Arrogance destroyed the World Trade Organisation …

That’s another manifestation of the ascendance of “national neoliberalism,” which now is displacing “classic neoliberalism.”

Attempts to remove Trump via color revolution mechanisms (Russiagate, Ukrainegate) are essentially connected with the desire of adherents of classic neoliberalism to return to the old paradigm and kick the can down the road until the cliff. I think it is impossible because the neoliberal elite lost popular support (aka support of deplorable) and now is hanging in the air. “Greed is good” mantra, and the redistribution of the wealth up at the end proved to be very destructive.

That’s why probably previous attempts to remove Trump were unsuccessful. And if corrupt classic neoliberal Biden wins Neoliberal Dem Party nomination, the USA probably will get the second term of Trump. Warren might have a chance as “Better Trump then Trump” although she proved so far to be pretty inept politician, and like “original” Trump probably can be easily coerced by the establishment, if she wins.

All this weeping and gnashing of teeth by “neoliberal Intelligentsia” does not change the fact that neoliberalism entered the period of structural crisis demonstrated by “secular stagnation,” and, as such, its survival is far from certain. We probably can argue only about how long it will take for the “national neoliberalism” to dismantle it and what shape or form the new social order will take.

That does not mean that replacing the classic neoliberalism the new social order will be better, or more just. Neoliberalism was actually two steps back in comparison with the New Deal Capitalism that it replaced. It clearly was a social regress.

John, I am legitimate curious what you find “exactly right” in the comment above. Other than the obvious bit in the last line about new deal vs neoliberalism, I would say it is completely wrong,band presenting an amazingly distorted view of both the last few years and recent history.

I agree with Matt.

In fact, I see the problem as more nuanced.

Neo-liberalism is not a unified thing. Right wing parties are not following the original (the value of choice) paradigm of Milton Friedman that won the argument during the 1970s inflation panic, but have implemented a deceitful bait and switch strategy, followed by continually shifting the goalposts – claiming – it would of worked but we weren’t pure enough.

But parts of what Milton Friedman said (for instance the danger of bad micro-economic design of welfare systems creating poverty traps, and the inherent problems of high tariff rates) had a kernel of truth. (Unfortunately, Friedman’s macro-economics was almost all wrong and has done great damage.)

“In that context it felt free to override national governments on any issue that might affect international trade, most notably environmental policies.”

Not entirely sure about that. The one case where I was informed enough to really know detail was the China and rare earths WTO case. China claimed that restrictions on exports of separated but otherwise unprocessed rare earths were being made on environmental grounds. Rare earth mining is a messy business, especially the way they do it.

Well, OK. And if such exports were being limited on environmental grounds then that would be WTO compliant. Which is why the claim presumably.

It was gently or not pointed out that exports of things made from those same rare earths were not limited in any sense. Therefore that environmental justification might not be quite the real one. Possibly, it was an attempt to suck RE using industry into China by making rare earths outside in short supply, but the availability for local processing being unrestricted? Certainly, one customer of mine at the time seriously considered packing up the US factory and moving it.

China lost the WTO case. Not because environmental reasons aren’t a justification for restrictions on trade but because no one believed that was the reason, rather than the justification.

I don’t know about other cases – shrimp, tuna – but there is at least the possibility that it’s the argument, not the environment, which wasn’t sufficient justification?

Neoliberalism gets used as a generalized term of abuse these days. Not every political and institutional development of the last 40 years comes down to the worship of the free market. In the EU, East Asia, and North America, some of what has taken place is the rationalization of bureaucratic practices and the weakening of archaic localisms. Some of these developments have been positive. In this respect, neoliberalism in the blanket sense used by Likbez and many others is like what the the ancien regime was, a mix of regressive and progressive tendencies. In the aftermath of the on-going upheaval, it is likely that it will be reassessed and some of its features will be valued if they manage to persist. I’m thinking of international trade agreements, transnational scientific organizations, and confederations like the European Union.

@3
”I am legitimate curious what you find “exactly right” in the comment above”.

Me too –
as especially the believe that removing Trump ”are essentially connected with the desire of adherents of classic neoliberalism to return to the old paradigm” – is truly… disturbing?

As I very strongly believe that removing Trump ”is essentially connected with the desire of adherents of ”civilisation” to return to ”civilisation” – as ”Trumps Wild West” actually was a lot more steps back – than just the two steps Neoliberalism was back in comparison with the New Deal Capitalism that it replaced.

I have a take on Neoliberalism- it’s pretty poorly informed, but then a lot of people have pretty poorly informed takes on this subject.

There are actually three phenomena that masquerade under the name Neoliberalism:

A) A situation of class power in which elites are claiming an unusual portion of the spoils.
B) A special strategy by which that unusual portion of the spoils is extracted (economic policy done on a purely efficiency basis- unweighted CBA.)
C) An ideology that justifies B.

I think C) has fallen, although it retains a pallid existence in economics departments for want of a clear alternative.

B) has not entirely fallen, but has come under severe pressure, as elites have become more willing to adopt extractive strategies which clearly aren’t even pretending to be efficiency based.

A) on the other hand is doing fine. It’s perhaps a tad more nervous than it was in the past, but only a tad.

Whether phrases like “national neoliberalism” makes sense will depend on what you identify as the key portion of the beast. Is it the ideas, the policies, or an overall balance of class forces that you identify with “Neoliberalism”?

I think calling a specific balance of class forces that does not favor the working class “Neoliberalism” is too much of a stretch on the original meaning of the term- which clearly concerned a specific specific ideology and strategy. On that basis, I would say that Neoliberalism is dead or dying, and has been replaced with something far more openly venal. The unusually complete dominance of the ruling class has not (yet) diminished, but its accouterments have changed entirely.

Indeed venality seems to be the dominant feature of the ruling class in this period- a kind of dissolute uselessness that, somehow, is associated with no visible diminishment of power. On that basis I propose that the GFC marked the beginning of the Venal Age.

fausutsnotes 10.28.19 at 8:27 am @4

> … What on earth is “national neoliberalism.”

It is a particular mutation of the original concept similar to mutation of socialism into national socialism, when domestic policies are mostly preserved (including rampant deregulation) and supplemented by repressive measures (total surveillance) , but in foreign policy “might make right” and unilateralism with the stress on strictly bilateral regulations of trade (no WTO) somewhat modifies “Washington consensus”. In other words, the foreign financial oligarchy has a demoted status under the “national neoliberalism” regime, while the national financial oligarchy and manufactures are elevated.

And the slogan of “financial oligarchy of all countries, unite” which is sine qua non of classic neoliberalism is effectively dead and is replaced by protection racket of the most political powerful players (look at Biden and Ukrainian oligarchs behavior here ;-)

> I think every sentence in that comment is either completely wrong or at least debatable. And is likbez actually John Hewson, because that comment reads like one of John Hewson’s commentaries …

I wish ;-). But it is true in the sense of sentiment expressed in his article
A few bank scalps won’t help unless they change their rotten culture That’s a very similar approach to the problem.

politicalfootball 10.28.19 at 1:19 pm @8
> Most obviously, to define Warren and Trump as both being neoliberals drains the term of any meaning

You are way too fast even for a political football forward ;-).

Warren capitalizes on the same discontent and the feeling of the crisis of neoliberalism that allowed Trump to win. Yes, she is a much better candidate than Trump, and her policy proposals are better (unless she is coerced by the Deep State like Trump in the first three months of her Presidency).

Still, unlike Sanders in domestic policy and Tulsi in foreign policy, she is a neoliberal reformist at heart and a neoliberal warmonger in foreign policy. Most of her policy proposals are quite shallow, and are just a band-aid.

“Warren’s “I have a plan” mantra sounds an awful lot like a dog whistle to Clinton voters” Elizabeth Warren’s
Plan-itis Excessive Lobbying Case Study naked capitalism

Jim Harrison 10.28.19 at 5:20 pm @9
> Neoliberalism gets used as a generalized term of abuse these days. Not every political and institutional development of the last 40 years comes down to the worship of the free market.

The dominant ideology of the last 30 years was definitely connected with “worshiping of free markets,” a secular religion that displaced alternative views and, for several decades (say 1976 -2007), dominated the discourse. So worshiping (or pretense of worshiping) of “free market” (as if such market exists and is not a theological construct– a deity of some sort) is really defining feature here.

If I may venture to correct the translation from @12 of @1?

Right-wing populism like Orban, Salvini, the Brexiteers will collapse (like Clownstick) NOT ”all around the globe” – as Right-wing populism is less than more restricted to certain ”uncivilised” areas.

Trying to head off redivision of the world into nationalist trade blocks by removing Trump via ”democratic upheavals” (like not only ”color revolutions”) or just using scandals like pro-Russian treason or anti-Ukrainian treason – (which seems “Huh?” the only way to get rid of the corrupt Moron – because US laws don’t allow to get rid of him for the real reasons we have to get rid of him?) is NOT futile.

It stems from a desire to keep some kind of a ”civilisation” and the “free trading” thing is just the sideshow – EVEN ”despite the secular stagnation that has set in, hoping that the sociopolitical nowhere (major at least) doesn’t collapse until God or Nature or something restores the supposedly natural order of economic growth without end/crisis”.

I think efforts to better NOT ”neoliberal international WTO/IMF/World Bank” BUT “free” trading system is NOT futile – because the ”lower orders” have realised that ”right-wing populism” is NOT an alternative to change the rigid class system.
Because. if the pie is to shrink forever, all the vile masses (the deplorables) are going to hang together in their various ways, wanting to be ”like Denmark”, which will leave the international capitalists with no other option than to ”bring on Denmark” – period.

AND the following is true:
“Greed is good” mantra, and the redistribution of the wealth up at the end proved to be very destructive. Saying “Greed is good,” then expecting selflessness from the lowers is not high-minded but self-serving. Redistribution of wealth upward has been terribly destructive to social cohesion, both domestically and in the sense of generosity towards foreigners.

BUT this pervasive feeling that “we” are going down and drastic action has to be taken is probably why there has been much so much traction for impeachment.
(as isn’t a majority for impeachment in the US – an amazing ”traction”?)

And don’t worry about Biden – he will NOT be nominated to lead the Democratic Party into four/eight years of Obama-esque promise to continue shrinking the status quo for the lowers. Any other Democrat will win – in order to get AOC as President in 2028.

Again, despite the fury to think that some ”old internationalism is collapsing under stagnation” NOT ”weeping” BUT ”betterment” is relevant. Without all the ideas from European Countries – where the New Green Deal already is reality – we can react to any events of nationalist predators fighting – in order to create a better new world.

I’m saying right wing populism was tried and thanks god – has failed so spectacular – that the ”the New Deal/Great Society” looks ”SO GOOD” – that more and more Americans want a revival –
As this is true too – that the ”the New Deal/Great Society” has done more for America than its political successors since Nixon et al. The years since 1968 I think have been a regression and I see no reason–alas–that it can’t get A LOT better.

steven t johnson 10.29.19 at 12:29 am @12

Thank you ! A very nice interpretation of my views, which in many parts is better and more coherent then the original.

I disagree strenuously on some details, like Warren’s problem being a schoolmarm, rather than being a believer in capitalism who shares Trump’s moral values against socialism, no matter what voters say.

I fully agree with your point as for “a believer in capitalism who shares Trump’s moral values against socialism, no matter what voters say.” It’s very difficult or impossible to like Trump, but his enemies in “intelligence community” proved to be so sleazy and dishonest, that he might well beat Warren in 2020 elections on the wave of revulsion to their dirty tricks. Although she is a more difficult opponent then Biden, which would be a dream opponent for Trump.

As for “Trump’s moral values” I would only say that Trump does not have any moral values ;-)

I really can’t be bothered with the mishmash of junk in likbez’s response up above, but I’ll note again that there are now multiple people commenting on this blog who claim to be left wing but have bought Trump and Giuliani’s ravings about Hunter Biden completely. None of them have ever mentioned Biden or his son until the last two weeks and suddenly they’re so self-assured about the fact that this corruption is a well-known fact and we all agree with it. Could the seductive allure of Trump to the far-left in America be any clearer than this? How old are you guys, do you have daddy issues or are you cranky old men yourselves? Do you seriously believe this rubbish that these people are spouting at you? Do you vote based on these ludicrous fantasies? It’s just incredible how quickly Trump and Giuliani’s fantasies have sunk into the minds of far left commenters here so that they not only believe this weird conspiracy theory but think everyone else has always known it.

You guys would fit in so well in 1984. You would really honestly believe that we have always been at war with Eastasia, and take every opportunity to remind everyone of this universally accepted eternal fact. You really are model running dog lackeys!

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/25/us/politics/25biden.html?module=inline

Biden’s record on credit card companies.

(look at Biden and Ukrainian oligarchs behavior here ;-)

Ah, the tell.

But this color revolution thing – this is really interesting. Where on earth did you get this idea from?

The answer is simple. Likbez is a pro-Russia troll.

Thank you for this unorthodox view. I’ve noticed that my thinking has been strongly contaminated with “The Conventional Wisdom”, which includes big falsehoods and misdirections. While the situation was stable this didn’t matter much in the short run — the politics would be dominated by people who believed those things. But now that things are starting to fall apart it’s getting important not to believe the old lies.

So ideas which look very different are important because they challenge me to examine my unconscious assumptions, regardless how true the new ideas may be.

About Trump…. It looks to me like he has some background in professional wrestling where the “kayfabe” concept is important. He doesn’t care how awful he looks to the rubes who think of him as a heel, provided they keep focusing on the outrageous things he says more than on what he does. The more attention he can get on that, the more he “sucks the air out of the room” for anything else.

It’s possible the Republicans will do a surprise and nominate somebody else. That will disrupt everybody’s thinking. I don’t think that’s real likely, but it would sure disrupt things, wouldn’t it?

Since Truman the US presidential elections have gone 8 years of Democrats and 8 years of Republicans, like clockwork. One single exception, Reagan got Carter’s second term. Is it a secret agreement between the parties? I don’t know why. But it’s plausible that the Republican will win in 2020 and the Democrats get 8 years starting in 2024. One way to look at it is that when it isn’t their turn, the losing party runs somebody who’s too far from center.

About the “color revolution” thing, of course there hasn’t been anything much like that here. But there was the “pussy hat” march. Somebody put a lot of money into that, and a whole lot of people turned out for it, and then it just ended. Could it have been the same people, organizing it as a kind of trial run? They have the methodology. They could do it here, if conditions were right. Would they? I don’t know. I don’t know much about them. What would it take for conditions to be right? I don’t know that either. Maybe they don’t know. They have surely analyzed the places it succeeded and the places it failed, so they know more than I do.

Maybe the most valuable thing here is to recognize how much I don’t know. I hear ideas that sound absurd, and then realize that while there may be no truth to them, the reason I think they are absurd is that I have accepted bullshit conventional thinking inside my own head, and I have hardly any more teason to believe it than I do the new absurd ideas.

@25
”The answer is simple. Likbez is a pro-Russia troll”.

Highly doubtful – as anybody who has been around -(on the Intertuebs) might have ran into likbez – here and there – at all kind of blogs – and he always was far too confused to be a pro-Russia troll could be.

As classical ”pro Russia trolls” know that they have to write something which is -(kind of) ”pro Russia” but likbez is ”all over the map” – like the type of ”Internet Warrior” who on German blogs just write:

”Alles ist Scheisse”!

@15:

Neoliberalism gets used as a generalized term of abuse these days.

This is a typical stance of neoliberal MSM, a popular line of attack on critics on neoliberalism.

You just so perfectly stepped on that rake.

Scott P@26:
The answer is simple. Likbez is a pro-Russia troll.

Depressingly, the answer probably isn’t that simple. They cited Naked Capitalism, and pretty much everything they’ve said here is in keeping with the moderator-enforced orthodox overarching narrative on that site. It seems more likely that they’re a true believer who’s spent too long in echo chambers which recognize the US’s foreign policy as selfish and destructive, but then make the entirely unwarranted leap that because it’s so bad, any actor that opposes them is morally neutral, or at least not subject to the same degree of scrutiny and criticism. It’s a bizarre worldview that seems to want to ignore the possibility that every actor in an interaction is a bad actor, or at the bare minimum confuses the idea of it can be useful for a third party to weaken and distract a common enemy with the idea that this makes the third party succeeding in their broader aims desirable without considering what those aims are. It’s schadenfreude combined with tunnel vision, and its appeal seems to lie in its creation of a personally satisfying narrative which demonizes the near enemy – their centrist political rivals – as hopeless authoritarians.

Also it’s hilarious watching people like likbez tie themselves in knots to try and avoid saying “fascism”. Call it “national neoliberalism” and you can use this much-abused nothing word to make it sound like Republicans and Democrats are the same, but if you have to call it fascism then suddenly everyone knows that the two parties are different and your nihilistic politics falls apart. Good effort!

For EWM – just two words – Hong Kong and Chile.

An interesting sidelight is that Brexit No-Dealers have been keen on the merits of trading “on WTO terms”, but those terms will probably be unenforceable by the time No Deal happens (if it does).

That’s exactly what I thought of when I read your article at The Conversation.

AND furthermore – do you guys know – that it was people like me (MOI!) – who told Americans like Bernie – and AOC -(at a bar) that:
YES!!

It’s really possible – to get all of the… the… (above) ”stuff” – living in ”Denmark” –
(or even the even ”happier” country – Finland) ALSO for the US of A!
(-and you even won’t have to go through some ”stressful revolution” in order to get it)

The way likbez, Steven j Thompson et al drain all words of their meaning is astounding. ‘Color revolution ‘ has a specific meaning and what happened to lula and trump ain’t it. If you want to make words mean whatever you want we can’t talk. If you think the word “rigid” applies equally to the class system in both the uk and oz you either know nothing about those societies or you don’t know what the word means (perhaps you need a fluffed?) and as for neoliberal … my god could you stop flogging that horse? It died 30 years ago and you’ve thrashed it to meaningless mush.

Just like republicans, to the American far left words and argument have no meaning – just a collection of spam they deploy to defend their nihilism. There’s no point in talking to people who are going to flagrantly abuse a word as specific as ‘color revolution’.

And please, spare me the mad notion that you have always been concerned about what hunter Biden did in Ukraine . You had never heard of it until Giuliani started spouting it on tv and now you’ve bought the whole story hook line and sinker. Fox News addicted leftists – whodathunkit!

steven t johnson@44:

For the right-wingers (open and secret) I’ll grant you charges on emoluments (his properties and the income to them from the government) and campaign violation (Ukraine) and maybe even obstruction of justice (orders to refuse testimony to Congress.) But I can’t see the compelling case that these are high crimes of the same sort.

Here’s the problem: “high crimes [and misdemeanors]” was a legal term of art at the time the Constitution was drafted, and to describe it briefly, it means “abuse of power by officials of state”. It does not mean “violations of the criminal code which are particularly egregious, such as treason”; it does not require violations of the criminal code, full stop. Misrepresenting the Constitution like this is disingenuous – not as disingenuous as characterizing an elected official extorting an ally by withholding Congressionally appropriated funds as quid pro quo for their denouncing a presumptive political rival as “campaigning with public money”, but still quite disingenuous. It can’t even be passed off as an innocent misunderstanding; the Constitution places “Bribery” between “Treason” and “other high Crimes and Misdemeanors”. Your insistence of equating any accusations of misconduct that you don’t credit as well-grounded as accusations of treason is a slight-of-hand lets you sweepingly dismiss those accusations as alarmist, self-serving, and grossly inaccurate, and it intentionally obfuscates both the accusers’ actual grievances and the legal standards in question.

It’s frustrating to have watched the feckless neoliberal centrist Democratic leadership refuse to take up impeachment for the reasons you list, but as impeachment is a political remedy to abuse of office, it’s well within their rights, and their refusal to do so until they were cornered, cajoled, and one of their near and dear was threatened via very straightforward malfeasance they felt they could denounce without electoral risk is not in any way illegitimate. It’s shameless, and predictable, and demoralizing, but it’s not illegitimate.

Orange watch, it’s really obvious what I was talking about. I wonder why you have to work so hard to misrepresent it? Exhausting work this fluffing, isn’t it?

For those wondering what Biden has to do with plagiarism, in his earlier failed presidential bid in 1988 he stole large elements of one British politician Neil Kinnock’s speeches. See forex —

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Biden_1988_presidential_campaign#Kinnock_controversy

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/2607505/Joe-Biden-plagiarised-Neil-Kinnock-speech.html

Faustusnotes—

I think your views of American politics are often a bit “off”. For instance, while it is not uncommon for people on the far left to criticize Sanders for voting for imperialist foreign policies, you are the only person I have ever seen use this as a defense of more mainstream Democrats who are far more hawkish than he is.

So I jumped in to point out that Biden’s sleaziness has been an often discussed topic going back for decades. I could have mentioned the plagiarism of Kinnock’s speech, but that was so strange I don’t know what to make of it.

You can imagine whatever you wish about me. It doesn’t matter. I will vote for any Democrat over any Republican. I also despise a great many Democratic politicians, including some I have voted for. This will likely happen again in 2020, unless Sanders or Warren ( my second choice) get the nomination. I actually like them.

@46
”But nastywoman can take joy in correctly spotting that I’m a disgusting old person too vile to understand rap and can hope I’ll be dead soon, and blight humanity no more”.

But I don’t – as actually the rap reference – plus the ”for older people” – was meant more like… ”joking” – when the wiser (older women and men) of my family telling my generation that we just don’t have this ”revolutionary spirit” – they had in the 60th and 70th” – including the classical joke: ”if they still would remember it – they wouldn’t have been there.
And soooo – please! – just don’t take anything I write so… so… seriously? – as really – believe me – for anybody who currently has the pleasure – living the NEW GREEN DEAL” -(with no student loans – a well paying job – affordable healthcare and housing AND long vacations) the EU is sooo much more than any ”treaty” or what else you mention – especially in Italy and Greece.

And YES – enjoying everything what the EU has to offer – in such a (”ignorant”?) way might be completely and totally ”incoherent” – but that’s the fun of it – which could bring us to @48 and my ”level of indoctrination”.
I have been ”indoctrinated” so ”massiv” that I’m currently working very hard to get AOC elected as the second female US President in 2018 – and I always only hit ”above” the belt.

Faustusnotes 10.29.19 at 11:07 pm @34

Nice misdirection Donald. I asked about the sudden interest in the Ukraine thing, trump and Giulianis latest Old Man Yells at Cloud moment, not some old news about credit cards.

As for “sudden interest in the Ukraine thing” I would like to remind you that Ukraine was an important player in Russiagate, and, as such, is potentially guilty in the interference in the USA elections.

Below is one tidbit for your attention: there is actually an old (1999) and a very interesting treaty between the USA and Ukraine under which Ukraine is legally obligated to help the USA exactly in the matters discussed by Trump. Under this treaty very little sovereignty is reserved for Ukraine , if the USA wants to investigate something. So no pressure, or God forbid quid pro quo is needed at all. Ukraine is legally obligated to deliver the materials requested and/or open their own investigation to get those materials for the USA.

I think that not only you, but also other “Full of Schiff” people in this blog will have great difficulties in understanding this legal situation ;-).

Due to existence of this treaty, from a legal standpoint Trump behaved exactly as if he was asking Governor of NJ for help in investigation of Jon Corzine, or older Kushner for their misdeeds. So while ethically he was wrong, and it was politically suicidal to include Biden (who, being semi-senile is an ideal for Trump opponent on Dem side) along with legitimate request to provide information about Ukrainian action of CrowdStrike, and, especially, servers that were used for this (from which probably fake Russian attack on DNC originated)

That blunder allowed Dems plotters to launch a very successful counterattack on his attempt to get to the origins of Russiagate.

But legally he was on a pretty solid ground: below is the quote from Bill Clinton to the Senate on November 10, 1999 Treaty Document 106-16 -106th

https://www.congress.gov/treaty-document/106th-congress/16/document-text

:

” Mutual assistance available under the Treaty includes: taking of testimony or statements of persons; providing documents, records, and articles of evidence; serving documents; locating or identifying persons; transferring persons in custody for testimony or other purposes; executing requests for searches and seizures; assisting in proceedings related to restraint, confiscation, forfeiture of assets, restitution, and collection of fines; and any other form of assistance not prohibited by the laws of the requested state. ”

Also interesting to watch the communists on here saying China’s class system is as rigid as the UK’s, so that they can defend a white fascist. Nice work boys!

‘It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley’s broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else….

In certain kinds of writing… it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning….. When one critic writes, ‘The outstanding feature of Mr. X’s work is its living quality’, while another writes, ‘The immediately striking thing about Mr. X’s work is its peculiar deadness’, the reader accepts this as a simple difference of opinion. If words like black and white were involved, instead of the jargon words dead and living, he would see at once that language was being used in an improper way. Many political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’….Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary….’ (Orwell).

@52 – likbez
”I think that under the weight of those facts, the picture is more or less clear — this was a color revolution”.
and
@55
”I think that not only you, but also other “Full of Schiff” people in this blog will have great difficulties in understanding this legal situation ;-)”

You couldn’t be more… ”right” – and I take it ALL back –
You are definitely not – ”not a pro Russian Troll” and definitely not one of theses German Internet warriors who write: ”Alles is Scheisse”!

You write:“Full of Schiff” and then you quote – ”an old (1999) and a very interesting treaty between the USA and Ukraine under which Ukraine is legally obligated to help the USA exactly in the matters discussed by Trump. Under this treaty very little sovereignty is reserved for Ukraine , if the USA wants to investigate something. So no pressure, or God forbid quid pro quo is needed at all. Ukraine is legally obligated to deliver the materials requested and/or open their own investigation to get those materials for the USA”.

You are far more funnier than I am – and nearly as funny as this:

https://youtu.be/upBCQo5bkJc

fn@54:

You should consider the possiblity that Pelosi knew it was coming, and was holding off on impeachment until something marketable arose. But to do that you would have to accept that a) Pelosi is acting as a politician and not a corrupt gangster and b) most people in America are too conservative to want to impeach the president for something as “minor” as imprisoning and abandoning children.

There are more than a few problems with your exculpatory narrative. For starters, there is of course Nancy Smash’s flat declaration last fall that impeachment was off the table. You can try to spin that as Pelosi cannily holding out for the trump card she somehow knew was coming months before the underlying incident occurred because she’s playing 12th dimensional chess, but that’s completely undermined by her repeated and loud insistence that the proper way for Trump to be removed was for him to be voted out by the electorate in 2020. That’s not a master strategist keeping their cards close to their chest; that’s someone who doesn’t want to undertake impeachment under any circumstances poisoning that particular well. Her rhetoric was not the rhetoric of someone holding off for the right time to impeach, it was that of someone seeking to quash dissent in her party that rose unexpectedly and unwantedly when the party regained its majority by means of pols running on platforms to the left of what she wanted. If anyone is refusing to recognize that Pelosi is acting as a politician, it’s you: her actions are fixed on maintaining her faction’s control of the Democratic Party against the near enemy’s treacherous insurrection. Her acts are extremely in line with those of a politician, just not a good one: she’s risk-adverse and terrified of trying to lead public opinion rather than follow it, but simultaneously she’s resentful of dissent in the ranks from those who want to lead rather than follow. This is who she is, and has been for a very long time, and it’s quite typical of her generation. You’re a foreign spectator whose views of American politics are often a bit “off”, and an awful lot of that is because you don’t live here. America is consistently less conservative than conventional wisdom predicts it is (not least because national polls are mostly still tied to that noted bastion of staunch leftism, the vanishing and greying owners of landlines) – what makes this less actionable is precisely how disillusioned, jaded, and hammered into apathy most of the body politic is. Politicians like Pelosi who “know better than” the people who elect them are a major cause of this. Let’s not forget that Pelosi’s grand counterargument for the last year has been that the House majority was not elected to undertake futile, meaningless gestures like impeaching Trump when the Senate wouldn’t convict; the Democratic voters elected them to pass aspirational bills that the Senate wouldn’t pass and Trump wouldn’t sign. Let’s also not forget that she dismissed investigations as a distraction from that lofty goal… or that she said before the election last fall had even occurred that Democrats calling for investigations or impeachment were doing so for self-serving reasons. She doesn’t want to rock the boat; she wants Trump gone but with no risk she can be held accountable for any failure, nor with any damage done to the credibility of the Washington establishment. Or more succinctly, she wants to go back to business as usual.

likbez@52:

This theory appears unfalsifiable. Is there any action by the state that cannot be added to its litany of proof of nefarious intent? It also appears to pretend that only Western nations have security services. Is Russia a passive, isolationist nation with no agency whatsoever WRT foreign policy?

likbez@55:

That treaty does not say what you want it to say. Very pointedly, it does not allow requesting states to compel the requestee to pursue new investigations. It is a treaty that would allow the requestor to request specific assistance with ongoing domestic investigations, but even then it spells out a formal process requiring explicit assistance requests – and pointedly, at no point does it allow the requestor to compel public statements by the requestee’s executive that they are pursuing such actions. Indeed, as the treaty explicitly excludes private citizens from making requests and lists political offenses as a category of offense that the requestee can deny assistance in pursuing, it looks like that treaty if anything would undermine your claims. Is there a specific American investigation into Burisma into crimes under American law being undertaken by the American federal gov’t? If so, then the treaty (which is described as a standard LE assistance treaty, not some extrodinary document) requires the US openly request specific aid in writing. Again, there is nothing in that treaty allowing a requestor to compel the other party to initiate investigations – and there is no reason for standard LE assistance to be pursued through verbal communication by the hands-off, rips-up-papers-after-reading-them American President.

OTOH, if your claim that this is the authority under which Trump made a totally legitimate request… someone needs to file a FOIA request, because per Article 4 there’s a paper trail:

1. A request for assistance shall be in writing except that the Central Authority of the Requested State may accept a request in another form in urgent situations. If the request is not in writing it shall be confirmed in writing within ten days unless the Central Authority of the Requested State agrees otherwise. The request shall be in the language of the Requested State unless otherwise agreed.

2. The request shall include the following:
(a) the name of the authority conducting the investigation, prosecution, or proceeding to which the request relates;
(b) a description of the nature and subject matter of the investigation, prosecution, or proceeding, and the applicable provisions of law for each offence;
(c) a description of the evidence, information, or other assistance sought; and
(d) a statement of the purpose for which the evidence, information, or other assistance is sought.
[3. is roughly ‘to the extent necessary and possible, specific information/persons sought, and/or a description of exactly what is being sought, to possibly include specific questions to be answered’]

I would LOVE to see a formal description of this fishing expedition’s scope, purpose, and anticipated deliverables.

Ben Bernanke, after his ‘helicopter money’ speech endorsing quantitative easing in 2002, was being wheeled into position by the powers that be to become Fed chairman

Citation needed.

And the reason for both “Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005” and Bernanke being wheeled into place was that the financial industry were preparing for the financial blowout, which they well aware was coming.

In other words, that bill was passed — with Biden’s very active assistance — specifically to ensure that for the vast mass of Americans there would be even less recourse and the crash would be even harder when it hit.

Citation needed.

Even this year people were still defending some of those “intellectuals” (even on this blog) as legitimate scholars

Citation needed.

AND @steven t johnson
-(and likbez alike)
a very serious MUST – to read and watch – from the NYT comment section:

ARV’s
montanaNov. 1

…I fear we have become obsessed with all that we can’t do as a nation, rather than what we can and should do for the benefit of all Americans…

I suggest everyone take a look at the short (4 min.) video the NY Times had up a day or two ago, looking at America from the outside. It may be an eye opener for those who don’t believe we can afford healthcare, higher education, parental leave, and other social benefits that would make us stronger as a nation.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/28/opinion/europeans-view-americans.html
Reply70 RecommendShare

fn@68:

If I have to pick between Imperialists, why should I choose the incompetent one who’s going to have a heart attack in the first year of the job?
[…]
We in the rest of the world need the most achievable way of getting you to stop screwing up the world, and that doesn’t demand moral purity – it demands a proper understanding of American imperialism.
[…]
The best thing for the rest of the world is America retreats from its imperialism in a way that doesn’t damage the countries it is currently occupying, and doesn’t give too much space for the EU, China or Russia to become a new behemoth.

This is thoroughly incoherent. You’re arguing for consistent interventionist American imperialism but also arguing that American imperialism needs to be drawn down? I hate to break it to you, but arguing for the likes of Clinton and Obama foreign policy is not arguing for a sensible, careful drawing-down of American imperialism. It’s arguing for another “American Century”, to use some unpleasant old language that historically went over very well with polite, well-mannered rich American liberal hawks. You’re arguing for multilateral American imperialism – American-directed imperialism with European buy-in and support.

You’re also bizarrely endorsing greater-evilism. I’m not sure who you would think you could convince by saying “Look! This pol who isn’t as bad in terms of the dumb things you claim to care about isn’t perfect! Therefore, you should embrace someone who is far worse by those measures – someone who is not only complicit in doing so-called “bad things”, but who actively does them with great proficiency (and that all-important multilateral buy-in) while rationalizing them as inevitable or even desirable!”

The core problem with your framing is that comfortable, privileged liberals prioritize well-ordered financial institutions over the lives of brown peasants in the global south (or for that matter, any laborers anywhere), so it’s inconceivable for them to weigh hawkish of foreign policy anywhere near as heavily in calculations of lesser-evilism as compared to keeping the planes running on time. But of course, they’re merely trying to ensure an equitable multipolar world order, and it’s pure coincidence that only by preserving the existing financial and social hierarchies they benefit from that this can be achieved…

4. Many of its citizens are Russian speakers. (If you speak Russian, you want to live in Russia, just like Russian speakers in the Baltic states.)

Doing some background research out of curiosity, I discovered something interesting. Wikipedia reports these figures from the 2001 Ukrainian census: 77.8% of the population identify themselves as Ukrainians and 17.3% as Russians; 67.5% of the population declared Ukrainian as their native language and 29.6% Russian (I would consider that, in context, to be ‘many’ Ukrainian citizens, but that’s not my main point). So it seems that there may be about 10% of the Ukrainian population who identify as Ukrainian rather than Russian even though they declare themselves as native speakers of Russian rather than Ukrainian.

I should add that even being a Russian-speaker who identifies as Russian doesn’t automatically make a person a supporter of Russian irredentism. There’s a significant fraction of the population of Finland who identify as Swedish and have Swedish as their native language, but that doesn’t make them supporters of Swedish irredentism; as far as I know (admittedly I don’t know much) they are as accepting of the Finnish state as their Finnish-speaking ethnically Finnish compatriots.

steven t johnson 11.01.19 at 3:27 pm

likbez@42 doesn’t realize that the legal course was for the US Justice Department to draw up a list of requirements of the sort specified in the treaty. The US embassy in Kyiv would then relay the request to their counterparts. If and only if the request was denied would there be any occasion for presidents to discuss the matter, and only then would such discussion be legally mandated. What Trump did was press Zelensky for a public announcement of an investigate, or worse, to rig and investigation.

I respectfully disagree. Road to hell is always paved with good intentions. How you can do it, if you know that Kiev embassy is controlled by Obama/Brennan plotters including the ambassador, and the CIA controls Ukrainian security services? Speaking directly to president about Crowdstike was the only way to move this investigation forward. Inclusion of Biden was a huge, suicidal political blunder, for which Trump now is paying a price. “Full of Schiff” commenters here emphasize it, and conveniently forget to mention Crowdstrike part and “Manafort dirt” part of the “Ukrainian influence on 2016 elections” story. Which are far more important.

It looks to me as if somebody within Trump administration wanted to sabotage the whole thing. He should have been staying strictly on Russiagate investigation topic (which is a criminal investigation now, if I understand the situation correctly), but being Trump he can’t (Rick Perry was probably a contributing factor in this stupidity). As the result it served as a pretext for the counterattack on his Russiagate origins investigation by Obama/Brennan faction.

But there is a silver lining in any dark cloud. If Ukrainegate is the new Russiagate then the ‘whistleblower complaint’ is surprisingly similar to the ‘former’ MI6 spy Christopher Steele ‘dirty dossier’. It has a lot of problems. First of all Obama/Brennan faction have chosen the issue, Ukraine, where they themselves have a lot of skeletons in the closet. The choice of a CIA officer as a whistleblower and his complaint as the cornerstone of the impeachment was especially dumb: the word “CIA” is a dog whistle for Trump electorate. It also puts Brennan and Obama in undesirable spotlight.

And this process or digging out neoliberal Dems and CIA machinations already started: Schiff already flip-flopped over requesting the ‘whistleblower’ to testify after it was reported that two members of his staff, who knew Ciaramella from working with him at the Obama National Security Council, had advised him.

Now this process is starting to create more and more collateral damage for neoliberal Dems, as Schiff will not be able to fully block republican efforts to bring witnesses. But it will not hurt Trump with his electorate. And it will not end with impeachment.

I believe, like Noam Chomsky, that it will, in the end, help Trump and might put Warren (forget about Biden) in disadvantage: the noise for impeachment will deafen all her proposals and will convert 2020 election into another show. And Trump is much better showmen then she.

That is the point that “full of Schiff” commenters, in their excitement about the new opportunity to unseat Trump, are unable to comprehend.

Jim Harrison 11.01.19 at 5:28 pm

I like your good old “Russians under each bed” mentality. It so refreshing to see McCarthyism meme has such a staying power and is not fading when we discuss political issues in this blog ;-)

Questions for you:

1. Is still Ciaramella still whistleblower (a whistleblower reports problems in his own agency(CIA), not another one), or a rogue CIA political operative, and as such is now yet another subject of Barr criminal investigation into Russiagate origins?

2. Did Obama sought to induce the government of Ukraine to become involved in the 2016 presidential election? Was Ukraine given military gear in exchange for dirt on Hillary’s election opponent ?

3. What else they are hiding about Obama/Brenan/Biden actions in Ukraine?

4. What is the level of probability that additional Obama/Brennan Russiagate dirty tricks be exposed in Flynn trial, which continues to produce details of entrapment, manipulation, perjury, and prosecutorial misconduct?

5. Will the blowback for Ukrainegate CIA operation be that polarization spearheaded by Russiagate increases and as the result much less Americans feel a shared sense of national identity ? (see https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/11/impeachment-democrats-republicans-polarization/601264/)

@Orange Watch,

I’m confused by your attitude towards Pelosi. On the one hand you recognise she is a politician considering whether to employ a process you recognise as political, i.e. impeachment.

You also (I presume correctly) seem to recognise the calculation as a political one, e.g. if starting impeachment proceedings will achieve nothing and just detract from the campaign for the general election, it would be better (politically speaking) to not start them.

But you’re very disappointed, if not angry, that in her reckoning it wasn’t worth proceeding with impeachment up until recently, when (I take it this is obvious) the situation changed markedly. This dispite the fact that the polling changed with the situation: even the release of the Mueller report only put a small and temporary dent in the majority not in favour of impeachment, whereas now a plurality hovering around the majority mark favour it.

With your statements about lack of leadership, and mention of disaffected people not appearing in polls, I presume your position is that Pelosi and other democratic leaders could have made it politically viable despite the lack of support for the proposition in the general public (at least as recorded by polls) by ‘leading’ and drawing in the disaffected? And that this should have been obvious to Pelosi?

If so, I wonder what makes you so certain about that, because it seems to require being sure about the responses of people who according to you we have little information about.

Faustusnotes—

Sanders is obviously the lesser evil of any Democratic nominee on the subject of imperialism. It isn’t just his refusal to vote for the Iraq War. He is also the furthest left on Israel- Palestine though he had to be dragged there. But he was far left on that subject by US standards by 2016. He has also been a leader in campaigning against the war on Yemen.

I’m repeating myself, but your view on this subject is, in my experience at least, unique to you. One can find a lot of leftist anti – imperialists either lumping Sanders in with the other Democrats ( because, for instance, he doesn’t support BDS) or supporting him while recognizing he still needs to be pressured, but nobody else sees this as a reason to support people who are well to his right.

I suppose if one looks hard enough you can find people with almost any combination of views. Nothing wrong with that necessarily. But in this case I think you are wrong.

I think Pelosi supposed, all along, that Trump might be impeached. But impeachment inquiries have been long processes and there was no need to say the “i” word until Mueller was finished. Everyone had to wait to see the work in the Mueller Report (April) and then hear Mueller’s public testimony (July). There are five or more actionable counts of criminal obstruction, and it also stated that there might be a charge of criminal conspiracy (with Russia) if all of the evidence were seen. The report also directly indicated impeachment.

Still, there weren’t enough House Dems from swing districts on board, to carry an impeachment resolution. So then, what to do? The answer: a month after Mueller’s testimony, House Intelligence and House Judiciary started inquiries (and occasionally called them impeachment inquiries) on various aspects, which were likely to go on for a long time, perhaps through the 2020 election. These inquiries might have admitted evidence which the Mueller Report knew but could not print, due to Justice Dept. policies and counterintelligence rules.

Then the Ukraine whistleblower story broke in September, confirming the general prediction made when Mattis was fired last December that because Trump had gotten rid of his last babysitter, he was bound to do something really, really stupid. (As if to further confirm the prediction, he betrayed the Syrian Kurds in October, reminding the Senate GOP once again that he is out of control and must be removed.) House Intelligence (Schiff) refocused onto the Ukraine story, and quickly interviewed over a dozen officials from the Administration resulting in testimony that this story goes back for months. The full testimony is supposed be released publicly after redactions of classified information. But the hints were enough to bring the Dems from swing districts on board, and so the House voted formally for the impeachment inquiry last Thursday.

Next question is, how long will this go on? I used to think that Pelosi would want it wrapped up by next spring, before the campaign season really heats up. But she must know that this has started a process which cannot easily be scheduled. Court rulings promise access to witnesses and documents that may suggest new avenues for investigation. In addition, the inquiry rules state that the minority party (the Republicans) can call witnesses, subject to a majority override (this rule is consonant with previous impeachments). This is to prevent the Freedom Caucus from calling every half-witted conspiracy theorist from the internet to bog down the proceedings. But the Republicans surely have the right to take their complaints and try their case in the press. If the inquiries don’t appear fair then the Dems have more work to do.

And then there’s the question of what happens after the impeachment vote to send the charges to the Senate for trial. This again will be public, and probably not short.

So then the question is, if this goes on through the election, will that be a disaster? It may depend on what evidence comes out.

Lee A. Arnold 11.03.19 at 7:19 pm

Then the Ukraine whistleblower story broke in September

The problem here is that the person in question does not fit well the definition of “whistleblower” unless you want to change the meaning of this word.

A more plausible hypothesis is that Ciaramella (if it was he) was a Brennan spy in the West Wing, which former key FBI Russaigaters Peter Strzok and Lisa Page named “Charlie”.

And now evidence emerges that “former CIA Director John Brennan reportedly created and staffed a CIA Task Force in early 2016 that was named, Trump Task Force, and given the mission of spying on and carrying out covert actions against the campaign of candidate Donald Trump.” https://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2019/11/growing-indicators-of-brennans-cia-trump-task-force-by-larry-c-johnson.html#comments

If Ciaramella was a “Confidential Informant” (CI) in no way he can be called whistleblower, because it was his responsibility to produce regular reports about Trump administration actions and intentions for FBI, CIA or both. And that makes him and his handlers subjects to criminal investigation.

So then the question is, if this goes on through the election, will that be a disaster? It may depend on what evidence comes out.

IMHO the intention is to drag it till the elections in order to repeat the success of the influence of Mueller investigation on the 2018 elections results. Kind of “Hail Mary” pass by Pelosi. Right now even Sanders has diminished chances against Trump due, unfortunately, to his health problems (to say nothing about the fact that DNC would prefer Trump to Sanders any day ;-).

But please understand that the real game will start only after the Senate will open the trial. So the last thing Pelosi wants is to get this case on the Senate floor. At this point Senate Republicans can wipe the floor with Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, and company with impunity as long as they wish: they can call any witnesses and request any material they want, using help from their House colleagues, especially Nunes, who proved to be a pretty capable politician, much superior caliber then Schiff (who is the victim of nepotism, so to speak ;-) . Tables will be instantly turned.

They can also destroy Brennan, Marie Yovanovitch (who can be criminally prosecuted for informing Ukrainians that they do not need to deal with Trump, just wait until impeachment) , Taylor, Vindman (who can be court marshaled) and other initiators of Ukrainegate.

The question only is whether they want to do it or not, because most Republicans do not like Trump.

Warren chances in the atmosphere of impeachment hysteria are not looking good (and the fact the she jumped into Ukrainegate bandwagon proves that she is a weak politician.)

First of all, unhinged Trump is dangerous. Not only he is a much better showman, he is a master of playing a victim. He will try to rally voters around the flag and make his failures less significant for his core electorate (some faction of which, for example anti-war Republicans, and a part of blue-collar workers might not vote at all).

In other words, this impeachment game (and it is a dirty game) may play for Trump the same role that Iraq war played for Bush II: people understood that this reformed alcoholic is a miserable failure, but voted for him anyway out of patriotism.

Likewise, many independents who were ready to defect Trump may hold their nose and vote for Trump because they despise neoliberal Dems dirty games more then they despise Trump. Kind of perverted version of LEV (lessee evil voting :-)

I’m not going to comment on #Ukrainegate because it’s very obviously another gigantic waste of time that is going nowhere, like #Russiagate. All I will point out is that to get engaged in this ‘debate’ you have to think that the US (or to be more precise, Donald Trump) giving weapons (i.e. guns…you know…guns to kill people) to Ukrainians is a good idea.

Remember that the Democrats main objection to this is that Trump didn’t get the guns to the Ukrainians* quickly enough.

Think about this and then reflect on whether the current drive to impeachment is likely to empower progressives in the US, or whether it is not.

Chomsky has, as one might expect, some choice words on this.

‘First notice something, they (i.e. the Democrats) are going after Trump not on his major crimes but because he went after a leading Democrat. Does that remind you of anything? Yes. Watergate. They didn’t go after Nixon on his major crimes. They were off the record. It was because he had attacked the Democratic party….

Is it politically wise? I frankly doubt it. I think it’ll turn out pretty much like the Mueller report, which, that I thought was also a political mistake. What’ll happen is probably the House will impeach, goes to the Senate. The Republican senators are utterly craven. They’re terrified of Trump’s voting base. So they’ll vote to turn down the impeachment request. Trump will come along, say I’m vindicated. Say it was the Deep State and the treacherous Dems trying to overturn the election. Oh, vote for me.’

https://theintercept.com/2019/10/31/deconstructed-special-the-noam-chomsky-interview/

*Ukrainians in a Ukrainian state that was, within very recent memory, plausibly accused of being basically a Nazi regime with a very thin ‘democratic’ cover.

Lee A. Arnold 11.04.19 at 1:10 pm

A more plausible hypothesis is that they freaked-out because Trump had contacts with Russian mobsters for decades

Russian mobsters are a part on NYC underground, so no real estate developer can avoid contacts with them. Trump gave one interesting interview where he essentially pit himself against NYC mafia. But he probably used their money to survive after 2007.

Ethnically many high level Russian mobsters like Semion Mogilevich are Jewish and have close contacts with NY organized crime which also has prominent elements of this ethnic group (Kosher Nostra). Jewish and Italian crime groups became increasingly interconnected in the 1920s and 1930s (Meyer Lansky.) Trump also has rather close ties with orthodox Jewish community, including Chabad-Lubavitch sect which has a long history of various criminal activities (see, for example, https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-05-12-iowa-immigration_N.htm ).

But mafia is intelligence agencies natural habitat. Using mafia for their operations is what intelligence agencies do. So to assume that “they freaked-out” is pretty naïve. Remember Jack Ruby (Jacob Leon Rubenstein)? Or Felix Sater ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Sater ) ?

likbez 11.04.19 at 5:13 pm @90

Lee A. Arnold 11.04.19 at 1:10 pm

So the next question is, WHY did they hate Trump at that time?

That’s the key question and I do not have an answer to it.

One, not very convincing hypothesis that tries to explain this strange situation was proposed by Prof. Harry Targ:
https://mronline.org/2019/10/23/united-states-foreign-policy-yesterday-today-and-tomorrow/

The dispute was not over whether the United States should continue to pursue empire but rather how to continue to achieve it. The debates were occasioned by the rise of the countries of the Global South, the societally wrenching experience of the Vietnam War, the growth of power and influence of the former Soviet Union, and since its collapse, the emergence of China as a new global economic, political and military power. In addition, the new international economy was becoming more global, that is to say more interconnected. Debates about strategy, tactics, surfaced between the neoliberal globalists who emphasized so-called free trade, financial speculation, and the promotion of a neoliberal agenda that advocated for the privatization of all public activities by states and the development of austerity policies that would shift wealth from the many to the few. The international debt system would be the vehicle for pressuring poor and rich countries to transform their own economic agendas. This faction dominated United States foreign policy making for generations, particularly from Reagan to Clinton to Obama. In political/military terms, they have sought to push back challengers to neoliberal capitalism: Russia, China, populist Latin American countries, and they have advocated advancing US economic interests in Asia and Africa. Many of the institutions of the neoliberal globalists, sometimes called the “deep state” include the CIA, NSA, and other security agencies.

In the analysis of Prof. Targ article in https://dissidentvoice.org/2019/11/the-empire-trump-and-intra-ruling-class-conflict/ they characterize Trump faction of the US elite the following way:

On the other hand, as Targ explains, are the Trumpian, “America First” nationalist capitalists. This faction of the ruling class, while also supporting global dominance and a permanent war economy (military-related spending will consume 48 percent of the 2020 federal budget) favors trade restrictions, economic nationalism, building walls and anti-immigrant policies.

Although Trump is inconsistent, bumbling and sometimes contradictory, he’s departed from the neocon’s agenda by making overtures to North Korea and Russia, voicing doubts about NATO as an expensive relic from the past that is being dangerously misused outside of Europe, not being afraid to speak bluntly to EU allies, frequently mentioning ending our “endless, ridiculous and costly wars,” asserting that the U.S. is badly overextended and saying “The job of our military is not to police the world.”

I would add that Trump is also an “American exceptionalist” but ascribes a very different provincial meaning to the term, something closer to a crabbed provincialism, an insular “Shining City on a Hill,” surrounded by a moat.

@every comment form nikbiz-
so somebody on the Internet believes that a Corrupt Criminal Moron – who made very clear that he is not ”a politician” and very stupid – is doing some ”political strategic stuff”?

That’s what I’m always sayen – so it is not ”arrogance” which destroyed the WTO it’s just stupidity and old fashion corruption?

Right?

And everything has become ”Pizzagate” – where the Mafia has changed ”strategy” – and sells everybody in the World bad Olive Oil?

Let’s start from the fundamentals. The world is quickly headed into a multi-power era, meaning that there are military-economic powers emerging which will vie against each other, or form alliances with each other, whether short term or long term.

Democracies are preferable to autocracies in the long term for a number of different reasons such as freedom, individualism, political stability, peaceful change, and so on.

Let’s put aside (for a moment) the huge problem of economics and the control of democracies by rich elites with vested interests, and here just point-out that democracy will likely be better than autocracy at finding peaceful, equitable solutions in both the short term and long term.

Let’s also put aside (forever) this insistence that the key to US policy is the pursuit of empire. Its people don’t want that. I’m not aware of a US historical period when they did. Yes, vested interests try to push foreign policies for economic gains, and the US government has made enormous mistakes in foreign policy, and its history is littered with horrible disasters, BUT its people do NOT want an imperial empire. (Meanwhile, the theory that the so-called “deep state” wants empire for power and loot, and that’s why they opposed Trump, is not credible. He clearly intended to line all the rich pockets, and to increase defense industry spending, and he has done so.)

But, to take the opposite of empire, if you think that US isolationism will lead to less war in the long term, and the growth of foreign autocracies will be peaceful, then you haven’t thought it all the way through. Instead autocracies are far more likely to lead themselves stupidly into big wars, and the democracies including the US will be dragged into them, because this era is global and possibly nuclear.

So I think the biggest question is, what is the value of democracy (as an aspiration and ideal, and as a dysfunctional reality) to the emerging multipolar geopolitics?

Russia is run by a strongman who harasses and murders his domestic political opponents. Russia has legitimate foreign security interests which must be respected but that doesn’t justify continuing to advance beyond Crimea to kill more Ukrainians in areas where the majority would prefer to join Europe. This is what appears to be happening.

You can respond with all the previous US mistakes and all the whataboutisms you like. The US and EU are trying to protect their democracies and others, and are allied in that task. Russian intelligence agencies, using organized crime in some cases, are trying to subvert those democracies.

Even Chomsky thinks Russia can go too far. He also thinks quite rightly that the US shouldn’t have betrayed the Kurds.

China poses a big challenge. In every way it is a completely different and very long conversation. Cutting to the conclusion, the best peaceful strategy to deal with China is to ally with, and support, all the OTHER countries where people aspire to individual freedom and democracy for themselves and for everybody else. That might include Russia, but it does not include Putin.

Only after future multi-power geopolitics is understood as posing the necessity to preserve democracy and to encourage all aspirants to it, does it make sense to bring economics into this discussion. Because neoliberalism, too, is to be fought by democracy.

nastywoman 11.05.19 at 8:12 am

You have a realistic nickname I would say :-). The level of your detachment from reality is pretty amusing, not to say more. The feelings your posts incite are pretty eloquently reflected in the following comment ;-) :

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/civil-war-begins-when-the-constitutional-order-breaks-down/

Rick Porter > Mark B. • 20 hours ago

You two idiots show your lack of knowledge and understanding of rural culture now and southern culture during the civil war. Your elite attitudes were what nearly lost the civil war for the North during the first part of the war. A lack of understanding of the Souths strengths at the start of the civil war and rural cultures strengths now.

Your ignorance now is as blatantly stupid as many people during the first Battle of Bull Run thinking it would be a quick short war. It turned out to be much different.

Don’t make the same stupid assumptions twice. If you imagine you can blissfully live on the coasts and discount the middle parts of the country your very ignorant. Shutting down travel between the coasts and any economic activity accross middle America would bring urban areas to heal very quickly.

All of us in flyover country would get along just fine without the coasts.

arcseconds@79:

What is missing from your analysis is the idea that Pelosi has any agency. To take a favorite idea bandied about in certain parts of the liberal blogosphere, it’s the unstated corollary to Murc’s Law: it is unreasonable to ascribe agency to orthodox Democrats, and any suggestions that they have agency can be dismissed as made in bad faith under Murc’s Law. Pelosi is a politician, and she is actively shaping public opinion even as she tried to frame her PR as passively sitting back and watching as events played out. She actively pursued a course of action to exclude impeachment from the realm of possibilities by dismissing it as an impossible, vain, symbolic pursuit – even as she explicitly declared that the people had elected the Democratic House majority a mandate to pass bills in the House (which is also an impossible, vain, symbolic pursuit). Worse still, she undermined the idea of carrying out investigations by repeatedly insinuating that Congresspersons calling for investigations were doing so for self-serving reasons. She was not merely passively failing to pursue impeachment or to shape public opinion such that impeachment could be viewed favorably, she was actively and publicly attacking and undermining the legitimacy of the idea of impeachment as a concept – she was arguing that the only legitimate way to remove Trump was by voting him out. It’s political cowardice – not just before the nation as a whole, but before members of her caucus.