Ian Welsh

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

Category: Trump Era Page 11 of 18

Those Who Fall with Steve Bannon

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On March 22, 2018

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One interesting note about the Cambridge Analytica story was on Bannon’s role:

A few months later, in autumn 2013, Wylie met Steve Bannon. At the time, he was editor-in-chief of Breitbart, which he had brought to Britain to support his friend Nigel Farage in his mission to take Britain out of the European Union.

Steve Bannon

What was he like?

“Smart,” says Wylie. “Interesting. Really interested in ideas. He’s the only straight man I’ve ever talked to about intersectional feminist theory. He saw its relevance straightaway to the oppressions that conservative, young white men feel.”

Wylie meeting Bannon was the moment petrol was poured on a flickering flame. Wylie lives for ideas. He speaks 19 to the dozen for hours at a time. He had a theory to prove. And at the time, this was a purely intellectual problem. Politics was like fashion, he told Bannon.

“[Bannon] got it immediately. He believes in the whole Andrew Breitbart doctrine that politics is downstream from culture, so to change politics you need to change culture. And fashion trends are a useful proxy for that. Trump is like a pair of Uggs, or Crocs, basically. So how do you get from people thinking ‘Ugh. Totally ugly’ to the moment when everyone is wearing them? That was the inflection point he was looking for.”

Absent Bannon meeting Wylie, there is no Trump Presidency. That’s not the only inflection point, of course, but it is there.

Bannon’s a weird bird: nativist populist, very smart, rich himself, and apparently quite likable in person, which surprised people in Congress.

It was Bannon’s ideas which undergirded Trump’s rise, which gave him a leverage point. While initial reports suggested that Cambridge Analytica was related to Kushner, the core operation which mattered traces back to Bannon.

Meanwhile, since Bannon left Breitbart after falling out with Trump, it has lost half its readership.

I mention all this because one of the most important things is to grant our enemies their virtues: Bannon is smart, has social insight, can get along with most people (interviewers usually find him quite likeable), and he can execute on his ideas. He also is able to understand popular rage.

This is not to say that Bannon has no flaws. He couldn’t handle Trump. He was taken out by his own inclination to shoot his mouth off and not stay in the background. When people started seeing him as the power behind the throne it was obviously something that Trump would not stand for.

His world model is actually, pretty good. It doesn’t have to be entirely accurate, and it’s not; what it has to be is something with which enough people agree, and to the extent they will act on it, and it is.

Bannon saw where the pain was. He saw where the rage was. He assembled a team, found a front man, ran with it, and he won.

Then he lost, because his front man could win, but was a very flawed tool when it came to actually ruling.

I don’t know if Bannon has a second act. Second acts are hard. If he wants one, he has to position himself as the operator other people can work with.

And right now it looks like he’s doing that. He may well be back, after Trump, with a second attempt, learning from these lessons.

But he may be too damaged. There may be too much fallout from his methods. I don’t actually think that Analytica is the unprecedented act people are making it to be, I believe that many others will turn out to have scraped Facebook in much the same way (developers I know find it amusing that people think this is new).

But unprecedented act or not, it is a scandal, and depending on how Trump falls, the damage to Bannon may make him beyond the pale.

Meanwhile, the money behind the scenes, Robert Mercer, will look for another brilliant executor.

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Trump’s Refusal to Impose Sanctions on Russia

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On January 30, 2018

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He should impose sanctions, not because they are a good idea, but because they passed with a veto-proof majority.

That said, sanctions are a terrible idea. I am aware of no case in which they have not done more harm than good, except possibly South Africa.

Further, the US “punishing” another country for electoral meddling is ludicrous. If this is worthy of punishment, the US is due for sanctions 50 times worse, since they are the world’s leading criminal when it comes to messing with other people’s elections.

One of the few things Trump is doing that is a good thing is trying to keep US/Russian relations from getting any worse.

Maybe he’s doing it for the wrong reasons, but it’s still something worth doing.

Regular reminder: Russia is one of two countries with enough nukes to destroy the world.

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What the Republican Tax Bill Portends for the Future

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On December 2, 2017

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I haven’t written about this before because I don’t have a great deal to say that hasn’t been said by other people. The bill is an obvious cash grab by various private interests which will cause great hardship.

The idea that it will “pay for itself” is ludicrous, and no one with a shred of intellectual integrity believes it.

It is six trillion in tax cuts, with 4.5 trillion in tax raises, including not taxing private education, but taxing public education.

A lot of Americans will suffer greatly as a result and a smaller number will do very well.

There will be an attempt to gut Medicare and Social Security next year, and it will be argued as necessary on budgetary grounds, after decades of deliberate acts like this tax bill, which hurt the budget. (And is basically bullshit even on budget grounds, but that’s a different article.)

As for the corporate tax cut from 35 percent to 20 percent, well, the 35 percent was paid by very few large companies–if any, but the last thing the US needs is corporate tax cuts: Corporations are sitting on vast quantities of cash, and they are not investing it. They should be taxed punitively on any non-reinvested profits, and that money should be spent by the government, if corporations don’t. This is common sense stuff.

Taxing overseas profits at a lower rate than domestic profits is a special sort of insanity.

None of this is likely to stand.

A lot of people in the US will suffer because of this. Some will die. All of it will most likely be repealed within eight years, because, as with the Tories in Britain completely destroying the economy for ordinary people, this will lead to a huge backlash.

It will stand only if “centrists” succeed in making sure that genuine left-wing principles are locked out of the Democratic party, as Blairites tried to do with Labour, only barely failing.

However, a genuine left-wing candidate on the Democratic ticket, with policies similar to Corbyn’s, will win in a landslide, because the youngs will vote for them in massive majorities (and, as Corbyn showed, the rule “young people don’t vote” isn’t true when someone champions their causes).

By 2024 at the latest, there will be enough of a generational shift, and enough people hurt badly enough and unable to pretend that the status quo ante was every good, that the Left, if not prevented by internal party politics, will win.

And they will win with a fairly radical agenda.

There are alternative scenarios, of course, nothing is 100 percent. But the feared fascism is unlikely to stick in the US, because the youngs aren’t onside with it (unlike the youngs in Eastern Europe). The people who want fascism in the US are mostly old and getting older (and dying).

Every time fascists come out for a march, Antifa outnumber them vastly.

What is more likely, if the possibility of a large shift to the left is stifled, is cyberpunk dystopia (sadly, so far, minus the cyberwear). Surveillance police state, vast slums abandoned by corporations and governments, corporate syndicalist towns and enclaves (already happening, as tech companies start building housing for their employees), and so on.

Those are the two most likely scenarios for the US. Those who think they can go back to the (illusory) Clintonian prosperity are deluded. The present marches into the future, and the neoliberal era is dying. The question is not if it will be replaced, but by what.

Choose your sides.

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Was All-Powerful Russia Responsible for Brexit, Trump, and Catalonia?

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On November 26, 2017

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Vladimir Putin Official Portrait

Dark Lord Vladimir Putin

I am given to understand that, in addition to causing Trump to win the US election, Russia is responsible for Brexit, and for the Catalonian independence vote.

Russia, with a GDP of less than half that of California, has, in other words, the most effective election tampering program, in the form of internet trolls and fake news, the world has ever known (or at least since back in the 50s, when the CIA was pretty good at this stuff, and willing to overthrow the government of any country that voted the wrong way).

Is this credible?

Or is Russia being used as a scapegoat for election results neo-liberal elites don’t like?

This isn’t to say Russia may not have tried to influence elections. Sure as hell, the US spends a ton of money influencing foreign elections, but is Russia “the reason”?

It seems unlikely to me, and to whatever extent it might be true, it would only be true in the sense that truly close election results have a thousand parents. If it’s close, any number of things made up the margin.

But I think it’s largely bullshit. That it is an attempt to evade responsibility by domestic elites for screwing things up, or in the case of political opponents like Clinton’s Democrats, for running terrible electoral campaigns (or both).

Trump was possible because a lot of people are very unhappy. Brexit was possible because a lot of people are very unhappy. Catalonia was possible because a lot of Catalonians are unhappy with how Spain treats them.

Or, if you wish, two out of three are driven by racism, or regional anger, or…your choice of reason. They were possible because there were already serious problems.

Something like Trump or Brexit or an independence referendum doesn’t happen primarily because of foreign interference, it happens because a lot of people are unhappy with the status quo. In such circumstances, perhaps foreign interference might make the difference, but it wouldn’t do shit unless it was already razor close.

Look home, not abroad, for why people are willing to vote for actions which elites consider unthinkable.

The primary reason for it is always, always, elite mismanagement of some sort or another.

 

Trump Commits to Afghanistan

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On August 22, 2017

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Well, this directly violates a core promise and is stupid, besides being a betrayal. But I see various pundits going on about how Presidential he is to “admit” he was wrong to want to leave and to decide to kill lots of people in an unwinnable war. Trump needs and wants approval, and killing foreigners is essentially the only way he gets it from the media these days.

I imagine Putin and various other Russian leaders laugh themselves sick about this regularly, given what happened to the USSR in Afghanistan.

The Mongols conquered Afghanistan without too much difficulty, but short of a truly genocidal strategy (which, no, shouldn’t be done), no one’s winning this war, and everyone’s losing it.

At least he stopped the CIA program supporting Jihadis (er, I mean moderates) in Syria, but this is still a black mark and a tragedy.

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Bannon Out

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On August 18, 2017

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Steve Bannon

So, this is Steve Bannon’s last day at the White House.

I wrote that this would be a courtier’s White House, with a lot of knife fights, and with their victors determining a lot of policy.

Bannon’s a white nationalist and scum, of course, but he’s also the only senior advisor who wants to, say, raise taxes and do various other actually populist things. He hates Wall Street and wanted real checks on bankers power, etc.

Again, clearly a bad man, but someone who wanted some good things which will no longer be represented by anyone with the President’s ear. (Also, the popular things.)

It looks like Breitbart is very angry about this.

Bear in mind that two-thirds of Republicans approved of Trump’s speech on Charlottesville, with its equivalence between Nazis and and people protesting Nazis. Trump is impeachment-proof as long as the people who make up the majority of the primary base in the Republican party continue to support him.

But Breitbart has quite a bit of influence with such people.

From a pragmatic, Trumpian point of view, firing Bannon feels like a mistake. He should have been sidelined and given a nice desk and office and mostly inconsequential work. He will be far more of a problem to Trump outside than inside.

(Er, also, Bannon was against military intervention.)

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Relations with Russia Sour Further

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On July 31, 2017

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So, we have an anti-Russia sanctions bill moving through Congress, which will increase sanctions on Russia and include fines on non-American companies who do business with Russia in specific ways. It will remove Trump’s ability to remove sanctions. While Trump could veto it, the two versions (House and Senate) both passed with super-super-majorities (the Senate version is 98-2).

The White House has indicated that Trump will likely pass it, and if he doesn’t, will seek a “harsher” bill.

Meanwhile Russia has expelled 755 diplomats and seized two US diplomatic buildings in Russia, a move which brings American diplomatic numbers in Russia to the exact same number as Russian diplomats in America. This is in retaliation for Obama’s seizure of two buildings and removal of Russia diplomats just before he left office.

Russia had put off retaliation in hopes that Trump would reverse Obama’s action.

One of the few good things one hoped for with respect to the Trump administration was an improvement in US-Russia relations.

But Russia hysteria is in full swing in the US; red-scare reborn, based on accusations that Russia put Trump in the White House. A lot of people believe this, there were certainly plenty of contacts between various Russians and the Trump campaign, and heck, Russia probably did prefer Trump, hoping he’d undo sanctions and be less hostile.

(Meanwhile, the US appears to be working to overthrow the Venezuelan government.)

Proof of significant action by Russia is lacking. It may be that some minor help was given, but I have yet to see any proof that hacking was ordered by the Russian government, only repeatedly asserted by a variety of intelligence agencies, all of whom have a long record of lying when convenient.

If interference did occur, it appears to have amounted to “release of true information that was harmful to Clinton.”

If this is worthy of sanctions, then the rest of the world should lock up America and throw away the key given America’s actions; repeatedly not just interfering in elections, but overthrowing governments–including democratically elected ones.

It is worth remembering, again, that Russia has enough nukes to destroy the world, and so does America. Good relations are in the interest of world survival.

It is perhaps also worth looking, with a cold eye, at whether America or Russia, over the last 20 years or so, has done more harm to other countries and their citizens? If you are honest in the exercise, you might begin to wonder who is the greater threat.

Meanwhile, we also have more sanctions against Iran and North Korea coming down the pipe.

North Korea is, by the way, still at war: The Korean war was never ended with a peace treaty, only with a truce. North Korea is under perhaps the most extensive sanctions in world history, but somehow those sanctions haven’t stopped it from getting nukes, and it’s possible they may even wind up with missiles able to strike the US.

There is a rumor that the current leader of North Korea was left a note by his father, which said, “Don’t give up your nukes. Saddam gave up his program, and that’s when the US went for him.” It has also been noted that Qaddafi gave up his nuclear program, played nice with the West, and as a reward, got sodomized with a knife and killed. (Clinton was very happy about this: “We came, we saw, he died.”)

I don’t know if the rumor is true, but I do know that North Korea would be insane to give up their nukes as anything but part of a comprehensive peace deal which removed sanctions, and maybe not even then. This is simply as a matter of survival. You don’t have to like the North Korean regime (I don’t) to not realize that people aren’t going to cut their own throats for your convenience.

As for Iran sanctions… bah, fill it in yourself. This is vile stupidity, and I hate any form of theocratic government.

I blame Democrats and the media for a ton of this. The hysterics have been never-ending. Better relations with Russia are a good thing under most circumstances. Instead, the US is ratcheting up tensions and giving Russia every reason to see the United States as its enemy. (Lets’ be frank, the US is Russia’s enemy, and, save for a brief period when they were allied against Germany, has never been anything else.)

So, the world gets stupider, more propaganda ridden, and more dangerous. The sanctions won’t “work” (and appear to be about forcing Europeans to buy American oil instead of Russian), not in the sense of making Russia do what the US wants or not do anything they can to undo damage done to their country.

If you don’t want someone to treat you as a threat, perhaps don’t act as a threat. (Insert long essay here about how, actually, the US is far more of a threat to Russia than Russia is to the US.)

This is all pathetic, and everyone involved in it should be ashamed, but is, instead, proud.

Pathetic.

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The Only Person with Sense in the Trump Administration…

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On July 29, 2017

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Steve Bannon

…is Steve Bannon. (Yes, he’s a nasty nativist as well.)

In the last few days, Bannon has suggested increasing the top marginal rate to 44 percent and regulating Google and Facebook.

Both of these are good ideas. I’m sure that Bannon’s regulations of Facebook and Google might not be what I’d want, but the bottom line is that these are now the primary media organizations of the world: What people read or see is mostly determined by Google or Facebook–their algorithms and employees.

For example, three months ago, Google put out a new algo to reduce fake news. Result?

In the three months since Google implemented the changes to its search engine, fewer people have accessed left-wing and anti-war news sites. Based on information available on Alexa analytics, other sites that have experienced sharp drops in ranking include WikiLeaks, Alternet, Counterpunch, Global Research, Consortium News and Truthout. Even prominent democratic rights groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and Amnesty International appear to have been hit.

Hey! What a surprise. Major corporation does something which makes people who tend to think badly of major corporations read less!

The bottom line is simple: Two companies control most of what people read and that should be under democratic control. And that’s before we even get to how Google and Facebook have systematically taken control of advertising, diverting more and more of the profit to them and away from actual content creators.

This is similar to the problem of railroads before major highways and trucking: farmers could only get crops to market through railroads, so railroads took almost all the profits. We have forgotten, but farmers hated the railroads with a sickly passion, and for good reason.

Google and Facebook determine who gets read, the political and economic repercussions of which are massive. (And Facebook’s CEO quite clearly wants to be President.)

Bannon is right, whether you like his other politics or not.

As far as the Trump admin goes, Ivanka and Jared are the ones who try to mitigate the nasty social stuff (often failing) and Bannon is the only one who wants ordinary Americans to do well.

You can despise all three, with good reason, but understand the reality.

Oh, and “fake news”? It exists, but the hysteria around it is being ridden heavily by people you want nothing to do with. And no fake news so far has ever equaled the New York Times lies which helped sell the Iraq war.

Fake news hysteria among elites is really just them saying: “Our monopoly on lies is being taken away from us! Only approved lies should be allowed!”

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.

 

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