Our dumb-as-rocks New Feudal Lords… steering us to Helvetia

Back from schmoozing with his fellow oligarchs at Davos, the U.S. President is about to proclaim his agenda at the State of the Union, presenting a picture of both nation and world that will be scrupulously tidy and scrubbed free of facts. But one core point of today's back-from-the-dead confederacy is likely to be left out, for now -- slandering the “deep state” – civil servants, intelligence agencies, the FBI and military officer corps. 

In fact, Donald Trump is likely to point at a few military heroes in the balcony, but don't be fooled. They were the last fact-centered professions to be attacked; but now it’s their turn.

For years I inveighed, we need a tsunami of retired officers running for office in every ‘red’ district in America – folks who are perhaps conservative by personality and demeanor, but modern and scientific, and hence willing to pragmatically negotiate for progress. And free of puppet strings leading to the busy, meddling fingers of oligarchs. It’s happening! 

Bless ‘em. Read about three women - graduates of Annapolis - running for Congress in reddish districts. One of them just scared off her Republican opponent, Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, who announced his retirement, rather than face her in November. The article cites some GOP candidates who are also former officers, which is fine by me! Let members of this fact-using, pragmatic, “deep state” community run as both dems and repubs! (I’ve linked to Col. McGrath before.) 

And so, before diving in to a range of political topics, here’s another example of why sincere professionals – traditionally deeply apolitical – feel they must step up. In an open letter to Congress on Thursday, a group of 17 former nuclear launch officers argued that President Trump “poses a clear and present danger to the country and the world” and warned that “there are no reliable safeguards” to prevent Trump from deciding to launch a nuclear missile on his own.

In fact, I have offered up the most logical way to protect the world from a presidential “spasm.” It’s very simple, though it would take some courage from at least fifty GOP lawmakers. Only look at it if you plan to seriously read and understand. It’s not for skimming. 

The alternative that people are bandying about – impeachment – is a trap! We are being deliberately led to it and this is not a recommended route out of our dilemma. In fact, there are worse things than a manic clown car. Far worse things. 

        

== A gathering of gnomes ==

After delivering on his one actual campaign promise, to the billionaire caste (“I just made you a whole lot richer”), Donald Trump seems to taunt the working class whites who called upon him to 'drain the swamp.'  Breitbart is a wholly-owned propaganda arm of the Mercer family, when Fox and InfoWars and Cato are all owned by other Davos elites. One gambling lord launders money from a foreign government through his Macao casinos straight into the Republican Party. Another just resigned as GOP finance chair, fleeing sex-abuse charges, but safely continues funneling favors to Trump, a fellow casino mogul.  

It's no surprise that one side of the ongoing civil war turns a blind eye to rising plutocracy. The confederacy was always a tool of feudal aristocracy, at every phase. In the 1770s, when southern tories were big supporters of the King, and the 1850s and 1860s Civil War phases, defending the property rights of slave-owning plantation lords.

== The one question that would expose every hypocrisy ==

The central question that not a single Democrat has ever publicly asked is “When do you MAGA folks envision that America ‘Great’"? 

Under the 'Greatest Generation' that overcame depression, crushed Hitler, contained communism, took us into space, cured polio and built a mighty middle class?

Fine, only dig it, those GGs knew the feudal enemy and they adored Franklin Roosevelt, voting in high tax rates that (surprise!) accompanied the highest growth and best-flat-fair capitalism in U.S. history. Sure, we’ll concede that our parents in the Greatest Generation accomplished a lot – like beginning the long struggle to cleanse our national heart of racism, sexism and other absurd wastes of talent. Led by FDR, their defeat of aristocracy and confederatism produced our ‘greatest’ era! And dismantling that modern American Contract has been the sole GOP-plutocrat aim since 1981.

Alas, when they met in Davos, theoe zillionaires did not do what I portray some of the rich doing in EXISTENCE - soberly discussing how to rule better. At least, better than feudalism's dismal record of 6000 years. No, these masters-of-the-world will hear the mob sharpening scythes, pitchforks and torches... and they'll do what lords always do: order sycophants to sing their praises louder.

Or, as Ken Fitzer  put it: “Feudalism: When it's your Count that votes.”

Then there’s the story about the rich guy noticing anger simmering in the faces of the poor, so he tells the poor white guy that the poor black guy wants to steal his cookie. Same as it ever was.

== Are we “hacked”? ==

An important article by Roger McNamee - an early Facebook investor-insider - explores how the algorithm-led strategies of Google and Facebook made them inherently vulnerable to foreign hack-meddling aimed at wrecking our civilization:

“It reads like the plot of a sci-fi novel: a technology celebrated for bringing people together is exploited by a hostile power to drive people apart, undermine democracy, and create misery. This is precisely what happened in the United States during the 2016 election. We had constructed a modern Maginot Line—half the world’s defense spending and cyber-hardened financial centers, all built to ward off attacks from abroad—never imagining that an enemy could infect the minds of our citizens through inventions of our own making, at minimal cost. Not only was the attack an overwhelming success, but it was also a persistent one, as the political party that benefited refuses to acknowledge reality. The attacks continue every day, posing an existential threat to our democratic processes and independence.”

The author, once a friend and mentor to the CEOs of these brash companies, now has burned his bridges in calling for a national response based on veritable survival.  Let me add that the core problem of insularity and echo-chambers (‘Nuremberg Rallies’) that can be manipulated by cynical savanarolas is one that I predicted, long ago, in my novel EARTH (1989)

Remember: whether or not the Mueller investigation proves “knowing collusion” isn’t the point!  What matters is that hostile foreign powers wanted a U.S. political outcome, strove to achieve it, and got what they wanted. And they are still at it.

Though we must always calibrate! Jim Wright – whose Stonekettle blog is always lively and fascinating – inveighs that the word “hack” has very specific meanings that should not be muddied as we (rightfully) complain about and act against foreign and domestic meddling.  

“Facebook, Google, Twitter, and other platforms were manipulated to shift outcomes in Brexit and the U.S. presidential election, and unless major changes are made, they will be manipulated again.”

I consulted at Facebook, some months ago. One top piece of advice? “Get out of the news business.” Now, it seems they are taking steps.

== Action Items! ==

You should ask your congress-critters to support the Secure Elections Act.  “The bill reads like a computer security expert’s wish list.”  Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) are key co-sponsors of the bill. Which makes me curious about this young Lankford feller. I mean, really? A republican senator supporting a reform that would eliminate a major GOP cheat? Of course it won’t pass this year. Murdoch and his shills know they’ll need every cheat to suppress to coming Wave. But could this fellow be part of the revival of sane-not-treasonous conservatism?

Truth is as vital a part of the civic, social and intellectual culture as justice and liberty. Our civilization is premised on the conviction that such a thing as truth exists, that it is knowable, that it is verifiable, that it exists independently of authority or popularity and that at some point — and preferably sooner rather than later — it will prevail.”  This LA Times editorial: Why Trump Lies dissects the problem when a U.S. president appears completely incapable of recognizing his own lies and taking even marginal pains to keep them consistent, or to not paint us - or even himself - into lethal corners.

The top confederate article of faith - rigorously conveyed on Fox - is: “repeating an assertion makes it so!” Hence the open war against all fact-using professions.

Alas, instead of bemoaning this, leaders and thinkers in Sane America need to think tactically and strategically. “What can be done to make the issue of “facts” a decisive weapon, instead of one more thing to whine about — *rewarding* the enemies of fact, as they giggle victoriously over our complaints?  Don’t any of you liberals and moderates and nerds remember the modus of Junior High School bullies? Who answered our appeals to reason with guffaws of mockery?

I laid down a way to do this. Alas, not one moderate or sane US politician or pundit has come anywhere near doing what has a real chance of working. But here it is:

The Times finishes wisely: “Investigate. Read. Write. Listen. Speak. Think. Be wary of those who disparage the investigators, the readers, the writers, the listeners, the speakers and the thinkers. Be suspicious of those who confuse reality with reality TV, and those who repeat falsehoods while insisting, against all evidence, that they are true. To defend freedom, demand fact.”

And thus they prove they are fools. You are asking that the folks in Sane America be what they already are, and implicitly demanding we continue to wrestle with the confederacy using Sumo, grunting and shoving by inches. Instead of shifting to Judo.

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Taxation, capitalism, free enterprise and fair play

A lot to cover, and yes, politics.  But first ...

== Capitalism, democracy and fair play ==

Evonomics is on a roll. The site has become the central place where serious minds ponder how to revive a mixed economy that served us so well. The miracle that communists never understood and that oligarchs seek to destroy. 

In the lead article, zillionaire entrepreneur Steve Roth writes: “Democracy. Capitalism. Socialism. Choose Any Three of the Above. If you don’t have a big bathtub of oil in the ground, you need all three to deliver widespread economic well-being.” Showing the understanding that has made almost all of the rich folks who got it via innovation democrats, he discusses how each of these three legs supports a stable society.

My own metaphor: 
 . Marx wants me to amputate my right arm of competitive, individual or group ambition. 
 . Ayn Rand demands that I cut off my left arm of great projects we decide to do together, in research, infrastructure, space and making sure all children get to reify their talents in fair competition. 
 . Both simplistic prescriptions are monstrous and spectacularly stupid.  I will not amputate.  I need both arms.

David Graeber, a Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics, opines on “Why Capitalism Creates Pointless Jobs. It’s as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working.”  Graeber describes how many “bullshit jobs” there are in critical terms… 

...while I take a different tack: that all the nail salons and other — less than necessary — service jobs out there have been a blessing because people like to work!  They don’t want to live in the world of Kurt Vonnegut’s PLAYER PIANO (set in the Albany area where I just spoke (at GE's Whitney Symposium), wherein the only way most people can get work is via the state’s department of reconstruction. Far better to set up an economy in which people provide each other less-than-necessary services, and feel some pride. 

Still, interesting stuff.

Bob Atkinson, a very smart Washington think-tanker I know, argues that “Complexity and Evolution Need to Play a Foundational Role in the Next Economic Paradigm.”  He suggests that “a key focus for economic policy should be to encourage adaptation, experimentation and risk taking. It means supporting policies to intentionally accelerate economic evolution, especially from technological and institutional innovation. 

This means not only rejecting neo-Ludditism in favor of techno-optimism, it means the embrace of a proactive innovation policy. And it means enabling new experiments in policy, recognizing that many will fail, but that some will succeed and become “dominant species.” Policy and program experimentation will better enable economic policy to support complex adaptive systems.”

== Okay... politics... ==

Warren Buffet demolished Donald Trump's whine that he and other Clinton supporters 'do the same thing' avoiding taxes: " Buffet says, “I have paid federal income tax every year since 1944, when I was 13. (Though, being a slow starter, I owed only $7 in tax that year,)" Buffett wrote. “I have copies of all 72 of my returns and none uses a carry forward”

Buffet, the Greatest Investor and popular for his folksy brilliance, wants success for the middle class that has so benefited him and other democratic billionaires like Bill Gates. All agree that taxes on the rich should go back to pre-Bush levels, when we had surpluses, under another Clinton.  In 2015 alone, Buffet gave away $2.9 billion -- that's more than 75% of Trump's claimed net worth.... and twice what sober analysts figure DT owns...

... and as much as a million times what Donald Trump is estimated to give to charity, most years. (See below.)

 But then, we'd know -- (shouldn't we?) -- if those IRS returns got released. And let's be clear about that.  Those who are screeching about "emails" know that, at their very worst, HC's emails reveal nothing criminal, only a lapse in judgement. They do not compare even remotely to Trump's concealing 30 years of tax returns that (bet on it) would reveal conflicts and torts of towering magnitude.

The Trump Tax Return matter should not leave  anyone's awareness, this week.  Remind your crazy uncle.  It won't change his vote... but your aunt is listening.

== More on taxes ==

Moron taxes? Donald Trump's tax plan offers massive tax relief for the rich, which would add trillions to the national debt. In contrast, Clinton's proposal would increase taxes on the wealthy and lessen the burden on middle-class families, especially those with young children.

"A pair of new analyses published Tuesday afternoon by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center emphasize the extreme contrasts between the two candidates when it comes to taxes. In a campaign that has been defined by conspiracy theories, racial innuendos and sex scandals from decades past, the new data is a reminder that the election puts serious money at stake for many American households," writes Max Ehrenfreund in The Washington Post.

I will only add that this also distills the difference between confederates and americans. In 1861, a million poor, white southerners marched off to die fighting for a slave-owning aristocracy that had been waging economic war against poor, white southerners for two generations. Why would they do that, then? And why now? Because symbolism and cultural grievances trump self-interest. (Don't think for a minute this is about free enterprise, which always, always does better under democrats.)

America - the blue Union - is a pragmatic place where we fight for incremental reforms that maintain a healthy middle class.

== Don’t you dare claim the ‘high road’  ==

Donald Trump spent more than a quarter-million dollars from his charitable foundation to settle lawsuits that involved the billionaire’s for-profit businesses. Laws against “self-dealing” prohibit nonprofit leaders from using charity money to benefit themselves or their businesses.

Hence the chain of cheats, mafia dealings, bribing public officials (and bragging about it), lying to Trump University students and union workers and small businessmen and leaving them in ruins, and denigrating for 5 years the birth of the twice legitimately elected president of his country… 

...none of those matter to his followers. These merely exemplify his “strength.”  The fact that he’s actually a very poor businessman, who has not meaningfully enlarged his inheritance beyond what an index fund would have done? Shruggable. Racism and sexism are plus-points, as is participation in the War on Science. 

To the fundamentalist hypocrites who – unlike Jimmy Carter’s sincere Christians –pray daily for events that would end freedom, democracy, ambition and - yes - bring to an end the United States of America, there is no limit to the faults they will forgive in this predatory, philandering, twice-divorced, flip-flopping, charity-stealing, truth-spurning gambling lord.  

One trait absolves all of that and it is not having been washed clean by the blood of the lamb. It is sharing the same despised enemies.  All the college-smartypants. Those enemies.

== Hello Breitbart ==

Let's experiment: Compare side by side the very worst (non-tinfoil) allegations against Clinton and those assertions about Trump. 

Assume the very worst about Hillary Clinton and only include the Trumpist behaviors that are open matters of public record. Include none of the anti Trump assertions that we're merely 90% sure about, with tons of supporting evidence, but not absolutely proved.

Hers add up to zero years of actual jail time! At the very most? A few fines, and that is if all of the molehills are 100% true. (They aren't.)

On the other hand, Trump's openly admitted crimes - bribing public officials, lying in sworn testimony, slandering people then shrugging off disproof, fraudulently declaring bankruptcy... amount to potential maximum sentences approaching a thousand years. Sexual assault.

Again, only two 8-year presidencies ended with zero high officials sentenced or even indicted for malfeasance of office. Despite 24 years and up towards a billion $ in relentless investigations. Those two administrations are thus proved to have been the most honest in U.S. history...

...Bill Clinton's and Barack Obama's. 

Screech and howl over that. Summon incantation spells about how they managed to hide all the "proof" that endless hearings and $100 million in Koch-offered "whistleblower rewards" never found. But after 24 years of witch hunts and half a billion in largely taxpayer funds spent 'investigating' the most scrutinized couple in history... you bear the burden of proof for your paranoid ravings.

And that'll do, for a couple a days.