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Old Print Articles: William Dudley Pelley, An American Hitler (1938/42)

February 24, 2017 in Old Print Articles, Photography, Politics | Permalink

Karl Marx wrote that “history repeats…first as tragedy, then as farce,” but when it comes to the threat of Fascism in America over the last century, the order, it would seem, has been reversed.

William Dudley Pelley was a white supremacist and Hitler wannabe with a missionary’s zeal when he ran for President in 1936, his risible campaign ultimately receiving a grand total of 1,600 votes. He spent most of the next decade in prison having been tried for and convicted of conspiring with the enemy during World War II.

Things didn’t start out so haywire for Pelley. An autodidact, he became a successful writer of fiction and nonfiction, even penning scenarios for silent films for Lon Chaney. In 1928, however, he claimed to have had an “out-of-body experience” in which God and Christ, performing in a duet, instructed the scribe to bring about a spiritual transformation in America, one which was to occur at the expense of Jewish and non-white people. He formed a militia of “Silver Shirts” and commenced to work which never, thankfully, proved successful.

Eighty years later, an aspiring autocrat and bigot received nearly 63 million votes, winning the Presidency by hook and by crook. Many scholars advise that Trump, for all his bad qualities, is not actually what would historically be called a Fascist. In December 2015, during the ugly-as-sin campaign, UK historian Matthew Feldman commented on the “F” word in an interview with Mic:

There are some [Fascist-sounding] things about Trump when seen in a particular light, such as his slogan, “Make America Great Again.” But what I really want to stress is that’s not the same thing as overthrowing liberal democratic regimes, which is really the hallmark of classic fascist movements.•

After all that’s transpired since the inauguration, including Trump and Steve Bannon’s words at this week’s CPAC Conference, it’s fair to fear the Administration intends to implode our liberal democratic regime from the inside. The President continued his all-out warfare on the free press, which has been one of his main targets along with the Judiciary and the Intelligence Community, while Bannon explicitly acknowledged heads of cabinets have been selected based on their ability to destroy them, to “deconstruct the administrative state.”

Even if the new boss doesn’t meet the precise specifications of traditional Fascism, elements of that system can be mixed with the new abnormal to bring about the same end. The risk of American autocracy is not a punchline now, but a series of punches. One way or another, it seems like it will all end in tragedy. It already has, really.

The following are a series of articles about Pelley from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

From April 5, 1938:

From April 5, 1942:

From August 16, 1942:

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“This Is Not Good News For The U.S. Economy”

February 24, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Secondary to the sheer un-American nature and moral failing of Muslim bans and refugee refusal is just how injurious such policies are for business.

Whether it’s because these moves have instilled fear in international travelers or because vacationers have chosen to vote with their pocketbooks, tourists from abroad have turned away sharply from the U.S. in the weeks since Trump’s attempt at an Executive Order banning visitors from seven predominantly Muslim countries. That’s a severe threat to the livelihoods of many Americans, who are already facing myriad pressures in the Digital Age.

The causes of unemployment, underemployment and stagnant wages are amazingly complex, especially among the “structurally unemployed,” a contingent unlikely to be aided by catchphrases on baseball caps.

Two excerpts follow, one on what the travel ban means for U.S. workers and another about the web of troubles keeping citizens who want to work from doing so.

From Michelle Baran at Travel Weekly:

International flight-booking data released this week confirmed concerns across the travel industry that president Trump’s 90-day travel ban on nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries is dealing a significant blow to inbound travel to the U.S.

Following the Jan. 27 ban on travel to the U.S. by nationals from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan and Syria, net bookings from those seven countries were down 80% between Jan. 28 and Feb. 4, compared with the same period last year, according to flight reservation transactions analyzed by the travel data company ForwardKeys.

ForwardKeys also reported a 6.5% drop in overall international travel to the U.S. for the same period when compared with the equivalent eight-day period the year before.

Meanwhile, Hopper, a flight app that tracks GDS searches in order to analyze fare prices and demand, also found that the number of flight searches for travel from international points of origin to the U.S. — a key indicator of future travel intent — was down 17% the week of Jan. 27. Last year, there was only a 1.8% decline during the same time period.

“The data forces a compelling conclusion that Donald Trump’s travel ban immediately caused a significant drop in bookings to the USA and an immediate impact on future travel,” said Olivier Jager, CEO of ForwardKeys. “This is not good news for the U.S. economy.”•

From Jeanna Smialek’s Bloomberg portrait of a struggling Kentucky man named Tyler Moore:

His problems started in earnest in 2014. He had been living on his own for several years, having moved out at 18 after dropping out of high school, obtaining his GED, and going to work in security at a coal company. Moore is gay in an intensely conservative region, and he said he left school because of bullying.

Moore lost his job in late 2013 after smoking marijuana and failing a drug test. Though he found temporary work as a remote customer service representative, he lost that one when his mother died of a drug overdose in 2014 and he had to plan her funeral.

Deeply depressed and unemployed, he moved into an old Airstream camper propped on cinder blocks behind his father’s house, at the entrance to the litter-strewn trailer park that the older man owns in the misty hills of Lovely. There, surrounded by long-unemployed neighbors and rampant drug use, Moore began to abuse his medical prescriptions. “I guess I used it as my crutch, in a way,” he says.

Moore began getting in fights while drugged and was arrested twice. When he landed in jail for several months, he realized things needed to change. He graduated from a rehabilitation program in September, one year, one month, and 15 days after that last altercation. Since then, he’s deepened his friendship with Sister Therese Carew, a Catholic nun who ministers to the region, and dedicated his time to job seeking.

Opportunities are few. Coal mines have been closing, and they’ve taken most other businesses with them.

To employers outside the area, the fact that Moore is neatly groomed, soft-spoken, and polite can’t mask his history. What’s more, he’s the first to admit that the math skills he learned in the local public schools—where only eight in 10 students graduate—aren’t up to par, and his speaking patterns are colored by regional grammar.•

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“The Idea Will Always Be Around”

February 24, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Tim Wu, the Columbia law professor who coined the term “network neutrality” and recent candidate for New York State Lieutenant Governor, just conducted a predictably intelligent and engaging Reddit Ask Me Anything.

Net neutrality, which was supported by the FCC during the Obama Administration, is likely on the chopping block with all three branches of the government in the hands of Republicans, and often extremely conservative ones at that.

Regardless of what happens in the immediate future, it’s still an idea that makes sense if we are to be a democracy with equal opportunities for all. Just imagine if there were two national highway systems, one that allowed 55 mph for those that can pay more and another that permitted 25 mph for those who were poor. While airlines offer different options–first class, business class, coach–everyone arrives at the same time. If we’re not all permitted a roughly similar ETA at reasonable cost, the inequality we’re now experiencing will only grow.

A few exchanges follow.

Question:

Do you have (in your mind’s eye) a moment when American society reached it’s proverbial “fork in the road” leading us on this dark path?

Tim Wu:

That is an interesting question. There is a danger in always thinking that previous times were “golden” and now is dark. Nonetheless I do think now has an objective sense of darkness, where fear and loathing seem to be the currency of daily life.

On the question of whether America took a fork in the road. Here are a few candidates, one public one private:

In the 1990s, when progressives (myself included) were too sanguine about the effects of trade, various forms of deregulation and other policies on the middle and working classes. It was predicted and well known that inequality would result, but the argument that we needed a bigger pie that could then be redistributed. The redistribution never came. And led to the election of a demagogue.

Private: The 1980s – 90s, when corporate leadership at large lost any sense of noblese oblige — a duty to the country and began to feel that their only real duties were to shareholders and maximization of executive compensation. I think this also led us to mass inequality, which I see as the root cause of most of what ails us today.

Question:

With a Republican in the White House, one would assume antitrust enforcement is dead, but Trump seems to be far more interventionist (starting trade wars, threatening private enterprises who cut jobs, etc) than traditional hands-off-the-market, laissez faire Republicans. Meanwhile, Obama’s own Council of Economic Advisors conceded the US economy became more concentrated under his watch. Do you think antitrust could actually improve under Trump? If possible, please break out your prognosis for both the US economy at large vs the internet economy.

Tim Wu:

It is hard to predict anything related to Trump. My main fear is that if there is more enforcement, that it is arbitrary and capricious, based on the beefs the administration has with its perceived enemies.

There is some sense, already, that Trump wants to use the Time – AT&T proposed merger to “punish” CNN — have it sold to someone who will do what he says. This is not the kind of antitrust policy that I support.

Question:

Do you think net neutrality can be reinstated if it’s lost or will it be near impossible to reinstate?

Tim Wu:

The idea will always be around.

Question:

Do you also want to make it illegal for UPS and Amazon to offer priority mail at a premium?

Tim Wu:

As it stands, premium delivery is a user-selected option that does not strike me as a major factor in competition among the vendors of goods

I would be concerned if…

(1) If there were evidence of limited bandwidth capacity in the delivery system, and evidence that UPS wanted to slow down mail generally to promote their “premium product” (2) If UPS and Amazon charged vendors, not consumers, to have things delivered faster (i.e., charged Fischer Price to deliver toys faster than its rivals) (3) If there was a sense that Amazon / UPS were likely to use premium mailing to entrench a monopoly incumbent (4) If premium mailing had a discernible effect on the quality of the product once it arrived.•

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“There Is No Opt Out To His ‘We'”

February 23, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

In America, quantity matters.

Peter Thiel’s billions has impressed all manner of serious people, economists and social scientists and politicos, dollar signs making them somehow ignore that this “genius” was sure that there were WMDs in Iraq and certain that an unqualified sociopath should lead the nation. He may be smart about business, but he’s stupid about life, and it’s the kind of stupid that can get people killed. Thiel’s a rich man and a poor one.

His fellow Silicon Valley billionaire Mark Zuckerberg is also sanctified for large numbers. Not only does he have oodles of money, but reportedly close to two billion people are active on Facebook, that quasi-nation, which is part surveillance state and also the world’s largest sweatshop. 

Despite years of dubious business moves, comments and “social experiments,” Zuckerberg may not be a bad person, but he also isn’t necessarily a wise one, despite what the shallowest of scoreboards may say. His recent religious revival and 50-state “listening tour” provoked speculation that he’d watched another (perhaps) billionaire celebrity snake his way into the Oval Office and decided he wanted to get into the game. He certainly would be better than Trump, but maybe we should actually elect someone who’s qualified?

But why settle for a petty bureaucrat’s position like President when you can lord over a multi-national empire?

In Zuckerberg’s recent 5,700-word position paper, “Building Global Community,” he asserts that his company must lead the way in building an Earth-sized social fabric, something that doesn’t take into consideration that a) many of us want no part of Facebook, b) many of the users possess bigoted and anti-social views, c) having for-profit companies play such a role is huge potential for abuses and d) there’s no substitute for good government or actual (rather than virtual) political movements. Moreover, social media is as much a bane to democracy as a boon–and that may be a hopeful reading of its effects–so such an initiative may be akin to treating a poisoning victim with more poison.

The opening of Nicholas Carr’s outstanding Rough Type post about the Facebook founder’s massive missive, which eviscerates its “self-serving fantasy about social relations”:

The word “community” appears, by my rough count, 98 times in Mark Zuckerberg’s latest message to the masses. In a post-fact world, truth is approached through repetition. The message that is transmitted most often is the fittest message, the message that wins. Verification becomes a matter of pattern recognition. It’s the epistemology of the meme, the sword by which Facebook lives and dies.

Today I want to focus on the most important question of all: are we building the world we all want?

It’s a good question, though I’m not sure there is any world that we all want, and if there is one, I’m not sure Mark Zuckerberg is the guy I’d appoint to define it. And yet, from his virtual pulpit, surrounded by his 86 million followers, the young Facebook CEO hesitates not a bit to speak for everyone, in the first person plural. There is no opt-out to his “we.” It’s the default setting and, in Zuckerberg’s totalizing utopian vision, the setting is hardwired, universal, and nonnegotiable.

Our greatest opportunities are now global — like spreading prosperity and freedom, promoting peace and understanding, lifting people out of poverty, and accelerating science. Our greatest challenges also need global responses — like ending terrorism, fighting climate change, and preventing pandemics. Progress now requires humanity coming together not just as cities or nations, but also as a global community.  …

Facebook stands for bringing us closer together and building a global community. When we began, this idea was not controversial.

The reason the idea  — that community-building on a planetary scale is practicable, necessary, and altogether good — did not seem controversial in the beginning was that Zuckerberg, like Silicon Valley in general, operated in a technological bubble, outside of politics, outside of history. Now that history has broken through the bubble and upset the algorithms, history must be put back in its place. Technological determinism must again be made synonymous with historical determinism.•

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“There Is Too Much Fantasy And Too Little Realism”

February 22, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

In the Digital Age, robots aren’t easy to identify.

That’s a problem since some, including Bill Gates, have recently suggested America tax them. On the face of it, that seems like a good idea, but the picture gets fuzzier the longer you stare at the situation.

Consider Uber, for instance. The company, using just algorithms, disrupted the taxi industry, undermining solid working-class jobs and replacing them with piecemeal precariousness, while employing very few workers in its own middleman function. Because it doesn’t utilize what we’d traditionally define as robots, it wouldn’t be taxable by the Gates standard. Even if we classify these computer systems as robotics and wanted to levy algorithm-centric companies like Uber–or Netflix or Amazon or Spotify–their effect on the economy, while real, is also amorphous. 

Let’s say now that driverless becomes realistic within a decade. This capability would remove Uber’s freelance drivers from behind the wheel. Because autonomous cars are considered robotics, they could be taxed, which would create more resources for education and social-welfare programs. But in that scenario, couldn’t Uber just delay its transition until a more politically advantageous moment? That would be a lose-lose outcome from a purely economic viewpoint, since companies in other countries would likely move forward with this innovation and outstrip its U.S.-based counterpart.

Even with actual robots, it’s not so simple. For instance: Are Roombas taxed? We don’t know if they’re actually eliminating jobs or just toil. I don’t have any good answer in regards to this problem, but I don’t know that anyone else, Gates included, currently has one either.

In a smart Financial Times piece, philosopher Luciano Floridi cuts to the heart of the matter, arguing that seemingly easy answers to the situation just birth far more thorny questions. An excerpt:

We are laying down foundations for the mature information societies of the near future, so we need new ethical frameworks to determine which forms of artificial agency we are happy to see flourishing in them. Against this background, the EU’s initiative provokes mixed feelings: excitement at the aspiration but disappointment at the implementation. There is too much fantasy and too little realism.

Consider two key issues: jobs and responsibilities. Robots replace human workers. Retraining unemployed people was never easy, but it is more challenging now that technological disruption is spreading so rapidly, widely and unpredictably. There will be many new forms of employment in other corners of the infosphere — think of how many people have opened virtual shops on eBay. But new and different skills will be needed. More education and a universal basic income may mitigate the impact of robotics on the labour market.

Society will need more resources. Unfortunately, robots do not pay taxes. And more profitable companies are unlikely to pay enough extra taxes to compensate for the loss of revenues. So robots cause a higher demand for taxpayers’ money and a lower supply of it.

How can one get out of this tailspin? The report correctly identifies the problem. But its original recommendation of a robo tax on companies that employ robots — a proposal that did not survive into the final text approved the parliament — may not be feasible, for what counts as a robot? It may also work as a disincentive to innovation.•

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“From The Start, Ineptitude And Tragedy Plagued The Venture”

February 22, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Speaking of bigoted public businessmen, not even the Andrew “Dice” Jackson currently in the White House could hold a taillight to Henry Ford, who was such a virulent anti-Semite that he actually published a newspaper to disseminate his hateful views. The Model-T magnate purchased the Dearborn Independent in 1919, and until it was sued out of existence eight years later, he helped to fan the flames of intolerance that eventually led to the greatest tragedy of the twentieth century. At least, though, he never became President.

Retro racism isn’t the only aspect of Ford’s worldview that’s ascendant once more. Like today’s Libertarian sea-steaders and deep-pocketed New Zealand zealots, the industrialist dreamed of skirting rules and regulations and building a haven according to his narrow worldview far from the madding crowd. Fordlândia, as he modestly called it, was established in 1928 in the Amazon Rainforest to create a cheap supply of rubber for automobile parts.

It wasn’t long before the locals hired for the project bristled under the incredibly severe lifestyle requirements laid down by the plutocrat. Open revolt began. These uprisings and poor planning ultimately forced the settlement into failure by 1934, when it was abandoned.

From Simon Romero in the New York Times:

From the start, ineptitude and tragedy plagued the venture, meticulously documented in a book by the historian Greg Grandin that I read on the boat as it made its way up the Tapajós. Disdainful of experts who could have advised them on tropical agriculture, Ford’s men planted seeds of questionable value and let leaf blight ravage the plantation.

Despite such setbacks, Ford constructed an American-style town, which he wanted inhabited by Brazilians hewing to what he considered American values.

Employees moved into clapboard bungalows — designed, of course, in Michigan — some of which are still standing. Streetlamps illuminated concrete sidewalks. Portions of these footpaths persist in the town, near red fire hydrants, in the shadow of decaying dance halls and crumbling warehouses.

“It turns out Detroit isn’t the only place where Ford produced ruins,” said Guilherme Lisboa, 67, the owner of a small inn called the Pousada Americana.

Beyond producing rubber, Ford, an avowed teetotaler, anti-Semite and skeptic of the Jazz Age, clearly wanted life in the jungle to be more transformative. His American managers forbade consumption of alcohol, while promoting gardening, square dancing and readings of the poetry of Emerson and Longfellow.

Going even further in Ford’s quest for utopia, so-called sanitation squads operated across the outpost, killing stray dogs, draining puddles of water where malaria-transmitting mosquitoes could multiply and checking employees for venereal diseases.

“With a surety of purpose and incuriosity about the world that seems all too familiar, Ford deliberately rejected expert advice and set out to turn the Amazon into the Midwest of his imagination,” Mr. Grandin, the historian, wrote in his account of the town.

These days, the ruins of Fordlândia stand as testament to the folly of trying to bend the jungle to the will of man.•

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“Throughout History, Only Massive, Violent Shocks…Proved Powerful Enough To Flatten Disparities In Income And Wealth”

February 21, 2017 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Was planning on stopping by my favorite bookstore on Wednesday or Thursday to pick up a copy of Walter Scheidel’s The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century. Just as an extra nudge, the author published an article on the topic today in The Atlantic. As you might have guessed from the subtitle, it is not a hopeful piece. “With the rarest of exceptions, great reductions in inequality were only ever brought forth in sorrow,” the author writes.

No candidate was particularly honest about the economy and wealth inequality in the recent Presidential election. In one debate during the Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton argued that the free markets had allowed post-war America to create an upward trajectory for those seeking a solid middle-class existence. Well, not exactly.

The free market was important, sure, but it can’t be forgotten that progressive tax rates reached 90% during the Eisenhower Administration, a figure even your average liberal today would say is draconian, and that money was redistributed via investment in those who had less, often through education, social welfare and infrastructure development. Without flourishes from both capitalism and socialism, the level playing field that inched into the 1970s never would have existed for more than two decades. And if you remove World War II from the equation, it never would have happened at all. 

Scheidel doesn’t relate his thoughts on the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era in this article, though hopefully he does in his book.

The opening:

Calls to make America great again hark back to a time when income inequality receded even as the economy boomed and the middle class expanded. Yet it is all too easy to forget just how deeply this newfound equality was rooted in the cataclysm of the world wars.

The pressures of total war became a uniquely powerful catalyst of equalizing reform, spurring unionization, extensions of voting rights, and the creation of the welfare state. During and after wartime, aggressive government intervention in the private sector and disruptions to capital holdings wiped out upper-class wealth and funneled resources to workers; even in countries that escaped physical devastation and crippling inflation, marginal tax rates surged upward. Concentrated for the most part between 1914 and 1945, this “Great Compression” (as economists call it) of inequality took several more decades to fully run its course across the developed world until the 1970s and 1980s, when it stalled and began to go into reverse.

This equalizing was a rare outcome in modern times but by no means unique over the long run of history. Inequality has been written into the DNA of civilization ever since humans first settled down to farm the land. Throughout history, only massive, violent shocks that upended the established order proved powerful enough to flatten disparities in income and wealth. They appeared in four different guises: mass-mobilization warfare, violent and transformative revolutions, state collapse, and catastrophic epidemics. Hundreds of millions perished in their wake, and by the time these crises had passed, the gap between rich and poor had shrunk.•

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“The Numbers Still Need To Be Credible”

February 21, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

The main reason I preferred Hillary Clinton to Bernie Sanders was simple math. 

In addition to his impossible pledge of America no longer having the highest incarceration rate of Western nations by the end of his first term, Sanders based his extraordinary spending plans on fanciful economic growth numbers (5.3%) that he couldn’t possibly deliver. That promise made Sanders policies seem less debt-heavy than they were, a dishonest way of doing business.

Although Donald Trump is promising a smaller if still out-of-reach 3.0-3.5%, he’s doing something the Vermont Senator would have never done: Ordering the Council of Economic Advisers to backfill all of its projections at his unrealistic rate. That intellectually deceptive gaming, he hopes, will be the smoke and mirrors he needs to cover the exorbitant cost of the tax cuts he plans for the nation’s highest earners. 

From Catherine Rampell at the Washington Post:

Astonishingly, the White House still hasn’t released details for any of the major economic initiatives Trump promised during the campaign (a “terrific” Obamacare replacement, a top-to-bottom tax overhaul, massive infrastructure investment). But thanks to recent leaks about the administration’s economic book-cooking, we at least know that whatever Trump ultimately proposes will be very, very expensive.

After the election, the Trump transition team began the long, arduous process of putting together the presidential budget. As is always the case, it worked with the (non-political) career staffers at the Council of Economic Advisers.

Normally this process starts by asking the CEA staff to estimate baseline economic growth under current policies. These professionals then build on this baseline to forecast how the president’s proposals will affect the overall economy, as well as budget deficits.

The end results are often more optimistic than what independent forecasters predict — the White House is factoring in new policies it believes are pro-growth, after all — but not wildly so. The numbers still need to be credible.

Like I said, that’s how things normally work. Not this time around.

As the Wall Street Journal first reported (and as I’ve independently confirmed through my own sources), the Trump transition team instead ordered CEA staffers to predict sustained economic growth of 3 to 3.5 percent. The staffers were then directed to backfill all the other numbers in their models to produce these growth rates.•

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“The Response In Previous Eras Was Quite Different”

February 21, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Nothing pleases me more than the smart-stupid tweets from the account of Jose Canseco, which serves as its own parody. The former baseball player and amateur chemist has, it would seem, recently become aware of the Second Machine Age and has addressed its arrival in the most dystopian 140-character bursts possible. 

In “No, Robots Aren’t Killing the American Dream,” the New York Times has a more sober Editorial Board take on the topic that gets a lot right, but it skates over some troubling points. The Times is correct in saying that robotics is good for a society’s wealth in the aggregate and that it should be a boon for all if robust public policy is done properly. But it makes that seem too simple.

“The response in previous eras was quite different,” the op-ed declares, suggesting yesteryear’s politicians were nimble with answers to the challenges that attended the Industrial Age. Not so. The rise of Labor Unions was born (quite literally) of blood, and the G.I. Bill, which the essay lauds, was labeled as “welfare” by those on the right who wanted to kill it. 

The path to a fairer country was always a jagged one, and Times also fails to mention, perhaps most importantly, that the pace of change is poised to be far faster now as robotics matures, a dynamic that will put further stress on even good policy. Additionally, thinking of automation in a vacuum neglects an important part of the contemporary Labor story, as Internet companies with few employees have been able to disrupt industries formerly full of steady middle-class work. That’s another ingredient missing from the twentieth-century’s struggles.

Yes, policy is the answer. No, it never was so simple in our capitalist society and won’t be now.

An excerpt:

And yet, the data indicate that today’s fear of robots is outpacing the actual advance of robots. If automation were rapidly accelerating, labor productivity and capital investment would also be surging as fewer workers and more technology did the work. But labor productivity and capital investment have actually decelerated in the 2000s.

While breakthroughs could come at any time, the problem with automation isn’t robots; it’s politicians, who have failed for decades to support policies that let workers share the wealth from technology-led growth.

The response in previous eras was quite different.

When automation on the farm resulted in the mass migration of Americans from rural to urban areas in the early decades of the 20th century, agricultural states led the way in instituting universal public high school education to prepare for the future. At the dawn of the modern technological age at the end of World War II, the G.I. Bill turned a generation of veterans into college graduates.

When productivity led to vast profits in America’s auto industry, unions ensured that pay rose accordingly.

Corporate efforts to keep profits high by keeping pay low were countered by a robust federal minimum wage and time-and-a-half for overtime.

Fair taxation of corporations and the wealthy ensured the public a fair share of profits from companies enriched by government investments in science and technology.•

“Global Integration Won’t Work If It Means Local Disintegration”

February 20, 2017 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

One troubling aspect of globalization is that those not adversely affected by the flow of international trade and actually helped by it (most Americans) are often opposed to a smaller world because of prejudice or some other irrational fear.

While financial concerns in the Rust Belt may have put Trump over the top (along with Russian hacking and FBI machinations), the bigoted President’s voters enjoy an overall higher household income than the average U.S. resident. Many were turning the lever for something else, and that was nationalism, which is sadly something most dear to many among us.

In an excellent Five Questions interview, Lawrence Summers discusses the strictly economic repercussions of globalization. He acknowledges that while he thinks the process still works in the big picture, our bumpy ride is just beginning, meaning we’ll need to strengthen “systems of social insurance,” something which seems to not be on the horizon in the U.S. Sooner or later, though, people will tire of bread and Kardashians.

An excerpt:

Question:

Finally, a title from last year. Richard Baldwin’s The Great Convergence (2016). Please give us a precis.

Lawrence Summers:

It’s the newest of the books and it’s a very powerful description of the newest phase of globalization. Two ideas about this newest phase of globalization that Baldwin emphasizes are hugely important.

The first is that we used to think very much in terms of trade in goods—some country exports washing machines, some other country exports dryers. Increasingly, goods are produced with global supply chains. Part of a good is produced in one country, part of a good is produced in another country and assembly takes place in a third country. So trade is part of the production process, whether it takes place within a multi-national corporation or between companies. Trade is part of production through supply chains.

The other idea that is emphasized is the role of trade and globalization in sharing knowledge. Baldwin uses a very powerful analogy. He says it’s one thing for a soccer team in one country to play against a soccer team in another country. It’s a very different thing if the coach in one country starts to coach teams in many countries and therefore promotes convergence. Baldwin argues that the second type of openness may be more problematic than the first. And, increasingly, trade is taking that form.

Question:

Please explain the challenges to politics and economic policy presented by this “great convergence” he describes.

Lawrence Summers:

The challenge is that there are likely to be more winners associated with global convergence, but there are also likely to be more losers and more potential volatility. In this latest stage of globalization, ideas can be traded and support production elsewhere, leading to less identification of entrepreneurship with location. The example I like to give is when George Eastman invented the instamatic camera, he got rich and Rochester, New York, where he founded his company, had a strong middle class for several generations. When Steve Jobs made equally powerful innovations, involving the iPhone and the iPad, the result was that he got very, very rich and there was an increase in the demand for labor globally, primarily in Asia, with no similarly broad increase in local wealth.

Question:

In recent years, you have been sounding an alarm about the role of globalization in contributing to local dislocations and inequality. What caused your worries and what are your solutions for globalization going forward.

Lawrence Summers:

I’ve said, for some years, that global integration won’t work if it means local disintegration. Unfortunately, that proved prescient.•

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“Today’s Apocalypse Will Be Unevenly Distributed”

February 20, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

  • The meek were promised they would inherit the earth, but policies change.
  • Trump’s Administration, fueled by Exxon and coal, is eager to deregulate as many environmental protections as possible and embrace what will be the death of us. The willful ignorance of the ruling party may not kill off all of humanity–not immediately, anyway–but you better have a large bankroll or be especially lucky if you want a chance at persisting in life.
  • I wrote last month on Evan Osnos’ New Yorker article about members of the financial elite planning on escaping a large-scale calamity, readying themselves for the Big Withdrawal from a disaster that will envelop their less-well-funded friends. Perhaps they’ll relocate away from the worst of a heating planet or maybe the wars that will likely attend higher mercury. Peter Thiel has a backup plan if the sociopath he enabled into the White House is the final nail in our coffin, but for most there will be no avoiding the creeping disaster of climate change.
  • It’s the worst possible moment for the most destructive American political uprising in memory. The earth is cracked and so are the people.

In “The Slow Confiscation of Everything,” an excellent Baffler essay, Laurie Penny analyzes how the meaning of end-of-world scenarios have changed through the ages and the political undertones of the current ruinous impulses among the masses. 

An excerpt:

This month, in a fascinating article for The New Yorker, Evan Osnos interviewed several multi-millionaires who are stockpiling weapons and building private bunkers in anticipation of what preppers glibly call “SHTF”—the moment when “Shit Hits The Fan.” Osnos observes that the reaction of Silicon Valley Svengalis, for example, is in stark contrast to previous generations of the super-rich, who saw it as a moral duty to give back to their community in order to stave off ignorance, want and social decline. Family names like Carnegie and Rockefeller are still associated with philanthropy in the arts and sciences. These people weren’t just giving out of the goodness of their hearts, but out of the sense that they too were stakeholders in the immediate future.

Cold War leaders came to the same conclusions in spite of themselves. The thing about Mutually Assured Destruction is that it is, well, mutual—like aid, or understanding, or masturbation. The idea is that the world explodes, or doesn’t, for everyone. How would the Cuban Missile Crisis have gone down, though, if the negotiating parties had known, with reasonable certainty, that they and their families would be out of reach of the fallout? 

Today’s apocalypse will be unevenly distributed. It’s not the righteous who will be saved, but the rich—at least for a while. The irony is that the tradition of apocalyptic thinking—religious, revolutionary or both—has often involved the fantasy of the destruction of class and caste. For many millenarian thinkers—including the puritans in whose pinched shoes the United States is still sneaking about—the rapture to come would be a moment of revelation, where all human sin would be swept away. Money would no longer matter. Poor and privileged alike would be judged on the riches of their souls. That fantasy is extrapolated in almost every modern disaster movie—the intrepid survivors are permitted to negotiate a new-made world in which all that matters is their grit, their courage, and their moral fiber. 

A great many modern political currents, especially the new right and the alt-right, are swept along by the fantasy of a great civilizational collapse which will wash away whichever injustice most bothers you, whether that be unfettered corporate influence, women getting above themselves, or both—any and every humiliation heaped on the otherwise empty tables of men who had expected more from their lives, economic humiliations that are served up and spat back out as racism, sexism, and bigotry. For these men, the end of the world sounds like a pretty good deal. More and more, it is only by imagining the end of the world that we can imagine the end of capitalism in its current form. This remains true even when it is patently obvious that civilizational collapse might only be survivable by the elite.•

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“I Was Glad The Next Morning To Sit Down And See It In The Newspaper”

February 19, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Newspapers could simply fade in America, unable to make the post-print transition, but what if they’re able to turn a profit from a much smaller readership and sustain themselves, even thrive, in that fashion?

If companies can monetize this tinier base without touching the masses, that could lead to the present polarization becoming permanently entrenched, a battle between those largely informed and those not nearly. You don’t have to ban books if most people aren’t reading, and you needn’t censor the news if enough eyes are closed.

On his blog, journalist Clive Davis posted a pertinent quote from Alistair Cooke, who wondered in 1952 how fascism would be received when newsprint was no longer prominent, when a Hitler wouldn’t even have to bother to wrest control of the presses. An excerpt:

We don’t know yet what the televising of the conventions will do to American politics, to elections, to the convention system itself. Some of us fear what one good demagogue with a fine voice and a rousing profile might do to the tyranny of popular government…. The only time that I ever saw Adolf Hitler was at a big rally outside the Brauhaus in Munich in 1931. I was a student who had only just heard of him. I got jammed in there and I watched him and soon felt my heart begin to pound. He was – all morals, politics aside – a superb performer. When he got to his peroration, he ended on a practically meaningless sentence. He shouted, “It is five minutes to twelve.” Nobody knew in his head what Hitler meant. But they felt they had been slapped on the back and a sword put in their hands. Hitler paid a direct physical compliment to the nervous system. I had to fight my frightened way out over fainting women and cheering, sobbing men.

I was glad the next morning to sit down and see it in the newspaper and know that most Germans could sit back and read, and judge the speech unmoved, unseduced by the physical experience of the thing itself. The next Hitler will not suffer from this restraint.•

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A Note From 1934 About Fascist Mass Weddings

February 19, 2017 in Old Print Articles, Politics | Permalink

From the February 11, 1934 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“If The Business Demands Immediate Action, That’s One Thing. If It’s Your Conscience, That’s Another.”

February 17, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

“You’re far better off affecting policy if you’re in the room” is a true statement in U.S. politics if we’re talking about your average conservative, liberal or moderate elected official, but it doesn’t extend to this moment in our history, with a reckless, dangerous, kleptocratic and, perhaps, traitorous sociopath in the White House.

In this case, it’s better to be outside the room, refusing to lend your reputation to an aspiring autocrat and raising your voice in protest, especially if you have a giant megaphone like Travis Kalanick or Elon Musk. The former did the morally correct thing in resigning from Trump’s economic advisory council, while the latter still sees this un-American Administration as a game he can officiate.

In a jaw-dropping BuzzFeed article, William Alden reports on political consultant Bradley Tusk’s work advising Silicon Valley titans on how to deal with a deeply irregular White House, encouraging them to ignore their consciences at all costs and do what’s best for the bottom line. It’s not shocking there are people so amoral they can’t see beyond business as usual even in these desperate times, but it is surprising to hear someone so publicly announce such a dicey position.

An excerpt:

Last week, he sent a memo to clients outlining a strategy for dealing with Trump, advising them to take a deep breath and think before engaging in political protest. Taking a stand against Trump might be the right choice, Tusk said, but only if it makes business sense.

“If the business demands immediate action, that’s one thing. If it’s your conscience, that’s another,” he wrote in the memo. Pressure from the media or even from employees, he added, wouldn’t necessarily be a sufficient reason to speak out, especially if it would create other problems.

The memo came just days after Tusk’s flagship client, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, resigned from President Trump’s economic advisory council. More than 200,000 Uber customers had deleted their accounts, according to The New York Times, after the ride-hailing company was accused of trying to undermine a taxi strike over Trump’s immigration order. Uber also came under pressure from employees and drivers, many of whom are immigrants. Kalanick’s resignation from the advisory council contrasted with the decision of another tech titan, Elon Musk, to stay there.

“This is one of those cases where the symbolism and the emotion on both sides of it took everything in such an incredible direction that people like Travis, like Elon, who are pretty well intentioned, and are saying, ‘O.K., let’s see if we can help things,’ got put in a really, really impossible position,” Tusk told BuzzFeed News. “And they’re handling it in different ways. But that’s kind of why I wrote this memo.”

Tusk said Kalanick made the right decision in this case, but he expressed regret that it had to be that way. “I think Travis joined the council for the right reasons,” Tusk said. “You’re far better off affecting policy if you’re in the room.”•

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“That Can Be Deeply Destabilizing”

February 17, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

 

Another repercussion of having a Constitution-shredding sociopath in the Oval Office is the possibility that a foundation will be laid for a long-term bifurcated government, with the executive branch and the intelligence community constantly angling to undermine one another. 

The concern of a “Deep State” in Washington or worries of the White House operating a shadow National Security Agency speak to the fathomless rift orchestrated by a deeply polarizing President. Intel leaks about the Administration’s involvement in Russia have become a deluge, spies are reportedly withholding information from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for fear they’ll be shared with the Kremlin and Trump has threatened a review of the intelligence community to be spearheaded by one of his billionaire buddies.

Agents anonymously leaking the truth may be the best bet to prevent the end of American democracy, but in the long term (should there be one) the intelligence community being put in a position where it has to go rogue could have serious ramifications. As Karl Rove said: Elections have consequences.

From “As Leaks Multiply, Fears of a ‘Deep State’ in America,” by Amanda Taub and Max Fisher of the New York Times:

Though the deep state is sometimes discussed as a shadowy conspiracy, it helps to think of it instead as a political conflict between a nation’s leader and its governing institutions.

That can be deeply destabilizing, leading both sides to wield state powers like the security services or courts against one another, corrupting those institutions in the process.

In Egypt, for instance, the military and security services actively undermined Mohamed Morsi, the country’s democratically elected Islamist president, contributing to the upheaval that culminated in his ouster in a 2013 coup.

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has battled the deep state by consolidating power for himself and, after a failed coup attempt last year, conducting vast purges.

Though American democracy is resilient enough to resist such clashes, early hints of a conflict can be tricky to spot because some push and pull between a president and his or her agencies is normal.

In 2009, for instance, military officials used leaks to pressure the White House over what it saw as the minimal number of troops necessary to send to Afghanistan.

Leaks can also be an emergency brake on policies that officials believe could be ill-advised or unlawful, such as George W. Bush-era programs on warrantless wiretapping and the Abu Ghraib detention facility in Iraq.

“You want these people to be fighting like cats and dogs over what the best policy is, airing their views, making their case and then, when it’s over, accepting the decision and implementing it,” said Elizabeth N. Saunders, a George Washington University political scientist. “That’s the way it’s supposed to work.”

“Leaking is not new,” she said, “but this level of leaking is pretty unprecedented.”•

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Old Print Article: Norbert Wiener Believes Russia or Robots (Or Both) May Ruin The U.S. (1950)

February 16, 2017 in Old Print Articles, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Near the mid-point of last century, cyberneticist and mathematician Norbert Wiener worried that either the Kremlin or computers–perhaps both–would be the ruination of America. In Trump’s time, his fears may be realized.

A Russian spy ship is now patrolling the East Coast as a new Administration deeply linked to Vladimir Putin stands idly by, just days after it was reported that Trump campaign officials had constant contact with the autocracy throughout an election that was hacked by our adversary. 

Meanwhile, the new President and his anti-science inner circle are manufacturing fetishists who will invest in yesterday’s jobs at the expense of tomorrow’s high-tech future (robotics included). That could leave China, another despotic nemesis, in a position of predominance. That scenario becomes especially likely if isolationist tendencies and trade wars reduce our soft power abroad.

That’s not exactly how Wiener’s apocalyptic vision unfolded, but the same end would be reached.

In an article in the August 18, 1950 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, the scientist explained how the “Automatic Age” might be a mixed blessing.

“It Was Brilliantly Stimulating”

February 16, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Drain the swamp was the most obvious lie of the campaign that landed a kleptocrat in the White House. Did his supporters actually believe this line or was its acceptance just a rationalization to cover up other motivations?

I blogged last year about Alexandra Suich’s The Economist 1843 article which reported on the eye-popping conspicuous consumption of deep-pocketed Silicon Valley titans, which was an echo of the outrageous displays of wealth of Wall Street wizards just prior to the 2008 economic collapse that laid so many low. Especially egregious was Blackstone Group CEO Steve Schwarzman’s vomit-inducing 60th birthday party, which the Trumps attended, of course. The exclamation point at the end of the sentence occurred later when Schwarzman compared Obama raising taxes on the highest earners to Hitler invading Poland.

A decade later, with Schwarzman now chairing Trump’s Strategic and Policy Forum, his big 7-0 was welcomed with another circus-like bash replete with Gwen Stefani, fireworks, acrobats and even camels. The swamp may not be drained but the desert is a little barer.

In Amanda L. Gordon’s Bloomberg piece on the bash, Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital said, “It’s nice to have an evening where everybody’s happy, harmonious and upbeat.” Well, not everybody, with much of the camel-less country in the greatest state of unrest in 50 years.

The opening:

There were camels in the sand, a gondolier in the pool and a giant birthday cake in the shape of a Chinese temple — with Gwen Stefani on hand to help sing Happy Birthday at midnight.

Steve Schwarzman’s 70th birthday party in Palm Beach, Florida, on Saturday was another memorable affair, according to guests who attended. (The event was closed to the media.)

“You walked into what used to be the tennis court, and there was a balcony with trapeze artists,” said Larry Gagosian, the art dealer. “The level of detail and creativity, it was extraordinary. Steve loves parties.”

Guests said they were impressed by the production overseen by Schwarzman’s wife, Christine Hearst Schwarzman, and the event-design firm Van Wyck & Van Wyck, whose clients have included Madonna, Calvin Klein and David Koch for his own 70th.

Ivanka and Jared

“It was brilliantly stimulating,” said Koch, the day after Schwarzman’s party. “You learned a lot about Asian theater. There were acrobats, Mongolian soldiers and two camels. It was a little bit of everything.”

The guest list also was a little bit of everything, reflecting Schwarzman’s vast personal, professional, philanthropic and, increasingly, White House connections as the billionaire chief executive officer of Blackstone Group.

Representing President Trump’s sphere were daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner and incoming cabinet members Steve Mnuchin, Wilbur Ross and Elaine Chao. Bank bosses included Jes Staley of Barclays and Michael Corbat of Citigroup. Investing titans Henry Kravis, David Rubenstein and Howard Marks paid respects.

Philanthropic recipients and leaders abounded. Olympians, whose training Schwarzman sponsored, mingled. So did Susan George, executive director of the Inner-City Scholarship Fund, and Nigel Thrift, executive director of the Schwarzman Scholars program.

And for some glamour: Donatella Versace, Sloan Barnett in Yves Saint Laurent, Jean Pigozzi who came up from Panama, Nicolas Berggruen, the Hiltons, Philippe Dauman and Francois Delattre, France’s representative to the United Nations.•

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“Anti-Government Groups Have Racked Up A Death Toll On Par With That Of Islamist Extremists”

February 15, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The problem with pointing out that the Trump Administration wants to severely shift focus on Muslims involved in terrorism to the point of ignoring domestic radical right-wing and anti-government groups is that it’s not an oversight.

These are some of the very people, often white nationalists, who most ardently supported Trump’s bigoted campaign, and it’s not likely that the self-avowed tough-on-crime politician will turn on these militias. That will put law enforcement officers, government officials and non-white folks in general in harm’s way. Perhaps an outcry from police groups can bring greater light on what could be a lethal decision?

From an article by Emily Tamkin, Robbie Gramer and Molly O’Toole of Foreign Policy:

Such a shift would also downplay the threat from other forms of terrorism. Far-right and anti-government groups plan and carry out domestic attacks at a greater frequency than foreign terrorist groups, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit focused on advocacy and civil rights. There are nearly 1,000 such groups in the United States, such as the Crusaders, which counts among its membership three men in Kansas who plotted in October 2016 to bomb an apartment complex where Somalis live. The SPLC noted an increase in hate crimes in the month following Trump’s election.

And since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, anti-government groups have racked up a death toll on par with that of Islamist extremists, according to New America, a think tank, which keeps a database on terrorist incidents. Until the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, in 2016, in which a New York man pledging allegiance to the Islamic State killed 49 people, far-right extremism caused more deaths in the United States than did jihad.

“The trend lines look very similar,” David Sterman, a terrorism analyst with New America, told FP.

According to a 2015 survey of nearly 400 law enforcement agencies at the federal, state, and local levels, authorities considered anti-government violent extremists, rather than radicalized Muslims, to be “the most severe threat of political violence that they face.”

And that threat may be growing. The former U.S. counterterrorism official said recent intelligence briefings showed an uptick in domestic threats associated with white nationalists and anti-government groups. Police officers are being threatened by these groups as well, the official said — and are even being infiltrated by them, according to a classified FBI counterterrorism policy guide from April 2015.•

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“Outside The Fetishists’ Fantasies, It Will Not Produce The Desired Effect”

February 15, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

In handicapping what kind of President Trump would be just before he was inaugurated, Brad DeLong did not consider “Russian traitor,” which now might be the most obvious choice.

The economic historian did write these chilling words about the Silvio-style kleptocracy that seemed poised to unfold: “Italy lost a decade of economic growth, I think, because of Berlusconi.” If Trump survives the corrupt and perhaps treasonous morass he’s engulfed in, America could be headed down the same sinkhole, which would be awful for us and wonderful for China and other autocracies.

Already have written that in addition to various high-tech fields, America should invest in creating positions that focus on maintenance of many kinds: health, environment, infrastructure. The demand is certainly evident. In the Financial Times, Martin Sandbu argues the new Administration’s manufacturing fetish is regressive, especially in a society heading deeper into automation, while the “caring industry” is the future.

An excerpt:

The economic nationalism of President Trump and Messrs Navarro and Bannon can be described as Germany-envy. In those manufacturing powers, they see countries that have fought to hold on to the good, manly jobs that validate the status of the native working class. Like so often with machismo, the envy is rooted in insecurity — a feeling of inadequacy compared with the perceived strength sported by these economies. Since export surpluses cannot be enjoyed by all countries (unlike broader gains from trade), manufacturing fetishism leads logically to a zero-sum view of trade policy. It entails an attempt to displace the current surplus of manufacturing producers. Thus, in the context of a Germany-envying inferiority complex, the desire to repatriate global supply chains, limit imports and boost manufacturing makes sense.

But, outside the fetishists’ fantasies, it will not produce the desired effect. First, manufacturing machismo itself is a handicap when it comes to grasping the opportunities for a thriving economy. By far the largest number of jobs to be created in the US over the next decade will be in services, in particular the caring professions. 

Factory fetishists might retort that it is this development they want to oppose by resurrecting factory employment. But this runs headlong into a second obstacle. Regardless of trade, automation is reducing the need for manufacturing jobs everywhere.•

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“We Begin A New Journey That Will Last For Decades To Come”

February 14, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

The United Arab Emirates announced it will build the first city on Mars by 2117, and I would also like to announce I will build the first city on Mars by 2117. Why not? Plenty of wiggle room there.

While the ETA date is probably a lot more realistic than Elon Musk’s proposed mad dash into space, the UAE really wants to use the project to create an international coalition that can help advance science in the region and educate their next several generations of students and workers for employment in the technological and information sectors, not a bad plan for enjoying continued wealth tomorrow in a world that wants to wean itself off of oil. 

From Gulfnews:

The scientific initiative will first be implemented by an Emirati scientific team, and will eventually expand to include international scientists and researchers that will run in parallel with the coordination of human research efforts in the field of exploring and inhabiting Mars.

“The landing of people on other planets has been a longtime dream for humans. Our aim is that the UAE will spearhead international efforts to make this dream a reality,” said Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid.

He emphasised that the project prioritises the building of scientific capacities of Emiratis, and transforming our universities into research centres, thus consolidating the passion of leadership in our generations to come.

Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid said that the UAE is ranked among the most important nine countries in the world that invest in space science, and our goal is to accelerate human researches in this field.

“Human ambitions have no limits, and whoever looks into the scientific breakthroughs in the current century believes that human abilities can realise the most important human dream,” he added.

“The new project is a seed that we are planting today, and we expect the next generations to reap its fruits,” Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid said.

Shaikh Mohammad Bin Zayed said that the short-term goal is to develop the capacities and skills of Emiratis. “The 2117 Mars initiative is a long-term project, which will first help develop our education, universities and research centres that will empower young Emiratis to enter all disciplines of scientific research fields,” said Shaikh Mohammad Bin Zayed.

“The findings of the project will be available to all international research institutes,” he said, and added that the research outcomes will contribute to aspects of transportation, energy and food as part of the Mars project to achieve scientific breakthroughs that contribute to developing human life on Earth.

“The UAE has become part of dynamic human scientific efforts to explore space and making scientific contributions to human knowledge,” Shaikh Mohammad Bin Zayed said.

“With the launch of this project, we begin a new journey that will last for decades to come, and it will speed up human endeavors to explore other planets,” he added.•

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“Kushner Was Defensive About The Executive Order That Temporarily Barred Muslim Immigrants And Refugees”

February 14, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

While the headline of Emily Jane Fox’s Vanity Fair “Hive” article “Jared Kushner Emerges as Trump’s True Believer” is misleading because he always was just that, it goes a good way toward being a corrective for an earlier piece she wrote which perplexingly distanced Ivanka Trump and her spouse from the chaos and bigotry they supported into the White House. 

It may be difficult for some to accept that Kushner, who was raised in an Orthodox Jewish background, would be so simpatico with the white nationalists and anti-Semites central to the campaign’s success (and now the Administration), but that’s exactly who Kushner is. He isn’t a mitigator but a co-conspirator, not especially bright and seriously lacking in decency.

An excerpt:

Both Bannon and Kushner have tried to articulate their improbable mutual affection. In explaining the unlikely relationship between himself (an orthodox Jew whose grandparents survived the Holocaust), and Bannon (who ran the alt-right Web site Breitbart News, which has published anti-Semitic comments), Kushner defended his colleague’s character in an interview with Forbes. “What I’ve seen from working together with him was somebody who did not fit the description that people are pushing on him. I choose to judge him based on my experience and seeing the job he’s done, as opposed to what other people are saying about him.” Bannon had a similar take. “If you’re in a foxhole with him, and fighting with him, you’re a brother, and he will defend you nonstop,” Bannon told New York Magazine.

Nevertheless, a perception existed during the campaign and transition that Kushner was a moderating voice to Bannon’s nationalistic agenda. Kushner, after all, came from a major Democratic family. He hosted fundraisers for Corey Booker. He privately reassured his friends and business leaders in his orbit that his father-in-law and Trump’s team would pull back from some of the extreme rhetoric that they peddled on the trail once they got into the West Wing. As one source close to Kushner described to me last month, Kushner was thought of as the “secure line” as a result—someone whom moderates could call in order to be heard by the president and to hear what the president really planned to do behind all that political bombast.

But now, a month into his new job in the West Wing, Kushner appears to have become a true believer in Bannon’s agenda. Several sources told me that Kushner was defensive about the executive order that temporarily barred Muslim immigrants and refugees. The longtime friend said that when he pointed out that refugees had not, in fact, been responsible for any of the terror attacks on U.S. soil, Kushner, he said, answered by saying that that was not true.

The source close to the Trump administration explained that Kushner has “always been far more defensive of Donald and their policies than the general public has believed.•

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“The Point Is To Bring Down The Republic”

February 13, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

It’s appalling that basically sane and intelligent people like James Baker still can’t discern the grave danger American democracy is now facing. Not even the removal of the word “Jewish” from the Holocaust Remembrance Day announcement, an attempt at a Muslim ban and repeated attacks on the judicial branch and press have awakened them to this reality.

In an interview in the international edition of Süddeutsche Zeitung that is required reading, Matthias Kolb questions Yale historian Timothy Snyder about the fascist threat to the U.S. that is the Trump Administration, which doesn’t want only to rule but to also destroy the rule of law. History, decency and liberty are also on the chopping block.

While Snyder’s spirits have been buoyed by the early resistance, he believes we don’t have much time to save the Republic, especially with a non-responsive legislative branch. “What happens in the next few weeks is very important,” he warns.

An excerpt:

Question:

When [Steve] Bannon calls the press the main “opposition party“ that should make everyone concerned. This is not only intended to cheer up Trump supporters.

Timothy Snyder:

When you say that the press is the opposition, than you are advocating a regime change in the United States. When I am a Republican and say the Democrats are the opposition, we talk about our system. If I say the government is one party and the press is the opposition, then I talk about an authoritarian state. This is regime change.

Question:

Last week Trump called those who take part in demonstrations “thugs” and “paid protestors”. This doesn’t show respect for First Amendment right, it sounds more like Putin.

Timothy Snyder:

That is exactly what the Russian leadership does. The idea is to marginalize the people who actually represent the core values of the Republic. The point is to bring down the Republic. You can disagree with them. but once you say they have no right to protest or start lying about them, you are in effect saying: “We want a regime where this is not possible anymore.“  When the president says that it means that the executive branch is engaged in regime change towards an authoritarian regime without the rule of law. You are getting people used to this transition, you are inviting them into the process by asking them to have contempt for their fellow citizens who are defending the Republic. You are also seducing people into a world of permanent internet lying and way from their own experiences with other people. Getting out to protest, this is something real and I would say something patriotic. Part of the new authoritarianism is to get people to prefer fiction and inaction to reality and action. People sit in their chairs, read the tweet and repeat the clichés: “yes, they are thugs” instead of “it is normal to get out in the streets for what you believe.” He is trying to teach people a new behavior: You just sit right where you are, read what I say and nod your head. That is the psychology of regime change. …

Question:

On Facebook there are a lot of countdowns: 3 years, 11 months, 1 week until President Trump’s first term is over. How is your mood, do you see hope?  

Timothy Snyder:

The marches were very encouraging. These were quite possibly the largest demonstrations in the history of the US, just in sheer numbers on one single day. That sort of initiative has to continue.  The constitution is worth saving, the rule of law is worth saving, democracy is worth saving, but these things can and will be lost if everyone waits around for someone else. If we want encouragement out of the Oval Office, we will not get it. We are not getting encouragement thus far from Republicans. They have good reasons to defend the republic but thus far they are not doing so, with a few exceptions.  You want to end on a positive note, I know; but I think things have tightened up very fast, we have at most a year to defend the Republic, perhaps less. What happens in the next few weeks is very important.•

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“It’s Going To Be Necessary”

February 13, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Elon Musk was saying things again today. He likes to say things.

The technologist and F.O.T. (Friend of Trump), who has completely misunderstood this political moment and either doesn’t comprehend or doesn’t care that he’s been permanently lowered in many eyes, spoke out on the topics of Guaranteed Basic Income and cyborgism.

Musk is in favor of both, thinking the first will be necessary for society to survive the rough patch of Digital Age transformation, and the second will be required for human beings to survive at all as Artificial Intelligence become more profound. Of course, even if the latter is needed, the melding of human and machine would create something that isn’t exactly human as we know it, so we wouldn’t truly survive.

At any rate, if GBI and human-machine interface become realities, I would hope someone with a more developed sense of morality than Musk is leading the way. A person born in an Apartheid nation should know better than to cozy up to an Administration that would like to turn America into one.

Two excerpts follow.

From Fast Company:

“There will be fewer and fewer jobs that a robot cannot do better. I want to be clear. These are not things I wish will happen; these are things I think probably will happen. And if my assessment is correct and they probably will happen, than we have to think about what are we going to do about it? I think some kind of universal basic income is going to be necessary. The output of goods and services will be extremely high. With automation there will come abundance. Almost everything will get very cheap. I think we’ll end up doing universal basic income. It’s going to be necessary.•

From CNBC:

Billionaire Elon Musk is known for his futuristic ideas and his latest suggestion might just save us from being irrelevant as artificial intelligence (AI) grows more prominent.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO said on Monday that humans need to merge with machines to become a sort of cyborg.

“Over time I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence,” Musk told an audience at the World Government Summit in Dubai, where he also launched Tesla in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
 
“It’s mostly about the bandwidth, the speed of the connection between your brain and the digital version of yourself, particularly output.”
 
Musk explained what he meant by saying that computers can communicate at “a trillion bits per second,” while humans, whose main communication method is typing with their fingers via a mobile device, can do about 10 bits per second.

In an age when AI threatens to become widespread, humans would be useless, so there’s a need to merge with machines, according to Musk.

“Some high bandwidth interface to the brain will be something that helps achieve a symbiosis between human and machine intelligence and maybe solves the control problem and the usefulness problem,” Musk explained.

The technologists proposal would see a new layer of a brain able to access information quickly and tap into artificial intelligence.•

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“Stick To The Facts, Repeat Them Boldly And Frequently”

February 12, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Trump Adviser Stephen Miller is one of the true ideologues of the Administration, a dweeb eager to encourage a demagogue’s worst impulses.

In a 2016 Politico profile by Julie Ioffe, Miller said of his liberal high school that “a number of students lacked basic English skills,” and commented about his alma mater Duke that “many professors had radical beliefs and engaged in outrageous behavior.”

Now he’s the willing marionette of an Administration in which most seem to lack basic English skills, have radical beliefs and engage in outrageous behavior–a Pinocchio to Gestapo-ish Geppettos.

What’s worst about the bald-faced lies he offers on TV news shows as he did over the weekend is they’re meant to confer upon the occupant of the Oval Office an unimpeachable authoritarian status. “The President’s powers here are beyond question,” he commented in immigration on ABC’s This Week, trying to cut a path for the Simon Cowell-ish strongman to do what he pleases with no dissent brooked.

In a smart Vox interview conducted by Alexander Bisley, Garry Kasparov reminds that the “U.S. President shouldn’t need to speak like a tyrant.” He also offers tips on how to stop the birth of dictatorship in America based on Russia’s descent under Putin. An excerpt:

Alexander Bisley:

What can Trump opponents do?

Garry Kasparov:

You have to reinforce the institutions, steadily and legally, and work through them. If you go too far, and react violently, it will only play into the hands of the Trump administration, which is already portraying all opposition as paid agitators and other ridiculousness straight from Putin’s playbook. When I talk about these things on Twitter or Facebook, I immediately receive a bunch of “Here too!” responses from people living in other authoritarian regimes, from Venezuela to Vietnam.

Riots will only frighten the “moderate middle” you will need as allies sooner or later. If Trump convinces them with lies that the opposition is controlled by dangerous thugs, you’re going to have eight years of Trump and another of his kind to follow. Stick to the facts, repeat them boldly and frequently, so his supporters see the would-be emperor has no bathrobe!

The courts are important, but things won’t really change unless enough Republicans start to see Trump as a liability to their fundraising and reelection chances. That could be quite soon if he can’t fulfill his many campaign promises. Making him look like a loser is crucial. Either the GOP will turn on him or he will be chastened and more likely to compromise. If a demagogue succeeds in claiming credit for wins and scapegoating his enemies for losses, he’s very hard to stop.

Trump will continue to push the limits, to find the cracks in the system that constrains him. America is finding out the hard way that much of its government is based on tradition and the honor system, and not explicit laws. There will be a crisis every day.

Everyone must do what they can themselves and not wait for others to act. If you want change, you have to initiate action, even at a personal level that might seem insignificant. As the motto of Soviet dissidents went: “Do what you must, and so be it.”•

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“Changing The System…Was Not A Question Of Contesting And Polemicizing, But Of Blowing Everything Up”

February 11, 2017 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Steve Bannon seems like one of those voracious if prejudiced consumers of media who might be persuaded that ancient aliens helped Hitler become Führer. He has read widely not to debunk his crackpot theories and deep-seated bigotry but to collect fuel for them. The Chief Strategist reminds me of a line from the jacket of Blaise Cendrars’ Moravagine: “He is a monster, a man in pursuit of a theorem that will justify his every desire.”

Until recently, I never connected him to a 2004 film I reviewed called In the Face of Evil: Reagan’s War in Word and Deed, which is one of the more deranged, heavy-handed and paranoid pieces of propaganda I’ve ever seen, Riefenstahl included. I remember thinking then that the director must be a unhinged person badly in need of mental help. Until the last five years or so, I watched 250 to 300 films a year during my entire adult life, and because of the quantity I don’t remember many of them, even some good ones, but I still can vividly recall how delusional and chilling this work was.

When not busy making his pseudo-documentaries, Bannon was a decade ago trying to sell virtual gold for real money, then peddled tin-pot despotism at Breitbart, and now he’s trying his hand at political alchemy, a white nationalist in the White House, serving as a Rasputin or Alexander Dugin to Trump. As Jason Horowitz of the New York Times reports, one of the Oval Office insider’s influences is the monocled Italian philosopher Julius Evola, who swayed Mussolini and embraced Hitler, and now serves as a hero to Internet-friendly neo-Nazis.

An excerpt:

Born in 1898, Evola liked to call himself a baron and in later life sported a monocle in his left eye.

A brilliant student and talented artist, he came home after fighting in World War I and became a leading exponent in Italy of the Dada movement, which, like Evola, rejected the church and bourgeois institutions.

Evola’s early artistic endeavors gave way to his love of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, and he developed a worldview with an overriding animosity toward the decadence of modernity. Influenced by mystical works and the occult, Evola began developing an idea of the individual’s ability to transcend his reality and “be unconditionally whatever one wants.”

Under the influence of René Guénon, a French metaphysicist and convert to Islam, Evola in 1934 published his most influential work, “The Revolt Against the Modern World,” which cast materialism as an eroding influence on ancient values.

It viewed humanism, the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation and the French Revolution all as historical disasters that took man further away from a transcendental perennial truth.

Changing the system, Evola argued, was “not a question of contesting and polemicizing, but of blowing everything up.”

Evola’s ideal order, Professor Drake wrote, was based on “hierarchy, caste, monarchy, race, myth, religion and ritual.”

That made a fan out of Benito Mussolini.•

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