Category: Authoritarianism

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The threshold of consent.

Long-time readers will recognise that consent (specifically, mass contingent consent) is something that I have written about regularly, here at KP as well in my academic life. In light of what is happening in Europe and elsewhere with regards to popular unrest in democracies, the concept is worth reviewing. There is a phrase in comparative politics and political theory known as the “threshold of consent.” That is the point at which people have had enough, reached the limits of their toleration and decide to push back one way or the other at the government and, in the case of revolutions, the State itself (remembering that revolutions involve but are not reducible to revolts, uprisings, riots etc.). What is happening in many contemporary democracies may in fact be that moment, the moment where mass contingent consent is withdrawn and people cast their gaze over the “valley of transition” between the extant order and whatever comes next. Elections are supposed to channel such discontent, as are policy reforms, well before the valley of transition is even a distant consideration, but as France and other countries (including Italy, India and Argentina) have recently demonstrated, that may not be enough to stave off mass insurrectionist urges. When the valley appears to be transitable and something better appears to lie on the other side, the moment of substantive social change has arrived.


The threshold of consent varies from society to society. In some societies material things like standards of living matter most. In others respect for cultural traditions or religious beliefs are of primary importance. In others freedoms of association, speech, thought and representation are treasured above all. In many places the threshold of mass contingent consent (contingent in that it is not given once, forever, but is dependent on expectations being met and regularly reaffirmed or renegotiated) is like a dew point in that it is a combination of expectations from those governing on the part of those being governed at any given moment in time. What people will tolerate and consent to in the US or NZ is different than what people will consent to in Bangladesh or Albania (I will refrain from mentioning whether this applies in Cuba or Singapore, which if to be treated properly because of the complexities involved needs a dedicated essay of its own). What people consented to five decades ago may well be different than now. When mass contingent consent is withdrawn, it is from country-specific political, economic and social configurations even if the sources of discontent (e.g., material deprivation, lack of opportunity, systemic exclusion) are more widely propagated around the world.

Add to that the fact that for the threshold of consent to be reached an alternative has to be realistically feasible. Withdrawal of mass consent does not necessarily entail the fall of a regime. People may just hunker down, grin and bear it, and go about their daily routines as best they can without making waves or calling negative attention to themselves from authorities. They do not need the stress created by political involvement or social activism, so they retreat into what I have termed elsewhere “survivalist atomisation:” they keep to themselves and focus on their own personal circumstances rather than those of the society at large. In my youth Argentines had a saying for living under the various dictatorships that I experienced: “De la casa al trabajo y del trabajo al hogar” (“from house to work and work to home’). This “heads down” behaviour is what dictatorships cultivate via repression, threatened or actual (because just the threat of official State violence against people for dissent is a very effective weapon of mass control). Since no peaceful or legitimate institutional channels exist for public feedback and redress under most dictatorships, the only alternative is collective violence–organized if it is to be successful in fostering real social change, but spontaneous and disorganised by default.

People throw rocks, burn cars, break storefront windows and loot. They vent their rage, and then go home if they have not been hurt or detained. They may come back and repeat their rage-venting for a period of time, but without leadership, organization and concrete objectives they are no more than an angry mob that will, even if slowly, be forced to heel by the organised violence meted out by the State. Revolutionaries spend much time trying to turn mob spontaneity into organised collective violence with the goal of social or regime change, even going so far as to advocate so-called “leaderless resistance” tactics so as to force authorities to over-extend the repressive apparatus in pursuit of the hydra heads behind the insurgent masses. Depending on what the threshold of mass consent is in a given context (including a tolerance for collective pain) , they may or may not succeed. But modern history is not in their favour, especially in the developed liberal democratic world. Simply put, social revolutionaries do not overthrow democracies. Only authoritarian coup plotters do, and they most often do so from within the State rather than from without it (even in the case of so-called “constitutional coups”).

Liberal democracies cannot resort to repression as a normal part of governance–it must be selective and used as the exception against “outlaws” in a usually peaceful society ruled by law. As Gramsci noted, repression is the iron fist within the velvet glove. The glove is ideological and usually suffices in order to maintain consent. But when ideological consensus frays and State authorities are forced or choose to remove the glove, then what is left is the moment of force. Trouble is, using repression as the basis for rule is a short term solution at best. The State cannot coerce the same number of the people in the same measure indefinitely. It has to replace repression with something else and try to re-establish the basis for mass contingent consent, because at some point the ongoing resort to repression may well make the valley of transition begin to appear transitable by those on the sharp end of the stick, water cannon, tear gas or gunfire. The necessity is to reestablish the bases of mass consent, not confirm the fact of its withdrawal.

All of which is to say that places like France need to move beyond the moment of force and onto the type of reform-mongering that addresses the root causes of popular unrest. Prime Minister Macron did that several years ago in the face of soaring petrol prices that occasioned trucker and commuter strikes, but in doing so via tax breaks and subsidies he only increased French sovereign debt, which has now come due and which contributed the politics of austerity that protestors are currently demonstrating against. As his example shows, all too often, by the time leaders undertake reforms, it is too little, too late and temporary at best. Effective reform has to be anticipatory and proactive, not reflexive and reactive. In European democracies today, that does not appear to be the case.

Elsewhere, things could get worse. If Trump tries to overturn the midterm electoral results, the US may well reach the triggering moment, even if only in some states or in a federal government versus state rights type of conflict.

Whatever happens, it is clear that the bases of the mass contingent consent that was given to liberal democracies in the post WW2 era has now crumbled under the weight of political sclerosis, government non-responsiveness and official corruption accelerated by increasing oligarchical control and manipulation of the State, economic deprivation for many and enrichment for a few, increased social alienation, stratification, material deprivation and intra-group enmity, and a breakdown of the liberal rules based International order (such as it existed, at least on paper). It is a turn to a feral politics, of might makes right, of “to the rich go the spoils” social order where mass contingent consent is no longer seen as a core requirement of democratic (capitalist) stability. In fact, even democracy as a political construct and form of rule is now being openly questioned by “techbro” oligarchs and alienated masses alike. For them, the withdrawal of consent to liberal democracy has already occurred.

A simple analogy may help drive home the point. At what moment does an abused spouse or child say enough is enough and walk out, retaliate against, or seek help with regard to their abuser? The specifics of individual circumstances may differ but the commonality is that a threshold of consent has been reached, then breached. In whatever manifestation, the individual withdraws their consent to the family arrangement, the exit option becomes necessary and, if there is shelter and support available away from the oppressive context, then becomes a feasible, if not desired alternative. At that point, the valley of transition for that individual has been reached and the moment to move is at hand..

As collections of individuals marshalled into groups, democratic societies follow this basic pattern of human behaviour. They consent to a given form of rule in exchange for expectations being met (even if these expectations are ideologically framed and manipulated by dominant groups). When those expectations are not met and are not reform-mongered by way of redress, then the threshold limit of consent will be reached, mass consent is withdrawn and the valley of transition becomes a possibility.

It remains to be seen what will happen with the democracies in Europe and elsewhere, especially given the authoritarian resurgence world-wide and the global rise of rightwing politics that seek to narrow rather than confirm or extend notions of rights and responsibilities in the social order. Whatever happens, it is clear that as a political construct liberal democracy has reached its limits when it comes to mass contingent consent to the established project. What lies next is unknown and uncertain, but what is clear is that for many, the threshold of consent was crossed some time ago.

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Weathervane elections.

Here is something short from my other social media accounts.

Weathervane elections forthcoming: Brazil presidential run-off, Israeli parliamentary elections, US midterms and NZ general elections. These are true tests of where voters want their countries to go. The choices are foremost about reaffirming or rejecting the Right as a governing force. These elections occur in four parts of the globe with country-specific issues needing address but one unifying, underlying question: does the (moderate) Left present a realistic and preferable alternative to Rightwing dominance of national politics in these (ostensible) democracies?

At the risk of over-simplification, here is a quick take:

I have already written here about how the NZ Left has to reframe the political narrative away from the market mantras of the last three decades. So far it has not done so, which means it is nibbling around the margins of a pie that is already cooked (in both senses of the term) rather than focusing on its ingredients and allocated portions. The Greens are trying to do that, but Labour prefers to nibble. And in spite of its obvious decay and increased price of the pie, National claims that it is perfectly edible even if it now has an (Opportunity-flavoured) teal mold tinge to it, while Act wants the pie smaller and NZ First wants it to be a different colour with less flavour ingredients.

In Brazil the question is whether to re-elect a corporate Left leader with corruption problems or a Trump-worshipping son of a convicted seditionist former president with ties to organised crime (both of them). It is about becoming a servitor imperialist vassal that submits to the “Donroe Doctrine” or remains an independent sovereign State in a highly stratified society.

In Israel it is about reaffirming or rejecting the politics of genocide and ethnic cleansing. There is more than that, of course, but above all it is a referendum on the Netanyahu-led coalition’s policies leading up to and after October 7.

In the US it is about consolidating the slide into neoimperialist kleptocratic despotism or breaking the Russian-favoring stranglehold that the MAGA Right has on US politics.

For these reasons the next three weeks are very significant in terms of electoral politics in democracies. What happens in them and what their results turn out to be will set the stage for what is to come in global politics, for better or worse.

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Cartoon Villains.

The 25th anniversary of September 11 got me to thinking. Marx wrote that history tended to repeat itself, first as tragedy and then as farce. It seems that the MAGA administration in the US has decided to combine the process and roll both together in its second term while elevating its stupidity and cruelty to new heights. Let’s call it “tragicfarce.” The US is a historical tragicfarce unfolding before our eyes. The slide into decadence began long ago but 9-11 was the accelerant that fed the flames of reflexive imbecility and its attendant turn to global villainy.

The cast of culprits is large and the cliches write themselves: the gilt-edged monumental vanity project known as the MAGA circus clown car dumpster fire careening downhill has now jumped the shark. It is led by a snoozing Russian asset pedophile rapist diaper-wearing conman with orange facial skin and a cotton candy hairpiece (and his grifter family), seconded by a coke-snorting steroid freak, road-kill eater and racoon penis collecting Secretary of Health; a closeted Beta-boi Islamophobe misogynist alcoholic as Secretary of War; a google eyed podcasting ambulance-chasing lawyer drunkard as FBI director and a mob attorney as Attorney General; a former plumber/cage fighter as Secretary of Homeland Security (who replaced an adulterous former beauty queen puppy-killing mean girl); the wife of a wrestling mogul as Secretary of Education; a bitchy top as Treasury Secretary; a real estate fraudster as Secretary of Commerce; an adulteress fraudster with an on-the-job drinking problem as Labor Secretary; a sofa-humping neo-Nazi billionaire’s hand puppet whose fictionalised accounting of his life story was the launching pad for his rise as Vice President; a reality TV personality on a long road trip with a dozen kids as Secretary of Transportation; a closeted ideological troglodyte in heels as Secretary of State; the former head of the think tank that produced Project 2025 as the blueprint for this Carnaval side-show posing as government as Director of the Office of Management and Budget; and so many lesser sycophantic and opportunistic others that the list could fill an anthology of cravenly crass creeps (including a bleached blond known as the human printer who dotes on the slumbering Jabba with a diaper bag at her side). These extend down to the local US political level and to places overseas like the presidencies of Argentina and El Salvador (and the NZ First and ACT parties).

This ensemble of morons and cretins striving hard to become idiots have waged war on the US people using their own Gestapo known as ICE and are in the process of losing a war of opportunistic choice against Iran started at the behest of a genocidal Israeli state and its criminal Netanyahu government. It has killed scores of innocents at sea without evidence or trial, forcibly deposed and removed a foreign head of state and his wife while killing dozens in the process, then corruptly appropriated that nations’s oil assets, threatened to annex Canada and Greenland, renamed international bodies of water as “American,” blockaded Cuba, openly interfered in several Latin American elections, deported people to prisons in El Salvador and elsewhere, launched a global tariff war, eliminated foreign aid programs and financial support for international organisations and humanitarian relief agencies, ignored international law and engaged in punitive retaliation against international legal bodies like the ICC, and generally acted in what can only be described as a rogue way.

There is so, so much more on that score. Remember the reflecting pool make-over into a sewage pond? Or the Kennedy Center re-naming? or the Arch d’Trump at the entrance to ArIington National Cemetary? Perhaps not because there is so much more piled on top of those cultural and architectural atrocities. In fact, the plan seems to have been all along that the MAGA administration would perpetrate one or two outrages per day or at least several a week, in order to, as Steve Bannon advised them, “to flood the zone with sh*t.” That way one scandal would blend into another affront that in turn would bleed into a a vortex of policy and personal dysfunction that would be lost in the media cycle in the so-called “attention economy.” Forget North Korea, Iran or any other of the despotic regimes extant at the moment. The real threat to global peace comes from this criminal rabble and their endless dirty spin.

MAGA mouthpieces keep on speaking of “winning” and being great when inflation is unchecked, prices of domestic staples are rising, poverty is growing (and along with it civil unrest). It mugs and postures on real and imagined holidays but always with an eye on itself, not on the people or causes being venerated. It speaks of traditional Christian values and beliefs but it only worships its power over others. In a fairer time it would just be a parody of bad governance, sort of like a “Yes Minister” pitched along very dark lines. Sadly, it is not.

It is a theatre of the absurd made real and stocked with cartoon villains.

I could go on and on but we all know what we are seeing even if it is hard to fully comprehend. Some even seek to emulate these monsters in suits, spray tans, big hair and fake breasts. That cannot be allowed to happen, either in the US or anywhere else.

May their reign soon end and may their demise be painful..

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Reactionary bookends.

Now that election season is underway in NZ, I shall very briefly drift into a subject I usually tend to avoid: NZ domestic politics, and more specifically, policy agendas during election campaigns. In this case I would like to note two examples of what I (and many experts far more knowledgeable than myself) see as a major flaw in MMP, as exemplified by the Right’s embrace of populist themes.

First we have NZ First and its NZ version of MAGA mendacity. Slamming all contrary views as “woke,” sucking up to mining and fishing interests, going full xenophobic racist on Opposition MPs and communities of Chinese and Indian descent, dog-whistling homo- and trans-phobic hysteria, kissing the rear of the gun lobby and generally being grumpy old codgers is pretty rich for a party led by opportunistic rather than self-recognised Maori men in parliament. They may have been born Maori but when it comes to election agendas, they are anything but. In the US such type of MAGA people–people of color who use their color only when it suits them–have some processed snack-related names attached to them.

They are also unimaginative. They might have some One Nation/Hanson tropes in their policy mix but they are simply MAGA lite, Kiwi style. Insults included. It is a pity that a former academic political scientist is one of Peter’s main advisors because he certainly has the capacity to know better about how corrosive that brand of politics is to national cohesion and civilised debate. But for Peters and his colleagues the main goal is to exploit the MMP weakness and carve out the 5 percent needed to stay in parliament and perhaps figure in coalition discussions. Forget the other 95 percent of voters. What matters is to grab that sliver of electoral pie and if that means catering to the baser instincts of reactionary Deep State and other conspiracy theory types as well as religious bigots and assorted other anti-social ideological riff-raff, then so be it. They just need to reach the election threshold to convert their narcissistic self-interest into a parliamentary presence, perhaps as no more than a vanity project but also perhaps as a power-broker faction under MMP (as we have recently and sadly seen).

Phrased differently: The price of Grumpy Winston’s and Greasy-palmed Shane’s baubles is stirring the effluent pools of NZ politics. PM Luxon’s tepid response to NZ First’s antics demonstrate more than his personal weakness. It serves as a passive enabling device that allows racist and xenophobic beliefs to be mainstreamed into election politics. Luxon needs the financial contributions to National from certain ethnic-based business groups, but he also knows that on current polling he can either condemn MAGA-style sectarian and culture war extremism or he can hope to make a pact with the devil. He has chosen the latter.

Then there is ACT. One thing is obvious beyond the racism that is behind its Treaty Principles bill and its corporate pimping with regard to the Resources Management Reform bill. It also does not know or care about children or educators. Take its latest campaign initiative. With a strong female majority employee base, who does ACT expect to be the ones who use “reasonable force” on unruly middle and secondary school students, some of whom may either be large, violent or both. Does ACT propose to hire school discipline officers to deal with such students? If not, then what? Does Seymour, a posterboi for incels who says he has a girlfriend but whose obsession with former Green MP Golriz Ghahraman was more that of the stalker creep rather than the partisan policy difference type, have a clue about how to deal with contrarian, disturbed, distressed or alienated 12 to 18 year olds? And no, I do not include as “experience” chatting up minor females on social media.

Plus, what about teacher safety? Does he really expect teachers, not trained in physical restraint techniques and deescalation procedures, to be on the front line against “miscreant” students once things threaten to or get physical? How would the chickenhawk Paul Henry fare in a tussle with a teenager? Or will it be the Cruella de Ville South African woman who cracks the whip on those do not conform, obey and bow to the rod? And if all of this was somehow achievable, what is the cost and who pays for it? Is not ACT’s schtick about reducing budgetary deficits and bloated public sector expenditures? How does a “reasonable force” policy enter into that equation, both in terms of financial costs but also in terms of the human costs involved in the resort to physical control of young people? Who pays the price for all of this, and how?

Surely ACT know that the proposal is not practicable. But they can blame teacher’s unions for being “soft” on student misbehaviour and pass the buck onto education professionals who know how and why “reasonable force” is not the answer to problems that begin far from classrooms. They can talk about parental failure and inter-generational dependencies resulting in bad school-kid behaviour. They do so not because they care or have realistic remedies, but because as with the NZ First racists and xenophobes, they hope that it stirs the pot enough to keep them in parliament as power-brokers using the same logic as Winston and company.

And true to form, Luxon and fellow National Party leaders dutiful go along with the proposed uncosted “tough on youth crime” overreach.

I say all of this only slightly tongue in cheek because this is what NZ has become, at least on the Right. And from what I can see, the corporate media is happy to give them a platform to spew their nonsense as if it were common sense.

But here lies the rub, because “common sense” is what elites tell us how things should be, whereas good sense is what our hearts and minds tell us what should be regardless of what elites say. Something tells me that, notwithstanding the crackpots in Groundswell and other astroturf outfits associated with the Wellington protests a few years back, in their hearts and minds most Kiwis know that when it comes to public policy, Seymour, Peters and their entourages are no more than grandiloquent turd-polishers posing as politicians.

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No Bread, all Circus on the Potomac.

A well-worn truth about regimes in crisis is that as their failures mount, internal fractures emerge and external opposition grows, they resort to diversions and distractions in order to maintain their grip on power. The more that they are in trouble, the more outlandish become the “lookee here” and arm-waving at shiny objects and glittery glitz. The Romans had a phrase to describe this phenomenon, which is often the terminal phase of a regime in crisis: “bread and circus” (which referred to the mass spectacles performed in Colosseums and the distribution of bread to citizens as things otherwise got worse for them). In Argentina during my youth, the Peronists turned this tactic on its head and offered demi-johns of red wine along with large loafs of French bread to people assembled at their rallies and demonstrations when they were in office as well as when in opposition (when able to do so). In both instances, the popular feel-good moment often presaged darker times for those in power–and their countries as well.

It appears that the MAGA administration has reached that phase. But there is a twist to this tale. There is no bread in the MAGA distraction. Instead there are higher domestic commodity prices thanks to Trump’s tariff regime; higher fuel and fuel derivative prices thanks to the US/Israeli war of aggression against Iran and the consequent closing of the Straits of Hormuz; a bloated federal deficit due to tax breaks for rich individuals and corporations even with reductions in the federal budget for non-defence expenditures; stagnated incomes and employment levels for most wage earners; culture war weirdness seeping into the education system, arts institutions and research centres; the proliferation of sports and ” predictive” betting and dodgy get-rich-quick schemes that encourage insider trading by elites and masses alike; all wrapped up in increased domestic repression in the form of ICE and its adjacent “law enforcement” agencies.

Rather than bread, the US is offered crumbs.

Then what about the circus? Unlike the absence of bread, the MAGA movement is full of circus. On top of all the other outrages, graft, corruption, excess, incompetence and crass coarseness of the Trump administration, two recent events exemplify this in bold relief.

The first is the passing of an Immigration Bill by the GOP -controlled Congress that includes US$ 1 billion earmarked for the new White House ballroom that Trump has fixated on and for which he promised only private funds would be used (after razing the historical landmark that was the East Wing of the White House without congressional consultation or approval, as per law). Trump and the GOP argue that the recent purported attempt on Trump’s life at the White House Correspondents dinner (the assailant did not make into the ballroom where Trump was located) justifies the expense in the name of security even though the White House already has multiple security layers that start outside the perimeter fences enclosing the complex’s grounds and continue into the buildings themselves. Plus, US$1 billion is a bit much even for a three story structure that will dwarf the White House itself (recognising that the White House is a 18th century-sized neo-classical-style mansion that is small and quaint by modern standards). This is pork barrel politics at its finest.

In sane societies with rational democratic elected leaders, the appropriation of US $1 billion in taxpayer money to fund what was supposed to be a privately-financed ballroom for a vainglorious president in an election year (midterms are in November, with all of the House of Representatives and one third of the Senate having seats contested, as well numerous governorships and other political offices throughout the country) would appear to be an act. of political suicide. But the US is no longer a sane society run by rational people. Instead, it has become a divided amalgam of decent people having to coexist with a hard core voting third of racists, xenophobes, hypocrites, opportunists, charlatans and grifters using the foundational narrative of “greatness” and “freedom” to cloak their selfish ambitions and (not so) private prejudices. Conservative support for the ballroom and its political underpinnings are a shining illustration of that.

The circus does not stop with a garish ballroom. In a few days the White House will host a cage fighting card on the White House South Lawn. Not a cricket match, not a tennis match, not a chess match, not polo, not basketball, not gymnastic, not fencing or ice skating, not any sort of game or sport that conveys dignity and sophistication in competitive endeavour.

No. Instead, we will be treated to the spectacle of steroid-laden brutes bashing each other into bloody submission inside an actual chainlink cage as if they were modern-era gladiators entertaining the Roman hordes (4000 spectators will be ringside on the South Lawn and millions of others are anticipated by the White House to be watching on the Washington Monument grounds across from the South Lawn and on global media outlets). Trump will be ringside but could also be the MC, depending on his mood. The prime seats will be reserved for his acolytes and associates in the political, business and religious worlds. Despite their expensive finery, they and the rest of the MAGA mob will revel in their bloodlust, shouting, cheering, booing and baying like hounds at the stylised but real violence. Given their limited historical knowledge, someone in the Trump administration–perhaps Pete “Keg”seth given that he has recent form in this regard–will make grandiose comparisons to Gladiators by referencing the movie of that name, not the actual historical era in which they were part of the Roman circus..

To finish with this Roman motif, think of contemporary Washington DC as Rome before the Fall. The MAGA movement is Rome, Trump is its Caesar, the GOP are its praetorian guard, the Potomac is its Tiber River, and its downfall is inevitable not because it will be overrun by a modern-day equivalent of the Huns, but because it is collapsing from within as I write. It may take some time, but the rot has well and truly set in and there will be a day coming in the not-to-distant future when we look at whatever emerges from the rubble of the White House East Wing (and perhaps that Arc de Trump, aka the “United States Triumphal Arch,” that he is proposing for a site looking across from the Eastern banks of the Potomac River towards Arlington National Cemetery) as something akin to the Colosseum itself–a relic of a time when excess overcame taste, and where vacuous venality lorded over ethics and civility.

It would be fitting if the Trump/MAGA legacy turned out to be a case of figuratively fiddling while the country burned. Let’s hope so because at least out of ashes can come regeneration. The US sorely needs that.

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Causality in context.

Media and MAGA spin aside and assuming that this was not (another) staged assassination attempt, besides all other contributing factors, the intense levels of frustration felt by many who see that Trump continues to get away with the most egregious (and criminal) behavior in the face of institutional impotence has clearly raised stress and anger levels in US society. Add in Trump’s normalising of violent political rhetoric against scapegoats and demonising those who oppose him (say, by condoning ICE tactics, including the murders of US citizens protesting against them) then the stage is set for events like this.

The sad truth is that Trump reaps what he sows. This does not imply condoning real attacks on him no matter how loathsome he is, but it does offer more by way of contextual backdrop than the immediate and fetishistic coverage being regurgitated and manipulated by corporate media and partisan political agents. What is needed is more context to the causality.

The “good”news is that the suspect–a mild mannered computer geek, part-time tutor and teacher with hard science degrees who lived with his parents at age 31–is alive (or at least not “Epsteined” yet) may yet give us some idea of his motivations, much like in the case of the Charlie Kirk killer. Assuming of course that he will explain what drove him to engage in what should have been a suicidal act. For the moment we have as a clue to his motivation an email left for his family that complains about being tainted by a corrupt pedophile war-mongerer. We can figure out who that is.

If I were more cynical than I already am, I would say that this event is another diversion away from a previous diversion (the war with Iran) that itself was a diversion from major problems for Trump (the Epstein files and failure of his domestic agenda in a midterm year).

It will take a while but eventually the truth about the “attempts” on Trump’s life will come out. For the moment we have to resist those who make the “but both sides do it” arguments. There is only one side inciting violence and sadly there are some on the fairer side of history who respond by seeking retribution (as seemingly is the case with this suspect). By doing so they do not help the cause of fairness and instead play into the hands of the fear-mongerers, MAGA mouthpieces and corporate media ghouls. Let us not lose sight of that fact because the spin machine is already hard at work framing the narrative surrounding the event as an affront to God and country.

It would be otherwise laughable but my political math calculator says that the increase in “attempts” on Trump’s life will be proportional to Trump policy defeats suffered in the run-up to the November midterms. The more his policy agenda suffers setbacks, the more assassins will come out of the woodwork in order to do him in at surprisingly unguarded places such as the Washington Hilton where the latest shooting occurred (and where Reagan was shot as well). If the current negative trend continues (Iran standoff persists, gas and commodity prices spike, more ICE violence and popular backlash endure through the Summer and Fall, etc.), by October there will be a frenzy of shoot ’em ups at Trump events that will make the shootouts at the OK Corral in Tombstone look tame. And Trump ain’t no Wyatt Earp or Doc Holliday. More immediately, it is time to keep an eye on what that Goebbels-inspired Stephen Miller has to say because he is the propaganda puppet master.

As for the attack itself. Set up, much?

In light of all of this, what I am trying to establish a chain of causality assuming that it was not staged. In terms of percipient, immediate and background causes is it the fault of US gun culture? No, because the guns were legal and the suspect has no police record (in fact he had a clean sheet after background checks to be a teacher). How about untreated mental health issues? Maybe, but if so even his family and acquaintances were unaware. Socioeconomic status causing class resentment? No, as he came from an affluent family. Radicalization in an ANTIFA sort of way, on-line and via association with like-minded others? Perhaps but also not probative. Was living in his parent’s basement and trying to be a video game developer contributory to his state of mind? Likely, but in a twisted way. He was a loner and a gamer but being a so-called incel (involuntary celibate) and gaming nerd are more of a rightwing thing seldom associated with progressive values.

So I am left with the uncontrollable frustration thesis mentioned at the top of this post. No one is doing anything to effectively stop the criminality, corruption and opportunistic incompetence of the violence-dog whistling MAGA administration and in fact many actors continue to support and enable it as it drags the country down. In the words of Howard Beale (Peter Finch): ” I am mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore!”

The twist is that the frustrated loner theory sounds like a plausible contributing factor if we loosen the predominant ideological feature of US “incels.” Back in the Pentagon an old CIA hand told me, with reference to young men joining guerrilla and narco groups, about the “blueballs theory” of recruitment. Guys who cannot get laid and do not have strong affective relations with their female family members are approached with an explanation for their personal failures and social alienation being XYZ, these being whatever sounds likely as a justification given the religious, ethnic, political and economic context of the times. The idea is to pin their woes on “da Man,” whoever “da Man” might be at the time, and get them to join the effort to fight him at all costs. This is as true for ISIS and al-Qaeda as it is for the Proud Boys or Colombian FARC back in the day. The key to recruitment into practicing violence is not so much the cause itself as is its explanatory power when it comes to an individual’s frustrated situation and the remedies for it.

Well, the orange weasel and his MAGA governing cohort are the epitome of ‘da Man” in the current US context, and it is not hard to be hating on them for a variety of reasons. Heck, if Stephen Miller can get a wife and reproduce and “nice,” even “Alpha” guys cannot, then something is seriously messed up when it comes to certain male demographic in the US. Their rage is real. And while it is mostly vented on women, gay and trans people, Muslims, ethnic minority groups,”wokesters” and “libtards,” sometimes it spills over into attacks on public figures by people outside of the usual suspects.

SAD!

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Regime transition sequencing.

I was reading a recent article in which the author wrote that the US has actually made the transition to democracy in Venezuela more difficult than it could have been by removing Nicolas Maduro and his wife from the country but leaving the rest of his regime intact. In the author’s words, “they took the dictator but left the dictatorship.” He went on to write that the usual order of things is to embark on a political regime transition (presumably to democracy if the starting point is authoritarian) followed by an economic regime transition (say, in simplistic terms, from communism to capitalism) or at least significant economic reform. In Venezuela’s case, the US has pushed for US-investor friendly economic reforms in the extractive industrial sector but left the Bolivarian regime otherwise intact and has not bothered with broader economic reforms that promote market diversification, income redistribution, decreased dependence on primary good exports (including but moving beyond petroleum), and more value-added domestic commodity and service production.

That got me to thinking about one major theme of the first generation regime transition literature of the (late) 1970s-1980s, which focused on the transition from democracy to authoritarianism in Europe, East Asia and Latin America in the 1960s and early 1970s and then the transitions form authoritarianism to democracy in the rest of the 1970s and 1980s. One theme that emerged was the sequence by which regime transitions occurred. We might call it a type of “chicken or egg” question.

Some argued that what was needed first for democracy to obtain was an economic transition from state-centric (e.g., Keynesian welfare or socialist) to free market models, which was believed would promote the civic freedoms needed for democracy to emerge as the corresponding political form (this was grounded in what was known as “modernisation theory,” which was a 1950s-era prescription for overcoming underdevelopment in the “Third World”). That was the “egg” answer, which was used as one justification for the US support for China’s admission into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. As with original modernization theory, the underpinning syllogism proved incorrect.

Instead, both in the PRC and in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV) as of the 1990s, communist party leaders engineered the move from a state-controlled command economy marshalled along what might be described as Stalinist or Maoist lines to a state capitalist economy in which investment and production was incrementally opened to private (including foreign) investment while the State controlled overall economic management decision-making and kept a stake in specific productive assets (e.g., telecommunications in both instances).

In effect, capitalism came but democracy did not. In both the PRC and SRV change occurred within the political regime, not of it, regardless of economic change. Communist Parties still control both countries and staff the leadership of the State. Their respective leadership architectures and other partial regimes within the larger whole have been subjected to reforms of various magnitudes, including those deemed required to accommodate the economic changes undertaken by the national political leaderships in question. The same is true, in another variation on the theme, in Singapore under the PAP regime: the overall regime remains and reforms (in Singapore’s case by “liberalising” when it comes to political and civil rights without giving up ultimate authority) while the economy changes (from post-colonial trading to techno-finance capitalism). In other words, rather than a transitional sequence, in some instances economic change can occur under the aegis of a stable political regime (at least if it is authoritarian).

Others have disagreed with the economic–>political change thesis, noting that political regime change was required before economic regime change could happen because economic policy is ultimately a political choice made by regime leaders. This is the “chicken” answer. The 1948 Chinese, 1959 Cuban and 1979 Nicaraguan revolutions are considered emblematic in this regard.

In both types of sequence, the key issue is one of parametric change: the boundaries of political and economic life are fundamentally altered as a result of the major institutional changes that define regime transition as a social phenomenon no matter which way the chain of causality proceeds.

Among other subtopics, one part of the debate about regime transitions in the 1980s centred on the preferred “regime change sequence” leading to democratisation. It was a simple, perhaps crude measure, but it had the virtue of forcing scholars and policy practitioners to address the linkage between political change and economic development and reform rather than just one or the other. It also broadened the “chicken or egg” question with regard to the linkage between economic development and political regimes, Was there a correlation or causal relationship between specific regime types and certain levels of development? If so, in which direction and of what specific type in both categories? Capitalist to socialist, socialist to capitalist or somewhere in between? Authoritarian to democratic or democratic to authoritarian and if the latter, what type of authoritarian? The possibilities of political-economic regime change are not as straight forward as might seem at first glance.

There is a third type of regime change that is also theoretically possible> It is simultaneous rather than sequential in nature. This is a situation where economic and political regime change occurred simultaneously, as part and parcel of the same transitional dynamic. This alternative was particularly of interest to students of the fall of the USSR and Eastern bloc regimes grouped in the Warsaw Pact as well as of the revolutionary transitions such as that of Nicaragua and Iran in 1979. In the former the hope was they would transition to both democracy and capitalism in short periods of time. In the latter the expectation was that with revolutionary overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship, socialism as an economic model could be rapidly imposed. The 1979 Iranian revolution represented a variant on that model, with many hoping that the post-Reza Pahlavi regime would be a theocratic democracy wedded to an Islamic market economy rooted in traditional Bazaari social relations of production.

Sadly, in both instances the 1979 revolutions eventually brought economic changes, but under a different type of authoritarianism than what existed before rather than the democracy that was promised. This may have been partially a product of the hostile reaction and pressure placed on the revolutionary regimes by the US and other Western states, but the fact is that be they simultaneous or sequential, the 1979 revolutionary regimes delivered something different than what was hoped (and fought) for.

The simultaneous transition possibility was also considered in the rise of Hugo Chavez and Bolivarianism in Venezuela in 1979 via electoral means, which presumably would have paved the way for a peaceful revolutionary change towards popular democracy and socialism, much in the way hope was previously raised along the same lines by the 1970 election of Salvador Allende in Chile. Alas, neither expectation was met: Allende was overthrown and killed in 1973 by a US-backed military coup d’état supported by rightwing forces while Chavez and his successor Maduro descended into authoritarian-kleptocratic rule culminating in the US military kidnapping of the Venezuelan leader in January of this year. As the author mentioned at the beginning of this post noted, the Venezuelan political leader has been forcibly removed but the regime has not.

As for former Soviet states, the record is very mixed. Russia has reverted to authoritarianism with a state capitalist/oligarchical hybrid economic model grounded in fossil fuel extraction and modernised Soviet-era industrial production.. Some former Warsaw Pact states have gone both democratic and (mostly) market capitalist. Others have gone autocratic and state capitalist/kleptocratic. Some have gravitated towards the European Union and even NATO. Others have remained within the Russian orbit on both political and economic grounds. This is especially true for Central Asian former Soviet republics (the so-called “Stans”), which have not undergone appreciable political regime change except to use elections as legitimation devices while economic control of extraction-based primary good production remains in the hands of nepotistic political elites and politically-connected interests.

It can be argued that simultaneous regime transitions cannot happen simply because of the turmoil and complexities involved in attempting to manage profound political and economic changes all at once. The cases cited above support that view regardless of what eventuated after the old political regime was displaced or the economic model substantially altered. But the issue of transitional sequencing remains an important one, not just conceptually but also as a matter of policy practice, especially if the goal is to restore or revive democratic governance.

As an example, my stay in the Pentagon in the early 1990s was based on a successful fellowship application that was centred on a proposal on how to democratise civil-military relations in post-authoritarian Latin America. I had noticed the difficulty with which new civilian elected governments were coping with entrenched authoritarian traditions in the (sometimes Prussian) military cultures of several Latin American nations, and so outlined in the fellowship proposal ways in which US non-lethal military aid, weapons sales and peer-to-peer training programs, coupled with legal and normative changes to the institutional relationships between the armed forces and civilian government, might help “democratise” the relations between political leaders and the military hierarchies of the time.

This was just one part of the political regime transition from dictatorship to democracy in that region–what was called “partial regime change,” where the sum of a number of reforms in the constituent parts of an electoral democracy (civil rights, election procedures, interest group intermediation systems, inter-agency accountability, policing authority, budget-setting agendas, federal-state relations, and even the relationship between civilian and military authorities)–were reformed, reconstituted or revitalised with the purpose being to provide institutional underpinnings that would support, then sustain and eventually reproduce democratic governance structures.

Again, the results were mixed but for the most part I am pleased to see that in places like Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay, the changes that my colleagues and I proposed seem to have stuck.

Getting back to the subject of Venezuela and now the attempt at forced regime change by the US in Iran, the folly of the move becomes clearer (as if it was not already). Not only were the “decapitation” strikes simply instances of state-sanctioned murder (by proxy, since the Israelis did the actual bombing of targeted leaders like the Ayatollah Khamenei), the Islamic regime and its constituent partial regimes remain intact, albeit with a stronger military influence replacing a weakened clerical caste headed by Khamenei’s badly injured son Mojtaba (something that is more the result of Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) dissatisfaction with the cleric’s enforcement of theocratic social policy prior to the US/Israeli attacks rather than the US/Israeli strikes themselves). If anything, what political regime change might be underway is, by several accounts, one from a theocratic to a military-dominated regime, conveniently reinforced by the foreign aggression waged upon Iranian society.

Lines of succession, promotion, policy and operational authority remain in place. So do the underlying civic structures, including the Bazaari social networks that even if now in opposition to most of the hard-line elements in the regime, remain fiercely anti-Western and Persian nationalist in orientation. In other words, the partial regime mosaic that when taken together constitutes the institutional edifice of the Islamic regime continues in place and functioning. Like in Venezuela, some former leaders are gone (dead) but the regime remains even as it evolves from within. Nor has the economy changed–although porous sanctions and the Revolutionary Guard toll booth blockade of the Hormuz Straits has strengthened the Islamic Republic regime’s control over it.

In effect, we have seen leadership change without regime change, little significant economic change other than a shift in beneficiaries in the Venezuelan case, and no real transitional sequence at all. This demonstrates the shallowness of what passes in the US for strategic thinking, comparative political analysis and foreign country expertise, to say nothing of the ahistorical ignorance of the MAGA elites in and outside of government who enable and support US foreign adventurism under Trump.

In fact, it might do well for scholars, politicians and economic interests alike to return to that literature on authoritarian regime demise to develop a US-focused idiosyncratic conceptual and practical framework for studying the late stage dynamics of the second MAGA administration. Because it is quite feasible that its demise will more resemble that of dictatorial collapse rather than that of democratic decline even if certain electoral trappings and procedural niceties cloak the entire process. The question for the US then is: if the transitional sequence begins with political change away from MAGA, will it a) result in its elimination from political society? and b) what if any economic and other partial regime reforms will come from the anti-MAGA political change if it occurs?

Without both, regime (or at least government) change in the US away from what exists today will not happen. Depending on one’s perspective, that may or may not be a good thing.

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Veil of hypocrisy, lifted.

As I think about how to frame the opening episode of the relaunched “A View from Afar” podcast next week, I find myself wondering about silver linings. The current international moment is very dark and the end of the liberal order is nearing, but surely there must be some good shining amid the gloom. I think I have found one such glimmer, perhaps not of hope but of honesty in how one country represents itself before the world–and perhaps by extension, how the West sees or should see itself.

Readers may remember that last year I wrote about Trump believing himself to be the “Great Disruptor” and agent of change in the world. His advisors and acolytes seized on this self-perception to whisper chaos theory-based sweet nothings into his ears about carving out spheres of influence (for the US, in a Western Hemisphere that extends to Greenland) that he is willing to divide up with Russia and the PRC. He believes in annexing the sovereign territory of other states (including Canada), renaming international geographic landmarks (like the Gulf of Mexico), authorising the murder of civilians on the high seas and kidnapping of the authoritarian president of a foreign state on trumped up drug charges while leaving even worse dictators unscathed because they are “friendly,” blockading an island State out of ideological spite, and interfering in the elections of foreign countries by using direct foreign aid as a weapon of reward or retaliation. It does not matter if the view is simplistic, wrong in its theoretical grounding and practical application, and ultimately more of a fever dream than a practicable reality when extended over time, but however deluded it is his belief system and he acts upon it with the complicity of the MAGA/GOP establishment currently in control of the US government. And because the US government wields extraordinary coercive powers, both economic and military, it is dangerous.

It is apparent that Trump’s mental abilities have diminished considerably in recent times, but his advisors continue to blow sunshine up his skirt and oil him with grandiose ideas that are designed to stroke his ego, promote his brand and enlarge his bank accounts while serving their overlapped agendas (Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller and Peter Navarro are notable in this regard). From what I can discern, they encourage him to free range when it comes to speaking at domestic political rallies and campaign events, but then urge his caregivers to lace him up with the mother of all pharmaceutical cocktails when he has to give speeches to serious audiences such as foreign diplomats, business magnates and international statesmen in global fora. When compared with the stream of consciousness rants that he uses on domestic partisan audiences, with some exceptions his tone at these international meetings becomes more subdued, he speaks in a monotone, behaves semi-civilly and generally gives the appearance of situational detachment from the realities of the moment and consequences of what he is saying. If only we were to have access to his medication list and schedule!

Returning to the glimmer of light, it begins in darkness. It turns out that the US is indeed the core of the international system and Trump is the vortex that is drawing the old order into the black hole of systemic dissolution. One only needs to see the Trump ripple effects–he is the rock thrown into the centre of the global pond–to acknowledge his impact on domestic politics and international relations across the world. He is a malignant, evil force but he is also an irresistible object, a rip tide of ignorance, banality, self-interested corruption and narcissism using US power as the current against which all other global actors must now sink or swim. Fortunately, although undeniably strong, his hubristic ignorance weakens the US gravitational pull on the world scene.

There is good in this. For nearly a century the US has claimed to be the leader of the “free” world, the champion of democracy, upholder of human rights and defender of the innocent, weak and powerless. The reality is that it is a nation-state founded on racist beliefs standing on stolen lands by white property (and slave) owning men, using laws and institutions that promoted patriarchical heterosexist privilege over everything else. It took a civil war to abolish slavery and then another century to enact the Civil Rights Act that granted “equal” status to African Americans. It took over fifty years before females of age earned the right to vote, and long after that restrictions on the franchise remained in place (like poll taxes, residency and language requirements, forfeiture of voting rights due to criminal convictions even if for minor offences, etc. ). It systematically discriminated against waves of immigrants, be the Italian, Irish, Asian, Mexican and now those coming from the African and Latin American diaspora. It pushed indigenous tribes off their lands and onto reservations. Forced segregation was replaced by self-segregation, which is still a thing in many places. So is socioeconomic class stratification, gerrymandering, voter suppression (much more than fraud) and deliberate dumbing down of and distraction from obvious social contradictions on the part of the public majority. One percent of the population control eighty percent of the wealth. Christian nationalist-fascism, long thought to be on the wane, has a stranglehold on one side of the US ideological divide and skews public debates about cultural mores and social ethics. And yet the US public still believes, or at least until Trump entered office, to be living in the land of the free and home of the brave.

What is good is that Trump has ripped the veil off of that foundational myth. He has revealed the US for what it is even if he and others do not want to admit it: a venal, bloated, self-absorbed authoritarian husk of a democratic Great Power. It never was any of things that it claimed to be but for a while it at least tried to improve or pretended to be better than it was, harking to the idealism of some of its founders who held a belief in the perfectibility of humankind. It took time and struggle, but the myth tells us that the US was getting better as a society and as a political construct. But it never was and now certainly is not a truly liberal democracy. Yet it took Trump to debunk the myth.

The myth was, if not a lie, more of a pipe dream than an achievable reality. So it is good that Trump has exposed the true nature of US society and better yet, rendered transparent the contradictions and fractures that undermine its increasingly brittle institutional edifice. Or to paraphrase my father, “when the wanna-be dictator starts naming everything after himself and painting everything in gold leaf, he reveals his true intent.”

The same applies to US foreign relations. It is the core of the international system, but that was the OLD liberal internationalist order that is currently being destroyed by the gravitational pull of the Trump dark hole. Again, the US used to claim that it was the “leader of the free world” etc., but today it is anything but. It is a neo-imperialist declining Great Power, once hegemonic after the Cold War but now more like an old athlete shouting “I used to be somebody” into the winds of time. The US has broken the global order but it is incapable of dominating what comes next. It is more akin to the death grasp of a drowning man, locked into a hopeless situation beyond its control and overcome by circumstance of its own and other’s making. So it thrashes about as it slips under, pulling anything it can get a hold of down with it. It now has the liberal internationalist order in its grasp.

Over the short term, as I have written at some length before, a declining Great Power is dangerous. It is more likely to start wars in order to preserve its position in the global status quo. But declining powers may be able to start wars but then are unable to finish them on their preferred terms. Instead, they are defeated by rising powers or, in what appears to be crystallising at the moment in response to Trump’s foreign policy adventurism, a polycentric constellation of established and emerging technopoles rooted in the Global South that use soft power as a counter-weight to US bullying. This is more than the BRICS and although critical minerals are the new gold of world technological economies, it is knowledge economies, knowledge production and commodified knowledge accumulation that will fuel the growth of the Global South and the ascendent Great Powers coming from within it.

The US is too socially divided, too inward-looking, too partisanly governed, too corrupt and too incompetent as political managers to meet the challenges of the emerging polycentric technopolar world. It lives on grievance, internal culture wars, fabricated problems, selectively applied situational ethics, denial of responsibility, contrived outrage and clickbait self-absorption in a culture where “influencers” are given more respect than neuroscientists and astrophysicists, and where modern bread and circus acts have replaced the fine arts as the currency of popular culture. All of this is epitomised by the MAGA regime.

Thanks to Trump, all of that is now made transparent. There is no pretence of “public interest” or “commonweal,” just naked self-interest, transactional bartering, bullying and opportunism posing as government for both domestic and foreign audiences. We finally see the US, or at least that part that is MAGA in orientation, for what it really is.

So it is that with Trump lifting the veil of hypocrisy from the self-proclaimed US position, we can now fully see that it is a two sided coin where the domestic side is marked by increased prejudice and avaricious authoritarianism and the foreign side is overtly neo- imperialist. There are certainly many decent people fighting against this in the US, but the dye has been cast and neither the US or the international system will be the same once Trump has left the scene. That should give the rest of the world pause to reflect on what might constitute a post-liberal world order and perhaps for some in the post-imperial West to draw parallels between themselves and the giant in its decline.

“A View from Afar” podcast relaunch: Monday February 23, 12PM noon NZ time/Sunday February 22, 6PM US East Coast time.

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Media Link: “A View from Afar” returns.

For those who may be interested, my buddy Selwyn Manning and I have decided to revive the “A View from Afar” podcast next week.

There is so much going on in the world the days, most of it bad sad to say, but our geopolitical angle perched down in the deep South Pacific may be different than some other perspectives for those who live in other parts of the world (and perhaps surprising to some who live in this neck of the woods)..

The show airs Monday February 23 at 12:00PM NZ time and Sunday February 22 6:00PM US East Coast time. It streams live on YouTube and various streaming platforms and then will be on demand. Just look for the title of the show wherever you listen/watch podcasts.

The first show highlights the death knell of the liberal international order and the US role in ringing that bell. Here is a summary tease of what is in store:

“The sad fact, though, is that the US is the center of our earthly geopolitical universe, serving as the first rock to drop in the global pond whose ripple effects are extensive, negative, and washing up in unexpected and unforeseen ways. That rock, in fact, is a black hole sucking the remnants of the rules-based order into oblivion, or if not oblivion, irrelevance in a new age of power politics (might makes right, etc.). It is a dark force from which things as they exist cannot return.”

See you then!

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Acquiescence is not consent, or a basis for rule.

As a follow up to my previous post (and harkening to a regular theme in my writing), consider this:

Used as the basis for authority, repression obeys a form of Newtonian Law: it wanes over time. You cannot repress the same amount of people with the same amount of force forever. Their numbers will grow and your ability to repress will drop unless you further increase the use of force. That only aggravates the situation. If the only response to dissent is more and wider repression, then less people have something to lose, even if it is their fear.

Repression must be justified ideologically and accepted by the majority for it to work as an instrument of social control. In other words, using mass repression without commensurate public consent is a brittle club. Despots try to shape narratives via lies, disinformation and propaganda in order to alter that inescapable fact, but the truth is that partisan spin or silence may obscure reality–what our eyes have seen and our ears have heard–but they can never replace it. It forms a memory that cannot be erased even if suppressed or delayed in its activation. It is the memory of what is and was real that forms the conscious basis of mass contingent consent (contingent because we do not give consent once, forever, to any given leader, government or administration).

That is why public acquiescence does not equal popular consent. That former is a short-term solution, born of silence and submission to superior physical force. The latter is the basis for political legitimacy and stable democratic rule. One is temporary, designed to break resistance to or reinforce a particular political project. The other is long-term in orientation even if contingent on material and social expectations being met.

Trump and co. appear to not understand this basic axiom and in fact seem blind to it given their slanderous and false accounts of the ICE murders in MN. This augers poorly for their longer-term prospects.

That gives me a basis for hope.