocating for a
"responsible nationalism". Now he argues that politicians must recognise that "the basic responsibility of government is to maximise
the welfare of citizens, not to pursue some abstract concept of the global good".
One curious thing about the pro-globalisation consensus of the 1990s and 2000s, and its collapse in recent years, is how closely
the cycle resembles a previous era. Pursuing free trade has always produced displacement and inequality – and political chaos, populism
and retrenchment to go with it. Every time the social consequences of free trade are overlooked, political backlash follows. But
free trade is only one of many forms that economic integration can take. History seems to suggest, however, that it might be the
most destabilising one.
... ... ...
The international systems that chastened figures such as Keynes helped produce in the next few years – especially the Bretton
Woods agreement and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (Gatt) – set the terms under which the new wave of globalisation
would take place.
The key to the system's viability, in Rodrik's view, was its flexibility – something absent from contemporary globalisation,
with its one-size-fits-all model of capitalism. Bretton Woods stabilised exchange rates by pegging the dollar loosely to gold, and
other currencies to the dollar. Gatt consisted of rules governing free trade – negotiated by participating countries in a series
of multinational "rounds" – that left many areas of the world economy, such as agriculture, untouched or unaddressed. "Gatt's purpose
was never to maximise free trade," Rodrik writes. "It was to achieve the maximum amount of trade compatible with different nations
doing their own thing. In that respect, the institution proved spectacularly successful."
Partly because Gatt was not always dogmatic about free trade, it allowed most countries to figure out their own economic objectives,
within a somewhat international ambit. When nations contravened the agreement's terms on specific areas of national interest, they
found that it "contained loopholes wide enough for an elephant to pass", in Rodrik's words. If a nation wanted to protect its steel
industry, for example, it could claim "injury" under the rules of Gatt and raise tariffs to discourage steel imports: "an abomination
from the standpoint of free trade". These were useful for countries that were recovering from the war and needed to build up their
own industries via tariffs – duties imposed on particular imports. Meanwhile, from 1948 to 1990, world trade grew at an annual average
of nearly 7% – faster than the post-communist years, which we think of as the high point of globalisation. "If there was a golden
era of globalisation," Rodrik has written, "this was it."
Gatt, however, failed to cover many of the countries in the developing world. These countries eventually created their own system,
the United Nations conference on trade and development (UNCTAD). Under this rubric, many countries – especially in Latin America,
the Middle East, Africa and Asia – adopted a policy of protecting homegrown industries by replacing imports with domestically produced
goods. It worked poorly in some places – India and Argentina, for example, where the trade barriers were too high, resulting in
factories that cost more to set up than the value of the goods they produced – but remarkably well in others, such as east Asia,
much of Latin America and parts of sub-Saharan Africa, where homegrown industries did spring up. Though many later economists and
commentators would dismiss the achievements of this model, it theoretically fit Larry Summers's recent rubric on globalisation:
"the basic responsibility of government is to maximise the welfare of citizens, not to pursue some abstract concept of the global
good."
The critical turning point – away from this system of trade balanced against national protections – came in the 1980s. Flagging
growth and high inflation in the west, along with growing competition from Japan, opened the way for a political transformation.
The elections of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were seminal, putting free-market radicals in charge of two of the world's
five biggest economies and ushering in an era of "hyperglobalisation". In the new political climate, economies with large public
sectors and strong governments within the global capitalist system were no longer seen as aids to the system's functioning, but
impediments to it.
Not only did these ideologies take hold in the US and the UK; they seized international institutions as well. Gatt renamed itself
as the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the new rules the body negotiated began to cut more deeply into national policies. Its
international trade rules sometimes undermined national legislation. The WTO's appellate court intervened relentlessly in member
nations' tax, environmental and regulatory policies, including those of the United States: the US's fuel emissions standards were
judged to discriminate against imported gasoline, and its
ban on imported shrimp caught without turtle-excluding
devices was overturned. If national health and safety regulations were stricter than WTO rules necessitated, they could only
remain in place if they were shown to have "scientific justification".
The purest version of hyperglobalisation was tried out in Latin America in the 1980s. Known as the "Washington consensus", this
model usually involved loans from the IMF that were contingent on those countries lowering trade barriers and privatising many of
their nationally held industries. Well into the 1990s, economists were proclaiming the indisputable benefits of openness. In an
influential 1995 paper, Jeffrey Sachs and Andrew Warner wrote: "We find no cases to support the frequent worry that a country might
open and yet fail to grow."
But the Washington consensus was bad for business: most countries did worse than before. Growth faltered, and citizens across
Latin America revolted against attempted privatisations of water and gas. In Argentina, which followed the Washington consensus
to the letter, a grave crisis resulted in
2002 , precipitating an economic collapse and massive street protests that forced out the government that had pursued privatising
reforms. Argentina's revolt presaged a left-populist upsurge across the continent: from 1999 to 2007, leftwing leaders and parties
took power in Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, all of them campaigning against the Washington consensus on globalisation.
These revolts were a preview of the backlash of today.
Rodrik – perhaps the contemporary economist whose views have been most amply vindicated by recent events – was himself a beneficiary
of protectionism in Turkey. His father's ballpoint pen company was sheltered under tariffs, and achieved enough success to allow
Rodrik to attend Harvard in the 1970s as an undergraduate. This personal understanding of the mixed nature of economic success may
be one of the reasons why his work runs against the broad consensus of mainstream economics writing on globalisation.
"I never felt that my ideas were out of the mainstream," Rodrik told me recently. Instead, it was that the mainstream had lost
touch with the diversity of opinions and methods that already existed within economics. "The economics profession is strange in
that the more you move away from the seminar room to the public domain, the more the nuances get lost, especially on issues of trade."
He lamented the fact that while, in the classroom, the models of trade discuss losers and winners, and, as a result, the necessity
of policies of redistribution, in practice, an "arrogance and hubris" had led many economists to ignore these implications. "Rather
than speaking truth to power, so to speak, many economists became cheerleaders for globalisation."
In his 2011 book The Globalization Paradox
, Rodrik concluded that "we cannot simultaneously pursue democracy, national determination, and economic globalisation." The
results of the 2016 elections and referendums provide ample testimony of the justness of the thesis, with millions voting to push
back, for better or for worse, against the campaigns and institutions that promised more globalisation. "I'm not at all surprised
by the backlash," Rodrik told me. "Really, nobody should have been surprised."
But what, in any case, would "more globalisation" look like? For the same economists and writers who have started to rethink
their commitments to greater integration, it doesn't mean quite what it did in the early 2000s. It's not only the discourse that's
changed: globalisation itself has changed, developing into a more chaotic and unequal system than many economists predicted. The
benefits of globalisation have been largely concentrated in a handful of Asian countries. And even in those countries, the good
times may be running out.
Statistics from Global Inequality
, a 2016 book by the development economist Branko Milanović, indicate that in relative terms the greatest benefits of globalisation
have accrued to a rising "emerging middle class", based preponderantly in China. But the cons are there, too: in absolute terms,
the largest gains have gone to what is commonly called "the 1%" – half of whom are based in the US. Economist Richard Baldwin has
shown in his recent book, The Great Convergence, that nearly all of the gains from globalisation have been concentrated in six countries.
Barring some political catastrophe, in which rightwing populism continued to gain, and in which globalisation would be the least
of our problems – Wolf admitted that he was "not at all sure" that this could be ruled out – globalisation was always going to slow;
in fact, it already has. One reason, says Wolf, was that "a very, very large proportion of the gains from globalisation – by no
means all – have been exploited. We have a more open world economy to trade than we've ever had before." Citing The Great Convergence,
Wolf noted that supply chains have already expanded, and that future developments, such as automation and the use of robots, looked
to undermine the promise of a growing industrial workforce. Today, the political priorities were less about trade and more about
the challenge of retraining workers , as technology renders old jobs obsolete and transforms the world of work.
Rodrik, too, believes that globalisation, whether reduced or increased, is unlikely to produce the kind of economic effects it
once did. For him, this slowdown has something to do with what he calls "premature deindustrialisation". In the past, the simplest
model of globalisation suggested that rich countries would gradually become "service economies", while emerging economies picked
up the industrial burden. Yet recent statistics show the world as a whole is deindustrialising. Countries that one would have expected
to have more industrial potential are going through the stages of automation more quickly than previously developed countries did,
and thereby failing to develop the broad industrial workforce seen as a key to shared prosperity.
For both Rodrik and Wolf, the political reaction to globalisation bore possibilities of deep uncertainty. "I really have found
it very difficult to decide whether what we're living through is a blip, or a fundamental and profound transformation of the world
– at least as significant as the one that brought about the first world war and the Russian revolution," Wolf told me. He cited
his agreement with economists such as Summers that shifting away from the earlier emphasis on globalisation had now become a political
priority; that to pursue still greater liberalisation was like showing "a red rag to a bull" in terms of what it might do to the
already compromised political stability of the western world.
Rodrik pointed to a belated emphasis, both among political figures and economists, on the necessity of compensating those displaced
by globalisation with retraining and more robust welfare states. But pro-free-traders had a history of cutting compensation: Bill
Clinton passed Nafta, but failed to expand safety nets. "The issue is that the people are rightly not trusting the centrists who
are now promising compensation," Rodrik said. "One reason that Hillary Clinton didn't get any traction with those people is that
she didn't have any credibility."
Rodrik felt that economics commentary failed to register the gravity of the situation: that there were increasingly few avenues
for global growth, and that much of the damage done by globalisation – economic and political – is irreversible. "There is a sense
that we're at a turning point," he said. "There's a lot more thinking about what can be done. There's a renewed emphasis on compensation
– which, you know, I think has come rather late."
As Noam Chomsky
says, the term globalisation has been appropriated by a narrow sector of power and privilege to
refer to their version of international integration and it makes sense for them to own the term
because anyone who is opposed to their version becomes anti-globalisation -- someone who is
primitive and wants to go back to the stone age and that everyone likes international integration
but not the investor rights version of it.
In reality globalization was a politically correct term for neocolonialism
Notable quotes:
"... In finance, the change was marked by a fundamental shift in governments' attitudes away from managing capital flows and toward liberalization ..."
Globalization is in trouble. A populist backlash, personified by U.S. President Donald
Trump, is in full swing. A simmering trade war
between China and the United States could easily boil over. Countries across Europe are
shutting their borders to immigrants. Even globalization's biggest boosters now concede that it
has produced lopsided benefits and that something
will have to change .
Today's woes have their roots in the 1990s, when policymakers set the world on its current,
hyperglobalist path, requiring domestic economies to be put in the service of the world economy
instead of the other way around. In trade, the transformation was signaled by the creation of
the World Trade Organization, in 1995. The WTO not only made it harder for countries to shield
themselves from international competition but also reached into policy areas that international
trade rules had not previously touched: agriculture, services, intellectual property,
industrial policy, and health and sanitary regulations. Even more ambitious regional trade
deals, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, took off around the same time.
In finance, the change was marked by a fundamental shift in governments' attitudes away from
managing capital flows and toward liberalization. Pushed by the United States and global
organizations such as the International Monetary Fund and the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development, countries freed up vast quantities of short-term finance to slosh
across borders in search of higher returns.
At the time, these changes seemed to be based on sound economics. Openness to trade would
lead economies to allocate their resources to where they would be the most productive. Capital
would flow from the countries where it was plentiful to the countries where it was needed. More
trade and freer finance would unleash private investment and fuel global economic growth.
But
these new arrangements came with risks that the hyperglobalists did not foresee, although
economic theory could have predicted the downside to globalization just as well as it did the
upside.
Globalization is simply a neoliberal economic substitute for colonialism.
Neoliberals contrary to popular opinion do not believe in self-regulating markets as
autonomous entities. They do not see democracy as necessary for capitalism.
The neoliberal globalist world is not a borderless market without nations but a doubled
world (economic -global and social- national) . The global economic world is kept safe from
democratic national demands for social justice and equality, and in return each nation enjoys
cultural freedom.
Neoliberals see democracy as a real problem. Democracy means the unwashed masses can
threaten the so called market economy (in fact manipulated and protected markets) with worker
demands for living wages and equality and consumer demands for competitive pricing and safe
products. Controlling both parties with money prevents that.
In fact, neoliberal thinking is comparable to that of John Maynard Keynes in one respect :
"the market does not and cannot take care of itself".
The neoliberal project did not liberate markets so much as protect them by protecting
capitalism against the threat of democracy and to reorder the world where borders provide a
captive market
Neoliberals insulate the markets by providing safe harbor for capital, free from fear of
infringement by policies of progressive taxation or redistribution. They do this by
redesigning government, laws, and other institutions to protect the market.
For example the stock market is propped up by the Feds purchases of futures, replacing the
plunge protection teams intervention at an even more extreme level. Manipulation of economic
statistics by the BLS also serve a similar purpose.
Another example is getting government to accept monopoly capitalism over competitive
capitalism and have appointed judges who believe illegal collusion is nothing more than
understandable and legal "conscious parallelism"
Now it seems to me the Koch-Soros think tank is an attempt to unify the neoliberal
globalist forces which represent factions from international greenies to nationalist
protectionists . In other words to repackage and rename neoliberal globalism while keeping
its essence. Be interesting to see what they come up with.
As for China opening to private international finance. They already did that but this
takes it to a new level. Like I said. Fake wrestling. This was one of the demands in the
trade negotiations by Trump. Why take one of your chips off the table if the game is for
real?
China was Made in USA (includes the City of London) like the EU and Putins neoliberal
Russia.
One day they will get around telling us they are all buddies, or maybe not. I suspect they
have a lot of laughs playing us like they do.
I could be wrong but this is more interesting than the official and semi official
narratives.
"... if the US ever held unipolar control in reality it was briefly during the period after the downfall of the USSR and up until the conquest of Iraq. ..."
"... An economic system, of which the financial system is a part of, is one of the fundamental structures of any society. Societies in today's world are defined at the sovereign state level, and the economic systems are defined by the governments of these states ..."
"... 'Globalism' as discussed in these blogs, in opposition to 'multi-polarity' is not about global commerce, but rather about an effort by a certain group of wealthy elites, primarily centered in London and New York, and commonly referred to as 'Globalists' to transfer the authority for the definition and control of economic systems from sovereign states to a set of international institutions under their control. ..."
"... In doing so they strip the sovereignty from sovereign states, as as already happened with the EU, and create a global dictatorship, under the control of the 'Globalists' and completely isolated from any democratic oversight. A fascist project in the purest sense of fascism. ..."
"... The 'Multi-polar' group of nations are those nations who oppose this fascist project and who are working to maintain and restore the sovereignty of nations. ..."
Stating "globalism" is antithetical to "multipolarity" is a non-sequitor.
Globalism is the financial structure (or "system" if you will) through which capitalist
enterprises function. This is complex of course and includes capital markets, corporations,
multinational corporations, currency markets, commodities markets, trading agreements.
Politicians intervene in the functioning of globalism so there is seldom if ever anything
like a globalism free of political influence.
OTOH, "multipolarity" has no structure that I can see. It is an empty vessel, purely a
political, statist-inspired idea (whereas globalism is a "thing" which contains
political and economic ideas of course but those ideas may or may not be statist in concept
depending on the context) which can mean anything to anyone at any point in time.
I guess I would say the term is purely Orwellian. Thus, without reading anything other
than James's comment I would guess the author's idea is either nonsensical or propagandistic
in nature.
For me, the world became "multipolar" the minute the US invaded Iraq in 2003. The idea
that the US wishes to maintain its "unipolar" leadership of the world may be true in the
wishful sense of some neocons, however if the US ever held unipolar control in reality it
was briefly during the period after the downfall of the USSR and up until the conquest of
Iraq.
Today, I view the world as both multipolar and globalist. While many of the political and
economic tensions we see result from the disconnects between national political and global
economic conditions, I think we must admit if we are honest that many of the more recent
tensions are simply the result of Trump's presidency, which has the intended affect of being
"a bull in the china shop" of the globalist system.
This is not necessarily a bad thing in theory. Sadly, however, Trump is a geopolitical and
foreign policy moron who doesn't know what he is doing beyond enriching himself and creating
daily fake news headlines in hopes of being re-elected on behalf of the same global elites he
playacts at combatting for his worshipful audience of true believers.
'Globalism is the financial structure (or "system" if you will) through which capitalist
enterprises function.'
What B.S.!!
An economic system, of which the financial system is a part of, is one of the
fundamental structures of any society. Societies in today's world are defined at the
sovereign state level, and the economic systems are defined by the governments of these
states , which are supposed to function on behalf of the population of each state, and
in democratic states, are also supposed to be under the control of the overall population
through their democratic institutions. International institutions are there to coordinate
commerce between the different economic systems of sovereign states.
'Globalism' as discussed in these blogs, in opposition to 'multi-polarity' is not
about global commerce, but rather about an effort by a certain group of wealthy elites,
primarily centered in London and New York, and commonly referred to as 'Globalists' to
transfer the authority for the definition and control of economic systems from sovereign
states to a set of international institutions under their control.
In doing so they strip the sovereignty from sovereign states, as as already happened
with the EU, and create a global dictatorship, under the control of the 'Globalists' and
completely isolated from any democratic oversight. A fascist project in the purest sense of
fascism.
The 'Multi-polar' group of nations are those nations who oppose this fascist project
and who are working to maintain and restore the sovereignty of nations.
@ donkeytale 15
I think the world has always been multipolar, the differences that give the definition
coming to (being presented to) the forefront, or being dissimilated, according to choice and
circumstance. The globalist direction aims to interweave or merge these differences (cultural
and historic, religion, philosophy and so on), or at least bring them under a common control.
So the idea that multipolarity represents anything more than increased recognition of various
regional power as opposed to recognition of one regional power (say western) as more visible,
is not much more than an indication of how global policy will be conducted, i.e. with an
emphasis on regional responsibility.
Recent US policy is not aimed at destroying the globalist order, it is a result of the
failure of one format of the globalist order, where the global financial order no longer
fitted into national or regional economic sense. This was the gfc, and there is simply no way
to continue the flow of trade and finance as it existed for the previous decades. The easing
of rates across the globe is paliative, it is no solution, you only have to look at national
debt levels to understand this, or in Eurozone try target2 differences. The world is now
partly funded by negative yielding debt. All of this works contrary to capitalist (in its
basic honest philosophy) understanding. In short "something" is going to happen to readjust
this circumstance, planned or otherwise. I have watched how in EU the single currency has
been used to takeover the traditional national hierarchies (banking, political and to a
degree social), but we don't have that sort of framework accepted at global level, only
various currency pegs, bilateral arrangements and so on. The IMF and sdr is not much liked.
What I have noted is virtual central bank currency is being promoted in several ways, be it
the bis just announcing it may become a necessity face to cryptocurrency or similar (with a
caveat of harmonising monetary policy) , EU organising a parallel payment system that avoids
commercial banks, even Instex is along these lines. Where the US and some others truly stand
with regard to this is a different question, as for now it (et al) still enjoy a financial
hegemony that is both organised and profitable. Interesting times, I just hope that a major
event is not the catalyst for reform, that the various parties can agree to withdraw to more
localised structure and agreement if any grand plans meet the resistance or failure that is
already partly visible. I doubt that will be allowed though, by the time people really want
to take part, there won't be much option left and circumstance will already be already
confused and conflictive.
@31 donkeytale.. well, if the usa didn't commit as much paper money as it does to the
military complex it runs, i suppose the financial complex where the us$ can be printed ad
nauseam might come into question.. the sooner oil isn't pegged to the us$ and etc. etc.
happens, the better off the world will be... and, i don't blame the usa people for this..
they are just being used as i see it - much the same here in canada with our politicians
thinking the prudent thing to do is to support the status quo.. the problem is the status quo
can only go on for so long, before a change inevitably happens...
as for swift - they went along with usa sanctions back in 2011 on iran, but then it was
brought to court in europe and overturned... but again - they are back in the same place
bowing down to usa exceptionalism... call it what you want.. another system needs to get made
if this one that exists is beholden to a special interest group - usa-uk-europe, where others
are 2nd rate citizens of the world... same deal imf... these world financial institutions
need to be changed to reflect the changes that are taking place... the voting rights of the
developed countries are skewed to favour the ones who have been raping and pillaging africa,
and etc. etc.. you may not think it matters, but i personally do.. and i don't blame the usa
for it..but they are being used as a conduit to further an agenda which is very unbalanced
and unfriendly to the world as i see it..
I am afraid that I cannot agree with much of what you said.
Dictatorship, as a governance system, has always failed, and will always fail. The
'Globalists' who grabbed power, and imposed an effective oligarchic dictatorship, in the U.S.
in 1980 and the EU since 1990, have clearly demonstrated this fact through the destruction of
the economies of the U.S. and much of Europe and the impoverishment of their populations. And
since 2001, they have used the U.S. and British military and intelligence services and NATO
as their personal bludgeon in order to force the submission of any state that did not
voluntarily submit to their project of a 'Global' dictatorship.
Resistance to this 'Globalist' project is at the root of almost all conflicts in the world
today. The 'Multi-Polar' nations resisting the 'Globalists', in Ukraine, Syria, North Korea,
Venezuela, etc. is one front in this resistance. The other front is the resistance of
'Nationalists' (such as Trump, the Brexiteers, the Yellow Vests, and populists across Europe)
to the 'Globalists.
The Trump Presidency is not the cause of tensions in the world today, as you suggest, but
rather the symptom. Trump understands that without an industrial base, the U.S. is condemned
to becoming the 'India' of the Americas'. The central theme of his actions is to restore the
U.S. industrial base and U.S. sovereignty, which have largely been destroyed by the
'Globalists' and their 'Deep State' machine over the past 40 years. The 'Globalists' need
only the U.S. military and intelligence services, and care nothing for its population and
less for its sovereignty, and thus are fighting Trump every step of the way.
Trump may be coarse and a buffoon, and he may be completely wrong in carrying Israel's
water with respect to Iran, but he is just about the only American politician that I see that
is working on behalf of the U.S. population rather than on behalf of the 'Globalists'.
Reversing the 'Globalization' that has savaged the U.S. and Europe over the past several
decades will not come easily, nor without pain and tensions, and winners and losers. However
failure to do so guarantees the likely rapid and long term decline and impoverishment of all
populations under 'Globalist' control.
dh-mtl @29 explained it well, I thought, but some still don't seem to get it.
It is the difference between the UN, which has a law-based charter which upholds the national
sovereignty of each nation and forbids aggression against any sovereign country, and
the WTO, which is a rules-based agreement which forbids any national government to pass laws
which interfere in the profits of corporations.
Globalism is the project in which capital has complete freedom to do as it will, while humans
and national governments are forbidden such freedom.
Putin and Lavrov frequently point to the difference between international law, which they
support, and the "rules-based order" which the US and its partners-in-crime support, in which
the rules are used to destroy sovereign countries and enrich the multi-national corporations
which strip the planet at will, and go to the cheapest labor countries, with no environmental
laws, for their global production lines.
A multi-polar world is one with many sovereign countries, ruled by international law,
respected by all, with peaceful relations between all countries.
Globalism is when corporations rule the world, and we continue on the path of destruction of
all the natural wealth of the world in the turning of nature into commodities and then
trash.
@ wagelaborer who wrote
"
Globalism is the project in which capital has complete freedom to do as it will, while humans
and national governments are forbidden such freedom.
"
Perfectly stated!
I appreciate you, dh-mtl, bevin and others responding to donkeytale. I have not read the
comment because donkeytale is on bypass for me but it is nice to read other commenters taking
on donkeytale BS for others to see....thanks
Sorry if I need to pick your resopnse to donkeytale apart but there are a lot of
inconsistencies in your argument.
The 'Globalists' who grabbed power, and imposed an effective oligarchic dictatorship, in
the U.S. in 1980 and the EU since 1990, have clearly demonstrated this fact through the
destruction of the economies of the U.S. and much of Europe and the impoverishment of their
populations.
You seem to imply that the 'globalists' (illuminati, Zionist bankers etc., etc.) did not
exist or had power before the 1980s, which could not be further from the truth. There are
several reasons why neo-liberalism took hold in the 1980s, creating the economic narrative
and agenda of today, none of which, are related to some kind of power grab by people that did
not hold any power beforehand. The threat of the cold war was waning in the 1980s and elites
felt less pressured by local populations potentially becoming 'too' sympathetic to communism
anymore. So they began rolling back social policies implemented in the post-war years to
counter communism's appeal. Computer technology going mainstream, creating all sorts of
economic spillovers to be harnessed by increased open and international trade was another
reason, there were many more. But the people you call 'globalists' controlled matters much,
much earlier than the 1980s.
The other front is the resistance of 'Nationalists' (such as Trump, the Brexiteers, the
Yellow Vests, and populists across Europe) to the 'Globalists.
If there truly were such politicians as 'nationalists' who somehow only hold the best
interest of their native people at heart, then why is that most European populists cosy up to
Israel? None of them have tried to reclaim control over their Central Banks and in the case
of i.e. Italy, do they try to break free from the Euro? Why are Polish nationalists rabidly
supporting the build up of US arms on their territory? I think it is about time to see beyond
this silly dichotomy of 'Globalist' vs 'Nationalist', at least while these Nationalists do
nothing substantial to actually help their lot and further squeeze the lower classes of their
countries in good neo-liberal fashion, same as their Globalist political 'opponents' they
claim to oppose.
Trump may be coarse and a buffoon, and he may be completely wrong in carrying Israel's
water with respect to Iran, but he is just about the only American politician that I see
that is working on behalf of the U.S. population rather than on behalf of the 'Globalists'.
So you admit that Trump is essentially a controlled zionist buffoon but at the same time
he is working towards restoring US sovereignty on behalf of the people? You mean he worked
for the US people when he lowered taxes for the rich even further, creating an ever larger US
public debt, and throwing Americans further into debt servitude of private finance? Or do you
mean his still open promise to invest large sums in the US crumbling infrastructure? Oh
right, he has instead opted to increase defence spending to combat the US many imaginary
enemies around the globe.
Look, I agree with you that global neo-liberalism is bad for the vast majority of people
on this planet but don't go looking for help from false prophets, such as Trump or other
'nationalists', you will only find yourself completely disappointed before long.
donkeytale , Jun 30, 2019 6:48:21 PM |
58dh-mtl , Jun 30, 2019 6:50:23 PM |
59
@50 Alexander P
Response to a few of your criticisms.
1. You say 'You seem to imply that the 'globalists' (illuminati, Zionist bankers etc.,
etc.) did not exist or had power before the 1980s'.
Not at all. They lost power from the mid-1930s to 1980. They regained power with Reagan,
followed by Clinton, W, and Obama. You only need to look at any graph that shows when income
inequality in the U.S. began to ramp up. The date is clear - 1980.
2. You say. 'If there truly were such politicians as 'nationalists' who somehow only hold
the best interest of their native people at heart'.
I didn't say that these 'Nationalists' or 'Populists' hold the best interests of their
native peoples at heart. Usually they are only interested in what they see as best for
themselves. But there is no doubt that they are resisting the 'Globalists' push to strip
their countries of their sovereignty, to transfer their wealth to the 'Globalist' elites, to
transfer their industries to wherever labor is the cheapest. I said that this was a 'second
front' against the 'Globalists'. And there is no doubt, from the fight that the 'Globalists'
are waging against Trump, 'Brexit' and populists and nationalists across Europe, that the
'Globalists' take this 'front' seriously.
3. You say. 'don't go looking for help from false prophets, such as Trump'.
You are right. It is unlikely that Trump will be able to 'Make America Great Again'. At
best he may be able to break the 'Globalists' hold on power in the U.S. However, this is a
necessary first step if the U.S. is ever to recover wealth and power that it had during the
middle of the last century, but which today is rapidly evaporating.
I agree with Alexander P that nationalist and populist presentation is often either
controlled opposition or a method of splintering and isolating influence. That is not to say
there are a lot of public in many countries who are sincere in their sentiment.
Sorry no link, recent :
"As he arrived at the Kempinski hotel lobby last December, journalists scuffled with
bodyguards as they tried to get their microphones and cameras close. Despite being jostled,
Zanganeh remained calm and waited to deliver a simple message: Iran can’t participate
in OPEC’s production cuts as long as it remains under U.S. sanctions and won’t
allow other members to steal its rightful market share."
I.E. approval for continued reduced opec oil supply to support prices depends on Iran (?),
lower prices otherwise affecting all other producers, and/or Iran is making the case that
sanctions are a theft of market share by other producers. The latter has been a part of the
cause of hostility in the gulf.
In Germany
"The 2018 report by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution of Germany
(Bundesmat fur Verfassungsschutz, BfV), which was released on June 27, 2019 by the Federal
Minister of the Interior, Horst Seehofer and Thomas Haldenwang, head of the organization,
examines the activities of the intelligence services of the Iranian regime in Germany....
The BfV annual report states: "The central task of the Iranian intelligence services is to
spy against opposition movements and confront these movements. In this regard, evidences of
state-sponsored terrorism in Europe, which originates in Iran, have intensified during 2018."
" etc
is being used by ncr (the article source) to the effect of calling for closure of the
Iranian embassy. That aside, the report does show Germany is moving towards, or is willing
to, apply pressure on Iran now. France has also given indication that it is not fully behind
Iran (reprimand and warning on not respecting jcpoa etc.)
You are correct to say inequality began rising again in 1980; however, the rise must be
attributed to Carter and Volker--Reagan just continued the process. It seemed odd the GHW
Bush initially opposed it as "Voodoo Economics" but readily championed it all as VEEP, making
it just a political posture in the nomination race.
Thanks for the excellent response. One thing I failed to take into account is the
difference between the EU and the US financial systems so thanks for that corrective
explanation.
The Euro represents the biggest failure of the EU from where I sit. Centralised control of
the currency and banking systems is a grave error in that construct and the "European
Parliament" just seems too silly for me to even contemplate, although I'm sure there is some
logical explanation for its existence that I'm missing.
And you bet, I'm also sure the day of reckoning for the global debt overload is fast
approaching. What I don't understand is how one form of capitalism (neoliberal) versus
another (state managed) makes any difference in how this debt overload developed. China, for
instance, has used similar stimulus methods more frequently even than the US since 2008 to
keep its economic growth chugging along and certainly way more than the EU, which under
stimulated its own economy in response to the recession.
IMHO, Brexit is a forced over the top politicised reaction to this conservative German-led
response in light of the fact the UK kept its own currency and banking systems separate and
had the means to provide stimulus but didn't under the Tory buffoons in charge.
Grexit made much more sense to me than Brexit for many reasons. I was dismayed when the
Greek people failed in their courage after voting in Syriza follow through and tell the
Germans to take the Euro and their debt and put it where the sun don't shine.
What I believe people are tending to forget or overlook, such as wagelabourer @ 48 and
dh-mtl elsewhere, that while these postwar international re-orderings such as NATO, the UN
and the EU are nowhere near perfect, they are also not purely NWO conspiratorial constructs.
Rather they were created for a very specific purpose stemming from a lesson of history which
seems to have been rather easily tossed aside because of the relative success of these same
institutions: that is, clashing nationalisms inevitably lead to major conflict and
devastating wars, especially among the major imperialist states.
On the surface, it appears the dying empire must finally grab everything, no matter how
historically untouchable, in last ditch claim on total power.
Of course this is bad on every level, it's immoral, unethical, illegal, doomed to fail,
and doomed to hasten failure of the entire enterprise.
I'm dreaming here, but the best plan is to fade slowly into the night and put on the make
up tomorrow.
But anyway, the fully doomed and immoral path has a bright side for the MIC--it's a lock
on anyone who would try to shut it down. We will continue to do stupid things so we must
continue to do stupid things.
Trump "national neoliberalism" is a deviation from classic neoliberalism and that's why
Russiagate color revolution was launched against him with full support Britain and some other EU
countries. So I doubt that he is a defective tool of globalism. He destroyed existing neoliberal order by starting the trade
war with China.
Trump is not a perfect tool of nationalism, he is a defective tool of globalism. He
represents the slide to an international fascism bound at the top of fake nationalist
authoritarians who fancy the .01% worldwide above the needs of their own subjects.
Government by the multinational corporations for the multinational corporate
shareholders.
Trump's only hope to remain in power is to create a constant wartime crisis atmosphere
without leading to war (so he can take credit)....or else to suspend the Constitution because
of a "crisis".
Globalism will not be defeated by China, Russia and Iran working in concert.
I don't think they're trying to defeat "Globalism", I think they're trying to defeat
fascism on a global scale.
Zionist supremacist ideology + globalism = global fascism.
The economic benefits of "Globalism" have gone most to a neoliberal oligarch interests
that are in cahoots with Western governments. And, as a block, they support MIC, dollar
hegemony, etc. so as to secure and extend their gains.
"... President Trump and the far right preach not the end of globalization, but their own strain of it, not its abandonment but an alternative form. They want robust trade and financial flows, but they draw a hard line against certain kinds of migration. The story is not one of open versus closed, but of the right cherry-picking aspects of globalization while rejecting others. Goods and money will remain free, but people won't. ..."
"... The express effort is to use unilateral action to bully other countries, China in particular, into better market access for American products. The point of comparison is not the dreams of economic self-sufficiency of the 1930s but Ronald Reagan's assault on Japanese competition in the 1980s. "The basic philosophy that we have is that we want free trade without barriers," Mr. Lighthizer explained to Congress in August. ..."
"... What they share is a rejection not of the "postwar international order" -- as many pundits fruitlessly argue -- but of the order of the 1990s. In the cross hairs are the products of that decade, above all, the crown jewels of neoliberal globalism: the W.T.O., the European Union and Nafta (which was recently renegotiated and renamed). ..."
"... The formula of right-wing alter-globalization is: yes to free finance and free trade. No to free migration, democracy, multilateralism and human equality. ..."
"... What the author is struggling to define, is called 'America First' ..."
"... America First, consequently, is about more than simply putting America first. In the sense that the author raises the subject, America First is about reforming the WTO. Come on guys, get with the program! ..."
"... The rise of the right in the US and Europe is a response to neoliberal globalization's anti-worker consequences. In the US, the working class was so desperate for someone to speak to their economic anxieties, that a large portion of them placed their hopes in the hands of a ridiculous, blow-hard billionaire. ..."
In a recent speech at the United Nations, President Trump
railed against "the ideology of globalism" and "unelected, unaccountable global
bureaucracy."
For those of us who came of age in the 1990s, there was an eerie sense of déjà
vu. Then, too, there were protests against global institutions insulated from democratic
decision-making. In the most iconic confrontation, my college classmates helped scupper the
World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in 1999.
The movement called for "alter-globalization" -- a different kind of globalization more
attentive to labor and minority rights, the environment and economic equality. Two decades
later, traces of that movement are hard to find. But something surprising has happened in the
meantime. A new version of alter-globalization has won -- from the right.
We often hear that world politics is divided between open versus closed societies, between
globalists and nationalists. But these analyses obscure the real challenge to the status
quo.
President Trump and the far right preach not the end of globalization, but their own strain
of it, not its abandonment but an alternative form. They want robust trade and financial flows,
but they draw a hard line against certain kinds of migration. The story is not one of open
versus closed, but of the right cherry-picking aspects of globalization while rejecting others.
Goods and money will remain free, but people won't.
The current United States trade war is a case in point. Commentators lament that Mr. Trump
is tearing up " the rules
America itself created more than 80 years ago " and conjure up visions of the 1930s, when
nations and empires dreamed of total self-sufficiency. Yet they overlook the fact that the
actions of the president and his influential trade representative Robert Lighthizer betray no
desire to withdraw from the world market.
Quite the opposite. The express effort is to use unilateral action to bully other countries, China in particular, into
better market access for American products. The point of comparison is not the dreams of economic self-sufficiency of the 1930s
but Ronald Reagan's assault on Japanese competition in the 1980s. "The basic philosophy that we have is that we want free trade
without barriers," Mr. Lighthizer explained to Congress in
August.
In Britain, the Brexit campaign was built on the demand to "take back control" and
fear-mongering about refugees and immigrants. Withdrawal from the world economy was never on
the program. On the contrary, the Brexiteers
championed a pivot from the European economy to the global one unfettered by the
regulations of Brussels and the European Court of Justice. Almost all negotiations since the
vote to leave have been in pursuit of a vision in which the free flow of goods and money across
the channel can be preserved while labor migration can be squelched. A recent
report from British and American think tanks close to the Brexiteers proposes a new free
trade agreement between the two countries that could act as an embryonic World Trade
Organization 2.0 that would target more directly Chinese state subsidies for industries and the
lingering state-provided social services like the National Health Service.
The pattern of right-wing alter-globalization is repeated in Germany and Austria, where the
Alternative for Germany and the Austrian Freedom Party have recently recorded electoral wins.
Neither party proposes national self-sufficiency or economic withdrawal. In their programs, the
rejection of economic globalization is highly selective. The European Union is condemned, but
the language demanding increased trade and competitiveness is entirely mainstream. The
Alternative for Germany takes fiscal conservatism to an absurd degree with criminal charges
demanded for policymakers who overspend. Both parties call for no inheritance tax and
burdensome regulations, even as they make new promises for social spending.
Free market capitalism is not rejected but anchored more deeply in conservative family
structures and in a group identity defined against an Islamic threat from the East. Several of
the Alternative for Germany's leaders are also
members in a society named after Friedrich Hayek, often seen as the arch-thinker of
free-market globalism.
Even the alt-right, usually seen as the epitome of the fortress mentality of separatist
survivalism, contains significant strains of alter-globalization. Some of the alt-right's most
prominent figures, from Richard Spencer to Christopher Cantwell (better known as the "
crying Nazi " from the 2017 Charlottesville, Va., protest), have expressed their sympathies
for the radical form of libertarianism known as anarcho-capitalism.
Many people on the alt-right -- including the premier anarcho-capitalist thinker, the German
economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe -- believe that cultural homogeneity is a precondition
for socio-economic order. Mr. Hoppe envisions a dissolution of the current world map of states
into thousands of tiny units the size of Hong Kong, Andorra and Monaco without representative
government and ruled only by private contract.
Like Hong Kong and Singapore, these zones would not be isolated but hyper-connected, nodes
for the flow of finance and trade ruled not by democracy (which would cease to exist) but
market power with disputes settled through private arbitration. No human rights would exist
beyond the private rights codified in contract and policed through private security forces. As
Mr. Hoppe argues, the alt-right and identitarian vision of "a place for every race" need not
conflict with a global division of labor. None of this need disrupt commercial exchange and the
international division of labor. As Mr. Hoppe wrote, "not even the most exclusive form of
segregationism has anything to do with a rejection of free trade." The maxim would be: separate
but global.
The varieties of right-wing alter-globalization differ significantly in degrees of horror.
What they share is a rejection not of the "postwar international order" -- as many pundits
fruitlessly argue -- but of the order of the 1990s. In the cross hairs are the products of that
decade, above all, the crown jewels of neoliberal globalism: the W.T.O., the European Union and
Nafta (which was recently renegotiated and renamed).
The right's alter-globalizers unite in a condemnation of the structures of multilateral
governance that emerged from that decade along with their implication that democracy and
capitalism were twins joined at the reported "end of history."
Instead, in a forthright embrace of inegalitarianism, they question the ability of every
country and every population to practice democratic capitalism and, in many cases, propose a
departure from status quo democratic capitalism themselves.
The idea that openness is under attack is too vague. The formula of right-wing
alter-globalization is: yes to free finance and free trade. No to free migration, democracy,
multilateralism and human equality.
The nature of property is that nobody has any unless the rest of us agree to protect it. The
left-right contest is about how much we should protect an individual's claim of property. The
right-wing ideologues' design for "the free movement of goods and money, but not of people"
is a plan to give property (money) an unfettered superior claim.
What fools we are if we
agree to give up on every other claim, including a habitable place for our offspring a couple
generations out. And freedom of movement?
Would you be okay if allowed to roam in a 10,000 mi
radius? How about 1,000 or 100, or 100 yards?
The fact that people seem to have received such differing messages from this ...essay does
not mean that it is complex and sophisticated. It means tha it is one of those too clever by
half pieces that serve to confuse and divide.
It is essentially disinformation passing for
depth. It obscures rather than clarifies.
When the NYT condemns Trump, it often cites Buckley's rejection of John Birch Society as an
example of "sane" good old GOP. The sad reality is that they were right!
The hysterical fear
of the UN was overblown but the emergence of the "global consensus" that Pres. Obama so often
cited was very real. At core, the John Birch Society accurately predicted a cosmopolitan,
coastal finance system that directed money and people in a global interest, not national.
The
appeal of the right is so strong because most people can SEE that their own citizens go to
work day in and day out to move capital out of their backyards into the coffers of
financiers.
This writer clearly has a longer memory than most commentators, who see opposition to the WTO
as an exclusively right-wing issue. It's very, very important to remember and keep alive the
heritage of the left-wing alter-globalisation movement. The right wing offers false solutions
to a real problem: the "liberal world order" has indeed suppressed the rights of people,
especially in the Third World, in order to boost the profitability of the transnationals.
Workers are left behind by the current system. The only way to stop right-wing xenophobic
"anti-globalism" is to return to an authentic left wing critique of the international system,
rather than posturing as its defenders.
Every president should have to take a oath stating "First do no harm." Trump is harming our
country and the world. He's not remotely democratic or American. He rules by fear, blackmail
and intimidation. These are not American. He likes to rile things up but that is not what you
do with a country or the world. Welcome to World War III.
While I agree the globalization (compliments of technological advances) has gone right wing,
the politics of failure provide so much of the emotional fuel of this hard turn. A very
different scenario might be playing out now if the Arab Spring had not collapsed compliments
of the Saudis (what a shock) among others.
Had Obama listened to John McCain about Syria; Had
George W. Bush not invaded Iraq while back-burnering Afghanistan; Had Operation Ajax not
toppled the legitimate government of Iran; Had Truman supported Ho-Chi Minh instead of the
French.
These abject failures in the Right Thing to Do have stressed the post WWI world to
dog-eat-dog status where the rhetoric of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness are
being held hostage to a zero sum game where seas of migrants risk everything to avoid the
final failure because everything else has failed around them. Shows you how much we've
learned from all of it.
What the author is struggling to define, is called 'America First'. It's is akin to the
warning you get when taking off in an airplane. If a problem occurs, (which very definitely
has happened since China joined the WTO in 2001)... if a problem occurs, put on your own
seatbelt, before helping others. You can't help someone else, if you, yourself are dead in
the water. America First, consequently, is about more than simply putting America first. In
the sense that the author raises the subject, America First is about reforming the WTO. Come
on guys, get with the program!
The dear leader wants to have it both ways. He wants free trade when it benefits him and
tariffs when it doesn't. He doesn't care about the average shopper who has to pay more for
necessities, which are all made in China now. Try to buy a cooking implement that's not made
in China! A pot or a pan or a napkin, or a glass vessel.
@Mike Livingston No one, not even democrats are saying that we should have open borders, what
they are saying is that this country needs comprehensive immigration reform. Which was the
pretext Reagan used when giving amnesty to some 3 million Mexican immigrants. The republicans
have had more than 6 years to fashion genuine immigration reform, that never happened. The
reason is, the only thing that the GOP has is immigration, and fear to get elected. To try
and get elected by saying we're going to pollute the air, water, ground, we're going to give
some 1.5 trillion in tax breaks to corporations and the rich, we're going to balloon the
national debt, that we blamed Obama for, while ignoring the economic damage we've done. We
want to defund education, take away your healthcare, and destroy Social Security Medicaid,
and Medicare, to pay for the 1.5 trillion in tax breaks, and the you the people will get
zero. How log would a party stay in power, because that's exactly what the GOP has done.
Congress, has no right to decide what or how much future generations will pay to service
debt. They are supposed to contend with the here and now, not saddle generations with debt.
So what happens when the national debt comes due, they won't be able to get the money from
the voter, so like the British had to do after WWI, they got it from the only people that had
it to give, the aristocracy, which is why most sold off vast swaths of land. And so it will
go for the billionaires.
The rise of the right in the US and Europe is a response to neoliberal globalization's
anti-worker consequences. In the US, the working class was so desperate for someone to speak
to their economic anxieties, that a large portion of them placed their hopes in the hands of
a ridiculous, blow-hard billionaire.
The Democrats for over two decades have worried that any
pro-worker policies they might enact would threaten the flow of corporate cash that they
longed for so, as Charles Schumer reasoned, "For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in
western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in
Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin." A failed strategy,
but they're still going with it. That quote was from 2016 but it could as well have been from
1992 when the Democrats joined the Republicans in supporting NAFTA. For those who couldn't
connect the dots, another ridiculous billionaire presidential candidate helped them out,
warning of the "giant sucking sound" as jobs left the country, bound for low wage countries.
All Trump had to do was walk through the door both parties had opened, promising to bring
those jobs back. The centrist Dems obliged him with their self-sabotaging response that
"those jobs are gone and they ain't coming back". Slobodian is wrong: the wealthy and their
politicians aren't cherry-picking the parts of globalization that they want - they're
cynically claiming to be on the side of workers.
Why did I, after reading a paragraph or two, mistakenly conclude that I was in disagreement
with Quinn? In any case, his piece here makes sense. In short: The Trump Republicans want a
right wing, white nationalist cum supremacist world. Goods and money (and rich white
Republicans like Ivanka and Kushner) move (sashay) around the world, but not other people.
And not democracy, human rights, decency, and ethics. According to their thinking, the old
racist white prerogatives and entitlements are preserved, here and around the world. Goods
and money should move to the benefit of rich white Republicans, which will be accomplished by
corruption a la Russia and its oligarchs. Whenever an President Obama accomplishment can be
undone or even just recreated under a Trump Republican moniker, that's all for the better.
Even statements, opinions and truth would move in only one direction--outward from Trump and
his cult and the other right wing, white nationalist globalists. They will say whatever they
want to, however untrue, vile or silly. And the rest of us would silently slavishly abide by
it. The world will be a hybrid of plantation, concentration camp, gulag, and Gilead. The rich
and the white and the powerful and the males will do as they will, and the rest of us will be
grateful to merely survive.
The Republicans are riding a global wave of republicanism that's been in the works for
decades. This is a well-funded and scientifically designed plan that is sequentially rolling
out with military precision. There is nothing accidental about this global Republican
strategy. We are experiencing a fascist Blitzkrieg. Is this not obvious? Yet we have no plan,
no strategy, and no leader. Just childish wishful thinking about being saved by the vote.
Where is the global antifascist strategy from our entitled 80 year-oldster Democrat
leadership? Where is the global Democratic wave? Is Pelosi is "working on it"? Wake up
Democrats, the current feeble Democratic leadership is leading us down the drain. "Every
generation has their Fascism" (Primo Levi) -- the Republicans are just doing what they do,
while the Democrats do nothing.
It doesn't make you a right-wing blood-and-soil fascist to note that mass movement of people
from one country to another is VERY different than movement of funds from one country to
another. And just as a broken clock is right twice a day you don't have to agree with actual
Nazis to also note that the movement of people is all one way-into the "West". No one is
seriously arguing that China, South Korea, India, Vietnam, or the myriad nations of Africa
must have more diversity and multiculturalism regardless of what the various citizens of
those places want. If we don't want increasingly right-wing governments and politicians in
North America, Europe and Australia, (and I DON'T!!) we must allow space to talk about
immigration, legal and illegal, how much, when, and from where. There is nothing wrong with
Kenya wanting to remain Kenyan, Germany wanting to remain German, France wanting to remain
French, etc. The solution to Third World problems can't be for everyone to move to Europe,
Australia or the US.
Quinn Slobodian: Absolutely correct, your analysis is. What many left critiques in the '90s
saw in the EU, e.g., was the free movement of goods, capital AND labor, the last being the
most significant insofar as the vast majority of human beings are spoken of/for in formal
policy and institutional practices. On the other hand, NAFTA was only meant to be the free
movement of goods and capital, written by the leaders of the 3 capitalist states to promote
the concentration of capital in North America via corporate actors. It was said then by
officials in the US that uniting the three economies would be a deliberate way to compete
against the European Union. The left here said the specific political difference between the
two blocs reflected a crueler type of capitalism at work in North America, than the softer
capitalism of the social democracies of the EU [then]. Having recently returned from
Stuttgart and a trip to Süd Tyrol, it's still true. NAFTA was seriously flawed
initially, insofar as it never cared to directly promote the interests of the vast majority
in all 3 countries, viz., working people. Only foreign investors [from MX, CAN &/or US]
and their capital movements were protected and promoted by NAFTA. Yes, now the alt-right
seeks global separation [really segregation, historically], via race and socio-economic
status, two social constructs. Completely inane and dangerous stuff, ideologically.
With either our current versions of globalism or nationalism, the loser in both is the
environment. Global trade seeks to maximize national resources for transnational profits.
Nationalists, like President Trump, don't care about the environment if it means we're not
"winning" against other countries in jobs, trade, etc. In either case, the environment and
climate is sacrificed for monetary profit and political benefit.
Free trade and open borders are alternative ways to achieve the same end: cheap labor. We
either outsource to cheaper labor abroad through trade or bring the cheaper labor here
through immigration. But there are advantages and disadvantages of both methods. And may
depend on what kind of industries we are talking about. I think it would probably be better
to keep low skill, labor intensive, polluting industries abroad. Like basic materials
manufacturing or scrap metal processing or something like that you see in China and India. Or
perhaps natural resource extraction (you can't really choose the geography of that though).
Because all those things impose a lot of negative externalities on the local environment.
Look at the smog in Beijing. And these low wage workers come here and can't command high
enough wages to pay for the social services they and their families utilize. And low skill
workers of course have lower education attainment and language skills and so you have
additional barriers to assimilation for them and their children. Contrast with engineering,
advanced manufacturing or knowledge industry workers--bringing those people here and the
country is probably better off because the imported workers will be higher income, net payers
into the tax base. Plus they'll assimilate more easily as probably already studied English or
worked at multinationals. These are the kinds of immigrants we need for the 21st century.
"Mr. Hoppe envisions a dissolution of the current world map of states into thousands of tiny
units the size of Hong Kong, Andorra and Monaco without representative government and ruled
only by private contract...." I can understand why Mr. Hoppe is popular, he is actually in
the ballpark as to how future societies will develop. Think of this from the point of view of
any of the various political movements enjoying popularity and power today: MeToo, Black
Lives Matter on the "left" (outmoded term), and Trump-style populism, White Supremacy on the
"right" (outmoded term). Are any of these democratic? If, at some future date, the entities
of New York City, San Francisco, Chicago and Los Angeles, for example, declare independence
from a white, monocultural "Middle Lands of America", would those entities tolerate dissent
and organize along traditional democratic lines, with multiple political parties and a
balance of power? No, they'd organize just like identity groups are now organizing, with
social pressure to conform or be excluded. What we NEED to hope for, is that legitimate,
just, legal institutions will emerge to arbitrate disputes between the new wave of
micro-societies, and have the power to back up their decisions.
Globalization has enabled the rise of the far right by destroying local economies, wages,
agriculture, and jobs. It made some people very wealthy for a while, and it made millions of
poor people even poorer.
The truly wealthy right-wing and its money operate without regard to nationality, borders, or
governments. Money flows around the world in ways no government could control even if it
wished to. Countries are valued only to the extent they can be exploited (usually third-world
countries with natural resources) or used to protect your interests (powerful first-world
countries such as the U.S.) What makes them "right-wing" is that their only concern is to
increase the upward flow of money from us to them, while defending their own interests
legally, politically and militarily. They don't care in the slightest about human rights,
justice, health care, voting rights etc. because they already have those things. So when the
writers observe that they "propose a departure from status quo democratic capitalism" that is
absolutely accurate. They only want what is best for them and the rest of us can fend for
ourselves.
Corporations are people. Money is speech. We won at freedom. And all we've got to show for it
is the next era of feudalism, and a glorified, national Prison-State. Bravo, folks.
Perhaps the author thinks that the despicable majority, those of us that did not go to ivy
league schools are too ignorant to know that the flow of goods across borders and invasions
of many 10's of millions foreigners across borders are fundamentally different events and so
have very different effects on societies! What the various "right" groups that the author
disparages and also 80% of people polled in developed nations have realized is that "free"
movement of people across borders (interesting that anything can be justified by putting
"free" in front of it), that this is nothing more than an elite mechanism to invade and
conquer uppity native citizens, who know and insist on their rights, using foreigners as
pawns and mercenaries that the 1% has devised to create a worldwide medievalist state.
People like Herr Hoppe and all the lesser adherents of private sector "government" are all
unwitting dupes of people like Putin and Trump. If successful (and they have been so far),
the oligarchs have ZERO intention of codifying any rules-based "laws" for the unwashed
masses. They will make sure they, and they alone, have the power to shape decision-making to
suit whatever their needs are at that given moment. When Hoppe and the rest realize "this
isn't what I signed up for" it will be too late. All you people out their tempted by a strong
man leader, wake up! These men are mere gangsters, nothing more!
"Like Hong Kong and Singapore, these zones would not be isolated but hyper-connected, nodes
for the flow of finance and trade ruled not by democracy (which would cease to exist) but
market power with disputes settled through private arbitration. No human rights would exist
beyond the private rights codified in contract and policed through private security forces."
With all the talk of Americans sorting themselves into opposing economic and ideological
groups, (Fox News on every TV in the wealthy gated community, etc.), we could try this here
in the US. As noted in a Brookings article regarding the 2016 Presidential election: "The
less-than-500 counties that Hillary Clinton carried nationwide encompassed a massive 64
percent of America's economic activity as measured by total output in 2015. By contrast, the
more-than-2,600 counties that Donald Trump won generated just 36 percent of the country's
output -- just a little more than one-third of the nation's economic activity." So let's have
3000 feudal county-states divided between Blue and Red. Each with it's own independent
authority, if it has an authority at all. With no over-arching federal assistance, such as
health care and infrastructure, Redlandia would suddenly struggle with serious social needs
and the "commoners" within those states, if not actual Democrats, would suddenly start to act
like Democrats, arguing for social justice and fair treatment. Back to square one.
I live in Arizona, I'm a citizen of the USA but I'm also a human being on the planet earth.
Globalism is a given. It's not going away. We are connected through the water table, ICBM's,
Telecommunications in space, Oceans, Air, trade, etc., etc., etc. We have common problems, we
have had horrible World conflicts. We will always have self interest but we will also always
have shared interests. Those shared interests are growing faster than our self interests
which are highly connected to our shared interests. Where the right gets it wrong is by
destroying all norms of international law, treaties, allies, arms control, emissions
controls, human rights, etc., etc., etc. it creates a huge vacuum in the areas where mutual
shared interest is concerned. Mutual interest in our every increasing connected world is
becoming much more important than national self interest in the ultimate peaceful survival of
our planet. We just fought a 2 trillion dollar war in Iraq over WMD's. We are on the cusp of
abandoning the INF treaty. Why would we spend 2 Trillion going after WMD's and bomb Syria
over chemical weapons if our intent is to embark on nuclear proliferation? War, the end
result of Right-Wing Globalization is flooding, killer storms and nuclear war. It must be
stopped. The truth is post WW2 liberal democracy has been the greatest wealth building
machine in the history of the world. The Right can't refute that.
@HL The right is attacking everything that made our prosperity happen because they are too
greedy to see that the things they attack are what made their prosperity possible. The most
obvious is science. They attack scientists because they don't know how science works. They
think that they can separate science that messes with their worldview from science that makes
the gadgets they sell. It is all one science and if you undermine the integrity of science by
politicizing it, then you end up with your leading scientists locked in a tower like Galileo,
or forced to commit suicide like Plato. (Philosophy used to encompass all of the subjects we
now specialize in including math, science, and engineering. Most of the philosophers built
fortifications and war machines for a living.) Back when the top tax rate was 70% and the
corporate rate was 50% growth averaged 3.5% and peak growth was 8%, while we paid down the
still record debt (as a percent of GDP), rebuilt Europe and Japan, built the Interstate
Highway system, and numerous dams, brought electricity to Texas (ingrates), and most people
could live a reasonable life on one salary. Now we have cut taxes by more than half, average
growth is less than 2%, and peak growth 5.1% (and that was under Obama). But corporate mass
media and centrist Democrats never mention this obvious historical argument against Supply
Side Economics, pretending that this hypothesis without a cause and effect linkage, or data
to back it may yet work?!
@Ryan When hundreds of thousands of immigrants whose first or last name was Ryan came here in
the mid 19th century the result turned out pretty good! Also, check the numbers, we're hardly
being "swamped."
The essential difference between neo-liberal and right wing views of globalization this:
Neo-liberals dispute that globalization of goods trade will ultimately lower the wages of US
workers exposed to it to the global average (roughly that of China). Their counter argument :
Let workers become coders As if. IBM has now more workers in India than in the US. The PRC is
leading in A.I Fact is that the money sent to ther PRC by the US trade has permitted her to
gain the knowledge and industrial bas to specializes in any product it wishes to. Right
winged nationalists, too, love free trade, but to gain political power write conditions into
trade agreement such by 2020. in 2020, Mexican made cars and trucks must have 30 percent of
the work done by workers earning $16 an hour, in 2023 , 40% There is nothing new or
unexpected about the spread of tariff protection from farm products and farmers (where it has
been practiced by the US since the 1920's and ifor 50 years has been practised globally) to
manufactured goods and workers. It was inevitable Peter Drucker, founder of mangement theory
predicted it in 2001. Read
https://www.economist.com/special-report/2001/11/01/the-next-society to learn why
Slobodian isn't talking about alternative globalism. He's not even talking about globalism.
Embracing free finance and trade while rejecting migration, democracy, multilateralism and
human equality is not globalization, alternative or otherwise. Slobodian is describing an odd
form of global corporatism wrapped in a nationalistic shell. Taken to Hoppe's extreme, you'd
end up with a series of corporate micro-states competing for profit domination while
collaborating to suppress the global labor market. The problem of course is humans cannot
manage behavioral identity in this fashion. Finance and trade are an expression of human
production. They are the abstract form of what human beings do all day. You can't divorce
transactional convenience from the human experience. Not without literally enslaving the
entire working population of the world. Envisioning a global labor force organized into
essentially one big gig economy is delusional.
Free movement of goods, services and capital, but not of workers, is nothing new. It was, in
effect, the predominate economic ideology, from the 1920s to the 1990s, of what used to be
called the "free world." Restricting migration is not at all novel; what is new about the
Trump administration is HOW it is being done. Trump is not replacing free migration with
blocked migration, he is replacing rule of law with rule of the jungle, multilateral
agreement with bullying, respect for principles with mafioso loyalty and tribalism,
objectivity with deceit, respect and tolerance with crudeness and hatred, enlightenment with
spontaneously exploited ignorance, consistency, reliability and transparency with
never-ending Orwellian doublespeak, and the spirit of progress with crass fearmongering. In
the late 1930s, America hardly had more open borders than did Germany, Italy or Japan. Unlike
them, however, it supported republican institutions and democratic mechanisms, and opposed
fascism, militarism and wanton cruelty. Trump is not a fascist leader, and would not have
been one in the 1930s, because he lacks leadership competence generally. He would have been,
and is, a water-carrier for would-be wreckers of free institutions, freedom of ideas and
expression, and respect for truth.
Welcome to the new feudalism of the future. There will be two classes of people: Those who
own all the capital and control the military and the rest of us who either soldier for the
haves or tend to those who do. There will be no diplomatic corp, instead they will send the
military to take what they want. There will be islands of extreme wealth and luxury, guarded
by private armies; while surrounded by oceans of misery and despair. I don't see who that is
going to work out very well. Maybe it's just as well that we are probably going to incinerate
the planet and our species in the near future.
So, Slobodian - A Wellesley history professor - champions the end of the West as we know it,
demonizing those who want to preserve their cultures as "far right-wing". Somehow, the
academics decided that wanting to keep your culture is reactionary ... if you are from the
West. If you are not, then you have no responsibility to adapt because this would be cultural
imperialism. Academics like this are part of the problem.
@Kai Culture is the servant of power. You're suggesting that somehow preserving and defending
culture is the far right's purpose and there is truth in that - certainly they don't want to
share or pollute "our" culture. Both the right and the left were co-opted by those whose
hands are on the levers of power generations ago in the west. In the east, they have learned
the lessons of both our successes and failures. Culture is just the bait.
Sounds like we don't tax the wealthy enough. They've got theirs, now they want their own
country, too. That way, slave wages leading to even more wealth. And since their fiefdom will
be small, no need to provide more modes of transportation than is necessary to get goods and
services out to customers. The rest of us aren't going anywhere other than to work. And, if
you limit your workforce to one ethnic group, it's cheaper to control them. We all get to
marry our cousins, which is a red state (I won't go there). I'm assuming we get lots of drugs
to ease our boredom - kind of like now. These people are more than short-sighted and greedy,
they are Trumpian. If Democrats do take the House, how about the first thing they do is make
it easier to vote, i.e., national holiday on the weekend, fair and secure voting practices
and corporations are not people.
This article describes a wide range of social, economic & political models currently
advocated on the world stage that address globalization in positive terms from an ultra-right
political perspective. Arguably, advocates of these models may differ over the details of the
reactionary utopianism each espouses but, when push comes to shove in the real world, they
share an implied fallback openness to authoritarian government with quasi-fascist undertones.
There has not been the "free movement of people" within any of our lifetimes (or our
grandparent's life times). Populism is in part a reaction to global overpopulation. The
developing world must get its fertility rates in check. It is not the obligation of countries
like Japan, Australia, the United States or Italy to mop up the excess humanity billowing
from the global south.
@Rennata Wilson The "excess humanity?" What callous, ugly language. God forbid that those who
are better off ever say those words about you or those you love when your hour of need comes.
Whether struck with cancer or another car, surviving an earthquake or domestic abuse,
struggling against hunger or warfare, we are all on the edge of death and violence. Do you
think you and your grandchildren will be spared in perpetuity just because you're comfortable
now? That you'll never need the aid of your brothers and sisters in the world? Do you really
think that the lives of those in "the global south" (code word for people of color) don't
matter as much as yours? What kind of person are you??? Your comment is shocking in its
selfishness, arrogance, and cruelty. Hopefully you're not superstitious, for putting such
ugliness into the universe should make you uneasy about you fate and that of your children.
American corporations didn't move production of goods overseas - or shift to using foreign
made components in production - because they compassionately sought to boost employment in
those countries. The idea that globalization ever had a rosy hued humanist element is
patently absurd. It's always been this - a way for big business to work outside the system,
exploit people, and maximize profits while minimizing costs. The US government has been
enabling it for decades. What Reagan teed up, Clinton knocked out of the park. And of course
immigration is part of all of this - it's far more profitable for domestic business interests
if a significant percentage of the immigrant population is here illegally, hired illegally,
and too frightened by an anti-immigration social climate to even think about reporting
egregious violations of federal labor laws.
@Januarium Thank you for pointing out that both Reagan and Clinton created this disaster.
Democrats the first step to bragging Republicans is to stop filtering the Clintons who sold
us out and made Democrats take responsibility for Republican disasters. This started with
NAFTA, which most Democrats were against and which Republicans now blame you for.
You seem careful in your article to avoid leaning too heavily on the term "neoliberal," but
one way of summarizing your article might be that it asks the question "is Trump a
neoliberal?" and answers with a resounding "yes!" This probably seems jarring to a certain
benighted stratum of American politicos who may still be struggling to integrate the term
"neoliberal" into their political vocabulary after having first encountered it during the
Clinton vs. Sanders contest in 2015-16, in which the Clinton camp's concern-trolling about
racist/sexist "Bernie bros" was identified with neoliberalism. So just to clarify, yes, it's
true that neoliberalism corresponds to a long tradition of essentially right-wing thought
dating back to midcentury thinkers like Hayek (whose most famous book "The Road to Serfdom"
was recently making the rounds again in the US as a fixture of Glenn Beck's Tea Party reading
list) as well as Wilhelm Röpke, the postwar German economist who vehemently defended
South African apartheid as a necessary bulwark against the socialistic redistribution of
wealth. In short, when we leftists talk about neoliberalism in the context of ostensibly
"progressive" or center-left politicians like Clinton, part of what we mean is to argue that
such politicians have more in common with Trumpian racism -- in particular, a strong shared
commitment to the racially loaded ideal of a "global division of labor" -- than they might
care to openly admit.
The basis of the Right is bully-boy ego and a will to violence. Physical, I'm gonna kill you
and your children, too, violence. We are there. Its just our namby-pamby President has not
yet summoned the nerve to implement. He has, however, put the bones of the machine in place,
and introduced the rhetoric that will make it seem to make sense. Economically, the same.
Trump and his Right-wing would-be totalitarianist cronies are for free trade as long as they
think they're in charge. As soon as someone else, some other country, gains a clear
advantage, even in a limited sector, there will be conflict. Trump thinks he and everything
about him is the best, the invincible, the inevitable and so, of course, he endorses the law
of the jungle. But he will never fight. If he can't convince some gullible general, some
lunatic political movement to fight for him he will, first, resort to his bought and paid for
courts or, failing that, his flaccid legislature for relief. Failing that, he'll wall himself
up in the Trump compound and continue harassing independent contractors. Failing that, he
will try to run away but, I suspect, find no welcoming refuge in a world civilized enough to
respect the putter like Trump. This Uber-Right 'Globalization' isn't an economic idea, it
isn't a system, its a demand for the world's lunch money.
So under this new system would people be confined to the country (or even the state) in which
they were born? Would there be no tourism industry, only those in charge of trade agreements
and shippers allowed to go between these Singapore type enclaves? And the majority of people
kept in a virtual slave type existence? Takes me back to the phrase from a song of my
childhood: "Don't fence me in!"
"Mr. Hoppe envisions a dissolution of the current world map of states into thousands of tiny
units the size of Hong Kong, Andorra and Monaco without representative government and ruled
only by private contract...." In other words, a new corporatist-styled globalized feudalism.
And the vast majority of the population reduced to some new dystopian construct of peasantry.
Of course, if we're in the full throes of dystopia - for here we surely are - the planet is
faced with multiple crises of environmental degradation, dwindling resources and wars of
conquest. And no global structure in place to resolve any of this. Part of the big problem
with right wing-styled libertarianism: it doesn't deal well with large-scale events like
extinction. In fact, it's utterly oblivious to them.
@Chris Another thing is missing, tiny states are the perfect cauldron for permanent warfare
of neighbours against neighbours. This phenomenon is perfectly depicted in the History of
Europe.
"The formula of right-wing alter-globalization is: yes to free finance and free trade. No to
free migration, democracy, multilateralism and human equality." There is no new form of
globalization here. This is exactly the formula for the corporate-led globalization we have
seen since the 1980s: free flows of goods and money, but not people. The only new twist here
is the abandonment of multilateralism, which was always intended by the global top 1% as a
means to subvert democracy: put in place a system of global rules that no individual
government can violate, even if the vast majority of its people want it to, because corporate
globalization is literally killing them. Trump and the Republican party, now wholly owned by
a handful of multi-billionaires, simply want to impose their own rules on the world economy,
and not have to rely on multilateral rules that occasionally favor competing groups of
multi-billionaires. The so-called populist masses around the world are simply being taken in
by the reactionary ideology that is always used to divide and rule: scapegoat the "others,"
whoever they may be in any given situation.
Quinn Slobodian: "The formula of right-wing alter-globalization is: yes to free finance and
free trade. No to free migration, democracy, multilateralism and human equality." Slobodian's
views are quite fascinating on this problem. In fact it's quite fascinating to ask what would
occur today if nations were to become even dangerously far right as in the 1930's, but unlike
the 1930's we were to have more of them, a true multipolar situation, and of course to have
these nations armed with WMD, yet they would ostensibly be committed to free finance and free
trade and not declaring outright war on each other. Obviously these nations would be a
nightmare from perspective of migration, democracy, and human equality, but might they have a
rough multilateralism (which free finance and trade roughly implies) and be prevented from
outright war, and eventually be such a fierce and forward driving economic clash to point
that despite all their right wing trends they drive the world up into plenty and innovation
which solves many outstanding problems today such as climate change, and eventually they
loosen up to act more along line of left wing globalization dreams today? Or will such a
right wing trend eventually be the 1930's again but this time a terrible WW3? I guess the big
question is whether we can tell if the world will swing too far right or left for that matter
or if we are sensible enough to swing this way and that in uneven climb to eventual success
of us all.
Mr. Slobodian's is a very insightful article, and you can see the influence of Bannon and the
Alt-Right on Trump in this regard, and how Trump fits into this paradigm in his relationships
with NAFTA, the WTO, the EU.
Trump and his ilk are NOT "Populists"! See definition below. Language matters! Why does the
press persist in repeating this utterly inaccurate term? Whatever we think of the likes of
Trump and Le Pen, etc., they are not "Populists"! pop·u·list
/ˈpäpyələst • a person who holds, or who is concerned with, the
views of ordinary people. • a member of the Populist Party, a US political party formed
in 1891 that advocated the interests of labor and farmers, free coinage of silver, a
graduated income tax, and government control of monopolies. They have no REAL interest in
"ordinary people", they're demagogues. And Trump's policies (healthcare, taxes) HURT
"ordinary people." As for "graduated income tax, and government control of monopolies".... we
know how he feels about that!
@NYer Yes language matters, but dictionary definitions never exhaust words. 'Populist' has
also come to mean, unjustly or not, someone who claims to speak for 'the people' in some
unmediated and undifferentiated sense. So not a variety of groups, not ordinary people, but
'the people' in the homogenized way that Slobodian discusses. I don't expect to be able to
change your mind in a few lines here, but would suggest Jan-Werner Muller's book, What is
Populism? for something far richer than an older definition (but still short). I don't know
if this hyperlink will be scrubbed but: http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15615.html
@NYer Think about the people who were and are attracted to Trump rallies. A significant
nmajority of White Americans (who consider themselves to be "real" Americans) want to take
our country back and to make America great again. These are the people who voted for Donald
Trump. Authoritarian leaders often gain power on the basis of popullist messaging.
@NYer I echo the comments of Evans. Trump isn't ideologically sophisticated enough to offer
solutions that are wholly populist, and at the end of the day, he has to rely on the
Republican party establishment to create legislation. His campaign, however, was a populist
campaign for sure, even though this paper and many other media outlets were insistent on
calling it fascist and racist... most certainly because too many of our journalists are not
knowledgeable about history and has no idea what a populist was.
"The formula of right-wing alter-globalization is: yes to free finance and free trade. No to
free migration, democracy, multilateralism and human equality." So, where does Trump fit in
all of this? Yes to free finance. Yes to free trade if Trump and the wealthy can get their
cut. A big NO to free migration...even legal immigration. A big NO to democracy with
republican lead voter suppression and vote rigging with electronic voting machines, along
with propaganda meant to influence elections with fake news. A big NO to multilateralism as
Trump does not believe in working for anyone's benefit but his own. And a really big NO to
human equality as Trump believes no one is his equal. So, you should not be surprised that
Trump doesn't have a super duper health care plan for the nation as he doesn't care about
your health. Trump talks about jobs, but no infrastructure program because Trump doesn't care
how well the country operates. And Trump talks about immigrants of color as an "infestation"
because he is a white supremacist seeking a false purity. When will we learn that diversity
is strength. True in nature...true among humans. VOTE OUT ALL REPUBLICANS
So the distinction being proposed is between global mercantilism vs. global (what? altruism?
friendliness? whatever is the opposite of xenophobia?). While it's hard to justify opposition
to global mercantilism in modern times, obviously there is a dark human impulse to fear and
fight foreigners, however foreign is defined. Must be a sibling or close cousin to
scapegoating - blaming the foreigner for deficits that are more likely domestic. Both dark
impulses seem ameliorated by education and cosmopolitanism -- the latter likely helped by
global trade relationships. So there is some connection. We have a real problem in figuring
out how to stop amoral fascists like Trump from exploiting the dark human impulses of
xenophobia and scapegoatism to gain authority and power -- and we really must wage that fight
without giving up on democracy. I suspect there are deep psychological and sociological
insights (see Jonathan Haidt) that we have not yet attained.
@Nreb The corporate elite donor class, particularly the Republican donor class, don't really
want to cut off the flow of cheap labor. They just want to turn them into underground serfs
instead of green card holders who can ask for higher wages when the labor market is tight.
Karl Marx wasn't right about everything. He was wrong in thinking that people were
good-natured-enough to be willing to work for equal wages. But, he was spot-on about class
struggle. The rich and powerful strain every sinew to get richer and more powerful. If we put
on our Marxist glasses while reading your article, the motives of our leaders become
crystal-clear. It's about making the rich and powerful richer and more powerful. And, until
we freely acknowledge the existence of a class struggle in America, we regular citizens are
going to be aiming at secondary targets.
@Voter Frog The class struggle in America is between the Progressives and the Democrats. That
is, between the old and the new, the past and the future, the old and the young, the rulers
and the ruled, democracy and fascism, the People and corporations. Republicans are the
militant arm of the Democrats, they are important but secondary targets. We have to first go
through the Democrats to get to the Republicans.
@Voter Frog Yes, I am not against markets or money. These things are useful and not going
away. But the global .1% are still doing what they have been doing for ten thousand years:
waging class warfare against the other 99% The royalty used to tax the poor and give to
themselves. That is why Robin Hood was a hero to the masses. Then we had a revolution so that
the rest of us could tax the rich and invest in our children and our infrastructure. That is
exactly what the Constitution says that we are supposed to do. Read it. But the global mega
rich are unhappy with any system that is not designed to make them richer at our expense, so
they bought the politicians and they bought the media. And these politicians and media have
convinced a whole lot of people that the rich are the job creators, while they fire everyone,
and they are the wealth creators even though the workers actually do the work that creates
the wealth, while the rich take risks with our retirement money. A real rugged individualist
is a hermit, alone and disconnected from the grid. A CEO of a global bank getting free cash
from the federal Reserve is not a rugged individualist, they are semi useful parasites
sucking cash from the financial veins of our economy. If you fire a CEO from a car company,
it can still make cars, but if you fire the workers, it can't. Markets are good, but
capitalism puts the owners of machinery above the people that do the work. Adam Smith was
against this and so am I.
I urge, again, some supervisor who ACTUALLY reads the op-eds before publishing them. In this
ediorial i haven't to go longer than first paragraph to read that mr. Trump and republicans
are cherry-picking their own kind of globalism where goods an money are free. That, is. not.
true. First globalism is something that has to do with a free circulation of people and goods
( money are included in my view within goods by necessity, unless you're thinking about a
primordial society founded on exchange of good for good ) AMONG many countries. There wasn't
ever a call for globalism in history because there wasn't such massive partecipation from
countries. What you had in the past was bilateral or trilateral accord ( like NAFTA; recently
renmed USAMCA ) over negotiated goods. Globalism won't do that by negotiating single cases,
but only for general cases ( all diary, all automotive, etc.. ) Regardless that, it's been
since mr. Trump's election that this presidency has imposed restrictions over goods coming
from China, recently it has mined the Pan-pacific accord with asian countries, imposed
tariffs on steel trade with Europe, and the list goes on and on. It's appalling, to say the
least, that everything was shut down and narrowed to only the last few days data only ( that
is only to consider the 100bls tradi with saudis.. in a vacuum! ) Maybe the author is not
aware of the meaning of the word cherry-picking, but he is an expert of the word
horse-viewing.
The "free movement of goods", when it encompasses imports from poorly regulated,
authoritarian countries with no history of labor rights and with little regard for the
stewardship of God's green earth, has exacerbated our climate calamity and is bringing right
wing nativists, with dangerous ideologies, to power all over the developed world. But the
bankers & their friends in Washington and Manhattan remain willfully blind.
If this is true what is up with the trade war? It is about goods and services and money.
Unless the Internet is coming down it will always move things in the direction of consumers
and empower the movement of goods and money but do little about the movement of workers.
Your main point: "The idea that openness is under attack is too vague. The formula of
right-wing alter-globalization is: yes to free finance and free trade. No to free migration,
democracy, multilateralism and human equality." And I am assuming that saying no to free
migration, democracy, multilateralism and human equality is bad, in your opinion. And I am
assuming that you believe both finance and free trade can exist along side free migration,
democracy, multilateralism and human equality. To preserve our basic values, if indeed these
are an examples and I am assuming they are, we need to work harder at not simply settling for
"free finance and free trade", which are far easier to achieve if you dispense with these
basic values. We used to fight for human rights, we sought to be a nation that practiced
democracy as a role model for the globe, and we hoped to make progress every year on
improving human equality. Never perfect, but striving to abide by these values as a nation.
Openness under attack is a critique that is too vague. Is you point that we sacrifice these
values to quickly, and at our moral peril, if we settle for that as adequately clear and
direct. I hope that is what you are saying. I agree with you. And with our vote in November
we can begin the process of protecting these basic values.
Holding up the EU as the root of all woes, while at the same time dominating political
discourse and deflecting the blame from the real culprits.
All at a time when public spending cuts in the name of austerity (itself a direct reaction
to the failings of the neoliberal economic system) are spreading untold misery. At a time
when we finally have an opposition ready to challenge the policies of austerity, the issue
has been conveniently brushed under the brexit rug.
Right-wing ideology is often presented as a natural state and not ideological at all. This
denial is a central feature, acting as a way of abdicating responsibility for harmful and
selfish actions and providing means of fostering intellectual suspicion to prevent challenges
or structured and coherent critiques like your own.
The right engenders coalitions of people disinterested in politics and distrustful of
politicians with those who feel intellectually superior but see politics as an amoral game in
the pursuit of "enlightened" self-interest.
As a result, everything about it is disingenous.
There is no alternative (that we want you to choose). It's not racist to (constantly,
always negatively and to the expense of everything else) talk about immigration. Cutting
taxes for the rich reduces inequality (because we change the criteria to exclude the richest
from the calculations). This is also because there are dualities at play. Neoliberalism
relies on immigration to increase worker competition and suppress wage demand but courts the
xenophobic vote (which is why even with reduced EU migration Brexit has so far increased
overall immigration and would continue to do so in the event of no deal or May's deal). Both
Remainers and Leavers have accused the other of being a neoliberal project, and in certain
aspects -because of these dualities - both sides are correct.
I also believe the disdain for "political correctness" is somewhat a result of
neoliberalism, since marketisation is so fundamental to the project and the wedge of the
market is advertising, the language of bullshit and manipulation. People railing against
political correctness feel judged for their automatic thoughts that they identify as natural
instead of culturally determined. Behavioural advertising encourages these thoughts and
suppresses consideration. It is a recipe for resentment.
"... If 'free markets' of enterprising individuals have been tested to destruction, then capitalism is unable to articulate an ideology with which to legitimise itself. ..."
"... Therefore, neoliberal hegemony can only be perpetuated with authoritarian, nationalist ideologies and an order of market feudalism. ..."
"... The market is no longer an enabler of private enterprise, but something more like a medieval religion, conferring ultimate authority on a demagogue. ..."
"... Only in theory is neoliberalism a form of laissez-faire. Neoliberalism is not a case of the state saying, as it were: 'OK everyone, we'll impose some very broad legal parameters, so we'll make sure the police will turn up if someone breaks into your house; but otherwise we'll hang back and let you do what you want'. ..."
"... Hayek is perfectly clear that a strong state is required to force people to act according to market logic. If left to their own devices, they might collectivise, think up dangerous utopian ideologies, and the next thing you know there would be socialism. ..."
"... This the paradox of neoliberalism as an intellectual critique of government: a socialist state can only be prohibited with an equally strong state. That is, neoliberals are not opposed to a state as such, but to a specifically centrally-planned state based on principles of social justice - a state which, to Hayek's mind, could only end in t totalitarianism. ..."
"... It should be understood (and I speak above all as a critic of neoliberalism) that neoliberal ideology is not merely a system of class power, but an entire metaphysic, a way of understanding the world that has an emotional hold over people. For any ideology to universalize itself, it must be based on some very powerful ideas. Hayek and Von Mises were Jewish fugitives of Nazism, living through the worst horrors of twentieth-century totalitarianism. There are passages of Hayek's that describe a world operating according to the rules of a benign abstract system that make it sound rather lovely. To understand neoliberalism, we must see that it has an appeal. ..."
"... However, there is no perfect order of price signals. People do not simply act according to economic self-interest. Therefore, neoliberalism is a utopian political project like any other, requiring the brute power of the state to enforce ideological tenets. With tragic irony, the neoliberal order eventually becomes not dissimilar to the totalitarian regimes that Hayek railed against. ..."
The other point to be made is that the return of fundamentalist nationalism is arguably a
radicalized form of neoliberalism. If 'free markets' of enterprising individuals have
been tested to destruction, then capitalism is unable to articulate an ideology with which to
legitimise itself.
Therefore, neoliberal hegemony can only be perpetuated with authoritarian, nationalist
ideologies and an order of market feudalism.
In other words, neoliberalism's authoritarian orientations, previously effaced beneath
discourses of egalitarian free-enterprise, become overt.
The market is no longer an enabler of private enterprise, but something more like a
medieval religion, conferring ultimate authority on a demagogue.
Individual entrepreneurs collectivise into a 'people' serving a market which has become
synonymous with nationhood. A corporate state emerges, free of the regulatory fetters of
democracy.
The final restriction on the market - democracy itself - is removed. There then is no
separate market and state, just a totalitarian market state.
Yes, the EU is an ordoliberal institution - the state imposing rules on the market from
without. Thus, it is not the chief danger. The takeover of 5G, and therefore our entire
economy and industry, by Huawei - now that would be a loss of state sovereignty. But because
Huawei is nominally a corporation, people do not think about is a form of governmental
bureaucracy, but if powerful enough that is exactly what it is.
Pinkie123: So good to read your understandings of neoliberalism. The political project is the
imposition of the all seeing all knowing 'market' on all aspects of human life. This version
of the market is an 'information processor'. Speaking of the different idea of the
laissez-faire version of market/non market areas and the function of the night watchman state
are you aware there are different neoliberalisms? The EU for example runs on the version
called 'ordoliberalism'. I understand that this still sees some areas of society as separate
from 'the market'?
ADamnSmith: Philip Mirowski has discussed this 'under the radar' aspect of neoliberalism. How
to impose 'the market' on human affairs - best not to be to explicit about what you are
doing. Only recently has some knowledge about the actual neoliberal project been appearing.
Most people think of neoliberalism as 'making the rich richer' - just a ramped up version of
capitalism. That's how the left has thought of it and they have been ineffective in stopping
its implementation.
Neoliberalism allows with impunity pesticide businesses to apply high risk toxic pesticides
everywhere seriously affecting the health of children, everyone as well as poisoning the
biosphere and all its biodiversity. This freedom has gone far too far and is totally
unacceptable and these chemicals should be banished immediately.
The left have been entirely wrong to believe that neoliberalism is a mobilisation of
anarchic, 'free' markets. It never was so. Only a few more acute thinkers on the left
(Jacques Ranciere, Foucault, Deleuze and, more recently, Mark Fisher, Wendy Brown, Will
Davies and David Graeber) have understood neoliberalism to be a techno-economic order of
control, requiring a state apparatus to enforce wholly artificial directives.
Also, the work
of recent critics of data markets such as Shoshana Zuboff has shown capitalism to be evolving
into a totalitarian system of control through cybernetic data aggregation.
Only in theory is neoliberalism a form of laissez-faire. Neoliberalism is not a case of the
state saying, as it were: 'OK everyone, we'll impose some very broad legal parameters, so
we'll make sure the police will turn up if someone breaks into your house; but otherwise
we'll hang back and let you do what you want'.
Hayek is perfectly clear that a strong state
is required to force people to act according to market logic. If left to their own devices,
they might collectivise, think up dangerous utopian ideologies, and the next thing you know
there would be socialism.
This the paradox of neoliberalism as an intellectual critique of
government: a socialist state can only be prohibited with an equally strong state. That is,
neoliberals are not opposed to a state as such, but to a specifically centrally-planned state
based on principles of social justice - a state which, to Hayek's mind, could only end in t
totalitarianism.
Because concepts of social justice are expressed in language, neoliberals
are suspicious of linguistic concepts, regarding them as politically dangerous. Their
preference has always been for numbers. Hence, market bureaucracy aims for the quantification
of all values - translating the entirety of social reality into metrics, data, objectively
measurable price signals. Numbers are safe. The laws of numbers never change. Numbers do not
lead to revolutions. Hence, all the audit, performance review and tick-boxing that has been
enforced into public institutions serves to render them forever subservient to numerical
(market) logic. However, because social institutions are not measurable, attempts to make
them so become increasingly mystical and absurd. Administrators manage data that has no
relation to reality. Quantitatively unmeasurable things - like happiness or success - are
measured, with absurd results.
It should be understood (and I speak above all as a critic of neoliberalism) that
neoliberal ideology is not merely a system of class power, but an entire metaphysic, a way of
understanding the world that has an emotional hold over people. For any ideology to
universalize itself, it must be based on some very powerful ideas. Hayek and Von Mises were
Jewish fugitives of Nazism, living through the worst horrors of twentieth-century
totalitarianism. There are passages of Hayek's that describe a world operating according to
the rules of a benign abstract system that make it sound rather lovely. To understand
neoliberalism, we must see that it has an appeal.
However, there is no perfect order of price signals. People do not simply act according to
economic self-interest. Therefore, neoliberalism is a utopian political project like any
other, requiring the brute power of the state to enforce ideological tenets. With tragic
irony, the neoliberal order eventually becomes not dissimilar to the totalitarian regimes
that Hayek railed against.
"... In his first speech to a joint session of Congress, President Trump promised to deliver on his populist campaign pledges to protect Americans from globalization. "For too long," he bemoaned, "we've watched our middle class shrink as we've exported our jobs and wealth to foreign countries." But now, he asserted, the time has come to "restart the engine of the American economy" and "bring back millions of jobs." ..."
"... To achieve his goals, Trump proposed mixing massive tax-cuts and sweeping regulatory rollbacks with increased spending on the military, infrastructure and border control. ..."
...with Trump the ideological patina of faith in free markets has gone and he's more or less
just engaged in an asset stripping exercise. Thing is, though, you can't get away with that
without some kind of distraction, and in Trump's case it's his country club racist's
understanding of geopolitics converted into campaign rhetoric and immigration policy.
I don't think this is some masterplan -- he just happened to stumble into the stage at a
point where there was an opening for his kind of rhetoric. I'm just amazed someone smarter
didn't see it earlier and capitalise.
Under Trumps tax plan, a single mother with 2 kids working fulltime at minumum wage gets 75
dollars a YEAR in childcare, about $-1.50 per week.
----------
While the rich, those making up to 400,000 per year get 2000.00 per year child credit off
their taxes.
---------------
Name a benefit for the poor,
that the recent tax bill passed by Trump and GREEDY GOP.
In his first speech to a joint session of Congress, President Trump promised to deliver on
his populist campaign pledges to protect Americans from globalization. "For too long," he
bemoaned, "we've watched our middle class shrink as we've exported our jobs and wealth to
foreign countries." But now, he asserted, the time has come to "restart the engine of the
American economy" and "bring back millions of jobs."
To achieve his goals, Trump proposed
mixing massive tax-cuts and sweeping regulatory rollbacks with increased spending on the
military, infrastructure and border control.
This same messy mix of free market
fundamentalism and hyper-nationalistic populism is presently taking shape in Trump's proposed
budget. But the apparent contradiction there isn't likely to slow down Trump's pro-market,
pro-Wall Street, pro-wealth agenda.
His supporters may soon discover that his professions of
care for those left behind by globalization are -- aside from some mostly symbolic moves on
trade -- empty.
Just look at what has already happened with the GOP's proposed replacement for Obamacare,
which if enacted would bring increased pain and suffering to the anxious voters who put their
trust in Trump's populism in the first place.
While these Americans might have thought their
votes would win them protection from the instabilities and austerities of market-led
globalization, what they are getting is a neoliberal president in populist clothing.
I adore the ill educated, unintentional, satirical nature of some of the Rand supporters
comments here - unsurprisingly predominantly American. Who appear to have a tenuous grasp on
the nature and meaning of philosophy. Who replace rational thought with cod philosophy and
hysterical rants, - that would embarrass your average cargo cult worshiper - as a
justification for their own sociopathy and intellectual inadequacy. Take a bow...
MoreThanExists and the even more comic BruceMajors
Ironic isn't it, America may end up becoming the Western world's first failed state? A
kind of Somalia with hamburgers,obesity and better drainage; ruled by Christian
fundamentalist neo liberal warlords and Ayn Rand inspired gangsters, funded by Wall Street
parasites, with the Tea Party as the Sturm Abteilung (SA), and "Atlas Shrugged" as their most
sacred holy text written by a third rate Sadeian dominatrix.
Remember the fascist war cry as they went into battle against Republican troops during the
Spanish Civil War, "Death to the intellect! Long live death!". How appropriate?!! Maybe
Rand's disciples could work that into a revised version of "The Star-Spangled Banner.?"
" -- seems to me a very complicated explanation for: If a country doesn't produce what it
consumes Such a country is entirely F ed!"
This is totally NOT what I said, so I'll restate my point differently.
IF people (localists, sovereignists etc.) really wanted less globalisation, without global
supply chains, etc., then it would be possible, at a price (in terms of productivity).
BUT in reality localists, sovereignists etc. don't really want de-globalisation for the sake
of it, they mostly want to increase exports and decrease imports, and in fact these localists
desires are stronger in countries (USA, UK) that are big net importers, and therefore think
they are losing in the globalisation race.
The reason localists want to increase exports and decrease imports is that it is a form of
mercantilism: if exports increase and imports decrease, there are more jobs and
contemporaneously there are also more profits for businesses, so it's natural that countries
want to import less and export more.
BUT exports are a zero sum game, so while this or that country can have some advantages by
being a net exporter, this automatically means that some other country becomes a net importer,
so onne can't solve the problem of unemployment by having everyone being net exporters (as
Krugman once joked by having everyone export to Mars).
So the big plan of localists cannot work in aggregate, if it works for one country it
creates a problem for another country. This is a really big problem that will cause increasing
international tensions.
We are seeing this dinamic, IMHO, in the Brexit negotiations, where in my opinion many
brexiters had mercantilist hopes, but of course the EU will not accept an accord that makes it
easy for the UK to play mercantilist.
I'll add that I think that Brexiters don't really realise that they are mercantilists,
but if you look at the demands and hopes of many Brexiters this is their "revealed
preference".
This is also a problem because apparently many people (not only the Brexiters, see also
EU's policies towards Greece) don't really realise what's the endgame for the policies they are
rooting for, it seems more like a socially unconscious tendency, so it is difficult to have a
rational argument with someone that doesn't really understand what he wants and what he is in
practice trying to do.
The reason that every country is trying to play mercantilist is that in most countries
inequality rose in the last decades, which creates a tendency towards underconsumption, that
must be countered through one of these 3 channels: (1) Government deficits; (2) Easy money
finance and increased levels of financial leverage; (3) net exports.
The first two channels lead to higher debt levels, the third apparently doesn't but, as
on the other side of net exports there has to be a net importer, in reality it still relies on
an increase in debt levels, only it is an increase in debt levels by someone else (sometimes
known as the net exporter -- "vendor-financing" the net importer)
The increase in leverage goes hand in hand with an increase of the value of capital assets
VS GDP, that is an increase of the wealth to income ratio.
So ultimately the increased level of inequality inside countries (as opposed to economic
inequality between countries, that is falling) leads to a world where both debt levels and
asset prices grow more than proportionally to GDP, hence speculative behaviour, and an economy
that is addicted to the increase of debt levels, either at home or abroad (in the case of net
exporting countries).
The countries that seriously want to become net exporters have to depress internal
consumption, which makes the problem worse at a world level. The countries like the USA, where
internal consumption is too much a big share of the pie relative to what the USA could gain by
exports, are forced to the internal debt route, and so are more likely to become net
importers.
However, in this situation where everyone acts mercantilist, by necessity someone will end
up a net importer because import/export is a zero sum game, so it doesn't really make sense to
blame this or that attitude of, for example, Americans for they being net importers: they are
forced into it because otherwise they would be in perma-depression.
“But it is unquestionably and unarguably true that American conflict (which may or may
not be of a military nature) with a rising China is literally inevitable”
As long as the US Casino -(”the stock market”) will react unfavourable to a
(real) American-Chinese conflict – there will be no (real) American-Chinese conflict
–
(just the games which are going on currently) – and just never forget – all of my
Chinese friends are really ”tough gamblers”.
“As long as the US Casino -(”the stock market”) will react unfavourable
to a (real) American-Chinese conflict – there will be no (real) American-Chinese
conflict “
Crash, then conflict?
One possibility is a US market crash entirely due to domestic shenanigans, followed by
demagogue blaming it all on “Chiner.”
The first explicit reaction against globalization to gain
popular attention was the Battle of Seattle in 1999
Why not the Zapatista uprising in 1994? It was explicitly against Nafta and neoliberalism.
The 1997 Asian financial crisis also triggered a very strong reaction against the US centered
globalized financial system, its hedge funds, and the IMF.
the neoliberal ideology on which it rested, didn't face any serious challenge until the
Global Financial Crisis of 2008
In 2003, the unified challenge of the poorer countries was so serious that it the collapsed
the WTO talks to the point that it has never recovered. 2008 was simply catastrophic.
More than globalization being challenged, I think it is US hegemony. Trump is definitely
uniting its challengers with his media circus in Venezuela, disruptive tariff threats against
Mexico, and the blacklisting of Huawei.
Likbez 06.09.19 at 11:38 pm (no link)
Trump election in 2016 was in essence a rejection of neoliberal globalization by the
American electorate which showed the USA neoliberal establishment the middle finger. That's
probably why Russiagate hysteria was launched to create a smoke screen and patch the
cracks.
The same is probably true about Brexit. That's also explains Great Britain prominent role
in pushing anti-Russia hysteria.
I think the collapse of neoliberal ideology in 2008 (along with the collapse of financial
markets) mortally wounded "classic" neoliberal globalization. That's why we see the
conversion of classic neoliberalism into Trump's "national neoliberalism" which rejects
"classic" neoliberal globalization based on multinational treaties like WTO.
As the result of crisis of neoliberal ideology we see re-emergence of far-right on the
political scene. We might also see the emergence of hostile to each other trading blocks
(China Russia Turkey Iran; possibly plus Brazil and India ) vs G7. History repeats
I suspect that the USA neoliberal elite (financial oligarchy and MIC) views the current
trade war with China as the key chance to revitalize Cold War schemes and strategically
organize US economic, foreign and security policies around them. It looks like this strategic
arrangement is very similar to the suppression of the USSR economic development during the
Cold War.
The tragedy is that Trump administration is launching the conflict with China, while
simultaneously antagonizing Russia, attacking EU and undermining elements of the postwar
world order which propelled the USA to its current hegemonic position.
When you hear the same cue words you know exactly where it comes from.
Peace as its goal through staged wars ( undeclared since WW11).
"
February 9, 1950 -- The Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee introduces Senate Concurrent
Resolution 66 which begins:
"Whereas, in order to achieve universal peace and justice, the present Charter of the
United Nations should be changed to provide a true world government constitution."
The resolution was first introduced in the Senate on September 13, 1949 by Senator Glen
Taylor (D-Idaho). Senator Alexander Wiley (R-Wisconsin) called it "a consummation devoutly to
be wished for" and said, "I understand your proposition is either change the United Nations,
or change or create, by a separate convention, a world order." Senator Taylor later
stated:
"We would have to sacrifice considerable sovereignty to the world organization to enable
them to levy taxes in their own right to support themselves."
Me**** the problem with this draft of war plan is that if you are pointing fingers of a
" Presidential coup" at home and expect the Treasonous culprits to do time, you can't
purpose the same scheme in a foreign country without reprecusions.
And I think that is the Traitors in the White House plan to save their slimy asses....
Expose the undeclared coup through media ( weaponized as usual) and bring down Barrs
attempts to clean up our own swamp.
As commander in chief Trump has a n op problem.
Whoever inititated this because of ecconomic warefare ( bankers... How the web catches
you at every corner) both at home ( USA) and world.
War, undeclared, declared, either way and use universal peace as goal equals profits for
the war machine and depopulation for the world.
Win win situation for the original planers of one world govetnment.
You remember Dulles don't you ( Dulles airport).
New plan same as the old plan:
April 12, 1952 -- John Foster Dulles, later to become Secretary of State, says in a
speech to the American Bar Association in Louisville, Kentucky, that "treaty laws can
override the Constitution." He says treaties can take power away from Congress and give
them to the President. They can take powers from the States and give them to the Federal
Government or to some international body and they can cut across the rights given to the
people by their constitutional Bill of Rights.
A Senate amendment, proposed by GOP Senator John Bricker, would have provided that no
treaty could supersede the Constitution, but it fails to pass by one vote."
This is an interesting but probably way too simplistic view. The USA as a neoliberal
superpower can't change its course. It now depends and it turn needs to support all the
neoliberal empire superstructure no matter what. Or vanish as en empire. Which is not in
Washington and MIC or Wall Street interests.
So "Empire Uber Alles" is the current policy which will remain in place. Even a slight
deviation triggers the reaction of the imperial caste (Mueller witch hunt is one example,
although I do not understand why it lasted so long, as Trump folded almost instantly and became
just Bush III with the same set of neocons driving the USA foreign policy )
The internal logic of neoliberal empire is globalization -- enforcing opening of internal
markets of other countries for the US multinationals and banks. So the conflict with the
"nationalist" (as as neocon slur them "autocratic") states, which does not want to became the USA
vassals ( like the Russia and China ) is not the anomaly, but the logical consequence of the USA
status and pretenses as imperial center. Putin tried to establish some kind of détente
several time. He failed: "Carnage needs to be destroyed" is the only possible attitude and it
naturally created strong defensive reaction which in turn strains the USA resources.
Meantime the standard of living of workers and middle class dropped. While most of the drop
is attributable to neoliberalism redistribution of wealth up, part of it is probably is
attributable to the imperial status of the USA.
The USA neoliberal elite after 1991 became completely detached from reality (aka infected
with imperil hubris) and we have what we have.
Those 700 billions that went to Pentagon speak for themselves.
And in turn create the caste of imperial servants that are strongly interested in maintaining
the status quo and quite capable to cut short any attempts to change it. The dominance of neocons
(who are essentially lobbyists of MIC) in the Department of State is a nice illustration of this
mouse trap.
So the core reason of the USA current neocon foreign policy is demands and internal dynamics
of neoliberal globalization and MIC.
In other words, as Dani Rodik said "...today's Sino-American impasse is rooted in
"hyper-globalism," under which countries must open their economies to foreign companies,
regardless of the consequences for their growth strategies or social models."
The American foreign policy Blob's latest worry is that Venezuela's radical leftist
government is
reaching out to the Middle East for support against growing pressure from Washington.
Specifically, President Nicolás Maduro is reportedly trying to establish extensive
political and financial links with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his ally in Lebanon,
Hezbollah . The
latter has repeatedly condemned
U.S. policy towards Maduro , and already appears to have
shadowy economic ties to Caracas. There are indications that Maduro's regime may be
utilizing Hezbollah to launder funds from the illegal drug trade.
Washington's fear is that lurking behind an Assad-Hezbollah-Maduro alliance is America's
arch-nemesis, Iran, which has close relations with both Assad and Hezbollah. Tehran's apparent
objective would be to strengthen the Venezuelan regime, boost anti-U.S. sentiment in the
Western Hemisphere, and perhaps acquire some laundered money
from a joint Maduro-Hezbollah operation to ease the pain of U.S. economic sanctions
re-imposed following the Trump administration's repudiation of the nuclear deal.
Although Iran, Assad, and Hezbollah remain primarily concerned with developments in their
own region, the fear that they want to undermine Washington's power in its own backyard is not
unfounded. But U.S. leaders should ask themselves why such diverse factions would coalesce
behind that objective.
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It is hardly the only example of this to emerge in recent years, and the principal cause
appears to be Washington's own excessively belligerent policies. That approach is driving
together regimes that have little in common except the need to resist U.S. pressure.
Washington's menacing posture undermines rather than enhances American security, and especially
in one case -- provoking an expanding entente between Russia and China -- it poses a grave
danger.
The current flirtation between Caracas and anti-American factions in the Middle East is not
the first time that American leaders have worried about collaboration among heterogeneous
adversaries. U.S. intelligence agencies and much of the foreign policy community warned for
years about cooperation between Iran
and North Korea over
both nuclear and ballistic missiletechnology
. During the Cold War, a succession of U.S. administrations expressed frustration and anger at
the de facto alliance between the totalitarian Soviet Union and democratic India. Yet the
underlying cause for that association was not hard to fathom. Both countries opposed U.S.
global primacy. India was especially uneasy about Washington's knee-jerk diplomatic and military support for
Pakistan , despite that country's history of dictatorial rule and aggression.
Alienating India was a profoundly unwise policy. So, too, has been Washington's longstanding
obsession with weakening and isolating Iran and North Korea. Those two countries have almost
nothing in common, ideologically, politically, geographically, or economically. One is a weird
East Asian regime based on dynastic Stalinism, while the other is a reactionary Middle East
Muslim theocracy. Without the incentive that unrelenting U.S. hostility provides, there is
little reason to believe that Tehran and Pyongyang would be allies. But Washington's vehemently
anti-nuclear policy towards both regimes, and the brutal economic sanctions that followed, have
helped cement a de facto alliance between two very strange bedfellows.
Iranian and North Korean leaders have apparently reached the logical conclusion that the
best way to discourage U.S. leaders from considering forcible regime change towards either of
their countries was to cooperate in strengthening their respective nuclear and missile
programs. Washington's
regime change wars , which ousted Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Libya's Moammar Gaddafi -- and
the unsuccessful attempt to overthrow Syria's Assad -- reinforced such fears.
The most worrisome and potentially deadly case in which abrasive U.S. behavior has driven
together two unlikely allies is the deepening relationship between Russia and China.
Washington's
"freedom of navigation" patrols in the South China Sea have antagonized Beijing, which has
extensive territorial claims in and around that body of water. Chinese protests have grown in
both number and intensity. Bilateral relations have also deteriorated because of Beijing's
increasingly aggressive posture toward Taiwan and
Washington's growing support for the island's de facto independence. The ongoing trade war
between the United States and China has only added to the animosity. Chinese leaders see
American policy as evidence of Washington's determination to continue
its status of primacy in East Asia, and they seek ways to undermine it.
Russia's grievances against the United States are even more pronounced. The expansion of
NATO to the borders of the Russian Federation, Washington's repeated trampling of Russian
interests in the Balkans and the Middle East, the imposition of economic sanctions in response
to the Crimea incident, the Trump administration's withdrawal from the Intermediate Nuclear
Forces treaty,
U.S. arms sales to Ukraine , and other provocations have led to a new
cold war . Russia has moved to increase diplomatic,
economic, and even military cooperation with China. Beijing and Moscow appear to be
coordinating
policies on an array of issues,
complicating Washington's options .
Close cooperation between Russia and China is all the more remarkable given the extent of
their bitterly competing interests in Central Asia and elsewhere. A mutual fear of and anger
toward the United States, however, seems to have overshadowed such potential quarrels -- at
least for now.
There even appears to be a "grand collusion" of multiple U.S. adversaries forming. Both
Russia and China are increasing their economic links with
Venezuela , and Russia's military involvement with the Maduro regime is also on the rise.
Last month, Moscow dispatched two nuclear-capable bombers to Caracas
along with approximately 100 military personnel. The latter contingent's mission was to
repair and refurbish Venezuela's air defense system in light of Washington's menacing rhetoric.
That move drew a
sharp response from President Trump.
Moscow's policy toward the Assad government, Tehran, and Hezbollah has also become more
active and supportive. Indeed, Russia's military intervention in Syria, beginning in 2015, was
a
crucial factor in tilting the war in favor of Assad's forces, which have now regained
control over most of Syria. Washington is thus witnessing Russia getting behind two of its
major adversaries: Venezuela and an Iran-led coalition in the Middle East.
This is a classic example of
balancing behavior on the part of countries worried about a stronger power that pursues
aggression. Historically, weaker competitors face a choice when confronting such a power:
bandwagon or attempt to balance against that would-be hegemon. Some very weak nations may
have little choice but to cower and accept dependent status, but most midsize powers (and even
some small ones) will choose the path of defiance. As part of that balancing strategy, they
tend to seek any allies that might prove useful, regardless of differences. When the perceived
threat is great enough, such factors are ignored or submerged. The United States and Britain
did so when they formed the Grand Alliance with the totalitarian Soviet Union in World War II
to defeat Nazi Germany. Indeed, the American revolutionaries made common cause with two
reactionary autocracies, France and Spain, to win independence from Britain.
The current U.S. policy has produced an array of unpleasant results, and cries out for
reassessment. Washington has created needless grief for itself. It entails considerable
ineptitude to foster collaboration between Iran and North Korea, to say nothing of adding
Assad's secular government and Maduro's quasi-communist regime to the mix. Even worse are the
policy blunders that have driven Russia to support such motley clients and forge ever-closer
economic and military links with a natural rival like China. It is extremely unwise for any
country, even a superpower, to multiply the number of its adversaries needlessly and drive them
together into a common front. Yet that is the blunder the United States is busily
committing.
Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in security studies at the Cato Institute and a
contributing editor at , is the author of 12 books and more than 800 articles. His latest book
is Gullible Superpower: U.S. Support for Bogus Foreign Democratic Movements (2019).
"I never thought I'd be saying this, but if the Soviet Union still existed, the United States
would not dare to do what it is doing now" – said to me by an anti-Communist Romanian
who had fled Romania when it was still Communist ruled. We were attending a demonstration
against the Clinton air war which was the final death blow to Yugoslavia.
The emergence of a powerful anti-American world coalition is a good thing; US world
hegemony has been good neither for the US nor for the world. The main danger is that the US,
seeing its power slip away, will resort to all out war, even nuclear war. I pray that the US
rulers are at least sane even if they are quite evil and over-bearing.
Current US foreign policy, set by the White House and Commander-in-Chief, reflects the beliefs
of the Deplorables who put Trump into office: sadly, most of these dupes believe the myth of
American Exceptionalism [copyright Sarah Palin]. The nexus of confusing social media and
reality TV with genuine reality, and 1950s Hollywood jingoism, has them waiting for a crisis
[possibly a gay Star Wars/Kardashian-type monster] that can only be saved before the final
commercial by their 'Hero'.
Hello,
Let's see here.
It's gotten to the point where the great United States is ruled by Trump and the strangest of
people, like freak Bolton and Pompeo and the Presidents son in law?
Are the voters nuts? The lousy choices of war mongers Hillary and Trump?
Look at the foreign leaders in the pictures.
Then look at the nasty hate filled, historically ignorant bums I named above.
The difference?
They, the leaders of those four nations threaten no one and no other nation, but clown Trump
and his advisers do every day.
Take away any power from Trump and his advisers, yeah, wishful thinking, I know, and read a
book by Noam Chomsky or an article or three by Bernie Sanders and maybe you will see what a
circus the white house is, of this nation. Ironically, America has never been LESS great. What
a damn crying shame, know what I mean?
There is a diverse coalition of weaker countries opposing the U.S. because
A. Each have been the target of regime change and figure they they better pool their resources
and help each other when they can 'the axis of resistance'.
or
B. The wolves are waiting at the wood's edge just waiting to humiliate the United States, the
last flickering light of all that is good.
Well since we are a nation of narcissists we believe B because we cannot fathom that other
countries act in their own interests.
This slur "authoritarian state" is now peddled by neocons as synonym for the "countries we do not like"
This neocons in not very inventive... We already saw this line from Robert Kagan, who
actually is a better writer. This neocon/neolib pressitute can't even use proper terms such as
"neoliberalism" and "Washington consensus"
And slide to far-right nationalism and neo-fascism is direct result of neoliberalism
dominance for the last 40 years (since Carter) and sliding of the standard of living of workers
and the middle class.
Notable quotes:
"... Both countries have touted the virtues of their systems, while arguing that Western values are a source of decadence, amorality and disorder in the Western world. ..."
As international rivalry intensifies, the core strategic task for the U.S.-led democratic
community is to contain the geopolitical influence and political disruption caused by
authoritarian great powers, namely China and Russia. Yet that task is made all the harder
because illiberalism -- and sympathy for those illiberal powers -- is simultaneously surging
among key actors on the political right. If the U.S. and its allies are to succeed in the great
global rivalry of the 21st century, the right must confront the threat of illiberalism within
its ranks -- just as the left did during a previous twilight struggle in the 20th century.
... ... ...
This time, the threat is not expansionist communism, but a combination of autocracy and
geopolitical revisionism. China has been moving toward a dystopian future of high-tech
authoritarianism, as it pushes for greater power and influence overseas. Putin's Russia has
consolidated an illiberal oligarchy, while using information warfare, political meddling and
other tools to subvert liberal democracies in Europe, the U.S. and beyond.
Both countries have touted the virtues of their systems, while arguing that Western
values are a source of decadence, amorality and disorder in the Western world.
... ... ...
It is not for nothing that the political scientist Marc Plattner has
written that the gravest threat to liberal democracy today is “that it will end up
being abandoned by substantial segments of the right.” And even in the U.S., there are
alarming signs that conservative commitment to the norms of liberal democracy is under
strain.
Communism was not a threat, but actually benefited the world in many ways.
It was communism that put pressure on capitalism to provide labor a fair share of wealth and
income. As soon as Soviet communism collapsed, capitalism returned to its avaricious roots,
resulting in stagnant wages for the working class. And the pauperization of the working class
in recent decades is the cause for the current revolt against liberal capitalism.
So it was the competition from communism that was helping capitalism to stay healthy. Without
it capitalism has degenerated into a Dickensian dystopia. We should therefore welcome any
alternative socio-economic models to liberal capitalism.
It was communism that put pressure on capitalism to provide labor a fair
share of wealth and income. As soon as Soviet communism collapsed,
capitalism returned to
Thats a great point Che.
I have never ever looked at it from that angle.
Interesting.
Robert Kagan of the Brookings Institution, who has long been a leading conservative
intellectual, warns that this disillusion with liberal democracy “is clearly present
among American conservatives, and not just among the ‘alt-right.’
Honest and real conservatives are far and fewer in today's MAGA/tea party infested GOP.
Forget career politicians like Ted Cruz or McConnell, even the previously decent conservative
think tanks/pundits like from NR or Erik Erickson or others have all given up on any
principles and just bow at the altar of Trump now.
No they haven’t, Trump decided to put McConnell in charge so of course the
#neverTrumpers like the McConnell presidency...which consists of appointing Republican judges
at record pace and little else.
The biggest need is to resist holy warriors like Hal Brands who want to destroy the world
if it resists their version of revealed truth. They are the biggest threat to the human
future. The United States has to learn to live in a world that it cannot control. The
American goal should be to work towards a constructive human future not some kind of holy war
to impose American control on the rest of the world. The United States is the biggest
military spender. In recent history, It has been the world's global aggressor.
It has an
history of wars that have made little difference whether America won or lost them. Perhaps
the United States could succeed with some kind of genocide that wiped out all of the parts of
the world that refuse to accept American supremacy. But, short of that kind of disgrace, the
United States is not going to succeed in achieving any meaningful goal through war. As long
as America does not destroy the world, the future is going to be determined by economic
competition and the destinies that the people of different parts of the world choose for
themselves.
I had wondered if it was noticed the Liberalism was dying. The world has turned hard
right, with all the anger, nationalism, do-as-I-say, and social intolerance.
I don't even the children of today.
I might suggest that liberals themselves are destroying their freedoms with illogical
illiberal liberalism.
YOU can't do that, say that, act like that, think like that...no no no...we must act and
be correct, nice, polite, all forgiving and never critical.
Huh?
The freedoms that so many of us marched for, fought for, voted for, sang about (thank gawd
the music still lives), got bloody for, even died for, are slipping away quicker than you can
say me, me, me...it's all about me.
Maybe...small maybe...our youth can once again awaken America and the world's conscience.
Maybe? Maybe not!
Wha? It seems our LIttle Cultural Revolution is just warming up. Wait till AOC et al are
all growed up.
"This is a moment when the “free world” needs to be strong and united."
Is this the same "free" world that jails grandmothers over contested historical views?
That has reneged on free speech?
Thanks to a truly ethnomasochistic immigration policy, I assure you that this will not
happen. The West will be lucky if squeaks through this period without a civil war.
"... Today's Sino-American impasse is rooted in "hyper-globalism," under which countries must open their economies to foreign companies, regardless of the consequences for their growth strategies or social models. But a global trade regime that cannot accommodate the world's largest trading economy is a regime in urgent need of repair. ..."
"... Today's impasse between the US and China is rooted in the faulty economic paradigm I have called "hyper-globalism," under which countries must open their economies to foreign companies maximally, regardless of the consequences for their growth strategies or social models. This requires that national economic models – the domestic rules governing markets –converge considerably. Without such convergence, national regulations and standards will appear to impede market access. They are treated as "non-tariff trade barriers" in the language of trade economists and lawyers. ..."
Today's Sino-American impasse is rooted in "hyper-globalism," under which countries must open their economies to
foreign companies, regardless of the consequences for their growth strategies or social models. But a global trade regime that cannot
accommodate the world's largest trading economy is a regime in urgent need of repair.
CAMBRIDGE – The world economy desperately needs a plan for "peaceful coexistence" between the United States and China. Both sides
need to accept the other's right to develop under its own terms. The US must not try to reshape the Chinese economy in its image
of a capitalist market economy, and China must recognize America's concerns regarding employment and technology leakages, and accept
the occasional limits on access to US markets implied by these concerns.
The term "peaceful coexistence" evokes the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev understood
that the communist doctrine of eternal conflict between socialist and capitalist systems had outlived its usefulness. The US and
other Western countries would not be ripe for communist revolutions anytime soon, and they were unlikely to dislodge the Communist
regimes in the Soviet bloc. Communist and capitalist regimes had to live side by side.
Peaceful coexistence during the Cold War may not have looked pretty; there was plenty of friction, with each side sponsoring its
own set of proxies in a battle for global influence. But it was successful in preventing direct military conflict between two superpowers
armed to the hilt with nuclear weapons. Similarly, peaceful economic coexistence between the US and China is the only way
to prevent costly trade wars between the world's two economic giants
Today's impasse between the US and China is rooted in the faulty economic paradigm I have
called "hyper-globalism," under
which countries must open their economies to foreign companies maximally, regardless of the consequences for their growth strategies
or social models. This requires that national economic models – the domestic rules governing markets –converge considerably. Without
such convergence, national regulations and standards will appear to impede market access. They are treated as "non-tariff trade barriers"
in the language of trade economists and lawyers.
Thus, the main US complaint against China is that Chinese industrial policies make it difficult for US companies to do business
there. Credit subsidies keep state companies afloat and allow them to overproduce. Intellectual property rules make it easier for
copyrights and patents to be overridden and new technologies to be copied by competitors. Technology-transfer requirements force
foreign investors into joint ventures with domestic firms. Restrictive regulations prevent US financial firms from serving Chinese
customers. President Donald Trump is apparently ready to carry out his threat of slapping additional punitive tariffs on $200 billion
of Chinese exports if China does not yield to US demands in these areas.
For its part, China has little patience for arguments that its exports have been responsible for significant whiplash in US labor
markets or that some of its firms are stealing technological secrets. It would like the US to remain open to Chinese exports and
investment. Yet China's own opening to world trade was carefully managed and sequenced, to avoid adverse impacts on employment and
technological progress.
Peaceful coexistence would require that US and China allow each other greater policy space, with international economic integration
yielding priority to domestic economic and social objectives in both countries (as well as in others). China would have a free hand
to conduct its industrial policies and financial regulations, in order to build a market economy with distinctive Chinese characteristics.
The US would be free to protect its labor markets from
social dumping and to exercise greater oversight over Chinese investments that threaten technological or national security objectives.
The objection that such an approach would open the floodgates of protectionism, bringing world trade to a halt, is based on a
misunderstanding of what drives open trade policies. As the principle of comparative advantage indicates, countries trade because
it is in their own interest. When they undertake policies that restrict trade, it is either because they reap compensating benefits
elsewhere or because of domestic political failures (for example, an inability to compensate the losers).
In the first instance, freer trade is not warranted because it would leave society worse off. In the second case, freer trade
may be warranted, but only to the extent that the political failure is addressed (and compensation is provided). International agreements
and trade partners cannot reliably discriminate between these two cases. And even if they could, it is not clear they can provide
the adequate remedy (enable compensation, to continue the example) or avoid additional political problems (capture by other special
interests such as big banks or multinational firms).
Consider China in this light. Many analysts believe that China's industrial policies have played a key role in its transformation
into an economic powerhouse. If so, it would be neither in China's interests, nor in the interest of the world economy, to curb such
practices. Alternatively, it could be that these policies are economically harmful on balance, as others have argued. Even in that
case, however, the bulk of the costs are borne by the Chinese themselves. Either way, it makes little sense to empower trade negotiators
– and the special interests lurking behind them – to resolve fundamental questions of economic policy on which there is little agreement
even among economists.
Those who worry about the slippery slope of protectionism should take heart from the experience under the General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade prior to the establishment of the World Trade Organization. Under the GATT regime, countries had much greater freedom
to pursue their own economic strategies. Trade rules were both weaker and less encompassing. Yet world trade expanded (relative to
global output) at a more rapid clip in the three and a half decades after World War II than it has under the post-1990 hyper-globalist
regime. Similarly, one can make a convincing case that, thanks to its unorthodox growth policies, China today is a larger market
for foreign exporters and investors than if it had stuck to WTO-compliant policies.
Finally, some may say that these considerations are irrelevant, because China has acceded to the WTO and must play by its rules.
But China's entry into the WTO was predicated on the idea that it had become a Western-style market economy, or would become one
soon. This has not happened, and there is no good reason to expect that it will (or should). A mistake cannot be fixed by compounding
it.
A global trade regime that cannot accommodate the world's largest trading economy – China – is a regime in urgent need of repair.
"... "The Western liberal model of development, which particularly stipulates a partial loss of national sovereignty – this is what our Western colleagues aimed at when they invented what they called globalization – is losing its attractiveness and is no more viewed as a perfect model for all. Moreover, many people in the very western countries are skeptical about it," Lavrov said. ..."
"... "The US and its allies are trying to impose their approaches on others," Lavrov noted. ..."
"... "They are guided by a clear desire to preserve their centuries-long dominance in global affairs although from the economic and financial standpoint, the US – alone or with its allies – can no longer resolve all global economic and political issues," he said. ..."
"... "In order to preserve their dominance and recover their indisputable authority, they use blackmail and pressure. They don't hesitate to blatantly interfere in the affairs of sovereign states." ..."
"... Agree with the assessment other than the claim the US has had centuries long global dominance, or even influence. ..."
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declared today that the Western, liberal model of society is dying, and a new world order
is taking its place.
Lavrov made the comments at his annual meeting with students and professors at the Foreign Ministry's Diplomatic Academy, reported
Russian state news agency TASS.
"The Western liberal model of development, which particularly stipulates a partial loss of national sovereignty – this
is what our Western colleagues aimed at when they invented what they called globalization – is losing its attractiveness and is
no more viewed as a perfect model for all. Moreover, many people in the very western countries are skeptical about it," Lavrov
said.
According to him, global development is guided "by processes aimed at boosting multipolarity and what we call a polycentric world
order."
"Clearly, multipolarity and the emergence of new centers of power in every way requires efforts to maintain global stability
and search for a balance of interests and compromises, so diplomacy should play a leading role here," Lavrov went on to say.
"Particularly because there are a lot of issues that require generally acceptable solutions."
These include regional conflicts, international terrorism, food security and environmental protection. This is why we believe
that only diplomacy can help make agreements and reach sustainable decisions that will be accepted by all.
"The US and its allies are trying to impose their approaches on others," Lavrov noted.
"They are guided by a clear desire to preserve their centuries-long dominance in global affairs although from the economic
and financial standpoint, the US – alone or with its allies – can no longer resolve all global economic and political issues,"
he said.
"In order to preserve their dominance and recover their indisputable authority, they use blackmail and pressure. They don't
hesitate to blatantly interfere in the affairs of sovereign states."
Perry Colace
When I was a kid, the Soviet Union was the enemy. Now Russia (with an economy, population, military and world influence the
fraction of the United States) seems to be one of the few places in the world that makes any bit of sense and ACTUALLY cares a
little bit about its culture and people.
Fluff The Cat
"The Western liberal model of development, which particularly stipulates a partial loss of national sovereignty – this is
what our Western colleagues aimed at when they invented what they called globalization – is losing its attractiveness and is
no more viewed as a perfect model for all.Moreover, many people in the very western countries are skeptical about it," Lavrov
said.
A Judaic-Masonic world order is the end goal. It entails the complete loss of sovereignty for all Western nations and the slow
genocide of white Christians via miscegnation and displacement by third-worlders.
lnardozi
I can't think of a man more American than Putin.
Sell the bases, come home, stop bothering others and trying to run world affairs.
Then we can spend a nice nice century or so rebuilding our infrastructure and trimming our out-of-control federal government.
The clue is right there in the name - the united STATES of America. A state is a sovereign country with its own laws - except
for those powers enumerated in the Constitution which the federal government should have.
That's the whole point - competition in government. You don't like the state you're in - you're guaranteed the choice of 49
others, along with all your possessions.
notfeelinthebern
Agree with the assessment other than the claim the US has had centuries long global dominance, or even influence.
johnnycanuck
Western global dominance, US took over from the British Empire with the assistance of the banksters class. It's all there in
the history books, you just need to spend time
consider me gone
As much as I hate to say it, this was Winston Churchill's idea. Even as the war was just starting, he was a major advocate
for the West controlling the globe after WWII.
But I'll bet he had no idea that the West would abandon traditional Western values in the process. He wouldn't watch TV and
predicted it would turn society into unthinking idiots. He nailed that one anyhow.
The Alliance
"...many people in the very western countries are skeptical about it," Lavrov said.
Skeptical?
I, for one, would show up early and highly motivated to march against, and to destroy, these treasonous, malevolent, collectivist
Globalists.
The Globalists within the United States government are traitors--traitors, by definition. They have declared war on our republic.
CDN_Rebel
Russia works because they have a ruthless tyrant who happens to be incredibly competent. That same system with a weak ruler
will collapse entirely in a matter of months. I like Putin, but he needs to groom an ironfisted successor pronto.
As for the chows - they need to print half a trillion a month to stay afloat and that's your model?
The west is only fucked because the sleeping masses refuse to acknowledge that Marxists have undermined our institutions...
It would take only a few years to scrub these subversive ***** from our society if we had the balls to do it
johnnycanuck
yadda yadda yadda.. marxists, subversives, commies, all the catch phrases of ye old Joe McCarthy. Russia works because Russians
have a history of enduring adversity. Unlike Americans.
Moribundus
It is eventually end of era of western imperialism, era that lasted 900 years. Game is over
"... Trump's failure here is his alone. Closing the border could be accomplished with a simple executive order. It has happened before: Reagan ordered the closing of the border when DEA agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena was murdered on assignment in Mexico in 1985, for instance. ..."
"... Trump's empty threats over the past two years have had real-world consequences, prompting waves of migrants trying to sneak into the country while they still have the chance. His recent move to cut all foreign aid to Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador is another empty gesture that will probably have similar consequences. The funds directed to those countries were used for programs that provided citizens with incentives not to migrate elsewhere. (The situation was not ideal from an isolationist point of view, but a wiser man would have built the wall before cutting off the aid.) ..."
"... Trump's betrayal of American workers is perhaps best encapsulated by the fact that one of the members of the advisory board of his National Council for the American Worker (which claims to "enhance employment opportunities for Americans of all ages") is the CEO of IBM, a company that has expressed a preference for F-1 and H-1B visa holders in its job postings. ..."
"... There are more former Goldman Sachs employees in the Trump White House than in the Obama and Bush administrations combined. ..."
"... It is hard to escape the conclusion that Trump is not actually interested in curbing immigration and reversing America's demographic decline. He is a con artist and a coward who is willing to betray millions of white Americans so that he can remain in the good graces of establishment neoconservatives ..."
"... As Ann Coulter has put it, "He's like a waiter who compliments us for ordering the hamburger, but keeps bringing us fish. The hamburger is our signature dish, juicy and grilled to perfection, you've made a brilliant choice . . . now here's your salmon. " ..."
"... Third, he put an end to American funding for Palestinians. This coincided with the passing of a bill that codified a $38 billion, ten-year foreign aid package for Israel. Trump also authorized an act allocating an additional $550 million toward US-Israel missile and tunnel defense cooperation. ..."
"... Trump's track record on Israel shows that he is capable of exercising agency and getting things done. But he has failed to address the most pressing issue that America currently faces: mass immigration and the displacement of white Americans. The most credible explanation for his incompetence is that he has no intention of delivering on his promises. There is no "Plan," no 4-D chess game. The sooner white Americans realize this, the better. ..."
"... We elected America's first Jewish president, nothing more" ..."
"Unlike other presidents, I keep my promises," Trump boasted in a
speech delivered on Saturday to the Republican Jewish Congress
at a luxury hotel in Las Vegas. Many in the audience wore red yarmulkes emblazoned with his name. In his speech, Trump condemned
Democrats for allowing "the terrible scourge of anti-Semitism to take root in their party" and emphasized his loyalty to Israel.
Trump has kept some of his promises. So far, he has kept every promise that he made to the Jewish community. Yet he has reneged
on his promises to white America – the promises that got him elected in the first place. It is a betrayal of the highest order: millions
of white Americans placed their hopes in Trump and wholeheartedly believed that he would be the one to make America great again.
They were willing to endure social ostracism and imperil their livelihoods by supporting him. In return, Trump has turned his back
on them and rendered his promises void.
The most recent example of this is Trump's failure to keep his promise to close the border. On March 29, Trump threatened to close
the border if Mexico did not stop all illegal immigration into the US. This would likely have been a highly effective measure given
Mexico's dependence on cross-border trade. Five days later, he suddenly retracted this threat and said that he would give Mexico
a " one-year warning
" before taking drastic action. He further claimed that closing the border would not be necessary and that he planned to establish
a twenty-five percent
tariff on cars
entering the US instead.
Trump's failure here is his alone. Closing the border could be accomplished with a simple executive order. It has happened
before: Reagan ordered the closing of the border when DEA agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena was murdered on assignment in Mexico in 1985,
for instance.
Trump's empty threats over the past two years have had real-world consequences, prompting waves of migrants trying to sneak
into the country while they still have the chance. His recent move to cut all foreign aid to Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador
is another empty gesture that will probably have similar consequences. The funds directed to those countries were used for programs
that provided citizens with incentives not to migrate elsewhere. (The situation was not ideal from an isolationist point of view,
but a wiser man would have built the wall before cutting off the aid.)
The past two years have seen a surge in illegal immigration without precedent in the past decade. Since late December, the Department
of Homeland Security has released 125,565 illegal aliens into the country. In the past two weeks alone,
6,000 have been admitted. According to current projections, 2019 will witness around 500,000 to 775,000 border crossings. Additionally,
about 630,000 illegal aliens will be added to the population after having overstayed their visas. By the end of the year,
more than one million illegal aliens will have been added to the population:
These projections put the number of illegal aliens added to the U.S. population at around one to 1.5 million, on top of the
11 to
22 million illegal aliens who are already living across the country. This finding does not factor in the illegal aliens who
will be deported, die over the next year, or leave the U.S. of their own will. As DHS data has revealed, once border crossers
and illegal aliens are released into the country, the overwhelming majority are never deported.
In February, Trump signed a
bill allowing the DHS
secretary to add another 69,320 spots to the current H-2B cap of 66,000. On March 29, DHS began this process by announcing that it
would issue an additional
30,000 H-2B visas this year. The H-2B visa program allows foreign workers to come to the US and work in non-agricultural occupations.
Unlike the H-1B program, a Bachelor's degree is not required; most H-2B workers are employed in construction, maintenance, landscaping,
and so on. The demographic most affected by the expansion of the H-2B program will be unemployed working-class Americans. This flies
in the face of Trump's promise to protect American workers and stop importing foreigners.
Trump has indicated that he has plans to expand the H-1B visa program as well. "We want to encourage talented and highly skilled
people to pursue career options in the U.S.," he said in a
tweet in January.
Trump's betrayal of American workers is perhaps best encapsulated by the fact that one of the members of the advisory board
of his National Council for the American Worker
(which claims to "enhance employment opportunities for Americans of all ages") is the CEO of IBM, a company that has
expressed a preference for F-1 and H-1B visa holders
in its job postings.
Trump has been working on legal immigration with Jared Kushner, who has quietly been crafting a
plan to grant
citizenship to more "low- and high-skilled workers, as well as permanent and temporary workers" (so, just about everyone). Kushner's
plan proves the folly of the typical Republican line that legal immigration is fine and that only illegal immigration should be opposed.
Under his plan, thousands of illegal aliens will become "legal" with the stroke of a pen.
There is a paucity of anti-immigration hardliners in Trump's inner circle (though Stephen Miller is a notable exception). Trump
has surrounded himself with moderates: the Kushners, Mick Mulvaney, Alex Acosta, and others. There are more former Goldman Sachs
employees in the Trump White House than in the Obama and Bush administrations combined.
The new DHS secretary, Kevin McAleenan, who was appointed yesterday following Kirstjen Nielsen's resignation, is a middle-of-the-road
law enforcement official who served under Obama and Bush and is responsible for the revival of the "
catch-and-release " policy, whereby
illegal aliens are released upon being apprehended. It was reported last week that Trump was thinking of appointing either Kris Kobach
or Ken Cuccinelli to a position of prominence (as an "
immigration czar "),
but this appears to have been another lie.
Trump's failure to deliver on his promises cannot be chalked up to congressional obstruction. Congress. As Kobach said in a recent
interview , "It's not like we're powerless and it's not like we have to wait for Congress to do something. . . . No, we can actually
solve the immediate crisis without Congress acting." Solving the border crisis would simply demand "leadership in the executive branch
willing to act decisively." Kobach recently outlined an intelligent
three-point plan that Trump could implement:
Publish the final version of the regulation that would supersede the Flores Settlement. The initial regulation was
published by the Department of Homeland
Security in September 2018. DHS could have published the final regulation in December. Inexplicably, DHS has dragged its feet. Finalizing
that regulation would allow the United States to detain entire families together, and it would stop illegal aliens from exploiting
children as get-out-of-jail free cards. Set up processing centers at the border to house the migrants and hold the hearings in one
place. The Department of Justice should deploy dozens of immigration judges to hear the asylum claims at the border without releasing
the migrants into the country. FEMA already owns
thousands of travel trailers and mobile homes that it has used to address past hurricane disasters. Instead of selling them (which
FEMA is currently doing), FEMA should ship them to the processing centers to provide comfortable housing for the migrants. In addition,
a fleet of passenger planes should deployed to the processing centers. Anyone who fails in his or her asylum claim, or who is not
seeking asylum and is inadmissible, should be flown home immediately. It would be possible to fly most migrants home within a few
weeks of their arrival. Word would get out quickly in their home countries that entry into the United States is not as easy as advertised.
The incentive to join future caravans would dissipate quickly. Publish a proposed Treasury regulation that prohibits the sending
home of remittances by people who cannot document lawful presence in the United States. This will hit Mexico in the pocketbook: Mexico
typically brings in well over $20 billion a year in
remittances , raking in
more than $26 billion in 2017. Then, tell the government of Mexico that we will finalize the Treasury regulation unless they do two
things to help us address the border crisis: (1) Mexico immediately signs a "safe third country agreement" similar to our agreement
with Canada. This would require asylum applicants to file their asylum application in the first safe country they set foot in (so
applicants in the caravans from Central America would have to seek asylum in Mexico, rather than Canada); and (2) Mexico chips in
$5 billion to help us build the wall. The threat of ending remittances from illegal aliens is a far more powerful one than threatening
to close the border. Ending such remittances doesn't hurt the U.S. economy; indeed, it helps the economy by making it more likely
that such capital will be spent and circulate in our own country. We can follow through easily if Mexico doesn't cooperate.
It would not be all that difficult for Trump to implement these proposals. Kobach still has faith in Trump, but his assessment
of him appears increasingly to be too generous. It is hard to escape the conclusion that Trump is not actually interested in
curbing immigration and reversing America's demographic decline. He is a con artist and a coward who is willing to betray millions
of white Americans so that he can remain in the good graces of establishment neoconservatives . At the same time, he wants to
maintain the illusion that he cares about his base.
As Ann Coulter has put it, "He's like a waiter who compliments us for ordering the hamburger, but keeps bringing us fish.
The hamburger is our signature dish, juicy and grilled to perfection, you've made a brilliant choice . . . now here's your salmon.
"
Nearly everything Trump has done in the name of restricting immigration has turned out to be an empty gesture and mere theatrics:
threatening to close the border, offering protections to "Dreamers" in exchange for funding for the ever-elusive wall, threatening
to end the "anchor baby" phenomenon with an executive order (which never came to pass), cutting off aid to Central American countries,
claiming that he will appoint an "immigration czar" (and then proceeding to appoint McAleenan instead of Kobach as DHS secretary),
and on and on.
While Trump has failed to keep the promises that got him elected, he has fulfilled a number of major promises that he made to
Israel and the Jewish community.
First, he moved the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Trump claimed that the move would only cost $200,000, but in
reality it will end up being more than
$20 million . The construction
of the embassy also led to a series of bloody protests; it is located in East Jerusalem, which is generally acknowledged to be Palestinian
territory.
Second, he pulled the US out of the Iran nuclear deal. Netanyahu
claimed on Israeli TV that Israel was responsible for convincing him to exit the deal and reimpose sanctions on Iran. (Both Trump
and Netanyahu falsely alleged that Iran lied about the extent of its nuclear program; meanwhile, Israel's large arsenal of chemical
and biological weapons has escaped mention.) Third, he put an end to American funding for Palestinians. This coincided with the
passing of a
bill that codified a $38 billion, ten-year foreign aid package for Israel. Trump also authorized an act allocating an additional
$550 million toward US-Israel missile and tunnel defense cooperation.
Fourth, he recognized Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights (in defiance of the rest of the world, which recognizes the
Golan Heights as Syrian territory under Israeli occupation). Trump's Golan Heights proclamation was issued on March 21 and was celebrated
by Israel. Trump's track record on Israel shows that he is capable of exercising agency and getting things done. But he has failed
to address the most pressing issue that America currently faces: mass immigration and the displacement of white Americans. The most
credible explanation for his incompetence is that he has no intention of delivering on his promises. There is no "Plan," no 4-D chess
game. The sooner white Americans realize this, the better.
If you haven't picked up a copy of Vicky Ward's book, Kushner, Inc.: Greed. Ambition. Corruption. The Extraordinary Story
of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump , you really should.
I haven't read Mr. Graham's essay yet, but I thought those two links would fit in nicely. I stay in a low boil, like it is,
and having plodded through both those reviews, I can't stand reading too much on this topic at once.
Something's gotta give. Or are the brainless goy just going to let themselves be led off a cliff?
Oh, yes. There's an interview with Ward on
BookTV .
Yep. Trump's a lying POS pond scum like the rest of the DC swamp that he said he was going to drain, turns out he is one of them
all along. We elected America's first Jewish president, nothing more. He needs to change his campaign slogan to MIGA, Make Israel
Great Again, that was the plan of his handlers all along.
What I want to know is, who are those idiots who still keep showing up at his rallies? Are they really that dumb?
Even Sanders came out and said we can't have open borders. I've also heard him said back in 2015 that the H1b visa program
is a replacement program for American workers. If he grows a pair and reverts back to that stance, teams up with Tulsi Gabbard,
I'll vote for them 2020. Fuck Trump! Time for him and his whole treasonous rat family to move to Israel where they belong.
His "implicitly white" supporters would have abandoned him in droves, not wanting to be associated with a racist, thus pointing
up the weakness of implicit whiteness as a survival strategy. And is it actually a survival strategy? A closer look at it makes
me think it's more of a racial self-extermination strategy. After all, what kind of a survival strategy is it that can't even
admit its goals to itself? And it's exactly this refusal of whites to explicitly state that they collectively want to continue
to exist as a race that is the greatest impediment to their doing so. It's an interesting problem with no easy solution. How
do you restore the will to live to a race that seems to have lost it? And not only lost its will to live, but actually prides
itself on doing so? Accordingly, this "betrayal" isn't a betrayal at all. It's what American whites voted for and want. Giving
their country away and accepting their own demographic demise is proof of their virtue; proof of their Christian love for all
mankind.
You are definitely onto something here.
Still, I feel it's not that deep and complicated. It could be that they simply don't believe that the danger is closing in.
Boils down to wrong judgment. People who haven't had the need to think hard about serious things tend to develop that weakness.
I guess that boils down to "good times make weak men."
Hard times are coming and they'll make hard men.
The catch is simple: will be enough of them in time ?
Switching to the Democrats is no solution. The DNC has proven itself to be a criminal organization through sabotaging Sander's
campaign and then being instrumental in creating Russophobia, in collusion with Obama, the CIA, the FBI, and the DoJ. The DNC
has rules in place stating that super delegates – elitists aligned with the DNC – can vote if one nominee does not win on the
first ballot at the National Convention.
Because we have a HUGE number of hats in the Democratic ring, the chances that the nomination
will not be decided on a first vote are extremely high, with the result being that the Democratic nominee is not going to be decided
by voters in the primaries but by super delegates, i.e., the elitists and plutocrats.
Democracy exists when we vote to support
candidates chosen by the elites for the elites; when we stop doing that, the elites turn on democracy. It is a sham; we will have
a choice in 2020: between Pepsi and Coke. You are free to choose which one you prefer, because you live in a democracy. For more
on the rigging of the democratic primaries for 2020, see
Junk author, junk book of the butcher of Yugoslavia who would be hanged with Bill clinton by
Nuremberg Tribunal for crimes against peace. Albright is not bright at all. she a female bully
and that shows.
Mostly projection. And this arrogant warmonger like to exercise in Russophobia (which was the
main part of the USSR which saved the world fro fascism, sacrificing around 20 million people)
This book is book of denial of genocide against Iraqis and Serbian population where bombing with
uranium enriched bombs doubled cancer cases.If you can pass over those facts that this book is
for you.
Like Robert Kagan and other neocons Albright is waiving authoritarism dead chicken again and
again. that's silly and disingenuous. authoritarism is a method of Governance used in military.
It is not an ideology. Fascism is an ideology, a flavor of far right nationalism. Kind of
"enhanced" by some socialist ideas far right nationalism.
The view of fascism without economic circumstances that create fascism, and first of
immiseration of middle and working class and high level of unemployment is a primitive
ahistorical view. Fascism is the ultimate capitalist statism acting simultaneously as the civil
religion for the population also enforced by the power of the state. It has a lot of common with
neoliberalism, that's why neoliberalism is sometimes called "inverted totalitarism".
In reality fascism while remaining the dictatorship of capitalists for capitalist and the
national part of financial oligarchy, it like neoliberalism directed against working class
fascism comes to power on the populist slogans of righting wrong by previous regime and kicking
foreign capitalists and national compradors (which in Germany turned to be mostly Jewish)
out.
It comes to power under the slogans of stopping the distribution of wealth up and elimination
of the class of reinters -- all citizens should earn income, not get it from bond and other
investments (often in reality doing completely the opposite).
While intrinsically connected and financed by a sizable part of national elite which often
consist of far right military leadership, a part of financial oligarchy and large part of lower
middle class (small properties) is is a protest movement which want to revenge for the
humiliation and prefer military style organization of the society to democracy as more potent
weapon to achieve this goal.
Like any far right movement the rise of fascism and neo-fascism is a sign of internal problem
within a given society, often a threat to the state or social order.
Still another noted that Fascism is often linked to people who are part of a distinct ethnic
or racial group, who are under economic stress, and who feel that they are being denied rewards
to which they are entitled. "It's not so much what people have." she said, "but what they think
they should have -- and what they fear." Fear is why Fascism's emotional reach can extend to
all levels of society. No political movement can flourish without popular support, but Fascism
is as dependent on the wealthy and powerful as it is on the man or woman in the street -- on
those who have much to lose and those who have nothing at all.
This insight made us think that Fascism should perhaps be viewed less as a political
ideology than as a means for seizing and holding power. For example, Italy in the 1920s
included self-described Fascists of the left (who advocated a dictatorship of the
dispossessed), of the right (who argued for an authoritarian corporatist state), and of the
center (who sought a return to absolute monarchy). The German National Socialist Party (the
Nazis) originally came together ar ound a list of demands that ca- tered to anti-Semites,
anti-immigrants, and anti-capitalists but also advocated for higher old-age pensions, more
educational op- portunities for the poor, an end to child labor, and improved ma- ternal health
care. The Nazis were racists and, in their own minds, reformers at the same time.
If Fascism concerns itself less with specific policies than with finding a pathway to power,
what about the tactics of lead- ership? My students remarked that the Fascist chiefs we remem-
ber best were charismatic. Through one method or another, each established an emotional link to
the crowd and, like the central figure in a cult, brought deep and often ugly feelings to the
sur- face. This is how the tentacles of Fascism spread inside a democ- racy. Unlike a monarchy
or a military dictatorship imposed on society from above. Fascism draws energy from men and
women who are upset because of a lost war, a lost job, a memory of hu- miliation, or a sense
that their country is in steep decline. The more painful the grounds for resentment, the easier
it is for a Fascist leader to gam followers by dangling the prospect of re- newal or by vowing
to take back what has been stolen.
Like the mobilizers of more benign movements, these secular evangelists exploit the
near-universal human desire to be part of a meaningful quest. The more gifted among them have
an apti- tude for spectacle -- for orchestrating mass gatherings complete with martial music,
incendiary rhetoric, loud cheers, and arm-
lifting salutes. To loyalists, they offer the prize of membership in a club from which
others, often the objects of ridicule, are kept out. To build fervor, Fascists tend to be
aggressive, militaristic, and -- when circumstances allow -- expansionist. To secure the
future, they turn schools into seminaries for true believers, striv- ing to produce "new men"
and "new women" who will obey without question or pause. And, as one of my students observed,
"a Fascist who launches his career by being voted into office will have a claim to legitimacy
that others do not."
After climbing into a position of power, what comes next: How does a Fascist consolidate
authority? Here several students piped up: "By controlling information." Added another, "And
that's one reason we have so much cause to worry today." Most of us have thought of the
technological revolution primarily as a means for people from different walks of life to
connect with one another, trade ideas, and develop a keener understanding of why men and women
act as they do -- in other words, to sharpen our perceptions of truth. That's still the case,
but now we are not so sure. There is a troubling "Big Brother" angle because of the mountain of
personal data being uploaded into social media. If an advertiser can use that information to
home in on a consumer because of his or her individual interests, what's to stop a Fascist
government from doing the same? "Suppose I go to a demonstra- tion like the Women's March,"
said a student, "and post a photo
on social media. My name gets added to a list and that list can end up anywhere. How do we
protect ourselves against that?"
Even more disturbing is the ability shown by rogue regimes and their agents to spread lies
on phony websites and Facebook. Further, technology has made it possible for extremist
organiza- tions to construct echo chambers of support for conspiracy theo- ries, false
narratives, and ignorant views on religion and race. This is the first rule of deception:
repeated often enough, almost any statement, story, or smear can start to sound plausible. The
Internet should be an ally of freedom and a gateway to knowledge; in some cases, it is
neither.
Historian Robert Paxton begins one of his books by assert- ing: "Fascism was the major
political innovation of the twentieth century, and the source of much of its pain." Over the
years, he and other scholars have developed lists of the many moving parts that Fascism
entails. Toward the end of our discussion, my class sought to articulate a comparable list.
Fascism, most of the students agreed, is an extreme form of authoritarian rule. Citizens are
required to do exactly what lead- ers say they must do, nothing more, nothing less. The
doctrine is linked to rabid nationalism. It also turns the traditional social contract upside
down. Instead of citizens giving power to the state in exchange for the protection of their
rights, power begins with the leader, and the people have no rights. Under Fascism,
the mission of citizens is to serve; the government's job is to rule.
When one talks about this subject, confusion often arises about the difference between
Fascism and such related concepts as totalitarianism, dictatorship, despotism, tyranny,
autocracy, and so on. As an academic, I might be tempted to wander into that thicket, but as a
former diplomat, I am primarily concerned with actions, not labels. To my mind, a Fascist is
someone who identifies strongly with and claims to speak for a whole nation or group, is
unconcerned with the rights of others, and is willing to use whatever means are necessary --
including violence -- to achieve his or her goals. In that conception, a Fascist will likely be
a tyrant, but a tyrant need not be a Fascist.
Often the difference can be seen in who is trusted with the guns. In seventeenth-century
Europe, when Catholic aristocrats did battle with Protestant aristocrats, they fought over
scripture but agreed not to distribute weapons to their peasants, thinking it safer to wage war
with mercenary armies. Modern dictators also tend to be wary of their citizens, which is why
they create royal guards and other elite security units to ensure their personal safe- ty. A
Fascist, however, expects the crowd to have his back. Where kings try to settle people down,
Fascists stir them up so that when the fighting begins, their foot soldiers have the will and
the firepower to strike first.
Hypocrisy at its worst from a lady who advocated hawkish foreign policy which included the
most sustained bombing campaign since Vietnam, when, in 1998, Clinton began almost daily
attacks on Iraq in the so-called no-fly zones, and made so-called regime change in Iraq
official U.S. policy.
In May of 1996, 60 Minutes aired an interview with Madeleine Albright, who at the time was
Clinton's U.N. ambassador. Correspondent Leslie Stahl said to Albright, in connection with
the Clinton administration presiding over the most devastating regime of sanctions in history
that the U.N. estimated took the lives of as many as a million Iraqis, the vast majority of
them children. , "We have heard that a half-million children have died. I mean, that's more
children than died in Hiroshima. And -- and, you know, is the price worth it?"
Madeleine Albright replied, "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price -- we think
the price is worth it.
While I found much of the story-telling in "Fascism" engaging, I come away expecting much
more of one of our nation's pre-eminent senior diplomats . In a nutshell, she has devoted a
whole volume to describing the ascent of intolerant fascism and its many faces, but punted on
the question "How should we thwart fascism going forward?"
Even that question leaves me a bit unsatisfied, since it is couched in double-negative
syntax. The thing there is an appetite for, among the readers of this book who are looking
for more than hand-wringing about neofascism, is a unifying title or phrase which captures in
single-positive syntax that which Albright prefers over fascism. What would that be? And, how
do we pursue it, nurture it, spread it and secure it going forward? What is it?
I think Albright would perhaps be willing to rally around "Good Government" as the theme
her book skirts tangentially from the dark periphery of fascistic government. "Virtuous
Government"? "Effective Government"? "Responsive Government"?
People concerned about neofascism want to know what we should be doing right now to avoid
getting sidetracked into a dark alley of future history comparable to the Nazi brown shirt or
Mussolini black shirt epochs. Does Albright present a comprehensive enough understanding of
fascism to instruct on how best to avoid it? Or, is this just another hand-wringing exercise,
a la "you'll know it when you see it", with a proactive superficiality stuck at the level of
pejorative labelling of current styles of government and national leaders? If all you can say
is what you don't want, then the challenge of threading the political future of the US is
left unruddered. To make an analogy to driving a car, if you don't know your destination, and
only can get navigational prompts such as "don't turn here" or "don't go down that street",
then what are the chances of arriving at a purposive destination?
The other part of this book I find off-putting is that Albright, though having served as
Secretary of State, never talks about the heavy burden of responsibility that falls on a head
of state. She doesn't seem to empathize at all with the challenge of top leadership. Her
perspective is that of the detached critic. For instance, in discussing President Duterte of
the Philippines, she fails to paint the dire situation under which he rose to national
leadership responsibility: Islamic separatists having violently taken over the entire city of
Marawi, nor the ubiquitous spread of drug cartel power to the level where control over law
enforcement was already ceded to the gangs in many places...entire islands and city
neighborhoods run by mafia organizations. It's easy to sit back and criticize Duterte's
unleashing of vigilante justice -- What was Mrs. Albright's better alternative to regain
ground from vicious, well-armed criminal organizations? The distancing from leadership
responsibility makes Albright's treatment of the Philippines twin crises of gang-rule and
Islamist revolutionaries seem like so much academic navel-gazing....OK for an undergrad
course at Georgetown maybe, but unworthy of someone who served in a position of high
responsibility. Duterte is liked in the Philippines. What he did snapped back the power of
the cartels, and returned a deserved sense of security to average Philippinos (at least those
not involved with narcotics). Is that not good government, given the horrendous circumstances
Duterte came up to deal with? What lack of responsibility in former Philippine leadership
allowed things to get so out of control? Is it possible that Democrats and liberals are
afraid to be tough, when toughness is what is needed? I'd much rather read an account from an
average Philippino about the positive impacts of the vigilante campaign, than listen of
Madame Secretary sermonizing out of context about Duterte. OK, he's not your idea of a nice
guy. Would you rather sit back, prattle on about the rule of law and due process while
Islamic terrorists wrest control over where you live? Would you prefer the leadership of a
drug cartel boss to Duterte?
My critique is offered in a constructive manner. I would certainly encourage Albright (or
anyone!) to write a book in a positive voice about what it's going to take to have good
national government in the US going forward, and to help spread such abundance globally. I
would define "good" as the capability to make consistently good policy decisions, ones that
continue to look good in hindsight, 10, 20 or 30 years later. What does that take?
I would submit that the essential "preserving democracy" process component is having a
population that is adequately prepared for collaborative problem-solving. Some understanding
of history is helpful, but it's simply not enough. Much more essential is for every young
person to experience team problem-solving, in both its cooperative and competitive aspects.
Every young person needs to experience a team leadership role, and to appreciate what it
takes from leaders to forge constructive design from competing ideas and champions. Only
after serving as a referee will a young person understand the limits to "passion" that
individual contributors should bring to the party. Only after moderating and herding cats
will a young person know how to interact productively with leaders and other contributors.
Much of the skill is counter-instinctual. It's knowing how to express ideas...how to field
criticism....how to nudge people along in the desired direction...and how to avoid ad-hominem
attacks, exaggerations, accusations and speculative grievances. It's learning how to manage
conflict productively toward excellence. Way too few of our young people are learning these
skills, and way too few of our journalists know how to play a constructive role in managing
communications toward successful complex problem-solving. Albright's claim that a
journalist's job is primarily to "hold leaders accountable" really betrays an absolving of
responsibility for the media as a partner in good government -- it doesn't say whether the
media are active players on the problem-solving team (which they have to be for success), or
mere spectators with no responsibility for the outcome. If the latter, then journalism
becomes an irritant, picking at the scabs over and over, but without any forward progress.
When the media takes up a stance as an "opponent" of leadership, you end up with poor
problem-solving results....the system is fighting itself instead of making forward
progress.
"Fascism" doesn't do nearly enough to promote the teaching of practical civics 101 skills,
not just to the kids going into public administration, but to everyone. For, it is in the
norms of civility, their ability to be practiced, and their defense against excesses, that
fascism (e.g., Antifa) is kept at bay.
Everyone in a democracy has to know the basics:
• when entering a disagreement, don't personalize it
• never demonize an opponent
• keep a focus on the goal of agreement and moving forward
• never tell another person what they think, but ask (non-rhetorically) what they think
then be prepared to listen and absorb
• do not speak untruths or exaggerate to make an argument
• do not speculate grievance
• understand truth gathering as a process; detect when certainty is being bluffed;
question sources
• recognize impasse and unproductive argumentation and STOP IT
• know how to introduce a referee or moderator to regain productive collaboration
• avoid ad hominem attacks
• don't take things personally that wrankle you;
• give the benefit of the doubt in an ambiguous situation
• don't jump to conclusions
• don't reward theatrical manipulation
These basics of collaborative problem-solving are the guts of a "liberal democracy" that
can face down the most complex challenges and dilemmas.
I gave the book 3 stars for the great story-telling, and Albright has been part of a great
story of late 20th century history. If she would have told us how to prevent fascism going
forward, and how to roll it back in "hard case" countries like North Korea and Sudan, I would
have given her a 5. I'm not that interested in picking apart the failure cases of
history...they teach mostly negative exemplars. Much rather I would like to read about
positive exemplars of great national government -- "great" defined by popular acclaim, by the
actual ones governed. Where are we seeing that today? Canada? Australia? Interestingly, both
of these positive exemplars have strict immigration policies.
Is it possible that Albright is just unable, by virtue of her narrow escape from Communist
Czechoslovakia and acceptance in NYC as a transplant, to see that an optimum immigration
policy in the US, something like Canada's or Australia's, is not the looming face of fascism,
but rather a move to keep it safely in its corner in coming decades? At least, she admits to
her being biased by her life story.
That suggests her views on refugees and illegal immigrants as deserving of unlimited
rights to migrate into the US might be the kind of cloaked extremism that she is warning us
about.
Albright's book is a comprehensive look at recent history regarding the rise and fall of
fascist leaders; as well as detailing leaders in nations that are starting to mimic fascist
ideals. Instead of a neat definition, she uses examples to bolster her thesis of what are
essential aspects of fascism. Albright dedicates each section of the book to a leader or
regime that enforces fascist values and conveys this to the reader through historical events
and exposition while also peppering in details of her time as Secretary of State. The climax
(and 'warning'), comes at the end, where Albright applies what she has been discussing to the
current state of affairs in the US and abroad.
Overall, I would characterize this as an enjoyable and relatively easy read. I think the
biggest strength of this book is how Albright uses history, previous examples of leaders and
regimes, to demonstrate what fascism looks like and contributing factors on a national and
individual level. I appreciated that she lets these examples speak for themselves of the
dangers and subtleties of a fascist society, which made the book more fascinating and less of
a textbook. Her brief descriptions of her time as Secretary of State were intriguing and made
me more interested in her first book, 'Madame Secretary'. The book does seem a bit slow as it
is not until the end that Albright blatantly reveals the relevance of all of the history
relayed in the first couple hundred pages. The last few chapters are dedicated to the reveal:
the Trump administration and how it has affected global politics. Although, she never
outright calls Trump a fascist, instead letting the reader decide based on his decisions and
what you have read in the book leading up to this point, her stance is quite clear by the
end. I was surprised at what I shared politically with Albright, mainly in immigration and a
belief of empathy and understanding for others. However, I got a slight sense of
anti-secularism in the form of a disdain for those who do not subscribe to an Abrahamic
religion and she seemed to hint at this being partly an opening to fascism.
I also could have done without the both-sides-ism she would occasionally push, which seems
to be a tactic used to encourage people to 'unite against Trump'. These are small annoyances
I had with the book, my main critique is the view Albright takes on democracy. If anything,
the book should have been called "Democracy: the Answer" because that is the most consistent
stance Albright takes throughout. She seems to overlook many of the atrocities the US and
other nations have committed in the name of democracy and the negative consequences of
capitalism, instead, justifying negative actions with the excuse of 'it is for democracy and
everyone wants that' and criticizing those who criticize capitalism.
She does not do a good job of conveying the difference between a communist country like
Russia and a socialist country like those found in Scandinavia and seems okay with the idea
of the reader lumping them all together in a poor light. That being said, I would still
recommend this book for anyone's TBR as the message is essential for today, that the current
world of political affairs is, at least somewhat, teetering on a precipice and we are in need
of as many strong leaders as possible who are willing to uphold democratic ideals on the
world stage and mindful constituents who will vote them in.
The book is very well written, easy to read, and follows a pretty standard formula making
it accessible to the average reader. However, it suffers immensely from, what I suspect are,
deeply ingrained political biases from the author.
Whilst I don't dispute the criteria the author applies in defining fascism, or the targets
she cites as examples, the first bias creeps in here when one realises the examples chosen
are traditional easy targets for the US (with the exception of Turkey). The same criteria
would define a country like Singapore perfectly as fascist, yet the country (or Malaysia)
does not receive a mention in the book.
Further, it grossly glosses over what Ms. Albright terms facist traits from the US
governments of the past. If the author is to be believed, the CIA is holier than thou, never
intervened anywhere or did anything that wasn't with the best interests of democracy at
heart, and American foreign policy has always existed to build friendships and help out their
buddies. To someone ingrained in this rhetoric for years I am sure this is an easy pill to
swallow, but to the rest of the world it makes a number of assertions in the book come across
as incredibly naive. out of 5 stars
Trite and opaque
We went with my husband to the presentation of this book at UPenn with Albright before it
came out and Madeleine's spunk, wit and just glorious brightness almost blinded me. This is a
2.5 star book, because 81 year old author does not really tell you all there is to tell when
she opens up on a subject in any particular chapter, especially if it concerns current US
interest.
Lets start from the beginning of the book. What really stood out, the missing 3rd Germany
ally, Japan and its emperor. Hirohito (1901-1989) was emperor of Japan from 1926 until his
death in 1989. He took over at a time of rising democratic sentiment, but his country soon
turned toward ultra-nationalism and militarism. During World War II (1939-45), Japan attacked
nearly all of its Asian neighbors, allied itself with Nazi Germany and launched a surprise
assault on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, forcing US to enter the war in 1941. Hirohito
was never indicted as a war criminal! does he deserve at least a chapter in her book?
Oh and by the way, did author mention anything about sanctions against Germany for
invading Austria, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Poland? Up until the Pearl Harbor USA and
Germany still traded, although in March 1939, FDR slapped a 25% tariff on all German goods.
Like Trump is doing right now to some of US trading partners.
Next monster that deserves a chapter on Genocide in cosmic proportions post WW2 is
communist leader of China Mao Zedung. Mr Dikötter, who has been studying Chinese rural
history from 1958 to 1962, when the nation was facing a famine, compared the systematic
torture, brutality, starvation and killing of Chinese peasants compares to the Second World
War in its magnitude. At least 45 million people were worked, starved or beaten to death in
China over these four years; the total worldwide death toll of the Second World War was 55
million.
We learn that Argentina has given sanctuary to Nazi war criminals, but she forgets to
mention that 88 Nazi scientists arrived in the United States in 1945 and were promptly put to
work. For example, Wernher von Braun was the brains behind the V-2 rocket program, but had
intimate knowledge of what was going on in the concentration camps. Von Braun himself
hand-picked people from horrific places, including Buchenwald concentration camp. Tsk-Tsk
Madeline.
What else? Oh, lets just say that like Madelaine Albright my husband is Jewish and lost
extensive family to Holocoust. Ukrainian nationalists executed his great grandfather on
gistapo orders, his great grandmother disappeared in concentration camp, grandfather was
conscripted in june 1940 and decommissioned september 1945 and went through war as
infantryman through 3 fronts earning several medals. his grandmother, an ukrainian born jew
was a doctor in a military hospital in Saint Petersburg survived famine and saved several
children during blockade. So unlike Maideline who was raised as a Roman Catholic, my husband
grew up in a quiet jewish family in that territory that Stalin grabbed from Poland in 1939,
in a polish turn ukrainian city called Lvov(Lemberg). His family also had to ask for an
asylum, only they had to escape their home in Ukraine in 1991. He was told then "You are a
nice little Zid (Jew), we will kill you last" If you think things in ukraine changed, think
again, few weeks ago in Kiev Roma gypsies were killed and injured during pogroms, and nobody
despite witnesses went to jail. Also during demonstrations openly on the streets C14 unit is
waving swastikas and Heils. Why is is not mentioned anywhere in the book? is is because
Hunter Biden sits on the board of one of Ukraine's largest natural gas companies called
Burisma since May 14, 2014, and Ukraine has an estimated 127.9 trillion cubic feet of
unproved technically recoverable shale gas resources? ( according to the U.S. Energy
Information Administration (EIA).1 The most promising shale reserves appear to be in the
Carpathian Foreland Basin (also called the Lviv-Volyn Basin), which extends across Western
Ukraine from Poland into Romania, and the Dnieper-Donets Basin in the East (which borders
Russia).
Wow, i bet you did not know that. how ugly are politics, even this book that could have been
so much greater if the author told the whole ugly story. And how scary that there are
countries where you can go and openly be fascist.
To me, Fascism fails for the single reason that no two fascist leaders are alike. Learning
about one or a few, in a highly cursory fashion like in this book or in great detail, is
unlikely to provide one with any answers on how to prevent the rise of another or fend
against some such. And, as much as we are witnessing the rise of numerous democratic or
quasi-democratic "strongmen" around the world in global politics, it is difficult to brand
any of them as fascist in the orthodox sense.
As the author writes at the outset, it is difficult to separate a fascist from a tyrant or
a dictator. A fascist is a majoritarian who rouses a large group under some national, racial
or similar flag with rallying cries demanding suppression or exculcation of those excluded
from this group. A typical fascist leader loves her yes-men and hates those who disagree: she
does not mind using violence to suppress dissidents. A fascist has no qualms using propaganda
to popularize the agreeable "facts" and theories while debunking the inconvenient as lies.
What is not discussed explicitly in the book are perhaps some positive traits that separate
fascists from other types of tyrants: fascists are rarely lazy, stupid or prone to doing
things for only personal gains. They differ from the benevolent dictators for their record of
using heavy oppression against their dissidents. Fascists, like all dictators, change rules
to suit themselves, take control of state organizations to exercise total control and use
"our class is the greatest" and "kick others" to fuel their programs.
Despite such a detailed list, each fascist is different from each other. There is little
that even Ms Albright's fascists - from Mussolini and Hitler to Stalin to the Kims to Chavez
or Erdogan - have in common. In fact, most of the opponents of some of these
dictators/leaders would calll them by many other choice words but not fascists. The
circumstances that gave rise to these leaders were highly different and so were their rules,
methods and achievements.
The point, once again, is that none of the strongmen leaders around the world could be
easily categorized as fascists. Or even if they do, assigning them with such a tag and
learning about some other such leaders is unlikely to help. The history discussed in the book
is interesting but disjointed, perfunctory and simplistic. Ms Albright's selection is also
debatable.
Strong leaders who suppress those they deem as opponents have wreaked immense harms and
are a threat to all civil societies. They come in more shades and colours than terms we have
in our vocabulary (dictators, tyrants, fascists, despots, autocrats etc). A study of such
tyrant is needed for anyone with an interest in history, politics, or societal well-being.
Despite Ms Albright's phenomenal knowledge, experience, credentials, personal history and
intentions, this book is perhaps not the best place to objectively learn much about the risks
from the type of things some current leaders are doing or deeming as right.
Each time I get concerned about Trump's rhetoric or past actions I read idiotic opinions,
like those of our second worst ever Secretary of State, and come to appreciate him more.
Pejorative terms like fascism or populism have no place in a rational policy discussion. Both
are blatant attempts to apply a pejorative to any disagreeing opinion. More than half of the
book is fluffed with background of Albright, Hitler and Mussolini. Wikipedia is more
informative. The rest has snippets of more modern dictators, many of whom are either
socialists or attained power through a reaction to failed socialism, as did Hitler. She
squirms mightily to liken Trump to Hitler. It's much easier to see that Sanders is like
Maduro. The USA is following a path more like Venezuela than Germany.
Her history misses that Mussolini was a socialist before he was a fascist, and Nazism in
Germany was a reaction to Wiemar socialism. The danger of fascism in the US is far greater
from the left than from the right. America is far left of where the USSR ever was. Remember
than Marx observed that Russia was not ready for a proletarian revolution. The USA with ready
made capitalism for reform fits Marx's pattern much better. Progressives deny that Sanders
and Warren are socialists. If not they are what Lenin called "useful idiots."
Albright says that she is proud of the speech where she called the USA the 'Indispensable
Nation.' She should be ashamed. Obama followed in his inaugural address, saying that we are
"the indispensable nation, responsible for world security." That turned into a policy of
human rights interventions leading to open ended wars (Syria, Yemen), nations in chaos
(Libya), and distrust of the USA (Egypt, Russia, Turkey, Tunisia, Israel, NK). Trump now has
to make nice with dictators to allay their fears that we are out to replace them.
She admires the good intentions of human rights intervention, ignoring the results. She says
Obama had some success without citing a single instance. He has apologized for Libya, but
needs many more apologies. She says Obama foreign policy has had some success, with no
mention of a single instance. Like many progressives, she confuses good intentions with
performance. Democracy spreading by well intentioned humanitarian intervention has resulted
in a succession of open ended war or anarchy.
The shorter histories of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Venezuela are much more
informative, although more a warning against socialism than right wing fascism. Viktor Orban
in Hungary is another reaction to socialism.
Albright ends the book with a forlorn hope that we need a Lincoln or Mandela, exactly what
our two party dictatorship will not generate as it yields ever worse and worse candidates for
our democracy to vote upon, even as our great society utopia generates ever more power for
weak presidents to spend our money and continue wrong headed foreign policy.
The greatest danger to the USA is not fascism, but of excessively poor leadership
continuing our slow slide to the bottom.
Here is a 5 day old article on Trump deregulating Big Pharma that directly impacts the skyrocketing costs of American Health Care
to go with the above posts re the Republican Party's AHCA cutting of coverage and transfer of wealth to the wealthiest in America
Trump is the #1 problem with American Health Care today, he works for the interests of the corporations not the people's
"Draft Order on Drug Prices Proposes Easing Regulations"
By SHEILA KAPLAN and KATIE THOMAS...JUNE 20, 2017
"In the early days of his administration, President Trump did not hesitate to bash the drug industry. But a draft of an executive
order on drug prices appears to give the pharmaceutical industry much of what it has asked for - and no guarantee that costs to
consumers will drop.
The draft, which The New York Times obtained on Tuesday, is light on specifics but clear on philosophy: Easing regulatory hurdles
for the drug industry is the best way to get prices down.
The proposals identify some issues that have stoked public outrage - such as the high out-of-pocket costs for medicines - but
it largely leaves the drug industry unscathed. In fact, the four-page document contains several proposals that have long been
championed by the industry, including strengthening drugmakers' monopoly power overseas and scaling back a federal program that
requires pharmaceutical companies to give discounts to hospitals and clinics that serve low-income patients.
Mr. Trump has often excoriated the drug industry for high prices, seizing on an issue that stirs the anger of Republicans and
Democrats alike. He has accused the industry of "getting away with murder," and said that he wanted to allow the federal government
to negotiate directly with drug companies over the price of drugs covered by Medicare.
But the proposed order does little to specifically call out the drug industry and instead focuses on rolling back regulations,
a favorite target of the administration..."
I don't know the reason for persistence at attempts to understand the Economics of Trump's and the Republican various remake of
the American Economy from an academic Economics perspective by this blog.
It is not possible to do any such rational analysis, b/c as Paul Krugman has pointed out recently and pointedly, there is no
rhythm or reason to what they are doing except to obtain the sole single outcome of a major transfer of wealth to the wealthiest
Americans in the form of a huge tax cut for most of America's Billionaires and Mega-Millionaires by eliminating as much as possible
of the American Safety Net and other protections from the 99%.
"... Now, America's first professor of economics at the first business school, Simon Patten, said public infrastructure is a fourth factor of production, but unlike labor, land, and capital, the role of public infrastructure is not to make a profit. It's to provide public services that are basic for the economy's living standards and capacity to produce at a subsidized rate. So, America got rich and came to dominate the world industrial economy by subsidizing all of the basic costs. Low-cost roads, low-cost infrastructure. The government bore these costs so that, in effect, public infrastructure subsidizes the economy to lower the cost of production. ..."
"... Look at the, for instance, the Indiana Toll Road. That was done by a Trump-style private and public infrastructure and the toll roads are so high to try to pay off the hedge fund backers that people don't use them. They go on the free, slower internal roads. And that sort of is a horror story that anyone who's thinking of Trump's plan should be there. ..."
"... Well, under Trump's plan, the cities, in order to get federal funding, would have to help themselves by recapturing the real estate value created by this added transportation instead of leaving it in the hands of the landlords as the Second Avenue Subway extension was left or as the West Side extension to the Javits Center increased value of real estate all along there or the Wall Street luxurious restructuring at the subway, another 3 billion there. ..."
"... The government would finance it, and it would finance it by creating its own credit in the same way that it created the 4.6 trillion to bailout the banks on Wall Street. Instead of creating money to give to Wall Street, you'd spend money into the economy to build up the infrastructure. And ideally, you'd tax the rich for this, but now that Trump has untaxed the wealthy, the only way that you could possibly do it under his tax giveaway to Wall Street is for the government simply to print the money, create the money as the Federal Reserve or the Treasure can easily do, and finance it all public, and provide the basic infrastructure services at cost or freely. So, instead of tripling the cost of water, instead of tripling the cost of transportation, you'd actually reduce the cost of transportation, you'd reduce the cost of water, and you'd still get the value recapture tax but at least, the whole idea is you'd make it less expensive for the economy to produce and to live. ..."
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, many states and localities have blocks to prevent privatization, and they want to prevent what's happening
to them from what happened in Indiana with the toll road. They say, "Wait a minute. Privatization is going to be a giveaway. It's
going to triple the costs of providing infrastructure services. It's going to price our cities and states out of the market if we
try to go along with this plan." And Trump says, "Well, in order to qualify for public funding, you have to abolish these restrictions
on private funding."
You have to let yourself be robbed blind by the hedge funds and Wall Street. That's basically what he said. He said just as the
hedge funds robbed Chicago blind on the parking meters getting a huge rate of return that probably will force Mayor Rahm out of office,
you have to let other privatizers come in and vastly increase your cost of living.
So, the infrastructure is going to really destroy America's competitiveness instead of contributing to it. It's going to vastly
raise the price of the cost of living rather than providing more resources and making things easier for the population.
SHARMINI PERIES: Michael, the American Society of Civil Engineers agrees with you that this is inadequate in terms of funding,
that the Trump plan is just not sufficient. In fact, it needs, they say, just to deal with the backlog a $4.6-trillion investment
by 2025 and Trump's plan doesn't even come close. What do you make of this?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, to begin with, Trump's plan would triple the cost of what the engineers say to $22 trillion and the reason
is that it's a Thatcherite privatization plan. Trump's plan reverses the last 150 years of public infrastructure. And in fact, it's
the biggest attack on industrial capitalism in over 100 years, more serious than a socialist attack.
Now, America's first professor of economics at the first business school, Simon Patten, said public infrastructure is a fourth
factor of production, but unlike labor, land, and capital, the role of public infrastructure is not to make a profit. It's to provide
public services that are basic for the economy's living standards and capacity to produce at a subsidized rate. So, America got rich
and came to dominate the world industrial economy by subsidizing all of the basic costs. Low-cost roads, low-cost infrastructure.
The government bore these costs so that, in effect, public infrastructure subsidizes the economy to lower the cost of production.
Trump's plan is to vastly increase it because he forces all of this into the marketplace. Instead of offering, say, roads at the
cost of production, he'd actually triple the cost of production by insisting that it be privately financed, probably by hedge funds
and by bank credit that would add the interest charges, the capital gains charges, the management fees, the oversight charges and
the fines for criminal fraud that goes with it by factoring all these prices into the cost.
Look at the, for instance, the Indiana Toll Road. That was done by a Trump-style private and public infrastructure and the
toll roads are so high to try to pay off the hedge fund backers that people don't use them. They go on the free, slower internal
roads. And that sort of is a horror story that anyone who's thinking of Trump's plan should be there.
Trump mentions, for instance, water privatization. All you have to do is look at Thatcher's water privatization in Britain, which
has vastly increased the price of water. The water companies have been bought out by hedge funds, registered abroad by foreign owners
that are opaque and it's become probably the most unpopular privatization plan of all. So that part's a disaster.
SHARMINI PERIES: Michael, another part of the plan is what is known as value capture financing in order to raise more funds. First
of all, what is value capture financing? And what are its implications for states and communities that apply this principle?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Value capture financing is a wonderful idea. It's so wonderful I don't know how it got into the plan. It says
that if you build transportation along a route, sort of like the Second Avenue Subway in New York, that transportation is going to
increase the value of land and real estate all along the route because now people are going to be closer in access to the subways,
to the roads, to the railroads. Many Hollywood movies in the 1930s were all about building roads up to politicians' houses.
So, the idea is that in the future, if New York City were to do something like build the Second Avenue Subway for $3 billion,
that this would raise the rental value, already has raised the rental value along the subway line by $6 billion because now, I'm
sorry, 6 trillion, I forget whether it's billion or trillion at this point. But at any rate, it's raised it by so much because now
people don't have to walk a mile to an overcrowded Lexington Subway.
Well, under Trump's plan, the cities, in order to get federal funding, would have to help themselves by recapturing the real
estate value created by this added transportation instead of leaving it in the hands of the landlords as the Second Avenue Subway
extension was left or as the West Side extension to the Javits Center increased value of real estate all along there or the Wall
Street luxurious restructuring at the subway, another 3 billion there.
This is the best idea of the plan and the one thing that should be kept, which is, of course, why the Democrats don't mention
it at all because they're backing the real estate and the financial interest in this. It's such a good idea, I don't know how, Rick
Rybeck has written a wonderful article on this recently. So, there are a lot of followers of Henry George that love this aspect of
the plan.
SHARMINI PERIES: All right, Michael, this is your opportunity to lay out a infrastructure plan that you think will work for this
country.
MICHAEL HUDSON: The government would finance it, and it would finance it by creating its own credit in the same way that it
created the 4.6 trillion to bailout the banks on Wall Street. Instead of creating money to give to Wall Street, you'd spend money
into the economy to build up the infrastructure. And ideally, you'd tax the rich for this, but now that Trump has untaxed the wealthy,
the only way that you could possibly do it under his tax giveaway to Wall Street is for the government simply to print the money,
create the money as the Federal Reserve or the Treasure can easily do, and finance it all public, and provide the basic infrastructure
services at cost or freely. So, instead of tripling the cost of water, instead of tripling the cost of transportation, you'd actually
reduce the cost of transportation, you'd reduce the cost of water, and you'd still get the value recapture tax but at least, the
whole idea is you'd make it less expensive for the economy to produce and to live.
SHARMINI PERIES: And Michael, much of this country doesn't believe that government is capable of doing this because they have
been given example after example of how government bureaucratic structures aren't working. And, of course, this deterioration of
the civil service, it plays a big role in all of this. How do you rebuild confidence in the state structures?
MICHAEL HUDSON: You write a history of America's success in doing this. You can look at Eisenhower's road building plan of the
1950s, for instance. You can look at the whole history of America's infrastructure spending and the whole logic that was spelled
out by Simon Patten at the Wharton School and by the economic theorists of industrial capitalism when America was really taking off
in the late 19th and early 20th century. The whole history of how America built its roads, how it built the communication system,
public health are examples of how governments make things work.
ORDER IT NOW
You can look at Germany, you can look at other successful economies. And you look at what went well, but you have to look at what
went wrong so you see how the financial interests can take over these plans, privatize them, and somehow gut them, and turn them
around and make them predatory instead of productive.
SHARMINI PERIES: All right, Michael. As always, great pleasure to have you on and thank you for joining us.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Thank you. It's good to be here, Sharmini.
SHARMINI PERIES: And thank you for joining us here on The Real News Network.
Michael Hudson is a Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. He is the
author of many books, including The Bubble and Beyond, and Finance Capitalism and its Discontents,Killing the Host- How
Financial Parasites and Debt Destroy the Global Economy , and most recently J is for Junk Economics: A Survivor's Guide to
Economic Vocabulary in an Age of Deception .
"... The whole thing is classic Trumpian right move for the wrong reason ..."
"... IMO steel manufacturing in America became unsustainable because manufacturers chose not to reinvest in newer tech/newer processes that would make production more efficient. Plus the neolibs refused to force foreign manufacturers to wear a surcharge based upon the (at that time) superior working conditions of American steel workers. Anyone else conclude that the badly thought through 'plan' was to force American steel workers to give up their conditions? ..."
"... I suspect Trump will encourage the growth of non-union 'scab' steel plants to get around one issue while 'trusting' amerikan manufacturers to wake the fuck up amd modernise to cover the other. ..."
Just on a different note, we haven't discussed donny senior's somewhat limpwristed attempt to reintroduce protected markets into
the amerikan economy.
There is no doubt that 'something must be done' to provide a lifeline to the people of the Midwest aka 'the rustbelt'. I'm not
sure that resurrecting old programs is the best way forward; at least not solely. There must be more diversification if any resurrection
hopes to endure. The whole thing is classic Trumpian right move for the wrong reason
When I began thinking about this I had a quick scout of the web to try to find out which nation is the largest supplier of steel
to the US market. The financial times was about the only site which appeared to answer the query, but that was behind Murdoch's pay
wall.
I have watched mainstream US/Oz/englander & Aotearoa coverage since donny said he was gonna tax steel imports and to my knowledge
none of them have actually named the 'perps' aside from vague inferences vis a vis the People's Republic of China.
The allusions to China which is by far the
largest producer of steel on the planet
don't mention history. The Chinese did invent the steel-making process after all, but since 2007's allegations of dumping, China
has moved well down the hierarchy of amerikan steel suppliers to somewhere around #8.
I don't like to guess but I suspect South Korea is copping the rough end of the pineapple too. That leaves India, Mexico, Brazil
and Canada as the likely 'top 4'.
IMO steel manufacturing in America became unsustainable because manufacturers chose not to reinvest in newer tech/newer processes
that would make production more efficient. Plus the neolibs refused to force foreign manufacturers to wear a surcharge based upon
the (at that time) superior working conditions of American steel workers. Anyone else conclude that the badly thought through 'plan'
was to force American steel workers to give up their conditions?
I suspect Trump will encourage the growth of non-union 'scab' steel plants to get around one issue while 'trusting' amerikan
manufacturers to wake the fuck up amd modernise to cover the other.
I doubt the latter will eventuate to the point donny anticipates. Where new plants are constructed it will be in regions where
there wasn't a steel industry previously so as to make acceptance of non-union plants easier.
Nobody ever screwed up underestimating Wall St cupidity & where possible there will be little investment in new steel manufacturing
tech as that is akin to robbing stockholders as far as corporate capitalists believe.
Posted by: Debsisdead | Mar 5, 2018 9:19:41 PM |
87NemesisCalling , Mar 6, 2018 1:31:42 AM |
92
@87 deb
There is no doubt that 'something must be done' to provide a lifeline to the people of the midwest aka 'the rustbelt'. I'm
not sure that resurrecting old programs is the best way forward; at least not solely. There must be more diversification if
any resurrection hopes to endure. The whole thing is classic trumpian right move for the wrong reason.
This is the same logic that Obama used to defend neoliberalism: "those jobs aren't coming back." Oh yeah...Americans can't
make shoes and clothes anymore, huh? Too beneath us? Is that why the international intelligentsia rails against the ignorance
of the fly-over states? Same twisted logic...same obfuscation. So which is it? Is America still a potentially diverse working
force which needs a little help from combatting the hella-not-free-Chinese-protectionism and outright theft of intellectual property?
Or are those days over with so America really doesn't need market commodities like domestically-produced shoes, clothes, steel,
etc.? Did I miss something, because a lot of people feel like since the iPAD was created, we don't need a darn thing as long as
Foxconn over in China is holding a gun to their workers temple and keeping up with demand. Or making a pair of Nikes for a dollar
and selling it for $200.
"... I don't see how nations- or states- can develop other than with a mercantilist mindset. Doesn't the failure of globalization demand a return to mercantilist methods in order to have a functioning society in the modern, technological world? ..."
"... From my limited and naive understanding of history, it seems to me that the opportunity for peaceful coexistence on the planet is consistently being squandered by Western nations -- particularly the US. ..."
The European multinational is following a trend started by Boeing, which
recently opened a new completion plant in China. On the face of it, the decision by the two
companies (which dominate the civilian aviation market) makes sense: build where your biggest
customer lives, especially as China does not yet have a fully homegrown civil aviation industry
ready to compete globally. The benefits are many, including the goodwill and esteem of the
country that would be buying these planes. In the long term, however, that might prove to be a
costly miscalculation. Based on its recent history ( here and
here ), it
won't take long for China to catch up and largely displace both companies domestically in
Beijing's home aviation market, as well as seizing a large chunk of the corporate duopoly's
global market share. Airbus and Boeing could therefore be making short-term decisions with
negative long-term consequences for their future profitability.
Given China's formidable economic advancement, none of this should come as a surprise to
either Airbus or Boeing. Nor should it shock Western governments. The problem is that everybody
has historically been guided by the naïve assumption that simply admitting China to
organizations such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) would induce Beijing to, in
the words of Philip Pan , "eventually bend to what were considered the established rules of
modernization: Prosperity would fuel popular demands for political freedom and bring China into
the fold of democratic nations. Or the Chinese economy would falter under the weight of
authoritarian rule and bureaucratic rot." China has unquestionably modernized, but its
politically illiberal, dirigiste polity has, if anything, massively
moved in the opposite direction, strengthened by that very modernization process that has done
anything but falter. Furthermore, the country has many aims and goals that are antithetical to
the long-term prosperity of Western companies and economies (as the European Union is
beginning to recognize ).
Boeing and Airbus might simply become the latest Western sacrificial lambs. Beijing has
explicitly targeted wide-bodied aircrafts as one of its 10 new priority sectors for import
substitution in its " Made in China
2025 " document, so whatever short-term gains Airbus and Boeing receive in terms of
securing additional orders from China could well be undermined longer-term. The resultant
technology transfers and lower labor costs will almost certainly give Beijing a quantum leap
toward competing directly and ultimately displacing both companies. Given the merger with
McDonnell Douglas, Boeing will continue its march toward effectively becoming a branch of the
U.S. Department of Defense, as its civilian market share crashes, but Airbus doesn't really
have the luxury of a military alternative, given the relative paucity of European defense
expenditures.
As if Boeing needed any further problems, the 737 fiasco represents the latest in a series
of setbacks for the company. Boeing's 737 global recall, coming on the heels of the initial
launch problems of the 787 Dreamliner some six years ago (where the " demoduralization " of
production meant that Boeing "could not fully account for stress transmission and loading at
the system level," as Gary Pisano and Willy Shih write ), together
illustrate the dangers of spreading manufacturing too far across the globe: Engineers,
notes CUNY fellow Jon Rynn , "need
to 'kick the tires' of the new production processes they design. So while a market may be
global, production and the growth of production take place most efficiently" in relatively
close geographic quarters.
American companies such as Boeing consistently underestimate the value of closely
integrating R&D and manufacturing, while underplaying the risks of separating them (
as
recent events have demonstrated again to the company's cost ). By deciding to expand its
A330 production in China, Airbus looks poised to repeat Boeing's error, a potential
miscalculation that most European Union companies have hitherto largely avoided, because the EU
has prioritized domestic manufacturing/discouraged offshoring more than its U.S. counterparts
(in regard to the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs attributable to China, the American
Economic Review paper by Justin R. Pierce and Peter K. Schott specifically notes that there
was "no similar reaction in the European Union, where policy did not change").
Beijing itself has historically balanced its purchases from both major civil aviation
manufacturers to ensure that it does not rely too heavily on one aircraft supplier, which means
that Airbus will likely benefit from the void created by the 737 recall. All the more reason
why the European conglomerate should be wary of following the pied piper-like expansion into
China. (The 737 recall also complicates resolution of the U.S.-China trade conflict, which had
appeared closer to resolution in light of Beijing's proposal to buy an additional $1.2tn in
U.S. exports over six years. Boeing aircraft purchases featured heavily on Beijing's shopping
list.)
But the longer-term challenges relate to China's economic development path and its
corresponding move up the high-tech curve, which have largely been characterized by
mercantilist policies of protection and heavy government subsidy. In this regard, the Chinese
state has followed a national development strategy first outlined in the
mid-19th century by the German economist Friedrich List , who argued that the national
government should play a crucial role in promoting, guiding, and regulating the process of
national economic advancement.
Protectionism, List argued, should play a role here as well during the country's "catch up"
phase of technological development. List wrote the analysis against a historic backdrop where
Germany was beginning to challenge the dominant economic power of its time, the United Kingdom.
So the defenders of Beijing might well point to his work to show that there is nothing new
about using the state as a principal instrument to accelerate economic development and
innovation.
However, List was analyzing two capitalist economies operating within the context of a
19th-century gold standard global financial system, which invariably circumscribed the scope of
state involvement (the finite availability of gold reserves limiting fiscal policy options). By
contrast, today the global economy operates under a fiat currency system, and what therefore
distinguishes China's economic domestic development from its 19th century predecessors is the
sheer scale of fiscal resources it can deploy in the furtherance of its economic (and military)
objectives. Some of these objectives might not be so benign to the West
longer-term.
Which points to another consideration for the West: for all of its supposed embrace of
capitalism, China is still primarily a state-dominated economy, which eschews the disciplines
of a free market economy. This means it has the capacity (and ideological predisposition) to
use the national fiscal policy as a loss leader, absorbing losses well beyond what would be
tolerated in an economy dominated by private enterprise (private companies, of course, can go
bust). Beijing underwrites its designated national champions by relying on a combination of
subsidies (some disguised, as they flow through state-backed investment funds and the financial
sectors) and "Buy China" preferences to develop Chinese products, even though these policies
are contrary to the rules of WTO membership, which China eagerly joined in 2001. As the
economist Brad Setser argues
, "various parts of the Chinese state compete, absorb losses, and then
consolidat[e] around the successful firms. Other countries [might] worry about the
[scale of the cumulative] losses," notes Setser, but not the Chinese government, which simply
socializes the losses at the national level, and writes them off.
In this regard, Boeing and Airbus would do well to consider China's experience in the solar
industry. Designating this as another strategic sector for growth in the 1990s, Chinese solar
companies, with the explicit backstop of the state, ultimately raised enough funding via debt
to build sufficient solar capacity for the world three times over. The overinvestment
ultimately killed the cash flows of major Western competitors and knocked them out of the
business, leaving the market free for China to dominate. Commenting on the trend, Scientific
American highlighted
that "between 2008 and 2013, China's fledgling solar-electric panel industry dropped world
prices by 80 percent, a stunning achievement in a fiercely competitive high-tech market. China
had leapfrogged from nursing a tiny, rural-oriented solar program in the 1990s to become the
globe's leader in what may soon be the world's largest renewable energy source."
Here was a classic case of state-guided/supported commercial companies receiving benefits
that went far beyond anything in, say, Korea or Taiwan, or even Japan in the earlier part of
their development. Now this trend is manifesting itself across the entire spectrum of the
Chinese guided economy, including agricultural equipment, industrial machinery,
telecommunications, AI, computer chips, and civil aviation. In another disturbing parallel that
Boeing and Airbus would do well to consider, "[t]he timeline of China's rise began in the late
1990s when Germany, overwhelmed by the domestic response to a government incentive program to
promote rooftop solar panels, provided the capital, technology and experts to lure China into
making solar panels to meet the German demand," according
to Scientific American . Much like the German solar companies, which shipped valuable
manufacturing and technological expertise to China, to sustain demand, Boeing and Airbus could
well be signing their economic death warrants by agreeing to offshore increasing amounts of
production in China to sustain their global market shares (aided and abetted by their more
market-oriented governments, which frown on the idea of national industrial policy).
The same thing is happening in wind power in China, which is expected to see offshore wind
capacity grow from 2 gigawatts last year to 31 gigawatts in the next decade. China's expansion
here has already forced Siemens and Gamesa to merge to cope with the rising competitive
challenge. As far as aviation itself goes, Setser
makes the point that "China may cut into the United States' future exports by building its
own competitor to the 737 and also cut into Europe's future exports if Airbus decides to build
the A330 in China and China buys
'Made in China' Rolls-Royce engines for the C929 and the A330." Even if this allows the
duopoly to maintain its dominance in global civil aviation, it is hard to see how shifting
manufacturing production of aircraft components to China to get orders constitutes a "win" for
the U.S. or European workers who are already being displaced. And Boeing's
weak-kneed response to the 737 crisis will likely exacerbate the company's problems going
forward.
The bottom line is that both Western governments and Western corporations have persistently
underestimated the power of China's economic development model, and the corresponding economic
threat that it poses to the West's own affluence. The usual criticism leveled against the
Chinese growth model is that a country that subsidizes its industries ends up with inefficient
industries, because heavily protected local firms are shielded from global competition,
ultimately leaving the country that resorts to protectionism with inferior products. The idea
of national champions, built up via state dirigisme, according to classic liberal economic
doctrine, ultimately ensures that economic efficiency and commercial considerations get
squeezed out. Rent-seeking and corruption become institutionalized, goes the argument, so these
national champions ultimately will not be able to compete in the global marketplace. That was
certainly the assumption of Milton Friedman, who called the
Chinese Communist Party's state-driven strategy "an open invitation to corruption and
inefficiency." By contrast, according to Defense and the National Interest , the governing
assumptions of capitalist economies is that "[t]he discipline of the 'marketplace,'" not the
state, is better suited to choose winners and knock out losers "who cannot offer the prices or
quality or features of their competitors."
China represents the ultimate repudiation of these seemingly ironclad economic laws. The
country's success has come across a slew of industries: clean tech, notably wind and solar
power, internet companies (despite overwhelming censorship, China has corporate behemoths, such
as Alibaba, or Baidu, which rival Google in scale and scope), and more recently, in the
telecommunications sector (where Huawei has clearly benefited from "Buy China" preferences
created by the state via its state-owned telecommunications enterprises and now is considered
to be the global leader in 5G telephony). In practice, therefore, there is no reason why the
same model cannot work with regard to civil aviation even as Airbus and Boeing eagerly provide
the rope with which they may hang their respective companies in the future.
Designating this as another strategic sector for growth in the 1990s, Chinese solar
companies, with the explicit backstop of the state, ultimately raised enough funding via
debt to build sufficient solar capacity for the world three times over.
I'm confused. Why should it matter that they raised funding via debt? It kinda reads like
Auerback feels this should shock us, or make us think China is "cheating" or somesuch. But
iirc there's a nice book by Mazzucato that proves something that Chomsky's been saying since
forever about the US (federal) govt. Now to be sure, the US govt tends to mainly simply give
away money, rather than extending loans, but..
Fiat economies have solidly proved that debt is just noise. Unless politicians use it as a
cudgel to kill good fiscal governance. I am confused about the use of the term "socializing
losses" here because what really seems to be happening is China is creating social value.
When our corporations are coddled and their externalized costs and losses are socialized we,
the tax payers, are the ones who suffer the austerity in order to keep the dollar "strong"
and etc. I'll never forgive this country for allowing our corporations to murder American
labor in the 80s and hot-foot it off to China to make their profit. Now that was definitely
socializing losses – in fact it was socializing losses in advance. I don't think we
will ever recover from that little episode of free marketeering. China might be scary because
they are so very powerful, pragmatic and adaptable. But they are no more "illiberal" than we
are. It's time to set some standards.
Just to point out that Airbus has had an assembly plant in Tianjin in China since 2010. I
recall reading a few years ago that Airbus found costs were so high because of a shortage of
the right workers it would actually have been cheaper to make them in France. Airbus also
assemble aircraft in the US for precisely the same reason – to get a manufacturing
'foothold' in important markets to prevent mercantilist retaliation.
But as the article says, many a manufacturer has found to their cost that the Chinese
simply don't play fair, they will extract every bit of information they can from those plants
and use it for their new Comac aircraft (which so far are not very impressive, nobody wants
to buy them).
You may consider that chinese don't play fair, it also migth be considered that Airbus
strategy is just another way of economic colonization and to prevent the surge of new
competitors maintaining the duopoly. Is it fair?
Given the recent drift of political geostrategy leaded by the US in which anything is
"fair" to defend particular interests, my opinion is that China interest on developing their
own airplane industry is not only fair but very reasonable. One wonders when the US will put
in place another arbitrary ban.
I don't see how nations- or states- can develop other than with a mercantilist mindset.
Doesn't the failure of globalization demand a return to mercantilist methods in order to have
a functioning society in the modern, technological world?
The argument that globalization has not failed is tested by growing social tensions and
inequality around the world. A return to mercantilism, or a version thereof seems logical.
Thriving internal markets linked to strong alliances seem to offer a path into the future
that is workable. Peaceful nations trading among themselves. Over time, resource issues can
be worked out peacefully. The competition will be over functioning economies, not world
domination. But to get there, nations have to have both security and technical ability.
Should the Chinese or the Russians be trusted to bring about a positive transformation in
world society? Time will tell. I would hope so.
From my limited and naive understanding of history, it seems to me that the opportunity
for peaceful coexistence on the planet is consistently being squandered by Western nations --
particularly the US.
If a functioning world government is not possible, than the next best thing would be
functioning national governments that set standards and economic policy that benefited the
majority of citizens, not just the elite. It seems the truly intelligent, and wise ones see
this.
If a functioning world government is not possible, than the next best thing would be
functioning national governments that set standards and economic policy that benefited the
majority of citizens, not just the elite. It seems the truly intelligent, and wise ones see
this.
This is what we had under the Bretton Woods system from appoximately 1945 to 1973.
Moderate free trade with each country setting its own goals, policies, and standards, yet
being connected economically to other countries. An intermediate level between full
mercantilist protectionism and completely open free trade and unrestricted currency flows. It
was replaced by neoliberalism's goal of open borders with unrestricted free trade, currency
flows, and labor.
Yes, but a return seems inevitable. If not, serfdom and peasantry brought back due to
excessive crapification of production and rent seeking by a global oligarchy is in our
future.
Native populations would gladly buy less advanced goods and services if produced locally
and offered secured jobs and livelihoods. Made in China, Made in USA, Made in Russia- makes
perfect sense. Supplying the world through monopolistic corporations is only feasible if not
weaponized. But that is the path not taken.
If you ask a neoliberal what the end game would look like, and they are forced to answer,
most people would be horrified by the answer.
Brexit is a good analogy. The transition could be a managed affair with less pain to go
around, or a crash out.
In the end, saner heads will prevail if only for growing grass roots efforts to create a
fairer economy and necessity.
US forced UK to break and give up jet turbine, Radar, and many other technologies.
Philips, Dutch under Nazi occupation, had all it's patents abrogated and USA assets seized
and never returned. WW 2 made USA a world power not just from being isolated from war but
because USA stole everything and everyone of any value.
Blame the United States for many things, but realize that technology like radar and jet
turbines were extremely important during the Second World War.
During a major war everything is open to theft, or even just being given away, by everyone
as merely surviving becomes more important than any other concern by the various states.
There are also the large businesses that often, very illegally and even treasonously,
continue to do business with their country's enemies. Those businesses just get nasty words
usually and keep their profits (of course).
Examples of both are the Polish and French work on the German Enigma encryption system
given to the British, the Soviet theft and reverse engineering of American technology, IBM's
leasing and maintaining its punchcard machines (census records used in Holocaust) Ford's
manufacturing and maintaining its vehicles and Standard Oil's running its refineries in, and
shipping when possible oil, into Europe for the Nazis, the Nazis stold from everyone
(technology in armored vehicles, artillery, radar, radio) likewise the Japanese who also got
technology from the Nazis. And everyone stold from the Germans.
The only reason the United States got to take full use of what it got was because it's
universities, businesses, and factories were all intact afterwards.
Nobody wants to buy them now but in a few years they will just like cars from S. Korea
were looked upon as inferior to Japanese ones but now they they're deemed to be just as good
and better value for the money.
When I worked there, it seemed that Boeing was always on the cutting edge of bad corporate
ideas. So it's baffling to me that it's taken them so long to have their guts carved out by
China. I mean, the peer pressure at the corporate country club I infer is rather intense. But
I appreciate it as my pension from them is now in a seaparate autonomous account. That is no
guarantee it will be truly insulated but it helps.
I have worked in the electronics industry in Northern California for many years and
watched the outsourcing of manufacturing and some design overseas.
I believe that many in the industry have realized that moving manufacturing and design
overseas has helped to create some very worthy competitors.
Some years ago, I was told of a company that wanted a low end product for an existing
product line.
The company negotiated with a Chinese company and rebranded one of their inexpensive
products, but only after the Chinese company was told of design changes/improvements.
As I was told, the USA company realized they had helped bring a competitor up the learning
curve and would not do it again.
I remember reading that the telecom companies also went into China with assembly plants
and found they did not see the revenue they projected because they "trained new competition"
that opened their own facilities.
Probably there will be considerable lower-level resistance inside Boeing to moving
assembly/design to China, but the "big picture" executives will rule the day.
People will get with the program, as one technician who was being laid off about 20 years
ago related to me. "They told me I could leave that day, or get more pay by training my
overseas replacement for two weeks."
People will get with the program, as one technician who was being laid off about 20
years ago related to me. "They told me I could leave that day, or get more pay by training
my overseas replacement for two weeks."
This has been happening in the United States since the 80s. I am surprised we have
workers, knowledge, or equipment left to be stolen, sold, given away, or thrown away for our
Blessed Elites' God Mamon.
I expect the Chinese to be fools as, for a very old civilization, they are surprisingly
parochial and shortsighted, but seeing my fellow Americans throwing everyone else, including
most Americans, into the compost pile because "greed, for lack of a better word, is good"
makes me want to drink.
Once you impoverish and enrage the population of a nation as large as the United States
what does anyone expect to happen? To everyone else?
This was made possible by keeping the decision secret from the targeted technician(s)
until the last moment before implementation. If the company had told these technicians
several years ahead of time that " in several years time we will give you the choice of
leaving immediately or working for two weeks to train the overseas replacement we will
replace you with" . . . . that the technician(s) in question would have saved up two weeks
worth of living expenses so as to be able to surprise the company with their own last-second
refusal to train the replacement for two weeks pay when the time came.
Which is why the company never told these technicians about this "train your replacement"
plan several years in advance. I sincerely hope this technician was able to withhold certain
key information from his trainee. Even better would be if he had been able to give his new
trainee certain subtle dis-information and dis-training would which lead to downstream decay
in the foreign replacements' performance sometime after the replacement was made. Hopefully
to the detriment of the company which pulled that stunt.
I had to do it twice. I trained my Indian replacement for my world-leader high-tech
employer.
Ten years later, trained my Chinese replacement for my other world-leader employer.
Other countries [might] worry about the [scale of the cumulative] losses," notes Setser,
but not the Chinese government, which simply socializes the losses at the national level,
and writes them off.
Auerback's entirely right on this. But I disagree completely: Boeing and Airbus
should sign suicide pacts. The capitalists are selling China the rope to hang them
with – and please, China, do hang them! While you're at it, keep developing the green
tech the species needs to survive.
"Considering" a move overseas sounds like an indirect way of asking for more special
treatment in the two companies' respective home markets. Which they will probably need
– the market for airliners might be overextended even without the Boeing fiasco.
It is not "Boeing" and "Airbus" as such which are making these decisions. It is actual
human executive persons inside offices in buildings called "Boeing" and "Airbus" who are
making these decisions.
In the current Forced Free Trade environment, if those executives making those decisions
will make more personal money with in order to retire richer with by relocating the bussiness
to China, they will relocate the bussiness to China. If it goes extinct after they have taken
their personal money and run; it is no longer their problem to care about. So they won't care
about it.
My main take-away from Marshall's post is that China is harnessing the power of fiat money
to develop its economy. Why shouldn't all countries do that? It seems to me ideological
blinders are preventing it except perhaps in military expenditures in the U.S. All caveats
regarding human rights, inequality, corruption, environment, etc., apply of course.
Airbus has plant in Tianjin since 2010. The information that China managed to extract from
it did not make the COMAC C919 a competitive aircraft.
So, Airbus and Boeing may think now that the risks of setting a plant in China are less
than expected.
Civil aviation is a particular industry. There is a lot of know-how in the design offices
and in the supply chains. This know-how cannot be copied from a manufacturing plant.
Same thing with the conventional auto industry, however, it's a totally different story
with high speed rail, ship-building, and telecommunications, for which China has caught up.
China's electric vehicle industry also seems promising. I think Comac's ARJ21 and C919 are
good enough to be competitive on China's domestic market.
It is also the publicly-held stock company model, whereby management and boards compute
risk/reward far out enough to match their personal enrichment deadlines, no more.
Neoliberals concentrate on the next quarter's earnings; these companies are pr0bably
eyeing the cheaper labor in the plants in China. I can see that as their main incentive.
Combine the insights of this post with MMT and you have a winner. With a few
qualifications:
1. success (wealth creation?) should be measured by the ability of the nation, with perhaps a
few of its closets friends, to support and defend itself – NOT by how fast the number
of zeros in the financial portfolios of its citizens grows;
2. nor should it be measured by how (temporarily?) cheaply Western consumers can continue the
consumption of the cars, televisions, etc that powers the growth of those portfolios.
Auerbac's choice of the future for the Western airline industry as a potential object of
concern is, however, interesting. It suggests he hasn't been reading Naked Capitalism's
warnings about that industry's planet-killing potential.
I'm catching up on NC post reading this morning and had just finished the post from
earlier this week, "Work of the Past " before I read this one. Autour's study of the widening
wage gap increases between workers with low and high education levels, which, as commenters
there pointed out, were seen as almost natural phenomena, no agency involved, segues nicely
into this post. And, resulted in my thinking about the rise of so-called 'toxic
masculinity.'
When I moved to Long Beach, California in the '80's, I lived just a few miles from the
then-thriving McDonnell-Douglas assembly plant. Driving by, you could see the end product
planes, still an unpainted dull metallic gray, sitting in a row on the tarmac. Crews would
then paint on the distinctive livery of the purchasing airline and the new plane, in glowing
color, would be rolled out. The CEO of the airline would arrive, have his tie cut off (don't
ask!) and take delivery of the new plane in a ceremony that involved the proud workers.
For a short time, I worked there, hiring training pilots. The esprit-de-corps in
the plant was infectious. People were immensely proud to be working there and had a vested
interest in each plane as it rolled off the assembly line. (There was a growing concern with
workers going out for Friday lunch and never coming back; or returning and then falling
asleep inside the wings or engine cowlings, but that was at the end, when workers knew the
company was contracting.)
I was there when the company sold plants in San Diego and older guys with years of
experience came up to Long Beach to work as temporary contractors. Then the LB plant
closed.
All those employees, mainly white males, who had good jobs, worked hard, crafting a
product they were proud of, that flew all over the world (spewing carbon dioxide, but that's
another tale), owned a nice little house, took family vacations, cut adrift.
Our nation's lack of an industrial policy not only strips workers of their jobs, their
sources of income and their pensions, but takes away their dignity, their reason for getting
up in the morning. It strips away the bonds they have forged with their co-workers and
smashes the pride they had in their product. It emasculates them. And, what is left becomes
poisoned and toxic, turns to hate and despair.
We do have an industrial policy – go to war for the oil companies to name one
objective. Our government concludes pacts to force other countries to buy our grain, pharma,
planes, medical equipment etc. etc.
Unfortunately, this plicy do not translate into manufacturing in this countries because these
companies chase cheap labor elsewhere around the world.
China is still primarily a state-dominated economy, which eschews the disciplines of a
free market economy.
This is the most hilarious quote I think I have ever seen on Naked Capitalism.
If your competitor's strategy is having them eat your lunch, rather than criticize that
strategy, maybe you might consider learning a thing or two from it.
One assumes that the CEOs of these companies making these decisions actually care about
the future of the company, the future of their country. They don't. They care about getting
rich. They live in a different world than the rest of us. End of story.
China is doing what Japan did with automobiles and consumer electronics after WW2.
Toyota was once warehouse with a dormitory, and the workers found out if they were going to
work today by looking out the window to see if there was smoke coming from the warehouse
chimney.
And I am glad it happened, my 1995 Toyota Tacoma is better and cheaper than anything made in
USA. Also true for my 2004 Mazda3.
The contributors to this blog seem to have no regard for USA consumers.
Yes my local clothing store closed down long ago, but they never had my size pants anyway.
Walmart does, Costco does, and for far less $.
Do you really think that Boeing deserves our support? Do you really think they have acted
responsibly?
I think Boeing is just another oligarch, like VW, that will do anything to increase
profits.
"Yes my local clothing store closed down long ago, but they never had my size pants
anyway. Walmart does, Costco does, and for far less $."
You must be both not so old and not so tall. I'm both. Nike used to make XL t-shirts that
fit me, but now its XXLs are too small. I have one Nike t-shirt from at least thirty years
ago and it fits perfectly, so my body isn't what changed.
And if you don't realize that Walmart quality is far below what one would have found in US
clothing stores thirty years ago, there's nothing more to say.
Walmart and Amazon sell the same socks, t shirts, and pants.
And so does Hanes if you order direct online.
I don't think any of them are made in USA.
I used to buy fine cotton t shirts made in L.A (CA)
They are no longer in business because they cost $20, and Hanes now sells for $5 online.
Walmart quality varies, so do their prices.
I know what I want, and am glad to buy it for less anywhere that sells it.
Most of the CEOs don't care about the worker that works for them.
They largely see them as something to exploit so that they can get their big stock options
bonus. Boeing is no different, nor is Airbus.
From the CEO's point of view, they outsource, they transfer technology, and for a few
years, the profits will be good. Then when the full extent of the failure becomes apparent,
they will be gone anyways, having cashed in on their stock options and a new CEO will be
there to take the fall.
It's the MBA culture run amok and it has been responsible for a large amount of the damage
done to the middle classes of the Western world. They are creating future competitors and
destroying their own communities.
A while back, Eamonn Fingleton noted this problem – only for Japan.
The Chinese have long wanted to develop their own domestic aerospace industry. An example
of one area that China needs to master is the jet turbine blade manufacturing. It's an
extremely difficult part of making a competent aircraft, as higher inlet temperatures mean
more efficient aircraft.
The difference is that China takes a more long term view of what is in the best interest
of their nation, however flawed and corrupt the CCP may be. The US ruling oligarchs are a
naked kleptocracy that milk their population.
To paraphrase Bill Clinton, that depends upon the definition of "modernized." China will
always be the preeminent communist country, but Deng and others realized that China could
earn big bucks by playing a capitalist game, as long as Chinese businessmen do not interfere
with the government.
Airbus and Boeing are merely the latest suckers to believe that China will ever change.
Der Spiegel noted years ago that Chinese engineers were videotaped in the middle of the night
taking measurements of Germany's Transrapid train. Today China has the best technology from
all major train manufacturers, with short-sighted entities such as the state of California
seriously considering buying Chinese trains (before the new governor canceled the project, of
course).
The aircraft horse has already left the barn. China's C919 is a 737 clone which will allow
China to stop buying smaller airliners, with many countries naively buying it to save money.
Obtaining Airbus and Boeing technology will allow China to do the same for larger
airliners.
If you want a real laugh, read the articles written by libertarians about how Americans
will always be more productive than Chinese, so allowing China into the WTO and giving it
PNTR will not hurt us in the long run.
The basic problem in the West is that the neo-liberal ideology has merged with human greed
to form an economic/political system that is divorced from reality. At least the Party in
China has Russia as an example and must deal with the real world to stay in power less they
lose their mandate to rule. America has its exceptionalism. China has its chauvinism. My
opinion is that the iPhone sales cratered there for one reason; Trump's trade war. Boeing's
boneheaded decision to add a fatally flawed fly-by-wire system to the 737 Max without telling
anyone and with no training deserves prison time for Chicago executives for manslaughter.
They won't go to jail and the last manufacturing American led industry will die away.
Mid-America is a colony to global oligarchs and their bi-coastal lackeys. The only way to
turn our fate around is to restore democracy and government by and for the people.
We can spend endless amounts of money on the NSA, wars overseas, political campaigns and bailing out banks, but PGL and the weak
tea centrists demand "how are we going to pay for it???" now that single-payer is becoming a real possibility. Every other advanced
nation does it better with massive savings for their taxpayers.
Op-Ed Single-payer healthcare for California is, in fact, very doable
by Robert Pollin
June 21, 2017
The California Senate recently voted to pass a bill that would establish a single-payer healthcare system for the entire state.
The proposal, called the Healthy California Act, will now be taken up by the state Assembly. [not]
The plan enjoys widespread support - a recent poll commissioned by the California Nurses Assn. found that 70% of all Californians
are in favor of a single-payer plan - and with good reason. Under Healthy California, all residents would be entitled to decent
healthcare without having to pay premiums, deductibles or copays.
But as critics of the bill have pointed out, a crucial question remains: Is Healthy California economically viable? According
to research I conducted with three colleagues at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, the answer is yes.
Enacting Healthy California would entail an overhaul of the state's existing healthcare system, which now constitutes about
14% of California's GDP. In particular, it would mean replacing the state's private health insurance industry with government-managed
insurance. Our study - which was also commissioned by the California Nurses Assn. - concludes not only that the proposal is financially
sound, but that it will produce greater equity in the healthcare sector for families and businesses of all sizes.
California will spend about $370 billion on healthcare in 2017. Assuming the state's existing system stayed intact, the cost
of extending coverage to all California residents, including the nearly 15 million people who are currently uninsured or underinsured,
would increase healthcare spending by about 10%, to roughly $400 billion.
That's not the full story, though. Enacting a single-payer system would yield considerable savings overall by lowering administrative
costs, controlling the prices of pharmaceuticals and fees for physicians and hospitals, reducing unnecessary treatments and expanding
preventive care. We found that Healthy California could ultimately result in savings of about 18%, bringing healthcare spending
to about $331 billion, or 8% less than the current $370 billion.
How would California cover this $331-billion bill? For the most part, much the same way it covers healthcare spending right
now. Roughly 70% of the state's current spending is paid for through public programs, including Medicare and MediCal. This funding
- totaling about $225 billion - would continue, as is required by law. It would simply flow through Healthy California rather
than existing programs.
The state would still need to raise about $106 billion a year to cover the cost of replacing private insurance. This could
be done with two new taxes.
First, California could impose a gross receipts tax of 2.3% on businesses, but with an exemption for the first $2 million of
revenue. Through such an exemption, about 80% of all businesses in California - small firms - would pay nothing in gross receipts
tax, and medium-sized businesses would pay an effective tax rate of less than 1%.
Second, the state could institute a sales tax increase of 2.3%. The tax would not apply to housing, utilities, food purchased
for the home or a range of services, and it could be offset for low-income families with a 2% income tax credit.
Relative to their current healthcare costs, most Californian families will end up spending less, even with these new taxes,
and some will even enjoy large gains. Net healthcare spending for middle-income families would fall by between 2.6% and 9.1% of
income. Most businesses would also see a drop in spending. Small firms that have been providing health insurance for their workers
will see costs fall by 22% as a share of payroll. For medium-sized firms, costs will fall by an average of between 6.8% and 13.4%
as a share of payroll. Even most large firms will see costs fall, by an average of between 0.6% and 5% of payroll.
At the moment, about 2.7 million of California's residents, or about 8% of the population, have no health insurance. Another
12 million residents, or about 33% of the population, are underinsured. A large proportion of the remaining 60% of the population
who are adequately insured still face high costs, as well as anxiety over President Trump's proposal to repeal and replace Obamacare.
Healthy California is capable of generating substantial savings for families at most income levels and businesses of most sizes.
These savings are in addition to the benefits that the residents of California will gain through universal access to healthcare.
"... Indeed, a year later, Trump built a pro-war team that includes the most bloodthirsty, hawkish neocons. And then, he ordered a second airstrike against Syria, together with his neocolonial friends. ..."
"... Trump conducted the longest experiment on neoliberals' ultimate goal: abolishing the annoying presence of the state. And this was just a taste of what Trump is willing to do in order to satisfy all neoliberals' wet dreams. ..."
"... And perhaps the best proof for that is a statement by one of the most warmongering figures of the neocon/neoliberal cabal, hired by Trump . As John Bolton cynically and openly admitted recently, " It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies really invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela. " ..."
"... Donald Trump is the personification of an authoritarian system that increasingly unveils its true nature. The US empire makes the Venezuelan economy 'scream hard', as it did in Chile in 1973. The country then turned into the first laboratory of neoliberalism with the help of the Chicago Boys and a brutal dictatorship. So, as the big fraud is clear now, neoliberalism is losing ground and ideological influence over countries and societies, after decades of complete dominance. ..."
Government shutdown, Venezuela: Donald Trump evolves into the best propagator of neoliberal fascism that tends to become a
normFebruary
07, 2019by system failure
Even before the 2016 US presidential election, this blog supported that Donald Trump is
apure sample of neoliberal barbarism . Many almost laughed at this perception because Trump was being already promoted,
more or less, as the 'terminator' of the neoliberal establishment. And many people, especially in the US, tired from the economic
disasters, the growing inequality and the endless wars, were anxious to believe that this was indeed his special mission.
Right after the elections, we supported that the
US establishment
gave a brilliant performance by putting its reserve, Donald Trump, in power, against the only candidate that the same
establishment identified as a real threat: Bernie Sanders.
In 2017 , Trump bombed Syria for the first time, resembling the lies that led us to the Iraq war disaster. Despite the fact that
the US Tomahawk missile attack had zero value in operational level (the United States allegedly warned Russia and Syria, while the
targeted airport was operating normally just hours after the attack), Trump sent a clear message to the US deep state that he is
prepared to meet all its demands - and especially the escalation of the confrontation with Russia.
Indeed, a year later, Trump built a pro-war team that includes the most bloodthirsty, hawkish neocons. And then, he ordered
a second airstrike against Syria, together with his neocolonial friends.
In the middle of all this 'orgy' of pro-establishment moves, Trump offered a controversial withdrawal of US forces from Syria
and Afghanistan to save whatever was possible from his 'anti-interventionist' profile. And it was indeed a highly controversial action
with very little value, considering all these US military bases that are still fully operational in the broader Middle East and beyond.
Not to mention the various ways through which the US intervenes in the area (training proxies, equip them with heavy weapons, supporting
the Saudis and contribute to war crimes in Yemen, etc.)
And then , after this very short break, Trump returned to 'business as usual' to satisfy the neoliberal establishment with a 'glorious'
record. He achieved a 35-day government shutdown, which is the
"longest shutdown in US history"
.
Trump conducted the longest experiment on neoliberals' ultimate goal: abolishing the annoying presence of the state. And this
was just a taste of what Trump is willing to do in order to satisfy all neoliberals' wet dreams.
And now, we have the Venezuela issue. Since Hugo Chavez nationalized PDVSA, the central oil and natural gas company, the US empire
launched a fierce economic war against the country. Yet, while all previous US administrations were trying to replace legitimate
governments with their puppets as much silently as possible through slow-motion coup operations, Trump has no problem to do it in
plain sight.
And perhaps the best proof for that is a statement by one of the most warmongering figures of the neocon/neoliberal cabal,
hired by Trump . As John Bolton cynically and openly
admitted recently, " It will make
a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies really invest in and produce the oil capabilities
in Venezuela. "
Therefore, one should be very naive of course to believe that the Western imperialist gang seriously cares about the Venezuelan
people and especially the poor. Here are three basic reasons behind the open US intervention in Venezuela:
The imperialists want to grab the rich oil fields for the US big oil cartel, as well as the
great
untapped natural resources , particularly gold (mostly for the Canadian companies).
Venezuela must not become an example for other countries in the region on social-programs policy, which is mainly funded
by the oil production. The imperialists know that they must interrupt the path of Venezuela to real Socialism by force if
necessary. Neoliberalism must prevail by all means for the benefit of the big banks and corporations.
Venezuela must not turn to cooperation with rival powers like China and Russia. Such a prospect may give the country
the ability to minimize the effects of the economic war. The country may find an alternative to escape the Western sanctions in
order to fund its social programs for the benefit of the people. And, of course, the West will never accept the exploitation of
the Venezuelan resources by the Sino-Russian bloc.
So, when Trump declared the unelected Juan Guaido as the 'legitimate president' of Venezuela, all the main neoliberal powers of
the West rushed to follow the decision.
This is something we have never seen before. The 'liberal democracies' of the West - only by name - immediately, uncritically
and without hesitation jumped on the same boat with Trump towards this outrageously undemocratic action. They recognized Washington's
puppet as the legitimate president of a third country. A man that was never elected by the Venezuelan people and has very low popularity
in the country. Even worse, the EU parliament
approved this action
, killing any last remnants of democracy in the Union.
Yet, it seems that the US is finding increasingly difficult to force many countries to align with its agenda. Even some European
countries took some distance from the attempted constitutional coup, with Italy even
trying to
veto EU's decision to recognize Guaido.
Donald Trump is the personification of an authoritarian system that increasingly unveils its true nature. The US empire makes
the Venezuelan economy 'scream hard', as it did in Chile in 1973. The country then turned into the first laboratory of neoliberalism
with the help of the Chicago Boys and a brutal dictatorship. So, as the big fraud is clear now, neoliberalism is losing ground and
ideological influence over countries and societies, after decades of complete dominance.
This unprecedented action by the Western neoliberal powers to recognize Guaido is a serious sign that neoliberalism returns
to its roots and slips towards fascism. It appears now that this is the only way to maintain some level of power.
"... It's almost like there's a neo-liberal playbook, isn't there? No underpants gnomes , they! (1) Defund or sabotage, (2) Claim crisis, (3) Call for privatization (4) Profit! [ka-ching]. Congress underfunds the VA, then overloads it with Section 8 patients, a crisis occurs, and Obama's first response is send patients to the private system . ..."
"... Assuming that wait time is a function of resources, you can easily see how the playbook would work: (1) Reduce resources, (2) whinge about wait time, and (3) drain patients from the VA system, for profit! (Note that while Democrats are ostensibly jumping on board the #MedicareForAll train, they are, in the main, silent -- Warren and Sanders being the only notable exceptions -- about the destruction of an existing ..."
"... "This is nothing short of a steady march toward the privatization [1] of the VA," Sanders said. "It's going to happen piece by piece by piece until over a period of time there's not much in the VA to provide the quality care that our veterans deserve." ..."
"... Now, just because privatizing the Veterans Administration is a project of the political class as a whole doesn't mean that the Trump Administration hasn't brought its own special mix of corruption and buffoonery to the table. Indeed it has! Who, we might ask, were the actual factions in the Republican administration pushing for VA Mission? Three of Trump's squillionaire golfing buddies at Mar-a-Lago[2], as it all-too-believably turns out. From Pro Publica, " The Shadow Rulers of the VA ": ..."
"... The wretched excess of Trump's policy-by-golfing buddies aside, I don't see why privatiizing the Veterans Administration shouldn't become a major campaign issue, especially given Sanders' presence on the relevant committee. We send our children off to die in wars for regime change where the only winners are military contractors. ..."
With the release of new proposed eligibility rules under the VA Mission Act, we see that privatization at the Veterans Administration
(VA) continues to unfold, as outlined in the
neoliberal
playbook , to which we have alluded before:
The stories intertwine because they look like they're part of the
neoliberal privatization playbook , here described in a post about America's universities:
It's almost like there's a neo-liberal playbook, isn't there? No
underpants gnomes , they! (1) Defund or sabotage, (2) Claim crisis,
(3) Call for privatization (4) Profit! [ka-ching]. Congress underfunds the VA, then overloads it with Section 8 patients, a
crisis occurs, and
Obama's first
response is send patients to the private system .
Congress imposes huge unheard-of, pension requirements on the Post Office, such that it operates at a loss, and it's gradually
cannibalized by private entities, whether for services or property. And charters are justified by a similar process.
(I've helpfully numbered the steps, and added 'sabotage' alongside defunding, although defunding is neoliberalism's main play,
based on the ideology of austerity.)
The political class has been trying to privatize the VA across several administrations -- "
Veterans groups are angry after President
Obama told them Monday that he is still considering a proposal to have treatment for service-connected injuries charged to veterans'
private insurance plan" -- although it is true that the Trump administration has brought its own special brand of crassness to the
project, as we shall see. As
we might expect , the project has nothing to do with
the wishes of veterans :
Nearly two-thirds of veterans oppose "privatizing VA hospitals and services," according to a poll released Tuesday by the Vet
Voice Foundation. And some 80 percent of the veterans surveyed believe veterans "deserve their health care to be fully paid for,
not vouchers which may not cover all the costs."
A plurality of veterans, or 42 percent of those surveyed, agreed with the statement that the VA "needs more doctors," according
to the poll, indicating they believe the VA's problems are at least partly due to a personnel shortage [Step (1)].
Although Vet Voice is a progressive organization, the poll of 800 veterans was jointly conducted by a Democratic polling firm
and a Republican one.
A new study by Dartmouth College that compares Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals with other hospitals in the same regions
found VA facilities often outperform others when it comes to mortality rates and patient safety.
Researchers compared performance data at VA hospitals against non-VA facilities in 121 regions. In 14 out of 15 measures, the
VA performed "significantly better" than other hospitals, according to results from the study.
"We found a surprisingly high, to me, number of cases where the VA was the best hospital in the region," said Dr. William Weeks,
who led the study. "Pretty rarely was it the worst hospital." "One has to wonder whether outsourcing care is the right choice
if we care about veterans' outcomes," Weeks said. "The VA is, for the most part, doing at least as well as the private sector
in a local setting, and pretty often are the best performers in that setting."
"One has to wonder" indeed! Be that it may, the new VA eligibility rules accelerate privatization.
USA Today :
Nearly four times as many veterans could be eligible for private health care paid for by the Department of Veterans Affairs
under sweeping rules the agency proposed Wednesday.
VA officials estimated the plan could increase the number of veterans eligible for private care to as many as 2.1 million
– up from roughly 560,000 .
Assuming that wait time is a function of resources, you can easily see how the playbook would work: (1) Reduce resources,
(2) whinge about wait time, and (3) drain patients from the VA system, for profit! (Note that while Democrats are ostensibly jumping
on board the #MedicareForAll train, they are, in the main, silent -- Warren and Sanders being the only notable exceptions -- about
the destruction of an existing , and highly functional, single payer system. So how do we get to this point? A previous
iteration of the neoliberal playbook, of course!
The program, which began in 2014, was supposed to give veterans a way around long waits in the VA. But veterans using the Choice
Program still had to wait longer than allowed by law. And according to ProPublica and PolitiFact's analysis of VA data, the two
companies hired to run the program [TriWest and Health Net] took almost $2 billion in fees, or about 24 percent of the companies'
total program expenses .
According to the agency's inspector general, the VA was paying the contractors at least $295 every time it authorized private
care for a veteran. The fee was so high because the VA hurriedly launched the Choice Program as a short-term response to a crisis.
Four years later, the fee never subsided -- it went up to as much as $318 per referral .. In many cases, the contractors' $295-plus
processing fee for every referral was bigger than the doctor's bill for services rendered, the analysis of agency data showed.
Ka-ching! So, step (3) -- profit! -- worked out very well for TriWest and Health Net, piling up $2 billion in loot. (
Step (2) was a scandal of "35 veterans who had died while waiting for care in the Phoenix VHA system," step (1) being the usual
denial of resources/sabotage). The VA Mission Act was the legislative response to Veterans Choice debacle. Naturally, it moved the
privatization ball down the field.
The American Prospect
:
Only two of the 42 members on the House and Senate Veterans Affairs Committee opposed Mission last year , when it
came up for a vote.
In other words, privatizing the Veterans Administration has strong bipartisan support. But:
One of those lawmakers, Bernie Sanders, the Vermont Democrat, reiterated his opposition to Mission in December.
"This is nothing short of a steady march toward the privatization [1] of the VA," Sanders said. "It's going
to happen piece by piece by piece until over a period of time there's not much in the VA to provide the quality care that our
veterans deserve."
Now, just because privatizing the Veterans Administration is a project of the political class as a whole doesn't mean that
the Trump Administration hasn't brought its own special mix of corruption and buffoonery to the table. Indeed it has! Who, we might
ask, were the actual factions in the Republican administration pushing for VA Mission? Three of Trump's squillionaire golfing buddies
at Mar-a-Lago[2], as it all-too-believably turns out. From Pro Publica, "
The Shadow Rulers of the VA ":
[Bruce Moskowitz, is a Palm Beach doctor who helps wealthy people obtain high-service "concierge" medical care] is one-third
of an informal council that is exerting sweeping influence on the VA from Mar-a-Lago, President Donald Trump's private club in
Palm Beach, Florida. The troika is led by Ike Perlmutter, the reclusive chairman of Marvel Entertainment, who is a longtime acquaintance
of President Trump's. The third member is a lawyer named Marc Sherman. None of them has ever served in the U.S. military or government
.
The arrangement is without parallel in modern presidential history.
Everything is like CalPERS.
The Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972 provides a mechanism for agencies to consult panels of outside advisers, but such
committees are subject to cost controls, public disclosure and government oversight. Other presidents have relied on unofficial
"kitchen cabinets," but never before have outside advisers been so specifically assigned to one agency. During the transition,
Trump handed out advisory roles to several rich associates, but they've all since faded away. The Mar-a-Lago Crowd, however, has
deepened its involvement in the VA.
In September 2017, the Mar-a-Lago Crowd weighed in on the side of expanding the use of the private sector. "We think that some
of the VA hospitals are delivering some specialty healthcare when they shouldn't and when referrals to private facilities or other
VA centers would be a better option," Perlmutter wrote in an email to Shulkin and other officials. "Our solution is to make use
of academic medical centers and medical trade groups, both of whom have offered to send review teams to the VA hospitals to help
this effort."
In other words, they proposed inviting private health care executives to tell the VA which services they should outsource to
private providers like themselves. It was precisely the kind of fox-in-the-henhouse scenario that the VA's defenders had warned
against for years.
While it is true that the ideological ground for privatization was laid by
the
Koch Brothers , among others, the actual vector of tranmission, as it were, seems to have been the Mar-a-Lago crowd. There has
been pushback against them, in the form of
a Congressional
request for a GAO investigation , and
a lawsuit by veterans
, but as we have seen, the neoliberal play continues to run.
* * *
The wretched excess of Trump's policy-by-golfing buddies aside, I don't see why privatiizing the Veterans Administration shouldn't
become a major campaign issue, especially given Sanders' presence on the relevant committee. We send our children off to die in wars
for regime change where the only winners are military contractors.
Then, when our children come home, we're going to send them into a health care system that's been as crapified as everybody else's
(and that's before we get to PTSD, homelessness, and suicide). Surely a pitch along those lines would play in the heartland? If Sanders
doesn't pick up the ball and run with it, Gabbard should.
[SANDERS:] No one disagrees that veterans should be able to seek private care in cases where the VA cannot provide the specialized
care they require, or when wait times for appointments are too long or when veterans might have to travel long distances for that
care. The way to reduce wait times is to make sure that the VA is able to fill the more than 30,000 vacancies it currently
has. This bill provides $5 billion for the Choice program. It provides nothing to fill the vacancies at the VA. That is wrong
. My fear is that this bill will open the door to the draining, year after year, of much needed resources from the VA.
In other words, the way to solve the problem is not to take Step 1: Give the VA the resources that it needs.
[2] I continue to believe that golf play, or knowledge of golf play, should be a disqualification for high office.
America's
trade policy is in incoherent shambles. Decades of neoliberal "free trade" pacts -- which as
often as not simply gave corporations an end run around the state, or their very own rigged,
pseudo-legal system -- have created terrible social carnage around the world and a furious
political backlash. And President Trump's incoherent, haphazard response has done little to
change the system, let alone reform it in a sensible fashion.
Overhauling such a gargantuan, world-spanning system is a dizzying task. But Timothy Meyer
and Ganesh Sitaraman at the Great Democracy Initiative have a
new paper that presents a solid starting point for developing a fundamental reform of
American trade structure.
Meyer and Sitaraman identify three large problems with the status quo, and propose policy
solutions for each:
The complicated and unbalanced structure of the bureaucracy that oversees trade
policy
The enormous pro-rich bias that is built into trade deals
How the inequality resulting from trade routinely goes totally unaddressed
Let's take these in turn.
The extant trade bureaucracy -- as usual for the American state -- is highly fragmented and
bizarrely structured. There is the Department of Commerce, the United States Trade
Representative, the Export-Import Bank, and the U.S. Trade and Development Agency, plus the
International Development Finance Corporation coming soon. Then there are a slew of other
agencies that have some bearing on trade-related security or economic development.
Meyer and Sitaraman logically suggest combining most of these functions into a single
Department of Economic Growth and Security. The point is not just to streamline the trade
oversight structure, but also to make it consider a broader range of objectives. Neoliberals
insist that trade is simply about making the self-regulating market more "efficient," but trade
very obviously bears on employment, domestic industry, and especially security.
For instance, for all its other disastrous side effects, Trump's haphazard tax on aluminum
has dramatically
revived the American aluminum industry . Ensuring a reasonable domestic supply of key
metals like that is so obviously a security concern -- for military and consumer uses
alike -- that it wouldn't have even occurred to New Deal policymakers to think otherwise. It
takes a lot of ideological indoctrination to think there's no problem when a small price
disadvantage causes a country to lose its entire supply chain of key industrial
commodities.
Then there is the problem of pro-rich bias. Put simply, the last few decades of trade deals
have been outrageously biased towards corporations and the rich. They have powerfully enabled
the growth of
parasitic tax havens , which allow companies to book profits in low-tax jurisdictions,
starving countries of rightful revenue (and often leading to companies piling up gargantuan
dragon hoards of cash they don't know what to do with).
Corporations, meanwhile, have gotten their own fake legal system in the form of
Investor-State Dispute Settlement trade deal stipulations. As I have written before ,
the point of these arbitration systems is to create a legal system ludicrously slanted in favor
of the corporation -- allowing them not just to win almost every time, but to sue over
nonsensical harms like "taking away imaginary future profits."
Meyer and Sitaraman suggest renegotiating the tax portions of trade deals to enforce a
"formulary" tax system -- in which profits are taxed where they are made, not where they are
booked. This would go a considerable distance towards cracking down on tax havens -- who knows,
perhaps Luxembourg might even develop some productive business.
Finally, there is the problem of distributive justice. Again contrary to neoliberal dogma,
trade very often creates winners and losers -- witness the wreckage of Detroit and the fat
salaries of the U.S. executive class. Meyer and Sitaraman suggest new mechanisms to consider
the side effects of trade deals (and ways to compensate the losers), to take action against
abusive foreign nations (for example, by dumping their products below cost, or violating
environmental or labor standards), and finally directly taxing the beneficiaries.
Something the authors don't discuss is the
problem of trade imbalances . When one country develops a surplus (that is, it exports more
than it imports), another country must of necessity be in a deficit. The deficit country in
turn must finance its imports, usually by borrowing. That can easily create a severe economic
crisis if the deficit country suddenly loses access to loans -- which then harms the exporting
country, though not as much. This has been a disastrous problem in the eurozone.
The U.S. does have extremely wide latitude to run a trade deficit, because it controls the
global reserve currency, meaning a strong
demand for dollar-denominated assets so other countries can settle their international
accounts. But this creates its own problems, as discussed above.
To be fair, this is not exactly an omission for a paper focused on domestic policy. Creating
a specifically international trade architecture would require an entire paper of its own, if
not a book or three. But it would be something future trade policymakers will have to
consider.
At any rate, it's quite likely that trade policy will be a major topic of discussion in 2020
-- if for no reason other than Trump's ridiculous shenanigans in the area. However, even that
demonstrates an important fact: The U.S. president has a great deal of unilateral authority
over trade. Democrats should be thinking hard about how they would change things.
This paper is a great place to start.
President Donald Trump is planning on using his executive powers to cut food stamps for more
than 700,000 Americans.
The United States Department of Agriculture is proposing that states should only be allowed
to waive a current food stamps requirement -- namely, that adults without dependents must work
or participate in a job-training program for at least 20 hours each week if they wish to
collect food stamps for more than three months in a three-year period -- on the condition that
those adults live in areas where unemployment is above 7 percent,
according to The Washington Post . Currently the USDA regulations permit states to waive
that requirement if an adult lives in an area where the unemployment rate is at least 20
percent greater than the national rate. In effect, this means that roughly 755,000 Americans
would potentially lose their waivers that permit them to receive food stamps.
The current unemployment rate is 3.7 percent.
The Trump administration's decision to impose the stricter food stamp requirements through
executive action constitutes an end-run around the legislative process. Although Trump is
expected to sign an $870 billion farm bill later this week -- and because food stamps goes
through the Agriculture Department, it contains food stamp provisions -- the measure does not
include House stipulations restricting the waiver program and imposing new requirements on
parents with children between the ages of six and 12. The Senate version ultimately removed
those provisions, meaning that the version being signed into law does not impose a conservative
policy on food stamps, which right-wing members of Congress were hoping for.
"Congress writes laws, and the administration is required to write rules based on the law,"
Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., told The New York Times (Stabenow is the top Democrat on the
Senate's agriculture committee). "Administrative changes should not be driven by ideology. I do
not support unilateral and unjustified changes that would take food away from families."
Matthew Rozsa is a breaking news writer for Salon. He holds an MA in History from
Rutgers University-Newark and is ABD in his PhD program in History at Lehigh University. His
work has appeared in Mic, Quartz and MSNBC.
When people who voted for Obama realized the Obama is a fraud with strong CIA connections it
was too late...
When people who voted for Trump realized that Trump was a fraud with strong Israeli
connections it was too late.
Notable quotes:
"... Nor does the caravan 'fix' or even illuminate decades of US abuses in Central and South America. It simply gives Trump an opportunity to grandstand and urge his voters to go to the polls. ..."
...And it seems likely, if not certain, that the caravan is a political stunt that will
end in disappointment for the caravan migrants. So I fail to see why you are so angry Debs.
Our discussion doesn't ignore the realities. Nor does the caravan 'fix' or even
illuminate decades of US abuses in Central and South America. It simply gives Trump an
opportunity to grandstand and urge his voters to go to the polls.
We are being played by an establishment that wants to move the country to the right. MAGA!
is a bi-partisan effort fueled by the challenge from China and Russia. This is clear from
Democratic Party priorities and actions as well as what they don't say or do.
"... Trump has succeeded in implementing some of his campaign ideas and not all of them are 100% evil or wrongheaded. He has shaken the long term calcification of the US foreign and trade policy, has introduced tariffs especially to combat clearly unfair Chinese trade practices while demanding European and Asian allies pay more for their defense of empire. ..."
"... As b stated recently, Trump is an astute salesman (unfortunately, that is all he is) but what is left unmentioned is that he is of the sales school that is totally unmoored for any sense of ethical, moral or legal responsibility. ..."
"... The US political system was invested with an ability to self-correct, or self-police through separation of powers within the tripartite political system. It is hardly news this system is about dead, starting not with Trump of course, but now reaching its absolute low point under his rule and the acquiescence of the spineless GOP. ..."
That is, he started off on the wrong foot. Campaigning as a populist who eschewed accepted
mainstream "progressive" and "conservative" political positions, he completely cratered the
unpopular Republican orthodoxy during the 2016 primaries by promising such heretical ideas as
a non-interventionist foreign policy, protection for Medicare/Medicaid and social security,
improvement on Obamacare, higher taxes on the wealthiest and a massive infrastructure program
to rebuild the decaying facilities of this so-called once grate nation.
These are all ideas that gained the support of enough Obama voters and independents in
just the right flyover states to lead Trump to an improbable victory while being soundly
thrashed in the popular voting nationwide. A stunning, historical accomplishment as much as
and as much in reaction too, the 2008 Obama victory.
Of course, to those of us who understand the modern GOP and the history of the lying-ass
self promotion of the Trump entertainment spectacle its own self, we were neither duped nor
surprised when the initial 2017 legislative agenda items proferred were none of the populist
agenda but instead were the repeal of Obamacare, massive tax cuts for the wealthy and the
reversal of all Obama executive orders, most notably in the areas of refugee resettlement and
immigration.
Trump, the so-called change agent who in fact was and still is clueless regarding how to
function as President simply let the craven Obama opposition leaders of the prior 8 years,
McConnell and Ryan set out the typical GOP legislative agenda, which is opposed by a
majority, in some cases overwhelming majority, of Amerikkkans.
Obamacare repeal failed memorably based on but one late night thumb's down taken more out
of personal revenge than the ideology of a very soon to be dead Senator.
Trump's ruling style in large part has substituted for any sense of a coherent agenda in
that he obviously cares only about his base (an obdurate block of 36% of the electorate
consisting almost entirely of white, entitled, racist baby boomers who have devolved into
anti-democratic fascists now that they no longer represent a majority of the US population
and believe (falsely) they have something to protect).
Trump has succeeded in implementing some of his campaign ideas and not all of them are
100% evil or wrongheaded. He has shaken the long term calcification of the US foreign and
trade policy, has introduced tariffs especially to combat clearly unfair Chinese trade
practices while demanding European and Asian allies pay more for their defense of
empire.
While I have my own view of whether any of Trump's policies contain great value from a
long term historical perspective, I do recognize Trump's appeal to certain sectors of the
internet, including most obviously certain useful idiots of the ultra left.
I do not believe his victory to be a fluke of nature but rather in keeping with the
current worldwide trend borne of aging whitebread fear, cyncism and disenchantment with
elitist political/economic establishments and which has been amped to a viral degree by a
staggering wealth disparity, but only as it impacts the formerly entitled feeling, aging
white people situated in western countries.
The natural response to any socially or cultural threat is to band together tribally and
fight back. And the main threat, when it is boiled down, is the fear of overpopulation (and
its accompnaying unstoppable environmental degradation) driven by what is viewed
through the Trump voter political lens as non-white, primitive, illsuited people from
shithole countries who are and will continue to ruin Amerikkka and Western Europe.
As perfectly illustrated by the migrant caravan heading to Tijuana.
Unfortunately, Trump through disinterest or incompetence or both hasn't followed through
either with enough of the promises he made that are actually meaningful to most people,
whether GOP or Democratic. He has been able to bind his tribe to him and conquer the GOP
political apparatus simply because the Party platform was already so badly decayed
(overcooked Reagan leftovers) and out of touch with reality pre-Trump that the Donald could
bend delusional conservative tropes in any way he saw fit to his electoral advantage. As long
as he infotained well, and he has indeed, he would dominate.
As b stated recently, Trump is an astute salesman (unfortunately, that is all he is)
but what is left unmentioned is that he is of the sales school that is totally unmoored for
any sense of ethical, moral or legal responsibility.
In other words, Trump is that quintessential Amerikkkan salesman: the grifter. This
particular breed of business person is not an exception in the US but rather the rule. In
fact, the US system has devolved to the point where laws and regulations now enfranchise what
previously had been considered illegal activity. Amerikkkans are heavily incentivised these
days by the call to a form of monopolistic, crony capitalism and institulionised rigged
gambling ("Wall Street"), which in more quaint times was considered mobsterism.
Institutions have been purposefully compromised so they no longer support whatever
criminal laws still exist. It is not by accident that the IRS is now chronically understaffed
and has no effective way to stop income tax cheating or collection of the minimal taxes now
due.
It is not by accident that Trump's main role as President is to weaken institutions such
as the media, to further debase language and kill whatever generally accepted objective truth
remain extant in the land. He is recognisable to all Amerikkkans as a CEO in support of this
ongoing wave of legal criminality through which the 1% and their lackeys section have
prospered at the expense of the 99%.
The US political system was invested with an ability to self-correct, or self-police
through separation of powers within the tripartite political system. It is hardly news this
system is about dead, starting not with Trump of course, but now reaching its absolute low
point under his rule and the acquiescence of the spineless GOP.
And no, I don't believe the Demotardic Party to be absolved of blame in any way. Rather,
the Demotards have entirely gone along to get along with this same trend because of course
the Party leaders have been able to criminally enrich themselves and their cronies along the
way too.
However, let's be real for minute and drop all pretense of holier than thou keyboard
revolutionism. The ultimate solution of the world's disease is not going to be resolved in
2018 through a political revolution, especially one inspired by the disharmony and fraud of
internet based social media and its acolytes. D'uh.
Look around. Since we have been blogging our lives away the world has only grown further
away from leftism. We live in a fascist police state owned and operated by teh ultra wealthy
who have dropped pretense of any humanitarian or religious concern for those less firtunated
than themselves.
Donald Trump has one more chance to make himself truly into the transformational leader he
believes himself to be in his degraded soul.
The first bill on the 2019 legislative needs to be a bipartisan infrastructure bill of
such scope and magnitude that it will serve not only a political change of direction but also
redirect the economy in such way that wealth is re-directed from the wealthy to the rest of
us, particularly those able bodied non-college educated people who have suffered through the
last several decades without hope or gain.
Trump must dictate to his party that Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security will not only
be maintained but strengthened through improved benefits.
Am I dreaming? Yes, I admit that I am. But I'm also calling out to the criminal conman in
chief: it's not too late to reclaim your own legacy.
Among the many untruths told about Donald Trump is the claim that his is not a movement of
ideas. As a candidate in 2016, Trump may not have spoken the language of the policy wonks. But
unlike those Republicans who did, his view of the world was not a stale ideological cliche. It
was instead refreshingly frank: about a foreign policy that couldn't win the wars it waged, an
economy that imperiled middle- and working-class America, and an immigration regime only the
employers of illegal nannies could love. Trump recognized reality, and that drew to his cause
independent-minded intellectuals who had also done so. The Trump movement suffers not from a
dearth of ideas or thinkers, but a dearth of institutions. It has thinkers but no think
tank.
F.H. Buckley, Foundation Professor at George Mason University's Scalia School of Law, is one
of its thinkers. His new book, The Republican Workers Party , comes from a publisher --
Encounter -- led by another, Roger Kimball. Buckley is no relation to William F., who as
writer, editor, and Firing Line host did more than anyone to make conservatism a byword
for eloquence in the latter half of the 20th century. But much as the other Buckley remade the
Right by founding National Review in 1955, this one aims to bring about a profound
change of heart and mind among conservatives. He wants to make good on the promise of the GOP
as a party for American workers.
It was a promise made right from the beginning, when in the mid-19th century the Republicans
were the party of free labor against the slavocracy. But the GOP and the country lost their
way. Today, in Buckley's telling, a self-perpetuating "New Class" of administrators and
mandarins runs the country from perches of privilege in the academy and nonprofit sector, as
well as the media, government, and much of the business world. Republicans of the Never Trump
variety are as much a part of this ruling caste as Clinton-Schumer-Pelosi Democrats are. And if
you might wonder whether someone in Buckley's position isn't part of the same professional
stratum, his answer is that he very much aspires to be a traitor to his class, just as Donald
Trump is.
Trump, writes Buckley, is "unlike anything we've seen before, for the simple reason that
he's up against something that we've never seen before: a liberalism that has given up on the
American Dream of a mobile and classless society." Those who today style themselves as
progressives are nothing of the sort -- they are not revolutionaries but the new aristocrats:
"They are Bourbons who seek to pass themselves off as Jacobins. They have bought into a radical
leftism, while resisting the call to unseat a patrician class that leftists in the past would
have opposed."
This is an eloquent explanation for an inversion that has puzzled many observers. Today's
Left, at least the mainstream Left represented by the Democratic Party, is now
establishmentarian. The Republican Right is now populist, if not downright revolutionary. "When
the upper class is composed of liberals who support socialist measures to keep us immobile and
preserve their privileged position," Buckley argues, "class warfare to free up our economy by
tearing down an aristocracy is conservative and just, as well as popular."
Buckley came to these conclusions before the rise of Donald Trump. They are at the heart of
his last two books, The Way Back and The Republic of Virtue . He recognized in
Trump a force for salutary change. So in early 2016, he signed up as a speechwriter for the
candidate and his family. At one point, this attracted unwanted attention: a speech delivered
by Donald Trump Jr. was found to have plagiarized an article in . Except it wasn't plagiarism:
Buckley was the author of both. I was editor of the magazine at the time, and Buckley is
correct when he says in The Republican Workers Party that I enjoyed the non-scandal --
because it brought attention to an essay I thought deserved a brighter spotlight than it had
initially received.
A further disclosure or two is in order: I also published some of the material that appears
in The Republican Workers Party in the journal I now edit, Modern Age , and I'm
thanked in the book's acknowledgments. My warm words for Buckley's last volume are quoted on
the dust jacket of this one. The review you're reading now is honest, but subjective -- I'm a
part of the story. Only a small one, however: Buckley reveals many details of the Trump
campaign and post-election transition that I had never heard before, including how Michael
Anton came to be hired and fired.
The campaign memoir is intriguing in its own right, but it's in the service of the book's
larger purpose. I've known Buckley to refer to himself as an economic determinist, and he's
also said that the future will be decided by a fight between the right-wing Marxists and the
left-wing Marxists. But those are exaggerations, and The Republican Workers Party isn't
primarily about economics: quite the contrary, it's about solidarity, humanity, and the
Christian spirit of brotherhood. The book is informed by a religious sensibility as much as it
is by policy acumen. But it's a religious sensibility that addresses the soul through material
conditions. Buckley is critical of attempts at a "moral rearmament crusade" that amounts to
shaming the poor and blaming them for their own condition.
On this, Buckley is at odds with what movement conservatism has promoted over the last
30-odd years, which is a pure moralism alongside a theoretically pure free-market economism,
each restricted to its own categorical silo. An economic conservative or libertarian might thus
approach Buckley's book with the trepeditation of a holy Inquisitor fearful that a friend will
be found committing heresy. But there is little in these pages that a free-market conservative
can quibble with at the policy level: rather it is the spirit in which economic conservatives
conduct politics that Buckley criticizes. He is even on the side of conservative orthodoxy,
more or less, when it comes to tariffs. He's a free trader at heart, though not a dogmatic
one.
On immigration, he favors a more Canadian-like, points-based system that would prioritize
skills, with a view toward providing maximum benefit for our current citizens, especially the
least well off among them. The present system "admits people who underbid native-born Americans
for low-skill jobs, while refusing entry to people with greater skills who would make life
better for all Americans." Canada lets in many more immigrants in proportion to its population
than the United States does, but "Canadians see an immigration policy designed to benefit the
native-born, so they don't think their government wants to stick it to them," even when it
comes to generous admission of refugees.
Buckley speaks from experience about immigration and Canada -- he was born, brought up, and
lived most of his life there before becoming a U.S. citizen in 2014. Like Alexander Hamilton,
whose Caribbean origins gave him a view of America's national economy unprejudiced by sectional
interests, Buckley's Canadian background gives him an independent vantage from which to
consider our characteristic shibboleths unsparingly. The separation of powers, for one, is a
dismal failure that "has given us two or more different Republican parties: a presidential
party, which today is the Republican Workers Party, but also congressional Republican parties
rooted in the issues and preference of local members. There's the Freedom Caucus composed of
Tea Party members, the more moderate Main Street Partnership and whatever maverick senators
were thinking this morning." Federalism too is a mixed bag. These are themes touched lightly
upon here but worked out in detail in such earlier Buckley books as The Once and Future
King .
That's not to say there's something alien about Buckley's ideas. He's an heir to Viscount
Bolingbroke, as were many of the Founding Fathers. (He contrasts Bolingbroke's disinterested
ideal of a patriot king, for example, with the identity-driven politics of the Democratic
Party.) But Buckley is also an heir to George Grant and the Anglo-Canadian tradition of Red
Toryism, a form of conservatism that does not bother itself with anti-government formulas that
never seem to reduce the size of government one iota anyway. Buckley's heroes are "leaders such
as Disraeli, Lord Randolph Churchill (Winston's father) and even Winston Churchill himself."
"They were conservative" but "they supported generous social welfare policies."
The policies that Buckley is most concerned about, however, are those that generate social
mobility. Education is thus high on his agenda. He is a strong supporter of vouchers and school
choice and points again to Canada as a success story for private schools receiving public
funds. But America is a rather different country, and as popular as vouchers are on the Right,
some of us can't help but wonder whether they would lead to the same outcome in primary and
secondary education that federal financial aid has produced in higher education. With the money
comes regulation, and usually soaring prices, too.
But Buckley is right that the defects of our present education system go a long way toward
explaining the rise of the new status class, and other countries have found answers to the
questions that perplex American politics -- or some of them at least. More adventurous thinking
is required if anything is to be saved of the American dream of mobility, in place of the
nightmare of division into static castes of winners and losers.
Libertarian economists and blame-the-poor moralizers are not the only figures on the Right
Buckley criticizes. He has no patience for the barely disguised Nietzscheanism of certain "East
Coast" Straussians, who imagine themselves to be philosopher-princes, educating a class of
obedient gentlemen who will in turn dominate a mass of purely appetitive worker bees and cannon
fodder.
Buckley's book is an argument against right-wing heartlessness. Its title may conjure in
some minds phantoms of the National Socialist German Workers Party or America's own penny-ante
white nationalist Traditionalist Workers Party, on which the media has lavished a certain
amount of attention in recent years. But fascists are not traditionalists, workers, or even,
properly speaking, socialists -- they simply steal whatever terms happen to be popular. Buckley
refuses to concede their claims and appease them.
He is eloquent in his American -- not white -- nationalism. "There isn't much room for white
nationalism in American culture," he writes, "For alongside baseball and apple pie, it includes
Langston Hughes and Amy Tan, Tex-Mex food and Norah Jones. You can be an American if you don't
enjoy them, but you might be a wee bit more American if you do." It's populism, not
nationalism, that he considers a toxic term, its genealogy tracing to figures like "Pitchfork
Ben" Tillman, a Jim Crow proponent and defender of lynch mobs.
He is right to defend the honor of nationalism, but Buckley may be mistaken in his animus
toward "populism," a word that for most people is more likely to bring to mind William Jennings
Bryan than the Ku Klux Klan.
Buckley's project in The Republican Workers Party parallels on the Right the task
taken up by Mark Lilla on the Left in last year's The Once and Future Liberal . Like
Lilla, Buckley wants to see a revival of mid-20th-century liberalism. For both, politics is
ultimately class-based, not identity-based. Lilla trains his fire on the identity-parsing Left,
while Buckley rebukes the Right for failing to fight the class war -- or rather, for fighting
on the wrong side, that of the self-serving New Class, the aristocracy of education,
connections, and right-thinking opinion.
This may seem nostalgic, but it's not: Buckley does not expect a return to JFK or Camelot,
even if, like Lilla, he once borrowed a title from T.H. White. The 21st century can only give
us a new and very different Kennedy or Disraeli -- an insurgent from the Right to retake the
center. In Donald Trump, F.H. Buckley found such a figure, but a movement needs a program as
well as a leader, and the program has to be grounded in an idea of humanity and the limits of
politics. The nation defines those limits, and while not every Trump supporter will agree with
Buckley's policy thought in all its specifics, the spirit of Buckley's endeavor represents what
is finest in the Trump moment, and what is best in conservatism, too.
Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review.
"... As to your question about who votes for Bolsonaro, I think we can break this down into three or four categories. His hard core is the sort of middle class of small business owners, plus members of the police and the armed forces. This would be, I guess, your classic fascist constituency, if you want to call it that. But you know, that's a very small proportion. ..."
"... Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who is a former academic sociologist who was exiled during the military dictatorship and was president of Brazil in the late '90s. He has yet to endorse Haddad, despite the fact that Bolsonaro previously said something about 10 years ago that Fernando Henrique Cardoso should have been killed by the military dictatorship. This is a real, in my opinion, a real failure of character, a real cowardice from the Brazilian supposedly-centrist elite to defend democracy against the very obvious threat that Bolsonaro poses. ..."
As to your question about who votes for Bolsonaro, I think we can break this down into
three or four categories. His hard core is the sort of middle class of small business owners,
plus members of the police and the armed forces. This would be, I guess, your classic fascist
constituency, if you want to call it that. But you know, that's a very small proportion.
And certainly in terms of his voters, in terms of his voter base, that's a small proportion.
What you have, then, is the rich, amongst whom he has a very significant lead. He polls 60-65
percent amongst the rich. And these people are motivated by what is called [inaudible]machismo,
which is anti-Worker's Party sentiment, which is really a sort form of barely-disguised class
loathing which targets the Worker's Party, rails against corruption, but of course turns a
blind eye to corruption amongst more traditional right-wing politicians.
These are the people who, at the end of the day, are quite influential, and have probably
proved decisive for Bolsonaro. But that isn't to say that he doesn't have support amongst the
poor, and this is the real issue. Bolsonaro would not win an election with just the support of
the reactionary middle class and the rich. He needs the support amongst the broad masses, and
he does have that to a significant degree, unfortunately.
What are they motivated by? They're motivated by a sense that politics has failed them, that
their situation is pretty hopeless. The security situation is very grave. And Bolsonaro seems
to be someone who might do something different, might change things. It's a bit of a rolling of
the dice kind of situation. And you know, here the Worker's Party does bear some blame. They've
lost a large section of the working class. A large section of the poor feel like they were
betrayed by the Worker's Party, who didn't stay true to its promises. The Worker's Party
implemented the austerity in its last government under Dilma, which led to a ballooning of
unemployment. And you know, there's a sense that- well, what have you done for us? A lot of
people don't want to return to the path. They want something better, and kind of roll the dice
hoping that maybe Bolsonaro does something, even though all evidence points to the fact that
he'll be a government for the rich, and the very rich, and for the forces of repression.
GREG WILPERT: So finally, in the little time that we have remaining, what is
happening to Brazil's left? Is it supporting the Haddad campaign wholeheartedly?
ALEX HOCHULI: Yes, absolutely. It's pretty much uniform amongst the left. Certainly
in terms of, you know, in terms of individuals, in terms of groups, in terms of movements.
Everyone, from even the kind of far-left Trotskyist Revolutionary Socialist Workers Party who
hate PT have told its members that they should vote for Fernando Haddad who, it should be
noted, is a figure to the right of that of PT, I guess, within the party. He's a much more
centrist figure. So that's kind of notable.
What hasn't happened is a broad front against fascism. That hasn't really materialized,
because the Brazilian center has failed to defend its democratic institutions against the very
obvious threat that Bolsonaro represents. You know, just to highlight one thing, Eduardo
Bolsonaro, who is Jair Bolsonar's son and a congressman, has threatened the Supreme Court,
saying that you could close down the Supreme Court. All you have to do is send one soldier and
one corporal, and they'll shut down the Supreme Court. I mean, this is a pretty brave threat
against Brazilian institutions. And a lot of the center has failed to really manifest itself,
really failed to take a stand. Marina Silva, who was at one point polling quite high about six
months ago, who is a kind of an environmentalist and an evangelical and a centrist, and who is
known for always in her speeches talking about doing things democratically, even she- it took
her until this week to finally endorse Haddad, lending Haddad critical support.
The center right, which should be the, you know, the Brazilian establishment, the ones
upholding the institutions, have broadly failed to endorse Haddad as the democratic candidate.
Which is really, really striking. I mean, just to give you one example, probably the best known
figure for your viewers outside of Brazil who might not know the ins and outs and all the
players involved, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who is a former academic sociologist who was
exiled during the military dictatorship and was president of Brazil in the late '90s. He has
yet to endorse Haddad, despite the fact that Bolsonaro previously said something about 10 years
ago that Fernando Henrique Cardoso should have been killed by the military dictatorship. This
is a real, in my opinion, a real failure of character, a real cowardice from the Brazilian
supposedly-centrist elite to defend democracy against the very obvious threat that Bolsonaro
poses.
GREG WILPERT: Wow. Amazing. We'll definitely keep our eyes peeled for what happens on
Sunday. We'll probably have you back soon. I'm speaking to Alex Hochuli, researcher and
communication consultant based in Sao Paulo. Thanks again, Alex, for having joined us
today.
Fascism is always eclectic and its doctrine is composed of several sometimes contradicting each other ideas. "Ideologically speaking,
[the program] was a wooly, eclectic mixture of political, social, racist, national-imperialist wishful thinking..." (Ideologically speaking,
[the program] was a wooly, eclectic mixture of political, social, racist, national-imperialist wishful thinking..."
)
Some ideas are "sound bite only" and never are implemented and are present only to attract sheeple (looks
National Socialist Program ). he program championed
the right to employment , and called for the institution of
profit sharing , confiscation of
war profits , prosecution of usurers and profiteers,
nationalization of trusts , communalization of department stores,
extension of the old-age pension system, creation of a
national education program of all classes, prohibition
of child labor , and an end to the dominance of
investment capital "
There is also "bait and switch" element in any fascism movement. Original fascism was strongly anti-capitalist, militaristic and
"national greatness and purity" movement ("Make Germany great again"). It was directed against financial oligarchy and anti-semantic
element in it was strong partially because it associated Jews with bankers and financial industry in general. In a way "Jews" were codeword
for investment bankers.
For example " Arbeit Macht Frei " can be viewed as
a neoliberal slogan. Then does not mean that neoliberalism. with its cult of productivity, is equal to fascism, but that neoliberal
doctrine does encompass elements of the fascist doctrine including strong state, "law and order" mentality and relentless propaganda.
The word "fascist" is hurled at political / ideological opponents so often that it lost its meaning. The Nazi Party (NSDAP) originated
as a working-class political party . This is not true about
Trump whom many assume of having fascist leanings. His pro white working class rhetoric was a fig leaf used for duration or elections.
After that he rules as a typical Republican president favoring big business. And as a typical neocon in foreign policy.
From this point of view Trump can't be viewed even as pro-fascist leader because first of all he does not have his own political
movement, ideology and political program. And the second he does not strive for implementing uniparty state and abolishing the elections
which is essential for fascism political platform, as fascist despise corrupt democracy and have a cult of strong leader.
All he can be called is neo-fascist s his some of his views do encompass ideas taken from fascist ideology (including "law and order";
which also is a cornerstone element of Republican ideology) as well as idealization and mystification of the US past. But with Bannon
gone he also can't even pretend that he represents some coherent political movement like "economic nationalism" -- kind of enhanced
mercantilism.
Of course, that does not mean that previous fascist leaders were bound by the fascism political program, but at least they had one.
Historian Karl Dietrich Bracher writes that, "To [Hitler,
the program] was little more than an effective, persuasive propaganda weapon for mobilizing and manipulating the masses. Once it had
brought him to power, it became pure decoration: 'unalterable', yet unrealized in its demands for nationalization and expropriation,
for land reform and 'breaking the shackles of finance capital'. Yet it nonetheless fulfilled its role as backdrop and pseudo-theory,
against which the future dictator could unfold his rhetorical and dramatic talents."
Notable quotes:
"... Fascist politics invokes a pure mythic past tragically destroyed. Depending on how the nation is defined, the mythic past may be religiously pure, racially pure, culturally pure, or all of the above. But there is a common structure to all fascist mythologizing. In all fascist mythic pasts, an extreme version of the patriarchal family reigns supreme, even just a few generations ago. ..."
"... Further back in time, the mythic past was a time of glory of the nation, with wars of conquest led by patriotic generals, its armies filled with its countrymen, able-bodied, loyal warriors whose wives were at home raising the next generation. In the present, these myths become the basis of the nation's identity under fascist politics. ..."
"... In the rhetoric of extreme nationalists, such a glorious past has been lost by the humiliation brought on by globalism, liberal cosmopolitanism, and respect for "universal values" such as equality. These values are supposed to have made the nation weak in the face of real and threatening challenges to the nation's existence. ..."
"... fascist myths distinguish themselves with the creation of a glorious national history in which the members of the chosen nation ruled over others, the result of conquests and civilization-building achievements. ..."
"... The function of the mythic past, in fascist politics, is to harness the emotion of nostalgia to the central tenets of fascist ideology -- authoritarianism, hierarchy, purity, and struggle. ..."
It's in the name of tradition that the anti-Semites base their "point of view." It's in the name of tradition, the long, historical
past and the blood ties with Pascal and Descartes, that the Jews are told, you will never belong here.
-- Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (1952)
It is only natural to begin this book where fascist politics invariably claims to discover its genesis: in the past. Fascist
politics invokes a pure mythic past tragically destroyed. Depending on how the nation is defined, the mythic past may be religiously
pure, racially pure, culturally pure, or all of the above. But there is a common structure to all fascist mythologizing. In all fascist
mythic pasts, an extreme version of the patriarchal family reigns supreme, even just a few generations ago.
Further back in time, the mythic past was a time of glory of the nation, with wars of conquest led by patriotic generals,
its armies filled with its countrymen, able-bodied, loyal warriors whose wives were at home raising the next generation. In the present,
these myths become the basis of the nation's identity under fascist politics.
In the rhetoric of extreme nationalists, such a glorious past has been lost by the humiliation brought on by globalism, liberal
cosmopolitanism, and respect for "universal values" such as equality. These values are supposed to have made the nation weak in the
face of real and threatening challenges to the nation's existence.
These myths are generally based on fantasies of a nonexistent past uniformity, which survives in the traditions of the small towns
and countrysides that remain relatively unpolluted by the liberal decadence of the cities. This uniformity -- linguistic, religious,
geographical, or ethnic -- can be perfectly ordinary in some nationalist movements, but fascist myths distinguish themselves
with the creation of a glorious national history in which the members of the chosen nation ruled over others, the result of conquests
and civilization-building achievements. For example, in the fascist imagination, the past invariably involves traditional, patriarchal
gender roles. The fascist mythic past has a particular structure, which supports its authoritarian, hierarchical ideology. That past
societies were rarely as patriarchal -- or indeed as glorious -- as fascist ideology represents them as being is beside the point.
This imagined history provides proof to support the imposition of hierarchy in the present, and it dictates how contemporary society
should look and behave.
In a 1922 speech at the Fascist Congress in Naples, Benito Mussolini declared:
We have created our myth. The myth is a faith, a passion. It is not necessary for it to be a reality. . . . Our myth is
the nation, our myth is the greatness of the nation! And to this myth, this greatness, which we want to translate into a total
reality, we subordinate everything.
The patriarchal family is one ideal that fascist politicians intend to create in society -- or return to, as they claim. The patriarchal
family is always represented as a central part of the nation's traditions, diminished, even recently, by the advent of liberalism
and cosmopolitanism. But why is patriarchy so strategically central to fascist politics?
In a fascist society, the leader of the nation is analogous to the father in the traditional patriarchal family. The leader is
the father of his nation, and his strength and power are the source of his legal authority, just as the strength and power of the
father of the family in patriarchy are supposed to be the source of his ultimate moral authority over his children and wife. The
leader provides for his nation, just as in the traditional family the father is the provider. The patriarchal father's authority
derives from his strength, and strength is the chief authoritarian value. By representing the nation's past as one with a patriarchal
family structure, fascist politics connects nostalgia to a central organizing hierarchal authoritarian structure, one that finds
its purest representation in these norms.
Gregor Strasser was the National Socialist -- Nazi -- Reich propaganda chief in the 1920s, before the post was taken over by Joseph
Goebbels. According to Strasser, "for a man, military service is the most profound and valuable form of participation -- for the
woman it is motherhood!" Paula Siber, the acting head of the Association of German Women, in a 1933 document meant to reflect official
National Socialist state policy on women, declares that "to be a woman means to be a mother, means affirming with the whole conscious
force of one's soul the value of being a mother and making it a law of life . . . the highest calling of the National Socialist
woman is not just to bear children, but consciously and out of total devotion to her role and duty as mother to raise children for
her people." Richard Grunberger, a British historian of National Socialism, sums up "the kernel of Nazi thinking on the women's question"
as "a dogma of inequality between the sexes as immutable as that between the races." The historian Charu Gupta, in her 1991 article
"Politics of Gender: Women in Nazi Germany," goes as far as to argue that "oppression of women in Nazi Germany in fact furnishes
the most extreme case of anti-feminism in the 20th century."
Here, Mussolini makes clear that the fascist mythic past is intentionally mythical. The function of the mythic past, in fascist
politics, is to harness the emotion of nostalgia to the central tenets of fascist ideology -- authoritarianism, hierarchy, purity,
and struggle.
With the creation of a mythic past, fascist politics creates a link between nostalgia and the realization of fascist ideals. German
fascists also clearly and explicitly appreciated this point about the strategic use of a mythological past. The leading Nazi ideologue
Alfred Rosenberg, editor of the prominent Nazi newspaper the Völkischer Beobachter, writes in 1924, "the understanding of and the
respect for our own mythological past and our own history will form the first condition for more firmly anchoring the coming generation
in the soil of Europe's original homeland." The fascist mythic past exists to aid in changing the present.
Jason Stanley is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. Before coming to Yale in 2013, he was Distinguished
Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Rutgers University. Stanley is the author of Know How; Languages in Context;
More about Jason Stanley
This could have been such a helpful, insightful book. The word "fascist" is hurled at political / ideological opponents so
often that it has started to lose its meaning. I hoped that this book would provide a historical perspective on fascism by examining
actual fascist governments and drawing some parallels to the more egregious / worrisome trends in US & European politics. The
chapter titles in the table of contents were promising:
- The Mythic Past
- Propaganda
- Anti-Intellectual
- Unreality
- Hierarchy
- Victimhood
- Law & Order
- Sexual Anxiety
- Sodom & Gomorrah
- Arbeit Macht Frei
Ironically (given the book's subtitle) the author used his book divisively: to laud his left-wing political views and demonize
virtually all distinctively right-wing views. He uses the term "liberal democracy" inconsistently throughout, disengenuously equivocating
between the meaning of "representative democracy as opposed to autocratic or oligarchic government" (which most readers would
agree is a good thing) and "American left-wing political views" (which he treats as equally self-evidently superior if you are
a right-thinking person). Virtually all American right-wing political views are presented in straw-man form, defined in such a
way that they fit his definition of fascist politics.
I was expecting there to be a pretty heavy smear-job on President Trump and his cronies (much of it richly deserved...the man's
demagoguery and autocratic tendencies are frightening), but for this to turn into "let's find a way to define virtually everything
the Republicans are and do as fascist politics" was massively disappointing. The absurdly biased portrayal of all things conservative
and constant hymns of praise to all things and all people left-wing buried some good historical research and valid parallels under
an avalanche of partisanism.
If you want a more historical, less partisan view of the rise of fascist politics, I would highly recommend Darkness Over Germany
by E. Amy Buller (Review Here). It was written during World War II (based on interviews with Germans before WWII), so you will
have to draw your own contemporary parallels...but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
"... The vote for Brexit and the election of protectionist Donald Trump to the US presidency – two momentous markers of the ongoing pushback against globalization – led some to question the rationality of voters. This column presents a framework that demonstrates how the populist backlash against globalisation is actually a rational voter response when the economy is strong and inequality is high. It highlights the fragility of globalization in a democratic society that values equality. ..."
"... See original post for references ..."
"... Aversion to inequality thus reflects envy of the economic elites rather than compassion for the poor. ..."
Posted on September 28,
2018 by Yves
Smith Yves here. Haha, Lambert's volatility voters thesis confirmed! They are voting
against inequality and globalization. This important post also explains how financialization
drives populist rebellions.
By Lubos Pastor, Charles P. McQuaid Professor of Finance, University of Chicago Booth
School of Business and Pietro Veronesi, Roman Family Professor of Finance, University of
Chicago Booth School of Business. Originally published at VoxEU
The vote for Brexit and the election of protectionist Donald Trump to the US presidency
– two momentous markers of the ongoing pushback against globalization – led some to
question the rationality of voters. This column presents a framework that demonstrates how the
populist backlash against globalisation is actually a rational voter response when the economy
is strong and inequality is high. It highlights the fragility of globalization in a democratic
society that values equality.
The ongoing pushback against globalization in the West is a defining phenomenon of this
decade. This pushback is best exemplified by two momentous 2016 votes: the British vote to
leave the EU ('Brexit') and the election of a protectionist, Donald Trump, to the US
presidency. In both cases, rich-country electorates voted to take a step back from the
long-standing process of global integration. "Today, globalization is going through a major
crisis" (Macron 2018).
Some commentators question the wisdom of the voters responsible for this pushback. They
suggest Brexit and Trump supporters have been confused by misleading campaigns and foreign
hackers. They joke about turkeys voting for Christmas. They call for another Brexit referendum,
which would allow the Leavers to correct their mistakes.
Rational Voters
We take a different perspective. In a recent paper, we develop a theory in which a backlash
against globalization happens while all voters are perfectly rational (Pastor and Veronesi
2018). We do not, of course, claim that all voters are rational; we simply argue that
explaining the backlash does not require irrationality. Not only can the backlash happen in our
theory; it is inevitable.
We build a heterogeneous-agent equilibrium model in which a backlash against globalization
emerges as the optimal response of rational voters to rising inequality. A rise in inequality
has been observed throughout the West in recent decades (e.g. Atkinson et al. 2011). In our
model, rising inequality is a natural consequence of economic growth. Over time, global growth
exacerbates inequality, which eventually leads to a pushback against globalization.
Who Dislike Inequality
Agents in our model like consumption but dislike inequality. Individuals may prefer equality
for various reasons. Equality helps prevent crime and preserve social stability. Inequality
causes status anxiety at all income levels, which leads to health and social problems
(Wilkinson and Pickett 2009, 2018). In surveys, people facing less inequality report being
happier (e.g. Morawetz et al. 1977, Alesina et al. 2004, Ferrer-i-Carbonell and Ramos 2014).
Experimental results also point to egalitarian preferences (e.g. Dawes et al. 2007).
We measure inequality by the variance of consumption shares across agents. Given our other
modelling assumptions, equilibrium consumption develops a right-skewed distribution across
agents. As a result, inequality is driven by the high consumption of the rich rather than the
low consumption of the poor. Aversion to inequality thus reflects envy of the economic elites
rather than compassion for the poor.
Besides inequality aversion, our model features heterogeneity in risk aversion. This
heterogeneity generates rising inequality in a growing economy because less risk-averse agents
consume a growing share of total output. We employ individual-level differences in risk
aversion to capture the fact that some individuals benefit more from global growth than others.
In addition, we interpret country-level differences in risk aversion as differences in
financial development. We consider two 'countries': the US and the rest of the world. We assume
that US agents are less risk-averse than rest-of-the-world agents, capturing the idea that the
US is more financially developed than the rest of the world.
At the outset, the two countries are financially integrated – there are no barriers to
trade and risk is shared globally. At a given time, both countries hold elections featuring two
candidates. The 'mainstream' candidate promises to preserve globalization, whereas the
'populist' candidate promises to end it. If either country elects a populist, a move to autarky
takes place and cross-border trading stops. Elections are decided by the median voter.
Global risk sharing exacerbates US inequality. Given their low risk aversion, US agents
insure the agents of the rest of the world by holding aggressive and disperse portfolio
positions. The agents holding the most aggressive positions benefit disproportionately from
global growth. The resulting inequality leads some US voters, those who feel left behind by
globalization, to vote populist.
Why Vote Populist?
When deciding whether to vote mainstream or populist, US agents face a
consumption-inequality trade-off. If elected, the populist delivers lower consumption but also
lower inequality to US agents. After a move to autarky, US agents can no longer borrow from the
rest of the world to finance their excess consumption. But their inequality drops too, because
the absence of cross-border leverage makes their portfolio positions less disperse.
As output grows, the marginal utility of consumption declines, and US agents become
increasingly willing to sacrifice consumption in exchange for more equality. When output grows
large enough -- see the vertical line in the figure below -- more than half of US agents prefer
autarky and the populist wins the US election. This is our main result: in a growing economy,
the populist eventually gets elected. In a democratic society that values equality,
globalization cannot survive in the long run.
Figure 1 Vote share of the populist candidate
Equality Is a Luxury Good
Equality can be interpreted as a luxury good in that society demands more of it as it
becomes wealthier. Voters might also treat culture, traditions, and other nonpecuniary values
as luxury goods. Consistent with this argument, the recent rise in populism appears
predominantly in rich countries. In poor countries, agents are not willing to sacrifice
consumption in exchange for nonpecuniary values.
Globalization would survive under a social planner. Our competitive market solution differs
from the social planner solution due to the negative externality that the elites impose on
others through their high consumption. To see if globalization can be saved by redistribution,
we analyse redistributive policies that transfer wealth from low risk-aversion agents, who
benefit the most from globalization, to high risk-aversion agents, who benefit the least. We
show that such policies can delay the populist's victory, but cannot prevent it from happening
eventually.
Which Countries Are Populist?
Our model predicts that support for populism should be stronger in countries that are more
financially developed, more unequal, and running current account deficits. Looking across 29
developed countries, we find evidence supporting these predictions.
Figure 2 Vote share of populist parties in recent elections
The US and the UK are good examples. Both have high financial development, large inequality,
and current account deficits. It is thus no coincidence, in the context of our model, that
these countries led the populist wave in 2016. In contrast, Germany is less financially
developed, less unequal, and it runs a sizable current account surplus. Populism has been
relatively subdued in Germany, as our model predicts. The model emphasises the dark side of
financial development – it spurs the growth of inequality, which eventually leads to a
populist backlash.
Who are the Populist Voters?
The model also makes predictions about the characteristics of populist voters. Compared to
mainstream voters, populist voters should be more inequality-averse (i.e. more anti-elite) and
more risk-averse (i.e. better insured against consumption fluctuations). Like highly
risk-averse agents, poorer and less-educated agents have less to lose from the end of
globalization. The model thus predicts that these agents are more likely to vote populist. That
is indeed what we find when we examine the characteristics of the voters who supported Brexit
in the 2016 EU referendum and Trump in the 2016 presidential election.
The model's predictions for asset prices are also interesting. The global market share of US
stocks should rise in anticipation of the populist's victory. Indeed, the US share of the
global stock market rose steadily before the 2016 Trump election. The US bond yields should be
unusually low before the populist's victory. Indeed, bond yields in the West were low when the
populist wave began.
Backlash in a booming economy
In our model, a populist backlash occurs when the economy is strong because that is when
inequality is high. The model helps us understand why the backlash is occurring now, as the US
economy is booming. The economy is going through one of its longest macroeconomic expansions
ever, having been growing steadily for almost a decade since the 2008 crisis.
This study relates to our prior work at the intersection of finance and political economy.
Here, we exploit the cross-sectional variation in risk aversion, whereas in our 2017 paper, we
analyse its time variation (Pastor and Veronesi 2017). In the latter model, time-varying risk
aversion generates political cycles in which Democrats and Republicans alternate in power, with
higher stock returns under Democrats. Our previous work also explores links between risk
aversion and inequality (Pastor and Veronesi 2016).
Conclusions
We highlight the fragility of globalization in a democratic society that values equality. In
our model, a pushback against globalization arises as a rational voter response. When a country
grows rich enough, it becomes willing to sacrifice consumption in exchange for a more equal
society. Redistribution is of limited value in our frictionless, complete-markets model. Our
formal model supports the narrative of Rodrik (1997, 2000), who argues that we cannot have all
three of global economic integration, the nation state, and democratic politics.
If policymakers want to save globalization, they need to make the world look different from
our model. One attractive policy option is to improve the financial systems of less-developed
countries. Smaller cross-country differences in financial development would mitigate the uneven
effects of cross-border risk sharing. More balanced global risk sharing would result in lower
current account deficits and, eventually, lower inequality in the rich world.
"rising inequality is a natural consequence of economic growth. " For which definition of
growth? Or maybe, observing that cancer is the very model of growth, for any definition?
Nice model and graphs, though.
What kind of political economy is to be discerned, and how is one to effectuate it with
systems that would have to be so very different to have a prayer of providing lasting
homeostatic functions?
The global overclass can hardly wait too. They think they are in position to guide the
change to their desired outcome. Targeted applied Jackpot Engineering, you know.
At some point if the majority dont think they get any benefit from the economy, they will
put a stake through it, and replace it with some thing that works?now that could be some
thing very different, but it will happen
I had the same thought – growth as defined in the current, neoliberal model. There
is nothing inevitable about inequality – it is caused by political choices.
It is painful to find these assumptions accepted at NC.
"the economy is strong"
Not from my perspective. Or from the perspectives of the work force or the industrial base
replacing themselves. Or the perspective of a 4 to 5 trillion dollar shortfall in
infrastructure funding.
"In our model, rising inequality is a natural consequence of economic growth."
Well, that simply did not happen 1946 to 1971.
"populist delivers lower consumption but also lower inequality to US agents."
REALLY? Consumption of WHAT? Designer handbags and jeans? What about consumption of mass
public transit and health care services? I'm very confident that a populist government that
found a way to put a muzzle on Wall Street and the banksters would increase consumption of
things I prefer while also lessening inequality.
Reading through this summary of modeling, it occurred to me that the operative variable
was not inequality so much as "high financial development."
Yes and also, let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. These days, just saying
that globalisation leads to inequality and people act rationally, when they push back –
even though choices are limited – is pretty revolutionary. We need other analyses along
those lines, maybe with a few corrections. Thanks for posting!
" In our model, a populist backlash occurs when the economy is strong because that is when
inequality is high. "
Yes to the above comments. This sentence really stuck in my throat. A strong economy to me
is one that achieves balanced equality. Somehow this article avoids the manner in which the
current economy became "strong". Perhaps a better word is "corrupt". (No 'perhaps' really;
I'm just being polite.)
I also didn't like that the anti-neoliberalists are being portrayed as not having sympathy
for the poor. Gosh, we are a hard-hearted lot, only interested in our own come-uppance and
risk-adversity.
A "strong" economy is one that is growing as measured by GDP – full stop. Inequality
looks to me like a feature of our global economic value system, not a bug.
I only read these articles to see what the enemy is thinking. The vast majority of
economists are nothing more than cheerleaders for capitalism. I imagine anybody who strays
too far from neoliberal orthodoxy is ignored.
the Trump/Brexit populist thinking has nothing to do with equality. it has do do with who
should get preferential treatment and why -- it's about drawing a tight circle on who get's
to be considered "equal".
not sure how you can pull a desire for equality from this (except through statistics,
which can be used to "prove" anything).
I'm confused – so the evidence of statistics should be discounted, in favor of more
persuasive evidence? Consisting of your own authoritative statements about the motives of
other people?
In the future, please try to think about what sorts of arguments are likely to be
persuasive to people who don't already agree with you.
If you consider yourself an "environmentalist," then you have to be against
globalization.
(From the easiest to universally agree upon) the multi-continental supply chain for
everything from tube socks to cobalt to frozen fish is unsustainable, barring Star Trek-type
transport tech breakthroughs.
(to the less easily to universally agree upon) the population of the entire developed
(even in the US) would be stablized/falling/barely rising, but for migration.
mass migration-fueled population growth/higher fertility rates of migrants in the
developed world and increased resource footprint is bad for both the developed world and
developing world.
The long, narrow, and manifold supply lines which characterize our present systems of
globalization make the world much more fragile. The supply chains are fraught with single
points of systemic failure. At the same time Climate Disruption increases the risk that a
disaster can affect these single points of failure. I fear that the level of instability in
the world systems is approaching the point where multiple local disasters could have
catastrophic effects at a scale orders of magnitude greater than the scale of the triggering
events -- like the Mr. Science demonstration of a chain-reaction where he tosses a single
ping pong ball into a room full of mousetraps set with ping pong balls. You have to be
against globalization if you're against instability.
The entire system of globalization is completely dependent on a continuous supply of cheap
fuel to power the ships, trains, and trucks moving goods around the world. That supply of
cheap fuel has its own fragile supply lines upon which the very life of our great cities
depends. Little food is grown where the most food is eaten -- this reflects the distributed
nature of our supply chains greatly fostered by globalization.
Globalization increases the power and control Corporate Cartels have over their workers.
It further increases the power large firms have over smaller firms as the costs and
complexities of globalized trade constitute a relatively larger overhead for smaller firms.
Small producers of goods find themselves flooded with cheaper foreign knock-offs and
counterfeits of any of their designs that find a place in the market. It adds uncertainty and
risk to employment and small ventures. Globalization magnifies the power of the very large
and very rich over producers and consumers.
I believe the so-called populist voters and their backlash in a "booming" economy are
small indications of a broad unrest growing much faster than our "booming" economies. That
unrest is one more risk to add to the growing list of risks to an increasingly fragile
system. The world is configured for a collapse that will be unprecedented in its speed and
scope.
Actually, the way I see it – if one considers oneself an environmentalist, one has
to be against capitalism, not just globalization. Capitalism is built on constant growth
– but on a planet, with limited resources, that simply cannot work. Not long term
unless we're prepared to dig up and/or pave over everything. Only very limited-scale,
mom-and-pop kind of capitalism can try to work long term – but the problem is, it would
not stay that way because greed gets in the way every time and there's no limiting greed.
(Greed as a concept was limited in the socialist system – but some folks did not like
that.)
" Given their low risk aversion, US agents insure the agents of the rest of the world by
holding aggressive and disperse portfolio positions."
That low risk aversion could be driven by the willingness of the US government to provide
military/diplomatic/trade assistance to US businesses around the word. The risk inherent in
moving factories, doing resource extraction and conducting business overseas is always there,
but if one's government lessens the risk via force projection and control of local
governments, a US agent could appear to be "less risk averse" because the US taxpayer has
"got their back".
This paper closes with
"If policymakers want to save globalization, they need to make the world look different
from our model. One attractive policy option is to improve the financial systems of
less-developed countries. Smaller cross-country differences in financial development would
mitigate the uneven effects of cross-border risk sharing. More balanced global risk sharing
would result in lower current account deficits and, eventually, lower inequality in the rich
world."
Ah yes, to EVENTUALLY lower inequality, the USA needs to "improve the financial systems of
less-well developed countries"
Perhaps the USA needs to improve its OWN financial system first?
Paul Woolley has suggested, the US and UK financial systems are 2 to 3 times they should
be.
And the USA's various financial industry driven bubbles, the ZIRP rescue of the financial
industry, and mortgage security fraud seem all connected back to the USA financial
industry.
Inequality did not improve in the aftermath of these events as the USA helped preserve the
elite class.
Maybe the authors have overlooked a massive home field opportunity?
That being that the USA should consider "improving" its own financial system to help
inequality.
I'm glad to see that issues and views discussed pretty regularly here in more or less
understandable English have been translated into Academese. Being a high risk averse plebe,
who will not starve for lack of trade with China, but may have to pay a bit more for
strawberries for lack of cheap immigrant labor, I count myself among the redistributionist
economic nationalists.
Right now I'm making raisins from the grapes harvested here at home .. enough to last for
a year, or maybe two. Sure, it's laborous to some extent, but the supply chain is very short
.. the cost, compared to buying the same amount at retait rates, is minuscule, and they're as
'organic' as can be. The point I'm trying to make is that wth some personal effort, we can
all live lighter, live slower, and be, for the most part, contented.
Might as well step into collapse, gracefully, and avoid the rush, as per J. M. Greer's
mantra.
The UK had become somewhat dependent on Switzerland for wristwatches prior to WW2, and all
of the sudden France falls and that's all she wrote for imports.
Must've been a mad scramble to resurrect the business, or outsource elsewhere.
My wife and I were talking about what would happen if say the reign of error pushes us
into war with China, and thanks to our just in time way of life, the goods on the shelves of
most every retailer, would be plundered by consumers, and maybe they could be restocked a few
times, but that's it.
I recently purchased a cabinet/shelf for 20 tubmans, from a repurposing/recycling
business, and, after putting a couple of hundred moar tubmans into it .. some of which
included recycled latex paints and hardware .. transformed it into a fabulous stand-alone
kitchen storage unit. If I were to purchase such at retail, it would most likely go for close
to $800- $1000.00 easy !!
With care, this 'renewed' polecat heirloom will certainly outlive it's recreator, and pass on
for generations henceforth.
Yes, thank goodness there was no mention of Canada's failure to negotiate a trade treaty
with our best friend. All of a sudden, Canadians seem to be the target of a lot of ill will
in other articles.
I think it's just ill- informed jealousy. Us US mopes think Canadians are much better off
than we Yanks, health care and such. You who live there have your own insights, of course.
Trudeau and the Ford family and tar sands and other bits.
And some of us are peeved that you don't want us migrating to take advantage of your more
beneficent milieu.
It's a different vibe up over, their housing bubble crested and is sinking, as the road to
HELOC was played with the best intentions even more furiously than here in the heat of the
bubble.
Can Canada bail itself out as we did in the aftermath, and keep the charade going?
Feel free to fill out that 8 inch high pile of Canadian immigration documentation, so
ya'all can come on up and join the party. Or just jump on your pony and ride North into the
Land of the Grandmother. Trudeau wants more people and has failed to offer proper sacrifice
to the god Terminus, the god of borders, so .
Just don't move to "Van" unless you have a few million to drop on a "reno'ed" crack shack.
When the god Pluto crawls back into the earth, the housing bubble will burst, and it's not
going to be pretty.
That's funny as our dam here is called the Terminus Reservoir, if the name fits
I'm just looking for an ancestral way out of what might prove to be a messy scene down
under, i'd gladly shack up in one of many of my relatives basements if Max Mad breaks out
here.
Great article, interesting data points, but besides placing tariffs on Chinese imports
there is nothing populist about Trump, just empty rhetoric. Highly regressive tax cuts for
the wealthy, further deregulation, wanton environmental destruction, extremist right-wing
ideologues as judges, a cabinet full of Wall Street finance guys, more boiler-plate Neo-Lib
policies as far as I can tell.
I fear Trump and the Brexiters are giving populism a bad name. A functioning democracy
should always elect populists. A government of elected officials who do not represent the
public will is not really a democracy.
Aversion to inequality thus reflects envy of the economic elites rather than
compassion for the poor.
That's ridiculous. Indeed, the Brexit campaign was all about othering the poor and
powerless immigrants, as well as the cultural, artistic, urban and academic elites, never the
the moneyed elites, not the 1%. The campaign involved no dicussion what's so ever of the
actual numbers of wealth inequality.
When deciding whether to vote mainstream or populist, US agents face a
consumption-inequality trade-off. If elected, the populist delivers lower consumption but
also lower inequality to US agents.
How can anyone possibly write such a thing? The multi-trillion tax cut from Donald Trump
represents a massive long time rise in inequality. Vis-à-vis Brexit, the entire
campaign support for that mad endeavor came from free-trader fundamentalists who want to be
free to compete with both hands in the global race-to-the-bottom while the EU is (barely)
restraining them.
Trump and Brexit voters truly are irrational turkeys (that's saying a lot for anyone who's
met an actual turkey) voting for Christmas.
Some of us mopes who voted for Trump did so as a least-bad alternative to HER, just to try
to kick the hornet's nest and get something to fly out: So your judgment is that those folks
are "irrational turkeys," bearing in mind how mindless the Christmas and Thansgiving turkeys
have been bred to be?
Better to arm up, get out in the street, and start marching and chanting and ready to
confront the militarized police? I'd say, face it: as people here have noted there is a
system in place, the "choices" are frauds to distract us every couple of years, and the
vectors all point down into some pretty ugly terrain.
Bless those who have stepped off the conveyor, found little places where they can live
"autarkically," more or less, and are waiting out the Ragnarok/Gotterdammerung/Mad Max
anomie, hoping not to be spotted by the warbands that will form up and roam the terrain
looking for bits of food and fuel and slaves and such. Like one survivalist I spotted
recently says as his tag-line, "If you have stuff, you're a target. If you have knowledge.
you have a chance–" this in a youtube video on how to revive a defunct nickel-cadmium
drill battery by zapping it with a stick welder. (It works, by the way.)He's a chain smoker
and his BMI must be close to 100, but he's got knowledge
The papers's framing of the issues is curious: the populace has 'envy' of the well-off;
and populism (read envy) rises when the economy is strong and inequality rises (read where's
my yaht?).
The paper lacks acknowledgement of the corruption, fraud, and rigging of policy that rises
when an overly financialized economy is 'good.' This contributes to inequality. Inequality is
not just unequal, but extremely disproportionate distributions which cause real suffering and
impoverishment of the producers. It follows (but not to the writer of this paper) that the
citizens take offense at and objection to the disproprtionate takings of some and the meager
receipts of the many. It's this that contributes to populism.
And the kicker: to save globalization, let's financialize the less developed economies to
mitigate cross-border inequalities. Huh? Was not the discussion about developed nations'
voters to rising inequality in face of globalization? The problem is not cross-border 'envy.'
It's globalization instrinsically and how it is gamed.
I'm with Olga. It's good to see that voting "wrong" taken seriously, and seen as
economically rational. Opposing globalization makes sense, even in the idiosyncratic usage of
economics.
The trouble, of course, is that the world of economics is not the world we live in.
Why does the immigrant cross the border? Is it only for "pecuniary interests," only for
the money? Then why do so many send most of it back across the border, in remittances?
If people in poor countries aren't willing to sacrifice for "luxuries," like a dignified
human life, who was Simon Bolivar, Che Guevara, or more recently, Berta Cáceres?
Seems to be a weakness of economic models in general: it's inconceivable that people do
things for other than pecuniary interests. In the reductionist terms of natural science,
we're social primates, not mechanical information engines.
If this model were a back patio cart, like the one I'm building right now, I wouldn't set
my beer on it. Looks like a cart from a distance, though, esp when you're looking for
one.
To the extent that the backlash has irrational aspects in the way it manifests, I would
suspect that it relates to the refusal of the self-styled responsible people to participate
in opening more rational paths to solutions, or even to acknowledge the existence of a
problem. When the allegedly responsible and knowledgeable actors refuse to act, or even see a
need to act, it's hardly surprising that the snake oil vendors grow in influence.
I'm always leery of t-test values being cited without the requisite sample size being
noted. You need that to determine effect size. While the slope looks ominously valid for the
regression model, effects could be weak and fail to show whether current account deficits are
the true source. Financialization seems purposely left out of the model.
This is a very weak article, but it raises several important questions such as the role or neoliberal MSM in color revolution
against Trump and which social group constituted the voting block that brought Trump to victory. The author answers incorrectly on
both those questions.
I think overall Tremblay analysis of Trump (and by extension of national neoliberalism he promotes) is incorrect. Probably the largest group
of voters which voted for Trump were voters who were against neoliberal globalization and who now feel real distrust and aversion to
the ruling neoliberal elite.
Trump is probably right to view neoliberal journalists as enemies: they are tools of intelligence agencies which as agents of
Wall Street promote globalization
At the same time Trump turned to be Obama II: he instantly betrayed his voters after the election. His
election slogan "make Ameraca great again" bacem that same joke as Obama "Change we can believe in". And he proved to be as
jingoistic as Obama (A Nobel Pease Price laureate who was militarists dream come true)
In discussion of groups who votes for Trump the author forgot to mention part of professional which skeptically view neoliberal
globalization and its destrction of jobs (for example programmer jobs in the USA) as well as blue color
workers decimated by offshoring of major industries.
Notable quotes:
"... "Just stick with us, don't believe the crap you see from these people [journalists], the fake news Just remember, what you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening. " ..."
"... Donald Trump (1946- ), American President, (in remarks made during a campaign rally with Veterans of Foreign Wars, in Kansas City, July 24, 2018) ..."
"... "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." ..."
"... This is a White House where everybody lies ..."
"... I am a mortal enemy to arbitrary government and unlimited power ..."
"... The second one can be found in Trump's artful and cunning tactics to unbalance and manipulate the media to increase his visibility to the general public and to turn them into his own tools of propaganda. ..."
"... ad hominem' ..."
"... Donald Trump essentially has the traits of a typical showman diva , behaving in politics just as he did when he was the host of a TV show. Indeed, if one considers politics and public affairs as no more than a reality show, this means that they are really entertainment, and politicians are first and foremost entertainers or comedians. ..."
"... He prefers to rely on one-directional so-called 'tweets' to express unfiltered personal ideas and emotions (as if he were a private person), and to use them as his main public relations channel of communication. ..."
"... checks and balance ..."
"... The centralization of power in the hands of one man is bound to have serious political consequences, both for the current administration and for future ones. ..."
"Just stick with us, don't believe the crap you see from these people [journalists], the fake news Just remember, what
you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening. "
Donald Trump (1946- ), American President, (in remarks made during a campaign rally with Veterans of Foreign Wars, in Kansas
City, July 24, 2018)
"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."
George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair) (1903-1950), English novelist, essayist, and social critic, (in '1984', Ch. 7, 1949)
" This is a White House where everybody lies ." Omarosa Manigault Newman (1974- ), former White House aide to President
Donald Trump, (on Sunday August 12, 2018, while releasing tapes recording conversations with Donald Trump.)
" I am a mortal enemy to arbitrary government and unlimited power ." Benjamin Franklin (
1706 –
1790 ), American inventor and US Founding Father, (in 'Words of
the Founding Fathers', 2012).
***
In this day and age, with instant information, how does a politician succeed in double-talking, in bragging, in scapegoating and
in shamefully distorting the truth, most of the time, without being unmasked as a charlatan and discredited? Why? That is the mysterious
and enigmatic question that one may ask about U. S. President Donald Trump, as a politician.
The most obvious answer is the fact that Trump's one-issue and cult-like followers do not care what he does or says and whether
or not he has declared a
war on truth and reality , provided he delivers the political and financial benefits they demand of him, based on their ideological
or pecuniary interests. These groups of voters live in their own reality and only their personal interests count.
1- Four groups of one-issue voters behind Trump
There are four groups of one-issue voters to
whom President Donald Trump has delivered the goodies:
Christian religious right voters, whose main political issue is to fill the U. S. Supreme Court with ultra conservative
judges. On that score, Donald Trump has been true to them by naming one such judge and in nominating a second one.
Super rich Zionists and the Pro-Israel Lobby, whose obsession is the state of Israel. Again, on that score, President
Donald Trump has fulfilled his promise to them and he has unilaterally moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, in addition
to attacking the Palestinians and tearing up the 'Iran Deal'.
The one-percent Income earners and some corporate owners, whose main demand to Trump was substantial tax cuts and
deregulation. Once again, President Trump has fulfilled this group's wishes with huge tax cuts, mainly financed with future public
debt increases, which are going to be paid for by all taxpayers.
The NRA and the Pro-Gun Lobby, whose main obsession is to have the right to arm themselves to the teeth, including
with military assault weapons, with as few strings attached as possible. Here again President Donald Trump has sided with them
and against students who are increasingly in the line of fire in American schools.
With the strong support of these four monolithic lobbies -- his electoral base -- politician Donald Trump can count on the indefectible
support of between 35 percent and 40 percent of the American electorate. It is ironic that some of Trump's other policies, like reducing
health care coverage and the raising of import taxes, will hurt the poor and the middle class, even though some of Trump's victims
can be considered members of the above lobbies.
Moreover, some of Trump's supporters regularly rely on
hypocrisy and on excuses to exonerate their favorite
but flawed politician of choice. If any other politician from a different party were to say and do half of what Donald Trump does
and says, they would be asking for his impeachment.
There are three other reasons why Trump's rants, his
record-breaking lies , his untruths, his deceptions and his dictatorial-style attempts to
control information , in the eyes of his fanatical supporters, at least, are like water on the back of a duck. ( -- For the record,
according to the
Washington Post , as of early August, President Trump has made some 4,229 false claims, which amount to 7.6 a day, since his
inauguration.)
The first reason can be found in Trump's view that politics and even government business are first and foremost another form
of
entertainment , i.e. a sort of TV reality show, which must be scripted and acted upon. Trump thinks that is
OK to lie
and to ask his assistants to
lie
. In this new immoral world, the Trump phenomenon could be seen a sign of
post-democracy .
The second one can be found in Trump's artful and cunning tactics to unbalance and
manipulate the media to increase his visibility to the general public and to turn them into his own tools of propaganda.
When Trump attacks the media, he is in fact coaxing them to give him free coverage to spread his
insults , his fake accusations, his provocations, his constant
threats , his denials or reversals, his convenient
changes of subject or his political spins. Indeed, with his outrageous statements, his gratuitous accusations and his attacks
' ad hominem' , and by constantly bullying and insulting adversaries at home and foreign heads of states abroad, and
by issuing threats in repetition, right and left, Trump has forced the media to talk and journalists to write about him constantly,
on a daily basis, 24/7.
That suits him perfectly well because he likes to be the center of attention. That is how he can change the political rhetoric
when any negative issue gets too close to him. In the coming weeks and months, as the Special prosecutor
Robert Mueller's report is likely to be released, Donald Trump is not above resorting to some sort of "
Wag the Dog " political trickery, to change the topic and to possibly push the damaging report off the headlines.
In such a circumstance, it is not impossible that launching an illegal war of choice, say against Iran (a
pet
project of Trump's National Security Advisor John Bolton), could then look very convenient to a crafty politician like Donald
Trump and to his warmonger advisors. Therefore, observers should be on the lookout to spot any development of the sort in the
coming weeks.
That one man and his entourage could whimsically consider launching a
war of aggression is a throwback to ancient times
and is a sure indication of the level of depravity to which current politics has fallen. This should be a justified and clear
case for impeachment .
Finally, some far-right media outlets, such as
Fox News and
Sinclair Broadcasting , have taken it upon themselves to systematically present Trump's lies and misrepresentations as some
'alternative' truths and facts.
Indeed, ever since 1987, when the Reagan administration abolished the
Fairness Doctrine for licensing public radio
and TV waves, and since a Republican dominated Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which allowed for the
mass conglomeration of local broadcasting
in the United States, extreme conservative news outlets, such as the Fox and Sinclair networks, have sprung up. They are well
financed, and they have essentially become powerful
political propaganda machines , erasing the line between facts and fiction, and regularly presenting fictitious alternative
facts as the truth.
In so doing, they have pushed public debates in the United States away from facts, reason and logic, at least for those listeners
and viewers for whom such outlets are the only source of information. It is not surprising that such far-right media have also
made Donald Trump the champion of their cause, maliciously branding anything inconvenient as 'fake' news, as Trump has done in
his own anti-media campaign and his sustained assault on the free press.
2- Show Politics and public affairs as a form of entertainment
Donald Trump does not seem to take politics and public affairs very seriously, at least when his own personal interests are involved.
Therefore, when things go bad, he never volunteers to take personal responsibility, contrary to what a true leader would do, and
he conveniently
shifts the blame on somebody else. This is a sign of immaturity or cowardice. Paraphrasing President Harry Truman, "the buck
never stops at his desk."
Donald Trump essentially has the traits of a typical
showman diva , behaving
in politics just as he did when he was the host of a TV show. Indeed, if one considers politics and public affairs as no more than
a reality show, this means that they are really entertainment, and politicians are first and foremost entertainers or comedians.
3- Trump VS the media and the journalists
Donald Trump is the first U.S. president who rarely holds scheduled press conferences. Why would he, since he considers journalists
to be his "enemies"! It doesn't seem to matter to him that freedom of the press is guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution by the First
Amendment. He prefers to rely on one-directional so-called 'tweets' to express unfiltered personal ideas and emotions (as if
he were a private person), and to use them as his main public relations channel of communication.
The ABC News network
has calculated that, as of last July, Trump has tweeted more than 3,500 times, slightly more than seven tweets a day. How could he
have time left to do anything productive! Coincidently, Donald Trump's number of tweets is not far away from the number of outright
lies and misleading claims that he has told and made since his inauguration.
The Washington Post has counted no less than 3,251 lies or misleading claims of his, through the end of May of this year, --
an average of 6.5 such misstatements per day of his presidency. Fun fact: Trump seems to accelerate the pace of his lies. Last year,
he told 5.5 lies per day, on average. Is it possible to have a more cynical view of politics!
The media in general, (and
not only American ones), then serve more or less voluntarily as so many resonance boxes for his daily 'tweets', most of which
are often devoid of any thought and logic.
Such a practice has the consequence of demeaning the public discourse in the pursuit of the common good and the general welfare
of the people to the level of a frivolous private enterprise, where expertise, research and competence can easily be replaced by
improvisation, whimsical arbitrariness and charlatanry. In such a climate, only the short run counts, at the expense of planning
for the long run.
Conclusion
All this leads to this conclusion: Trump's approach is not the way to run an efficient government. Notwithstanding the U.S. Constitution
and what it says about the need to have " checks and balance s" among different government branches, President Donald Trump
has de facto pushed aside the U.S. Congress and the civil servants in important government Departments, even his own
Cabinet
, whose formal meetings under Trump have been little more than photo-up happenings, to grab the central political stage for himself.
If such a development does not represent an ominous threat to American democracy, what does?
The centralization of power in the hands of one man is bound to have serious political consequences, both for the current
administration and for future ones.
"... Serious border enforcement, demanding our wealthy allies do more for their own security, infrastructure investment, the (campaign's) refutation of Reaganomics, acknowledging the costs of globalism, calling BS on all of the dominant left PC pieties and lies, were themes of Trump's campaign that were of value. ..."
Serious border enforcement, demanding our wealthy allies do more for their own security,
infrastructure investment, the (campaign's) refutation of Reaganomics, acknowledging the
costs of globalism, calling BS on all of the dominant left PC pieties and lies, were themes
of Trump's campaign that were of value.
Trump was able to harness and give voice to some very important energies. But being Trump,
he's poisoned these issues for a couple of generations. No serious leader will be able to
touch these things.
Add this to all the institutional and political ruin he has created.
"... he has brought North Korea away from the edge of nuclear war and established at least tentative diplomatic relations with that nation, something no president has done before him. Against frenzied opposition from the American Establishment, he has somewhat softened U.S. relations with Russia. ..."
"... On domestic and environmental matters, Trump is pro-plutocrat, a climate change denier, and the installer of arch-reactionary Supreme Court justices. But this is more a function of the current national Republican party than of Trump himself. Any of Trump's opponents in the 2016 primaries would have followed the same policies. ..."
Trump is not crazy at all. He is the proponent of a particular philosophy, Trumpism, which
he follows very clearly and consistently.
As president, he has had significant successes. Notably, he has brought North Korea away
from the edge of nuclear war and established at least tentative diplomatic relations with
that nation, something no president has done before him. Against frenzied opposition from the
American Establishment, he has somewhat softened U.S. relations with Russia.
On domestic and environmental matters, Trump is pro-plutocrat, a climate change denier,
and the installer of arch-reactionary Supreme Court justices. But this is more a function of
the current national Republican party than of Trump himself. Any of Trump's opponents in the
2016 primaries would have followed the same policies.
Trumpism is undeniably a form of near-fascism. Trump has followed viciously anti-immigrant
tendencies, and this, along with his ties to out-and-out racists, is the worst part of his
presidency. But these horrible aspects do not at all show that he is crazy. He has used them
coldly and calculatedly to gain power.
And while his schtick and bluster are indeed bizarre, he has used them very consistently
to keep a 40%-plus approval rating in the face of an Establishment opposition the like of
which has used against a president at least in our lifetimes.
As I have commented here before, except for Trump's disgusting anti-immigration policies,
George W. Bush was on balance a far worse president.
This is partially incorrect view on Trump foreign policy. At the center of
which is careful retreat for enormous expenses of keeping the global neoliberal
empire, plus military Keyseanism to revive the us economy. Which means
tremendous pressure of arm sales as the only way to improve trade balance.
NATO was always an instrument of the USA hegemony,
so Trump behavior is perfectly compatible with this view -- he just downgraded vassals
refusing usual formal respect for them, as they do no represent independent nations.
That's why he addressed them with the contempt. He aptly remarked that German stance
of relying on Russia hydrocarbons and still claiming the it needs the USA defense
is pure hypocrisy. On the other side china, Russia and North Korea can't be considered
the USA vassals.
China is completely dependent on the USA for advanced technologies so their
dreams of becoming the world hegemon is such exist are premature.
Notable quotes:
"... Washington's dominance over the world economy had begun to wither and its once-superior work force to lose its competitive edge. ..."
"... By 2016, in fact, the dislocations brought on by the economic globalization that had gone with American dominion sparked a revolt of the dispossessed in democracies worldwide and in the American heartland, bringing the self-proclaimed "populist" Donald Trump to power. ..."
"... Determined to check his country's decline, he has adopted an aggressive and divisive foreign policy that has roiled long-established alliances in both Asia and Europe and is undoubtedly giving that decline new impetus. ..."
"... On the realpolitik side of that duality, Washington constructed a four-tier apparatus -- military, diplomatic, economic, and clandestine -- to advance a global dominion of unprecedented wealth and power. This apparatus rested on hundreds of military bases in Europe and Asia that made the U.S. the first power in history to dominate (if not control) the Eurasian continent. ..."
"... Instead of reigning confidently over international organizations, multilateral alliances, and a globalized economy, Trump evidently sees America standing alone and beleaguered in an increasingly troubled world -- exploited by self-aggrandizing allies, battered by unequal trade terms, threatened by tides of undocumented immigrants, and betrayed by self-serving elites too timid or compromised to defend the nation's interests. ..."
"... Instead of multilateral trade pacts like NAFTA, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), or even the WTO, Trump favors bilateral deals rewritten to the (supposed) advantage of the United States. ..."
"... As he took office, the nation, it claimed, faced "an extraordinarily dangerous world, filled with a wide range of threats." ..."
"... Despite such grandiose claims, each of President Trump's overseas trips has been a mission of destruction in terms of American global power. Each, seemingly by design, disrupted and possibly damaged alliances that have been the foundation for Washington's global power since the 1950s ..."
"... Donald Trump acted more like Argentina's former presidente Juan Perón, minus the medals. ..."
"... Beijing's low-cost infrastructure loans for 70 countries from the Baltic to the Pacific are already funding construction of the Mediterranean's busiest port at Piraeus, Greece, a major nuclear power plant in England, a $6 billion railroad through rugged Laos, and a $46 billion transport corridor across Pakistan. If successful, such infrastructure investments could help knit two dynamic continents, Europe and Asia -- home to a full 70% percent of the world's population and its resources -- into a unified market without peer on the planet. ..."
"... In January, to take advantage of Arctic waters opened by global warming, Beijing began planning for a "Polar Silk Road," a scheme that fits well with ambitious Russian and Scandinavian projects to establish a shorter shipping route around the continent's northern coast to Europe. ..."
"... Financial Times ..."
"... New York Times ..."
"... Yet neither China nor any other state seems to have the full imperial complement of attributes to replace the United States as the dominant world leader. ..."
"... In addition to the fundamentals of military and economic power, "every successful empire," observes Cambridge University historian Joya Chatterji, "had to elaborate a universalist and inclusive discourse" to win support from the world's subordinate states and their leaders. ..."
"... China has nothing comparable. Its writing system has some 7,000 characters, not 26 letters. ..."
"... During Japan's occupation of Southeast Asia in World War II, its troops went from being hailed as liberators to facing open revolt across the region after they failed to propagate their similarly particularistic culture. ..."
"... A test of its attitude toward this system of global governance came in 2016 when the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague ruled unanimously that China's claims to sovereignty in the South China Sea "are contrary to the Convention [on the Law of the Sea] and without lawful effect." ..."
...Although they started this century on generally amicable terms, China
and the U.S. have, in recent years, moved toward military competition and open
economic conflict. When China was admitted to the World Trade Organization (WTO)
in 2001, Washington was confident that Beijing would play by the established
rules and become a compliant member of an American-led international community.
There was almost
no awareness of what might happen when a fifth of humanity joined the world
system as an economic equal for the first time in five centuries.
By the time Xi Jinping became China's seventh president, a decade of rapid
economic growth averaging 11% annually and currency reserves surging toward
an unprecedented $4 trillion had created the economic potential for a rapid,
radical shift in the global balance of power. After just a few months in office,
Xi began tapping those vast reserves to launch a bold geopolitical gambit, a
genuine challenge to U.S. dominion over Eurasia and the world beyond. Aglow
in its status as the world's sole superpower after "winning" the Cold War, Washington
had difficulty at first even grasping such newly developing global realities
and was slow to react.
China's bid couldn't have been more fortuitous in its timing. After nearly
70 years as the globe's hegemon, Washington's dominance over the world economy
had begun to wither and its once-superior work force to lose its competitive
edge.
By 2016, in fact, the dislocations brought on by the economic globalization
that had gone with American dominion sparked a revolt of the dispossessed in
democracies worldwide and in the American heartland, bringing the self-proclaimed
"populist" Donald Trump to power.
Determined to check his country's decline, he has adopted an aggressive
and divisive foreign policy that has roiled long-established alliances in both
Asia and Europe and is undoubtedly giving that decline new impetus.
Within months of Trump's entry into the Oval Office, the world was already
witnessing a sharp rivalry between Xi's advocacy of a new form of global collaboration
and Trump's version of economic nationalism. In the process, humanity seems
to be entering a rare historical moment when national leadership and global
circumstances have coincided to create an opening for a major shift in the nature
of the world order.
Trump's Disruptive Foreign Policy
Despite their constant
criticism of Donald Trump's leadership, few among Washington's corps of
foreign policy experts have grasped his full impact on the historic foundations
of American global power. The world order that Washington built after World
War II rested upon what I've
called a "delicate duality": an American imperium of raw military and economic
power married to a community of sovereign nations, equal under the rule of law
and governed through international institutions such as the United Nations and
the World Trade Organization.
On the realpolitik side of that duality, Washington constructed a four-tier
apparatus -- military, diplomatic, economic, and clandestine -- to advance a
global dominion of unprecedented wealth and power. This apparatus rested on
hundreds of military bases in Europe and Asia that made the U.S. the first
power in history to dominate (if not control) the Eurasian continent.
Even after the Cold War ended, former national security adviser Zbigniew
Brzezinski
warned that Washington would remain the world's preeminent power only as
long as it maintained its geopolitical dominion over Eurasia. In the decade
before Trump's election, there were, however, already signs that America's hegemony
was on a downward trajectory as its share of global economic power fell from
50% in 1950 to just
15% in 2017. Many financial forecasts now
project that China will surpass the U.S. as the world's number one economy
by 2030, if not before.
In this era of decline, there has emerged from President Trump's torrent
of tweets and off-the-cuff remarks a surprisingly coherent and grim vision of
America's place in the present world order. Instead of reigning confidently
over international organizations, multilateral alliances, and a globalized economy,
Trump evidently sees America standing alone and beleaguered in an increasingly
troubled world -- exploited by self-aggrandizing allies, battered by unequal
trade terms, threatened by tides of undocumented immigrants, and betrayed by
self-serving elites too timid or compromised to defend the nation's interests.
Instead of multilateral trade pacts like NAFTA, the Trans-Pacific Partnership
(TPP), or even the WTO, Trump favors bilateral deals rewritten to the (supposed)
advantage of the United States. In place of the usual democratic allies
like Canada and Germany, he is trying to weave a web of personal ties to avowedly
nationalist and autocratic leaders of a sort he clearly admires: Vladimir Putin
in Russia, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Narendra Modi in India, Adel Fatah el-Sisi
in Egypt, and Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman of Saudi Arabia.
Instead of old alliances like NATO, Trump favors loose coalitions of like-minded
countries. As he sees it, a resurgent America will carry the world along, while
crushing terrorists and dealing in uniquely personal ways with rogue states
like Iran and North Korea.
His version of a foreign policy has found its fullest
statement in his administration's December 2017 National Security Strategy.
As he took office, the nation, it claimed, faced "an extraordinarily dangerous
world, filled with a wide range of threats." But in less than a year of his
leadership, it insisted, "We have renewed our friendships in the Middle East
to help drive out terrorists and extremists America's allies are now contributing
more to our common defense, strengthening even our strongest alliances." Humankind
will benefit from the president's "beautiful vision" that "puts America First"
and promotes "a balance of power that favors the United States." The whole world
will, in short, be "lifted by America's renewal."
Despite such grandiose claims, each of President Trump's overseas trips
has been a mission of destruction in terms of American global power. Each, seemingly
by design, disrupted and possibly damaged alliances that have been the foundation
for Washington's global power since the 1950s. During the president's first
foreign trip in May 2017, he promptly
voiced withering complaints about the supposed refusal of Washington's European
allies to pay their "fair share" of NATO's military costs, leaving the U.S.
stuck with the bill and, in a fashion unknown to American presidents, refused
even to endorse the alliance's core principle of collective defense. It was
a position so extreme in terms of the global politics of the previous half-century
that he was later forced to formally
back down . (By then, however, he had registered his contempt for those
allies in an unforgettable fashion.)
During a second, no-less-divisive NATO visit in July, he charged that
Germany was "a captive of Russia" and pressed the allies to immediately
double their share of defense spending to a staggering 4% of gross domestic
product (a
level even Washington, with its monumental Pentagon budget, hasn't reached)
-- a demand they all ignored. Just days later, he again questioned the very
idea of a common defense,
remarking that if "tiny" NATO ally Montenegro decided to "get aggressive,"
then "congratulations, you're in World War III."
Moving on to England, he promptly kneecapped close ally Theresa May, telling
a British
tabloid that the prime minister had bungled her country's Brexit withdrawal
from the European Union and "killed off any chance of a vital U.S. trade deal."
He then went on to Helsinki for a summit with Vladimir Putin, where he visibly
abased himself before NATO's nominal nemesis, completely enough that there were
even brief, angry
protests
from leaders of his own party.
During Trump's major Asia tour in November 2017, he
addressed the Asian-Pacific Economic Council (APEC) in Vietnam, offering
an extended "tirade" against multilateral trade agreements, particularly the
WTO. To counter intolerable "trade abuses," such as "product dumping, subsidized
goods, currency manipulation, and predatory industrial policies," he swore that
he would always "put America first" and not let it "be taken advantage of anymore."
Having denounced a litany of trade violations that he termed nothing less than
"economic aggression" against America, he
invited everyone there to share his "Indo-Pacific dream" of the world as
a "beautiful constellation" of "strong, sovereign, and independent nations,"
each working like the United States to build "wealth and freedom."
Responding to such a display of narrow economic nationalism from the globe's
leading power, Xi Jinping had a perfect opportunity to play the world statesman
and he took it,
calling upon APEC to support an economic order that is "more open, inclusive,
and balanced." He spoke of China's future economic plans as an historic bid
for "interconnected development to achieve common prosperity on the Asian, European,
and African continents."
As China has lifted 60 million of its own people out of poverty in just a
few years and was committed to its complete eradication by 2020, so he urged
a more equitable world order "to bring the benefits of development to countries
across the globe." For its part, China, he assured his listeners, was ready
to make "$2 trillion of outbound investment" -- much of it for the development
of Eurasia and Africa (in ways, of course, that would link that vast region
more closely to China). In other words, he sounded like a twenty-first century
Chinese version of a twentieth-century American president, while Donald
Trump
acted
more like Argentina's former presidente Juan Perón, minus the medals. As
if to put another nail in the coffin of American global dominion, the remaining
11 Trans-Pacific trade pact partners, led by Japan and Canada,
announced major progress in finalizing that agreement -- without the United
States.
In addition to undermining NATO, America's Pacific alliances, long its historic
fulcrum for the defense of North America and the dominance of Asia, are eroding,
too. Even after 10 personal meetings and frequent phone calls between Japan's
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Donald Trump during his first 18 months in office,
the president's America First trade policy has
placed a "major strain" on Washington's most crucial alliance in the region.
First, he ignored Abe's
pleas and cancelled the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact and then, as
if his message hadn't been strong enough, he promptly imposed heavy
tariffs on Japanese steel imports. Similarly, he's
denounced the Canadian prime minister as "dishonest" and
mimicked Indian Prime Minister Modi's accent, even as he made chummy with
North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and then
claimed ,
inaccurately , that his country was "no longer a nuclear threat."
It all adds up to a formula for further decline at a faster pace.
Beijing's Grand Strategy
While Washington's influence in Asia recedes, Beijing's grows ever stronger.
As China's currency reserves
climbed rapidly from $200 billion in 2001 to a peak of $4 trillion in 2014,
President Xi launched a new initiative of historic import. In September 2013,
speaking in Kazakhstan, the heart of Asia's ancient Silk Road caravan route,
he
proclaimed a "one belt, one road initiative" aimed at economically integrating
the enormous Eurasian land mass around Beijing's leadership. Through "unimpeded
trade" and infrastructure investment, he suggested, it would be possible to
connect "the Pacific and the Baltic Sea" in a proposed "economic belt along
the Silk Road," a region "inhabited by close to 3 billion people." It could
become, he predicted, "the biggest market in the world with unparalleled potential."
Within a year, Beijing had
established a Chinese-dominated Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank
with 56 member nations and an impressive $100 billion in capital, while launching
its own $40 billion Silk Road Fund for
private equity projects. When China convened what it called a "belt and
road summit" of 28 world leaders in Beijing in May 2017, Xi could, with good
reason,
hail his initiative as the "project of the century."
Although the U.S. media has often described the individual projects involved
in his "one belt, one road" project as
wasteful ,
sybaritic ,
exploitative , or even
neo-colonial , its sheer scale and scope merits closer consideration. Beijing
is expected to
put a mind-boggling $1.3 trillion into the initiative by 2027, the largest
investment in human history, more than 10 times the famed American Marshall
Plan, the only comparable program, which
spent a more modest $110 billion (when adjusted for inflation) to rebuild
a ravaged Europe after World War II.
Beijing's low-cost infrastructure
loans for 70 countries from the Baltic to the Pacific are already funding
construction of the Mediterranean's
busiest port at Piraeus, Greece, a major nuclear power plant in England,
a $6 billion
railroad through rugged Laos, and a $46 billion transport
corridor across Pakistan. If successful, such infrastructure investments
could help knit two dynamic continents, Europe and Asia -- home to a full 70%
percent of the world's population and its resources -- into a unified market
without peer on the planet.
Underlying this flurry of flying dirt and flowing concrete, the Chinese leadership
seems to have a design for transcending the vast distances that have historically
separated Asia from Europe. As a start, Beijing is building a comprehensive
network of trans-continental gas and oil pipelines to import fuels from Siberia
and Central Asia for its own population centers. When the system is complete,
there will be an integrated inland energy grid (including Russia's extensive
network of pipelines) that will extend 6,000 miles across Eurasia, from the
North Atlantic to the South China Sea. Next, Beijing is working to link Europe's
extensive rail network with its own expanded high-speed rail system via transcontinental
lines through Central Asia, supplemented by spur lines running due south to
Singapore and southwest through Pakistan.
Finally, to facilitate sea transport around the sprawling continent's southern
rim, China has already bought into or is in the process of building more than
30 major port facilities, stretching from the Straits of Malacca across
the Indian Ocean, around Africa, and along
Europe's extended coastline. In January, to take advantage of Arctic waters
opened by global warming, Beijing began
planning for a "Polar Silk Road," a scheme that fits well with ambitious
Russian and
Scandinavian projects to establish a shorter shipping route around the continent's
northern coast to Europe.
Though Eurasia is its prime focus, China is also pursuing economic expansion
in Africa and Latin America to create what might be dubbed the strategy of the
four continents. To tie Africa into its projected Eurasian network, Beijing
already had doubled its
annual trade there by 2015 to $222 billion, three times that of the United
States, thanks to a massive infusion of capital expected to reach a trillion
dollars by 2025. Much of it is financing the sort of commodities extraction
that has already made the continent China's second largest source of crude oil.
Similarly, Beijing has
invested heavily in Latin America, acquiring, for instance, control over
90% of Ecuador's oil reserves. As a result, its commerce with that continent
doubled in a decade, reaching $244 billion in 2017, topping U.S. trade with
what once was known as its own "backyard."
A Conflict with Consequences
This contest between Xi's globalism and Trump's nationalism has not been
safely confined to an innocuous marketplace of ideas. Over the past four years,
the two powers have engaged in an escalating military rivalry and a cutthroat
commercial competition. Apart from a
shadowy struggle for
dominance in space and cyberspace, there has also been a visible, potentially
volatile naval arms race to control the sea lanes surrounding Asia, specifically
in the Indian Ocean and South China Sea. In a 2015 white paper, Beijing
stated
that "it is necessary for China to develop a modern maritime military force
structure commensurate with its national security." Backed by lethal land-based
missiles, jet fighters, and a global satellite system, China has built just
such a modernized fleet of 320 ships, including nuclear submarines and its first
aircraft carriers.
Within two years, U.S. Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson
reported
that China's "growing and modernized fleet" was "shrinking" the traditional
American advantage in the Pacific, and warned that "we must shake off any vestiges
of comfort or complacency." Under Trump's latest $700-billion-plus defense budget,
Washington has responded to this challenge with a crash program to build 46
new ships, which will
raise its total to 326 by 2023. As China builds new naval bases bristling
with armaments in the Arabian and South China seas, the U.S. Navy has begun
conducting assertive "freedom-of-navigation" patrols near many of those same
installations, heightening the potential for conflict.
It is in the commercial realm of trade and tariffs, however, where competition
has segued into overt conflict. Acting on his
belief that "trade wars are good and easy to win," President Trump
slapped heavy tariffs, targeted above all at China, on steel imports in
March and, just a few weeks later, punished that country's intellectual property
theft by
promising tariffs on $50 billion of Chinese imports. When those tariffs
finally hit in July, China immediately
retaliated against what it called "typical trade bullying" with similar
tariffs on U.S. goods. The Financial Times
warned that this "tit-for-tat" can escalate into a "full bore trade war
that will be very bad for the global economy." As Trump
threatened to tax $500 billion more in Chinese imports and
issued confusing, even contradictory demands that made it unlikely Beijing
could ever comply, observers became
concerned that a long-lasting trade war could destabilize what the New
York Times called the "mountain of debt" that sustains much of China's
economy. In Washington, the usually taciturn Federal Reserve chairman issued
an uncommon
warning that "trade tensions could pose serious risks to the U.S. and global
economy."
China as Global Hegemon?
Although a withering of Washington's global reach, abetted and possibly accelerated
by the Trump presidency, is already underway, the shape of any future world
order is still anything but clear. At present, China is the sole state with
the obvious requisites for becoming the planet's new hegemon. Its phenomenal
economic rise, coupled with its expanding military and growing technological
prowess, provide that country with the obvious fundamentals for superpower status.
Yet neither China nor any other state seems to have the full imperial complement
of attributes to replace the United States as the dominant world leader. Apart
from its rising economic and military clout, China, like its sometime ally Russia,
has a self-referential culture, non-democratic political structures, and a developing
legal system that could deny it some of the key instruments for global leadership.
In addition to the fundamentals of military and economic power, "every
successful empire,"
observes Cambridge University historian Joya Chatterji, "had to elaborate
a universalist and inclusive discourse" to win support from the world's subordinate
states and their leaders. Successful imperial transitions driven by the
hard power of guns and money also require the soft-power salve of cultural suasion
for sustained and successful global dominion. Spain espoused Catholicism and
Hispanism, the Ottomans Islam, the Soviets communism, France a cultural
francophonie , and Britain an Anglophone culture.
Indeed, during its century of global dominion from 1850 to 1940, Britain
was the exemplar par excellence of such soft power, evincing an enticing
cultural ethos of fair play and free markets that it propagated through the
Anglican church, the English language and its literature, and the virtual invention
of modern athletics (cricket, soccer, tennis, rugby, and rowing). Similarly,
at the dawn of its global dominion, the United States courted allies worldwide
through soft-power programs promoting democracy and development. These were
made all the more palatable by the appeal of such things as Hollywood films,
civic organizations like
Rotary International , and popular sports like basketball and baseball.
China has nothing comparable. Its writing system has some 7,000 characters,
not 26 letters. Its communist ideology and popular culture are remarkably, even
avowedly, particularistic. And you don't have to look far for another Asian
power that attempted Pacific dominion without the salve of soft power. During
Japan's
occupation of Southeast Asia in World War II, its troops went from being
hailed as liberators to facing open revolt across the region after they failed
to propagate their similarly particularistic culture.
As command-economy states for much of the past century, neither China nor
Russia developed an independent judiciary or the autonomous rules-based order
that undergirds the modern international system. From the foundation of the
Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague in 1899 through the formation of
the International Court of Justice under the U.N.'s 1945 charter, the world's
nations have aspired to the resolution of conflicts via arbitration or litigation
rather than armed conflict. More broadly, the modern globalized economy is held
together by a web of conventions, treaties, patents, and contracts grounded
in law.
From its founding in 1949, the People's Republic of China gave primacy to
the party and state, slowing the growth of an autonomous legal system and the
rule of law. A test of its attitude toward this system of global governance
came in 2016 when the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague
ruled unanimously that China's claims to sovereignty in the South China
Sea "are contrary to the Convention [on the Law of the Sea] and without lawful
effect." Beijing's Foreign Ministry simply
dismissed the adverse decision as "invalid" and without "binding force."
President Xi
insisted China's "territorial sovereignty and maritime rights" were unchanged,
while the state Xinhua news agency
called the ruling "naturally null and void."
If Donald Trump's vision of world disorder is a sign of the American future
and if Beijing's projected $2 trillion in infrastructure investments, history's
largest by far, succeed in unifying the commerce and transport of Asia, Africa,
and Europe, then perhaps the currents of financial power and global leadership
will indeed transcend all barriers and flow inexorably toward Beijing, as if
by natural law. But if that bold initiative ultimately fails, then for the first
time in five centuries the world may face an imperial transition without a clear
successor as global hegemon. Moreover, it will do so on a planet where the "
new normal " of
climate change -- the heating of the atmosphere and the
oceans , the intensification of flood, drought, and
fire , the rising seas that will
devastate coastal cities, and the
cascading damage to a densely populated world -- could mean that the very
idea of a global hegemon is fast becoming a thing of the past.
Alfred W. McCoy, a
TomDispatch regular , is the Harrington professor of history at the University
of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity
in the Global Drug Trade , the now-classic book which probed the conjuncture
of illicit narcotics and covert operations over 50 years, and the recently published
In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global
Power (Dispatch Books).
That might have been true .then. However, Bannon was never the puppet master (Trump is a
capitalist who has never listened to anyone else apart from his own messy ego in his life: the
idea that he would be a puppet for anyone, Bannon, Putin or whatever, is risible). Without
wanting to raise from the dead the 'Trump is teh Hitler' meme: there is a very very tiny grain
of truth in it, just as there is a very very tiny grain of truth in the right wing idea that
Hitler was a socialist because his party had the word 'socialist' in it. Hitler's initial
programme really did have a tiny element of 'socialism' in it, and some elements of the working
class (shamefully) swallowed the lies and gained him votes.
But it was never real and Hitler was never going to deliver. He dealt with the Brownshirts
(the most authentically 'working class' and 'socialist' part of the Nazi movement) in the Night
of the Long Knives, and from that point on, the 'socialist' parts of the Nazi programme were
steadily ditched, as the regime became more and more strongly right wing throughout the
'30s.
Same with Trump (in this respect only). It's true that in the run up to the election he
threw some scraps to the working class, and some of his protectionist rhetoric swung him some
states in the Rust Belt. Some union supporters, to their shame, trooped along to the White
House soon after.
But Trump, a right wing Republican who is, as I've said, far more orthodox a Republican than
the media would have you believe, was never going to deliver. Bannon was the most 'left wing'
of Trump's circle (and as his admiration for Thatcher makes clear, he was never very left wing)
and he was quickly cast out. Trump did not, in fact, 'drain the swamp' and nor did he try. His
major economic policy has turned out to be .tax cuts for the rich. And he has totally failed to
follow through on the (interesting) isolationist rhetoric he used in his election campaign
(despite the fact that some of us hoped otherwise). He has turned out to be as much of a
warmonger as Obama or even Bush jr (even towards Russia, again despite what the media would
have you believe).
And we haven't heard too much about that 'trillion dollar' investment in infrastructure
recently have we?
The problem is that the Democrats have concentrated on the (mainly trivial and
uninteresting) ways in which Trump differs from previous Republican Presidents (the lies, the
silly tweets, the dubious rhetoric) and have therefore persuaded themselves that this
'unorthodox' President will have to be removed by 'unorthodox means'. 'Tain't so. Trump will be
removed the only way any President (except Nixon) has ever been removed since the dawn of the
Republic: by the opposing party organising, developing a strong program that people can believe
in, and getting out the core vote. No election has ever been won any other way. In the case of
the Democrats this means using the might and money of organised labour and activists to get
candidates who can inspire and who have a genuinely progressive message that resonates with
people.
Democrats, #Russiagate will not save you. Getting your core vote out to vote for a genuinely
progressive candidate, will.
Likbez
@Hidari 08.18.18 at 6:41 pm
Powerful post and a veryclear thinking. Thank you !
Also an interesting analogy with NSDAP the 25-point Plan of 1928
Hitler's initial programme really did have a tiny element of 'socialism' in it, and some
elements of the working class (shamefully) swallowed the lies and gained him votes.
But it was never real, and Hitler was never going to deliver. He dealt with the Brownshirts
(the most authentically 'working class' and 'socialist' part of the Nazi movement) in the Night
of the Long Knives, and from that point on, the 'socialist' parts of the Nazi programme were
steadily ditched, as the regime became more and more strongly right wing throughout the
'30s.
Same with Trump (in this respect only). It's true that in the run-up to the election he
threw some scraps to the working class, and some of his protectionist rhetoric swung him some
states in the Rust Belt. Some union supporters, to their shame, trooped along to the White
House soon after.
Actually NSAP program of 1928 has some political demands which are to the left of Sanders
such as "Abolition of unearned (work and labor) incomes", ".We demand the nationalization of
all (previous) associated industries (trusts)." and "We demand a division of profits of all
heavy industries."
7.We demand that the state be charged first with providing the opportunity for a livelihood
and way of life for the citizens... ... ...
... ... ...
9.All citizens must have equal rights and obligations.
10.The first obligation of every citizen must be to productively work mentally or
physically. The activity of individuals is not to counteract the interests of the universality,
but must have its result within the framework of the whole for the benefit of all.
Consequently, we demand:
11.Abolition of unearned (work and labour) incomes. Breaking of debt (interest)-slavery.
12.In consideration of the monstrous sacrifice in property and blood that each war demands
of the people, personal enrichment through a war must be designated as a crime against the
people. Therefore, we demand the total confiscation of all war profits.
13.We demand the nationalisation of all (previous) associated industries (trusts).
14.We demand a division of profits of all heavy industries.
15.We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare.
16.We demand the creation of a healthy middle class and its conservation, immediate
communalization of the great warehouses and their being leased at low cost to small firms, the
utmost consideration of all small firms in contracts with the State, county or
municipality.
17.We demand a land reform suitable to our needs, provision of a law for the free
expropriation of land for the purposes of public utility, abolition of taxes on land and
prevention of all speculation in land.
18.We demand struggle without consideration against those whose activity is injurious to the
general interest. Common national criminals, usurers, profiteers and so forth are to be
punished with death, without consideration of confession or race.
... ... ...
21.The state is to care for the elevating national health by protecting the mother and
child, by outlawing child-labor, by the encouragement of physical fitness, by means of the
legal establishment of a gymnastic and sport obligation, by the utmost support of all
organizations concerned with the physical instruction of the young.
22.We demand abolition of the mercenary troops and formation of a national army.
23.We demand legal opposition to known lies and their promulgation through the press...
.... ... ...
24.We demand freedom of religion for all religious denominations within the state so long as
they do not endanger its existence or oppose the moral senses of the Germanic race...
But I think Trump was de-facto impeached with the appointment of Mueller. And that was the
plan ( "insurance" as Strzok called it). Mueller task is just to formalize impeachment.
Pence already is calling the shots in foreign policy via members of his close circle (which
includes Pompeo). The recent "unilateral" actions of State Department are a slap in the face
and, simultaneously, a nasty trap for Trump (he can cancel those sanctions only at a huge
political cost to himself) and are a clear sign that Trump does not control even his
administration. Here is how <a
href="http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2018/august/17/america-the-punitive/">Philip
Giraldi</a> described this obvious slap in the face:
The most recent is the new sanctioning of Russia over the Skripal poisoning in Salisbury
England. For those not following developments, last week Washington abruptly and without any
new evidence being presented, imposed additional trade sanctions on Russia in the belief that
Moscow ordered and carried out the poisoning of Sergey Skripal and his daughter Yulia on March
4th. The report of the new sanctions was particularly surprising as Yulia Skripal has recently
announced that she intends to return to her home in Russia, leading to the conclusion that even
one of the alleged victims does not believe the narrative being promoted by the British and
American governments.
Though Russian President Vladimir Putin has responded with restraint, avoiding a
tit-for-tat, he is reported to be angry about the new move by the US government and now
believes it to be an unreliable negotiating partner. Considering the friendly recent exchanges
between Putin and Trump, the punishment of Russia has to be viewed as something of a surprise,
suggesting that the president of the United States may not be in control of his own foreign
policy.
From the very beginning, any anti-globalization initiative of Trump was sabotaged and often
reversed. Haley is one example here. She does not coordinate some of her actions with Trump or
the Secretary of State unliterary defining the US foreign policy.
Her ambitions worry Trump, but he can so very little: she is supported by Pence and Pence
faction in the administration. Rumors "Haley/Pence 2020" surfaced and probably somewhat poison
atmosphere in the WH.
Add to this that Trump has hostile to him Justice Department, CIA, and FBI. He also does not
control some critical appointments such as the recent appointment of CIA director (who in no
way can be called Trump loyalist).
Which means that in some ways Trump already is a hostage and more ceremonial President than
a real.
"... By Sanjay Reddy, Associate Professor of Economics, The New School for Social Research. Originally published at the Institute for New Economic Thinking website ..."
Grappling with the shock of Donald Trump's election victory, most analysts focus on his
appeal to those in the United States who feel left behind, wish to retrieve a lost social
order, and sought to rebuke establishment politicians who do not serve their interests. In this
respect, the recent American revolt echoes the shock of the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom,
but it is of far greater significance because it promises to reshape the entire global order,
and the complaisant forms of thought that accompanied it.
Ideas played an important role in creating the conditions that produced Brexit and Trump.
The 'social sciences' -- especially economics -- legitimated a set of ideas about the economy
that were aggressively peddled and became the conventional wisdom in the policies of mainstream
political parties, to the extent that the central theme of the age came to be that there was no
alternative. The victory of these ideas in politics in turn strengthened the iron-handed
enforcers of the same ideas in academic orthodoxy.
It is never clear whether ideas or interests are the prime mover in shaping historical
events, but only ideas and interests together can sustain a ruling consensus for a lengthy
interval, such as the historic period of financialization and globalization running over the
last 35 years. The role of economics in furnishing the now-rebuked narratives that have reigned
for decades in mainstream political parties can be seen in three areas.
First, there is globalization as we knew it. Mainstream economics championed
corporate-friendly trade and investment agreements to increase prosperity, and provided the
intellectual framework for multilateral trade agreements. Economics made the case for such
agreements, generally rejecting concerns over labor and environmental standards and giving
short shrift to the effects of globalization in weakening the bargaining power of workers or
altogether displacing them; to the need for compensatory measures to aid those displaced; and
more generally to measures to ensure that the benefits of growth were shared. For the most
part, economists casually waved aside such concerns, both in their theories and in their policy
recommendations, treating these matters as either insignificant or as being in the jurisdiction
of politicians. Still less attention was paid to crafting an alternate form of globalization,
or to identifying bases for national economic policies taking a less passive view of
comparative advantage and instead aiming to create it.
Second, there is financialization, which led to increasing disconnection between stock
market performance and the real economy, with large rewards going to firms that undertook asset
stripping, outsourcing, and offshoring. The combination of globalization and financialization
produced a new plutocratic class of owners, managers and those who serviced them in global
cities, alongside gentrification of those cities, proleterianization and lumpenization of
suburbs, and growing insecurity and casualization of employment for the bulk of the middle and
working class.
Financialization also led to the near-abandonment of the 'national' industrial economy in
favor of global sourcing and sales, and a handsome financial rentier economy built on top of
it. Meanwhile, automation trends led to shedding of jobs everywhere, and threaten far more.
All of this was hardly noticed by the discipline charged with studying the economy. Indeed,
it actively provided rationales for financialization, in the form of the efficient-markets
hypothesis and related ideas; for concentration of capital through mergers and acquisitions in
the form of contestable-markets theory; for the gentrification of the city through attacks on
rent control and other urban policies; for remaking of labor markets through the idea that
unemployment was primarily a reflection of voluntary leisure preferences, etc. The mainstream
political parties, including those historically representing the working and middle classes, in
thrall to the 'scientific' sheen of market fetishism, gambled that they could redistribute a
share of the promised gains and thus embraced policies the effect of which was ultimately to
abandon and to antagonize a large section of their electorate.
Third, there is the push for austerity, a recurrent trope of the 'neoliberal' era which,
although not favored by all, has played an important role in creating conditions for the rise
of popular movements demanding a more expansionary fiscal stance (though they can paradoxically
simultaneously disdain taxation, as with Trumpism). The often faulty intellectual case made by
many mainstream economists for central bank independence, inflation targeting, debt
sustainability thresholds, the distortive character of taxation and the superiority of private
provision of services including for health, education and welfare, have helped to support
antagonism to governmental activity. Within this perspective, there is limited room for fiscal
or even monetary stimulus, or for any direct governmental role in service provision, even in
the form of productivity-enhancing investments. It is only the failure fully to overcome the
shipwreck of 2008 that has caused some cracks in the edifice.
The dominant economic ideas taken together created a framework in which deviation from
declared orthodoxy would be punished by dynamics unleashed by globalization and
financialization. The system depended not merely on actors having the specific interests
attributed to them, but in believing in the theory that said that they did. [This is one of the
reasons that Trumpism has generated confusion among economic actors, even as his victory
produced an early bout of stock-market euphoria. It does not rebuke neoliberalism so much as
replace it with its own heretical version, bastard neoliberalism, an orientation without a
theory, whose tale has yet to be written.]
Still, to the extent that Trumpism has any economic policy content it's the idea that a
package of immigration restrictions and corporate tax cuts[1] will make workers better off by
reducing competition from migrants and increasing labor demand from corporations. The second
part of this claim has been pretty thoroughly demolished, so I want to look mainly at the
first. However, as we will see, the corporate tax cuts remain central to the argument.
Still, to the extent that Trumpism has any economic policy content it's the idea that a
package of immigration restrictions and corporate tax cuts[1] will make workers better off
by reducing competition from migrants and increasing labor demand from corporations.
The emergence of Trumpism signifies deepening of the ideological crisis for the
neoliberalism. Neoclassical economics fell like a house of cards. IMHO Trumpism can be viewed
as a kind of "national neoliberalism" which presuppose rejection of three dogmas of "classic
neoliberalism":
1. Rejection of neoliberal globalization including, but not limited to, free movement
of labor. Attempt to protect domestic industries via tariff barriers.
2. Rejection of excessive financialization and primacy of financial oligarchy.
Restoration of the status of manufacturing, and "traditional capitalists" status in
comparison with financial oligarchy.
3. Rejection of austerity. An attempt to fight "secular stagnation" via Military
Keysianism.
Trumpism sent "Chicago school" line of thinking to the dustbin of history. It exposed
neoliberal economists as agents of financial oligarchy and "Enemy of the American People"
(famous Trump phase about neoliberal MSM).
It is never clear whether ideas or interests are the prime mover in shaping historical
events, but only ideas and interests together can sustain a ruling consensus for a lengthy
interval, such as the historic period of financialization and globalization running over
the last 35 years. The role of economics in furnishing the now-rebuked narratives that have
reigned for decades in mainstream political parties can be seen in three areas.
First, there is globalization as we knew it. Mainstream economics championed
corporate-friendly trade and investment agreements to increase prosperity, and provided the
intellectual framework for multilateral trade agreements. ...
Second, there is financialization, which led to increasing disconnection between stock
market performance and the real economy, with large rewards going to firms that undertook
asset stripping, outsourcing, and offshoring. The combination of globalization and
financialization produced a new plutocratic class of owners, managers and those who
serviced them in global cities, alongside gentrification of those cities,
proletarianization and lumpenization of suburbs, and growing insecurity and casualization
of employment for the bulk of the middle and working class.
Financialization also led to the near-abandonment of the 'national' industrial economy
in favor of global sourcing and sales, and a handsome financial rentier economy built on
top of it. Meanwhile, automation trends led to shedding of jobs everywhere, and threaten
far more.
All of this was hardly noticed by the discipline charged with studying the economy.
Indeed, it actively provided rationales for financialization, in the form of the
efficient-markets hypothesis and related ideas; for concentration of capital through
mergers and acquisitions in the form of contestable-markets theory; for the gentrification
of the city through attacks on rent control and other urban policies; for remaking of labor
markets through the idea that unemployment was primarily a reflection of voluntary leisure
preferences, etc. The mainstream political parties, including those historically
representing the working and middle classes, in thrall to the 'scientific' sheen of market
fetishism, gambled that they could redistribute a share of the promised gains and thus
embraced policies the effect of which was ultimately to abandon and to antagonize a large
section of their electorate.
Third, there is the push for austerity, a recurrent trope of the 'neoliberal' era which,
although not favored by all, has played an important role in creating conditions for the
rise of popular movements demanding a more expansionary fiscal stance (though they can
paradoxically simultaneously disdain taxation, as with Trumpism). The often faulty
intellectual case made by many mainstream economists for central bank independence,
inflation targeting, debt sustainability thresholds, the distortive character of taxation
and the superiority of private provision of services including for health, education and
welfare, have helped to support antagonism to governmental activity. Within this
perspective, there is limited room for fiscal or even monetary stimulus, or for any direct
governmental role in service provision, even in the form of productivity-enhancing
investments. It is only the failure fully to overcome the shipwreck of 2008 that has caused
some cracks in the edifice.
The dominant economic ideas taken together created a framework in which deviation from
declared orthodoxy would be punished by dynamics unleashed by globalization and
financialization. The system depended not merely on actors having the specific interests
attributed to them, but in believing in the theory that said that they did. [This is one of
the reasons that Trumpism has generated confusion among economic actors, even as his
victory produced an early bout of stock-market euphoria. It does not rebuke neoliberalism
so much as replace it with its own heretical version, bastard neoliberalism, an orientation
without a theory, whose tale has yet to be written.]
Finally, interpretations of politics were too restrictive, conceptualizing citizens'
political choices as based on instrumental and usually economic calculations, while
indulging in a wishful account of their actual conditions -- for instance, focusing on low
measured unemployment, but ignoring measures of distress and insecurity, or the indignity
of living in hollowed-out communities.
Mainstream accounts of politics recognized the role of identities in the form of wooden
theories of group mobilization or of demands for representation. However, the psychological
and charismatic elements, which can give rise to moments of 'phase transition' in politics,
were altogether neglected, and the role of social media and other new methods in politics
hardly registered. As new political movements (such as the Tea Party and Trumpism in the
U.S.) emerged across the world, these were deemed 'populist' -- both an admission of the
analysts' lack of explanation, and a token of disdain. The essential feature of such
movements -- the obscurantism that allows them to offer many things to many people,
inconsistently and unaccountably, while serving some interests more than others -- was
little explored. The failures can be piled one upon the other. No amount of quantitative
data provided by polling, 'big data', or other techniques comprehended what might be
captured through open-eyed experiential narratives. It is evident that there is a need for
forms of understanding that can comprehend the currents within the human person, and go
beyond shallow empiricism. Mainstream social science has offered few if any resources to
understand, let alone challenge, illiberal majoritarianism, now a world-remaking
phenomenon.
Why, then, would a coalition of leftish and right-wing patriots not join in
denouncing a leader who seemed to put Russia's interests ahead of those of his own country?
Sorry to say, things are not so simple. Look a bit more closely at what holds the anti-Trump
foreign policy coalition together, and you will discover a missing reality that virtually no
one will acknowledge directly: the existence of a beleaguered but still potent American Empire
whose junior partner is Europe. What motivates a broad range of the President's opponents,
then, is not so much the fear that he is anti-American as the suspicion that he is
anti-Empire.
Of course, neither liberals nor conservatives dare to utter the "E-word." Rather, they argue
in virtually identical terms that Trump's foreign and trade policies are threatening the
pillars of world order: NATO, the Group of Seven, the World Trade Organization, the
International Monetary Fund, the OSCE, and so forth. These institutions, they claim, along with
American military power and a willingness to use it when necessary, are primarily responsible
for the peaceful, prosperous, free, and democratic world that we have all been privileged to
inhabit since the Axis powers surrendered to the victorious Allies in 1945.
The fear expressed plainly by The New York Times 's David Leonhardt, a
self-described "left-liberal," is that "Trump wants to destroy the Atlantic Alliance." Seven
months earlier, this same fear motivated the arch-conservative National Review to
editorialize that, "Under Trump, America has retreated from its global and moral leadership
roles, alienated its democratic allies, and abandoned the bipartisan defense of liberal ideals
that led to more than 70 years of security and prosperity." All the critics would agree with
Wolfgang Ischinger, chair of the Munich Security Conference, who recently stated, "Let's face
it. Mr. Trump's core beliefs conflict with the foundations of Western grand strategy since the
mid-1940's."
"Western grand strategy," of course, is a euphemism for U.S. global hegemony – world
domination, to put it plainly. In addition to peace and prosperity (mainly for privileged
groups in privileged nations), this is the same strategy which since 1945 has given the world
the Cold War, the specter of a nuclear holocaust, and proxy wars consuming between 10 and 20
million lives in Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya,
and Yemen. Its direct effects include the overthrow of elected governments in Guatemala, Iran,
Lebanon, Congo, Nigeria, Indonesia, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Granada, Ukraine, et al.;
the bribery of public officials and impoverishment and injury of workers and farmers world-wide
as a result of exploitation and predatory "development" by Western governments and
mega-corporations; the destruction of natural environments and exacerbation of global climate
change by these same governments and corporations; and the increasing likelihood of new
imperialist wars caused by the determination of elites to maintain America's global supremacy
at all costs.
It is interesting that most defenders of the Western Alliance (and its Pacific equivalent:
the more loosely organized anti-Chinese alliance of Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand,
and South Korea) virtually never talk about American hegemony or the gigantic military
apparatus (with more than 800 U.S. bases in 60 or so nations and a military-industrial complex
worth trillions) that supports it. Nor is the subject of empire high on Mr. Trump's list of
approved twitter topics, even when he desecrates NATO and other sacred cows of the Alliance.
There are several reasons for this silence, but the most important, perhaps, is the need to
maintain the pretense of American moral superiority: the so-called "exceptionalist" position
that inspires McCain to attack Trump for "false equivalency" (the President's statement in
Helsinki that both Russia and the U.S. have made mistakes), and that leads pundits left and
right to argue that America is not an old-style empire seeking to dominate, but a new-style
democracy seeking to liberate.
The narrative you will hear repeated ad nauseum at both ends of the liberal/conservative
spectrum tells how the Yanks, who won WW II with a little help from the Russians and other
allies, and who then thoroughly dominated the world both economically and militarily,
could have behaved like vengeful conquerors, but instead devoted their resources and
energies to spreading democracy, freedom, and the blessings of capitalism around the world. Gag
me with a Tomahawk cruise missile! What is weird about this narrative is that it "disappears"
not only the millions of victims of America's wars but the very military forces that
nationalists like Trump claim deserve to be worshipfully honored. Eight hundred bases? A
million and a half troops on active duty? Total air and sea domination? I'm shocked . . .
shocked!
In fact, there are two sorts of blindness operative in the current U.S. political
environment. The Democratic Party Establishment, now swollen to include a wide variety of
Russia-haters, globalizing capitalists, and militarists, is blind (or pretends to be) to the
connection between the "Western Alliance" and the American Empire. The Trump Party (which I
expect, one of these days, to shed the outworn Republican label in favor of something more
Berlusconi-like, say, the American Greatness Party) is blind – or pretends to be –
to the contradiction between its professed
"Fortress America" nationalism and the reality of a global U.S. imperium.
This last point is worth emphasizing. In a recent article in The Nation , Michael
Klare, a writer I generally admire, claims to have discovered that there is really a method to
Trump's foreign policy madness, i.e., the President favors the sort of "multi-polar" world,
with Russia and China occupying the two other poles, that Putin and Xi Jinping have long
advocated. Two factors make this article odd as well as interesting. First, the author argues
that multi-polarity is a bad idea, because "smaller, weaker states, and minority peoples
everywhere will be given even shorter shrift than at present when caught in any competitive
jousting for influence among the three main competitors (and their proxies)." Wha? Even shorter
shrift than under unipolarity? I think not, especially considering that adding new poles (why
just three, BTW? What about India and Brazil?) gives smaller states and minority peoples many
more bargaining options in the power game.
More important, however, Trump's multi-polar/nationalist ideals are clearly contradicted by
his determination to make American world domination even more overwhelming by vastly increasing
the size of the U.S. military establishment. Klare notes, correctly, that the President has
denounced the Iraq War, criticized American "overextension" abroad, talked about ending the
Afghan War, and declared that the U.S. should not be "the world's policeman." But if he wants
America to become a mere Great Power in a world of Great Powers, Trump will clearly have to do
more than talk about it. He will have to cut the military budget, abandon military bases,
negotiate arms control agreements, convert military-industrial spending to peaceful uses, and
do all sorts of other things he clearly has no intention of doing. Ever.
No – if the Western Alliance, democratic values, and WTO trade rules provide
ideological cover and junior partners for American global hegemony, "go-it-alone" nationalism,
multi-polarity, and Nobel Peace Prize diplomatic efforts provide ideological cover for . . .
American global hegemony! This can be seen most clearly in the case of Iran, against whom Trump
has virtually declared war. He would like to avoid direct military involvement there, of
course, but he is banking on threats of irresistible "fire and fury" to bring the Iranians to
heel. And if these threats are unavailing? Then – count on it! – the Empire will
act like an empire, and we will have open war.
In fact, Trump and his most vociferous critics and supporters are unknowingly playing the
same game. John Brennan, meet Steve Bannon! You preach very different sermons, but you're
working for the same god. That deity's name changes over the centuries, but we worship him
every time we venerate symbols of military might at sports events, pay taxes to support U.S.
military supremacy, or pledge allegiance to a flag. The name unutterable by both Trump and his
enemies is Empire.
What do we do with the knowledge that both the Tweeter King and the treason-baiting
coalition opposing him are imperialists under the skin? Two positions, I think, have to be
rejected. One is the Lyndon Johnson rationale: since Johnson was progressive on domestic
issues, including civil rights and poverty, that made him preferable to the Republicans, even
though he gave us the quasi-genocidal war in Indochina. The other position is the diametric
opposite: since Trump is less blatantly imperialistic than most Democratic Party leaders, we
ought to favor him, despite his billionaire-loving, immigrant-hating, racist and misogynist
domestic policies. Merely to say this is to refute it.
My own view is that anti-imperialists ought to decline to choose between these alternatives.
We ought to name the imperial god that both Trump and his critics worship and demand
that the party that we work and vote for renounce the pursuit of U.S. global hegemony.
Immediately, this means letting self-proclaimed progressives or libertarians in both major
parties know that avoiding new hot and cold wars, eliminating nuclear weapons and other WMD,
slashing military spending, and converting war production to peaceful uses are top priorities
that must be honored if they are to get our support. No political party can deliver peace and
social justice and maintain the Empire at the same time. If neither Republicans nor Democrats
are capable of facing this reality, we will have to create a new party that can.
Notes.
[1]
The author is University Professor of Conflict Resolution and Public Affairs at George Mason
University. His most recent book is Resolving Structural Conflicts : How Violent
Systems Can Be Transformed (2017).
Why, then, would a coalition of leftish and right-wing patriots not join in
denouncing a leader who seemed to put Russia's interests ahead of those of his own country?
Sorry to say, things are not so simple. Look a bit more closely at what holds the anti-Trump
foreign policy coalition together, and you will discover a missing reality that virtually no
one will acknowledge directly: the existence of a beleaguered but still potent American Empire
whose junior partner is Europe. What motivates a broad range of the President's opponents,
then, is not so much the fear that he is anti-American as the suspicion that he is
anti-Empire.
Of course, neither liberals nor conservatives dare to utter the "E-word." Rather, they argue
in virtually identical terms that Trump's foreign and trade policies are threatening the
pillars of world order: NATO, the Group of Seven, the World Trade Organization, the
International Monetary Fund, the OSCE, and so forth. These institutions, they claim, along with
American military power and a willingness to use it when necessary, are primarily responsible
for the peaceful, prosperous, free, and democratic world that we have all been privileged to
inhabit since the Axis powers surrendered to the victorious Allies in 1945.
The fear expressed plainly by The New York Times 's David Leonhardt, a
self-described "left-liberal," is that "Trump wants to destroy the Atlantic Alliance." Seven
months earlier, this same fear motivated the arch-conservative National Review to
editorialize that, "Under Trump, America has retreated from its global and moral leadership
roles, alienated its democratic allies, and abandoned the bipartisan defense of liberal ideals
that led to more than 70 years of security and prosperity." All the critics would agree with
Wolfgang Ischinger, chair of the Munich Security Conference, who recently stated, "Let's face
it. Mr. Trump's core beliefs conflict with the foundations of Western grand strategy since the
mid-1940's."
"Western grand strategy," of course, is a euphemism for U.S. global hegemony – world
domination, to put it plainly. In addition to peace and prosperity (mainly for privileged
groups in privileged nations), this is the same strategy which since 1945 has given the world
the Cold War, the specter of a nuclear holocaust, and proxy wars consuming between 10 and 20
million lives in Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya,
and Yemen. Its direct effects include the overthrow of elected governments in Guatemala, Iran,
Lebanon, Congo, Nigeria, Indonesia, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Granada, Ukraine, et al.;
the bribery of public officials and impoverishment and injury of workers and farmers world-wide
as a result of exploitation and predatory "development" by Western governments and
mega-corporations; the destruction of natural environments and exacerbation of global climate
change by these same governments and corporations; and the increasing likelihood of new
imperialist wars caused by the determination of elites to maintain America's global supremacy
at all costs.
It is interesting that most defenders of the Western Alliance (and its Pacific equivalent:
the more loosely organized anti-Chinese alliance of Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand,
and South Korea) virtually never talk about American hegemony or the gigantic military
apparatus (with more than 800 U.S. bases in 60 or so nations and a military-industrial complex
worth trillions) that supports it. Nor is the subject of empire high on Mr. Trump's list of
approved twitter topics, even when he desecrates NATO and other sacred cows of the Alliance.
There are several reasons for this silence, but the most important, perhaps, is the need to
maintain the pretense of American moral superiority: the so-called "exceptionalist" position
that inspires McCain to attack Trump for "false equivalency" (the President's statement in
Helsinki that both Russia and the U.S. have made mistakes), and that leads pundits left and
right to argue that America is not an old-style empire seeking to dominate, but a new-style
democracy seeking to liberate.
The narrative you will hear repeated ad nauseum at both ends of the liberal/conservative
spectrum tells how the Yanks, who won WW II with a little help from the Russians and other
allies, and who then thoroughly dominated the world both economically and militarily,
could have behaved like vengeful conquerors, but instead devoted their resources and
energies to spreading democracy, freedom, and the blessings of capitalism around the world. Gag
me with a Tomahawk cruise missile! What is weird about this narrative is that it "disappears"
not only the millions of victims of America's wars but the very military forces that
nationalists like Trump claim deserve to be worshipfully honored. Eight hundred bases? A
million and a half troops on active duty? Total air and sea domination? I'm shocked . . .
shocked!
In fact, there are two sorts of blindness operative in the current U.S. political
environment. The Democratic Party Establishment, now swollen to include a wide variety of
Russia-haters, globalizing capitalists, and militarists, is blind (or pretends to be) to the
connection between the "Western Alliance" and the American Empire. The Trump Party (which I
expect, one of these days, to shed the outworn Republican label in favor of something more
Berlusconi-like, say, the American Greatness Party) is blind – or pretends to be –
to the contradiction between its professed
"Fortress America" nationalism and the reality of a global U.S. imperium.
This last point is worth emphasizing. In a recent article in The Nation , Michael
Klare, a writer I generally admire, claims to have discovered that there is really a method to
Trump's foreign policy madness, i.e., the President favors the sort of "multi-polar" world,
with Russia and China occupying the two other poles, that Putin and Xi Jinping have long
advocated. Two factors make this article odd as well as interesting. First, the author argues
that multi-polarity is a bad idea, because "smaller, weaker states, and minority peoples
everywhere will be given even shorter shrift than at present when caught in any competitive
jousting for influence among the three main competitors (and their proxies)." Wha? Even shorter
shrift than under unipolarity? I think not, especially considering that adding new poles (why
just three, BTW? What about India and Brazil?) gives smaller states and minority peoples many
more bargaining options in the power game.
More important, however, Trump's multi-polar/nationalist ideals are clearly contradicted by
his determination to make American world domination even more overwhelming by vastly increasing
the size of the U.S. military establishment. Klare notes, correctly, that the President has
denounced the Iraq War, criticized American "overextension" abroad, talked about ending the
Afghan War, and declared that the U.S. should not be "the world's policeman." But if he wants
America to become a mere Great Power in a world of Great Powers, Trump will clearly have to do
more than talk about it. He will have to cut the military budget, abandon military bases,
negotiate arms control agreements, convert military-industrial spending to peaceful uses, and
do all sorts of other things he clearly has no intention of doing. Ever.
No – if the Western Alliance, democratic values, and WTO trade rules provide
ideological cover and junior partners for American global hegemony, "go-it-alone" nationalism,
multi-polarity, and Nobel Peace Prize diplomatic efforts provide ideological cover for . . .
American global hegemony! This can be seen most clearly in the case of Iran, against whom Trump
has virtually declared war. He would like to avoid direct military involvement there, of
course, but he is banking on threats of irresistible "fire and fury" to bring the Iranians to
heel. And if these threats are unavailing? Then – count on it! – the Empire will
act like an empire, and we will have open war.
In fact, Trump and his most vociferous critics and supporters are unknowingly playing the
same game. John Brennan, meet Steve Bannon! You preach very different sermons, but you're
working for the same god. That deity's name changes over the centuries, but we worship him
every time we venerate symbols of military might at sports events, pay taxes to support U.S.
military supremacy, or pledge allegiance to a flag. The name unutterable by both Trump and his
enemies is Empire.
What do we do with the knowledge that both the Tweeter King and the treason-baiting
coalition opposing him are imperialists under the skin? Two positions, I think, have to be
rejected. One is the Lyndon Johnson rationale: since Johnson was progressive on domestic
issues, including civil rights and poverty, that made him preferable to the Republicans, even
though he gave us the quasi-genocidal war in Indochina. The other position is the diametric
opposite: since Trump is less blatantly imperialistic than most Democratic Party leaders, we
ought to favor him, despite his billionaire-loving, immigrant-hating, racist and misogynist
domestic policies. Merely to say this is to refute it.
My own view is that anti-imperialists ought to decline to choose between these alternatives.
We ought to name the imperial god that both Trump and his critics worship and demand
that the party that we work and vote for renounce the pursuit of U.S. global hegemony.
Immediately, this means letting self-proclaimed progressives or libertarians in both major
parties know that avoiding new hot and cold wars, eliminating nuclear weapons and other WMD,
slashing military spending, and converting war production to peaceful uses are top priorities
that must be honored if they are to get our support. No political party can deliver peace and
social justice and maintain the Empire at the same time. If neither Republicans nor Democrats
are capable of facing this reality, we will have to create a new party that can.
Notes.
[1]
The author is University Professor of Conflict Resolution and Public Affairs at George Mason
University. His most recent book is Resolving Structural Conflicts : How Violent
Systems Can Be Transformed (2017).
"... As widely loathed as the Democratic establishment is, it has been remarkably adept at engineering a reactionary response in favor of establishment forces. Its demonization of Russia! has been approximately as effective at fomenting reactionary nationalism as Mr. Trump's racialized version. Lest this be overlooked, the strategy common to both is the use of oppositional logic through demonization of carefully selected 'others.' ..."
"... What preceded Donald Trump was the Great Recession, the most severe capitalist crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The Great Recession followed approximately three decades of neoliberal de-industrialization, of policies intended to reduce the power of organized labor, reduce working class wages and raise economic insecurity under the antique capitalist theory that destitution motivates workers to produce more for less in return. ..."
"... The illusion / delusion that these problems -- lost livelihoods, homes, social roles, relationships, sense of purpose and basic human dignity -- were solved, or even addressed, by national Democrats, illustrates the class divide at work. The economy that was revived made the rich fabulously rich, the professional / managerial class comfortable and left the other 90% in various stages of economic decline. ..."
"... Asserting this isn't to embrace economic nationalism, support policies until they are clearly stated or trust Mr. Trump's motives. But the move ties analytically to his critique of neoliberal economic policies. As such, it is a potential monkey wrench thrown into the neoliberal world order. ..."
"... Democrats could have confronted the failures of neoliberalism without resorting to economic nationalism (as Mr. Trump did). And they could have confronted unhinged militarism without Mr. Trump's racialized nationalism. But this would have meant confronting their own history. And it would have meant publicly declaring themselves against the interests of their donor base. ..."
"... Mr. Trump's use of racialized nationalism is the primary basis of analyses arguing that he is fascist. Left unaddressed is the fact the the corporate-state form that is the basis of neoliberalism was also the basis of European fascism. Recent Left analysis proceeds from the premise that Trump control of the corporate-state form is fascism, while capitalist class control -- neoliberalism, is something else. ..."
"... Lest this not have occurred, FDR's New Deal was state capitalism approach within the framework of the corporatism (merge of corporations and a state) social formation. The only widely known effort to stage a fascist coup in the U.S. was carried out by Wall Street titans in the 1930s to wrest control from FDR before the New Deal was fully implemented. Put differently, the people who caused the Great Depression wanted to control its aftermath. And they were fascists. ..."
"... As political scientist Thomas Ferguson has been arguing for decades and Gilens and Page have recently chimed in, neither elections nor the public interest hold sway in the corridors of American power. The levers of control are structural -- congressional committee appointments go to the people with lots of money. Capitalist distribution controls the politics. ..."
"... The best-case scenario looking forward is that Donald Trump is successful with rapprochement toward North Korea and Russia and that he throws a monkey wrench into the architecture of neoliberalism so that a new path forward can be built when he's gone. If he pulls it off, this isn't reactionary nationalism and it isn't nothing. ..."
"... Rob Urie is an artist and political economist. His book ..."
The election of Donald Trump fractured the American Left. The abandonment of class analysis
in response to Mr. Trump's racialized nationalism left identity politics to fill the void. This
has facilitated the rise of neoliberal nationalism, an embrace of the national security state
combined with neoliberal economic analysis put forward as a liberal / Left response to Mr.
Trump's program. The result has been profoundly reactionary.
What had been unfocused consensus around issues of economic justice and ending militarism
has been sharpened into a political program. A nascent, self-styled socialist movement is
pushing domestic issues like single payer health care, strengthening the social safety net and
reversing wildly unbalanced income and wealth distribution, forward. Left unaddressed is how
this program will move forward without a revolutionary movement to act against countervailing
forces.
As widely loathed as the Democratic establishment is, it has been remarkably adept at
engineering a reactionary response in favor of establishment forces. Its demonization of
Russia! has been approximately as effective at fomenting reactionary nationalism as Mr. Trump's
racialized version. Lest this be overlooked, the strategy common to both is the use of
oppositional logic through demonization of carefully selected 'others.'
This points to the most potent fracture on the Left, the question of which is the more
effective reactionary force, the Democrats' neoliberal nationalism or Mr. Trump's racialized
version? As self-evident as the answer apparently is to the liberal / Left, it is only so
through abandonment of class analysis. Race, gender and immigration status are either subsets
of class or the concept loses meaning.
By way of the reform Democrat's analysis , it was the shift of
working class voters from Barack Obama in 2012 to Donald Trump in 2016 that swung the election
in Mr. Trump's favor. To the extent that race was a factor, the finger points up the class
structure, not down. This difference is crucial when it comes to the much-abused 'white
working-class' explanation of Mr. Trump's victory.
What preceded Donald Trump was the Great Recession, the most severe capitalist crisis
since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The Great Recession followed approximately three
decades of neoliberal de-industrialization, of policies intended to reduce the power of
organized labor, reduce working class wages and raise economic insecurity under the antique
capitalist theory that destitution motivates workers to produce more for less in
return.
The illusion / delusion that these problems -- lost livelihoods, homes, social roles,
relationships, sense of purpose and basic human dignity -- were solved, or even addressed, by
national Democrats, illustrates the class divide at work. The economy that was revived made the
rich fabulously rich, the professional / managerial class comfortable and left the other 90% in
various stages of economic decline.
Left apparently unrecognized in bourgeois attacks on working class voters is that the
analytical frames at work -- classist identity politics and liberal economics, are ruling class
ideology in the crudest Marxian / Gramscian senses. The illusion / delusion that they are
factually descriptive is a function of ideology, not lived outcomes.
Here's the rub: Mr. Trump's critique of neoliberalism can ] accommodate class analysis
whereas the Democrats' neoliberal nationalism explicitly excludes any notion of economic power,
and with it the possibility of class analysis. To date, Mr. Trump hasn't left this critique
behind -- neoliberal trade agreements are currently being renegotiated.
Asserting this isn't to embrace economic nationalism, support policies until they are
clearly stated or trust Mr. Trump's motives. But the move ties analytically to his critique of
neoliberal economic policies. As such, it is a potential monkey wrench thrown into the
neoliberal world order. Watching the bourgeois Left put forward neoliberal trade theory to
counter it would seem inexplicable without the benefit of class analysis.
Within the frame of identity politics rich and bourgeois blacks, women and immigrants have
the same travails as their poor and working-class compatriots. Ben Carson (black), Melania
Trump (female) and Melania Trump (immigrant) fit this taxonomy. For them racism, misogyny and
xenophobia are forms of social violence. But they aren't fundamental determinants of how they
live. The same can't be said for those brutalized by four decades of neoliberalism
The common bond here is a class war launched from above that has uprooted, displaced and
immiserated a large and growing proportion of the peoples of the West. This experience cuts
across race, gender and nationality making them a subset of class. If these problems are
rectified at the level of class, they will be rectified within the categories of race, gender
and nationality. Otherwise, they won't be rectified.
Democrats could have confronted the failures of neoliberalism without resorting to
economic nationalism (as Mr. Trump did). And they could have confronted unhinged militarism
without Mr. Trump's racialized nationalism. But this would have meant confronting their own
history. And it would have meant publicly declaring themselves against the interests of their
donor base.
Mr. Trump's use of racialized nationalism is the primary basis of analyses arguing that
he is fascist. Left unaddressed is the fact the the corporate-state form that is the basis of
neoliberalism was also the basis of European fascism. Recent Left analysis proceeds from the
premise that Trump control of the corporate-state form is fascism, while capitalist class
control -- neoliberalism, is something else.
Lest this not have occurred, FDR's New Deal was state capitalism approach within the
framework of the corporatism (merge of corporations and a state) social formation. The only
widely known effort to stage a fascist coup in the U.S. was carried out by Wall Street titans
in the 1930s to wrest control from FDR before the New Deal was fully implemented. Put
differently, the people who caused the Great Depression wanted to control its aftermath. And
they were fascists.
More recently, the effort to secure capitalist control has been led by [neo]liberal
Democrats using Investor-State Dispute Resolution (ISDS) clauses in trade agreements. So that
identity warriors might understand the implications, this control limits the ability of
governments to rectify race and gender bias because supranational adjudication can overrule
them.
So, is race and / or gender repression any less repressive because capitalists control the
levers? Colonial slave-masters certainly thought so. The people who own sweatshops probably
think so. Most slumlords probably think so. Employers who steal wages probably think so. The
people who own for-profit prisons probably think so. But these aren't 'real' repression, are
they? Where's the animosity?
As political scientist Thomas Ferguson
has been arguing for decades and
Gilens and Page have recently chimed in, neither elections nor the public interest hold
sway in the corridors of American power. The levers of control are structural -- congressional
committee appointments go to the people with lots of money. Capitalist distribution controls
the politics.
The liberal explanation for this is 'political culture.' The liberal solution is to change
the political culture without changing the economic relations that drive the culture. This is
also the frame of identity politics. The presence of a desperate and destitute underclass
lowers working class wages (raising profits), but ending racism is a matter of changing
minds?
This history holds an important lesson for today's nascent socialists. The domestic programs
recently put forward, as reasonable and potentially useful as they are, resemble FDR's effort
to save capitalism, not end it. The time to implement these programs was when Wall Street was
flat on its back, when it could have been more. This is the tragedy of betrayal by Barack Obama
his voters.
Despite the capitalist rhetoric at the time, the New Deal wasn't 'socialism' because it
never changed control over the means of production, over American political economy. Internal
class differences were reduced through redistribution, but brutal and ruthless imperialism
proceeded apace overseas.
The best-case scenario looking forward is that Donald Trump is successful with
rapprochement toward North Korea and Russia and that he throws a monkey wrench into the
architecture of neoliberalism so that a new path forward can be built when he's gone. If he
pulls it off, this isn't reactionary nationalism and it isn't nothing.
Otherwise, the rich have assigned the opining classes the task of defending their realm.
Step 1: divide the bourgeois into competing factions. Step 2: posit great differences between
them that are tightly circumscribed to prevent history from inconveniently intruding. Step 3:
turn these great differences into moral absolutes so that they can't be reconciled within the
terms given. Step 4: pose a rigged electoral process as the only pathway to political
resolution. Step 5: collect profits and repeat. Join the debate on
Facebook More articles by: Rob Urie
Rob Urie is an artist and political economist. His bookZen Economicsis
published by CounterPunch Books.
We are in the point when capitalist system (which presented itself as asocial system that created a large middle class)
converted into it opposite: it is social system that could not deliver that it promised and now want to distract people from this
sad fact.
The Trump adopted tax code is a huge excess: we have 40 year when corporation paid less taxes. This is last moment when they
need another gift. To give them tax is crazy excess that reminding
Louis XV of France. Those gains are going in buying of socks. And real growth is happening elsewhere in the world.
After WW2 there were a couple of decades of "golden age" of US capitalism when in the USA middle class increased considerably.
That was result of pressure of working class devastated by Great Depression. Roosevelt decided that risk is too great and he
introduced social security net. But capitalist class was so enraged that they started fighting it almost immediately after the
New Deal was introduced. Business class was enrages with the level of taxes and counterattacked. Tarp act and McCarthyism were
two successful counterattacks. McCarthyism converting communists and socialists into agents of foreign power.
The quality of jobs are going down. That's why Trump was elected... Which is sad. Giving your finger to the
neoliberal elite does not solve their problem
Notable quotes:
"... Finally, if everybody tries to save themselves (protection), we have a historical example: after the Great Depression that happened in Europe. And most people believe that it was a large part of what led to WWII after WWI, rather than a much saner collective effort. But capitalism doesn't go for collective efforts, it tends to destroy itself by its own mechanisms. There has to be a movement from below. Otherwise, there is no counter force that can take us in another direction. ..."
"... When Trump announced his big tariffs on China, we saw the stock market dropped 700 points in a day. That's a sign of the anxiety, the danger, even in the minds of capitalists, about where this is going. ..."
"... Everything is done to avoid asking the question to what degree the system we have in place - capitalism is its name - is the problem. It's the Russians, it's the immigrants, it's the tariffs, it's anything else, even the pornstar, to distract us from the debate we need to have had that we haven't had for a half a century, which puts us in a very bad place. We've given a free pass to a capitalist system because we've been afraid to debate it. And when you give a free pass to any institution you create the conditions for it to rot, right behind the facade. ..."
"... The Trump presidency is the last gasp, it's letting it all hang out. A [neoliberal] system that's gonna do whatever it can, take advantage of this moment, grab it all before it disappears. ..."
In another interesting interview with Chris Hedges, Richard Wolff explains why the Trump presidency is the last resort of a system
that is about to collapse:
Finally, if everybody tries to save themselves (protection), we have a historical example: after the Great Depression that happened
in Europe. And most people believe that it was a large part of what led to WWII after WWI, rather than a much saner collective effort.
But capitalism doesn't go for collective efforts, it tends to destroy itself by its own mechanisms. There has to be a movement from
below. Otherwise, there is no counter force that can take us in another direction.
So, absent that counter force we are going to see this system spinning out of control and destroying itself in the very way its
critics have for so long foreseen it well might.
When Trump announced his big tariffs on China, we saw the stock market dropped 700 points in a day. That's a sign of the anxiety,
the danger, even in the minds of capitalists, about where this is going. If we hadn't been a country with two or three decades of
a middle class - working class paid really well - maybe we could have gotten away with this. But in a society that has celebrated
its capacity to do what it now fails to do, you have an explosive situation.
Everything is done to avoid asking the question to what degree the system we have in place - capitalism is its name - is the problem.
It's the Russians, it's the immigrants, it's the tariffs, it's anything else, even the pornstar, to distract us from the debate we
need to have had that we haven't had for a half a century, which puts us in a very bad place. We've given a free pass to a capitalist
system because we've been afraid to debate it. And when you give a free pass to any institution you create the conditions for it
to rot, right behind the facade.
The Trump presidency is the last gasp, it's letting it all hang out. A [neoliberal] system that's gonna do whatever it can, take advantage
of this moment, grab it all before it disappears.
In France, it was said
'Après moi, le déluge' (after me the
catastrophe). The storm will break.
"... A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order ..."
"... The American ruling class turned to neoliberalism after the failure of Keynesianism -- with its emphasis on state intervention and state-led development -- to overcome the economic crisis of the 1970s and restore profitability and growth in the system. Neoliberalism was not a conspiracy hatched by the Chicago School of Economics, but a strategy that developed in response to globalization and the end of the long postwar boom. ..."
"... For a period, the United States did indeed superintend a new global structure of world imperialism. It integrated most of the world's states into the neoliberal order it dubbed the Washington Consensus, using its international financial and trade institutions like the IMF, World Bank, and the World Trade Organization to compel all nations to adopt neoliberal policies that benefited a handful of powerful players. It used international loans and debt restructuring not only to remove trade and investment restrictions, but also to impose privatization and cuts in health, education, and other vital social services in states all over the world. The Pentagon deployed its military might to police and crush any so-called rogue states like Iraq. ..."
"... The Making of Global Capitalism ..."
"... Washington's attempt to lock in its dominance through its 2003 war and occupation of Iraq backfired. Even before launching the invasion, Bush recognized that the United States needed to do something to contain China and other rising rivals. In a sign of this growing awareness, he and his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, rebranded China, which Clinton had called a strategic partner, as a strategic competitor. ..."
"... Bush used 9/11 as an opportunity to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, as part of a plan for serial "regime change" in the region. If it succeeded, the United States hoped it would be able to control rivals, particularly China, which is dependent on the region's strategic energy reserves. Instead, Washington suffered, in the words of General William Odom, the former head of the National Security Agency, its "greatest strategic disaster in American history." ..."
"... Iran, one of the projected targets for regime change in Bush's so-called "Axis of Evil," emerged as a beneficiary of the war. It secured a new ally in the form of the sectarian Shia fundamentalist regime in Iraq. And while the United States was bogged down in Iraq, China became increasingly assertive throughout the world, establishing new political and economic pacts throughout Latin America, the Middle East, and a number of African countries. ..."
"... Finally, the Great Recession of 2008 hammered the United States and its allies in the EU particularly hard. By contrast, Beijing's massive state intervention in the economy sustained its long boom and lifted the growth rates of countries in Latin America, Australia, Asia, and sections of Africa that exported raw materials to China. ..."
"... Trump's strategy to restore American dominance in the world is economic nationalism. This is the rational kernel within his erratic shell of bizarre tweets and rants. He wants to combine neoliberalism at home with protectionism against foreign competition. It is a position that breaks with the American establishment's grand strategy of superintending free-trade globalization. ..."
"... Demagogic appeals to labor aside, Trump is doing none of this for the benefit of American workers. His program is intended to restore the competitive position of American capital, particularly manufacturing, against its rivals, especially in China but also in Germany. ..."
"... This economic nationalism is paired with a promise to rearm the American military, which he views as having been weakened by Obama. Thus, Trump has announced plans to increase military spending by $54 billion. He wants to use this 9 percent increase in the military budget to build up the Navy and to modernize and expand the nuclear arsenal, even if that provokes other powers to do the same. As he quipped in December, "Let it be an arms race." 21 Trump's fire-breathing chief strategist, former Brietbart editor Steve Bannon, went so far as to promise, "We're going to war in the South China Sea in five to ten years. There's no doubt about that." 22 ..."
"... Trump threatens a significant break with some previously hallowed institutions of US foreign policy. He has called NATO outdated. This declaration is really just a bargaining position to get the alliance's other members to increase their military spending. Thus, both his secretary of state and defense secretary have repeatedly reassured European states that the United States remains committed to NATO. More seriously, he denounced the EU as merely a vehicle for German capital. Thus, he supports various right-wing populist parties in Europe running on a promise to imitate Britain and leave the EU. ..."
"... Trump's "transactional" approach comes out most clearly in his stated approach to international alliances and blocs. He promises to evaluate all multilateral alliances and trade blocs from the standpoint of American interests against rivals. He will scrap some, replacing them with bilateral arrangements, and renegotiate others. Much of the establishment has reacted in horror to these threats, denouncing them as a retreat from Washington's responsibilities to its allies. ..."
"... Hoping that he can split Russia away from China and neutralize it as a lesser power, Trump then wants to confront China with tariffs and military challenges to its assertion of control of the South China Sea. Incoming Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has already threatened to deny China access to its newly-built island bases in the South China Sea. ..."
"... On top of all this, multinational capital opposes his protectionism. Of course almost all capital is more overjoyed at his domestic neoliberalism, a fact demonstrated in the enormous stock market expansion, but they see his proposals of tariffs, renegotiation of NAFTA, and scrapping of the TPP and the TTIP as threats to their global production, service, and investment strategies. They consider his house economist, Peter Navarro, to be a crackpot. ..."
"... Beneath the governmental shell, whole sections of the unelected state bureaucracy -- what has been ominously described as the "deep state" -- also oppose Trump as a threat to their interests. He has openly attacked the CIA and FBI and threatens enormous cuts to the State Department as well as other key bureaucracies responsible for managing state policy at home and abroad. Many of these bureaucrats have engaged in a campaign of leaks, especially of Trump's connections with the Russian state. ..."
"... One of Trump's key allies, Newt Gingrich, gives a sense of how Trump's backers are framing the dispute with these institutions. "We're up against a permanent bureaucratic structure defending itself and quite willing to break the law to do so," he told the New York Times ..."
"... The Democratic Party selectively opposes some of Trump's program. But, instead of attacking him on his manifold reactionary policies, they have portrayed him as Putin's "Manchurian Candidate," posturing as the defenders of US power willing to stand up to Russia. ..."
"... Even if Trump weathers the storm of this resistance from above and below, his foreign policy could flounder on its own internal conflicts and inconsistencies. To take one example: his policy of collaboration with Russia in Syria could flounder on his simultaneous commitment to scrap the nuclear deal with Iran. Why? Because Iran is a Russian ally in the region. Most disturbingly, if the Trump administration goes into a deeper crisis, it will double down on its bigoted scapegoating of immigrants and Muslims to deflect attention from its failures. ..."
"... China is accelerating the transformation of its economy. It seeks to push out multinationals that have used it as an export-processing platform and replace them with its own state-owned and private corporations, which, like Germany, will export its surplus manufactured goods to the rest of the world market. 31 No wonder, then, that a survey conducted by the American Chamber of Commerce found that 80 percent of American multinationals consider China inhospitable for business. ..."
"... China is also aggressively trying to supplant the United States as the economic hegemon in Asia. Immediately after Trump nixed the TPP, China appealed to states in the Asia Pacific region to sign on to its alternative trade treaty, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). China is determined to challenge American imperial rule of the Asia Pacific. Though its navy is far smaller than Washington's, it plans to accelerate efforts to build up its regional naval power against Trump's threats to block Chinese access to the strategic islands in the South China Sea. ..."
"... Financial Times ..."
"... Imperial Brain Trust: The Council on Foreign Relations and United States Foreign Policy ..."
"... Wall Street's Think Tank: The Council on Foreign Relations and the Empire of Neoliberal Geopolitics ..."
"... Foreign Affairs ..."
"... A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order ..."
"... International Socialism Journal ..."
"... Global Slump: The Economics and Politics of Crisis and Resistance ..."
"... International Socialist Review ..."
"... Imperialism and World Economy, ..."
"... International Socialist Review ..."
"... A Theory of Global Capitalism: Production, Class, and the State in a Transitional World ..."
The neoliberal world order of free-trade globalization that the United States has pioneered
since the end of the Cold War is in crisis. The global slump, triggered by the 2007 Great
Recession, has intensified competition not only between corporations, but also between the
states that represent them and whose disagreements over the terms of trade have paralyzed the
World Trade Organization. Similar conflicts between states have disrupted regional free-trade
deals and regional blocs. Obama's Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement failed to come to a
vote in Congress, and now Trump has scrapped it. The vote for Brexit in the United Kingdom is a
precedent that could lead other states to bolt from the European Union. Rising international
tensions, especially between the United States, China, and Russia, fill the daily
headlines.
Indeed, the world has entered a new period of imperialism. As discussed in previous articles
in this journal, the unipolar world order based on the dominance of the United States, which
has been eroding for some time, has been replaced by an asymmetric multipolar
world order. The United States remains the only superpower, and possesses by far the largest
military reach, but it faces a global rival in China and a host of lesser rivals like Russia.
And the competition between nation-states over the balance of geopolitical and economic power
is intensifying.
The multiple crises and conflicts have also confronted all the world's states with the
largest migration crisis in history. Over fifty million migrants and refugees are fleeing
economies devastated by neoliberalism, the economic crisis, political instability, and in the
case of the Middle East -- especially Syria -- counterrevolution against the Arab Spring
uprisings. The bourgeois establishment and their right-wing challengers have scapegoated these
migrants in country after country.
All of this has destabilized bourgeois politics throughout the world, opening the door to
both the Left and the Right posing as alternatives to the establishment. In the United States,
Donald Trump won the presidency with the promise to "Make America Great Again" by putting
"America First." He threatens to retreat from the post-Cold War grand strategy of the United
States overseeing the international free-trade regime, in favor of economic nationalism and
what has been described as a "transactional" approach to international politics.
While Trump aims to continue certain neoliberal policies at home (such as deregulation,
privatization, and tax cuts for the wealthy), his international policies represent a
significant shift away from global "free trade." He has promised to rip up or renegotiate
free-trade deals and impose protectionist tariffs on economic competitors. To enforce this, he
wants to rearm the American military to push back against all rivals -- China in particular --
and conduct what he depicts in racist fashion a civilizational war against Islam in the Middle
East. He marries this militaristic nationalism to a bigoted campaign of scapegoating against
immigrants, Muslims, Blacks, women, and all other oppressed groups.
Panic in the imperial brain trust
The architects and ideologues of American imperialism recognize that their grand strategy is
in crisis, and worry that Trump's new stand will only magnify it. The Financial Times
' Martin Wolf declares,
We are, in short, at the end of both an economic period -- that of western-led
globalization -- and a geopolitical one -- the post-cold war "unipolar moment" of a US-led
global order. The question is whether what follows will be an unraveling of the post-second
world war era into de-globalization and conflict, as happened in the first half of the 20th
century, or a new period in which non-western powers, especially China and India, play a
bigger role in sustaining a co-operative global order. 1
Obama's favorite neocon Robert Kagan warns that Washington's retreat from managing the world
system risks "backing into World War III," the title of the piece in which he writes:
Think of two significant trend lines in the world today. One is the increasing ambition
and activism of the two great revisionist powers, Russia and China. The other is the
declining confidence, capacity, and will of the democratic world, and especially of the
United States, to maintain the dominant position it has held in the international system
since 1945. As those two lines move closer, as the declining will and capacity of the United
States and its allies to maintain the present world order meet the increasing desire and
capacity of the revisionist powers to change it, we will reach the moment at which the
existing order collapses and the world descends into a phase of brutal anarchy, as it has
three times in the past two centuries. The cost of that descent, in lives and treasure, in
lost freedoms and lost hope, will be staggering. 2
In somewhat more measured tones, the imperial brain trust of American imperialism, the
Council on Foreign Relations, is using their journal, Foreign Affairs , to oppose
Trump and defend the existing neoliberal order with minor modifications. 3 Stewart
Patrick, for example, worries that Trump has laid-out
no broader vision of the Unites States' traditional role as defender of the free world,
much less outline how the country play that part. In foreign policy and economics, he has
made clear that the pursuit of narrow national advantage will guide his policies --
apparently regardless of the impact on the liberal world order that the United States has
championed since 1945. That order was fraying well before November 8. It had been battered
from without by challenges from China and Russia and weakened from within by economic malaise
in Japan and crises in Europe, including the epochal Brexit vote last year. No one knows what
Trump will do as president. But as a candidate, he vowed to shake up world politics by
reassessing long-standing U.S. alliances, ripping up existing U.S. trade deals, raising trade
barriers against China, disavowing the Paris climate agreement, and repudiating the nuclear
accord with Iran. Should he follow through on these provocative plans, Trump will unleash
forces beyond his control, sharpening the crisis of the Western-centered order.
The Council's Gideon Rose fears that Trump is introducing "damaging uncertainty into
everything from international commerce to nuclear deterrence. At worst, it could cause other
countries to lose faith in the order's persistence and start to hedge their bets, distancing
themselves from the Unites States, making side deals with China and Russia, and adopting
beggar-thy-neighbor programs." 4
But the Council and the rest of the foreign policy establishment have little to offer as a
solution to the crisis they describe. For example, the Council on Foreign Relations' president,
Richard Haass's, new book, A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of
the Old Order , produces little more than tactical maneuvers designed to incorporate
America's rivals into the existing neoliberal order. 5 But it is within that very
order that the United States has undergone relative decline against its increasingly assertive
rivals, especially China.
Neoliberalism's solution to the crisis last time
The American ruling class turned to neoliberalism after the failure of Keynesianism -- with
its emphasis on state intervention and state-led development -- to overcome the economic crisis
of the 1970s and restore profitability and growth in the system. Neoliberalism was not a
conspiracy hatched by the Chicago School of Economics, but a strategy that developed in
response to globalization and the end of the long postwar boom.
The US ruling class adopted what later came to be known as neoliberalism in coherent form
under the regimes of Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in Britain.
6 Neoliberalism had domestic and international dimensions. At home, the mantra was
privatization and deregulation. The ruling class got rid of regulations on capital and launched
a war against workers. They privatized state-run businesses as well as traditionally state-run
institutions like prisons and schools. They busted unions, drove down wages, and cut the
welfare state to ribbons.
Abroad, the United States expanded the program of "free trade" they had pursued since the
end of World War II. Seeking cheap labor, resources, and markets, Washington used its dominance
of international institutions to pry open national economies throughout the world. It aimed
first to incorporate its allies, then its antagonists in this neoliberal world order, with the
promise that it would work in the interests of "the capitalist class" around the world. As
Henry Kissinger once remarked, "What is called globalization is really another name for the
dominant role of the United States." 7 These domestic and international policies
overcame the crises of the 1970s and ushered in a period of economic expansion (interrupted by
a few recessions) that lasted from the early 1980s through to the early 2000s. 8
The brief unipolar moment
Unable to keep pace with the West's economic expansion and the Reagan administration's
massive rearmament program, and beset by its own internal contradictions, the Soviet Union
collapsed in 1991, and the Cold War's bipolar geopolitical order came to an end. The United
States hoped to establish a new unipolar world order in which it would solidify its position as
the world's sole remaining, and unassailable, superpower.
For a period, the United States did indeed superintend a new global structure of world
imperialism. It integrated most of the world's states into the neoliberal order it dubbed the
Washington Consensus, using its international financial and trade institutions like the IMF,
World Bank, and the World Trade Organization to compel all nations to adopt neoliberal policies
that benefited a handful of powerful players. It used international loans and debt
restructuring not only to remove trade and investment restrictions, but also to impose
privatization and cuts in health, education, and other vital social services in states all over
the world. The Pentagon deployed its military might to police and crush any so-called rogue
states like Iraq.
Amidst the heady days of this unipolar moment, much of the left abandoned the classical
Marxist theory of imperialism developed chiefly by the early twentieth century Russian
revolutionaries Vladimir Lenin and Nikolai Bukharin. In brief, Lenin and Bukharin argued that
capitalist development transformed economic competition into interstate rivalry and war for the
political and economic division and redivision of the world system between the dominant
capitalist powers vying for hegemony. 9
"The development of world capitalism leads," wrote Bukharin, "on the one hand, to an
internationalization of the economic life and, on the other, to the leveling of economic
differences, and to an infinitely greater degree, the same process of economic development
intensifies the tendency to 'nationalize' capitalist interests, to form narrow 'national'
groups armed to the teeth and ready to hurl themselves at one another at any moment."
10
Imperialism was a product of the interplay between the creation of a world market and the
division of the world between national states, and as such was a product of the system rather
than simply a policy of a particular state or party. This was in contrast to the German
socialist Karl Kautsky, who argued that imperialism was a policy favored by some sections of
the capitalists but which ran against the interests of ruling classes as a whole, which, as a
result of the economic integration of the world market, had a greater interest in peaceful
competition.
The new period of globalized capitalism produced new theories that rejected Lenin and
Bukharin's approach. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri argued in their 2000 book that
globalization had replaced imperialism with a new structure of domination they termed empire.
Nonstate networks of power, like international financial institutions such as the IMF and the
World Bank, were now, in an era where states were increasingly powerless, the dominant world
players. 11 "The United States does not, and indeed no nation-state can today, form
the center of an imperialist project," they famously wrote in the preface. 12 Others
took the argument further, maintaining that a system of globalized transnational production and
trade was fast displacing states, including Washington, as influential centers of power.
13
On the other extreme, Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin argue in their 2012 book The Making of
Global Capitalism that the American state organized globalization and integrated all the
world's states as vassals of its informal empire. 14 Though diametrically opposed at
the start, these arguments ended with the same conclusion -- inter-imperial rivalries between
the world's leading states, including the potential for them to spill over into military
conflict -- are not a necessary outcome of capitalism; and today those rivalries are a thing of
the past.
The return of rivalry in an asymmetric world order
Developments in the real world -- such as the Bush administration's 2001 invasion and
occupation of Afghanistan, and two years later of Iraq -- viscerally disproved these arguments.
Indeed, changes in the real world were already undermining the foundations of the postwar world
order that Kagan and others are frantically holding up against Trump's "America First"
nationalism.
Washington's drive to cement its hegemony in a unipolar world order was undermined in
several ways. The neoliberal boom from the early 1980s to the 2000s produced new centers of
capital accumulation. China is the paradigmatic example. After it abandoned autarkic state
capitalism in favor of state-managed production for the world market, it transformed itself
from a backwater producer to the new workshop of the world. It vaulted from producing about 1.9
percent 15 of global GDP in 1979 to about 15 percent in 2016. 16 It is
now the second-largest economy in the world and predicted to overtake the United States as the
largest economy in the coming years.
But China was not the sole beneficiary of the neoliberal expansion. Brazil and other
regional economies also developed. And Russia, after suffering an enormous collapse of its
empire and its economic power in the 1990s, managed to rebuild itself as a petro-power with
disproportionate geopolitical influence because of its nuclear arsenal. Of course, whole
sections of the world system did not develop at all, but instead suffered dispossession and
economic catastrophe.
Washington's attempt to lock in its dominance through its 2003 war and occupation of Iraq
backfired. Even before launching the invasion, Bush recognized that the United States needed to
do something to contain China and other rising rivals. In a sign of this growing awareness, he
and his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, rebranded China, which Clinton had called a
strategic partner, as a strategic competitor.17
Bush used 9/11 as an opportunity to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime in
Iraq, as part of a plan for serial "regime change" in the region. If it succeeded, the United
States hoped it would be able to control rivals, particularly China, which is dependent on the
region's strategic energy reserves. Instead, Washington suffered, in the words of General
William Odom, the former head of the National Security Agency, its "greatest strategic disaster
in American history."18
Iran, one of the projected targets for regime change in Bush's so-called "Axis of Evil,"
emerged as a beneficiary of the war. It secured a new ally in the form of the sectarian Shia
fundamentalist regime in Iraq. And while the United States was bogged down in Iraq, China
became increasingly assertive throughout the world, establishing new political and economic
pacts throughout Latin America, the Middle East, and a number of African countries.
Russia also took advantage of American setbacks to reassert its power against EU and NATO
expansionism in Eastern Europe. It went to war against US ally Georgia in 2008. In Central
Asia, China and Russia came together to form a new alliance, the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization. They postured against American imperialism in their own imperial interests.
Finally, the Great Recession of 2008 hammered the United States and its allies in the EU
particularly hard. By contrast, Beijing's massive state intervention in the economy sustained
its long boom and lifted the growth rates of countries in Latin America, Australia, Asia, and
sections of Africa that exported raw materials to China.
This was the high-water mark of the so-called BRICS -- Brazil, Russia, India, China, and
South Africa. The lesser powers in this bloc hitched their star to Chinese imperialism,
exporting their commodities to fuel China's industrial expansion. Together they launched the
BRICS bank, officially known as the New Development Bank, and China added another, the Asian
Infrastructure Development Bank, as alternatives to the IMF and World Bank. The recent Chinese
slowdown and the consequent drop in commodity prices have, however, hammered the economies of
many of the BRICS.
These developments cracked the unipolar moment and replaced it with today's asymmetric world
order. The United States remains the world's sole superpower; but it now faces an international
rival in China and in lesser powers like Russia. It must also wrestle with regional powers that
pursue their own interests, sometimes in sync with Washington and other times at odds with
it.
Obama's failure to restore dominance
The Obama administration came to power with the hopes of restoring the credibility and
standing of American power in the wake of Bush's disasters in the Middle East. It implemented a
combined program of stimulus and austerity to restore growth and profitability. By imposing a
two-tier wage structure on the auto industry, it set a precedent for competitive
reindustrialization in the United States, and launched the massive fracking expansion to
provide cheap domestic energy to US corporations.
Intending to extract the United States from its costly and inconclusive ground wars in the
Middle East, Obama turned to air power, shifting the focus of the so-called War on Terror to
drone strikes, Special Force operations, and air support for US proxy forces in different
countries.
Once disentangled from Bush's occupations, Obama planned to conduct the ballyhooed "pivot to
Asia" to contain China's ongoing rise, bolster Washington's political and military alliance
with Japan and South Korea, and prevent their economic incorporation into China's growing
sphere of influence. The now dead Trans-Pacific Partnership was meant to ensure American
economic hegemony in the region, which would then be backed up militarily with the deployment
of 60 percent of the US Navy to the Asia Pacific region. 19 Obama also began to push
back against Russian opposition to the EU and NATO expansion into Eastern Europe -- hence the
standoff over Ukraine.
But Obama was unable to fully implement any of this because US forces remained bogged down
in the spiraling crisis in the Middle East. Retreating from the Bush administration's policy of
regime change to balancing between the existing states, Obama, while continuing to support
historic US allies such as Israel and Saudi Arabia, at the same time struck a deal with Iran
over its nuclear program. But this strategy was undermined by the Arab Spring, the regimes'
counterrevolutions, attempts by regional powers to manipulate the rebellion for their own ends,
and the rise of ISIS in Syria and Iraq. The United States has been unable to resolve many of
these developing crises on its own terms.
Now Russia, after having suffered a long-term decline of its power in the region, has
managed to reassert itself through its intervention in Syria in support of Assad's
counterrevolution. It is now a broker in the Syrian "peace process" and a new player in the
broader Middle East.
While the United States continued to suffer relative decline, China and Russia became even
more assertive. Russia took Crimea, which provoked the United States and Germany to impose
sanctions on the Kremlin. China intensified its economic deal making throughout the world,
increasing its foreign direct investment from a paltry $17.2 billion in 2005 to $187 billion in
2015. 20 At the same time, it engaged in a massive buildup of its navy and air force
(though its military is still dwarfed by the US) and constructed new military bases on various
islands to control the shipping lanes, fisheries, and potential oil fields in the South China
Sea.
Obama did manage to oversee the recovery of the US economy, and China has suffered an
economic slowdown. That has dramatically reversed the economic fortunes of the BRICS, in
particular Brazil, which has experienced economic collapse and a right-wing governmental coup.
The drop in oil prices that accompanied the Chinese slowdown also hammered the OPEC states as
well as Russia.
But China's slowdown has not reversed Beijing's economic and geopolitical ascension. In
fact, China is in the process of rebalancing its economy to replace multinational investment,
expand its domestic market, and increase production for export to the rest of the world. The
aim is to increase its ability to compete with the United States and the EU at all levels.
Thus, well before Trump's election, the United States had been mired in foreign policy
problems that it seemed incapable of resolving.
Trump's break with neoliberalism
Trump's strategy to restore American dominance in the world is economic nationalism. This is
the rational kernel within his erratic shell of bizarre tweets and rants. He wants to combine
neoliberalism at home with protectionism against foreign competition. It is a position that
breaks with the American establishment's grand strategy of superintending free-trade
globalization.
Inside the United States, Trump aims to double down on some aspects of neoliberalism. He
plans to cut taxes on the rich, rip up government regulations that "hamper" business interests,
expand Obama's fracking program to provide corporations cheaper energy, and to go after public
sector unions. He also wants to invest $1 trillion to modernize the country's decrepit
infrastructure. While his Gestapo assault on immigrants is less popular among the business
class, they are salivating over the tax and regulatory cuts. Trump hopes with these economic
carrots to lure American manufacturing companies back to the United States.
At the same time, however, Trump wants to upend the neoliberal Washington Consensus. He is
threatening to impose tariffs on American corporations that move their production to other
countries. He has already nixed the TPP and intends to do the same to the Transatlantic Trade
and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with Europe. He promises to renegotiate NAFTA with Mexico and
Canada to secure better terms, and, in response to Chinese and EU protectionism, he threatens
to impose a border tax of 45 percent on Chinese and others countries' exports to the United
States. These measures could trigger a trade war.
Demagogic appeals to labor aside, Trump is doing none of this for the benefit of American
workers. His program is intended to restore the competitive position of American capital,
particularly manufacturing, against its rivals, especially in China but also in Germany.
This economic nationalism is paired with a promise to rearm the American military, which he
views as having been weakened by Obama. Thus, Trump has announced plans to increase military
spending by $54 billion. He wants to use this 9 percent increase in the military budget to
build up the Navy and to modernize and expand the nuclear arsenal, even if that provokes other
powers to do the same. As he quipped in December, "Let it be an arms race." 21
Trump's fire-breathing chief strategist, former Brietbart editor Steve Bannon, went so far as
to promise, "We're going to war in the South China Sea in five to ten years. There's no doubt
about that." 22
Trump also plans to intensify what he sees as a civilizational war with Islam. This will
likely involve ripping up the nuclear deal with Iran, intensifying the war on ISIS in Iraq and
Syria, and conducting further actions against al Qaeda internationally. It will also likely
involve doubling down on Washington's alliance with Israel. Trump's appointment as ambassador
to Israel, David Friedman, is actually to the right of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu. 23 Trump has already begun escalating the ongoing war on Muslims
conducted by the last two administrations, with his executive orders that are in effect an
anti-Muslim ban and have increased the profiling, surveillance, and harassment of Muslims
throughout the country.
To pay for this military expansion, the Trump administration, in Bannon's phrase, plans to
carry out the "deconstruction of the administrative state." Thus, the administration has
appointed heads of departments, like Ed Pruitt at the Environmental Protection Agency, whose
main purpose is to gut them. 24 No doubt this will entail massive cuts to social
programs like Medicare and Medicaid.
Trump threatens a significant break with some previously hallowed institutions of US foreign
policy. He has called NATO outdated. This declaration is really just a bargaining position to
get the alliance's other members to increase their military spending. Thus, both his secretary
of state and defense secretary have repeatedly reassured European states that the United States
remains committed to NATO. More seriously, he denounced the EU as merely a vehicle for German
capital. Thus, he supports various right-wing populist parties in Europe running on a promise
to imitate Britain and leave the EU.
Trump's "transactional" approach comes out most clearly in his stated approach to
international alliances and blocs. He promises to evaluate all multilateral alliances and trade
blocs from the standpoint of American interests against rivals. He will scrap some, replacing
them with bilateral arrangements, and renegotiate others. Much of the establishment has reacted
in horror to these threats, denouncing them as a retreat from Washington's responsibilities to
its allies.
In a departure from Obama's policy toward Russia, Trump intends to create a more
transactional relationship with the Kremlin. He does not view Russia as the main threat; he
believes that is China. In addition to considering cutting a deal with Russia to drop sanctions
over its seizure of Crimea, he wants to collaborate with Putin in a joint war against ISIS in
Syria.
Hoping that he can split Russia away from China and neutralize it as a lesser power, Trump
then wants to confront China with tariffs and military challenges to its assertion of control
of the South China Sea. Incoming Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has already threatened to
deny China access to its newly-built island bases in the South China Sea.
Trump's economic nationalism leads directly to his "fortress America" policies. These
policies chiefly target Muslims and immigrants, but they should not be seen in isolation from
other domestic policies. With the wave of protests against his attacks that emerged from the
moment he stepped into office, Trump and his allies in state governments have introduced bills
that impose increasing restrictions on the right to protest and give the police a license for
repression with impunity. Thus the corollary of his "America First" imperialism abroad is
authoritarianism at home.
Can Trump succeed?
Trump faces a vast array of obstacles that could stop him from implementing his new
strategy. To begin with, he is an unpopular president with an approval rating hovering below 40
percent in his first months in office. He and his crony capitalist cabinet will no doubt face
many scandals, compromising their ability to push through their agenda.
He may be his own biggest obstacle. His 6 A.M. tweets are signs of someone more concerned
with his celebrity status than imperial statecraft. He has already lost his national security
adviser, Michael Flynn, due to Flynn's failure to disclose his communication with Russian
diplomats during the campaign, and his Attorney General Jeff Sessions took heat on similar
charges, forcing him to recuse himself from any investigations of the Trump campaign with the
Kremlin.
There are also real economic challenges to his ability to follow through on his economic
program. He simultaneously promises to cut taxes for the wealthy, spend hundreds of millions on
domestic infrastructure (not to mention the billions it would cost to build a wall along the
US–Mexico border), and cut the deficit. This does not square with economic reality.
On top of all this, multinational capital opposes his protectionism. Of course almost all
capital is more overjoyed at his domestic neoliberalism, a fact demonstrated in the enormous
stock market expansion, but they see his proposals of tariffs, renegotiation of NAFTA, and
scrapping of the TPP and the TTIP as threats to their global production, service, and
investment strategies. They consider his house economist, Peter Navarro, to be a crackpot.
25
Even his cabinet opposes much of his program. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson testified
that he supports the TTP and American obligations to its NATO allies in Europe, including
recent deployments of American troops to Poland. And Trump's Defense Secretary James "Mad Dog"
Mattis disagrees with Trump's proposal to rip up the nuclear treaty with Iran.
Beneath the governmental shell, whole sections of the unelected state bureaucracy -- what
has been ominously described as the "deep state" -- also oppose Trump as a threat to their
interests. He has openly attacked the CIA and FBI and threatens enormous cuts to the State
Department as well as other key bureaucracies responsible for managing state policy at home and
abroad. Many of these bureaucrats have engaged in a campaign of leaks, especially of Trump's
connections with the Russian state.
One of Trump's key allies, Newt Gingrich, gives a sense of how Trump's backers are framing
the dispute with these institutions. "We're up against a permanent bureaucratic structure
defending itself and quite willing to break the law to do so," he told the New York
Times . 26 Thus, the core of the capitalist state is at least attempting to
constrain Trump, bring down some of his appointees and may, if they see it as necessary, do the
same to Trump himself. At the very least, these extraordinary divisions at the top create a
sense of insecurity, and open up space for questioning and struggle from below.
The Democratic Party selectively opposes some of Trump's program. But, instead of attacking
him on his manifold reactionary policies, they have portrayed him as Putin's "Manchurian
Candidate," posturing as the defenders of US power willing to stand up to Russia. As Glenn
Greenwald writes, the Democrats are
not "resisting" Trump from the left or with populist appeals -- by, for instance, devoting
themselves toprotection ofWall Street and environmental regulations
under attack , or supporting the revocation of jobs-killing free trade
agreements, or demanding that Yemini civilians not be massacred. Instead, they're attacking him
on the grounds of insufficient nationalism, militarism, and aggression: equating a desire to
avoid confrontation with Moscow as a form of treason (just like they did when they were the
leading Cold Warriors).
This is why they're finding such common cause with the
nation's most bloodthirsty militarists -- not because it's an alliance of convenience but
rather one of shared convictions (indeed, long before Trump,
neocons were planning a re-alignment with Democrats under a Clinton presidency).
27
Republicans also object to many of Trump's initiatives. For example, John McCain has
attacked his cozy relationship with the Kremlin. And neoliberals in the Republican Party
support the TPP and free trade globalization in general. The neocon Max Boot has gone so far as
to support the Democrat's call for a special counsel to investigate Trump's collusion with
Putin. He explains,
There is a good reason why Trump and his partisans are so apoplectic about the prospect of
a special counsel, and it is precisely why it is imperative to appoint one: because otherwise
we will never know the full story of the Kremlin's tampering with our elections and of the
Kremlin's connections with the president of the United States. As evidenced by his desperate
attempts to change the subject, Trump appears petrified of what such a probe would reveal.
28
Even if Trump weathers the storm of this resistance from above and below, his foreign policy
could flounder on its own internal conflicts and inconsistencies. To take one example: his
policy of collaboration with Russia in Syria could flounder on his simultaneous commitment to
scrap the nuclear deal with Iran. Why? Because Iran is a Russian ally in the region. Most
disturbingly, if the Trump administration goes into a deeper crisis, it will double down on its
bigoted scapegoating of immigrants and Muslims to deflect attention from its failures.
Economic nationalism beyond Trump?
While Trump's contradictions could stymie his ability to impose his economic nationalist
program, that program is not going to disappear any more than the problems it is intended to
address. The reality is that the United States faces continued decline in the neoliberal world
order. China, even taking into account the many contradictions it faces, continues to benefit
from the current setup.
That's why, in an ironic twist of historic proportions, Chinese premier Xi Jing Ping
defended the Washington Consensus in his country's first address at the World Economic Forum in
Davos Switzerland. He even went so far as to promise to come to the rescue of free-trade
globalization if the Trump administration abandoned it. "No one will emerge as a
winner in a trade war ," he declared. "Pursuing protectionism is just like locking one's
self in a dark room. Wind and rain may be kept outside, but so are light and air."
29
One of his underlings, Zhang Jun, remarked, "If anyone were to say China is playing a
leadership role in the world I would say it's not China rushing to the front but rather the
front runners have stepped back leaving the place to China. If China is required to play that
leadership role then China will assume its responsibilities." 30
China is accelerating the transformation of its economy. It seeks to push out multinationals
that have used it as an export-processing platform and replace them with its own state-owned
and private corporations, which, like Germany, will export its surplus manufactured goods to
the rest of the world market. 31 No wonder, then, that a survey conducted by the
American Chamber of Commerce found that 80 percent of American multinationals consider China
inhospitable for business.32
China is also aggressively trying to supplant the United States as the economic hegemon in
Asia. Immediately after Trump nixed the TPP, China appealed to states in the Asia Pacific
region to sign on to its alternative trade treaty, the Regional Comprehensive Economic
Partnership (RCEP). China is determined to challenge American imperial rule of the Asia
Pacific. Though its navy is far smaller than Washington's, it plans to accelerate efforts to
build up its regional naval power against Trump's threats to block Chinese access to the
strategic islands in the South China Sea.
All of this was underway before Trump. That's why Obama was already inching toward some of
Trump's policies. He initiated the pivot to Asia, deployed the US Navy to the region, and
imposed tariffs on Chinese steel and tires. He also complained about NATO countries and others
freeloading on American military largesse. He thus encouraged Japan's rearmament and
deployments of its forces abroad. He also began the move to on-shoring manufacturing based on a
low-wage America with cheap energy and revitalized infrastructure.
So it's imaginable that another figure could take up and repackage Trump's economic
nationalism. Regardless of whether this happens or not, it is clear that there is a trajectory
deep in the dynamics of the world system toward interimperial rivalry between the United States
and its main imperialist challenger, China. Obviously there are countervailing forces that
mitigate the tendency toward military conflict between them. The high degree of economic
integration makes the ruling classes hesitant to risk war. And, because all the major states
are nuclear powers, each is reluctant to risk armed conflicts turning into mutual
annihilation.
For background on this key institution of American imperialism see Laurence H. Shoup and
William Minter, Imperial Brain Trust: The Council on Foreign Relations and United States
Foreign Policy (New York: Authors Choice Press, 2004), and Laurence H. Shoup, Wall
Street's Think Tank: The Council on Foreign Relations and the Empire of Neoliberal
Geopolitics (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2015).
Gideon Rose, "Out of Order," Foreign Affairs (January–February,
2017).
Richard Haass, A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old
Order (New York: Penguin Press, 2017).
For one of the best accounts of neoliberalism as a response to globalization and a
strategy to overcome the crisis of the 1970s, see Neil Davidson, "The Neoliberal Era in
Britain: Historical Developments and Current Perspectives," International Socialism
Journal , no. 139 (2013),
http://isj.org.uk/the-neoliberal-era-in-... .
Lecture at Trinity College, Dublin, Oct. 12, 1999, cited by Sam Gindin in "Social Justice
and Globalization: Are They Compatible?" Monthly Review , June 2002, 11.
For an account of the neoliberal boom and consequent crisis and slump, see David McNally,
Global Slump: The Economics and Politics of Crisis and Resistance (Oakland, CA: PM
Press, 2010).
For a summary of the classical theory of imperialism, see Phil Gasper, "Lenin and
Bukharin on Imperialism," International Socialist Review , no. 100 (May 2009),
http://isreview.org/issue/100/lenin-and-...
.
For a summary and critique of Hardt and Negri's ideas see Tom Lewis, "Empire strikes
out," International Socialist Review , no. 24 (July–August 2002), www.isreview.org/issues/24/empire_strike...
.
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 2000),
xiii–xiv.
See, for example, William Robinson, A Theory of Global Capitalism: Production, Class,
and the State in a Transitional World (Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins, 2004).
See Ashley Smith, "Global empire or imperialism?" International Socialist Review
, no 92 (Spring 2014), http://isreview.org/issue/92 .
Justin Yifu Lin, "China and the Global Economy," Remarks at the Conference "Asia's Role
in the Post-Crisis Global Economy," November 29, 2011,
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DEC/s... .
Ed Pilkington and Martin Pengelly, "'Let it Be an Arms Race': Donald Trump Appears to
Double Down on Nuclear Expansion," The Guardian , December 24, 2016, www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/23/...
.
Phillip Rucker and Robert Costa, "Bannon Vows Daily Fight for the "Deconstruction of the
Administrative State," Washington Post , February 23, 2017,
www.washingtonpost.com/politics/top-wh-s... .
Julie Hirschfeld Davis, "Rumblings of a 'Deep State' Undermining Trump? It Was Once a
Foreign Concept," New York Times , March 6, 2017,
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/06/us/po... .
Stephen Fidler, Te-Ping Chen, and Lingling Wei, "China's Xi Jingping Seizes Role as
Leader of Globalization," Wall Street Journal , January 17, 2017, www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-xi-jinping-d...
.
For further discussion of this point, see Ashley Smith, "Anti-imperialism and the Syrian
Revolution," Socialist Worker , August 25, 2016, https://socialistworker.org/2016/08/25/a...
.
"... Through neoliberal rationales, they are able to reach many of their social objectives even if they fall short of their policy goals ..."
"... The belief that Trump would alter American conservativism away from neoliberal economics is not without its basis. ..."
"... The marriage between neoliberalism and Christian nationalism that neo-conservatives pursued during the George W. Bush era was going to experience a soft separation under Trump. The pursuit of neoliberalism policies would be relegated in importance, if not abandoned completely, and there would be doubling down on Christian nationalism, with a tripling down on the nationalist element. Unsurprisingly, the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act reveals that Trump is ready to renege on his end of this bargain with the hope that poor whites will still be willing to keep up their end. ..."
"... The argument that Trump would somehow overturn America's neoliberal economic order myopically focused on Trump's trade policy. In doing so, it both misunderstood what Trump represented and the ideological framework of neoliberalism. Trump's fever pitch agonizing over the United States' trade deficit with China and Mexico are both the wallowing of an economic idiot and the maneuvering of a political savant. ..."
"... The insinuation was for average Americans to take back what was rightfully theirs by engaging in a new round of economic bargaining with these two nations, if not an open trade war. ..."
"... As the latest tax bill has shown, Trump is dedicated to weakening the ability of the government to extract wealth from the rich. This supreme goal takes priority over the Republican gospel of balance budgets. ..."
"... The Right Nation: Conservative Power in ..."
"... The United States now has an Americanized version of European style far Right politics, and its xenophobic ambitious has come about through a constant assertion of neoliberal values. ..."
"... Understood in proper terms, "economic nationalism" is best described as "market statism" -- where, in Milton Friedman's words, the purpose of the state should be "to preserve law and order, to enforce private contracts, to foster competitive markets" but nothing else. ..."
The passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act has refuted any notion that
Trump's ascension to the White House would mark an end to neoliberalism. Poor whites who
supported Trump expected him to offer America a new version of conservativism that would break
with neoliberalism. Instead, furthering neoliberal policies has become a critical objective
that works in tandem with Trump's xenophobic rhetoric
With the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, President Trump secured his first major
policy victory. Despite their federal dominance, the Republican Party has proven to be
legislatively constipated. Below the surface of party unity, sectarian differences between the
competing strains of American conservatism have hindered it from taking advantage of its
historical positioning. Nevertheless, tax cuts proved to be a workable common ground that Trump
was able to take advantage of. While commentary of the passage has tended to focus on this
Republican unity, the most significant aspect of the Act's passage is the refutation that
Donald Trump's ascension to the White House would somehow mark an end to the era of neoliberal
economics. Furthering neoliberal policies has not only been an aspect of Trump's agenda but a
critical goal that works in tandem with his xenophobic rhetoric. Far from being opposed by the
Bannon faction of Trump's coalition, neoliberalism has provided a comforting aerie for their
fascist inclinations to develop. Through neoliberal rationales, they are able to reach many
of their social objectives even if they fall short of their policy goals .
The belief that Trump would alter American conservativism away from neoliberal economics
is not without its basis. In a bizarre case of enveloping ironies, Trump's presidential
campaign was successful in portraying him as both a billionaire business wizard and as an
example of an American everyman. He advocated for "draining the swamp" of corrupt Wall Street
executives, while at the same time paraded his practice of tax evasion has an example of his
shrewd financial acumen. The incompatibility of these two personas is obvious, but it has a
certain appeal within the context of America's poor whites. Poor white Americans are both
spiteful toward and enamored by capitalism. They are spiteful because it retards their own
social mobility, but enamored with it because it provides a basis for their own privilege over
racial minorities. Unlike their counterparts among racial minorities, poor whites do not
consider themselves poor by class, but poor by temporary misfortune. They are not poor per se,
but rather down-on-their-luck millionaires whose are unjustly treated by liberal elites and
coddled minorities. For these people, Trump represented an enchanting example of uncouth
success. The fact that he was crass and despised only reinforced the notion that it is not
connections and education that made a person wealthy, but hard work and an intuition for
affluence. Culturally speaking, these are traits are considered innate to white Americans. Of
course, to believe this mythology, many of Trump's low-class acolytes were only willing to
support his campaign under the pretext of an unspoken bargain: they would ignore the reality
that his wealth was inherited and not earned, and he would refrain from the usual Republican
claptrap about the virtues of privatizing Social Security and Medicare. That way both partners
could remain comfortable in their delusions that all their current and potential future wealth
was a product of their own doing. The result of this unspoken bargain was that Trump was
supposed to offer America a new version of conservativism. The marriage between
neoliberalism and Christian nationalism that neo-conservatives pursued during the George W.
Bush era was going to experience a soft separation under Trump. The pursuit of neoliberalism
policies would be relegated in importance, if not abandoned completely, and there would be
doubling down on Christian nationalism, with a tripling down on the nationalist element.
Unsurprisingly, the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act reveals that Trump is ready to renege
on his end of this bargain with the hope that poor whites will still be willing to keep up
their end.
Astute observers saw this betrayal coming. The argument that Trump would somehow
overturn America's neoliberal economic order myopically focused on Trump's trade policy. In
doing so, it both misunderstood what Trump represented and the ideological framework of
neoliberalism. Trump's fever pitch agonizing over the United States' trade deficit with China
and Mexico are both the wallowing of an economic idiot and the maneuvering of a political
savant. The issue was always economically inane. A trade deficit in-and-of-itself reveals
very little about the overall health of an economy. Whether a nation should strive for or
against a trade deficit is more dependent on that nation's strategic position within the global
economy, and not necessarily an indicator of the health of domestic markets. But, trade proved
to be a salient issue for symbolic purposes. Stagnation and automation have compelled American
middle and lower classes to accept an economic torpor. Making trade deficits a central campaign
tenant provided these people with an outlet for their class anxieties without having to
question the nature of class itself. Lethargic economic growth was blamed on Mexicans and the
Chinese. The insinuation was for average Americans to take back what was rightfully theirs
by engaging in a new round of economic bargaining with these two nations, if not an open trade
war.
While Trump's criticism of Mexico and China seemed to imply an undoing of international
market liberalization and a return to an age of greater protectionism, in reality, Trump very
rarely recommended such policies. Instead, he made vague references to "good people" who will
make "good deals" for American workers and openly preferred lowering America's corporate tax
rate in order to encourage businesses to reinvest in the United States. The first proposal was
always understood as meaningless. Its value was in showmanship. A person can hoodwink the world
into thinking that they are a genius just by referring to everyone around them as a moron.
However, the second proposal not only does not overturn the reigning neoliberal order, it
strengthens it. As the latest tax bill has shown, Trump is dedicated to weakening the
ability of the government to extract wealth from the rich. This supreme goal takes priority
over the Republican gospel of balance budgets. The deficit be damned if preventing it
smacks of any hint of expropriation of the wealthy. But, the deficit is not entirely damned. It
is an open secret that Republicans are salivating for a fiscal crisis that will provide them
with a pretext for cutting Social Security and Medicare. It was only a matter of time before
Trump's administration wholeheartedly joins them.
The fact that the real potential for cutting favored government programs has not resulted in
the same outcry among Trump's supporters, even among low-class demographics, as his suggestion
that he might soften his position on immigration is a grave concern. Social Security and
Medicare are extremely popular in the United States among poor and working people regardless of
ethnicity and political ideology. Nevertheless, tolerance for their obliteration has become
palatable to the majority of white Americans. In 2004, journalists John Micklethwait and Adrian
Wooldridge published their exhaustive history of the American Right, The Right Nation: Conservative Power
inAmerica . At the time, Michlethwait and Wooldridge could accurately claim
that "in no other country is the Right defined so much by values rather than class Yet despite
the importance of values, America has failed to produce a xenophobic 'far Right' on anything
like the same scale as Europe has." A little over a decade later, Michlethwait's and
Wooldridge's observation has become obsolete. Trump is inept at policy and governance, but he
is a skilled mobilizer and has managed to shift the American Right into a new direction.
The United States now has an Americanized version of European style far Right politics, and
its xenophobic ambitious has come about through a constant assertion of neoliberal
values.
Trump has not only furthered the neoliberal doctrine of privatization, but also that of the
economization of everyday life, and specifically, the economization of American racism. While
fear of cultural differences between "the west" and "the rest" has always been front and center
for the Bannon wing of Trump's coalition, more tactical voices find economic justifications for
their xenophobia: immigrants steal jobs, freeride on welfare benefits, and don't pay taxes. The
image that emerges when these talking points converge is a political system enamored with
quantifying and dispensing material goods between those who deserve and those who do not. For
most modern conservatives, opposition to immigration is not based on an open fear of
differences; rather, it is a feeling that immigrants, especially undocumented immigrants, are
unwilling to accept a free market economic system that treats all Americans on fair and equal
terms. Unlike average Americans, who work hard and thus deserve their market remunerations,
immigrants -- and by implication other minorities -- rely on a mixture of government handouts
and liberal acquiescence to the rules. Immigrants cash their welfare checks because liberal
elites look the other way on law enforcement. This worldview suggests that the government
should not only be redirected to strenuous law enforcement but also that it should not be in
the business of providing society with social welfare in the first place. Doing so only creates
an impetus for illegal immigration and lazy minorities. In this manner, Bannon's cheerleading
of "economic nationalism" was always a rhetorical mirage. Understood in proper terms,
"economic nationalism" is best described as "market statism" -- where, in Milton Friedman's
words, the purpose of the state should be "to preserve law and order, to enforce private
contracts, to foster competitive markets" but nothing else.
There is no fundamental difference in the terms of the realpolitik outcomes between
Friedman's neoliberalism and Bannon's economic nationalism, even if they begin from separate
economic philosophies. The only difference is in what should be considered preferable within
market configurations. In Capitalism and Freedom ,
Friedman emphasizes his personal objections to racist ideologies but sees no need for a
government to ensure racial equality. According to Friedman, racism is to be overcome through
individual argumentation, not political struggle; it is the changing of tastes within the
marketplace that will provide the liberation of ethnic minorities, not the paternal hand of the
government preventing discrimination. Friedman's de-politicizing of racial anxieties to mere
matters of "taste," provides an opening for those -- like Bannon -- who are eager to engage in
a culture war, but are well aware of the potentially alienating effects of actually taking up
arms. If racial discrimination is only a matter of "taste," similar to other desires within the
marketplace, then the maintenance of white supremacy is predicated on its profitability. As
long as whiteness can maintain its social hegemony, then Friedman's governmental obligations
"to preserve law and order, to enforce private contracts, to foster competitive markets," will
serve to reinforce it. The neoliberal economizing of American racism allows for many of the
effects of white supremacy without necessarily the adoption of any of its core premises.
Trump's coalition of white nationalists and free-market ideologues thus become comfortable
bedfellows, even while maintaining a rhetorical mistrust of each other.
The question is can Trump maintain his coalition of realigned conservatives in time for the
next election cycle? While his low polling numbers and recent Democratic Party successes are
encouraging, they are not foolproof. The destabilizing of the narrative on American racism can
only occur through a refusal to accept the economization of the debate. The exclusion of racial
minorities from social welfare and the utter bureaucratic madness of the United States'
immigration policies have a moral dimension that has to take precedence over concerns regarding
job stealing and tax burdens, no matter how fallacious such arguments are to begin with.
Expecting the Democratic Party's leadership to play a leading role in this de-economization of
the debate is not impossible, but unlikely. Along with Republicans, Democrats have been
complicit in the framing social issues in relations to the economy, and the economy as merely
working in the service of private interests. Only recently has the leftwing of the Democratic
Party been organized and energized enough to counter this influence and return the party to its
New Deal orientation. Whatever its limitations, Roosevelt's "freedom from want" provides a
moral framework for economic policy. It is a reasonable and familiar starting point to break
with a neoliberal credo that economizes all morality within a capitalist framework.
While the left-wing of the Democratic Party has seen tremendous progress, it is still far
from overturning the organization's centrist leadership. In many ways, the passage of the Tax
Cuts and Jobs Act is a painful reminder of how weak the American Left is once Republicans are
able to stay united. Like with the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act
is extremely unpopular. The trickledown theory of economics that the act is based on is rightly
seen a convenient canard for the rich. So much so, that it has been reduced to a cliché
joke among late night talk show hosts. With the exception of Fox News, the mainstream press has
frequently commented on the nearly universal consensus among economists that the Act will
result in a massive transfer of wealth to the upper class. Intellectually, there is no place
for defenders of the Act to hide. However, unlike opposition to repealing the Affordable Care
Act, opposition to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act has been somewhat muted. While Americans still are
seething from the injustices of the 2007-2008 economic collapse, ten years on, they still have
not found a tangible political venue to express their frustrations. This means that regardless
of the outcome of the next election cycle the American Left is going to have to play a
persistent role creating a meaningful outlet for people's dismay, and fostering a political
discourse that recognizes that the Trump phenomenon is rooted in the neoliberal age that
preceded it. The dangerous tantrum-prone child of Trumpism will only be forced off the
playground when its neoliberal parents no longer own the park.
Yes he is a libral domestcally and nationalsit in forign policy -- that's why the term "national neoliberalism" looks appropriate
for definition of his policies
Notable quotes:
"... When one compares these 10 neoliberal commandments with Trump's policy agenda, it is clear that the president is far more neoliberal than his populist rhetoric would suggest. ..."
"... Trump is clearly and consistently positioning himself to cut taxes on the wealthy, deregulate big business and the financial industry, and pursue a wide range of privatization plans and public-private partnerships that will further weaken American unions. In short, he will govern like the neoliberals who came before him and against whom he campaigned so ardently. ..."
"... In fact, Trump's agenda aims to realize the foremost goals of neoliberalism: privatization, deregulation, tax-cutting, anti-unionism, and the strict enforcement of property rights. For example, in his address to Congress , Trump promised "a big, big cut" for American companies and boasted about his administration's "historic effort to massively reduce job-crushing regulations." Ironically, Trump then asserted that he will reduce regulations by "creating a deregulation task force inside of every government agency," itself a contradictory expansion of the administrative state he had just sworn to shrink. ..."
"... Like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Trump was correct to criticize the Obama administration, whose economic team was for a time staffed by neoliberal Democrats like Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers, for saving Wall Street after the financial collapse of 2008 while allowing Main Street to go under. Trump's victory is the direct result of the fact that American workers have not been well served by the country's policymaking elites. ..."
"... Yet the resistance that Trump's presidency has inspired across the country must also learn from the contradictions between his economic nationalism and neoliberalism. Those who reject his phony populism must be careful not to dismiss the concerns of Trump's voters, which has unfortunately been the response of too many who console themselves by deriding Trump's supporters as ignorant "deplorables" who deserve what they will get. ..."
"... The problem with the last paragraph is that it tries once again to put the election in purely economic terms. It wasn't. It was largely white cultural backlash. Much of his vote was driven by bans on immigration and a promise to maintain a white rural/suburban culture by bringing jobs back like coal mining or manufacturing jobs to Northwood Michigan. ..."
In his first speech to a joint session of Congress, President Trump promised to deliver on his populist campaign pledges to protect
Americans from globalization. "For too long," he bemoaned, "we've watched our middle class shrink as we've exported our jobs and
wealth to foreign countries." But now, he asserted, the time has come to "restart the engine of the American economy" and "bring
back millions of jobs." To achieve his goals, Trump proposed mixing massive tax-cuts and sweeping regulatory rollbacks with increased
spending on the military, infrastructure and border control.
This same messy mix of free market fundamentalism and hyper-nationalistic populism is presently taking shape in Trump's proposed
budget. But the apparent contradiction there isn't likely to slow down Trump's pro-market, pro-Wall Street, pro-wealth agenda. His
supporters may soon discover that his professions of care for those left behind by globalization are -- aside from some mostly symbolic
moves on trade -- empty.
Just look at what has already happened with the GOP's
proposed
replacement for Obamacare , which if enacted would bring increased pain and suffering to the anxious voters who put their trust
in Trump's populism in the first place. While these Americans might have thought their votes would win them protection from the instabilities
and austerities of market-led globalization, what they are getting is a neoliberal president in populist clothing.
Neoliberalism is a term most often used to critique market-fundamentalism rather than to define a particular policy agenda. Nonetheless,
it is most useful to understand neoliberalism's policy implications in terms of 10 norms that have defined its historical practice.
These norms begin with
trade liberalization and extend to
the encouragement of exports;
enticement of foreign investment;
reduction of inflation;
reduction of public spending;
privatization of public services;
deregulation of industry and finance;
reduction and flattening of taxes;
restriction of union organization;
and, finally, enforcement of property and land ownership.
Politicians don't necessarily have to profess faith in all of these norms to be considered neoliberal. Rather, they have to buy
into neoliberalism's general market-based logic and its attendant promise of opportunity.
When one compares these 10 neoliberal commandments with Trump's policy agenda, it is clear that the president is far more
neoliberal than his populist rhetoric would suggest. This conclusion will likely surprise his supporters, especially in light
of Trump's assaults on the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the North American Free Trade Agreement. Despite these attacks, however,
Trump is clearly and consistently positioning himself to cut taxes on the wealthy, deregulate big business and the financial
industry, and pursue a wide range of privatization plans and public-private partnerships that will further weaken American unions.
In short, he will govern like the neoliberals who came before him and against whom he campaigned so ardently.
In fact, Trump's agenda aims to realize the foremost goals of neoliberalism: privatization, deregulation, tax-cutting, anti-unionism,
and the strict enforcement of property rights. For example, in his
address
to Congress , Trump promised "a big, big cut" for American companies and boasted about his administration's "historic effort
to massively reduce job-crushing regulations." Ironically, Trump then asserted that he will reduce regulations by "creating a deregulation
task force inside of every government agency," itself a contradictory expansion of the administrative state he had just sworn to
shrink.
Since so much of Trump's agenda aligns with the long-standing ambitions of the Republican Party, it is likely that Trump will
be able to work with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) to pass strictly neoliberal
legislation. Unlike his approach to trade, which congressional Republicans will probably scuttle, there is little reason to doubt
that we will see new legislation that privatizes public lands, overturns Dodd-Frank and other Wall Street regulations, cuts taxes
on business, makes organizing unions difficult, and allows big landowners to develop, mine, log, and shoot without restraint. For
all the animosity that may exist between the Trump administration and Republican congressmen, the two groups share a neoliberal vision
of the world.
From his new budget proposal we also know that Trump plans to continue the neoliberal assault on social service provisions --
such as the subsidies in the Affordable Care Act -- as well as public broadcasting, arts funding, scientific research and foreign
aid. As Trump vowed to Congress, he intends to implement a plan in which "Americans purchase their own coverage, through the use
of tax credits and expanded health savings accounts." Moreover, the money he does want to spend will be expended on military and
infrastructure projects that will almost certainly be organized around public-private partnerships that will fill the coffers of
Trump's business cronies.
What does Trump's neoliberal agenda mean for those whose discontent with globalization gave him the presidency? Nothing good.
The irony here is that the same neoliberalism that Trump plans to strengthen created the conditions that allowed him to enter the
White House. Like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Trump was correct to criticize the Obama administration, whose economic team was
for a time staffed by neoliberal Democrats like Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers, for saving Wall Street after the financial
collapse of 2008 while allowing Main Street to go under. Trump's victory is the direct result of the fact that American workers have
not been well served by the country's policymaking elites.
Yet the resistance that Trump's presidency has inspired across the country must also learn from the contradictions between
his economic nationalism and neoliberalism. Those who reject his phony populism must be careful not to dismiss the concerns of Trump's
voters, which has unfortunately been the response of too many who console themselves by deriding Trump's supporters as ignorant "deplorables"
who deserve what they will get. Going forward, all of those who want to resist the President's agenda must engage those left
behind by neoliberalism and provide them with an economic vision that addresses their very real concerns. After all, Trump's administration
will probably strengthen the forces that have hurt these citizens, and they will need representatives who are genuinely concerned
with their well-being if our political turmoil is to be put to rest.
Don't let his trade policy fool you: Trump is a neoliberal
(2/2) I think the truth is that many of these people are too far gone mentally and emotionally to ever come around to the "correct"
way of thinking (which is to say, they have been so brainwashed by reacting to facile nonsense like "liberty" and "freedom" that
they will believe anything as long as the argument is couched in those terms, despite the fact that when they vote they are indeed
consigning themselves and the rest of the country to a world without those very freedoms for anybody who's not supposedly "one
of them").
A great man once famously said "Conscience do cost." And boy, does it. Liberals need to get over their conscience once and
for all, and push back against conservatives the way conservatives have been for decades, but that can only happen if we are honest
about who we are arguing with, and call them out, boldly and proudly, on their intellectual failings.
(1/2) It's clear the authors don't expose themselves to right-wing news outlets. Far too much is made in liberal media about the
"deplorables" and how they feel suffocated by the economy (or more realistically, by the natural ebb and flow of capitalism),
but they belie the fact that so much of modern conservatism is more about being anti-liberal than it is about any sort of pro-conservative
ideology. The "deplorable" moniker has been adapted and co-opted by conservatives and is now worn proudly as a badge of honor
(in the same way "fake news" began as a liberal criticism of specific, deliberately-misleading media targeted towards the right,
but is now a term used almost exclusively by the right to blanket-describe literally any media that they disagree with). Any criticisms
of Trump are immediately met with criticisms of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or Democrats in general. Bring up the KKK's support
of Trump 3 months ago? They'll bring up how the KKK was invented by Democrats 150 years ago.
The authors are too nice/professional to say it, but liberals need to stop handling conservatives with kid gloves and start
calling them what they are: rubes. Because it's not enough that they vote against their own self-interest and the interests of
the country, they take it one further and are actively gleeful in depriving liberals of anything liberals might value. Conversely,
most liberals I know and read online don't have an active hatred of conservatives, instead they have compassion and want to educate
them, and I suppose the thought is that if only enough of these articles get written, they'll eventually come around.
Like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Trump was correct to criticize the Obama administration, whose economic team was for a
time staffed by neoliberal Democrats like Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers, for saving Wall Street after the financial
collapse of 2008 while allowing Main Street to go under.
And here you have it. This is how Trump got elected. The Bernibots are the unwitting agent that gave us Trump. And they
are planing on doubling down
The problem with the last paragraph is that it tries once again to put the election in purely economic terms. It wasn't. It
was largely white cultural backlash. Much of his vote was driven by bans on immigration and a promise to maintain a white rural/suburban
culture by bringing jobs back like coal mining or manufacturing jobs to Northwood Michigan.
It is quite possible that Trump can win again in these areas despite implementing neoliberal policies. And it isn't that Democrats
don't have an economic message, they do. But it is one that includes and supports a much wider cultural base and one that many
of that WWC that voted for Trump don't want to hear.
I-Myslef 3/22/2017 1:37 PM EDT
NO. The Rust Belt was handed over to him by Bernie and non stop assault on Clinton and trade ...
Got my Economics Degree in 1971 – when they still taught the stuff. Maybe I
shouldn't, but I still go nuts when educated writers like yourself distort the origins of
Fascism. It was a three legged stool consisting of government, industry and labor. Taking
care of the working class was a key element. Also, being socialist, it was not market
oriented. Neoliberalism is exactly the opposite with it's 'lump of labor' and unregulated
markets. It arose in defense of the crushing fist of western capitalism and, had it not
been taken over by dictators, might have done the world a lot of good. Other than that you
wrote a nice piece. Keep it up
"... Trump's vision would seem to include protection of core industries, existing demographics and cultural institutions combined with an end of "democratization," which will result in an acceptance of foreign autocratic or non-conforming regimes as long as they do not pose military or economic threats. ..."
"... Sounds good, I countered but there is a space between genius and idiocy and that would be called insanity, best illustrated by impulsive, irrational behavior coupled with acute hypersensitivity over perceived personal insults and a demonstrated inability to comprehend either generally accepted facts or basic norms of personal and group behavior. ..."
"... Trump's basic objections were that Washington is subsidizing the defense of a wealthy Europe and thereby maintaining unnecessarily a relationship that perpetuates a state of no-war no-peace between Russia and the West. ..."
"... And the neoconservatives and globalists are striking back hard to make sure that détente stays in a bottle hidden somewhere on a shelf in the White House cloak room. Always adept at the creation of new front groups, the neocons have now launched something called the Renew Democracy Initiative (RDI), with the goal of "uni[ting] the center-left and the center-right." Its founders include the redoubtable Max Boot, The Washington Post's Anne Appelbaum, the inevitable Bill Kristol, and Richard Hurwitz of Council on Foreign Relations. RDI's website predictably calls for "fresh thinking" and envisions "the best minds from different countries com[ing] together for both broad and discrete projects in the service of liberty and democracy in the West and beyond." It argues that "Liberal democracy is in crisis around the world, besieged by authoritarianism, nationalism, and other illiberal forces. Far-right parties are gaining traction in Europe, Vladimir Putin tightens his grip on Russia and undermines democracy abroad, and America struggles with poisonous threats from the right and left." ..."
"... There are also the internal contradictions in what Trump appears to be doing, suggesting that a brighter future might not be on the horizon even if giving the Europeans a possibly deserved bloody nose over their refusal to spend money defending themselves provides some satisfaction. In the last week alone in Syria the White House has quietly renewed funding for the so-called White Helmets, a terrorist front group. It has also warned that it will take action against the Syrian government for any violation of a "de-escalation zone" in the country's southwest that has been under the control of Washington. That means that the U.S., which is in Syria illegally, is warning that country's legitimate government that it should not attempt to re-establish control over a region that was until recently ruled by terrorists. ..."
"... In Syria there have been two pointless cruise missile attacks and a trap set up to kill Russian mercenaries. Washington's stated intention is to destabilize and replace President Bashar al-Assad while continuing the occupation of the Syrian oil fields. And in Afghanistan there are now more troops on the ground than there were on inauguration day together with no plan to bring them home. It is reported that the Pentagon has a twenty-year plan to finish the job but no one actually believes it will work. ..."
"... The United States is constructing new drone bases in Africa and Asia. It also has a new military base in Israel which will serve as a tripwire for automatic American involvement if Israel goes to war and has given the green light to the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians. ..."
"... And then there are the petty insults that do not behoove a great power. A friend recently attended the Russian National Day celebration at the embassy in Washington. He reported that the U.S. government completely boycotted the event, together with its allies in Western Europe and the anglosphere, resulting in sparse attendance. It is the kind of slight that causes attitudes to shift when the time comes for serious negotiating. It is unnecessary and it is precisely the sort of thing that Russian President Vladimir Putin is referring to when he asks that his country be treated with "respect." The White House could have sent a delegation to attend the national day. Trump could have arranged it with a phone call, but he didn't. ..."
"... Winston Churchill once reportedly said that to "Jaw, jaw, jaw is better than war, war, war." As one of the twentieth century's leading warmongers, he may not have actually meant it, but in principle he was right. So let us hope for the best coming out of Singapore and also for the G-7 or what replaces it in the future. But don't be confused or diverted by presidential grandstanding. Watch what else is going on outside the limelight and, at least for the present, it is not pretty. ..."
"... Phil nails it as usual. Like him, I'm not very optimistic. Whether overall one approves or disapproves of Trump (and count me as a disapprover), it is obvious that most of the government is operating outside his control and this includes many of his own appointees. The continuities of US policy are far deeper than the apparent discontinuities. ..."
I had coffee with a foreign friend a week ago. The subject of Donald Trump inevitably came
up and my friend said that he was torn between describing Trump as a genius or as an idiot, but
was inclined to lean towards genius. He explained that Trump was willy-nilly establishing a new
world order that will succeed the institutionally exhausted post-World War 2 financial and
political arrangements that more-or-less established U.S. hegemony over the "free world." The
Bretton Woods agreement and the founding of the United Nations institutionalized the spread of
liberal democracy and free trade, creating a new, post war international order under the firm
control of the United States with the American dollar as the benchmark currency. Trump is now
rejecting what has become an increasingly dominant global world order in favor of returning to
a nineteenth century style nationalism that has become popular as countries struggle to retain
their cultural and political identifies. Trump's vision would seem to include protection of
core industries, existing demographics and cultural institutions combined with an end of
"democratization," which will result in an acceptance of foreign autocratic or non-conforming
regimes as long as they do not pose military or economic threats.
Sounds good, I countered but there is a space between genius and idiocy and that would be
called insanity, best illustrated by impulsive, irrational behavior coupled with acute
hypersensitivity over perceived personal insults and a demonstrated inability to comprehend
either generally accepted facts or basic norms of personal and group behavior.
Inevitably, I have other friends who follow foreign policy closely that have various
interpretations of the Trump phenomenon. One sees the respectful meeting with Kim Jong-un of
North Korea as a bit of brilliant statesmanship, potentially breaking a sixty-five year logjam
and possibly opening the door to further discussions that might well avert a nuclear war. And
the week also brought a Trump welcome suggestion that Russia should be asked to rejoin the G-7
group of major industrialized democracies, which also has to be seen as a positive step. There
has also been talk of a Russia-U.S. summit similar to that with North Korea to iron out
differences, an initiative that was first suggested by Trump and then agreed to by Russian
President Vladimir Putin. There will inevitably be powerful resistance to such an arrangement
coming primarily from the U.S. media and from Congress, but Donald Trump seems to fancy the
prospect and it just might take place.
One good friend even puts a positive spin on Trump's insulting behavior towards America's
traditional allies at the recent G-7 meeting in Canada. She observes that Trump's basic
objections were that Washington is subsidizing the defense of a wealthy Europe and thereby
maintaining unnecessarily a relationship that perpetuates a state of no-war no-peace between
Russia and the West. And the military costs exacerbate some genuine serious trade imbalances
that damage the U.S. economy. If Trumpism prevails, G-7 will become a forum for discussions of
trade and economic relations and will become less a club of nations aligned military against
Russia and, eventually, China. As she put it, changing its constituency would be a triumph of
"mercantilism" over "imperialism." The now pointless NATO alliance might well find itself
without much support if the members actually have to fully fund it proportionate to their GDPs
and could easily fade away, which would be a blessing for everyone.
My objection to nearly all the arguments being made in favor or opposed to what occurred in
Singapore last week is that the summit is being seen out of context, as is the outreach to
Russia at G-7. Those who are in some cases violently opposed to the outcome of the talks with
North Korea are, to be sure, sufferers from Trump Derangement Syndrome, where they hate
anything he does and spin their responses to cast him in the most negative terms possible. Some
others who choose to see daylight in spite of the essential emptiness of the "agreement" are
perhaps being overly optimistic while likewise ignoring what else is going on.
And the neoconservatives and globalists are striking back hard to make sure that
détente stays in a bottle hidden somewhere on a shelf in the White House cloak room.
Always adept at the creation of new front groups, the neocons have now launched something
called the Renew Democracy Initiative (RDI), with the goal of "uni[ting] the center-left and
the center-right." Its founders include the redoubtable Max Boot, The Washington Post's Anne
Appelbaum, the inevitable Bill Kristol, and Richard Hurwitz of Council on Foreign Relations.
RDI's website predictably calls for "fresh thinking" and envisions "the best minds from
different countries com[ing] together for both broad and discrete projects in the service of
liberty and democracy in the West and beyond." It argues that "Liberal democracy is in crisis
around the world, besieged by authoritarianism, nationalism, and other illiberal forces.
Far-right parties are gaining traction in Europe, Vladimir Putin tightens his grip on Russia
and undermines democracy abroad, and America struggles with poisonous threats from the right
and left."
There are also the internal contradictions in what Trump appears to be doing, suggesting
that a brighter future might not be on the horizon even if giving the Europeans a possibly
deserved bloody nose over their refusal to spend money defending themselves provides some
satisfaction. In the last week alone in Syria the White House has quietly renewed funding for
the so-called White Helmets, a terrorist front group. It has also warned that it will take
action against the Syrian government for any violation of a "de-escalation zone" in the
country's southwest that has been under the control of Washington. That means that the U.S.,
which is in Syria illegally, is warning that country's legitimate government that it should not
attempt to re-establish control over a region that was until recently ruled by
terrorists.
And then there is also Donald Trump's recent renunciation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of
Action (JCPOA), eliminating a successful program that was preventing nuclear proliferation on
the part of Iran and replacing it with nothing whatsoever apart from war as a possible way of
dealing with the potential problem. Indeed, Trump has been prepared to use military force on
impulse, even when there is no clear casus belli. In Syria there have been two pointless
cruise missile attacks and a trap set up to kill Russian mercenaries. Washington's stated
intention is to destabilize and replace President Bashar al-Assad while continuing the
occupation of the Syrian oil fields. And in Afghanistan there are now more troops on the ground
than there were on inauguration day together with no plan to bring them home. It is reported
that the Pentagon has a twenty-year plan to finish the job but no one actually believes it will
work.
The United States is constructing new drone bases in Africa and Asia. It also has a new
military base in Israel which will serve as a tripwire for automatic American involvement if
Israel goes to war and has given the green light to the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians.
In Latin America, Washington has backed off from détente with Cuba and has been
periodically threatening some kind of intervention in Venezuela. In Europe, it is engaged in
aggressive war games on the Russian borders, most recently in Norway and Poland. The
Administration has ordered increased involvement in Somalia and has special ops units operating
– and dying – worldwide. Overall, it is hardly a return to the Garden of Eden.
And then there are the petty insults that do not behoove a great power. A friend recently
attended the Russian National Day celebration at the embassy in Washington. He reported that
the U.S. government completely boycotted the event, together with its allies in Western Europe
and the anglosphere, resulting in sparse attendance. It is the kind of slight that causes
attitudes to shift when the time comes for serious negotiating. It is unnecessary and it is
precisely the sort of thing that Russian President Vladimir Putin is referring to when he asks
that his country be treated with "respect." The White House could have sent a delegation to
attend the national day. Trump could have arranged it with a phone call, but he didn't.
Winston Churchill once reportedly said that to "Jaw, jaw, jaw is better than war, war, war."
As one of the twentieth century's leading warmongers, he may not have actually meant it, but in
principle he was right. So let us hope for the best coming out of Singapore and also for the
G-7 or what replaces it in the future. But don't be confused or diverted by presidential
grandstanding. Watch what else is going on outside the limelight and, at least for the present,
it is not pretty.
The Establishment (which includes both major political parties) is furious that Trump may be
defusing the (very real) nuclear threat from Kim for the price of a few plane tickets and
dinners, while the Establishment was gung-ho for throwing away a few trillion dollars,
hundreds of thousands of innocent lives, and our nation's once-good reputation in the process
of neutralizing Saddam Hussein, who didn't even have any nukes to begin with. Yep, they're
sore all right.
Phil nails it as usual. Like him, I'm not very optimistic. Whether overall one approves or
disapproves of Trump (and count me as a disapprover), it is obvious that most of the
government is operating outside his control and this includes many of his own appointees. The
continuities of US policy are far deeper than the apparent discontinuities.
It is a very sad day to admin the neocon Kristof ( see Robert Parry evalution of this guy at
America's Journalistic Hypocrites – Consortiumnews
) is mostly right in his one year old Trump evaluation. Rephazing Oscar Wilde (
Notable quotes:
"... But while you voted for Trump because you put faith in his gauzy pledges, I bet he will do no better with campaign promises than with marriage vows. ..."
"... The biggest Trump bait-and-switch was visible Friday when he talked about giving Americans "access" to health care. That's a scam his administration is moving toward, with millions of Americans likely to lose health insurance: Instead of promising insurance coverage, Trump now promises " access " -- and if you can't afford it, tough luck. ..."
"... This promise of "access" is an echo of Marie Antoinette. In Trump's worldview, starving French peasants wouldn't have needed bread because they had "access" to cake. ..."
"... Let's not get distracted by his howls or tweets. What's most important at this moment is not Trump's theatrics, but the policies he is putting in place in areas like health care and immigration that will devastate the lives of ordinary Americans. ..."
"... The truth is that among the biggest losers from Trump policies will be you Trump voters, especially those of you from the working and middle class. You were hoping you'd elected a savior, and instead Donald Trump is doing to you what he did to just about everyone who ever trusted him: He's betraying you. ..."
You've been had. President Trump sold you a clunker. Now that he's in the White House, he's betraying you -- and I'm writing in
hopes that you'll recognize that betrayal and hold him accountable.
Trump spoke to your genuine pain, to the fading of the American dream, and he won your votes. But will he deliver? Please watch
his speeches carefully. You'll notice that he promises outcomes, without explaining how they'll be achieved. He's a carnival huckster
promising that America will thrive with his snake oil.
"We're going to win, we're going to win big, folks," Trump declared Friday at the CPAC meeting, speaking of his foreign policy.
Great! Problem solved. Next? He then outlined his take on drug trafficking and what will surely be his outcome:
"No good. No good. Going to stop." Wow! Why didn't anyone else think of that?
Similarly, all looks rosy for tax outcomes: "We're going to massively lower taxes on the middle class," Trump said.
But that seems like a classic shell game. The Tax Policy Center
estimated that
Trump's tax plan (to the extent that there is one) would hugely increase the federal debt and give middle-income households an average
tax cut of $1,010, or 1.8 percent of after-tax income -- while the top 1 percent would save $214,690, or 13.5 percent of after-tax
income.
Trump made more than 280 campaign promises as a candidate, and a few -- such as infrastructure spending to create jobs -- would
be sensible if done right. But there still is no infrastructure plan, and The Washington Post Fact Checker
is tracking
60 specific campaign promises and found only six cases so far of promises kept.
It's still early, and Trump has nominated a smart conservative to the Supreme Court and followed his campaign line on issues like
barring refugees.
But while you voted for Trump because you put faith in his gauzy pledges, I bet he will do no better with campaign promises
than with marriage vows.
Health care will be one of the greatest betrayals. On Friday, he described his plan: "We're going to make it much better, we're
going to make it less expensive."
Yet the steps that Republicans seem likely to take on health care will hurt ordinary Americans.
For example, Trump seems poised to weaken the
contraception
mandate for insurance coverage and curb funding for women's health clinics. The upshot will likely be more unintended pregnancies,
more abortions, more unplanned births -- and more women dying of cervical cancer.
The biggest Trump bait-and-switch was visible Friday when he talked about giving Americans "access" to health care. That's
a scam his administration is moving toward, with millions of Americans likely to lose health insurance: Instead of promising insurance
coverage, Trump now promises " access
" -- and if you can't afford it, tough luck.
This promise of "access" is an echo of Marie Antoinette. In Trump's worldview, starving French peasants wouldn't have needed
bread because they had "access" to cake.
Many of you voted for Trump because he campaigned as a populist. But instead of draining the swamp, he's wallowing in it and monetizing
the presidency. He retains his financial interests, refuses to release his taxes or explain what financial leverage Russia may have
over him, and doubled the fee to join Mar-a-Lago to $200,000.
The greatest betrayal of all will come if, as some of his
advisers
recommend , he "reforms" and tears holes in some of the big safety net programs like Medicaid, Social Security or Medicare. Medicaid
is particularly vulnerable.
Trump howls at the news media, not just because it embarrasses him, but because it provides an institutional check on his lies,
incompetence and conflicts of interest. But we can take his vitriol: When the time comes, we will write Trump's obituary, not the
other way around.
Let's not get distracted by his howls or tweets. What's most important at this moment is not Trump's theatrics, but the policies
he is putting in place in areas like health care and immigration that will devastate the lives of ordinary Americans.
Trump's career has often been built on scamming people who put their faith in him, as Trump University shows. Now he's moved the
scam to a much bigger stage, and he boasts of targeting Muslims, refugees and unauthorized immigrants.
Please don't cheer, or acquiesce in these initial targets. The truth is that among the biggest losers from Trump policies
will be you Trump voters, especially those of you from the working and middle class. You were hoping you'd elected a savior, and
instead Donald Trump is doing to you what he did to just about everyone who ever trusted him: He's betraying you.
The sooner you recognize that, the sooner you can fight back and push for policies that will protect your health care and Social
Security, defend the integrity of our election system and protect your own interests. You have a false savior, and you will have
to turn on him to save yourselves and our nation.
Questionable but interesting. "Trump's "policy" is simply a reflection of his character as a narcissistic, arrogant
bully.
To "make America great again" means for him "make America the Global Bully" again." Trump really believe like a typical bully.
In case of tough resistance he folds and appologize. Otherwise he tries to press opooneent into complete submission.
Notable quotes:
"... The underlying assumption of Trump's strategic thinking is that 'power works': the more intransigent his posture, the greater his belief in a unipolar world based on US power. As a corollary, Trump interprets any ally, adversary, competitor who seeks negotiations, reciprocity or concessions is 'weak' and should be pressured or forced to concede greater concessions and further retreats and sacrifices, up to the ultimate goal of surrender and submission. ..."
"... Trump views President Rohani as a rug seller not a military strategist. Trump believes that an economic squeeze will lead President Rohani to sacrifice his allies in Syria, Lebanon (Hezbollah), Yemen (Houthi), Palestine (Hamas) and Iraq (Shia)and to dismantle its ICBM defense strategy. ..."
"... Trump pursues the strategic goal of weakening Iran and preparing a regime change, reverting Iran into a client state – as it was prior to the 1979 revolution under the Shah. ..."
"... Trump recognizes and submits to Zionist-Israeli dictates because they have unprecedented power in the media, real estate, finance and insurance (FIRE). Trump recognizes the ZPC's power to buy Congressional votes, control both political parties and secure appointments in the executive branch. ..."
"... Trump is the typical authoritarian: at the throat of the weak, citizens, allies and adversaries and on his knees before the powerful ZPC, the military and Wall Street. ..."
"... Trump's unilateral declaration of a trade war against China accompanied his belief that military threats led to North Korea's "capitulation" – its promise to end its nuclear program. ..."
"... Is Trump playing the Nixon-Kissinger 'madman' tactic, in which the Secretary of State tells adversaries to accept his 'reasonable' demands or face the worst from the President? I don't think so. ..."
"... China got Trumps to waiver ZTE ruling, with Huawei declared no longer a threat to US security. ..."
"... "Speaking to soon-to-be graduates of the Virginia Military Institute on Wednesday, Tillerson dropped this truth bomb: "If our leaders seek to conceal the truth, or we as people become accepting of alternative realities that are no longer grounded in facts, then we as American citizens are on a pathway to relinquishing our freedom." Woof. ..."
For some time, critics of President Trump's policies have attributed them to a mental
disorder; uncontrolled manic-depression, narcissus bullying and other pathologies. The question
of Trump's mental health raises a deeper question: why do his pathologies take a specific
political direction? Moreover, Trump's decisions have a political history and background, and
follow from a logic and belief in the reason and logic of imperial power.
We will examine the reason why Trump has embraced three strategic decisions which have
world-historic consequences, namely: Trump's reneging the nuclear accord with Iran ;Trump's
declaration of a trade war with China; and Trump's meeting with North Korea.
In brief we will explore the political reasons for his decisions; what he expects to gain;
and what is his game plan if he fails to secure his expected outcome and his adversaries take
reprisals.
Trump's Strategic Framework
The underlying assumption of Trump's strategic thinking is that 'power works': the more
intransigent his posture, the greater his belief in a unipolar world based on US power. As a
corollary, Trump interprets any ally, adversary, competitor who seeks negotiations, reciprocity
or concessions is 'weak' and should be pressured or forced to concede greater concessions and
further retreats and sacrifices, up to the ultimate goal of surrender and submission. In
other words, Trump's politics of force only recognizes counter-force: limitations in Trump's
policies will only result when tangible economic and military losses and costs in US lives
would undermine US imperial rule.
Reasons Why Trump Broke the Peace Accord with Iran
Trump broke the accord with Iran because the original agreement was based on retaining US
sanctions against Iran; the total dismantling of its nuclear program and calling into question
Iran's limited role on behalf of possible allies in the Middle East.
Iran's one-sided concessions; trading military defense for market opportunities encouraged
Trump to believe that he could intimidate Iran militarily by closing all its markets.
Trump views President Rohani as a rug seller not a military strategist. Trump believes
that an economic squeeze will lead President Rohani to sacrifice his allies in Syria, Lebanon
(Hezbollah), Yemen (Houthi), Palestine (Hamas) and Iraq (Shia)and to dismantle its ICBM defense
strategy.
Trump pursues the strategic goal of weakening Iran and preparing a regime change,
reverting Iran into a client state – as it was prior to the 1979 revolution under the
Shah.
The second reason for Trump's policy is to strengthen Israel's military power in the Middle
East. The Trump regime is deeply influenced by the Zionist power configuration (ZPC) in the US,
dubbed 'the Lobby'.
Trump recognizes and submits to Zionist-Israeli dictates because they have unprecedented
power in the media, real estate, finance and insurance (FIRE). Trump recognizes the ZPC's power
to buy Congressional votes, control both political parties and secure appointments in the
executive branch.
Trump is the typical authoritarian: at the throat of the weak, citizens, allies and
adversaries and on his knees before the powerful ZPC, the military and Wall Street.
Trump's submission to Zionist power reinforces and even dictates his decision to break the
peace accord with Iran and his willingness to pressure. France, Germany, the UK and Russia to
sacrifice billion-dollar trade agreements with Iran and to pursue a policy of pressuring
Teheran to accept part of Trump's agenda of unilateral disarmament and isolation. Trump
believes he can force the EU multi-nationals to disobey their governments and abide by
sanctions.
Reasons for Trump's Trade War with China
Prior to Trump's presidency, especially under President Obama, the US launched a trade war
and 'military pivot' to China. Obama proposed the Trans-Pacific Pact to exclude China and
directed an air and naval armada to the South China Sea. Obama established a high-powered
surveillance system in South Korea and supported war exercises on North Korea's border. Trump's
policy deepened and radicalized Obama's policies.
Trump extended Obama's bellicose policy toward North Korea, demanding the de-nuclearization
of its defense program. President Kim of North Korea and President Moon of South Korea reached
an agreement to open negotiations toward a peace accord ending nearly 60 years of
hostility.
However, President Trump joined the conversation on the presumption that North Korea's peace
overtures were due to his threats of war and intimidation. He insisted that any peace
settlement and end of economic sanctions would only be achieved by unilateral nuclear
disarmament, the maintenance of US forces on the peninsula and supervision by US approved
inspectors.
Trump's unilateral declaration of a trade war against China accompanied his belief that
military threats led to North Korea's "capitulation" – its promise to end its nuclear
program.
Trump slapped a trade tariff on over $100 billion dollars of Chinese exports in order to
reduce its trade imbalance by $200 billion over two years. He demanded China unilaterally end
industrial 'espionage', technological 'theft' (all phony accusations) and China's compliance
monitored quarterly by the US. Trump demanded that China not retaliate with tariffs or restrictions or face bigger
sanctions. Trump threatened to respond to any reciprocal tariff by Beijing, with greater tariffs, and
restrictions on Chinese goods and services.
Trump's goals seek to convert North Korea into a military satellite encroaching on China's
northern border; and a trade war that drives China into an economic crisis. Trump believes that as China declines as a world economic power, the US will grow and
dominate the Asian and world economy.
Trump believes a successful trade war will lead to a successful military war. Trump believes
that a submissive China, based on its isolation from the 'dynamic' US market, will enhance
Washington's quest for uncontested world domination.
Trump's Ten Erroneous Thesis
Trump's political agenda is deeply flawed! Breaking the nuclear agreement and imposing harsh
sanctions has isolated Trump from his European and Asian allies. His military intervention will
inflame a regional war that would destroy the Saudi oil fields. He will force Iran to pursue a
nuclear shield against US-Israeli aggression and lead to a prolonged, costly and ultimately
losing war.
Trump's policies will unify all Iranians, liberals and nationalist, and undermine US
collaborators. The entire Muslim world will unify forces and carry the conflict throughout
Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Tel Aviv's bombing [of Iran] will lead to counter-attacks
in Israel.
Oil prices will skyrocket, financial markets will collapse, industries will go bankrupt.
Trump's sanctions and military aggression against Iran will lead to mutual economic
destruction.
Trump's trade war with China will lead to the disruption of the supply chain which sustains
the US economy and especially the 500 US multi-nationals who depend on the Chinese economy for
exports to the US. China will increase domestic consumption, diversify its markets and trading
partners and reinforce its military alliance with Russia. China has greater resilience and
capacity to overcome short-term disruption and regain its dominant role as a global economic
power house.
Wall Street will suffer a catastrophic financial collapse and send the US into a world
depression.
Trump's negotiations with North Korea will go nowhere as long as he demands unilateral
nuclear disarmament, US military control over the peninsula and political isolation from
China.
Kim will insist on the end of sanctions, and a mutual defense treaty with China. Kim will
offer to end nuclear testing but not nuclear weapons. After Trump's reneged on the Iran deal,
Kim will recognize that agreements with the US are not trustworthy.
Conclusion
Trump's loud, threatening gestures are a real danger to world peace and justice. But his
assumptions about the consequences of his policy are deeply flawed. There is no basis to think
his sanctions will topple the Iranian regime; that Israel will survive unscathed from a war
with Iran: that an oil war will not undermine the US economy; that Europe will allow its
companies to be frozen out of the Iran market.
Trump's trade war with China is dead in the water. He cannot find alternative production
sites for US multi-nationals. He cannot freeze China out of the world market, since they have
links with five continents. Trump cannot dominate North Korea and force it to sacrifice its
sovereignty on the basis of empty economic promises to lift sanctions. Trump is heading for
defeats on all counts. But he may take the American people into the nuclear abyss in the
process.
Epilogue
Are Trump's threats of war part of a strategy of bluff and bombast designed to intimidate,
in order to secure political advantages? Is Trump playing the Nixon-Kissinger 'madman'
tactic, in which the Secretary of State tells adversaries to accept his 'reasonable' demands or
face the worst from the President? I don't think so.
Nixon unlike Trump was not led by the nose by Israel. Nixon unlike Trump was not led by
pro-nuclear war advisers. Nixon in contrast to Trump opened the US to trade with China and
signed nuclear reduction agreements with Russia. Nixon successfully promoted peaceful
co-existence.
"Trump's sanctions and military aggression against Iran will lead to mutual economic
destruction."
indeed they will, and sadly it well deserved after the last 20yrs off US terrorism.
the US hubris will soon meet karma, and we all know karma is a bitch..
You didn't have to be genius to see this coming. In fact, NK played Trump as
expected. Anything else would have been gross negligence by their diplomatic
negotiators. Getting Trump to speculate about a prospective Nobel (for himself) for bringing nuclear
peace to the Pacific was baiting the hook nicely.
The US is now dealing from a position of weakness. Let's see what NK can extract in terms of
keeping their weapons and gaining economic assistance in return for getting the meetings back
on track.
This theory is the opposite of what I suppose is the right explanation, the explanation also
given by prof Laslo Maracs, UVA Amsterdam, that Trump and his rich friends understand that
the USA can to longer control the world, conquering the rest of the world totally out of the
question.
The end of the British empire began before 1914, when the twe fleet standard had to lowered
to one fleet.
Obama had to do something similar, the USA capability of fighting two wars at the time was
lowered to one and half.
What half a war accomplishes we see in Syria.
In the thirties the British, some of them, knew quite well they could no longer defend their
empire, at the time this meant controlling the Meditarranean and the Far East.
Lawrence R. Pratt, 'East of Malta, West of Suez', London, 1975
The British guarantees to Poland and countries bordering on the Med lighted the fuse to the
powder keg that had been standing for a long time.
Churchill won, the British thought, and some of them think it still, WWII.
But shortly after WWII some British understood 'we won the war, but lost the peace'.
I still have the idea that Trump has no intention of losing the peace, but time will tell.
I suppose Trump just is buying time against Deep State and Netanyahu.
The fool Netanyahu is happy with having got Jerusalem, he does not see the cost in increased
hatred among Muslims, and Israel having won the Eurovision Song Festival.
Trump's "policy" is simply a reflection of his character as a narcissistic, arrogant
bully.
To "make America great again" means for him "make America the Global Bully" again.
However, behind the facade of all his bravado hides a puppet of the Jewish Power Structure,
which is even more dangerous than Trump himself. "Make Zion Great Again" would be a more
apposite slogan.
Wall Street collapsing will not cause a world depression, but will reflect the very real
depression that will arise from huge disruptions to the US supply chain and energy costs and
the knock-on effect that will have on the global economy.
A strike on Iran won't by itself be enough to cripple the US economy, but the loss of a
single aircraft carrier might be enough of a pull on a thread that unravels the magical
mantle of military force that currently holds the empire together and keeps the vassal-states
in line to cause things to go pear-shaped quickly.
Nobody can accuse Donald of not being obedient executioner of tasks given by his Masters.
You don't have to be dark skinned to reside in Masters quarters, orange haired and white is
ok too..
Overall a good analysis, but as far as his support of Israel is concerned, his family
connections with the most ultra-Zionist factions should not be overlooked.
Trump believes that as China declines as a world economic power, the US will grow and
dominate the Asian and world economy.
On what basis does the author say that? Trump is smart enough to know that China is
growing as an economic and military power, not declining.
A fairly poorly (and likely hastily) written article.
Trump is under the control of Zionists just as is the U.S. gov with Zionist dual citizens in
control of every facet and has been since 1913 when the Zionists created the FED and the IRS.
Trump is like the Roman emperor Caligula and is a Trojan Horse for the Zionist agenda of a
NWO and is continuing the tradition of the U.S. gov breaking its word about everything, just
ask the native American Indians.
The nuke agreement with Iran was a sham. Iran lied about what they were doing. The agreement
had never been submitted to the Senate and so was never ratified. Our "allies" in Europe and
Asia knew that and their reaction has not been nearly as negative as the author of this
column has claimed.
I continue to admire President Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Xi of China. WHY? .because
RESULTS matter more than opinions on internet websites, T.V., or in printed publications.
N. Korea has stopped performing ICBM or nuke tests, a less extremist regime change "coup"
took place in Saudi Arabia, financing/ weapons flows / intelligence to Syrian terrorists has
dried up with resulting collapse of ISIS, Iran is threatening to release the names of
European & American politicians who previously made millions / billions off the Iran nuke
deal if it is dropped, Harvey Weinstein, Allison Mack, and "Weiner" were untouchable before
Trump, the list just goes on and continues to get bigger.
A major reason for admiration of Putin is that the Mainstream Media (MSM) can't stop
demonizing him. So of course I'm logically led to believe that he is mostly a good guy since
the MSM has proven itself repeatedly to distort the Truth. Putin also largely ended the
oligarchs power, doubled Russian citizens income, used an tiny Russian military in Syria to
gradually reverse ISIS expansion there, improved Russia's internal manufacturing,
agricultural, mining, and technological research/ development, intellectually crushed
international debate opponents repeated using only logic and facts (You should watch the
videos!), built / rebuilt over 10 thousand churches, has patriotic Muslims (Crimea) fighting
for Russia in Syria, etc. etc.
Xi of China has pretty impressive creditials but this post is
overly long anyway.
RESULTS COUNT MORE THAN WORDS!
Of course they do this, they would be stupid if they didn't.
• Agree: CalDre
I like your frankness. Every countries is into this at different degree, with ZUS the
apex. But been leading in most tech area currently & lazy to produce any useful things,
ZUS is very unhappy that their esponage net result is negative, hence the continuous
whining.
When tide reverse with China leading in most tech, ZUS will complaint about complex patent
system as been flawed in exploitating & suppressing of weaker country innovation, juz as
it did for WTO & Globalization now.
Of course any moronic comments about only China is espionaging US IPR & rise purely due
to US FDI & Tech transfer will resonate CalDre into high chime.
Well, he is not meeting with North Korea either, since Kim didn't chicken out, and is not
that stupid as to offer his head on the plate! Bolton made sure of that.
Hastily written article cobbled by bits of public info here & there without deep
analysis.
1. Today NK declared they have indefinitely terminate all high level exchange with SK. If
Trumps insisted on another Libya & Iraq defank & ending model advocate by Bolton,
meeting with Trumps will be cancelled. Trumps needs the Korea peace credit to get his Nobel
Prize, so as to booster his coming Nov election win. Kim has baited Trumps to put him in
tight corner now, hence WH still insisting to go ahead prepare for the meeting.
If venue does changed to Beijing from Trumps' choice of Spore (Kim's cargo plane can't fly
his limousine so far, also a risk of him as Spore is US vassal), we will see Kim has K.O.
Trumps in another round. Kim will get to keep its nuke weapon until USM remove its Korea
present, clear all sanctions, with UNSC guaranteed its safety. If Trumps has the meeting
cancelled, then China can roll out its own play book as unchallenged leader in solving Korea
crisis. Either way, Trumps will lost influence to China.
2. Trade war with China has exposed ZUS deep weakness in its brinkmanship when china
retaliated with no compromise. Four most senior trade & treasury secs scrambled 10,000
miles to Beijing to seek detente, but return empty handed in 2 days with their ridiculous
demands in hubris. Still China got Trumps to waiver ZTE ruling, with Huawei declared no
longer a threat to US security.
Btw, this author has wrongly written about the $100B trade tariff, its only $50B so far.
Another additional $100B is only a empty threat ZUS dare not release to avoid China
retaliation.
3. JCPOA cancelling is godsend move.
First, EU with Germany & France having huge investments in Iran is crying loud that they
have to be free from been ZUS vassal. If they caved in to ZUS sanction threat, then EU bosses – Macron & Merkel will
face revolt from Europe business sector. China & Russia will be happy to pick up whatever
investments in fire sales.
If EU decided to rebel & chart its own destiny with a little spine, then ZUS has lost
its tight clutch over EU. EU has juz announced to trade Iran oil in Euro, hasten
de-dollarization. The geopolitical game is changing tide. In either way of EU decision, China
& Russia win.
Now Iran will continue to enjoy free trades with everyone except ZUS that it dislike most,
& win moral high ground in international standing by keeping to JCPOA.
ZUS has juz ordered Trumps to shoot its own foot. It pay the high price of losing every
credibility in international agreement, forced EU into seeking independency, have EU trade in
Euro, with Iran, China & Russia all smiling.
Of course, but I just wanted to make a point not write a book or even a PhD thesis. thanks
for the supplementary material though. Your comments about oil are spot on as you know. The wars were about smashing some real
competition.
Somebody has to shovel the BS occasionally, to keep the smell down here. I guess it's my
turn today, sigh.
The nuke agreement with Iran was a sham. Iran lied about what they were doing.
Then the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and many of the major European
countries must also be lying when they say that Iran is fully complying with the JCPOA.
The agreement had never been submitted to the Senate and so was never ratified.
The United Nations Security Council endorsed the JCPOA; see UNSC resolution 2231.
According to the UN treaty, UNSC resolutions are automatically the law of the land,
even in the USA -- no Senate ratification needed.
Have you ever made a comment that was other than your mere and clearly biased opinion? Try
it sometime; it would be interesting to see what evidence you provide to support such
transparently erroneous ideas.
Trump's only strategy is to do what Israel orders him to do. The Neocon Jews and their friends including the Jew In Chief of
the White House Jared Kushner are running the show. You can easily see this in ... Niki Haley's presentation before the UN including
walking out before the Palestinian Rep had a chance to speak.
Trump is up to his arms in shady deals with Jewish financiers of his properties and they
will get what they want from him politically. It's Israel against the world and the US is
nothing more than their war whore. More people will die for this strategy that comes from
formerly Tel Aviv and now from the Magic Jewish Capital called Jerusalem.
New York City's Hip Hop station Hot 97's morning show, "Ebro in the Morning," dedicated an
entire segment to yesterday's demonstration in Gaza where the two blasted Israel and
President Donald Trump http://pic.twitter.com/43XIqhKFWZ
-- Gigi Hadid (@GiGiHadid) May 15, 2018
Hadid posted screen shots of Al Jazeera's coverage alongside an image of the Nakba with text
written by a relative,
"Almost One Million Palestinians were violently forced out of their country and never allowed
back to Palestine. The Hadid family was amongst them and they fled in fear to Syria where
they became refugees."
Why are these important? Because they have millions of followers on social media .because
their audience and followers are the coming voter and leadership force .for better or worse
..and for Israel its the 'worse'.
Gigi Hadid for instance has 9 million followers on twitter.
Giuliani: Mueller's team told Trump's lawyers they can't indict a president
This true. BUT ..'if' any criminal wrong doing by Trump before he was president is revealed in the
course of the Russia investigation he can be indicted for that after he is out of office. IN ADDITION ..'if' any criminal wrong doing is revealed in Trump's businesses then any
persons involved in it within his businesses including his sons or daughter can be indicted. And now, as they have no presidential protection.
imo .this is what Trump is most afraid of ..some criminal business like money laundering
being exposed. not that Mueller will find Russian election collusion.
"Speaking to soon-to-be graduates of the Virginia Military Institute on Wednesday,
Tillerson dropped this truth bomb:
"If our leaders seek to conceal the truth, or we as people become accepting of alternative
realities that are no longer grounded in facts, then we as American citizens are on a pathway
to relinquishing our freedom."
Woof.
..
Why is this important? Because the graduating class of VMI selects its speakers so that
tells you where the minds of the elite military schools are on Trumpism.
"... I agree Trump is an Israeli Flunky, but he likes Missile Strikes, so I think the Missile Strike, his second on Syria, was as much his idea as it was Israel's. It makes for great Optics. It makes Trump, in his Twisted Mind at least, look Big & Strong throwing Rocks at Toddlers in their Playpens. ..."
I suspect that only Israel had any real interest in saving the face of their hired
boogeyman. Trump being a flunky of Israeli, he did what he had to do.
I agree Trump is an Israeli Flunky, but he likes Missile Strikes, so I think the
Missile Strike, his second on Syria, was as much his idea as it was Israel's. It makes for
great Optics. It makes Trump, in his Twisted Mind at least, look Big & Strong throwing
Rocks at Toddlers in their Playpens.
Ultimately Trump is a typical playground bully, he's a bullshitter, a blowhard. All talk.
Trump was the same with Kim, and is the same with Putin and Assad.
Like all bullies underneath he is a coward, he threatens Putin with ridiculous teenager
Tweet threats, but as soon as Putin but back Trump backpeddles.
In an age of fake news and endless propaganda it's very difficult these days to see the woods
from the trees... The words butcher and thug are easily thrown around in the Syrian civil
war.
It appears some people have short memories as it wasn't that long ago when we were witnessing
the alternative world of Islamic State in Syria. Head choppers running amok and anyone
suspected of being gay being chucked off tall buildings. Women being flogged to death for
trumped up charges of adultery. Kids having their hands cut off for stealing apples.
To make matters worse these sadistic psychopaths were armed and driving around in vehicles
supplied by the West... It had developed into a living hell for many as the death cult of
Isis took hold.
I remember the so called thug Putin saying someone had to take on these terrorists...
The West were reluctant to do the dirty work required... So it came down to Russia to get
boots on the ground to help defeat Islamic State.
Why does the UK supply the terror supporters of the Arabian Peninsula with weapons while
fighting and vilifying Assad? This is real hypocrisy. Yemenis suffer horrendously from Saudi
attacks, the UK's close friends. Assad always guaranteed religious freedom and Syrians
enjoyed much more freedom than any of the Middle Eastern countries.
What's actually is disconcerting is the fact that mainline media have taken the alleged
chemical attack as a fact. They don't have their reporters on the ground or even Western
military personnel in the area. But a claim and some unauthenticated videos from headchoppers
are taken as a fact. A fact which is not allowed to be tested or critiqued. Does it mean they
just want more bombs and missiles to hammer Syria and any reason/justification would do?
Now the color revolution against Trump just does not make any sense. We got to the point
where Trump=Hillary. Muller should embrace and kiss Trump and go home... Nobody care if Trump is impeached anymore.
Donald Trump's far-right loyal fans must be really pissed off right now after permanently
switching himself to pro-war mode with that evil,
warmongering triplet in charge and the second bombing against Syria. Even worse,
this time he has done it together with Theresa May and the neoliberal globalist Emmanuel
Macron.
We can tell that by watching the mind-blowing reactions of one of his most fanatic alt-right
media supporters: Alex Jones. Jones nearly cried(!) in front of the camera, feeling betrayed
from his 'anti-establishment', 'anti-interventionist' idol and declared that he won't support
Trump anymore. Well, what did you expect, Alex? expect, Alex?
A
year before the 2016 US national elections, the blog already warned that Trump is a pure
product of the neoliberal barbarism , stating that the rhetoric of extreme cynicism
used by Trump goes back to the Thatcherian cynicism and the division of people between
"capable" and "useless".
Right after the elections, we supported that the US
establishment gave a brilliant performance by putting its reserve, Donald Trump, in
power, against the only candidate that the same establishment identified as a real threat:
Bernie Sanders. Right after the elections, we supported that the US
establishment gave a brilliant performance by putting its reserve, Donald Trump, in
power, against the only candidate that the same establishment identified as a real threat:
Bernie Sanders.
The only hope that has been left, was to resist against starting a war with Russia, as the US
deep state (and Hillary of course) wanted. Well, it was proven to be only a hope too. Last
year, Trump bombed Syria under the same pretext resembling the lies that led us to the Iraq war
disaster. Despite the fact that the US Tomahawk missile attack had zero value in operational
level (the United States allegedly warned Russia and Syria, while the targeted airport was
operating normally just hours after the attack), Trump sent a clear message to the US deep
state that he is prepared to meet all its demands - and especially the escalation of
confrontation with Russia. Indeed, a year later, Trump already built a pro-war team that
includes the most bloodthirsty, hawkish triplet.
And then, Donnie ordered a second airstrike against Syria, together with his neo-colonial
friends.
It seems that neither this strike was a serious attempt against the Syrian army and its allies.
Yet, Donnie probably won't dare to escalate tension in the Syrian battlefield before the next
US national elections. That's because many of his supporters are already pissed off with him
and therefore, he wants to go with good chances for a second term.
Although we really hope that we are are wrong this time, we guess that, surrounded by all these
warmongering hawks, Donnie, in a potential second term, will be pushed to open another war
front in Syria and probably in Iran, defying the Russians and the consequent danger for a
WWIII.
Poor Alex et al: we told you about Trump from the beginning. You didn't listen ...
Trump became a despicable warmonger. That true. And undisputable after the recent attack on
Syria ("operation Stormy Daniels"). But was it War Party that coerced him or were other processes
involved?
The main weakness of Buchanan hypothecs is that it is unclear wether Trump was coerced by War
Party, or he was "Republican Obama" from the very beginning performing classic "bait and switch"
operation on gullible electorate (as in "change we can believe in") . The second hypothesis is
now strong then the fist and supported by more fact. just look at the "troika" of
Haley-Bolton-Pompeo -- all three were voluntarily selected by the President and all three are
rabid neocons. So it looks liek no or little coercion from the War Party was necessary.
Notable quotes:
"... Wall Street Journal ..."
"... Defense Secretary James Mattis called the U.S.-British-French attack a "one-shot" deal. British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson appears to agree: "The rest of the Syrian war must proceed as it will." ..."
"... Clearly, with the U.S. fighting in six countries, Commander in Chief Trump does not want any new wars, or to widen any existing wars in the Middle East. But he is being pushed into becoming a war president to advance the agenda of foreign policy elites who, almost to a man, opposed his election. ..."
"... We have a reluctant president being pushed into a war he does not want to fight. This is a formula for a strategic disaster not unlike Vietnam or George W. Bush's war to strip Iraq of nonexistent WMDs. ..."
"... The assumption of the War Party seems to be that if we launch larger and more lethal strikes in Syria, inflicting casualties on Russians, Iranians, Hezbollah, and the Syrian army, they will yield to our demands. ..."
"... As for Trump's statement Friday, "No amount of American blood and treasure can produce lasting peace in the Middle East," the Washington Post ..."
April
16, 2018, 9:55 PM "Ten days ago, President Trump was saying 'the United States should
withdraw from Syria.' We convinced him it was necessary to stay."
Thus boasted French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday, adding, "We convinced him it was
necessary to stay for the long term."
Is the U.S. indeed in the Syrian Civil War "for the long term"?
If so, who made that fateful decision for this republic?
U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley confirmed Sunday there would be no drawdown of the 2,000 U.S.
troops in Syria, until three objectives were reached. We must fully defeat ISIS, ensure
chemical weapons will not again be used by Bashar al-Assad and maintain the ability to watch
Iran.
Translation: whatever Trump says, America is not coming out of Syria. We are going deeper
in. Trump's commitment to extricate us from these bankrupting and blood-soaked Middle East wars
and to seek a new rapprochement with Russia is "inoperative."
The War Party that Trump routed in the primaries is capturing and crafting his foreign
policy. Monday's Wall Street Journal editorial page fairly blossomed with war
plans:
The better U.S. strategy is to turn Syria into the Ayatollah's Vietnam. Only when Russia
and Iran began to pay a larger price in Syria will they have any incentive to negotiate an
end to the war or even contemplate a peace based on dividing the country into ethnic-based
enclaves.
Apparently, we are to bleed Syria, Russia, Hezbollah, and Iran until they cannot stand the
pain and submit to subdividing Syria the way we want.
But suppose that, as in our Civil War of 1861-1865, the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939, and
the Chinese Civil War of 1945-1949, Assad and his Russian, Iranian, and Shiite militia allies
go all out to win and reunite the nation.
Suppose they choose to fight to consolidate the victory they have won after seven years of
war. Where do we find the troops to take back the territory our rebels lost? Or do we just bomb
mercilessly?
The British and French say they will back us in future attacks if chemical weapons are used,
but they are not plunging into Syria.
Defense Secretary James Mattis called the U.S.-British-French attack a "one-shot" deal.
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson appears to agree: "The rest of the Syrian war must
proceed as it will."
The Journal 's op-ed page Monday was turned over to former U.S. ambassador to Syria
Ryan Crocker and Brookings Institute senior fellow Michael O'Hanlon: "Next time the U.S. could
up the ante, going after military command and control, political leadership, and perhaps even
Assad himself. The U.S. could also pledge to take out much of his air force. Targets within
Iran should not be off limits."
And when did Congress authorize U.S. acts of war against Syria, its air force, or political
leadership? When did Congress authorize the killing of the president of Syria whose country has
not attacked us?
Can the U.S. also attack Iran and kill the ayatollah without consulting Congress?
Clearly, with the U.S. fighting in six countries, Commander in Chief Trump does not want
any new wars, or to widen any existing wars in the Middle East. But he is being pushed into
becoming a war president to advance the agenda of foreign policy elites who, almost to a man,
opposed his election.
We have a reluctant president being pushed into a war he does not want to fight. This is
a formula for a strategic disaster not unlike Vietnam or George W. Bush's war to strip Iraq of
nonexistent WMDs.
The assumption of the War Party seems to be that if we launch larger and more lethal
strikes in Syria, inflicting casualties on Russians, Iranians, Hezbollah, and the Syrian army,
they will yield to our demands.
But where is the evidence for this?
What reason is there to believe these forces will surrender what they have paid in blood to
win? And if they choose to fight and widen the war to the larger Middle East, are we prepared
for that?
As for Trump's statement Friday, "No amount of American blood and treasure can produce
lasting peace in the Middle East," the Washington Post on Sunday dismissed this as
"fatalistic" and "misguided." We have a vital interest, says the Post , in preventing
Iran from establishing a "land corridor" across Syria.
Yet consider how Iran acquired this "land corridor." The Shiites in 1979 overthrew a shah
our CIA installed in 1953. The Shiites control Iraq because President Bush invaded and
overthrew Saddam and his Sunni Baath Party, disbanded his Sunni-led army, and let the Shiite
majority take control of the country. The Shiites are dominant in Lebanon because they rose up
and ran out the Israelis, who invaded in 1982 to run out the PLO.
How many American dead will it take to reverse this history?
How long will we have to stay in the Middle East to assure the permanent hegemony of Sunni
over Shiite?
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles
That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever. To find out more about Patrick
Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators
website at www.creators.com.
In reality Trump proved again that POTUS does not matter and presidential elections matter very little. In was he is like
drunk Obama, reckelss and jingoistic to the extreme. Both foreign and domestic policy is determined by forces, and are outside POTUS control, with very little input
possible. But the "deep state"
fully control the POTUS, no matter who he/she are.
Notable quotes:
"... To Trump apologists: Trump is the Republican Obama. The follow the same model of government: faux populist leader dogged by crazy critics that want to derail a righteous agenda. ..."
"... Obamabots gave similar excuses. Real populists simply don't get have a chance of being elected in US money-driven elections. ..."
"... Why was there only two populists running for President in 2016? Sanders, Hillay's sheepdog, destroyed the movement that would been the best check on the establishment and the rush to war. That movement was never going to be allowed to take root. Trump, a friend of the Clinton's was probably meant to prevail. ..."
To Trump apologists: Trump is the Republican Obama. The follow the same model of government: faux populist leader
dogged by crazy critics that want to derail a righteous agenda.
Obamabots gave similar excuses. Real populists simply don't get have a chance of being
elected in US money-driven elections.
Why was there only two populists running for President in 2016? Sanders, Hillay's sheepdog, destroyed the movement that would been the best check on the
establishment and the rush to war. That movement was never going to be allowed to take root.
Trump, a friend of the Clinton's was probably meant to prevail.
Rome had bread and circuses. We've got crumbs and tweets.
The reason we voted for Trump is because we are tired of this sanctimonious hypocritical horse shit. Instead we get more of
what we didn't vote for. All Russia did was kindly not sink any of our war ships when we attacked Syria on an assumption.
You got exactly what you voted for... because if you were dumb enough to think you could actually get an outsider maverick
anywhere near the white house I have to think you are too dumb to figure out how to turn on a computer.
Trump's in deep over his head. It was an open question whether he posed any genuine obstacle to the pathocracy, but it seems
more clear now that, one way or another, he has been brought more tightly under their control. THAT, much more than any individual
false-flags or other deceptions or wrongs, should be cause for the rational world to fear. The psychopaths are still on the march,
and Trump is at least paying lip service to their chicanery. The further out on a limb he goes, the more reluctant and then helpless
he will be to backtrack as pathology becomes more extreme and events escalate under their own momentum. With markets looking more
precarious than ever, how long will it be before the psychopaths commit more and bigger false flags?
Cornered animal; that sounds like Trumps modus operandi. Notice that
anyone who criticizes him gets lambasted with personal attacks
instead of a reasoned response.
We need a President who
understands freedom and who is a reasonable person, neither of which
traits are possessed by Trump. He didn't win the election on his own
qualification but on Hillary's lack of qualification. This speaks to
the point, "The lesser of two evils is still evil".
Another hypothesis is that is a "false flag" operation, like Obama was. Or in political
jargon "bait and switch" candidate.
Notable quotes:
"... The case for stupidity is fairly strong: after all, where's the evidence that Assad launched a chemical attack? Like the series of fake "attacks" touted by the jihadist rebels over the years, this one lacks verification – but that doesn't bother the War Party. Since when do they need evidence? ..."
"... The case for craziness – a real mental affliction – is even stronger, in my opinion. When President Obama was confronted with the same phony "attacks," as reported by jihadist "activists" and "medics," Trump urged him to stay out of it . Yet now that's he's in the Oval Office, he's doing what he urged Obama not to do. This is the classic behavior pattern of a schizoid nutjob with multiple personalities: it's " The Three Faces of the Donald ," and the big question is which one will emerge today? ..."
"... He's a Beta male masquerading as an Alpha ..."
"... The top three most powerful foreign lobbies in Washington are pushing the US to not only stay in Syria but to expand the role of US troops: the Saudis, who directly support the jihadist rebels, the Israelis, who have long sought to overthrow Assad, and the British, who are behind the maniacal anti-Russian propaganda campaign, starting with the shenanigans of Christopher Steele. Trump's craven capitulation to these "allies" is yet more evidence of his cowardice under fire. ..."
and wrote about
Trump's various foreign policy pronouncements right up until very recently: as I've pointed out
repeatedly, and exhaustively, the very fact that a successful presidential candidate criticized
the Iraq war ("they lied") and our policy of global intervention – e.g., questioned
NATO's existence – was and still is a great step forward. That Trump isn't living up to
his campaign promises and his post-election rhetoric is another matter entirely. The
"deplorables" are in open rebellion against this new
turn: Trump is losing his base.
So here's the question: is he stupid, like George W. Bush, or is he crazy, in the tradition
of, say, Richard M. Nixon?
The case for stupidity is fairly strong: after all, where's the evidence that Assad
launched a chemical attack? Like
the series of fake "attacks" touted by the jihadist rebels over the years, this one lacks
verification – but that doesn't bother the War Party. Since when do they need
evidence? Last time Trump fell for this routine it turned out that his own Secretary of
Defense
admitted – well after the US bombing raid – that there was "no evidence" that
the Syrian government had launched a chemical attack. The same
dodgy "proof"
beleaguers the Skripal "poisoning" case in
Britain – and, what a coincidence, the same villains are being blamed – Putin
& Co. The idea that Assad had anything to gain from launching such an attack is not even
worth refuting: he'd already won the war. So what would be the point? It isn't hard to
understand this, yet our President is clueless – or pretends to be.
The case for craziness – a real mental affliction – is even stronger, in my
opinion. When President Obama was confronted with the same phony "attacks," as reported by
jihadist "activists" and "medics," Trump urged him to stay out of it . Yet now
that's he's in the Oval Office, he's doing what he urged Obama not to do. This is the
classic behavior pattern of a schizoid nutjob with multiple personalities: it's " The Three Faces of the
Donald ," and the big question is which one will emerge today?
Another issue I was apparently dead wrong about is the ascension of John Bolton as National
Security Advisor: no big deal , I
said. Wrong ! I refuse to believe that Trump is caving in to the War Party on Syria
just as
Bolton gets the keys to his new office . And here's another non-coincidence: this new turn
comes just after Trump got into an argument with his
generals over Syria. He wanted out: they insisted we stay. It didn't take him long to find an
excuse – this bogus "attack" – to cave.
So he's not just stupid, and crazy – he's also a coward. He refuses to confront the
War Party head on, despite his campaign trail rhetoric. Just the other day he was telling
crowds in Ohio how we were on the way out of Syria because "we have to take care of our own
country." The crowd cheered. Would he go back to that same audience and tell them we need to
intervene in a country that's been wracked by warfare for years, with no real hope of a
peaceful settlement? Of course not.
He's a Beta male masquerading as an Alpha .
The top three most powerful foreign lobbies in Washington are pushing the US to not only
stay in Syria but to expand the role of US troops: the Saudis, who directly support the
jihadist rebels, the Israelis, who have long sought to overthrow Assad, and the British, who
are behind the maniacal anti-Russian propaganda campaign, starting with the shenanigans of
Christopher Steele. Trump's craven capitulation to these "allies" is yet more evidence of his
cowardice under fire. And there's no doubt that his blaming Russia – and naming
Putin – as supposedly responsible for this "gas attack" is a ploy to get Robert Mueller
off his back.
I have to say that the future looks grim. This puts Trump's entire foreign policy agenda up
for grabs, including the once-promising Korean peace initiative. Will he sabotage what might
have been his greatest accomplishment – peace on the Korean peninsula?
It's entirely possible.
We are now entering uncharted territory – although, come to think of it, that's been
true since Election Day, 2016. Hold on to your hats, folks, and get a grip on your nerves
– because it's going to be a long, scary ride.
A Note to My Readers : I need to clarify
my column on the current confrontation between the Palestinians in Gaza and the Israeli
military.
I did not mean to draw an equal sign between the two sides: the Israelis, who are wantonly
slaughtering unarmed protesters, including children – and clearly marked media
representatives – are clearly the aggressors. Their actions are inexcusable and just
another giant step in the direction of complete moral degeneration. While I stand by my
criticism of such actions as the "Knife Intifada," what's clear to me is that this is not the
consequence of some inherent flaw in the Palestinian cause, but a mark of sheer desperation.
Yes, Hamas is a monstrous entity, but the Israelis encouraged its
growth and development from the start, which is something you don't read about very often:
see here .
Let no one misunderstand me: while I never give unconditional support to anyone, and I'm
especially critical of the Palestinian leadership, I stand with the Palestinian people
in their just struggle against an oppressive apartheid state. Period.
The Never Trump cabal can now claim total victory. Unsuccessful at preventing Trump from
winning the nomination or the general election, they have instead co-opted his presidency for
their own policies and programs.
With the nomination of John Bolton, Never Trump interventionists have installed one of the
unrepentant architects of the catastrophic Iraq War to head the National Security Council.
In recent months, ignoring and rejecting his own party's convention platform, Trump has
agreed to send lethal weapons to Ukraine. Besides accelerating the deaths of Ukrainians and
ethnic Russians while laying waste to the civilian population of the Donbas, what advantage to
the people of the United States does this military escalation provide?
Last summer, in one of the strangest speeches in American history, President Trump announced
he would surge troop levels in Afghanistan -- and then in the same breath admitted it was a
mistake and something he didn't really want to do. That should show the conflict here: Trump's
instincts versus the establishment sorts around him.
Never Trumpers are not so secretly celebrating. They got the president they thought they
didn't want. And now, pretending they still don't want him, they can hardly believe their good
fortune.
Achieving their foreign policy goals is just the icing on the cake. They also got the
president to implement the entire Wall Street agenda: lowering taxes on the super rich;
advancing huge subsidies to the medical insurance industry; keeping the Export-Import Bank
funded; re-authorizing the ivory trade; shrinking the size of national monuments so that
multi-national corporations can turn our wilderness areas into strip mines and clear-cut
wastelands.
Then, just this week, in a reckless act of generational theft, Trump endorsed the second
biggest budget in U.S. history, caving in to every demand and desire of the UniParty and the K
Street lobbyists whom they serve.
In the 18th century, the cry went "Millions for defense, but not one penny for tribute!"
Trump's cry is "Billions for defense, but not one penny for a wall!"
Trump justifies his signature on the omnibus bill by claiming it was necessary for national
security. But that claim rings hollow when comparatively little is allocated for the protection
of America's own borders and the defense of its homeland. Americans intuitively know that the
real danger to their safety is not along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border; it's along the
U.S.-Mexico border. But Trump's own laudable instincts have been neutered by the globalist,
interventionist generals and policy wonks who now populate powerful positions at the White
House and the departments of State and Defense.
Many reading this might now protest: what's wrong with passing the omnibus? Isn't it
providing the funds necessary for making America great again? But Donald Trump did not run for
office on a platform of bloating spending; he ran on opposition to massive debt increases and
specifically to many of the programs they pay for. The budget can be summed up in a paraphrase
of a Broadway musical hit tune: whatever crony wants, crony gets.
Has there been a fiercer critic of the Iraq war than Donald Trump? Yet he promotes to the
head of the NSC perhaps that conflict's most vociferous apologist. Trump promised he would end
the wars of choice, that he would refrain from taking sides in other nation's internal
conflicts. He called for a reasonable rapprochement with Russia with the goal of making America
and Americans safer. He specifically said he would wind down the military commitment in
Afghanistan as quickly and safely as possible.
His only bellicose pledge concerned ISIS, which he promised to destroy. As we have seen,
that was one of the few promises he kept. In most other policy areas he has reversed his
campaign pledges. His foreign policy is no longer America First; it's evolved into the same,
old, dangerous, meddling, interventionist program of the last quarter century. Trump has
deepened U.S. involvement in Yemen, Syria, Ukraine, and Afghanistan without clearly defining
the missions, the goals, and the risks. If voters had wanted this, they would have elected
Hillary Clinton, not Donald Trump.
Yet of all the betrayals, the war on nature is the most grievous and shocking. As someone
who supported Trump from day one in June 2015, who has seen virtually every one of his
speeches, interviews, and tweets, I cannot recall a single word about the national parks or
monuments.
Had Trump forecast during the campaign how he would govern on environmental issues, would he
have been elected? Could those narrow margins of victory in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin,
and Iowa have gone the other way? With his appointment of Ryan Zinke to the Department of the
Interior, Trump needlessly and recklessly alienated tens of thousands of voters who might
otherwise have supported him and who may indeed have voted for him in 2016. Although its hard
to discern exactly why the president's poll numbers are as low as they are, it would be a
mistake to discount the animus engendered by the unexpected assault on wilderness, open space,
endangered species, and America's magnificent national monuments.
The only national monument that Trump has failed to shrink is the Beltway swamp. In fact,
judging from the continuing spread of McMansions in Potomac, Maryland and Falls Church,
Virginia, he has effectively widened its borders. It's as if the chants from all those packed
stadiums during that long ago presidential campaign were "Fill that swamp! Fill that
swamp!"
It is now abundantly clear why the Never Trumpers are tittering over their cocktails. Trump
has staffed most departments of his government with establishment cronies and neoconservative
zealots. He now presides over the implementation of their agenda. In effect, we're
getting a variation on what could be called the third Bush presidency -- minus the decorum.
Trump's is also the all-talk presidency: talk tough on illegal immigration, but fail to
build the wall; talk tough on sanctuary cities, but fail to cut federal subsidies; talk tough
on illegal immigration, then push for the biggest amnesty since 1986; talk tough against the
Export-Import Bank, then fund it; talk tough on Obamacare, then fund big insurance to keep the
subsidies flowing; talk tough on reducing taxes, then screw millions of homeowners across
America by actually raising their taxes; talk tough on trade, then tiptoe around
Mexico and Canada on everything that really matters; talk tough on the deficit, then sign the
second biggest boondoggle spending bill in U.S. history.
Still, it cannot be denied: President Trump has accomplished much -- for the establishment
and their K Street lobbyists. They write the bills, Paul Ryan guides them through the House
amendment-free, and Trump signs them in to law.
For those who packed those campaign rallies, who wore those red "Make America Great Again"
caps, and for the rest of us mere plebs, Donald Trump's presidency is best summed up by The
Bard: "Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
Ron Maxwell wrote and directed the Civil War motion-pictures Gettysburg ,
Gods & Generals , and Copperhead .
Speaking candidly to a Columbia University audience comprised largely of College Republicans
and a few hecklers expecting a debate, Coulter broke down her bitter disappointment with Trump
- recounting one instance in which she and the President engaged in a "profanity-laced shouting
match" in the Oval Office last year over what she felt was his weak follow-through on
immigration promises made during the campaign.
" It kind of breaks my heart, " Coulter acknowledged of her disappointment with the
president, and she recounted a profanity-laced shouting match she had with Trump in the Oval
Office last year over what she saw as his lackluster follow-through on immigration policy. "
He's not giving us what he promised at every single campaign stop ." -
Daily Beast
That said, Coulter still says that Trump was the best house in a bad neighborhood when it
came to voting for the 2016 lineup of candidates.
"I regret nothing. I'd do the exact same thing," said Coulter. "We had 16 lunatics being
chased by men with nets running for president -- and Trump. So of course I had to be
pedal-to-the-metal for Donald Trump. I'd been waiting 30 years for someone to say all these
things " -- i.e., that illegal immigration is hurting low-income American citizens and carries
with it high rates of crime. " I went into this completely clear-eyed ."
"I knew he was a shallow, lazy ignoramus, and I didn't care," said the conservative
pundit.
At one point in the evening, Coulter dispatched a heckler after she blamed income inequality
in California on immigration.
We are bringing in immigrants who are good for the very rich, " she said. "They don't live
in their neighborhoods. They don't fill up their schools or their hospital emergency rooms.
And, oh boy, you should see how clean Juanita gets the bathtub. You can eat off of it after
she's done. "
"You're a racist! " shouted a young man from back.
" No, I'm sorry, the people bringing in Juanita, the maid, and underpaying her, are the
racists, " Coulter fired back. " You are a moron! " she added, to fervent applause. " You're
very stupid. I can't argue with stupid people ."
On Wednesday evening, Coulter joined Fox Business Network 's Lou Dobbs to discuss her
"ignoramus" comment. When Dobbs called her out on it, she said " A switch changed with him ,"
adding "An elegant person would have said the things he was saying. It was precisely that he
was so coarse that allowed him to say these incredibly courageous things. He didn't care what
Manhattan elites thought of him ."
" Now all he wants is for Goldman Sachs to like him ," she continued. "I don't know what
happened. But that's a different president. I haven't changed. He has."
"Affirmation complexes are never attractive and unfortunately I believe there is some truth
to the fact that there are those in the White House who would like to guide him toward this
liberal fantasy that is a nightmare for America and has proved to be such for our middle class
which has been dwindling for the past 20 years," Dobbs said, to Coulter's hearty agreement.
"Under this president, they're starting to grow and money is starting to come in and we're
starting to see housing prices rise."
In my opinion the May show is no more than paying the price the EU wants for remaining in
the common market.
The EU on the one hand wants to increase the economic war against Russia, on the other it
must prevent that after Brexit GB develops close economic ties with Russia.
The remain in the common market ticket is temporarily, when the agreed period is over a
further price can be asked, the Brussels imperialists think, I suppose.
Alas, Merkel is on her way out, her minister of police etc. begins playing the nationalist
card, resistance in France against Macron is rising, and how the euro country Italy can be
saved nobody knows.
These two staggering leaders want more Europe.
On top of all this misery, the until some time ago biggest bank in the world, Deutsche
Bank, once 100.000 employees worldwide, now 50.000, may soon collapse, share prices dropping
daily for the past week, transaction volumes in shares from 25.000 to even 35.000, where
8.000 is normal.
The derivates DB owns are said to be staggering, over thirty trillion, the EU total national
income, in comparison, is less than ten trillion.
Varoufakis predicted a world wide crash which will make look 1929 child's play in
comparison.
Cannot imagine that the EU survives this crash, the populations will look to the national
governments for food, the rationing thereof, etc.
The fact that Trump is a sad excuse for a human being and a conman has been pretty obvious
since the 1980s. It was never clear to me why conservatives believed this man had really
changed his spots.
The one and only issue where Trump really does seem to have some principles and conviction
is trade. He has certainly defied the Deep State, and most of his donors, on that issue and
he may yet force China to cave and open their economy to Western corporations. If he pulls
that off, he will deserve some credit.
And really, despite his lack of structural change to immigration laws, the ICE does seem
to have become a lot more zealous under Trump's watch than it would have been under Hillary,
so there is that. Problem is Trump is actually looking a lot like Obama – a lot of
symbolic gestures that will probably be instantly reversed by the next President (whether Dem
or GOP), but no real influence over congress and very little substantive legislative changes.
From Carter to Obama and now Trump the record of "outsiders" in the White House is pretty
pathetic.
Rolled is putting things mildly. This is such brazen act of capitulation by the self styled
swamp slayer Trump that he should strongly consider resigning to save face. Trump just took a
giant dump on the people who risked their physical safety to support him at campaign rallies.
At this point I'm throwing him to the wolves and hope Mueller destroys him or the coming
Democrat majority in 2018 impeaches him. He only has his cowardly, lying self to blame.
This is the third spending bill with no wall funding, no reductions in H1B or H2B visas
and no added interior enforcement funding requested by the WH. Trump keeps rubber stamping
these bills then vows to fight next time around only to meekly sign yet again. This all just
seems to be reality TV to him.
This really leaves the deplorables and those opposed to the third worlding of America in
the lurch. Trump was our only and probably last hope and now he's decided to join the swamp
and conduct business as usual. We're totally without political representation at the moment
while the country browns, yellows and blackens at an alarming rate.
I guess we shouldn't be too surprised since Trump has very few core convictions about
anything other than making money and having sex. And of course "winning" which we've done
little of since he assumed office. The only "win" was that he wasn't Hillary but now he
is!
The few political convictions he might possess are very shallow and subject to change
almost hourly depending on who he talks to, Ivanka's emotional state and his PMS like mood
swings. The only thing that's non-negotiable for Trump is slavish support for and devotion to
Israel. Obama was an anti-white and anti-American bigot, but at least he had a world view and
ideology guiding his actions regardless of input he received, his media coverage or his
approval rating.
Trump = Obama = W. Different actors get to play the same role on behalf of the super rich
– it's in the Constitution. It's sad to see a zombie voter express voter's remorse on
social media. An emotional zombie is an obedient slave. They are easy to control since
there's no need for the lash to get them crying about politics.
Trump will have to pound his chest about war like Clinton did with Yugoslavia. This will
make him a well rounded President – he just needs the right supporting cast.
Some actors like General Kelly proudly served the country into 9/11. You'd figure a guy
would get fired for such an enormously bad performance. Instead this moribund ghoul serves as
Chief of Staff. Perhaps it's not his fault and big complicated computers determine when
massive amounts of people need to be killed from time to time.
"... Based on historical evidence, to believe that Trump (with his party - Republican control of House and Senate) will change our course is naive. By contrast, Obama D had both houses also - we got WAR, cash for clunkers, foreclosures, bank bailouts and health care by AHIP with runaway costs. ..."
In fifty years, very little has been done by US Federal Government which benefits the common citizen. A great deal has been done
to facilitate the degradation of the common citizen by the global one percent. We have a new world order as called for by GHW
Bush.
Based on historical evidence, to believe that Trump (with his party - Republican control of House and Senate) will change
our course is naive. By contrast, Obama D had both houses also - we got WAR, cash for clunkers, foreclosures, bank bailouts and
health care by AHIP with runaway costs.
Trump is and has been carrying out his own policies to enrich those that already have everything and to repeal any regulations
that were put into place to protect the people. Have you not noticed that he lined his cabinet with Goldman Sachs (which he blasted
HRC for associating her self with.
Like I said he and his gang are doing what they want to help enrich themselves on the backs of the rest of us. Wake up and
quit upholding these lying pieces of excrement they are no different than the ones before them.
Trump is a dirty businessman the things that he is doing are to benefit him and his family and to screw the rest of us and
tell us how great it is for us. You my man have drank from the Trump cup and think that anything that speaks against him is "fake
news" when in reality Trump and the likes of Breitbart are the "fake news" a little truth but a bunch of spin
In this state the current war between factions of the US elite reminds Stalin fight against "globalists" like Trotsky, who were
hell-bent of the idea of world revolution.
Notable quotes:
"... I would define Trump_vs_deep_state as "bastard neoliberalism" which tries to combine domestic "100% pure" neoliberalism with the rejection of neoliberal globalization as well as partial rejection of expensive effort for expansion of US led neoliberal empire via color revolutions and military invasions, especially in the Middle East. ..."
"... That makes screams of "soft neoliberals" from Democratic Party at "hard neoliberals" at Republican Party really funny indeed. Both are essentially "latter-day Trotskyites", yet they scream at each other, especially Obama/Clinton supporters ;-) ..."
"... But in reality Democratic sheeple are just a different type of wolfs -- wolfs in sheep clothing. And Hillary was an old, worn "classic neoliberal" shoe, which nobody really wants to wear. ..."
"... Trump does not intend to change the neoliberal consensus of what government should do domestically, and what should be the relationship between US government and business community. ..."
I would define Trump_vs_deep_state as "bastard neoliberalism" which tries
to combine domestic "100% pure" neoliberalism with the rejection of neoliberal globalization as well
as partial rejection of expensive effort for expansion of US led neoliberal empire via color revolutions
and military invasions, especially in the Middle East.
That's what seems to be the key difference of Trump_vs_deep_state from "classic neoliberalism" or as Sklar
called it "corporate liberalism".
From Reagan to Obama all US governments pray to the altar of classic neoliberalism. Now we have
a slight deviation.
That makes screams of "soft neoliberals" from Democratic Party at "hard neoliberals" at Republican
Party really funny indeed. Both are essentially "latter-day Trotskyites", yet they scream at each
other, especially Obama/Clinton supporters ;-)
In this sense Krugman recent writings are really pathetic and signify his complete detachment
from reality, or more correctly attempt to create an "artificial reality" in which bad wolf Trump
is going to eat Democratic sheeple. And in which media, FBI, and Putin are responsible entirely for
Hillary's loss.
But in reality Democratic sheeple are just a different type of wolfs -- wolfs in sheep clothing.
And Hillary was an old, worn "classic neoliberal" shoe, which nobody really wants to wear.
Trump does not intend to change the neoliberal consensus of what government should do domestically,
and what should be the relationship between US government and business community.
But the far right movement that he created and led has different ideas.
But Trump himself was quickly neutered (in just three month) and now does not represents
"Trumpism" (rejection of neoliberal globalization, unrestricted immigration for suppression of
wages, rejection of elimination of jobs via outsourcing and offshoring of manufacturing,
rejection of wars for enlargement and sustaining of neoliberal empire, especially NATO role as
global policemen and wars for Washington client Israel in Middle east, detente with Russia etc)
in any meaningful way. He is just an aging Narcissist in power.
Looks like Trump became a variant of Hillary minus sex change operation.
Notable quotes:
"... He supports same sex relations and marriage of the same. ..."
"... He is by nature a situational leader -- not typically a conservatives methodology of leadership ..."
"... . He mistakes support and loyalty for agreement. ..."
"... He seems too weak to stand his ground on key issues. Syria, (missile attack) ..."
"... His willingness to ignore -- Israel-US problematic relationship. ..."
"... I am leary of anyone who says tough things about immigration, but quietly backpedals or openly does the same -- DACA. ..."
it's easy to come away from CPAC energy and enthusiasm thinking your headline is an accurate
description of what is happening in the GOP. I am more conservative thankfully in my views
than most members at CPAC. And while I may not be the typical voter. I can say categorically,
that :trumoing" is not in my blood. Let's look what a consevative had to consider when
evaluating Pres Trump:
3. He supports same sex relations and marriage of the same.
... ... ...
5. He is by nature a situational leader -- not typically a conservatives methodology
of leadership
... ... ...
8 . He mistakes support and loyalty for agreement.
9. He seems too weak to stand his ground on key issues. Syria, (missile
attack)
10. His willingness to ignore -- Israel-US problematic relationship.
11. He thinks that Keynesian policy is a substitute for economic growth. monetary
policy.
12. I am leary of anyone who says tough things about immigration, but quietly
backpedals or openly does the same -- DACA.
"Note about Miss Mona Charin: the two agree on so many points on foreign policy, especially
Israel, it's hard to see her disdain. I think she rejects his troublesome demeanor and attitude.
Presidential decorum is a big deal to many."
Notable quotes:
"... The sixty plus millions of people who voted Trump are politically diverse. They have one thing in common. They were not persuaded by the loud, continuous and shameless lying of the corporate media. Rather they were motivated by it. ..."
Now his other supporters might say, considered against all the other candidates -- he's
better. Hmmmm, well, that's why I voted for him.
Thank you. My bullet points would differ from yours but in the end I also voted for Trump.
The sixty plus millions of people who voted Trump are politically diverse. They have one
thing in common. They were not persuaded by the loud, continuous and shameless lying of the
corporate media. Rather they were motivated by it.
The deplorables, having found one another, need to hang together until we find real
leadership. Trump, whatever he is, is not a leader.
"... he Dems disgust me with their neo-McCarthyism and the Repubs disgust me because of the way they are playing out their hand right now as well. Games within corrupt games, and yet normal behavior especially in waning empires (or other types of polities, including powerful int'l corporations). ..."
"... Chapter 14 of Guns, Germs and Steel is titled "From Egalitarianism to Kleptocracy" and it used to be available online but my old link is dead and I couldn't find a new one. But a basic definition should suffice: "Kleptocracy, alternatively cleptocracy or kleptarchy, is a form of political and government corruption where the government exists to increase the personal wealth and political power of its officials and the ruling class at the expense of the wider population, often without pretense of honest service." I have no idea how one turns this around and I doubt it's even possible. ..."
"... The Real Reason Establishment Frauds Hate Trump and Obsess About Russia https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2018/02/20/the-real-reason-establishment-frauds-hate-trump-and-obsess-about-russia/ ..."
"... Blaming Russia for all the nation's problems serves several key purposes for various defenders of the status quo. For discredited neocons and neoliberals who never met a failed war based on lies they didn't support, it provides an opportunity to rehabilitate their torched reputations by masquerading as fierce patriots against the latest existential enemy. Similarly, for those who lived in denial about who Obama really was for eight years, latching on to the Russia narrative allows them to reassure themselves that everything really was fine before Trump and Russia came along and ruined the party. ..."
"... he doesn't provide the same feel good quality to empire that Obama did. He's simply not the warm and fuzzy salesman for oligarchy and empire Obama was, thus his inability to sugarcoat state-sanctioned murder forces a lot of people to confront the uncomfortable hypocrisies in our society that many would prefer not to admit. ..."
"... I can't stand Kushner's smirky face and got a good chuckle from this prince's fall as I am not a fan of his passion for Israel. But I don't think he's a stupid idiot either. He's probably very smart in business, but he seems to have no feel for politics. Trump is much better at it than Kushner. Of course they are going after Kushner as a way to attack and disadvantage Trump. Politics is a form of warfare after all. ..."
"... My take is that Trump survives but mostly contained by the Borg ..."
jsn @16 & 40, in complete agreement with you. Great comments! T he Dems disgust me
with their neo-McCarthyism and the Repubs disgust me because of the way they are playing out
their hand right now as well. Games within corrupt games, and yet normal behavior especially
in waning empires (or other types of polities, including powerful int'l corporations).
Chapter 14 of Guns, Germs and Steel is titled "From Egalitarianism to Kleptocracy" and
it used to be available online but my old link is dead and I couldn't find a new one. But a
basic definition should suffice: "Kleptocracy, alternatively cleptocracy or kleptarchy, is a
form of political and government corruption where the government exists to increase the
personal wealth and political power of its officials and the ruling class at the expense of
the wider population, often without pretense of honest service." I have no idea how one turns
this around and I doubt it's even possible.
Back when I used to subscribe to STRATFOR, founder George Friedman always made a point of
evaluating the elites of whatever country he was analyzing and how they operated amongst
themselves and relative to the people and how effective they were or were not in governing a
country. But he never did that for the US. I would have paid extra for that report! But of
course he could not stay in business if he did such a thing as those people are his
clients.
I think Mike Krieger over at Liberty Blitzkrieg nails it from another perspective with
this post:
Blaming Russia for all the nation's problems serves several key purposes for various
defenders of the status quo. For discredited neocons and neoliberals who never met a failed
war based on lies they didn't support, it provides an opportunity to rehabilitate their
torched reputations by masquerading as fierce patriots against the latest existential enemy.
Similarly, for those who lived in denial about who Obama really was for eight years, latching
on to the Russia narrative allows them to reassure themselves that everything really was fine
before Trump and Russia came along and ruined the party.
By throwing every problem in Putin's lap, the entrenched bipartisan status quo can tell
themselves (and everybody else) that it wasn't really them and their policies that voters
rejected in 2016, rather, the American public was tricked by cunning, nefarious Russians.
Ridiculous for sure, but never underestimate the instinctive human desire to deny
accountability for one's own failures. It's always easier to blame than to accept
responsibility.
That said, there's a much bigger game afoot beyond the motivations of individuals looking
to save face. The main reason much of the highest echelons of American power are united
against Trump has nothing to do with his actual policies. Instead, they're terrified that --
unlike Obama -- he's a really bad salesman for empire. This sort of Presidential instability
threatens the continuance of their well oiled and exceedingly corrupt gravy train. Hillary
Clinton was a sure thing, Donald Trump remains an unpredictable wildcard.
... Obama said all the right things while methodically doing the bidding of oligarchy. He
captured the imagination of millions, if not billions, around the world with his soaring
rhetoric, yet rarely skipped a beat when it came to the advancement of imperial policies. He
made bailing out Wall Street, droning civilians and cracking down on journalists seem
progressive. He said one thing, did another, and people ate it up. This is an extraordinarily
valuable quality when it comes to a vicious and unelected deep state that wants to keep a
corrupt empire together.
Trump has the exact opposite effect. Sure, he also frequently says one thing and then does
another, but he doesn't provide the same feel good quality to empire that Obama did. He's
simply not the warm and fuzzy salesman for oligarchy and empire Obama was, thus his inability
to sugarcoat state-sanctioned murder forces a lot of people to confront the uncomfortable
hypocrisies in our society that many would prefer not to admit.
------------
I can't stand Kushner's smirky face and got a good chuckle from this prince's fall as
I am not a fan of his passion for Israel. But I don't think he's a stupid idiot either. He's
probably very smart in business, but he seems to have no feel for politics. Trump is much
better at it than Kushner. Of course they are going after Kushner as a way to attack and
disadvantage Trump. Politics is a form of warfare after all.
My take is that Trump survives but mostly contained by the Borg
At the core of Trumpism is the rejection of neoliberalism
Pat Buchanan does not understand neoliberalism well and mixes apples with oranges, but the key idea expressed here stands: " Consider
this crazed ideology of free trade globalism with its roots in the scribblings of 19th-century idiot savants, not one of whom ever built
a great nation. Adhering religiously to free trade dogma, we have run up $12 trillion in trade deficits since Bush I. Our cities have
been gutted by the loss of plants and factories. Workers' wages have stagnated. The economic independence Hamilton sought and Republican
presidents from Lincoln to McKinley achieved is history."
Notable quotes:
"... Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, "Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever." ..."
"I walk through this world with greater courage and hope when I find myself in a relation of friendship and intimacy with this
great man, whose fame has gone out not only over all Russia, but the world. We regard Marshal Stalin's life as most precious to the
hopes and hearts of all of us."
Returning home, Churchill assured a skeptical Parliament, "I know of no Government which stands to its obligations, even in its
own despite, more solidly than the Russian Soviet Government."
George W. Bush, with the U.S. establishment united behind him, invaded Iraq with the goal of creating a Vermont in the Middle
East that would be a beacon of democracy to the Arab and Islamic world.
Ex-Director of the NSA Gen. William Odom correctly called the U.S. invasion the greatest strategic blunder in American history.
But Bush, un-chastened, went on to preach a crusade for democracy with the goal of "ending tyranny in our world."
... ... ...
After our victory in the Cold War, we not only plunged into the Middle East to remake it in our image, we issued war guarantees
to every ex-member state of the Warsaw Pact, and threatened Russia with war if she ever intervened again in the Baltic Republics.
No Cold War president would have dreamed of issuing such an in-your-face challenge to a great nuclear power like Russia. If Putin's
Russia does not become the pacifist nation it has never been, these guarantees will one day be called. And America will either back
down -- or face a nuclear confrontation. Why would we risk something like this?
Consider this crazed ideology of free trade globalism with its roots in the scribblings of 19th-century idiot savants, not one
of whom ever built a great nation. Adhering religiously to free trade dogma, we have run up $12 trillion in trade deficits since
Bush I. Our cities have been gutted by the loss of plants and factories. Workers' wages have stagnated. The economic independence
Hamilton sought and Republican presidents from Lincoln to McKinley achieved is history.
But the greatest risk we are taking, based on utopianism, is the annual importation of well over a million legal and illegal immigrants,
many from the failed states of the Third World, in the belief we can create a united, peaceful and harmonious land of 400 million,
composed of every race, religion, ethnicity, tribe, creed, culture and language on earth.
Where is the historic evidence for the success of this experiment, the failure of which could mean the end of America as one nation
and one people?
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of a new book, "Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and
Divided America Forever."
Pat Buchanan does not understand neoliberalism well and mixes apples with oranges, but the key idea expressed here stands:
" Consider this crazed ideology of free trade globalism with its roots in the scribblings of 19th-century idiot savants,
not one of whom ever built a great nation. Adhering religiously to free trade dogma, we have run up $12 trillion in trade deficits
since Bush I. Our cities have been gutted by the loss of plants and factories. Workers' wages have stagnated. The economic
independence Hamilton sought and Republican presidents from Lincoln to McKinley achieved is history."
The truth is that now Trump does not represent "Trumpism" -- the movement that he created which includes the following:
– rejection of neoliberal globalization;
– rejection of unrestricted immigration;
– fight against suppression of wages by multinationals via cheap imported labor;
– fight against the elimination of meaningful, well-paying jobs via outsourcing and offshoring of manufacturing;
– rejection of wars for enlargement and sustaining of neoliberal empire, especially NATO role as global policemen and wars for
Washington client Israel in the Middle East;
– détente with Russia;
– more pragmatic relations with Israel and suppression of Israeli agents of influence;
– revision of relations with China and addressing the problem of trade deficit.
– rejection of total surveillance on all citizens;
– the cut of military expenses to one third or less of the current level and concentrating on revival on national infrastructure,
education, and science.
– abandonment of maintenance of the "sole superpower" status and global neoliberal empire for more practical and less costly "semi-isolationist"
foreign policy; closing of unnecessary foreign military bases and cutting aid to the current clients.
Of course, the notion of "Trumpism" is fuzzy and different people might include some additional issues and disagree with some
listed here, but the core probably remains.
Of course, Trump is under relentless attack (coup d'état or, more precisely, a color revolution) of neoliberal fifth column,
which includes Clinton gang, fifth column elements within his administration (Rosenstein, etc) as well from remnants of Obama
administration (Brennan, Comey, Clapper) and associated elements within corresponding intelligence agencies. He probably was forced
into some compromises just to survive. He also has members of the neoliberal fifth column within his family (Ivanka and Kushner).
So the movement now is in deep need of a new leader.
That's a good summary of what the public voted for and didn't get.
And whether Trump has sold out, or was blackmailed or was a cynical manipulative liar for the beginning is really irrelevant.
The fact is that he is not doing it – so he is just blocking the way.
At some point the US public are going to have to forget about their "representatives" (Trump and Congress and the rest of
them) and get out onto the street to make themselves heard. The population of the US is 323 million people and if just 1/2
of 1% (1,6 million) of them decided to visit Congress directly the US administration might get the message.
pyrrhus, March 3, 2018 at 2:15 am GMT
@anon
Finally, Pat understands that the American [Neoliberal] Empire and habit of intervention all over the world is a disaster.
"... Mainstream Media: Trump Victorious At CPAC, Economic Nationalist 'Takeover of Conservatism Is Complete, ..."
"... Witness the celebration of neocon pundit Mona Charen (pictured right) a marginal talent whose career of purported conservatism while actually accepting liberal clichés is endangered by the rise of nationalism in the GOP. Her condemnation of CPAC as a "disgrace" because it invited Marion Le Pen of France led to gleeful celebration in the MSM. Charen was promptly rewarded with an op-ed in the New York Times, ..."
"... CPAC panelist reveals in NYT op-ed that she was happy to be booed ..."
"... National Review's ..."
"... Speaking Truth ..."
"... National Review ..."
"... Europe in Crisis ..."
"... Marion Marechal Le Pen's Dynamic Speech, The American Conservative ..."
"... But, of course, what do they care? After all, it's increasingly clear that many Conservatism Inc. functionaries, such as Bill Kristol, always regarded their fellow American citizens as the real enemy anyway . ..."
"... Wanna Be a Player at CPAC? Write a Check First ..."
"... Daily Beast, ..."
"... The Coming Clash of the GOP Titans ..."
"... The American Conservative, ..."
"... WesternJournalism, ..."
"... Kentucky Democrat wins state House in Trump stronghold ..."
"... In blow to Trump, Supreme Court won't hear appeal of DACA ruling ..."
"... I was good with Kucinich and Nader. I'm neither Conservative nor Republican. I voted for McGovern. Yet I am a card carrying deplorable. Bernie is a fraud and Trump is the only real opposition to the entrenched thieves and murderers in Washington. Your Conservative grass roots have a significant cohort of fellow travelers. Trump could not have won the upper midwest without us. ..."
It was only two years ago that then-candidate Trump avoided the annual Conservative
Political Action Conference [CPAC] because it looked likely he would be booed by "true
conservatives." At this year's CPAC, both President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence
were treated as conquering heroes, leading the Main Stream Media to declare the president's
victory conclusive [ Trump's Takeover of Conservatism Is Complete and Total, by Tim Alberta,
Politico, February 25, 2018]. But there are still real dangers for
National Conservatives aiming to use the GOP as a vehicle to achieve patriotic immigration
reform. Chief among them: the possibility that President Trump will continue to show weakness
on immigration. With midterms approaching, time is running out, and Trump
simply has not yet given his base a compelling reason to follow him .
This is inexcusable given President Trump's remarkable capture the GOP . Pat Buchanan correctly observed on
the most recent McLaughlin Group that the "Bush party has become a Trump party" on immigration,
trade and foreign policy [ Pat Buchanan: The Bush Party Has Become A Trump Party On Immigration, Trade, Staying Out of
Foreign Wars, by John Binder, Breitbart, February 25, 2018]. The
rank-and-file conservative activists at CPAC showed utter contempt for Bush-era talking points,
lustily booing the ritualistic references to Hispanic immigrants as "natural Republicans."
An astonishing 93 percent of CPAC attendees gave the president a favorable approval rating,
with almost 80 percent demanding the GOP Congress do a better job of working with him [
Trump tweets CPAC straw poll showing favorable approval rating, by John
Boweden, The Hill, February 24, 2018].
With any other Republican, this could simply be dismissed as the grassroots backing their
leader. but with Donald Trump, it shows that much of the official Conservative Movement has
bent the knee to a man they regarded as a usurper during his candidacy.
And those who would dethrone Trump and, more importantly, Trumpism, are still rallying their
forces. Thus Alberta began: "If you're a conservative with something critical to say about
President Trump, watch your back" -- implying the conservative faithful will ruin the careers
of anyone who attacks the Commander-in-Chief. But attacking Trump is in reality a great
professional move for ambitious conservative mediocrities, who can become more prominent in the
Main Stream Media by trashing the president.
Witness the celebration of neocon pundit
Mona Charen (pictured right) a marginal talent whose career of purported conservatism
while actually accepting liberal clichés is endangered by the rise of nationalism in the
GOP. Her
condemnation of CPAC as a "disgrace" because it invited Marion Le Pen of France led to
gleeful celebration in the MSM. Charen was promptly rewarded with an op-ed in the New York
Times, where she got to brag about how she was "glad to be booed at CPAC" [
CPAC
panelist reveals in NYT op-ed that she was happy to be booed, by Alessia
Grunberger, CNN, February 25, 2018]. Charen thus joins the ranks of people like
Charlie Sykes ,
Rick Wilson , and Jennifer Rubin , professional
"conservatives" who, somehow, never have anything positive to say about Republicans but instead
validate the MSM line of the day.
Of more interest was National Review's celebration of Charen. Yuval Levin praised
her and presenting her antics as a Time For
Choosing : "Mona's comments and the ugly reaction of some in the audience lay out before us
two possible paths for the Right," he said sanctimoniously. "Let's hope we ultimately choose
the right one. It certainly isn't the one we have generally been choosing lately" [ Speaking
Truth, February 25, 2018].
Yet what Levin is urging is not some return to an idealized intellectual conservatism, but a
turn back to the lame slogans which marked the George W. Bush years and a refusal to confront
the issues of today. The Islamization of Europe is occurring before our eyes, and has even been
described in National Review itself [ Europe in Crisis, by David Pryce-Jones, July 10, 2017]. Marion Le
Pen (pictured right) also offered, by far, the most intellectually sophisticated and
authentically conservative address of the conference, which even Rod Dreher admitted avoided
the usual "conservative boilerplate" that passes for wisdom at these increasingly embarrassing
junkets [ Marion
Marechal Le Pen's Dynamic Speech, The American Conservative, February 22,
2018]. Yet even at this moment of existential civilization danger, the parasites of the
Respectable Right are determined to make sure there is no effective resistance until it's
too late -- just as they purged everyone
who warned of America's immigration disaster which now threatens the entire GOP with
annihilation.
This intellectual bankruptcy won't prevent Conservatism Inc. from simply retaking the
movement once President Trump is gone, or politically defeated. While the grassroots is with
Trump and CPAC could not openly oppose the president, the panels were still ultimately
controlled by the Donor Class, which pushed cheap labor, mass immigration and resistance to
America First trade and immigration policies [ Wanna Be a
Player at CPAC? Write a Check First, by Lachlan Markay, Daily
Beast, February 23, 2018]
2/ was somehow responsible for those wage increases, not increased immigration enforcement
and thus a tighter labor market with less cheap, foreign competition. This assertion seems to
be common among the Reagan-nostalgic wing of the GOP,
And Mitt Romney is also clearly setting himself up as the "anti-Trump,"
denouncing identity politics from the crypto-ethnostate of Utah. Once
he gets his chance, he'll go back to making sure Republicans continue politely losing the way
they did over the past decade [ The
Coming Clash of the GOP Titans, by Daniel Depetris, The American
Conservative, February 23, 2018].
And Romney may get his chance soon. Rasmussen has President Trump's approval rating at 50
percent, but it only polls likely voters. Groups that poll all registered voters have the
president's approval rating as far lower, even in the mid 30's [ Trump Hits 50% by Dick
Morris, WesternJournalism, February 25, 2018]
This is significant because in 2018 there is likely to be far more voter turnout than usual
in a midterm election, as the Main Stream Media has whipped the Democrat base into a frenzy.
Democrats are also scoring a number of special election victories in districts President Trump
and the Republicans won handily in 2016 [ Kentucky
Democrat wins state House in Trump stronghold, by Maegan Vasquez,
CNN, February 22, 2018].
The defeat of Roy Moore in Alabama (albeit due to his
betrayal by a terrified GOP Establishment ) should also be considered a warning sign.
Yet Republicans appear complacent -- and this includes the "nationalists." And with the
Supreme Court's recent decision to allow DACA recipients to stay in the country until the issue
is litigated through the appeals court level, President Trump's peculiar decision to try
to pose as a
pro-DACA moderate on immigration no longer makes any sense because Democrats will not be
under any pressure to "save the Dreamers" [
In blow to Trump, Supreme Court won't hear appeal of DACA ruling, by Pete
Williams, NBC News, February 26, 2018]. The March 5 "deadline" is now gone for
good.
Trump needs to change the equation on immigration and find new sources of pressure to put on
the Democrats. One of the easiest moves:
advocate a remittance tax to pay for the border wall. With the Supreme Court's DACA ruling,
an action like this practically becomes a political necessity.
CPAC shows the conservative grassroots are with the president and that the Beltway elites
are cowed. But they are still hostile. They will only accept the president while he is strong.
Today, he appears weak, as even foreign leaders such as former Mexican President Vicente Fox
are mocking him, saying Mexico
will never pay for the wall.
It is time for President Trump to show leadership and strength on his signature issue. And
if he doesn't act soon, the anti-Trump wing of the GOP will join the incipient coup against
him.
CuckPAC has never represented any conservative values and has always been a display of
Zionist ass kissing. That they now love them some Donald just shows what a worthless Israel
firster Trump has shown himself to be.
"This intellectual bankruptcy won't prevent Conservatism Inc. from simply retaking the
movement once President Trump is gone, or politically defeated."
When Trump is gone or politically defeated it will be due to the efforts of Conservative
Inc. for which CuckPAC has always been the showcase.
CPAC shows the conservative grassroots are with the president and that the Beltway
elites are cowed.
I was good with Kucinich and Nader. I'm neither Conservative nor Republican. I voted for
McGovern. Yet I am a card carrying deplorable. Bernie is a fraud and Trump is the only real
opposition to the entrenched thieves and murderers in Washington. Your Conservative grass
roots have a significant cohort of fellow travelers. Trump could not have won the upper
midwest without us.
I thought Trump's offer of amnesty in exchange for moving toward a sane immigration policy
WAS leadership. It's easier to stop immigration than to reverse it. And he exposed the
Democrats. They have lost the dreamers as a political tool.
Where Trump is losing me is with his stupid and dangerous foreign policy. That's where I
would like to see some leadership.
President Donald Trump flew to Davos for the World Economic Forum, and completely
electrified it,
according to reports .
Although the "America First" slogan had raised concern in the global economic community that
this meant the United States would disregard the needs and concerns of other world economic
powers, the President dispelled this worry handily. Members of his cabinet had been in Davos a
bit before his arrival, and were involved in interview and panels already, and when he arrived,
he and his assistants were able to explain more what this philosophy actually means.
"America first is not America alone", said Gary Cohn, the president's economic adviser. The
point of this idea is not for the United States to dominate and control the world, but in
Trump's view, to make better deals and better trade agreements around the world, and to also
cement and strengthen the diplomatic relations between the USA and her allies, most notably
England and Israel.
The President met with both Prime Ministers Netanyahu of Israel and Theresa May of the
United Kingdom. In each meeting he affirmed the very close ties between nations, and also waved
away the rumors that the US and Britain were in a fractious state with one another in his
meeting with PM Theresa May.
"... What do you think? Perhaps almost 60,000 Americans dying in Vietnam was a darker time. Or maybe when Hitler's armies rolled across Europe, Japan surprise attacked Pearl Harbor, and 400,000 American soldiers died World War II. ..."
"... Anyone who thinks Trump's Presidency is the darkest time in American history is a poor student of American history. And I must assume their lives are pretty amazing if this is the worst they have ever felt. ..."
I saw someone refer to the Trump Presidency as "possibly the darkest time in American
history." I've heard some iteration of that many times from people still in a frenzy over the
Trump Administration.
I'm not a big Trump fan. I wasn't a big Obama fan either. But their presence in office did
not and does not hang over my life like a dark cloud. They really aren't that important.
Yes, they have the ability to make life more difficult for many. It is unfortunate that any
politicians have that much control over our day to day lives.
But the darkest time in American history ?
What do you think? Perhaps almost 60,000 Americans dying in Vietnam was a darker time. Or
maybe when Hitler's armies rolled across Europe, Japan surprise attacked Pearl Harbor, and
400,000 American soldiers died World War II.
For Japanese Americans, FDR's
presidency was likely a darker time, as they sat in detainment facilities. Their crime was
having Japanese ancestors.
In 1918 the Spanish Flu swept across the globe killing at least 20 million people worldwide,
675,000 Americans. At the same time, soldiers were coming home from WWI blinded by chemicals
and mutilated by bombs.
And that is just going back one century. American history also includes the Civil War,
slavery, and
the Whiskey Rebellion .
Anyone who thinks Trump's Presidency is the darkest time in American history is a poor
student of American history. And I must assume their lives are pretty amazing if this is the
worst they have ever felt.
... ... ...
Look at where it left the global
warming alarmists . They wanted to reduce pollution, which is a noble cause. But they lied
about the goals, they lied about the causes, and they exaggerated the timetable. It's the
classic boy who cried wolf.
... ... ...
I used to be paranoid about the government. Obviously, some of that paranoia is well
founded. They do monitor communications and
disrupt online discourse . They do violate
rights . They are oppressive
in many ways.
Bannon backed candidate later lost. So much for this Bannon "success".
This idea of Trump playing 6 dimensional chess is a joke. It's the same explanation that was pushed for Obama disastrous neocon
foreign policy. Here is one very apt quote: "What Trump has done are disasters, and equates to treason. Selling billions of dollars
of weapons the our enemies the terrorists/Saudis, killing innocent people in Syria, and Yemen, sending more troops to
Afghanistan..." What 6-dimetional chess?
According to Occam razor principle the simplest explanation of Trump behaviour is probably the most correct. He does not control
foright policy, outsourcing it to "generals" and be does not pursue domestic policy of creating jobs as he promised his
electorate. In other words, both in foreign policy and domestic policy, he became a turncoat,
betraying his electorate, much like Obama. kind of Republican Obama.
And as time goes by, Trump looks more and more like Hillary II or Republican Obama. So he might have problems with the candidates he supports
in midterm elections. His isolationism, if it ever existed, is gone. Promise of jobs is gone. Detente with Russia is gone.
What's left?
Note the level disappointment of what used to be Trump base in this site comment section...
Notable quotes:
"... In a serious rebuke for President Trump (and perhaps moreso for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell), ousted judge and alt-right favorite Roy Moore has won the Alabama Republican Primary by a landslide ..."
"... The Steve Bannon-backed candidate, who defied court orders to remove the Ten Commandments from his courtroom and refused to recognize gay marriage after the Supreme Court's June 2015 ruling legalizing same-sex marriage, is leading by 9.6 points with 92% of the votes counted... ..."
"... These attacks on Bannon were one of the most prominent news stories in the first week following Trump's election victory. It didn't take long, however, for a counter-attack to emerge - from the right-wing elements of the Jewish community. ..."
"... Bannon is a true fucking patriot trying to pull this once great country from the sinkhole. ..."
"... I think the reality is that this was a message to McConnell much more than Trump. That message is simple: I'm coming to kill your career. Bannon went out of his way to say he fully supports Trump (despite backing the opposite candidate). And, let's face it, if Bannon buries McConnell, he's doing everyone a service, Trump included. ..."
"... The echo chamber media "is so surprised" that in Germany and the US we are seeing a rising tide of pissed off people, well imagine fucking that? Leaving the echo chamber and not intellectually trying to understand the anger, but living the anger. ..."
"... Well, we can only hope that Trump gets the message. He was elected to be President of the USA, not Emperor of the World. Quote from that Monty Python film: "He's not the Messiah; he's a very naughty boy!" ..."
"... A cursory background reading on Roy Moore tells me that he is one of the worst types for public office. And he might just turn out to be like Trump -- act like an anti-swarm cowboy and promise a path to heaven, then show his real colors as an Establishment puppet once the braindead voters put him in office. ..."
"... When Trump won the Republican nomination, and then the Presidency it was because people were rebelling against the establishment rulers. There is considerable disgust with these big government rulers that are working for themselves and their corporate cronies, but not for the US population. ..."
"... Trump seems to have been compromised at this point, and his support of the establishment favourite, Luther Strange is evidence that he isn't really the outsider he claimed to be. Moore's victory in Alabama says the rebellion still has wheels, so there is some hope. ..."
"... In Missouri where I live, the anti-establishment Republican contender for the upcoming US Senatorial 2018 race is Austin Peterson. It will be interesting to see how he, and his counterparts in other states do in the primaries. Both of the current Missouri Senators are worthless. ..."
"... I remember well the last "3-Dimensional Chess master" Obama while he too was always out maneuvering his apponents, per the media reports... ..."
"... Every now and then Trump tends to make huge blunders, and sometimes betrayals without knowing what he is doing. "Champions"- (great leaders) do not do that. ..."
"... What Trump has done are disasters, and equates to treason. Selling billions of dollars of weapons the our enemies the terrorists/Saudis, killing innocent people in Syria, and Yemen, sending more troops to Afghanistan... ..."
"... It is epitome of self-delusion to see people twisting themselves into pretzels, trying to justify/rationalize Trump's continuing display of disloyalty to America ..."
"... YOU CAN'T BE A ZIONIST AND AN AMERICAN FIRSTER, IT IS ONE OR THE OTHER. ..."
Congratulations to Roy Moore on his Republican Primary win in Alabama. Luther Strange started way back & ran a good race. Roy,
WIN in Dec!
In a serious rebuke for President Trump (and perhaps moreso for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell), ousted judge and
alt-right favorite Roy Moore has won the Alabama Republican Primary by a landslide
The Steve Bannon-backed candidate, who defied court orders to remove the Ten Commandments from his courtroom and refused to
recognize gay marriage after the Supreme Court's June 2015 ruling legalizing same-sex marriage, is leading by 9.6 points with 92%
of the votes counted...
... ... ...
However, as Politco
reported this evening, President Donald Trump began distancing himself from a Luther Strange loss before ballots were even cast,
telling conservative activists Monday night the candidate he's backing in Alabama's GOP Senate primary was likely to lose ! and suggesting
he'd done everything he could do given the circumstances.
Trump told conservative activists who visited the White House for dinner on Monday night that he'd underestimated the political
power of Roy Moore, the firebrand populist and former judge who's supported by Trump's former chief strategist Steve Bannon, according
to three people who were there.
And Trump gave a less-than full-throated endorsement during Friday's rally.
While he called Strange "a real fighter and a real good guy," he also mused on stage about whether he made a "mistake" by backing
Strange and committed to campaign "like hell" for Moore if he won.
Trump was encouraged to pick Strange before the August primary by son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner as well as other aides,
White House officials said. He was never going to endorse Alabama Republican Rep. Mo Brooks, who has at times opposed Trump's agenda,
and knew little about Moore, officials said.
... ... ...
Déjà view -> Sanity Bear •Sep 26, 2017 11:19 PM
AIPAC HAS ALL BASES COVERED...MIGA !
On Sept. 11, the Alabama Daughters for Zion organization circulated a statement on Israel by Moore, which started by saying
the U.S. and Israel "share not only a common Biblical heritage but also institutions of representative government and respect
for religious freedom." He traced Israel's origin to God's promise to Abram and the 1948 creation of modern Israel as "a fulfillment
of the Scriptures that foretold the regathering of the Jewish people to Israel."
Moore's statement includes five policy positions, including support for U.S. military assistance to Israel, protecting Israel
from "Iranian aggression," opposing boycotts of Israel, supporting Israel at the United Nations, and supporting direct Israeli-Palestinian
negotiations without outside pressure. He added, "as long as Hamas and the Palestinian Authority wrongly refuse to recognize Israel's
right to exist, such negotiations have scant chance of success."
While those views would give Moore common ground with much of the Jewish community regarding Israel, most of the state's Jewish
community has been at odds with Moore over church-state issues, such as his displays of the Ten Commandments in courthouses, and
his outspoken stance against homosexuality, both of which led to him being ousted as chief justice.
moore misreads the Bible as most socalled christians do. they have been deceived, they have confused the Israel of God( those
who have been given belief in Christ) with israel of the flesh. They cant hear Christs own words, woe is unto them. they are living
in their own selfrighteousness, not good. they are going to have a big surprise for not following the Word of God instead following
the tradition of men.
They were warned over and over in the Bible but they cant hear.
I Claudius -> VinceFostersGhost •Sep 27, 2017 6:27 AM
Forgive? Maybe. Forget? NEVER!! He tried to sell "US" out on this one. We now need to focus on bringing "Moore" candidates
to the podium to run against the RINO's and take out McConnell and Ryan. It's time for Jared and Ivanka to go back to NYC so Jared
can shore up his family's failing empire. However, if his business acumen is as accurate as his political then it's no wonder
the family needed taxpayer funded visas to sell the property. Then on to ridding the White House of Gen Kelly and McMaster - two
holdover generals from the Obama administration - after Obama forced out the real ones.
Clashfan -> Mycroft Holmes IV •Sep 26, 2017 11:33 PM
Rump has hoodwinked his supoprt base and turned on them almost immediately. Some refuse to acknowledge this.
These attacks on Bannon were one of the most prominent news stories in the first week following Trump's election victory.
It didn't take long, however, for a counter-attack to emerge - from the right-wing elements of the Jewish community. The
Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) came to Bannon's defense and accused the ADL of a "character assassination" against Bannon.
The Wizard -> Oh regional Indian •Sep 26, 2017 10:12 PM
Trump should figure out the Deep State elites he has surrounded himself with, don't have control of the states Trump won. Trump
thought he had to negotiate with these guys and his ego got the best of him. Bannon was trying to convince him he should have
stayed the course and not give in.
~"American politics gets moore strange by the day..."~
Technically speaking OhRI, with Moore's win politics became less Strange, or "Strange less", or "Sans Luther", depending on
how one chose to phrase it [SMIRK]
Adullam -> Gaius Frakkin' Baltar •Sep 26, 2017 11:05 PM
Trump needs to fire Jared! Some news outlets are saying that it was his son in law who advised him to back Strange. He has
to quit listening to those who want to destroy him or ... they will.
overbet -> Killtruck •Sep 26, 2017 9:41 PM
Bannon is a true fucking patriot trying to pull this once great country from the sinkhole.
Juggernaut x2 -> overbet •Sep 26, 2017 10:07 PM
Trump better pull his head out of his ass and quit being a wishy-washy populist on BS like Iran- the farther right he goes
the greater his odds of reelection because he has pissed off a lot of the far-righters that put him in- getting rid of Kushner,
Cohn and his daughter and negotiating w/Assad and distancing us from Israhell would be a huge help.
The whole Russiagate ploy was a diversion from (((them)))
NoDebt -> Killtruck •Sep 26, 2017 9:42 PM
I think the reality is that this was a message to McConnell much more than Trump. That message is simple: I'm coming to
kill your career. Bannon went out of his way to say he fully supports Trump (despite backing the opposite candidate). And, let's
face it, if Bannon buries McConnell, he's doing everyone a service, Trump included.
Oldwood -> NoDebt •Sep 26, 2017 10:08 PM
I think it was a setup.
Bannon would not oppose Trump that directly unless there was a wink and a nod involved.
Trump is still walking a tightrope, trying to appease his base AND keep as many establishment republicans at his side (even
for only optics). By Trump supporting Strange while knowing he was an underdog AND completely apposed by Bannon/his base he was
able to LOOK like he was supporting the establishment, while NOT really. Trump seldom backs losers which makes me think it was
deliberate. Strange never made sense anyway.
But what do I know?
Urahara -> NoDebt •Sep 27, 2017 12:20 AM
Bannon is hardcore Isreal first. Why are you supporting the zionist? It's an obvious play.
general ambivalent -> Urahara •Sep 27, 2017 2:23 AM
People are desperate to rationalise their failure into a victory. They cannot give up on Hope so they have to use hyperbole
in everything and pretend this is all leading to something great in 2020 or 2024.
None of these fools learned a damn thing and they are desperate to make the same mistake again. The swamp is full, so full
that it has breached the banks and taken over all of society. Trump is a swamp monster, and you simply cannot reform the swamp
when both sides are monsters. In other words, the inside is not an option, so it has to be done the hard way. But people would
prefer to keep voting in the swamp.
Al Gophilia -> NoDebt •Sep 27, 2017 3:58 AM
Bannon as president would really have those swamp creatures squirming. There wouldn't be this Trump crap about surrounding
himself with likeminded friends, such as Goldman Sachs turnstile workers and his good pals in the MIC.
Don't tell me he didn't choose them because if he didn't, then they were placed. That means he doesn't have the clout he pretends
to have or control of the agenda that the people asked him to deliver. His backing of Stange is telling.
Bobbyrib -> LindseyNarratesWordress •Sep 27, 2017 5:38 AM
He will not fire Kushner or Ivanka who have become part of the swamp. I'm so sick of these 'Trump is a genius and planned this
all along.'
To me Trump is a Mr. Bean type character that has been very fortunate and just goes with the flow. He has nearly no diplomacy,
or strategic skills.
NoWayJose •Sep 26, 2017 10:35 PM
Dear President Trump - if you like your job, listen to these voters. Borders, Walls, limited immigrants (including all those
that Ryan and McConnell are sneaking through under your very nose), trade agreements to keep American jobs, and respect for our
flag, our country, and the unborn!
I had hope for Trump, but as someone who reads ZH often, and does not suffer from amnesia (like much of America), I knew he
was way too good to be true.
We all know his back tracking, his flip flops...and while the media and many paid bloggers like to spin it as "not his fault",
it actually is.
His sending DACA to Congress was the last straw. Obama enacted DACA with a stroke of his pen, but Trump "needed to send it
to Congress so they could "get it right". The only thing Congress does with immigration is try and get amnesty passed.
Of course while Trump sends DACA to Congress, he does not mind using the military without Congress, which he actually should
do.
Why is it when it's something American's want, it has to go through the "correct channels", but when its something the Zionists
want, he does it with the wave of his pen? We saw the same bull shit games with Obama...
Dilluminati •Sep 26, 2017 11:02 PM
Anybody surprised by this is pretending the civility at the workplace isn't masking anger at corporate America and Government.
I'll go in and put in the 8 hours, I'm an adult that is part of the job. However I'm actually fed up with allot of the stupid
shit and want the establishment to work, problem is that we are witnessing failed nations, failed schools, failed healthcare,
even failed employment contracts, conditions, and wages.
The echo chamber media "is so surprised" that in Germany and the US we are seeing a rising tide of pissed off people, well
imagine fucking that? Leaving the echo chamber and not intellectually trying to understand the anger, but living the anger.
You haven't seen anything yet in Catalonia/Spain etc, Brexit, or so..
This is what failure looks like: That moment the Romanovs and Louis XVI looked around the room seeking an understanding eye,
there was none.
Pascal1967 •Sep 26, 2017 11:19 PM
Dear Trump:
Quit listening to your moron son-in-law, swamp creature, Goldman Sachs douchebag son-in-law Kushner. HE SUCKS!! If you truly
had BALLS, you would FIRE his fucking ass. HE is The Swamp, He Is Nepotism! THE AMERICAN PEOPLE HATE HIM.
MAGA! LISTEN TO BANNON, DONALD.
DO NOT FUCK THIS UP!
ROY MOORE, 100%!!!!
You lost, Trump ... get your shit together before it is too late!
ElTerco •Sep 26, 2017 11:28 PM
Bannon was always the smarts behind the whole operation. Now we are just left with a complete idiot in office.
Also, unlike Trump, Bannon actually gives a shit about what happens to the American people rather than the American tax system.
At the end of the day, all Trump really cares about is himself.
samsara •Sep 26, 2017 11:25 PM
I think most people get it backwards about Trump and the Deplorables.
I believed in pulling troops a from all the war zones and Trump said he felt the same
I believed in Legal immigration, sending people back if here illegal especially if involved in crime, Trump said he felt the
same.
I believed in America first in negotiating treaties, Trump said he felt the same.
I didn't 'vote' for Trump per se, he was the proxy.
We didn't leave Him, He left us.
BarnacleBill •Sep 26, 2017 11:31 PM
Well, we can only hope that Trump gets the message. He was elected to be President of the USA, not Emperor of the World.
Quote from that Monty Python film: "He's not the Messiah; he's a very naughty boy!" It's high time he turned back to the
job he promised to do, and drain that swamp.
napper •Sep 26, 2017 11:47 PM
A cursory background reading on Roy Moore tells me that he is one of the worst types for public office. And he might just
turn out to be like Trump -- act like an anti-swarm cowboy and promise a path to heaven, then show his real colors as an Establishment
puppet once the braindead voters put him in office.
America is doomed from top (the swarm) to bottom (the brainless voters).
Sid Davis •Sep 27, 2017 1:40 AM
When Trump won the Republican nomination, and then the Presidency it was because people were rebelling against the establishment
rulers. There is considerable disgust with these big government rulers that are working for themselves and their corporate cronies,
but not for the US population.
Trump seems to have been compromised at this point, and his support of the establishment favourite, Luther Strange is evidence
that he isn't really the outsider he claimed to be. Moore's victory in Alabama says the rebellion still has wheels, so there is some hope.
In Missouri where I live, the anti-establishment Republican contender for the upcoming US Senatorial 2018 race is Austin Peterson.
It will be interesting to see how he, and his counterparts in other states do in the primaries. Both of the current Missouri Senators
are worthless.
nevertheless -> pfwed •Sep 27, 2017 7:33 AM
I remember well the last "3-Dimensional Chess master" Obama while he too was always out maneuvering his apponents, per the
media reports...
LoveTruth •Sep 27, 2017 2:56 AM
Every now and then Trump tends to make huge blunders, and sometimes betrayals without knowing what he is doing. "Champions"-
(great leaders) do not do that.
nevertheless -> LoveTruth •Sep 27, 2017 7:16 AM
What Trump has done are disasters, and equates to treason. Selling billions of dollars of weapons the our enemies the terrorists/Saudis,
killing innocent people in Syria, and Yemen, sending more troops to Afghanistan...
But most treasonous of all was his sending DACA to "get it right", really? Congress has only one goal with immigration, amnesty,
and Chump knows dam well they will send him legislation that will clearly or covertly grant amnesty for millions and millions
of illegals, dressed up as "security".
Obama enacted DACA with the stroke of a pen, and while TRUMP promised to end it, he did NOT. Why is it when it's something
Americans want, it has to be "Constitutional", but when it comes form his banker pals, like starting a war, he can do that unilaterally.
It is epitome of self-delusion to see people twisting themselves into pretzels, trying to justify/rationalize Trump's continuing
display of disloyalty to America, and loyalty to Zionism.
Trump should always have been seen as a likely Zionist shill. He comes form Jew York City, owes everything he is to Zionist
Jewish bankers, is a self proclaimed Zionist...
YOU CAN'T BE A ZIONIST AND AN AMERICAN FIRSTER, IT IS ONE OR THE OTHER.
Either Zero Hedge is over run with Zionist hasbara, giving cover to their boy Chump, or Americans on the "right" have become
as gullible as those who supported Obama on the "left".
"... As for Bannon himself, his downfall has been fast and unceremonious: trashed by the president after he gossiped to Michael Wolff, abandoned by his deep-pocketed Mercer family funders, sacked by Breitbart, and then forced to watch as Trump indicated in a meeting earlier this week that he could sign a comprehensive immigration reform bill. Marat's downfall saw him elevated into a revolutionary martyr; Bannon has been banished into exile. ..."
"... But revolutions don't die with their figureheads. Bannonism won't either because, unlike the ethereal ideas behind liberalism and conservatism, it's found visceral real-world resonance -- among blue collars who see economic nationalism as a glimmer of hope among boarded-up plants, service-members frustrated with fruitless wars, young men flummoxed by modern feminism, right-wing activists frustrated with their political party's perceived impotence. Taunt Bannon all you like, but the imprint he leaves behind will be far larger than one spurious tell-all. ..."
"... The last blast of paleconservatism was Perot and the strong late 1990s economy halted that movement. ..."
"... The biggest thing lacking of the Bannon/Trump movement is how push back against the economic elite. Trump is governing exactly like an establishment Republican. Look at Trump/Perry ideas on saving coal which was properly turned down. This plan was unbelievably awful and not the right way for a better electric system and was simply handing Murray and First Energy a bunch money. ..."
"... Conservatism stands for stability and community. The accretions of "limited government" and "lower taxes", charming they may be as mantras, are more libertarian (Classic Liberal) than they are conservative ..."
"... A bomb-throwing Bolshevik like Bannon truly belongs on The Left, but in these days of abysmal ignorance of civics, it doesn't matter. "Bannonism" may live on, but thanks to the crackpot nature of its cobbled-together ideology, will remain a niche religion much like hard-core anarcho-libertarianism. ..."
"... Given the current atmosphere of outrage porn, willful ignorance and gleeful brutality, I do not have much hope for a Burkean conservatism to thrive, at least until after the pending social collapse ..."
"... Bannon will likely fade into oblivion via the Bourbon barrel, and the name Trump may become synonymous with "traitor" (but not like the media elite would hope). These men did not create a movement nor inspire anything. They were both savvy enough to see the political reality in this country and to give it voice. They will go, but the reality will remain. Ironically, but predictably, both men will likely be laid low by their own egos. But, so it goes ..."
"... The reality that supersedes these egotistical, narcissistic men is the fact that the traditional core of the American people have "woke" to the fact of their betrayal by the elite class to whom they have entrusted the leadership of this country for decades. They have awakened to find decay and rot throughout every American institution and to discover that these elites have enriched themselves beyond measure with the wealth of the nation at the cost of the workers and taxpayers who make that wealth possible. They have awakened to their own replacement and now realize the disdain with which they are viewed by those who would be their "masters." ..."
"... These Deplorables, white, working, taxpaying, Bible-believing, gun-owning MEN(!), are not going back into the opioid sleep of blissed out suburbia. They are now aware of the ill-hidden hatred which the elite class has for them and the future of serfdom to which these elites have fated them and their children. Gentlemen, a beast is being born out here in the hinterlands. It will not be put back in the cage ..."
Bannon is an imperfect ideologue. He has a gargantuan ego that often leads him astray, perhaps lately towards the delusion that
he himself would be a better populist messenger than the man he helped elect. But he's also hit on a paradox at the core of today's
American conservatism. Conservatives, in theory at least, look with skepticism upon grand projects and giant leaps, which too often
end up rupturing with the societal traditions they hold dear. Yet much of what conservatives support today is actually quite radical:
banning all or most abortions, rolling back the regulatory state, rejecting decades of orthodoxy on the issue of climate change,
a massive downshift of power from the federal government to states and localities, a moral ethic rooted in Christianity rather than
identity politics -- and lately questioning the "liberal international order" in favor of something more nationalist and protectionist.
The enactment of such an agenda would cause a good deal of upheaval and uncertainty, exactly the sort of void conservatives' forebears
feared most.
Some have wrangled with this contradiction by scaling back their proposals, claiming great problems can be addressed with light-touch
solutions, like child tax credits to arrest sagging birth rates. Others, much of Conservative Inc. it seems, are fine pretending
this tension doesn't exist at all. Bannon's approach has been to gleefully embrace conservatism's radical side. Disagree with him
all you like (and I do), but his is a perfectly logical position. His ascent -- some would say his transformation -- is a predictable
consequence of conservatives yearning for something increasingly distant from the modern world, just as did young people in the quietly
simmering 1950s. Indeed, there are many stylistic similarities between the radicals of today and those half a century ago: the "for
the lulz" performance art of a Milo Yiannopoulos contains an echo of the prankster Yippies, for example. Those who lack cultural
power can sell out, they can evolve, they can retreat to the catacombs -- or they can take Bannon's approach, they can transgress
and pump their fists and try to burn it all down.
Bannon's digestible binaries -- establishment versus the people, globalists versus Americans -- are easily superimposed on an
electorate that's itself divided both economically and culturally. Red states and the Rust Belt have for decades been the victims
of bad federal policy; Bannonism gives them an abstract enemy to blame, a valve for their fury. The algorithmic and library-voiced
Mitt Romney and the earnest Paul Ryan seem woefully inadequate by comparison: have those praying they run for higher office again
learned nothing? In The Constitution of Liberty , F.A. Hayek critiques conservatism by defining it as "a brake on the vehicle
of progress" and observing that a mere decrease in speed "cannot offer an alternative to the direction in which we are moving." Likewise,
while conventional taxes-and-terrorism Republican rhetoric doesn't feel like much of a heave on the ship's wheel, Bannonism furnishes
a clear vision, a real change, swords to wield, dragons to slay. Guess which one has greater appeal right now?
The modern right has always had a whiff of radicalism about it, with origins in pushback against the 60s counterculture, a second
wind in Newt Gingrich's legislative reformation, and late-life vitality in the Saul Alinsky-invoking tea party. But it's with Bannon
that the odor has become most pungent. He is an unlikely revolutionary. An
early profile from Bloomberg Businessweek
in 2015 portrays him as more of an operative than anything, determined to professionalize a conservative movement that had made too
many unforced errors. Other pre-Trump appearances found Bannon worrying about the national debt and extolling his Catholic faith.
It's a windy road from there to storming the barricades under Donald Trump's sigil, but it's one many conservatives have traveled
in recent years. The challenge for more traditional Republicans will be fashioning a new politics that quenches voters' burning thirst
for change -- a position they've arrived at themselves, not been brainwashed into by Fox News -- while circumventing Bannonism's
conflagrations and The Camp of the Saints ugliness.
As for Bannon himself, his downfall has been fast and unceremonious: trashed by the president after he gossiped to Michael Wolff,
abandoned by his deep-pocketed Mercer family funders, sacked by Breitbart, and then forced to watch as Trump
indicated in
a meeting earlier this week that he could sign a comprehensive immigration reform bill. Marat's downfall saw him elevated into
a revolutionary martyr; Bannon has been banished into exile.
But revolutions don't die with their figureheads. Bannonism won't either
because, unlike the ethereal ideas behind liberalism and conservatism, it's found visceral real-world resonance -- among blue collars
who see economic nationalism as a glimmer of hope among boarded-up plants, service-members frustrated with fruitless wars, young
men flummoxed by modern feminism, right-wing activists frustrated with their political party's perceived impotence. Taunt Bannon
all you like, but the imprint he leaves behind will be far larger than one spurious tell-all.
Matt Purple is the managing editor of The American Conservative
There is always a level of Bannonism /Paleoconservatism in the US politics but who knows how impactful it will be.
Probably the biggest issue for Bannon was Trump was elected in 2016 and our nation did not want or need a Leninist. (It
wasn't 2008 anymore) Frankly most conservatives were satisfied that HRC and Obama were not President and did not want massive changes.
The whole the people and globalist division is too simplistic and there are a lot 'People' that support free trade or relatively
open borders. (For instance I don't see the economic benefit of steel tariffs at all.)
The last blast of paleconservatism was Perot and the strong late 1990s economy halted that movement.
We still don't know how much a pushback on Trump/Bannonism will be. Trump is not popular and the House is endangered.
5) The biggest thing lacking of the Bannon/Trump movement is how push back against the economic elite. Trump is governing
exactly like an establishment Republican. Look at Trump/Perry ideas on saving coal which was properly turned down. This plan was
unbelievably awful and not the right way for a better electric system and was simply handing Murray and First Energy a bunch money.
It is a cardinal error to confuse conservatism with The Right, as much as it is to conflate liberalism with The Left.
Conservatism stands for stability and community. The accretions of "limited government" and "lower taxes", charming they
may be as mantras, are more libertarian (Classic Liberal) than they are conservative. (Thanks loads, Frank Meyer.)
A bomb-throwing Bolshevik like Bannon truly belongs on The Left, but in these days of abysmal ignorance of civics, it doesn't
matter. "Bannonism" may live on, but thanks to the crackpot nature of its cobbled-together ideology, will remain a niche religion much
like hard-core anarcho-libertarianism.
Given the current atmosphere of outrage porn, willful ignorance and gleeful brutality, I do not have much hope for a Burkean
conservatism to thrive, at least until after the pending social collapse.
Bannon will likely fade into oblivion via the Bourbon barrel, and the name Trump may become synonymous with "traitor" (but
not like the media elite would hope). These men did not create a movement nor inspire anything. They were both savvy enough to
see the political reality in this country and to give it voice. They will go, but the reality will remain. Ironically, but predictably,
both men will likely be laid low by their own egos. But, so it goes.
The reality that supersedes these egotistical, narcissistic men is the fact that the traditional core of the American people
have "woke" to the fact of their betrayal by the elite class to whom they have entrusted the leadership of this country for decades.
They have awakened to find decay and rot throughout every American institution and to discover that these elites have enriched
themselves beyond measure with the wealth of the nation at the cost of the workers and taxpayers who make that wealth possible.
They have awakened to their own replacement and now realize the disdain with which they are viewed by those who would be their
"masters."
These Deplorables, white, working, taxpaying, Bible-believing, gun-owning MEN(!), are not going back into the opioid sleep
of blissed out suburbia. They are now aware of the ill-hidden hatred which the elite class has for them and the future of serfdom
to which these elites have fated them and their children. Gentlemen, a beast is being born out here in the hinterlands. It will
not be put back in the cage.
The writer's allusion to the French Revolution is somewhat telling. The history of the West is replete with moments of savagery
and destruction directed inwardly. It will be so again. When these Deplorables turn on their keepers, it will not be pretty. The
Progressive elites who believe that they can control and shape "narratives" to harness that power are fools. The cloistered intellectuals
who believe that they can "opt" out of the coming clash are dreaming.
The traditional core of the American people are no different than their ancestors. They just don't live as close to the edge
as those folks did. But when they are backed up to that edge, when betrayal has been made clear and the institutions are revealed
for the Oz that they have become, they will recall that old hatred that still courses in the Western man's veins and will react
in ways that will chill the blood. The imaginary "crimes" with which "privileged whites" are damned by the rioting Cultural Marxists
will escape imagination and leap into reality. God help us.
Re: The last blast of paleconservatism was Perot and the strong late 1990s economy halted that movement.
Perot, for whom I voted in 1992 but not 1996, was not a paleoconservative, but rather a pragmatic centrist. Compare his position
on social issues with Pat Buchanan's (Buchanan being Mr. Paleoconservative -- and who ran in 1992 too)
Looks like Bannon is really weak in political economy. He does not even use the term neoliberalism. Go
here to read the full transcript of his speech.
One very interesting quote is ""I believe we've come partly off-track in the years since the fall of the Soviet Union and we're
starting now in the 21st century, which I believe, strongly, is a crisis both of our church, a crisis of our faith, a crisis of the
West, a crisis of capitalism."
Notable quotes:
"... That war triggered a century of barbaric -- unparalleled in mankind's history -- virtually 180 to 200 million people were killed in the 20th century, and I believe that, you know, hundreds of years from now when they look back, we're children of that: We're children of that barbarity. This will be looked at almost as a new Dark Age. ..."
"... I believe we've come partly offtrack in the years since the fall of the Soviet Union and we're starting now in the 21st century, which I believe, strongly, is a crisis both of our church, a crisis of our faith, a crisis of the West, a crisis of capitalism. ..."
"... I see that every day. I'm a very practical, pragmatic capitalist. I was trained at Goldman Sachs, I went to Harvard Business School, I was as hard-nosed a capitalist as you get. I specialized in media, in investing in media companies, and it's a very, very tough environment. And you've had a fairly good track record. So I don't want this to kinda sound namby-pamby, "Let's all hold hands and sing 'Kumbaya' around capitalism." ..."
"... One is state-sponsored capitalism. And that's the capitalism you see in China and Russia. I believe it's what Holy Father [Pope Francis] has seen for most of his life in places like Argentina, where you have this kind of crony capitalism of people that are involved with these military powers-that-be in the government, and it forms a brutal form of capitalism that is really about creating wealth and creating value for a very small subset of people. And it doesn't spread the tremendous value creation throughout broader distribution patterns that were seen really in the 20th century. ..."
"... The second form of capitalism that I feel is almost as disturbing, is what I call the Ayn Rand or the Objectivist School of libertarian capitalism. And, look, I'm a big believer in a lot of libertarianism. I have many many friends that's a very big part of the conservative movement -- whether it's the UKIP movement in England, it's many of the underpinnings of the populist movement in Europe, and particularly in the United States. However, that form of capitalism is quite different when you really look at it to what I call the "enlightened capitalism" of the Judeo-Christian West. It is a capitalism that really looks to make people commodities, and to objectify people, and to use them almost -- as many of the precepts of Marx -- and that is a form of capitalism, particularly to a younger generation [that] they're really finding quite attractive. And if they don't see another alternative, it's going to be an alternative that they gravitate to under this kind of rubric of "personal freedom." ..."
Buzzfeed has the remarks of Stephen Bannon, former CEO of Breitbart News ,
and currently appointed by President Elect Trump to be his chief advisor, at a conference at
the Vatican in the summer of 2014:
Steve Bannon:
Thank you very much Benjamin, and I appreciate you guys including us in
this. We're speaking from Los Angeles today, right across the street from our headquarters in
Los Angeles. Um. I want to talk about wealth creation and what wealth creation really can
achieve and maybe take it in a slightly different direction, because I believe the world, and
particularly the Judeo-Christian west, is in a crisis. And it's really the organizing principle
of how we built Breitbart News to really be a platform to bring news and information to people
throughout the world. Principally in the west, but we're expanding internationally to let
people understand the depths of this crisis, and it is a crisis both of capitalism but really
of the underpinnings of the Judeo-Christian west in our beliefs.
It's ironic, I think, that we're talking today at exactly, tomorrow, 100 years ago, at
the exact moment we're talking, the assassination took place in Sarajevo of Archduke Franz
Ferdinand that led to the end of the Victorian era and the beginning of the bloodiest century
in mankind's history. Just to put it in perspective, with the assassination that took place 100
years ago tomorrow in Sarajevo, the world was at total peace. There was trade, there was
globalization, there was technological transfer, the High Church of England and the Catholic
Church and the Christian faith was predominant throughout Europe of practicing Christians.
Seven weeks later, I think there were 5 million men in uniform and within 30 days there were
over a million casualties.
That war triggered a century of barbaric -- unparalleled in mankind's history --
virtually 180 to 200 million people were killed in the 20th century, and I believe that, you
know, hundreds of years from now when they look back, we're children of that: We're children of
that barbarity. This will be looked at almost as a new Dark Age.
But the thing that got us out of it, the organizing principle that met this, was not
just the heroism of our people -- whether it was French resistance fighters, whether it was the
Polish resistance fighters, or it's the young men from Kansas City or the Midwest who stormed
the beaches of Normandy, commandos in England that fought with the Royal Air Force, that fought
this great war, really the Judeo-Christian West versus atheists, right? The underlying
principle is an enlightened form of capitalism, that capitalism really gave us the wherewithal.
It kind of organized and built the materials needed to support, whether it's the Soviet Union,
England, the United States, and eventually to take back continental Europe and to beat back a
barbaric empire in the Far East.
That capitalism really generated tremendous wealth. And that wealth was really
distributed among a middle class, a rising middle class, people who come from really
working-class environments and created what we really call a Pax Americana. It was many, many
years and decades of peace. And I believe we've come partly offtrack in the years since the
fall of the Soviet Union and we're starting now in the 21st century, which I believe, strongly,
is a crisis both of our church, a crisis of our faith, a crisis of the West, a crisis of
capitalism.
And we're at the very beginning stages of a very brutal and bloody conflict, of which if
the people in this room, the people in the church, do not bind together and really form what I
feel is an aspect of the church militant, to really be able to not just stand with our beliefs,
but to fight for our beliefs against this new barbarity that's starting, that will completely
eradicate everything that we've been bequeathed over the last 2,000, 2,500 years.
Now, what I mean by that specifically: I think that you're seeing three kinds of
converging tendencies: One is a form of capitalism that is taken away from the underlying
spiritual and moral foundations of Christianity and, really, Judeo-Christian belief.
I see that every day. I'm a very practical, pragmatic capitalist. I was trained at
Goldman Sachs, I went to Harvard Business School, I was as hard-nosed a capitalist as you get.
I specialized in media, in investing in media companies, and it's a very, very tough
environment. And you've had a fairly good track record. So I don't want this to kinda sound
namby-pamby, "Let's all hold hands and sing 'Kumbaya' around capitalism."
But there's a strand of capitalism today -- two strands of it, that are very
disturbing.
One is state-sponsored capitalism. And that's the capitalism you see in China and
Russia. I believe it's what Holy Father [Pope Francis] has seen for most of his life in places
like Argentina, where you have this kind of crony capitalism of people that are involved with
these military powers-that-be in the government, and it forms a brutal form of capitalism that
is really about creating wealth and creating value for a very small subset of people. And it
doesn't spread the tremendous value creation throughout broader distribution patterns that were
seen really in the 20th century.
The second form of capitalism that I feel is almost as disturbing, is what I call the
Ayn Rand or the Objectivist School of libertarian capitalism. And, look, I'm a big believer in
a lot of libertarianism. I have many many friends that's a very big part of the conservative
movement -- whether it's the UKIP movement in England, it's many of the underpinnings of the
populist movement in Europe, and particularly in the United States.
However, that form of capitalism is quite different when you really look at it to what I
call the "enlightened capitalism" of the Judeo-Christian West. It is a capitalism that really
looks to make people commodities, and to objectify people, and to use them almost -- as many of
the precepts of Marx -- and that is a form of capitalism, particularly to a younger generation
[that] they're really finding quite attractive. And if they don't see another alternative, it's
going to be an alternative that they gravitate to under this kind of rubric of "personal
freedom."
The other tendency is an immense secularization of the West. And I know we've talked
about secularization for a long time, but if you look at younger people, especially millennials
under 30, the overwhelming drive of popular culture is to absolutely secularize this rising
iteration.
"... "I'm not a white nationalist, I'm a nationalist. I'm an economic nationalist," Bannon told the news outlet earlier this week. "The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia. The issue now is about Americans looking to not get f -- ed over." ..."
"... "Look, are there some people that are white nationalists that are attracted to some of the philosophies of the alt-right? Maybe," Bannon told Mother Jones in August. "Are there some people that are anti-Semitic that are attracted? Maybe. Right? Maybe some people are attracted to the alt-right that are homophobes, right? But that's just like, there are certain elements of the progressive left and the hard left that attract certain elements." ..."
"... "It's everything related to jobs," Bannon said and seemingly bragged about how he was going to drive conservatives "crazy" with his "trillion-dollar infrastructure plan." ..."
"... "With negative interest rates throughout the world, it's the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything. Ship yards, iron works, get them all jacked up," he proposed. "We're just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks. It will be as exciting as the 1930s, greater than the Reagan revolution -- conservatives, plus populists, in an economic nationalist movement." ..."
"... Bannon, in the Reporter interview, also gave some insight into how he viewed his political foes (presumably, liberals and the media) -- and the "darkness" he touts in fighting against them. ..."
Steve Bannon, the chief strategist and right-hand man to President-elect Donald Trump,
denied in an interview that he was an advocate of white nationalism -- and gave hints instead
about how his brand of "economic" nationalism will shake up Washington.
In The Hollywood Reporter, Bannon, the controversial former head of Breitbart News who went
on to chair Mr. Trump's presidential campaign, discussed why he believed his candidate won the
election.
"I'm not a white nationalist, I'm a nationalist. I'm an economic nationalist," Bannon told
the news outlet earlier this week. "The globalists gutted the American working class and
created a middle class in Asia. The issue now is about Americans looking to not get f -- ed
over."
Bannon's appointment to the White House has drawn criticism from Democrats and several civil
liberties groups, in part because of his (and Breitbart's) strong association with
the alt-right , a political movement with strains of white supremacy.
In the past, the former Breitbart CEO has admitted the alt-right's connections to racist and
anti-Semitic agendas.
"Look, are there some people that are white nationalists that are attracted to some of the
philosophies of the alt-right? Maybe,"
Bannon told Mother Jones in August. "Are there some people that are anti-Semitic that are
attracted? Maybe. Right? Maybe some people are attracted to the alt-right that are homophobes,
right? But that's just like, there are certain elements of the progressive left and the hard
left that attract certain elements."
In the Reporter interview, Bannon challenged the notion that racialized overtones dominated
the Trump campaign on the trail. He predicted that if the administration delivered on its
election promises, "we'll get 60 percent of the white vote, and 40 percent of the black and
Hispanic vote and we'll govern for 50 years."
"It's everything related to jobs," Bannon said and seemingly bragged about how he was going
to drive conservatives "crazy" with his "trillion-dollar infrastructure plan."
"With negative interest rates throughout the world, it's the greatest opportunity to rebuild
everything. Ship yards, iron works, get them all jacked up," he proposed. "We're just going to
throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks. It will be as exciting as the 1930s, greater
than the Reagan revolution -- conservatives, plus populists, in an economic nationalist
movement."
Bannon, in the Reporter interview, also gave some insight into how he viewed his political
foes (presumably, liberals and the media) -- and the "darkness" he touts in fighting against
them.
"Darkness is good," Bannon said. "Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That's power. It only
helps us when they...get it wrong. When they're blind to who we are and what we're doing."
"... When Donald Trump burst onto the scene, Bannon had found what he is quoted describing as a "blunt instrument for us," a man who had "taken this nationalist movement and moved it up twenty years." ..."
"... the rise of Bannon and Trump holds lessons for the Dissident Right. One of them: despite how powerful the Establishment may appear, there are fatal disconnects between it and the people it rules -- for example, on social and identity issues. Thus, many members of this Ruling Class, such as the Republican strategists who predicted a Jeb or Rubio victory, have been more successful in deluding themselves than they have been in building any kind of effective base. Similarly, Clinton campaign operatives believed, without much evidence, that undecided voters would eventually break in their favor. Because the thought of a Trump presidency was too horrifying for them to contemplate, they refused to recognize polls showing a close race, ignored the Midwest and sauntered their candidate off to Arizona in the final days. ..."
"... Of course, currently the ideas that Bannon fought for appear to be on the wane, leading him to declare upon leaving the White House that the "Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over." [ Weekly Standard, August 18, 2017] ..."
"... But this is probably somewhat of an exaggeration. I doubt that Bannon laments the fact that the current president is Donald Trump rather than Hillary Clinton or Marco Rubio. But it has proved much more difficult to change government policy than to win an election. Unlike GOP strategists, the Deep State appears to know what it is doing. ..."
Throughout 2016, I would occasionally turn on the television to see how the punditocracy was
responding to the mounting
Trump tsunami . If you get most of your news online, watching cable news is frustrating.
The commentary is so dumbed down and
painfully
reflective of speaker's biases, you can always basically guess what's coming next. With a
few exceptions -- above all Ann Coulter 's famous June 19, 2015
prediction of a Trump victory on
Bill Maher -- these pundits again and again told us that Trump would eventually go away,
first after he made this or that gaffe, then after he "failed" in a debate, then after people
actually started voting in the primaries.
The most interesting cases to me: the "
Republican strategists ," brought on to CNN and MSNBC to give the audience the illusion
that they were hearing both sides: Nicole Wallace, Steve Schmidt, Ana Navarro, Rick Wilson,
Margaret Hoover, Todd Harris.
Mike Murphy even convinced donors to hand him over $100 million to make Jeb Bush the
next president -- [
Jeb's 2016 departure draws out Mike Murphy critics , By Maeve Reston, February 22,
2016]
With campaigns and donors throwing money at these people, and the Main Stream Media touting
them, it was easy to assume they must know what they were talking about. Significantly, each of
these pundits was a national security hawk, center-right on economic issues, and just as
horrified by "
racism " and " sexism
" as their
Leftist counterparts . By a remarkable coincidence, the "
strategic " advice that they gave to Republican candidates lined up perfectly with these
positions. Their prominence was a mirage created by the fact that the MSM
handed this token opposition the Megaphone
because they did not challenge the core prejudices of the
bipartisan Ruling Class.
And of course they were all humiliated in a spectacular fashion, November 8 being only the
climax.
Joshua Green begins his book Devil's
Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency by giving us a
view inside the Trump campaign on election night, before tracing Steve Bannon's path up to that
point. Reliving the journey is one of the joys of Green's work, which is mostly an intellectual
biography of Steve Bannon,
with a special focus on his relationship with Trump and the election.
Bannon
joined the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016 without any previous experience in
electoral politics. But like the candidate himself, the Breitbart editor showed that he
understood the nature of American politics and the GOP base
better than Establishment Republicans. The "strategists'" supposed "expertise," "strategic
advice," and "analysis" was in reality built on a house of cards. (In fact, the
Bannon-Trump view of the electorate is closer to the consensus
among political scientists that, unlike more nationalist and populist policies,
Republican Establishment positions have relatively little popular support. [ Political Divisions in 2016 and Beyon d | Tensions Between and Within the Two
Parties, Voter Study Group, June 2017]).
Bannon at Breitbart.com gave the Republican base what it wanted. Moral: in a democracy, you
always have a chance at winning when public opinion (or at least intraparty opinion) is on your
side.
Green traces Bannon's journey from his Irish-Catholic
working-class roots and traditionalist upbringing, to his time in the Navy, at Harvard
Business School and Goldman Sachs, and finally Breitbart.com and the pinnacle of American
politics. The picture
that emerges is of a man with principles and vigor, refusing to submit to the inertia that
is part of the human condition, with enough confidence to realize that life is too short to not
make major changes when staying on the current path is not going to allow him to accomplish his
goals.
For example, Bannon originally wanted a career in defense policy, and took a job in the
Pentagon during the Reagan administration. Yet he was off to Harvard Business School when he
realized that the rigid bureaucracy
that he was a part of would not let him move up to a high-level position until he was
middle-aged. Decades later, after taking over his website upon the unexpected death of Andrew Breitbart in
2012, it would have been easy to go low-risk -- sticking to Establishment scripts, making life
comfortable for Republican elites, implicitly submitting to the taboos of the Left.
Instead , he helped turn Breitbart News into a major voice of the populist tide that has
been remaking center-right politics across the globe.
When Donald Trump burst onto the scene, Bannon had found what he is quoted describing as
a "blunt instrument for us," a man who had "taken this nationalist movement and moved it up
twenty years."
From Green, we learn much about Bannon's intellectual influences. Surprisingly, although he
was raised as a Roman Catholic and maintains that faith today, we find out that Bannon briefly
practiced Zen Buddhism while in the Navy. There are other unusual influences that make
appearances in the book, including Rightist philosopher Julius
Evola and
René Guénon, a French occultist who eventually became a Sufi Muslim. Although
not exactly my cup of tea, such eccentric intellectual interests reflect a curious mind that
refuses to restrict itself to fashionable influences.
It's incorrect to call Devil's Bargain a biography. There is practically no mention
of Bannon's personal life -- wives, children. I had to Google to find out that he has three
daughters. His childhood is only discussed in the context of how it may have influenced his
beliefs and political development.
Rather, we get information on Bannon's intellectual and career pursuits and his
relationships with consequential figures such as mega-donor Robert Mercer, Andrew Breitbart and
Donald Trump.
As Bannon exits the White House and returns to Breitbart, we must hope that Bannon and the
movement he's helped to create accomplish enough in the future to inspire more complete
biographies.
But the rise of Bannon and Trump holds lessons for the Dissident Right. One of them:
despite how powerful the Establishment may appear, there are fatal disconnects between it and
the people it rules -- for example, on social and identity issues. Thus, many members of this
Ruling Class, such as the Republican strategists who predicted a Jeb or Rubio victory, have
been more successful in deluding themselves than they have been in building any kind of
effective base. Similarly, Clinton campaign operatives believed, without much evidence, that
undecided voters would eventually break in their favor. Because the thought of a Trump
presidency was too horrifying for them to contemplate, they refused to recognize polls showing
a close race, ignored the Midwest and sauntered their candidate off to Arizona in the final
days.
Of course, currently the ideas that Bannon fought for appear to be on the wane, leading
him to declare upon leaving the White House that the "Trump presidency that we fought for, and
won, is over." [
Weekly Standard, August 18, 2017]
But this is probably somewhat of an exaggeration. I doubt that Bannon laments the fact
that the current president is Donald Trump rather than Hillary Clinton or Marco Rubio. But it
has proved much more difficult to change government policy than to win an election. Unlike GOP
strategists, the Deep State appears to know what it is doing.
In his memoir Nixon's White House Wars , Pat Buchanan writes about how, despite
playing a pivotal role in the election of 1968, the conservative movement was
mostly shut out of high-level jobs:
Then there was the painful reality with which the right had to come to terms. Though our
movement had exhibited real power in capturing the nomination for Barry Goldwater and helping
Nixon crush the Rockefeller-Romney wing of the Republican Party, and though we were
playing a pivotal role in the election of 1968, the conservative movement was
mostly shut out of high-level jobs:
Then there was the painful reality with which the right had to come to terms. Though our
movement had exhibited real power in capturing the nomination for Barry Goldwater and helping
Nixon crush the Rockefeller-Romney wing of the Republican Party, and though we were veterans
of a victorious presidential campaign, few of us had served in the executive branch. We
lacked titles, resumes, credentials Our pool of experienced public servants who could
seamlessly move into top positions was miniscule compared to that of the liberal Democrats
who had dominated the capital's politics since FDR arrived in 1933.
History repeated itself in 2016, when Donald Trump would win the presidency on a nationalist
platform but find few qualified individuals who could reliably implement his agenda.
If nationalists want to ensure that their next generation of leaders is able to effectively
implement the policies they run on, they are going to have to engage in the slow and tedious
project of working their way up through powerful institutions.
Bannon may have been and remains an "outsider" to the political Establishment. But
nonetheless, throughout his life he has leveraged elite institutions such as Harvard, Goldman
Sachs, the Republican Party, and even Hollywood in order to become financially independent and
free to pursue his political goals.
If enough of those on the Dissident Right forge a similar path, we can be sure that future
nationalist political victories will be less hollow. Jeremy Cooper is a specialist in
international politics and an observer of global trends. Follow him at @NeoNeoLiberal .
@Clyde
Wilson Is there any evidence that Trump even tried to find the right people to fill the
offices? Having dabbled ever so slightly in this process in the spring, my impression is that
there is a mechanism run largely by lawyers from the big DC law firms (presumably one for
each party) who are the gatekeepers for applicants. The result of this system, which I have
little doubt that the "Trump Team" did not try to take on (after all, they had only a couple
of months to put together the beginnings of a team, and that left little or no time replacing
The Swamp Machine ) is that the key positions throughout the administration are largely
filled with lawyers from connected law firms. After all, who better to administer the
government than lawyers -- ? -- ?
At any rate, my experience with the process was: on your marks, get set, nothing. 30 years
experience in and around federal government, but not a lawyer. Don't call us, we don't want
to talk to you. (I also made clear in my cover letter that the key motivator for my
application -- and first ever political contributions -- was Trump and his agenda. In
retrospect, this "admission" was probably a kiss of death. I was a Trumpite. Eeeewww -- -- --
(I may well not have been qualified for anything, but I'm SURE I was disqualified by my
support for Trump )
Too little, too late. Also Bannon by demonizing Russians has shown that his is a dangerous warmonger. And a weak
politician.
Notable quotes:
"... Bannon added that his comments to Wolff were "aimed at Paul Manafort," the former Trump campaign manager who has been charged as part of an investigation into possible collusion between the Russian government and members of Trump's team. Manafort was also at the 2016 Trump Tower meeting. Manafort, Bannon said, "should have known how the Russians operate. He should have known they are duplicitous, cunning and not our friends. ..."
"... Bannon released the statement after a three-day barrage of criticism from Trump and his allies. The president dubbed Bannon "Sloppy Steve." Bannon's statement also followed a CNN appearance on Sunday by Stephen Miller, the president's senior policy adviser and former Bannon ally, who eviscerated his comments to Wolff as "grotesque." ..."
The former White House aide said Donald Trump Jr. is a "patriot and a good man."
Steve Bannon backpedaled on comments to journalist Michael Wolff, whose explosive new book
sparked
a backlash against the former top Donald Trump aide over his remarks about a meeting at
Trump Tower in June 2016. According to the book, released a week early due to high demand, the
former White House strategist called the infamous meeting in New York between Donald Trump Jr.
and Russian operatives at Trump Tower "treasonous."
In a
statement to Axios on Sunday, Bannon heaped praise on Trump and his agenda, and called Don
Jr. a "patriot and a good man." "My comments about the meeting with Russian nationals came from
my life experiences as a Naval officer stationed aboard a destroyer whose main mission was to
hunt Soviet submarines to my time at the Pentagon during the Reagan years when our focus was
the defeat of 'the evil empire' and to making films about Reagan's war against the Soviets and
Hillary Clinton's involvement in selling uranium to them, " Bannon said in the statement.
Bannon
added that his comments to Wolff were "aimed at Paul Manafort," the former Trump campaign
manager who has been charged as part of an investigation into possible collusion between the
Russian government and members of Trump's team. Manafort was also at the 2016 Trump Tower
meeting. Manafort, Bannon said, "should have known how the Russians operate. He should have
known they are duplicitous, cunning and not our friends.
To reiterate, those comments (about
the meeting with the Russians) were not aimed at Don Jr." In the statement, Bannon again denied
that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia. And though he did not deny any of the remarks
that were attributed to him in the book, Bannon said he regretted "that my delay in responding
to the inaccurate reporting regarding Don Jr has diverted attention from the president's
historical accomplishments in the first year of his presidency."
Bannon released the statement
after a three-day barrage of criticism from Trump and his allies. The president dubbed Bannon
"Sloppy Steve." Bannon's statement also followed a CNN appearance on Sunday by Stephen Miller,
the president's senior policy adviser and former Bannon ally, who eviscerated his comments to
Wolff as "grotesque."
Earlier Sunday, Trump railed about what he called Wolff's "Fake Book" on
Twitter:
"... Economic nationalism is a term used to describe policies which are guided by the idea of protecting domestic consumption, labor and capital formation, even if this requires the imposition of tariffs and other restrictions on the movement of labour, goods and capital. It is in opposition to Globalisation in many cases, or at least on questions the unrestricted good of Free trade. It would include such doctrines as Protectionism, Import substitution, Mercantilism and planned economies. ..."
"... Examples of economic nationalism include Japan's use of MITI to "pick winners and losers", Malaysia's imposition of currency controls in the wake of the 1997 currency crisis, China's controlled exchange of the Yuan, Argentina's economic policy of tariffs and devaluation in the wake of the 2001 financial crisis and the United States' use of tariffs to protect domestic steel production. ..."
"... Think about what a trade war with China would do. It would crash the world economy as China tried to cash in on it US Treasury holdings with the US likely defaulting......just one possible scenario. ..."
"... Here is Bannon's latest: Bannon dismissed the far-right as irrelevant: "Ethno-nationalism!it's losers. It's a fringe element. I think the media plays it up too much, and we gotta help crush it, you know, uh, help crush it more." "These guys are a collection of clowns," he added. Bannon is no friend of White Nationalists. ..."
"... I think Bannon is an authentic economic nationalist, and one that Trump feels is good counsel on those matters. If this is so, then Bannon cannot be trying to provoke a trade war with China, since that would be an economic catastrophe for the US (and China and the rest of the world). I'm hoping he's playing bad cop and eventually Trump will play good cop in negotiations for more investment by China in the US and other goodies in exchange for 'well, not much' from the US. Similar to what the US dragged out of Japan in the 80s nd 90s. ..."
"... Bannon (and most of his followers) have no trust in the corporate sector as they are to a large degree Globalists - they used the US and then threw it aside in pursuit of profit elsewhere. For that, he would even call them traitors. So you could call him a Nationalist. ..."
"... Bannon does not seem himself as an "ethno-nationalist". Yet his slanderous contempt for the liberal ethos/values of many Americans would tend to make one question if he can be called a Nationalist. ..."
"... If Bannon was a Zionist, he would never make the comments he does against the financial sector ..."
"... Isn't exceptionalism the same as narcissism? ..."
"... At least the concern for 10 million in Seoul (mostly missing in the discussion of other leaders) show he is not a psychopath ..."
So lets start parsing this economic nationalism that Bannon is making happen with Trump.
Economic nationalism is a term used to describe policies which are guided by the idea of protecting domestic consumption, labor
and capital formation, even if this requires the imposition of tariffs and other restrictions on the movement of labour, goods
and capital. It is in opposition to Globalisation in many cases, or at least on questions the unrestricted good of Free trade.
It would include such doctrines as Protectionism, Import substitution, Mercantilism and planned economies.
Examples of economic nationalism include Japan's use of MITI to "pick winners and losers", Malaysia's imposition of currency
controls in the wake of the 1997 currency crisis, China's controlled exchange of the Yuan, Argentina's economic policy of tariffs
and devaluation in the wake of the 2001 financial crisis and the United States' use of tariffs to protect domestic steel production.
Think about what a trade war with China would do. It would crash the world economy as China tried to cash in on it US Treasury
holdings with the US likely defaulting......just one possible scenario.
At least now, IMO, the battle for a multi-polar (finance) world is out in the open.....let the side taking by nations begin.
I hope Bannon is wrong about the timing of potential global power shifting and the US loses its empire status.
Here is Bannon's latest: Bannon dismissed the far-right as irrelevant: "Ethno-nationalism!it's losers. It's a fringe element.
I think the media plays it up too much, and we gotta help crush it, you know, uh, help crush it more." "These guys are a collection
of clowns," he added. Bannon is no friend of White Nationalists.
Bannon can be perfectly mature, adult and realist on some points and be totally blinded by biases on others - him wanting total
economic war against China is proof enough. So I don't rule out that he has a blind spot over Iran and wants to get rid of the
regime. I mean, even Trump is realist and adult in a few issues, yet is an oblivious fool on others.
Kind of hard to find someone who's always adult and realist, actually. You can only hope to pick someone who's more realist
than most people. Or build a positronic robot and vote for him.
I think Bannon is an authentic economic nationalist, and one that Trump feels is good counsel on those matters. If this is so,
then Bannon cannot be trying to provoke a trade war with China, since that would be an economic catastrophe for the US (and China
and the rest of the world). I'm hoping he's playing bad cop and eventually Trump will play good cop in negotiations for more investment
by China in the US and other goodies in exchange for 'well, not much' from the US. Similar to what the US dragged out of Japan
in the 80s nd 90s.
@ Everybody who bought into the MSM Steve Bannon promoted white supremacy and through Breitbart. Suggested you read his world
view expressed in remarks at Human Dignity Institute, Vatican Conference 2014
Progressives and Steve Bannon have something surprising in common: hating Wall Street
Pop quiz! Which major American political figure said the following:
"The 2008 crisis is really driven I believe by the greed, much of it driven by the greed of the investment banks."
"I think the bailouts in 2008 were wrong."
"[N]ot one criminal charge has ever been brought to any bank executive associated with 2008 crisis."
"The Republican Party "is really a collection of crony capitalists that feel that they have a different set of rules"
and are "the reason that the United States' financial situation is so dire."
In the Vatican talk, Bannon described in length and detail how he views the biggest issues of the day:
He wants to tear down "crony capitalism": "a brutal form of capitalism that is really about creating wealth and
creating value for a very small subset of people.[.]
He is against Ayn Rand's version of libertarianism: "The second form of capitalism that I feel is almost as disturbing,
is what I call the Ayn Rand or the Objectivist School of libertarian capitalism.[.]
He believes the West needs to wage "a global war against Islamic fascism": "They have a Twitter account up today,
ISIS does, about turning the United States into a "river of blood" if it comes in and tries to defend the city of Baghdad.
And trust me, that is going to come to Europe.[.]
He believes the capitalism of the "Judeo Christian West" is in crisis: "If you look at the leaders of capitalism
at that time, when capitalism was I believe at its highest flower and spreading its benefits to most of mankind, almost
all of those capitalists were strong believers in the Judeo-Christian West.[.]
He believes the racists that are attracted to Trump will become increasingly irrelevant: [.]
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
this recent Bannon interview with The American Prospect will now go viral. Drudgereport headlines the WAPO spin.
Except for the selective Zion-flavored warmongering, Bannon appears to be an intelligent and thoughtful person. Also crafty. Is
he not "Trump's Brain" in the way that Rove was Bush's Brain?
Agree. I think Bannon's quite bright and very very clever and crafty.
However, if anyone believes the lies he spewed yesterday about white supremacists, let me enlighten you that that's what's
called "good PR" or something. Bannon is someone whom I hold quite responsible for contributing to the rise of White Supremacy
in the USA, which I consider a clear and present danger. Bannon's dismissive hand waving yesterday is meant to dissemble. Guess
some are willing to buy what he was selling yesterday. Not me.
The first group to call themselves Progressives were the 19th century Populists. Their mantle was adopted by T. Roosevelt and
other like-minded Republicans. Lafollette and Wallace are perhaps the best remembered Progressives--yes, FDR is portrayed as one,
but when examined really isn't: Eleanor was far more Progressive and since she was people also thought he was too. Once Wallace
was ousted from government, Democrats reverted to their old ways, although Truman did order the military to desegregate--perhaps
his only Progressive act. JFK was in the process of becoming a Progressive in the months prior to his murder. LBJ very reluctantly
made some Progressive noises in his War on Poverty that he was essentially forced into thanks to massive ethnic strife and related
riots during the 60s. But essentially since the beginning of WW2, Progressives and their goals vanished from the political landscape.
Nader brought it back to the fringe from the wilderness, but the so-called Progressive Caucus really isn't Progressive thanks
to its war promotion.
Admittedly, I don't know much about Steve Bannon; he certainly isn't a Progressive, but he doesn't seem to be a Regressive
either. The points he made at the Vatican Talk supplied by likklemore @28 are rather encouraging in an anti-Deep State manner.
So, his interaction with The American Prospect I don't see as surprising--he's seeking allies: "'It's a great honor to
finally track you [Robert Kuttner] down. I've followed your writing for years and I think you and I are in the same boat when
it comes to China. You absolutely nailed it.'... Bannon explained that his strategy is to battle the trade doves inside the administration
while building an outside coalition of trade hawks that includes left as well as right. Hence the phone call to me." I think Kuttner
will discover Bannon will "still [be] there" after Labor Day, so he might as well make his travel plans.
I won't give you a pass. Your bias and lack of intelligence is on great display.
Read and understand as Bannon is proven right on events.
The $28 - trillion (US dollar) global bailouts in 2008 is proven to have failed. A handful on Wall Street became trillionaires
instead of being suited in special stripes.
Negative interest rates steal the retirement savings of seniors. Pensions and Insurance companies cannot meet promised payouts.
And all is fine. Corruption flourishes. Judeo-Christian moral values are not in crisis.
@12... "Bannon is a fascist" I'm not so sure. Mussolini defined fascism as being an alliance of corporate and state powers...
but Bannon (and most of his followers) have no trust in the corporate sector as they are to a large degree Globalists - they used
the US and then threw it aside in pursuit of profit elsewhere. For that, he would even call them traitors. So you could call him
a Nationalist.
@ 8 as you say... Bannon does not seem himself as an "ethno-nationalist". Yet his slanderous contempt for the liberal ethos/values
of many Americans would tend to make one question if he can be called a Nationalist.
@ 9 If Bannon was a Zionist, he would never make the comments he does against the financial sector (see @28).
@28 Bannon would never call himself a Socialist, but the most logical expression of his individualist views when applied to
the business world are expressed by none other than Ayn Rand. The financial world simply got legal cover to act on the views that
he rails against. Bannon does not like what he sees when the rules he claims for himself are given to the rest of the world. Which
makes him an "Exceptionalist"??
Isn't exceptionalism the same as narcissism?
At least the concern for 10 million in Seoul (mostly missing in the discussion of other leaders) show he is not a psychopath.
"... Bannon is almost universally loathed by the Washington press corps, and not just for his politics. When he was the CEO of the pro-Trump Breitbart website, he competed with traditional media outlets, and he has often mercilessly attacked and ridiculed them. ..."
"... The animosity towards Bannon reached new heights last month, when he incautiously told the New York Times that "the media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while." He also said the media was "the opposition party" to the Trump administration. To the Washington media, those are truly fighting words. ..."
"... Bannon's comments were outrageous, but they are hardly new. In 2009, President Obama's White House communications director, Anita Dunn, sought to restrict Fox News' access to the White House. She even said, "We're going to treat them the way we would treat an opponent." The media's outrage over that remark was restrained, to say the least. ..."
"... Reporters and pundits are also stepping up the effort to portray Bannon as the puppet master in the White House. Last week, MSNBC's Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski said, "Legitimate media are getting word that Steve Bannon is the last guy in the room, in the evening especially, and he's pulling the strings." Her co-host, Joe Scarborough, agreed that Bannon's role should be "investigated." ..."
"... I'm all for figuring out who the powers behind the curtain are in the White House, but we saw precious little interest in that during the Obama administration. ..."
"... Liberal writer Steven Brill wrote a 2015 book, America's Bitter Pill , in which he slammed "incompetence in the White House" for the catastrophic launch of Obamacare. "Never [has there] been a group of people who more incompetently launched something," he told NPR's Terry Gross, who interviewed him about the book. He laid much of the blame at Jarrett's doorstep. "The people in the administration who knew it was going wrong went to the president directly with memos, in person, to his chief of staff," he said. "The president was protected, mostly by Valerie Jarrett, from doing anything. . . . He didn't know what was going on in the single most important initiative of his administration." How important was Jarrett inside the Obama White House? Brill interviewed the president about the struggles of Obamacare and reported Obama's conclusion: "At this point, I am not so interested in Monday-morning quarterbacking the past." ..."
"... five of the highest-ranking Obama officials had told him that "as a practical matter . . . Jarrett was the real chief of staff on any issues that she wanted to weigh in on, and she jealously protected that position by making sure the president never gave anyone else too much power." When Brill asked the president about these aides' assessment of Jarrett, Obama "declined comment," Brill wrote in his book. That, in and of itself, was an answer. Would that Jarrett had received as much media scrutiny of her role in eight years under Obama as Bannon has in less than four weeks. ..."
"... I've had my disagreements with Bannon, whose apocalyptic views on some issues I don't share. Ronald Reagan once said that if someone in Washington agrees with you 80 percent of the time, he is an ally, not an enemy. I'd guess Bannon wouldn't agree with that sentiment. ..."
Bannon is almost universally loathed by the Washington press corps, and not just for his politics. When he was the
CEO of the pro-Trump Breitbart website, he competed with traditional media outlets, and he has often mercilessly attacked
and ridiculed them.
The animosity towards Bannon reached new heights last month, when he incautiously told the New York Times that "the media
should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while." He also said the media was "the opposition
party" to the Trump administration. To the Washington media, those are truly fighting words.
Joel Simon, of the Committee to Protect Journalists, told CNN that "this kind of speech not [only] undermines the work of the
media in this country, it emboldens autocratic leaders around the world." Jacob Weisberg, the head of the Slate Group, tweeted that
Bannon's comment was terrifying and "tyrannical."
Bannon's comments were outrageous, but they are hardly new. In 2009, President Obama's White House communications director,
Anita Dunn, sought to restrict Fox News' access to the White House. She even said, "We're going to treat them the way we would treat
an opponent." The media's outrage over that remark was restrained, to say the least.
Ever since Bannon's outburst, you can hear the media gears meshing in the effort to undermine him. In TV green rooms and at Washington
parties, I've heard journalists say outright that it's time to get him. Time magazine put a sinister-looking Bannon on its
cover, describing him as "The Great Manipulator." Walter Isaacson, a former managing editor of Time , boasted to MSNBC that
the image was in keeping with a tradition of controversial covers that put leaders in their place. "Likewise, putting [former White
House aide] Mike Deaver on the cover, the brains behind Ronald Reagan, that ended up bringing down Reagan," he told the hosts of
Morning Joe . "So you've got to have these checks and balances, whether it's the judiciary or the press."
Reporters and pundits are also stepping up the effort to portray Bannon as the puppet master in the White House. Last week,
MSNBC's Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski said, "Legitimate media are getting word that Steve Bannon is the last guy in
the room, in the evening especially, and he's pulling the strings." Her co-host, Joe Scarborough, agreed that Bannon's role should
be "investigated."
I'm all for figuring out who the powers behind the curtain are in the White House, but we saw precious little interest in
that during the Obama administration.
It wasn't until four years after the passage of Obamacare that a journalist reported on just how powerful White House counselor
Valerie Jarrett had been in its flawed implementation. Liberal writer Steven Brill wrote a 2015 book, America's Bitter Pill
, in which he slammed "incompetence in the White House" for the catastrophic launch of Obamacare. "Never [has there] been a group
of people who more incompetently launched something," he told NPR's Terry Gross, who interviewed him about the book. He laid much
of the blame at Jarrett's doorstep. "The people in the administration who knew it was going wrong went to the president directly
with memos, in person, to his chief of staff," he said. "The president was protected, mostly by Valerie Jarrett, from doing anything.
. . . He didn't know what was going on in the single most important initiative of his administration." How important was Jarrett
inside the Obama White House? Brill interviewed the president about the struggles of Obamacare and reported Obama's conclusion: "At
this point, I am not so interested in Monday-morning quarterbacking the past."
Brill then bluntly told the president that five of the highest-ranking Obama officials had told him that "as a practical matter
. . . Jarrett was the real chief of staff on any issues that she wanted to weigh in on, and she jealously protected that position
by making sure the president never gave anyone else too much power." When Brill asked the president about these aides' assessment
of Jarrett, Obama "declined comment," Brill wrote in his book. That, in and of itself, was an answer. Would that Jarrett had received
as much media scrutiny of her role in eight years under Obama as Bannon has in less than four weeks.
I've had my disagreements with Bannon, whose apocalyptic views on some issues I don't share. Ronald Reagan once said that
if someone in Washington agrees with you 80 percent of the time, he is an ally, not an enemy. I'd guess Bannon wouldn't agree with
that sentiment.
But the media's effort to turn Bannon into an enemy of the people is veering into hysterical character assassination. The Sunday
print edition of the New York Times ran an astonishing 1,500-word story headlined: "Fascists Too Lax for a Philosopher Cited
by Bannon." (The online headline now reads, "Steve Bannon Cited Italian Thinker Who Inspired Fascists.") The Times based this
headline on what it admits was "a passing reference" in
a speech by Bannon at a Vatican conference in 2014 . In that speech, Bannon made a single mention of Julius Evola, an obscure
Italian philosopher who opposed modernity and cozied up to Mussolini's Italian Fascists.
ho is Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the 30-year-old White House aide who could be a key player in the blockbuster
investigation into Russian ties to President Trump and his campaign?
Cohen-Watnick, 30, who
The New York Times reports
provided key information in the probe, is a once fast-rising protege of ousted
Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn with deep roots in suburban Washington's Jewish community.
The paper identified him as one of two staffers who explosively gave information on intelligence gathering in
the Russia probe to Republican House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, a move that potentially
compromised the lawmaker's role in the bombshell probe.
Cohen-Watnick grew up in Chevy Chase, Maryland, just outside the nation's capital, and attended the nearby
Conservative synagogue Ohr Kodesh. Last November he celebrated his engagement to Rebecca Miller at the synagogue.
He attended the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 2008. Cohen-Watnick began working as an intelligence
analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency after college. At the DIA, Cohen-Watnick met Flynn, the then-director
who was later removed from his position during the Obama administration.
After Trump won the November election, Flynn brought Cohen-Watnick from the DIA to the Trump transition team,
where the young staffer, according to
The Washington Post,
was among the few Trump advisers to hold a top security clearance. He participated in
high-level intelligence briefings and briefed Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and their team on national security
issues.
When Flynn was appointed to lead the National Security Council, he hired Cohen-Watnick to work with him there.
But Flynn served as national security adviser for less than a month before being asked to leave following
revelations that he had maintained ties with Russia during the campaign.
Flynn's successor, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, sought to remove Cohen-Watnick from the team, following input from
the CIA director who pointed to problems intelligence officers had when dealing with Cohen-Watnick. Questions were
raised about his ability to carry out the position of senior NSC director for intelligence programs, who oversees
ties with intelligence agencies and vets information that should reach the president's desk.
But Cohen-Watnick was spared when Trump personally intervened, reportedly after top White House aides Sphen
Bannon and Jared Kushner stepped in. Cohen-Watnick still serves as senior director at the NSC.
Cohen-Watnick is known for holding hawkish views on national security issues and of being a proponent of an
American tough line toward Iran.
The Times said that Cohen-Watnick became swept up in the Russia probe this month, shortly after Trump wrote on
Twitter about unsubstantiated claims of being wiretapped on the orders of the former president Barack Obama.
Cohen-Watnick apparently was reviewing highly classified reports detailing the intercepted communications of
foreign officials that consisted primarily of ambassadors and other foreign officials talking about how they were
trying to curry favor with Trump's family and inner circle in advance of his inauguration.
He and another aide, identified as Michael Ellis, came across information that Trump aides may have been
inadvertently caught on some of the surveillance.
Nunes says he went to the White House to meet with the aides, whom he has refused to identify. Nunes wolud not
share the information with his colleagues on the committee but did brief Trump, raising major questions about his
independence.
Cohen-Watnick, 30, who
The New York Times reports
provided key information in the probe, is a once fast-rising protege of ousted
Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn with deep roots in suburban Washington's Jewish community.
The paper identified him as one of two staffers who explosively gave information on intelligence gathering in
the Russia probe to Republican House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, a move that potentially
compromised the lawmaker's role in the bombshell probe.
Cohen-Watnick grew up in Chevy Chase, Maryland, just outside the nation's capital, and attended the nearby
Conservative synagogue Ohr Kodesh. Last November he celebrated his engagement to Rebecca Miller at the synagogue.
He attended the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 2008. Cohen-Watnick began working as an intelligence
analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency after college. At the DIA, Cohen-Watnick met Flynn, the then-director
who was later removed from his position during the Obama administration.
After Trump won the November election, Flynn brought Cohen-Watnick from the DIA to the Trump transition team,
where the young staffer, according to
The Washington Post,
was among the few Trump advisers to hold a top security clearance. He participated in
high-level intelligence briefings and briefed Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and their team on national security
issues.
When Flynn was appointed to lead the National Security Council, he hired Cohen-Watnick to work with him there.
But Flynn served as national security adviser for less than a month before being asked to leave following
revelations that he had maintained ties with Russia during the campaign.
Flynn's successor, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, sought to remove Cohen-Watnick from the team, following input from
the CIA director who pointed to problems intelligence officers had when dealing with Cohen-Watnick. Questions were
raised about his ability to carry out the position of senior NSC director for intelligence programs, who oversees
ties with intelligence agencies and vets information that should reach the president's desk.
But Cohen-Watnick was spared when Trump personally intervened, reportedly after top White House aides Sphen
Bannon and Jared Kushner stepped in. Cohen-Watnick still serves as senior director at the NSC.
Cohen-Watnick is known for holding hawkish views on national security issues and of being a proponent of an
American tough line toward Iran.
The Times said that Cohen-Watnick became swept up in the Russia probe this month, shortly after Trump wrote on
Twitter about unsubstantiated claims of being wiretapped on the orders of the former president Barack Obama.
Cohen-Watnick apparently was reviewing highly classified reports detailing the intercepted communications of
foreign officials that consisted primarily of ambassadors and other foreign officials talking about how they were
trying to curry favor with Trump's family and inner circle in advance of his inauguration.
He and another aide, identified as Michael Ellis, came across information that Trump aides may have been
inadvertently caught on some of the surveillance.
Nunes says he went to the White House to meet with the aides, whom he has refused to identify. Nunes wolud not
share the information with his colleagues on the committee but did brief Trump, raising major questions about his
independence.
@Paul Well, the
real enemy of the people are the real terrorists behind the scenes. Those who planned the
9/11 false flag. Those who sent the Anthrax letters to resisting congress members. Those who
pre-planned the wars of aggression in the whole middle east.
So any appeal to the "White House" is almost pointless since the White House is one
element of the power structure captured by the war-criminal lunatics.
To change something people in the US should at first stop buying their war criminal lying
mass media.
Then they should stop supporting ANY foreign intervention by the US and should stop
believing any of the preposterous lies released by the media, the state dept., or any other
neocon outlet.
Actually Trump was probably elected because he said he was anti-intervention and
anti-media. But did it help?
The US needs mass resistance (demonstrations, strikes, boycotts, non-participation,
sit-ins, grass-root information, or whatever) against their neocon/zionist/mafia/cia power
groups or nothing will change.
We need demonstrations against NATO, against war, against false flag terrorism, against
using terrorists as secret armies, against war propaganda!
B.t.w. Iran has always been one of the main goals. Think of it: Why did the US attack
Afghanistan and Iraq? What have those two countries in common? (Hint: a look on the map helps
to answer this question.) I am beginning to get interested in why some people are sure 9/11
was a false flag affair covered up by a lot of lies. So may I try my opening question on you.
How much, if any of it, have you read of the official 9/11 commission report?
"... Europe will not contribute more to its defense, and Trump will not abandon NATO. China will continue on as before, indifferent to the blustering of the American president because it realizes Trump needs Chinese workers to manufacture the things Americans will not (at Chinese wages), the same things (at low prices) that maintain the lifestyle of the Trump supporters. ..."
"... So civil religion is now a name for national megalomania? ..."
"... If you think the Americans sacralize the presidency, then I don't think you know what it actually means to sacralize a state authority. Look at Putin, Stalin and the tsars in Russia. American presidents are nowhere near them in sacralization ..."
"... Clinton, on the other hand, presents us with a deadly serious plan ("no fly zone")to start an unnecessary unjustified war against Syria, Russia and Iran, the only beneficiaries of which would be Al-Qaida and ISIS, the inevitable results of which would be the destruction of Middle Eastern Christianity and an intensification of the migrant invasion of Europe, and the obvious risk of which is a catastrophic nuclear exchange. ..."
"... Trump will be the first president since Eisenhower who can be trusted to enforce the immigration laws, reduce the trade deficit, and avoid unnecessary wars. ..."
"... Look, here's the deal: Trump is the only candidate who has identified the problems of Middle America and who has identified ways to begin to fix those problems. Trump is not a "miracle" worker, but he does have the will and the courage to lead the country back in the right direction. And as his supporters he has our backing all the way. ..."
"... As President Trump will no doubt run into problems in implementing some aspects of his broad, multi-faceted program to make America great again. For sure there will be setbacks and delays, because (1) there is so much wrong with the country that has to be set right again, and because (2) there are so many powerful, wealthy, vested interests who will oppose doing what the country needs. ..."
"... Nelson said: You can't be a Christian and hate thy neighbor. ..."
"... Well, let's see what John Adams had to say about the Christian nation concept. ""The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." ..."
"... "The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the Supreme Being in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with all this artificial scaffolding ." ..."
"... There's a whole lot more I could point to that further illustrates the erroneous nature of the Christian nation myth. But people love their myths, just as the term Christian is quite a bit problematic in that historically it most accurately describes Orthodox Jews. ..."
"... Bush2/Cheney fancied themselves caesars invading multiple Mideast nations. Obama fancies himself as god. ..."
"... Is Trump a surprise? Only in that he is unapologetic and doesn't hide it. ..."
"... WYSIWYG. The problem is he is a mirror, and the problem is it is your image staring back even if you find it horrible. ..."
"... Trump is what you get when a party becomes bankrupt of any real ideas other than personal greed. ..."
"... Why is the author, and some commenters here, acting as if the label "Evangelical" means any more to those Evangelicals than the label "Catholic" means to most Catholics, or the label "Jewish" means to most Jews, etc. ..."
"I even brought my Bible-the evangelicals, OK?" Donald Trump
whinged at a
campaign stop in the run-up to the Iowa caucuses. "We love the evangelicals and we're polling so well." For good measure, he waved
his prop a little more and doubled down, "I really want to win Iowa-and again, the evangelicals, the Tea Party-we're doing unbelievably,
and I think I'm going to win Iowa."
This sycophantic word vomit was about average as Trump's public forays into religion go. His transparent attempts to cast himself
as a churchgoer have been awkward
at best
, and more often approach the bizarre if not
the heretical
. Nevertheless, as the man himself would say, the professing evangelicals-and the "professing"
is key here -love him. They really, really do.
But for all the headlines the
Trumpvangelicals have snagged,
their vehement support is ably matched by the strident
opposition to Trump found among millions of American Christians of all stripes, many of them (like me) appalled that such blatant
pandering and brash prurience is, well, working on our fellow travelers in the faith. Nearly a year into this misadventure,
it is still tempting to ask: How is this happening? How is the heir of the Moral Majority
endorsing a twice-divorced former
strip
club owner? How is Trump so appealing to what is supposed to be a Christian nation?
And it is in precisely that last phrase-"Christian nation"-the answer may be found: America's
entrenched
, pseudo-Christian civil religion
is the primary culprit here. President Trump is the due result of our theologically vacant imperial cult, which in the guise
of orthodoxy worships only the power of the state.
Granted, the connection may not be immediately obvious, particularly in light of the harsh critiques Trump has received from many
prominent Christians, as well as his own dime-store costume faith.
These surface obstacles obscure the deeper fit. Trump's extravagant self-deification, his demands of personal allegiance, and
his obsession with unique national and personal greatness all flow naturally out of a civil religion which co-opts Christianity to
cast an aura of divine approval on Washington. Indeed, Trump fancies himself a modern
Caesar
, tinged with divinity and cloaked in
gold . Our civil religion gives him just the theological resource he needs.
Consider, first, Trump's view of himself. As Frank Bruni persuasively
argued
in the New York Times , the Republican frontrunner comes off not as "someone interested in serving God" so much as "someone
interested in being God." Trump so closely links himself and the divine that
he drifts into boasting of his own accomplishments
in the very process of explaining why God is important. The candidate feels he
is above the need for God's
forgiveness ( as it is written
, "there is one who is righteous, yea, just one") and recently
named "an eye for an
eye" as his favorite Bible verse, an interesting selection given the New Testament's
assignment of vengeance
as God's prerogative.
Of course, Americans might rightly protest that we don't ascribe divinity to the presidency, but the office is undoubtedly sacralized.
Its successes-notably in foreign policy-are attributed to divine blessing. Conventional politicians may be more politic than Trump,
but most will happily harness God to tow their pet projects. A classic example is what theologian Michael J. Gorman
labels the "divine
passive voice," in which, often in the run-up to war, presidents
say things like "We are called " to subtly invoke a holy authority for their plans. In a Trump White House, the voice would simply
become slightly more active.
Beyond this there's Trump's demand (
and receipt
) of intense personal loyalty. One gets the feeling that the provision of a bust of Trumpself for long-distance
veneration would not be taken amiss by many of his followers, but usually a simple pledge of allegiance will do.
"I do solemnly swear that I, no matter how I feel, no matter what the conditions, if there are hurricanes or whatever, will vote
on or before the 12th for Donald J. Trump for President,"
he asked Floridian supporters
to promise in advance of their state's primary. This sort of ultimatum is right at home in a civil religion that facilitates unthinking
Christian loyalty to the state by means of a clever syncretism: If America is "under God"-if the United States becomes the "
city on a hill "-we needn't worry about obeying God
rather than men. It's all one and the same as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Joseph is idolatrously mutated into an American tribal
deity.
But the most convincing link lies in Trump's preoccupation with greatness. In the context of American civil religion, Gorman
explains , "Greatness
is defined especially as financial, political, and/or military strength, and this definition carries with it the conviction that
both America and Americans should always enjoy and operate from a position of strength and security."
"Weakness," he adds, "is un-American; Americans want to be number one. For many, these kinds of secular strengths are seen as
manifestations of power from God." Gorman wrote that more than five years ago, but Trump couldn't have said it better himself. His
is a
perverse patriotism inextricably tied to the notion that God likes America (and the Donald) most. Trump is certainly more explicit
in his promises of unparalleled
personal
("the greatest jobs president God ever created") and
national ("we will have so much winning") greatness, but his distinction from our standard-issue civil religion is one of degree,
not kind.
We might ask why a Trumpian candidate is only now appearing-and with such success-on our political stage. The civil religion is
hardly new, but surely Trump is. The tipping point, I suggest, is primarily about the expansion of power in the executive branch,
a process which has been underway for decades but accelerated in recent times. The authority of the White House has expanded to match
the sanctity we've assigned it. (Not for nothing is it called the imperial presidency.) The
modern office "looks nothing like
the modest, businesslike, law-governed executive the Framers envisioned," and if it did, Trump wouldn't want it.
In The Four Loves , C.S. Lewis
recounts a conversation with an elderly clergyman sincerely convinced that his "own nation, in sober fact, has long been, and
still is markedly superior to all others." "To be sure," Lewis muses, "this conviction had not made my friend (God rest his soul)
a villain; only an extremely lovable old ass. It can however produce asses that kick and bite." If mixed with assurance of unique
divine favor, he continues, this dangerous nonsense "draws evil after it. If our country's cause is the cause of God, wars must be
wars of annihilation. A false transcendence is given to things which are very much of this world."
In Trump we find such nonsense crystallized into an ass that kicks and bites, and gleefully plans to
torture and
murder because this is what
will make America great again. His gilded self-aggrandizement is the organic fruit of a "Christian" nation that welcomed such theo-nationalism
in drabber forms for years. We may not for a while see again so shameless an execution of the temple ceremonies of the American state,
but the false transcendence of our civil religion will not die with the Trump campaign.
Bonnie Kristian is a writer who lives in the Twin Cities. She is a graduate student at Bethel Seminary, a contributor at The Week , a columnist at Rare, and a fellow at the American Security Initiative Foundation. Her writing has also appeared
at Time , Relevant, and The American Conservative , among other outlets. Find her at
bonniekristian.com and
@bonniekristian .
Brendan, May 5, 2016 at 7:00 am
Well, America has had a born again evangelical Christian in the Whitehouse in recent memory, and how did that work out?
I suspect most Presidents are a reflection of culture, rather than shapers and formers of it. In other words, the problem didn't
begin and end with Trump.
Nick Valentine, May 5, 2016 at 8:03 am
The opinion of the New York Times is not normally a reliable voice when one seems to determine what is and what is not properly
Christian.
Nonetheless, as a Christian voter, I'll gladly explain my support of Donald Trump despite his questionable Christian "creds".
I don't care.
I've given up on finding a true, virtuous, Conservative Christian to lead us in DC, because that's never going to happen. This
is NOT a devoutly Christian nation any longer. Sure, many people identify as Christians, but like Trump, few of them ever pick
up a Bible.
Instead, I prefer the man who speaks his mind – however un-PC his mind may be – honestly and forthrightly, and who talks directly
to the citizens about the real issues that concern us as a nation:
Illegal immigration, Islamic terrorism, corruption in government, jobs and the economy, crony-capitalists who are destroying
the middle class by shipping jobs overseas, and unfair trade deals that also damage American jobs.
Based on Mr. Trump's business success and extreme confidence, he strikes me as the man most likely to right this ship of state.
So as a Christian, I'm confident that if Trump is President, I'll do just fine.
In all honesty, any Christians who are looking for devout Christianity at the polls should probably stay home.
Daniel (not Larison ), May 5, 2016 at 8:59 am
Nick wrote:
Instead, I prefer the man who speaks his mind – however un-PC his mind may be – honestly and forthrightly, and who talks directly
to the citizens about the real issues that concern us as a nation:
Does "speaking his mind" and being "un-PC" include shameless, ham-fisted pandering to Evangelicals, as posted in the article?
Trump is as deceptive as the rest of them, perhaps more so. You just get a kick out of him offending certain people, the people
that you don't like either. If anyone–including Trump–said something to hurt your precious feelings, you wouldn't say "I love
how he speaks his mind!" You'd call him an @sshole.
That doesn't make you weak, it makes you human. But to support it when others are the victims is just sad.
JLF, May 5, 2016 at 9:30 am
The most frightening thing will not come in the immediate wake of Trump's inauguration. It will not be brought by Democrats
and Republicans-in-exile. It will come from the Trump faithful when they see that their idol has feet of clay and cannot perform
the miracles he says he will. Even with a compliant Congress (and Court), Trump will not build a wall. Mexico will not pay for
it. He will not deport 11 million illegal aliens. Europe will not contribute more to its defense, and Trump will not abandon
NATO. China will continue on as before, indifferent to the blustering of the American president because it realizes Trump needs
Chinese workers to manufacture the things Americans will not (at Chinese wages), the same things (at low prices) that maintain
the lifestyle of the Trump supporters.
The scales fallen from their eyes, Trump's followers will act in the same way any mob acts and turn on the one that has betrayed
them. Only two questions remain: how long after inauguration will it take for their enlightenment, and how will The Donald react
to being cast down from his pedestal?
Rancor, May 5, 2016 at 9:49 am
So civil religion is now a name for national megalomania?
The British saw themselves as the lost tribe of Israel
The French as Galls and descendants of the Roman Empire
The Germans as Germanics who are supposed to destroy the Rome
The Russians as Katechons who must conquer Europe, as the last and true Rome
All of this is civil religion?
If you think the Americans sacralize the presidency, then I don't think you know what it actually means to sacralize a
state authority. Look at Putin, Stalin and the tsars in Russia. American presidents are nowhere near them in sacralization
John Gruskos, May 5, 2016 at 10:02 am
Trump muses about the possibility of using torture and assassination against a small number of terrorists who have American
blood on their hands.
Clinton, on the other hand, presents us with a deadly serious plan ("no fly zone")to start an unnecessary unjustified war
against Syria, Russia and Iran, the only beneficiaries of which would be Al-Qaida and ISIS, the inevitable results of which would
be the destruction of Middle Eastern Christianity and an intensification of the migrant invasion of Europe, and the obvious risk
of which is a catastrophic nuclear exchange.
Please remove the plank from your own eye before trying to remove the speck from mine.
Trump will be the first president since Eisenhower who can be trusted to enforce the immigration laws, reduce the trade
deficit, and avoid unnecessary wars. He is receiving enthusiastic support because of his *platform*, not his alleged cult
of personality. The clown act was a necessary tactic to circumvent the media gatekeepers who prevented previous outsiders such
as Buchanan, Tancredo and Paul from presenting their ideas to the public. See Scott Adams' blog for a full explanation. Bravo
Trump! You weren't too proud to fight for the interests of the American people.
Robert Thomas, May 5, 2016 at 10:20 am
Not that I am particularly religious nor does religion play a part in my politics.
However I don't need to be a bible thumper to see how over my life Christianity has been slowly systematically and successfully
attacked and wiped clean from our culture but the left and their orahanizatuons like the ACLU. Trump is the first guy who actually
acknowlages this and addresses it by simply saying " we will say Merry Christmas again"
When B.J.B. And Michael Sheuer both support Trump That's a great indicator that My support for Trump is well founded.
I was surprised to see an article like this written in TAC
It would be more fitting and we'll received in the national review or huffington post!
Clint, May 5, 2016 at 10:54 am
Trump,
"I will be the greatest representative of the Christians they've had in a long time." It appears Trump will be a better advocate
for Christians than Obama or Hillary Clinton.
SteveM, May 5, 2016 at 11:16 am
These days the ONLY thing we get from a president are NEGATIVE impacts. I.e., too much war, too much immigration, too much
regulation, a pathologically busted health care solution, tolerance of a pathological tax code, tolerance of Beltway Swamp corruption,
supplicant to the Security State. All of it – just too much
If Trump us just gives a small respite, let alone some actual relief from the massive parasitic hammer of the Leviathan, I'll
settle for that.
"Business as usual" just can't continue. It can't
Kurt Gayle, May 5, 2016 at 11:57 am
@ JLF, who wrote: "The most frightening thing will come from the Trump faithful when they see that their idol has feet of clay
and cannot perform the miracles he says he will."
With all due respect, JLF, I think you hold those of us who are "the Trump faithful" in an unusual level of contempt.
Look, here's the deal: Trump is the only candidate who has identified the problems of Middle America and who has identified
ways to begin to fix those problems. Trump is not a "miracle" worker, but he does have the will and the courage to lead the country
back in the right direction. And as his supporters he has our backing all the way.
As President Trump will no doubt run into problems in implementing some aspects of his broad, multi-faceted program to
make America great again. For sure there will be setbacks and delays, because (1) there is so much wrong with the country that
has to be set right again, and because (2) there are so many powerful, wealthy, vested interests who will oppose doing what the
country needs.
But as tough and steadfast a group as we Trump supporters have shown ourselves to be, why would you think that we would see
setbacks and delays as signs of some sort of "betrayal"? Why? That doesn't make any sense. Haven't you learned yet, JFL, that
of all the groups of Americans supporting all the candidates of both parties, those of us who are Trump supporters are by far
the most loyal, the most unshakeable, and the toughest.
So, don't try to hang some kind of prissy faint-of-heart label on us. As Trump supporters we're in this for the long haul.
We're ready to fight against the setbacks. We'll be fighting this out for as long as it takes to get the job done.
TB, May 5, 2016 at 6:40 pm
Nelson said: You can't be a Christian and hate thy neighbor.
____________________
all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.
Lee, May 5, 2016 at 6:42 pm
Well, let's see what John Adams had to say about the Christian nation concept. ""The government of the United States is
not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."
-John Adams
Or what of Thomas Jefferson's letter to John Adams on April 11 of 1823?
"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the Supreme Being in the womb of a virgin, will be classed
with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought
in these United States will do away with all this artificial scaffolding ."
There's a whole lot more I could point to that further illustrates the erroneous nature of the Christian nation myth. But
people love their myths, just as the term Christian is quite a bit problematic in that historically it most accurately describes
Orthodox Jews.
LouisM, May 5, 2016 at 6:55 pm
Bush2/Cheney fancied themselves caesars invading multiple Mideast nations. Obama fancies himself as god. He has gone
beyond any president in usurping the congress and the states for his personal beliefs in Islam, global warming, drugs, immigration,
unions, sexual identity, Title IX, Healthcare, etc.
Is Trump a surprise? Only in that he is unapologetic and doesn't hide it. More than likely future presidents will
not be as overt and obvious but that does not make them any less psychopathic in seeing the Presidency as a throne rather than
a orchestra leader.
tz, May 5, 2016 at 7:27 pm
Sad. Bush and Obama have both tortured and murdered and garnered only a few peeps – aside from the few low level personnel
who were all but ordered to do so, who is in prison, much less been tried?
Trump is the epitome of our last two decades of compromise, of the end justifies the means, the "24" "Jack Bauer" that will
save the day at any cost, and is somehow the amoral savior.
The most rabidly righteous evangelicals who hate even the mild "damn" love "24". For some reason they originally preferred
Cruz.
This is the one thing – Trump may be many other forms of evil, but is not a hypocrite. He doesn't equivocate on torture (listen
to Cruz's debate response). He doesn't pull punches. He doesn't triangulate or check the polls.
WYSIWYG. The problem is he is a mirror, and the problem is it is your image staring back even if you find it horrible.
Jay L , May 6, 2016 at 12:09 pm
Trump is what you get when a party becomes bankrupt of any real ideas other than personal greed. The party of NO wing
of the Republican Party has reached its logical conclusion. The Party has paid only lip service to Evangelicals for a generation.
Look at all the shirt sleeve pols that end up in sex and/or money scandals all the while thumping the bible and being born again.
Look how every problem can be solved and every issue addressed if only you support us is giving the corporate and wealthy class
another round of tax cuts and hand outs. The Party has over and over said to the Evangelicals if you support us we will get around
to your agenda right after we address the lobbyists who fund our greed. I have wondered for years when the Evangelicals would
see that the ends don't justify the means philosophy of the Republican Party isn't really interested in what they have to say.
One doesn't achieve a Christian state through the seven deadly sins.
My greatest fear is that Trumps rise and the rise of a civil religion/cult is but a step on the path to chaos. History has
shown many times that when people don't see religion as an answer to their problems that they next turn to civil god champions
and when their champions ultimately fail there is nothing left to turn to except the social chaos of tearing the whole structure
down. Many of Trumps and Bernie's supporters won't listen to or care about what dangers, even to themselves, are on the path they
are supporting as long as it hurts the current ruling class that refuses to share the benefits of the system.
A. G. Phillbin , May 6, 2016 at 3:36 pm
Why is the author, and some commenters here, acting as if the label "Evangelical" means any more to those Evangelicals
than the label "Catholic" means to most Catholics, or the label "Jewish" means to most Jews, etc.
People are asked in a survey
to identify by religion. People saying, for example, "Catholic," would include both liberal and traditionalist Catholics, practicing
Catholics and lapsed Catholics and perhaps even ex-Catholics who haven't converted to anything. But the poll would only reflect
the number of people who checked the "Catholic" box, not the depth of their faith.
Similarly, would not people checking "Evangelical"
include people who were born into an Evangelical Christian household, but don't practice much themselves and have given little
thought as to what being an Evangelical means, as well as the very devout?
Without knowing which Evangelicals or which Catholics or which Jews are supporting a candidate or political position, how useful
is the information?
There are hardly any rational actors left in the Trump administration.
Rex Tillerson is a
joke and should have long done these bunch of crazies. Russia and China should join forces
and should tell Trump and his Ziocon backers what is at stake if they attack Syria or Iran.
Nikki Haley is the mouthpiece of the Zionist regime and tried to make Colin Powell. If the
US-Zionist and the Saudi regime attack Iran, at least the Zionist regime and the decadent
Saudi one will be doomed. The US should adjust itself to more coffins from the Middle East
and Afghanistan.
Just recently I watched an interview with Security adviser McMasters on BBC,
and I could not believe the nonsense this guy was saying about Iran, Hezbollah et cetera. He
is very dangerous. Such a policy advice is not rational but insane.
A comment on Trump's national security doctrine, I read it as 'U.S. uber alles'.
The remarkable thing is to see the complete disappearance of the anti-war left. On CNN,
their reaction was, Trump is talking the talk but not walking the walk. They were miffed that
he had a polite phone conversation with Putin. It's not enough to send weapons to Ukraine,
call the Russians and Chinese revisionist powers, have aggressive air patrols near Crimea,
maintain sanctions in perpetuity, have a massive increase in Defense spending, and expand
NATO, you have to be rude to Putin on every possible occasion, perhaps even allow a terrorist
attack.
Some see this as a big fake out to satisfy the Neocons, he's got me eating grass too
(picture Defensive End missing a Running Back in a football game). I guess we just have to
wait to see what the next 3yrs bring.
All signs that the citizens of the imperial court have poisoned themselves with their own
propaganda. Apparently they've collectively forgotten that it all started out as a con for
the rubes. An exceedingly dangerous condition.
I was surprised neither China or Russia vetoed the recent UN sanctions on North Korea. I
can see how the SCO countries would want to play for time, but I wonder if throwing NK to the
wolves makes war more likely rather than less so. I could see Iran interpreting it as being
on deck (next, a baseball term), and the Neocons as a green light.
And so few seem to care... It's almost as if they've been conditioned to want war.
I was dragged to the latest Star Wars movie this weekend. Explosion porn... For a story
ostensibly about sacrifice and honor, it had so many silly comic book jokes I was almost
surprised it didn't have a laugh track.
On the new National Security Doctrine – excellent! The US does not mince words and
states clearly, that both China and Russia are "resurgent" and "revisionist powers", who
"threaten the world order". The US dominated unipolar world order that's it. Which, again, is
true.
If Obama/Clinton had their way, Russia will be listed among the "threats to the national
security" such as ISIL, Ebola and DPRK. Well – who remembers about Ebola's outbreak and
ISIL is losing its memeticness by hour. The esteemed members of the establishment (the
legislative branch) also would have liked to see Russia among such "top priority national
security threats" as Iran and DPRK.
Instead we, Russia, are in China's company. Not bad, not bad at all. Cuz the US can't
negotiate with Iran, North Korea and ISIL without losing a face. With China – now, here
a sort of détente is possible.
It actually appears to be from "Napalm: an American Biography" by Robert M. Neer, 2013.
The book is divided into 3 sections: Hero, Soldier, Pariah - hence the seeming title of
Soldier at the top of the page.
A Google search on "correspondent Cutforth" (including the quotation marks) returns a
slightly differently typeset book but with the same copy as b's image. The image itself is
also returned under Images for that search. So it's definitely the Napalm book.
A comment on Trump's national security doctrine, I read it as 'U.S. uber alles'.
The remarkable thing is to see the complete disappearance of the anti-war left. On CNN,
their reaction was, Trump is talking the talk but not walking the walk. They were miffed that
he had a polite phone conversation with Putin. It's not enough to send weapons to Ukraine,
call the Russians and Chinese revisionist powers, have aggressive air patrols near Crimea,
maintain sanctions in perpetuity, have a massive increase in Defense spending, and expand
NATO, you have to be rude to Putin on every possible occasion, perhaps even allow a terrorist
attack.
Some see this as a big fake out to satisfy the Neocons, he's got me eating grass too
(picture Defensive End missing a Running Back in a football game). I guess we just have to
wait to see what the next 3yrs bring.
On the new National Security Doctrine – excellent! The US does not mince words and
states clearly, that both China and Russia are "resurgent" and "revisionist powers", who
"threaten the world order". The US dominated unipolar world order that's it. Which, again, is
true.
If Obama/Clinton had their way, Russia will be listed among the "threats to the national
security" such as ISIL, Ebola and DPRK. Well – who remembers about Ebola's outbreak and
ISIL is losing its memeticness by hour. The esteemed members of the establishment (the
legislative branch) also would have liked to see Russia among such "top priority national
security threats" as Iran and DPRK.
Instead we, Russia, are in China's company. Not bad, not bad at all. Cuz the US can't
negotiate with Iran, North Korea and ISIL without losing a face. With China – now, here
a sort of détente is possible.
"Apparently they've collectively forgotten that it all started out as a con for the
rubes."
Exactly. And that condition seems to appertain to the formation of most domestic and
foreign policies emanating from Washington these day. That's what you get in a country where
folks like to gorge themselves on the swill of cable news and talk radio.
Trump is now 100% pure neocon. What a metamorphose is less a year from inauguration...
Notable quotes:
"... It says, with extreme hyperbole, that "China and Russia challenge American power, influence, and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity. They are determined to make economies less free and less fair, to grow their militaries, and to control information and data to repress their societies and expand their influence. At the same time, the dictatorships of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the Islamic Republic of Iran are determined to destabilize regions, threaten Americans and our allies, and brutalize their own people." ..."
"... A somewhat more detailed account of what Moscow is up to is also contained in the written report, stating that "Russia is using subversive measures to weaken the credibility of America's commitment to Europe, undermine transatlantic unity, and weaken European institutions and governments. With its invasions of Georgia and Ukraine, Russia demonstrated its willingness to violate the sovereignty of states in the region. Russia continues to intimidate its neighbors with threatening behavior, such as nuclear posturing and the forward deployment of offensive capabilities." ..."
"... Nearly every detail in the indictment of Russia can be challenged. Most notably, if anyone is forward deploying offensive capabilities in Eastern Europe or invading other countries it is the United States, a trend that continues under Donald Trump. Just this past week, Trump approved the sale of offensive weapons to Ukraine, which has already drawn a warning from Moscow and will make any dialogue with Russia unlikely. ..."
"... And, of course, there is the usual softball for Israel claiming that "For generations the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has been understood as the prime irritant preventing peace and prosperity in the region. Today, the threats from jihadist terrorist organizations and the threat from Iran are creating the realization that Israel is not the cause of the region's problems." It is a conclusion that must make the unspeakable Benjamin Netanyahu smile. One might observe that as Israel has attacked all of its neighbors since it was founded, holding its governments blameless is a formulation that others in the region might well dispute. ..."
"... So the Donald Trump National Security Strategy will be more of the same, a combination of the worst ideas to emerge from his two predecessors with little in the way of mitigation. Trump might balk at going toe-to-toe with North Korea because they have the actual capability to strike back and might think they have nothing to lose if they are about to be incinerated, something no bully likes to see, but Iran is certainly in the cross hairs and you best believe they have taken notice and will be preparing. Vladimir Putin too can sit back and wonder how Trump could possibly have gotten everything so ass-backwards when he had so much latitude to get at least some things right. The National Security Strategy will deliver little in the way of security but it will provide an answer to why most of the world has come to hate the United States. ..."
If one takes Trump at his word, the U.S. will use force worldwide to make sure that only
Washington can dominate regionally, a frightening thought as it goes beyond even the wildest
pretensions of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. And equally ridiculous are the potential
consequences of such bullying – the White House clearly believes that it will make other
nations respect us and follow our leadership whereas quite the reverse is likely to be
true.
On the very limited bright side, Trump did have good things to say about the benefits
derived from intelligence sharing with Russia and he also spoke about both Moscow and Beijing
as "rivals" and "adversaries" instead of enemies. That was very refreshing to hear but
unfortunately the printed document did not say the same thing.
The NSS report provided considerably more detail than did the speech but it also was full of
generalizations and all too often relied on Washington group think to frame its options. The
beginning is somewhat terrifying for one of my inclinations on foreign policy:
"An America that is safe, prosperous, and free at home is an America with the strength,
confidence, and will to lead abroad. It is an America that can preserve peace, uphold liberty,
and create enduring advantages for the American people. Putting America first is the duty of
our government and the foundation for U.S. leadership in the world. A strong America is in the
vital interests of not only the American people, but also those around the world who want to
partner with the United States in pursuit of shared interests, values, and aspirations."
One has to ask what this "lead" and "leadership" and "partner" nonsense actually represents,
particularly in light of the fact that damn near the entire world just repudiated Trump's
decision to move the American Embassy in Israel as well as the nearly global rejection of his
response to climate change? And Washington's alleged need to lead has brought nothing but grief
to the American people starting in Korea and continuing with Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and
numerous lesser stops along the way in places like Somalia, Panama and Syria. The false
narrative of the threat coming from "foreigners" has actually done nothing to make Americans
safer while also diminishing constitutional liberties and doing serious damage to the
economy.
The printed report is much more brutal than was Trump about the dangers facing America and
it is also much more carefree in the "facts" that it chooses to present. It says, with extreme
hyperbole, that "China and Russia challenge American power, influence, and interests,
attempting to erode American security and prosperity. They are determined to make economies
less free and less fair, to grow their militaries, and to control information and data to
repress their societies and expand their influence. At the same time, the dictatorships of the
Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the Islamic Republic of Iran are determined to
destabilize regions, threaten Americans and our allies, and brutalize their own people."
A somewhat more detailed account of what Moscow is up to is also contained in the written
report, stating that "Russia is using subversive measures to weaken the credibility of
America's commitment to Europe, undermine transatlantic unity, and weaken European institutions
and governments. With its invasions of Georgia and Ukraine, Russia demonstrated its willingness
to violate the sovereignty of states in the region. Russia continues to intimidate its
neighbors with threatening behavior, such as nuclear posturing and the forward deployment of
offensive capabilities."
Nearly every detail in the indictment of Russia can be challenged. Most notably, if anyone
is forward deploying offensive capabilities in Eastern Europe or invading other countries it is
the United States, a trend that continues under Donald Trump. Just this past week, Trump
approved the sale of offensive weapons to Ukraine, which has already drawn a warning from
Moscow and will make any dialogue with Russia unlikely.
And, of course, there is the usual softball for Israel claiming that "For generations the
conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has been understood as the prime irritant
preventing peace and prosperity in the region. Today, the threats from jihadist terrorist
organizations and the threat from Iran are creating the realization that Israel is not the
cause of the region's problems." It is a conclusion that must make the unspeakable Benjamin
Netanyahu smile. One might observe that as Israel has attacked all of its neighbors since it
was founded, holding its governments blameless is a formulation that others in the region might
well dispute.
So the Donald Trump National Security Strategy will be more of the same, a combination of
the worst ideas to emerge from his two predecessors with little in the way of mitigation. Trump
might balk at going toe-to-toe with North Korea because they have the actual capability to
strike back and might think they have nothing to lose if they are about to be incinerated,
something no bully likes to see, but Iran is certainly in the cross hairs and you best believe
they have taken notice and will be preparing. Vladimir Putin too can sit back and wonder how
Trump could possibly have gotten everything so ass-backwards when he had so much latitude to
get at least some things right. The National Security Strategy will deliver little in the way
of security but it will provide an answer to why most of the world has come to hate the United
States.
"... Defense Secretary James Mattis seems skeptical about neocon hysteria, declaring that the North Korean missile program does not pose a "capable threat" to the United States. With that in mind, we can only hope that President Trump will encourage Tillerson to do another about-face and return to the idea of talks without pre-condition. Strategic ambiguity is one thing, sending constantly mixed signals when nuclear war looms is something else. (Republished from The Ron Paul Institute by permission of author or representative) ..."
President Trump has often said that his foreign policy objective was to
keep his enemies guessing. If that's the goal, you could say that he's doing a good job. The problem is who
does he think his enemies are, because the American people are often left guessing as well.
US policy toward North Korea last week is a good example of how the Trump
Administration is wittingly or unwittingly sowing confusion among friend and foe alike. In what looked like
a breakthrough, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced last Tuesday that the US would be willing to sit
down and talk with North Korea "without preconditions." Previously the US had demanded that North Korea
agree to end its nuclear weapons and missile programs before Washington was willing to sit down to formal
talks.
The State Department shift toward actual diplomacy with North Korea was
quickly quashed, however, when the White House announced that its position on North Korea had not changed.
It seemed that the State Department and White House were each pursuing different foreign policies on the
Korea issue.
The White House even appeared to belittle Tillerson's attempt at
diplomacy, releasing a statement on Wednesday that talks with North Korea would be "pointless." No wonder
speculation persists that Tillerson is on his way out as Secretary of State.
Then on Friday Secretary Tillerson seemed to do a u-turn on his own
policy, announcing at a UN Security Council meeting that a "sustained cessation of North Korea's threatening
behavior" must precede any negotiations with the US. "North Korea must earn its way back to the table," he
said. So, after just three days the offer of unconditional talks with North Korea had been put on and then
removed from the table.
There is more than a little hypocrisy in US demands that North Korea cease
its "threatening behavior." Just this month the US and South Korea launched yet another joint military
exercise targeting North Korea. Some 12,000 military personnel and 230 aircraft – including stealth fighters
– participated in the massive war games. Does anyone think this is not meant to be threatening to North
Korea?
It is a shame that the hawks in the Administration continue to dominate.
It seems pretty reasonable to open talks with North Korea after a period of "good faith" gestures between
Washington and Pyongyang. Why not agree on no US/South Korean joint military exercises for six months in
exchange for no North Korean missile launches for the same period and then agree to a meeting on neutral
ground? How could it possibly hurt, particularly considering the alternative?
The hawks continue to talk up a US strike against North Korea. Senator
Lindsey Graham seemed pleased when he announced that there was a 70 percent chance that the US would attack
North Korea if it detonated another nuclear weapon. Does he realize how many people will die? Does he care?
Defense Secretary James Mattis seems skeptical about neocon hysteria,
declaring that the North Korean missile program does not pose a "capable threat" to the United States. With
that in mind, we can only hope that President Trump will encourage Tillerson to do another about-face and
return to the idea of talks without pre-condition. Strategic ambiguity is one thing, sending constantly
mixed signals when nuclear war looms is something else.
(Republished from
The Ron Paul Institute
by permission of author or representative)
Best solution would be to have each race have their own league. Due to biological race-ism that favors
blacks in sports, non-blacks can hardly play in pro sports.
So, let there be various racial leagues.
Since biological race-ism discriminates against whites in NBA and NFL, let there be the Blanco League.
T. Rex is probably closer to the mark. Clearly the Last Trump is continuing his Wizard of Oz impersonation
and being humored by his minders while others try to go about the business of actually performing miracles.
Eventually Congress critters will wake up back home in their jerrymandered constituencies and realize it has
all been a bad dream.
"Senator Lindsey Graham seemed pleased when he announced that there was a 70 percent chance that the
US would attack North Korea if it detonated another nuclear weapon. Does he realize how many people will
die? Does he care?"
1) Yes.
2) No.
It's a sick, sad world where a former JAG Corps officer has so much influence over foreign and national
defence and security policies.
Trump should re-activate him and either put him in Syria to brief the rules of engagement to the special
ops forces (who will no doubt frag him) in real-time, or at one of the bases near the Korean DMZ, where
he'll get real-world experience in the first wave of the invasion he is cheering on.
In a competent administration I'd assume good cop / bad cop. In the Trump era no assumptions are possible.
Everything is just random noise, like leaves and trash blowing down the street, or cats yowling on a fence.
With that in mind, we can only hope that President Trump will encourage Tillerson to do another
about-face and return to the idea of talks without pre-condition.
You got that right Dr. Paul. We can only hope. We want peace. We vote for peace. But we get war.
Why not agree on no US/South Korean joint military exercises for six months in exchange for no North
Korean missile launches for the same period and then agree to a meeting on neutral ground? How could it
possibly hurt, particularly considering the alternative?
Well the simple reason is that the US continues to dream of regime change in North Korea there is no
other 'plan'. There is no desire for simple coexistence with North Korea. That is quite plain and indisputable, based on the US actions. The US refusal to even consider a peace treaty for 60 years now makes that sinister motive plain as day. So it is useless to start from the point that the US is somehow interested in 'defusing' the North Korean
crisis or even cares about the nuclear weapons or missiles
Missiles and nukes are not the problem even without those the US has never abandoned its core goal of 70
years to dominate the entire Korean peninsula. As soon as we recognize what the dynamics here really are then we can go forward. It is interesting to see here that Tillerson is yet again showing himself to be hugely capable of
realism. This man is a gift to the American people but he is undermined by Dump himself who has chosen to adopt
the entire neocon agenda. If we assume that the policy of the US is shaped more by unseen actors rather than the elected and
visible personalities on center stage then my hope is that there are some rational players among those
'unseen' shot callers who may be supporting the Tillerson realpolitik approach because getting real and snapping out of disneyland fantasies is the only thing that is going to stave
off impending disaster for the US
We can only hope that such a faction of realists exists within the 'unseen' power structure. What we can be plenty sure of is that there is clearly another powerful faction at work call them the
neocons the war party or what you will and they seem to have the upper hand over the pathetically weak Dump
"... America has lost moral grounds. Its propaganda machine is falling apart exposing America as an international outlaw ..."
"... America is in a situation when it cannot wage an open full-scale war and it cannot negotiate anything. For example, a war with N. Korea potentially will be an extremely bloody for America with totally unpredictable consequences and, at the same time, America cannot negotiate anything since, in a case of Iran, Trump stated that he did not give a shit to any negotiated agreements. ..."
"... Trump vision of making America great is to be a greater lackey of Israel and by impoverishing the America middle class by enriching his lenders on the Wall Street. ..."
" there are many vacancies, which has opened the door to eager neoconservative-leaning
nominal Republicans to re-enter government . At the State Department Brian Hook of the
neocon John
Hay Initiative is now chief of policy planning, courtesy of Margaret Peterlin,
Tillerson's chief of staff. They have recently hired David Feith , the son of the infamous
Pentagon Office of Special Plans head Doug Feith , to head the Asia desk. And Wes Mitchell
, whose policies are largely indistinguishable from his predecessor, has replaced Victoria
Nuland as Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs . While Elliot Abrams,
Eliot Cohen, the Kagans and other prominent neocons have been blocked, second-tier
activists carrying less political baggage have quietly been brought in . "
" The unfortunate Donald Trump Administration decision to recognize Jerusalem as the
capital of Israel serves no visible American interest , in spite of what some of the
always-loyal-to-Israel punditry has been suggesting. Israel is already moving to exploit
the situation in its usual fashion . Immediately after the announcement was made, Israeli
Ambassador in Washington Ron Dermer suggested
that the decision on Jerusalem could now be extended to include other disputed areas,
most particularly Syria's Golan Heights that were occupied in 1967"
" Nothing good will come out of the Trump decision as the situation in the region is
already starting to unravel. The Turks are talking about opening an Embassy to Palestine in
East Jerusalem and the 56 other Muslim countries in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation
might follow suit."
The perfect example of the present state of American "morality". We are paying you off to
agree with us and if not we will take our ball and go home. And as for Haley's comment that
"This is what the American people want and is the right thing to do", when were the American
people ever asked and who says it is the right thing to do other than neocons?
Sanctions and Miltary intervention is the sum total of US foreign policy. Is it any wonder
that the Chinese are winning friends and making inroads around the world by engaging in quiet
diplomacy and reaching win/win investment solutions with no political demands made on the
host country.
The Trump's foreign policies are a total catastrophe:
America has lost moral grounds. Its propaganda machine is falling apart exposing
America as an international outlaw
America is in a situation when it cannot wage an open full-scale war and it cannot
negotiate anything. For example, a war with N. Korea potentially will be an extremely
bloody for America with totally unpredictable consequences and, at the same time, America
cannot negotiate anything since, in a case of Iran, Trump stated that he did not give a
shit to any negotiated agreements.
Trump vision of making America great is to be a greater lackey of Israel and by
impoverishing the America middle class by enriching his lenders on the Wall Street.
IIRC from my international affairs classes, the UN was always a rubber stamp for American
interests. Every "international" organization was like this. Now, we see the tables are
turning and we might end up ditching these organizations as the Empire no longer controls
them.
Look back at the Korean War. Originally, the loss of sovereignty was meant to be an MIC
rubber stamp, to commit the US to war while going around Congress. In other words, the UN was
the MIC's rubber stamp to approve whatever it wanted, without Congressional approval, and
without making American politicians bear the burden of guilt.
Stop right there trollie .... the ONLY outrageous challenge to US "sovereignty" is the
Zionist talmudist ethnocentric chosenites who have their "dual"-citizens
pulling the strings on US foreign policy:
"Neoconservative Douglas Feith writes a position paper entitled "A Strategy for Israel."
Feith proposes that Israel re-occupy "the areas under Palestinian Authority control" even
though "the price in blood would be high." [Commentary, 9/1997; American Conservative,
3/24/2003; In These Times, 3/13/2007] Feith is the co-author of the 1996 position paper "A
Clean Break" (see July 8, 1996), which advocates a similar aggressive posture for
Israel."
"January 30, 2001: First National Security Council Meeting Focuses on Iraq and Israel, Not
Terrorism.
The Bush White House holds its first National Security Council meeting. The focus is on Iraq
and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict...But Bush isn't interested in terrorism...Instead, Bush
channels his neoconservative advisers, particularly incoming Deputy Defense Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz... in taking a new approach to Middle East affairs, particularly the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict...
Rice begins noting "that Iraq might be the key to reshaping the entire region."...Bush orders
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Hugh Shelton to
begin preparing options for the use of US ground forces in Iraq's northern and southern
no-fly zones in support of a native-based insurgency against the Hussein regime..."Meeting
adjourned. Ten days in, and it was about Iraq...
"US Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill, later recalls: "From the very beginning, there
was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go. From the
very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this
regime...officials never questioned the logic behind this policy. No one ever asked, "Why
Saddam?" and "Why now?" Instead, the issue that needed to be resolved was how this could be
accomplished. "It was all about finding a way to do it," O'Neill will explain. "That was the
tone of it. The president saying 'Go find me a way to do this.'""
"The president told his Pentagon officials to explore the military options, including use of
ground forces..."These were the policies that even the Israeli right had not dared to
implement." One senior administration official says after the meeting, "The Likudniks are
really in charge now."..."
"Shortly After September 11, 2001: Pentagon Officials Wolfowitz and Feith Set Up Counter
Terrorism Evaluation Group"
"Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith set up a secret
intelligence unit, named the Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group (CTEG -- sometimes called the
Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group), to sift through raw intelligence reports and look
for evidence of a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda... George Packer will later describe their
process, writing, "Wurmser and Maloof were working deductively, not inductively: The premise
was true; facts would be found to confirm it."...Critics claim that its members manipulate
and distort intelligence, "cherry-picking" bits of information that support their
preconceived conclusions... They were cherry-picking intelligence and packaging it for [Vice
President] Cheney and [Defense Secretary] Donald Rumsfeld to take to the president. That's
the kind of rogue operation that peer review is intended to prevent."...A defense official
later adds, "There is a complete breakdown in the relationship between the Defense Department
and the intelligence community, to include its own Defense Intelligence Agency. Wolfowitz and
company disbelieve any analysis that doesn't support their own preconceived conclusions. The
CIA is enemy territory, as far are they're concerned."... For weeks, the unit will attempt to
uncover evidence tying Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 attacks, a theory advocated by both Feith
and Wolfowitz..."
"The rest of the US intelligence community is not impressed with CTEG's work. "I don't
have any problem with [the Pentagon] bringing in a couple of people to take another look at
the intelligence and challenge the assessment," former DIA analyst Patrick Lang will later
say. "But the problem is that they brought in people who were not intelligence professionals,
people were brought in because they thought like them. They knew what answers they were going
to get."..."
"Dismissing CIA's Findings that Iraq, al-Qaeda are Not Linked... In CTEG's view, policy
makers should overlook any equivocations and discrepancies and dismiss the CIA's guarded
conclusions: "[T]he CIA report ought to be read for content only -- and CIA's interpretation
ought to be ignored." Their decision is powered by Wolfowitz, who has instructed them to
ignore the intelligence community's view that al-Qaeda and Iraq were doubtful allies. They
also embrace the theory that 9/11 hijacker Mohammad Atta met with an Iraqi official in
Prague, a theory discredited by intelligence professionals..."
"The group is later accused of stovepiping intelligence directly to the White House. Lang
later tells the Washington Times: "That unit had meetings with senior White House officials
without the CIA or the Senate being aware of them. That is not legal. There has to be
oversight." According to Lang and another US intelligence official, the two men go to the
White House several times to brief officials, bypassing CIA analysts whose analyses they
disagreed with..."
For those how do not want to read the article I've linked to these quotes let me highlight
a few passages (apologies in advance as someone replied to my previous article so I could not
do it prior):
"Neoconservative Douglas Feith writes a position paper entitled " A Strategy for Israel ."
Feith proposes that Israel re-occupy "the areas under Palestinian Authority control" even
though "the price in blood would be high." [Commentary, 9/1997; American Conservative,
3/24/2003; In These Times, 3/13/2007] Feith is the co-author of the 1996 position paper " A
Clean Break " (see July 8, 1996), which advocates a similar aggressive posture for
Israel."
" January 30, 2001 : First National Security Council Meeting Focuses on Iraq and Israel,
Not Terrorism
The Bush White House holds its first National Security Council meeting. The focus is on
Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict...But Bush isn't interested in terrorism
...Instead, Bush channels his neoconservative advisers, particularly incoming Deputy Defense
Secretary Paul Wolfowitz... in taking a new approach to Middle East affairs, particularly the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict...
Rice begins noting "that Iraq might be the key to reshaping the entire region."...Bush
orders Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Hugh
Shelton to begin preparing options for the use of US ground forces in Iraq's northern and
southern no-fly zones in support of a native-based insurgency against the Hussein
regime..."Meeting adjourned. Ten days in, and it was about Iraq ...
"US Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill, later recalls: "From the very beginning, there
was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go. From the
very first instance, it was about Iraq . It was about what we can do to change this
regime...officials never questioned the logic behind this policy . No one ever asked, "Why
Saddam?" and "Why now?" Instead, the issue that needed to be resolved was how this could be
accomplished. " It was all about finding a way to do it ," O'Neill will explain. "That was
the tone of it. The president saying 'Go find me a way to do this.'""
"The president told his Pentagon officials to explore the military options, including use
of ground forces ..."These were the policies that even the Israeli right had not dared to
implement." One senior administration official says after the meeting, "The Likudniks are
really in charge now."..."
"Shortly After September 11, 2001: Pentagon Officials Wolfowitz and Feith Set Up Counter
Terrorism Evaluation Group"
"Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith set up a secret
intelligence unit, named the Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group (CTEG -- sometimes called the
Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group), to sift through raw intelligence reports and look
for evidence of a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda... George Packer will later describe their
process, writing, "Wurmser and Maloof were working deductively, not inductively: The premise
was true; facts would be found to confirm it ."...Critics claim that its members manipulate
and distort intelligence, "cherry-picking" bits of information that support their
preconceived conclusions... They were cherry-picking intelligence and packaging it for [Vice
President] Cheney and [Defense Secretary] Donald Rumsfeld to take to the president. That's
the kind of rogue operation that peer review is intended to prevent. "...A defense official
later adds, "There is a complete breakdown in the relationship between the Defense Department
and the intelligence community, to include its own Defense Intelligence Agency. Wolfowitz and
company disbelieve any analysis that doesn't support their own preconceived conclusions . The
CIA is enemy territory, as far are they're concerned."... For weeks, the unit will attempt to
uncover evidence tying Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 attacks, a theory advocated by both Feith
and Wolfowitz..."
"The rest of the US intelligence community is not impressed with CTEG's work. "I don't
have any problem with [the Pentagon] bringing in a couple of people to take another look at
the intelligence and challenge the assessment," former DIA analyst Patrick Lang will later
say. "But the problem is that they brought in people who were not intelligence professionals
, people were brought in because they thought like them. They knew what answers they were
going to get ."..."
"Dismissing CIA's Findings that Iraq, al-Qaeda are Not Linked... In CTEG's view, policy
makers should overlook any equivocations and discrepancies and dismiss the CIA's guarded
conclusions: "[T]he CIA report ought to be read for content only -- and CIA's interpretation
ought to be ignored." Their decision is powered by Wolfowitz, who has instructed them to
ignore the intelligence community's view that al-Qaeda and Iraq were doubtful allies . They
also embrace the theory that 9/11 hijacker Mohammad Atta met with an Iraqi official in
Prague, a theory discredited by intelligence professionals..."
"The group is later accused of stovepiping intelligence directly to the White House . Lang
later tells the Washington Times: " That unit had meetings with senior White House officials
without the CIA or the Senate being aware of them . That is not legal . There has to be
oversight." According to Lang and another US intelligence official, the two men go to the
White House several times to brief officials, bypassing CIA analysts whose analyses they
disagreed with ..."
Oh, that's right. Bill Clinton and the Democrats NEVER condoned regime change in Iraq.
Just like they NEVER proposed accepting Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
The UN is Washington's most powerfull tool to keep the rest of the world in check.
And because Washington wants to preserve the global status quo (which has been constructed
to Washington's advantage), the UN is not allowed to do "anything productive".
As a Gringo, you should be damn content with the UN, because Washington's control over the
UN facilitates your luxurious Gringo-lifestyle.
But you can't have it all: AND a luxurious Gringo-lifestyle AND the applause of the rest
of the world.
UN, IMF and World Bank are just the three pillars on which the neo-colonial US-empire is
built.
Most of the world would wish to be liberated from you Gringos,but you don't even realize
what you're wishing for, because you've never looked beyond your home-town, next month's pay
check or thought about what happened longer than a week ago.
"Could we just finally leave the UN now? Or are we waiting for them to finally like
us?"
Yes! Please! Leave! Go with god, but go!
I think it's long over due to move the UN out of New York to any-place-is-better. To be
blackmailed by its xenofobic USA-host, is just unacceptably lethal to a plurinational
institution like the UN.
Maybe the Crimea Peninsula would be a rather suitable place: it's more central for most of
the rest of the world and Russia is a much more respectful and hospitable host.
To be rid of the two most murderous rogue states of the UN, would make life so much easier
for the rest of the world. Without the USA and Israel, the UN would be able to advance with
leaps on a laundry list of bogged down global problems.
I'm quite sure that within a few years of voluntary isolation, the USA and Israel would
come back, begging to be atmitted again to the UN. But of course, the USA would not get back
its veto right in the Security Counsil anymore.
While its populist to shit post the UN, many here are smarter than that. Likely you
appreciate this may be the first signs of the great pivot East. Putin & Xi Jingping will
be crunching their popcorn with interest at this, if not cackling down the phone to each
other. US may well save on its UN subscriptions if this course is pursued, the end result
will be UN HQ will move, not to Switzerland, but to Bejing and with it American isolationism
in a way thats not been experienced since the great depression. More than anything else, the
US needs foreign trade, and that calls for engagement.
The disturbing part is why choose now to recognise Jerusalem? What exactly has Israel done
for the US? Dance on some rooftops while WTC came down? Caused havoc to most of her
neighbors? Schemed and conived to set one neighbor against another.
The Don knew this would sit badly abroad, possibly it's linked with some push back against
Putin in Syria, and to tell Iraq how pissed he is they rained on the Kurdish State parade.
Likely it includes some MIC trade off to pull CiA dogs off his back??? IDK - but it will
forment more dissent in Middle East, and since that's where much of the world's oil & gas
still comes from, we'll all feel the hit.
It seems an action more guided by the Generals? and whilst US does have a formidable
military to add leverage to decisions, it's military infrastructure was built in the cold
war. Much of it in need of replacement:
Stop overthinking. This is nothing more than a campaign funding promise to Sheldon Adelson
and his conservative Isreali-American Council (note which name appears first). $50+ million
to his campaign, $5 million to inauguration.
Some even think the Las Vegas shooting (Adelson owns Las Vegas) was a not so subtle signal
to Trump to get on with it or more events like it would happen.
Canada's entire economic system is so incredibly connected to the USA that it is to a
great extent dependent on a happy and prosperous USA. The last thing Canada needs right now
(since the country already has an embarrassing buffoon as a leader) is to upset the US.
To abstain was their only option, especially since it was known that it would make no
difference in the vote. So it was the wise choice. It had little to do with dumbass
Trudeau.
"... Needless to say, the Never Trumpers were eminently correct in their worry that Trump would sully, degrade and weaken the Imperial Presidency. That he has done in spades with his endless tweet storms that consist mainly of petty score settling, self-justification, unseemly boasting and shrill partisanship; and on top of that you can pile his impetuous attacks on friend, foe and bystanders (e.g. NFL kneelers) alike. ..."
There was a sinister plot to meddle in the 2016
election, after all. But it was not orchestrated from the Kremlin; it was an entirely homegrown
affair conducted from the inner sanctums---the White House, DOJ, the Hoover Building and
Langley----of the Imperial City.
Likewise, the perpetrators didn't speak Russian or write in the Cyrillic script. In fact,
they were lifetime beltway insiders occupying the highest positions of power in the US
government.
Here are the names and rank of the principal conspirators:
John Brennan, CIA director;
Susan Rice, National Security Advisor;
Samantha Power, UN Ambassador;
James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence;
James Comey, FBI director;
Andrew McCabe, Deputy FBI director;
Sally Yates, deputy Attorney General,
Bruce Ohr, associate deputy AG;
Peter Strzok, deputy assistant director of FBI counterintelligence;
Lisa Page, FBI lawyer;
and countless other lessor and greater poobahs of Washington power, including President
Obama himself.
To a person, the participants in this illicit cabal shared the core trait that made Obama
such a blight on the nation's well-being. To wit, he never held an honest job outside the halls
of government in his entire adult life; and as a careerist agent of the state and practitioner
of its purported goods works, he exuded a sanctimonious disdain for everyday citizens who make
their living along the capitalist highways and by-ways of America.
The above cast of election-meddlers, of course, comes from the same mold. If Wikipedia is
roughly correct, just these 10 named perpetrators have punched in about 300 years of
post-graduate employment---and 260 of those years (87%) were on government payrolls or
government contractor jobs.
As to whether they shared Obama's political class arrogance, Peter Strzok left nothing to
the imagination in his now celebrated texts to his gal-pal, Lisa Page:
"Just went to a southern Virginia Walmart. I could SMELL the Trump support......I LOATHE
congress....And F Trump."
You really didn't need the ALL CAPS to get the gist. In a word, the anti-Trump cabal is
comprised of creatures of the state.
Their now obvious effort to alter the outcome of the 2016 election was nothing less than the
Imperial City's immune system attacking an alien threat, which embodied the very opposite
trait: That is, the Donald had never spent one moment on the state's payroll, had been elected
to no government office and displayed a spirited contempt for the groupthink and verities of
officialdom in the Imperial City.
But it is the vehemence and flagrant transparency of this conspiracy to prevent Trump's
ascension to the Oval Office that reveals the profound threat to capitalism and democracy posed
by the Deep State and its prosperous elites and fellow travelers domiciled in the Imperial
City.
That is to say, Donald Trump was no kind of anti-statist and only a skin-deep populist, at
best. His signature anti-immigrant meme was apparently discovered by accident when in the early
days of the campaign he went off on Mexican thugs, rapists and murderers----only to find that
it resonated strongly among a certain element of the GOP grass roots.
But a harsh line on immigrants, refugees and Muslims would not have incited the Deep State
into an attempted coup d'état; it wouldn't have mobilized so overtly against Ted Cruz,
for example, whose positions on the ballyhooed terrorist/immigrant threat were not much
different.
No, what sent the Imperial City establishment into a fit of apoplexy was exactly two things
that struck at the core of its raison d' etre.
First was Trump's stated intentions to seek rapprochement with Putin's Russia and his
sensible embrace of a non-interventionist "America First" view of Washington's role in the
world. And secondly, and even more importantly, was his very persona.
That is to say, the role of today's president is to function as the suave, reliable
maître d' of the Imperial City and the lead spokesman for Washington's purported good
works at home and abroad. And for that role the slovenly, loud-mouthed, narcissistic,
bombastic, ill-informed and crudely-mannered Donald Trump was utterly unqualified.
Stated differently, welfare statism and warfare statism is the secular religion of the
Imperial City and its collaborators in the mainstream media; and the Oval Office is the bully
pulpit from which its catechisms, bromides and self-justifications are propagandized to the
unwashed masses---the tax-and-debt-slaves of Flyover America who bear the burden of its
continuation.
Needless to say, the Never Trumpers were eminently correct in their worry that Trump would
sully, degrade and weaken the Imperial Presidency. That he has done in spades with his endless
tweet storms that consist mainly of petty score settling, self-justification, unseemly boasting
and shrill partisanship; and on top of that you can pile his impetuous attacks on friend, foe
and bystanders (e.g. NFL kneelers) alike.
Yet that is exactly what has the Deep State and its media collaborators running scared. To
wit, Trump's entire modus operandi is not about governing or a serious policy agenda---and most
certainly not about Making America's Economy Great Again. (MAEGA)
By appointing a passel of Keynesian monetary central planners to the Fed and launching an
orgy of fiscal recklessness via his massive defense spending and tax-cutting initiatives, the
Donald has more than sealed his own doom: There will unavoidably be a massive financial and
economic crisis in the years just ahead and the rulers of the Imperial City will most certainly
heap the blame upon him with malice aforethought.
In the interim, however, what the Donald is actually doing is sharply polarizing the country
and using the Bully Pulpit for the very opposite function assigned to it by Washington's
permanent political class. Namely, to discredit and vilify the ruling elites of government and
the media and thereby undermine the docility and acquiescence of the unwashed masses upon which
the Imperial City's rule and hideous prosperity depend.
It is no wonder, then, that the inner circle of the Obama Administration plotted an
"insurance policy". They saw it coming-----that is, an offensive rogue disrupter who was soft
on Russia, to boot--- and out of that alarm the entire hoax of RussiaGate was born.
As is now well known from the recent dump of 375 Strzok/Gates text messages, there occurred
on August 15, 2016 a meeting in the office of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe (who is still
there) to kick off the RussiaGate campaign. As Strzok later wrote to Page, who was also at the
meeting:
" I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office -- that
there's no way he gets elected -- but I'm afraid we can't take that risk......It's like an
insurance policy in the unlikely event that you die before you're 40."
They will try to spin this money quote seven-ways to Sunday, but in the context of
everything else now known there is only one possible meaning: The national security and law
enforcement machinery of Imperial Washington was being activated then and there in behalf of
Hillary Clinton's campaign.
Indeed, the trail of proof is quite clear. At the very time of this August meeting, the FBI
was already being fed the initial elements of the Steele dossier, and the latter had nothing to
do with any kind of national security investigation.
For crying out loud, it was plain old "oppo research" paid for by the Clinton campaign and
the DNC. And the only way that it bore on Russian involvement in the US election was that
virtually all of the salacious material and false narratives about Trump emissaries meeting
with high level Russian officials was disinformation sourced in Moscow, and was completely
untrue.
As former senior FBI official, Andrew McCarthy, neatly summarized the sequence of action
recently:
The Clinton campaign generated the Steele dossier through lawyers who retained Fusion GPS.
Fusion, in turn, hired Steele, a former British intelligence agent who had FBI contacts from
prior collaborative investigations. The dossier was steered into the FBI's hands as it began
to be compiled in the summer of 2016. A Fusion Russia expert, Nellie Ohr, worked with Steele
on Fusion's anti-Trump research. She is the wife of Bruce Ohr, then the deputy associate
attorney general -- the top subordinate of Sally Yates, then Obama's deputy attorney general
(later acting AG). Ohr was a direct pipeline to Yates.....
Based on the publication this week of text messages between FBI agent Peter Strzok and
Lisa Page, the FBI lawyer with whom he was having an extramarital affair, we have learned of
a meeting convened in the office of FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe...... right around the
time the Page FISA warrant was obtained......
Bruce Ohr met personally with Steele. And after Trump was elected, according to Fusion
founder Glenn Simpson, he requested and got a meeting with Simpson to, as Simpson told the
House Intelligence Committee, "discuss our findings regarding Russia and the election."
This, of course, was the precise time Democrats began peddling the public narrative of
Trump-Russia collusion. It is the time frame during which Ohr's boss, Yates, was pushing an
absurd Logan Act investigation of Trump transition official Michael Flynn (then slotted to
become Trump's national-security adviser) over Flynn's meetings with the Russian
ambassador.
Here's the thing. There is almost nothing in the Steele dossiers which is true. At the same
time, there is no real alternative evidence based on hard NSA intercepts that show Russian
government agents were behind the only two acts----the leaks of the DNC emails and the Podesta
emails----that were of even minimal import to the outcome of the 2016 presidential
campaign.
As to the veracity of the dossier, the raving anti-Trumper and former CIA interim chief,
Michael Morrell, settled the matter. If you are paying ex-FSA agents for information on the
back streets of Moscow, the more you pay, the more "information" you will get:
Then I asked myself, why did these guys provide this information, what was their
motivation? And I subsequently learned that he paid them. That the intermediaries paid the
sources and the intermediaries got the money from Chris. And that kind of worries me a little
bit because if you're paying somebody, particularly former [Russian Federal Security Service]
officers, they are going to tell you truth and innuendo and rumor, and they're going to call
you up and say, 'Hey, let's have another meeting, I have more information for you,' because
they want to get paid some more,' Morrell said.
Far from being "verified," the dossier is best described as a pack of lies, gossip, innuendo
and irrelevancies. Take, for example, the claim that Trump lawyer Michael Cohen met with
Russian Federation Council foreign affairs head Konstantin Kosachev in Prague during August
2016. That claim is verifiably false as proven by Cohen's own passport.
Likewise, the dossier 's claim that Carter Page was offered a giant bribe by the head of
Rosneft, the Russian state energy company, in return for lifting the sanctions is downright
laughable. That's because Carter Page never had any serious role in the Trump campaign and was
one of hundreds of unpaid informal advisors who hung around the basket hoping for some role in
a future Trump government.
Like the hapless George Papadopoulos, in fact, Page apparently never met Trump, had no
foreign policy credentials and had been drafted onto the campaign's so-called foreign policy
advisory committee out of sheer desperation.
That is, because the mainstream GOP foreign policy establishment had so completely boycotted
the Trump campaign, the latter was forced to fill its advisory committee essentially from the
phone book; and that desperation move in March 2016, in turn, had been undertaken in order to
damp-down the media uproar over the Donald's assertion that he got his foreign policy advise
from watching TV!
The truth of the matter is that Page was a former Merrill Lynch stockbrokers who had plied
his trade in Russia several years earlier. He had gone to Moscow in July 2016 on his own dime
and without any mandate from the Trump campaign; and his "meeting" with Rosneft actually
consisted of drinks with an old buddy from his broker days who had become head of investor
relations at Rosneft.
Nevertheless, it is pretty evident that the Steele dossier's tale about Page's alleged
bribery scheme was the basis for the FISA warrant that resulted in wiretaps on Page and other
officials in Trump Tower during September and October.
And that's your insurance policy at work: The Deep State and its allies in the Obama
administration were desperately looking for dirt with which to crucify the Donald, and thereby
insure that the establishment's anointed candidate would not fail at the polls.
So the question recurs as to why did the conspirators resort to the outlandish and even
cartoonish disinformation contained in the Steele dossier?
The answer to that question cuts to the quick of the entire RussiaGate hoax. To wit, that's
all they had!
Notwithstanding the massive machinery and communications vacuum cleaners operated by the $75
billion US intelligence communities and its vaunted 17 agencies, there are no digital
intercepts proving that Russian state operatives hacked the DNC and Podesta emails. Period.
Yet when it comes to anything that even remotely smacks of "meddling" in the US election
campaign, that's all she wrote.
There is nothing else of moment, and most especially not the alleged phishing expeditions
directed at 20 or so state election boards. Most of these have been discredited, denied by
local officials or were simply the work of everyday hackers looking for voter registration
lists that could be sold.
The patently obvious point here is that in America there is no on-line network of voting
machines on either an intra-state or interstate basis. And that fact renders the whole election
machinery hacking meme null and void. Not even the treacherous Russians are stupid enough to
waste their time trying to hack that which is unhackable.
In that vein, the Facebook ad buying scheme is even more ridiculous. In the context of an
election campaign in which upwards of $7 billion of spending was reported by candidates and
their committees to the FEC, and during which easily double that amount was spent by
independent committees and issue campaigns, the notion that just $44,000 of Facebook ads made
any difference to anything is not worthy of adult thought.
And, yes, out of the ballyhooed $100,000 of Facebook ads, the majority occurred after the
election was over and none of them named candidates, anyway. The ads consisted of issue
messages that reflected all points on the political spectrum from pro-choice to anti-gun
control.
And even this so-called effort at "polarizing" the American electorate was "discovered" only
after Facebook failed to find any "Russian-linked" ads during its first two searches. Instead,
this complete drivel was detected only after the Senate's modern day Joseph McCarthy, Sen. Mark
Warner, who is the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a leading legislator
on Internet regulation, showed up on Mark Zuckerberg's doorstep at Facebook headquarters.
In any event, we can be sure there are no NSA intercepts proving that the Russians hacked
the Dem emails for one simple reason: They would have been leaked long ago by the vast network
of Imperial City operatives plotting to bring the Donald down.
Moreover, the original architect and godfather of NSA's vast spying apparatus, William
Binney, has essentially proved that the DNC emails were leaked by an insider who downloaded
them on a memory stick. By conducting his own experiments, he showed that the known download
speed of one batch of DNC emails could not have occurred over the Internet from a remote
location in Russia or anywhere else on the planet, and actually matched what was possible only
via a local USB-connected thumb drive.
So the real meaning of the Strzok/Gates text messages is straight foreword. There was a
conspiracy to prevent Trump's election, and then after the shocking results of November 8, this
campaign morphed into an intensified effort to discredit the winner.
For instance, Susan Rice got Obama to lower the classification level of the information
obtained from the Trump campaign intercepts and other dirt-gathering actions by the
Intelligence Community (IC)--- so that it could be disseminated more readily to all Washington
intelligence agencies.
In short order, of course, the IC was leaking like a sieve, thereby paving the way for the
post-election hysteria and the implication that any contact with a Russian--even one living in
Brooklyn-- must be collusion. And that included calls to the Russian ambassador by the
president-elect's own national security advisor designate.
Should there by any surprise, therefore, that it turns out the Andrew McCabe bushwhacked
General Flynn on January 24 when he called to say that FBI agents were on the way to the White
House for what Flynn presumed to be more security clearance work with his incipient staff.
No at all. The FBI team was there to interrogate Flynn about the transcripts of his
perfectly appropriate and legal conversations with Ambassador Kislyak about two matters of
state----the UN resolution on Israel and the spiteful new sanctions on certain Russian citizens
that Obama announced on December 28 in a fit of pique over the Dems election loss.
And that insidious team of FBI gotcha cops was led by none other than......Peter Strzok!
But after all the recent leaks---and these text messages are just the tip of the
iceberg-----the die is now cast. Either the Deep State and its minions and collaborators in the
media and the Republican party, too, will soon succeed in putting Mike Pence into the Oval
Office, or the Imperial City is about ready to break-out in vicious partisan warfare like never
before.
Either way, economic and fiscal governance is about ready to collapse entirely, making the
tax bill a kind of last hurrah before they mayhem really begins.
In that context, selling the rip may become one of the most profitable speculations ever
imagined.
Not sure why Stockman went off on a tangent about Trump's innumerate economic strategy -
kinda dilutes from an otherwise informative piece for anyone who hasn't a handle on the
underhand shit that's been hitting the fan in recent months. Its like he has to have a go
about it no matter what the main theme. Like PCR and "insouciance". And then there's the
texting...
Clue yourself in, David.
A very small percentage of the public are actually informed about what is really going
down. Those that visit ZH or your website. Fox is the only pro-Trump mainstream TV news
outlet, and as to the NYT, WP et al? The media disinformation complex keep the rest in the
matrix, and it has been very easy to see in action over the last year or so because it has
been so well co-ordinated (and totally fabricated).
Given the blatant and contemptous avoidance of the truth by the MSM (the current litany of
seditious/treasonous actions being a case in point), it is fair to say that Trump's tweets
provide a very real public service - focussing the (otherwise ignorant) public's attention on
many things the aforementioned cunts (I'll include Google and FaecesBook) divert from like
the plague (and making them look utter slime in the process).
I do respect stockman but here's bullshit-call #1: he says that the deep state doesn't
like the divisiveness he causes: bush certainly did that and Obama' did so at an order of
magnitude higher. I don't believe that the left is more upset by trump than we were by Barry-
we're just not a bunch of sniveling, narcissistic babies like they are.
When the details of the FISA warrant application are revealed, it will be like a
megaton-class munition detonating, and the Deep State will bear the brunt of destruction.
Similar mass deception was in play to start the Iraq war as well. Constant bombardment led
to public consensus and even the liberal New York Times endorsed the war. Whenever we see
mass hysteria about something new, we should just go with the flow and not ask any questions
at all. It is best for retaining sanity in this dumbed down and getting more dumber
world.
Susan Rice and Obama should be indicted for illegally wiretapping Trump Towers for the
express purpose of finding oppo research to help Hellary's late term abortiion of a
campaign
This one is deeper but well laid out. Comey & Mueller Ignored McCabe's Ties to Russian
Crime Figures & His Reported Tampering in Russian FBI Cases, Files
Great read, loved the 'Imperial City's immune system' analogy...
I disagree about the economy though.
It feels strange to me that the architect of the Reagan Revolution is unable to see the
makings of another revolution, the Trump Revolution.
We have had 10-20 years of pent up demand in the economy and instead of electing another
neo-Marxist Alynski acolyte, the American people elected a hard charging anti-establishment
bull in a China shop.
Surely Dave can see the potential.
It kills me when people are surprised by a 12 month, 5000 point run up on Wall Street.
For God's sake the United States was run by a fucking commie for 8 years, what the fuck
did you think was gonna happen?
America is divided and will remain divided. I think it will last at least for the next 50
years, maybe longer. The best way out is to limit the federal government and give each state
more responsibility. States can succeed or fail on their own. People will be free to move
where they want.
Somewhere there is a FISA judge who should be defrocked and exposed as a fraud. No sober
judge would accept such evidence for any purpose, much less authorizing government snooping
on a major party candidate for president.
The CIA holds all the videos from Jeff Epstein's Island (20 documented trips by Bill, 6
documented trips by Hillary), I'm sure Bill doing a 12 year old, Hillary and Huma doing an 8
year old girl together, etc. So what are they willing to do for the CIA? Anything at any
cost, getting caught red handed with a dossier is chump change when you look at the big
picture..they don't care and will do anything...ANYTHING to get rid of Trump.
This is the only reason they are so frantic. There is absolutely no other reason they
would play at this level.
As always, Dave puts it all into prospective for even the brain dead. Ya think Joe and his
gang will be talking about this article on their morning talk show today?? I wonder how
Brezenski's daughter is going to tell daddy that the gig is up and they may want to look into
packing a boogie bag just to play it safe?
David Stockman is a flame of hope in a world of dark machievellian thought!
Why did the alt media and the msm all stop reportinmg that McCabe's wife recieved 700
thousand dollars from Terry McAulife (former Clinton campaign manager times 2!) for a
Virginia State Senate run? Quid pro quo? Oh no, never the up and up DemonRats.
So when I hear that the conversation was held in McCabe's office- I want to puke first
then start building the gallows.
fucken brilliant article!! There is a lot I don't like about trump (some of which stockman
discusses above), but as a retired govt worker, I can tell you that he right about what he is
saying here.
One little tidbit that has been lost in all of this:
If the FBI was willing to use their power to back Hillary and defeat Trump at the national
level, what did they try to do in McCabe's wife's state senate campaign? She is a
pediatrician and she ran for state senate. ??? WTF is that about? She's not only a doctor but
a doctor for children. Those people are usually wired to help people. Yet she was going to
for-go being a doctor for a state senate position. ??? And the DNC forked over $700,000 to
put her on the map.
I'm sure the people meeting daily in Andy's office were not pleased with the voter
resistance to his wife and to Hillary. The FBI needs to be shut down. They have become an
opposition research firm for the DNC. Even if they can't find dirt on candidates using the
NSA database, they are able to tap that database to find out political strategies in real
time on opposition The fish is rotten from the head down to the tail.
No matter what article you read here, and don't get me wrong, I love the insight, but
every fucking article is "it's all over. America is doomed, the petro dollar days are over,
China China China. It's getting a bit old. The charts and graphs about stock market
collapse......it becoming an old record that needs changed. If I say it's going to rain every
fucking day, at some point I will be right. That doesn't make me a genius....it makes me
persistent.
It's a Deep State mess and Sessions is trying his best as he cowers in a corner sucking
his thumb.
If they continue to go after Trump, the FBI is going to be found guilty of violating the
Hatch Act by exonerating Hillary. See burner phones. See writing the conclusion in May when
the investigation supposedly ended with Hillary's interview on July 3rd. The FBI will also be
exposed for sedition as they then carried out the phony Russiagate investigation as their
"insurance policy."
However, they have created an expectation with the left that Trump and his minions will be
brought to "justice." If we thought the Left didn't handle losing the election well, they
will not be pleased at losing Russiagate.
The overall direction of the empire was never going to change with or without Trump and we are seeing it play out now.
Notable quotes:
"... Ok, he has been called the most pro Israel President by Netanyahu himself, his administration just recognized Jerusalem as
the capital of Israel, something even most ardent analysts in here did not predict. His son-in-law who he listens to is a pure Zionist
and the neo-con lap dog Hailey is quite clearly gearing the audience up for a confrontation with Iran. One way or another....watch out
2018. ..."
"... But no he is not controlled enough by the Zionists? The overall direction of the empire was never going to change with or without
Trump and we are seeing it play out now. ..."
"... America is a particularly vivid example of indoctrinated groupthink and I just cannot see anyone/movement espousing alternative
ways of operating getting traction. ..."
"... Simply pay attention to what those monsters actually do. The Trump Administration has continued and expanded US domestic and
foreign policy precisely as has his predecessors. NATO is bigger, better funded, and more heavily deployed along Russia's "near abroad"
than at any time in history. The Pentagon now admits we have 2,000 to 5,000 active "boots on the ground" in Syria, and they have no
intention of ever leaving. Goldman Sachs is embedded in every Executive Branch office. Taxes on the wealthy and corporations are being
slashed soon to be followed in social services, as neo-liberal economics remains the god worshipped by all. ..."
"I won't be optimistic about AmeriKKKa until Russia and/or China announce a Zero Tolerance policy toward US military adventurism
in countries on the borders of Russia/China - by promising to bomb the continental USA if it attacks a Russia/China neighbor.
Imo it's absolutely essential to light a big bonfire under AmeriKKKa's Impunity. And it would be delightful, sobering,
and a big boost for Peace and Diplomacy to hear the Yankees whingeing about being threatened by entities quite capable of following
through on their threats."
Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Dec 19, 2017 11:10:32 AM | 14
Hell yes, I'd love that scenario, but never happen. Too much $to be made by kissing up to the empire.
Sad Canuck @ 31: Abso fukken 'lutely!!
b, you better change what you're smoken' if you believe the empire is going isolationist.
@48 They did not want him lol? So many comments in here make me chuckle.
Ok, he has been called the most pro Israel President by Netanyahu himself, his administration just recognized Jerusalem
as the capital of Israel, something even most ardent analysts in here did not predict. His son-in-law who he listens to is a pure
Zionist and the neo-con lap dog Hailey is quite clearly gearing the audience up for a confrontation with Iran. One way or another....watch
out 2018.
But no he is not controlled enough by the Zionists? The overall direction of the empire was never going to change with
or without Trump and we are seeing it play out now.
@26 "I think you would find that the vast majority of Americans would be quite happy to disengage militarily from the rest of
the world, and put resources at work on domestic problems."
Disengage militarily? I would like to think so sleepy but why do they keep getting so involved internationally? Instead of
concentrating on domestic issues putting 'America first' seems to mean bullying any country that doesn't do what it's told.
@ Debsisdead with the end of his comment
" America is a particularly vivid example of indoctrinated groupthink and I just cannot see anyone/movement espousing alternative
ways of operating getting traction.
"
There are those that say the same (vivid example of indoctrinated groupthink) about China, so there might be some competition
in our world yet.
I , for one, want to end private finance and maybe give the China way a go. Anyone else? I did future studies in college and
am intrigued by planning processes at the scale that China has done 13 of....their 5-year plans.
May we live to see structural change in the way our species comports itself......soon, I hope
NemesisCalling, I suggest paying little to know attention to Trump's (or any other politician/oligarch) platitudes.
Simply pay attention to what those monsters actually do. The Trump Administration has continued and expanded US domestic
and foreign policy precisely as has his predecessors. NATO is bigger, better funded, and more heavily deployed along Russia's
"near abroad" than at any time in history. The Pentagon now admits we have 2,000 to 5,000 active "boots on the ground" in Syria,
and they have no intention of ever leaving. Goldman Sachs is embedded in every Executive Branch office. Taxes on the wealthy and
corporations are being slashed soon to be followed in social services, as neo-liberal economics remains the god worshipped by
all.
I remain amazed that people who KNOW that the MSM lies to us constantly, about things big and small, still believe with all
their hearts the MSM narrative that Trump is an "outsider" whom the Establishment hates and has fought against ever since they
gave him $5 billion in free advertising.
Disengage? In 2017, U.S. Special Operations forces, including Navy SEALs and Army Green Berets, deployed to 149 countries around
the world, according to figures provided to TomDispatch by U.S. Special Operations Command. That's around 75 percent of the nations
on the planet.
What the vast majority of Americans might want has been cast aside by this president after he got their votes. There go hope
and change again, damn.
"... The antiwar movement could not survive the end of the draft. One most Americans did not have to worry about their kids being sent in harm's way, when minorities became soldiers for the pay, the enthusiasm waned. It was other people's kids that did the fighting and the dying. None of your concern. ..."
"... Initiatives of the Military-Industrial-Complex are well-planned, well-funded, and have paid staff to keep the interests of the corporate sector healthy and powerful. ..."
"... The Pentagon knows that as long as we have a volunteer army and outsource much of the nasty side of conflict to contractors, the volunteer peace activists don't stand a chance against their wealthy corporate allies. ..."
The duopoly succumbed to the war machine, while organized resistance got pushed to the fringe
Veterans For Peace rally in Washington, less than a month after 9/11. Credit:
Elvert Barnes/Flickr
"Imagine there's no heaven and no religion too."
A more useful line when it comes to our current wars may be "Imagine there's no duopoly." It's hard to fault John Lennon for his
idealism, of course. In his day, many blamed religion on the wars of history. But a much bigger obstacle right now, at least in the
U.S., is partisanship. The two major political parties, in power and out, have been so co-opted by the war machine that any modern
anti-war movement has been completely subsumed and marginalized -- even as American troops and killer drones continue to operate
in or near combat zones all over the world.
Aside from the very early days of the Iraq war, the anti-war movement has been a small, ineffectual pinprick on the post-9/11
landscape. A less generous assessment is that it's been a bust. After liberals helped elect the "anti-war" Barack Obama, the movement
all but disappeared, even though the wars did not. By putting a Nobel Peace Prize-winning Democratic face on his inherited wars,
Obama expanded into new conflicts (Libya, Syria, Yemen) with little resistance,
ultimately bombing seven different
countries during his tenure. By 2013, Code Pink founder Medea Benjamin
lamented
, "We've been protesting Obama's foreign policy for years now, but we can't get the same numbers because the people who would've
been yelling and screaming about this stuff under Bush are quiet under Obama."
It's easy to blame the military-industrial complex, the corporate media, and the greed and malleability of politicians. But what
about the anti-war movement itself? Why has it failed so miserably, and can it revive as President Donald Trump continues the wars
of his predecessors and threatens new ones?
The rallies and protests in the early 2000s attracted significant numbers but they were weighed down by far-left organizations
like the World Workers Party, which brought with them myriad other issues beyond war like global warming and poverty. There was also
long-held and fairly broad skepticism about
the intentions of United For Peace and Justice (UFPJ) and the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition, which organized most of the big protests over
the last 17 years. This was due to the "big tent" affiliations of some of their steering committee members, which critics say led
to a dilution of the message and drove the anti-war movement further from the mainstream.
Perhaps the movement's biggest weakness was that it shied away from directly attacking its own -- the liberal Democrats who voted
for the war in Congress.
In a sense, Democrats did emerge as the de facto anti-war party during the Iraq war, but that was only because a Republican --
George W. Bush -- was commander-in-chief. And what of the Democrats who voted for the war and continued to fund it? Out of 77 senators
who supported the resolution authorizing military force against Iraq in 2002, 20 are still in office and roughly half are Democrats,
while out of the 296 votes in favor in the House, 90 are still in office and 57 of them are Democrats. Some of them, like Harry Reid
and Chuck Schumer, went on to become party leaders. Two others, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, went on to become secretaries of
state and their party's nominees for president in 2004 and 2016 respectively. All went on to support new military interventions and
regime changes, albeit under a new, liberal interventionist, Democratic banner.
Conversely, steadfast non-interventionist Democrat Dennis Kucinich, who voted against the resolution, failed badly in both his
2004 and 2008 attempts at his party's presidential nomination. Bottom line: Support for the war was hardly a deal-breaker for voters,
any more than opposition to it was a dealmaker.
Reaction to war is just a microcosm of the political landscape, a manifestation of partisan-driven, short-term memory. Sure there
might have been momentary disapproval, but when it came time to decide whether supporters of the war stayed or went, the sins of
one's party leaders meant very little in the zero-sum game of electoral politics. Parties outside the duopoly be damned.
The same thing happened to the anti-war right, as the Ron Paul movement took off in 2008 with an immense level of grassroots energy.
One of the singular successes of his movement was the ability to reach people on an intellectual and practical level about the folly
of our foreign interventions and the waste, fraud, and abuse of tax dollars. Paul didn't shy from criticizing his own party's leaders
and actions. He explained the Federal Reserve's relationship to the monetary costs of war.
Ultimately, media blackouts and distortion of Paul's message (for example, conflating his non-interventionist foreign policy views
with "isolationism") helped kill his campaign. After Paul's 2008 defeat, conservative political activists seized upon the Texas congressman's
libertarian-leaning revolutionary momentum and channeled it into the Tea Party -- while leaving the non-interventionist impulses
behind. By 2011, national coordinator Jenny Beth Martin
acknowledged , "On foreign
policy probably the majority [of Tea Party Patriots] are more like [hawks] Michele Bachmann or Newt Gingrich."
And don't underestimate how the escalation of drone warfare during the Obama presidency muted the anti-war effort. Drone attacks
made fewer headlines because they supposedly caused less collateral damage and kept U.S. troops out of harm's way, which was portrayed
by administration officials and the war establishment in Washington as progress.
What the drone program did, in essence, was to create the illusion of "less war." Nevertheless,
studies showing an increase of terrorism since the beginning of the "war on terror" indicate precisely the opposite: Civilian
drone deaths (not always reported) create more enemies, meaning more of our troops will be put in harm's way eventually.
So where should the anti-war movement go from here? Perhaps it should begin by tempering its far-left impulses and embracing its
allies on the right who have been made to feel unwelcome. They could take a lesson from right-leaning places like Antiwar.com and
TAC that have long been open to writers and activists on the left.
Meanwhile, flying "Resist Trump" signs at rallies not only misses the mark by suggesting that our needless wars aren't a bipartisan,
systemic problem, but creates a non-inclusive atmosphere for anti-war Trump voters. Ironically, not much "resistance" was heard when
Democrats recently helped pass Trump's $700 billion 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and failed to repeal the original
post-9/11 Authorization for Use of Military Force, as was advocated for by Senator Rand Paul this year.
In addition, the few on the anti-war left who oppose war based on pacifist or religious reasons need to acknowledge that the majority
of Americans believe in a strong national defense as outlined in the Constitution. Most people are willing to accept that there's
a big difference between that and the terrible waste and tragedy that comes with waging unnecessary wars overseas.
They are also averse to their lawmakers doing favors for special interests. Focusing on the money and influence that giant defense
contractors like Lockheed Martin and Boeing have on Capitol Hill -- essentially making war a business -- makes the anti-war point
by raising the issue of crony capitalism and the cozy relationship between politicians and big business, which increasingly leaves
the American public out of the equation.
These corporations, along with Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, have accounted for $42 million in contributions to congressional
candidates since 2009, with $12 million in the 2016 cycle alone. The majority of these funds have targeted Armed Services
Committee members, such as perennial
war hawk John McCain. In addition, influential neoconservative think tanks have received millions in grants over the years from "philanthropic"
organizations such as the
Bradley Foundation and the Olin
Foundation, which have corporate backgrounds in the defense industry. The conservative Heritage Foundation is reportedly considering
the vice president of Lockheed
as its
new president.
Furthermore, mantras and slogans like, "you're either with us or against us" and "support our troops" have been used as powerful
psy-ops to create a false dichotomy: you either support the war policy or you're not patriotic. Debunking this by pointing out how
these wars profit the elite while serving as a pipeline that puts more American military servicemembers -- often from working-class
backgrounds -- into harm's way should appeal to the current populist spirit on both sides of the political fence. In fact, it could
begin to draw new, disenchanted voters into the movement.
Americans today are tired of war, which is good, for now. Unfortunately, without a strong anti-war movement, there won't be much
resistance when the next "big threat" comes along. The two major parties have proven to be false friends when it comes to opposing
war -- they only do it when it suits them politically. Moving beyond them and becoming stronger with allies and numbers -- imagine,
there's no parties -- is the best way to build a real opposition.
Daniel Martin is an anti-war activist, musician, and rock journalist from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Follow him on Twitter
@MartysInvasion .
The antiwar movement could not survive the end of the draft. One most Americans did not have to worry about their kids being
sent in harm's way, when minorities became soldiers for the pay, the enthusiasm waned. It was other people's kids that did the
fighting and the dying. None of your concern.
The so-called 'anti-war' or 'peace' movement is mostly a genuine grass roots phenomenon that relies upon volunteers and ordinary
people taking time out of their busy lives to become active. The energy and drive are hard to sustain on a volunteer basis.
To a great extent, motivation for activism is a reaction to something egregious, not a planned and sustained response to an on-going
situation. Despite the power of social media, reactively movements lead by well-intentioned amateurs cannot martial prolonged
support.
Initiatives of the Military-Industrial-Complex are well-planned, well-funded, and have paid staff to keep the interests of
the corporate sector healthy and powerful. The activism that pulled the US out of SE Asia in the 70s took 10 years to build strength
against a what was less organised and planned war machine than we see today. The Pentagon knows that as long as we have a volunteer
army and outsource much of the nasty side of conflict to contractors, the volunteer peace activists don't stand a chance against
their wealthy corporate allies.
The tragedy yet to be is that the business of war and its boosterism only ends when the suffering of war comes upon the nation
whose leaders make it. It might be different if the population were inclined against it, but there is a widespread belief in U.S.
Exceptionalism and a belief that it is America's birthright to rule the world by military force if required. And ruling peoples
against their wills does require force.
The consistency of human nature does not promise any respite from the propensity to make war, as has occurred throughout all
known history. Those wars will be waged with ever greater and even world-ending technology – there never has been a weapon created
that was not used, and every one of them has proliferated.
This makes sense to me. There has to be a coalition of anti interventionists across the political spectrum because the two parties
are dominated by warmongers. On foreign policy I am closer to many of the conservatives here than to many or most liberals I know
in real life or online. I have never heard a liberal in my real life mention Yemen or drones unless I bring it up. Syria was never
seen as a place where our support for " moderate" rebels kept the killing going. A friend of mine has become outraged when I tell
him our support for the Saudis in Yemen is much more important than Russiagate. So Russiagate matters more than our complicity
in a crime against humanity.
Mainstream liberals simply don't care about our stupid wars unless there is a large American death toll and it can be blamed
solely on a Republican. I am not saying conservatives are better. The ones here are better.
I hope that the anti-war movement grows again, and persists throughout the probable Democratic Presidency in 2020. There's such
little a single person can do, though.
1) Most military is below the headlines and it is hard to protest here. There several thousands troops in Africa and hardly
anybody knows it.
2) The last 7 Prez elections, 6 doves (2004 exception and yes Bush pretended to the dove in 2000.) won and yet the dovish winner
is more hawkish in the White House. So it is hard not to use the military and it would wise to answer that question,
3) Anti-War conservatives only had modest support when Obama signed the nuclear deal or avoided bombing in Syria. Where were the
'Ron Paul' voters there to support the President making dovish choices? Sure Syria was handled poorly but if we heard more support
it might change things.
4) And it is true the hard left is very-war but focused on other agenda. Witness Bernie Sanders was unable to beat HRC because
he is dove complaining about Cold War battles that is past history. And watch out Matt Duss is writing his speeches and Bernie
is taking them seriously.
I'm a liberal democrat and certainly would agree that President Obama was culpable for destroying our anti-war movement. It was
one of my grievances with him from the very beginning, as nothing about his rhetoric was ever about peace. It was only till the
very end of his last term that he ever learned any lessons on caution in intervention (But never about the folly of drone striking
civilians), and by then, it was too late.
Neo-militarism, which is where the costs of war are separated from engagement with it in order to reduce civil unrest over
military actions, wasn't something Obama created though. It was a reaction to the Vietnam War that was thoroughly ingrained in
the conscience of both parties. The only lesson they learned from that war is that if Americans see and hear of the suffering
of their soldiers, they won't be supportive of military pork and intervention.
And so we live in a really weird culture now where most people don't even know a soldier, where our soldiers are off to forever
war and in the system they are in is so distant that they don't understand civilian society either, and where the costs of war
are hidden. There is a political problem certainly, but the root of it is a cultural problem. We are fed patriotic myths of American
invincibility and Spartanism, and militarism has become one of the only unifying threads in being an "American", even though most
Americans have not even the faintest clue of how the military operates or what soldiers are like.
You can gather up all the anti-war activists across the political spectrum, and you still aren't going to find enough people
for a successful movement. And I'm not entirely sure how you can change the culture on this issue, as it would require undoing
a lifetime worth of programming and propaganda in every citizen.
It may take another cultural trauma from a war so disastrous that even the worst chicken hawks have to say, "Wow, we really
ruined everything here" for Americans to finally learn a lesson beyond how to sweep the nasty parts of war under the rug so the
public doesn't see them. I suppose North Korea is looking promising on that front.
I dislike the term anti-war. It sounds too much akin to a pacifists pose. I don't have any issues with people who are sincerely
pacifists. But there are times when war is required. And sometimes in my view, that includes the use of force for humanitarian
purposes.
I rest on the views that push the "clear and present danger" as old as it may be. And I do so without being ignorant of my
own concerns about the strategic threats that abound or potentially abound in the future, near and far.
Where's the anti-war movement -- they are in think tanks, congress, and CEO corporate positions seeking to atone for the mess
they made of our communities, country and veterans since the the misguided anti-war slogans of the late '60's and early '70's.
The consequence of an all volunteer military separates the community from a national sense of risk. I will dare utter, the
unspoken, Vietnam was not about some just cause or care about the Vietnamese or the national conscience. It was the basic fear
of personal sacrifice – period.
Ohh it was nicely clothed in all kinds of rhetorical discourse about war, peace loving Vietnamese, peace-love and understanding,
free speech, anti-colonialism . . . blah and blah.
As Dr. King would soon discover, lending his intellect to young white kids fears, sabotaged the real retrenchment of the consequence
of the nation's hypocrisy.
It takes a moral courage that has been bled out because there is in my view essentially no risk individual national investment.
If x hundred thousand are willing to sign-up for defense --
that is a choice of no account to citizens who don't.
There is a war going on and its right here at home.
If we want the freedom to comfortably drive to the convenience store to buy more plastic products from China, we must have war
to secure the oil, flow of foreign goods and exploitation of foreign labour necessary to maintain our predatory and non-productive
way of life. Peace requires a transformation of consciousness with the resultant total rejection of consumerism. The personal
sacrifice required for peace is the missing element.
"a strong national defense as outlined in the Constitution."
I take strong exception to this. The second amendment
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms,
shall not be infringed."
Unlike what most people think, the "free State" mentioned here represents the 13 original states. Their "well regulated Militia"'s
could not be disarmed because that would allow the federal military to take away their sovereign freedom. The federal government
was never intended to be more powerful than the individual state's militias.
And Section 8 Clause 12 of the Constitution when describing Congress' responsibilities:
"To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years"
The Constitution assumed that Congress would only raise an army when at war, and it would be dismantled almost immediately,
hence the "two Years" limit on funding the military.
The Constitution assumes a very weak defensive posture, and the continued massive military system of the USA is the most unconstitutional
thing we do. By a million miles.
As long a there is a volunteer military there will not be a strong anti war movement. Remember, the sixties and that so called
anti war movement which turned out to be nothing more that an anti draft movement. As soon as the military draft stopped those
so called activists shaved their beards, got a haircut, took a bath, and along with those who came back from Canada went on to
join daddy's business or law firm, with many migrating to wall street, eventually becoming the chicken hawks of the current era.There
would never have been an invasion of Iraq or the perpetual war if every family shared the burden of sending one of their sons
or daughters to act as cannon fodder. With the poverty draft only five percent of the younger generation are doing the fighting
and dying. Americans will not even give up attending football games where disrespect for the military takes the form of disrespecting
the flag, let alone join the military or put one of their children in harms way.
"The Constitution assumes a very weak defensive posture, and the continued massive military system of the USA is the most unconstitutional
thing we do. By a million miles."
I guess if one skips the preamble one might come to that conclusion. But the Purpose of the Constitution establishing a nation
spells out in very clear terms --
" . . . provide for the common defense . . ."
That is not a weak posture in any sense of the word. And no founder of government not those that followed understood that said
union was to be weak. Avoiding unnecessary wars or conflicts does not mean a weak defense. What they pressed was a weak federal
systems that would subvert internal freedoms for states and individuals.
It's hard to argue that no established international defense was sought -- when it states in very clear terms -- the nation
is created for the very purpose of defending it's existence.
A strong defense does not require a an over aggressive posture, but existence requires an ability to defend it. And right now
nothing more threatens our existence as much as weak immigration enforcement.
And I think the evidence for that is overwhelming. Most poignantly demonstrated by the events of 9/11. And there christians
of many brands are a threat to the US by aiding and abetting the violations of that sovereignty and using Christ as the excuse
to do so, even as that defense undermines their fellow citizens. That breed of christian ethos is certainly not new nor are its
tentacles of hypocrisy.
What I object to among both interventionists is that they both don't mind giving people in the country illegally a pass despite
their mutual claims of legal moral high bround.
Biggest sign of how weak we are in this article is the assumption built into this: "In addition, the few on the anti-war left
who oppose war based on pacifist or religious reasons need to acknowledge that the majority of Americans believe in a strong national
defense as outlined in the Constitution." I mean the assumption that one cannot oppose the whole institution for the overwhelming
secular empirical reasons that it endangers us, destroys our environment, impoverishes us, erodes our liberties, militarizes our
localities, degrades our culture, poisons our politics. See the case made at World Beyond War's website.
Superb article by Daniel Martin. The first step out of this mess is to fully acknowledge the scope of the mess: Democrats and
Republicans -- who squabble about many things -- unite to give bipartisan support for American militarism.
The anti-war movement is not listened to. In SF during a bombardment of Gaza, there were hundreds of anti-war protesters at City
Hall. The most liberal deliberative body in the US looked stone-faced and emotionless. When they finished, if on a cue, a Jewish
member of the Board tabled the agenda item, and it was never heard from again. Not one of these eleven lawmakers even asked a
question. Who said you cannot fight City Hall? They were right.
A lot of Dems stepped forward to oppose the Iraq War and they got plowed over for it politically.
I fully expect the same to happen to any Dems who divert their attention from stopping the other budget busting, middle-class
harming, anti-environmental, anti-women measures the GOP is currently pushing to make a futile attempt to stop whatever Trump
decides to do with our military.
The argument that there can be no anti-war movement without a draft to drive it is belied by the fact that no war in our history
generated more protests than the Bush Administration's build-up towards the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Where the mass base of any
anti-war movement seems to draw the line is not specifically at their kids but at the possibility of significant American casualties,
period. Hence, the absence of mass protest against drone warfare on the one hand, and the immediate and decisive push back by
the public against Congress authorizing Obama to "put boots on the ground" in Syria on the other.
My friends in the International Bolshevik Tendency ( http://bolshevik.org/
) argue for the classic united front in their anti-war organizing. Everyone opposed to War X should march together but retain
their right to free speech at the march and on the podium. So the official call for the march is not a laundry list, but marchers
and speakers are not subject to censorship or being shut down if they want to make connections that discomfit some Democratic
politician or movement hack. It makes more sense to me than either the single-issue, "we must ALL stay ON point" model or the
multi-issue, excessively intersectional and virtue-signaling one that arose in reaction to it.
No one seems to mention the power and importance of the mainstream, corporatized, media, which has supported all our wars and
associated aggressions in recent times, and which ignores and suppresses antiwar sentiments and opinion writers, as well as inconvenient
facts. This holds for the NYT, the WP, the WSJ and client newspapers as well as the TV news channels. The internet is evidently
not powerful enough to offset this national bias. Antiwar periodicals tend to be on the fringe in terms of mass circulation.
It also takes money in this society to get things done, and the anti-war "left"(or right) , in addition to having organizational
problems, lacks those resources. An antiwar super billionaire, if that is not a contradiction in terms, might make a dent by creating/promoting
TV and news channels.
EliteCommInc., be assured you will get your wars. Also be assured that they won't accomplish the aims they will be sold to accomplish.
Some of those who know the real reasons may well accomplish their private goals for a season. One day, the real cost to be paid
will come due, and it may not be a rude awakening, but nuclear death. So by all means, continue not to be against war, against
all the evidence. We are predisposed to war because our fallen nature leads us to dream of it.
Democrats and Republicans -- who squabble about many things -- unite to give bipartisan support for American militarism.
That is because, sadly, American voters demand it.
As I've observed before – if you place a candidates militarism on a spectrum of 0 (Ghandi) to 100 (Hitler) American voters
are conditioned to prefer a candidate with a score 20 points higher than theirs to a candidate 5 points lower.
Kent makes a very good point. Yet this baby nation was somewhat torn between a Scylla and Charybdis of military readiness. The
Scylla was the fear of a "European" track that is to say the evolution into a Monarchy anchored on a powerful national army. The
Charybdis was the potential invasions by the powerful European states of Great Britain and Spain.
The opinion that anti-war people, particularly from the Vietnam era, did so because they didn't want to sacrifice is ludicrous.
It displays an ignorance of the sacrifices made, and the success of the war party to paint them in this manor. Veterans are appointed
a myriad of benefits, a plethora of memorials,holidays, endless honorable mentions. For the war resistors, nothing, unless one
could count the kind of scorn I see here, on an antiwar site ! It is not "selfish" to look both ways before crossing the street,
and perhaps choosing not to if it appears the risk is not worth the reward. In fact, this behavior defines "conservative". Militant
societies require centralization. The key to modern centralized militant power, is nuclear war. The existence of these weapons
produces a huge secrecy, and internal security state. They produce an insane populace whom believe the state is protecting them
from annihilation. Know this, our militant masters love that North Korea has the bomb. Sleep tight.
"... At the time, I agreed, but I did note that the neoconservatives have proven to be remarkable resilient, particularly as many of them have remained true to their Democratic Party values on nearly everything but foreign policy, where they are irredeemable hawks, hostile to Russia and Iran and always reliably in the corner of Israel. In short, many neocons can be unmasked as Hillary Clinton Democrats if one looks at them issue by issue, which certainly helps to explain some subsequent developments. ..."
"... Multiple sources are predicting Tillerson out and Mike Pompeo in at State Department with Pompeo replaced at CIA by Senator Tom Cotton. The White House is denying the story, calling it "fake news," but it is clear that Trump is uncomfortable with the current arrangement and Tillerson will be gone sooner or later. ..."
"... Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State replaces a somewhat bumbling businessman adept at dealing in energy futures contracts who has been struggling with reducing State's enormously bloated payroll. Pompeo, a real hard-nosed political hardliner who tends to see complex issues in fairly simplistic ways, has become a presidential confidant, briefing Trump frequently on the state of the world, most recently pushing for the horrific decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. ..."
"... Pompeo would like to turn the United States into an unleashed wrecking ball directed against the enemies of the American Way and he appears intent on starting that process in the Middle East. ..."
"... And Pompeo will be replaced as CIA Director by Tom Cotton. The less said about Tom the better, but I will attempt to summarize in 8 words here: Tom is completely owned by the Israel Lobby. ..."
"... I do not wish to imply that Cotton and Pompeo are somehow stupid, but they do tend to see the world in a very monochromatic fashion, just like their boss. Pompeo was first in his class at West Point and Cotton graduated from Harvard as an undergrad and also from the Law School ..."
"... Haley really is stupid. And ambitious. And is also owned by the Israel Lobby, which appears to be a thread that runs its way through all the Trump foreign policy appointees. ..."
"... Neocon watchers will undoubtedly note that big names like Brill Kristol, the Kagans, Michael Chertoff and Max Boot will not be showing up in government. True, but that is because they will instead be working through their foundations, of which FDD is only one. The Alliance for Securing Democracy, which has recently sprung up in lobby-land, markets itself as "bipartisan, and transatlantic " but it actually is pure neocon. ..."
"... The replacement of former political appointees in the government has been so slow in Trump's first year that it has actually benefited the neocons in their recovery. Many survivors of the two previous administrations are still in place, nearly all of whom reflect the hawkishness prevalent during 2001-2016. They will be supplemented by second and third tier neoconservatives, who will fill in the policy gaps, virtually guaranteeing that the neocon crafted foreign policy that has been around for the past sixteen years will be here for some time longer. ..."
Back during the admittedly brief shock and awe period that immediately followed on the Trump
electoral victory, it appeared that there might be an actual realignment of American foreign
policy. The neoconservatives virtually unanimously had opposed Donald Trump in the most vile
terms, both in the GOP primaries and during the actual electoral campaign, making clear that
Hillary was their choice for a future full of unrelenting, ideologically driven warfare to
convert the world to democracy. By that metric, one would assume that Trump would prefer to be
roasted on a spit rather than have neocons on his national security team, and many in the
punditry did agree with that analysis and went on to share that view.
At the time, I agreed, but I did note that the neoconservatives have proven to be
remarkable resilient, particularly as many of them have remained true to their Democratic Party
values on nearly everything but foreign policy, where they are irredeemable hawks, hostile to
Russia and Iran and always reliably in the corner of Israel. In short, many neocons can be
unmasked as Hillary Clinton Democrats if one looks at them issue by issue, which certainly
helps to explain some subsequent developments.
Some Washington observers who actually care about such things have been writing how there
has been a kumbaya process going on between self-described conservative neocons and liberal
interventionists. Katrina vanden Heuvel describes
the progressive hawks as "the essential-country crowd," borrowing a phrase from
ex-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
There are inevitably minor disconnects between the two groups based on their motives for
aggression – Democrats claim to do it to bring democracy and freedom while Republicans
say they do it to enhance national security. Both are lying in any event as it all comes down
to great power rivalries, with big powerful nations pushing smaller weaker nations around
because they are able to get away with it and feel more comfortable if everyone lines up behind
them.
So everyone in Washington and New York's financial services industry agrees that a more
assertive America is a better America even when the reality is that no one winds up with either
democracy or security. Which brings us to the latest shuffle in the Donald Trump cabinet and
what it is likely to mean down the road. Multiple sources are predicting Tillerson out and
Mike Pompeo in at State Department with Pompeo replaced at CIA by Senator Tom Cotton. The White
House is denying the story, calling it "fake news," but it is clear that Trump is uncomfortable
with the current arrangement and Tillerson will be gone sooner or later.
Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State replaces a somewhat bumbling businessman adept at
dealing in energy futures contracts who has been struggling with reducing State's enormously
bloated payroll. Pompeo, a real hard-nosed political hardliner who tends to see complex issues
in fairly simplistic ways, has become a presidential confidant, briefing Trump frequently on
the state of the world, most recently pushing for the horrific decision to recognize Jerusalem
as the capital of Israel. In a
recent speech , Pompeo criticized the CIA, observing that it had both forgotten how to spy,
which is almost certainly true, while adding that it will have to become "more vicious" to
accomplish its mission of making the United States "safe." Pompeo would like to turn the
United States into an unleashed wrecking ball directed against the enemies of the American Way
and he appears intent on starting that process in the Middle East.
And Pompeo will be replaced as CIA Director by Tom Cotton. The less said about Tom the
better, but I will attempt to summarize in 8 words here: Tom is completely owned by the Israel
Lobby. In his 2014 election as junior Senator from Arkansas, he received $1 million from
the Emergency Committee for Israel headed by Bill Kristol as well as additional assistance from
the Republican Jewish Coalition. In March 2015, Tom paid those supporters back when 47
Republican United States Senators signed a letter
allegedly written by him that was then sent to the Iranian government directly, warning
that any agreement over that country's nuclear program reached with President Barack Obama
would likely be overturned by the Congress. The letter, which undercuts the authority of the
American president before an international audience, was signed by the entire Republican Party
leadership in the Senate and also included then presidential contenders Rand Paul, Marco Rubio
and Ted Cruz.
I do not wish to imply that Cotton and Pompeo are somehow stupid, but they do tend to
see the world in a very monochromatic fashion, just like their boss. Pompeo was first in his
class at West Point and Cotton graduated from Harvard as an undergrad and also from the Law
School . Trump claims to be the smartest person in the room no matter where he is
standing. But for all the academic credentials and other posturing, it is hard to imagine how
the new choices could possibly be worse from a common-sense perspective unless one includes
Nikki Haley, who is, fortunately, otherwise engaged. Haley really is stupid. And ambitious.
And is also owned by the Israel Lobby, which appears to be a thread that runs its way through
all the Trump foreign policy appointees.
What is wrong about the whole Trump team is that they all seem to believe that you can go
around the world kicking the shit out of everyone without there being any consequences. And
they all hate Iran for reasons that continue to be obscure but may be connected to their
relationships with – you guessed it – the neoconservatives and the Israeli
Lobby!
Yes, the neocons are back. I noted back in October that when Pompeo and National Security
Adviser H.R. McMaster wanted a friendly place to drop by to give a policy speech that would be
warmly received they went to the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), whose
marketing masthead
slogan is "Fighting Terrorism and Promoting Freedom." FDD is currently neocon central, used
like the American Enterprise Institute was when Dick Cheney was Vice President and needed a
friendly audience. It is headed by Canadian Mark Dubowitz, whose passion in life is making sure
that sanctions on Iran are enforced to the letter. Unfortunately, it is not easy to deport a
Canadian.
Neocon watchers will undoubtedly note that big names like Brill Kristol, the Kagans,
Michael Chertoff and Max Boot will not be showing up in government. True, but that is because
they will instead be working through their foundations, of which FDD is only one. The Alliance
for Securing Democracy, which has recently sprung up in lobby-land, markets itself as
"bipartisan, and transatlantic " but it actually is pure neocon. Its goal is to "expose
Putin's ongoing efforts to subvert democracy in the United States of America and Europe." It
includes the usual neocon names but also has the loyal Democratic opposition, including ex-CIA
Acting Director Mike Morell and Jake Sullivan, both of whom were top level advisers to Hillary
Clinton.
The replacement of former political appointees in the government has been so slow in
Trump's first year that it has actually benefited the neocons in their recovery. Many survivors
of the two previous administrations are still in place, nearly all of whom reflect the
hawkishness prevalent during 2001-2016. They will be supplemented by second and third tier
neoconservatives, who will fill in the policy gaps, virtually guaranteeing that the neocon
crafted foreign policy that has been around for the past sixteen years will be here for some
time longer.
What all this means is that, now that the Palestinians have been disposed of and the
Israelis rewarded, we can expect armed conflict with Iran within the next year, followed by
increased hostility towards Moscow as Russiagate continues to play out. I do not even want to
guess at what kind of insanity the gang in the West Wing Situation Room will come up with for
dealing with North Korea. The good news is that the builders of home bomb shelters, a booming
enterprise when I was growing up back in the 1950s and 1960s now used to cultivate mushrooms,
will be back in business.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National
Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based
U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org,
address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected].
Of course, UNZ is more radical on this issue then most (actually they use the terms "Jew", "neocons" and "Zionist" almost interchangeably,
but in most case the meaning is neocon -- ideology, not nationality ) , but it looks like public support of neocons in the USA
now dropped dramatically, especially after their attacks on Trump during 2016 elections.
Notable quotes:
"... They are not a threat to the US and while I think we will be in a support capacity -- with Israel obviously -- to a bunker buster attack it will be regarded as US backed war throughout the Islamic world. Trump may be too weak to resist Netanyahu's best sales pitch. ..."
"... The Neocons are turning up at MSNBC of late. In addition to Podhoretz, Brooks, Kristol, we are now seeing E. Johnson, B. Stephens, D. Pletka on the scene as regular rotation players. No doubt where they will be leading. Moving in where opportunities abound for some reason? ..."
"... "Trump may be too weak to resist Netanyahu's best sales pitch." Trump is an Israeli sycophant ..a loser. ..."
"... That US missile attack on the Syrian airport cost Trump a lot of domestic and international support for zero benefit... ..."
"... This is a war of an elite. [Tom] Friedman laughs: I could give you the names of 25 people (all of whom are at this moment within a five-block radius of this office) who, if you had exiled them to a desert island a year and a half ago, the Iraq war would not have happened. ..."
"... Yet if you point out the obvious, that our foreign policy has been hijacked by an element whose first loyalty is to Israel, you will catch all sorts of hell, be banned from making comments on blogs and news sites, or like the brave Mr. Giraldi, lose your job. And be blasted with the worn-out canard of being an anti-Semite. Maybe even a Jew hater, all because you show concern for the nation you love and are loyal to. ..."
"... While Pompeo would be not good, Tillerson has been a big disappointment with his latest statements on Crimea and Ukraine included. ..."
"... You obviously do not live here. 99% of Americans have a flat screen TV installed in their living rooms and believe everything (jooie managed images and info) spewing forth from it. ..."
"... The "problem" is that the whole American "business model" is based on global economic supremacy, which means, essentially, the dollar as world reserve currency. If that goes, the whole US house of cards will probably implode, Soviet-style. That requires unchallenged American "world leadership". The big threat to the "American model" isn't the EU and certainly not the Russian Federation. It's China. ..."
"... Yeah, yeah, yeah big bad ISIS. The Israeli Secret Intelligence Service. "Keeping Fools and Idiots At Each Other's Throats". Since 1950. I don't know what to tell you ..."
"... The US is expansionist, projecting itself all over the globe and uses force against anyone who resists. Force is all it understands. What happens when the irresistible force bumps into the immovable object? War hysteria, of which we've had an unending amount for the past three generations. Objectively there's nothing conservative about the so-called neocons. They're hardly any different from fascists except the rhetoric is different. Mussolini had limits as to how much territory he wanted to conquer for his empire unlike the US which recognizes no limits. ..."
"... BTW, I still don't see an attack on Iran as being very likely. If Russia and China would not greenlight an attack on Syria, they will be doubly reluctant to greenlight an attack on Iran. ..."
"... The "democracy" the neocons want to push is the one in which (((mass media))) successfully lobotomizes the electorate into thinking it has democracy. The zombies then make their way to the polls seeking "hope & change" but with no choice. Hegemony is the goal, not democracy. ..."
"... American has an all volunteer armed forces (mercenary), they are paid to kill or be killed, their fates is only a few seconds on the screens if the MSM decided to air them, otherwise the wars and the American soldiers' lives have nothing to do with the American public. Mayhem in far away land in out of sight and out of mind. ..."
"... The real issue is how to finance the war, as long as the war does not cause hyper inflation in the USA, the warmongers in the Washington beltway will go ahead with the war without much concern, with EU, Australia, Japan and S Korea in line paying the bills, the American should be able to wage another regime change war in the ME without much difficulty. ..."
"... Having some small portion of Scotch-Irish ancestry myself, and having ancestors who pioneered Tennessee, I don't think General Andrew Jackson would support the Israel First foreign policy of Tom Cotton. ..."
"... Yet if you point out the obvious, that our foreign policy has been hijacked by an element whose first loyalty is to Israel, you will catch all sorts of hell, be banned from making comments on blogs and news sites, or like the brave Mr. Giraldi, lose your job. And be blasted with the worn-out canard of being an anti-Semite. Maybe even a Jew hater, all because you show concern for the nation you love and are loyal to. ..."
"... Re: At the time, I agreed, but I did note that the neoconservatives have proven to be remarkable resilient, particularly as many of them have remained true to their Democratic Party values on nearly everything but foreign policy, where they are irredeemable hawks, hostile to Russia and Iran and always reliably in the corner of Israel ..."
"... And when it comes to foreign policy, of course the Neocons are globalists, like the international bankers whom they serve. ..."
"... The Neocons are nothing less than a parasitical foreign body which has us thinking in accordance with its interests; in fact they are mortal enemies, nothing less. ..."
"... Wall Street power held a gun to the head of the entire US economy and said 'Give us money, OR we will take ALL OF YOU down with us.' ..."
"... My knowledge of foreign policy is headline-quality only. My knowledge of some domestic policy is pretty good. I've been on the public stump in my area. The reality of American policy, as I've seen it, is that it's bought and paid for. There is no "public interest", no "national interest". I'm not even sure there's an America, in the sense of a people joined by some common values. Sometimes I think of America as an agglomeration of rackets. You're goddamned right I don't like thinking this way. ..."
"... Dump's second big mistake was firing Comey again on the advice of Kushner. Which got the Mueller ball rolling. Some have rightly drawn the parallels of Kushner whispering in Dump's ear to the same role of Kissinger vis a vis Nixon's downfall ..."
"... Then Kushner appeared to connive with his buddy KSA Clown Prince MBS to engineer the Hariri fiasco [which Tillerson managed to "deftly undo..."] ..."
"... That is a useless statement on many levels Tillerson deftly managed what is arguably America's most important corporation in what is surely the most strategic and geopolitical global industry energy ..."
"... The neocons are of course insane they are picking fights with Iran, Venezuela and others who are going to be the first to ditch the petrodollar and accelerate the tipping point to the new global financial order that is going to impoverish the US overnight ..."
"... The same neocons are also the ones who are undermining US demographics because their Ponzi scheme economy is based on perpetual growth which, in turn, requires perpetual population growth which means more immigration. Also the immigration keeps the wages low which is just extra gravy for the Plutocracy ..."
I'm really concerned an attack on Iran is a correct assessment Philip. They are not a threat to the US and while I think
we will be in a support capacity -- with Israel obviously -- to a bunker buster attack it will be regarded as US backed
war throughout the Islamic world. Trump may be too weak to resist Netanyahu's best sales pitch.
Tillerson will be gone sooner or later: No question, perhaps the week between Christmas and New Year?
Cotton and Pompeo: Pompeo may have problems with the Mueller probe. Cotton has a number of rumors in his
past and maybe they are just unfortunate talk? But I don't see him at CIA (we shall see?)
The Neocons are turning up at MSNBC of late. In addition to Podhoretz, Brooks, Kristol, we are now seeing E. Johnson, B.
Stephens, D. Pletka on the scene as regular rotation players. No doubt where they will be leading. Moving in where opportunities
abound for some reason? At least two (Halperin, Ford) aren't around anymore on Coffee Joe.
We're all just hapless passengers on the Neocon Titanic, unable to influence what's playing out on the bridge. Steady as she goes
on the unsinkable U.S.S.
From the movie Iron Sky, meant as a condemnation of Nazism, but inadvertently conveying a sensible message about the merits of
purity.
Renate Richter:
This is very simple. The world is sick, but we are the doctors. The world is anemic, but we are the vitamin. The world
is weary, but we are the strength. We are here to make the world healthy once again, with hard work, with honesty, with
clarity, with decency. We are the product of loving mothers and brave fathers. We are the embodiment of love and bravery!
We are the gift of both God and Science. We are the answer to the question. We are the promise delivered to all mankind.
For that, we raise our hands to one Nation. We step to the beat of one drum. We march to the beat of one heart and it is
this song that we will sing to this world. We are the people who carry the children on our shoulders in the same way that
our fathers carried us and their fathers carried them. We are the one people united and strong. We are the one people with
certainty, moral certainty. We are invincible and we have no fear because the truth makes us wise.
Well, if conflict is simply air assault on Iranian nuclear facilities that shouldn't be a problem for either party. Israelis/Americans
bomb a bit and then everything goes back to normal. Something as that cruise missile launch on Syria.
That US missile attack on the Syrian airport cost Trump a lot of domestic and international support for zero benefit...
I do not even want to guess at what kind of insanity
Insanity. That's the key. Sick beyond redemption. No rational person could ever begin to understand their motives. Somehow
the jackals need to be restrained.
We see the same usual suspects time and again, waving their pom-poms lustily cheering on endless war that does NOT help or benefit
the USA. In fact, it is destroying our nation economically, spiritually and politically.
From an April 2003 Haaretz article:
The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservative intellectuals, most of them Jewish, who are pushing President
Bush to change the course of history. Two of them, journalists William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer, say it's possible.
This is a war of an elite. [Tom] Friedman laughs: I could give you the names of 25 people (all of whom are at this moment
within a five-block radius of this office) who, if you had exiled them to a desert island a year and a half ago, the Iraq war
would not have happened.
Yet if you point out the obvious, that our foreign policy has been hijacked by an element whose first loyalty is to Israel,
you will catch all sorts of hell, be banned from making comments on blogs and news sites, or like the brave Mr. Giraldi, lose
your job. And be blasted with the worn-out canard of being an anti-Semite. Maybe even a Jew hater, all because you show concern
for the nation you love and are loyal to.
Will Americans ever realize they are being played for fools by a country and Zionist con artists which doesn't give a tinkers
damn about us or will we keep jumping up and down to the pom-pom waving?
Of course I hope you're wrong Phil. While Pompeo would be not good, Tillerson has been a big disappointment with his latest
statements on Crimea and Ukraine included.
Cotton would be another matter altogether and even though there is a 'collegial spirit' in the Senate I would hope that Rand
Paul and other senators with common sense would squash this guys nomination. Even if he has to carry himself back from Kentucky,
broken ribs and all, to squash this Neocon stooge Cotton. Also, I'm hopping there are some boys in the closet when it comes to
Cotton. lol
Faith in Bush the OLDER is misplaced. In 1979 he stood shoulder to shoulder w/ Bibi and Benzion Netenyahu, and Midge Decter
& other neocons, in Jerusalem, as they drafted the blueprint for GWOT. Planning went so far as to name the 7 states to take out.
USSR was #1 at the time. Jews got Jews Who had been highly educated at Russian expense – out of Russia, now Russia is back in
the crosshairs.
Americans are stoopid and cowardly fucks for being so easily manipulated by the Jew.
Not so much anymore. Meanwhile, didn't the Muslims spend five years fighting each-other right on the Israeli border? But wait
– they did attack Israel once – and apologised:
"the American public isn't as gullible as before ."
Ha, Ha. You obviously do not live here. 99% of Americans have a flat screen TV installed in their living rooms and believe
everything (jooie managed images and info) spewing forth from it. More than 50% of Americans have multiple flat screen TV
in their homes so they can be sure not to miss the latest disinfo or lies.
The "problem" is that the whole American "business model" is based on global economic supremacy, which means, essentially,
the dollar as world reserve currency. If that goes, the whole US house of cards will probably implode, Soviet-style. That requires
unchallenged American "world leadership". The big threat to the "American model" isn't the EU and certainly not the Russian Federation.
It's China. 1.4 billion people and rapidly heading for global economic hegemony. To say nothing of a rising India at 1.2
billion. At 300 million, the US is small beans. How to ward off the Yellow Peril? That's the problem the US hegemonists had to
resolve.
Yeah, yeah, yeah big bad ISIS. The Israeli Secret Intelligence Service. "Keeping Fools and Idiots At Each Other's Throats".
Since 1950. I don't know what to tell you ..
It's not that difficult to strategize HOW to go about "restraining the jackals." 99 44/100% of what ziocons accuse others of
is projection. They say, "They [_____ Iran, ISIS, Palestinians, Russians - fill in the blank] understand only force." This projects
that the only thing that will restrain psychopathic Israel is force.
When an Iranian nuclear engineer was assassinated in Tehran, Ronen Bergman told Brian Williams that "Israel has used assassination
more than any other state; not even Stalin or Hitler used assassination as much as Israel. . . ."
So far the President has proved much smarter than most people expected him to be
Exactamundo, Ben Frank (any relation to Anne, Princess of the Ballpoint Pen?). Naming Jerusalem the capital of Israel was fucking
brilliant. Don't you worry your pretty little head about all the US forces in the multiple bases in the region that are accessible
to mad-as-hornets Muslims; Israel will have their backs, fer shur.
--
Come to think of it, maybe Trump can burnish his "much smarter-ness" by taking a page out of Reagan's playbook: Immediately
after the first US soldier is plinked by an Angry Arab, Trump should pull ALL US FORCES out of the region: do a Reagan-post-Black
Hawk down.
If the Israelis want to stir the pot, let them stand over the steam-heat and wield the spoon. We're outa there.
The people of the ME can't catch a break. Since being pried away from the Ottoman empire a hundred years ago they've been the
plaything of various western countries. Their national borders drawn up by distant foreigners, they've been interfered with constantly,
their regimes dictated by foreigners. Then the selfsame westerners turn around and point to their backwardness as proof that they're
incapable of doing anything on their own.
The US is expansionist, projecting itself all over the globe and uses force against
anyone who resists. Force is all it understands. What happens when the irresistible force bumps into the immovable object? War
hysteria, of which we've had an unending amount for the past three generations. Objectively there's nothing conservative about
the so-called neocons. They're hardly any different from fascists except the rhetoric is different. Mussolini had limits as to
how much territory he wanted to conquer for his empire unlike the US which recognizes no limits.
it was faint, and barely perceptible, but at some level, I did actually tremble when I read those words. Cotton is the new
John McCain. The ultimate traitor to this nation and its people and all people of good will on the planet and every tenet of decency
known to the universe
a lickspittle to Sheldon Adelson and everything that repulsive toad represents. if Cotton is exalted to head the CIA, I'll
have to think very hard about leaving these shores. perhaps Bobby Fischer was right, and the ZUSA is endemically, irredeemably
evil.
there can be no doubt that the zio-Fiend is the incarnation of evil itself, but I always keep hoping that the good people of
the ZUS will repudiate the zio-Fiend- that has them waging serial wars all over the planet to benefit the Jews. As their infrastructure
crumbles back home, and their veterans can't get health care, and the jobs are 'in' and outsourced to the third world. what will
it take to wake up the bovine, cud-chewing sheople?!
their children come home in body bags, or with their souls so eviscerated by the sheer evil of the wars they're forced to fight,
that they often just 'snuff it' as the only escape from their nightmares. (and the realization that the ZUSA is a drooling fiend
and that they've murdered innocent people and destroyed nations on its behalf)
those young people can not abide the evil that the ZUS government has become, and their only salvation is to end their young
lives.
for those of us with more choices at hand, why can't we finally and simply repudiate the zio-scum who've done us and so many
others so much harm?!
PS If the USA / American people and their representatives conformed foreign as well as economic policy to the vision of George
Washington rather than Louis Brandeis -- > Benjamin Netanyahu & fellow psychopaths and traitors, USA would engage with
OBOR rather than attempt to destroy it.
Destruction (and deception) are the way of the Talmudists. Even Heinrich Graetz, the Germanophilic Jew who authored the first
modern history of the Jewish people, had nothing but opprobrium to heap on Talmudists.
The American 'way' is not the way of the Talmud. Christian values are not Talmudic values. George Washington's
legacy was not Talmudic, it was America First :
doesn't matter, we are still the ones doing the dirty work. there is no escape from the responsibility. it is like a hitman
claiming he is a professional, it is just business. that doesn't fly.
What's with it with neoconservative Israel lackeys like Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz graduating from a prestigious and supposedly left-wing
school like Harvard? Are they book-smart without common sense? The country would be better off if Cotton stayed in the Senate.
He can do less damage if 1 of 100. Plus, the shelf-life of anyone in the Trump admin seems to be very short – and he'd better
not have groped any Harvard classmates, who might just be waiting in the wings to destroy his career.
As recently as a month ago, I was still willing to give Trump the benefit of the doubt. But it should now be obvious to all what
a total zio-muppet he really is. If there's any silver lining in all of this, it's the fact that the Jew-media have expended so
much effort in attacking Trump that he'll now make a very poor spokesman for their cause abroad.
BTW, I still don't see an attack on Iran as being very likely. If Russia and China would not greenlight an attack on Syria,
they will be doubly reluctant to greenlight an attack on Iran.
The "democracy" the neocons want to push is the one in which (((mass media))) successfully lobotomizes the electorate into
thinking it has democracy. The zombies then make their way to the polls seeking "hope & change" but with no choice. Hegemony is
the goal, not democracy.
Trump may have been skeptical as a candidate about America's role as policeman of the world, but the establishment knives are
out and he might (correctly?) surmise that the only way to stay in office is to make the ziocons happy. Even Bill Kristol would
see the error in never-Trump_vs_deep_state if bombs started falling on Iran.
American has an all volunteer armed forces (mercenary), they are paid to kill or be killed, their fates is only a few seconds
on the screens if the MSM decided to air them, otherwise the wars and the American soldiers' lives have nothing to do with the
American public. Mayhem in far away land in out of sight and out of mind. Citing the American public gullibility is really
a residual sentiment of old days cold war mentality and trying to attach some kind of morality to the wars the American has been
fighting. American has long been demonstrated they are just as morally defunct imperialist as the British and their mentor, the
Romans.
The real issue is how to finance the war, as long as the war does not cause hyper inflation in the USA, the warmongers
in the Washington beltway will go ahead with the war without much concern, with EU, Australia, Japan and S Korea in line paying
the bills, the American should be able to wage another regime change war in the ME without much difficulty.
Tom Cotton is not to be trusted. Many gave US Senator Tom Cotton credit for his offering a bill that would cut legal immigration
in half and would significantly reduce illegal immigration. It is now clear that the immigration reduction ploy proffered by Tom
Cotton was a sneaky way to mollify the White Core American voter base of President Trump.
Tom Cotton is a stooge for Sheldon
Adelson and the Neo-Conservatives. The Neo-Conservatives know they are highly vulnerable on the immigration issue and the national
question. That is why they sent their puppet Tom Cotton out with instructions to bang the pot on reducing immigration.
Recently, the Neo-Conservative-controlled, Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal gave Tom Cotton a half page, above the fold puff
piece where Tom Cotton is said to be offering a foreign policy fit for "Jacksonian America." I think Tom Cotton must be referring
to Michael Jackson or some other Jackson, and not General Andrew Jackson. Having some small portion of Scotch-Irish ancestry
myself, and having ancestors who pioneered Tennessee, I don't think General Andrew Jackson would support the Israel First foreign
policy of Tom Cotton.
IMMIGRATION and the NATIONAL QUESTION are the two things that will finally dislodge the nation-wrecking Neo-Conservatives and
their politician puppets from the ruling class of the American Empire.
Yet if you point out the obvious, that our foreign policy has been hijacked by an element whose first loyalty is to
Israel, you will catch all sorts of hell, be banned from making comments on blogs and news sites, or like the brave Mr. Giraldi,
lose your job. And be blasted with the worn-out canard of being an anti-Semite. Maybe even a Jew hater, all because you show
concern for the nation you love and are loyal to.
If you remember what happened to Rick Sanchez, the former talking head of NBC and CNN when he was pushed into calling out the
Jew in a 'gotcha' interview as he sarcastically replied that yeah Jews are underrepresented in the media. He was gone in '60 seconds'!
Re: At the time, I agreed, but I did note that the neoconservatives have proven to be remarkable resilient, particularly as
many of them have remained true to their Democratic Party values on nearly everything but foreign policy, where they are irredeemable
hawks, hostile to Russia and Iran and always reliably in the corner of Israel.
-- -- -- -- -
Of course. The Jewish Neocons and their "useful idiots," whether "bought and paid for" or voluntarily enlisted, are necessarily
"liberal" in relation to domestic policy because the idea is to destroy all Western and Christian norms and values by means of
cultural marxist "critical theory." And it's working very well. The mass media and the educational system have hopelessly corrupted
American and European minds with this profoundly subversive "intellectual" garbage.
And when it comes to foreign policy, of course the Neocons are globalists, like the international bankers whom they serve.
Israel first, because they are not there to defend their country's interests, but to defend Israel's, in accordance with the permanent
goal of Eretz Ysrael and world hegemony in accordance with the ultimate goal of Jewish supremacy via the money power, and
in preparation for their "messiah". It's all disguised as for the sake of American greatness and "our values."
The Neocons are nothing less than a parasitical foreign body which has us thinking in accordance with its interests; in
fact they are mortal enemies, nothing less. The Western goyim–as well as innocent Jews here and in Israel itself–will be
cheerfully sacrificed by the Zionists, who serve darker forces and interests than those of their people. Western humanity has
been rendered helpless because they are intellectually helpless and because in consequence they have been dispossessed of deep
faith and corresponding real virtues. This was noted years ago by Solzhenitsyn, among others. Ideas rule human beings for good
or ill, since we are thinking beings. But when the ideas that determine us are profoundly wrong and when intellectual chaos and
unbridled individualism reign, nothing real can be accomplished. However, in due time vincit omnia veritas –the Real has
the last word. "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord."
North Korea's survival strategy is "If you invade us, we will blow up South Korea and maybe even Tokyo." Ruled by a vile regime
but with rational concern for survival, even if it has no moral right to survive. But then, what is the other option? South Korea
is a puppet state of US globalist empire. If NK was ruled by wiser people, its case would be made more intelligently. It would
tell the world community that it needs for defense given US record in the Middle East and North Africa. But it's ruled by some
egotistical brat-boy whose idea of culture is Dennis Rodman and Rap trash-talking.
As different as NK and Jewish Power, they have one thing in common: WGYG or We Go, You Go. The idea is that if they are destroyed,
they will take others with them.
Jewish Power pulled this off in 2008. When Lehman Brothers wasn't bailed out by the government, Wall Street pushed a 'too big
to fail' scheme and threatened Total Collapse of the Economy UNLESS it was showered with super-generous bailouts that would eventually
come to enrich the banks during a severe recession for most Americans. Bush couldn't do anything about it except go along. Obama
bailed out Wall Street. And McCain would have done the same had he won. Jewish Wall Street power held a gun to the head of
the entire US economy and said 'Give us money, OR we will take ALL OF YOU down with us.'
The system is rigged so that a major collapse of Jewish Power will trigger total collapse of the entire system. It's been wired
that way. The whole tower will collapse. So, if anyone tries to cut the wire of Jewish Power, kaboom, the whole thing blows up,
and everyone dies. Gentiles must carry Jewish Power like a crate of nitroglycerin. One false step and Kaboom.
"Tom [Cotton] is completely owned by the Israeli lobby."
" . . . [Nikki] Haley is stupid. And ambitious. And is also owned by the Israeli lobby . . .".
My knowledge of foreign policy is headline-quality only. My knowledge of some domestic policy is pretty good. I've been
on the public stump in my area. The reality of American policy, as I've seen it, is that it's bought and paid for. There is no
"public interest", no "national interest". I'm not even sure there's an America, in the sense of a people joined by some common
values. Sometimes I think of America as an agglomeration of rackets. You're goddamned right I don't like thinking this way.
There are only insider players who bankroll and blackmail their way into getting the decisions they want. I wish I could say
something high-minded, but I can't.
India and Pakistan have nukes. How would they respond to an Israeli Sampson Option?
How about China? An Izzie attack on European capitals could destroy a lot of Chinese investment. China has sufficient nuclear
capability to detach Israel from the Mediterranean littoral and create an irradiated submerged island.
Does van Crevald think Putin will sit on his hands and wait a thousand years for the dust to clear?
van Crevald says Israel can hit Rome. That's zionism's wet dream, to completely obliterate Rome.
How many Jews live a parasitical life in Rome and other European capitals?
Can Izzies reach USA? Didn't think so. What do they think would happen to hundreds of Jewish institutions, and Jewish people,
in USA if Israel destroys Europe -- again?
People need to let go of the idea that Dump is anything but a conman and a weak one at that
The office of President holds a lot of authority that Dump has not been able [or willing] to wield that speaks to his own weakness
as a leader
It's time to admit that he is not the messiah that many Lunchpail Joes wanted to believe
As to the specifics of this article yes I agree with Mr. Giraldi that the neocons are back in the driver's seat if they ever
left in the first place
Exhibit One is Jared Kushner the Clown Prince of the Shite House. This is the guy who has inflicted most of the damage on Dump
starting with his advice to dump Flynn. Dump was under zero pressure to do any such thing the
neocon Pence is the one who demanded Flynn's head. Dump could have pushed back there was nothing wrong with Flynn the
incoming National Security Adviser speaking to the Russians or anyone else and what he spoke of with the Russians was in lobbying
THEM in the US interest not the other way round
Dump's second big mistake was firing Comey again on the advice of Kushner. Which got the Mueller ball rolling. Some have
rightly drawn the
parallels of Kushner whispering in Dump's ear to the same role of Kissinger vis a vis Nixon's downfall
Then Kushner appeared to connive with his buddy KSA Clown Prince MBS to engineer the Hariri fiasco [which Tillerson managed
to "deftly undo..."]
' Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who was accompanying the president during his Asia tour at the time of the Saudi-engineered
initiative, was "completely blindsided" by the move, as several senior Middle East diplomats confirmed to TAC.
While Tillerson would later be accused of being "totally disengaged" from the crisis, several former and current U.S. diplomats
have told us that just precisely the opposite was the case '
' The unlikely hero in all of this might well be Rex Tillerson, who quietly engineered a U.S. policy at odds with the
views of Donald Trump -- and his son-in-law. The exact details of how Tillerson pulled this off remain unknown ("I think
Tillerson just told Trump what he was going to do," the senior diplomat with whom we spoke speculates, "and then just did it.")
'
So that's the backstory right there about why the neocons are agitating for Tillerson's ouster. I have to strongly disagree
with Mr. Giraldi's characterization of Tillerson as
' a somewhat bumbling businessman adept at dealing in energy futures contracts who has been struggling with reducing State's
enormously bloated payroll '
That is a useless statement on many levels Tillerson deftly managed what is arguably America's most important corporation
in what is surely the most strategic and geopolitical global industry energy
The global oil trade is 14 trillion dollars even at today's prices and the petrodollar is the underpinning of the entire
US system a free ride for printing free money because every nation has to buy US dollars to buy or sell oil. In 1971
' I was informed at a White House meeting that U.S. diplomats had let Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries know that they
could charge as much as they wanted for their oil, but that the United States would treat it as an act of war not to keep
their oil proceeds in U.S. dollar assets '
This whole saga surrounding Dump's readiness to tie the can to Tillerson is proof positive if any more were needed that conman
Dump has been a fake from the beginning
If the neocons are ascendant and back in the driver's seat it is no one's fault but the Dumpster
He has cast his lot with Kushner who appears to be the neocons' Trojan Horse
There can be no more sympathy or understanding anymore for Dump
If we recall his campaign rhetoric of 'draining the swamp' and rebuilding America's failing infrastructure improving relations
with Russia all good things
we must also recall that he has been vehemently anti-Iran from the get-go
One has to ask why ?
Iran is a completely Israeli-owned issue Iran has nothing to do with the interests of the US other than to benefit leading
US industries like aircraft manufacturing which were immediately rewarded with a $100 billion order of Boeing aircraft in the
aftermath of the Obama nuclear deal
That vehement anti-Iran attitude even on the campaign trail should have been a red flag to everyone
Even Hellary would have been better in that regard and as for the Russia 'issue' what could Hellary or the US to do Russia
anyway ?
Militarily nothing even in Syria the US military would certainly not go for an open war against Russia neither would the regional
players hosting US bases which would need to be on board for such an adventure
same goes for the breakaway region of eastern Ukraine
Germany and France are anyway moving closer to Russia, which has de facto established itself as an energy distribution superpower
for the continent and for China
The big picture is that the petrodollar and the free ride for US prosperity is living on borrowed time China is the world's
biggest energy importer and is not going to support the petrodollar forever
Already an alternative financial architecture is being built and the BRICS countries now outpace the combined GDP of the G7
so the writing is on the wall
Dump has shown himself to be a conman first and an incredibly weak president he deserves no sympathy or support
The neocons are of course insane they are picking fights with Iran, Venezuela and others who are going to be the first
to ditch the petrodollar and accelerate the tipping point to the new global financial order that is going to impoverish the US
overnight
The same neocons are also the ones who are undermining US demographics because their Ponzi scheme economy is based on perpetual
growth which, in turn, requires perpetual population growth which means more immigration. Also the immigration keeps the wages
low which is just extra gravy for the Plutocracy
The US will be a white-minority country by 2050 much of the Southwest already is
None of that is going to change when the party is over and the Titanic sinks the handful of necons and Plutocrats will have
their lifeboats ready
The US official religion is neoliberalism not Christianity. Christianity is in sharp decline.
Notable quotes:
"... Where evangelicals emphasize asking God for forgiveness, Trump says, "I am not sure I have. I think if I do something wrong, I think, I just try and make it right. I don't bring God into that picture. I don't." ..."
"... Compare these remarks to the more earnest faith of President George W. Bush, who claimed divine consultation before invading Iraq, or the incessant God-talk of candidates like Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Sarah Palin and Ben Carson ..."
"... Since then, it's hard to see what benefit America's strong leaning toward theocracy has had. Comparing 17 first-world prosperous democracies on a number of societal health measures, social scientist Gregory S. Paul found that the most religious country of them all-the United States -- had by far the worse measures on a number of criteria, including the highest rates of homicides, suicides, incarceration, STDs, teen pregnancies, abortions, divorce, alcohol consumption, corruption, poverty and income inequality. Correlation is not causation, of course. ..."
"... "Seems to me Donald has been doing a lot more God talk since taking office, " I agree 1,000% – which just validates my view that Trump is all bullsh*ter. Elmer Gantry comes to mind ..."
"... And another point – it strikes me that those saying Trump is a liar misses the point – Trump is more like a parrot in that Trump will say (parrot) whatever he believes is necessary to get the cracker (though I didn't intend "cracker" to mean racists, but merely a reward, I note one can interpret that as one wishes .). ..."
"... PAUL JAY: Under the protection of God, America, we'll use the Mother of All Bombs and fight without restraint. That's the message Donald wanted to send, and perhaps that's the message this bomb was meant to deliver in Afghanistan. ..."
"... Pointing out hypocrisy misses the point because it's never been about religious doctrine as much as trying to belong to something and have purpose. Trump can miss every question about angels dancing on heads of pins, and it won't matter. Trump in his own way embraced the evangelicals. In effect, Hillary said she wanted the non-evangelical republicans who are so smart and moderate. ..."
"... In "The Merchant of Venice" (Act 1, Scene 3), Antonio says, "even the devil can cite scripture for his own use." This is all they need because it's not about scripture and never has been. ..."
"... You and Marx: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people" ..."
This Sunday [Easter], tens of millions of American Christians will celebrate Easter, and thousands of children and their families
will descend on the White House to take part in the annual Easter Egg Roll. As the festivities spill over the grounds of 1600
Penn., I wonder if anyone will stop to note the obvious irony: That President Donald J. Trump is very likely the least religious
president to occupy the White House since Thomas Jefferson.
I'm not saying Trump is a closeted atheist, but he's no evangelical. As a self-proclaimed Protestant, or Presbyterian, or something
he describes as "a wonderful religion," Trump nominally attends the nondenominational Marble Collegiate Church in New York City.
Where evangelicals emphasize asking God for forgiveness, Trump says, "I am not sure I have. I think if I do something wrong,
I think, I just try and make it right. I don't bring God into that picture. I don't."
Compare these remarks to the more earnest
faith of President George W. Bush, who claimed divine consultation before invading Iraq, or the incessant God-talk of candidates
like Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Sarah Palin and Ben Carson.
Since then, it's hard to see what benefit America's strong leaning toward theocracy has had. Comparing 17 first-world prosperous
democracies on a number of societal health measures, social scientist Gregory S. Paul found that the most religious country of
them all-the United States -- had by far the worse measures on a number of criteria, including the highest rates of homicides, suicides,
incarceration, STDs, teen pregnancies, abortions, divorce, alcohol consumption, corruption, poverty and income inequality. Correlation
is not causation, of course. But if religion is suppose to be such a powerful force for societal health, then why is America-the
most religious nation in the Western world-also the unhealthiest on all of these important social measures?***
===================================================
I almost posted this yesterday, but I thought that would be churlish.
I read Trump's "religious" remarks and find them extremely off putting. Than I read the religious remarks of other repubs, and
I find them EVEN MORE off putting .
***Teen pregnancy – so much for the solemn pledges of abstinence made by teenagers .*** ***
*** *** What is it with the US? How can anybody in hypersexualized America really believe American teens are gonna keep it in
their pants?
"Seems to me Donald has been doing a lot more God talk since taking office, "
I agree 1,000% – which just validates my view that Trump is all bullsh*ter. Elmer Gantry comes to mind.
And another point – it strikes me that those saying Trump is a liar misses the point – Trump is more like a parrot in that Trump
will say (parrot) whatever he believes is necessary to get the cracker (though I didn't intend "cracker" to mean racists, but
merely a reward, I note one can interpret that as one wishes .).
PAUL JAY: Under the protection of God, America, we'll use the Mother of All Bombs and fight without restraint. That's the message
Donald wanted to send, and perhaps that's the message this bomb was meant to deliver in Afghanistan.
From my experience with Catholic school and church, I've long since determined "god talk" isn't as relevant as "us v. them"
talk. Hillary's "deplorable" statement was just an affirmation of a view many "Christians" believe is held about them.
Pointing out hypocrisy misses the point because it's never been about religious doctrine as much as trying to belong to something
and have purpose. Trump can miss every question about angels dancing on heads of pins, and it won't matter. Trump in his own way
embraced the evangelicals. In effect, Hillary said she wanted the non-evangelical republicans who are so smart and moderate.
In "The Merchant of Venice" (Act 1, Scene 3), Antonio says, "even the devil can cite scripture for his own use." This is all
they need because it's not about scripture and never has been.
Why were enslaved Africans in the American South so religious?
Actually, they weren't all that religious. The slave owners allowed them time off on Sunday for religious services. The slaves
were savvy enough to make sure that "services" were an all-day affair. Even meals and socialization were woven into the Sunday
religious celebrations. That practice is the genesis of many AME and AME-Z all day (or most of the day) Sunday services today.
(I learned that bit of information in my Black Religion college course many years ago.)
You and Marx: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.
It is the opium of the people"
"... Fred: It's assuming that the "professional diplomats" who gave us the Iraq War and the Maiden Demonstrations in Ukraine call Trump irresponsible! I think Trump is doing a Gulfies. Besides the Mother of Arms Deals with the Kingdom of Horrors, he's just got Bahrain to buy another batch of F-16's they don't need. ..."
"... Trump said he was going to make the Gulfies pay for our protection. And that is what he is doing. Now if he could only make the Zionists pay..... ..."
On this side of the water, my prediction that Tillerson would be gone by end of year appears
to be coming true.
Reports say Trump is going to throw Tillerson under the bus - like all his other
supporters - and replace him with CIA's Mike Pompeo. Senator Cotter - a torture and drone
advocate - will replace Pompeo at CIA
So now we'll have a CIA head in charge at State. I'm totally sure that will improve US
diplomacy with North Korea, Russia, China, etc...
Those people who kept saying Trump had some master plan to save us were right - it entails
throwing out anyone NOT advocating war with most of the nuclear powers on the planet.
Zizi controlled US media, like the NYT and CNN really want Rex Tillerson out, they are paving
the way for him to leave, and have decided who they like to replace him, both candidates for
the state and CIA are supper neocon protectors of Zionism in US, and totally anti Iran.
This is the second, or perhaps third, report of Tillerson getting "thrown under the bus".
I would say the Borg are having their policy narrative systematicly destroyed by Trump and
they are desperate to at least create, or at least maintain, an image of turmoil in the
executive branch.
Do you think that POTUS ordered CENTCOM to cut off arms supplies to the Kurds in order to
start a war with nuclear powers? It seems to me this action does the complete opposite of
that - it dramatically reduces the chance of war with Russia.
"Those people who kept saying Trump had some master plan to save us were right" Maybe not a master plan, but Trump may well be marching to a tune that you can not
hear. Take his refusal to certify the JCPOA as stipulated by Congress.
Q: Did he follow that up by tearing up the JCPOA?
A: No, he didn't. He threw the problem back to Congress, who look like a deer caught in some
headlights.
He is also expected (either this time or the next) to refuse to sign the waiver regarding
moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem.
Q: Will he then follow up by actually, you know, moving that embassy?
A: My guess is he won't, and he'll dare Congress to make something of it.
I really think that there is a pattern to his behaviour, and it isn't the behaviour of a
slave to "the establishment". It looks more like he is throwing that establishment off-balance by saying, in essence,
that he isn't interested in playing their silly games, and by doing so he exposes those games
as.... silly.
Certifying the JCPOA is a burden, and he simply shrugs it off.
Waiving the Embassy move is a burden, and he'll just shrug it off. Every time he does so he exposes Congressional politicking that are an irrelevance - an
instance of Congress sticking its nose where it doesn't belong - and that's no bad thing. Just my take, but I really don't think Trump is who you think he is.
Fred: It's assuming that the "professional diplomats" who gave us the Iraq War and the Maiden
Demonstrations in Ukraine call Trump irresponsible! I think Trump is doing a Gulfies. Besides the Mother of Arms Deals with the Kingdom of
Horrors, he's just got Bahrain to buy another batch of F-16's they don't need.
Trump said he was going to make the Gulfies pay for our protection. And that is what he is
doing. Now if he could only make the Zionists pay.....
"... "President Trump instructed [his generals] in a very open way that the YPG will no longer be given weapons. He openly said
that this absurdity should have ended much earlier ," Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu told reporters after the phone call. ..."
"... The YPG is the Syrian sister organization of the Turkish-Kurdish terror group PKK. Some weapons the U.S. had delivered to the
YPK in Syria to fight the Islamic State have been recovered from PKK fighters in Turkey who were out to kill Turkish security personal.
Despite that, supply for the YPG continued. In total over 3,500 truckloads were provided to it by the U.S. military. Only recently the
YPK received some 120 armored Humvees , mine clearance vehicles and other equipment. ..."
"... The generals in the White House and other parts of the administration were caught flat-footed by the promise Trump has made.
The Washington Post writes : "Initially, the administration's national security team appeared surprised by the Turks' announcement and
uncertain what to say about it. The State Department referred questions to the White House, and hours passed with no confirmation from
the National Security Council." ..."
"... The U.S. military uses the YPG as proxy power in Syria to justify and support its occupation of north-east Syria, The intent
of the occupation is , for now, to press the Syrian government into agreeing to a U.S. controlled "regime change": ..."
"... When in 2014 the U.S. started to use Kurds in Syria as its foot-soldiers, it put the YPG under the mantle of the so called
Syrian Democratic Forces and paid some Syrian Arabs to join and keep up the subterfuge. This helped to counter the Turkish argument
that the U.S. was arming and supporting terrorists. But in May 2017 the U.S. announced to arm the YPG directly without the cover of
the SDF. The alleged purpose was to eliminate the Islamic State from the city of Raqqa. ..."
"... A spokesperson of the SDF, the ethnic Turkman Talaf Silo, recently defected and went over to the Turkish side. The Turkish
government is certainly well informed about the SDF and knows that its political and command structure is dominated by the YPK. The
whole concept is a sham. ..."
"... Sometimes it's hard to see if Trump actually believed what he was saying about foreign policy on the campaign trail -- but
either way it doesn't matter much as he seems incapable of navigating the labyrinth of the Deep State even if he had in independent
thought in his head. I don't expect US weapons to stop making their way into Kurdish hands as they try to extend their mini-Israel-with-oil
foothold in Syria. But it would certainly be a welcome sight if the US left Syria alone for once! ..."
"... Trump personally sent General Flynn to recruit back Erdogan and the Turks right before the election. Flynn wrote his now infamous
editorial "Our ally Turkey is in crisis and needs our support" and published in "The Hill". http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/foreign-policy/305021-our-ally-turkey-is-in-crisis-and-needs-our-support
..."
"... But if you know the role he played for Trump in the campaign and then the post-election role as soon to be NSC advisor, you
will see that Trump was sending him to bring Turkey back into the fold after the coup attempt by CIA, Gulen and Turkey's AF and US State
Dept failed. ..."
"... Trump wanted to prevent the Turkish Stream. It was a huge rival to his LNG strategy. All these are why Flynn did what he did
for Trump. Now Trump has to battle CIA and State, as well as the CENTCOM-Israeli plans for insurgencies in Syria. It's not just the
Kurd issue or the other needs of NATO to hold the bases in Turkey. It's the whole southwest containment of Russian gas and Russian naval
power, and the reality of sharing the Mediterranean as well as MENA with the Bear. ..."
"... Furthermore, I've always been suspicious of Erdogan's 'turn' toward Russia. Many have suspected that the attempted coup was
staged by Erdogan (with CIA help?) so as to enable Erdogan to remain in office. IMO Erdogan joined the 'Assad must go!' effort not just
because he benefited from the oil trade but because he leans toward Sunnis (Surely he was aware of the thinking that: the road to Tehran
runs through Damascus .) ..."
President Trump is attempting to calm down the U.S.
conflict with Turkey . The
military junta in the White House has different
plans. It now attempts to circumvent the decision the president communicated to his Turkish counterpart. The result will be more
Turkish-U.S. acrimony.
Yesterday the Turkish foreign minister surprisingly
announced a phone call
President Trump had held with President Erdogan of Turkey.
United States President Donald Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan spoke on the phone on Nov. 24 only days after
a Russia-Turkey-Iran summit on Syria, with Ankara saying that Washington has pledged not to send weapons to the People's Protection
Units (YPG) any more .
"President Trump instructed [his generals] in a very open way that the YPG will no longer be given weapons. He openly said
that this absurdity should have ended much earlier ," Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu told reporters after the phone call.
Will be speaking to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey this morning about bringing peace to the mess that I inherited
in the Middle East. I will get it all done, but what a mistake, in lives and dollars (6 trillion), to be there in the first place!
12:04 PM - 24 Nov 2017
During the phone call Trump must have escaped his minders for a moment and promptly tried to make, as announced, peace with Erdogan.
The issue of arming the YPG is really difficult for Turkey to swallow. Ending that would probably make up for the
recent NATO blunder of presenting the founder of modern Turkey Kemal Atatürk and Erdogan himself as enemies.
The YPG is the Syrian sister organization of the Turkish-Kurdish terror group PKK. Some weapons the U.S. had delivered to
the YPK in Syria to fight the Islamic State have been
recovered from PKK fighters in Turkey who were out to kill Turkish security personal. Despite that, supply for the YPG continued.
In total over
3,500 truckloads
were provided to it by the U.S. military. Only recently the YPK received
some 120 armored Humvees ,
mine clearance vehicles and other equipment.
The generals in the White House and other parts of the administration were caught flat-footed by the promise Trump has made.
The Washington Post
writes : "Initially, the administration's national security team appeared surprised by the Turks' announcement and uncertain
what to say about it. The State Department referred questions to the White House, and hours passed with no confirmation from the
National Security Council."
The White House finally released what the Associated Presscalled :
a cryptic statement about the phone call that said Trump had informed the Turk of "pending adjustments to the military support
provided to our partners on the ground in Syria."
Neither a read-out of the call nor the statement AP refers to are currently available on the White House website.
The U.S. military uses the YPG as proxy power in Syria to justify and support
its
occupation of north-east Syria, The intent of the occupation is , for now,
to press the Syrian government into agreeing to a U.S. controlled "regime change":
U.S. officials have said they plan to keep American troops in northern Syria -- and continue working with Kurdish fighters --
to pressure Assad to make concessions during peace talks brokered by the United Nations in Geneva, stalemated for three years
now. "We're not going to just walk away right now," Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said last week.
To solidify its position the U.S. needs to further build up and strengthen its YPG mercenary forces.
When in 2014 the U.S. started to use Kurds in Syria as its foot-soldiers, it put the YPG under the mantle of the so called
Syrian Democratic Forces and paid some Syrian Arabs to join and keep up the subterfuge. This helped to counter the Turkish argument
that the U.S. was arming and supporting terrorists. But in May 2017 the U.S.
announced
to arm the YPG directly without the cover of the SDF. The alleged purpose was to eliminate the Islamic State from the city of Raqqa.
The YPG had been unwilling to fight for the Arab city unless the U.S. would provide it with more money, military supplies and
support. All were provided. The U.S. special forces, who control the YPG fighters, directed an immense amount of aerial and artillery
ammunition against the city. Any potential enemy position was destroyed by large ammunition and intense bombing before the YPG infantry
proceeded. In the end few YPG fighters died in the fight. The Islamic State was let go or eliminated from the city but
so was the city of Raqqa . The intensity
of the bombardment of the medium size city was at times ten
times greater than the bombing in all of Afghanistan. Airwarsreported :
Since June, an estimated 20,000 munitions were fired in support of Coalition operations at Raqqa . Images captured by journalists
in the final days of the assault show a city in ruins
Several thousand civilians were killed in the indiscriminate onslaught.
The Islamic State in Syria and Iraq is defeated. It no longer holds any ground. There is no longer any justification to further
arm and supply the YPG or the dummy organization SDF.
But the generals want to continue to do so to further their larger plans. They are laying grounds to circumvent their president's
promise. The Wall Street Journal seems to be the only outlet to
pick up on the subterfuge:
President Donald Trump's administration is preparing to stop sending weapons directly to Kurdish militants battling Islamic State
in Syria, dealing a political blow to the U.S.'s most reliable ally in the civil war, officials said Friday.
...
The Turkish announcement came as a surprise in Washington, where military and political officials in Mr. Trump's administration
appeared to be caught off-guard. U.S. military officials said they had received no new guidance about supplying weapons to the
Kurdish forces. But they said there were no immediate plans to deliver any new weapons to the group. And the U.S. can continue
to provide the Kurdish forces with arms via the umbrella Syrian militant coalition
The "military officials" talking to the WSJ have found a way to negate Trump's promise. A spokesperson of the SDF, the ethnic
Turkman Talaf Silo, recently
defected and went over to the Turkish side. The Turkish government is certainly well informed about the SDF and knows that its
political and command structure is dominated by the YPK. The whole concept is a sham.
But the U.S. needs the YPG to keep control of north-east Syria. It has to continue to provide whatever the YPG demands, or it
will have to give up its larger scheme against Syria.
The Turkish government will soon find out that the U.S. again tried to pull wool over its eyes. Erdogan will be furious when he
discovers that the U.S. continues to supply war material to the YPG, even when those deliveries are covered up as supplies for the
SDF.
The Turkish government released
a photograph showing
Erdogan and five of his aids taking Trump's phonecall. Such a release and the announcement of the call by the Turkish foreign minister
are very unusual. Erdogan is taking prestige from the call and the public announcement is to make sure that Trump sticks to his promise.
This wide publication will also increase Erdogan's wrath when he finds out that he was again deceived.
Posted by b on November 25, 2017 at 12:14 PM |
Permalink
Sometimes it's hard to see if Trump actually believed what he was saying about foreign policy on the campaign trail -- but
either way it doesn't matter much as he seems incapable of navigating the labyrinth of the Deep State even if he had in independent
thought in his head. I don't expect US weapons to stop making their way into Kurdish hands as they try to extend their mini-Israel-with-oil
foothold in Syria. But it would certainly be a welcome sight if the US left Syria alone for once!
Some
interpret this act on Election eve as a pecuniary fulfillment by Flynn of a lobbying contract (which existed).
But if you know the role he played for Trump in the campaign and then the post-election role as soon to be NSC advisor,
you will see that Trump was sending him to bring Turkey back into the fold after the coup attempt by CIA, Gulen and Turkey's AF
and US State Dept failed.
Flynn understood the crucial need for US and NATO to hold Turkey and prevent the Russians from getting Erdogan as an ally for
Syria and the Black Sea, the Balkans and Mediterranean as well as Iran, Qatar and Eurasia. Look at what has transpired between
Turkey and Russia since. Gas will be flowing through the Turkish Stream and Erdogan conforms to Putin's wishes.
Trump wanted to prevent the Turkish Stream. It was a huge rival to his LNG strategy. All these are why Flynn did what he
did for Trump. Now Trump has to battle CIA and State, as well as the CENTCOM-Israeli plans for insurgencies in Syria. It's not
just the Kurd issue or the other needs of NATO to hold the bases in Turkey. It's the whole southwest containment of Russian gas
and Russian naval power, and the reality of sharing the Mediterranean as well as MENA with the Bear.
Flynn was on it for Trump. And the IC and State want him prosecuted for defying their efforts to replace Erdogan with a stooge
like Gulen. It looks like Mueller is pursuing that against the General.
Its not a problem for US to drop Kurds if they are no longer needed, BUT for now they are essential for US/Israel/Saudi goals,
therefore you can bet 100% Kurds support will continue. Trump's order (he hasn't made it official either) will be easily circumvented.
The real question is, what Resistance will do with the backstabbing Kurds? It wont be easy to make a deal while Kurds
maintain absurd demands and as long as they have full Axis of Terror support.
Go Iraq's way like they reclaimed Kirkuk? US might have sitten out that one, I doubt they'll allow this to happen in Syria
as well, unless they get something in return.
While America's standard duplicity of saying one thing while doing the opposite has been known for decades, they have been able
to play games mainly because of the weakness of the other actors in the region.
The tables have turned now, but America still thinks it holds top dog position.
Wordplay, semantics and legal loopholes wont be tolerated for very long, and when hundreds of US boots return home in body bags
a choice will have to be made - escalate, or run away.
Previous behavior dictates run away, but times have changed.
A cornered enemy is the most dangerous, and the USA has painted itself into a very small corner...
Gee. While reading B's article what got to my mind is: "Turkey is testing the ground". Whatever Trump said to Erdogan on the phone,
it seems to me that the Turks are playing a card to see how the different actors in the US that seems to follow different agendas
will react. If Turkey concludes that the US will continue to back YPG, it's split from the US and will be definitive.
Erdogan is shifting away from US/NATO. He even hinted today that he might talk to Assad. That's huge! I wouldn't be surprised
if Turkey leaves NATO sooner than later. And if it's the case, it will be a major move of a tectonic amplitude.
Trump.. "Will be speaking to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey this morning about bringing peace to the mess that I inherited
in the Middle East. I will get it all done, but what a mistake, in lives and dollars (6 trillion), to be there in the first place!"
Surely by now Erdogan must realise that whatever the US President says and promises will be circumvented by the State Department,
the Pentagon, the 17 US intel agencies (including the CIA and the NSA) and rogue individuals in these and other US government
departments and agencies, and in Congress as well (Insane McCain comes to mind)? Not to mention the fact that the Israeli government
and the pro-Israeli lobby on Capitol Hill exercise huge influence over sections of the US government.
If Erdogan hasn't figured out the schizoid behaviour of the US from past Turkish experience and the recent experience of Turkey's
neighbours (and the Ukraine is one such neighbour), he must not be receiving good information.
Though as Jean says, perhaps Erdogan is giving the US one last chance to demonstrate that it has a coherent and reliable policy
towards the Middle East.
Well, the US policy has been coherent and reliable in the last years. It enhanced local conflicts, supported both sides at
the same time but with different intensities. Whoever wins would be "our man". Old stuff since the Byzantine period. It always
takes a lot of time to prove the single actions that were done. In most cases we learn about it years later. The delay is so big
and unpleasant that quite a number of folks escapes to stupid narratives that explain everything in one step, and therefore nothing.
By the way: is the interest of Kurds to remain under the umbrella of the Syrian state but not be governed by Baath type of Arabic
nationalism illegitimate?
The Kurds (PKK basically) are only necessary to give a "face" to the force the US is trying to align in E. Syria. The "fighting"
against ISIS (if there really was any) is coming to a close. The Chiefs of ISIS have been airlifted to somewhere nearby, and the
foreign mercenary forces sent elsewhere by convoy. ALL the valuable personnel have now become "HTS2" with reversible vests. These,
plus the US special forces are the basis of a new armed anti-Syrian force. (Note that one general let slip that there are 5'000
US forces in E-Syria - not the 500 spoken of in the MSM).
So Trump may well be correct in saying that the Kurds (specifically) will not get any more arms - because they have other demands
and might make peace with the Syrian Government, to keep at least some part of their territorial gains. The ISIS "bretheren" and
foreign mercenaries do not want any peaceful solution because it would mean their elimination.. So The CIA and Pentagon will probably
continue arms supplies to "HTS2" - but not the Kurds.
(ex-ISIS members; Some are from Saudi Arabia, Qatar - the EU and the US, as well as parts of Russia and China. They are not
farming types but will find themselves with some of the best arable land in Syria. Which belonged to Syrian-arabs-christians-Druzes-Yadzis
etc. Who wil want their properties back.)
Note that the US forces at Tanf are deliberately not letting humanitarian help reach the nearby refugee camp. Starvation and
deprivation will force many of the younger members to become US paid terrorists.
thanks b.. i tend to agree with @4 jean and @5 jen... the way i see it, there is either a real disconnect inside the usa where
the president gets to say one thing, but another part of the establishment can do another, or trump has made his last lie to turkey
here and turkey is going to say good bye to it's involvement with the usa in any way that can be trusted.. seems like some kind
of internal usa conflict to me at this point, but maybe it is all smoke and mirrors to continue on with the same charade.. i mostly
think internal usa conflict at this point..
Odd that no one has mentioned the fact the US was behind the attempted coup, where Erdogan was on a plane with two rogue Syrian
jets that stood down rather than execute the kill shot. I have read opinion that the fighter pilots were "lit up" by Russian missile
batteries and informed by radio they would not survive unless they shut down their weapons targeting immediately. This is probably
a favour Putin reminds Erdogan of on a regular basis, whenever Erdo tries to play Sultan. The attempted coup/asassination also
shows Erdogan exactly how much he can trust the US/Zionists at any level.
And Edrogan must also know Syria was once at least partly in the US-orbit, as Syria was the destination for many well-documented
US-ordered rendition/torture cases. It is probable Mossad (or their proxy thugs) killed Assad's father and older brother, so Erdo
knows he's better relying on Putin than Trumpty Dumbdy.
Erdogan is about to make a u-turn toward Syria. He is furious at Saudi Arabia for boycotting its ally Qatar, for talking about
owning Sunni Islam and by the continuous support of Islamists and Sunni Kurds in Syria.
Erdogan is preparing the turkish public opinion to a shift away from the USA-Israeli axis. This may get him many points in the
2019 election if the war in Syria is stopped, most Syrian refugees are back, Turkish companies are involved in the reconstruction
and the YPG neutralized. Erdogan has 1 year and half to make this to happen. For that he badly needs Bashar al Assad and his army
on his side.
Therefore he is evaluating what is the next move and he needs to know where the USA is standing about Turkey and Syria. Until
now the messages from the USA are contradictory yet Erdogan keeps telling his supporters that the USA is plotting against Turkey
and against Islam. Erdogan's reputation also is been threatened by the outcome of Reza Zarrab's trial in the US where the corruption
of his party may be exposed.
That is why Erdogan is making another check about the US intentions before Erdogan he starts the irreversible shift toward
the Iran-Russia (+Qatar and Syria) axis.
missing in this analysis is oil gas ... producers, refiners, slavers, middle crooks, and the LNG crowd :Israel, Fracking, LNG
and wall street... these are the underlying directing forces that will ultimately dictate when the outsiders have had enough fight
against Assad over Assad's oil and Assad's refusal to allow outsiders to install their pipelines. Until then, gangland intelligence
agencies will continue the divide, destroy and conquer strategies sufficient to keep the profits flowing. The politicians cannot
move until the underlying corruptions resolve..
The word 'byzantine' has been used for centuries to describe the intricate and multi-leveled forms of agreement, betrayal, treachery
and achievement among the shifting power brokers in the region. The US alone has three major and another three minor players at
work - often fighting each other. If however, it thinks it can outplay people whose lives are steeped in such a living tradition,
it is sadly deluded and will one day be in for a very rude surprise. Even the Russians have had difficulty navigating that maze.
When confronted with such a 'Gordian knot' of treachery and shifting alliances, Alexander the Great drew his sword and cut
through it with a vision informed by the sage Socrates as taught by Aristotle.
Despite claiming to represent such a western heritage, the US has no such Socratic wisdom, no Aristotelian logic, and no visionary
leadership that could enable it to do what Alexander did. Lacking this, it is destined to get lost in its' own hubris, and be
consumed by our current version of that region's gordian knot.
'...By the way: is the interest of Kurds to remain under the umbrella of the Syrian state but not be governed by Baath type
of Arabic nationalism illegitimate?..'
...showing that he either knows only the crap spouted by wikipedia...or nothing at all about the Baath party...
...which happens to be a socialist and secular party interested in pan-Arab unity...not nationalism...[an obvious oxymoron
to be pan-national and 'nationalist' at the same time...]
Of course there is always a 'better way'...right Hausmaus...?
The Baath socialism under Saddam in Iraq was no good for anyone we recall...especially women, students, sick people etc...
A 'better way' has since been installed and it is working beautifully...all can agree...
Same thing in Libya...where the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya was no good for anyone...
Of course everyone wanted the 'Better Way'...all those doctoral graduates with free education and guaranteed jobs...a standard
of living better than some European countries...etc...
Again...removing the 'socialist' Kadafi has worked out wonderfully...
We now have black African slaves sold in open air markets...where before they did all the broom pushing that was beneath the
dignity of the Libyan Arabs...
...and were quite happy to stay there and have a job and paycheck...instead of now flooding the shores of Italy in anything
that can float...
Oh yes...why would anyone in Syria want to be governed by the socialist Baath party...?
...especially the Kurds...who just over the border in Turkey are not even recognized as humans...never mind speaking their
own language...
I'd really hoped that Donald Trump® would be the "outsider" that both the MSM and he have been insisting he is for the past couple
of years. Other than the Reality TV Show faux conflicts with which the MSM entertains us nightly, I see no such "rogue" Administration.
This say one thing, and do the other has been US foreign policy forever.
Recall, for instance that on February 21, 2014, Obama's State Department issued a statement hailing Ukrainian President Yanukovych
for signing an agreement with the "pro-democracy Maidan Protest" leaders in which he acquiesced to all of their demands.
Then, on February 22, 2014, the US State Department cheered the "peaceful and Constitutional" coup after neo-nazis stormed
the Parliament.
A few months later, Secretary of State Kerry hailed the Minsk Treaty to end the war in Ukraine. Later that day, Vickie Nuland
said there was no way her Ukies would stop shelling civilians, and sure enough they didn't (until they'd been on the retreat for
weeks, and came whimpering back to the negotiations table).
A couple years later, Kerry announced that the US and Russia would coordinate aerial assaults in Syria. The next day, "Defense"
Secretary Carter said, "no way," and within a week or so, we "accidentally" bombed Syrian forces at Deir ez Zoir for over an hour.
From my perspective, they keep us chasing the next squirrel, while bickering amongst each other about each squirrel. But the
wolves are still devouring the lambs, with only the Bear preventing a complete extinction.
What we know with at least some level of confidence...
Dump is not the 'decider'...the junta is...he's just a cardboard cutout sitting behind the oval office desk...
And he's got no one to blame but himself...he came in talking a big game about cleaning house and got himself cleaned out of
being an actual president...
This was inevitable from the moment he caved on Flynn...the only person he didn't need to vet with the senate...and a position
that wields a lot of power...
This was his undoing on many levels...not only because he faced a hostile deep state and even his own party in congress with
no one by his side [other than Flynn]...
...but because it showed that he had no balls and would not stand by his man...
This is not the stuff leaders are made of...
The same BS we see with Turkey is playing out with Russia on the Ukraine issue...
Now the junta and their enablers in congress want to start sending offensive arms to Ukraine...Dump and his platitudes to Putin...no
matter how much he may mean it...mean nothing...he's not in charge...
I think that Jean @4 has the best take on this: Erdoğan went very public on Trump's "promise" in a classic put-up-or-shut-up challenge
to the USA.
Either the word of a POTUS means something or it doesn't, and if it doesn't then Turkey is going to join Russia in concluding
that the USA as simply not-agreement-capable.
Erdoğan will then say "enough!!!", give the USA the two-finger-salute, and then take Turkey out of NATO.
And the best thing about it will be that McMaster, Kelly and Mathis will be so obsessed with playing their petty little games
that they won't see it coming.
It's hard to tell what Erdoğan is doing or intending other than that he is navigating something - objective TBD. It'll be interesting
to see if he constrains the use of Incirlik airbase should the US keep arming the YPG/PKK forces. Airpower is the enabler (sole
enabler, IMO) of the/any Kurdish overreach inside Syria. Seems like Erdoğan holds the ace card in this muddle but has yet to play
it.
Seems like Turkey has more than one card to play. A commenter on another site mentioned recently that the US really doesn't
want Erdogan to have that S-400 system from Russia. Got me thinking, could Russia have deliberately loaded Erdogan's hand with
that additional card to help him negotiate with the US?
Turkey may well leave NATO and as others have pointed out, this would be a game changer far beyond the matter of the US's illegal
presence in NE Syria. This possibility brings immense existential gravitas to Erdogan's position right now. He could ask
for many concessions at this point, not to leave. And from the Eurasian point of view, it doesn't matter if he leaves or stays,
while from the western view, it matters greatly.
Would the US give up Syria, in order to keep Turkey in NATO? It's a western dichotomy, not one that affects Asia. It would
be simple to throw S-400 at that dynamic to watch it squirm.
The plays the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King.
- Hamlet
As the endgame plays out, Erdogan's conscience may be revealed.
b has made the point that the partition that US-led proxy forces have carved out is unsustainable. But it would be sustainable
if Erdogan can be convinced to allow trade via Turkey.
For that reason, I thought Trump's ceasing direct military aid to the Kurds made sense as it provided Erdogan with an excuse
to allow land routes for trade/supply. Erdogan can argue that he wants to encourage such good behavior and doesn't want to make
US an enemy (Turkey is still a NATO country).
Furthermore, I've always been suspicious of Erdogan's 'turn' toward Russia. Many have suspected that the attempted coup
was staged by Erdogan (with CIA help?) so as to enable Erdogan to remain in office. IMO Erdogan joined the 'Assad must go!' effort
not just because he benefited from the oil trade but because he leans toward Sunnis (Surely he was aware of the thinking that:
the road to Tehran runs through Damascus .)
Hasn't Erdogan's vehement anti-Kurdish stance done R+6 a disservice? It seems to me that it has helped USA to convince
Kurds to fight for them and has also been a convenient excuse for Erdogan to hold onto Idlib where al Queda forces have refuge.
If Erdogan was really soooo angry with Washington, and soooo dependent on Moscow, then why not relax his anti-Kurdish
stance so as to bring Kurds back into the Syrian orbit?
Jackrabbit @20:
Erdogan may feel that if he relaxed his stance against the Syrian Kurds, it could embolden Turkish Kurds to further pursue their
agenda. It would also make him appear weak towards his supporters.
Erdogan is NOT going to leave NATO. Why should he? It would be the stupidest chess move ever? He's in the club and they can't
kick him out. He can cause all the trouble he wants and hobble that huge machine that is the western alliance. He will not get
EU membership, but he has his NATO ID CARD and that ain't bad. Erdo now knows that the poor bastard Trumps is WORTHLESS that he
is a toothless executive in name only. This is a wake up call, if I were Erdo, I would be very afraid of the USA and it's Syria,
MENA policy. It is being run by LUNATICS and is a slow moving train wreak. So for now, Erdo must be looking at Moscow, admiring
Putin for this is a man who has his shit together and truly knows how to run a country. Maybe even a sense of admiration and more
respect for Putin is even present. If I were Erdo, I'd double down in my support for Russia's Syria policy.
You do not get it:
„...which happens to be a socialist and secular party interested in pan-Arab unity...not nationalism..."
According to this ideology the coherence of a society comes from where? And who is excluded if one applies it?
So your contribution is just a rant using rancidic rhetoric tools. But I will not call you „flunkerbandit". My advice is to move
to this area and have a look into such a society from a more close position. Armchair type of vocal leadership does not help.
@23 "Erdogan is NOT going to leave NATO. Why should he?"
I guess one possible reason would be this: as long as Turkey remains in NATO then he is obliged to allow a US military presence
in his country, and that's just asking for another attempt at a military coup.
After all, wasn't Incirlik airbase a hotbed of coup-plotters during the last coup attempt?
"when the Syrian settlement is achieved, Syria's democratic forces will join the Syrian army." "When the Syrian state stabilizes, we can say that the Americans did what they said, then withdraw as they did in Iraq and
set a date for their departure and leave."
Nothing new here, nothing good either. Kurds so far are keeping up their demands of de-facto independence under fig-leaf of
"we are part of federalised Syria" with weak central government and autonomous Kurds. Thats how US plan to castrate Syria. Russia
offered cultural autonomy, Kurds rejected.
As for Americans "withdrawing" willfully, it never happened. Iraq had to kick them out, and then US used ISIS and Kurds to
get back in.
As for Syria's stabilization part, US is doing everything in its power to prevent it.
@Yeah Right #26
Turkey is not obliged to keep foreign troops in their country to remain in NATO. De Gaulle invited the US to leave France in 1967
but is still a member of NATO
@31 France actually withdrew from NATO in 1966. It remained "committed" to the collective defence of western Europe, without being,
you know, "committed" to it.
So, yeah, France kicked all the foreign troops out of France in 1967, precisely because its withdrawal from NATO's Integrated
Military Command meant that the French were no longer under any obligation to allow NATO troops on its soil.
But France had to formally withdraw from that Command first, and the reason that de Gaulle gave for withdrawing were exactly
that: remaining meant ceding sovereignty to a supra-national organization i.e. NATO Integrated Military Command.
That France retained "membership" of NATO's political organizations even after that withdrawal was little more than a fig-leaf.
After all, NATO's purpose isn't "political", it is "military".
"The Decider" is Trump's apparent self image. He can't be enjoying the Presidency and the controls exerted upon him by others
among the "Deep State" (whom I suppose have effectively cowed him into behaving via serious threats).
If he already had money and power, as it appears that he had, he gained little by taking the crown. He has less power because
he is now controlled by a number of forces (CIA, NSA, Media, MIC and etc.) as he remains under constant assault by his natural
opposition.
Big mistake dumping Flynn.
Now you take another kind of asshole in the person of Obama - a guy that had nothing - you have a malleable character who enjoys
the pomp and circumstance. Really didn't need any persuading to do anything required of him.
Here is a recent report from the Turkish Prime Minister supporting Trump's "lie" about ending support for the Kurds....what will
history show occured?
ISTANBUL, Nov. 26 (Xinhua) -- Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Sunday that his country is expecting the United
States to end its partnership with the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its military wing, the People's Protection
Units (YPG).
"Since the very beginning, we have said that it is wrong for the U.S. to partner with PKK's cousin PYD and YPG in the fight
against Daesh (Islamic State) terrorist group," Yildirim told the press in Istanbul prior to his departure for Britain.
Ankara sees the Kurdish groups as an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) fighting against the Turkish government
for over 30 years, while Washington regards them as a reliable ground force against the Islamic State (IS), also known as Daesh.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday spoke to his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan over the phone, pledging not to
provide weapons to the YPG any more, an irritant that has hurt bilateral ties, according to the Turkish side.
Yildirim noted that Washington has described it as an obligation rather than an option to support the Kurdish groups on the
ground. "But since Daesh (IS) is now eliminated then this obligation has disappeared," he added.
It would be nice if Erdogan when withdrawing from NATO (Assuming he does this in the next 12-18 months) would say something like.
"We really like President Trump - and we trust his word implicitly. The problem is, although we trust his word, we know
he is not in control so his word is useless and best ignored. Though of course - we still trust he means well."
That would be a nice backhander to hear from Erdopig.
Speculation about Turkey leaving NATO seems farfetched. Turkey has NATO over a barrel. It has been a member for decades and what
would it gain by leaving? Nothing. By staying it continues to influence and needle at the same time. Turkey will only leave when
NATO throws it out, which isn't going to happen.
Perestroika and Trump_vs_deep_state has one important thing in common -- they arose out of deep crisis of the
Soviet Society and the US neoliberal society, correspondingly
Notable quotes:
"... The reasoning of Gorbachev's program of perestroika -- as an attempt to both transcend tired Soviet orthodoxies while remaining loyal to the underlying assumptions of the regime -- also explains the attraction of Trump_vs_deep_state to many conservative intellectuals, voters, and activists. Trump_vs_deep_state gives its followers the allure of reckoning with the conservative movement's inadequacies while remaining faithful to its underlying assumptions about economics and the role of the state. ..."
"... For all its recklessness, it is this faction of Right that has indeed grappled with a nation whose poor- and lower-middle class face the erosion of both wages and a formerly rich institutional fabric ..."
"... When Bannon calls for Americans to understand themselves as citizens with "certain responsibilities and obligations," it's a subtle -- if incomplete and disingenuous -- recognition that the vocabulary of "liquid modernity" cannot rescue us from the very fruits it created. ..."
"... The Hayekian claim that any language of social justice commences a perilous journey towards serfdom was perhaps necessary to combat midcentury sirens of collectivism. But today it is more often representative of an age fearful of placing demanding claims upon our lives ..."
"... Someone else at TAC asked a similar question, and the answer is, no: Trump is no Gorbachev. If anything he is our Boris Yeltsin. And no, that is not intended as a compliment. MEOW , says: November 15, 2017 at 12:07 am Good points. Gorby was a realist like the Chinese. They could not depress a people's living standards with an inferior system of exchange, production, and distribution. The word was out about living standard differences. The one-world movement is very different. It means to disable all our traditions and differences (Happy Holidays for Merry Christmas – rewriting history etc) in order to allow a different cabal to prevail in this artificially created vacuum. Mac61 , says: November 15, 2017 at 6:46 am Gorbachev said we must set aside all ideology and look at all things through the light of morality. Trump is not capable of that. Bannon tried to ally Trump_vs_deep_state with Judeo-Christian morality. That project seems incomplete at the moment. Egypt Steve , says: November 15, 2017 at 9:26 am I suppose if you compare any two things, you can find some points of similarity somewhere. M1798 , says: November 15, 2017 at 9:32 am You ask for a more expansive welfare state, but didn't Make the case that our current welfare state does any public good. Food stamps and disability payments subsidize mothers to not keep the father around and fathers to not work to provide for their families. We have job training programs, yet you fail to make the case that they serve any long term good. And even our most popular welfare programs, social security and Medicare, are financially unsustainable. You wrote this article as if the GOP has legislated in the same way as their rhetoric, yet the we saw the failure to repeal Obamacare as proof that this isn't true. Dan Green , says: November 15, 2017 at 9:39 am I subscribe to what Hayek coined, the road to serfdom. Once The Social Democratic Welfare State is fully implemented , as we witness today, the state cannot make it work. Currently the model is subsidized with debt. John , says: November 15, 2017 at 10:49 am If there were an award in journalism for the hottest of takes, this might be a strong finalist for this year's. Otherwise LOL. vern , says: November 15, 2017 at 11:38 am Trump is none of the above. His only purpose in government was for his own ego gratification and to increase his wealth. He is a puppet for whoever is close enough for him to pull his strings. His favorite world leaders all happen to be autocrats who care little about civil liberties or human rights. He cares about wins and losses (ego) He is not religious, it is just a smoke screen he has put up so he can hide his worse tendencies and use it to block criticism. spite , says: November 15, 2017 at 11:57 am People that write these kind of articles just never get it (actually they probably do but cannot say these things openly). It has to do with race, whether you like this reason or not – this is the underlying fundamental issue at play here. Being replaced by another people is not going to sit well with some, one would think this is stating the obvious but it seems that the fear to broach this topic makes people come up with all kinds of reasonings that simply do not admit the truth of this. I know that anything to do with race causes so called conservatives to have abject fear (even this comment has a high chance of being censored), but you simply cannot ignore this anymore. Alex , says: November 15, 2017 at 11:59 am Oh, please. I am from the former Soviet Union. I know who Gorbachev was. He was a democrat, Trump is a dictator. Gorbachev was able to talk and listen to people, Trump is very good in insulting and blaming people. I can continue forever. They have nothing in common as human beings. connecticut farmer , says: November 15, 2017 at 12:34 pm " in which the state is again recognized as a limited but essential expression of our shared life together, where we are members not just of a market but a "great common enterprise" in which solidarity and justice are indeed tangible things." This phrase unfortunately constitutes a blemish on an otherwise fine and thoughtful article. Exactly what does the phrase "limited but essential expression of our shared life together" mean? "Limited" by what? What "great common enterprise"? What "solidarity"? Ours is a country where commonality of purpose–to the extent that it has ever existed in the first place– appears to be vanishing at an exponential level. Lots of questions. No answers. polistra , says: November 15, 2017 at 1:10 pm Obama is more like Gorbachev. The last attempt to rebrand the old system, hoping to make it more palatable. Trump may turn out to be more like Yeltsin if he starts doing SOMETHING. So far the fake image of "Trump" is causing all sorts of reactions and changes, but the actual Trump has done nothing at all. He just emits meaningless noises, handing his enemies free ammunition. ..."
TAC'
s own Rod Dreher recently
highlighted an American professor's exchange with an African diplomat, who compared Donald
Trump to Mikhail Gorbachev. Just as the last Soviet premier unwittingly became "the man who
destroyed a superpower," Trump in this view is recklessly squandering the United States' global
position. But upon reflection, the analogy holds for another reason: Whatever Trump's own
mixture of "irritable mental gestures," Trump_vs_deep_state -- as articulated by Steve Bannon, Laura
Ingraham, Michael Anton & Company -- can be read as a sort of perestroika for the
American Right.
A reader may naturally look warily at the comparison. Can one discern a link between the
rhetoric of Breitbart and Gorbachev's exhortation, "to reject obedience to any dogma, to think
independently, to submit one's thoughts and plans of action to the test of morality"? However
reaching, the comparison may allow us to discern why debates over immigration and trade now
capture the conservative imagination in a way not reducible to "white identity politics" or
reflexive loyalty to the president.
The reasoning of Gorbachev's program of perestroika -- as an attempt to both
transcend tired Soviet orthodoxies while remaining loyal to the underlying assumptions of the
regime -- also explains the attraction of Trump_vs_deep_state to many conservative intellectuals, voters,
and activists. Trump_vs_deep_state gives its followers the allure of reckoning with the conservative
movement's inadequacies while remaining faithful to its underlying assumptions about economics
and the role of the state. The appeal of nationalist rhetoric is not reducible to
nativism, though it might be for some. Instead, Bannon's program offers conservatives a safe
exit ramp from self-critical thinking, allowing them to both grapple with an erosion of work
and community among America's economic losers, while maintaining most of an existing right-wing
economic program.
In a 1987 message to the Communist Party's Central Committee, Gorbachev flaunted the Soviet
order for its "conservative inclinations, inertia, and desire to brush aside everything that
didn't fit into habitual patterns." This is the same critique offered by the Jacksonian Right
of the conservative establishment. "The whole enterprise of Conservative Inc.," wrote
Michael Anton in his famous "Flight 93 Election" essay, "reeks of failure. Its sole recent and
ongoing success is its own self-preservation."
For all its recklessness, it is this faction of Right that has indeed grappled with a
nation whose poor- and lower-middle class face the erosion of both wages and a
formerly rich institutional fabric Laura Ingraham's description of "a working class hammered by
globalization" would not seem foreign to readers of Our Kids, Hillbilly Elegy, or
Janesville . At its most tone-deaf, the Right responds with incantations to
"rekindle the rugged individualism of America's founding, frontiers, and Constitution." But
even those on the center-right with sincere empathy frequently offer only small-ball politics.
For all their merits ,
a modest increase of the Child Tax Credit, repeal of occupational licensing, vouchers for
improved geographic mobility, and moral exhortations for coastal elites to escape their bubble
do not match the gravity of the moment. In a certain way, the Bannonite call for the wall and
ripping up trade agreements is a rebellion against a purely technocratic politics without
boldness of purpose. When Bannon calls for Americans to understand themselves as citizens
with "certain responsibilities and obligations," it's a subtle -- if incomplete and
disingenuous -- recognition that the vocabulary of "liquid modernity"
cannot rescue us from the very fruits it created.
Trade and immigration are becoming the signature benchmarks for this new movement. Yet the
Jacksonian shift allows conservatives to still maintain their aversion to a strong, active
welfare state, an institution all other Western center-right parties have come to terms with.
Limiting the fluid movement of goods and people, in this view, will accomplish the same goals
as a state modeled on social or Christian-democratic purposes: We do not need to expand child
tax credits or pursue ambitious investments of retraining and vocational education. All our
struggling labor markets
demand is "stopping the importation of cheap labor." At the same time, we can press ahead
to repeal Obamacare and the tentacles of the administrative state, for economic nationalism can
ameliorate our social problems far better than any program arising out of the Washington
cesspool. Perhaps this strategy explains why, according to
Pew Research , the president maintains far more support among "Core Conservatives" than
"Country First" and "Market Skeptic" Republicans. The Trump revolution is ultimately not a
decisive schism from old-time William F. Buckley-style fusionism, no matter what both
supporters and Never Trumpers allege.
Systematic free-marketers may point out accurately how Trump_vs_deep_state can be just as economically
redistributive as any welfare program. This is all true, but to most conservative activists,
all this subtle redistribution and subsidizing looks far more hidden than paid-family leave or
public investments in early childhood or prenatal care. In other words, Trump_vs_deep_state's attraction
derives not from its wholesale rejection of traditional American conservatism, but its
potential to keep its core tenets of the right alive -- even as neoliberalism's inadequacies
suggest what is needed is a more vigorous discussion of what conservatism means in the public
sphere.
If Trump_vs_deep_state's fundamental attraction to most conservative writers and activists derives from
its ability to revise but sustain their movement, it is difficult to see how it will be to
evolve into a credible governing program. This is not because a more hawkish line on
immigration and trade is a fundamental betrayal of the "liberal world order." Indeed, one need
only read
Paul CollierGeorge BorjasMichael
Lind ,
Peter Skerry , or Dani
Rodrik to find sustained, reasonable critiques of the establishment consensus on these
matters.
But none of these authors would present their heterodox dissents as singular solutions for
restoring the American (or Western) social contract. Just as Gorbachev's ambition was not to
revitalize Russia but the Soviet Union, so is Trump_vs_deep_state not a program to save the Republic, or
even a more narrow "Middle America." Despite the Jacobin rhetoric, the Trump_vs_deep_state of Bannon,
Anton, and Ingraham is ultimately a rearguard maneuver to preserve a conservative movement
whose even devoted partisans recognize has not aged gracefully since 1989. To keep it alive,
wrecking the "globalist" consensus on immigration and trade must be pursued, regardless of the
absence of any discernible benefit for the white working class.
What would a true revolution for American conservatism look like? It should start with the
(early) thought of George Will, who wrote in the New Republic that, "if conservatism is to engage itself with the way we live now, it
must address government's graver purposes with an affirmative doctrine of the welfare state."
Conservatives must "come to terms with a social reality more complex than their slogans," where
equality of opportunity is assumed as given. The Hayekian claim that any language of social
justice commences a perilous journey towards serfdom was perhaps necessary to combat midcentury
sirens of collectivism. But today it is more often representative of an age fearful of placing
demanding claims upon our lives .
The Right must again recover the
wisdom held by Disraeli, Churchill, and the (early) domestic neoconservatives, in which the
state is again recognized as a limited but essential expression of our shared life together,
where we are members not just of a market but a "great common enterprise" in which solidarity
and justice are indeed tangible things. Accepting this truth will be a harder project than
tightening the border and combating Chinese mercantilism, worthy though such things may be. But
it will be far more revolutionary, even historic, than anything the present Trumpian revolution
offers.
David Jimenez, a recent graduate of Bowdoin College and a Fulbright Scholar in Romania,
works on campus outreach at a Washington think-tank.
Good points. Gorby was a realist like the Chinese. They could not depress a people's living
standards with an inferior system of exchange, production, and distribution. The word was out
about living standard differences. The one-world movement is very different. It means to
disable all our traditions and differences (Happy Holidays for Merry Christmas –
rewriting history etc) in order to allow a different cabal to prevail in this artificially
created vacuum.
Gorbachev said we must set aside all ideology and look at all things through the light of
morality. Trump is not capable of that. Bannon tried to ally Trump_vs_deep_state with Judeo-Christian
morality. That project seems incomplete at the moment.
You ask for a more expansive welfare state, but didn't Make the case that our current
welfare state does any public good. Food stamps and disability payments subsidize mothers to
not keep the father around and fathers to not work to provide for their families. We have job
training programs, yet you fail to make the case that they serve any long term good. And even
our most popular welfare programs, social security and Medicare, are financially
unsustainable. You wrote this article as if the GOP has legislated in the same way as their
rhetoric, yet the we saw the failure to repeal Obamacare as proof that this isn't true.
I subscribe to what Hayek coined, the road to serfdom. Once The Social Democratic Welfare
State is fully implemented , as we witness today, the state cannot make it work. Currently
the model is subsidized with debt.
Trump is none of the above. His only purpose in government was for his own ego gratification
and to increase his wealth.
He is a puppet for whoever is close enough for him to pull his strings. His favorite world
leaders all happen to be autocrats who care little about civil liberties or human rights.
He cares about wins and losses (ego) He is not religious, it is just a smoke screen he has
put up so he can hide his worse tendencies and use it to block criticism.
People that write these kind of articles just never get it (actually they probably do but
cannot say these things openly). It has to do with race, whether you like this reason or not
– this is the underlying fundamental issue at play here. Being replaced by another
people is not going to sit well with some, one would think this is stating the obvious but it
seems that the fear to broach this topic makes people come up with all kinds of reasonings
that simply do not admit the truth of this. I know that anything to do with race causes so
called conservatives to have abject fear (even this comment has a high chance of being
censored), but you simply cannot ignore this anymore.
Oh, please. I am from the former Soviet Union. I know who Gorbachev was. He was a democrat,
Trump is a dictator. Gorbachev was able to talk and listen to people, Trump is very good in
insulting and blaming people. I can continue forever. They have nothing in common as human
beings.
" in which the state is again recognized as a limited but essential expression of our shared
life together, where we are members not just of a market but a "great common enterprise" in
which solidarity and justice are indeed tangible things."
This phrase unfortunately constitutes a blemish on an otherwise fine and thoughtful
article. Exactly what does the phrase "limited but essential expression of our shared life
together" mean? "Limited" by what? What "great common enterprise"? What "solidarity"? Ours is
a country where commonality of purpose–to the extent that it has ever existed in the
first place– appears to be vanishing at an exponential level.
Obama is more like Gorbachev. The last attempt to rebrand the old system, hoping to make it
more palatable.
Trump may turn out to be more like Yeltsin if he starts doing SOMETHING. So far the fake
image of "Trump" is causing all sorts of reactions and changes, but the actual Trump has done
nothing at all. He just emits meaningless noises, handing his enemies free ammunition.
"For all its recklessness, it is this faction of Right that has indeed grappled with a nation
whose poor- and lower-middle class face the erosion of both wages and a formerly rich
institutional fabric."
But Trump might already be betraying it, as this article on banking (de)regulation
suggests. It doesn't bode will for what the tax reform bill would mean for the 80% in the
bottom quintiles of the population.
Unfortunately the entrenched social democratic welfare state will not lead to serfdom but to
a dysfunctional society. This is the lesson from independent india which has no political
party representing individualistic policies. The current Hindu nationalist party in power
caters to Hindu sentiments but a redistributive economic policy. As an outsider i see USA
following the same path with islands of functionality sustaining barely, the rest. Hopefully
the author would join in a length discussion with me on this
"... So should Mr Azar be confirmed as Secretary of DHHS, the fox guarding the hen house appears to be a reasonable analogy. ..."
"... In this post, I'd like to add two additional factors to our consideration of Azar. The first: Democrat credentialism makes it hard for them to oppose Azar. The second: The real ..."
Clearly, Alex Azar, nominated yesterday for the position of Secretary of Health and Human Services by the Trump Administration,
exemplifies the case of the "revolving door," through which
Flexians slither on their way to (or from) positions of public trust. Roy Poses (
cross-posted at NC ) wrote, when Azar was only Acting Secretary:
Last week we noted that Mr Trump famously promised to “drain the swamp” in Washington. Last week, despite his previous
pledges to not appoint lobbyists to powerful positions, he appointed a lobbyist to be acting DHHS Secretary. This week he is apparently
strongly considering Mr Alex Azar, a pharmaceutical executive to be permanent DHHS Secretary, even though the FDA, part of DHHS,
has direct regulatory authority over the pharmaceutical industry, and many other DHHS policies strongly affect the pharmaceutical
industry. (By the way, Mr Azar was also in charge of one lobbying effort.)
So should Mr Azar be confirmed as Secretary of DHHS, the fox guarding the hen house appears to be a reasonable analogy.
Moreover, several serious legal cases involving bad behavior by his company, and multiple other instances of apparently unethical
behavior occurred on Mr Azar’s watch at Eli Lilly. So the fox might be not the most reputable member of the species.
The literature makes clear that the revolving door process is a source of valuable political connections for private firms.
But it generates corruption risks and has strong distortionary effects on the economy , especially when this power is
concentrated within a few firms.
The ongoing parade of people transiting the revolving door from industry to the Trump administration once again suggests how
the revolving door may enable certain of those with private vested interests to have excess influence, way beyond that of ordinary
citizens, on how the government works, and that the country is still increasingly being run by a cozy group of insiders with ties
to both government and industry. This has been termed crony capitalism.
In this post, I'd like to add two additional factors to our consideration of Azar.
The first: Democrat credentialism makes it hard for them to oppose Azar. The second: The real damage Azar could do is on
the regulatory side.[1]
"I am glad to hear that you have worked hard, and brought fair-minded legal analysis to the department," Democratic
Sen. Max Baucus said at Azar's last confirmation hearing.
And:
Andy Slavitt, who ran the Affordable Care Act and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services during the Obama administration,
said he has reason to hope Azar would be a good secretary.
"He is familiar with the high quality of the HHS staff, has real-world experience enough to be pragmatic, and will hopefully
avoid repeating the mistakes of his predecessor," Slavitt said.
So, if Democrats are saying Azar is "fair-minded" and "pragmatic" -- and heaven forfend that the word "corruption"[2] even be
mentioned -- how do they oppose him, even he's viscerally opposed to everything Democrats supposedly stand for? (Democrats do this
with judicial nominations, too.) Azar may be a fox, alright, but the chickens he's supposedly guarding are all clucking about how
impeccable his qualifications are!
Second, let's briefly look at Azar's bio. Let me excerpt salient detail from
USA Today :
1. Azar clerked for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia .
2. Azar went to work for his mentor, Ken Starr , who was heading the independent counsel investigation into Bill
and Hillary Clinton's Whitewater land deal.
3. Azar had a significant role in another major political controversy when the outcome of the 2000 presidential election
hinged on a recount in Florida . Azar was on the Bush team of lawyers whose side ultimately prevailed [3]
For any Democrat with a memory, that bio provokes one of those "You shall know them by the trail of the dead" moments. And then
there's this:
When Leavitt replaced Thompson in 2005 and Azar became his deputy, Leavitt delegated a lot of the rule-making process to Azar.
So, a liberal Democrat might classify Azar as a smooth-talking reactionary thug with a terrible record and the most vile mentors
imaginable, and on top of it all, he's an effective bureaucratic fixer. What could the Trump Administration possibly see in such
a person? Former (Republican) HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt explains:
"Understanding the administrative rule process in the circumstance we're in today could be extraordinarily important because
a lot of the change in the health care system, given the fact that they've not succeeded legislatively, could come administratively."
1) Administratively, send ObamaCare into a death spiral by sabotaging it
2) Legislatively, gut Medicaid as part of the "tax refom" package in Congress
3) Through executive order, eliminate "essential health benefits" through "association health plans"
As a sidebar, it's interesting to see that although this do-list is strategically and ideologically coherent -- basically,
your ability to access health care will be directly dependent on your ability to pay -- it's institutionally incoherent, a bizarre
contraption screwed together out of legislation, regulations, and an Executive order. Of course, this incoherence mirrors to Rube
Goldberg structure of ObamaCare itself, itself a bizarre contraption, especially when compared to the simple, rugged, and proven
single payer system. ( Everything Obama did with regulations and executive orders, Trump can undo, with new regulations and
new executive orders . We might compare ObamaCare to a child born with no immune system, that could only have survived within
the liberal bubble within which it was created; in the real world, it's not surprising that it's succumbing to opportunistic infections.[2])
On #1, The administration has, despite its best efforts, not achieved a controlled flight into terrain with ObamaCare; enrollment
is up. On #2, the administration and its Congressional allies are still dickering with tax reform. And on #3 . That looks looks like
a job for Alex Azar, since both essential health benefits and association health plans are significantly affected by regulation.
So, yes, there are worse scenarios than the revolving door; it's what you leave behind you as the door revolves that matters.
It would be lovely if there were a good old-fashioned confirmation battle over Azar, but, as I've pointed out, the Democrats have
tied their own hands. Ideally, the Democrats would junk the Rube Goldberg device that is ObamaCare, rendering all of Azar's regulatory
expertise null and void, but that doesn't seem likely, given that they seem to be doing everything possible to avoid serious discussion
of policy in 2018 and 2020.
NOTES
[1] I'm leaving aside what will no doubt be the 2018 or even 2020 issue of drug prices, since for me that's subsumed under the
issue of single payer. If we look only at Azar's history in business, real price decreases seem unlikely.
Business Insider :
Over the 10-year period when Azar was at Lilly, the price of insulin notched a three-fold increase. It wasn't just Lilly's
insulin product, called Humalog. The price of a rival made by Novo Nordisk has also climbed, with the two rising in such lockstep
that you can barely see both trend lines below.
The gains came despite the fact that the insulin, which as a medication has an almost-century-long history, hasn't really changed
since it was first approved.
Nice business to be in, eh? Here's that chart:
It's almost like Lilly (Azar's firm) and Novo Nordisk are working together, isn't it?
[2] Anyhow,
as of the 2016 Clinton campaign , the Democrat standard -- not that of Poses,
nor
mine -- is that if there's no quid pro quo, there's no corruption.
[3] And, curiously, "[HHS head Tommy] Thompson said HHS was in the eye of the storm after the 2001 terrorist attacks, and Azar
had an important role in responding to the resulting public health challenges, as well as the subsequent anthrax attacks "
Oh please, stop quoting Andy Slavitt, the United Healthcare Ingenix algo man. That guy is the biggest crook that made his money
early on with RX discounts with his company that he and Senator Warren's daughter, Amelia sold to United Healthcare. He's out
there trying to do his own reputation restore routine. Go back to 2009 and read about the short paying of MDs by Ingenix, which
is now Optum Insights, he was the CEO and remember it was just around 3 years ago or so he sat there quarterly with United CEO
Hemsley at those quarterly meetings. Look him up, wants 40k to speak and he puts the perception out there he does this for free,
not so.
I think you're missing the context. Lambert is quoting him by way of showing that the sleazy establishment types are just fine
with him. Thanks for the extra background on that particular swamp-dweller, though.
Alex Azar is a Dartmouth grad (Gov't & Economics '88) just like Jeff Immelt (Applied Math & Economics '78). So much damage
to society from such a small department!
Since 2014, Ross has been the vice-chairman of the board of Bank of Cyprus PCL, the largest bank in Cyprus.
He served under U.S. President Bill Clinton on the board of the U.S.-Russia Investment Fund. Later, under New York City Mayor
Rudy Giuliani, Ross served as the Mayor's privatization advisor.
I don't believe that the President's "swamp" ever consisted of crooked officials, lobbyists, and cronies I think it has always
consisted of those regulators who tried sincerely to defend public interests.
It was in the sticky work of those good bureaucrats
that the projects of capitalists and speculators bogged down. It is against their efforts that the pickup-driving cohort of Trump_vs_deep_state
(with their Gadsden flag decals) relentlessly rails.
Trump has made much progress in draining the regulatory swamp (if indeed
that is the right way to identify it), and no doubt will make considerably more as time wears on, leaving America high and dry.
The kind of prevaricator Trump is may simply be the one who fails to define his terms.
I think we've moved past the revolving door. We hear members of the United States Senate publicly voice their concerns about
what will happen if they fail to do their employers' bidding (and I'm not talking about "the public" here). In the bureaucracy,
political appointees keep accruing more and more power even as they make it clearer and clearer that they work for "the donors"
and not the people. Nowhere is this more true than the locus through which passes most of the money: the Pentagon. The fact that
these beribboned heroes are, in fact, setting war policy on their own makes the knowledge that they serve Raytheon and Exxon rather
than Americans very, very troubling.
I suspect Azar's perception is that he is just moving from one post to another within the same company.
Big pharma indeed has so much defense from the supposed left. It combines their faith in technological progress, elite institutions,
and tugs on the heart strings with technology that can save people from a fate of ill health or premature death. Of course, the
aspect of the laws being written to line the pockets of corrupt executives is glossed over. While drug prices and medical costs
spiral ever higher, our overall longevity and national health in the US declines. That speaks volumes about what Democrats really
care about.
Matthew Walther The failure and delusions of the adults in the room
Matthew Walther The 2020 Democratic frontrunner is a Republican
The passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act has refuted any notion that Trump's ascension to the White House would mark an end to neoliberalism. Poor whites who supported Trump expected him to offer America a new version of conservativism that would break with neoliberalism. Instead, furthering neoliberal policies has become a critical objective that works in tandem with Trump's xenophobic rhetoric
