Amos's River of Justice

Category: U.S. Politics

  • The State of Israel is a False Friend

    The State of Israel is a False Friend
    American and Israeli Flags Credit: tzahiV

    Israel has a sordid history of its dealings with the United States. This has been documented in a recently released FBI file, Isaiah L. Kenen: Foreign Agent to Founder of AIPAC. According to this document, Isaiah Kenen and the Israeli government have abused the trust of the American people since 1948. The evidence suggests that the State of Israel is a false friend. This is a summary and timeline of the relevant events.

    1948: Isaiah L. Kenen and the Israel Office of Information

    In the late 1940’s, Isaiah L. Kenen was instrumental in lobbying the US Congress, the administration, and United Nations for the creation of the state of Israel in Palestine. In 1948, he moved from Israel’s UN delegation to start the “Israel Office of Information” on behalf of the Israeli Embassy and Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In this capacity, he was obliged to register with the US Department of Justice under the 1938 Foreign Registration Act (FARA), which he did. However, in 1950, with the help of the Israeli government and behind the Americans’ backs, he began planning to break free of FARA oversight. This is one of several disloyal acts revealed in his biography, Israel’s Defense Line: Her Friends and Foes in Washington.

    The American Zionist Council (AZC): Isaiah L. Kenen acts in bad faith

    Kenen eventually left the Israel Office of Information (IOI) to lobby for the American Zionist Council. He later became founder and chairman of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee known as AIPAC. It is now known that while Kenen was chairman of AIPAC he received strategic direction from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the founder of Mossad.

    In regard to the FARA registration for the Israel Office of Information, Mr. Arthur C.A. Liverhant, Second Secretary of the Israeli Mission, conferred in September of 1948 with Mr. Lenvin and Bernard S. Morris. Mr. Liverhant stated that offices were being established in Washington and New York with a director for each. Lenvin and Morris explained the registration process as well as the filing and labeling requirements.

    On October 10, 1948 Mr. Liverhant submited a foreign agent registration cover letter for a new “Israel Office of Information”. It named Rita Grossman, Bernard Zamichow, Isaiah Kenen, Harvey Rosenhouse and Harry Zinder as officers. Kenen was named as “Director of Information” of the New York office. He filed his personal Foreign Agent Registration on November 1, 1948. However, he failed to report his connections with foreign officials, such as Abba Eban and David Ben-Gurion. This also was not revealed until he published his biography.

    Unreported Israel Office of Information Office in the Los Angelas Consulate: DOJ Files Defenciency Record and Notice

    The DOJ submitted a Deficiency Record and Notice covering the dates from December 1948 to June 1949. It had discovered that the existence of another office in the Los Angelas Consulate had not been reported. The Israelis were advised to correct these deficiencies in the next supplemental statement.

    On June 30, 1950, Mr. Kenen submitted a supplemental registration statement for the Israel Office of Information. He did not disclose a trip to Capitol Hill to lobby for US arms and aid to Israel in January of 1950.

    Kenen Advised to File a new registration statement FA-1 for the Israeli Office of Information.

    The following memo was submitted to the FBI file on January 17, 1951.

    Mr. Isaiah L. Kenen, Director of Information for the Government of Israel’s Mission to the United Nations and one of the officers of the Israeli Office of Information, visited my office on January 17, 1951 to discuss his possible obligations under the Foreign Agents Registration Act in the event he terminates his present activities and establishes his own public relations business.

    Mr. Kenen stated that his first client would probably be the Government of Israel and consequently I told him that he should file a new registration statement on Form FA-1. I explained to Mr. Kenen the registration statement of the Israeli Office of Information and the necessity for the filing of a new statement. Mr. Kenen stated that he would file a new statement as soon as he commences his activities on behalf of the Government of Israel. Suitable forms were given to Mr. Kenen.”

    FARA Section Memo by Nathan Lenvin concerning Isaiah Kenen’s visit

    Kenen Claims he is resigning from the IOI and Severing Ties with the Israeli Government

    However, on February 13th 1951 Kenen announced he was resigning from the Israeli Office of Information and severing ties with the Israeli government. He requested that FARA remove his name from their lists. This request was acknowledged by FARA Section chief William E. Foley.

    Kenen also submitted financial statements to the FARA office in April of 1951 and requested that his name be withdrawn from the IOI file. Three months later, an Israel Office of Information press release announced plans to solicit skilled workers.

    On the same day, James X. Kilbridge requested that the IOI Department of Professional and Technical Personnel be exempted from FARA registration requirements. The DOJ’s William Foley agreed. (No further information is available about Mr. Kilbridge.)

    The New York Times Announces Kenen’s appointment as the Washington Representative of the AZC

    In February of 1952, The New York Times published a short article entitled “I.L. Kenen in Zionist Unit Post“: 

    “The appointment of I.L. Kenen, former director of information for the Jewish Agency in Palestine, as the Washington Representative of the American Zionist Council, the public relations arm of Zionist groups in this country, was announced yesterday by Louis Lipsky, chairman of the council.  Mr. Kenen, who also has served as director of information of the Israel delegation to the United Nations, recently returned from Israel.”

    In March of that year, Kenen advised the FARA section office of his travels to Israel and receipt of Israeli government funds. However, he did not disclose conducting tours and lobbying initiatives with visiting congressmen on behalf of the Israeli government while he was there. The congressmen included Senator Javits and Congressmen Ribicoff, Fugate, Keating, O’Toole, Barrett and Fein. (This is detailed in All My Causes)

    Kenen claimed his employment at the American Zionist Council “expired” before his Israel visit, but he immediately returned to AZC lobbying. Even so, he claimed to be exempt from FARA requirements. (He presented his term at the AZC as ‘uninterrupted’ in his biographies.)

    FARA section gives Kenen a clean bill of health

    In April, FARA section responded to Isaiah Kenen “You state, however, that during the trip to Israel you did not publish or transmit to the United States any documents or propaganda material.  In view of your statement, you were not acting within the United States as an agent of a foreign principal…”

    The FBI Asked Assistant Attorney General Warren Olney III if they should investigate the Israel Office of Information

    The FBI director received and forwarded copies of Israel Office of Information literature in April of 1952. This literature was circulating without foreign agents disclosure stamps (a typical disclosure would read: “A copy of this material is filed with the Department of Justice where the required statement under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of the Israel Office of Information as an agent of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs is available for public inspection.  Registration does not indicate approval of this material by the United States Government.“)  The FBI asked Assistant Attorney General Warren Olney III if the FBI should begin an investigation of the Israel Office of Information.

    Kenen had continued to work at the AZC.

    In 1962, the AZC was ordered to register as a foreign agent.

  • Thoughts on the Eve of the Election

    There are three main concerns that might affect the way people vote in the coming election. My thoughts on the eve of the election include: fascism versus mafia rule; The Supreme Court’s abortion ban; and the question of how people who disagree with each other can live peacefully together.

    Fascism, Mafia Rule, or Liberalism

    In the 1924 general election in Italy, Mussolini won nationally, but the Popular and Liberal Parties won in Sicily, with the help of the mafia. So Mussolini launched an anti-mafia campaign to defeat them. He started with abolishing parliamentary elections–a main source of mafia currency. The end result was a 28 percent decrease in agricultural wages. “The fascists merely replaced the mafia as enforcers of the landowning class.”1

    The Abortion Ban

    On the Supreme Court’s new project of saving fetuses from their mothers, I think it’s amusing how young conservative men, as well as old men on the Supreme Court, assume that banning abortion will result in more babies. I think it’s more likely that single women and married couples will change their sexual habits. It’s not just the fact that they won’t be able to end an unwanted pregnancy. That will probably be a very small part of it. But thanks to the Supreme Court, the possibility of maternal death has become much greater.

    A change of sexual habits will be much harder on men than on women. You might enjoy chapter three of Stefan Zweig’s book, The World of Yesterday. 2 The social expectations of his time were nothing like today. The middle class youth of that day were expected to be celibate until marriage.Zweig tries to empathize with the women of his time, but the trials of middle-class men as he describes them were much worse.

    French Catholics and Rene Guenon

    According to Peter Brooke, Guenon believed in a “great world tradition of which Christianity is simply a part. Guenon himself, in Cairo, became a Muslim, but he argued that the only two valid expressions of the tradition in Western Europe (for ‘Frenchmen and occidentals’) were Roman Catholicism (not any form of Protestantism) and Freemasonry. For other peoples other religions constitute the ‘religious reality and sole traditional spirituality’. But perhaps more obviously dangerous from an ordinary Catholic point of view is the idea that at a particular point in history, and a long time ago at that, Christianity ceased to radiate spirituality.” 3 (p. 221)

    …[Albert] Gleizes had definite ideas about Thomas Aquinas. He saw him as the intellectual personification of a period, the thirteenth century, in which the primacy of spirit is giving way to the primacy of the senses…

    Gleizes lost some valuable friendships over his adherence to these convictions, and much of the blame falls on his loyalty to Guenon.  In his last letter to Gleizes, Pere Jerome apologizes for his part in the breakup of their friendship. But then he says,

    On the other hand, you can’t be surprised that I react when I hear you say, for example, that ‘the whole of theology needs to be taken up again’, or certain ideas on the subject of the Person and of the reality of Christ which the Church does not and never will allow…

    I read Peter Brooke’s biography of Albert Gleizes as history, but not as a historian. I was sympathetic to Gleizes’s discoveries in art but more so to his Catholic friends who disagreed with him and at the same time, commissioned work and gave him opportunities to teach. But I didn’t see it as a current debate. When I first mentioned Guenon I thought he was part of an old conversation that had been settled, but apparently not. I recently read that King Charles III has taken up Guenon’s ideas.

    When you vote tomorrow, vote for a world where we have the time and the will to talk about such things.

     

    1. James Cockayne, Hidden Power: The Strategic Logic of Organized Crime. Oxford University Press; 1st edition, October 1, 2016. ↩︎
    2. Cassell and Company LTD. London, Toronto, Melbourne and Sydney. ↩︎
    3. Peter Brooke, Albert Gleizes For and Against the Twentieth Century. Hong Kong and Italy, 2001, p. 221. ↩︎

  • Rosicrucians, Fallen Angels, and American Politics

    Accusations of leftist magic leveled by right-wing members of Congress led me to research the question of whether magic is really a leftist thing. The closest connection I was aware of was the association of the drug culture of the 1960s with shamanism. But I have always understood the Right’s connection to magic to be more of a thing. I think it would be more more correct to call right-wing magic ‘the occult’. In the end, I was not  really surprised to find that the story of magical politics in America begins by blaming the Left for the whole phenomenon. Both-siderism is apparently the handmaid of American politics, even its weirdest manifestations. This is the story of Rosicrucians, Fallen Angels, and American politics.

    Egil Asprem’s Magical Theory of Politics

    One of the first results on Google was Egil Asprem’s article about the magical theory of politics. True to historical patterns, the magic war serves a right-wing agenda. It seems the Left is only included in the discussion because it’s such a perfect target.

    The Cult of Kek, The Magic Resistance, and the Magic Reaction

    Asprem distinguished three camps of ‘belligerents’ in the magic war over Donald Trump: The Cult of Kek; the Magic Resistance; and the Magic Reaction. The Magic Resistance is where the Left comes in. He cites an article published February 16, 2017 on Medium by Michael M. Hughes, a left-leaning author and lecturer. It was entitled A Spell to Bind Donald Trump and All Those Who Abet Him. The article suggested that a ritual be performed at midnight on every crescent moon until Trump is removed from office.

    The Left’s Social Medial Coordinated Protest Movement

    It can’t be determined from Hughes’s own comments how serious he intended this effort to be. Asprem defines it as “a social media-coordinated protest movement leveraging the trappings of magic and witchcraft to mobilize resistance against the incumbent United States president and his administration.” But however you look at it, the magical resistance was hard to ignore. The first event took place on February 24, 2017. The ‘movement’ was given coverage on social media and in magazines such as Elle, Dazed, Vanity Fair, and Vox. It’s not clear how many people actually participated in the initial event, and the numbers quickly diminished. But the movement had enough participants, or enough publicity, to earn it equal billing with the Right in the magical drama. And this supposedly inspired the Magical Reaction.

    4chan’s Ominous Numbers

    But in my opinion, the most disturbing discovery in Asprem’s article is a date that connects Donald Trump’s nomination as GOP presidential candidate, with 4chan’s /pol/ board. It is possible that intelligence operatives are fueling political divisions, and the magical war in particular, including the Cult of Kek, 4chan, 8chan, and q anon. Consider an unlikely occurrence on 4chan concerning Trump’s coming victory in the presidential race. Asprem explains that there is “a particular form of playful superstition on 4chan”.

    Posts on 4chan are consecutively given an identifying number (currently nine digits, reflecting the fact that the total number of posts number in the billions). Due to the very high posting frequency (over one million a day, in 2018), it is impossible for a user to predict exactly what the last few digits will be when posting. This has given rise to a phenomenon where certain numbers, patterns, and repetitions of numbers–especially repeating digits, labeled “dubs,” “trips,” “quads,” and so on–are considered particularly auspicious. This phenomenon is related to a wider practice known as GET, by which posters on an image board would attempt to score certain integer sequences considered “special” (e.g. posts number 123456789, 1000000, or 555555555). Themes, memes, or users that frequently “GET,” or that just score many dubs and trebs, are considered special, allowing for hidden patterns and connections to emerge in the minds of users. During the primaries and the presidential campaign, a perception formed on /pol/ that Trump and Pepe memes were doing just this. For example, on 19 June 2016, a post on 4chan’s /p/ board with the text “Trump will win” achieved the remarkable GET 77777777. A web of significance was gradually spun, in the usual post-ironic way, in which Trump was divinely selected, the god selecting him was Kek, and the Pepe meme was one of the god’s many manifestations.

    Trump’s Nomination and the Fallen Angel Azazel

    Asprim may not be aware that July 19, 2016 also connects the Rosicrucians to the current political turmoil.  That is the date when the fallen angel Azazel was supposed to rise from his earthly imprisonment.

    There was an unusual scene at the Republican National Convention surrounding Trump’s nomination.

    Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions put Trump’s name up for the nomination shortly before 6 p.m. ET. The nomination was seconded by New York Rep. Chris Collins, the first member of Congress to endorse him.

    “Donald Trump is the singular leader that can get this country back on track,” Sessions said while nominating Trump.

    (It is likely Jeff Sessions is a 33rd Degree Freemason.)

    Particularly outraged was the Washington, D.C., delegation, which held its convention in March and attempted to award 10 votes to Marco Rubio and nine to John Kasich. But convention officials announced the rules merit Trump be award all 19 delegates from the nation’s capital.

    “This is an outrage, and this is a reason the Republican Party is turning off a lot of voters,” a Kasich delegate from D.C. said on MSNBC.

    After Trump had clinched the nomination, the Alaskan delegation contested how its vote total was recorded. They originally requested 12 votes go to Ted Cruz, 11 to Trump and 5 to Rubio, but the RNC recorded all 28 votes to Trump. However, the appeal was unsuccessful because, Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus said, all the votes went to Trump because Rubio and Cruz suspended their campaigns…

    The official nomination came on the second day of what has been a rocky start to the convention. An effort Monday to protest Trump’s candidacy on the convention floor fell short, but not before images of chaos unseen in recent conventions played out on live television.

  • Miser Joe Manchin Offends Faith-Based Allies

    Catholic Democrat Joe Manchin’s position on the child tax credit has put him at odds with important allies such as the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Association of Evangelicals, and Orthodox Union.  Unfortunately, these groups are in a somewhat embarrassing position after objecting to the bill’s mandate that faith-run pre-kindergarten and childcare programs obey federal non-discrimination statutes.  Manchin used their objections as an excuse for his own objections, which have more to do with his dislike of helping those in need.

    Political negotiations first broke down when Manchin proposed to White House officials that the bill maintain elements of the original legislation but omit an expansion of the child tax credit.  Then, this week Manchin told reporters he supports the child tax credit, but only if there is a work requirement for the parents involved.

    Senator Manchin has been trumpeting his work requirement for months despite his religious allies’ prediction that if the requirement becomes part of the law families who don’t pay income tax due to lack of income would not receive the benefit.

    In a September 7 letter, bishops voiced support for the child tax credit expansion without the work requirement.

    “It is especially important that the credit remain fully refundable to ensure the most economically vulnerable children benefit from this family support.”

    The National Association of Evangelicals has not taken a position on the Build Back Better Act as a whole, but the group’s vice president for government relations, Galen Carey, has consistently expressed support for the child tax credit provision. He was asked this week about tying work requirements to the child tax credit.

    “We support making the child tax credit fully available to the families who need the help the most,” he said in a statement. “Work is critically important to human dignity but having a particular level of earned family income should not be a prerequisite to accessing support for their children. Full CTC refundability is what makes it such a powerful anti-poverty tool.”

    The Poor People’s Campaign, a faith-led activist group that often advocates for liberal-leaning legislation, has been protesting against Manchin’s position for months.   The Rev. Liz Theoharis, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, called Manchin’s excuses a “regression back to the tired debate of deserving and undeserving poor.”

    Progressives may have forgotten what an incredible accomplishment the child tax credit was because it was just one item on a very long wish list.  We may have also forgotten to give the Biden administration credit for its implementation.

    This benefit was perfectly aimed at the most vulnerable members of society–children.  And it had the added benefit of demonstrating how valuable the nation’s children are to the President and the people alike.  In my opinion, if the child tax credit is all that can be salvaged from the Build Back Better Act, its survival will be a cause for celebration.

    President Biden has a clear mandate.  I urge his administration to extend the child tax credit–without  Manchin’s work requirement.

     

  • Conservatives are Getting off Easy

    We have veered off track in this conversation.  I’ve been trying to return to the days when we could dream about another way of life.  If we thought about politics at all, we assumed our elected officials knew they’d reached a dead end and that it was time for a change.  Those days ended when we decided to support a presidential candidate.   We learned we were never taken seriously–we were merely a threat.  We have already talked about our shock and disgust at the tactics of conservatives in both parties.  What we haven’t talked about is whether the so-called left shares our vision of the way forward.

    We didn’t require Bernie to share our vision in 2016.  We supported him because he was our best bet.  We believed when he became president he would listen to us.  But now it is becoming clear that even if he had won he might never have been ours.  Bernie and his solutions belong to another time.  When he dreams he dreams about times past.

    Of course he’s not the only one.  There’s a lot of that going around.   The Catholics who fight Pope Francis are doing exactly the same thing.  Unfortunately we made it easy for them by supporting someone with a ‘socialist’ past for president.  Reactionaries need an enemy and we gave them one.  We wrote their script.

    The left will object that socialist policies are exactly what we need to combat inequality.  First, assuming inequality is the priority, you have to be president to put those policies in place.  Second, it is not clear that workers’ prosperity will solve our problem.  I admit it has been infuriating watching Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin play their part in assuring that Bernie’s programs don’t get passed, but don’t forget they are Bernie’s programs–not ours.  Sinema and Manchin prefer it that way.

    Reactionaries dream of an enemy like Bernie.  They never have to reveal their uselessness in dealing with today’s problems because all they have to do is fight Bernie.   It lets them hide the fact that they are not the people we need for the problems we are facing.

    We are losing farmland to desertification.  The green revolution has run its destructive course, depleting the land and polluting water supplies world-wide, and apparently no one is concerned about this at all.  Politicians continue to beat their natalist drums while bombing far-away people out of house and home and refusing to give them refuge.  And now they withhold covid vaccines from entire countries just because they can.  Strangely, they don’t seem to be aware that their bad behavior is catching up with them–the vaccine policy may finally ruin them.

    The supply chain is breaking down.  This affects the automotive repair industry, the construction industry, the medical industry–basically any industry that depends on the supply chain.  Could it be that parts and supplies and logistics and transportation depend on countries that didn’t get vaccinated?

    Making workers more prosperous is a worthy goal.  However our first priority today is survival, and we’re already failing.  We have a global problem that must be solved globally.  The supply chain demonstrates it is literally suicidal to throw entire peoples to the wolves.

    So what should we do?  We could start by making Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema and the right-wingers on Twitter tell us what they will do about the supply chain.  Ask them if they’ve made preparations for shortages in their own states.  Ask Sinema what she’ll do when the Colorado River doesn’t have enough water to farm and fish.  Ask her what she thinks about wealthy countries withholding vaccines from poor countries.  Of course, first you’d have to catch up with her, and then you’d have to get her attention, and then you’d have to convince her she’s just an earthling, like the rest of us.

  • The Return of Liberalism?

    The Meritocracy Versus Just America

    I recently watched George Packer talk about his new book, Last Best Hope.  I agree with most of what I heard in this interview (although there are hints that he is not an ally of progressives).  Parker is calling for the return of liberalism.  On the positive side, he thinks the goal for the country should be equal citizens governing themselves.  He stresses that he doesn’t define equality in the sense of equal outcome, but in the sense of no one being born and dying in a permanently subordinate class.  And when he says citizens should govern themselves, he means they should participate in the current democratic system.   My main concerns are the rivalry he sets up between liberalism and progressivism, and his belief that we actually have a self-governing system.

    The root of our problems, Packer says, is that we’ve been unable to make an equal America across race and class lines.  We have to create conditions of equality, mostly through government intervention, through breaking up monopolies, by empowering workers, by rebuilding the safety net, by making education more equal.

    I agree with all of these proposals.  However, I would argue that the attempt to achieve these goals has lead to the divisions he is trying to heal.  But Packer believes his policies would allow the temperature to go down so that people could work together again.

    Packer does mention progressives.  He credits Elizabeth Warren as the leader of progressives who want to rein in monopolies.  But progressives are not listed in his four divisions of America, and the category that would seem to include progressives is not invited to participate in the return of liberalism.  Below is Packer’s list of four rival Americas which have arisen since the 1970s:

    The four Americas are Free America; Real America; Smart America; and Just America.  Free America is conservative to the point of libertarianism.  Real America is Sarah Palin’s America, and the direct rival of Free America. Smart America is the professional class or meritocracy.  Smart America is separate from liberalism.  Just America is the chief critic of Smart America.  Packer does not think Just America has any benign attributes.  It is associated with social intolerance and cancel culture.

    According to Packer, Just America sees the United States as nothing but a caste system.  For this group everything about American history is white, and whiteness is on trial.  He illustrates this by citing Ta-Nehisi Coates’s statement that America is a unitary malignant force.  But Packer’s so-called illustration is misleading, because Coates has been criticized by progressives.

    Packer also claims that Just America’s focus on race makes them unwilling to talk about class.  What is needed, in his opinion, is two people of different races to spend several hours together in a room.  He seems unaware that Bernie Sanders and Killer Mike met together in just this way.

    Packer also criticizes Just America’s denial of black violence in black communities, as well as its support for defunding the police.  On the other hand, he speaks approvingly when he calls Black Lives Matter a movement for oppressed people.  This is a contradiction because Black Lives Matter is the most prominent voice for defunding the police.

    In case you are not convinced that Just America is on the firing line, I’ll share Packer’s summary of the four divisions of America:  Free America lauds the energy of the unencumbered individual; Smart America respects intelligence and welcomes change; Real America commits itself to a place and has a sense of limits; and Just America demands a confrontation with what the others want to avoid.

    The Return of Liberalism Needs the Left

    If the changes listed by Packer can be accomplished, I won’t object to the dismissal of the progressive movement.  But Packer’s false definition of the left makes success unlikely.  The accomplishments of progressives have to be acknowledged and appreciated and built upon if we’re going to achieve the equality George Packer is talking about.

    A Supporting View

    Packer’s misidentification of progressives is summed up by Eric Levitz in a June 15 article for Intelligencer.

    There are many problems with Packer’s essay.  For one, its characterization of Just America is a tendentious description of one ideological tendency in a single segment of the millennial left.  There are no small number of racial-justice advocates whose vision is unabashedly universalist…

    But an even bigger problem with Packer’s schema is this: It completely ignores the majority of Democratic voters who are neither professional-class meritocrats nor millennial anti-racists.  Packer hasn’t described the central division within Blue America but the generational cleavage within his own professional circle.

    The Return of Liberalism and Self-Governance

    Packer wants this country to remain self-governing.  I share his concern, but it’s important to acknowledge that the system needs improvement.  After all, it gave the presidency to Donald Trump in 2016 even though he had 4 million fewer votes than his opponent.  More importantly, it has silenced the voices of many generations who have tried to warn us about the climate crisis.  We need a system capable of being influenced by the voters, and we need voters who are willing to participate.  We can do a better job of self-governance.

    Tim Black on The Black Left

    Lynn Parramore on the Coup – and the corporations- That Destroyed the Black Middle Class

    Radical Universalism, on the Jacobin Show

    Zero Books: Identity Politics is Right Wing

    Gresham College: Food Oppression

    Bad Faith: What to do with Inconvenient Truths

    Glenn Greenwald: Canceling Comedians While the World Burns

  • Finding Joy in the Darkness

    Please see the update at the end of the article

    Considering the pressures that weigh down the inhabitants of Planet Earth this Christmas season, I think it is important to state the good news first rather than at the end of the article.  (My recommendations for a Russian movie, Stalker, and the Grace Cathedral version of Handel’s Messiah can be found at the end of this article.) The following may not be the good news you were hoping for, but it bodes well for the future: It has recently become apparent that our conversation is developing a recognizable character, substance and direction.  In these times when foundations seems to be crumbling, a new foundation has been forming itself right under our feet.

    I came to this realization after a disturbing conversation with a member of my local Democratic Party in which I discovered that she was completely unaware of the term ‘option for the poor’.  Participants in our conversation will have learned this term from Pope Francis–it is a term used in Catholic social teaching, and it means that “God invites us to care in a special way for those who need the most help.”

    As followers of Christ, we are challenged to make a preferential option for the poor, namely, to create conditions for marginalized voices to be heard, to defend the defenseless, and to assess lifestyles, policies and social institutions in terms of their impact on the poor.  The option for the poor does not mean pitting one group against another, but rather, it calls us to strengthen the whole community by assisting those who are most vulnerable.

    Her obliviousness to this key concept of the conversation was doubly disturbing considering that President-elect Joe Biden, a member of her own party, has been using this term in his speeches.  (Biden would have learned this term directly from Catholic social teaching.)

    In addition to his mention of a preferential option for the poor, President-elect Biden has appointed cabinet members that we can at least hope will be willing and able to manage our land and resources for the support of every American.

    For example, he has appointed Xavier Becerra as Secretary of Health and Human Services; Congresswoman Marcia Fudge as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; Deb Haaland as Interior Secretary; and Michael Regan as EPA Administrator.  Biden has also created a new cabinet role of Special Presidential Envoy for Climate Change, appointing John Kerry to this role.  We can discuss these nominees later, as well as others that are not as much to our liking, but in this season we can choose to focus on good news and that is what I want to do.

    Biden’s pick for Chair of Council of Economic Advisers, Cecilia Rouse, spoke in the language of the conversation when she said, “We need to be positioned for the economy of the future so that everyone is able to partake in the growth we hope to have.”  Biden’s pick for US Trade Representative, Katherine Tai, also spoke in the language of the conversation when she said, “[Trade] is a means to create more hope and opportunity for people…And it only succeeds when the humanity and dignity of every American–and of all people–lie at the heart of our approach.”

    In addition to the influence of Catholic social teaching, other crucial influences round out the conversation and give it life.  We have welcomed the wisdom of indigenous people in the fight to protect our resources.  Biden’s nomination of Deb Haaland as Interior Secretary is a clear nod to the importance of the Native American contribution to this effort.

    The conversation has also welcomed the influence of socialists and Marxists in our midst (although with some trepidation on my part, mostly due to the fear that it invites extremism in American politics.)   The socialists have patiently explained the necessity of economic theory going forward as well as the importance of the creation of wealth if we’re going to care for everyone in times of crisis.  For my part, I recognize the need for these knowledgable people who can think outside of the economic box.

    We are also grateful for the voices and activism of Black Lives Matter, and the attention that protesters around the world have brought to the problem of racism and police brutality.

    Of course, Bernie Sanders has been a huge influence in the conversation.  Although Sanders was considered a left-leaning candidate for the presidency this is only true by American standards.  All of his policy proposals have a solid place in American politics.

    We are also aware in this conversation of the importance of agricultural policy and the way it affects food and water security.  This has been a concern of Marcia Fudge, who lobbied for the position of Secretary of Agriculture.  She would have shifted the agency’s focus from farming toward hunger.  Agricultural policy is central to climate policy and job security as well as food security, so it is sure to be of interest to progressives in the years to come.

    For me, the realization of the centrality of agricultural policy in global conflicts was the most exhilarating realization of this conversation.  It is so important that it should have at least been acknowledged by the Democratic establishment in the 2016 election, but Biden may be making up for that omission.  It should motivate an immediate change, not only in domestic policy but in foreign policy as well.  It makes the Empire’s foreign adventures seem futile and ridiculous, and for that reason it inspires the imagination and the confidence to envision a new world.

    But this good news is only a beginning.  Americans who face hunger and eviction continue to suffer this Christmas season, so we ask the incoming Biden administration to make them a priority.

    I’ll finish by sharing a movie and Christmas music that I think you will enjoy.  Speaking of our strange times, there is a 1979 movie called Stalker.  Admittedly, you have to pay $3.99 to rent it and also have an Amazon Prime account.  (It may also be on Netflix, but I don’t have a Netflix account so I can’t say for sure.)  The movie is based on a novel by the Strugatsky brothers, Roadside Picnic, and directed by Andrei Tarkovsy.   According to Adam Curtis it was inspired by a sense of unreality in Soviet Russia.

    Those who are not interested in the movie might like this performance of Handel’s Messiah in Grace Cathedral.

    Or, the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah.

    Merry Christmas everyone.

    Update December 25: I believe that the following articles and videos have some bearing on the movie, Stalker, that I recommended at the end of this article, or some bearing on my article in general.

    The Infirmity of Jesus is a Teaching of Christmas

    The Light of Hope Shines Brightest in Darkness

    Twenty-five of the best films on Amazon Prime

    Reading the Hindu and Christian Classics: Why and How Deep Learning Still Matters

    Aruna Chetana

     

     

  • America’s War Against Political Modernization, 1775-2020

    America’s political system has been described by Loren Goldner ((Goldner, Herman Melville: Between Charlemagne and the Antemosaic Cosmic Man, Queequeg Publications, New York, NY, 2006)) and others as a Tudor Polity.  The jury is still out on whether this was a positive or negative development.

    The United States’ System Compared to Great Britain and Europe

    Samuel Huntington explains the meaning of America’s Tudor polity in more detail. ((Huntington, Samuel P. “The Change to Change: Modernization, Development, and Politics.” Comparative Politics, vol. 3, no. 3, 1971, pp. 283–322. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/421470. Accessed 20 Oct. 2020.))  Writing in 1966, Huntington praises the American system.  But perhaps he would have a different opinion of it today.  In fact, it’s possible he had reservations in 1966.  On page 412 he says:

    Mass participation goes hand-in-hand with authoritarian control.

    But Huntington is not referring to the United States in the previous quote.

    As in Guinea and Ghana, [authoritarian control] is the twentieth-century weapon of modernizing centralizers against traditional pluralism.

    Instead, Huntington’s article contrasts the evolution of British and European systems, which represent two patterns of modernization, with that of the United States.  He seems to think the United States is the superior system.

    There was a process of political modernization in Europe and Great Britain that involved “rationalized authority, differentiated structure, and mass participation…”  But the American system did not undergo any revolutionary changes; it kept the main elements of the English sixteenth-century constitution.

    The Americans did take the step of increasing participation in politics by social groups throughout society.  They also developed new political institutions–such as political parties and interest associations–to organize this participation.  Unfortunately, mass participation doesn’t necessarily result in equality of political power.  According to Huntington,

    Broadened participation in politics may increase control of the people by the government, as in totalitarian states, or it may increase control of the government by the people, as in some democratic ones. (p. 378)

    Mass Participation Versus Direct Democracy

    Huntington doesn’t explain what he means by ‘mass politics’ but an article by Yoram Gat argues the United States’ system is one of mass politics.  I cite this article because he elaborates on one possible meaning of mass politics.

    Due to the symmetry of its decision making process, mass politics has superficial similarity to democracy – a political system in which political power is distributed equally among the members – since both terms describe situations of equality.  The difference is that mass politics is defined in terms of formal equality while democracy is defined in terms of equality of actual political power.

    This seems to describe our present system more accurately, however Huntington’s approach is important because it focuses on the historical process of modernization.

    The American Colonies Fought Modernization

    According to Huntington,  late medieval and Tudor political ideas, practices, and institutions arrived in the New World with English colonists in the first half of the seventeenth century.  The conflict between the colonists and the British government in the middle of the eighteenth century only reinforced the colonists’ adherence to these ‘traditional’ patterns.

    The breach between colonists and mother country was largely a mutual misunderstanding based, in great part, on the fact of this retention of older ideas in the colonies after parliamentary sovereignty had driven them out in the mother country ((Charles Howard McIlwain, The High Court of Parliament and Its Supremacy, New Haven 1910, p. 386. As quoted by Huntington, p. 382)).

    Huntington concludes that America’s political modernization has been ineffectual and incomplete.

           European and English Monarchs of the Sixteenth Century

    The absolute monarchs of sixteenth century Europe were not reactionaries.  They were actually modernizers who oversaw the transition between medieval and modern politics.  (p. 385)  There were many political theorists at that time who tried to provide more ‘rational’ justifications of absolute sovereignty based on the nature of man and the nature of society.  Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan, 1651, was a more extreme doctrine of sovereignty than that of Bodin and the Politiques on the Continent.  Bodin and the Politiques looked to the creation of a supreme royal power which would maintain order and constitute a centralized public authority above parties, sects, and groups.

    Hobbes and Filmer represent both the secular and religious versions of the doctrine of sovereignty.  They argued that it was the subject’s absolute duty to obey his king.  Both of them helped political modernization by giving permission for the concentration of authority and the breakdown of the medieval pluralistic political orders.

    Mass participation came much later.  Since the twentieth century authority has been concentrated in either a political party or a popular charismatic leader.  Either one is capable of arousing the masses and challenging traditional sources of authority.

    In terms of modernization, the seventeenth century’s absolute monarch was the functional equivalent of the twentieth century’s monolithic party. (p. 386)

         Parliamentary Sovereignty

    This process also occurred in England with an important difference.  James I tried to follow the Continental pattern of the absolutist monarch but  Conservatives disagreed.  They argued against James I in terms of fundamental law and the traditional diffusion of authority.  However their ideas were already out of date in England.  Their claims for royal absolutism generated counterclaims for parliamentary supremacy.  For example, Hobbes’s and Filmer’s theories of sovereignty provoked Milton’s argument that parliament is above all positive law, whether civil or common.  In short, fundamental law suffered the same fate in England as it had on the Continent but it was replaced by an omnipotent legislature rather than by an absolute monarchy.

         America

    Meanwhile America clung to the old patterns of fundamental law and diffused authority.  Huntington makes a statement here that might seem contradictory given our current political situation.

    The persistence of fundamental-law doctrines went hand in hand with the rejection of sovereignty.  The older ideas of the interplay of society and government and the harmonious balance of the elements of the constitution continued to dominate American political thought.   In England, the ideas of the great Tudor political writers, Smith, Hooker, Coke, ‘were on the way to becoming anachronisms even as they were set down.’  In America, on the other hand, their doctrines prospered, and Hobbes remained irrelevant…The eighteenth-century argument of the colonists with the home country was essentially an argument against the legislative sovereignty of Parliament.

    American Popular Sovereignty is Latent and Passive

    After stating that in America sovereignty was to be lodged in the people, Huntington admits that popular sovereignty is a vague concept. “The voice of the people is as readily identified as is the voice of God.  It is thus a latent, passive, and ultimate authority, not a positive and active one.”

         The Courts

    America’s continuation of the belief in the supremacy of law, as well as its rejection of legislative sovereignty, explains the power of the judicial branch of government in the United States.  In England, the supremacy of the law ended in the civil wars of the seventeenth century.  The result was that English judges could not oppose any points of sovereignty.  However in America, the mixture of judicial and political function remained.

    The judicial power to declare what the law is became the mixed judicial-legislative power to tell the legislature what the law cannot be…The legislative functions of courts in America, as McIlwain argues, are far greater than those in England, ‘because the like tendency was there checked by the growth in the seventeenth century of a new doctrine of parliamentary supremacy.’

    By contrast, American courts are still ‘guided by questions of policy and expediency.’  (p. 394)  This explains the prominent role of lawyers in American politics.

    Conclusion

    Perhaps the most interesting idea brought up by Huntington is that political modernization in Europe and England was driven by the need for change.  Modernization began when the needs of the time met the simultaneous impossibility of change.   It can be argued that today in the United States there is an urgent need for change, including the need to combat climate change and preserve arable land and clean water.  Yet reactionary forces are cooperating with each other to make change impossible.  This is a strong argument for modernization.

     

  • Who Are the Progressives’ Friends?

    I’m not trying to end to our conversation with people in these categories.  I’m trying to clarify the position of progressives by comparison with competing voices in the “progressive” movement.  I put progressive in quotation marks because there are non-progressive participants in this movement. In fact, there are categories of participants that we may not be aware of. I’m thinking of socially conservative Marxists, progressive Trump supporters, and the Greeks. Everyone who differs with us is important for purposes of comparison if nothing else. But who are the progressives’ friends?

    We can learn from our exchanges with them if we have the courage to ask hard questions and disagree when necessary.  But if we keep silent about our differences the conversation can’t help but be empty and purposeless, and it will become vulnerable to special interests.  The consequences of capitulation on our part will no doubt be very unpleasant.

    Aside from enriching our debates, many of these ‘voices’ have served our causes.  One individual in particular has worked hard to advance our agenda for the environment.  We could not have accomplished the things Pope Francis has accomplished in such a short time and I plan to remember what he has done and honor him for his service to us.  However, I think the time has come to identify what is American in the progressive conversation and for that matter, what is progressive about it.

    Occupy Wall Street and Marxism

    Since Occupy Wall Street burst on the scene we’ve seen a lot of Marxist rhetoric from the alternative media.  Most people who subscribe to these channels don’t know anything about Marxism except that it claims to be a solution to our present troubles.  Likewise, they don’t know anything about Occupy Wall Street.

    Unfortunately, it is likely that the agenda some of our allies are espousing will keep everything the same.  For example Caleb Maupin, a “Marxist” on YouTube, has been insisting that Marxism has always been socially conservative.  This is a direct challenge to progressive support for Roe v Wade. Similar to right-wing pundits, he resorts to a litany of Margaret Sanger’s racism and Malthusianism to justify his position and to ‘prove’ that Roe v Wade was a misguided piece of legislation from the beginning.

    It is also important for progressives to speak frankly about Roe v Wade and how it constrains our conversation.  The right for a woman to obtain an abortion–which is a medical procedure and not technically a political issue–is a very low bar as far as women’s rights are concerned. It is sad that we are forced to continually fight for it.  Unfortunately, the fight for Roe v Wade, which is already the law of the land, is as progressive as we are allowed to be in this political climate.  I regret this situation while I acknowledge the fight as necessary.  I also regret the way we are forced to be cheerleaders for abortion in response to conservatives’ obsession with it.

    Was Occupy Wall Street Socially Conservative?

    I believe Maupin was associated with Occupy Wall Street, which also claimed to have a Marxist foundation. Was OWS proposing socially conservative policies too?  This possible association is pretty enlightening, given that OWS temporarily took over our conversation in its early days. Were they proposing their own agenda for the conversation?

    This leads me to wonder whether the mutual admiration expressed between OWS and Vatican II Catholics indicates a deeper alliance than we realize.  Again, this is not a rejection of their ideas.  It is a request for clarification.

    For progressives, social conservatism usually implies control of women. This is not a progressive position.

    Reproductive Rights Are Not Faith-based

    Some will say that women have always dealt with social control and the country has more important things to worry about at this time.  That may be true, but what if the problems we are facing are a result of our culture’s control of women?   I’ve written about this in the past and I will write more in the future.

    Marxism on Population Control

    Another Marxist, Loren Goldner, claims that humans don’t have population limits like other species do because humans continually interact with the environment to create new environments.

    The universalism of Marx rests on a notion of humanity as a species distinct from other species in its capacity to periodically revolutionize its means of extracting wealth from nature, and therefore is free from the relatively fixed laws of population which nature imposes on other species.1

    This is clearly a matter of faith and I completely disagree with it.  I also believe it is contrary to the progressive agenda which advocates slowing population growth as much as possible and finding ways to care for the population we do have.  It is my understanding that this is the reason we fight for better management of the environment.

    Marx and Engels Use Class Analysis for Male-Female Relations

    Goldner’s praise of Marx and Engels on the importance of quality relations between men and women falls into this discussion about how humanity creates its own environment.  Basically Marxists deal with this issue under the heading of class.  This of course, diminishes the standing of women. On the contrary, I would argue that male-female relations are in a class of their own.

    Male-female relations should be decided by customs within the extended family, not by Marxist theory or work arrangements. However, Marxists don’t want to talk about this any more than capitalists do.  They would prefer to discuss same-sex marriage and gender rights. That way, they don’t have to make any changes to the fundamental position of women.

    Same-Sex Marriage and Trans Rights

    I agree that discrimination against gays and trans-people must be illegal, but the interesting thing in this development is the lack of attention to the position of women.  Why do we see this convergence of the left and right on women?

    It is clear to me that right-wing talking points, regardless of whether they come from the right or the left, cannot refute the current progressive movement.  Our agenda is the only sensible response being offered at this time to the realities of human existence.  But if the “Marxists” are successful in winning over the progressive movement, nothing will change because their policy proposals are identical to the Right and the Democratic establishment in the only ways that really matter. They negatively influence our relationship with nature and the way our culture deals with women.

    Loren Goldner on Marx and Civil Society

    Goldner envisions the following options given our current predicament:

    The fundamental question before the international left today is whether or not Marx was (as this writer believes) right to think that civil society could be abolished…on a higher level (which preserves and deepens the positive historical achievements of civil, that is, bourgeois society) and not on a lower level, as happened in Soviet-type societies. The second question, which follows hard on the first, is: if Marx was wrong about the critique of civil society, and was in fact a protototalitarian, what, if anything remains valid in his critique of political economy and its programmatic implications?…

    I haven’t yet said anything under the heading of progressive Trump supporters.  It seems to me this category overlaps with the people who supported Jill Stein in 2016 and those who are now arguing that Trump is better on foreign policy than Biden.  It also overlaps with those who have been refuting the DNC’s claim of Russian interference.

    I agree that the DNC is an embarrassment in many ways, but their opponents’ arguments verge on support for Putin, who is seen by many Christians as a champion for Christianity.  I would argue that there is one good reason to vote for Joe Biden and it can’t be rationalized in order to drum up support for Trump.

    Trump’s Covid Response

    During the covid19 pandemic Donald Trump has actually carried out policies that he knew would kill more people in blue states, and especially people of color.  In other words, he has not only admitted to homicidal tendencies, he has acted on this impulse.  Any progressive who argues that we should consider Trump as a candidate should not be trusted.  We don’t know if Joe Biden will be better, but at least he has not admitted to being homicidal!

    Unfortunately, the DNC is replaying Hillary’s 2016 choice of a vice presidential running mate.  Biden’s new running mate, Kamala Harris, is like a clone of Tim Kaine in her unpopularity with progressives.  Therefore I think it is possible that the Democrats don’t want to win in 2020 and that they didn’t want to win in 2016.  The only choice left to us is to turn out in such large numbers that Joe Biden wins in spite of himself.

  • Progressives Grieve, Conservatives Posing as Democrats Gloat

    I want to urge activists to use caution in the post-Bernie stage of this election cycle.  I’m a little worried about the tone the analyses have taken–not for Bernie, I’m worried for the activists.  It is crucial to the health of the movement to be able to put things in their proper perspective, especially now.  At this time the pundits are apparently just coming to terms with the fact that Bernie is out and they have to watch the smirking idiots in Washington calmly go on with their plans.  I won’t deny it is disgusting to watch–one can’t help but think they should be more afraid than they are, and yet their so-called plans lurch determinedly on.  If you think the job of government is to serve the people, it seems to go forward without rhyme or reason.

    Still, it is not time to lash out.  For one thing, it’s not over yet.  I’m not implying that our dreams still might miraculously come true, although if the world makes any kind of sense at all they should come true.  What I’m saying is that at this point we have no choice but to wait and hope.  Rather than tear everything down, we should be using this time to reconnoitre.

    We have learned some important facts during the course of these two campaigns.  For example, we’ve seen that our people in Congress have a firm grip on the mechanism of government at every level–including the press which is not even supposed to be a branch of government–and they have no fear of repercussions.

    My own analysis of Sanders’ campaign would go something like this: we could have used our time better in the interim between the two campaigns.  I would also like to suggest that some of Bernie’s million volunteers were not really Bernie supporters.  I believe that if our progressive pundits had volunteered by making calls and knocking on doors, they would have the same concern.  Who were the volunteers who sabotaged the good volunteers you ask?  Ask yourself what you would do if it was your job to keep Bernie out of the White House?  Wouldn’t you sign up to volunteer so you could sabotage the attempts by real supporters trying to do their job?  It would be so easy–you could be virtually anonymous.  Finally, I would like to ask the pundits how they thought Bernie could win by being humiliated at the polls in all of the remaining states, which I believe would certainly have happened.  If you didn’t see that coming after Iowa I’m not going to waste my time explaining it.  Anyway, I’ve already written about it here.

    To continue with my analysis, we jumped into this torrent in the middle of the river with no preparation.  It wasn’t our fault.  When I started talking about the 2016 presidential campaign, I had in mind the responsibility of citizens to pay attention to elections and to vote.  The presidential election was on the horizon and it seemed like a good idea.  The thing is, no one knew that Bernie would take the country by storm and that we would have to stand by while those devils took it from us.  All I hoped back then is that his campaign would add a little sanity to the downward spiral of our republic.

    I still think we have the responsibility to vote, but I clearly had some unrealistic expectations.  I thought we could choose our candidates based on what we understood to be the most pressing needs of the nation.  That would be our second lesson–we can’t.  The election process, at least at the presidential level, is nothing more than a long, expensive spectacle.  Oh, we still have free speech alright, but what does that do for us?  It saves us from the punishment of cement overshoes for speaking our mind, which is a good thing, but unfortunately it lasts a lot longer than cement overshoes.  At least with cement overshoes we’d be sleeping with the fishes, whereas elections never end.  And no, this is not an invitation for Bernie’s former supporters to check out.  We’re going to find a way to go on and this is how you do that–by calmly thinking it over.  Well, maybe not so calmly in every case.

    Now let’s turn our attention to these people who claim to be Democrats, but who have been treating us like poor relations at the reading of the will.  Who exactly are these people against whom we’ve been sending our own personal gladiator, Bernie Sanders, to do battle?  Where do they fit in the overall scheme of American history and world history?  Let’s look at them first in the context of American history.

    I won’t keep you in suspense.  The explanation is too long and I’m afraid you’ll forget the question by the time I get to the answer.  Our Democratic establishment is kin to the conservatives who defeated the liberal Republicans in the 1960s and 70s.  How do I know this?  Because the main issue that divided the Republican Party at that time was the New Deal.  Of course now the Conservatives are all about social issues, while back in the sixties they used anti-Communism as a rallying point for bringing the GOP together, but they kept their animosity toward the American middle class.  The liberal Republicans were in favor of the New Deal and the conservatives were against it.  The Clintons have always been on board with this conservative focus.

    We know that Hillary Clinton was a Young Republican and that she supported the great conservative hope, Barry Goldwater.  Of course now she makes a joke of it but I’ve never heard her renounce his ideas, have you?  You might be interested to know that her father used the same tactic.  He ran for a local office as a Democrat, although he was a Republican, and then switched back to being a Republican. I only wish Hillary Clinton had the decency to switch back!

    Fast forward to the Clinton administration.  Bill Clinton did battle against the middle class on several fronts, the most egregious assault being NAFTA, but also including financial deregulation with the end of the Glass Steagall Act, and the Telecommunications Act of 1996.  Interesting isn’t it, that certain Democrats accuse others of not being Democrats when they are the ones who are not Democrats?

    You might want to read about how the conservative Republicans took over the party.  It’s explained in a book, Turning Right in the Sixties: The Conservative Capture of the GOP by Marry C. Brennan.  ((Turning Right in the Sixties: The Conservative Capture of the GOP, the University of North Carolina Press, 1995))

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

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