What is Really Behind Memorial Day
Category: philosophy & politics
If You Like Steely Dan…
It seems the younger generation has rediscovered Steely Dan.
Just in time for my good friend, Jon Zeeman, to release an original song in their style, with his Steely Dan Tribute band – The Expanding Man.
Now there is a whole book about Steely Dan’s rediscovery by a new generation that is covered in this Atlantic review.
In hindsight, Steely Dan’s Zelig-like presence in sample-based hip-hop looks like a harbinger of the band’s current renaissance: A duo that was one of the most polarizing acts in rock even at its peak, in the 1970s, has lately acquired an army of new fans, many of them remarkably young.
Pappademas tries out several theories to explain the Danaissance’s timing. The most compelling of them is the idea that their songs, full of gallows humor and wry disillusionment, resonate with a generation raised on crashing economies and a climate crisis. “Donald and Walter’s songs of monied decadence, druggy disconnection, slow-motion apocalypse, and self-destructive escapism seemed satirically extreme way back when; now they seem prophetic,” he writes. “We are all Steely Dan characters now.”
For those weary of the “rockism”-versus-“poptimism” debates of the past couple of decades—and who isn’t?—Steely Dan offers a welcome escape from the reductive opposition between rock as Promethean self-expression and pop as a big-tent pleasure center. The band didn’t mind being dismissed by the most doctrinaire rock partisans: “soulless, and by its calculated nature antithetical to what rock should be,” as a Rolling Stone review of Aja summed up the brief against them. At the same time, Steely Dan’s music is unapologetically snobbish, flouting the “everything is great” ethos of extreme poptimism.
A band that charts an idiosyncratic path ends up acquiring an eclectic audience, this one united by a tenacious devotion to the work of a pair of artists who were themselves nothing if not devoted.
Today’s Jury will vote to Convict
Across multiple national surveys sampling more than 12,000 people, we have found that a majority of Americans, more than 60 percent, consider false acquittals and false convictions to be equally bad outcomes. Most people are not Blackstonians. They are unwilling to err on the side of letting the guilty go free to avoid convicting the innocent. Indeed, a sizeable minority viewed false acquittals as worse than false convictions; this group is willing to convict multiple innocent persons to avoid letting one guilty person go free. You would not want those people on your jury if you were charged with a crime.
Developmental USA Industrial Policy
The Economist’s argument reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of US history. The American economic tradition is rooted in the ideas of Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, and Dwight Eisenhower, who recognized the need for a developmental state and the dangers of rent-seeking.
Neoliberalism’s Final Stronghold
Apr 27, 2023 J. Bradford DeLong
A recent essay celebrating America’s “astonishing economic record” is a case in point. After urging despondent Americans to be happy about their country’s “stunning success story,” the authors double down on condescension: “The more that Americans think their economy is a problem in need of fixing, the more likely their politicians are to mess up the next 30 years.” While acknowledging that “America’s openness” brought prosperity to firms and consumers, the authors also note that former President Donald Trump and current President Joe Biden “have turned to protectionism.” Subsidies, they warn, could boost investment in the short term but “entrench wasteful and distorting lobbying.” In order to address challenges like the rise of China and climate change, the US must “remember what has powered its long and successful run.”
As usual, the Economist delivers its reverence for neoliberal dogma with all the sanctimony and certitude of a true believer. Americans must sit down, shut up, and recite the catechism: “The market giveth, the market taketh away: blessed be the name of the market.” To doubt that the US economy’s current problems are caused by anything other than an interventionist, overbearing government is apostasy. But, as an economic historian, what took my breath away was the essay’s conclusion, which attributes America’s postwar prosperity to its worship of the Mammon of Unrighteousness (more commonly known as laissez-faire capitalism).
The essay cites three “fresh challenges” facing the US: the security threat posed by China, the need to rejigger the global division of labor due to China’s growing economic clout, and the fight against climate change. The climate challenge, of course, is hardly “fresh,” given that the world is at least three generations late in addressing it. Moreover, our failure to act promptly means that the economic impact of global warming will likely consume most, if not all, of the world’s anticipated technological dividends over the next two generations.
Recognizing the scale and urgency of global challenges such as climate change and then denying, as the Economist does, that only governments can effectively address them amounts to something resembling intellectual malpractice. Adam Smith himself supported the Navigation Acts – which regulated trade and shipping between England, its colonies, and other countries – despite the fact that they mandated that goods be transported on British ships even if other options were cheaper. “Defense,” he wrote in The Wealth of Nations, “is of much more importance than opulence.” Denouncing desirable security policies as “protectionist” was beside the point then and now.
The Economist’s argument reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of US history. The American economic tradition is rooted in the ideas of Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, and Dwight Eisenhower, who recognized the need for a developmental state and the dangers of rent-seeking.
To be sure, it has been 70 years since Eisenhower’s presidency, and much of America’s state capacity has been hollowed out during the long neoliberal era that began with the election of Ronald Reagan. But the laissez-faire policies that were woefully inadequate for the mass-production economy of the 1950s are an even worse fit for the biotech and IT-based economy of the future. Rather than reject Biden’s industrial policies, Americans should embrace them. To quote Margaret Thatcher, there is no alternative.
Yes Toto in our in the midst of a 4th Turning. Read this to understand what that means…
The Dress that launched a thousand Slave Ships
How an aristocratic fashion revolution in Paris brought about our Civil War. – the Law of Unintended Consequences
Marie Antoinette and her fellow fashion trendsetters made cotton desirable. Technology and slave labor made it affordable. It was the perfect storm. The affordability increased the desirability, resulting in an even higher demand, which in turn increased the mass production so that the price dropped even further. The cycle caused “King Cotton” and the institution of slavery which it stood upon to rule the South. Of course, we all know what happened from there. A simple dress launched an elaborate butterfly effect with far-reaching consequences that the young French queen never could have predicted when she took a step outside her lavish royal wardrobe.
The dress that launched thousands of slave ships
Bill Perry Is Terrified. Why Aren’t You?
When I was a child, I often had nightmares that ended in a blinding nuclear flash. I became an evangelist for building basement fallout shelters and actually convinced one neighbor to build and stock one.
We have been lulled back into a false-sense of security. Our aging minuteman missiles, which still run on floppy discs, are our biggest risk for an accidental annihilation of civilization, as we know it. The Russians have no early warning satellites left in orbit, so their paranoid that we could launch an ICBM leadership-decapitating sneak attack,has been to develop a six thousand-mile range remote-controlled thermonuclear torpedo, which could destroy a coastal city. Russia still openly discusses using tactical nuclear weapons in regional conflicts, without apparently appreciating the resulting inevitable escalation.
The mechanics of building a crude nuclear device are easily within the reach of well-educated and well-funded militants. The crate would arrive at Dulles International Airport, disguised as agricultural freight. The truck bomb that detonates on Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and Capitol instantly kills the president, vice president, House speaker, and 80,000 others.Where exactly is your office? Your house? And then, as Perry spins it forward, how credible would you find the warnings, soon delivered to news networks, that five more bombs are set to explode in unnamed U.S. cities, once a week for the next month, unless all U.S. military personnel overseas are withdrawn immediately?If this particular scenario does not resonate with you, Perry can easily rattle off a long roster of others—a regional war that escalates into a nuclear exchange, a miscalculation between Moscow and Washington, a computer glitch at the exact wrong moment. They are all ilks of the same theme—the dimly understood threat that the science of the 20th century is set to collide with the destructive passions of the 21st.“We’re going back to the kind of dangers we had during the Cold War,” Perry said. “I really thought in 1990, 1991, 1992, that we left those behind us. We’re starting to re-invent them. We and the Russians and others don’t understand that what we’re doing is re-creating those dangers—or maybe they don’t remember the dangers. For younger people, they didn’t live through those dangers. But when you live through a Cuban Missile Crisis up close and you live through a false alarm up close, you do understand how dangerous it is, and you believe you should do everything you could possibly do to [avoid] going back.”
Source: Bill Perry Is Terrified. Why Aren’t You? – POLITICO Magazine
If you want to read further on this risk http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/world-war-three-by-mistake
A Brave New World Order
Japan had the first world leader to meet with President-elect Trump. For the first time in eleven years, Putin just visited Japan for two days of talks. Trump’s proposed Secretary of State was awarded a Friendship medal by Vladimir Putin. What if anything do these have in common? Maybe nothing, but I can’t help but consider the implications for a Grand Alliance between Japan, Russia and the United States to contain China’s expansionist tendencies
Until recently, only Mao and Deng Xiaoping have achieved the title of “Core Leader”. Deng wanted the Communist Party to become a consensus-based system with rotating leadership and he would be the last Core leader. Current Premier Xi has put the end to that with his recent appointment as Core leader. We will have to see if this turns out to be an over-reach or the start of Emperor Xi’s dynasty.
China has always been a difficult country to rule. There are five distinct regions and multiple languages. There have only been a few times where a dynasty has been able to rule them all. Revolutions start, not when things are at their worst, but when rising expectations are dashed. Xi can see the demographic wall they are about slam into, as a result of the one-child policy lasting too long. He also knows that there will be economic dislocations, as they try to change from an Export-driven to a Consumer Society.
His biggest threat internally may not come from the aging establishment’s backlash, but from a youthful burgeoning left-wing Maoist movement. That is why the charismatic populist Bo Xilai was the victim of one of the first Stalin-like Show Trails. Xilai’s popular message was that Mao’s revolution has been hijacked by the corrupt Princelings – a group that Xi was fortunate enough to be born into.
China doesn’t it view itself as a Rising Power, but a a Returning Power. After all, with just 250 years under their belt, these Americans are only upstarts. While Kissinger was secretly meeting with Deng for Nixon’s Machiavellian opening to China, he asked Deng what he though about the French Revolution. After a pause, he said “We’ll have to see how it turns out”. China takes the long view of history and their future.
Embattled leaders will often use external threats to distract a restless populace. Xi knows the end of China’s economic miracle will bring unrest. Xi’s expansionist foreign policy has unnerved its neighbors, the most powerful of which are Russia and Japan. They could be open to a Grand Alliance with the United States to counter China’s rise. After all the US joined with Stalin to defeat what we thought was the greater foe – Hitler.
There is no love lost between Russia and China. They fought a seven month undeclared border war in 1969. China is financially taking over Mongolia and expects its other neighbors to eventually become vassal states also.
Russia had always been torn. It’s either a European or an Asian power. The construction of St. Petersburg was supposed to tilt Russia to the West. Putin rose to power from there. He has revived the Russian orthodox church. Putin’s Russia feels more comfortable with the West than the East. Russia is a declining power, who is afraid of the dragon’s growing power on it’s western borders. Japan is afraid too. Fear of a common enemy can make for strange bedfellows. Trump’s unconstrained collection of no-nonsense generals and plutocratic deal makers could think far enough outside the box to try and pull off such a Grand Bargain.
The Developing World Thinks Hitler Is Underrated
– 19.02.1943
Foto: Walter Frentz
“english_caption” Hitler and the generals look at maps during a briefing at the headquarters of ‘Heeresgruppe Sued’ (Army Squad South) at Saporoshje (Ukraine). From left: General Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, Adolf Hitler, General Theodor Busse, General Field Marshal Ewald von Kleist
– 02.19.1943
Picture: Walter Frentz “english_e
Yet in much of the developing world, where ignorance regarding the Holocaust and Hitler’s fantasies of world domination is rife, he is perceived less as a mass murderer and ideologue of global conquest than as a stern disciplinarian who addressed social ills in a briskly efficient manner. His is a legacy of “law and order,” not of horrific chaos and collapsed cities. Additionally, and crucially, in the non-Western world the name Hitler can connote “anti-imperialist rebel” due to the German leader’s nationalistic struggle against “Anglo-French-American-Zionist domination.”
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The Religion of Politics
