The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: Donald Trump Page 1 of 4

The Terrible Bind America’s Elites Are In

One point worth highlighting right now is that, despite the push to impeach AND convict Trump, Hawley, and others, it’s unclear that it will happen — even unlikely.

These folks did push the invasion of the Capitol, and it’s more and more obvious that some of the invaders had rather sinister plans had they been able to grab Senators, Pence or Reps; the zip-ties make this rather clear.

They made US elites feel unsafe in a way that hasn’t been true since 9/11. US elites regularly kill, impoverish, and hurt millions of people, but for them to even be so much as scared is intolerable.

The problem is, this is colliding with another principle: The principle of elite immunity from consequences. Elites don’t really go after other elites. Trump, pre-Presidency had committed dozens of crimes, but was never prosecuted, because everything he had done, did others had done also.

Essentially, every senior Wall Street and banking executive is guilty of fraud in the lead up to the sub-prime crisis, and they were all let off with slaps on the wrist. George Bush was unquestionably a war criminal and so were many of his senior officials, and I’d argue the same is true of Obama.

Even Clinton’s “emails,” widely dismissed as “no big deal” is the sort of offense which, if done by someone junior, would — at best — end their career and would more likely lead to jail time.

US elites send other elites to jail very rarely, and political elites do this almost never.

So there’s a real bind here. On the one hand, some Republican elites put the rest of the US federal political class at risk. On the other hand, well, who wants to set a precedent that a US president, senator, or representative can be truly held to account? Impeaching is one thing, convicting another (which is why Biden is wishy-washy about impeaching and convicting Trump).

Who knows? After all, where it would end if elites started holding each other accountable, when they all know that almost every one of them has violated many laws and far more norms?

For elites, the law is a sword they use against their lessers, not a weapon intended to be used against them. It is a shield against the hoi-polloi and has nothing to do with justice or equality before the law.

Feel for them, in their terrible dilemma: What is more important? Their physical safety or their legal immunity?


All the content here is free, but subscriptions and donations do help, a lot.

Plus c’est la même chose

***MANDOS POST MANDOS POST MANDOS POST****

Jeremiads notwithstanding, it appears that Biden’s strategy of appealing to Trump-disgusted suburban voters worked. At the US presidential level, at least, left-populists and Sanders supporters proved to be essentially irrelevant, politically. The Democratic consultant class has had its biases confirmed. What is, haha, left to the left-wing populist is to double down on the jeremiads: to predict that in the future, the inevitable failure of now-successful beige neoliberal centrism to reinstate its heavenly mandate in the USA will result, down the road, in the election of a smart fascist/right-populist Man On Horseback, if we’re luckymerely a Viktor Orbán figure or suchlike for the American context — or worse, possibly much worse.

This reasoning seems very plausible to me. Because it is true that unless the neoliberal establishment has a change of heart, Bidenist/Obamaist US leadership will not be able to turn the ship around from an on-going trajectory of national and global decline. And insofar as that decline is felt in shrinking living standards, and insofar as “beige centrism” manages to suppress left-wing alternatives, the population will likely turn to forceful/violent right-wing populism, and all the inherent divide-and-conquer grifts that right-wing populism brings with it alongside the nationalist emotional highs and the “sugar rush.” As I said, it seems very plausible.

One of the bad habits of neoliberal intellectualism is an excessive reliance on “counter-intuitive” explanations as exemplified by the once-popular book Freakonomics.   We should be rightly suspicious of narratives that tell us that things we view in common-sense terms as bad are actually good. Sometimes counter-intuitive explanations like that are valid, but only sometimes. But we should not fall into the reverse trap and always uncritically accept simpler explanations that happen to match our moral intuitions. A common left-wing moral intuition is what I explained above: A people increasingly deprived of access to the good life and unable to access progressive responses to that deprivation will eventually provide reactionary forces a breakthrough. It has, after all, happened before.

It is the implied determinism that we should view with at least a little bit of suspicion. First of all, although we should heed history’s warning signs, history actually does not truly repeat reliably, and context matters. Trump’s senility and incompetence was, in point of fact, part of the Trump political brand. It was the riposte to a failing elite in a time when elite “competence-signalling” was part of the elite self-image. The specific trajectory to the “competent Trump” is much harder to fathom, when the incompetence was specifically a part of what he was and still is lionized for by his most ardent followers.

If we leave aside the typical and easy materialist determinism that thrives particularly on the more left end of the spectrum and accept a little bit of “counter-intuitive” reasoning, a different picture emerges. One in which the success and failure of Trump was highly dependent on circumstances over and above material discontent, circumstances that are difficult to line up again.  Circumstances in which the very competence of the future feared competent fascistoid is one of the features that prevents his (or her) rise, just to give a possibility. One in which the bad memory of Trump is sufficiently mobilizing for a long enough period of time that the mainstream neoliberal centre is protected from attempts at overcoming it.

In that world, between every election, things just keep getting worse and worse. And yet, the process of coalition building in a complex society given the American political system simply throws up Biden after Biden, Democrat or Republican. Decline centrism, unending. Like Tyler Durden’s vision in Fight Club, with people drying meat on the asphalt of a ruined highway, except they’re still arguing over whether they should choose the chieftain with the red trim or the blue trim as head chieftain, out of fear that one of them might reduce the incentives created by the fear of winter freezing by their proposed “peltfare” program.

Imagine this future: the soft, dirty sole of a comfortable white Reebok runner gently stroking a human cheek — forever.

Trump Is Right to Talk to Kim

“Only Nixon could go to China.”

North Korea and America never made peace after the Korean war. It’s just an armistice.

The North Koreans have repeatedly said they want a peace, Americans have repeatedly said no–long before it was about nukes.

Bill Clinton had a nuclear deal, Bush Jr. tore it up. Then he invaded a country that had no nukes: Iraq after the UN made damn sure there weren’t any.

Then Qaddafi gave up his nuke program. His reward for that was death, but only after being sodomized by a knife. Hillary Clinton and Obama get the nod for that one. (Clinton convinced Obama, who was initially inclined not to support “regime change” in Libya.)

So, frankly, I’m not sure that, if I were Kim, there’s any way I could be convinced to give up my nukes. It looks dangerous. Still, perhaps a deal can be made, and North Korea is armed to the teeth conventionally, with huge amounts of conventional artillery pointed at Seoul.

But the bottom line is this: Whether you like Trump or not, trying to make peace with North Korea is the right thing to do. Another president should have done it long ago. I have my doubts that Trump will manage it, but he’s right to try, and if he succeeds he will deserve praise.

Now if he’d just grow up about Iran and stop talking about tearing up that nuke deal.


The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

Syria and the Cult of the Tough Decision

(POST BY MANDOS!!!)

The chances were always high that regardless of who was elected, Trump or Clinton, there would be some kind of American attack in Syria.  However, the chances were always higher with Trump than Clinton. Yes, you read that right: It was always a lot more likely that Trump would attack Syria than Clinton would. The reason for this is that Clinton took a more hawkish position on Syria before the election. Trump took a right-populist position of focusing on domestic politics and telegraphed a Russia-friendlier course. This more or less convinced me that he was going to attack Syria at some point. Likely, Clinton would have too — but with Trump it was basically inevitable.

Running a complex industrial and military power requires a highly technical bureaucracy. That bureaucracy therefore has an ultimate veto on what is possible to accomplish that is necessarily beyond democracy. That bureaucracy has made it clear that it won’t implement policies by people it doesn’t consider to be “serious.”  The hallmark of seriousness is the ability to make the Tough Decision.

(DID I MENTION THAT THIS WAS A POST BY MANDOS? BEFORE YOU COMMENT…)

The complaint by the technocratic class against what it denigrates as “populism” is — among other things — that populism is ultimately the rejection of the Tough Decision. Left-wing populism holds that there are a lot of win-win situations where the benefits to (most) stakeholders far outweigh the costs of participation. Right-wing populism does not believe in win-win propositions, but rather that in a win-lose situation it is effortless to identify who should be on the losing side of the equation and to practically shove the loss onto them. Either way, left- and right-wing populism deny the centrality of the Tough Decision in leadership.

Clinton ran as the anti-populist candidate, presenting herself as the one who would preserve an already-great America through her ability to make Tough Decisions that distributed costs in a way that her supporters wouldn’t always like. Trump ran as a right-wing populist, explicitly riding on the feeling that there were designated “winners” who weren’t winning and designated “losers” who weren’t losing, and proposing solutions whereby this state of affairs could be effortlessly corrected. Insofar as he has attempted to make good on this aspect of this program in a public way, the system has acted against him, because all of the other entities, and that includes the House “Freedom” Caucus, believes in the Tough Decision.

Foreign policy is always the domain in which the right-wing populist can most easily exercise the Tough Decision and win back some loyalty from the managerial class. That is because, in the short run, breaking a promise on a foreign policy or military point is often the one that is lowest-cost to his principal support base. By attacking Syria, Trump proves that he can make a Tough Decision and that he can be “brought to reason” by the policy elite. Clinton would not have had to do this so soon, at least, and would thus have had the confidence of the policy elite that she would “push the button” but would merely be holding off until a strategically more optimal moment. The policy elite seems to have been afraid that Trump would never push the button. That concern has been proven unjust.

The cult of the Tough Decision is killing the world. It is not merely a fetish of a generation of technocrats but deeply engrained into the psychological structure of our society. It stems from a couple of inoffensive common-sense pillars:

  1. There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch
  2. You Can’t Have Your Cake and Eat It Too

Both of these are narrowly true. Every “free” lunch requires at least some effort to go and obtain it. (1) is merely a recognition that all things have an up-front energy cost. (2) is merely a recognition that once you’ve made a choice, the world changes such that the very same choice is not available a second time in its exact original form. In present-day psychology, we exaggerate these to mean that not merely is there an up-front cost to everything, but it is highly likely that most up-front costs outweigh the benefits — and that there are no win-win situations, because the up-front cost of most choices must result in a major stakeholder losing out.

This exaggeration of common-sense wisdom has come in its most exaggerated form of the fetishization of abstract intellectual exercises from economics and game theory. These exercises are concentrated in the political and managerial elite, but they are constantly reflected in popular discourse and media culture. It is propagated by often very well-intentioned people who would like to make the world better.

Its results are particularly damaging to left-wing populism, because left-wing populism is founded on the existence of low-cost, self-replenishing free lunches — repeated win-win situations. (As opposed to, as I said, right-wing populism, which rejects either the low-cost or the self-replenishing part.) The existence of these free lunches probably sounds like an absurdity even to readers here. Admittedly, they seem to be vanishing quickly, but they are not all gone. Single-payer universal health care in a developed country is one of these free lunches, where the principal payers of the monopsony cost (medical services providers of various sorts, including large organizations) can afford the cost without true suffering.

In a twist of fate, Trump was one of the popular purveyors of the Cult of the Tough Decision in his reality show career. Reality TV, of the “voting off the island” genre, is all about making someone cry in public as a designated loser, and then self-back-patting that it was a responsible or necessary or realistic choice. It is a genre that is emblematic of our era. So it should surprise no one that Trump returns to the ontology of public action that worked out so well for him.

Fools Russians Where Angels Fear to Tread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mD5phTXGN_0

(NB: post by Mandos.)

Recent events suggest that, whatever they may have originally thought, the Trump administration is in the process of being pulled back into the overall historical attractor of US policy regarding Russia. The Russian establishment had made no secret of its preference for Trump and its belief that Trump was a person with which they could deal on a more even footing, a politician in a mold they understood, etc.

I’m not here to argue whether or not Trump (or Flynn) is some kind of Russian plant, an issue that seems to be occupying many others.  I gather that conclusive evidence on this matter has yet to be produced and that it so far lies in the realm of (negative) wishful thinking.  However, Russian policy-makers are already voicing disappointment that Russia-favorable entities in the Trump administration are increasingly weakened. The US state, particularly its intelligence community, are deeply set up for conflict with Russia, for better or for worse, and it turns out that the White House is only part of a large infrastructure, and any fantasies of an election resulting in a vast purge and house-cleaning were just that: fantasies. The intelligence community still believes to its core in the necessity of containing Russia.

However, one thing that is different now is the position of Western social liberals. Unfortunately, Russia had decided to back in spirit, if not always materially, movements that are identified with various strains of nationalist conservatism that are hostile to the goals and beliefs of social liberals. This is not only in the USA, but especially so in Europe, with the on-going rise of the Le Pens, the Wilders, and other groups in the world. Once upon a time, social liberal groups were principally parochial movements which were relatively indifferent on foreign policy questions regarding Russia, and to a very large extent also overlapped with anti-war movements — and so were once at odds with the intelligence community.

However, the apparent desire of Russia to return to a world of ordinary nation-state politics, and therefore its willing appearance (at minimum) of siding with conservative nationalist movements, have led to many social liberals now viewing Russia as mortal threat to their projects, and therefore, having a plausible motive to try to subvert political movements like that of Trumpism to their aims.  In this situation, social liberals (or “identity politics” movements, or whatever you want to call them) will quite rationally stake out a position that the devil you know (American intelligence forces) are better than the devil you don’t (Vladimir Putin). This is not helped by the appearance of things like Russia loosening its laws on domestic violence.

While social liberals have not lately been winning elections on their platforms (most notably, in the USA due to the Electoral College structure), it would be a mistake to assume that these groups have no power whatsoever. In fact, they have broad and deep bases of popular support (merely electorally inefficient), and those bases are being pushed into the arms of forces hostile to Russian interests. The combination of Cold War-style intelligence community conservatism with popular social liberalism is one that is likely to lead to an even more hostile neo-Cold War posture on the part of the Western establishment in the medium-term, unless in the short term Trumpism can generate the political competence required to coerce the establishment in the other direction.

For its part, Russia has been attempting to play, in the “further abroad”, a soft power role given that its other options are not effective. It is attempting to play the part of a rival global hegemon without actually being a hegemon. It does not currently have the cultural or technological reach to do so.  While it operates a technologically advanced, developed economy, it is still highly dependent on natural resource development and export. That means that the risks accruing from a strategy of using cultural divisions in the currently hegemonic Western social order are high: should social liberals gain the upper hand due to the inability of nationalist populism to operate the levers of state effectively, they will be confirmed in a resolve for further containment and suppression of a Russia that took sides against them.

In Which Mandos Is Unsympathetic Towards Australia’s PM

AustralianFlag

(This is a quick hit from MANDOS. Just so you know.)

Australia’s PM just had a little pity party about Donald Trump allegedly yelling at him about the refugee deal. Well, Trump’s tweet on the matter is, taken literally, true, except the part about them being illegal immigrants.

The truth is that Australia bought a country in order to use it as a torture camp for people who have mostly been declared real refugees. These are people who are fully the responsibility of Australia, and Australia is only using extra-territoriality as a fig leaf to use them in its political drama. That Trump is very likely to be unsympathetic to the refugees doesn’t mean that the Australian PM didn’t deserve it.

For the sake of the victims of Australia’s policy, I hope the deal eventually survives, and they can get to the US, although some of them will be very damaged by their treatment and may not get the psychological support that Australia morally owes them, along with enormous compensation. They don’t deserve to be used as a prop in the invasion paranoia drama of developed polities. Let me put it like this: If “preserving your civilization” requires the erection of a torture camp, your civilization deserves to have died yesterday. And no, holding refugees prisoner on an island from which they can’t escape to a normal life in a destination country of their own choosing is neither safety nor honouring of the refugee obligation.

Trump and the Taming of the Oligarchs

Some years ago, I read an article about a Russian oligarch who had wanted to close a factory in a Russian town in which the factory provided the only real jobs.

The people complained to Putin, and some time later Putin appeared on stage in the town with the oligarch. With an eye on the oligarch, Putin explained that the jobs would be kept in the town.

Putin’s speech was described as being cold and contemptuous towards the oligarch.

When Trump convinced Carrier to keep some, not all, jobs, in America, he did so largely through bribes.

What will be interesting, however, is to see how much he makes people bow.

Putin broke some oligarchs and allied with others, but the important thing to understand about Putin’s relationship with Russian oligarchs is that Putin is the senior partner. He is in charge. They can do well, even very well, but if they challenge him, he will force them to bow–or break them.

(For the record, I have less than zero sympathy for the oligarchs; I know how they made their money.)

We all, I presume, remember the picture of Romney meeting Trump, begging for the Secretary of State job (which he didn’t get). I suspect Trump really did want to give the job to Romney, simply so he could force Romney to bow on a regular basis, but Trump’s loyalists hated Romney too much.

Meanwhile, the tech oligarchs have all also met with Trump. He was gracious, but they came to him, despite their clear opposition of him.

One of the issues in the US is that its oligarchs think they don’t have to serve the public good. Apple and other companies have billions stored overseas, they dodge taxes, and they move jobs overseas at the drop of a hat.

They also think they don’t have to bow to the President.

Now Trump cares somewhat about Issue (by which I mean jobs, not tax dodging), but he’s going to care a lot about Issue #2 (bowing to the President). And Bannon cares a lot about both, because Bannon despises America’s oligarchs and wants to see them humbled.

Trump, well, Trump likes power. He wants to be loved by the mob, oh yes, but he values loyalty greatly, and, if crossed, he likes breaking people.

So I expect to see a number of oligarchs and other powerful people made examples of, forced to bow–indeed, forced to kneel.

If Trump wants to get his way, this is necessary. He needs these people to do some things they don’t want to do (make less money by bringing jobs back to the US), and they’ll need to be scared of him.

They need to be personally scared. They need to believe they personally aren’t immune from his power.

Trump will enjoy this. Bannon, if I read him correctly, will enjoy it even more.

Under Trump, oligarchs will do well, even very well. But not if they don’t bow. He wants some crumbs for ordinary Americans, and he needs the oligarchs to give them.

So one of the ways I will know if Trump is going to be successful (i.e., get his people enough goodies to get his second term, and the accompanying adulation) will be by watching the “kneeling to bribes” ratio, and seeing what Trump does to those companies who refuse to cooperate.

Be very clear on this, folks. This is something about which most people are complete idiots.

There is nowhere to go.

The rich cannot actually move their companies overseas. Where are they going to go? Europe will regulate them even harder (see all the problems Google is having). They don’t want to live in China or Russia, and China and Russia are the only countries strong enough to tell America to bugger off. Plus, of course, Putin and the Chinese Communist party won’t just make them kneel, they’ll make them get down on their bellies and grovel like worms.

No one else can stand up to America. Oh, Europe could, if it had its act together, but it doesn’t; and it wants regulation that repel oligarchs. Tax havens are a joke; they exist because the great powers want them to exist, and the second the Treasury cracks down on them, they will go away.

So if Trump wants to put the screws on, he can–especially if he’s smart about it. You make an example of a few people, you reward the others for cooperating, and soon they’re all bowing and scraping.

That’s how it works.

Let’s see if Trump knows how to play the game.

(And, for the record, no, this isn’t good. But the financial crisis proved we already have rule of men, and that this rule is to be used solely to enrich the few and immiserate the many. Rule of law will continue to disappear. I have no sympathy for most of the US’s oligarchs, because, while not as outright nasty as Russia’s oligarchs (on average–some of them are just as bad), they are almost all truly bad people who have strangled the US, and the world, to get where they are.)

The games are on, Caesarism continues its rise. It’s what Americans voted for and elites worked hard to create the conditions for it. Crying over it is like crying over physics.


The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

Trump’s Not-So-Crazed Speech in Ohio


I took the time to read the transcript of Trump’s speech, the entire transcript. It has three parts to it. First, he talks about what he’s going to do in very general terms (“Ra ra, we can fix America”). Then, he takes a victory lap and exorciates the press, and then he talks more about what he’s going to do.

According to this:

  • Cut taxes so that companies stay in the US.
  • Reduce regulations so corporations can produce in the US.
  • Renegotiate or leave NAFTA.
  • Consider leaving other trade deals seems implicit.
  • Repeal Obamacare.
  • Do something so people have healthcare.
  • Stop immigration from certain (a.k.a., Muslim countries) and stop taking refugees.
  • Massive infrastructure projects, including in the inner cities and rural America.
  • For those infrastructure programs, buy American and hire American.
  • Specifically bring manufacturing back to the rust belt.
  • He’s hired some billionaires, etc…that’s because he wants nasty winners on his team.
  • Executive branch employees can’t lobby for five years after working, can never lobby for foreign governments.
  • Affordable child support for all.
  • Increased pay and opportunities for women.
  • Partner with any nation to kill ISIS.
  • But other than that, no more wars.
  • More money for cops.
  • Great Wall
  • Work with other nations for win-win deals.
  • Repeal environmental restrictions on petroleum industries.

This is populist, little America-ism. Isolationism, bilateral trade deals, mind-our-own-business, combined with standard Republican tax cut and regulation policy.

Let me be clear, I think parts of this program are idiocy: American companies often pay no tax already, and taxes aren’t the primary issue in production. That doesn’t mean companies don’t use tricks to avoid paying American taxes, but there are ways to make them pay them. While there are certainly regulations which can be done away with, in general, regulations aren’t the issue either.

Climate change is real, so gutting enviro protections is insane, and coal jobs aren’t coming back–no matter what. Immigrants aren’t a significant problem, etc. Crime isn’t up, it’s down.

(He also inflated the trade deficit by about 300 billion, but it’s still too large.)

That said, this ain’t crazy stuff overall. What it is is a change from the current consensus on some important issues, especially American foreign and trade policy. The tax cuts are just more of the same.

I have doubts that Trump will be able to deliver on all of this, and he’s going to need to find some big pots of money to even try, especially given his ideas about tax cuts. His cabinet, while made up of rich people, does not engender confidence that he means what he says about corruption.

All that said, it’s NOT a crazy speech.

Now, if you read it below, you’ll also notice a very long and extended attack on the Press. It’s quite clear that Trump, personally, despises the press. But that doesn’t mean this isn’t also good strategy, much of the press, while they’ll cover him to inches, is going to work to de-legitimize him, so he needs to de-legitimize them.

I’m also tired of cherry picking. Trump wants to do some things that I truly despise. But, for example, killing the TPP was a really good thing. If he actually does follow through on his foreign policy promise of not attacking any more countries, that’d be a really good thing. Not everything Trump wants to do is bad, just as not everything he wants to do is good.

It should also be noted that Trump goes out of his way in this speech, as he has done in many others, to declare his love for African-Americans and Hispanics, and to say he intends to help them. Will he? Well, not with police violence, but, otherwise, we’ll see.

Trump, very clearly, wants to be loved and adored. That is his primary goal here. Trump would love nothing more than, in seven years, to be able to go to a rally with primarily Blacks or Hispanics and be cheered. So, while I don’t think he’ll deliver for them, I do think he wants to.

I’ve put the transcript below. I’ve taken out most of the (Applause) and (Booing) lines.  Original transcript is from C-span.


If you enjoyed this article, and want me to write more, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.


Transcript

For too long, Washington has tried to put us in boxes. They separate us by race, by age, by income, by geography, by place of birth. We spend too much time focusing on what divides us. Now is the time to embrace the one thing that truly unites us. You know what that is? America, America. It’s America.

You hear a lot of talk about how we’re becoming a globalized world, but the relationships people value in this country are local — family, city, state,

There is no global anthem, no global currency, no certificate of global citizenship. We pledge allegiance to one flag, and that flag is the American

From now on, it’s going to be America first, OK? America first.

We’re gonna put ourselves first. We seek peace and harmony with the nations of the world, but that means recognizing the right of every country including our own to look after its citizens. We would put other countries first. We had people running our country that truly didn’t know what the hell they we’re doing. OK?

Page 1 of 4

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén