Category: Trust of Government

What, Me Worry?

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” –HL Mencken

As we head towards the inauguration of Donald J. Trump, it is interesting to look at a recent survey by Ipsos Public Affairs, Which countries are on the right track, according to their citizens? that was cited in an article by the World Economic Forum. The global conclusion was that people think things are getting worse:

Between October and November 2016, the percentage of people who believe things are on the right track in their country dropped by 2 percentage points to 37% globally.

The survey is conducted online monthly in 25 countries by Ipsos. The countries are Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Great Britain, Germany, Hungary, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Peru, Poland, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and the US. Ipsos samples 18,110 adults aged 18-64 in Canada, Israel and the US, and aged 16-64 in all other countries. They were interviewed between October 21st and November 4th 2016, with about 1000 people participating in the US and other Western countries.  The survey has an estimated margin of error of +/-3.1 percentage points.

Here is a chart giving a snapshot of right track/wrong track just prior to the US presidential election:

This shows the US in the middle of the pack, with 65% of those surveyed saying we are on the wrong track. That is consistent with other surveys of American sentiment. In China, 90% of people expressed confidence in their country’s direction, followed by Saudi Arabia (80%), India (76%) and Russia (58%).

  • Among Western nations, Canadians are the only people with a predominantly positive outlook (54%).
  • The US showed a small month-on-month drop in “right track” from 37% to 35%.
  • France and Mexico bring up the rear as their citizens have the least confidence in their country’s direction: 88% and 96% of the populace respectively believe that their country is on the wrong track. Only 4% of Mexicans think their country is on the right track!

Ipsos also surveyed the issues that worry citizens in each country the most. They asked the question: Which three of the following topics do you find the most worrying in your country? In the US, the top three issues were:

  • Terrorism: 33%
  • Healthcare: 32%
  • Financial/Political Corruption: 29%

It is not clear that terrorism is profoundly worrying to Americans, since 67% of those surveyed chose something else to worry about. Remember that the rankings are based on how frequently the item is mentioned as the first in a list of three issues. Here is an Ipsos chart that compares the number one issue people worry about in each country:

Only Turkey, Israel and the US ranked terrorism first. Americans fear terrorism slightly more than uncertainty with their healthcare (32%). And they worry about corruption slightly more (29%-28%) than they worry about crime and violence. Where are poverty and social equality? Seventh, with 19%. What about education? Ninth, with 15%. Maintaining social programs are 14th tied with inflation at 7%.

Fear is emotional, it is not driven by logic about actual levels of risk. Assessment of risk is (mostly) a logical process, with a tiny element of emotion. Acts of terror are frightening, but the likelihood of one happening to you is infinitesimally small in the US. It is therefore, an irrational fear.

OTOH, do people worry about being mugged when walking through a sketchy part of the city? Most do. How many actually get mugged? Not many. But that fear has a basis in fact.

And terrorism isn’t about killing as many people as it can. It is about gaining a political victory through terror. Think about the 9/11 attack in NYC. Millions watched the Towers fall. Those in NYC saw the smoke for weeks. That is the end point of terror, and probably explains why so many rank it as their top worry.

In the survey, six countries worried more about terrorism than the US. They are: Turkey (66%), Israel (51%), France (44%), India (43%), Saudi Arabia (40%) and Germany (34%).  Those countries all have more real-world reasons to worry about terrorism than do Americans.

However, our neo-con politicians in collusion with a number of think tanks, and the military-industrial complex, have made a significant portion of Americans believe it is a rational fear. They do this for financial gain and control.

Control keeps the grift going.

And, like Israel, the more Muslims we kill, the more terrorists we create. Where is the virtue in this for anyone except the Defense Department, Lockheed, Rockwell, Northrup, Raytheon, Honeywell and Wall Street?

Facebooklinkedinrss

Audit The Federal Reserve?

Well, it should be no surprise that the Federal Reserve is already audited, but Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) re-introduced an “Audit the Fed” bill in the House on Wednesday, and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced companion legislation in the US Senate. This has been a pet idea of Republicans for years. The GOP’s reasoning was summed up by Rep. Massie:

Behind closed doors, the Fed crafts monetary policy that will continue to devalue our currency, slow economic growth, and make life harder for the poor and middle class…

Mr. Massie apparently does not know that the US dollar is among the strongest currencies in international markets. Otherwise, he wouldn’t say that the Fed is debasing our currency. This guy is the exact reason why Congress’ role in directing the Fed should not be enlarged. Some suggest the bill is inaccurately named, but as the WSJ says:

Fed officials meet several times a year to decide what to do with short-term interest rates and how to influence them—actions that affect the borrowing costs of households, businesses and investors across the country. The “Audit the Fed” measures would require the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to examine those decisions.

And then report their findings to various Congressional committees. The GAO already has some Fed oversight, but the bill would repeal restrictions on their oversight. The most important restriction blocks the GAO from reviewing:

Deliberations, decisions, or actions on monetary policy matters, [as well as] discussion or communication among or between members of the Board and officers and employees related to such deliberations.

The repeal of these existing restrictions would allow the GAO to view all materials and transcripts related to meetings of the Fed’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the entity that sets US interest rates. It would require the GAO, at the request of Congress, to provide recommendations on monetary policy, including the FOMC’s interest-rate decisions, to Congress.

This would make meeting-by-meeting monetary policy decisions subject to Congressional review and, potentially, Congressional pressure. Judging by Mr. Massie’s level of knowledge about central banking, it would be highly likely that political pressure and rabble-rousing would be unavoidable.

The Fed’s financial statements are already audited in the usual sense by the government’s Inspector General (IG) and by Deloitte, a world-class independent accounting firm. The resulting financial reports are available to the public online. Every security owned by the Fed, including its unique identifying CUSIP number, is also available online.

The GAO reviews the Fed’s activities at the request of Congress, and has wide latitude to review Fed operations. For example, the Dodd-Frank Act required the GAO to conduct reviews of the Fed’s emergency lending programs during the 2008 crisis, along with the Fed’s governance structure.  Since the financial crisis, the GAO has done some 70 reviews of aspects of Fed operations. That’s about 10 reviews a year since the end of the crisis.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who joined with Sen. Paul to introduce the “Audit the Fed” legislation in the Senate, speaks for many of the Right Wing political class when he says, “the Fed is a group of unaccountable, unelected philosopher kings making decisions that affect every American”.

The bill’s proponents argue that “transparency” is lacking, and this will be cured with more Congressional oversight. Or, by more finger-pointing by certain gerrymandered GOP lifers talking about how the FOMC decisions are based on incorrect assumptions and broken models. There will probably be about as much value-added oversight as the various Benghazi committees exercised over the State Department.

In 2017 we’re having the same debates about the role of the Federal Reserve Bank that America had in the early 1900s prior to the Federal Reserve Act’s passage in 1913. We still hear voices calling for either more or less restrictive monetary policy, for more or less regulation, and even for the Fed to be abolished.

These are the same issues that Sen. Nelson Aldrich, banker Paul Warburg and their colleagues debated a hundred years ago. Back then, the debate was highly politicized, since there was widespread populist mistrust of Wall Street and of the concept of a centralized federal banking authority. Sound familiar?

So, time to let the GOP politicize the Fed. Time to let the Congress get its hands on monetary policy, even though they have proven to have zero ability to handle fiscal policy. Consider Congress’s failure to pass budgets, and their willingness to let the US government default on its debt.

Shouldn’t we keep the Fed’s deliberations free from grandstanding politicians playing to a conspiracy hungry constituency?

Isn’t this supposed to be the Congress that believed in less government?

Facebooklinkedinrss

Monday Wake Up Call – December 19, 2016

Wrongo can’t lie, Democrats are in dire straits, and are barely able to put up any sort of defense against the coming Trump disaster. Obama will not save us. Schumer and Pelosi have no clue how to save us. We’re going to have to do the hard work to build a foundation strong enough to get back in the game, and that’s going to mean lots of time, resources, and people willing to spend them effectively.

Speaking of effective spending: Politico reports that the Trump campaign struck a deal with Sinclair Broadcast Group during the campaign to try and secure better media coverage, his son-in-law Jared Kushner told business executives Friday in Manhattan. Kushner said the agreement with Sinclair, which owns television stations across the country in many swing states and often packages news for their affiliates to run, gave them more access to Trump and the campaign.

In exchange, Sinclair would broadcast their Trump interviews across the country without commentary, Kushner said. Kushner highlighted that Sinclair, in states like Ohio, reaches a much wider audience — around 250,000 listeners — than networks like CNN, which reach somewhere around 30,000.

“It’s math,” Kushner said. Apparently, Hillary Clinton turned down a similar offer by Sinclair.

El Jefe appointed Mick Mulvaney (R-SC) as head of the Office of Management and Budget. Mulvaney is a founding member of the House Freedom Caucus, and a budget hawk. It will be interesting to see how Mulvaney reacts if Trump really planned to spend a quarter-trillion dollars on infrastructure. Mulvaney was a leading player in the debt ceiling fights.

Here are a few reactions:

Or, this from Lizzie O’Leary, a reporter for NPR’s Marketplace:

Another Trump appointment was Monica Crowley, Fox commentator, to be senior director of Strategic Communications for the National Security Council. Crowley sent this tweet in October:

She apparently has no clue about the Berlin Wall, the purpose of which WAS TO KEEP PEOPLE INSIDE. CNN reported that Crowley repeatedly pushed an unfounded conspiracy theory that claimed Hillary Clinton’s aide Huma Abedin has ties to Islamic extremists. Now she will be on the inside, influencing the National Security Council. But, on the plus side, Trump’s draining the Fox News swamp of one of its morons.

We have our first capture of the Trump administration, and it is Donald himself. Even by Republican standards, some of these picks are embarrassingly bad (We mean you, Michael Flynn). He is now completely in thrall with the hard right members of the GOP. Within a few months, there won’t be even nominal opposition to Trump from within the Republican Party.

So, time to wake up America! You need to roll up your sleeves and get to work building a party that can defeat the hard right. It might not be the Democrats.

Fortunately, you get a hall pass until New Year’s Day.

To help you relax about the horrible things that you can’t control, here is Affinití, an Irish group of three women who play a fusion of classical, Celtic and rock music. They have a Kickstarter that you may want to support. Here is Affinití with “Oh, Holy Night”:

Consider yourselves soothed.

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

Facebooklinkedinrss

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – December 18, 2016

Wrongo had hoped to avoid writing about the Russian email hacking, but it seems that it is all that the pundits will talk about. The argument is that Russia interfered in the US election, and the intervention gave the election to Trump. The drumbeats have gotten louder as Monday’s Electoral College voting looms.

Mainstream TV news anchors are reporting with indignation, and as fact, that Russia (specifically Vladimir Putin) not only sought to influence the US election and promote “doubt” about the whole legitimacy of the US electoral system, but to throw the vote to Donald Trump.

The main accusation by the government is that the DNC and Podesta emails leaked through WikiLeaks were provided by state-backed Russian hackers, while no Republican materials were leaked. The leaked emails seemed to be genuine, since no complaints about the contents were made by the victims of the leaks.

The case against Russia is plausible, but many questions remain. Jeremy Scahill and Jon Schwarz of The Intercept have asked Obama to disclose the government’s secret evidence:

US intelligence agencies have repeatedly demonstrated that they regularly both lie and get things horribly wrong. In this case, they may well be correct, but they cannot expect Americans to simply take their word for it.

The current debate about Russia’s possible hacking is plagued by innuendo similar to what we saw in the McCarthy era. There is a disturbing trend emerging that dictates that if you don’t believe Russia hacked the election or if you simply demand evidence for this tremendously significant allegation, you must be a Trump apologist or a Soviet agent.

Wrongo is neither. The growing lack of trust in government and news media means that few of us know what to believe. It will take facts to make a case that this isn’t just more fake noos. Even if a few CIA or NSA secrets are made public.

Putin needs a password:

Are Putin and Trump running a con? From The Economist:

When asked about the hack by Obama, Putin said nothing:

Trump picks Rick Perry:

Trump helps make coal great again:

Trump offers presents for the rest of us:

 

Facebooklinkedinrss

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – December 11, 2016

We are seeing the shape of Trump’s cabinet, and it’s clear that we will soon be working for idiots who used to be in sales. So, it’s time for some definitions: What are Kleptocracy and Kakistocracy?

Kleptocracy is a government where the rulers (kleptocrats) use their power to exploit the people and natural resources of their country in order to extend their personal wealth and power.

Kakistocracy means a state or country run by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens. The word comes from the Greek words kakistos (worst) and kratos (rule), with a literal meaning of government by the worst people.

Posted for your reference, in case something happens after January 20th that requires you to know about either term.

Trump’s commitment to renewable energy was on display in his Boeing tweet:

cow-hot-air-force-1

His cabinet, er, his junta:

cow-general-election

We’ve had high-ranking military men serve in high positions in our government since the beginning of the country, starting with George Washington through Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, Dwight D. Eisenhower, through Colin Powell.  But Trump is surrounding himself with an awful lot of them, and some of them have had issues with both their temperament and civil liberties. Just like the man hiring them.

Any issue with so many generals? The NYT offers this:

cow-7-days-in-may

Man of the Year is questioned, but it is real my friends:

cow-time

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trump’s EPA will be his undoing in the next election:

cow-mistletoe

Pearl Harbor is hardly remembered:

cow-pearl-harbor

It’s another Family of Trump voters having quality time at home. Never have so many known so little about so much.

I’m stepping through the door, and I’m floating in a most peculiar way…and the stars look very different today:

cow-john-glenn

Facebooklinkedinrss

Are We Facing an Undemocratic Future?

What do you think when Trump appoints so many retired generals to cabinet-level posts in his administration? The positive side of the argument is that these are talented, well-educated individuals who bring a worldview and experience on the global stage that Trump himself lacks.

The other side of the argument is that the authoritarian president Trump risks making his government much more authoritarian than it needs to be. This from Roger Cohen in the NYT:

A quarter-century after the post-Cold War zenith of liberal democracies and neoliberal economics, illiberalism and authoritarianism are on the march. It’s open season for anyone’s inner bigot. Violence is in the air, awaiting a spark. The winning political card today, as Mr. Trump has shown…is to lead “the people” against a “rigged system,”…The postwar order — its military alliances, trade pacts, political integration and legal framework — feels flimsy, and the nature of the American power undergirding it all is suddenly unclear.

We sound like a nation that is ripe for political upheaval. Citizens are not only more critical of their political leaders, they have become more cynical about the value of democracy as a political system, less hopeful that anything they do might influence public policy, and more willing to express support for authoritarian alternatives.

Yascha Mounk, a lecturer in government at Harvard, has spent the past few years challenging one of the bedrock assumptions of Western politics: That once a country becomes a liberal democracy, it will stay that way. That bedrock assumption is called “democratic consolidation” in political science, but Mounk’s research suggests that isn’t correct anymore.

In fact, he suggests that liberal democracies around the world may be at serious risk of decline. Data from Freedom House, an organization that measures democracy and freedom around the world, showed that the number of countries classified as “free” rose steadily from the mid-1970s to the early 2000s.

But since 2005, Freedom House’s index has shown a decline in global freedom each year. According to Mounk and his research partner Roberto Foa, who reviewed the data, early signs of democratic destabilization exist in the US and in other Western liberal democracies. They found that the percentage of people who say it is “essential” to live in a democracy has plummeted, and it is especially low among younger generations. The survey was based on 2014 data. Here is a graph from the Mounk-Foa study:

percent-who-say-democracy-is-essential-us

The graph shows responses by age cohort. Younger Americans have substantially less need to live in a democratic society than do older individuals. (The grey shaded part of graph is the 95% confidence limit for the responses to the survey). Remarkably, the trend toward acceptance of nondemocratic alternatives is especially strong among citizens who are both young and rich.

Mounk and Foa found that support for autocratic alternatives is also rising. Drawing on data from the European and World Values Surveys, they found that the share of Americans who say that authoritarianism would be a “good” or “very good” thing had risen from 18% in 1995 to 35% of rich Americans:

support-for-authoritianism-by-income-us

While citizen support for authoritarian rule remains in the minority, it can no longer be dismissed as a fringe group. They support “a strong leader who doesn’t have to bother with parliament and elections” and they want “experts” rather than the government to “take decisions” for the country. (In the study, “Upper income” is defined as the top 20% of income. “Lower Income” was defined as the bottom 50% of income.)

Overall, the rich are also now more likely than lower income citizens to express approval for “having the army rule.” While 43% of older Americans, including those born between the world wars and their baby-boomer children, do not believe that it is legitimate in a democracy for the military to take over when the government is incompetent or failing to do its job, the figure among millennials is much lower at 19%. In the US, only 5% of upper-income citizens thought that army rule was a “good” or “very good” idea in 1995. That figure has since risen to 16%, so the young rich are much more autocratic than their rich elders.

The clear message is that our democracy is now vulnerable. What was once unthinkable should no longer be considered outside the realm of possibility. This is partially the result of an educational system that does not teach even basic civics, much less the meaning of the Constitution.

Generations have grown up believing that they can casually read the document and understand what constitutional law is. Young Americans have never known the threat of an undemocratic system, so their fear of autocracy is far less than it is in the minds of their elders.

Trump is the prime example of this. And according to Mounk’s findings, he has a receptive audience in the young and the wealthy.

Would that be enough to undermine democracy in the US?

Facebooklinkedinrss

Monday Wake Up Call – December 5, 2016

We’ve entered uncharted territory. Trump had a phone call with the president of Taiwan. Why is that such an issue? Presidents speak to other world leaders all the time, but American presidents have not spoken to the president of Taiwan since 1979. This studied form of non-recognition is at the core of the One-China Policy.

That policy states that there is only one state called “China”, despite the existence of two governments claiming to be China. This diplomatic dance works precisely because everybody agrees to abide by rules that don’t make complete sense.

We learned from experience in Korea and Vietnam, where we acted with hostility to both “two country” standoffs between a communist and a non-communist government. We learned, and then changed the game when it came to the two Chinas. That is, until President-Elect Trump was lured into the Taiwan call by his advisors, John Bolton and Stephen Yates. This from the Guardian: (strike out and brackets by the Wrongologist)

Bolton wrote in the Wall Street Journal in January: “The new US administration could start with receiving Taiwanese diplomats officially at the State Department; upgrading the status of US representation in Taipei from a private ‘institute’ to an official diplomatic mission; inviting Taiwan’s president to travel officially to America; allowing the most senior US officials to visit Taiwan to transact government business; and ultimately restoring full diplomatic recognition.”

Stephen Yates, a former White House aide to Dick Cheney now advising the Trump transition was in Taiwan at the time of [Trump’s] the call. “It’s great to have a leader willing to ignore those who say he cannot take a simple call from another democratically elected leader,” Yates tweeted.

China reacted by saying Trump needs to be educated about the world. Scott Adams, Trump butt-boy, puts it in about the most favorable light possible:

Trump is “setting the table” for future negotiations with China. He just subtracted something from China’s brand that they value, and later he will negotiate with them to maybe give it back in some fashion. Probably in return for some trade concessions.

It didn’t end there. Trump apparently has invited Philippine President Duterte to the White House. Figuring out how to resolve Duterte’s issues with the US, his embrace of China, and his demonstrated abuse of human rights in the Philippines should be high on the new administration’s list of issues. It would have been smart to have the outline of an agreed joint solution in place before rewarding Duterte with a state visit.

And there was Trump’s phone call with the Prime Minister of Pakistan. According to the Pakistani account of the conversation, Trump told Nawaz Sharif that Pakistan is a “fantastic” country full of “fantastic” people that he “would love” to visit as president.

Just awesome, except for Trump ignoring that India, our real partner in that part of Asia, is Pakistan’s enemy. Trump risks appearing to reward Pakistan at the expense of our relationship with India. Again, the US has maintained a balancing act between these two countries, who have a history of war and skirmishes over their disputed border.

The jury is out on what Trump is trying to do, and whether it is based on strategy, or ideology. Speaking with Taiwan’s and Pakistan’s leaders are potentially dangerous moves, as is his engagement with Duterte.

They are also potentially revolutionary. Every out-of-the-box move by Trump challenges norms and potentially blows up longstanding ways of doing things. If you are gonna shake things up, it’s all-important that you understand exactly why we have done things the way we have, and what the implications are of change. We know Trump is an instinctive guy, and not a willing student. The danger is his willingness to overturn complex situations where governmental institutions have had very good reasons for the policy they support.

This is the dark underbelly of Trump’s populism. He was elected to shake things up by voters who dismiss facts, if presented by journalists.

You start by discrediting what came before. You call it elite failure. You shake things up because you can.

Time to wake up, America! Think about Michael Moore’s calling Trump a human Molotov cocktail on NBC’s “Meet the Press”:

Across the Midwest, across the Rustbelt, I understand why a lot of people are angry. And they see Donald Trump as their human Molotov cocktail…I think they love the idea of blowing up the system.

So, let’s wake up today with the Billy Joel song, “We Didn’t Start the Fire”. The lyrics to this song catalog both personalities and historic events from 1949 until 1989:

We didn’t start Trump’s fire, but get ready, we may very well have to put it out.

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

Sample lyrics:
Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray
South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio
Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, Television
North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe

Rosenbergs, H-Bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom
Brando, The King And I, and The Catcher In The Rye
Eisenhower, Vaccine, England’s got a new queen
Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye

We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
No we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it

Facebooklinkedinrss

Our New Political Majority

(This is the last column for this week. We will resume on Sunday with cartoons. Everyone has reasons to be thankful, so take the time to talk about them with your loved ones, or your close friends this week.)

Last weekend, like most Americans, Wrongo spoke with friends and family about how we got to the disappointing political place where we are today.

Der Spiegel Online asked: If you think back ten years, could you have imagined in 2006 that America’s reality would be Donald Trump as president of the US? Probably not, but ten years ago:

  1. Economic growth and job growth both fell in 2006 as the residential housing boom came to an end.
  2. Wages were the smallest share of national income since the government began compiling the statistic in 1947.
  3. Consumer debt soared to new heights, while consumer debt payments rose to the highest on record.

Those were dispatches from the ongoing war that corporations and neoliberal economic elites made on our citizens. And it didn’t stop there. After 2006, we had the financial meltdown and the Great Recession. Banks had to be bailed out. Millions of people lost their jobs. Debt grew, and faith in government’s willingness and ability to improve the fortunes of their citizens evaporated.

The clear losers were workers in traditional economic sectors, particularly in manufacturing. According to a study by economists David Autor, David Dorn and Gordon Hanson, the increase in imports from China have resulted in the loss of 1.5 million manufacturing jobs since the early 1990s.

But automation had a greater impact: In total, some 6.9 million manufacturing jobs were lost in the US between the early 1990s and 2011. For those who have lost their jobs, it seems that their political representatives have forgotten them. Particularly when establishment Democrats and Republicans continue to push for more trade, by which they mean more imports from our global corporations who continue to export those jobs to lower-wage countries.

In 2016, despite substantially better economic times, many American still worried about losing their jobs and their financial security. They saw themselves as the losers in a game that only helps corporations and the elites. This domination of our politics by the economic elites has produced a defacto disenfranchisement of everyone else.

A new political map has emerged, one that doesn’t neatly fit into the Left vs. Right model of our politics. The new dividing line is between those who support, and those who oppose, America’s economic elites and their neoliberal policies. Those on both sides of the old ideologies who distrust the elites are connected by their fear of being left behind. This was clear in 2016 in those precincts where Trump outperformed Romney, and where Clinton underperformed Obama.

This is today’s landscape, but in 1998, Richard Rorty, an American philosopher who died in 2007, wrote “Achieving Our Country” which predicted our current political situation. According to the NYT, the following fragment of the book has been retweeted thousands of times since the election:

Members of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers — themselves desperately afraid of being downsized — are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.

At that point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for — someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots.

One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past 40 years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion…All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet.

Rorty’s basic contention is that the left abandoned its core philosophy in favor of a neo-liberal worldview that promoted globalism and corporatism. Rorty said in a lecture in 1997:

This world economy will soon be owned by a cosmopolitan upper class which has no more sense of community with any workers anywhere than the great American capitalists of the year 1900.

Mr. Rorty’s most prescient words:

The cultural Left has a vision of an America in which the white patriarchs have stopped voting and have left all the voting to be done by members of previously victimized groups.

Rorty said that in 1998. And in 2016, it was Hillary Clinton’s failed election strategy.

What’s so striking about “Achieving Our Country” is Rorty’s argument that both the cultural and political left abandoned economic justice in favor of identity politics, ignoring too many economically disadvantaged Americans.

According to voter turnout statistics from the 2016 election, 58.4% of eligible voters actually voted (135.2 million). Clinton received about 63.7 million votes (27.5% of eligible voters) to Trump’s 62 million, (26.8%) while 9.5 million votes went to others.

This means that 41.6% of America voted for nobody, far outweighing the votes cast for Trump or Clinton.

That the majority of Americans did not vote is not because they don’t care. They voted no confidence in a political system that forgot about them a long time ago.

A minority elected Trump. The majority voted against our neoliberal political system.

 

(BTW, Tuesday was the 53rd anniversary of JFK’s assassination. While it remains fresh in Wrongo’s mind, it hardly registers in the minds of the press or the public. A new idea on Oswald’s motives appeared in the LA Times. Take a look.)

Facebooklinkedinrss

Monday Wake Up Call – November 21, 2016

Broadway attacked Mike Pence, not with sticks and stones, but with words. Mr. Pence went to see “Hamilton”, but was greeted with boos, and then the cast addressed him after the performance from the stage:

We, sir, we are the diverse Americans who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us…But we truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values, and to work on behalf of all of us. All of us.

Maybe it would have been appropriate for Mike Pence and Brandon Dixon, the Aaron Burr character who addressed Pence, to just duel out on Broadway after the play. But The Donald stepped in to protect Pence by dueling with the cast of Hamilton instead. As part of a tweet storm, Trump tweeted his demand for an apology. Get used to it, there will be many, many more demands via twitter by your Orange Overlord. This from Trump:

trump-apologize

If this got under Trump’s skin, maybe Hillary was right. Pence was professional in the low-key way in which he responded to the confrontation at the theater. Trump of course, was not. He could have seized the opportunity to assuage the fears of Americans who are afraid of what may be coming after January 20th.

He could have made it clear that his election night promise to be “A President for all Americans” actually meant something

Trump must know that the theater is a place to be challenged. NO one goes to the theater thinking it is a safe zone where their precious little Fe Fe’s will be safe. It is the nature of theater and the arts in general to challenge us, to force us outside of our comfort zone, to make us consider alternate ways of viewing the world. From Bob Lefsetz:

This is what artists do. They speak truth to power. They make people uncomfortable. And when there’s a reaction, they know they’ve done their job.

The negative social media response to Trump’s tweet went viral. More from Lefsetz:

…we’ve got a President-elect who uses social media to get his message across…Isn’t it funny that a contrary opinion is now being spread through the same platforms? My inbox and Twitter were ablaze last night after the “Hamilton” kerfuffle. Word spreads fast these days, and the last ones on it are the mainstream media, who go to bed at 11 when we live in a 24/7 world.

There were lots of comments supporting DJT’s tweet, that what the Hamilton cast said was “inappropriate” or was said in the wrong venue. So the Hamilton team has no right to speak up? Hogwash. So where do we go from here?

Have we ever seen this kind of spontaneous pushback right after a presidential election (other than Lincoln’s, which precipitated the Civil War)? There is demonstrable national unrest, people are pissed. And Trump now demands that people just lie down and take it?

Trump isn’t getting an apology.

Trump said that he wants to be president of all Americans. But post-election, he is acting as he did while campaigning. He expects to preside over all, attempting to quell dissent by forcing people who disagree with him to toe the line. If you want to be part of Making America Great Again, you will treat him and his administration with decorum and proper respect. Like this:

cow-healing

Yea, No. Time to be inspired to speak truth to power. Time to perfect your message of dissent. Time to develop a message that wins in 2018 and beyond. Let the Hamilton cast inspire your actions. Inspire others so that it is clear where the Orange Overlord is taking us. The time for revolution is here.

It’s time to wake up if you think that giving Trump a chance to heal America is a good idea. Healing requires a two-way street of thought and communication. But all that we are likely to get from the Orange Overlord are tweets that say get back in line, or here come the cops.

To help with your morning wake up, here is the late Mose Allison, who died last week, with his song, “Your mind’s on vacation but your mouth is working overtime”. It was said that Allison was a social critic before Dylan and a musical satirist before Randy Newman. His music has influenced many artists, including Jimi Hendrix, the Rolling Stones, Tom Waits, the Yardbirds, John Mayall, JJ Cale, and the Who.

Here is “Your mind’s on vacation but your mouth is working overtime”.

Sample Lyrics:

You’re sitting there yakkin’ right in my face
I guess I’m gonna have to put you in your place
Y’know if silence was golden
You couldn’t raise a dime
Because your mind is on vacation and your mouth is
Working overtime

You’re quoting figures, you’re dropping names
You’re telling stories about the dames
You’re always laughin’ when things ain’t funny
You try to sound like you’re big money
If talk was criminal, you’d lead a life of crime
Because your mind is on vacation and your mouth is
Working overtime

Does this remind you of a certain orange someone?

For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can view the video here.

Facebooklinkedinrss

Won’t Get Fooled Again

Wrongo and Ms. Right watched the”60 Minutes” Trump interview on Sunday. Basically, it was a low-information session, long on atmosphere and short on what is likely to happen in the first 100 days of Trumptopia.

There were hints that low information may be emblematic of the future relationship between the press and the new administration. In the interview, there was this: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Lesley Stahl:…A lot of people are afraid. They’re really afraid. African Americans think there’s a target on their back. Muslims are terrified.

Donald Trump: I think it’s horrible if that’s happening. I think it’s built up by the press because, frankly, they’ll take every single little incident that they can find in this country…and they’ll make into an event because that’s the way the press is.

More press paranoia by the Donald-elect. To think of the media as liars destroys one of the only protections we have for our democracy.

And Fortune Magazine, not exactly a haven for lefty journalists, said this:

What does that future look like? It looks like a pitched battle between a man who made his own media rules and rode them to victory, and a traditional press that has lost much of its power.

It seems obvious that President-elect Trump’s relationship with the press could be more contentious than even that of Richard Nixon.

Trump’s spokesperson, Hope Hicks, had to go out of her way to reassure the media that Trump was planning to operate a normal press “pool,” in which the president travels with reporters who share their news reports with others. The press is concerned, since they were not permitted to travel with Trump during the campaign.

But the media holding the Trump administration’s feet to the fire was is made very difficult by Trump’s points about social media in the “60 Minutes” interview: (brackets and emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Lesley Stahl: But are you going to be tweeting [about] whatever you’re upset about…when you’re president?

Donald Trump: So it’s a modern form of communication, between Face– you know, Facebook and Twitter and I guess Instagram, I have 28 million people. 28 million people—

Taken together, the major network and cable TV outlets account for 26.5 million viewers.

So, Trump has the ability to talk directly to more people than the networks. During the campaign, Trump took advantage of that to spread both accurate (and inaccurate) information that helped his cause. In effect, the Trumpets were using the media equivalent of modern military technology while the mainstream media (and the Clinton campaign) used tanks and bayonets.

Going forward, what will happen when Trump, who has continued to attack the motives of the press, has to deal with them as president? Will Breitbart News and Fox get preferential treatment while the New York Times and the Washington Post are left scrambling for the scraps they leave behind?

And if that happens, who is in a position to stop him? In 2016 and going forward, how will you find out what is really going on in the world?

And think about the parallels to the GW Bush presidency: Pence has the operations role. This could very well turn into another Cheney Administration, where Pence actually runs the government in the background while Trump soaks up all the attention playing Mister President on Twitter and for the cameras.

The parallels are frightening. Fortune has this vision of the future:

A weakened and increasingly marginalized traditional media, fighting with the tools of a previous era, surrounded by more nimble adversaries who know how to use social platforms for their own ends, and a president who is actively hostile to the traditional press. Not that long ago, it probably felt like things couldn’t get any worse for the media—but they just did.

Let’s not lose hope completely. Why? This administration will enter office with close to zero credibility with the press. Think about how few newspapers endorsed Trump.

Second, the media remembers its failures to follow the facts during the Bush administration. So, the fear of being called unpatriotic as those few in the media were when they spoke out against Bush’s Iraq policy, will be tempered by the press’s memory of their complicity in Iraq War.

Finally, blogs and social media can work both ways. They may have helped elect Trump, but social media in particular will not allow Trump to operate unchallenged.

That challenge will force the MSM to follow stories in a way that didn’t happen in the GW Bush administration.

Facebooklinkedinrss