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anonymous

Agenda: The U.S. and China Find Common Ground - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...s-and-china-find-common-ground

geopolitics u.s. china

shared by anonymous on 19 Aug 11 - Cached
  • Joe Biden is saying that a close relationship with China is of the utmost importance. The Chinese side of the three-day talks appear to agree, drawing back from sharp criticism of America in recent weeks. But does the dialogue spell improving relationships between the world’s two biggest economies?
  • On the public front there certainly is a lot of apparent ups and down
  • Underneath it, there’s a fairly strong economic link between the two. That link doesn’t necessarily guarantee good relations between them.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • they’re both trying to get a sense of reassurance and a sense that at least there is an element of stability between what are now the world’s two biggest economies.
  • I think that the talk about pulling Chinese investment out of U.S. bonds out of U.S. treasuries is more rhetoric than anything, although certainly there are elements within China that are raising that up.
  • in the end, the Chinese really have two questions:
  • One, who’s going to buy their stuff if they yank all these savings out of the U.S. and if they contribute to the crash of the U.S. economy. And the second would be who in the world is going to buy all of these if they try to dump them on the market and sell them, there have to be buyers out there.
  • two other trends
  • There seems to be a significant drop in students from the provinces enlisting in the better universities. It also looks as if Beijing is planning a new crackdown on bloggers and social networks.
  • On the one hand, being able to allow their citizens to kind of display their frustration or express themselves through these social networks has been a way to reduce potentially some of the steam that would build up in China that could ultimately kind of explode out against the government.
  • anonymous on 19 Aug 11
     
    "Rodger Baker reviews U.S. Vice President Joe Biden's speech in Beijing and discusses China's dilemma over social networks."
anonymous

Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% - 0 views

www.vanityfair.com/...top-one-percent-201105

society generations

shared by anonymous on 06 Apr 11 - Cached
  • While the top 1 percent have seen their incomes rise 18 percent over the past decade, those in the middle have actually seen their incomes fall.
  • Those who have contributed great positive innovations to our society, from the pioneers of genetic understanding to the pioneers of the Information Age, have received a pittance compared with those responsible for the financial innovations that brought our global economy to the brink of ruin.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 06 Apr 11
       
      This is, in fact, where libertarian economic policies fall down for me. Even if I were to consider them abstractly appealing, the reality is that the winner is the person who exploits, bends, and mutilates the rules, not merely to those who are most productive or creative.
  • An economy in which most citizens are doing worse year after year—an economy like America’s—is not likely to do well over the long haul. There are several reasons for this.
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • First, growing inequality is the flip side of something else: shrinking opportunity.
  • Second, many of the distortions that lead to inequality—such as those associated with monopoly power and preferential tax treatment for special interests—undermine the efficiency of the economy.
  • Third, and perhaps most important, a modern economy requires “collective action”—it needs government to invest in infrastructure, education, and technology.
  • None of this should come as a surprise—it is simply what happens when a society’s wealth distribution becomes lopsided.
  • The top 1 percent may complain about the kind of government we have in America, but in truth they like it just fine: too gridlocked to re-distribute, too divided to do anything but lower taxes.
  • But one big part of the reason we have so much inequality is that the top 1 percent want it that way.
  • The most obvious example involves tax policy. Lowering tax rates on capital gains, which is how the rich receive a large portion of their income, has given the wealthiest Americans close to a free ride.
  • During the savings-and-loan scandal of the 1980s—a scandal whose dimensions, by today’s standards, seem almost quaint—the banker Charles Keating was asked by a congressional committee whether the $1.5 million he had spread among a few key elected officials could actually buy influence. “I certainly hope so,” he replied.
  • When pharmaceutical companies receive a trillion-dollar gift—through legislation prohibiting the government, the largest buyer of drugs, from bargaining over price—it should not come as cause for wonder. It should not make jaws drop that a tax bill cannot emerge from Congress unless big tax cuts are put in place for the wealthy. Given the power of the top 1 percent, this is the way you would expect the system to work.
  • America’s inequality distorts our society in every conceivable way.
  • lifestyle effect
  • distorts our foreign policy
  • The rules of economic globalization are likewise designed to benefit the rich
  • they encourage competition among countries for business
  • if the rules were designed instead to encourage competition among countries for workers.
  • the erosion of our sense of identity, in which fair play, equality of opportunity, and a sense of community are so important.
  • anonymous on 06 Apr 11
     
    "Americans have been watching protests against oppressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation's income-an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret."
anonymous

How Slavery Really Ended in America - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...mag-03CivilWar-t.html

shared by anonymous on 05 Apr 11 - Cached
  • anonymous on 05 Apr 11
     
    "On May 23, 1861, little more than a month into the Civil War, three young black men rowed across the James River in Virginia and claimed asylum in a Union-held citadel. Fort Monroe, Va., a fishhook-shaped spit of land near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, had been a military post since the time of the first Jamestown settlers. This spot where the slaves took refuge was also, by remarkable coincidence, the spot where slavery first took root, one summer day in 1619, when a Dutch ship landed with some 20 African captives for the fledgling Virginia Colony. Two and half centuries later, in the first spring of the Civil War, Fort Monroe was a lonely Union redoubt in the heart of newly Confederate territory. Its defenders stood on constant guard. Frigates and armed steamers crowded the nearby waters known as Hampton Roads, one of the world's great natural harbors. Perspiring squads of soldiers hauled giant columbiad cannons from the fort's wharf up to its stone parapets. Yet history would come to Fort Monroe not amid the thunder of guns and the clash of fleets, but stealthily, under cover of darkness, in a stolen boat."
anonymous

Overworked America: 12 Charts that Will Make Your Blood Boil - 1 views

motherjones.com/...mericans-working-harder-charts

visualization american economy

shared by anonymous on 13 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • anonymous on 13 Jul 11
     
    In the past 20 years, the US economy has grown nearly 60 percent. This huge increase in productivity is partly due to automation, the internet, and other improvements in efficiency. But it's also the result of Americans working harder-often without a big boost to their bottom lines. Oh, and meanwhile, corporate profits are up 20 percent. (Also read our essay on the great speedup and harrowing first-person tales of overwork.)
anonymous

The new party of Reagan - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...gIQAuckfOI_story.html

reagan politics partisan

shared by anonymous on 20 Jul 11 - Cached
  • After he switched to the Republican Party in 1962, Ronald Reagan famously quipped: “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party. The party left me.”
  • At Tuesday morning’s meeting of the House Democrats, caucus chairman John Larson rallied his colleagues for the day’s debt-limit debate by playing an audio recording of the 40th president.“Congress consistently brings the government to the edge of default before facing its responsibility,” Reagan says in the clip. “This brinkmanship threatens the holders of government bonds and those who rely on Social Security and veterans benefits. Interest rates would skyrocket, instability would occur in financial markets, and the federal deficit would soar. The United States has a special responsibility to itself and the world to meet its obligations.”
  • Tea Party Republicans say they would sooner default on the national debt than raise taxes; Reagan agreed to raise taxes 11 times.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Reagan in 1988 signed a major expansion of Medicare.
  • Republicans have continued their ritual praise of Reagan during the debt-limit fight. Rep. Trent Franks (Ariz.) claimed that the budget caps would allow America to be “that great city on a hill that Ronald Reagan spoke of.”
  • Most recently, Rep. Duncan Hunter Jr. (Calif.) called Reagan a “moderate former liberal . . . who would never be elected today in my opinion.”
  • This spring, Mike Huckabee judged that “Ronald Reagan would have a very difficult, if not impossible time being nominated in this atmosphere,” pointing out that Reagan “raises taxes as governor, he made deals with Democrats, he compromised on things in order to move the ball down the field.”
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 20 Jul 11
       
      Holy shit. You mean he *governed*?
  • anonymous on 20 Jul 11
     
    "Tea Party Republicans call a vote to raise the debt ceiling a threat to their very existence; Reagan presided over 18 increases in the debt ceiling during his presidency." Reagan was a much more complex thinker than most of us realize. I do not agree with all of his policies, but that hardly makes him an outlier president (personally). More importantly, though, he defies the assumptions that partisans have of him. It makes me want to revisit a few other Reagan bookmarks lodged in Diigo (which I scratched together over the past few years).
anonymous

American vs. Russian notions of friendship - 0 views

marginalrevolution.com/...ian-notions-of-friendship.html

america russia culture friendship

shared by anonymous on 14 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • Not long ago I attended an evening-long discussion group on this topic, comprised mostly of Russian emigrants and their spouses.  The Russians were generally keen to argue that they have deeper and closer friendships than do the Americans.  They also dislike that Americans will call their acquaintances “friends.”  In response I noted that:
  • 1. Relative to Americans, Russians are far more concerned with defining who is truly a friend, or not.
  • 2. Russians are far more likely to conduct purges of their friends.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • 3. American geographic mobility has been falling for some time and so we might move back toward some closer and more durable notions of friendship
  • are Russian lower-middle class friendships so much more “life and death” than American lower-middle class friendships, especially among the immobile?
  • anonymous on 14 Jul 11
     
    Thanks to Dave Gottlieb for this pointer to Tyler Cowen's observations about the notion of friendship, comparing American to Russian
anonymous

How to Turn Republicans and Democrats Into Americans - 2 views

www.theatlantic.com/...8521

politics partisan republican democrat america

shared by anonymous on 24 Jun 11 - Cached
  • When Democrat Nancy Pelosi became speaker of the House, the leader of the lawmaking branch of government, she said her priority was to … elect more Democrats. After Republican victories in 2010, the Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said his goal was to … prevent the Democratic president’s reelection. With the country at war and the economy in recession, our government leaders’ first thoughts have been of party advantage.
  • Ours is a system focused not on collective problem-solving but on a struggle for power between two private organizations.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 24 Jun 11
       
      That modern parties vote in party-first ways is not an accident, yes. But, I'm not convinced that the unintended consequences of our political parties was something other than an accident. That point isn't well made enough.
  • What we have today is not a legacy of 1789 but an outdated relic of the late 1800s and early 1900s, when Progressives pushed for the adoption of primary elections.
  • ...28 more annotations...
  • the primaries, and the nominating conventions, were open only to party members. This reform was supposed to give citizens a bigger role in the election process. Instead, the influence of party leaders has been supplanted by that of a subset of party activists who are often highly ideological and largely uninterested in finding common ground.
  • Americans demand a multiplicity of options in almost every other aspect of our lives. And yet we allow small bands of activists to limit our choices of people to represent us in making the nation’s laws.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 24 Jun 11
       
      However, *too* many options paralyzes us. This is standard choice/marketing stuff, but I see how, if you tilt your head, something like this would seem inevitable.
  • I am not calling for a magical political “center”
  • Nor am I pleading for consensus
  • And I’m not pushing for harmony
  • The problem is not division but partisanship—advantage-seeking by private clubs whose central goal is to win political power. There are different ways to conduct elections and manage our government—and strengthen the democratic process. Here are some suggestions designed to turn our political system on its head, so that people, not parties, control our government.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 24 Jun 11
       
      I wonder if, with the best of intentions, partisans slowly conflate the party with the nation until it wouldn't dawn on them to consider themselves seeking party favor first, and nation second.
  • Break the power of partisans to keep candidates off the general-election ballot.
  • Because activists who demand loyalty and see compromising as selling out dominate party primaries and conventions, candidates who seek their permission to be on the November ballot find themselves under great pressure to take hard-line positions. This tendency toward rigidity—and the party system that enables it—is at the root of today’s political dysfunction.
  • As a result, members of Congress would have greater freedom to base their legislative decisions on their constituents’ concerns and on their own independent evaluations of a proposal’s merits. They would be our representatives, not representatives of their political clubs.
  • Turn over the process of redrawing congressional districts to independent, nonpartisan commissions.
  • Although legislative majorities continue to draw district lines in most states, 13 states (most recently, California) have established nonpartisan or bipartisan redistricting commissions, and two additional states have created merely “advisory” commissions. The systems vary—some use commissions to propose plans that legislatures must approve; others strip the legislature of all redistricting authority—but each of the 13 recognizes that the partisan drawing of congressional-district boundaries has hurt the democratic process, leaving elected officials dependent on, and beholden to, the party bosses who draw their districts.
  • Allow members of any party to offer amendments to any House bill and—with rare exceptions—put those amendments to a vote.
  • “closed” rules, preventing members from offering amendments, simply tell citizens their preferences don’t matter.
  • Speaker John Boehner deserves credit for promising greater opportunities for the minority party to have its amendments considered. Under his speakership, the Republican-dominated House has actually accepted some Democratic amendments.
  • The House should adopt rules guaranteeing that any proposal receiving a significant level of support—say, 100 co-sponsors—would automatically be allowed a committee hearing, an up-or-down vote in committee, and then, even if it fails in committee, a vote on the House floor.
  • Change the leadership structure of congressional committees.
  • We should change congressional rules to provide for a chairman from the majority party and a vice chairman from the minority (no such position exists in today’s Congress, except on certain special non-legislating committees); the vice chairman need not ascend to the chairmanship in the chairman’s absence, but each would have the authority to bring a bill forward and to invite expert witnesses to offer testimony. The process might be slower, but consideration of alternatives would be more thorough.
  • The current committee process is transactional, not deliberative.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 24 Jun 11
       
      Translation: "What can *we* get?"
  • Fill committee vacancies by lot.
  • The derivation of leadership in Congress from an internal version of the party primary or convention is an artificial construct. In every informal congressional subgroup—the Human Rights Caucus, the Rust Belt Caucus, the Flat Tax Caucus—leaders are chosen without regard to party affiliation.
  • Imagine how different the congressional dynamic would be if that practice prevailed in committee assignments.
  • They would be freer to vote as they saw fit.
  • Choose committee staff solely on the basis of professional qualifications.
  • But if the goal is to legislate for the country, not for a party, then committee staff members should be selected by a nonpartisan House or Senate administrator and obligated to serve all members equally without regard to party agenda.
  • The Constitution grants Congress most of the federal government’s real powers—to spend, tax, create federal programs, declare war, approve treaties, confirm federal court appointments.
  • By thinking of the House and Senate in constitutional rather than partisan terms, we would eliminate party-driven links between Congress and the president and avoid the spectacle of legislative leaders acting as though they were either members of the president’s staff or his sworn enemies.
  • Our current political dysfunction is not inevitable; it results from deliberate decisions that have backfired and left us mired in the trenches of hyper-partisan warfare.
  • The goal is not to destroy parties but to transcend them; to welcome their contributions but end their dominance; and to take back from these private clubs control of our own elections and our own Congress.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 24 Jun 11
       
      This is a really good read. Quite layman-friendly and concise. Without knowing more about the deeper mechanics of the government's procedure, it all (at least) seems quite plausible. When I started reading this, I thought I'd be buried under polemic, but this has almost an engineer's eye. An insider looks at the structure he's been within and thinks, "hmmm, we can fix it. Adjust here, here, and here." Which is not to say that these bullet-point items would be a hard solution, but they could be tweaks that move us in an *improved* direction.
  • anonymous on 24 Jun 11
     
    Thanks to Erik Hanson for the pointer. With a reminder from Ian Dorsch. Wishful thinking? Maybe. But I'd like to try any approach that hastens the departure of the uglier elements of American political shouting. From the Atlantic. "ANGRY AND FRUSTRATED, American voters went to the polls in November 2010 to "take back" their country. Just as they had done in 2008. And 2006. And repeatedly for decades, whether it was Republicans or Democrats from whom they were taking the country back. No matter who was put in charge, things didn't get better. They won't this time, either; spending levels may go down, taxes may go up, budgets will change, but American government will go on the way it has, not as a collective enterprise but as a battle between warring tribes."
anonymous

From Estonia to Azerbaijan: American Strategy After Ukraine - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...merican-strategy-after-ukraine

shared by anonymous on 25 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Whatever the origins of the events in Ukraine, the United States is now engaged in a confrontation with Russia.
  • At most, the Russians have reached the conclusion that the United States intends to undermine Russia's power. They will resist. The United States has the option of declining confrontation, engaging in meaningless sanctions against individuals and allowing events to take their course. Alternatively, the United States can choose to engage and confront the Russians. 
  • A failure to engage at this point would cause countries around Russia's periphery, from Estonia to Azerbaijan, to conclude that with the United States withdrawn and Europe fragmented, they must reach an accommodation with Russia.
  • ...44 more annotations...
  • This will expand Russian power and open the door to Russian influence spreading on the European Peninsula itself. The United States has fought three wars (World War I, World War II and the Cold War) to prevent hegemonic domination of the region. Failure to engage would be a reversal of a century-old strategy.
  • The American dilemma is how to address the strategic context in a global setting in which it is less involved in the Middle East and is continuing to work toward a "pivot to Asia."
  • Nor can the United States simply allow events to take their course. The United States needs a strategy that is economical and coherent militarily, politically and financially. It has two advantages.
  • Some of the countries on Russia's periphery do not want to be dominated by her. Russia, in spite of some strengths, is inherently weak and does not require U.S. exertion
  • Putin is now in a position where, in order to retain with confidence his domestic authority, he must act decisively to reverse the outcome. The problem is there is no single decisive action that would reverse events.
  • Whatever Putin does in Ukraine, he has two choices.
  • One is simply to accept the reversal, which I would argue that he cannot do. The second is to take action in places where he might achieve rapid diplomatic and political victories against the West -- the Baltics, Moldova or the Caucasus -- while encouraging Ukraine's government to collapse into gridlock and developing bilateral relations along the Estonia-Azerbaijan line.
  • The United States has been developing, almost by default, a strategy not of disengagement but of indirect engagement. Between 1989 and 2008, the U.S. strategy has been the use of U.S. troops as the default for dealing with foreign issues. From Panama to Somalia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States followed a policy of direct and early involvement of U.S. military forces.
  • However, this was not the U.S. strategy from 1914 to 1989. Then, the strategy was to provide political support to allies, followed by economic and military aid, followed by advisers and limited forces, and in some cases pre-positioned forces.
  • Main force was the last resort. 
  • Because the current Russian Federation is much weaker than the Soviet Union was at its height and because the general geographic principle in the region remains the same, a somewhat analogous balance of power strategy is likely to emerge after the events in Ukraine.
  • The coalescence of this strategy is a development I forecast in two books, The Next Decade and The Next 100 Years, as a concept I called the Intermarium. The Intermarium was a plan pursued after World War I by Polish leader Jozef Pilsudski for a federation, under Poland's aegis, of Central and Eastern European countries. What is now emerging is not the Intermarium, but it is close. And it is now transforming from an abstract forecast to a concrete, if still emergent, reality.
  • A direct military intervention by the United States in Ukraine is not possible.
  • First, Ukraine is a large country, and the force required to protect it would outstrip U.S. capabilities.
  • Second, supplying such a force would require a logistics system that does not exist and would take a long time to build.
  • Finally, such an intervention would be inconceivable without a strong alliance system extending to the West and around the Black Sea.
  • If the United States chooses to confront Russia with a military component, it must be on a stable perimeter and on as broad a front as possible to extend Russian resources and decrease the probability of Russian attack at any one point out of fear of retaliation elsewhere.
  • The problem is that NATO is not a functional alliance. It was designed to fight the Cold War on a line far to the west of the current line. More important, there was unity on the principle that the Soviet Union represented an existential threat to Western Europe. 
  • That consensus is no longer there. Different countries have different perceptions of Russia and different concerns. For many, a replay of the Cold War, even in the face of Russian actions in Ukraine, is worse than accommodation.
  • The countries that were at risk from 1945 to 1989 are not the same as those at risk today. Many of these countries were part of the Soviet Union then, and the rest were Soviet satellites.
  • The rest of Europe is not in jeopardy, and these countries are not prepared to commit financial and military efforts to a problem they believe can be managed with little risk to them.
  • the Baltics, Moldova and the Caucasus are areas where the Russians could seek to compensate for their defeat. Because of this, and also because of their intrinsic importance, Poland, Romania and Azerbaijan must be the posts around which this alliance is built.
  • The Baltic salient, 145 kilometers (90 miles) from St. Petersburg in Estonia, would be a target for Russian destabilization. Poland borders the Baltics and is the leading figure in the Visegrad battlegroup
  • . Poland is eager for a closer military relationship with the United States, as its national strategy has long been based on third-power guarantees against aggressors.
  • The Dniester River is 80 kilometers from Odessa, the main port on the Black Sea for Ukraine and an important one for Russia. The Prut River is about 200 kilometers from Bucharest, the capital of Romania. Moldova is between these two rivers.
  • In Western hands, Moldova threatens Odessa, Ukraine's major port also used by Russia on the Black Sea. In Russian hands, Moldova threatens Bucharest.
  • At the far end of the alliance structure I am envisioning is Azerbaijan, on the Caspian Sea bordering Russia and Iran.
  • Should Dagestan and Chechnya destabilize, Azerbaijan -- which is Islamic and majority Shiite but secular -- would become critical for limiting the regional spread of jihadists.
  • Azerbaijan also would support the alliance's position in the Black Sea by supporting Georgia
  • To the southwest, the very pro-Russian Armenia -- which has a Russian troop presence and a long-term treaty with Moscow -- could escalate tensions with Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh.
  • Previously, this was not a pressing issue for the United States. Now it is. The security of Georgia and its ports on the Black Sea requires Azerbaijan's inclusion in the alliance.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 25 Mar 14
       
      I hope I can remember to revisit this and check his assertions.
  • Azerbaijan serves a more strategic purpose. Most of the countries in the alliance are heavy importers of Russian energy
  • The key to the pipeline will be Turkey's willingness to permit transit. I have not included Turkey as a member of this alliance.
  • I view Turkey in this alliance structure as France in the Cold War. It was aligned yet independent, militarily self-sufficient yet dependent on the effective functioning of others.
  • Turkey, inside or outside of the formal structure, will play this role because the future of the Black Sea, the Caucasus and southeastern Europe is essential to Ankara. 
  • These countries, diverse as they are, share a desire not to be dominated by the Russians.
  • This is not an offensive force but a force designed to deter Russian expansion.
  • In each case, the willingness of the United States to supply these weapons, for cash or credit as the situation requires, will strengthen pro-U.S. political forces in each country and create a wall behind which Western investment can take place.
  • There are those who would criticize this alliance for including members who do not share all the democratic values of the U.S. State Department. This may be true. It is also true that during the Cold War the United States was allied with the Shah's Iran, Turkey and Greece under dictatorship and Mao's China after 1971.
  • The State Department must grapple with the harsh forces its own policies have unleashed. This suggests that the high-mindedness borne of benign assumptions now proven to be illusions must make way for realpolitik calculations.
  • The balance of power strategy allows the United States to use the natural inclination of allies to bolster its own position and take various steps, of which military intervention is the last, not the first.
  • It recognizes that the United States, as nearly 25 percent of the world's economy and the global maritime hegemon, cannot evade involvement. Its very size and existence involves it. 
  • Weak and insecure states with temporary advantages are dangerous. The United States has an interest in acting early because early action is cheaper than acting in the last extremity. This is a case of anti-air missiles, attack helicopters, communications systems and training, among other things.
  • These are things the United States has in abundance. It is not a case of deploying divisions, of which it has few.
  • anonymous on 25 Mar 14
     
    "As I discussed last week, the fundamental problem that Ukraine poses for Russia, beyond a long-term geographical threat, is a crisis in internal legitimacy. Russian President Vladimir Putin has spent his time in power rebuilding the authority of the Russian state within Russia and the authority of Russia within the former Soviet Union. The events in Ukraine undermine the second strategy and potentially the first. If Putin cannot maintain at least Ukrainian neutrality, then the world's perception of him as a master strategist is shattered, and the legitimacy and authority he has built for the Russian state is, at best, shaken. "
anonymous

America's Epidemic of Enlightened Racism - 0 views

www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/...epidemic-of-enlightened-racism

shared by anonymous on 28 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • the summary dismissal of the column – without substantive rebuttals to claims that are so racist as to seem to be beneath public discourse – means that he can play the role of victim of political correctness gone amok.
  • Derbyshire claims that his ideas are backed up by “methodological inquiries in the human sciences,” and includes links to sites that provide all the negative sociological data about black people you’d ever need to justify your fear of them, including the claim that “blacks are seven times more likely than people of other races to commit murder, and eight times more likely to commit robbery.”
  • So he can cast himself as someone who had the courage to tell it like it is – with all the sociological data backing him up – only to be punished for this by the reactionary hypocrites who control the public discourse.
  • ...25 more annotations...
  • Once again, he can tell himself, those quick to cry “racism” have prevented an honest conversation about race.
  • If Derbyshire were a lone crank, none of it would matter much. But he’s not.
  • they see them selves as advocates of a sort of enlightened racism that doesn’t shrink from calling a spade a spade but isn’t inherently unjust.
  • Enlightened racism is meant to escape accusations of being racist in the pejorative sense via two avenues: the first is the appeal to data I have just described. The second is a loophole to the effect that exceptions are to be made for individuals.
  • They could care less about skin color, they say; it really is the content of people’s characters that concerns them, and that content really does suffer more in blacks than whites.
  • Because they are so widespread and aim to restore the respectability of interracial contempt, these attempts at an enlightened racism deserve a rebuttal. Especially in light of the fact that those who hold such views often see themselves as the champions of reasons over sentiment, when in fact their views are deeply irrational.
  • First, a history of slavery, segregation, and (yes) racism, means that African American communities suffer from some social problems at higher rates than whites.
  • But that doesn’t change the fact that the majority of black people – statistically, and not just based on politically correct fuzzy thinking – are employed, not on welfare, have no criminal record, and so on and so forth.
  • So the kind of thinking that enlightened racists see as their way of staring a hard reality right in the face turns out to be just a silly rationalization using weak statistical differences.
  • In other words, one’s chances of being a victim of violent crime is already so low, that even accounting  for higher crime rates among African Americans, one’s chance of being a victim of violent crime by an African American remains very low.
  • The argument that Derbyshire and those like him make is that we are justified in treating an entire population as a threat – in essentially shunning them in the most degrading way – because one’s chances of being harmed by any given member of that population, while very low, is not quite as low as one’s chances of being harmed by the general population.
  • It’s an argument that starts out with sociological data and quickly collapses to reveal the obvious underlying motivation: unenlightened racism of the coarsest variety.
  • Second, there is the issue of character: because this, after all, is what really motivates these attempts at establishing an enlightened racism that gives individuals the benefit of the doubt while acknowledging the truth about general cultural differences.
  • I think it suffices to respond in the following way: people tend to mistake their discomfort with the cultural differences of a group with that group’s inferiority. (They also tend to conflate their political and economic advantages with psychological superiority).
  • If they respond with sociological data about education and birth rates and all the rest, we only have to respond that like crime rates, they’re exactly the sort of consequences one would expect from a history of oppression and even then fail to justify racist stereotypes.
  • The fact is, that where we pick a white person or black person at random, the same truths hold: they very likely have a high school diploma, and probably do not have a bachelor’s degree. They’re probably employed and not on welfare. They’ve probably never been to prison, and they almost certainly are not going to harm you. These are the broad statistical truths that simply do not vary enough between races to justify the usual stereotypes.
  • So here is the hard truth that advocates of enlightened racism need to face: their sociological data and ideas about black character, intelligence and morality are post-hoc rationalizations of their discomfort with average cultural differences between whites and blacks.
  • The fact that they have black friends and political heroes, or give individuals the benefit of the doubt as long as they are “well-socialized” and “intelligent” just means that they can suppress that discomfort if the cultural differences are themselves lessened to a tolerable degree.
  • And so they need to disabuse themselves of the idea that true, unenlightened racism is a term very narrowly defined: that it requires a personal hatred of individual black people based on their skin color despite evidence of redeeming personal qualities.
  • What they think of as redeeming personal qualities are just qualities that tend to make them less uncomfortable. But the hatred of black culture and post-hoc rationalizations of this hatred using sociological data are just what racism is.
  • This is not to say that mere discomfort with cultural difference is the same thing as racism (or xenophobia). Such discomfort is unavoidable: You’d have this sort of discomfort if you tried live in a foreign country for a while, and you’d be tempted by the same sorts of ideas about how stupid and mean people are for not doing things the way you’re used to.
  • strange customs become “stupid” because they reflect less of ourselves back to us than we’re used to.
  • That lack of reflection is felt not only as a distressing deprivation of social oxygen, but as an affront, a positive discourtesy.
  • The mature way to deal with such discomfort is to treat it as of a kind with social anxiety in general: people are strange, when you’re a stranger. Give it some time, and that changes. But it won’t change if you develop hefty rationalizations about the inferiority and dangerousness of others and treat these rationalizations as good reasons for cultural paranoia.
  • Americans seem to have difficulty engaging in the required reflective empathy, and imagining how they would feel if they knew that every time they walked into a public space a large number of a dominant racial majority looked at them with fear and loathing. They might, under such circumstances, have a bad day.
  • anonymous on 28 Mar 14
     
    From Nick Lalone in Buzz. "John Derbyshire has been fired from the National Review for an openly racist column on how white people should advise their children with respect to "blacks": for the most part, avoid them. Because on the whole, they are unintelligent, antisocial, hostile, and dangerous. Or as he puts it, avoid "concentrations of blacks" or places "swamped with blacks," and leave a place when "the number of blacks suddenly swells," and keep moving when "accosted by a strange black" in the street. The language is alarmingly dehumanizing: black people come in "swamps" and "concentrations" (and presumably also in hordes, swarms, and just plain gangs). And it's clearly meant to be a dismissal of the notion - much talked about recently in light of the Trayvon Martin shooting - that African Americans should be able to walk down the street without being shunned, much less attacked."
anonymous

The Paradox of America's Electoral Reform - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...adox-americas-electoral-reform

shared by anonymous on 10 Mar 15 - Cached
  • This election process matters to the world for two reasons.
  • First, the world's only global power will be increasingly self-absorbed
  • The United States sees itself as the City on the Hill, an example to the world. But along with any redemptive sensibility comes its counterpart: the apocalyptic.
  • ...29 more annotations...
  • Likely an archaic institution, the Electoral College still represents the founders' fear of the passions of the people — both the intensity of some, and the indifference of others.
  • They had two visions: that representatives would make the law, and that these representatives would not have politics as a profession.
  • The founders saw civil society — business, farms, churches and so on — as ultimately more important than the state, and they saw excessive political passion as misplaced.
  • First, it took away from the private pursuits they so valued, and it tended to make political life more important than it should be.
  • Second, they feared that ordinary men (women were excluded) might be elected as representatives at various levels.
  • They tried to shape representative democracy with standards they considered prudent — paralleling the values of their own social class, where private pursuits predominated and public affairs were a burdensome duty.
  • Of course it was the founders who created political parties soon after the founding. The property requirements dissolved fairly quickly, the idea that state houses would elect senators went away, and the ideological passions and love of scandal emerged. 
  • Political parties were organized state by state, and within state by counties and cities. These parties emerged with two roles.
  • The first was to generate and offer potential leaders for election at all levels.
  • The second was to serve as a means of mediation between the public — for multiple classes, from the wealthy to the poor — and the state.
  • The party bosses did not have visions of redemption or apocalypse. They were what the founders didn't want: professional politicians, not necessarily holding office themselves but overseeing the selection of those who would.
  • This was a system made for corruption, of course, and it violated the founders' vision, but it also fulfilled that vision in a way. The party bosses' power resided in building coalitions that they could serve.
  • The system was corrupt, but it produced leaders like Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, as well as some less illustrious people.
  • Starting in 1972, following Richard Nixon's presidency, the United States shifted away from a system of political bosses. This was achieved by broadly expanding primaries at all levels. Rather than bosses selecting candidates and controlling them, direct democratic elections were used for candidate selection. Since the bosses didn't select candidates, the candidates were beholden to the voters rather than the bosses. Each election year, the voters would select the candidates and then select the officeholder. Over time, the power of the political machine was broken and replaced by a series of elections. The founders did not want this level of democracy, but neither did they explicitly want the party boss.
  • This change had two unanticipated consequences.
  • The first was that the importance of money in the political process surged.
  • Corruption moved from favors for bosses to special treatment of fundraisers, but it was still there.
  • Reformers tried to limit the amount of money that could be contributed, but they ignored two facts.
  • First, a primary system for the presidency is fiendishly expensive simply because delivering the message to the public in 50 states costs a fortune. Second, given the stakes, the desire to influence government is difficult to curb.
  • The second unintended consequence was that it institutionalized political polarization.
  • The founders designed politics to be less important than private life, and in the competition on Election Tuesday, private life tends to win, particularly in off-year elections and primaries.
  • in the primaries, only two types of candidates win. One is the extremely well funded — and the passion of the wings make funding for them even more important. The other is the ideologically committed.
  • All of this applies equally to elections to the House and Senate. It has been said that there has never been less bipartisanship than there is now. I don't know if that is true, but it is certainly the case that the penalties for collaboration with the other party, or for moving to the center, are extremely high.
  • This is not meant to romanticize the bosses. We are, on the whole, better off without them, and we can't resurrect them. I am trying to explain why our elections have become so long, why they cost so much money, and why the wings of the parties get to define agendas and legislative and executive behavior.
  • Geopolitics, as Stratfor uses the concept, argues that the wishes and idiosyncrasies of individual leaders make little difference in the long run. This is because leaders are constrained by global realities. It is also because internal political processes define what must be done to take and hold power. Those internal political processes have their own origins in impersonal forces.
  • There has been a long struggle between the founders' vision of how politics should work and the reality of the process.
  • The American Republic was invented and it is continually being reinvented on the same basic theme. Each reform creates a new form of corruption and a new challenge for governance. In the end, everyone is trapped by reality, but it is taking longer and longer to enter that trap.
  • The political parties emerged against the founders' intentions, because political organization beyond the elite followed from the logic of the government. The rise of political bosses followed from the system, and simultaneously stabilized and corrupted it. The post-Watergate reforms changed the nature of the corruption but also changed the texture of political life. The latter is the issue with which the United States is now struggling.
  • The problem endemic in American culture is the will to reform. It is both the virtue and vice of the U.S. government. It has geopolitical consequences.
  • anonymous on 10 Mar 15
     
    "We are now in the early phases of selecting the president of the United States. Vast amounts of money are being raised, plans are being laid, opposition research is underway and the first significant scandal has broken with the discovery that Hillary Clinton used a non-government email account for government business. Ahead of us is an extended series of primaries, followed by an election and perhaps a dispute over some aspect of the election. In the United States, the presidential election process takes about two years, particularly when the sitting president cannot run for re-election."
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