Ruling Ideologies

Posted on January 11, 2017 by camelotkidd

 

Since the end of the Cold War in 1989, the United States has been operating under the auspices of two mutually reinforcing ideologies–neoliberalism and neoconservatism.

By criticizing trade treaties like the TPP and NAFTA, while promising to mend relations with Russia and cease regime change, president-elect Trump is challenging the continuation of these ruling ideologies.

Historian, Andrew Bacevich, has written an essay that examines how the US squandered a historic opportunity with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of communism. In the process, Bacevich traces the US economic and foreign policies that have led to the election of Trump.

“Globalization, militarized hegemony, and a more expansive definition of freedom, guided by enlightened presidents in tune with the times, should have provided Americans with all the blessings that were rightly theirs as a consequence of having prevailed in the Cold War.  Instead, between 1989 and 2016, things kept happening that weren’t supposed to happen.”

Bacevich doesn’t quite say it, but the things that kept happening should be properly understood as the blowback from the twin ruling ideologies–neoliberalism and neoconservatism.

The US elite saw the end of the Cold War as a marvelous opportunity to expand and consolidate the empire they inherited from Great Britain at the end of WWII. Since the US is supposedly a “democratic republic” there needed to be a cover story. The idea of the US is a “reluctant imperialist” or a “benevolent empire,” has been ongoing within academic literature and US corporate media to both advocate for and justify the existence of American domination of the world.

Thanks to planning documents, we know that the US was not a reluctant or accidental empire, nor, for that matter, a benevolent one. America chose to be an empire; it was strategised, discussed, debated, planned and implemented. The key architects of this empire were the bankers and corporations which arose out of America’s Industrial Revolution in the late 19th century, the prominent think tanks created throughout the first half of the 20th century, and the major academics, economists and policy-makers who emerged from the universities, institutes, think tanks, and the business community, and who dominated the Washington D.C. planning circles that made policy.

These very same ruling sentiments reemerged at the end of the Cold War. However, with the demise of the Soviet Union, US planners has no need to soften or disguise their economic and foreign policies to appease critics at home or abroad. Now, to quote Margaret Thatcher, there was “no alternative.”

Under the auspices of neoliberalism, the US has pushed a program of globalization led by U.S.-based financial institutions and transnational corporations.  Supposedly, this “open world” would facilitate the movement of goods, capital, ideas, and people and thereby create wealth on an unprecedented scale. “In the process, the rules governing American-style corporate capitalism would come to prevail everywhere on the planet, while US corporations and banks dominated the worlds economic system.”

Under the auspices of neoconservatism, the US has carried out a militaristic foreign policy, overthrowing or invading states not to our liking. “Since the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, the U.S. has waged war (sometimes creating new client-states) in Bosnia (1994-5),  Serbia (1999), Afghanistan (2001- ), Iraq (2003- ), Libya (2011), and Syria (2014- ), while raining down drone strikes from Pakistan to Yemen to North Africa. These wars-based-on-lies have produced hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, millions of refugees, and general ongoing catastrophe throughout the Middle East.”

Thus, to maintain US corporate hegemony, neoliberalism is dependent upon neoconservatism. This dynamic was well summed up by NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman, in his book the Lexus and the Olive Tree. “The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the U.S. Air Force F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps. For globalism to work, America can’t be afraid to act like the almighty superpower that it is.”

The problem with the neoliberal, neoconservative, corporate empire is that the gains have largely accrued to the 1%, with the vast majority of Americans coming out the worse for these policies. The election of Trump reflects this discontent. His supporters may not understand the details of the neoliberal and neoconservative policies of empire but they sense the vast betrayal carried out by our bi-partisan elite.

The series of crises that culminated with the election of Trump have been caused by our elite’s embrace of neoliberalism and neoconservatism.

Trump’s presidency will succeed or fail based on whether or not he can break free of these ruling ideologies.

Update: It used to be that the Republicans were the party that favored endless war but lately the Democrats have gotten into the act. After Hillary lost the presidential election the Democrats wasted no time in blaming her loss on the hacking of the nefarious Russians. Of course, since war is a bi-partisan affair, the Democrats were joined in their denunciation of Russia by neoconservatives, liberal interventionists, the corporate media, various Soros-funded NGO’s, virtually all the important think-tanks, and the CIA and the other intelligence agencies.

In my opinion, this hostility is designed to prevent Trump from seeking detente with Russia, and ensuring that the ruling ideology of neoconservatism remains intact. Likewise, there will be tremendous pressure on Trump to maintain the corporate globalization agenda favored by neoliberals.

 

 

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Necessary Lessons

Posted on January 4, 2017 by camelotkidd

 

Liberals lamenting the election of Donald Trump have not absorbed the necessary lessons.

Rather than examining the policies of financial neoliberalism and the identity politics that provided neoliberalism its moral veneer, they are still blaming the Russians, or the racism and stupidity of the “deplorables”, for the loss of Hillary Clinton.

The voters who elected Trump, like the ones who voted for Brexit, did so as a revolt against neoliberalism, which has been responsible for the erosion of their living standard for the last 40 years. However, the vote for Trump was not just a rejection of neoliberalism, but a repudiation of “progressive neoliberalism“. Progressive neoliberalism married financial capitalism, as represented by Wall Street, with progressive social movements such as gay-rights, feminism, anti-racism, and multiculturalism. This is the platform that Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton ran on.

Trump was treated as a joke, and Democrats like Hillary saw him as the ideal candidate to run against. Up until the final election results, liberal media icons, like the New York Times and Washington Post, predicted victory for Hillary.

The DNC and elite liberal media believed their own propaganda–that the new, hip, urban, progressive coalition had consigned the old, reactionary, rural, conservative coalition to the dustbin of history.

Surprise.

And now, in the US and Britain, there is a great deal of anger at those impertinent citizens who voted the wrong way. They are castigated as evil or racist, or maybe too dumb to vote for their own self-interests. In just one example, liberal writer, Daily Kos publisher and Vox Media co-founder Markos Moulitsas proclaimed: “Be Happy for Coal Miners Losing Their Health Insurance. They’re Getting Exactly What They Voted For”

This sort of shit is nauseating. If we are succeed in opposing the kleptocratic ruling policies of Trump, we need to be honest in examining the reasons for his election and not engage in attacks against prospective allies. The owner-class is certainly celebrating this infighting. Divide and conquer is as old as the hills, and predictably effective.

In my opinion, what has made the election of Donald Trump possible is the absence of a workers party in the US. This has led to the lack of a vision that could link the legitimate economic grievances of Trump supporters with an trenchant critique of neoliberalism, together with policies of equality for people of color, woman, and LGBT.

The Democratic Party, as represented by candidate Hillary Clinton, has  no interest in such policies, as demonstrated by their repeated failure to unite labor with these new social movements. Perhaps it wasn’t a bug but a feature to disguise who their true masters on Wall Street are. After all, the Democrats got to pose as liberals, while secretly promoting policies that have impoverished the majority of Americans, while enriching the ownership class.

The necessary lesson to draw from all of this is that the Democratic Party, as it is presently configured, is not a real opposition party.

Now, what are we going to do about it?

 

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War Pigs: or How Liberals Learned to Stop Worrying and to Love the Drone

Posted on December 24, 2016 by camelotkidd

 

When did the liberals turn into war pigs?

If there was going to be anything positive from the election of Trump, it was the lowering of tensions between the US and Russia.

With liberals excitedly pointing to the CIA’s assessment that Russia hacked our election, that may not happen.

In fact, I believe that this demonization is an attempt to block President–elect Trump from advancing better relations with Russia.

I’m old enough to remember when liberals distrusted the CIA and saw them as the enemy. 

For good reason. Since its inception in 1947, the CIA has employed a network of willing media conduits to propagandize the American people as part of Operation Mockingbird.

Fake news, indeed.

There’s also that little matter of projection. “The U.S. has a long history of attempting to influence presidential elections in other countries – it’s done so as many as 81 times between 1946 and 2000, according to a database amassed by political scientist Dov Levin of Carnegie Mellon University. That number doesn’t include military coups and regime change efforts following the election of candidates the U.S. didn’t like, notably those in Iran, Guatemala and Chile.”

I believe the real reason for all of this is that the military/industrial/complex is desperate for an ongoing conflict with Russia as a way to maintain their funding. There is just too much money and power at stake for the complex to shrink.

The biggest threat to the MIC has always been the threat of peace. With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, much of the military-industrial complex was suddenly deprived of its reason for existence—the threat was gone. Since then there has been a frantic search for new enemies to justify its enormous spending, and boondoggles like the F-35.

Now, Trump is threatening their feeding trough.

Why do you need a billion dollar fighter plane to battle stateless terrorists holed up in a cave?

You don’t.

The evil Russian empire, led by bad-Vlad?

Now you’re talking.

A Russian enemy requires all kinds of high-tech (read expensive) weapon systems, like the F-35. Maybe some more nukes.

What’s truly upsetting is that this love of war by liberals was brought on by Mr. “Hope and Change”. Since 2009, Obama, and his merry band of liberal/interventionists, like Samantha Power, Susan Rice, and Victoria Nuland, have been doing a pretty good neoconservative imitation.

In a manner, Obama has institutionalized many of the horrible foreign policies of Bush, with better public relations. Instead of capturing so-called terrorists and torturing and imprisoning them like Bush did, Obama simply assassinates them via drone.

Ironically, Obama was awarded the Noble peace prize, before the committee even had any idea about his future policies.

What, you were expecting bankers in orange jumpsuits?

It’s all tribal. When Bush was doing these horrible things, liberals were in high dungeon, but when Obama is doing the same, or worse, they defend it.

I’m sure that when Trump begins the next war, liberals will be back to denouncing violence.

There was a song in my youth that spoke of such things.

“Now in darkness, world stops turning,
ashes where the bodies burning.
No more war pigs have the power,
hand of god has struck the hour.
Day of judgement, god is calling,
on their knees the war pigs crawling.
Begging mercy for their sins,
Satan, laughing, spreads his wings…Oh lord, yeah!”

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Planned economy

Posted on December 21, 2016 by camelotkidd

 

The election of Donald Trump has caused an outpouring of grief and many commentators are convinced that the end of the world is nigh. However, Trump didn’t get us to this place, he was just a savvy opportunist who took full advantage of the economic and foreign policies that both Democrats and Republicans have pursued for the last 40 years.

Supposedly, the US eschews governmental planning in favor of a so-called free market. Of course, every economy is a planned economy, it just depends on who does the planning.

Economist, Michael Hudson, says that Wall Street plans the US economy.

“Under Greenspan and modern economics, a market is “free” from government regulation, free from throwing the bankers in jail when they commit crime, free from any kind of policymaking by government, by labor unions, or by society. So a free market today is a centrally planned economy, but it’s not planned by government. The planning is shifted out of government to the banks.”

Hudson says that US economists, especially the ones that work for the Federal reserve, justify the planning of the economy by Wall Street.

“They’re drawn from these Wall Street institutions. It’s also the financial sector that endows the universities and the business schools. Hardly by surprise, these schools teach that there is no such thing as unearned income, no exploitation. They teach that the financial sector is the most productive sector in the economy, instead of a burden that should be subtracted from GDP, because it’s an overhead that the rest of the economy has to pay.”

What Wall Street wants is the financialization of the US economy. This has resulted in the offshoring of American manufacturing and concomitant loss of jobs by former middle-class workers. The CEO’s of manufacturing corporations can make more money by strip-mining their business, aided and abetted by hedge funds who want to extract as much wealth as possible from the company while putting back as little as possible into production and workers.

Wall Street friendly economists justified this through their policy of shareholder value. Until the late 1970s changes in real wages tracked changes in productivity in the U.S. economy. It was the retain-and-reinvest employment policies of major U.S. corporations that largely accounted for this shared prosperity. Thanks to the theory of shareholder value, pushed by Wall Street friendly economists, “since the late 1970s there has been a widening gap between the growth in productivity and the growth in real wages, caused by a downsize- and-distribute regime in which corporate executives look for opportunities to downsize the labor force and distribute earnings to financial interests.”

In his voluminous writings, Hudson makes the distinction between earned and un-earned income. He points to classical economics, practiced by John Stuart Mills, and Adam Smith, which sought to free up an economy from rent, or financial overhead, so that small businesses could thrive.

The problem is that both Republicans and Democrats favor the powerful financial interests that fund them. They have no interest in creating an economy like the one Hudson describes. Both parties repeat Margaret Thatcher’s maxim–there is no alternative. The Democrats are particularly offensive since they pose as the party of labor. During the recent presidential campaign, Hillary insisted that no change was possible from that of financial neoliberalism— which Adolph Reed has succinctly defined as “capitalism without a labor opposition”.

But the American people know better. Our corporate media cheerleaders have suppressed the fact that economic policies that are considered far to the left by our political elite enjoy popular support among the American people.

For instance, clear majorities of Americans favor breaking up the too big to fail banks, single payer health-care system, free college tuition, and many other “socialist” policies, like the ones put forth by Bernie Sanders during his campaign for president. Sander’s campaign articulated a broad social-democratic program on inequality, regulating Wall Street, health care, education, housing, and jobs and expanded the political discourse to include the categories of class, power, and democratic socialism. It even demonstrated that money was not a definitive barrier to an electoral challenge.

Unfortunately, we’re stuck with Trump, thanks to the DNC, with their single-minded quest to elect Hillary Clinton at all costs, even sabotaging Sanders campaign, as the WikiLeaks files demonstrate.

But, Trump has inherited a mess, with a country hopelessly divided. And, with much of the deep state arrayed against him, he faces opposition to his presidency. If he makes it to the White House he will face an immediate challenge from Federal-Reserve Chair Janet Yellen who recently raised the interest rate, potentially derailing Trump’s economic agenda.

If Trump wants to govern he will absolutely require the ability to plan the US economy, with or despite Wall Street and the other members of the deep state.

Grab some popcorn.

Update: Ian Welsh makes the obvious point–Kleptocracy is neoliberalism’s child, its logical end-result, and Trump is just a new stage in kleptocracy.

 

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Internal divisions

Posted on December 13, 2016 by camelotkidd

 

The election of Donald Trump is provoking internal divisions within the deep state, leading to some very interesting disclosures. Indeed, there is a battle being waged for influence and control in the presumptive Trump administration.

It might be useful to reexamine Mike Lofgren’s essay describing the deep state, to help suss out how and why this battle is being prosecuted. Lofgren was a congressional staff member for 28 years specializing in national security and possessing a top secret security clearance.

“There is another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose.

The deep state is the big story of our time. It is the red thread that runs through the war on terrorism, the financialization and deindustrialization of the American economy, the rise of a plutocratic social structure and political dysfunction. 

The deep state does not consist of the entire government. It is a hybrid of national security and law enforcement agencies: the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Justice Department.” 

Lofgren says that members of the deep state, while pretending to be neutral technocrats with America’s best interests at heart, “almost invariably believe in the “Washington Consensus”: financialization, outsourcing, privatization, deregulation and the commodifying of labor. Internationally, they espouse 21st-century “American Exceptionalism”: the right and duty of the United States to meddle in every region of the world with coercive diplomacy and boots on the ground.”

So far Trump has resisted the daily presidential briefing by the CIA in favor of briefings by his nominee to be national security adviser, former Defense Intelligence Agency head General Michael Flynn.

Now, there’s the new CIA report alleging Russian meddling in the US election to favor Trump rather than Clinton. This report should be understood as a direct attack on the new administration by the CIA, who favored Hillary for president.

If you will recall, the CIA is strongly committed to regime change in Syria as part of its foreign policy mandate. Also, the CIA director, John Brennan, is very close to US ally Saudi Arabia, having served as the CIA station chief there before being named Obama’s national security advisor, and, then head of the CIA. Saudi Arabia is also committed to regime change in Syria, providing clandestine support with the U.S., Qatar and other Gulf States.

The dirty little secret of the war on terror is that for all the rhetoric about fighting terrorists the US is happy to use them to advance policy goals. To that end, the CIA has been funneling weapons and money through Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and others who provide direct and indirect support to groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda. This support has allowed al-Qaeda and their fellow terrorist organizations to establish strongholds throughout Syria, including in Aleppo.

The goal of such support for the Sunni terrorists attacking Syria is the creation of a Salafist principality” in east-Syria and west-Iraq. Gulf countries’ and Israeli lobbyists have called for such an occupation strategy. A U.S./Saudi controlled proxy entity that interrupts the “Shia crescent” from Iran over Iraq and Syria to Lebanon and holds the ground for a planned natural gas pipeline from Qatar to Turkey and onto Europe.

Meanwhile, Syria is supported by Russia. And, Trump has promised to mend relations with Russia. The Russian and Syrian hope may be that a Trump administration will abandon the present regime change policy.

Intelligence, and foreign policy expert, Marcy Wheeler, helps unpack all of this, and what it portends for the deep state going forward.

“First, if Trump comes into office on the current trajectory, the US will let Russia help Bashar al-Assad stay in power, thwarting a 4-year effort on the part of the Saudis to remove him from power. It will also restructure the hierarchy of horrible human rights abusing allies the US has, with the Saudis losing out to other human rights abusers, potentially up to and including that other petrostate, Russia. It will also install a ton of people with ties to the US oil industry in the cabinet, meaning the US will effectively subsidize oil production in this country, which will have the perhaps inadvertent result of ensuring the US remains oil-independent even though the market can’t justify fracking right now.

The CIA is institutionally quite close with the Saudis right now, and has been in charge of their covert war against Assad.

This story came 24 days after the White House released an anonymous statement asserting, among other things, “the Federal government did not observe any increased level of malicious cyber activity aimed at disrupting our electoral process on election day,” suggesting that the Russians may have been deterred.”

So, what is the purpose of such a leak, as Trump prepares to take office?

Here’s Marcy again. “The propaganda effect of these leaks will be to dampen any movement of a Trump administration towards more friendly relations with Russia. Any such move by Trump will be responded with a chorus “but Russia hacked our election” even though there has been zero evidence or proof produced that such was indeed the case.”

The plot thickens.

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The political/economy of empire

Posted on December 10, 2016 by camelotkidd

 

The US is an empire, in case you hadn’t noticed.

The political/economy of the US empire is the deep state.

The deep state in America is largely composed of the military/industrial/complex, the oil and gas industry, and Wall Street. The policies that they pursue shape and influence the economic and foreign policies of the American empire to their benefit.

When people think of empire, they imagine Roman legions, wars of conquest, and slave labor. Or Great Britain with its army of public servants administering a far flung empire where the sun never sets. These and other traditional empires tended to be about the acquisition of fertile lands or resources, the enslavement of people for exploitation, and the conquest of trade routes.

The US empire is of a different nature. It’s a corporate empire, where weapons, energy and finance play an outsized role. The US system of military bases straddling the world is not part of territorial occupation, but rather serves to maintain a stable of client states that US banks and corporations can dominate. In that way, the US employs its military to perpetuate American corporate preeminence.

The US empire has evolved from WWII, when the US sought to maintain its empire of client states by overthrowing leftist governments and installing pliable right-wing dictators or army officers. Think–Iran with the shah, or Guatemala with Colonel Armas.

The US empire of the 21st century is much less concerned with who rules its client states. Now, left-wing or right-wing governments are ok. The US empire uses market forces, such as trade agreements, debt bondage, and structural adjustments administered by the IMF, to control these governments.

In fact, the market can often succeed where military efforts of conquest fail. Take Vietnam. 40 years after the US was defeated by the Viet-Cong, and forced to retreat, Vietnam has largely acceded to US led globalization, including engaging in free-market reforms, privatization, and submission to IMF structural adjustment programs. After defeating the US militarily, they’ve been conquered by economic means, and surrendered to debt bondage and structural adjustments.

This reliance on economic means to maintain the US empire is what gives Wall Street its outsized role in national affairs, and why it’s been the leading member of the American deep state. It’s also why the Obama administration bailed out the banks instead of homeowners in the wake of the Wall Street crash of 2008. After all, Wall Street banks are essential to maintaining the American corporate empire, while homeowners are not.

The problem for the US empire in 2016, is that with it’s economic and financial power waning, military superiority seems to be the chief means by which U.S. imperialism can attempt to maintain global domination.

The election of Trump, exposes deep divisions within the deep state. What we see is that the incentives for the various members of the deep state are out of alignment. The empire of chaos thing certainly works for the MIC, while for energy and finance, endless war makes it hard to do business.

In my opinion, Trump intends to advance the US corporate empire, but in a different manner. Trump’s cabinet selections so far show finance losing out while energy and weapons are prospering

Stay tuned.

Update: Marcy, at Emptywheel says-–“It seems there’s a fight for the brain of Trump, even while he seems to be preparing to delegate all this stuff to his advisors.”

 

 

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Member Berries

Posted on December 6, 2016 by camelotkidd

 

To retake our country from the deep state we will have to end the American empire.

To end the American empire we have to challenge the narrative of American exceptionalism, that has been promulgated with the help of a corporate media that’s become undistinguishable from a state-controlled media. For example, the American media is always pro-war, and always pro-corporate-empire in accordance with US foreign policy.

American exceptionalism fuses the symbols of the state with those of the Christian religion, where actual knowledge is less important than fervent belief.

Most Americans have a Disneyfied version of US history, where America is the indispensable nation, laboring to spread peace and democracy.

Thanks to this corporate media portrayal, America’s real history of slavery, genocide and empire, is magically scrubbed away.

The election of Donald Trump with his campaign slogan–Make America Great Again, has appealed to this Disneyfied version of history, and also exposed the longing among his supporters for an imaginary golden-age of America. 

All of this was recently satirized by South Park, in an episode entitled Member Berries. The member berries, are small purple berries that utter nostalgic phrases that reflect American history–as imagined by straight, white, Christian-conservatives.

Member when Reagan was president and there weren’t so many Mexicans around and no gays?

The brutal reality facing Trump is that he will need to end the US empire to Make America  Great Again. He will also have to move past trite appeals to a member berry past.

Since we have two political parties I would be remiss if I didn’t address the Democrat’s use of a false and misleading history. After all, the Democrats have their very own member berries. Take the recent election loss–the Democrats, rather than examining Hillary’s shortcomings as a candidate, and their shitty policies, blamed it on the nefarious Russians.

Member when Hillary lost because Putin hacked our election?

Then, there’s the fact that both parties rely on the neoconservatives to articulate US foreign policy, even though this is the gang that couldn’t shoot straight and has been responsible for a series of cascading failures, from Afghanistan, to Iraq, to Libya, and now Syria. The neocons also use member berries as part of their Straussian deception.

Member when Saddam gave nerve gas to Al Qaeda so they could crop dust American cities?

As you can see from these examples, member berries aren’t just an appeal to an imaginary past. They are part of a sophisticated and ongoing ruling narrative, deployed to maintain the corporate empire and deep state.

This narrative is starting to break down, hence the hysterical reaction to the “fake news” controversy. In my opinion, this is largely due to fact that the US empire is falling apart, and the effects are starting to be felt here at home.

With a military budget almost the equal of all other countries put together and hundreds of military bases around the world, the US is drastically overextended. In the meantime, much of our country is descending into third-world status. Our elite living in their urban bubbles may not see this but in much of the fly-over parts of the country, where the people who actually fight America’s wars come from, and go back to with their PTSD, missing limbs, addictions and related financial burdens, there is a serious concern about the costs and failures of our belligerent foreign-policy.

And now Trump inherits the failing US empire, and deep state that’s frantic to put off this eventuality. I wonder if they’ve informed him of all the sordid details of empire? Be nice to be a fly on the wall for that conversation.

Back to the duopoly. Both Republicans and Democrats use misleading narratives and member berries to lure their supporters into voting against their self-interests.

As writers and intellectuals, we need to challenge this misleading narrative forcefully.

Going further, it’s not enough to simply challenge the dominant narrative of American exceptionalism that both parties use to maintain control. We need to offer our own narrative–where we can save the American republic by ending the American empire–and use the resources to rebuild our infrastructure and our manufacturing capability, while embarking on a post-carbon economy, putting millions of Americans back to work.

If we had something besides a corporate media, we might be able to discuss such proposals.

Instead we get member berries.

Update: Don’t think for a second that our elite are immune to the effects of member berries. I’m amazed at how much of he US political, economic, and media elite exist inside a Beltway bubble of group-think; reading the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times and Politico, and watching CNN, Fox and MSNBC.

Update 2: New York City and Washington D.C. liquor stores are now stocking Member Berry wine.

 

 

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Stage–2

Posted on November 29, 2016 by camelotkidd

 

US neoliberal and neoconservative elite are going through the stages of grief in the wake of the election of Donald Trump.

Judging by the recent McCarthy-style smear campaign in the Washington Post, they’re still stuck at anger.

On Thursday, the Post published a new article by Craig Timberg complaining of a “flood” of so-called fake news supported by “a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy,” To advance this conclusion, Timberg points to PropOrNot, an organization of anonymous individuals formed this year, as having identified “more than 200 websites as routine peddlers of Russian propaganda during the election season.” 

Ironically, the Washington Post, along with the New York Times, published the ultimate “fake news story”–Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction—justifying the invasion of Iraq.

The real crime of those on the list is challenging the Washington consensus, where neoliberal economic and neoconservative foreign policies are sacrosanct. According to new McCarthyism–either you must accept everything the US government says and does at face value, believe it implicitly and support it whole-heartedly, or else you’re a Russian dupe.

Damn, they’re on to me.

The fundamental source of the Post’s hysterical accusations is that our ruling elite has lost control of the narrative. Hence the anger, and hysterical and frantic efforts to marginalize and discredit any dissenting narratives that undermine or question the power of our corrupted, self-serving ruling elite.

The neocons who supported Hillary are especially butt-hurt. After all, just last month they were preparing for a much more muscular foreign policy when Hillary assumed the presidency, as this article at The Washington Post, in October, made clear.

“In the rarefied world of the Washington foreign policy establishment, President Obama’s departure from the White House — and the possible return of a more conventional and hawkish Hillary Clinton — is being met with quiet relief. 

The Republicans and Democrats who make up the foreign policy elite are laying the groundwork for a more assertive American foreign policy via a flurry of reports shaped by officials who are likely to play senior roles in a potential Clinton White House.

It is not unusual for Washington’s establishment to launch major studies in the final months of an administration to correct the perceived mistakes of a president or influence his successor. But the bipartisan nature of the recent recommendations, coming at a time when the country has never been more polarized, reflect a remarkable consensus among the foreign policy elite.”

The neocons dream of a more assertive foreign policy (read: more war) under a Clinton presidency is not to be.

So sad.

If Trump can break with the neocons on the idea of endless war it would go a long way towards helping make his presidency bearable.

The US neoliberal economic consensus, embraced by Clinton and other prominent Democrats, has also taken a hit, and they have reason to be angry. The election of Trump has thrown a wrench into the reliable neoliberal economic policies that our bi-partisan elite have pursued for the last 40 years.

Sanjay Reddy, Associate Professor of Economics, The New School for Social Research, argues that the election of Trump, “promises to reshape the entire global order, and the complaisant forms of thought that accompanied it.” Reddy is especially critical of economists who pushed neoliberal economic policies, even as they have been repeatedly demonstrated as ruinous for most of the worlds population.

“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.”

Reddy says, that, rather than being neutral observers, neoliberal economists, “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 election of Trump is a repudiation to the elite ruling orthodoxy in America. The American people voted for a change from the destructive neoliberal and neoconservative policies our elite have insisted on following.

The bi-partisan ruling elite hate the idea of their loss of power, prestige, and most of all their control. So they’re lashing out in anger.

As George Orwell predicted, telling the truth is now regarded as a hostile act.

Update: Under attack.

“Over Thanksgiving weekend, the Washington Post legitimated a thin, amateurish site whose principals have libeled not only Naked Capitalism but also Ron Paul’s institute, former Reagan Administration officials David Stockman and Paul Craig Roberts, well-respected progressive stalwarts, such as Counterpunch, Truthout, TruthDig, and Black Agenda Report, as supposed Russian propaganda outlets with foreign “coordinators.” Moreover, with no supporting evidence whatsoever, this site called for everyone on its list to be investigated by the FBI and DoJ for Espionage Act violations.

The common denominator for all these websites seems to be skepticism about the failed Clinton coronation.”

 

 

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Like Ike

Posted on November 22, 2016 by camelotkidd

 

Before he took office, President Obama professed his admiration of President Reagan. Lately he’s behaving like President Eisenhower.

Eisenhower, after creating the military-industrial-complex and nascent deep state, famously warned against it. As he was leaving office.

Many Americans remember Eisenhower’s farewell speech and have a nostalgia for his time in office. However, a careful reading of the history of his administration offers a much darker interpretation. The men that Eisenhower choose to cary out his foreign policy–John Foster Dulles, as Secretary of State, and Allan Dulles, as head of the CIA–turbo-charged the Cold War and embarked the US on a fateful program of corporate imperialism. Projecting the dangers of communism, the Dulles instituted a massive arms build-up, while deposing recalcitrant Third-World governments. On their watch, Iran and Guatemala were overthrown, and pliable dictators installed.

Now it’s Obama turn. After helping inequality explode, Obama warns of the dangers of inequality. As he’s leaving office.

As President Obama prepares to depart, it’s more imperative than ever for us to understand his legacy.

In hindsight it appears that Obama was a chameleon. While conservatives saw him as a Kenyon-Muslim-Socialist, herding them down the road to serfdom, liberals viewed him as their community-organizer-savior who would usher in the new–New Deal.

Neither view was correct, as Obama has turned out to be another corporate neoliberal.

When it comes to inequality, Obama neglects to mention that when he entered the White House in 2009 he had a historical opportunity to address runaway inequality. In the aftermath of the Wall Street crash the country was angry at the bankers that had caused the crash and eager for bold leadership.

Obama soon demonstrated that he wasn’t really interested in serving the public but in protecting Wall Street.

On 27 March 2009, Obama secretly told the chieftains of Wall Street assembled at a private meeting inside the White House, «My Administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks». «You guys have an acute public relations problem, and I want to help… I’m not out there to go after you. I’m protecting you».

This protection should be viewed in light of Obama’s financial benefactors. After all, Obama allowed Citigroup to select the men who would serve in his administration. Chief economic advisor Lawrence Summers, whose advice to President Bill Clinton in 1999 had encouraged him to terminate FDR’s Glass-Steagall separation of consumer-banking from investment-banking (Wall Street’s casinos). And, Timothy Geithner, who was the G.W. Bush era’s N.Y. Federal Reserve Bank President and thus king of Wall Street, became U.S. Treasury Secretary. Geithner went on to foam the runway with American homeowners to cushion a bank crash landing, causing millions of evictions.

Thus did Obama cement into place the massive inequality, he’s now at pains to decry. «Poverty Rose In 96% Of U.S. House Districts, During Obama’s Presidency». And, the income and wealth of the billionaires soared like at no time since 1923-1928. Meanwhile, the share of income and wealth of bottom 90 % wealth holders» both declined.

President Eisenhower’ favorite pastime in office was playing golf with wealthy industrialists.

Likewise, Obama enjoys golfing with his wealthy benefactors.

After January, he’ll have plenty of time to work on his game.

 

 

 

 

 

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Don’t mourn, organize

Posted on November 15, 2016 by camelotkidd

 

Trump is going to end the world, as we know it.

Or, something.

Liberals are always more energized and pugilistic when a Republican president gains power.

My biggest peeve with liberals, is that they were aghast at the behavior of Bush, but couldn’t be bothered when Obama was committing the same crimes. The only difference was that Obama represented team Blue. That, and he was much more articulate, with a lovely, intelligent wife, and two beautiful daughters.

My liberal friends are just convinced that Obama could never be as bad as Bush.

Except, that he was.

It’s all about moral consistency. If something is evil, it’s evil, no matter who’s doing it.

And, let’s be honest, the Democratic party has abandoned working-class people and progressive economic policies. Instead the Democrats have embraced financial neoliberalism, where the policies of deregulation, privatization, austerity, and corporate trade have devastated America’s once vibrant middle-class. These Americans living standards have declined precipitously. They’ve lost their jobs, they’ve lost their pensions, and they’ve lost much of their safety net. They see a bleak future for their children.

These Americans used to be reliable Democratic voters. They even voted for Obama. Once Senator Bernie Sanders lost the nomination, the Democrats hardly made any effort to recapture these voters.  Perhaps because their candidate, Hillary Clinton, was the very embodiment of the establishment policies that has created so much misery for these groups. These voters instead went for the change candidate–Trump–though there’s a pretty good chance his policies will make their position worse.

My liberal friends, while rightfully upset, need to see this as a historic opportunity.

When activist Joe Hill was waiting on death row he wrote a letter to union organizer, Big-Bill Haywood, urging him: “Don’t mourn, organize.”

The same principle applies in the wake of Trump’s surprise victory.

Even though progressives and liberals are upset and depressed, with more than a few threatening to move to Canada, they need to realize that now is the chance to put their outrage into action and gear up for a long struggle.

Naked Capitalism is running a series this week to remind us that, “The nut of the matter is this: you lose, you lose, you lose, you lose, they give up. As someone who has protested, and studied the process, it’s plain that one spends most of one’s time begin defeated. That’s painful, humiliating, and intimidating. One can’t expect typically, as in a battle, to get a clean shot at a clear win.”

In my opinion, it’s time to go on the offensive, and develop public policies that are universal. Progressives have been on the defensive for so long that they’ve forgotten how to articulate a positive agenda for what a progressive world would look like. We need to never forget that Bernie Sanders demonstrated conclusively that progressive policies are popular with the American electorate.

“The only way out of these dead ends lies in committing to a defined agenda of institutionalized, economic justice because this affects all. Social justice cannot be secured absent economic justice. Any such agenda is going to be anti-corporate, anti-poverty, pro-education (and job re-education), and pro-regulation. It has to be citizen-based outside of existing political parties. This kind of program can be articulated as pro-community rather than pro-faction if the organizing is done. This has to be pursued from a defined agenda, unapologetically, and from a pro-citizen(ship) position regardless of other more discrete goals.”

As I’ve said before–with great change comes great opportunity. Milton Friedman and the movement right understood this concept and had a program–neoliberalism–ready when New Deal policies faltered in the 1970’s. It’s the same thing for progressives. If you want a better world, start thinking about how to make it so.

Despite all the doom and gloom, the election of Donald Trump actually represents an unprecedented opportunity for change in both political parties and a chance to reform the underlying political and economic power structures in the US.

As Margaret Mead, the great democratic campaigner, said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

Let’s get busy.

 

Update: Joe Hill also sent another letter in which he implored Haywood, “Could you arrange to have my body hauled to the state line to be buried? I don’t want to be found dead in Utah.”

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