Empire as the Lens for Politics

I find that the concept of "empire" provides a meaningful context in which to view the current political scene.  In my view, the United States presides over a neoliberal empire whose tentacles encircle the globe.  China, Russia, Iran, N Korea, and a few other places stand outside the empire, while urban ghettos, war zones, and sparsely populated remote landscapes are loosely controlled areas on the fringes.  At the center of the empire in places such as Washington DC, vicious battles take place for power.  

While this may seem to be an unusual point of view, it seems to be to be typical when looking at historical empires.  Certainly the Roman Empire, for example, was engaged in continual warfare on the fringes, while intrigue and power struggles were common in the capital and other power centers.  The current political situation in the U.S. comes with the "territory" that we have carved out in becoming the world's primary superpower.

Within empires, there is an inherent tension between the control and expansion of the outer zones, and the care and nurturing of the heartland.  Thus, in the U.S. today, Trump has come to power as the politician who wants to focus on the heartland, as opposed to spending resources consolidating and extending gains in far away places.  Biden is the candidate of the most powerful forces of the empire who are determined to keep the empire strong not only at home, but around the world.  The empire's success depends upon people of different ethnicities working together.  Thus, Biden represents the forces promoting diversity, as opposed to Trump's focus on the traditional ethnic heartland.

Two factors strike me as interesting in this context:

1. The emergence of identity politics as a thorn in the side (cancer?) of the empire.
2. The association of empire foreign enemy Putin with empire domestic enemy Trump.  

The U.S. empire is built on the foundation of the western European enlightenment along with the industrial revolution.  Identity politics, as now embodied via Black Lives Matter, has become an enormous distraction to the establishment.  Originally deployed by the empire in the service of diversity and against the Trumpian forces opposed to empire, BLM has spun out of control and now promotes ethnic hatred.  The empire, led by Biden, still supports BLM but is rapidly losing credibility as BLM undermines the enlightment / capitalist ideological and practical foundations of the empire.  The empire no doubt hopes that sidelining Trump will defuse the more radical aspects of the BLM movement, but it is unclear to me how this might play out in college campuses and Democratic politics.  Until race, and other identity characteristics including gender, sexual orientation, and religious background, are diffused as animating forces at the heart of the empire, the forces of instability will remain potent.  The empire has been playing with fire in playing the race card against Trump and his supporters.

Closely related to these identity politics is the association of Trump with Putin as regressive agents of evil.  Putin has successfully pulled Russia away from the sphere of influence of the U.S. neoliberal empire, and so is a natural enemy of the U.S. empire.  In demonizing Putin, agents of the U.S. empire including both mainstream Republicans and Democrats, have associated Putin with the anti-empire forces at home, who are currently led by Trump.  This reinforces the BLM / identity politics narrative against regressive patriarchal politics.  Radicals who question the foundations of the empire, as established by white men, are aligned with those who seek to spread and strengthen this empire (e.g. neocons).  

The heart of the matter is the extent to which the old cultural order must be overturned.  Is Putin doomed to failure as an old white man clinging to his guns and old school conservative culture?  Or has the west  moved too quickly to invalidate traditions that ungird the empire?  In my view, Putin has the stronger position in this debate.  He has moved, in something of a Trump like fashion, to bolster traditional values,  He enjoys great domestic popularity as his rule has been accompanied by greatly increased stability in the newly downsized Russian empire.  He needn't worry so much about identity politics because:

• Russia does not have a legacy of black slavery
• Seventy years of Communist rule in Russia shattered many of the traditions related to gender identity and religious background.  So Putin's Russia is not that of the old patriarchal school.

Putin is, in a sense, consolidating Russian society following revolutionary cultural changes that were enforced via Communist dictatorship.  Much the same is taking place in China.

The U.S. led empire, on the other hand, is so diverse that cultural upheavals leave us with much more of a struggle to consolidate society.  The neoliberal empire is founded on the twin ideals of European enlightenment and capitalist / technological expansion.  The enlightenment principles are faltering in the face of the race card, for example, which has been played to control the MAGA faction.  The capitalist / technological imperative has been undercut by the outsourcing of vital economic activity to fire flung allies and enemies (China) alike.

So even as the empire lashes out at Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, N Korea, etc. (we have sanctions on countries representing one fourth of the world's population), the world increasingly rejects the sole superpower.  Wars in the Middle East have failed to extend the empire to that region.  Both Russia and China openly defy the empire and provide support and hope for other outcasts such as Iran and Venezuela.  Most strikingly, the U.S. is losing its allure as the shining city of the hill, a beacon of prosperity and peace in a troubled world.  Rioting has spread across the country, while immigration is restricted in the face of both Trumpism and pandemic control.  The American dream is being assaulted, and thus our appeal to would be immigrants is diminished.  Universities are hobbled by politics, as are international corporations.  Financialism has run amok and a crash is a near certainty, which will exacerbate these trends.

Still, perhaps a majority of voting Americans believes that getting rid of Trump will somehow turn things around.  Blacks will be happy to see the face of historic racism (MAGA) unceremoniously booted from power.  Immigrants will once again feel welcome.  Universities will feel less need to consciously intervene to protect minorities.  Foreign affairs will once again become more reasonable and amenable to international diplomacy.  These things are all true.

Yet the problem with empires is that entrenched interests get in the way.  The military industrial complex will still be around, as will the health care vested interests, and the diversity administrators at universities.  Domestic labor will still resent the outsourcing of jobs around the globe.  Countries on the fringe of empire will begin to demand autonomy commensurate with their increased productivity vis a vis the empire's homeland.  Cultural resentments that led to Trump will continue unabated. 

In other words, the internal contradictions of the empire will continue beyond Trump in the direction of instability.  Just as Trump resolved nothing, getting rid of him will resolve nothing.  Or, more optimistically, the election of Trump and potential removal of Trump may be steps in the direction of a new world order that is not centered on the United States.  In this best case scenario, we are freed from American exceptionalism and come to terms with the common humanity with share with others in the world regardless of race, creed, or nationality.

Church In-Person

 I ran across this anecdote today, which makes me feel more confident in our decision to not yet resume in-person church services:

On June 14, a man with COVID-19 attended a church service in an Ohio County.

Following that service, 91 additional people from five countiese developed symptoms of COVID-19.  This graphic shows how far the disease had spread by July 4.

Among the notable observations, children 6 to 16 years old are in the chain of transmission, passing SARS-CoV-2 infection on to other kids as well as to adults 

See also We Need to Talk About Ventilation:

Super-spreader events occur overwhelmingly in indoor environments where there are a lot of people... But it’s not only COVID-19’s super-spreader events that are indoors. The rest of the pattern of spread of COVID-19 —when it is spreading slowly, in small numbers—is also overwhelmingly through indoor transmission. 

Getting to Yes -- 2020 Election Edition

I think it's good if we can discuss politics, so I appreciate the linked article about the forthcoming election, and the responses from Steve and Darlene.  My approach is to try to find a sweet spot for constructive discourse, where we can share impressions and learn from one another.

I agree that "it will be a mess" and "a very challenging environment".  On the hopeful side, perhaps such an environment will be an opportunity to change the national trajectory.

I am generally a humanist, and my personal priorities are to lessen tribal and identity politics in both domestic and foreign affairs.  We are all in this together, regardless of race, geographic region, ethnicity, or nationality.  Of course, I am closer to Americans than to people in other countries, and closer to my circle of friends, family, and church than to the Trumpian universe.  But I think the road to success involves broadening our base of support and trust.  (The main other thing I worry about is technology combined with capitalism destroying the human environment.  We have weapons of mass destruction capable of destroying human life on earth if we're not careful.  And we're disrupting the earth's carbon cycle by releasing hundreds of millions of years of sequestered carbon into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels.)

So how can we take advantage of the unfolding mess?  My idea is to be constructive.  As Michelle Obama said, 'When They Go Low, We Go High'.  For those of us who dislike Trump, the danger has been to overreact as described by Matt Taibbi in The Press Cries Wolf (full article behind a paywall).  Excerpt:

By this week, images of mailboxes became synonymous with voter suppression, and the postal service supplanted the Muslim ban, “kids in cages,” Muellermania, the Brett Kavanaugh fiasco, the campaign to save the job of Jeff Sessions, the Ukraine whistleblower, and a dozen other episodes to become the latest all-consuming Media Fire That Never Dies.

In the Trump years, the news has been covered as an ongoing emergency, borrowing from techniques pioneered by Fox News and perfected through episodes like Benghazi. That story was blown into a frenzy for years, as Fox created the impression that litigating every detail of the Libyan mission narrative was at least 95% of what the average person should be caring about at any given moment.

CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times and the Washington Post are now following the same script with the Trump panics. The pattern is consistent. Day one involves spectacular claims of corruption. By day two, placard-bearing protesters are hitting the streets (“You can’t fire the truth!” a protester in Times Square proclaimed in the Sessions affair), celebrities are taping video appeals, and experts are quoted suggesting Trump is already guilty of crime: OPEN TREASON in Helsinki, “bribery” in Ukraine, or in this case, election interference (some are already speculating that Trump could get a year for the mail slowdown).

Almost always, by day three or four, key claims are walked back: maybe there was no direct “promise” to a foreign leader, or the CIA doesn’t have “direct evidence” of Russian bounties, or viral photos of children in cages at the border were from 2014, not 2017. By then it doesn’t matter. A panic is a panic, and there are only two reportable angles in today’s America, total guilt and total innocence.

The problem with all of these round-the-clock, crash-style coverage schemes is that commentators end up reaching for rhetorical extremes early. Trump’s genuinely abhorrent “zero tolerance” border policy right away morphed into the Holocaust (“Trump’s Concentration Camps,” as Charles Blow put it); revoking John Brennan’s security clearance made him a “dictator”; for making that phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, pundit after pundit insisted Trump was guilty of treason, a death penalty offense; it was the same for the Helsinki summit, where Thomas Friedman said Trump’s buddy-movie act with Putin marked a “historic moment in the entire history of the United States.”

This is another technique borrowed from Fox coverage of Barack Obama, who was constantly compared to Hitler and derided as a fascist with “third-world dictator-like arrogance.” The strategy initially galvanized audiences for some shows, but ended up fracturing the conservative audience overall. This type of coverage exhausts audiences, who either become addicted to the cycle of rhetorical highs or repulsed by the relentless maximalist formulations.

As I've said before, I'm not a fan of "both sides do it" in general, such as in comparing Obama and Trump.  In my opinion, Obama genuinely tried to reach out to Republicans and broaden the base.  I could do another post on why that didn't work, using Getting to Yes as a framework.  For now, I'll just say that separating the people from the problem can be useful.  Trump's narcissistic personality, in my opinion, is a real and important problem worthy of discussion and criticism.  (The same could be said about Biden, who is truly comparable to Trump in a number of respects.)  Perhaps the coming crisis will enable more of us to join together in addressing substantive issues, in addition to problematic personalities and media outlets.

It's easy to imagine the election becoming a constitutional crisis, with the Supreme Court becoming involved.  (This would be a continuation of the 2016 election where many Democrats refused to accept the result, and various investigations and legal battles have played out over the last 4 years.)  It's also easy for me to imagine the military getting involved with the support of a bi-partisan group of leaders who realize the need to ensure an orderly resolution of the constitutional issues.  The rules of the game may change.  Politics makes strange bedfellows (adapted from Shakespeare).  Ultimately, I pray for a peaceful resolution of issues and win-win relationships with as many fellow Americans and fellow humans as possible.

Hugs,

Dan

313-580-7082

Biden: Anachronism for the Status Quo

I stayed up late last night watching Thomas Frank on Anti-Populism, Plus Biden's Most-Stoned Moment Ever | Useful Idiots.  This is a regular YouTube show hosted by Matt Taibbi and Katy Halper.  The bulk of the episode was the interview with Frank, but there was also a powerful segment discussing Biden's apparent dementia.  There was another brief clip of Bill Clinton speaking at the recent John Lewis funeral.  

The episode highlights some contradictions in the current political environment:

1. Biden has some remarkable similarities to Trump.  He blusters incoherently.
   
   
2. Bill Clinton was arguing against Black Lives Matter anti-police rhetoric during the 2016 presidential campaign.  Speaking like that today would get most white people "cancelled".  Yet, in being against Trump, many BLM supporters are now allies with the Clinton-Biden camp of the Democrats.  Democrats such as Biden and Bill Clinton are allies with traditional black civil rights leaders such as Clyburn and John Lewis.  Biden and Clinton pushed the 1994 crime bill that symbolizes the get tough on crime attitude that is resisted by BLM.  Mainstream Democrats across the country proclaim solidarity with BLM.  
   
   
3. Mainstream Democrats have become vigorous defenders of the status quo, seeing Trump as the problem since he refuses to accept the validity of the mainstream media and other "experts".
     
4. Mainstream Democrats have embraced the demonization of Russia based upon "leaks" from intelligence agencies.   This is consistent with the anti-populist tactics of the 1890s and 1930s. "Liberals" defend and promote the "experts" even as they have been proven wrong again and again, in matters ranging from hydroxychloroquine to Russiagate to the 2003 Iraq War to the repeated financial bubbles and the 2009 Great Recession.

The mainstream discourse across the American empire is dominated by anti-populist hysteria, even as our technocratic society falls apart due to its own failings.

Personally, I approve of what Bill Clinton has stood for since becoming a major public figure and representative of mainstream Democratism.  He's stood for common sense, for the most part.  However, the times have changed and the current imperative is for the country's leadership to change accordingly.  Most crucially, we need more class based politics, with government support for those who need it the most including especially the working class.  We need less identity politics and international bullying.  These are my personal opinions.

So Bill Clinton and Joe Biden are anachronisms -- politicians who represent issues from a different time.  The current time demands action on labor, the environment, and peaceful/lawful international relations, as well as simplified universal health care, infrastructure, and social services.  Bill Clinton is fine as an elder statesman who has much wisdom and perspective to share.  But what in God's name is Joe Biden, who is older than Clinton, doing as the Democratic presidential candidate?  He's a demented figurehead put up to stop the populists.  He has no coherent policies on labor, identity politics, or foreign relations.  He's solely a marker for the status quo, and hence is supported by moderate Republicans as well as moderate Democrats.

His supporters see him as providing a bridge to a new generation of leadership.  I see him as a tool of the status quo, intended to prevent change until such time as the elite can regain some sort of coherence.  However Biden is so weak that he may not win the election, which will undoubtedly be heavily contested via the legal system.  Even if he does somehow take office, the contradictions noted above will still be around, and chaos may prevail until such time as the military takes control.  A best case scenario, perhaps, is that someone like Gretchen Whitmer emerges as a Putin like figure who leads the nation with a firm grip out of the chaos into which we have fallen.  (Update 9/1/2020:  It's more likely to be a military or "intelligence" person who is in the right place at the right time to lead us out of chaos.)

Masks, Hydroxychloroquine, and a Reason to Vote Green

A reluctance to wear masks is one of the hallmark idiocies of Trump supporters.  Fortunately, reason prevails and even Trump has started wearing masks occasionally, while in most public indoor places in the U.S. masks are required.  Of course, there have been no random controlled trials proving that masks save lives, but observational data and common sense indicate that the inconvenience of occasionally wearing a mask is probably worth it.  

On the other hand,  opposition to the use of hydroxychloroquine is one of the hallmarks of Trump opponents.  It is quite probable that hundreds of thousands of lives could be saved by adopting covid treatment protocols including administration of hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and azithromycin to high risk patients who show the first symptoms of COVID-19 illness.  The effectiveness of this HCQ treatment plan hasn't been proven by random controlled trials, but the safety has been proven over a period of 70 years and is on a par with that of wearing masks.  

But this is not something that you will know if you are a mainstream Democrat and consumer of mainstream media such as the New York Times and CNN.  These outlets have been fearmongering and ridiculing Trump supporters with regard to HCQ ever since Trump made some awkwardly optimistic comments about HCQ back in March.  

Unlike the situation with masks, the fake news about HCQ is conventional wisdom.  This demonstrates that the Democrats and mainstream media have the upper hand in terms of misinformation and are a greater danger than is Trump.  This follows the path set by Russiagate and identity politics cancel culture, which are all good reasons to vote Green, and to not vote for Joe Biden.