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    Joe Biden’s Revolving-Door Cabinet

    After a weird hiatus in modern history lasting four years — more like the “Twilight Zone” than “West Wing” — the US under Joe Biden will presumably return to its stable center, which is proudly claimed to be “center-right.” The Biden camp thinks that defining the nation as center-right is an objective, lucid, realistic evaluation of the mood of the population. They base it on their interpretation of the results of the 2020 election that sent Joe Biden to the White House, reduced the representation of Democrats in the House and left Republicans in control of the Senate.

    The true Democrats — a group that excludes a small minority of fanatical progressives — consider themselves the center but also claim to be progressive. The true Republicans — moderates like John Kasich and Meg Whitman, who endorsed Biden — are just right of center. And they claim that the millions of Trump voters define the right. This means that to accomplish the goal of unifying the country and offering something to everyone across the spectrum, President-elect Joe Biden’s policy should logically be situated somewhere to the right of the moderate Republicans.

    The Low Expectations of Biden’s High-Mindedness

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    Though the media seems uninterested, it can easily be demonstrated that this official reading of the “mood” of the US is based on totally erroneous assumptions. The US population is clearly tired of a foreign policy based on endless overseas wars, even traumatized by it. A clear majority of Americans, irrespective of party allegiance, favor the principle themes proposed by the progressive left of the Democratic Party: Medicare for All, a wealth tax, an end to bailouts for the rich, a $15 minimum wage, free college education, the decriminalization of marijuana, to mention only those. The Democratic center that Biden represents has branded most of those positions extreme. And the Republicans will systematically oppose them.

    If a majority of the people clamor for progressive policies but the officials they elect oppose them, shouldn’t the leaders recognize a state of cognitive dissidence rather than assume that their own values represent the truth? When citing the “mood of the nation,” whose mood are they talking about, the people’s or the that of Washington insiders? Whose mood will guide the new administration’s policies?

    If the choices Biden has been making for his cabinet are any indication, the only mood worth taking seriously is that of Beltway insiders. An article in The New York Times by Eric Lipton and Kenneth P. Vogel, “Biden Aides’ Ties to Consulting and Investment Firms Pose Ethics Test,” looks at the recent activity of Biden’s cabinet choices reveals how the system is built. All of the identified candidates for significant posts are linked to the kinds of corporate interests that oppose the positions the US public supports.

    Worse, the authors analyze the structural corruption of the DC system of revolving doors. They focus on two companies: the consulting firm WestExec Advisors and an investment fund, Pine Island Capital Partners. The two firms feature “an overlapping roster of politically connected officials,” that include “the most prominent names on President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s team and others under consideration for high-ranking posts.” WestExec was founded by the future secretary of state, Tony Blinken, and a top candidate for secretary of defense, Michèle Flournoy.

    The authors bring up the fact that Biden’s nominees have refused to release a list of their firm’s clients. This would be the key to following up any suspicion of corruption. WestExec generously offered this explanation of their refusal: “As a general matter, many of our clients require us to sign nondisclosure agreements, which are a standard business practice to protect confidential information. We are legally and ethically bound by those agreements.”

    Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

    Legally and ethically bound:

    Required by a supreme law, doubly enforced (by a moral code among people of honor and commercial law) to place one’s loyalty to corporate masters ahead of public service.

    Contextual Note

    Welcome to the iron-clad logic of what may be called the rulebook of the elite. Slaves in the old South and elsewhere were physically bound to prevent their escape. Slaves to an all-powerful corrupt system are voluntarily bound by shackles of self-interested solidarity. The average person assumes that the wealthy and powerful have absolute freedom. They too are slaves.

    Some may wonder if any difference exists between the idea of being “ethically bound” by devious commercial agreements and the Mafia’s law of omertà. Both function as a law of silence designed to hide shameful activities. The difference is that the Mafia never claims their business is either ethical or legal. Saagar Enjeti addressed The Times article on his program for The Hill, describing how the influence-peddling system Blinken and Flournoy created works, how the consulting company and the hedge fund work together to disguise their corruption. He added that “the best part is it’s totally legal. It’s also corruption 101 … a more sophisticated way of handing somebody a briefcase full of cash.”

    Embed from Getty Images

    Lipton and Vogel describe the system in these terms: “WestExec’s business plan accommodates the revolving door between the influence industry and government by offering services that draw on government expertise without triggering lobbying laws that would require its officials to disclose their clients’ identities or specific issues before the government.”

    Democrats will undoubtedly point out that none of this compares with the obscenity of Donald Trump’s flagrant violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution from day one of his presidency, to say nothing of the aggravated nepotism of his administration over the past four years. But the Democrats’ precious revolving door has been there for decades. Trump’s outrageous performance offered a singular advantage to any Democrat or Republican succeeding him. If they return to the more traditional, discrete methods of corruption, no one will blink an eye. Biden has been around DC lobbyists and their ilk long enough to understand the rules of that game.

    Historical Note

    The Times article is astonishing if only because it breaks with the newspaper’s perceived editorial stance of systematically developing Democratic talking points and avoiding any criticism of the party’s establishment. This time, the authors pull no punches as they describe what can only be called a flagrant sell-out to the corporate plutocracy by a president who didn’t even wait to assume his functions before putting the graft machine to work.

    Democrats will protest that, to quote Marc Antony on Brutus and his fellow assassins, “these are all honorable men” (even if today many of them are women). Lipton and Vogel mention the fact that the DC lobbyists they have spoken to “say WestExec has already come to be seen as a go-to firm for insight on how Mr. Biden’s team will approach issues of significance to deep-pocketed corporate interests.” Given the direct connections his appointees have with major defense contractors, the military-industrial complex will find itself in a more comfortable position than under Trump.

    The article nevertheless carefully avoids adventuring into the real and most troubling consequences of this revolving door. Biden’s group of political professionals has a shared professional and financial interest in keeping the massive arms industry ticking over. That doesn’t mean that war is imminent. It means that the risk of war and the threat of military intervention will continue to be a dominant tool not just of diplomacy, but also of the management of the economy.

    Trump had his own personal way of being what he claimed he would be during his first presidential campaign: “the most militaristic” president ever. Nevertheless, he thought military action abroad was a waste of money and sought to bring home the troops, but he also insisted that military build-up was vital. He relentlessly and needlessly bloated the defense budget. In comparison, Democratic presidents, at least since Lyndon Johnson, have tended to support both the build-up and the intervention.

    Biden’s future cabinet certainly appears to conform to that model. This cabinet will undoubtedly find itself “ethically and legally bound” to reinforce the US military presence across the globe. That’s what Democrats have been doing for decades. And that’s what the masters of the revolving door have been trained to do.

    *[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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    Is Michel Zecler France’s George Floyd?

    In recent weeks, France’s President Emmanuel Macron has accelerated his recent campaign to bolster his credentials as Europe’s most determined authoritarian leader. Citing France’s secular philosophical tradition, he appears to believe in the 18th-century cultural meme of the enlightened despot.

    Macron came to power in 2017 after painting himself as the inclusive centrist standing midway between the left and the right, whose parties were in total disarray. Like Joe Biden today, he promised to unite a nation that had suffered from a system of “alternance” (alternate rule). For decades, it had allowed the powerful political organizations on the right and left to repeatedly replace the other as France’s ruling elite, perpetuating a political class that had lost touch with reality.

    After three years of Macron, and because of the events last week, the president may be suddenly realizing the truth behind William Butler Yeats’ observation a century ago that “the center cannot hold.” Yeats was of course referring to Western civilization as a whole, not French politics. Macron wants people to believe he represents Western civilization. After claiming Jupiterian authority at the beginning of his reign, he has increasingly projected himself as the all-seeing arbiter of modern political truth. He claims to embody what he calls “the principles and values” of la république. His version of the Enlightenment has become the French version of Puritan America’s shining city on a hill.

    The Rapid Growth of Emmanuel Macron’s Authoritarianism

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    Macron may have noticed that the American politicians — notably Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush — who successfully marketed the shining-city meme to justify their militaristic authoritarianism, represented the right rather than the center. The right traditionally applauds xenophobic nationalism. But Macron still sees his brand as centrist. This obliges him to thread the needle by emphasizing secular universalism, traditionally approved by the left, as opposed to the right’s typically faith-based nationalism.

    In recent months, Macron has pushed two distinctly authoritarian themes: declaring cultural war on Islamists (meaning he has a beef with Islam itself) and reinforcing France’s already well-structured police forces to help the nation evolve into an enlightened police state. At the same time, he poses as the promoter of European unity, encouraging the EU to rally around his “liberal” values that notably include “freedom of expression,” redefined as the right — if not the duty — to blaspheme, so long as the target is Muslims, who clearly take their religion too seriously.

    Macron’s crowning achievement of the past week was the French parliament’s passing of the global security law, with its provisions to punish journalists and citizens who dare to film the police in the act of enforcing the always fair and just authority of the state. Those found guilty of filming the police face a €45,000 fine.

     Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

    Global security (Sécurité globale):

    The universally valid application of authoritarian methods of policing human activity in France and, why not, everywhere around the globe, since France is, as everyone should know, the source of universal moral values.   

    Contextual Note

    The vote in parliament took place the same day the surveillance video was released of the brutal beating by the police of Michel Zecler, a black music producer. The police booked Zecler for “violence against a public authority,” which, if successfully prosecuted, would have landed him in prison for many years. The three officers failed to notice the surveillance camera in Zecler’s professional premises, where the beating took place. The episode has proved severely embarrassing for Macron’s government. Although alive and safe, Michel Zecler could become the George Floyd of France. The law was already contested, but a massive protest on Saturday highlighted the symbolic importance of this incident. Others are likely to follow as the government hesitates on what tack to take.

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    Without the video, Zecler would have undergone the fate of so many other members of minorities harassed or brutalized by the authorities. The police officers claimed that he had assaulted them and attempted to seize their weapons. What judge or jury would believe Zecler’s word against theirs in a courtroom? Zecler has insisted on expressing his own respect for the police. He considers his attackers as three bad apples who do not represent the vast majority of law enforcement. What they do represent, however, is the workings of an arbitrary, racist and authoritarian system that Macron has chosen to reinforce and place beyond any criterion of accountability.

    The government finds itself in a quandary that in some way resembles the comedy of the Keystone Kops. The right-wing interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, a J. Edgar Hoover-type personality whom Macron appointed to demonstrate his commitment to authoritarian rule, immediately dismissed any reconsideration of the law. Within an hour, Prime Minister Jean Castex contradicted him, asserting, as France 24 reported, “that the government would review the wording of a controversial draft law that would place restrictions on citizens filming the police and publishing the images.” Castex immediately promised to set up “a commission to rewrite the text.”

    It didn’t take long for Macron’s own legislators who voted for the law to protest, calling the idea of appointing a commission to rewrite their law an insult. One complained of being treated like a “vulgar floorcloth” (serpillière), another like a doormat (paillasson). How embarrassing! The president had crafted the entire operation specifically for electoral purposes, following the results of private polling that showed a positive response to Macron’s promise to get tough on Muslims.

    Macron’s minister of justice, Eric Dupond-Moretti, speaking to BFM-TV, dared to undermine Macron’s and Darmanin’s logic: “It’s out of the question to forbid journalists from filming and informing the public.” He called for “amending a number of the law’s provisions.”

    Historical Note

    Macron has been heralding the 18th-century Enlightenment as an export rivaling champagne, Bordeaux or foie gras. This tells us a lot about the political philosophy of a man whose career oddly parallels Donald Trump’s. For both men, the presidency is the first political office they have been elected to. Theoretically, that should be good for democracy in two nations that have suffered from the corruption associated with government by political professionals whose idea of governing amounts to playing off vested interests against one another.

    Neither Macron’s center nor Trump’s solipsistic system have the capacity to mold reality to their purposes. But if both political mavericks managed to make it to the top, it is also because the traditional parties had themselves succumbed to a reality they could no longer control.

    Future historians will undoubtedly look back with curiosity at this strange period of history inaugurated by Osama Bin Laden in 2001, in which small terrorist groups and individuals managed to destabilize the immense power of the Western nations not through the damage they did do it directly, but through their ability to provoke self-destructive authoritarian responses from Western governments.

    Embed from Getty Images

    To be elected and respected, leaders had to show their electorate their determination to base policy on paranoia. In the meantime, the entire political class had lost its ability to analyze causes and effects, for the simple reason that they were focused on the task of balancing the interests of the powerful cliques — financial, industrial and military — that formed a club they aspired to belong to.

    Their governments’ growing authoritarianism had a two-fold effect: It punished its own citizens by restricting their liberty and reducing them to puppets in a system increasingly designed for a single purpose: to protect the status quo. Since terrorists were attacking the existing system, good citizens could accept the idea that it was the system that needed protecting, not the people themselves. 

    The second effect was more fundamental. The laws and political practices designed to protect the status quo augmented the power of private interests, increasing their wealth and control over the economy. This produced devastating social effects. The people — the supposed bedrock of democracy — were faced with an intolerable psychological dilemma. They were asked to adhere willingly to an increasingly arbitrary system that pushed them further and further into economic oblivion. Up to now, the system has worked because it seemed like the only system possible. But Yeats was right: There comes a moment when the center cannot hold. Sometimes it’s an obscure name that triggers it — a name like George Floyd or Michel Zecler.

    *[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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    International Monitors Found No Fraud in US Election

    This month’s election was no doubt the most dramatic in recent US history. Given the highly bipartisan political atmosphere, at 67%, voter turnout was the highest since 1900. Given the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, there were 20% fewer polling stations open across the country. An unprecedented 65 million voters opted for mail-in ballots, raising fears that the US Postal Service may not be able to handle the amount of traffic in a timely manner. President Donald Trump had already laid the groundwork in the preceding months to claim that the election will be stolen from him and, true to his brand, his team promptly filed 36 legal challenges to contest the results; to date, 29 of these have been unsuccessful.

    Donald Trump’s Treason Against the American People

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    More than three weeks after the election, Trump has not officially conceded. The president and his supporters are vociferously and aggressively claiming voter fraud. President-elect Joe Biden and his camp, alongside US election and security officials, are unequivocal that there is no evidence of foul play. At this time of bitter impasse, it would be invaluable to refer to a truly objective, unbiased third party. Fortunately, there is one.

    Election Monitoring

    The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) was founded in 1975. It consists of 57 member countries, and the United States is one of them. A key raison d’être of the OSCE is election monitoring. It assesses whether elections are “characterized by equality, universality, political pluralism, confidence, transparency and accountability.” The OSCE has observed over 300 elections globally, both in established democracies like Canada and the UK as well as in countries like Croatia and Ukraine, where the democratic tradition is still tenuous. A multinational team of experts is on hand before, during and after the vote. The methodology is thorough and transparent.

    Embed from Getty Images

    The organization has been observing every general and midterm election in the US since the 2000 disputed contest between Al Gore and George W. Bush. Its presence is particularly relevant at this moment in US history. The OSCE planned to deploy some 500 observers in the 2020 election, but the number was reduced due to the pandemic. By early October, the International Election Observation Mission (IEOM) to the US had some 130 international election monitors from 39 member nations on the ground. While some states did not allow international observers full access, most did. And even in states where the observers were not allowed in the polling stations, they at least examined the mail-in process. On the night of November 3, the OSCE delivered a detailed, 23-page report, the entirety of which is openly available on the internet. 

    The report covers a lot of ground: the political context and the legal framework of the electoral system; election administration and observation; voter rights, registration and identification; candidate registration (no room for birther controversy here); campaign environment and finance; the role of the media; legal complaints and appeals; as well as new voting technologies and the conduct of the election itself. It also explains IEOM’s process, observations, analysis, conclusions and recommendations.

    Anyone with any doubt about possible voter fraud and whether the election was legal will be assuaged by the report’s conclusion that “The 3 November general elections were competitive and well managed” and that, “In general, IEOM interlocutors expressed a high level of confidence in the work of the election administration at all levels.”

    The report also offers two chilling warnings. First, it states that “Baseless allegations of systematic deficiencies, notably by the incumbent president, including on election night, harm public trust in democratic institutions.” Second, it surmises that “Numerous ODIHR interlocutors noted that the judiciary has become highly politicized and indicated that this would have an impact on the rules governing the holding of these elections and possibly the outcome.” This report is preliminary. The IEOM remains on the task and will release a final report in early January.

    Virtually Ignored

    Interestingly, the presence of international election monitors in this United States has been virtually ignored by the media, the public and the politicians themselves. On the one hand, it’s understandable. Given the US-centric focus of many Americans, they may not even be aware of the role international observers play in US elections. Those who claim that the election was stolen from Donald Trump are certainly not going to point out that there is an objective assessment of the validity of the voting process. In fact, President Trump fired the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Chris Krebs, for stating that this election was “the most secure in American history.”

    But why are the Democrats, the left-wing media and indeed anyone interested in proving beyond doubt that the election was fair ignoring the OSCE findings? Perhaps they don’t want to rely on any outside institutions to determine the validity of their election. Or maybe they feel that international monitors are only for banana republics, not for established democracies — and certainly not for the world’s oldest democracy. Pride goes before the fall.

    Susan Hyde, a professor of political science at the University of Berkeley, California, and an experienced international election monitor, says that “In countries that are very divided, it can be hard for citizens to know which sources of information are objective because it seems like every domestic audience has a dog in the fight.” She explains that international observers can “act as an external but credible resource for voters and for political parties.” International monitoring missions do not stand for Democrats or for Republicans — they stand for democracy.

    On the one hand, it may be ironic that the United States should be in need of the services of international election monitors. But it would be even more tragic if the US did not use their essential, objective and readily available expertise and their vital findings at this critical juncture in its democracy.

    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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    The Low Expectations of Biden’s High-Mindedness

    As Donald Trump’s war of attrition has wound down to the point at which only an organized revolt could provide the final glimmer of hope the president is hoping for to extend his lease on the White House past January 20, the American people and US media are left wondering how the president-elect will fill the role of an absent reality TV host. It may, in the end, require the talents of a Samuel Coleridge to tell the full story of President-elect Joe Biden, the ancient mariner of the Washington marshes, who, having cast the albatross of Trump from the country’s neck, will seek to govern a nation reeling from the tsunami of COVID-19 and the economic woes that have come in its wake.

    To help us understand at least one dimension of the transformation awaiting us, Ben Smith — President Emmanuel Macron’s newest phone buddy at The New York Times — has authored a fascinating article examining what is likely to stand as the most visible change in the coming transition. It has little to do with policy. Instead, it concerns the two presidents’ relations with the media.

    Can Joe Biden Rewrite the Rules of the Road?

    READ MORE

    The sudden switch next January from the tweet-wielding, unmasked Republican slayer of Mexican and Muslim dragons, a man equipped his desk with a live hotline to Fox News host Sean Hannity and who manages an extended family ready to spread his improvised policies across the globe, to the 78-year-old Democratic DC seadog who, after 36 years in the Senate, spent half of this year sequestered in his basement, the change is likely to be monumental.

    The world has grown accustomed to Trump’s slogans, insults, claims of greatness and outrageous lies that are automatically echoed by his minions in the media, including those who oppose him. That has become an attribute of the White House itself. Trump is always on stage and always looking to land a zinger. As Smith points out, the contrast provided by the president-elect couldn’t be greater. Where Trump was constantly inventing counterfactual boasts to market his brand, “Mr. Biden liked nothing more than a wide-ranging, high-minded conversation about world affairs after he had returned from a trip to China or India.”

    Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

    High-minded conversation:

    A dialogue between two people who have mastered the art of sounding not only serious but responsible, regardless of whether the substance of what they have to say is either serious or responsible.

    Contextual Note

    Ben Smith recounts that Joe Biden, when he was vice president, showed himself “particularly attentive to the wise men of Washington, especially the foreign policy columnists David Ignatius of The Washington Post and Thomas L. Friedman of The Times.” The journalist was almost certainly using the term “wise men” ironically, since the wisdom of both of those writers has too often been questioned by truly wise analysts for Smith’s readers to suppose that Ignatius and Friedman seriously live up to that label.

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    According to the laws of the liberal marketplace — laws with which The New York Times generally complies — opinion writers treating serious subjects in a serious style, and who are read and quoted routinely by educated people, define a journalistic commodity that can be labeled “wise men.” These voices are a form of the merchandise The Times puts on sale every day of the week.

    Ever since Hillary Clinton’s famous characterization of Donald Trump’s voters as “a basket of deplorables,” it has been clear that “high-mindedness” is a feature of the Democratic brand. Democrats like to talk about serious, complex problems, although, even when in a position of power, they appear to be far less adamant about solving them. Above all, they aim to convince a reasonably educated public that they are serious people, in contrast with Republicans who like to reduce complex issues to slogans that turn around a binary choice. That is the kind of thing deplorables voters reflexively respond to.

    Michelle Obama is admired for the dictum she taught her children, which ultimately became a slogan: “When they go low, we go high.” The problem with this as a mobilizing sentiment is that it tends to communicate an attitude of superiority and condescension. When it comes from people who have achieved a high position, it implicitly expresses their indifference to the concerns of those who, for whatever reason, feel impelled to go low. Appearing to be the product of complex thought, it expresses a simple idea: that “we” (the wise ones) refuse to listen to those who fail to admire our accomplishments and respect our rules.

    Smith points out how patently unskilled Biden has been throughout his career at leveraging the power of the media, a force now available to any prominent figure in today’s celebrity culture to impose their brand. Whatever light a public personality has to shed outward can be refracted through the commercial media into thousands of colors and amplified by social media to create an impact that will generate enthusiasm among the populace. That is what Donald Trump consummately knows how to do, and Joe Biden clearly doesn’t. Smith sees Biden as clinging to “an older set of values.” In a word, Biden is an old school politician called to reign over a world that is more likely to resonate with Jack Black’s “School of Rock.”

    As Smith observes, “it misreads Mr. Biden to see him as either a true insider or a media operator with anything like President Trump’s grasp of individual reporters’ needs, his instinct for when to call journalists or their bosses and his shrewd shaping of his own image.” A good segment of the US population and a clear majority of people overseas will be reassured. But can this old school approach make an impact in the US today, where celebrity and influencer culture drives every social and even political trend?

    Historical Note

    In his latest book, “Capital and Ideology,” Thomas Piketty pours out and analyzes in considerable demographic and economic detail the history of voting patterns in the elections of three democracies: the US, France and the UK. The statistics reveal an inversion of the scale of education between the parties labeled left and right in all three countries. 

    Whereas the conservative parties in these countries have traditionally drawn a clear majority of the educated class, today, it is the parties on the left that have won over the college-educated crowd, producing what he calls the establishment’s “Brahmin left.” It may or may not overlap with the progressive left, who tend not only to be educated but, unlike their establishment peers, intellectual. Increasingly the parties on the right continue to appeal to the wealthiest segment of the population — their traditional constituency — but, paradoxically, they have managed to attract the less educated classes into voting for what Piketty calls their culture of the “merchant right.”

    Embed from Getty Images

    In a fascinating frank and personal discussion between former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang and author Anand Giridharadas, the writer explains his view of how the Democratic Party has evolved. After provocatively observing that “Democrats don’t know how to talk,” he tells Yang that “the Democratic Party as a constellation is a victim of its own high-mindedness, its own sense of moral purpose, its own very high level of educational attainment.” He quite rightly emphasizes that high-mindedness may be a bit overrated in the world of contemporary politics.

    Joe Biden of course managed to squeeze past Donald Trump in five battleground states by having what Hillary Clinton lacked, a tenuous connection with the working class and an education that was definitely not Ivy League. He wasn’t exclusively high-minded. But Biden never acquired or even sought to understand the populist swagger that now seems to be obligatory. When Giridharadas says that Democrats don’t know how to talk, what he means is that they don’t know how to present and sell their vision or their ideas. That, of course, supposes they have a vision and really do want to sell it, a proposition that has become somewhat debatable.

    If Giridharadas seems skeptical about any Democrat’s ability to promote necessary ideas, Ben Smith ends on a complementary melancholy note, wondering almost fatalistically “whether the electorate and we in the media can break our addiction to the Trump news cycle.”

    *[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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    The Rapid Growth of Emmanuel Macron’s Authoritarianism

    In early October, French President Emmanuel Macron, as a preparation for the 2022 election, made the decision to mount a campaign blaming France’s Muslims for their failure to embrace the country’s increasingly dogmatic “Republican culture.” To counter Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration extreme right, Macron calculated that his shambolic center-right party needed to find a way of steering votes away from the passably racist National Rally led by Le Pen.

    In Macron’s eyes, French Muslims have failed to prove the sincerity of their expected conversion to France’s national religion of laicité, or secularism, that has now definitively supplanted the traditional role of the Catholic Church. To outdo Le Pen, he deviated the blame to the world’s entire Muslim population, claiming that Islam was in the thralls of a global crisis that offended French republican sensibilities. Its credo of “equality, liberty, fraternity” now excluded tolerance for any group of people who did not unanimously adopt all its trappings. Fraternity has its limits.

    Even before the gruesome assaults on a schoolteacher and three citizens in a church in Nice that horrified the French nation, through his rhetoric about a global Islamic threat, Macron managed to convince a number of governments in Muslim countries that France was at war with their religion. Several nations responded by recommending a boycott of French products.

    Emmanuel Macron Defends His Crusade

    READ MORE

    Some went further. Since Macron felt himself in a position to signal their crisis, some Muslim authorities were tempted to focus on his own. Noticing that the French president was proposing increasingly authoritarian laws that had the effect of targeting Muslim children in schools, Pakistan’s Federal Minister for Human Rights Shireen Mazari penned a tweet comparing Macron’s proposed laws, which included attributing ID numbers to school children, to the Nazi policy of requiring Jews to wear yellow stars.

    Mazari initially made the accusation on the basis of an article that was later amended to state that the IDs would be required for all children, not just Muslims. The reform aimed at obliging every child in France to receive civic instruction teaching them the “values of the Republic.” Those values include celebrating the publication of insulting cartoons that may even express bigotry and limiting the freedom to don clothing or symbols that may signify affiliation with a religion other than republicanism. Because France’s values are universal, they trump anyone else’s particular values. Conformity is a core republican value.

    France’s Foreign Ministry wasted no time reacting to Mazari’s comparison of the new measures with Nazi practices. NBC News’s headline on the story read: “France ‘deeply shocked’ as Pakistan minister compares Macron to Nazis.”

    Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

    Deeply shocked:

    1. Morally offended
    2. Embarrassingly surprised that one has been found out

    Contextual Note

    In the film “Casablanca,” Captain Renault, the French chief of the local police under German occupation gives the order to shut down Rick’s Café, a nightclub where he spends most of his evenings. When Rick, the American owner of the café played by Humphrey Bogart, asks why, Renault replies “I’m shocked, shocked, to find that gambling is going on here” just as the croupier arrives to give him his winnings.

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    The French Foreign Ministry didn’t quite frame the message in the same terms as Captain Renault. NBC reports that “the minister spoke in ‘deeply shocking and insulting terms’ of Macron and the whole of France.” The ministry added, “These hateful words are blatant lies, imbued with an ideology of hatred and violence.” Clearly, Mazari had fallen into the trap of Godwin’s law (citing Nazis invalidates any argument) and the ministry jumped on it.

    France’s proposed law clearly applies the French anti-discriminatory republican rule that procedures must apply equally and uniformly to everyone. Unlike the policies of the Nazi regime, it doesn’t seek to exclude or eliminate groups of people considered different. Marine Le Pen’s party might be tempted to envisage measures of exclusion, but not France’s traditional parties. Not even Macron’s non-traditional Republic on the Move, which was cobbled together in 2017 by attracting a variety of traditional personalities from the political establishment to provide the president with a majority in parliament.

    The republican credo elevates universal civic values to the level of an alternative moral system, replacing all the traditional bases of morality, including the Christian principles of compassion, non-violence and concern for the oppressed. Universality implies uniformity. Individuals must show themselves not so much worthy of their neighbors and their community, but of the republic itself. In that sense, the spirit of the new policies put forward by Macron do vaguely resemble Hitler’s belief in a singular Aryan ideal.

    Historical Note

    Macron’s vision of la république takes Charles de Gaulle’s meme of aspiring to “a certain idea of France” beyond mere aspiration. Macron seeks to codify and monitor the behavior of individuals, who must now prove their conformity with the civic ideal.

    Recently, China’s President Xi Jinping inveighed against a trend that when translated into English is rendered as “splitism.” China is an immense country with a dominant ethnic group, the Han, and the ambition to control territory that includes other ethnicities and cultures. China enjoys the security that comes from governing a population that not only believes in its overwhelming ethnic unity but also, largely as a reaction to its humiliation by Western powers in the 19th century, embraces a fervent form of nationalism. This has permitted Xi in the 21st century to consolidate and reinforce the authoritarianism that Mao Zedong had pushed to a chaotic extreme half a century ago.

    Macron’s links his idea of Muslim separatism in France to the entire Muslim world. This curiously echoes Xi’s complaint about “splitism.” The two ideas are fundamentally different, of course, since Xi worries that the cultures and traditions of autonomous regions, such as Tibet or Xinjiang, might lead to movements of political independence. No risk exists in France of a Muslim nation splitting off, whereas in the past, there have been very real threats of Breton, Alsatian or Basque separatism.

    Historically, France achieved a sense of national unity by imposing the French language on its linguistically diversified regions. Forcing children whose native language was Breton, Alsatian, Basque or Occitan to think in French and imagine themselves as descendants of the Gauls (who obviously didn’t speak French) led to the virtual disappearance of the regional languages. Macron probably sees this historical reality as a policy that paid off in the end. Why not apply it to another important component of contemporary French demography: Muslims?

    Macron is now discovering that there are a number of problems with this approach. Unlike Basques or Bretons, French Muslims are geographically dispersed across the nation. The history of their relations with the French formerly colonialist nation is extremely complex. And the fact that it is their religion rather than their ethnicity or their geographical origin that defines them means that treating them as a coherent group is not just perilous, but impossible, especially if the reasoning is restricted to France itself. An important part of their identity derives from a global community that is also extremely diverse.

    Embed from Getty Images

    This may help to explain why Macron believes that Islam is in a crisis. Someone who has a “certain idea” of France itself expects other nations and groups of people to have a certain idea of themselves. For the universalist republican Macron, anything that isn’t uniform and unified must be in a state of crisis.

    By taking on the entire Muslim world, Macron may end up disastrously achieving the goal of unifying Muslims by posing as their common enemy. His policies that now insist on shaping all young Muslims in France into the universalist republican mold is creating rather than resolving tension. For one thing, it inevitably provokes more irrational attacks by unhinged fanatics — and every community has its unhinged fanatics.

    Norimitsu Onishi and Constant Méheut writing in The New York Times call the system Macron is putting in place “France’s Dragnet,” a policing campaign that now focuses on Muslim children as young as 10. Teachers have been instructed to denounce children who show signs of thinking differently about the values of the republic. It has already left numerous children “traumatized” and fearful to speak freely in class for fear of being suspected of terrorist intentions. That is how, in the wake of drama surrounding the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, France promotes its republican version of “freedom of expression.” 

    *[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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    Can America Confront Its Deadly Failure?

    Just when you thought you might breathe a sigh of relief in America with the victorious Biden administration on its way, it turns out that over 73 million people voted for Trump, the loser. That is truly difficult to comprehend for most of us who did not.

    Worse yet, since the national response to the coronavirus pandemic was clearly on the ballot, you have to assume that most of those “enlightened” souls were impressed enough with Trump’s pandemic response that they continued to support him. And despite overwhelming evidence that COVID-19 was exponentially rampaging through the populace as the election approached and that well over 200,000 Americans were already dead on his watch, they voted for him anyway.

    Where Do We Stand With the Pfizer Vaccine?

    READ MORE

    Now, Trump is splitting time between a post-election bunker and the golf course, refusing to do anything to advance a national plan to confront the coronavirus, while continuing to support the coronavirus denial narrative. That leaves those 73 million souls in a quandary — wear a mask or give up all of your freedoms. What to do?

    Too Little, Too Late?

    An initial national plan to move forward has been repeatedly articulated — a mask mandate, enforced social distancing in public places, readily available testing and contact tracing, and consistent messaging from public officials and the scientific community about personal hygiene and the dangers of indoor gatherings of any kind. Starting there and starting now is critical, particularly with the news that there may be a vaccine on the horizon. While this is good news for sure, it cannot be allowed to provide yet another excuse for the nation to avoid the inconvenience of collectively trying very hard to save some lives and protect so many others from tragic outcomes.

    However, the potential for future vaccination of the populace is so fraught with serious logistical and public health challenges that not even the most optimistic vaccine purveyors believe that vaccination will happen in large numbers before the spring. That leaves almost 60 days until the Biden inauguration and four months before spring arrives. At the current rate of over 150,000 new coronavirus cases a day, that is over 9 million new cases by Inauguration Day and more than double that to the first day of spring. The COVID-19 death numbers are equally staggering at a present rate of over 1,500 humans a day.

    There has been and continues to be so much wrong with the US response to the pandemic and the resulting casualties that it is hard to know where to start. But to be clear, Trump and his acolytes are now standing in the way of the development and implementation of any cohesive national plan, only adding to the blood on their hands from the daily death count. As a nation, we were ready to go to war, raise the flag and trumpet our national might when 3,000 of our own were killed by terrorists on 9/11. Now, 73 million Americans seem content to sit on their “patriotic” hands while that number are dying preventable deaths every two days and counting.

    Embed from Getty Images

    To illustrate how we got here, it was not so long ago that the governor of South Dakota, a full-throated cheerleader for the coronavirus denier crowd, welcomed Trump and thousands of guests to a big old July 4th rally at Mount Rushmore. Freedom was everywhere, in every unmasked smile and virus spewing cheer. No need for social distancing, it was all one big Trump-crazed family taking one for the unmasked emperor.

    And then to follow up and reinforce the messaging, how about a huge motorcycle rally in the midst of a pandemic? Another good idea from the governor of South Dakota — bring tens of thousands of drunken and drugged Trump biker “patriots” from all over America in August to celebrate this great country of ours in a place called Sturgis, population 7,000. Well, as of today, the COVID-19 test positivity rate in the great state of South Dakota is just under 50%, and there is still no mask mandate from the governor.

    By looking back just a little and trying to comprehend the present, it should be clear that President-elect Joe Biden has quite a challenge ahead of him. Planning can begin now, but a national plan cannot begin to be implemented until Trump gets out of the way.

    Since Trump and his acolytes are unable to accept being losers, let’s tag them as killers and see if we can get their attention. Now, even more than before, that is surely what they are. They are killing people in America who don’t have to die. While this may not be the time for legal niceties, “negligent homicide” seems to fit the bill. And it is surely time to make it part of the conversation.

    COVID-19 and the Holiday Season

    I am certain as I write this that the number of coronavirus deaths will soar in the days and weeks ahead. This is not a medical conclusion. Rather it is the only conclusion that reason suggests as we watch millions of Americans gather together for the holidays believing that “they” are immune from tragedy, kind of like people who text and drive and keep loaded guns in easy reach of the children they say they love. But more than that, it will be the price that the nation pays for its flailing and failing collective morality.

    As freedom rings and holiday bells jingle, as choirs sing and families gather around a tree sharing good cheer, this will also be the season for many to visit hospitals and funeral homes trying to figure out how it is possible that daddy is dead. Well, let me tell you, daddy is dead because a nation with the resources to keep daddy alive and well collectively failed to do so.

    It is also because of a failure of national leadership that has no historic precedent. Let me repeat this: Trump and his acolytes have blood on their hands. Those who support his continued refusal to cede authority immediately to the incoming Biden administration for implementation of a national pandemic response should check their hands as well.

    Yes, I am a Trump hater, and I will cheer the day that he is held accountable for his crimes.

    *[This article was co-published on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

    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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    Donald Trump’s Treason Against the American People

    Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election. He not only lost, he lost bigly, at least in terms of the popular vote, despite record numbers of voters turning out for him, wishing for four more years. Trump’s response has been entirely predictable. Like the proverbial spoilt child in the sandbox, he has been ranting and raving, shaking his fist at the injustice of it all, plotting his revenge on detractors and former allies alike and, particularly, on the ungrateful American people who so bitterly snubbed him, forgetting all the wonderful things he has done for them during his presidential stint.

    America Is No Longer One Nation

    READ MORE

    This brings me to another self-declared genius and self-appointed savior of his nation, Adolf Hitler. In an earlier article, I have maintained that associating Trumpism with fascism is pure nonsense. Equating Trump with Hitler is indeed utter nonsense, except for one not-so-minor detail.

    Treason

    Some 40 years ago, the German-British journalist and historian Sebastian Haffner wrote a remarkable book on Hitler with a rather unpretentious title, “Anmerkungen zu Hitler” (“Notes on Hitler”). In less than 200 pages, Haffner discusses the most significant aspects of the Hitler phenomenon, his “achievements” and “successes,” his errors, mistakes and crimes. None of these aspects is relevant for the point of this piece, even if they would make an excellent blueprint for any future notes on Trump. What is relevant here is Haffner’s final note: “treason.” Once Hitler realized, Haffner argues, that all was lost, he turned on his own people. Since he had failed to destroy the enemies of the Third Reich, and here above all the Soviets, he could at least destroy his own people.

    As Golo Mann, one of Germany’s most eminent postwar historians, noted in his review of Hassner’s book in Der Spiegel, in Hitler’s eyes, the potential demise of the German people was, “in and itself no loss” — as long as it guaranteed that the trains continued to roll toward Auschwitz and the gas chambers and crematoria to run smoothly.

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    Hitler’s betrayal of the German people was the quasi-logical consequence of his personality and self-projection. On a mission from the almighty (proof: Hitler survived the July 1944 attempt on his life largely unharmed), he promoted himself as the “chosen one” selected to do “the work of the Lord.” And Hitler was hardly alone in considering himself chosen. In 1938, after the annexation of Austria to the Third Reich, a Catholic paper stated that Austria’s “return to the Reich” was a clear sign that “the Almighty God has blessed the work of the Führer.”

    After the attack on Poland in 1939, the official organ of the Protestant Church of the Free City of Danzig wrote that God had sent Hitler to liberate Germany from the shackles of Versailles and redeemed the German people from the danger of Polish violence. Successes such as these affirmed Hitler’s belief that he was special, infallible, even almighty — a belief daily reaffirmed by his entourage of mediocre sycophants and yes-men scared to death of his choleric tantrums, perfectly portrayed by Bruno Ganz in “Downfall.”

    At this point, in films, you usually get a disclaimer that “any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.” I don’t know whether this also applies to opinion pieces. In any case, the disclaimer does not apply here. Any associations evoked in the reader’s mind are fully intended. This does not mean to suggest that Trump and Hitler are in the same league. Quite the contrary.

    Petty Impersonator

    Hitler was evil personified, a mass murderer who drew great satisfaction from human suffering. Compared to Hitler, Trump is a petty impersonator, a “man without qualities” and substance, full of himself. And yet. As Aninda Dey has recently put it in The Times of India, Trump’s behavior following his defeat in the presidential election is reminiscent of Hitler’s last days in his bunker in Berlin. “Ensconced in the White House ‘bubble bunker,’” Trump “uncorked a similar deluge of rants, delusions, a fake narrative, alternate reality and invincibility as witnessed by Hitler’s Generals and staff in his end days.”

    Add to that the clownish public appearances of the likes of Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, who has finally managed to live up to his own Borat-type caricature, and the picture is complete. Like Hitler in 1945, Trump in November 2020 lives in an alternate reality. This is a reality where he has won bigly, where the American people cannot wait to see all the wonderful things he has in store for them, like a big, beautiful wall, really beautiful new industrial parks and coal-fired power plants — where he will finally have the opportunity to make America great again.

    Delusion, even self-delusion, however, goes only that far. Reality hits when even Trump’s faithful toadies like Tucker Carlson, over at Fox News, take their distance — if cautiously, like treading on eggshells — and strong-arm methods no longer prove effective. It is in this situation that delusion turns into bitterness, and bitterness into a strong urge for revenge. This might be the point where we are now, the point where Trump turns on his own people, dishing out punishment for having failed him. Unfortunately enough, this is a real possibility, given he is going to be in office for another two months. And as the pandemic has taught us, two months are quite a long time.

    The signs are there, for all to see, starting with COVID-19. Over the past several weeks, the situation has reached catastrophic proportions, particularly in the predominantly rural states such as the Dakotas. The statistics are public knowledge, daily displayed on the front page of The New York Times. By now, even some of the most reluctant Republican governors, such as North Dakota’s Doug Burgum, have caved in and mandated wearing masks in their state after being overwhelmed by the pandemic. In the meantime, Trump completely checked out, despite a skyrocketing rate of new infections. In line with his earlier shrug of shoulders, “It is what it is,” the administration has largely gone AWOL.

    As Time magazine recently noted, in a situation where the United States and its people are confronted with a health crisis of terrifying proportions, Trump has “pulled a ‘disappearing act.’” But then, why should he care. He cared little before, when he was still the president. Now, he soon won’t be. It is what it is. Let them fend for themselves. Serves them right if they die from the “China virus.”

    Reversing Democracy

    In the meantime, Trump has done what he has done best — corrode America’s political institutions and weaken, sabotage and subvert the democratic system. The United States used to be a liberal democracy, all its serious faults and shortcomings notwithstanding. To be sure, the Founding Fathers of the republic were not entirely sure whether democracy was such a great idea. James Madison in particular had serious reservations, and it was he who drafted the US Constitution.

    This explains the Electoral College, an archaic and arcane institution, which Trump has been trying to manipulate to his advantage. This explains why it took until 1913 that senators were elected by the people rather than being appointed by state legislatures. Madison had little trust in the wisdom of ordinary citizens. In view of the current situation, he might have been right. Be it as it may, the United States developed into a liberal democracy. Donald Trump has done whatever he could to reverse this development.

    Embed from Getty Images

    His persistent insistence that the result of the election has somehow been rigged, his ludicrous tweets charging that he was cheated of what is rightfully his, together with his so-called legal team headed by Baghdad Bob impersonator, Rudy Giuliani, and the chorus of his sycophants in Congress and the right-wing media who have been toeing the line have done indelible damage to the democratic system. A few days ago, a representative survey found that more than half of Republicans believe that Trump “rightfully won” the election; more than two-thirds believe that the election was rigged. Before the election, more than 50% of Republicans expressed confidence about the electoral process; after the election, a bit more than 20%. In fact, a substantial majority of Republicans said they were “not at all confident” that the election had been fair and that the results were accurate.

    What is at heart here goes far beyond the belief in various conspiracies involving ballot tampering and other forms of fraud, but a fundamental belief that the whole system is rigged. As Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes have recently put it in Foreign Policy, elections, “Trump’s most fervid supporters feel, are rigged by open borders and low hurdles to the naturalization of people who have entered the country illegally and by making it easier for African-Americans to register and vote, policies introduced by Democrats who are thereby seeking to lock in their future preeminence by reshaping the electorate to their advantage.” As a result, they fear that for them, “there may never be another election.”

    The whole thing would make for a jolly good Monty Pythonesque farce if it were not so pathetic and, unfortunately, bloody serious. As Tho Bishop from the Mises Institute has recently noted, “regardless of the legal outcome, America is about to find itself with a president that will be viewed as illegitimate by a large portion of the population — and perhaps even the majority of some states. There is no institution left that has the credibility to push back against the gut feeling of millions of people who have spent the last few months organizing car parades and Trumptillas that their democracy has been hijacked by a political party that despises them.” They should know, given that they voted for a president and a political party that for four years showed nothing but contempt for large swaths of the American public.

    Betrayal of the American People

    The American president is supposed to be the president of all Americans. With Trump, this has never been the case. He has foremost been, in descending order, the president of himself, the president of the rich, of the Fox News MAGA crowd, and the white portion of the US population of European descent. His presidency has been largely consumed by the mission to safeguard and protect the privileged position of these groups. Take, for instance, the census whose data form the basis for the reapportionment of seats in the House of Representatives. In July, Trump made it known that he intended “to remove unauthorized immigrants from the count for the first time in history, leaving an older and whiter population as the basis for divvying up House seats, a shift that would be likely to increase the number of House seats held by Republicans over the next decade.”

    What all this amounts to is a large-scale, multi-pronged operation designed to add fuel to existing resentments, exacerbate the already high disaffection with politics, further undermine trust in political institutions and the democratic processes and, ultimately, pit Americans against Americans. In ancient times, they called this strategy divide et impera — divide and conquer. It is a core point in the playbook of every serious authoritarian and wannabe dictator, from Putin to Erdogan, from Orban to Maduro. In the United States, it is nothing short of a fundamental betrayal of the ideals that once upon a time, far, far away in history, informed the American republic, its founding documents and constitution. It has further eroded America’s standing as the defender and promoter of democracy across the globe, leaving its image further sullied.

    What this operation amounts to, in turn, is a fundamental betrayal of the American people. The architects of American democracy, above all James Madison, firmly believed that elected political leaders, “who held their office as a public trust, were not merely to act as a mouthpiece of the citizenry but to see farther than ordinary citizens: ‘to refine and enlarge the public views,’ to have the wisdom to ‘discern the true interest of their country,’ and to do so against ‘temporary or partial considerations.’” It fell onto the country’s political institutions and civic associations — political parties, the media, churches and schools — to cultivate the citizens’ minds and shape “a democratic people.”

    Over the past few years, the opposite has happened. As Larry Bartels, one of America’s most respected political scientists, has recently put it, under Trump, the Republican Party’s commitment to democracy has been eroded by “ethnic antagonism.” He cites the results of a recent survey that found that, among Republican identifiers and independents leaning toward the GOP, more than half agreed with the statement, “The traditional way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it.” Four out of 10 agreed that “A time will come when patriotic Americans have to take the law into their own hands.”

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    Under the circumstances, recent alarm over the specter of a coup staged by Trump in connivance with Republican officials in Congress and the states might not be all that crazy. In fact, they reflect to what degree four years of Trump have debased the spirit of American democracy, and to what extent the United States under Trump have progressed on the way to becoming a banana republic.

    It is fitting that by now, there are serious concerns that Trump’s attempts to create as much havoc as possible might even extend to the economy. As Claudia Sahm recently asked in the pages of The New York Times, “Is Trump Trying to Take the Economy Down With Him?” Trump already caused significant damage to the US economy with his protectionist policies aimed at China and the European Union — damage acknowledged even by Trump’s economic advisers. In the twilight of his presidency, nothing is more tempting than leaving his successor with an economic train wreck, particularly if it causes maximum damage to cities, such as Detroit and Atlanta, and states, such as Michigan and Pennsylvania, that killed his chances of reelection.

    US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s recent decision to defund several Federal Reserve COVID-19 lending programs, sharply criticized by both the Federal Reserve and the Biden transition team, is a preview of things to come. As Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio, put it, Mnuchin’s move was a clear sign “that the Trump administration and their congressional toadies are actively trying to tank the U.S economy.”

    It is to be hoped, for the sake of the American people, first, and for the whole international community, second, that the worst is not going to come to pass. Trump’s continued non-response to the catastrophic trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic, his protracted insistence that the outcome of the election was not only unfair but illegitimate, and his administration’s recent decisions directly impacting America’s economy suggest that a worst-case scenario is not out of the realm of the possible. On the contrary, it is quite likely.

    If it should come to that, it would represent an act of treason against the American people, which should be treated as such — and prosecuted, at least in the court of public opinion. Adolf Hitler betrayed the German people, starting in 1944. He was never held accountable for his betrayal, taking the easy way out by committing suicide. The German people, however, learned a lesson that for a long time immunized them to the siren songs of a politics based on the appeal to the baser sides of human nature. It is to be hoped that coming to terms with the extent to which four years of Trump have inflicted damage on American democracy will immunize the American people against a repeat of 2016. I, for myself, would not count on it.

    *[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.]

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

  • in

    Can Joe Biden Rewrite the Rules of the Road?

    During his presidency, Donald Trump found a new way to keep the American public and its media alert. It was a kind of educational game called “Spot the Lie.” If the media had understood how the game worked, the nation and the world would have benefited. Instead, it tended to degenerate into a shouting match in which each side would shriek with increasing volume to express its indignation.

    What was special about his prevarication? It was systematic and provocative, attention-getting. Traditionally, US presidents lied quietly, covering their reprehensible acts in expressions of virtuous intentions. Even the most obvious lie of the 21st century — George W. Bush’s claim that Saddam Hussein was hiding a massive store of weapons of mass destruction — was presented as a concern for ensuring peace by preventing an imminent act of war by a mad Iraqi dictator. It turned out that both the madness and the capacity for war were on the American side. But nobody noticed because, well, the American military is by definition “a force for good.”

    The Post-Election Art of Drawing Hasty Conclusions

    READ MORE

    With the incoming Biden administration, there will be fewer obvious lies. Given President-elect Joe Biden’s limited rhetorical skills, there may even be moments when Americans have access to the true intentions of a government that ordinarily seeks to hide them.

    After the signature by 15 Asian nations of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) last week, Biden explained what would be behind US strategy after he becomes president on January 20, 2021. “We make up 25% of the world’s trading capacity, of the economy of the world,” he said. “We need to be aligned with the other democracies, another 25% or more, so that we can set the rules of the road instead of having China and others dictate outcomes because they are the only game in town.”

    Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

    Rules of the road:

    The prescription of behavior for a group of supposed equals that clearly favors the interests of one member of the group whose dominant status allows it to impose its values and preferred behaviors on other members of a group without having to consult an external authority or waste too much time negotiating among equals

    Contextual Note

    Leaders of hegemons rarely explicitly lay out their hegemonic agenda. No one could doubt the bold claim Biden has made about the “rules of the road.” The United States always seeks to set the rules rather than play by them. But his statement deviates from the truth when he compares the US attitude with China’s. When it’s about the US defining the rules, Biden uses the verb “set.” But when it’s China, he uses the verb “dictate.” After all, China is a communist dictatorship, so logically anything it does can be called dictating.

    That’s how clever diplomatic language works, at least in the hands of Democrats. They prefer to select the effective verb to instill the idea of good versus evil. Republicans prefer to use the language of moral judgment or downright insult. President Trump likes to call them purveyors of evil, “illegitimate” or even “shitholes.”

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    But the major difference between the rhetoric of the two parties is that the Republicans shy away from admitting the hard reality that results from the muscular use of power relationships. They prefer to present it as the logic of history, divine will or predestination that have put the US in the role of unique decision-maker for the rest of the world. The shining city on the hill spreads its light across the globe by virtue of being the shining city, not through its complex interplay with other nations. It has an existential quality that can no one can ever doubt.

    That is what Trump means by “America First.” He presented the slogan as if it turned around the idea that the US should decide to tend only to its own needs and not worry about what happens elsewhere in the world. But it also contained the idea that because America was “first” by virtue of its might, it produced the light that illuminated the rest of the world. It didn’t actually have to be good and fair to stand as a model for everything that was good and fair.

    The primary difference between these two interpretations of American exceptionalism lies in the respective rhetorical strategies rather than policy. That is why Biden’s foreign policy may not be very different from Trump’s in its overall effect on the rest of the world. It will be a variation on hegemonic rhetoric, but the military and financial base will be nearly identical. 

    Democrats believe that American exceptionalism, the success story of the nation, endows it with the authority to write the rules of the road for the rest of humanity. The Republicans see it as the result of writing the rules for themselves which they expect the rest of the world will naturally follow.

    Historical Note

    When, alluding to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the RCEP, Joe Biden compared the attitude of the US quite naturally seeking to “set the rules of the road” and the Chinese who “dictate outcomes.” The case can be made that he inverted the truth concerning the history of these two trade arrangements.

    When the TPP was still awaiting signature at the end of Barack Obama’s presidency, the BBC noted that the deal designed to put the US in the position to set the rules of the road was contested inside the US. The BBC reports: “US opponents have characterised the TPP as a secretive deal that favoured big business and other countries at the expense of American jobs and national sovereignty.” That highlights the problem Biden will be facing in many of his future decisions: how to define the US and its interests. In other words, who defines the rules? Is it big business or the American people?

    Commenting on the historical background of the “secretive deal,” Vox reported: “Negotiations over the TPP’s terms were conducted in secret, with well-connected interest groups having access to more information — and more opportunities to influence the process — than members of the general public.” Even Congress was refused full access to the terms of the draft.

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    In other words, when Biden refers to setting the rules of the road, it is anything but an openly negotiated procedure. In contrast, the RCEP was drafted conjointly and largely democratically by all the interested parties, which include some of the strongest allies of the US: Australia, Japan and South Korea. It is a lie of Trumpian proportions to suggest that the RCEP was dictated by the Chinese.

    Statements of that kind by the president-elect do not bode well for the future foreign policy we can expect from the Biden administration. Biden’s future secretary of state, Anthony Blinken, sounds refreshing when he more realistically characterizes the state of the world at a forum at the Hudson Institute in July: “Simply put, the big problems that we face as a country and as a planet, whether it’s climate change, whether it’s a pandemic, whether it’s the spread of bad weapons — to state the obvious, none of these have unilateral solutions. Even a country as powerful as the United States can’t handle them alone.” 

    Blinken’s approach to foreign policy is likely to be similar to Obama’s, which does indeed appear refreshing in comparison to Donald Trump’s. But it is likely to be a return to a certain form of wishing to write the rules alone, if not handling the problems alone. In an interview in July, Blinken regretted that, under Trump, the US had lost the ability to dictate the rules. “If we’re not doing a lot of that organizing in terms of shaping the rules and the norms and the institutions through which countries relate to one another,” he said, “then one of two things, either someone else is doing it and probably not in a way that advances our own interests and values or maybe just as bad, no one is and then you tend to have chaos and a vacuum that may be filled by bad things.”

    The problem Biden will face is that the world has changed. Unlike a few decades ago, few now believe the US has a divine right to “shape the rules” or the ability to stave off chaos.

    *[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