Trump as Russian asset. I feel a Cold War snap!

There is a cold snap in the Northeast as I write.  Reading this article in Slate about the Russian recruitment of Trump, I feel a Cold War snap, but this time, the shoe is firmly on the other foot.  

I love the treason talk in this context.  It is so reminiscent of conservative and Cold War liberal nomenclature used in the 1940s through really almost the present when speaking about anyone deemed "left" of what is, in each era, called in corporate media the "center."  This is fabulous tasting popcorn so early in the morning.  

Yes, yes, Trump fans.  Please start talking about how unfair this sort of language this article is promoting.  That the article is promoting "guilt by association."  That it is "criminalizing politics."  Yes, yes.  I just munch away on popcorn waiting for your apology to every American who ever said, "You know, other nations have national health care..." and people like you would say, "Oh, you mean, like in Soviet Russia?  Why don't you move there?"

Or that so called right wing libertarian who loved to say stuff like, "You know who liked the progressive income tax?  Karl Marx. And you know where that ended up. Soviet Russia, a dictatorship!  I won't support any candidate with anything nice to say about Russia!  Ever!"  My new retort to those right libertarians, who invariably support Trump, is: "So why the red hat?  Why support Putin-loving Trump? Maybe your idea of a great country is...Russia?"

Yeah, I love applying Cold War nomenclature here.  Trump as stooge.  Trump as dupe.  Trump as asset.  Trump as, yes, traitor to his country, beholden to a foreign country, and a leader in that foreign country who was a major player in the Soviet Union's secret police (the KGB).  Yes, a leader now in Russia who, as a KGB officer, hated that Gorbachev pursued democratic or republican reforms which undermined a dictatorship that KGB officer supported.  Yeah, Putin.  Hard line, block opponents from running against him, and suppress free media Putin.  Yeah.  Putin.

Oh yes, I am acutely aware that the Trump administration mantra is that the U.S. and Russia are merely cooperating to fight against international Islamic terrorism and other nations deemed world threats. That sort of justification, however, did not seem to help those who were friendly with the Soviet Union when we were on the same side fighting against German Nazis, Italian Fascists, and Japanese feudal warlords.  Or when some worried after World War II about use of the atomic bomb and nuclear weapons that could destroy much of humankind, and who wanted international cooperation even with those we disliked.    

All of this just gets me singing now, "And we'll have fun, fun, fun, till Trump-ie takes the Mueller away"...or maybe more fun when that happens.  Yeah, more fun. Trump will likely take Mueller away from the investigation when Mueller is on the verge of fully proving Trump's responsibility as someone who was supposed to be in charge. If he does, it is a demonizing win either way with at least some of what political scientists and pollsters call "swing voters." For that narrative attacks Trump at the core of his perceived greatest strength, which is his claim that he can fool others, but he cannot be fooled.  Well, this entire investigation leads to at least a conclusion that Trump is an asset, a stooge, a dupe, or a tool of a foreign intriguing dictatorial leader, Putin. 

There was a whole apparatus set up after World War II to attack anyone who said anything nice about the Soviet Union, and it quickly became used to attack anyone promoting social democracy in the United States or any continuation of the New Deal or anyone seeking international cooperation through the United Nations.  Today, with the evidence already out there about Trump's dealings with Russian oligarchs, Deutsche Bank, his kind words for Putin over many years (in stark contrast to his tweets against so many other people), his trust in Putin's words over the conclusions of American intelligence agencies, Democratic Party leaders and minions around them in the corporate media and political consulting really ought to be able to show Trump as at least an asset or a stooge here.  Come on Congressman Adam Schiff. Come on Rachel Maddow.  Be our Henry Hyde, Adam.  Heck, be at least our Senator Pat McCarran, if not Senator Joe McCarthy.  And Rachel, please be our Matt Drudge, our Ann Coulter, our Bill Buckley, our George Sokolsky, our Pat Buchanan, oh so many people in those apparatuses of Red baiting.

This talk of Trump as stooge to traitor is just the sort of noise we need to also hear as we march  into and through the Congressional mid-terms of 2018.  Party like its 1950, man!  And let's remember our political science:  Swing voters love noise.  And that noise may well have coattails: "Why have you supported Trump's treasonous pro-Russia agenda, Republican Congressman or Senator?"   Ann Coulter's and Bill Buckley's right wing martyr Joe McCarthy spoke of "twenty years of treason." We have "two" and counting.  And if one really studies Trump's history, one finds his ties to Russian oligarchs and one of the only banks that would lend to him, Deutsche Bank, which has long had ties to Russian oligarchs and money-laundering Russians, go back...twenty years or more.  Oh yeah!  Nailed it!

Oh, and let's remember, we can chew gum and walk down the street. Some want to focus on impeachment and Cold War nomenclature thrown at Trump and his Republican supporters?  Fine.  Others want to focus on how the tax bill is designed to undermine important American institutions such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid?  Great.  Some want to replace Congressional Republicans with Democratic Party candidates who stand for new New Deal policies?  Really great.   Everyone has a role to play to, oh let's say it, take back our nation from the oligarchs, dupes, stooges, cronies, and anarchists posing as conservative and Republican legislators.

For my other blog post on this topic of Trump and dupe to treason politicking, see here. 

A Lincoln parable and government regulations

This article in Slate.com about Trump undermining regulations that were enacted to help people against predatory behavior of financiers caused me to think of this Lincoln parable:  

"The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty....Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty."

The philosopher Isiah Berlin is said to have summarized the parable as "Freedom for the wolves has often meant death to the sheep."

Hence, for those who automatically think cutting regulations is a good thing, well, think again.  If we do not do the hard thinking of why particular regulations were enacted or exist in a given area, then we may as well call ourselves a walking bumper sticker.  It is why I have such little respect for those who operate from broad minded principles, and why I have such little respect for libertarians in general, as they operate on Kantian principles of philosophy that something cannot be true if it is not always true.  Public policy is different.  Public policy is about tinkering, thinking about different situations and conditions, and recognizing there is no universal truth in particular situations and conditions. 

People figure out ways around regulations, to be sure.  Regulatory bodies are often captured by the interests they are supposed to regulate.  But that leads to my second equal point which is to avoid putting people into office who represent those interests, or who think those interests know best over regulators.  It would be like putting Greenpeace activists in charge of ExxonMobil.  ExxonMobil has to have its own interests to at least a reasonable extent to promote oil and gas drilling and refining.  The government, however, must have a broader interest and must act as a countervailing force when ExxonMobil's interests harm the environment or indeed the planet. 

We would do well to listen to the wisdom of Karl Polyani

The correct person, Robert Kuttner, has reviewed, in the NYRB, the latest and perhaps most comprehensive biography of Karl Polyani. Kuttner's "The Economic Illusion," written in the 1980s, did a marvelous job of introducing readers such as me to Polyani's macroeconomic and sociological insights.

We are moving ever closer to outright American fascism, and only social democracy can save us. We must begin to vote with our best hopes, not our worst fears.

PS: Kuttner is too hard on Polyani about the Soviet Union and satellites. An otherwise brilliant writer, Kuttner misses the details of moments, and is taking out of context of those moments, of Polyani's comments at the time of particular events. There is truth, for example, in Polyani's point that Conservative British Prime Minister Chamberlain's failure to grasp that Stalin and Hitler were moving toward a deal, and Chamberlain's insistence he could fight fascism at home, while allowing it spread abroad, played a role in that notorious Stalin-Hitler pact of 1939. There is also truth in Polyani's point that the initial post-WWII era in Eastern Europe, outside of Poland, was one where coalition governments did exist in places such as Hungary, Czechoslovakia, etc. There is much internal memoranda and other evidence that the Cold War did much to crush those coalition governments, and that the US rooted for that crushing so that propaganda for a Pax Americana could be further developed. And there were plenty of US policymakers, starting with the Dulles brothers and sadly my saintly George Kennan, who never took seriously the distinction between out and out Communists and those who were Social Democrats in the government in each of those nations during the period of 1945-1948. Polyani was no Stalinist in any way, but was almost always a subtle and astute analyst of international trends and affairs.

Bad readers? No, not quite.

This is not an essay for anyone other than those interested in the study of literature as an art form and as a literary historian.  

I found it amusing in part because I simply do not personally buy the nomenclature of people being "bad readers." I would rather talk about serious or engaged readers compared to light or non-engaged readers.  

My take is we should not worry about the latter as much as attempt to positively cultivate the former.  We should recognize very few people are going to be serious or engaged readers, just as there are only a certain amount of really good car mechanics.  It is about a form of elitism, that is meaning neither arrogant nor wealthy, but elite or elitist in the sense of someone who really is almost obsessed, and often obsessed, with something and wants to be really, really good at it.  Magic Johnson is an elitist in basketball.  My former neighbor who was a lead mechanic for a local Honda dealer is an elitist in auto repair and refurbishing.  Each cares deeply about honing the craft, honing what is best and understanding how others perform the work each cares deeply about.

Reading is itself a vocation, and encompasses comprehension and articulation of what one is reading or has read.  Nabokov, in the article, appears too despairing, and the backstory about not getting the Voice of America gig, shows a side of him that is petty.  I won't say I was ever a fan of any of his stories, not even the one he is most renowned.  But there are novelists whose novels I do not read, but whose essays or prose I admire, e.g. Joyce Carol Oates, whose essays I often adore; John Updike, whose frame of reference is small minded in my view, but whose prose is powerful and taut.

Common Ground

There are different ways of reaching common ground. I think we owe it to our nation and ourselves to find those who do not vote in Congressional mid-terms who understand the world as we do, and get them out to vote this coming year in the Congressional mid-terms. It is what Alabama, Virginia and NJ taught us in the past six weeks.

I blocked my stalker libertarian right winger with racial insensitivities, and am moving forward myself, though admittedly, I screwed two bullies into the ground elsewhere in the last 24 hours. I sorta regret that, but it was so much damn fun to give them what those two undoubtedly give to others. It's the lawyer in me. We all have Achille's Heels in our worldview. 

But, frankly, the majority of Americans know where we need to move, and organizing one by one and group by group is the source for Common Ground that already exists, and just needs to be allowed to flower. The disconnect is not polarization. The disconnect is minority government ruling over the majority. The majority must be organized to speak, however.

David Brin on the film version of his book on the film's anniversary

David Brin, in his blog post here, talking about the twenty year anniversary of the film version of his outstanding novel., "The Postman " I love Brin's novel, and I loved Costner's film version of it, too. I think Brin understood exactly the pluses and minuses of the film, which shows Brin's rarified mind. 

Corporate media critics of the time called it "Dirtworld," making further fun of the other neglected Costner classic, "Waterworld," which corporate media critics found incoherent, when they were too stupid to see "Waterworld's" warning about climate change, and humanity still being too dumb to do anything even after the catastrophe, other than huddle in ignorance while mean and murderous roving bands terrorized the remainder of people. 

Anyway, I went to see "The Postman" shortly after it arrived at theaters (I remember seeing it Christmas Day...), after reading a negative review from Kenneth Turan, who still is stinking up the pages of the Los Angeles Times. Turan called the film, with derision, if we can believe this, "Mad Max meets Frank Capra." You bet, Kenneth! It sure frickin' is! I said to The Wife, "We gotta see this--today!" And man, it was great.

The opening fifth of "The Postman" film sets up the appeal of fascism which, viewed today, will be even more clear for viewers.  This was a Costner invention more than Brin's, and it captures Costner's growing sophistication about American society that began with his involvement in "Field of Dreams."  Before that film, Costner saw himself as a Reaganite, if one can believe that!

The overall arc of the film thereafter is that New Deal values of government providing a mass service, such as the Postal Office, are often a springboard to human connection and development (or re-development) of civilization. And it also shows us the power of Myth with a Capital M. And the importance of Truth even within an individual's lie about himself. For The Postman, as a character, not film title, is heroic, and he is playing his greatest role as a postal worker trying to connect people's lives and restore the United States of America. He lives up to the Myth he creates and is a better person for it, and so are we.

Oh, and yes, Tom Petty.  When seeing the film for the first time, I laughed out loud when I saw Petty hit the screen.  Tom Frickin' Petty!  Yeah....Bridge City, where they don't allow guns...

Overheard in the U.S. Senate cloakroom...

In the Senate cloakroom, a conversation among two Republicans:

"This is a shitty tax bill. It's mean, it's dumb, and it's favoring our rich donors, all while screwing over wage earners."

"Yes, but Trump is clear, and so are Ryan and McConnell. We need to pass something--or else we are a 'do-nothing Congress,' as we head into 2018. And our donors won't fund us because we will have failed--again. They want the goodies they have long wanted, and couldn't get before Trump came along to tweet people silly while we dismantle everything we can, and give more money to our donors who fund us."

"But what I worry about is what we end up passing is itself a monstrosity, which leaves us open to charges we're just catering to rich people and corporations. Populism can work both ways, ya know?"

"Yeah, I made that point to McConnell and Ryan. They said to me, 'Look. People are dumb, people have short memories. We don't have to fool everyone, just fool enough people to win.' They said, too, that they can whip up any number of culture war issues to divert people. And people will forget all about this bill--and if they feel screwed over, it's the usual, you know, 'Just say it's the liberals' fault.'"

"They better be right...."

"Well, the funny thing is we can almost guarantee the DNC will keep throwing up weak candidates like Doug Jones, who only won because of how bad Roy Moore was. The Dems keep doing us a favor with their social liberal, economically vague and corporate oriented candidates--who just look like they'd be awkward at a labor union bar-b-que. The DNC will never put their full forces and money behind a Sanders type--"

"Sanders really put a scare out there...for all of us, the Democrat people here, too."

"He did. But we can count on wealthier liberals in the coastal regions to say he's too old to listen to, and, anyway who else have the Dems got?"

"Yeah, I hear that. And you know, something I thought about today, that when the new FCC rules kick in, Comcast and Google can really start limiting what people are exposed to. That's what Pai at the FCC told McConnell. It's like gerrymandering the Internet! Remember, Obama had to pick Pai back in 2012 for the Republican seat on the FCC. McConnell pushed Pai, and McConnell told me today he knew what he was getting with Pai from the start. McConnell plays a longer game, though he looks really bad when he said 'Seat Scott Brown in 2010, but don't seat Doug Jones now, when the shoe's on the other foot.' McConnell takes a hit for the rest of us on stuff like that...He's safe in Kentucky because all he has to do is say, 'I love coal and guns' and people just vote for him. Lucky bastard!"

"See? There's another reason why we go along with this shitty tax bill!"

"But what about the middle class, the country?"

"Don't talk like a Commie. We know who we rely on and who pays for our campaigns. And it's the same people who will fund us after we leave this God forsaken swamp."

"Yeah, you're right. Damn...Well, here we go. Gonna vote for the shitty bill! Glad Cruz and Corker fell into line. Lotta noise, though, with those guys."

"Prima donnas. Don't worry bout them. Just vote for the shitty tax bill."

Smiling, the two shake hands and leave the cloakroom.

With all the chaos of our own time, a reflection on a failed revolution a century ago

October 2017 was the centennial anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and its environs.  Yet, with all the chaos in the United States, and of course, corporate media's continuing onslaught against memory and solidarity of people, nary a word has been said in the fast-moving, outrage-driven cable news.  It affected even me as I frankly did not even think about it.  I recall being more touched by the 145th birthday of Ralph Vaughan Williams that month.  Shame on me.

This may be the best article I have read so far on the centennial memorialization of the Bolshevik Revolution.  It appears informed by Isaac Deutscher's works on Trotsky and Stalin, and perhaps some Victor Serge.  It is not because I agree with every insight or every part of the narrative, however.  It does, though, capture the overriding arc that led to the Bolshevik Revolution, which was the chaos arising from the First World War, known then as the Great War (with the word "Great" then being seen as much less of being a complete positive).  It shows that the Bolsheviks, though victorious in what the article's author correctly recognizes as a counter coup, were winging it, and hoping for a more broad set of revolutions throughout Europe.

I think the author, Sunkara, could have given more emphasis to the capitalist encirclement (as the Revolutionaries of the time often called it) that occurred starting in 1918 and continuing into 1921.  The attack against the nascent Soviet Russia by U.S., Britain, France, and other nations was somewhat similar to the manner and the attacks by Britain, Russia, and other nations in the early 1790s against the French Revolutionaries.  

For me, the most fascinating and penetrating book I have ever read on the topic of the Bolshevik Revolution and its immediate aftermath remains Victor Serge's "Year One of the Russian Revolution."  It shows something I think Sunkara, the author of the article in Jacobin, should have noted.  The Cheka, the secret police organization the nascent Soviet government set up, was also a response to the naivety of Lenin and his band of Revolutionaries in that first six months' period. The White government (Tsar and other forces) were brutal in their earliest tactics, killing every soldier from the Bolshevik side.  Twice, in those first months following the events of October 1917, Bolshevik forces captured two leading White government side generals--and let them go unharmed on the generals' false promises of laying down their arms and not continuing to fight the "Revolution."  Lenin, meanwhile, was dithering for months over the fate of the Tsarist leaders, the Romanovs, including their family, and, as the brutality of the Civil War grew, finally gave the order which the peasants holding them long wanted--retribution in the form of murder of the Tsar, Tsarina and their children.

As I have long told our own children, it is difficult for me, as I grow older, and see what war and oppression do to so many untold millions, to feel too much sadness about the murder of the Romanovs when one considers how easily and sometimes joyously the Tsar and Tsarina (Nicholas and Alexandria) pushed for pogroms that killed plenty of women and children, and terrorized millions.  We should feel so badly for little Anastasia, when she was, above all, a mere victim of peasant retribution in a time of madness?  It remains stunning to me how most of my generation and my parents' generation are shaped by the propaganda of the novel and film "Doctor Zhivago" (well, mostly the film, rarely the book, as this is, after all America!) and the focus on Anastasia and the Tsar's family as if we are talking about Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Charles, and Princess Diana. The Tsarist system was a system based upon brutality, enforcement of ignorant, obscurant hatred and oppression, and continued terrorism and murder against millions of people over centuries.  Oh, and the best novel of the Russian Revolution?  Try "Conquered City" for starters, again it's Victor Serge.

That the Soviet Union became itself a murderous, oppressive regime that continued in style (but with far more effective technologies at its disposal) the Tsarist regime is the cruelest irony of history.  For Stalin most resembled Ivan the Terrible and other horrible Tsars in the manner of his governance, the intrigue he engendered, and the poor leadership decisions that could only be covered up with executions of his own subordinates.

As Chomsky has pointed out, there are a variety of left traditions, and to view the Russian experience, born in war and retribution, as "The Left" is to betray any real hope for a better society and better world.  The Russian experience, however, should be much more studied and analyzed in American culture, and we should do well to learn its lessons, if they can be learned.

Making trouble wherever I go...

From the Sunday, once a week, Rio Rancho Observer, in New Mexico, the proprietor of MF Blog, the Sequel has written an opinion-editorial against the Sandoval County Commission's proposed right to work ordinance. 

What was not included was that this ordinance was written for the far right Commissioners by Americans for Prosperity, the Koch Bros. pet organization.  The organization has supposedly told the Commission that if a union or pro-union plaintiff challenges the ordinance in court, Americans for Prosperity will pay the cost of the defense.

That seems illegal to me, not simply unethical.  And I sure would want to know, if it is legal and ethical, what happens if the plaintiffs who sue are successful and get to recover their prosecuting attorneys' fees?  Does the County have to pay that, or do the Koch Bros. pet organization pay that, too?

This is a very bad ordinance because at best it does nothing to promote economic development.  At worst, it is a vehicle to weaken the trade unions that are barely existing already in this County.

Prescient Chomsky: December 10, 1993

This interview is literally 24 years ago today.  

In the pre-Internet age, and especially pre-YouTube days (it is amazing to recall that YouTube first appeared in 2005!), C-Span was the only place you could see Chomsky from time to time. Chomsky's analysis is largely accurate, and his recognition of how the Clintons operated and operate remains spot on.

I remember seeing this interview, and was so happy for us having C-Span.  I remember screaming at the time against the Clintons' betrayal, but finding that professionals and coastal people, where of course I lived, found me to be retro at best, naive and radical overall.  I kept saying we have to care about people in Iowa, in Ohio, in Kansas and throughout the South.  I would get the usual line, well, they are a bunch of racists, as if minorities did not live there, first off.  And worse, as if that is the only way to define people who lived there.  

I wound up leaving the Democratic Party for most of the rest of the 1990s.  I first joined Perot's party, The Reform Party, in 1994, and drifted toward the Greens for the rest of the decade.  I became persona non grata among various Orange County, CA Democrats, and one in particular told me I had ruined any chance I had to ever run for office.  I laughed, and said, With my medical costs each year, to risk losing a job, or taking leave from a job, was already out of the question.  And, from what I saw, there was never any chance to have someone with my New Deal views receive the money support, as this was pre-Internet, too, so that the Democratic Party was already in the hands of large donors at that point.

Overall, I have always taken the position that people in the United States are akin to our brothers and sisters, and we owe a societal duty towards each other.  Yup.  Still retro, still naive and still at least economic radical. 

The return of MF Blog's Review of Book Reviews

As I have had time to get back into deeper reading of the New York Review of Books, owing to my getting back a subscription in the past year or so, and now, as MF Blog, The Sequel, has re-emerged, I realized it was time to resurrect the Review of Book Reviews that the relatively few readers of the original MF Blog appeared to enjoy.

1.  From the latest NYRB:  Laura Kipnis has important things to say in the latest New York Review of Books about the exposure of male sexual oppression that has finally ripped open from the bowels of the entertainment industry which includes politics.  For, as Frank Zappa memorably said, Politics is the entertainment division of the military-industrial complex.

Kipnis became infamous among the academic community by providing the libertine Woodstock era sexual freedom perspective to the ongoing important debate over sexual assault on campuses.  Her take is part ironic, part radical, part conservative (only in the sense of recognizing the importance of decorum within the discussion), and a demand that we grow up.  What this last part means is that sexual desire and activities make us do stupid things, are highly emotionally laden, and there are distinctions that are made that cannot be neatly compartmentalized.  It is, in short, more than treating men and women equally in some anti-septic, non-discriminatory way.  But what it is, says Kipnis, we are not quite sure yet.  

I supported the California law for college campuses known as "No Means No/Yes Means Yes," despite my Lenny Brucian/Woodstock era misgivings.  I felt it was time for the culture to change more, ahem, forcefully, and make sure when a woman said No, she was comfortable saying that is exactly what she meant.  Human history has long put premiums on women's "maidenheads" so that No often meant Maybe, and even, You guys have to work for it or you are wimps.  And no man wants to be called a wimp, not even us wimps.  I felt at the time of the regulations being proposed and some implemented that it was in fact time to change the dynamic, and remove fear of the Madonna/Whore Complex we as a society or culture put on women. 

What has gone on in the past two months is spectacle as this issue has been thrust into the full limelight of reality television.  It has occurred in a way where others are manipulating attacks for political ends, whether with Moore or much more especially Franken.  But Kipnis has, again, something to say, and I am so glad the NYRB has decided it worthy of free reading. 

2. This excellent review of the expurgated biography of Czeslaw Milosz is great reading about a great 20th Century literary person who lived through the tumultuous times of Europe's 20th Century.  The only thing missing is the perhaps ironic fact that Milosz became an opponent of the Berkeley radicals as they descended into more cultural radicalism, which Milosz, a man of decorum in his adult years, abhorred.  Milosz's "The Captive Mind" should be required reading, not for the usual attacks on Stalinism, but for his generalized way of writing, which shows how a mind can be captivated by most ideologies, including capitalist, libertarian, corporate, etc.  It is why Milsoz was seen as someone not useful to American government propagandists when they spoke with him following his defection.  Milsoz never really lost his faith in a social democratic ideal, but he spoke and thought in paradox, in subtlety, and irony.  In some ways, Laura Kipnis and Milsoz have that important intellectual set of attributes in common.

I was going to write another Review of Book Review note, but The Wife has rightly commanded me to join her for a Breakfast Outing.   

Erik Prince and the International Corporate Fascist movement

I'm not sure Charles Pierce has read many congressional hearing transcripts, or at least none during the Red Scare years from 1945 through 1960. Contrary to his latest article in Esquire, this Congressional testimony from Erik Prince (Mr. Blackwater; Betsy DeVos' brother) is not "unbelievable" conduct on his part, or really all that interesting, except for two things, having read the transcript myself:

1. The Washington Post article that so upsets Erik Prince has very specific facts that shows him to have been a go-between for the Trump campaign and Russians, which Prince completely denies. Someone is not telling the truth, in other words.

2. I love Prince's statement in his testimony that if the FDR could work with Stalin to defeat "Nazi fascism," then Trump can work with Putin to defeat "Islamic fascism." (page 37 of transcript) 

This gets to my overall point I have made from the start of the imbroglio over Trump's relationship with the Russians: What Prince conveniently leaves out of his heartfelt formulation is that was, in its essentials, Alger Hiss' position, and Hiss went to jail because the government used perjury to put him jail because he lied about knowing a then Communist, Whittaker Chambers, and passing him information in 1937 (nothing treasonous about the information provided, one should add).  Hiss and others were people who supported working with the Soviet Union to combat international, armed fascism of Germany, Italy, Japan, and then, after World War II, wanted to continue some cooperation with the Soviet Union in a post-nuclear bomb world.*  These people were hounded out of government as spies, stooges, etc. The language of the questions from Schiff and  Hines are similar to those of then Congressman J. Parnell Thomas and others (Joe McCarthy was often a buffoon in his questioning, so let's not count him in this particular moment), and Prince's answers are fairly similar to the answers New Deal Internationalists gave, including worrying about leaks of supposedly false information to prominent newspapers, and appeals to values of civil liberties.  And if it turns out the Washington Post was correct in it essentials, and the information provided is put before a prosecutor, does that mean we should put Erik Prince in jail for perjury, too?

The funny thing too is that one can read Prince's overall testimony, and wind up feeling that he is part of a movement of International Corporate Fascism.  The way he talks about his trips around the world, the people he meets, his worldview and the worldview of those he meets with, his going in and out of government high officials' offices, are fodder for conspiracy theorists who believe wholeheartedly in the Trilateral Commission and Agenda 21.  It is not as if those groups do not promote a groupthink among elites.  It is just that it is systemic, not conspiratorial.

Anyway, as I have said, I can make the argument that Trump is not a traitor, and was and is simply trying to pursue a mutual cooperation strategy with Putin against Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. But having said that, one needs to recognize that Alger Hiss was merely trying to promote a multi-polar world, consistent with the idea behind the United Nations, that included the Soviet Union, and that Hiss' and other New Deal Internationalists' goal was to avoid a third World War, having then lived through two World Wars over just a few short decades.  This seemed especially urgent when the A-bomb had been shown to have such destructive power. In short, one can make the argument that each of these matters is a criminalization of politics--and that the adage remains true since the 1790s, which is that most foreign policy disputes in U.S. history mask what are pure domestic partisan politics (Gordon Wood's "Empire of Liberty" is an excellent retelling of the 1790s, where Federalists and Democratic-Republicans, led respectively by Hamilton and Jefferson, accused each other of treason: Hamilton being accused of treasonous support for the British, and Jefferson accused of being a traitor, acting on behalf of the French).

Oh well. I am not sure how much Erik Prince was a player in this...well, let's use the word Cold Warriors of the right loved to use at that time, "treason."** It would be fun to unmask those who spoke to the Post and find out what or who they were relying on. I always found it interesting how credulous right wingers and historians like Khlehr and Haynes have been about trusting US based Soviet spies' memoranda to their superiors in Moscow, which spies supposedly recruited and worked with people like Hiss, when all these historians and others would have to do is watch "Ninotchka" with Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas, or read Graham Greene's "Our Man in Havana," to understand how the world really works, particularly in this area. 

But as I love to say on Facebook, I sit back, and munch on the popcorn, as I see people on the right wing suddenly deciding to mouth the language of civil liberties, parse whether someone is committing treason, or merely seeking a change in our foreign policy against larger threats, etc. Munch, munch, munch.  Oh, and I often like to add, where is the apology to Alger Hiss, and especially Harry Dexter White?

*I put "some" in italics because, as Conrad Black (no liberal) wrote at page 1,080 in his magisterial biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt about Hiss' appearance at the Yalta Conference in early 1945:

“….Hiss’ chief contribution at the (Yalta) conference was a sensibly reasoned argument against giving the Soviet Union three votes in the international organization. In this as in all other matters, while he was competent and unexceptionable in his functions, Hiss had no influence whatever on Roosevelt or American policy at Yalta.” (Parenthesis added; quote in italics) 

Black also noted FDR had never met Hiss before Yalta and never spent a minute alone with FDR at Yalta per Charles Bohlen, a long time US diplomat.

**One recalls the famous Joe McCarthy speech that was carried into the hearts of many Americans, which speech is often entitled, "Twenty Years of Treason."  It essentially asserted the entire New Deal was tainted with what right wing people often spoke about, well before McCarthy, in conflating "foreign," "international" and "atheism" with "Communism."  M.J. Heale's book on the subject of anti-Communism in American history is quite good about tracing this phrasing and conflation.

But pass the popcorn on this one. I had no idea about Erik Prince, and now can enjoy watching the International Corporate Fascist set being treated like Alger Hiss.

Time for rank and file white Baby Boomer Republicans to stand up to their leaders

The Week is a right leaning news weekly.  They printed a truth here, which is the donor class to the GOP spoke clearly. There was never a draining of the swamp.  The swamp just became that much more wide and deep.  This single fact explains why the so-called "moderates" in the Republican Party, from Collins to McCain and Graham, etc., folded up the tent of dissent and signed off on this.

Oh, and white Baby Boomers who voted for Republicans all these years, pushing their phony elixir of tax cuts, when the cuts start coming to Social Security and Medicare (each of the two bills cuts growth in Medicare and Social Security, so that its means the more people reaching 65, the less money per person), it was not robbery, at least for you.  It was simply the consequence of policies you supported.  You supported the very thing you will later call "robbery."

But there is a chance to redeem yourself:  Call the Republicans in Congress and the President you helped elect.  You can even say, assuming this applies in whole or in part to you: 

"I'm a good right wing Baby Boomer Republican.  I hate unions, even though I was in one, and had its benefits, including this pension I'm getting.  I fear and sometimes hate black people enough to make sure we don't have national health insurance, 'cause damn if I want to pay for them. I totally fear Muslims, and am glad the US Supreme Court agreed with me and you guys.  And too many Mexicans here are the real problem, what with all the money we give them to come here.  But don't hurt my Social Security and Medicare.  Don't vote or sign this tax bill.  Go back to the drawing board.  You need to make the rich and corporations pay just a little more, as they already are saying they are not putting the saved corporate tax money into anything but stock buybacks and dividends, not create more jobs. The loss of those deductions hurts us very badly, even with the doubling of the standard deduction."  

I thought I would help here in those last few sentences...and no, we don't give much to the "Mexicans" who come here, and many pay Social Security taxes in our names with the phony cards that just go into the larger fund, so the net is not much at all.  The other stuff, though vile, is just your personal opinion, at least for some of you--and you know who you are; deep down, you know. And if you were not in a union, and only have a paltry 401k or I.R.A., well, you really better call now.

So yes, white Baby Boomers who vote Republican, and hey, you oldsters too--couldn't do it without the very aged parents who inaugurated and put into place the Cold War which said, "liberalism is socialism, which is Communism, which is treason!"--this is your chance for some redemption.  Stop putting up your memes, for just a moment, about making kids pray in school, say the pledge of allegiance, political correctness on a few college campuses, or whatever other right wing memes come your way from Russian troll sites or FoxNews.  This is where the rubber meets the road.  You have the credibility with these people, as you vote consistently for them, and heck, you may even back Bernie Sanders next time if they do this to you.  That will really scare the Republican Jesus out of them.

Cenk gets angry, correctly so, at Joy Reid, a leading voice at MSNBC

This post is not for Republicans. This is for those who are Democratic Party members or on the left side of the usual political equation. 

I don't think I've seen Cenk so angry in awhile, and rightfully so.  Joy Reid is definitely an embarrassment. It is such a shame she is so prominent on MSNBC. I guess it is why I am glad I no longer have cable and do not have to watch stupidness. I just get the snippets, and that is more than enough.  Just watch.  Cenk makes a great point that those, like Reid, who worried about a divisive primary in 2016 are aching for one in 2020 because they fear Bernie may run, and win.

Cenk focuses on the portion of Reid's tweet about body language, and again rightfully so.  But some should comment on Reid's reference to Bernie's "early writings" as being disingenuous too. Reid lied first off about "early writings."  There is one, and only one, article Bernie wrote for an "underground" early 1970s mag where he cited porn mags and then asked why it is that more people, especially women, were not standing up against sexual stereotypes that demean women. The fact that the citations in his article did not carry quotation marks, and were paraphrases and summaries, threw off Chuck Todd at the time, and now Joy Reid, and others in the media, who thought Bernie was endorsing what was said in the paraphrases and summaries. That is why they said the article was incoherent at best because of where he immediately went next in the article, which was to be supportive of women's rights and dignity as human beings. He then ended with a fictional dialogue that occurred in a lot of people's households in the late 1960s and early 1970s and was also a bow to Mark Twain's essays on men and women in "Letters from Earth" and "Diary of Adam" and "Diary of Eve." Bernie's article, however, is not a long article. One can now find it on the Internet, though I cited it above from a longer article in Mother Jones at the time it became a short lived issue. 

I read the article when the issue first arose, and was amazed at how twisted the interpretation was, and how ignorant people in the media are now of what passed for creative writing in early 1970s radical journals, and the way in which people wrote in those journals. But I was not surprised because these media elite people, when not lying cynics, are really, really dumb, and would fail Comprehension 101. They are also the type of folks who think Johnny Mercer's song, "Baby, It's Cold Outside" is about sexual assault. They fail to understand cultural history and what the woman's side of the conversation in that song had to be about as part of courting in the 1940s.* And news flash to Joy Reid: Bernie's stance from the time he was mayor of Burlington through the present has been and continues to be one of consistent endorsement of women's rights across the board, from reproductive rights to rights in the workplace and dignity as human beings. Consistent. And Bernie opposed the anti-gay marriage act of 1996 that Bill Clinton signed and Hillary Clinton clung to until 2013. 

As I say, Joy Reid is an embarrassment. But I have also said that about Chuck Todd, Don Lemon, Anderson Cooper and the like. FoxNews? It is not even worthy of mention. The anger one has against the WaPo, NYT, MSNBC is they should know better--and their limitations speak precisely to the Empire and to international corporate capitalism, from whom these people receive their paychecks. They know which marks they are supposed to stand on when they speak. They know what is said, and not said, in polite, elite circles. They are the proverbial person who Upton Sinclair referred to when he said a century ago, and I paraphrase, "It is difficult to change a man's mind when his job depends upon his not changing his mind." 

An even older saying from about 110 years ago was that it was not necessary for the British elite to bribe the then-mainstream capitalist owned newspaper men of the time. For they already stood for the Empire. That is how they got their jobs. That is how they held their jobs. 

I did not say it before as I think it is too early. As I watch Bernie go around the middle west and speak out against the tax bill, and promote a consistent agenda for people, I think he has to be considered a front runner for 2020. Damn it whether he is 78 in 2020. Just have him pick Nina Turner, Rose DeMoro or Nick Hannauer as VP. That will scare the elite shitless, and Sanders and Turner, DeMoro or Hannauer will barnstorm the nation.

* Margaret Whiting, who sang the song with Johnny Mercer, was the daughter of Richard Whiting, a famous songwriter in the first three decades of the 20th Century.  She was a very forward woman for the time, and was fearless.  

What might have been...

Here is a snippet of a speech I found this morning by accident.  I wish there was a full video.  RFK was speaking in Ft. Wayne, Indiana on April 10, 1968 about gun control in the aftermath of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination.  What is extraordinary about the snippet, though, is that, here RFK was in the heart of a hotly contested primary campaign, and he is telling an audience of very comfortable white people that he is about to talk about something they may not have wanted to hear.  And his message in the beginning was that we are all in this together.  But he also saying that something can be done when people pull together.  It is extraordinary to hear and see him, speaking in his often halting, deeply honest manner, because so much of what Trump, for example, says is not that style of rhetoric. It is a language of divisiveness and hopelessness about doing anything other than tearing down any sense that we should support the government in our nation. Trump, though, is hardly unique in this regard, however.  For many other politicians who have run for political office, since at least Reagan's time, including Reagan himself, talk in that way of making an important institution in our lives, i.e. government, an enemy when it is to be used in a way to promote the general welfare.  Instead, they promote fear and dividing people to promote that aspect of government which involves the police and the military.  Those are fine sub-institutions, but when there is severe inequality, when people are suffering and frustrated, those sub-institutions may be used by elites in ways that are truly oppressive and destructive.

We are approaching, next June, the 50th Anniversary of the assassination of RFK. The hope I have is that enough of our children's generation may have found RFK's spirit, and may not have the same aversion against that spirit that propagandized our generation.  The key is to not get tied down in ideologies, but to see those ideologies more as an aesthetic* than narrow blueprints. We must remember our greatest leaders were those who understood nation building and nation sustaining.  It is what Hamilton, Clay, Lincoln, TR, FDR and even, to some extent, LBJ understood, which is to use government as a tool to develop infrastructure, jump start new industries and do the things that develop and then maintain a nation of people.  Unfortunately, the wreckage of Baby Boomers and our parents continues apace, and I continue to fear a generational backlash is coming. 

There are four legs which support the chair that is society: government, business, labor, and religion.  These four institutions have natural overlapping interests, natural antagonisms, and sometimes form natural alliances against the other.  It is a series of balancings and negotiations.  Right now, however, we live in a society where we have nearly destroyed the leg that is labor.  We live in a society where we have crippled the ability of government to function as anything other than an instrument of physical oppression in the form of the military and police. And we live in a society where too many religious institutions are factories of hatred and clannishness, and add the insult of promoting dogmas that  promote ignorance and cripple critical thinking.  We are seriously out of balance, and... 

Oh well.  What might have been...what might have been.  However, as the light of future loving, healthy and helpful alternatives grows dim, there does, again, remain a hope on my part in the youth of our nation. 

* What I mean by this term aesthetic is more of what Oscar Wilde meant, but not quite.  I mean we should, for example, see democratic socialism/New Deal liberalism as something like Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.  It is something to aspire to, and speak of to children.  It is not something that has to be legislated at every level, not something that itself takes on the rigidity of dogma, and not something that substitutes for critical thinking.  Policy-making is about drawing lines, experimenting, and contouring over time.  It is about what Daniel Bell was trying to get at in his last essay in his book, "The End of Ideology" (1960).  He was trying to say that we should speak about more about public policy and less about ideology.  Bell also saw what Lenny Bruce once remarked, which is his frustration with people who suffer from too much organized religion because they get hung up on "good" and "evil" instead of "right" and "wrong."  The latter two are about rules of law.  The other two are about apocalyptic visions that descend into hatred and violence.  And what that means too is that, within these institutions, there are extremists and, more particulaly, those who do not see how each institution needs to protect against supremacy over the other institutions.  Again, "balancing" is a key word here.  Oh, and here is a snippet from Walter Cronkite's nightly news in 1968 with RFK confronting white protestors in Oregon who hated RFK for even daring to say that we should stop criminals and mentally ill people from having guns.