Casual Observation

4 Comments

1. 

   rikyrah on June 9, 2016 at 9:16 am

   ot:

   What Binds Ryan’s Post-Truth Agenda to Trump’s Post-Policy Politics: Racism
   by Nancy LeTourneau June 9, 2016 12:18 PM

   Personally, I’ve never found the dichotomy of establishment vs insurgency to be a very helpful way of understanding what is going on in the Republican Party right now. Another way of looking at the tension is to frame it as a difference between being post-truth and post-policy. Prior to 2008, David Roberts described the post-truth nature of the GOP.

   Republicans thus talk about “taxes” and “spending” and “regulation” in the abstract…They talk about cutting the deficit even as they slash taxes on the rich and launch unfunded wars. They talk about free markets even as they subsidize fossil fuels. They talk about American exceptionalism even as they protect fossil-fuel incumbents and fight research and infrastructure investments.

   In short, Republicans have mastered post-truth politics.

   While they worked to reduce taxes on the wealthy, get rid of government regulations and “drown government in the bathtub (all of which benefit the top 1%), they had to convince everyday Americans that their policies would actually help them.

   After the Bush/Cheney era and the Great Recession, being post-truth didn’t work very well anymore. Most Americans saw very clearly what happened when the Republican agenda was enacted. Rather than re-think that agenda, they simply went post-policy and obstructed anything President Obama and the Democrats tried to do. In order to rally their ground troops in support, Republican fanned the flames of racism, fear and anger. As I’ve written before, Donald Trump is the epitome of post-policy nihilism.

   ………………………………………

   So, if Donald Trump is post-policy and Paul Ryan is post-truth, where do their agendas come together. Jonathan Chait gave us the answer.

   There is nothing inherently racist about Ryan’s policy agenda. The arguments for enormous, regressive tax cuts, deregulation of finance and carbon pollution, and large reductions in spending assistance for the poor may be unpersuasive, but they have no intellectual connection to racism. The trouble for Republicans is that building a real-world constituency for these policies does rely on racism. Conservatives stopped the momentum of the New Deal in the mid-1960s only when they associated it with support for the black underclass. Republican politics has grown increasingly racialized over time, a trend that has dramatically accelerated during the Obama era.

   In other words, just as racism has been the fuel that ignites the post-policy positioning of Republicans over the last few years, it has been exploited for decades as a way to divide and conquer support for the progressive agenda.

2. 

   Arthur Gilroy on June 9, 2016 at 10:05 am

   A potential very strong argument against Chait’s position follows…one that I would bet Trump will use in one way or another. (Probably in his usual bombastic fashion.)

   See??? This is where this country has gone wrong. Huge amounts of money spent on bureaucracies that don’t work. Let the Democrats spend their $500 million. I’ll win while spending much less on the lying media. Then ater I win…and I will win… I’ll stop fighting and financing  useless, unwinnable wars and save hundreds of times that.

   All of that money will go back to You. The people. We’ll make America great again!!!

   As wrong as Trump is on many levels, he is essentially right on this one.

   George Gurdjieff referred to certain types of gurus as “stupid saints.” That is, they didn’t really know how they got to that level of spirituality nor could they teach others or even line-level survive in society. Tump is no saint, but I believe that he is a sort of “stupid genius” politically and probably in business as well. He does what he does as naturally as a plant grows or a bird flies.

   Can he be beaten?

   Certainly, but it’s going to take some truly out-of-the-box thinking to take him down.

   Hillary Clinton lives in a box…a neoliberal/neoconservative, centrist, hugely bureaucratic (and thus relatively immobile), Permanent Government box, just exactly the one against which Trump has been successfully running. He is fighting an asymmetrical war while HRC personifies…on every level…a classic, imperial-style so-called “conventional” war. Has the U.S. actually won a war were these are the two predominant styles of fighting since…since when? Since the American Revolution, maybe? This paradigm has now come home to roost in politics along with a bunch of other distasteful chickens in other areas of this society.

   Like the Mambo Legends song says…Watch OUT!!!

   And like I say…”Wake The Fuck Up!!!”

   AG

   P.S. This is one of the bands of which I most enjoy being a member. The true spirit of the Hispanic/Nuyorican streets of NYC. Trump will hit such a wall if he messes with this part of our society. Like Frankie Vasquez sings…”Watch OUT!!!”

   Unquenchable.

   • 

     Quentin on June 9, 2016 at 12:36 pm

     Arthur, Thanks for the enjoyable music.

3. 

   Marie3 on June 9, 2016 at 10:20 am

   TeleSur Bolivian Opposition Leader Admits Election Plotting with US Embassy.

   Bolivian lawmaker Rafael Quispe has held talks with the U.S. government in order to formulate a political strategy for the country’s next elections.

   Bolivian lawmaker from the National Unity (UN) opposition Party, Rafael Quispe revealed on Tuesday that he held secret meeting with the U.S. embassy officials in order to construct a political platform for the general elections in 2019.

   During a radio interview, Quispe went on to point out that the country’s current opposition leaders including Samuel Doria Medina and former president Jorge Quiroga did not participate in the gatherings, given that U.S. officials did not consider them to be a “viable” option.
   …

   Some background (Cliff notes version) for those not well informed and missed it in real time:

   NYTimes

   THE candidate running for president in Bolivia has a problem. He is seen as arrogant and aloof, a multimillionaire who has little in common with his countrymen. To top it off, he speaks with a strong American accent, a big strike against him in a country where people are suspicious of foreigners.

   But Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, better known as Goni, also has American political consultants, including James Carville, to guide his political fortunes. Using focus groups and polls, employing a simple message and beginning what one adviser unabashedly calls “a dirty war” against opponents, the strategists-for-hire slowly awaken a moribund campaign.
   …

   If Bolivians have a functioning memories like Iranians and not the nano-second like Americans, the Democratic Administration selling of a President in Bolivia won’t go down as well there has it has here.