Fixing class & political disparities without (much) revolution

All right the US midterms weren't so bad... unless you count the distressingly large number of places across America where 48% of our neighbors are frantically imbibing Kremlin agitprop and pro-oligarchy koolaid...

...or the desperate dumbness of our friends and allies on the left, for refusing even to talk to Hispanics (especially males) to find out why that essential part of the coalition is drifting away.

Gosh, even amid guardedly good news, the topic always has so many under-examined angles. Perspectives that you never see in the pathetically unimaginative, 2-D punditry, even on the Union side of this phase 8 of the American Civil War. 

So let's just let our hair down this time, while I take you through some off-axis ruminations... much of it about looming class war.

== Better late than never… ==

In The Atlantic, Francis Fukuyama defends the basic premise of his “End of History” notion that liberal democracies, science-based fact-checking, fair argument and reciprocal tolerance will win, in the end. 

“Over the years, we have seen huge setbacks to the progress of liberal and democratic institutions, with the rise of fascism and communism in the 1930s, or the military coups and oil crises of the 1960s and ’70s. And yet, liberal democracy has endured and come back repeatedly, because the alternatives are so bad. People across varied cultures do not like living under dictatorship, and they value their individual freedom. No authoritarian government presents a society that is, in the long term, more attractive than liberal democracy, and could therefore be considered the goal or endpoint of historical progress. The millions of people voting with their feet—leaving poor, corrupt, or violent countries for life not in Russia, China, or Iran but in the liberal, democratic West—amply demonstrate this.”

Fukuyama used to be a Republican Party court intellectual. But he is also brilliant and in regular contact with all of the fact-using professions who have become the bêtes noirs of the Foxite risen-confederacy. And hence, like nearly all of the US military officer corps, he has severed those ties.

“The big question mark remains, unfortunately, the United States. Some 30 to 35 percent of its voters continue to believe the false narrative that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, and the Republican Party has been taken over by Donald Trump’s MAGA followers, who are doing their best to put election deniers in positions of power around the country. This group does not represent a majority of the country but (because of their own cheats like gerrymandering) is likely to regain control of at least the House of Representatives this November, and possibly the presidency in 2024.”

Francis Fukuyama writes, “Liberal democracy will not make a comeback unless people are willing to struggle on its behalf. The problem is that many who grow up living in peaceful, prosperous liberal democracies begin to take their form of government for granted.”

Well, well. I would add that the non-confederate Union side of this civil war has another problem. So many of its 'generals' are so emotionally wedded to their favorite sanctimony-drug TACTICS that they cannot allow them to be questioned, even when it harms our shared, longterm, strategic goals.

== The ongoing Great Cheat ==

Re the recent midterm election and the influence of gerrymandering, Republicans really have been far more aggressive than Democrats. As the political analyst David Wasserman recently wrote for NBC News: 

"Thanks to reforms passed by voters, many heavily blue states employed bipartisan redistricting commissions that produced neutral or only marginally Democratic-leaning political maps — including in California, Colorado, New Jersey, Virginia and Washington. And state courts in Maryland and New York struck down Democratic legislatures’ attempted gerrymanders.

“By contrast, Republicans were able to manipulate congressional maps in their favor in Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Ohio, Tennessee and Texas, among others, and the conservative-dominated U.S. Supreme Court blocked lower court orders to draw new Black majority districts in Alabama and Louisiana. In Florida alone, Gov. Ron DeSantis overpowered his own Legislature to pass a map that adds an additional four G.O.P. seats.”

And much in the news (but not discussed here today) is the name given by the Mad Right for the Roberts Doctrine, using the illicitly ratified majority of the Supreme Court to support the 'Independent State Legislature' theory. That State Assemblies are the fundamental and final arbiters of electoral sovereignty, even when assembly GOP majorities are won and maintained through outright and flagrant cheating. I've discussed it elsewhere, along with ways to possibly corner John Roberts. Ways that I've seen no one even try.

Another example of political cheating....Under Bush and then under Trump, the U.S. helium reserve was given away - at steep discount - to Republican Party donors… and now we don’t have enough to run medical equipment. 

In contrast, Biden (and Clinton) sold oil from the strategic reserve when prices were at maximum and used those profits to buy and refill the reserve, when prices plummeted. It’s called ‘buy low and sell high” and supposed market enthusiasts should approve! That and deficits that always go DOWN under democrats.  Care to wager on that?

== The ??? who would be king? ==

 

"Arise! You are born of noble blood!" From SMBC, the fantasy of every neo-feudalist, neo-monarchist twit. 

I'm sure you've heard about this pathetic "Prince Heinrich XIII" who preened at the center of Germany's equally pathetic, QAnon-inspired, January-6th-wannabe, abortive beer hall putsch to restore both feudalism and Nazism.  

 

1. The "prince's" supposed line of male succession is pretty minor stuff. The nutter neo-Nazis weren't able to recruit a Prussian-Hohenzollern heir, or Habsburg, or Saxon or even Bavarian. Unlike Vladimir Putin, who has been kissing the ring of the Romanov heir to the very same vile czars whom Vlad ritualistically chanted curses at, across the first half of his life. Now, as an "ex"-commissar who is using Soviet methods to rebuild Olde Russia, Putin waves czarist imperial escutcheons and erects statues to Nicholas II, the imbecile who first crushed all reformers and workers and then - with his equally idiotic cousin the Kaiser - plunged the hopeful beginnings of the 20th Century into hell and nightmare.  

 

(Fascists seem to quite love royal figureheads. Mussolini, Franco, Tojo... and Hitler's on-off flirtation with the Prussian noble castes who had conspired to raise him from nothing.)

 

2. Thuringia is the minor 'principality' of that doofus, Heinrich XIII. The region is of interest to some sci fi fans because it is the setting of the Ring of Fire Series of the late (and lamented!) Eric Flint, that Eric gorgeously expanded with many co-authors into fun alternate universe wherein a West Virginia coal town from the year 2000 gets plopped into Thuringia in the year 1632. In that series, the Wettin ancestors of poor Heinrich are portrayed as having  some brains. Alas, a balrog must've got into the wood pile.

 

3. And yes, this neo-monarchist crap is reviving all over, subsidized by petro-boyars, oil-sheiks, preppers and all sorts of inheritance brats, who bribe 'journalists' to publish articles about jibbering-loco court apologists.   I describe this 'movement' of nasty, microcephalic poseurs here. And here's more on this Mencius Moldbug monster I have eviscerated several times, whose incel-hatred of the entire Enlightenment Experiment is totally bald-faced. See my article: Neo-Reactionaries drop all pretense - in their efforts to bring back rule by lords.  

 

The good news is that the oligarchs pushing this nonsense truly do seem to have crap-for-brains and they hire dopes and flatterers, while the enlightenment can call upon modernity's finest.  The bad news is that these would-be putschists are getting desperate, especially as one of the ring-leaders - Old Vlad - is shown to be no super-KGB chessmaster, after all. And any day now he may lose it, and spasm the world down paths that the preppers, despite all their fantasies, are nowhere near ready for. And that won't be anywhere near as fun as they imagine.

== More evidence of pico-cephalic 'lords' == 

It was Ronald S. Lauder, the Estee Lauder cosmetics billionaire who tried talking Trump into buying Greenland. The moronically narcissistic reasons are obvious. But could they really have been so stoopid about execution? 

Even given the goal of adding to the U.S. the world's biggest island (massively inflated on the most-used flat map projections), anyone even remotely sane in this century would have started with a cash and charm campaign at the native Greenlander indigenous community, instead of a coterie of Danish lords. 

Not all billionaires are morons. But I’m realizing they DO constitute - clearly - a majority.

And while we're on the topic… “Climate activists block private jet take-offs at Schiphol Airport…”  

If there's any type of radicalism that must spread round the globe, it is this one! Not just because under-taxed private jets are polluting parasites, symbolic of wealth disparities skyrocketing near French Revolution levels. But also because all forms of transport deteriorate when the rich abandon them. 

And so, the radicalism I want to see is mobs descending on those private jet terminals with pitchforks shouting: 

"All you lords and rich folk and celebrities, get BACK into 1st Class! 

"Sip mimosas in seats only 2x as big as ours! 

"Share our airport pain and flight delays and the rest! And if that upsets you... FIX it!"

That level of 'radicalism' might waken some of the insipid proto-feudalists to look up words like 'tumbrel' and decide NOT to tempt a revival of that kind of ride. 

== Where are today's Joe Kennedys? ==

See "Class War and the Lessons of History." And yeah, I didn't even once (till now) in a discussion of Class Conflict, invoke the name Karl Marx. Oh, there's plenty to discuss!  Like how old Karl never imagined that a scion of wealth - FDR - would be smart enough to buy off the workers by leveling the field and inviting them to share in a strong Middle Class. Big mistake. Glaring error! And for a while, Marx seemed consigned to the dustbin...

Only now his tomes are flying off the shelves on almost every university on the planet. Why?

 Because our insipid world aristocracy is largely made up of buffoons and 'preppers' and inheritance brats unable to read and argue over the historical lessons of class taught by 6000 years of history. Show me one with the brains of that smart crook Joseph Kennedy, who supported FDR for one reason:

"I'd rather be taxed half my wealth so the poor and workers are calm and happy than lose it all to revolution."

Any aristo who actually, actually thinks the R word is not on the table, amid his caste's all out war agains increasingly fed-up nerd professions, is truly too smug, dumb and incurious to ever care what 'tumbrel' means, until he is riding in one. But it's a cart that can find you, even deep in your Patagonian prepper fortress.

Though for a good fee, I'll tell you how to avoid that conveyance!

Funky memory lapses, flunky-flukes... and Fukuyama...

re-lighting the political lamp....

Let’s see, in the last week, the president has denied knowing Abramoff, denied knowing that management of many of our seaports had been sold to gulf interests, denied knowing that his administration had cut sustainable energy research while he publicly called for more, denied knowing about rampant fraud in Katrina relief, and denied knowing about fraud in no-bid crony contracts that still haven’t lifted Iraq to pre-war levels of supply in electricity, gas, water and food. When Jimmy Carter said “I don’t know,” there was usually an implication -- “but I’ll find out.”

Well, alas. here are some other items.

In the past two years, the Union of Concerned Scientists has collected the signatures of more than 8,000 scientists -- including 49 Nobel laureates, 63 National Medal of Science recipients and 171 members of the National Academies - who accuse the Administration of an unprecedented level of political intrusion into their world.

Of course most of you already caught this, but really, just in case somebody didn’t. Attorney General Gonzales’s testimony before the Judiciary Committee last Monday offered the following gem: "President Washington, President Lincoln, President Wilson, President Roosevelt have all authorized electronic surveillance on a far broader scale." ...um... and I used the word... “morons” to excess?

Oh, here’s a puff moment! I thank Stefan for finding this out: “George Deutsch, the political appointee put in charge of NASA public relations, who after a short career telling scientists to shut up if they knew what was good for them, recently had to resign... (and) The grad student blogger who uncovered Deutsch's fudged credential has Contrary Brin on his blog roll.”

And just when I was about to say “this isn’t doing any good...”

--
Oh, thanks , for citing the article about Bill Clinton.
It is vital that we remember one fact as the lefties who gave us Ralph Nader and Cindy Sheehan continue preaching their philosophy that the Democratic Party will win by “returning to its roots”... a political philosophy of always giving Karl Rove every provocation needed in order to stoke “Culture War.” That, all by itself, does not bother me. But to always choose the stupid fight over the fight that can be won? Let us recall that Bill Clinton not only won every fight. He won huge. Anybody who yammers that we need a different approach may be right... but they bear a burden of proof.

--
Finally... Some of you may have noticed that I’ve not dealt gently with Francis Fukuyama -- in some articles, for example, calling him a techno luddite and a neoconservitive “Bush Administration court intellectual.” (See: The Real Culture War: Defining the Background) A man of perception and ideas whose erudition has (alas) all-too often fallen short of its penetrating potential.

I wrote those words shortly before the 2004 election... even as Fukuyama was apparently commencing upon a process of soul-searching reevaluation. A process that - rather than being a sign of deplorable wishy-washyness - should be respected and given due credit. Indeed, it is the opposite trait, obstinate devotion to dogmatic consistency, that most threatens our pragmatic enlightenment in an era of rapid change.

To see witness process in action - as Fukuyama wishes it to be seen - have a look at “After Neoconservatism” an article that appeared recently in the NY Times. wherein he worries about political and psychological effects of an Iraq intervention that has turned into a quagmire. Beyond the immediate costs, he sees the incompetent execution of an assertively “wilsonian” foreign policy (pursuing the utopian goals of “spreading democracy” and nation building) resulting in a revulsion, repudiation and rejection of wilsonian activism. Through their unnecessarily bellicose and divisive methodologies, the “idealistic” neoconservatives have undermined their very goals, creating an environment that has only encouraged both the left and right to drift backward, reverting to their more isolationist versions. He sees this as lamentable, at the very moment when a confident and assertive America may be key to making a better world.

While this conversion is welcome, indeed, a possible harbinger of the 1947-style mass-desertion by honest conservatives that I have long called for - a great awakening that could save a nation and civilization - I nevertheless despair when I see a bright fellow like this still clinging to straws. For example, his desperate need to claim that the debacle in Iraq is harming American assertive “wilsonian” confidence is clearly true. But to attribute this process of pain and discreditation to his former friends’ incompetence is - well - perhaps too reflexively forgiving.

I find it stunning how bifurcated the world seems to be, between those who reflexively seek conspiratorial explanations for strange events (e.g. Pearl Harbor and the Kennedy assassinations) and those “reasonable people” who reject conspiratorial explanations almost as a reflex. Yes, the former group includes a vast number of kooks and loonies. And parsimony demands that moderate and rational people (especially in a somewhat open society) adopt a first order attitude of “what you see is what you get.” I am especially caustic toward silly notions that FDR wanted us defeated at Pearl Harbor, and I find Lee Harvey Oswald totally credible as a lone gunman.

On the other hand, can “reasonable” men deny that history truly is rife with conspiracies? Moreover, when the parsimonious explanation of actual events is the conspiratorial one, should it be reflexively dismissed?

In the case of our recent behaviors in Iraq - where the sheer number of corrupt, inciting, and incompetent acts beggars the imagination - is it not at least worth contemplating that these events, that were authored by supposedly brilliant men, might actually have unfolded as planned?

Fukuyama complains that wilsonian-activist idealism is being discredited because it was poorly executed. But what if -- (please, just consider) -- what if that was the intention, all along?

Again and again, I keep urging that people ask this one question. “Who has benefitted from the recent sequence of events?” Is it possible that the beneficiaries of events might have intended to so benefit, all along? Is that not at least a simple hypothesis worth putting up alongside others?

There is too much in this, vastly too much, to comment upon further, right now. I must put this aside for later, when I’ll make a mini-essay out of it. Stay tuned for a more detailed discussion of such matters, using Francis Fukuyama as a centripetal focus.

For there are so many levels. Is there actually a chance that an intellect of the size and stature of Fukuyama’s might be weaned away from the blandishments and flattery of aristoklepts and the seduction of platonists, to find his home again among the likes of Franklin, Locke and Marshall? As I said, stay tuned.

Funky memory lapses, flunky-flukes... and Fukuyama...

Re-lighting the political lamp....

==After Neoconservatism==

Some of you may have noticed that I’ve not dealt gently with Francis Fukuyama -- in some articles, for example, calling him a techno-luddite and a neoconservitive “Bush Administration court intellectual.” (See: The Real Culture War: Defining the Background.) A man of perception and ideas whose erudition has (alas) all-too often fallen short of its penetrating potential.

I wrote those words shortly before the 2004 election... even as Fukuyama was apparently commencing upon a process of soul-searching re-evaluation. A process that - rather than being a sign of deplorable wishy-washyness - should be respected and given due credit. Indeed, it is the opposite trait, obstinate devotion to dogmatic consistency, that most threatens our pragmatic enlightenment in an era of rapid change.

To see witness process in action - as Fukuyama wishes it to be seen - have a look at “After Neoconservatism” an article that appeared recently in the NY Times, wherein he worries about political and psychological effects of an Iraq intervention that has turned into a quagmire. Beyond the immediate costs, he sees the incompetent execution of an assertively “wilsonian” foreign policy (pursuing the utopian goals of “spreading democracy” and nation building) resulting in a revulsion, repudiation and rejection of wilsonian activism. Through their unnecessarily bellicose and divisive methodologies, the “idealistic” neoconservatives have undermined their very goals, creating an environment that has only encouraged both the left and right to drift backward, reverting to their more isolationist versions. He sees this as lamentable, at the very moment when a confident and assertive America may be key to making a better world.

While this conversion is welcome, indeed, a possible harbinger of the 1947-style mass-desertion by honest conservatives that I have long called for - a great awakening that could save a nation and civilization - I nevertheless despair when I see a bright fellow like this still clinging to straws. For example, his desperate need to claim that the debacle in Iraq is harming American assertive “wilsonian” confidence is clearly true. But to attribute this process of pain and discreditation to his former friends’ incompetence is - well - perhaps too reflexively forgiving.

I find it stunning how bifurcated the world seems to be, between those who reflexively seek conspiratorial explanations for strange events (e.g. Pearl Harbor and the Kennedy assassinations) and those “reasonable people” who reject conspiratorial explanations almost as a reflex. Yes, the former group includes a vast number of kooks and loonies. And parsimony demands that moderate and rational people (especially in a somewhat open society) adopt a first order attitude of “what you see is what you get.” I am especially caustic toward silly notions that FDR wanted us defeated at Pearl Harbor, and I find Lee Harvey Oswald totally credible as a lone gunman.

On the other hand, can “reasonable” men deny that history truly is rife with conspiracies? Moreover, when the parsimonious explanation of actual events is the conspiratorial one, should it be reflexively dismissed?

In the case of our recent behaviors in Iraq - where the sheer number of corrupt, inciting, and incompetent acts beggars the imagination - is it not at least worth contemplating that these events, that were authored by supposedly brilliant men, might actually have unfolded as planned?

Fukuyama complains that wilsonian-activist idealism is being discredited because it was poorly executed. But what if -- (please, just consider) -- what if that was the intention, all along?

Again and again, I keep urging that people ask this one question. “Who has benefitted from the recent sequence of events?” Is it possible that the beneficiaries of events might have intended to so benefit, all along? Is that not at least a simple hypothesis worth putting up alongside others?

There is too much in this, vastly too much, to comment upon further, right now. I must put this aside for later, when I’ll make a mini-essay out of it. Stay tuned for a more detailed discussion of such matters, using Francis Fukuyama as a centripetal focus.

For there are so many levels. Is there actually a chance that an intellect of the size and stature of Fukuyama’s might be weaned away from the blandishments and flattery of aristoklepts and the seduction of platonists, to find his home again among the likes of Franklin, Locke and Marshall? As I said, stay tuned.

==Memory Lapses==

Let’s see, in the last week, the president has denied knowing Abramoff, denied knowing that management of many of our seaports had been sold to gulf interests, denied knowing that his administration had cut sustainable energy research while he publicly called for more, denied knowing about rampant fraud in Katrina relief, and denied knowing about fraud in no-bid crony contracts that still haven’t lifted Iraq to pre-war levels of supply in electricity, gas, water and food. When Jimmy Carter said “I don’t know,” there was usually an implication -- “but I’ll find out.”

Well, alas. here are some other items.

In the past two years, the Union of Concerned Scientists has collected the signatures of more than 8,000 scientists -- including 49 Nobel laureates, 63 National Medal of Science recipients and 171 members of the National Academies - who accuse the Administration of an unprecedented level of political intrusion into their world.

Of course most of you already caught this, but really, just in case somebody didn’t. Attorney General Gonzales’s testimony before the Judiciary Committee last Monday offered the following gem: "President Washington, President Lincoln, President Wilson, President Roosevelt have all authorized electronic surveillance on a far broader scale." ...um... and I used the word... “morons” to excess?

Oh, here’s a puff moment! I thank Stefan for finding this out: “George Deutsch, the political appointee put in charge of NASA public relations, who after a short career telling scientists to shut up if they knew what was good for them, recently had to resign... (and) The grad student blogger who uncovered Deutsch's fudged credential has Contrary Brin on his blog roll.”

And just when I was about to say “this isn’t doing any good...”

Oh, thanks , for citing the article about Bill Clinton.

It is vital that we remember one fact as the lefties who gave us Ralph Nader and Cindy Sheehan continue preaching their philosophy that the Democratic Party will win by “returning to its roots”... a political philosophy of always giving Karl Rove every provocation needed in order to stoke “Culture War.” That, all by itself, does not bother me. But to always choose the stupid fight over the fight that can be won? Let us recall that Bill Clinton not only won every fight. He won huge. Anybody who yammers that we need a different approach may be right... but they bear a burden of proof.