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      How Tough Is Biden Prepared to Look?

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      A week after taking office, US President Joe Biden made a point of breaking with the position of his predecessor, Donald Trump, who famously blamed China for deliberately spreading the coronavirus. Trump insisted on calling it the Wuhan flu, Kung flu or any other xenophobic alternative. Coming to the defense of the entire Asian community in the United States, Biden issued a memorandum stating the following: “Inflammatory and xenophobic rhetoric has put Asian-American and Pacific Islander persons, families, communities and businesses at risk.”

      The Iran Deal vs. the Logic of History

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      The World Health Organization (WHO) team conducting an investigation in Wuhan released its preliminary findings this week on the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. It maintained, as Reuters reports, “that the virus likely came from bats and not a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan.” On February 10, an official of the US State Department announced what appeared to be a retreat to the Trump administration’s position: “The United States will not accept World Health Organization … findings coming out of its coronavirus investigation in Wuhan, China without independently verifying the findings using its own intelligence and conferring with allies.”

      One of the WHO inspectors, British zoologist and expert on disease ecology Peter Daszak, reacting to the State Department’s note, addressed this advice to Biden in a tweet: “Well now this👇. @JoeBiden has to look tough on China. Please don’t rely too much on US intel: increasingly disengaged under Trump & frankly wrong on many aspects. Happy to help.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Look tough:

      1. The principal action required to maintain the status of a bully, a person whose demeanor counts more than their substance
      2. The principal action required to maintain the image of the leader of a hegemon, called upon to make a show of being hyper-aggressive toward nations elected by politicians and the media as an existential threat  

      Contextual Note

      While the WHO team offered no definitive explanation of the origin, it focused on different possibilities of animal transmission requiring further investigation. When asked at a press conference on February 10 whether he had “any interest in punishing China for not being truthful about COVID last year,” President Biden cagily replied, “I’m interested in getting all the facts.” That answer leaves him free to look tough on China or, alternatively, to look tough at the intelligence that for the past four years has done what intelligence always does, responded obsequiously to the political solicitations of the administration in place.

      One American who, for the past four years, has made a point of looking tough and has been regularly featured in the media is Mike Pompeo, the final secretary of state under the Trump administration. In a desperate effort to keep the Trump mystique going to maintain its flagging ratings, Fox News brought Pompeo back to defend the Wuhan flu theme Trump consistently exploited for electoral advantage during last year’s presidential election campaign. In the interview, “Pompeo said ‘significant evidence’ remained that the coronavirus originated in a Chinese laboratory, casting doubt Tuesday on the World Health Organization‘s assessment that it likely spread from animals to humans.”

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      Pompeo, a former CIA director, admitted in 2019 that his job at the Central Intelligence Agency consisted of lying, cheating and stealing. He implied that he was now telling the truth, a fact ironically borne out by his honest admission of duplicity while at the CIA. And yet, there may be reason even today to believe that Pompeo has retained something of his talent for lying, which he will be willing to use for what he deems virtuous purposes. 

      The language people like Pompeo use often reveals how they manage to bend the truth when they aren’t simply betraying it. In the Fox interview, Pompeo explains, “I continue to know that there was significant evidence that this may well have come from that laboratory.” What can Pompeo possibly mean when he says, “I continue to know”? Is knowledge for Pompeo something that can appear and disappear? Knowledge is a state of awareness of truth, not an act of will, something one can decide according to the circumstances. 

      And because what someone knows must be a fact, what is the solid fact he says he continues to know? He tells us that it is the idea that the coronavirus “may have come from” the Wuhan laboratory. But something that “may” be true is at best a reasonable hypothesis and at worst a fabricated lie. Something that “may” be true cannot be called knowledge. Any honest speaker would use the verb “suspect.” But, in this age of conspiracy theories, people tend to suspect anything that is merely suspected. And Fox News has always preferred assertions to suspicions.

      In the same interview, Pompeo describes his recommendations for the US policy on China. He says the nation must “continue to make sure that the next century remains one dominated by rule of law, sovereignty and the things that the America first foreign policy put in place.” 

      Besides the fact that Pompeo offers another example of his favorite verb, “continue,” his odd assertion that “the next century” (the 22nd?) must be “dominated by rule of law” offers a curious yoking of two theoretically antinomic ideas: dominance and rule of law. The very idea of “rule of law” posits a relationship of equality between all concerned parties. It opposes the effect of domination. Rule of law is about level playing fields and fair play. Pompeo’s formulation reveals that he thinks of the rule of law as a specific tool of American domination. This is of course consistent with the facts, whatever the administration. The US still steadfastly refuses the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and Trump’s “America First” policy refused any law other than its own.

      For those wondering why Fox News has taken the trouble to interview the former secretary of state of a president now being tried for sedition, the journalists reveal the interest at the end of the interview. Fox sees Pompeo as a worthy contender for the 2024 presidential campaign. He’s a cleaner version of Trump, but one who will always talk and look tough.

      Historical Note

      After the most contentious presidential election in its history, the US has been preparing to experience the transition from one radical style of hyperreality to another — from Donald Trump’s outlandish display of petulant rhetoric committed to reshaping the world in his image to Joe Biden’s reserved and fundamentally uncommitted avuncular manner. Just as in 2008, when they voted in Barack Obama after eight years of George W. Bush’s chaotic wars and a Wall Street crash, Americans are expecting a change of style and focus from the never-ending drama of the Trump years. 

      But just as the self-proclaimed change candidate Obama, once in office, showed more respect for continuity than commitment to renewal, on the theme of foreign policy, President Biden appears to be following Trump’s lead while simply reducing the tone. This phenomenon reflects a more fundamental reality at the core of today’s pseudo-democratic oligarchy. It is regularly masked by the transition from Republican to Democrat and vice versa. The reigning political hyperreality, despite the contrasting personal styles of successive presidents, will always prevail. Continuity trumps change.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Biden’s future policy on both China and Iran provides two cases in point. The clock is ticking on the need to recalibrate both of these relationships, more particularly on Iran, which has an election coming in just a few months. As the world anxiously awaits the new orientations of the Biden administration, the kind of continuity Pompeo appreciates may prove more dominant than the reversal people have come to expect. After all, Trump set about reversing everything Obama did, so why shouldn’t Biden do the same? The answer may simply be that that’s not what Democrats do.

      The average American has never been seriously interested in foreign policy. That very fact has consistently led to the kind of Manichaean thinking that dominated during the Cold War. In his 2000 election campaign, the inimitable George W. Bush summed up how that Manichaean system works: “When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world, and you knew exactly who they were. It was us versus them, and it was clear who them was. Today, we are not so sure who the they are, but we know they’re there.” As John Keats once wrote, “That is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” 

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Pompeo's exit leaves new secretary of state with task of regaining department's trust

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      No statues were toppled at the state department after Mike Pompeo’s departure. It was a changing of the guard, rather than regime change. But in one case at least, his legacy was brought down quickly and visibly.
      On the day of the inauguration, workmen brought down a giant placard about “professional ethos” that the former secretary of state had erected at the main entrance to mark his first year in office.
      The Trump era was particularly tough for US diplomats, who were regularly maligned as part of the “Deep State” by Donald Trump – and the state department was hollowed out and often sidelined under Pompeo and his predecessor, Rex Tillerson.
      In April 2019, staff had been gathered in the foyer, and Happy by Pharrell Williams was played through the state department public address system, as the “ethos” placard was unveiled.
      Foreign service officers were told they were each a “champion of American diplomacy”. It was supposed to be a morale-boosting exercise but had the opposite effect. To experienced diplomats, it felt like condescension.
      “We are confident that our colleagues do not need a reminder of the values we share,” Ned Price, the incoming department spokesman, noted drily this week.
      The giant sign had also become a monument to hypocrisy as Pompeo was subjected to a string of inspector general investigations about his use of departmental resources for his private ends, sending government officials out for dry cleaning or to walk the dog, and flying his wife, Susan, out on state department trips. Pompeo had the inspector general fired.
      A state department spokesperson confirmed on Thursday that the “Madison Dinners” Pompeo and his wife had staged in the diplomatic reception rooms had been discontinued. His critics said that he was using the well-heeled guest list at the taxpayer-funded events to build up a donor base for a 2024 presidential run.
      In Pompeo’s day, the ground floor corridor leading to the press room was lined with pictures of him in action around the world. Since his departure, it has reverted to tradition, with photographs of several former secretaries going about their work.
      Another Pompeo legacy that has been quietly dropped is the Unalienable Rights Commission a panel of conservative historians and political philosophers, whose report every state department employee was instructed to read. It told them that America’s founding fathers believed that private property and religious freedom were “foremost” among human rights, and that US foreign policy should follow that example.
      At his confirmation hearing, Pompeo’s replacement, Antony Blinken, said he would repudiate the commission’s findings and reaffirm US adherence to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
      In his first speech at the headquarters in Foggy Bottom, Blinken promised staff he would begin “rebuilding morale and trust”. He did not mention his predecessor, but his speech sought to salve the bruises he left. Career diplomats had largely felt ignored, and betrayed when Pompeo declined to defend them in the face of groundless attacks from the White House.
      “I’ll seek out dissenting views and listen to the experts, because that’s how the best decisions are made,” he said. “And I will insist that you speak, and speak up, without fear or favor. And I will have your back.”
      The new management style has not been entirely welcomed. While the nominations for the top jobs in Washington and at the United Nations have gone to highly experienced and competent people, almost all have been political appointees – most of whom had left the department and become politically active – rather than career promotions.
      “The career people feel like you’re sending the message: if you want the top jobs, you’ve got to cozy up to a campaign and raise some big money. And that’s a terrible precedent,” Brett Bruen, director of global engagement in the Obama White House said. “It’s being seen by people who had high hopes for this administration as a slap in the face.”
      Price, the new spokesman, responded by saying Blinken’s “first task will be to invest in the department’s greatest asset: our people”.
      “Under Secretary Blinken’s leadership, career experts will always be at the center of our diplomacy, and he is committed to ensuring that they will help to lead it by serving in many of the department’s most senior positions,” Price said.
      Bruen said most of the top jobs in Washington and New York have already been filled, but the next test of the new secretary of state will be the appointment of ambassadors.
      “Biden said during the campaign he was going to empower and elevate career diplomats,” he said. “Pretty clearly, he hasn’t done in the senior positions so fine: with the ambassadors, appoint fewer than 10% political.” More

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      The Guardian view on Xinjiang and crimes against humanity: speaking and acting | Editorial

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      It took a long time for leaders to notice, longer to condemn, and longer still to act. It took time for researchers to amass evidence of China’s treatment of Uighurs in Xinjiang – from mass detention to forced sterilisation – given the intense security and secrecy in the north-west region. Beijing initially denied the existence of the camps, believed to have held about a million Turkic Muslims, before describing them as educational centres to tackle extremism. But the hesitation by other governments also reflected the anxiety to maintain relations with the world’s second-largest economy.The US, on Donald Trump’s final day in office, became the first country to declare that China is committing genocide. The administration has already targeted officials and issued a ban on any cotton or tomato products from the region. On Tuesday, the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, described a “systematic attempt to destroy Uighurs by the Chinese party-state … forced assimilation and eventual erasure”. A more cautious report from a bipartisan US Congressional commission said that China had committed crimes against humanity and “possibly” genocide.Mr Pompeo’s statement is a parting shot, made with some cynicism. (Not all criticism of human rights abuses, however merited, is motivated solely by human rights concerns; Mr Trump reportedly told Xi Jinping that the camps were “exactly the right thing to do”.) But the announcement is unlikely to be the end of the matter. Joe Biden’s campaign called it genocide months ago. While Mr Trump broke with the previous approach to China, the US has undergone a bipartisan shift, forged primarily by Beijing’s actions – not only in Xinjiang but also in Hong Kong, its handling of the pandemic and in international relations more broadly.The same change is evident in the UK, as evidenced by the sizeable Conservative rebellion in parliament on Tuesday, in which an amendment to the trade bill was narrowly defeated by 319 to 308. The genocide amendment originated in the Lords and was backed by all opposition parties, as well as a broad coalition outside parliament, including the Muslim Council of Britain and the Board of Deputies of British Jews. It proposes that the UK high courts could determine whether genocide is taking place, potentially leading to the revocation of trade deals. The Foreign Office argues that genocide determinations are complex matters better made by international institutions – knowing full well that in reality they will not consider them in this case, and that this is not a requirement of the Genocide Convention. The foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, struck a far stronger tone than before when he spoke recently of “torture and inhumane and degrading treatment … on an industrial scale” in Xinjiang. But the remedies he put forward – requiring firms to do better on due diligence – were feeble.A genocide finding is an extremely high bar: it is unclear whether a court would agree that Chinese actions passed it. It could not address Britain’s continuing sale of arms to Saudi Arabia despite its grotesque record, nor the recent agreement with Egypt, said by campaigners to be seeing its worst human rights crisis for decades. China – whose spokespeople have described “the so-called ‘genocide’” as “a rumour deliberately started by some anti-China forces and a farce to discredit China” – has shown itself increasingly impervious to international opinion.But at the very least, it must be ensured that western businesses do not profit from abuses such as forced labour. The willingness to say that human rights matter, and not only when it is convenient for the UK to do so, is important. MEPs too have promised to focus on them in their scrutiny of the new EU-China investment treaty, although Anglophone countries are taking a stronger stance towards Beijing in general. The political ground internationally is shifting. But measures can only hope to have an impact if like-minded nations act together and support each other. More

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      Unscrupulous and aggressive, Pompeo plans to be the next Trump – but smarter

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      While all eyes are on Donald Trump and his Capitol Hill mob, a would-be heir and successor is running riot all by himself, storming citadels, wagging the flag and breaking china. No, it’s not Donald Jr, or Ivanka, or Ted Cruz, and certainly not poor, conflicted Mike Pence.Mike Pompeo may not strike many people as presidential material. But Trump lowered the bar. Make no mistake. America’s snarly, bully-boy secretary of state is focusing not on Joe Biden’s inauguration this week but on how to beat him or any other Democrat in 2024.Pompeo, the man who would be king, is playing political hunger games – and, looking ahead, he aims to win.In a display of extraordinary chutzpah, Pompeo has spent the time since Trump lost the election setting booby traps and laying diplomatic minefields in global conflict zones. Partly he aims to secure his own and Trump’s “legacy”. Partly it’s to screw Biden. But mostly it’s about winning the White House.Pompeo has upended established policies, adopted ultra-hardline positions, and claimed imaginary successes to advance his personal standing with the Trump rump. In fact, he’s trying to out-Trump Trump. Like him, he’s unscrupulous and aggressive, but here’s the difference: he’s not stupid.That potentially makes the former Kansas Tea party congressman and CIA chief more dangerous to the Biden presidency, and the progressive cause, than a disgraced Trump may ever be. He showed his political savvy by steering clear of the impeachment fracas. Instead, Pompeo is busy setting future agendas.Speaking in Washington last Tuesday, for example, he declared – without new evidence but drawing from a dust-heap of recycled, unproven claims – that “al-Qaida has a new home base: it is the Islamic Republic of Iran”.The American right has been trying to make the Iran connection ever since Dick Cheney falsely fingered Saddam Hussein for 9/11. But Pompeo does not get hung up on facts. He prefers assertions, tweets and slogans. Thus, he claimed, “they [Iran and al-Qaida] are partners in terrorism, partners in hate… This axis poses a grave threat to the security of nations and to the American homeland”.There’s no doubting where Pompeo and his re-purposed axis of evil are headed with this sort of talk. “We ignore this Iran-al-Qaida nexus at our peril,” he said. “We must confront it. Indeed, we must defeat it.” Message to Biden: when dealing with Iran, make war, not peace – or be accused of coddling terrorists.Raw bellicosity plays well on the right, especially with Christian Zionists and evangelical born-againers, of whom Pompeo is ostentatiously proud to be one. Such voters now seek a less toxic Republican standard-bearer. His new designation of Yemen’s Tehran-supported Houthis as terrorists is yet more grist to this mill, regardless of the civilian suffering he admits it will cause.Pompeo also arbitrarily returned Cuba to the US list of terrorist sponsors last week. Cuba accused him, reasonably enough, of “political opportunism” to obstruct improved relations under Biden. Pompeo is notably less vocal about Havana’s ally, Venezuela, where he and John Bolton risked Bay of Pigs II with failed regime change plots.Pompeo loves baiting China, the new “evil empire”, no matter that “Wuhan virus” insults, sanctions, and sabre-rattling are plainly counter-productive. He gratuitously goaded Beijing again last week by strengthening contacts with Taiwan. Decades of delicate east Asian diplomatic balancing flew out the window.This last-gasp diplomatic blitzkrieg does not fatally tie Biden’s hands but coupled with past policy blunders, it makes sensible policymaking more difficult. In truth, the Pompeo-Trump legacy is best defined in negatives: not achieving North Korean disarmament, wrecking the Iran nuclear deal, quitting the Paris climate accord, alienating allies, undermining the UN. In this sense, Biden just needs to act positive.Pompeo’s last big push for a trademark achievement – persuading Saudi Arabia to join Gulf states in cutting highly-questionable “peace deals” with Israel – ran into the sand. The Trump administration leaves office with the Middle East in greater disarray than when it arrived, whether it’s Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Libya, or the western Sahara.Unabashed, Pompeo is zealously re-writing this record of failure as a fake narrative of success. “If Pompeo’s efforts [to promote his legacy] look comical… if they are a bloated mess of obsequious praise for Trump, empty sloganeering, and half-truths, well, they are also a fair reflection of the man himself,” wrote analyst Jeffrey Lewis.As he not so stealthily lays the groundwork for a 2024 run, Pompeo has controversially exploited his position to deliver partisan speeches, hold exclusive dinners for wealthy backers, woo Christian groups, tour key domestic battlefields such as Iowa, get chummy with authoritarian foreign leaders – and tailor US foreign policy to his hawkishly regressive views.His politicised machinations have not gone unnoticed. Pompeo’s professional conduct has been investigated by his own state department. He was accused of lying about the Ukraine phone call that got Trump impeached the first time. For a while, he abetted Trump’s election denialism with talk of a “second term”.“Selfishness at the expense of the national interest isn’t the mark of an honourable diplomat or a patriot,” a New York Times editorial scathingly remarked on Friday.Many abroad are wary. After Pompeo, anxious to get out of Dodge during last week’s Trump showdown, invited himself to Brussels, he was roundly snubbed. EU politicians who have smarted at past insults, served up one of their own. They did not have time for him. The trip was cancelled.Many in Europe hope finally to have seen the back of him. Fat chance. If he gets his way, Pompeo will be the next Trump. It’s an alarming prospect for America and the world. More

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      Pompeo scraps Europe trip after EU leader calls Trump 'political pyromaniac'

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      US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has cancelled a trip to Europe at the last minute after European officials were publicly critical of Donald Trump’s role in last week’s storming of the Capitol.The official reason for the cancellation of the trip, originally to Brussels and Luxembourg, was the need to coordinate with a transition team from the incoming Biden administration, but it comes after the unprecedented attack on American democracy that stunned many world leaders and US allies.The Luxembourg leg of the trip was called off on Monday after its foreign minister Jean Asselborn called Trump “criminal” for inciting the attack.Asselborn described the outgoing US president to RTL radio as a “political pyromaniac who must be brought before a court”.Reuters and Fox News both quoted diplomatic sources as saying it was Luxembourg that had called off the meeting, a devastating snub from a tiny country for a secretary of state that continually claims to have restored “swagger” to the state department.Pompeo was also due to meet the Belgian deputy prime minister and foreign minister, Sophie Wilmes, who tweeted while the assault in Washington was underway, “These images are shocking, also because they hurt our democratic ideals.”“They show the extent of President-elect Biden’s task, which will be to unite American society around a common project. We trust him to do that.”Jens Stoltenberg, the Nato secretary general, who was due to have a dinner with Pompeo had described the scenes in Washington as “shocking” and said: “The outcome of this democratic election must be respected.” A Nato spokesperson confirmed that Pompeo had cancelled on Tuesday, giving as a reason the need to focus on the transition.Reuters reported that EU officials had declined to meet Pompeo on his last foreign trip, but a EU spokesperson denied there had been any plan or request for meetings with EU leaders.The state department, in a statement, attributed the cancellation to transition work before President-elect Joe Biden takes office on 20 January, even if until recently Pompeo had been reluctant to unequivocally recognise Biden’s win. Also on Tuesday, the US Ambassador to the United Nations Kelly Craft cancelled a planned visit to Taiwan. The state department declined further comment on European officials’ rejection of meetings with Pompeo.The cold shoulder was a contrast with Pompeo’s previous visits to Brussels, which is home to Nato and EU headquarters, over the past three years, where he has given key-note speeches on US policy and met the EU’s chief executive, even as Europe balked at Trump’s foreign policy. More

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      Pompeo lifts US-Taiwan restrictions in move likely to anger China

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      Secretary of state Mike Pompeo on Saturday said he was lifting restrictions on contacts between US officials and their Taiwanese counterparts, a move likely to anger China and increase tensions between Beijing and Washington in the waning days of Donald Trump’s presidency.China claims democratic and separately ruled Taiwan as its own territory, and regularly describes Taiwan as the most sensitive issue in its ties with the US.While the US, like most countries, has no official relations with Taiwan, the Trump administration has ramped up support, with arms sales and laws to help Taiwan deal with pressure from China.In a statement, Pompeo said that for several decades the US state department had created complex internal restrictions on interactions with Taiwanese counterparts by American diplomats, service members and other officials.“The United States government took these actions unilaterally, in an attempt to appease the Communist regime in Beijing,” Pompeo said. “Today I am announcing that I am lifting all of these self-imposed restrictions.”The US ambassador to the United Nations, Kelly Craft, will visit Taiwan next week for meetings with senior Taiwanese leaders, prompting China to warn on Thursday that the Trump administration was playing with fire.Chinese fighter jets approached the island in August and September during the last two visits: by US health secretary Alex Azar and under secretary of state Keith Krach.The US is Taiwan’s strongest international backer and arms supplier, and is obliged to help provide it with the means to defend itself under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act.“Today’s statement recognizes that the US-Taiwan relationship need not, and should not, be shackled by self-imposed restrictions of our permanent bureaucracy,” Pompeo said. More

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      Can Mike Pompeo Swagger His Way Into 2024 Election?

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      The Daily Devil’s Dictionary has been a feature of Fair Observer for more than three years. Consistent with Fair Observer’s policy of crowd-sourced journalism, we have in the past expressed the hope that some new contributors, inspired by our example, may be incited to propose an article that follows the same format. We maintain an open invitation to anyone motivated by the potential ambiguity of language presented in the media. 

      Every entry in the Daily Devil’s Dictionary aims to provide enough circumstantial, cultural and historical context to deepen our perception of the meaning behind the words and phrases glossed. Typically, we cite well-known public figures but also journalists and various media personalities. 

      Texas: The End of Authentic America?

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      Today’s possibly involuntary contributor, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, has made several appearances in these columns (for example, here, here, here and here.) Today, however, it is the first time Pompeo is the one who offers an original definition of a word he himself appears to enjoy using. He offered this astonishing definition in a tweet with the hashtag #swagger.

      In today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition, we quote Secretary Pompeo verbatim:

      Swagger:

      To represent America with pride, humility, and professionalism. We’ve done it.

      Contextual Note

      Alas, Mike Pompeo may have missed the point made by Ambrose Bierce or even of his predecessor, Dr. Samuel Johnson, the author of the very serious dictionary of the English language. Johnson sought to account for the full breadth of the English language in a fundamentally scientific approach to his sources. He nevertheless understood that some definitions and redefinitions require a touch of irony to reveal the true secrets of their significance. For example, Dr. Johnson gave the definition of “luncheon” — a relatively new concept at the very moment of history that saw the culinary innovation of the Earl of Sandwich — as “as much food as one’s hand can hold.”

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      More closely related to Pompeo’s profession, Johnson defined the word “politician” as initially “one versed in the arts of government.” He nevertheless felt impelled to add a second meaning: “a man of artifice; one of deep contrivance.” As the former director of the CIA, Pompeo knew something about the art of contrivance. In 2019, he explained the kind of radical contrivance he was skilled at when he confessed, to resounding applause, that, as CIA director, he “cheated, lied and stole.” 

      The problem, in contrast to Johnson and Bierce, is that Pompeo seems immune to irony. His definition of “swagger” reveals what appears to be a total absence of irony in his thought processes. He even fails to acknowledge the implicit irony that becomes evident as soon as an official definition of swagger is evoked, like the one offered by Merriam Webster’s of the verb form: “to conduct oneself in an arrogant or superciliously pompous manner, especially: to walk with an air of overbearing self-confidence.”

      Pompeo equates the dictionary’s “superciliously pompous manner” and “overbearing self-confidence” with “humility and professionalism.” This kind of inversion of meaning provides the key to understanding what many powerful politicians believe about their own actions: that their obsequious service to power is a manifestation of personal humility. They fail to notice that what they are doing is executing policies designed to express an attitude of supercilious arrogance.

      But it gets worse. Merriam Webster offers a second definition of the verb “swagger.” It proposes three synonyms, “boast,” “brag” and “bully,” accompanied by the following definition: “to force by argument or threat.” In this definition, the reader will recognize Pompeo’s penchant for imposing sanctions and threatening military force against any nation that doesn’t sycophantically fall into line with US policy.

      Pompeo adds to his curiously antinomic definition a note of self-congratulation, something no author of a dictionary would ever do: “We’ve done it.” By calling attention to his own accomplishments, he inadvertently justifies the original meaning of the word as he expresses his “overbearing self-confidence,” to say nothing of his Trumpian vanity and narcissism.

      Historical Note

      Many see Secretary Pompeo as a future Republican presidential candidate. There are indications that he currently processes what he sees as the historical lesson delivered by his guru, Donald Trump, following his surprising electoral success in 2016. Total self-confidence, bluster, lies and narcissism can deliver victory. Even when losing to Joe Biden in November, Trump attracted some 74 million votes.

      If Pompeo can avoid the irritating tics that motivated television’s late-night comedians to create a wave of intense personal hatred for Trump that in turn motivated their audiences to vote not so much for Joe Biden as against the incumbent, Pompeo may feel he has a reasonable hope of emerging as the kind of more palatable swaggering strongman that a lot of American voters appear to appreciate. He could assume that he will attract not only the 74 million who voted for Trump but many others across the spectrum who are increasingly fed up with the kind of traditional DC elites Joe Biden and Kamala Harris exemplify. The Democrats need to be careful to avoid a repeat of 2016. But, if history is any guide, they won’t be.

      Pompeo has another advantage. Unlike the president, he is an authentic evangelical, a true God-fearer and churchgoer, unlike the obviously immoral Trump. Pompeo believes in his own divinely appointed destiny. Moreover, he appears to be interested, in a way Trump never was, in language itself, the key to winning elections and exercising power. His recent activity as a lexicographical revisionist may indicate that he is preparing to create his own updated version of George Orwell’s Newspeak. “Swagger” is simply the first item in his new dictionary.

      Embed from Getty Images

      After the four-year Trump fiasco Republicans are left wondering how to recast themselves. One big challenge will be to find a way to deal with Trump. Some of them might be tempted to rally around Pompeo just to keep Trump at bay. After four predictably calamitous years of a Biden-Harris administration, Pompeo may see himself as bursting onto the scene to save America with the promise of turning the US into the “Nation of Swagger.” He has already semi-officially renamed his State Department the “Department of Swagger.” 

      Still, it’s too early to discount Biden, who has shown signs of wanting to do something similar. Almost all of his speeches conclude with this stale refrain: “This is the United States of America. And there has never been anything we haven’t been able to do when we’ve done it together.” This may not be swaggering per se, but it communicates the intent to swagger. Especially when he follows it up with sentiments such as, “now … we embark on the work that God and history have called upon us to do.” Biden simply lacks Trump’s and Pompeo’s brand of swagger to make his bullying sound credible.

      The word “swagger” has been in the English language at least since Shakespeare, who used it in multiple contexts. Feste, the clown, closes the play “Twelfth Night” by lamenting the sorrows of his life In his song, “The Wind and the Rain.” It includes this stanza:

      But when I came, alas! to wive,

                  With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,

      By swaggering could I never thrive,

                  For the rain it raineth every day.

      It isn’t clear whether Feste regrets having married the woman who became his wife or whether he simply expresses his disappointment at learning that married life forced him to rein in his swaggering. In both cases, he appears to accept, unlike Pompeo, that swaggering is a less than respectable form of behavior.

      No one is positioned to tame Mike Pompeo’s swagger. His wife certainly hasn’t sought to play that role. She has even been accused of having her own taste for swaggering concerning lavish State Department parties she organized and personal travel. She eventually beat the rap, though it was established that she had clearly bent official rules. Pompeo understands that in the world of political hyperreality, swagger is a key to being elected to the most powerful office in the world and occupying the limelight. He now has three years ahead of him to hone his skills at swaggering before the next round of Republican primaries begins in 2023.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in US Politics

      Antony Blinken: Biden's secretary of state nominee is sharp break with Trump era

      by

      After reports first emerged on Sunday night that Antony Blinken would be US secretary of state in the Biden administration, one particular interview from his past began circulating on social media.It was a September 2016 conversation with Grover, a character from Sesame Street, on the subject of refugees, directed at American children who might have new classmates from faraway countries.“We all have something to learn and gain from one another even when it doesn’t seem at first like we have much in common,” Blinken told the fuzzy blue puppet.After four years of an administration that has separated migrant children from their parents and kept them in cages, Blinken’s arrival at the state department will mark a dramatic change, to say the least.While Mike Pompeo has remained a domestic politician throughout his tenure as secretary of state, giving the lion’s share of his interviews to conservative radio stations in the midwest, for example, Blinken is very much a born internationalist.He went to school in Paris, where he learned to play the guitar and play football (soccer), and harboured dreams of becoming a film-maker. Before entering the White House under Barack Obama, he used to play in a weekly soccer game with US officials, foreign diplomats and journalists, and he has two singles, love songs titled Lip Service and Patience, uploaded on Spotify.All those contacts and the urbane bilingual charm will be targeted at soothing the frayed nerves of western allies, reassuring them that the US is back as a conventional team player. The foreign policy priorities in the first days of a Biden administration will be rejoining treaties and agreements that Donald Trump left.There is little doubt that Blinken will be on the same page as Joe Biden. He has been at the president-elect’s side for nearly two decades. After working in Bill Clinton’s national security council, he became Biden’s chief foreign policy adviser in the Senate in 2002, as staff director on the foreign relations committee, and worked on Biden’s failed presidential bid in 2008.After Obama picked Biden as vice-president, Blinken returned to the White House as his national security adviser. His face can be seen at the back of the room in the famous photograph of Obama officials monitoring the raid that killed Bin Laden. More