From “The Sleeping Cure”, by Richard A. Friedman, New York Times, March 12, 2017:
When you quickly cross several time zones, your circadian rhythm remains stuck in the city you left behind. Arriving in Rome with your New York City brain is what produces the unpleasant symptoms of jet lag: fatigue, malaise, poor concentration and mood changes.
When you leave New York at 6 p.m., the Italians are probably in bed asleep. But you won’t feel ready for sleep until around 11 [p.m. New York time, or around 5 a.m. in Rome]. To make the right adjustment, you need to shift your internal clock earlier by six hours.
Unfortunately, exposure to light in the middle of the night will do the opposite. Instead of shifting you earlier to Italian time, it makes you feel it’s even later — that the night is over and it’s already morning.
If you’re ever in that situation, close the shades and put on dark sunglasses. Keep the glasses on until lunchtime in Rome — or 7 a.m. back home. Then go out into the sun, have an espresso and enjoy the splendor of the ancient city. This will shift your clock closer to Roman time.
The clock in your brain doesn’t just take cues from light, but from the hormone melatonin as well. Every night, about two to three hours before you conk out, your brain starts to secrete melatonin in response to darkness. Taking a melatonin supplement in the evening will advance your internal clock and make it possible to fall asleep earlier; taking it in the morning will do the opposite. (You might assume this would make you even more tired during the day but it won’t; you could think of it as tricking your brain into believing you slept longer.)
So now you know the fix for jet lag: Travel east and you’ll need morning light and evening melatonin; go west and you’ll need evening light and morning melatonin.
...
Researchers have developed a limited form of sleep deprivation that is euphemistically called wake therapy. It has been shown to have sustained antidepressant benefit in patients with bipolar disorder and major depression. The idea is to get up for the day halfway through the usual sleep period, which shifts the circadian clock to an earlier time. It’s thought that this works by realigning the sleep cycle with other circadian rhythms, like changes in levels of body temperature and the stress hormone cortisol, that are also out of sync with each other in depression.
Studies show that it is possible to make wake therapy even more powerful by incorporating two additional interventions: early morning light therapy and what’s called sleep phase advance, in which the patient goes to bed about five to six hours earlier than usual and sleeps for about seven hours. This combination of treatments is called triple chronotherapy, and the typical course involves one night of complete sleep deprivation followed by three nights of phase-advanced sleep and early morning light.
March 15, 2017
February 26, 2017
Climacteric, a poem
by Eric Rosenbloom
copyright 2017
Not the self-consuming fire Our turnings are slow ones The slow ending of an age The fire is in the worm |
February 8, 2017
The Choices for the Left in the Age of Trump
Boris Kagarlitsky writes at Counterpunch:
The events currently unfolding in the United States, and discussions of the American Left regarding Trump, remind me of the famous Soviet Odessa joke: a lady stops a car in the street, and asks the driver: “Are you a real taxi?” The driver’s answer: “Does madam need a ride, or a checkered pattern?”
Numerous activists of the left wing organizations who took part in January protests against the new President of the United States made a clear statement: they don’t want to move anywhere, they don’t need any changes. All they want is a correct discourse; they need a correct checkered pattern on the door of the car.
In the meantime, some changes, currently under way in the US, are not only global in scale, but also fully in line with the demands put forth by the same left in the mass protests they have been organizing in the last quarter of the century. Wasn’t it the Left who intensely criticized Northern American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), arguing (and the criticism turned out to be completely justified) that it would harm American industry, workers and the middle class? Wasn’t it the Left, who by the same token, was condemning the signing of a similar Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement and was opposed to the forthcoming Free Trade Agreement with the European Union?
President Trump promises to simplify the process of voter registration to facilitate easier access to the voting booth for the lower strata of the society. Openly neglecting his traditional role as the “leader of free world”, he not only refuses to impose liberal principles on the rest of the world, but also calls NATO obsolete. A few days before taking the oath of the office, he also stated that he stands for universal healthcare and for curbing the drug prices.
In other words, he repeated the demands of Bernie Sanders, the most left-leaning American politician.
Trump also hinted that he is interested in the educational reform, but did not offer any details. If such agenda becomes a reality, we are talking about the most radical social reform in the United States since Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Meanwhile, much of the American left attends the protest marches, organized with the support of the liberal-conservative establishment, invariably repeats any absurd and false accusations against the President, and enthusiastically joins the campaign against his administration, pretending not to understand that the only goal of all these actions is to block social and economic changes in the country. In less than 24 hours after the forty-fifth President took office, Washington and other big American cities witnessed mass demonstrations.
The public protested not a specific decision of the new Head of the State or against his policies in general, but against his personality. We have time and again been told that Trump is racist, a homophobe and hates women. They tried to accuse him of anti-Semitism as well, but the accusations had to be dropped because of the protests of the Jewish relatives of the President. The protesters never managed to formulate any political demands towards the new occupant of the White House.
Besides, Trump never said anything wrong regarding African Americans, women or gays, except for a private conversation many years ago, when he told his friend about an unsuccessful attempt to molest some lady. But what Trump said, or did not say, does not matter. None of the protesters are interested in Trump’s opinions, statements or even actions. What is really important for them is what the leading New York publications write about him.
In turn, the media showed an unprecedented sympathy for the protests. Many of those who came out in January 2017 to march in Washington and other cities were not protesting for the first time. They have participated in anti-globalization demonstrations or in the Occupy Wall Street movement. Back then, the leading newspapers and TV stations either ignored them or portrayed their actions as antics of bullies and outcasts.
Now, on the contrary, the media is talking with sympathy about what is happening. This is not surprising, because the media establishment itself also plays a crucial role in organizing the protests by working out the ideological basis for the protests, and by disseminating information about the upcoming events and coordinating them.
Some of the Left are wary of all this. But not all. Surprisingly, the majority of “critically thinking” intellectuals turned into an easily managed and manipulated mass, without any personal opinions or will. However, even those who are skeptical about the protests are not inclined to analyze what is happening in class or socio-political categories. All they do is remind their more naive colleagues that the same ladies and gentlemen who now call on them to protest in the street resorted to all sorts of dirty tricks just a few months ago to prevent the left candidate Bernie Sanders from winning the Democratic primary.
Such statements are, of course, justified, but they explain nothing. Russian politician Anatoly Chubais expressed the essence of the current moment much better while talking about his impressions of the World Economic Forum in Davos. In the words of the leading ideologist of Russian neoliberals, Trump’s victory plunged the crowd at the forum of the global elite into a state of horror. The only encouraging aspect against this backdrop was the speech of the Chinese leader:
This is a fairly paradoxical, but quite logical, situation: The US is the threat to the world order, while communist China is the last hope of the global bourgeoisie. However, Trump is in no way an opponent of capitalism. He is not a threat to the bourgeois order as such; he is only threatening to its neoliberal version, which was established worldwide after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The forty-fifth President of the United States is firmly committed to the principles of protectionism; he will protect US markets and jobs. And, most importantly, he encourages other countries to do the same, not taking into consideration the interests of multinational corporations based in the United States.
Worse, he considers these corporations to be the main threat to America. The anxiety of the representatives of transnational financial elite, who gathered in Davos, is understandable. They are really threatened with a catastrophe. After all, the trade agreements that the forty-fifth President of the United States is already starting to undo, in fact, are not about trade. They are about the restrictions of sovereignty of governments, elimination of democratic and social rights of citizens, as well as many privileges provided for large international companies. There is, however, a question: why the American billionaire Donald Trump is not only the enemy of these agreements, but also the driving force behind the alternative, which anti-globalists called for.
The fact is that Trump and his entourage, fabulously rich as they are, do not belong to the multinational corporate and financial elite that has developed and established dominance during the past quarter of a century. Fortunes of Trump and his associates reach 3-4 billion dollars. On the scale of the American and international capitalism of the beginning of the twenty-first century, these are not big fortunes. Multinational companies control capitals that are ten or more times greater, often managing hundreds of billions of dollars.
Donald Trump is quite a typical representative of medium-size businesses, oriented on the local market and dedicated to the development of real sector. This part of bourgeoisie quite naturally rebelled against the transnational corporations, which, together with the largest banks, have used their dominant position in Washington in the last quarter-century to change the rules in their favor and to reallocate resources, undermining not only workers and the middle class, but also a significant proportion of entrepreneurs. The average business, which rebelled against transnational oligarchies, was forced to look for allies. In turn, the lower classes of society, who for decades suffered from neoliberal policies, enthusiastically joined the revolt. Such alliance will not last for too long, but it is not accidental. The development of industry, internal market, and social policy that strengthens the position of the workers, and gives them confidence is needed in order to restore the workers’ movement, to allow it to gain momentum. In short, we need protectionism.
Historically, the German Social Democracy and Russian working class, which Bolsheviks relied upon, developed precisely against the backdrop of increased protectionist policies. Without industrial growth and development of the internal market, there would have been no revolution of 1917.
While workers need jobs and decent wages, businesses operating on the domestic market, need consumers, and the same workers could be these consumers.
Once upon a time, Henry Ford formulated the well-known principle: My workers themselves have to be able to buy the cars made by them.
The political embodiment of this principle was the “New Deal” of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s. It is this time of “American greatness” that Trump reminds about to his constituency. But it was not only the era of social transformation and strengthening of national industry; it was also the golden age of the American labor movement. The rise of left-wing forces and trade unions in the United States was stopped by the Cold War and McCarthyite anti-communist purges and persecutions against the radical intelligentsia, which ever since lost touch with the workers and took refuge in the comfort of the academic ghetto.
In the mid-twentieth century many Western Left strategists talked about the need for an alliance with the medium-sized businesses against monopoly capital. Paradoxically, such an alliance spontaneously formed now around the figure of Trump, who is supported by workers, farmers, small entrepreneurs, and provincial intellectuals. Only, this bloc is not dominated by progressive left-wing intellectuals, but by a rude and politically incorrect Manhattan bourgeois.
And the intellectuals should blame not Trump, but themselves for this state of affairs – in fact they contemptuously rejected in due time the “outdated” class policy, betting on lobbying liberal establishment and protection of minorities, depicted by them as a kind of socio-homogeneous “suffering” mass.
The fact that these minorities were often constructed artificially and, in any case, have been divided internally by class differences, was deliberately ignored by intellectuals, because otherwise their strategy to form a block with the enlightened liberals (in other words, the ideological apparatus of financial capital) would prove impossible.
In fact, Trump took to consistently fulfill everything that the Left in the US and Western Europe was talking about for a quarter-century. Undoubtedly, the ideology of the forty-fifth President of the United States is woven of contradictions; his program, as well as the coalition of social forces which established itself around it, is transitional, focused only on the decision of one, but absolutely fundamental, task – to undermine the rule of the financial oligarchy.
There is no way we can support his actions preventing Muslim people from Syria or Iran (or any people) from entering the US. There are plenty of other decisions and policies of Trump the Left will never agree with. Yet the administration in Washington, finally, appears to be headed by a politician who is determined to put into practice the demands that the radical activists put forward at least since the time of the protests in Seattle in 1999. And this is really a historic turning point.
What do the radical activists do in this situation? They complain about the insufficiently politically correct vocabulary of Trump. They respond to the call of the conservative-liberal media, acting as an infantry for preparation of an anti-Presidential coup. Do they themselves believe in what they say? Or are they simply hostages and mercenaries of liberal elite?
Of course, not all American leftists are willing to play this game. Bernie Sanders, for example, is brilliantly trying to sit on two chairs at once. He refused to boycott the inauguration of Trump and repeatedly wrote letters to the President calling him to fulfill the progressive promises made during election campaign. At the same time, Sanders makes appearances at protest demonstrations, stands in front of the opponents of Trump, but, just in case, avoids the leading role in these actions.
This is a very sophisticated tactical maneuvering. There is only one flaw in this tactic: there is no strategy behind it. And sooner or later Bernie will have to make a choice. And the later the choice will be made, the less free and effective it will be.
The liberal establishment has set a goal to achieve an overthrow of Trump in the next year and a half, before the next Congressional elections will be held and the President will be able to fill the Congress with his supporters by mobilizing the grass roots. Impeachment of Trump becomes a key strategic objective for Washington’s elite. They will try to achieve this goal by legal methods, but the overall scenario of destabilization, as we see, is not much different from what the US intelligence agencies would do abroad when they overthrow or try to overthrow governments.
The open conflict, which has already unfolded between Trump and CIA leadership, suggests that everything will happen exactly by such a scenario.
There is, however, one significant difference: the US President is well aware that he faces a potential coup and he knows where the threat is coming from. He will be forced to contribute to the mobilization and organization of the lower classes. In this situation, no one will help him but the working class.
In this regard, the demand for universal health insurance, supported by 60% of Americans, but unanimously rejected by the representatives from both parties in Congress, could be one of the decisive factors in the political confrontation. It is important for Trump to show that he is in favor of a reform which is clear, necessary and approved by the majority, while the Congress not only blocks his initiatives, but also acts against the American people. These people will have to take to the streets and determine the outcome of the political struggle at a crucial moment when confrontation between the President and the Congress will reach a climax.
In this situation, the Left has a choice: to promote grass-roots organizations and to put forward significant social demands while defending the movement’s independence in relation to the Trump administration, or participate in the conspiracy of the elites as extras, becoming pawns moved by an invisible hand of the elite on the political chessboard.
The events currently unfolding in the United States, and discussions of the American Left regarding Trump, remind me of the famous Soviet Odessa joke: a lady stops a car in the street, and asks the driver: “Are you a real taxi?” The driver’s answer: “Does madam need a ride, or a checkered pattern?”
Numerous activists of the left wing organizations who took part in January protests against the new President of the United States made a clear statement: they don’t want to move anywhere, they don’t need any changes. All they want is a correct discourse; they need a correct checkered pattern on the door of the car.
In the meantime, some changes, currently under way in the US, are not only global in scale, but also fully in line with the demands put forth by the same left in the mass protests they have been organizing in the last quarter of the century. Wasn’t it the Left who intensely criticized Northern American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), arguing (and the criticism turned out to be completely justified) that it would harm American industry, workers and the middle class? Wasn’t it the Left, who by the same token, was condemning the signing of a similar Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement and was opposed to the forthcoming Free Trade Agreement with the European Union?
President Trump promises to simplify the process of voter registration to facilitate easier access to the voting booth for the lower strata of the society. Openly neglecting his traditional role as the “leader of free world”, he not only refuses to impose liberal principles on the rest of the world, but also calls NATO obsolete. A few days before taking the oath of the office, he also stated that he stands for universal healthcare and for curbing the drug prices.
In other words, he repeated the demands of Bernie Sanders, the most left-leaning American politician.
Trump also hinted that he is interested in the educational reform, but did not offer any details. If such agenda becomes a reality, we are talking about the most radical social reform in the United States since Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Meanwhile, much of the American left attends the protest marches, organized with the support of the liberal-conservative establishment, invariably repeats any absurd and false accusations against the President, and enthusiastically joins the campaign against his administration, pretending not to understand that the only goal of all these actions is to block social and economic changes in the country. In less than 24 hours after the forty-fifth President took office, Washington and other big American cities witnessed mass demonstrations.
The public protested not a specific decision of the new Head of the State or against his policies in general, but against his personality. We have time and again been told that Trump is racist, a homophobe and hates women. They tried to accuse him of anti-Semitism as well, but the accusations had to be dropped because of the protests of the Jewish relatives of the President. The protesters never managed to formulate any political demands towards the new occupant of the White House.
Besides, Trump never said anything wrong regarding African Americans, women or gays, except for a private conversation many years ago, when he told his friend about an unsuccessful attempt to molest some lady. But what Trump said, or did not say, does not matter. None of the protesters are interested in Trump’s opinions, statements or even actions. What is really important for them is what the leading New York publications write about him.
In turn, the media showed an unprecedented sympathy for the protests. Many of those who came out in January 2017 to march in Washington and other cities were not protesting for the first time. They have participated in anti-globalization demonstrations or in the Occupy Wall Street movement. Back then, the leading newspapers and TV stations either ignored them or portrayed their actions as antics of bullies and outcasts.
Now, on the contrary, the media is talking with sympathy about what is happening. This is not surprising, because the media establishment itself also plays a crucial role in organizing the protests by working out the ideological basis for the protests, and by disseminating information about the upcoming events and coordinating them.
Some of the Left are wary of all this. But not all. Surprisingly, the majority of “critically thinking” intellectuals turned into an easily managed and manipulated mass, without any personal opinions or will. However, even those who are skeptical about the protests are not inclined to analyze what is happening in class or socio-political categories. All they do is remind their more naive colleagues that the same ladies and gentlemen who now call on them to protest in the street resorted to all sorts of dirty tricks just a few months ago to prevent the left candidate Bernie Sanders from winning the Democratic primary.
Such statements are, of course, justified, but they explain nothing. Russian politician Anatoly Chubais expressed the essence of the current moment much better while talking about his impressions of the World Economic Forum in Davos. In the words of the leading ideologist of Russian neoliberals, Trump’s victory plunged the crowd at the forum of the global elite into a state of horror. The only encouraging aspect against this backdrop was the speech of the Chinese leader:
“The keynote speaker Mr. Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Chinese communist party, opened the meeting with a speech which was a brilliant ode to the market economy with energetic appeals to remove the trade barriers, reduce taxes, and even ended with a statement that China is opening up a number of markets that were previously closed. Such a super liberal speech in the best traditions of Chicago school.”The consensus attitude toward Trump, according to Chubais, can be expressed in the following formula: “He will either reject everything he said before, or he will lead us to a catastrophe.”
This is a fairly paradoxical, but quite logical, situation: The US is the threat to the world order, while communist China is the last hope of the global bourgeoisie. However, Trump is in no way an opponent of capitalism. He is not a threat to the bourgeois order as such; he is only threatening to its neoliberal version, which was established worldwide after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The forty-fifth President of the United States is firmly committed to the principles of protectionism; he will protect US markets and jobs. And, most importantly, he encourages other countries to do the same, not taking into consideration the interests of multinational corporations based in the United States.
Worse, he considers these corporations to be the main threat to America. The anxiety of the representatives of transnational financial elite, who gathered in Davos, is understandable. They are really threatened with a catastrophe. After all, the trade agreements that the forty-fifth President of the United States is already starting to undo, in fact, are not about trade. They are about the restrictions of sovereignty of governments, elimination of democratic and social rights of citizens, as well as many privileges provided for large international companies. There is, however, a question: why the American billionaire Donald Trump is not only the enemy of these agreements, but also the driving force behind the alternative, which anti-globalists called for.
The fact is that Trump and his entourage, fabulously rich as they are, do not belong to the multinational corporate and financial elite that has developed and established dominance during the past quarter of a century. Fortunes of Trump and his associates reach 3-4 billion dollars. On the scale of the American and international capitalism of the beginning of the twenty-first century, these are not big fortunes. Multinational companies control capitals that are ten or more times greater, often managing hundreds of billions of dollars.
Donald Trump is quite a typical representative of medium-size businesses, oriented on the local market and dedicated to the development of real sector. This part of bourgeoisie quite naturally rebelled against the transnational corporations, which, together with the largest banks, have used their dominant position in Washington in the last quarter-century to change the rules in their favor and to reallocate resources, undermining not only workers and the middle class, but also a significant proportion of entrepreneurs. The average business, which rebelled against transnational oligarchies, was forced to look for allies. In turn, the lower classes of society, who for decades suffered from neoliberal policies, enthusiastically joined the revolt. Such alliance will not last for too long, but it is not accidental. The development of industry, internal market, and social policy that strengthens the position of the workers, and gives them confidence is needed in order to restore the workers’ movement, to allow it to gain momentum. In short, we need protectionism.
Historically, the German Social Democracy and Russian working class, which Bolsheviks relied upon, developed precisely against the backdrop of increased protectionist policies. Without industrial growth and development of the internal market, there would have been no revolution of 1917.
While workers need jobs and decent wages, businesses operating on the domestic market, need consumers, and the same workers could be these consumers.
Once upon a time, Henry Ford formulated the well-known principle: My workers themselves have to be able to buy the cars made by them.
The political embodiment of this principle was the “New Deal” of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s. It is this time of “American greatness” that Trump reminds about to his constituency. But it was not only the era of social transformation and strengthening of national industry; it was also the golden age of the American labor movement. The rise of left-wing forces and trade unions in the United States was stopped by the Cold War and McCarthyite anti-communist purges and persecutions against the radical intelligentsia, which ever since lost touch with the workers and took refuge in the comfort of the academic ghetto.
In the mid-twentieth century many Western Left strategists talked about the need for an alliance with the medium-sized businesses against monopoly capital. Paradoxically, such an alliance spontaneously formed now around the figure of Trump, who is supported by workers, farmers, small entrepreneurs, and provincial intellectuals. Only, this bloc is not dominated by progressive left-wing intellectuals, but by a rude and politically incorrect Manhattan bourgeois.
And the intellectuals should blame not Trump, but themselves for this state of affairs – in fact they contemptuously rejected in due time the “outdated” class policy, betting on lobbying liberal establishment and protection of minorities, depicted by them as a kind of socio-homogeneous “suffering” mass.
The fact that these minorities were often constructed artificially and, in any case, have been divided internally by class differences, was deliberately ignored by intellectuals, because otherwise their strategy to form a block with the enlightened liberals (in other words, the ideological apparatus of financial capital) would prove impossible.
In fact, Trump took to consistently fulfill everything that the Left in the US and Western Europe was talking about for a quarter-century. Undoubtedly, the ideology of the forty-fifth President of the United States is woven of contradictions; his program, as well as the coalition of social forces which established itself around it, is transitional, focused only on the decision of one, but absolutely fundamental, task – to undermine the rule of the financial oligarchy.
There is no way we can support his actions preventing Muslim people from Syria or Iran (or any people) from entering the US. There are plenty of other decisions and policies of Trump the Left will never agree with. Yet the administration in Washington, finally, appears to be headed by a politician who is determined to put into practice the demands that the radical activists put forward at least since the time of the protests in Seattle in 1999. And this is really a historic turning point.
What do the radical activists do in this situation? They complain about the insufficiently politically correct vocabulary of Trump. They respond to the call of the conservative-liberal media, acting as an infantry for preparation of an anti-Presidential coup. Do they themselves believe in what they say? Or are they simply hostages and mercenaries of liberal elite?
Of course, not all American leftists are willing to play this game. Bernie Sanders, for example, is brilliantly trying to sit on two chairs at once. He refused to boycott the inauguration of Trump and repeatedly wrote letters to the President calling him to fulfill the progressive promises made during election campaign. At the same time, Sanders makes appearances at protest demonstrations, stands in front of the opponents of Trump, but, just in case, avoids the leading role in these actions.
This is a very sophisticated tactical maneuvering. There is only one flaw in this tactic: there is no strategy behind it. And sooner or later Bernie will have to make a choice. And the later the choice will be made, the less free and effective it will be.
The liberal establishment has set a goal to achieve an overthrow of Trump in the next year and a half, before the next Congressional elections will be held and the President will be able to fill the Congress with his supporters by mobilizing the grass roots. Impeachment of Trump becomes a key strategic objective for Washington’s elite. They will try to achieve this goal by legal methods, but the overall scenario of destabilization, as we see, is not much different from what the US intelligence agencies would do abroad when they overthrow or try to overthrow governments.
The open conflict, which has already unfolded between Trump and CIA leadership, suggests that everything will happen exactly by such a scenario.
There is, however, one significant difference: the US President is well aware that he faces a potential coup and he knows where the threat is coming from. He will be forced to contribute to the mobilization and organization of the lower classes. In this situation, no one will help him but the working class.
In this regard, the demand for universal health insurance, supported by 60% of Americans, but unanimously rejected by the representatives from both parties in Congress, could be one of the decisive factors in the political confrontation. It is important for Trump to show that he is in favor of a reform which is clear, necessary and approved by the majority, while the Congress not only blocks his initiatives, but also acts against the American people. These people will have to take to the streets and determine the outcome of the political struggle at a crucial moment when confrontation between the President and the Congress will reach a climax.
In this situation, the Left has a choice: to promote grass-roots organizations and to put forward significant social demands while defending the movement’s independence in relation to the Trump administration, or participate in the conspiracy of the elites as extras, becoming pawns moved by an invisible hand of the elite on the political chessboard.
January 23, 2017
Pawns of fascism, or superficial diversity as a tool of conformist groupthink
The marchers against the fascism that they see in the person of President Trump provide a demonstration of how the forces of fascism work.
Fascism depends on manipulating the fears of people via flattery (it’s basic marketing). Thus, for example, we have the doctrine of “humanitarian interventions” by which support for imperial hegemony is cloaked in up-to-date socially progressive tropes (as it always was: the white man’s burden, spreading the salvation of Jesus, spreading the salvation of democracy and free trade).
Calls to war, to regime change (even domestically now, as implied by Chuck Schumer’s call to civil war at Trump’s inauguration), to the destruction of other countries and the death, maiming, and displacement of millions of people – they need only to be preceded by a shoutout to a few trending demographics: LGBTQIA, mothers, daughters, wives and sisters, black and brown and red and yellow sisters and brothers, immigrants, working women, etc. For all of you and our shared dreams and wisdom and struggle, we (the still white-majority Wall St profiteers) are going to war!
Sold!
The voices against the rainbow coalition–sponsored war and pillage are then by definition racist, misogynist, homophobic – a basket of deplorables, irredeemable, subhuman, to be squashed like bugs, exterminated like vermin.
And any policy that does not directly address issues of gender, skin color, religion etc., no matter how unrelated they might be to the concerns at hand, is therefore mocked and opposed and and discussion shut down, violently if need be.
This is not to say that “conservative” fascism is not a threat, but that it should make people all the more vigilant against “liberal” fascism.
A pluralistic society does not mean only in appearance and gender; it also means different world views that can nonetheless accommodate each other and work together for a common good. Making fascism gay friendly is not progress except for gay fascists.
(Fascism may be too strong a word for some. How about “Reaganism”? Since Bill Clinton, the Democratic Party has stood, not for workers or the poor or even the middle class, but simply a slightly more socially liberal Reaganism, which is to say a toxic brew of neoliberalism at home and neoconservatism abroad. Since then, the Democratic and Republican Parties have differed only in which false populism they use to divert the voices of the people. With the hypermilitarization under Bush and Obama of the security state – both at home and abroad – however, ... [See the pair of essays by Charles Hugh Smith: “The Collapse of the Left” and “The Protected, Privileged Establishment vs. The Working Class”.])
Bernie Sanders turned out not to be serious about challenging the Democratic Party with a true populism (his refusal to respect the common cause with voters leaning toward Trump betrayed his true, narrow-minded, loyalty), so he lost and Donald Trump, who was indeed committed to taking on the Republican establishment, won.
Now we have hordes of Clinton supporters calling for unity against Trump. Clinging to the irrelevant fact that more people in general voted for Clinton (though she lost in 30 states and an estimated 85% of counties), they assert the right of the mob to deny the results of the election. With cynical lip service to the trending demographic groups, they assert the righteousness of disregarding the lives of half the people in the country. During the inauguration, many of the security checkpoints were blocked by such mobs, who felt completely justified in preventing fellow citizens, whom they could see only as “deplorables”, from taking part. Militant conformity (but now with your choice of skin color, sexual preference, and gender!).
(Their actions are compatible with China’s severe limitation of news coverage of the US inauguration. They echo the neonazi-friendly Maidan Square protests in Kyiv in 2014, egged on both physically and financially by the USA (to prevent the renewal of Russia’s lease of the naval base in Sevastopol, Crimea), to oust the democratically elected but Russian-friendly President Yanukovych in favor of EU vassalage and the second Tahrir Square protests in Cairo in 2013 to oust the democratically elected but Islam-friendly President Morsi in favor of restoring military dictatorship.)
That’s how fascism works. Above all, it deplores the processes of democracy. Again, it depends on manipulating the fears of people via flattery (simple marketing). It counts on, for example, putting a picture of a model in a head scarf or dreadlocks (or of an eagle and flag) on its posters to exempt it from and provide the excuse to disregard any critical response. It puts symbolism above substance, because the substance is precisely what it wants to hide or at least continue to get away with by distributing a few flattering sops. It is the false populism of power whose greatest enemy is true populism.
Today in the USA, consultant-class liberals fully support the death of democracy as necessary to protect their economic advantage and sense of cultural privilege, telling themselves that they are acting on behalf the lower orders who don’t know any better. And if “those people” don’t appreciate all we do for them, they can drop dead – they deserve to suffer! Vive l’établissement!
January 21, 2017
Trump inaugural address (transcript)
[Bernie Sanders might have given much the same speech (except that he did not have the conviction to run against the Democratic Party, as Donald Trump ran against the Republican, and so he lost).]
[T]oday we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another, or from one party to another – but we are transferring power from Washington, DC, and giving it back to you, the American people.
For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished – but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered – but the jobs left, and the factories closed. The establishment protected itself but not the citizens of our country.
Their victories have not been your victories; their triumphs have not been your triumphs; and while they celebrated in our nation’s capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land.
That all changes – starting right here, and right now, because this moment is your moment: it belongs to you. It belongs to everyone gathered here today and everyone watching all across America. This is your day. This is your celebration. And this, the United States of America, is your country.
What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people.
January 20th 2017 will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again. The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer. Everyone is listening to you now. You came by the tens of millions to become part of a historic movement the likes of which the world has never seen before.
At the center of this movement is a crucial conviction: that a nation exists to serve its citizens. Americans want great schools for their children, safe neighborhoods for their families, and good jobs for themselves. These are the just and reasonable demands of a righteous public.
But for too many of our citizens, a different reality exists: mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system, flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge; and the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential.
This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.
We are one nation – and their pain is our pain. Their dreams are our dreams, and their success will be our success. We share one heart, one home, and one glorious destiny.
The oath of office I take today is an oath of allegiance to all Americans.
For many decades, we’ve enriched foreign industry at the expense of American industry. […] One by one, the factories shuttered and left our shores, with not even a thought about the millions upon millions of American workers left behind.
The wealth of our middle class has been ripped from their homes and then redistributed across the entire world.
But that is the past. And now we are looking only to the future.
We assembled here today are issuing a new decree to be heard in every city, in every foreign capital, and in every hall of power.
From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land. From this moment on, it’s going to be America first. Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs, will be made to benefit American workers and American families. […]
We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world – but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first.
We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example for everyone to follow. […]
At the bedrock of our politics will be a total allegiance to the United States of America, and through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other.
When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice. […] There should be no fear […]
The time for empty talk is over. Now arrives the hour of action. Do not let anyone tell you it cannot be done. No challenge can match the heart and fight and spirit of America. We will not fail. Our country will thrive and prosper again.
We stand at the birth of a new millennium, ready to unlock the mysteries of space, to free the Earth from the miseries of disease, and to harness the energies, industries and technologies of tomorrow.
A new national pride will stir our souls, lift our sights, and heal our divisions.
It is time to remember that old wisdom our soldiers will never forget: that whether we are black or brown or white, we all bleed the same red blood of patriots, we all enjoy the same glorious freedoms, and we all salute the same great American flag. And whether a child is born in the urban sprawl of Detroit or the windswept plains of Nebraska, they look up at the same night sky, they fill their heart with the same dreams, and they are infused with the breath of life by the same almighty creator. So to all Americans, in every city near and far, small and large, from mountain to mountain, and from ocean to ocean, hear these words:
You will never be ignored again.
Your voice, your hopes, and your dreams, will define our American destiny. And your courage and goodness and love will forever guide us along the way. […]
[T]oday we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another, or from one party to another – but we are transferring power from Washington, DC, and giving it back to you, the American people.
For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished – but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered – but the jobs left, and the factories closed. The establishment protected itself but not the citizens of our country.
Their victories have not been your victories; their triumphs have not been your triumphs; and while they celebrated in our nation’s capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land.
That all changes – starting right here, and right now, because this moment is your moment: it belongs to you. It belongs to everyone gathered here today and everyone watching all across America. This is your day. This is your celebration. And this, the United States of America, is your country.
What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people.
January 20th 2017 will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again. The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer. Everyone is listening to you now. You came by the tens of millions to become part of a historic movement the likes of which the world has never seen before.
At the center of this movement is a crucial conviction: that a nation exists to serve its citizens. Americans want great schools for their children, safe neighborhoods for their families, and good jobs for themselves. These are the just and reasonable demands of a righteous public.
But for too many of our citizens, a different reality exists: mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system, flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge; and the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential.
This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.
We are one nation – and their pain is our pain. Their dreams are our dreams, and their success will be our success. We share one heart, one home, and one glorious destiny.
The oath of office I take today is an oath of allegiance to all Americans.
For many decades, we’ve enriched foreign industry at the expense of American industry. […] One by one, the factories shuttered and left our shores, with not even a thought about the millions upon millions of American workers left behind.
The wealth of our middle class has been ripped from their homes and then redistributed across the entire world.
But that is the past. And now we are looking only to the future.
We assembled here today are issuing a new decree to be heard in every city, in every foreign capital, and in every hall of power.
From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land. From this moment on, it’s going to be America first. Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs, will be made to benefit American workers and American families. […]
We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world – but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first.
We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example for everyone to follow. […]
At the bedrock of our politics will be a total allegiance to the United States of America, and through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other.
When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice. […] There should be no fear […]
The time for empty talk is over. Now arrives the hour of action. Do not let anyone tell you it cannot be done. No challenge can match the heart and fight and spirit of America. We will not fail. Our country will thrive and prosper again.
We stand at the birth of a new millennium, ready to unlock the mysteries of space, to free the Earth from the miseries of disease, and to harness the energies, industries and technologies of tomorrow.
A new national pride will stir our souls, lift our sights, and heal our divisions.
It is time to remember that old wisdom our soldiers will never forget: that whether we are black or brown or white, we all bleed the same red blood of patriots, we all enjoy the same glorious freedoms, and we all salute the same great American flag. And whether a child is born in the urban sprawl of Detroit or the windswept plains of Nebraska, they look up at the same night sky, they fill their heart with the same dreams, and they are infused with the breath of life by the same almighty creator. So to all Americans, in every city near and far, small and large, from mountain to mountain, and from ocean to ocean, hear these words:
You will never be ignored again.
Your voice, your hopes, and your dreams, will define our American destiny. And your courage and goodness and love will forever guide us along the way. […]
January 16, 2017
Fake documents to foment fear of Russia: 1924 edition
From Human Smoke by Nicholson Baker:
The Daily Mail, a conservative London paper, published a forged letter. It was October 25, 1924.
The letter was purportedly signed by Grigori Zinoviev, a Russian communist leader, and addressed to the Communist Party in England. It appeared four days before the general election of 1924 – an important race for Winston Churchill, who had lost two previous campaigns.
The letter, marked “very secret,” talked of a “successful rising in any of the working districts of England.” Its prose had faintly Churchillian cadences in places – there were phrases such as “strain every nerve” and “pronounced its weighty word” – but with an admixture of bolshevistic pastiche. “It would be desirable to have cells (nuclei?) in all the units of troops, particularly among those quartered in large centres of the country, and among factories working on munitions and at military store depots,” the letter said. The headline in the Daily Mail was “Civil War Plot by Socialists’ Masters.”
Churchill’s devoted supporter Esmond Harmsworth wa the son of Lord Rothermere, publisher of the Daily Mail. Churchill’s close ally in Secret Intelligence, Desmond Morton, first forwarded the letter from an obscure Latvian source to the British Foreign Office, attesting to its authenticity.
Moscow called the letter a “clumsy forgery” and a “crude fabrication” and demanded an apology. ...
Churchill and other conservatives used the Zinoviev letter to unseat Prime Minister MacDonald. Churchill compared MacDonald to Alexander Kerensky, the weak Russian socialist leader who allowed the Bolsheviks to triumph.
“You all know the story of Kerensky,” Churchill said in a campaign speech, “how he stood there, like Mr. MacDonald, pretending that he meant to do the best he could for his country, and all the time apologizing behind the scenes to the wild, dark, deadly forces which had him in their grip.”
Churchill won his election. Still he couldn’t stop talking about the Zinoviev letter. Conspirators and revolutionaries “of every race under the sun” had assembled in Russia to plan world revolution, he asserted in the Weekly Dispatch. “Everywhere they have endeavoured to bring into being the ‘germ cells’ from which the cancer of Communism should grow,” he wrote. ...
The Daily Mail, a conservative London paper, published a forged letter. It was October 25, 1924.
The letter was purportedly signed by Grigori Zinoviev, a Russian communist leader, and addressed to the Communist Party in England. It appeared four days before the general election of 1924 – an important race for Winston Churchill, who had lost two previous campaigns.
The letter, marked “very secret,” talked of a “successful rising in any of the working districts of England.” Its prose had faintly Churchillian cadences in places – there were phrases such as “strain every nerve” and “pronounced its weighty word” – but with an admixture of bolshevistic pastiche. “It would be desirable to have cells (nuclei?) in all the units of troops, particularly among those quartered in large centres of the country, and among factories working on munitions and at military store depots,” the letter said. The headline in the Daily Mail was “Civil War Plot by Socialists’ Masters.”
Churchill’s devoted supporter Esmond Harmsworth wa the son of Lord Rothermere, publisher of the Daily Mail. Churchill’s close ally in Secret Intelligence, Desmond Morton, first forwarded the letter from an obscure Latvian source to the British Foreign Office, attesting to its authenticity.
Moscow called the letter a “clumsy forgery” and a “crude fabrication” and demanded an apology. ...
Churchill and other conservatives used the Zinoviev letter to unseat Prime Minister MacDonald. Churchill compared MacDonald to Alexander Kerensky, the weak Russian socialist leader who allowed the Bolsheviks to triumph.
“You all know the story of Kerensky,” Churchill said in a campaign speech, “how he stood there, like Mr. MacDonald, pretending that he meant to do the best he could for his country, and all the time apologizing behind the scenes to the wild, dark, deadly forces which had him in their grip.”
Churchill won his election. Still he couldn’t stop talking about the Zinoviev letter. Conspirators and revolutionaries “of every race under the sun” had assembled in Russia to plan world revolution, he asserted in the Weekly Dispatch. “Everywhere they have endeavoured to bring into being the ‘germ cells’ from which the cancer of Communism should grow,” he wrote. ...
January 12, 2017
Wayward Heroes by Halldór Laxness
‘[T]he fear that a land’s rulers have of foreign conquerors is slight compared to their fear of their own subjects.’
••••••
‘“And as for your murderous deeds, they are worthy of praise by none but the fools who sniff long after you, whom you call your skalds. … Off with you, then, to perform deeds befitting a warrior: setting fire to people’s houses and killing everything that draws breath for your sea-kings or sovereigns – all in order to rule the world.”’
••••••
‘The saltmaker replies: “We have had plenty of kings in Norway, but the only ones that proved of any use to us were those that we sacrificed for good harvests and peace.”’
••••••
‘“And as for your murderous deeds, they are worthy of praise by none but the fools who sniff long after you, whom you call your skalds. … Off with you, then, to perform deeds befitting a warrior: setting fire to people’s houses and killing everything that draws breath for your sea-kings or sovereigns – all in order to rule the world.”’
‘The saltmaker replies: “We have had plenty of kings in Norway, but the only ones that proved of any use to us were those that we sacrificed for good harvests and peace.”’
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