Category: Ideology

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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, but 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is happening in many contemporary democracies may in fact be that moment, the moment where mass contingent consent is withdrawn and people cast their gaze over the “valley of transition” between the extant order and whatever comes next.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. 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). When mass contingent consent is withdrawn, it is from country-specific political, economic and social configurations even if the sources of discontent (e.g., material deprivation, lack of opportunity) 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 when not.

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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Reframing the narrative.

It is said that those who frame the questions win the debate. Those who set the terms win the negotiation. If true, then the resolution to any matter of dispute starts with how the subject is approached, or put differently, how the narrative about the substance of the dispute is framed. That extends to negotiating approaches. Traditional diplomacy starts with areas of contention or disagreement and works towards resolutions via agreement, often of the “second-best” kind where no party get its preferred option but all parties get some of what they want without prohibitively costing the other (in game theory parlance, the strategy pursues even-sum outcomes). In contrast, the so-called Pacifika negotiating method championed by the Ardern government’s foreign policy team is to start with areas of commonality and consensus and then work back towards areas of contention and disagreement. Here the logic is that positive-sum openings can generate higher return even-sum outcomes. The traditional approach seeks to address contentious matters directly with the aim of finding a core of agreement that can serve as the basis for a mutually acceptable resolution even if just over the short-term. The second seeks to establish a basis of trust from which durable agreements on specific subjects can be reached.

This extends to political and electoral framing. US political analysts have noted that although the MAGA administration is grossly incompetent in pretty much every substantive way other than using public office to engage in graft and corruption, it is very proficient at PR and propaganda spinning. This often reaches Orwellian heights, such as when the White House announced that it is winning the war with Iran, that ICE is protecting US citizens from criminal “aliens,” that the US is using lethal force on the open seas to stop drug smuggling, that medicaid and voter fraud is rife, that social security is discretionary income, or that tariffs will be paid by the foreign exporters, not US consumers. A major aspect of this full spectrum disinformation campaign, one that takes its origins from Steve Bannon’s “flood the zone with s**t” principle, is to gaslight the public into second guessing the reality that they are living. For example, gas and other commodity prices, including groceries, are not going up and if they are it is president autopen Biden’s fault because he left everything in a shambles.

In spinning this alternate reality the MAGA administration has willing accomplices in the corporate media, including Fox News, OAN and Newsmax. Thanks to billionaire take-overs of once honourable institutions like CBS, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, the editorial direction of US “mainstream’ news has taken a distinctly rightwing tilt that, not surprisingly, reinforces MAGA framing of the national narrative. In fact, narrative framing has become more about spinning disinformation that reporting facts, and in this regard the rise of social media as competitors under market conditions only aggravates the situation and perpetuates the syndrome by reinforcing the move to an attention gig economy where all opinions are equally valid, “free” speech is devoid of social responsibility, expertise is disdained and algorithms push individual and collective preferences around lowest common denominators. Book reading gives way to doom-scrolling and learned debate is pushed aside by TikTok memes and podcasting, even when done by ignorant and often illiterate fools.

Although the US can be considered an exemplar in this regard, and has strong competition from State-organised disinformation campaigns in places like the PRC, Iran, Israel and Argentina, NZ has its own version of framing the narrative in the lead up to General Elections. In that regard the Right are, here too, winning.

The strategy is simple and can be summarised in two words: costs and taxes. For whatever reason (and there are several) Kiwis are a notoriously stingy lot. The very mention of taxes evokes images of grim reaper scythe-weilding IRD agents coming to take hard-earned incomes from average Kiwis. It does not matter if taxes are used to assist the neediest, to build and maintain infrastructure, to provide policing, education, housing, welfare and medical care to and for all, and to provide for a minimal level of national defense and security. In other words, even in these days of privatisation and public sector budget cutbacks, taxes fund core functions of the State. That frees the private sector, which is very unregulated compared to many other liberal capitalist democracies,, to pursue material interests without jeopardising basic social needs via public good provision.

In NZ, however, the Right has successfully captured and framed electoral narratives around the subjects of public sector costs and taxation, specifically the need for less of both in the face of the desire of Labour and other Left parties to increase public sector spending derived from taxation (and hence the costs to the average battler) for any number of frivolous “woke” and otherwise unnecessary reasons that ultimately benefit the undeserving, lazy and irresponsibly indolent. For the Right taxes are also just a rent-seeking instrument to justify civil service existence in make-work sinecures and shoulder-tapped public sector positions. They fuel a form of bureaucratic parasitism and as such must be resisted, curtailed and when possible, eliminated because the costs of doing so are economically unsustainable.

Rather than confront this false framing head on, Labour has succumbed to it. Its acquiescence stems from the Blairite “Third Way” legacies of 30 years ago that, much like the discredited neoliberal precepts that fuel the NZ Right’s sclerotic vision of market-led economics, is grounded in contexts that no longer apply to contemporary society. But dogma reigns supreme in NZ and both major parties buy into the narrative about keeping taxes low at all costs, quite literally so.

That is unfortunate because, given the incompetence and mean-spirited elite-serving nature of the NACTFirst coalition, there is a window of opportunity for Labour and its junior partners to emphasise that things do not have to be like this. NZ is capable, through the use of taxation and other policy instruments, to re-order itself as a fairer and more just society, one in which avarice and self-centredness take a back seat to inter-class and ethno-racial solidarity, something that is now very much under siege. This government-led institutional divisiveness and exclusion is often pushed by foreign interests that use NZ fronts as facades for their divisive appeals. The infamous Taxpayers Union and its sister astroturf agencies are cases in point, as Nicky Hager has recently reminded us in his book Dirty Work.

The Right also has been able to reframe narratives on any number of policy specifics by simply repeating the mantras “but what about the cost?” “where is the money coming from?” and/or “who is gong to pay for it?” Labour and its junior partners (save te Pati Maori, which does challenge colonialist narratives) too often fall into the trap by trying to explicate, often using policy wonk and technocratic terminology, how and from where policy funding will come from and how costings will be calculated and funded. This inevitably leads them to into the “no new taxation” and public spending arguments that they cannot win. The circle of despair is never-ending: Even things like a capital gains tax, which is a common public revenue instrument in OECD countries, become the targets of “taxation is theft” claims that leave the Left speechless in response.

All of this reductio ad absurdem Rightwing argument permeates its very effective election campaign strategies. Rather than reply from the back foot while riding the market-fetish policy narrative, Labour and its allies should be doing some narrative reframing of their own, focusing not on immediate costs but on who benefits and gains over the long term from their policy initiatives. Although the NACTFirst coalition has worked hard to dismantle Labour’s social engineering polices (such as with regard to traffic safety, tobacco use, electric car rebates and petrol levies) and replaced them with more deregulation and weakening of social safety nets of various stripes, the NZ Left have an opportunity to restore the commonweal orientation to public policy after three years of what can best be described as malevolently-intended criminal incompetence on the part of the government.

Readers may recall my referencing Gramsci’s notion of good sense versus common sense, the latter being the narrative framed by elite discourse on how the “proper” society should look like, and the former being the reality we see with our eyes and feel in our hearts. Rather than address what passes for market-driven common sense, as has been the case in NZ for three decades, the NZ Left should be countering it with a good sense reinterpretation of social reality as we experience it. From there the solutions to injustice, inequality and deprivation can more properly be addressed.

This includes human rights and civil liberties. The Right frames the extension of rights to previously excluded and marginalised people, including Maori, as an infringement on the rights of the majority and in fact a selective awarding of rights to some but not all. Freedom of speech for the Right means the freedom to engage in bigoted dog-whistling and hate-mongering. Rather than argue the matter as an issue of group entitlement and the limits of opinion, the Left needs to reframe the narrative as a matter of universal rights and human dignity, including respect for difference. The same goes for confronting Rightwing fear-mongering, which plays on ignorance, scapegoating (trans! immigrants!), division and acrimony as the fodder for electoral support. The Left should just call out those types of appeal for what they are and not get mired in arguments about who deserves what in NZ society. For the Left the issue is not one of entitlements but of endowment: humans are endowed with inalienable rights regardless of who they are and nobody is entitled to anything more or less than that. That includes matters of historical redress for past injustices–if a wrong was done it must be rectified.

The bottom line is that the Left cannot win if it simply responds to a policy narrative set by the Right (including on policy specifics), and even if it wins an election (a tactical victory) it cannot pursue a progressive policy agenda that will make a tangible difference to the majority’s lives if it continues to do so. Given that NZ is a capitalist society inserted in a capitalist world economy in which post-colonial, pro-market rules apply throughout the social hierarchy even if Maori are awarded “their” space in the socio-economic and cultural order, the best way for the NZ Left to advance is to reframe elections specifically, and politics in general, as a contest about how a new social contract should be defined in this technogarchical world.

Think of it as a foundational reset. The issue is more about an ideological shift, in fact an ideational shift, rather than about technocratic solutions under market-oriented conditions. Put another way, if it is true that politics is the art of the possible (as in what is possible to achieve under the circumstances given the socio-economic, cultural, political and get strategic context), then the basic issue is about framing what is defined as “possible.” For the Right, no matter how much it may use the language of agency, freedom and choice, what is possible is limited to those with a particular set of material endowments, social backgrounds and connections, and value orientations (lets say for the sake of argument White Anglo Saxon Protestant in nature). For the Left, what is possible is what we collectively aspire to be when unconstrained by material or sociodemographic difference. In that regard, Left politics as the art of the possible is about pursuing (and redressing where violated) universal ideals rather than catering to particularistic, elite-dominated interests, however incremental and reformist that pursuit may have to be given the dominant narrative confronting it..

Because for the Left, even as milquetoast as it is in NZ, arguing about policy specifics in a debate framed by the Right is always going to be a losing proposition.

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Fear-mongering the “Other.”

One of the signs of desperation of a political campaign, movement or ideology is the resort to fear mongering. Rather than offer a a bias for hope in the form of positive policy initiatives, fear mongerers use stereotypes, scapegoats and distorted narratives to stir anxiety and dread of the “others” in amongst the body politic. The “others” are the usual suspects–immigrants and foreigners, sexual, ethnic, religious and racial communities, social classes, intellectuals (remember Pol Pot?) ideological non-conformists and contrarians, witches and witch doctors, heavy metal Satanists, even tax-and-spend liberals–the list is as long as human history itself. New ones are invented every generation. They often are held to be carriers of disease and other pestilence or are pet eaters, children snatchers, rapists and murderers. They could well be shape-shifters or aliens, so the best precaution against their insidious designs is to beware and vote/follow those who saw the danger first and call it out. Oftentimes fear mongers will try a rock by rock approach, throwing out accusations against one entity to see if they can gain political traction with it, and if not, then move on to another scapegoat. Again, the targets are endless.

In recent times the US Right has focused on Islamicists and communist/socialists. The election of Zohran Mamdani as Mayor of New Youk and Abdul El-Sayed as Democratic candidate for the US Senate from Michigan has galvanised US conservatives into a frenzy of xenophobic bigotry over what they see as the imminent takeover of the self-proclaimed land of the free by Islamocommies. These forces of doom used to be called Islamofacists but once they introduced social democratic views into their political discourse, then they conveniently morphed into “commies” because as we all know, for the Right, socialists and communists are two sides of the same Marxist-Leninist-Maoist-Trotsyite-Castroite coin, with a little Ho Chi Minh, Guevara, Bukharin, Luxemburg and Angela Davis thrown in.

I will leave aside the differences between communism, socialism, social democracy and democratic socialism because my point (beyond the fact that most of the Right would not know the difference between them) is that for the fear mongers the objective is to tar them all with the same “othering” brush, to conflate them as one evil hydra and inflate them as an existential threat to the Republic and the Nation on which it purportedly stands.

NZ has its mini-me variant of that with the peripheral Right parties scapegoating various immigrant communities, most lately Indians (NZ First), and the ACT Party seeing Reds under beds anytime regulations are proposed or rights extended rather than curtailed. They both see Te Pati Maori as Maori-communists and the Green Party as wokester-communists seeking to infringe on the traditional rights of patriarchical white cis male capitalists (or, as they would say, “natural leaders”). The key point is that, because they have nothing positive to offer anyone other than their corporate patrons and pocket-liners and the mouth-breathing troglodytes who find reassurance in their hatreds, the NZ Right, just like the US Right, resorts to fear mongering as its weapon of choice.

Moving past the cut and thrust of the daily political news cycle, this is the lesson of the moment. The Right, both here and elsewhere (there are parallels to be drawn in places like Argentina and Brazil as well), have crested their wave of electoral popularity and run out of ideas for governing besides scripted corporate-speak mantras about financial discipline, governmental efficiency, law and order and traditional values. In fact, it is the lack of new policy ideas and initiatives that have made them electorally vulnerable, which is why they are now resorting to their weapon of choice.

I can only hope that the opposition in the US, NZ and other places like Argentina can focus on this syndrome as a campaign issue while offering a more positive vision for the future based on concrete proposals to improve commonweal conditions in the countries in which they are located. This means rejecting timidity, incrementalism and purely centrist-focused prescriptions in favour of bolder initiatives that move beyond cautious and defensive postures that serve to reaffirm the status quo by tinkering around the margins and onto more progressive actions that seek to accomplish more than just undo the bad Right policies of the recent past. That involves taxation, social policies, macro-economic re-orientation, foreign relations and a re-framing of what government exists to do and what the role of the State is in doing it–both a narrative and a substantive change, in other words–so that the tired recourse to fear-mongering can finally be put to rest based on a new, more inclusive social contract in which the license of consent is granted by the masses, not just by the entrenched elites of the current moment.

All of this must be done as a “sincere” campaign strategy rather than by hiding behind a curtain of centrism while the governing Right defends its position via fear mongering about “extremism” and assorted “other” assaults on the social fabric. Because in doing so, the Right inadvertently demonstrates that the time is ripe for more radical and progressive change. If being radical is to be progressive, then to be status quo is to be regressive. And regression is the breeding ground for fear-mongering “others.”

In this context bold change is not being ideologically extremist. It is being realistic and practical given the circumstances and alternatives. So Carpe diem!

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Something on early life reading.

Well, I guess that it was inevitable that this day would come given that he is the son of Kate and I, but today Enda started reading the Communist Manifesto. Apparently the word “communist” is in his school history books regarding the anti-apartheid/Springbok tour protests in NZ in the early 1980s and he came home curious about its meaning. Then he watched some news with the imbecile in chief railing about communists as the biggest threat to the US. He asked us what the term meant.

As you can imagine, the first response from his mom and dad was “don’t get us started.” But we did, at length. Kate had been to an anti-Springbok protest with her parents when she was three (in a baby stroller) and I had been introduced to the Manifesto at age 14 after getting my first real summer job at an Argentine brake factory (courtesy of my dad, who believed in honest labor although he certainly was no commie). So we gave him a quick synopsis of what communism is and is not, and then Kate suggested that he read the Manifesto since, let’s just say, our bookcases are littered with commie subversive literature and then some (e.g. feminists, environmentalists, The Anarchist Cookbook).

So now he is buried in text about workers losing their chains. Almost immediately he asked us what “bourgeoisie” meant, and I tell ya, it is going to be a swift ride into the loss of political and economic innocence with that kid. We talked about lords and serfs, farmers and peasants, shopkeepers, factory bosses, proletarians, wage labor–let’s just that we are just getting started. Surplus value and the universal tendency of the rate of profit to fall, here we come!

It occurred to me that we should think of what other works might serve as nice bookends to the Manifesto (as an introduction to political writing). My first thought was de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America because it is short, succinct and written by a non-“American.” Kate suggest Machiavelli’s The Prince, which is also not overly long or burdensome on the eyes and mind. I have written some derivative essays about the applicability of Machiavelli to contemporary politics, so that appeals to me. But so does de Tocqueville’s optimism about American Democracy in a simpler time, as seen from the vantage point of this terribly unhappy moment in US history.

Anyway, we shall see if another Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Castro, Guevara, Mao, Fanon, Ho Chi Minh or Patrice Lumumba comes from his readings. Maybe a Chris Hitches if that is the way he rolls. Of course he could go the neo-Gramscian route or perhaps get all Althusserian or Poulantzas on us, but as long as he does not go full blown Foucaultian and po-mo, I can live with that.

But what about Hegel (as a context for dialectical materialism)? Wittfogel on Hydraulic Societies? Wittgenstein? I have already thought of the brilliant Para Leer al Pato Donald (On Reading Donald Duck). Remember, we want to keep things relatively short and simple and in some logical order of intellectual progression. That may or not be possible at this point, e.g., Nietzche might be too much at this stage (if ever).

This is not about being presumptuous. It is about introducing a young-but-keen reader to texts about the human condition, forms of social organisation, political representation and voice, etc. Instead, it is about what would be a good reading list for a curious kid with the makings of a political mind? He has already been introduced to the Greeks and Romans, so I am trying to steer him away from the “old pale, male and stale” point of view although to be frank that is exactly what I am and where I come from. Kate, on the other hand, may have some/many ideas on that score.

So what should he read n next (as a soon-to-be 13 year old)? Please drop your suggestions in a comment.

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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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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.

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Some observations about state violence leading to state terrorism.

A long time ago I wrote a scholarly article about the use of state terror during the Argentine “Proceso” (https://www.jstor.org/stable/2111080).

Seeing what is happening in the US, I thought I would reference a few things from that article. First: state terror thrives in cultures of impunity. That is, where government authorities believe that they are immune from prosecution for criminal acts that they order or undertake, especially when they occupy the justice system and control the courts. The good news is that such a sense of impunity often leads them to eventually over-reach and make mistakes that cause their downfall.

Second, as with all forms of terrorism state terror follows a target–subject–object logic. Individuals and groups are targeted with state violence. The subject is the larger audience that witness state violence either directly or indirectly (via the media, word of mouth, etc.). The object is to intimidate the subject audience into submitting to the State’s authority, however illegally it is exercised.

Specifically, the object is to atomise and infantilize the body politic and society at large. “Atomization” means the forced breakup of collective identities and solidarity bonds, where people retreat into their own personal lives rather than risk being targeted by the State because of their collective ties to other social groups. They mind their own business, look away, do not make waves and certainly do not publicly confront the agents of repression even by peaceful non-violent means.

“Infantilization” refers to the forced loss of personal agency, where people are psychologically reduced to the level of a child’s nightmare because of what they are living, where monsters are real and have impunity when committing monstrous acts.

It may seem a stretch to say so right now, but the state violence being meted out by ICE and other US federal agencies against both citizen and non-citizen members of the public seems to lie on a continuum that inevitably culminates in state terrorism. The MAGA administration’s double-down response to ICE killings suggests that is where they are prepared to go.

The only answer to this is mass collective resistance, using the legal avenues and social networks available to people in spite of official judicial and extra-judicial retribution. There must be a groundswell of authentic grassroots push-back in spite of the inevitable dangers this poses to people’s lives and livelihoods.

I do not think that the US has reached the level of the state terror experiment of the “Proceso.” No yet. But the mindset of those in power–the demonisation of opponents as “communists” and un-American/anti-American “wokesters,” the gaslight of the public by officials saying that what people have seen with their own eyes is not true, that victims of state violence brought it on themselves and perpetrators of state violence are justified in their acts because it is making the country safe from criminal “aliens” and their treasonous native-born supporters–is very much the same (and in the cases of Stephen Miller, Greg Bovino and Kristi Noem, might as well be right out of central casting for a movie about the 3rd Reich). To reiterate, the US is on a continuum of violence when it comes to its increasingly authoritarian trajectory, and state terrorism is the culmination of that continuum.

I hope that my US whanau think about this as they go about their lives far from the front lines of Minneapolis, Chicago and other blue front-line states (because ICE is focusing its repression on Democrat-supportive states and cities, not Red GOP-supportive electorates). Just because one is not targeted now does not mean that one will never be.

And as the saying goes, if you wait until they come for you, it will be too late.

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Mamdani’s monster move.

The shouting about communist/socialist/Marxist/Islamist by the US Right when it comes to Zohran Mamdani suggests they live in a 1950s McCarthyite time warp and/or an ideological ignorance bubble. Besides a social democratic being none of the above, the operative term in the phrase is “democratic.” He was elected in a landslide on a working class focused platform that was well known and well received across the electoral demographic (age, gender, religion race, etc.)”. Although the Right did its dishonest best to smear him with the usual culture wars and “Reds under the beds” fear-mongering, it may be the case that after years of corrupt NYC machine politics-as-usual that catered to the interests of the corporate and oligarchical classes, voters are willing to try something new. 

“New” means a move to the center-Left. Mamdani is no radical extremist no matter what the rabid Right mouth-frothers say about him. NYC has never had a social democratic mayor and given what has come before, especially recently, perhaps voters decided to not listen to the troglodytes and try something different when it comes to a governance approach.

Mamdani still has to deal with a city council, borough governments, state government and people within his own party who will force him to compromise in order to be effective. But shifting the starting point to the policy Left after years of the city government maintaining a corporate-Right bias could just break the hold of embedded vested interests when it comes to how the public purse is distributed. That can only be a good thing, especially if working and middle class socio-economic wellbeing is a major focus.

Best of all, even if NYC is not representative of the entire nation (far from it), Mamdani is an absolute nightmare for the MAGA morons in and out of government at all levels. That is because should he be successful and cast his eyes an even higher federal office, there is bound to be a lot of bed-wetting in Red States and in red parts of DC as a result.

That should be fun to watch.

On a personal note, the rightwing hysteria about Mamdani’s “Marxism” brought back memories of when I underwent my first Top Secret US security clearance interview and polygraph test (in the early 1990s). I was asked if I had ever been a member of a Communist Party or advocated for the overthrow of the US government. Although I had affiliations with left-wing groups in Argentina and then elsewhere as a teenager and young adult, I could honestly say that I was never a member of any Communist Party (basically because most CPs of that era were pro-soviet Stalinists and I was and am not into Stalinists). I could also honestly say that I did not advocate the overthrow of the US government, although I certainly advocated for the overthrow of US client dictatorships in Latin America and elsewhere.

So I said “no” to both questions and passed that part of the exam. In the long form interview I explained to my interviewers from the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) that I was a Peronist symnpathizer-turned-neo-Gramscian analytic Marxist whose political sympathies tended towards what was then called the “Eurocommunist” line. I tried to be helpful and told them that they should try to be more specific in their questioning, since there were significant differences between Maoists, Leninists, Trotskyites and other Marxist derivatives. In response (and I kid you not, dear readers), the interviewers literally rolled their eyes, looked at each other, shook their heads and mouthed the letters “W-T-F?” After a long pause, the lead guy said to me “we do not care whatever you were and are so long as you are not a commie.” That was the state of play when it came to official Defence Department understanding of Marxism in the year Bill Clinton came to office.

They then moved on to ask me if I “liked” men. What ensued was an interesting discussion about the meaning of “liking men” and in what context. Their basic line was that they did not care whether I “liked men” or not, but that they simply had to know in the event that I was blackmailed given my new job. My then Navy Officer girlfriend was highly amused by this when I told her about the interview and offered to vouch for my, er, “proclivities.”

Anyway, I passed the test and headed off to the Pentagon with my clearance secured. I met a fair amount of closet commies and man-likers once there.

Mamdani was not among them.

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Return to the Big Stick, with some carrots thrown in.

A while back I wrote about Trump’s nostalgia for the “gilded” era (defined by tariffs and wars) and his return to a “neo” version of Gunboat Diplomacy with his threats to annex Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal. The term “gilded age ” was bestowed before but came to focus on William McKinley’s time in office by none other than Mark Twain, who noted that by “gilded” he meant all glittery on the surface and thoroughly corrupt underneath. How prescient he was, because what was true then certainly is true now.

Here I propose to extend the US imperialist theme that was part of that era by moving onto a famous phrase from McKinley’s successor, Teddy Roosevelt. McKinley was assassinated while in office and Roosevelt, as Vice President, at age 42 assumed the presidency. More than his extensive political career, including serving as governor of New York, he was famous for his leadership of the Rough Riders during the Spanish-American War and had served as an assistant secretary of the Navy before joining McKinley on the 1900 Republican presidential ticket. In 1906 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his mediator role in ending the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War., so perhaps that is another legacy of that era that Trump (he of “I have ended eightor nine wars” fame) would like to emulate. Roosevelt was also the president who authorized the building of the Panama Canal, so the historical tie-backs do not end with Trump’s preposterous fixation on the Nobel Peace Prize or on (re) claiming pieces of other country’s territory..

Roosevelt coined the phrase “speak softly and carry a big stick.” This aphorism guided his approach to relations with the Western Hemisphere, where it came to be known as the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. The corollary stated that beyond declaring the Western Hemisphere off-limits to non-hemispheric foreign military powers such as Spain, France, Germany and Russia (the Monroe Doctrine) , Roosevelt added the notion that the US would be the hemispheric policeman enforcing that doctrine as well as imposing peace on “uncivilized” and restive post-colonial Latin American societies.

The “Speak Softly/Big Stick” approach had five component parts:  First, it was essential to possess a serious military capability that would force adversaries to tread carefully when it came to challenging US power, especially in Latin America. At the time that meant a world-class navy (not only was Roosevelt a former Assistant Secretary of the Navy but he had written a book on the 1812 naval war between the US and England as well as several articles on naval power projection that were deeply influenced by the pioneering naval geopolitical analyst Alfred Thayer Mahan). The other qualities of the Speak Softly/Big Stick posture were to act justly toward other nations, never to bluff, to strike only when prepared to strike hard, and to be willing to allow the adversary to save face when being deterred, or when demurring, or if push comes to shove, in defeat.

It should be clear that Trump is incapable of speaking softly in any setting and that he bluffs, lies and dissembles as a matter of vulgar and bullying course. It is also clear that Trump is following Steve Bannon’s advice to “flood the zone” with an endless barrage of inane and serious initiatives, to the point that it is hard to disaggregate and differentiate between them in order to discern the details of the content because every day brings another scandal, Executive Order, or presidential musings on any number of things.

But in the approach towards what his former national security advisor (and now indicted defendant in a Trump political relation scheme) John Bolton called the “Triangle of Tyranny” (Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela), now expanded to include Colombia, Trump is clearly brandishing the big stick of US intervention, including of military attack, against them. At the same time, he is bestowing selective favors (let’s call them “carrots”) on rightwing governments like those of Javier Milei in Argentina and Nayib Bukele in El Salvador while overtly and covertly providing assistance to rightwing opposition leaders in states led by leftists, such as the case with the (reportedly) CIA-backed, recently announced Nobel Peace Prize recipient Maria Corina Machado in Venezuela. This regional foreign policy approach is worth breaking down in further detail.

Since the early 1960s US foreign policy in Latin America has been dominated by Cuba, Cuban exiles and anti-communism. The exiles are an important domestic lobby with deep reach into the Republican Party but they also line the pockets of Democrats in key districts and recently have now been joined by anti-Chavez/Maduro (anti-Bolivarian) Venezuelan exiles, anti-Sandinista exiles from Nicaragua and rightwing nationalists from other Latin American countries, Chileans most recently. Concentrated in places like South Florida, New Jersey and the Washington DC area, these groups of voluntary and involuntary expatriates wield disproportionate influence over US foreign policy in the region. And a fair few of them, Cuban and not, are violently inclined.

The Trump administration is not just brandishing the Big Stick in Latin America. It is welding it to bash its perceived enemies and hapless people caught up in its machinations. It began by broadening the definition of terrorism to include narco-traffickers, who it argues sow fear in the US by supplying drugs and via associated criminal activities. It has particularly focused on Mexican cartels like those in the Northern states of Sonora and Sinaloa, Venezuelan gangs like Tren de Agua and Salvadorean gangs like MS-13 that, ironically, grew and became powerful syndicates inside the US rather than their countries of origin. The expansion of the term terrorist to include drug gangs allows the US latitude when engaging them with force, because irregular warfare groups like ideological non-State actors (say, ISIS) that use terrorist tactics are not covered by the Laws of War and Geneva Convention. Labelling criminal drug traffickers “narco-terrorists” therefore clears the way for the US to engage in extra-judicial execution of those suspected on being so. But in order to do so, the US must ignore the fact that under US, international and regional national laws, drug running is not a capitol offence even if due process is followed. So, as Trump himself has openly said, they “are just killing them.”

Perhaps in recognition of this and not wanting to be charged as a war criminal, the 4 star admiral who leads the US military command responsible for Latin America, the Southern Command or SOUTHCOM, is taking early retirement, perhaps forfeiting his fourth star retirement pay because he did not serve out a full year in that rank after promotion. He may also had in mind Secretary Hegseth’s advice to the assembled general and admirals this month that if they had any “cringe” about his order, then they should do the honorable thing and resign.

The US pirate approach to the use of force at sea has led to the murder of over 50 individuals (Colombian, Ecuadorian, Venezuelan and Trinidadian citizens) by US forces without charge, arrest, trial, sentencing or any evidence of drug-smuggling (e.g. no floating bales of drugs after the strikes even while other debris was observed on the surface). In fact, imagery of the targeted vessels indicate that they were wooden outboard motor boats that could not reach the US mainland from Venezuela (which the US claims without evidence was the originating point) without multiple refuelling stops at sea or on land, (where they could be detained with relative ease by any number of regional law enforcement agencies). The same is true for the boats presumably coming our of Colombia that have been targeted in the Eastern Pacific. By its actions the US choses to be judge, jury and executioner without warrant, which effectively make its behaviour acts of piracy. The fact that none of the countries whose nationals were killed in these extrajudicial strikes are at war with the US only highlights the outlaw impunity with which Trump’s Big Stick is wielded.

Eight of the twelve kinetic operations against” narco-terrorists” happened in the Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela in international waters. Four strikes have killed people in wooden boats in the Eastern Pacific off the coast of Colombia (the Colombians claim one of the strikes was in Colombian territorial waters) and Central America. Trump is threatening to expand US military operations onto land in Venezuela and Mexico, where left-centre president Claudia Scheinbaum has clashed with Trump over his immigration and border control policies. Now Trump has cast his malevolent eye on Colombia, apparently because president Gustavo Petro, the first left centre president to survive and win a presidential election campaign in decades, had the temerity to criticise Trump’s immigration policies and join anti-ICE protests in New York City during the UN General Assembly meetings at which he spoke. That angered Trump, who revoked Petro’s visa and began to launch baseless accusations that Petro was somehow in cahoots with the narco-traffickers. The message was then backed with the kinetic strikes off Colombian shores.

Ironically, Colombia has traditionally been the US’s strongest ally in Latin America, especially as part of the so-called “War on Drugs,” and it definitely has the most experienced armed forces in the region thanks to its decades-old wars with various leftist guerrilla groups like the FARC and ERP. US special forces embedded with their Colombian counterparts for many years and the Colombians use US weapons platforms, equipment and training doctrine. They are no push-over military with generals sporting good conduct medals. They are also very proudly nationalistic, so they will not be walk-overs in the event the US decides to up the ante with them. It is therefore doubtful that the US will significantly step up physical attacks on Colombian territory and nationals, limiting itself to personal, diplomatic and economic sanctions, and, of course, noisy bluster from the loudmouth-in-chief.

The image of the fat armchair general that Secretary of Defence/War Pete Hegseth railed about in his talk to the US military brass a few weeks ago is more suited to Venezuela, which has slid from the lofty “pink tide” aspirations of the Bolivarian Revolutionary colonel and president Hugo Chavez in 1999 to a venal, bloated, corrupt one party “elected” kleptocracy under his former Vice President and one-time bus driver, now fraudulently re-elected president, Nicolas Maduro. Recognising the deep weakness under the veneer of Bolivarian solidarity, the US has threatened to invade Venezuela and Trump has openly claimed that he has authorized CIA covert operations in that country. The not-so-subtly declared objective is clear: regime change and replacement with a US-friendly leadership.

That would not be surprising given that several US -backed plots have been uncovered against both Chavez and Maduro, but in this instance Trump appears to be playing a crude psychological pressure game designed to foster paranoia and factionalism with the Venezuelan political and military leadership. And if the reports of Nobel Peace Prize winner Machado’s links to the CIA prove true, then those leaders have good reason to be concerned. After all, rightwing Cuban, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan exiles are openly plotting and scheming along with rightwing US groups to overthrow their respective home governments as soon as possible, and organising to that end in enclaves like Weston, Florida, northwest of Miami. The CIA is on friendly terms with these groups. Could this be the makings of Bay of Pigs 2.0 even if the exiles think of scenarios like the invasions of Grenada or Panama? We shall see.

Interestingly, although the US is putting direct heat on Colombia and Venezuela at the moment, it has taken as more subdued approach to Cuba and Nicaragua. On a scale of openness, Colombia is clearly first–it is democratic after all–but Cuba is in a slow process of liberalisation itself, while Nicaragua has regressed into a quasi-Stalinist kleptocracy much like Maduro’s Venezuela. So why the difference when it comes to waving and welding the Big Stick? In fact, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela all have close ties with Iran, the PRC, Russia, North Korea and assorted non-state actors like (what is left of) Hamas and Hezbollah. And yet Colombia is lumped in with Venezuela as a narco-terrorist State according to the Trumpian world map. The answer may lie in domestic politics–Trump has made numerous false claims about Venezuelan gangs taking over US cities, including Tren de Agua, while the US cocaine trade is largely controlled by Colombians–and personal hubris: Trump hates Petro because the latter showed up at a demonstration against Trump and Stephen Miller’s version of the Gestapo, while Maduro is an easy to ridicule tinpot clown posing as a revolutionary strongman.

Cuba and Nicaragua, on the other hand, are getting the kid glove treatment in comparison. This may be an admission that the White House does not see them as easy push-overs, worth confronting, or as places against which the MAGA base will rally. Perhaps they simply are seen to be undesirable scapegoats given their low drug-running profiles, even if the truth is that both autocracies have hand-in-glove connections to the narcotics trade.

The dissimilar approaches are made odder by the ongoing presence of a Russian naval base in Cuba (Cienfuegos) and Nicaragua’s expansion of ties with obvious US adversaries. One would think that the Trump Big Stick would be applied equally to all of the leftist “Fearful Foursome” countries, but perhaps this is just a reflection of Trump’s personalist policy making and attention span rather than ideological enmity or geopolitical calculation. Alternatively, perhaps the US thinks that regime change in Venezuela will stop the flow of oil and other resources from it to its regional allies, thereby indirectly squeezing them as well.

What is most ominous in the evolving scenario is that Trump appears determined to forcibly impose regime change on Venezuela. He obviously does not understand the lessons of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria in recent years and instead is hell-bent on showing his toughness by picking on a country that cannot put up a legitimate fight against US forces. His pretext is the claim of drug-running out of Venezuelan bases, although there has been no concrete proof yet provided to that effect. To buttress his bully move (which is an odd stance for a guy who campaigned on withdrawing the US from foreign conflicts), Trump has ordered the deployment of a carrier task force (a carrier with 5000 sailors, +/-100 aircraft, including 70 warplanes, 5 destroyers, a submarine and tenders) to the Southern Command area of operations (AOR) where an additional 8 warships are already stationed along with a US Marine Expeditionary Force. SOUTHCOM also uses Army, Marine, Navy and Coast Guard assets on specific occasions as deemed warranted, and is already conducting strategic and tactical bomber runs near Venezuelan airspace by B-52s and B-1s stationed on the US mainland.

One can get a sense of what US forces have deployed to the Caribbean to date here.

US Navy ships in Southern Caribbean. Source: Trinidad Express.

What all of this means is that the game is on. Moving this amount of assets to the Caribbean Basin, especially given the presence of land forces in the deployment, is no bluff. Trump seems to think that he can make an example out of Venezuela, contrary to historical precedent when it comes to the forced regime change going as planned or producing the desired results. One things is certain. It will be Venezuelans who suffer the most from any eventual escalation, and their scotch-swilling wealthy exile “leaders” will do nothing to shield them from a US assault.

In contrast to all of this Big Stick manoeuvring, Trump has offered Argentine president Javier Milei a USD$40 billion bridge loan as a form of bailout for Milei to make interest payments on outstanding public loans. No international lender like the IMF or World Bank would do so because of concerns about Milei’s reckless fiscal and macroeconomic policies (at one point he wanted to dollarize the Argentine peso and shipped off Argentina’s gold reserves to England on a private plane). Private investors took advantage of Milei’s public sector asset sale program to strip them of what value they held, repatriated the profits from the re-sale of those assets, then left the economy. What private investors remain are engaged in dodgy crypto schemes and destructive enterprises like critical mineral mining (lithium, in particular) where regulation is lax and where profits are largely sent abroad.

Milei himself is embroiled in an investigation into a memecoin “pump and dump”/”rug pull” scheme concocted along with Trump-allied US crypto billionaires, where he touted on social media a specific coin called $Libra that rapidly rose, then fell in value, making the 9 founding $Libra accounts around USD$82 million and leaving 72 thousand other investors with USD$251 million in losses in just over 3 hours. Milei later distanced himself from the scheme but it was discovered that he was one of the 9 founding accounts, which as per usual were managed by his sister and chief personal advisor, otherwise known as “Ms. 3 percent” for the price of the “commissions” she demands of entities doing business with the Argentine State (the most recent involving a pharmaceutical company). Milei’s sister, Karina, is also being investigated for links to–surprise!–narcotraffickers and assorted other dark forces in the Argentine landscape.

The Trump bridge loan bailout for Argentina was in fact a political rescue line thrown to Milei. His party (Libertad Avanza or Freedom Advances) did very poorly in provincial and first round congressional elections in September and at the time of the bailout it was assumed to be posted to suffer a similar fate, or at least not improve its minority Congressional representation in the national midterm elections this past weekend. That would jeopardize his reform agenda for the remainder of his presidential term, making him a lame duck and paving the way for a return of either a Peronist party faction leader or a newer centrist coalition-backed candidate. Either of these option would spell the end of the “chainsaw” approach to public sector restructuring as well as Milei’s pro-US (and pro-Israel and anti-climate change) position, something that Trump seeks to avoid.

As it turns out, Libertadad Avanza won 41.7 % of the congressional electorate vote, defeating the opposition coalition, which won 40.4% of the total number of party votes. This improves the government’s bloc position in Congress and strengthens Milei’s hand in imposing more reforms, but it also sets the stage for ongoing deadlocks and resort to rule-by-Executive decree on the part of the Argentine president. But for the moment, chalk this up as a win for Trump’s bailout carrot/election interference gambit because even if short term in nature, it may have influenced things in a US-favorable way when it comes to Argentine foreign policy. Since Trump threatened to rescind the bailout of Milei’s party did not win, it is quite possible that tis weighed significantly on the minds of voters (who still turned out in record low numbers–67.8%– in spite of voting being mandatory).

What is also interesting is not that the bailout was given for political rather than sound economic reasons. That happens. What is of note is that the bailout comes at a time when US tariffs on Chinese goods resulted in retaliatory tariffs on US agricultural products, especially soybean exports. Most of these are grown in Red Trump-voting states. When the retaliatory tariffs kicked in Argentina dropped its export taxes on soybeans, and along with Brazil rapidly took advantage to increase soybean exports to the PRC. In just a few months Argentine and Brazilian soybean exports have taken over the previous US share of the PRC soybean import market. So in effect Trump has bailed out a foreign government for ideological reasons even though it directly hurts a core voting block in the MAGA coalition. That makes neither economic or political sense.

In response to criticism of this deal, Trump puzzlingly announced that he would reduce tariffs on Argentine beef imports so that it could increase its US market share. At a minimum that means reducing US beef prices in the face of Argentine import competition., which is now the stated intention of the plan (beef price reductions across the board). Once again, US beef is mostly produced in Red states, so here too the economic and political logic at play appears to be contrary to the interests of key MAGA voters. It seems that for Trump ideological buttressing of an ally abroad is more important than the material fortunes of US farmers, and he does not fear electoral retribution as a result. That is another oddity, unless he has a plan for avoiding electoral backlash in the first place, which may be what the overall beef price reduction plan is all about..

In El Salvador, Trump has courted Nayib Bukele, the self-styled “world’s coolest dictator” who offered to house US deportees at his infamous CECOT prison in exchange for money, diplomatic favours and the betrayal of several FBI informants tied to the Salvadorean gang MS-13. Regarding the latter, Secretary of State promised the FBI that he would not divulge the informant’s names to Bukele but then did so, whereupon Bukele demanded they be returned to El Salvador rather than stay in US detention. Secretary Rubio obliged and it is now presumed that the informants are dead. Here the Big Stick was wielded on behalf of a foreign government in conjunction with domestic objectives rather than used against it for strategic gain.

Further afield, MAGA operatives have close links to former Brazilian president (and coup plotter) Jair Bolsonaro’s party and his revanchist sons while the Trump administration has imposed a 50 percent across-the-board tariff on Brazilian goods as well as travel sanctions against the judges that convicted Bolsonaro and sentenced him to six years in prison for sedition earlier this year. The Trump connection to Latin American opposition groups includes rightwing Chilean figures, adherents of the old Pinochet dictatorship and new tech moguls, as it is reported to be quietly influencing the policies of Paraguay (led by a conservative) and rightwing opposition factions in Peru. In effect, in these instances the Big Stick used by one foreign policy hand is complemented by a more subtle and covert velvet glove approach on the other.

In the end, Trump’s return to a US gilded age is very much true in the original Twain sense of the phrase, and its adoption of a crude form of Gunboat Diplomacy characterised by a Big Stick/Carrot approach is playing out in contradictory but obvious ways in what Trump considers, to Latin American revulsion, to be the US’s backyard where the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine gives it the right to act with wanton disregard for International law and imperialist impunity with regard to the rights of individuals and States. Much like demolishing of the White House East Wing serves as an allegory for the destruction of the US constitutional system and social fabric, the return to the Big Stick and selective carrots is symbolic of an increasingly feckless approach to US foreign policy, regionally defined.

As the saying from former Mexican president Porfirio Diaz goes (amended here to include the entire region): “Poor Latin America. So so far from God and so close to the United States.”

Que Pachamama los proteja!

Declaration: I was the Regional Policy Analyst for the Interamerican Region and Caribbean Desk Officer in the Office of the US Secretary of Defense (OSD/ISA/IA), co-Team Leader of the Cuba Task Force and a consultant to the CIA, US Southern Command, US Air Force Special Operations and US Navy Special Operations Commands in the 1990s. In those roles I was engaged in exactly the sort of exercises that go into this type of war-planning/preparation and am well aware of the long history of US anti-drug campaigns in the region as well as the US military involvement in them (including the infamous Pablo Escobar/Cali Cartel years). My commentary is informed by those experiences and by the certain knowledge that the norms and restraints that governed the actions of my colleagues and I no long apply when it comes to the application of US military force.

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A Fool’s Pied Piper.

For a while I have mentioned that too much of NZ political “thought” is re-hashed and often washed up ideas brought in from abroad. Both neo-liberalism and “Third Way” Labour positions were imported rather than organically generated from inside the NZ body politic and/or academia. With importation of foreign political ideas all too often comes stripping of the original ideas of any intellectual depth and nuance, particularly in the fields of public policy and political debate.

The latest example of this is ACT’s pimply-faced Ann Rand adolescent devotee’s use of libertarian thought as the basis for its policy approach. In recent years its leader, an Alfred E. Newman look-alike with serious racist and misogynist inclinations, has taken to exalting the virtues of the incestuous gnome that is currently president of Argentina, a Trump-loving mutton-chopped heavy metal grunting, formerly cross-dressing evil munchkin who takes advice from his cloned dogs, thinks orphaned children should be sold on open markets, denies that the Argentine dictatorship engaged in a “dirty war” that resulted in 30,000 deaths and countless tortured and disappeared people, believes blue-eyed people are more aesthetically and intellectually superior to brown eyed people, and who is now embroiled in a crypto currency meme fraud and a narco-trafficking scandal, all while his “chainsaw” approach to public sector reform has resulted in increased poverty, lower health and education standards, increased basic good prices like those of groceries and electricity, a hollowing out of the nation’s productive base and resultant wide-spread public unrest that is answered with indiscriminate police repression. Yep, that guy.

Which is why I say again, we are currently being governed by a crazy clown posse pushing a dumpster fire of anti-social, foreign inspired ideological garbage disguised as public management best practice. Stuff that.

But do not take this just from me. Have a look at this:

https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/this-is-why-you-dont-let-libertarians-run-your-country?fbclid=IwY2xjawNaSotleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHrKnIv4av64qdH339gFOGvGkGitLcQD-i6TN5dvgzWwXKTzCETs-JBy8FVUw_aem_6RfYz1vosbUC6-WP9FIxxg