I think the Great Pause of the pandemic gave us enough time to digest what just happened last decade. It's rare that you get to reflect on things in such a leisurely manner. The experience had some parts Boccaccio's 'Decameron' and some parts 'The Plague' by Camus.
One of the things that really struck a cord was how social media effectively turns us into hungry rats, addicted to the stimulus of other people's posts and news items. Indeed, there was a certain level of irony in all the doom-scrolling we did during lockdown. Now that the pandemic is in the "let's-just-ignore-it-and-it-might-go-away" phase, it's weird to reflect on the things we thought and did as we took cover from the unseen foe. As Genesis once pointed out in their songs, how does one fight a o deadly when you don't even know it's there? That in a nutshell is how dinosaurs went extinct.
Anyway, here is a song decrying the horror that was the betrayal inherent in the Cambridge Analytica episode that gave us Brexit and Trump in 2016.
I've written this before. I thought the 1990s were great. It was great in the wake of the end of the Cold War and many things seemed possible. Movies were fun, rock was resurgent, new things were going on in music, books were fun and interesting. It was like a flowering of ideas after a very long repression. I used to wonder how is this beautiful era going to end? I guess we found out with two things. The first was the election of Dubya, aka George W Bush as President. It was a cliff hanger that went to the supreme court and somehow the Republican lawyers wrested the outcome from Al Gore. It was the moment the Republicans allowed themselves to overtly break the rules and law to have their way. It would turn out to be an appetiser for the kind of shenanigans to follow.
The second thing was 9/11. After the Twin Towers came down, all bets were off. The world changed overnight and suddenly we were 'at war' with 'terror'. A flood of rhetoric washed out from the White House that led to things like the war in Afghanistan (probably legit) and the Marin Iraq *definitely not legit) as well as a slew of anti-terror laws and overreach by surveillance. The last two decades continue to be marred by the responses to 9/11 which were more often than not over-reactions. Yes, nearly 4000 people died and a whole slew of system failures were exposed as well as giving birth to the internet conspiracy theory culture, but it has to be said the trillions spent on prosecuting the foreign wars and surveilling the domestic population is a ridiculously expensive price to pay.
In that time America watered down its education and health to move money to its military industrial complex, and essentially created a generation of under-educated idiots susceptible to conspiracy theories on the internet. The worst aspects of that as blowback could be seen in the storming of the US Capitol earlier this year.
Let's say that is all by-the-by. 9/11 happened because of a string of incompetent decisions as well and lack of leadership to act on reports. The FBI had reports it didn't follow up. The CIA delivered reports to the White House that the White House did not follow up. It was so slack entire areas of conspiracy theories have grown up around them but the essential truth is that the government of the day, the Bush Jr Administration, was largely asleep at the wheel. And when the dust settled, the republican administration used it as an opportunity to overreach on surveillance and expand powers. They say in politics one should never let a good crisis go to waste, but that sort of cynicism was exactly what characterised the events that followed. To protect democracy, they decided to circumvent democracy. We are still living with the consequences of those terrible decisions.
My God What Have We Done?
There is a leader of Islamist thought Aga Khan IV who believes that 9/11 is a direct result of the world community ignoring the plight of the human tragedy of Afghanistan at the time. It is hard to argue with it if you remember what Afghanistan under the Taliban the first time around was like. It was repressive, regressive, iconoclastic, and most certainly toxic and misogynistic in a way that is off the scales for contemporary people living civilised society.
Throughout the 1990s we sort of let all of that slide. They were very much on the nose but we had a way of pretending it was too far away to matter. I am certain that we will fall into that mindset again soon enough, but for the record most people didn't know where Kabul was on the map until the Americans finally sent troops.
I think about that indifference a lot. In stark contrast to the globalised congeniality of the 1990s, there were plenty of people suffering under terrible regimes. We were very casual about the plight of people in the islamic world, partly because we didn't want to tell them how to run their governments. The world was celebrating and partying to the end of the Cold War. Bad Islamist governance in Kabul was like a distant problem we really didn't want to know about.
There is a very telling episode of 'Seinfeld' from the 1990s that illustrates this point. It's the episode titled 'The Visa'. It aired in January 1993 which feels like yesterday in some weird way; at least a lot closer to 9/11 than where we are today.
George meets a lawyer named Cheryl (Maggie Han) who thinks he's very funny. When he tells Jerry and Elaine, they enthusiastically plan a double date, much to George's dismay, as he imagines himself being upstaged by Jerry. At the restaurant, Elaine asks Cheryl for advice on dealing with the lawsuit from Ping, the Chinese food delivery boy whom Elaine injured in "The Virgin". Cheryl reveals that she is the prosecuting attorney in the case, as Ping is her cousin. Jerry and Elaine joke about this coincidence, making Cheryl laugh hysterically. While she is away, George makes them promise not to be funny around her. Jerry overdoes it, making comments that are so morbid that Cheryl is depressed by the end of the date.
At Jerry's apartment, Kramer returns early from baseball fantasy camp, where he accidentally punched Mickey Mantle. Elaine sees Cheryl with George and thanks her for persuading Ping to drop the case. She says that she did that because they all seemed like such nice people. As Elaine is giving Jerry the mail that she has been holding for him while he was out of town, Babu Bhatt, the Pakistani who Jerry tried to help in "The Cafe", is hauled off by the INS. Jerry had helped him get a job and the apartment down the hall. Jerry and Elaine discover Babu's Visa renewal form in Jerry's belated mail; it had been delivered to Jerry's address by mistake. They go to the jail where Babu is being held. When they tell him what happened he becomes angry. Jerry promises to straighten things out.
Jerry has lunch with Cheryl, where he continues his morose façade, so that he can ask her to solve Babu's problems with the INS. When she sees George, she confesses that she is attracted to Jerry's dark, disturbed personality. George, realizing his scheme has backfired, tells her the truth. Stunned at this revelation, she gets up and leaves.
At Jerry's apartment, Elaine sees Ping and thanks him for dropping the case. He sneers and tells her the case is back on because they all made Cheryl mad due to Jerry's deception. Babu's brother enters and says Babu has been deported, since Cheryl neglected to follow through on the favor after George's revelation. Back in Pakistan, Babu swears eternal vengeance against Jerry.
Ouch. At the time I watched this episode, I really felt for Babu. I laughed - but I knew Babu's problems were very real, as opposed to the decidedly trivial preoccupations and obsessions of all of the characters in 'Seinfeld'. The reality gap as it were, was what made it very black humour. It turned out to be very prescient. When 9/11 happened, Babu came to mind. 9/11 was Babu exacting vengeance upon us for our indifference.
How Did We End Up There?
We may ask ourselves how it is we were still stationing troops in Afghanistan all these years later, until last month. The protracted history of bad decisions goes a long way back, but it may point to the funding and arming of Mujihadeen resistance fighters against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. By training those people and arming them, and then beating the Soviets out of Afghanistan they decided that the West could be beaten. And in abandoning Afghanistan to its own devices in the 1990s led to a Taliban government which saw fit to harbour Osama bin Laden and other terrorists. Without going into the various theories - conspiracy and otherwise - about whether Al Qaeda was really a thing or merely a designation/conflagration by the CIA, it is true that Afghanistan as a state went rogue and allowed itself to sponsor terrorism abroad, and it was this lack of judgement that led to 9/11 and the subsequent war and occupation of Afghanistan.
That's all on one side. The other side is the utter lack of judgement on the side of the what became known as the Coalition of the Willing. That was the countries led by the USA that was happy to march into both Afghanistan and Iraq. Australia's part in it is pretty sorry. We sent our best troops and as they stayed and stayed, they became psychopaths on safari, committing acts that can only be described as war crimes. Nobody thought we would be there for so long, but without judgment there was no way of pulling out of Afghanistan without pulling down the state of Afghanistan we set up in the wake of the Taliban.
It took a President even worse than George W Bush to get the USA out of Afghanistan and his solution was simply to give up Afghanistan to the very same Taliban the USA ousted in 2002. The mind boggles. It's as if Donald Trump slept through 9/11 and missed it completely. Or didn't really care. Maybe he did us all a favour in ending a forever war, and we are all looking that gift horse in the mouth. Maybe Afghanistan is better off under the Taliban, as a beacon of intolerance and religious extremism and medieval legalism. After all, why should we spend money on a place that doesn't want to conform to a civilised world? Maybe we can enjoy a decade of no wars; because I feel like we should maybe party a little bit like it's 1999, once this pandemic lifts.
There are people in Afghanistan who are angry the West left, and let them in that terrible Dark Ages limbo. Yet it is easily arguable that we shouldn't have been there at all for as long as we were. At some point we can't fight the geopolitical gravity forever. Whatever goes up to Afghanistan must come down.
So Will It Happen Again?
With any luck, with all the civil liberties we have given up, and all the compromises to our democracy, the one thing that won't happen again is a 9/11. Is it a high price to pay? Probably in as much as it still doesn't guarantee it won't happen again - but it is highly unlikely. Bitter lessons were learnt at all levels of government everywhere.
As of that day, governments have given licences to themselves to compromise your privacy in exchange for security, and maybe we're all safer for it, but we are definitely not better for it. And I for one believe it when military people say we will be back in Afghanistan soon enough. It's just a terrible enough situation to draw us in. With any luck it will be the Chinese who end up trying to sort out that mess instead of us. That, would be a better outcome. Let somebody else suffer Afghanistan instead.
When it gets right down to it, I'm a sore loser. It didn't seem to matter no matter how much I offered up my opinions and pontificating over here. It was just howling into the wind. The world was stupid enough to be persuaded by the Murdoch papers and TV to vote Tony Abbott and Boris Johnson and Donald Trump into power, solely to give tax cuts for the rich and hold off doing anything about Global Warming, what is the damn point of writing a word more about any of this? Have we not crashed into the Twilight of Civilisation?
Not only did progressives not win, they could not stave off the onslaught of Stupid that ensued those losses. The English speaking world led by the USA, UK and Australia collectively lost its common sense and went with the worst kind of idiotic rhetoric as substitute for substantive policy. How is one to discuss what ensued those losses with any kind of sense?
So I stopped writing here. Why expend the energy? I can't beat Rupert Murdoch and his mighty minions of mendacity. Besides which, was it really my job to care? After all I have no kids. There is no generation I have to worry about. My friends with kids worry about the future, sure. I have had the odd luxury of not having to worry about that. In one sense, the stupidity that transpired because of those losses affected me less than it did my friends and their families.
Yet it has been a terrible. 7 years of Liberal Party rule in Australia, 6 years of Brexit politics in the UK, and 5 years of Donald Trump politics has put a huge dent in the credibility of the English speaking world. Nations that would look to the democratic leadership of Washington DC and London got an eyeful of miserable, partisan, anti-intellectual, pseudo-scientific brouhaha that passed for politics in these three countries - all of which share the intoxicating poison of stupidity that is the Murdoch press.
And so in the days following the Putsch upon Capitol Hill by pro-Trump idiots, we are left in the odd position of waiting to see if this horrible period in history will come to a close, at least in America. Will the Republicans finally wake up in the Senate as to just how untenable Trumpism has been for the GOP? Or will they aid and abet the worst President of all time, one last time? Brexit finally limped over the line in late December so as bad as the outcome is, that little drama has come to the end of its run. All that is left is living with the consequences. As for Australia, there is a good deal of time left before the next election. I don't know if the ALP will ever gets act together in time to oust Scomo and his squad of awful human beings. Also offers me little confidence. It appears that Bill Shorten's loss in 2019 was a spectacularly bad election to lose for the ALP, let alone Australia - but that is all a rant for another day.
If anything, the 2010s were a disappointing decade. It didn't really even have any form. People just scrapped for a living thanks to the GFC, and then it was done.
The Dying of People
In the intervening years I did not write here, I found some of my friends began dropping like flies. Death is always somewhat surprising, even though you come to realise that you have walked into the age group where death is not so surprising. Plenty of people have died at ages younger than what I am today. I feel a far cry from the person that started blogging back in 2003. And people really do die. I'm deeply saddened by the passing of Geoff Murphy, Brian Burgess, and Michael Jacob. They're all of a certain generation, and they all passed away during the years I did not write here.
I lost a friend to liver cancer; and I've lost one to COVID-19. If you spend your 30 year adult life drinking a lot, dying of liver cancer is unsurprising. If you are a touring musician in the USA, and Donald Trump is your president, then it is unsurprising that you contract COVID-19 and die. Some famous people have died form COVID-19. Countless animals perished in the mega fires of 2019. Death is all around us. death brought about by stupidity of others, is surprisingly common.
Death is a thing, in case you were lulled into not thinking about it as a factor in one's decision making.
Ambivalence Grows
The other thing I want to report from my self-imposed exile from writing on this blog, is that I've become even more ambivalent about how I feel about many things. One becomes less certain as one piles the age on to one's being. One becomes more discerning, but one also becomes less decisive.
It's also a little disturbing when you read back stuff written by people who died at an age younger than you are right now. This is one of those things that happen. You get perspective on your own life and existence in a way that you just can't buy into the framework of thought and ideology that is invested in a book. I used to think Soseki Natsume was a giant of literature. He died at age 49 and suddenly when you re-read his work as somebody older, you get this weird cognitive dissonance that maybe you really could rhetorically beat up on the literary giant if he only were around today - hey, I even have a cat these days Mr Natsume!
Same with Jack Kerouac who died at 47. F Scott Fitzgerald at 44. Jane Austen, 41. Raymond Radiguet, 20. Or the notion that for all his entire, massive, output, everything Frank Zappa ever did was as a person younger than you are today. Ditto Glenn Gould who died at 50. It's all a little unsettling - and this adds to this ambivalence. Everything looks like it has 10 sides to the argument, and it's exhausting.
So What Are You Gonna Do, Art Neuro?
I'm going to pop in more often this year. Stay tuned.
This series keeps delivering on its product. The cinematography and production design remain top notch. It doesn't quite feel like the sagas because the emotional lives of these characters are so much more intense and seem to have more in common with bikie gangs than say, Njal or Guunnar from 'Njal's Saga'. All the same, the violence is great, and the battle scenes glorious. The action cues really pump and the stakes are always abstract as well as practical. The writing is pretty snappy and in many ways the cast are hiding their stride playing these characters. In some ways I think this series appeals to me more than even 'Game of Thrones'.
Some of the events the series is based upon is beginning to overlap with events sourced for 'The Last Kingdom' which is Netflix's own series about medieval England around the time of the Viking invasions. 'Vikings' is inevitably aiming at showing us the Great Heathen Army, while 'The Last Kingdom' is working towards the reign of King Alfred in defiance of the Vikings who settled in England. It's all so interesting viewing if you're into medieval history.
The thing is, when i was studying medieval history back in high school, I never really got just how much blood guts gore, violence and sex there was in all of this. I wish I'd known - I'm sure I would have paid more attention.
Bullshit For Everybody
Trump is spreading the love. Okay no he's no, he's spreading evermore bullshit, possibly in avid to distract the world from probing further into his Russian connection. His current flavour of bullshit is that President Obama was wire-tapping him in Trump Tower, which sounds as preposterous as... oh I don't know, Area 51 housing alien corpses.
Of course, if President Obama had used the powers of his office to do so, there would be a trail of paperwork to make it so, and of course there isn't; the FBI have said they've done no such thing, and you'd think that would be the end of it, but no. The Donald is pushing for an inquiry, which is a bit like asking for people to officially sniff his butt to see if his bullshit indeed stinks.
There are days where I wonder where the world is going. Today I know I don't have to wonder at all, it's obvious it's going straight to hell in a hand basket full of deplorables.
The Vested Interests Of Politicians
The government likes to talk out housing affordability but isn't willing to actually do anything that might make a difference. Yes, that's right, they won't because all the gyrations of the RBA combined with shoring up the banks during the GFC (and including the debt-monster Macquarie Bank in that set) had everything to do with shoring up asset prices, and in most instances, those asset prices were homes. Why on Earth then would the government feel an incentive to knock down housing prices when the incentives are pointed in the other direction?
The federal government's problem with making housing more affordable is that it becomes, by definition, cheaper. And that's not something that the federal government wants to see happen for some very understandable reasons.
Back in the Howard era Australians were encouraged to invest in housing as a form of wealth creation, partially as a way of addressing rental strain and mainly as a way to ensure people had assets and therefore didn't go selfishly claiming pensions later on. That's when the negative gearing and capital gains exemptions were introduced that made buying property such a sweet deal.
So now there are a lot of Australians who have put their retirement eggs in the basket marked "leveraging the hell out of my mortgage to buy more investment properties" for the last couple of decades and who will be therefore disadvantaged if the value of housing drops.
And then there's pure self interest at work too, since between a third and half of all our representatives have investment properties - the PM himself owns seven properties, for example. How keen would you say that our parliamentary representatives are to make their portfolios drop in value, especially for something as stupid as the greater good?
Yes, they are part of the vested interests do with the Property Bubble. No, they won't be doing what needs to be done so that too will be left to the market.
Donald Trump has rightfully earned himself a lot of satirical blows. What's funny about President Trump is that he's no different to the Donald Trump on 'the Apprentice', which is to say he's just carried his reality TV persona into the White House, and leaks suggest he is fuming that people are able tome fun of him so mercilessly. His hapless advisor Kellyanne Conway has been a faux-pas machine blessing the world with such notions as 'alternative facts' and a totally imaginary 'Bowling Green Massacre'. Then there is his Press Secretary Sean Spicer who just can't land on the truth.
The novelty news of he week has been just how good Melissa McCarthy's take down of Spicer has been (and it really was spot on as well as hilarious) and Spicer meekly offered that perhaps the Saturday night Live crew were being mean. This is was sort of funny coming form the administration that went out of its way to be mean to women and muslims in the first ten days, so it was a bit rich.
All of this got me thinking a bit because I've been watching 'Designated Survivor' on Netflix and truth be told, they who plays the Press Secretary in that show looks ten times more competent than Sean Spicer. Actually, Kiefer Sutherland's accidental President looks to be ten times more competent than the Donald, and both men are having problems filling positions in their administration, even if it is for totally different reasons (I won't spoil it).
What's interesting about the real life chaos in the White House is that after watching 'West Wing', 'House of Cards' and 'Designated Survivor', most people would have a better idea of how to go about presenting for an administration. Clearly that's not the case with these people, Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway. To the extent that politics is a kind of theatre, then what we are seeing is a long-running Broadway show in the Obama Administration giving way to an underground variety theatre troupe, sort of trying things out as they go along. As State Actors go, they're terrible talent. Even with Donald Trump's experience with all the camera hogging he's done in all his life, he's actually not really anywhere near a good a talent as Alec Baldwin who is crucifying him. Melissa McCarthy is far more talented than Sean Spicer, and as for Conway, well...
A picture tells a thousand words. She shot her own credibility and all she has as comparison is Beavis.
The last time the SNL crew got it so well was when Tina Fey did her Sarah Palin back in 2008, and again, what was at play was just what an amateur talent Palin was, next to a consummate professional camera talent as Fey. This doesn't mean politicians ought to go to acting school or that - god forbid - more actors should be drafted into politics. It's just that the capacity for well-executed satire to demolish the pretensions of a politician resides in the gap of camera talent. It also explains the fact that the reason Reagan can be revered by so many Republicans is that at the end of the day, Reagan too was a great camera talent despite his track record as a B-Movie actor. The phrase 'B-Movie Actor' probably disparaged and undersold his genuine strengths as camera talent.
It's a peculiar problem of American Democracy because Americans value public speaking so much and so many of their good orators put across dodgy arguments with great presence and presentation. The very nature of charismatic leadership lends it self to image-over-substance and so it is understandable that a reality TV star beats out a field of bad camera talent, as Donald Trump did. It also means the whole system is susceptible to a talent like Donald Trump to short circuit proper discourse and shoehorn himself in to the White House - which is the big irony in all of this stuff. Therefore, as hard as it is to believe, Trump's still okay talent, but he needs to straighten out his act a lot if he wants be taken seriously.
If one casts one's mind back to recent Australian politics, we can see a parallel in the rise of Kevin Rudd, who basically built a demographic support out of a TV audience which over-rode the political considerations. The fact that he was reasonably equipped to tackle the job of leader and then Prime Minister might have been a tangential aspect to his leadership. What really fuelled his rise to theta was in fact his stint as pundit on a morning breakfast show. Similarly, the rise of WTE Joe Hockey to Worst Treasure EVER was facilitated by the very same show appearing opposite Rudd.
That being said, the leader Trump resembles most in the Australian landscape is of course Tony Abbott. Both men stand firm on the side of denying climate change is real, and both men entered their office as the most unpopular incoming leader. It took two years before the Liberal Party felt compelled to remove their leader in TonyAbbott, so we'll see just how long the US Republicans can tolerate the irrational, temperamental, unstable leadership style of Donald Trump.
All this is to say, it's really interesting to find out what an Administration is made of when a satirical punch lands as hard as Melissa McCarthy's turn as Sean Spicer.
I don't think the Trump Presidency is going to make it to June. Basically, the problem lies in the fact that having won the election on a dodgy kind of technicality, he's trying to push ahead as if he has a mandate when in reality he is one of the last popular incoming Presidents in the history of modern polling. He's hardly in a position to push for any mandate to do radical stuff. If anything he should be treading very delicately so that he can at least get the lay of the land and get used to a presidential routine. He's in the metaphorical big leagues now, so if we extend the baseball metaphor, it's time he put his game face on and started fielding the routine plays, play each ball on its merits and try to make good contact with the bat. Instead he's gotten to first base on a dropped third strike and proceeded to get picked off. It's not looking like he actually belongs.
Despite being the Republican POTUS, his notions of policy direction bears little relationship to the stated Republican values and objective, and as such a growing number of Republicans are deserting the cause of the President.
Unlike in the various dictatorships Trump admires, the complex skein of constitutional legal and political checks on tyranny in the United States are holding—just barely at times, but they are holding. And the more reckless Trump’s behavior, the stronger become the checks.
Only with his lunatic effort to selectively ban refugees (but not from terrorist-sending countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt where Trump has business interests) has Trump discovered that the American system has courts. It has courts. Imagine that.
The more unhinged he becomes, the less will conservative judges be the toadies to ordinary Republican policies that they too often have been. Anybody want to wager that the Supreme Court will be Trump’s whore?
In the past week, Republicans from Mitch McConnell on down have tripped over each other rejecting his view of Putin. They have ridiculed his screwball claim of massive voter fraud.
They are running for cover on how to kill ObamaCare without killing patients or Republican re-election hopes. This is actually complicated, and nuance is not Trump’s strong suit. Rep Tom McClintock of California spoke for many when he warned:
“We’d better be sure that we’re prepared to live with the market we’ve created” with repeal, said Rep. Tom McClintock. (R-Calif.)
“That’s going to be called Trumpcare. Republicans will own that lock, stock and barrel, and we’ll be judged in the election less than two years away.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, mocking Trump’s own nutty tweeting habits, sent out a tweet calling a trade war with Mexico “mucho sad.”
Trump’s own senior staff has had to pull him back from his ludicrous crusade against Mexico and Mexicans, where Trump forces the Mexican president to cancel an official visit one day, and spends an hour on the phone kissing up the next day.
Trump proposed to reinstate torture, but key Republican leaders killed that idea. Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the Senate’s third ranking Republican said Wednesday that the ban on torture was settled law and the Republicans in Congress would oppose any reinstatement. Trump’s own defense secretary holds the same view. After blustering out his new torture policy, Trump meekly agreed to defer to his defense advisers.
That looks ominous. Trump's presidency in roughly a working week has careened from reckless to loose, swinging wrecking ball as it has failed to fill positions, sacked ambassadors, and enacted directives that have blown up around the world.
(6) Finally, I want to highlight a story that many people haven’t noticed. On Wednesday, Reuters reported (in great detail) how 19.5% of Rosneft, Russia’s state oil company, has been sold to parties unknown. This was done through a dizzying array of shell companies, so that the most that can be said with certainty now is that the money “paying” for it was originally loaned out to the shell layers by VTB (the government’s official bank), even though it’s highly unclear who, if anyone, would be paying that loan back; and the recipients have been traced as far as some Cayman Islands shell companies.
Why is this interesting? Because the much-maligned Steele Dossier (the one with the golden showers in it) included the statement that Putin had offered Trump 19% of Rosneft if he became president and removed sanctions. The reason this is so interesting is that the dossier said this in July, and the sale didn’t happen until early December. And 19.5% sounds an awful lot like “19% plus a brokerage commission.”
Conclusive? No. But it raises some very interesting questions for journalists to investigate.
Finally, somebody is talking about this in the Anglophone Sphere.
Anyway, the Frankenstein Monster that is the Department of Homeland Security is finally getting up and around creating the havoc its critics predicted years ago when it was conceived in the wake of 9/11:
Note also the most frightening escalation last night was that the DHS made it fairly clear that they did not feel bound to obey any court orders. CBP continued to deny all access to counsel, detain people, and deport them in direct contravention to the court’s order, citing “upper management,” and the DHS made a formal (but confusing) statement that they would continue to follow the President’s orders. (See my updates from yesterday, and the various links there, for details) Significant in today’s updates is any lack of suggestion that the courts’ authority played a role in the decision.
That is to say, the administration is testing the extent to which the DHS (and other executive agencies) can act and ignore orders from the other branches of government. This is as serious as it can possibly get: all of the arguments about whether order X or Y is unconstitutional mean nothing if elements of the government are executing them and the courts are being ignored.
Yeah. So logically, the DHS can ignore courts and exercise its prerogatives, and the ramification of that is the Trump administration really is about the Putin-isation of American politics, concentrating power in the executive office.
You can expect that impeachment call to come in before June is through, but it might not be in time before Donald Trump uses the DHS to cut out the Courts, Congress, and the Senate, and then silences the media and academia. This is looking a lot uglier than people imagined.
Nothing about a world given over to billionaires is all that comforting or comfortable. We underestimate just much the 0.1% enrol the wealth of the world and by extension the media and information flow. In most instances we choose not to look into it because in most cases a misguided sense of modesty forbids us to compare ourselves to the stupendously wealthy. but then of course Donald Trump comes along an pecan't but help compare our commons sense against the man and find him wanting. And so it is with his choices for education secretary and chief of EPA and so on. The amazing thing is that the trump Presidency hasn't yet begun as of this writing and already it is feeling like a tired, failed administration.
In that spirit, I'd like to show you a small paper trail on the internet that's been bothering me for the last fortnight.
Here's the first link, sent to me by somebody who reads Russian. I know it's all in Russian, but one can resort to Google Translate and thesis what we get:
Взятка на 10,5 млрд. евро? Путин и Сечин подарили Трампу 19,5% акций «Роснефти»?
Google Translate: Bribe to 10.5 billion. Euro? Putin and Sechin gave Trump 19.5% of shares of "Rosneft"?
The other entries go:
Доклад отдела разведки, 2016/134, 18 октября 2016, с. 30: 2. Что касается содержания разговоров, то помощник СЕЧИНа сообщил, что президент «Роснефти» настолько заинтересован в снятии западных личных и корпоративных санкций, наложенных на компанию, что он предложил помощникам ПЕЙДЖа/ТРАМПа в обмен брокеридж на 19 процентов (приватизированного) пакета акций в Роснефти. ПЕЙДЖ выразил интерес и подтвердил, что если ТРАМП будет избран президентом США, то тогда антироссийские санкции будут сняты.
Google Translate: The report of the Intelligence Department, 2016/134, 18 October 2016, p. thirty: 2. With regard to the content of conversations, the assistant Sechin said that the president of "Rosneft" is so interested in the removal of personal and corporate Western sanctions imposed on the company, he suggested assistants Paige / Trump exchange brokerage by 19 percent (privatized) stake in Rosneft. PAGE expressed interest and confirmed that if TRUMP will be elected president of the United States, then the anti-Russian sanctions are lifted.
Company Intelligence Report 2016/134, 18 October 2016, p.30: 2. In terms of the substance of their discussions, SECHIN’s associate said that the Rosneft president was so keen to lift personal and corporate western sanctions imposed on the company, that he offered PAGE/TRUMP’s associates the brokerage of up to a 19 per cent (privatised) stake in Rosneft in return. PAGE has expressed interest and confirmed that were TRUMP elected US president, then sanctions on Russia would be lifted.
Москва, Кремль, 7 декабря 2016 г., 22:00: В.Путин: Игорь Иванович, хочу Вас поздравить с завершением приватизационной сделки по реализации крупного пакета нашей ведущей нефтегазовой компании «Роснефть» – 19,5 процента. Сделка совершена на восходящем тренде стоимости нефти, соответственно, это отражается на стоимости самой компании. В этом смысле время очень удачное, да и общий объём сделки значительный – 10,5 миллиарда евро. ...это крупнейшая приватизационная сделка, крупнейшая продажа и приобретение в нефтегазовом секторе в мире за уходящий, 2016 год. Очень рассчитываю на то, что приход новых инвесторов... приход в органы управления будет улучшать корпоративные процедуры, прозрачность компании и, соответственно, в конечном итоге будет приводить к росту капитализации. В целом это очень хороший результат. Хочу вас всех, ваших коллег, которые работали по этому направлению, поздравить с этим результатом… Мы с Вами знаем, что у компании «Роснефтегаз», которая в конечном итоге и должна перечислять деньги в бюджет, есть значительные ресурсы в рублях. В.Путин: И наших инвесторов, новых участников и акционеров компании «Роснефть», пригласите в Россию, мы их примем на высоком правительственном уровне. <…> http://www.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/53431
Google Translate: The Kremlin, Moscow, December 7, 2016 22:00: Vladimir Putin: Mr Sechin, I want to congratulate you on the completion of the privatization process for the implementation of a large block of our leading oil and gas company "Rosneft" - 19.5 percent. The transaction was executed on the upward trend in oil prices, respectively, is reflected in the value of the company. In this sense, time is very good, and the total amount of the transaction significantly - to 10.5 billion euros. ... It is the largest privatization deal, the largest sale and purchase of oil and gas sector in the world in the outgoing year 2016. I very much hope that the arrival of new investors in the coming ... controls will improve corporate procedures, transparency of the company and, accordingly, will ultimately lead to an increase in capitalization. In general this is a very good result. I want all of you, your colleagues, who have worked in this area, congratulations with this result ... We both know that the company "Rosneftegas", which ultimately must transfer the money to the budget, there are significant resources in rubles. Vladimir Putin: And our investors, new members and shareholders of the company "Rosneft", was invited to Russia, we will take them to the highest levels of government. <...> http://www.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/53431
Anyway, the fragments are leaks from inside the Kremlin according to this journalist Andrey Illarionov:
On 3 January 2005 Illarionov resigned from his position as presidential representative to the G8.[2] On 21 December 2005, Illarionov declared "This year Russia has become a different country. It is no longer a democratic country. It is no longer a free country". The Washington Post reported that he had cited a recent report by the U.S.-based and government sponsored Freedom House.[3] On 27 December 2005, Illarionov offered his resignation in protest against the government course, saying that Russia was no longer politically free, but ran by an authoritarian elite. "It is one thing to work in a country that is partly free. It is another thing when the political system has changed, and the country has stopped being free and democratic," he said.[4] He also claimed that he had no more ability to influence the government's course and that Kremlin put limits on him expressing his point of view. Illarionov was openly critical to such elements of the Russian economic policy as the Yukosaffair, increasing influence of government officials on large companies such as Gazprom and Rosneft, and at last the Russia-Ukraine gas dispute and the energy policy of Russia in general.[1] Illarionov has also been a proponent of secession of Chechnya.[5]
You get the feeling he's trying to get all this stuff out. According to the original person who sent me the Russian link, Illarionov's contention is that based on the leaks, the Kremlin has had Donald Trump as an asset going back 5 years. It may not have been purely Donald Trump's sea to run for President, and that the 19.5% stake in Rosneft is ear-marked for the Trump family business should he succeed in lifting sanctions on Russia - a sanction designed to hit Putin and his cronies.
Since the new year, this business Trump's dossier has grown, but what seems to have gathered the most traction is not that Trump might be in the control of the Kremlin but that he is being blackmailed by a bit of video showing him participating in Golden showers with Russian prostitutes. Vladimir Putin himself has dismissed the dossier (and also told us that Russian prostitutes are undoubtedly the best in the world) which further muddies the already murky puddle.
All the same, there's a carrot (10.5billion euros from the 19.5% sale of Rosneft); there's stick (the KGB have something on Donald Trump); and the likely cui bono of Putin getting his sanctions lifted. In other words, this is serious boys and girls. Now, maybe Trump was coerced into running, but didn't want to win -which would explain the bizarre flip flops on all the things that would have killed other candidates' chances like the support of the KKK or denigrating a disabled journalist on nationwide TV. They're not things a candidate wants to win goes about doing. but the purpose was not to win, then it makes more sense.
I ran all of the above past somebody else who has Russian links, and they came back with this link which is a compendium of various links that seems to point at shady dealings surrounding Rosneft.
Even with all the conflict of interests going on and the likelihood of early impeachment (what an amazing phrase to be typing I tell you!) Donald Trump may go full steam ahead with lifting sanctions on Putin and his mates in order to collect that 10.5billion euros, just waiting to be paid into Trump Corporation's Swiss bank accounts or wherever he has a tax haven bank account.
I'm telling you, we've never seen anything like this. The world will not end with a bang but amidst laughter from all the gallows humour this man will beget.
Yeah I know it sounds totally gratuitous to say that the government totally sucks, but hey, we actually have a government that's stinking it up pretty badly.
Here's something from Pleiades as a followup, coming off the pages of Crikey:
The latest global economic news is mostly excellent, though better for some countries. We now have figures on most of the world’s economies for the last quarter of the 2015-16 financial year. This enables comparisons with earlier periods, including Australia’s last three years (almost) of Coalition rule with the previous administration.
For the entire period 2009 to 2013 Australia’s economy was the best performed in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Alone in that club of 34 wealthy democracies, Australia maintained positive growth, kept most workers employed and increased productivity, incomes and wealth. Australia was the toast of the economic world.
Three years later, Australia is the stand-out economy again, but for the opposite reason. Australia is the only OECD member not to record improvement over the last three years in any of the six key indicators of economic health.
And the article tells us our jobs are down; our wages are rising the weakest of the group; our trade is in a disastrous slump thanks to the commodities tanking; the budget deficit is ballooning; our gross debt is climbing when other nations are cutting theirs; and our GDP growth is merely okay.
That leads us to this bit:
Of the 34 developed OECD countries, no fewer than seven have advanced on all six variables. Leading the pack are Germany, Ireland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, the Netherlands and New Zealand. Another six have gained in five areas — Denmark, Iceland, Luxembourg, Sweden, Italy and, surprisingly, Greece. Seventeen economies have improved in three or four areas, bringing to 30 the countries enjoying the fruits of the current sturdy global recovery.
That leaves just four laggers. Three nations have advanced on only two of the six variables — Chile, Finland and, perhaps another surprise, Canada. Just one country — Australia — has failed to advance on any indicator, keeping GDP growth steady and declining in the other five.
The conclusion thus seems highly probable: Australians have swapped the best economic administrators in the developed world for the worst.
Perhaps the one success the Coalition can claim is that the mainstream media has no desire to report what is actually happening.
So when I say the government sucks, I actually mean, the idiots in power who brought about this dismal, pathetic turn of performance. We always knew this bunch of conservatives were talentless, unprincipled hacks, but when you see their handiwork in numbers, it sure puts the bleak future into sharper focus.
Bromancing The Oil
When it gets down to the cui bono of the alleged Russian tampering of the US elections, and the subsequent good will between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, you would have to say Vladimir got his man, because his man Trump is the most likely to ignore climate science and give Putin's Russia a break from all the sanctions.
Let's face it, Russia's main export is oil. Without it, there's really just arms exports with Russia, something President Obama pointed to. These sanctions are hurting Russia, and so one shouldn't underestimate the motivation to get out from under these sanctions. A Trump Presidency essentially puts it on the table.
It's a scary thought because if Trump lifts the sanctions, then Russia effectively gets away with the Crimea annexation as well as the odd bit of military adventurism into Ukraine. Whatever one thinks of those places, it remains true that Russia simply grabbed hold of those places without contest. If Trump sells out the sanctions, he's effectively selling out NATO - and this would be disturbing in the extreme because it would mean he's at least rolling back America's commitment to keeping security in Europe.
One can indeed conjecture a whole lot about how all this plays out in say, eastern Europe, but the more compelling point might be that for Trump, it's all about money. Effectively the United States has just elected a President who may be willing to sell out on its most important strategic positions - gained over decades of hardworking and sacrifice - just to enrich his own billionaire coffers. It's actually a sick kind of joke that things have turned out the way they have. So, uh, their government is going to totally suck as well.
Turchin — a professor at the University of Connecticut — is the driving force behind a field called “cliodynamics,” where scientists and mathematicians analyze history in the hopes of finding patterns they can then use to predict the future. It’s named after Clio, the Greek muse of history.
These academics have the same goals as other historians — “We start with questions that historians have asked for all of history,” Turchin says. “For example: Why do civilizations collapse?” — but they seek to answer these questions quite differently. They use math rather than mere language, and according to Turchin, the prognosis isn’t that far removed from the empire-crushing predictions laid down by Hari Seldon in the Foundation saga. Unless something changes, he says, we’re due for a wave of widespread violence in about 2020, including riots and terrorism.
You could'a fooled me. Cyclical theories of history are interesting heuristics that come and go. I think the one I read recently - and this is a decade ago - was by a guy called Harry S. Dent Jr. who wrote an extensive book about how the market behaves in different cycles of economic expansion and debt accumulation. In as much as it was empirical in that a whole lot of data went into it, you still had to take it with a grain of salt because even as Dent was predicting all kinds of things, there was the calamitous GFC going on. You could easily argue the events of 2007-2008 were a cyclical thing or a total breakdown of an old system or a restructuring we had to have.
So in that light, let's have a look at what Turchin is offering:
In the simplest of terms, Turchin and his colleagues will build a mathematical model using one data set and then test that model against other historical data sets they’re unfamiliar with. That way, they can see if the model holds. This isn’t exactly the psychohistory described by Isaac Asimov. “For the most part, we don’t predict the future. It’s too far. We can’t wait 200 years to see if something’s right,” Turchin says. “I’m not a prophet.” But cliodynamics moves in that direction — and it’s not science fiction. Though traditional historians are often wary of the practice, others very much see the value.
“It’s very important to do. It should force traditional historians to respond,” says Yale historian Joseph Manning. “Most people in my field just publish documents and don’t go behind them.” What Turchin and his colleagues have found is a pattern of social instability. It applies to all agrarian states for which records are available, including Ancient Rome, Dynastic China, Medieval England, France, Russia, and, yes, the United States. Basically, the data shows 100 year waves of instability, and superimposed on each wave — which Turchin calls the “Secular Cycle” — there’s typically an additional 50-year cycle of widespread political violence. The 50-year cycles aren’t universal — they don’t appear in China, for instance. But they do appear in the United States.
The 100-year Secular Cycles, Turchin believes, are caused by longer-term demographic trends. They occur when a population grows beyond its capacity to be productive, resulting in falling wages, a disproportionately large number of young people in the population, and increased state spending deficits. But there’s a more important factor, one that better predicts instability than population growth. Turchin calls it “elite overproduction.” This refers to a growing class of elites who are competing for a limited number of elite positions, such as political appointments. These conflicts, Turchin says, can destabilize the state.
Many of these issues persist in industrial societies. Although population growth is no longer likely to result in mass starvation, it can push the supply of labor beyond demand, leading to increased unemployment.
And there you have it - the kind of conclusion Harry S. Dent Jr. came up with, which leaves you going, "yeah sure mate". I'm not sure how predictive these kinds of heuristics can be, given the kinds of parameters being lined up. Also, it does seem to have a deterministic underpinning that utterly fails to explain why the 1970 peak was so low, for instance. And while terrorism is indeed way up, lynchings are way down, so you wonder if lynchings is even a relevant term to be including in such an analysis.
One of the best ideas to come out of quantitative analysis of baseball was the notion of "replacement level". That is to say, if you state that something is good, or bad the natural question is "compared to what?" And that leads to the notion of an arbitrary mathematical straw man we can call the replacement level player. In a sense if we're going to put up stats and give them qualitative assertions, we need to at least have a framework of comparison - are 100 murders/riots/terror acts a year good or bad? Compared to what? It's this kind of benchmarking that is completely lacking in these numbers.
Still, I thought some people might be interested in this stuff.
Here's a little essay about Standing Rock. The writer likens the stand off to a moment from an imagined Zombie Apocalypse. You can just see that analogy right? Of course, how could those officers lined up to intimidate the Native Americans be so impervious to their own inhumanity? They must be some kind of cultural zombie, right?
At the head of the gathering army of the dead will be a man who brags about his lack of compassion and is so hollowed out by his punishing narcissism that he must compulsively eat our minds with tweets and outrageous behavior so as to fill his emptiness with our attention. His appetite for selfish self-regard seems immense enough to swallow the planet. It’s the appetite the Native-Americans witnessed as the European invasion crossed the continent. Hoisting the false flag of energy independence, our new zombie-in-chief promises a nationwide effort to extract coal, oil and gas offshore and in every natural environment. More pipelines, more strip mines, more deadly warming, more sacrifice zones.
With Donald Trump a zombie apocalypse arrives, and the Indians at Standing Rock are on the front lines.
The true origin of this zombie pandemic is of course us, we and the darker angels of our American culture. We are the culture that inspired the world with the ideal of human equality and self-governance. But we are also a culture motivated by fear. It is at work everywhere: in workplace competition, in our paranoia about immigrants, terrorists, ‘liberals,’ the ‘alt-right,’ even and perhaps especially in the pop up ads and blaring commercials that compel us to buy products by making us afraid that we’re lacking something, missing out, not part of the ‘winners.’ Our culture extols the supreme value of the self and is spellbound by narcissists and celebrities, justifies greed as good. Our consumerism, our sense of entitlement and exceptionalism have become part and parcel of the American dream, which in its grossest but most popular form is the dream of a better life filled with ever more comforts, conveniences, frivolous distractions, ersatz privilege (extra legroom on the airplane) and mountainous material possessions, most of them headed for the nearest landfill, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, or entangled in a sea bird’s stomach.
Like it or not, American culture in its current form destines our spirits to a disconnection from the Earth. Nature has become something we work to own a piece of in the middle class suburbs, or enjoy on our vacations. Many of us, possibly even most of us, feel helpless pangs when we see evidence of the ecological devastation our ravenous culture is wreaking, but even at our most pained we don’t feel wounds inflicted on the Earth as the Indigenous peoples do. During the three presidential debates no question was asked the candidates about environmental issues, and we Americans accepted that as okay. We have become deadened, zombie-fied. Now, as a country, we have chosen to elect a president pledged to perpetrate a conspiracy theory, a grand delusion reality show denying that any environmental crisis even exists. Whisked from their busy human bodies, more spirits will go missing, “lost.” The zombie apocalypse will spread.
Standing Rock, together with the Adani mine in Australia are the two big fossil fuel projects that need to be stopped.
Venezuela Is About To Blow
Venezuela is a troubling nation. Under Hugo Chavez, it was one part populist bullshit as politics, one part military junta-ism, and one part incoherent cult of personality around Hugo Chavez. And while Hugo Chavez himself was kind funky in some small, personal ways - he played a Stratocaster, - as head of government of Venzuela, he sort of ran the country right at financial ruin, a bit like driving the Titanic right at the ice berg. Now, it's looking like crunch time is upon them.
There are, I might add, shades of Gough Whitlam too in what Chavez was able to join his lifetime:
Chavez was intent on utilizing Venezuela’s oil wealth to transform the lives of the masses of the people, instead of allowing it to remain in the hands of the nation’s oligarchs, who used it to fund exorbitant lifestyles redolent of Miami Beach, Monaco, and Beverly Hills. The Venezuelan president undoubtedly kept his word, as over the next decade a social transformation took place in the country, measured in vast improvements in literacy, healthcare, housing, and the overall share of the nation’s wealth redistributed to the poor. Social spending doubled under Chavez from 11.3 percent of GDP in 1998 to 22.8 percent of GDP in 2011. The Gini coefficient, measuring income inequality, improved from one of the highest to one of the lowest in the region.
These achievements should be considered in the context of a relentless attempt by the forces of the right in Venezuela – the oligarchs in control of the private media, big business, and other economic interests – to block, derail, and even overturn the country’s democracy with an attempted coup in 2002, followed by a politically orchestrated strike within the oil industry in 2002-03.
Of course, this was all well and good when oil was fetching US$100 a barrel. What has made Venezuela come unstuck was how the oil prices plunged in the last 18months - pretty much because the Saudi Arabians wanted to kill off the shale oil industry in America.
And that brings us sort of to today.
For good or bad, oil was the economic foundations of the Bolivarian Revolution inspired and led by Hugo Chavez. It is a commodity whose price is so volatile that it can only leave economies dependent on it vulnerable to global factors outwith their control. But this oil dependency cannot be laid at the door of either Chavez or his successor Nicolas Maduro. The country’s underdevelopment had taken root long before they arrived on the scene, a consequence of generations of Venezuela’s unofficial status as US neo colony controlled by a small clique of oligarchs who benefited from this state of affairs.
Those oligarchs and vested interests never went away. On the contrary, exploiting Chavez’s determination to uphold the most advanced example of mass participatory democracy Latin America has seen, the right in Venezuela has been hyperactive over many years in its efforts to undermine, oppose, and ultimately end everything to do with Chavez and Chavism. In this they have enjoyed Washington’s unflinching support.
It is capitalism not socialism that has failed the people of Venezuela. However it is socialism that is carrying the can. Consequently, as things now stand, the Bolivarian Revolution is teetering on the brink.
It reminds us of Australia and its economic fortunes being tied so closely to coal. The rest of the world is moving on to renewable energy and here we are peddling our fossil fuels to keep our housing bubble going (and really, that's what it's come down to). We might go on about the integrity of our democracy, but structurally speaking, we're not that different to Venezuela. One of these days we might even vote in a hard left leader akin to Gough and you watch how quickly the vested interests and the 1% will manoeuvre to rid us of such a leader. You really can't discount the dynamics of the people who want to keep our country on a losing wicket.
Still, keep thatVenezuela thing in mind...
The Veil Of Niceties Fails Big
How awful were the 2016 US elections? Here's the explanation of the double-bind by which many sensible voters found themselves trapped:
Bernie Sanders put his 12 million primary voters and other supporters in a double-bind. For Sanders supporters, Hillary Clinton epitomized what they despised. Clinton has been: heavily supported by Wall Street and arms dealers; repeatedly pro-war from Iraq to Libya; a friend and admirer of Henry Kissinger, who for Sanders supporters is one of the greatest war criminals in world history; a former board member of the anti-labor union Wal-Mart Board of Directors; a co-sponsor of the Flag-Protection Act of 2005, which included prison terms for those who destroy the flag; and has had an otherwise despicable and untrustworthy history for progressives.
Bernie Sanders’ choice was to either support someone that his supporters despise and distrust or don’t support Clinton and Trump wins, and the Democratic Party and its media operatives politically assassinate Sanders as was done with Ralph Nader post-2000 election. Sanders’ public reaction was to choose what he had many reasons to believe was a false reality—that Clinton was not going to betray her new-found progressivism. Given Clinton’s history, Sanders had good reason to believe that Clinton as president would likely betray campaign progressive promises and simply blame failure on the Republicans. But rather than choosing Nader’s path, Sanders suppressed the reality of Clinton, and asked his supporters to do the same.
Many Sanders supporters could not shed the reality of Hillary Clinton’s anti-progressive history and that the Democratic Party establishment had sabotaged Sanders (who the polls had shown had a much better chance than Clinton of beating Trump); and these supporters lost faith in both Sanders and the electoral process and did not vote—a political-self psychotic break of sorts for people who had ardently believed in voting.
Other Sanders supporters followed Sanders’ direction and voted for Clinton, only to find themselves now assaulted by the reality that Sanders had instructed them to support a corrupt political process that resulted in Trump winning anyway.
If you thought the Sanders supporters got it bad, well, maybe you should spare a thought for the Basket of Deplorables after all.
How about Trump supporters? Millions of Trump supporters, even before his inauguration, began having their political-self psychotic break, recognizing that they had been “played,” that Trump had no intention of keeping his campaign promises, and used them to gain power and attention.
A major issue for Trump supporters was “crony capitalism,” but even before Trump was inaugurated, he orchestrated the Carrier deal of tax breaks for jobs, which was so obviously a betrayal that even Sara Palin decried it calling it “crony capitalism.” That has not been Trump’s only pre-inauguration betrayal.
Trump repeatedly promised to “drain the swamp.” The epitome of the “swamp” is the revolving door between the U.S. government and Goldman Sachs, yet Trump’s nominees for his administration include former Goldman Sachs employees Steve Mnuchin for Treasury Secretary and Gary Cohn for National Economic Council. It’s now become increasingly clear that Trump appears to be well on his way to creating the most putrid swamp ever, as he nominated for cabinet positions six of his top donors, as well as several establishment politicians (for example, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s wife Elain Chao as Transportation Secretary; 20-year U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions for Attorney General, and others).
Trump promised his supporters an “anti-politician,” and they received a caricature of a politician who didn’t even wait until he was inaugurated to betray his promises.
It could be worse. It's hard to fathom how, but it well may could be worse. But the important thing is that the message is out for once - "average Americans have no fucking influence on government policy". That's probably true of our own democracy down under in Australia as well. You could easily argue the veil-falling-off moment was when Julia Gillard ousted Kevin Rudd and called an early election to face Tony Abbott who had replaced Malcolm Turnbull as leader of the opposition. Now, it is easily argued that Ms. Gillard was trying to save us from the iniquities of the rule by the Deplorables, after all Tony Abbott represents the absolute naked nadir of intellectual ambition amongst leaders in this country. Even so, she was not successful, and by extension we can see how little control the citizens had over the outcomes.
Some of it reads like fairly reasonable bets. Try the China one for instance:
An ever-present risk for Australia is the economic health of its dominant trading partner.
China's
private debt is up there with Australia's as one of the world's
highest, with its loosely regulated "shadow banking" sector seen as a
key risk for financial crises.
Beyond a full-scale financial meltdown, there are indications the Chinese Government is planning to renew its economic shift away from heavy industry and construction towards services.
Last year, China boosted commodity prices through increasing infrastructure spending and relaxing restrictions on real estate investment, as well as cutting its own coal production.
Even moderate moves to limit growth in those sectors, plus a return to higher Chinese coal output, could see much of last year's commodity price gains unwind and, along with them, the boost to Australia's national income.
I mean, well, yeah. None of those on their own are likely, but there's an element where some of these risks are stacked like dominos. Plus, who knows what happens to Venezuela, and the fallout that would follow that one.
Fidel Castro, the Cuban revolutionary leader who built a communist state on the doorstep of the United States and for five decades defied U.S. efforts to topple him, died on Friday, his younger brother announced to the nation.
He was 90.
A towering figure of the second half of the 20th Century,
Castro stayed true to his ideology beyond the collapse of Soviet communism, and retained an aura in parts of the world that had struggled against colonial rule and exploitation.
He had been in poor health since an intestinal ailment nearly killed him in 2006. He formally ceded power to his younger brother two years later.
Wearing a green military uniform, Cuba's President Raul Castro appeared on state television to announce his brother's death.
"At 10.29 at night, the chief commander of the Cuban revolution, Fidel Castro Ruz, died," he said, without giving a cause of death.
"Ever onward, to victory," he said, using the slogan of the Cuban revolution.
Tributes poured in from world leaders including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Venezuela's socialist President Nicolas Maduro, who said "revolutionaries of the world must follow his legacy."
It wasn't exactly unexpected, the man was 90.
Somewhat In Defence Of Populism
The whole Trump winning the election situation has the world-knickers in a giant knot. It is as if the western world's left-leaning thinkers have been given a gigantic wedgie by the Bully-in-Chief. As a consequence, there's really not a whole lot of rational coherence going around, but it has to be said the charges that Trump is a populist and this is bad flies in the face of democracy.
Populism, by its very nature only works if the population get up behind the said candidate. A quick Google gives you this definition on 'popuist':
populistˈpɒpjʊlɪst/ nounnoun: populist; plural noun: populists1.
a member or adherent of a political party seeking to represent the interests of ordinary people.
a person who supports or seeks to appeal to the concerns of ordinary people.
"she is something of a populist—her views on immigration resemble those of the right-wing tabloid press" adjectiveadjective: populist1.
relating to or characteristic of a populist or populists.
"populist tabloid newspapers"
First off, if you're in a democracy, it's really hard to mount an argument that says it is good for the democracy for the polity to represent the interests of ordinary people. Think about that for a moment. If you want to run a policy counter to the interests of the ordinary people, you are likely an elitist or a revolutionary. Either way, those impulses are anti-democratic.
There seems to be a double-think going on whereby democracy, which is rule by people of the polity is good, but populism which is representing the very same ordinary people is somehow bad. It seems to be an oddity of etymology. Democracy comes from Ancient Greece and especially Athens where they fought to end tyranny. The word Populism derives from Latin, that is to say ancient Rome where the Roman Senate sought to rule over the masses until the Triumvirate came along and neutered the Senate. Julius Caesar, Pompeii and Crassus were all populists - and so in the context of Roman history, populism led to the Imperium, and carries the historic connotation of being against the interests of a proper democracy because it overrode the Senate.
If we do carry with us the Roman legacy of the word populism, then we're effectively standing with the elite who deem themselves to know better than the ordinary man what is good for the state and polity. That is to say, us charging the other as populist underscores their argument that there is a "liberal elite". In a sense our use of the word 'populist' to describe the leader of the 'Deplorables' is the very essence of what gives strength to their accusations of elitism; that somehow we think we know better than they do, and so we look down upon them when they are not just the people, they are the demos that forms the democracy.
It's a bit like saying "we are the courageous, but they are the foolhardy" or "we are flexible, they are without moral fortitude". What is good in our modus operandi shouldn't really be painted as bad in the opponent. It's a bit tricky, but this tension between the words democracy and populism sums up the problematic of a Trump Presidency whereby a silver-spooned rich guy played up to the crowd of 'Deplorables' and won an election. We as the pinko liberals need to get a grip on this lurking vocabulary problem whereby one person's democracy (good) is another persons populism (bad).
Winning The Votes, Losing The Election
The last time this happened was bacon 2000 when Al Gore failed to beat George W. Bush. It was - as it turned out - a crucial election to have lost for the Democrats and by extension, pinko liberals and environmentalists and technocrats everywhere; this was because 'Dubya' led the world into a series of wars with no discernible goalposts for victory. When you combine that event with Hillary Clinton losing this election even though she has 2 million more popular votes, you can understand why some people want to dismantle the electoral college system.
What's striking about the model of having electoral colleges is that it ends up weighing votes from different states differently. If you are from California, Texas, Florida or New York, your vote is vastly underweight next to a vote from North or South Dakota or for that matter Kentucky or Mississippi. One wonders if this is actually constitutional. This is partly how Hillary Clinton ends up with more votes and still fewer electoral colleges, but also discourages people from actually voting. There probably should be a class action to sue the United Staes of America for not allocating enough weight to votes in those four states.
The degree to which people opted not to vote is quite staggering. 46.9% of the electorate did not vote. This number dwarfs the 25% and 26% respectively of the sport Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton garnered.
For Australia, the other relevant problem is that the Australian Republican Movement wanted to go with this model of Republicanism to select a President. Back when John Howard allowed a referendum took take place, he successfully split the vote of the Republicans between the ARM's position and those who wanted a direct vote, thus stopping the move to a republic dead in its track. It was classic obfuscation whereby people not only had to vote for Republic, but had to overwhelmingly vote for one of two models, and so the entire republican cause suffered. You could say John Howard was a wiley bastard, but equally it could be said the ARM were indeed the elitists of the variety that had anti-democratic notions which contributed to the ad result. At the time, they blamed the people who wanted a direct election, but really, they only had themselves to blame for being so inflexible.
Ethan Coen of the Coen brothers fame penned a letter lambasting the people who voted for third party candidates.
1. Jill Stein voters: You helped elect a man who pledges that he will, in his first hundred days, cancel contributions to United Nations programs to fight climate change. If your vote for Ms. Stein did not end up advancing your green agenda, it did allow you to feel morally superior to all the compromising schmoes who voted for Hillary Clinton. And your feelings about your vote are more important than the consequences of your vote. So — thank you!
2. Gary Johnson voters: Thank you, for similar reasons. You, too, may now reward yourselves with feelings of warm self-approval, and your libertarian agenda will now be advanced (or not) by someone who admires the governance of Vladimir Putin. And to Mr. Johnson himself: Not only can no one blame you for this outcome — we’re all free agents, man! — but you can stop looking for Aleppo.
Democracy's a funny thing. You can't really be getting angry at the people who voted for somebody else when they're actually participating in democracy just like you. The people who didn't bother are the people you ought to be angry at.
I know this whole Trump thing sucks, but only a tiny portion of people voted for these candidates. The problem is 46.9% of the registered electorate didn't bother to turn up. Really, if you're going to lambast anybody, they're the people who deserve a swift pen to the eyeball.
'The Expanse' - Season 1
I guess this is as hard a Science FictionTV series you could make without it costing the earth. It's a pretty cool series set in the near future where humanity is colonising the solar system and planetary governments are somewhat in conflict. None of it is unimaginable, and in most part things look nice and gritty,ratherthan white, plastic and NASA. It's long way from '2001: A Space Odyssey' or its stunted cousin 'Space: 1999'.
Without spoiling anything, it's kind of interesting how the interplanetary trips are portrayed, as well as what a space battle might look like. I'm inclined to think they set up a lot here that could be interesting to explore but it never even gets through half of its problem. I'm kind of glad there's another season coming, because Season 1 really only scratches the surface of the problem.
'Ascension'
This mini-series goes 6 episodes and literally goes nowhere. And then some important characters die and there isn't a cathartic moment. It ends like it's meant to continue on, but apparently this one didn't get renewed, so there will be no more.
The idea of a generation ship as a setting is good; combining it with the irony that they never left and they're sitting in a huge silo on earth is better. Yet, it never reaches the cathartic moment when the crew find out they've been living in this phoney environment for 50years.
It'a bit of shame it won't continue to that logical conclusion. As it is leaves way too many loose ends which were obviously set up for a longer run.
Also, I know this came earlier than 'Stranger Things', but this business of an esper girl feels really tired. Right down to the bit where the supernatural powers are unleashed when she gets angry.
'ARQ'
Surprising cool little 'Groundhog Day' ripoff. Very suspenseful and well contained in a very small location. Very tight writing, except they wrote themselves into a corner. Some will enjoy, some will complain, that's the nature with these kinds stories. '22.11.63' comets mind as the more recent iteration apart from this one. Considering '22.11.63' was such an elaborate, grand 'Groundhog Day' derived concept, this one looks positively punchy by comparison.
Michael Moore observed early on that Trump was on a wining track. He did that by simply traveling around the Mid-West of the USA, and found that many people were simply disillusioned with both parties, but also if the Democratic Party could think of no better than to put up Hillary Clinton as their candidate, they had no choice but to vote for the other guy, warts and all. Somehow it got discounted in the mix of things because polls said Hillary was winning.
Well, polls have had their comeuppance. Just as the pollsters completely missed Brexit in the UK, their US counterparts completely missed Trump's support on pretty much the same methodology. Dare I say the pollsters in Australia missed the support for Tony Abbott, both in 2010 AND 2013; and if you look at a number of other elections, it's been clear for about a decade that polls have been far less reliable. Had they been reliable, Nate Silver would not have shot to fame in 2008.
What's surprising and interesting to dissect in the aftermath of Trump's win is just how much the media convinced itself that Clinton would win, and just how much America's heartland disagreed. It is in stark contrast to how they actually voted. White people voted for Trump and there were enough of them spread out through the country to swing the Electoral Colleges. Hillary Clinton may have won the popular vote, but she won them predominantly in urban areas. She won big with the base and utterly failed to persuade Michael Moore country.
Now, it could be argued that these people are racists for voting for Trump who was endorsed by the KKK and various other neo-Nazi groups and white supremacists and 'Deplorables', but it actually flies in the face of the two terms won by Barack Obama. The demographic narrative that came out of the Obama victories was how the demographic was changing in such a way that a coalition could be built around various groups to beat the white majority vote. The fact that the Mid-West support Obama could count on, collapsed for Clinton has to be sheeted home to the candidate, and not the white people in the Mid-West who decided to vote against her.
Perhaps it's no coincidence - no make that, perhaps it was bloody pertinent - that the Sanders campaign offered more to those people than Hillary Clinton did, and the fact that she was carrying the baggage of Bill Clinton's presidency which effectively sold them down the river made it nigh impossible to win over those people. Thus combined, we have a situation where a bad candidate was sent out to win seats she wasn't going to win while the pollsters failed to understand this fundamental dynamic as they gathered numbers that obscured this fundamental problem, and the media reported those poll figures as if it paints the entire picture because it had a big investment in ignoring the underlying conflict, and they felt comfortable in doing this because the DNC assured them this was okay. This kind of circularity essentially led to the Media Bubble that formed around the narrative that Clinton was going to win, and this same Media Bubble got exported to the world.
No wonder the world is in shock.
"President Pussygrabber"
I know this sounds terrible, but if it does sound terrible, today is the day you should check your privileges in being able to think it's terrible - everybody has been way too keen to label Donald Trump with the expletives of the Post-Modern era. He's a sexist, misogynist, racist, entitled white male oligarch. And while all of that is true, it simply didn't matter to the wider electorate. And - again this is probably hard to bear but - those things not mattering is the normal condition of humanity and history. Also, there's a lot more to politics than identity politics, and so we ought not be jumping up an down over whether Donald Trump identifies himself as a sexist misogynist racist entitled white male oligarch - or not.
It's really easy to denigrate Donald Trump. He's been on the media as a caricature of himself for a very long time, so much so we don't even know how serious he is when he says the stuff that he says. And while it's most likely true that he sexually assaulted all those women who have come out to sue him, that's still not the entirety of the man. It might behoove us to keep in mind that the parts of the man that isn't the Pussygrabber is going be making decisions about who to drone-strike or not as the case mat be.
I know that sounds awful, but you have to get this into some kind of historic perspective. I remember when Ronald Reagan won. It was meant to be a disaster, but Reagan, combined with Bush Snr. (and a dose of Alzheimer) didn't exactly destroy the world through nuclear war. Equally, John F. Kennedy who is held in high esteem by the Democrats was a philandering sex-addict on the prowl for pussy. Nobody's seriously judging his presidency on the back of Kennedy's sexual adventurism.
While I wouldn't forgive Trump his peccadillos and sexual transgressions, the office of the President of the United States of America is going to demand much more of the man; and as long as the office is what it is, he's going to have to live up to it. He's most likely not going to be grabbing pussy. This kind of name calling isn't going to help us one bit, going forwards if we are to fight what is coming down the pike. The stupids have won, they are going to have their day. All Hail Stupid, Long Live the Reign of King Stupid.
The Gap Between What Is And What Ought To Be
Naturally, the media want to disown any claim that maybe they were part of the problem in how they couched the Trump candidacy. Politico had this editorial piece.
All that digging by the press corps meant a lot, and its message hit home. As the Cook Report notes today, newspaper investigations cemented into the public mind the preexisting image of Donald Trump as a bad person, as exit polls showed that 60 percent of voters viewed him unfavorably. But that didn’t keep 15 percent of those who thought he was deplorable from voting for him. Likewise, 63 percent of voters believe Trump lacked the right “temperament” to be president. But of those respondents, 20 percent said what the hell and voted for him anyway. And 60 percent of voters said he wasn’t qualified to be president—and you can guess the rest: 18 percent of them voted for him.
The election of Trump, then, can’t be reduced to a “failure” of the “broken” press—to lean on two worn-out descriptions of the craft. Nobody would ever say the American electorate “failed” or proved itself “broken” because it voted in numbers large enough to place a political monster in the White House. So the election of Trump doesn’t render the many journalistic findings published during the campaign worthless. Journalism at its best can only provide a set of traffic advisories. It is not and it can’t be an autopilot for life’s trip. Voters are free to read or ignore the press corps’ findings and even, as the Cook Report points out, absorb and agree with those reports and then cast ballots that contradict what’s been reported and what they believe. Being stupid is an inalienable right in a representative democracy.
There you have it. The media did a fine job in exposing what a terrible human being Donald Trump was; it's just that people were stupid in not taking the media's heed. It seems a little self-congratulatory as well as self-serving. It is easy to argue what people ought to have done so given the plethora of information uncovered by the media. It overlooks the fundamental problem that what *is* does not give rise to an *ought*. To that extent the Trump candidacy is incredibly instructive in that the terrible phenomena of who and what Donald Trump is, did not necessarily dictate to people they ought to vote against him. It didn't happen because on some basic level, the Trump candidacy was not based on some points system of ticking off correct answers to questions posed by the media, rather, it was made up of a stronger desire to tell the media to go fuck itself for asking such questions. The Deplorables know they are some kind of something that the elite in the media do not like; some might have even looked up the word deplorable; but ultimately they would have worn the term as a badge of honour as they voted for Trump. In that process, the media did an adverse job, simply because it allowed itself to be the insulters in chief.
There's a line in the Batman movie where Alfred offers to Bruce Wayne that some men do despicable things, because they just want to watch the world burn. What this election shows is that it's not just some men, it's roughly about half the American population.
