Category: USA

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Social origins of the Politically Absurd.

The 2016 US presidential election is a an existential crisis of American society politically manifest as a theatre of the absurd. The story line revolves around a clash of visions over what constitutes the preferred America. On one side is what could be called the “old” vision. The vision is “old” not only because it harks to so-called traditional values rooted in nostalgic reimagining of the 1950s, but because those who most ardently adhere to it are lower educated whites aged 45 and over who are or were employed in blue collar, service sector and small business occupations.

This vision privileges the dominance of white heterosexual christian male values. It is both laissez faire and  economically nationalist in orientation, patriarchal and socially insular in perspective, wary of “outsiders,” and believes in a natural order where rules are made to be obeyed without question. It prizes conformity and stability and respect for authority.

On the other side is a “new” vision. This vision is “new” because it is multiracial, multicultural, heteroreligious and secular, plurisexual, post-feminist, economically internationalist, global in orientation and polyarchical when it comes to power distribution, legitimate authority and social hierarchy.

In reality the two visions bleed into each other in specific instances to form a hybrid social orientation in many groups that is not as dichotomous or binary as it otherwise might be. I say “bleed” rather than “blend” into each other because the overlap and cross-fertilisation between the two social perspectives is not uniform or universally applied: Mexican American IT specialists may enjoy rap as much as Norteno music while dutifully practicing their Catholic faith and adhering to its moral codes, while middle aged white professionals  can find identity in the mores and practices of non-traditional cultures and religions while engaging in post-modern leisure pursuits.

The battle between the old and new perspectives began in the 2008 presidential election when a representative of the “new” vision, Barak Obama, took on an old white man, John McCain, for the highest office in the land. That continued in 2012 when Obama confronted another old white man, Mitt Romney, in his re-election bid. It continues today in the form of another “new” candidate, Hillary Clinton, facing yet another old white man, Donald Trump. Clinton may not be the archetypical “new” candidate as described above, but the mere fact that she is female is a break from the traditional mould.

For his part, Trump represents a grotesque caricature of the traditional alpha male, and in the absurdity of his candidacy lies the last gasps of a dying culture. In his sociopathic narcissism, his sexually predatory behaviour, his racism, bigotry and xenophobia, his abject greed, his pathological lying, his thin-skinned obsession with revenge, his insensitivity to others, his ignorance of basic economic, political, military and diplomatic facts, and in his adolescent resort to crude insults and derision as a weapon of last resort, Trump is the antithesis of the self-made, strong and independent straight-talking man on horseback. And yet, because he acts as if he were and the GOP and conservative media enabled his deception, those who embrace the “old” vision see in him a saviour. But they are wrong, for what he is to them and the culture that they cling to is an angel of death.

That culture is dying because over 45 year old lower educated whites have the highest rates of suicide, alcoholism and opiod addiction in the US, so they are quite literally leaving the mortal coil at higher rates than everyone else. That is not a demographic on which to base a presidential campaign and yet Trump and the GOP have dog whistled, incited, pandered and courted it as these people will live forever or at least until the mythical past can become the future once again.

The “old” vision will lose this election but it will not be its death rattle. Its adherents will fight against the king tide of social change with  the fervour of a drowning man, and some of them will become violent. The obstructionists in the GOP will do everything in their power to undermine the Clinton presidency, and they will front another “old” visionary in the 2020 presidential campaign. But regardless of what they do and how much they resist, the hard fact is that demographic, socio-economic and cultural change are irresistible forces that work against them.

They are doomed and within a generation they will be gone.

Note: I write this the day before the election simply to give my brief read on the broader context that explains why Clinton will win. Depending on how poorly the GOP does in the House and Senate races, the bloodletting within the Republican camp could be epic. That will be fun to watch.

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Trump is Toast

Well, all good things must come to an end.

But first, let’s play word association:

Authoritarian Populist.

Racist. Bigot. Xenophobe.

Bully. Buffoon. Bankrupt.

War-mongerer. Torture fan. Genocidal Demagogue.

Narcissistic Sociopath. Tax evader. Ignorant blowhard.

Serial Liar. Serial Cheat. Serial adulterer.

Thin skinned. Egomaniac. Coward.

Lecher.

Sexual predator.

Whose name comes to mind when these words are mentioned?

Conservative spin aside, there is no coming back from this. The destruction of brand Trump is unfolding before our eyes and soon will be complete.

Let’s unpack the video outtakes from his 2005 Access Hollywood appearance in order to explain the reasons why.

In it he speaks of pursuing a married woman. That will cost him religious conservative votes as well as those from people who take a dim view of home-wreckers.

He then boasts that he has a pre-meditated strategy to swallow breath mints before he forcibly kisses women without their consent. He goes on to say that because he is a “star” he can grope women’s genitals with impunity. These are admissions of repeated sexual assault. That is going to cost him much more than female votes, as many in the law and order crowd, to say nothing of men who have real respect for their mothers, wives, sisters, daughters and grand daughters will walk away from a self-admitted practitioner of such criminal behaviour (say what you want about Bill Clinton, there is no audio recording in his own voice of him admitting to sexual assault).

In his non-apologies he claims that the crude and lewd language he used during the now infamous bus ride is just “locker room banter.” Besides the fact that many have pointed out that it is not, in fact, normal athlete talk to speak the way he did, what he is basically saying is that (presumably male) locker rooms are places where discussion of sexual assault is common place. If that is true, then what he is speaking about–and dismissing–is a particular aspect of rape culture. True or not (and there is definitely a problem with rape cultures in some areas of US society), the fact that he downplays the seriousness of boasting about sexual assault (whether real or made up) is indicative of deeply seated misogyny on his part. This may have been something that he could get away with twenty years ago, but it is not now.

Better yet, Trump is a wrecking ball that is bringing the Republican Party down with him as the GOP rats scramble to get off that sinking ship known as the 2016 campaign. They have to jump because the word association game that we just played will be attached to those who do not. Already 50 Republican elected officials are trying to put distance between themselves and Trump, including the House Majority Leader and 14 Senators. The focus of the Republicans is keeping their House and Senate majorities, and that looks to be increasingly in peril in the Senate (where a shift of 4 seats restores a Democratic majority).

In parallel, the media facilitators at the alternative universe known as Fox News are also in full meltdown mode as the Trump sycophants (Sean Hannity) publicly quarrel with other colleagues (Meghan Kelly, Shepard Smith) in a crisis environment brought about by the forced resignation of another sexual predator, Roger Ailes, as CEO of the network.

These are the worst of times. These are the best of times.

The forces of evil in the US are in disarray, on the run and looking for whatever (political) cover they can find. But there is no place to hide.

This year November 8 is not just election day. It is not just judgement day for the GOP.

It is armageddon for US conservatism. The end is nigh.

The real questions now are what will the Democrats do with the gift of Republican self-destruction? Will the Clinton administration heed the lessons of the election and integrate at least some aspects of Bernie Sanders’ policy prescriptions into it? Will the Democratic Congressional leadership seize the opportunity to consolidate or pursue legislative gains in areas such as health care, education, campaign finance reform and taxation? Will the Supreme Court nominations made by the Clinton administration ensure a “progressive” majority for decades to come?

For their part, will the unsavoury forces unleashed by the Trump campaign crawl back under their rocks or will they turn into a violent disloyal opposition? Will the GOP split into “moderate” and retrograde wings and if so who will dominate conservative discourse? What lessons will the Republicans take away from this disaster? Will those lessons teach them civility or even more darker modes of behaviour?

Time will tell but for the moment we can only thank The Donald for his efforts.

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Peddling False Hope.

By way of a short thought, I venture again into the waters of US election year politics.

Today’s subject is Donald Trump, or more precisely, the promises he passes off as solutions to the US malaise (as he and his supporters see it).  The key denominator in everything he says is that he offers the promise that he and he alone can solve the nation’s problems, foreign and domestic, and that he can do so in a clear, simple and direct fashion without much cost or sacrifice to the nation. Much like PT Barnum a century or so ago, he clearly believes that there is a sucker born every minute in the US. And what he is peddling to them is no more than that snake oil known as false hope.

Let me outline what he has promised to do but which he cannot do. Trump cannot build a wall and make Mexico pay for it. He cannot deport 11 million people including US citizens born of undocumented residents. He cannot place a ban on “all Muslims” immigrating to the US, he cannot institute blanket profiling of Muslims and surveillance of mosques, and he cannot stop refugees from Muslim-dominant countries from seeking asylum in it. He cannot leave NATO to its own devices. He cannot leave South Korea and Japan to defend themselves against Chinese aggression, and he cannot influence Chinese monetary policy in a way that would “level the playing field” with the US. He cannot force US based companies to return all of their operations to the US while paying US workers higher wages. He cannot reinstitute water boarding and other “worse” forms of torture. He cannot order the US military to commit war crimes such s killing the relatives of terrorists, and he cannot “take the oil” from Iraq. He cannot preemptively launch nuclear attacks based on whim. He cannot renege on trade deals without consequence. He cannot “rip up” NAFTA (the North American trade bloc involving Mexico, Canada and the US). He cannot fire generals because they disagree with his views, and he cannot form a partnership with Russia just because he admires Putin.

Trump cannot mandate that women be “punished” for having legal abortions. Trump cannot “wipe out” Daesh.

Trump cannot make “America Great Again” because his vision of greatness–white male christian nativist and insular–has been overcome by the structural, demographic, cultural, social and technological changes of the last quarter century. In fact, his vision of “greatness’ was great only for a socio-economic few, and that few will be a distinct minority within twenty years.

Trump cannot drill, drill, drill or frack, frack, frack. Trump cannot make the US safer by ensuring that more people have guns.  He cannot re-institute “stop and frisk” as the solution to African-American demonstrations against police brutality or even urban crime without re-hashing the case of its (un)constitutionality. Trump cannot run his administration like a family owned business lacking shareholders or a Board of Directors and he certainly cannot use bankruptcy as a means of avoiding liability for poor financial decisions. He cannot renegotiate the US debt using default as leverage.

The reasons he cannot do anything of what he has promised is not only that his words are meaningless and empty, in typical national populist demagogic tradition. It is due to the fact that the US political system does, in fact, rest on institutional checks and balances grounded in law. Any and everything that he proposes, were he to try to execute it via Executive Order, would be challenged in courts as unconstitutional and take years to litigate. He needs Congress to pass laws that will allow him to do some of the things that he promises to do, and other promises require congressional approval in any event. Even if it remains in Republican control, Congress has been the subject of his often personal attacks and understands its role as a check on the Executive (witness the obstructionism of the past eight years). So no matter who controls Congress, but especially if the Democrats win the Senate, the legislative branch will not just play along with Trump’s demands and initiatives and will in fact spend much time blocking most of what he has proposed on the campaign trail. He is on a hiding to nothing.

Trump cannot use his personal wealth while president, which includes paying lobbyists to advance his political projects. Although he can fund partisan and personal trips and events out of his own bank account, he cannot use his taxpayer-funded salary or the resources of his office for personal reasons. That means that he will have to place his assets in the hands of others, be it via trusts or family delegation for the duration of his incumbency. The Donald may have some problems adjusting to that situation and could try to circumvent the rules governing presidential finances. Beyond the ethics of the matter, that poses a practical challenge for him because even if he fills the entire upper echelon of the federal bureaucracy with political appointees (whose credentials will have more to do with shoe licking than competence), he still will have to deal with a career civil service with institutional knowledge and depth of expertise (if not vested interests) when it comes to policy implementation paid for by the taxes Trump thinks it is “smart” to dodge.

Nor can he reconcile his financial plan, which involves lowering corporate taxes while renegotiating trade agreements and increasing spending on the military and elected infrastructure projects. In an age of budgetary cost-cutting that has resulted in several government shut-downs, he simply will find it impossible to fund his projects with public money even if he offers sweetheart deals to private parties in order to offset public expenditures–again, because it is not for him alone to do so and he will find his purse strings not only constrained by but attached to the demands of other interests regardless of who controls Congress.

The truly sad aspect of this is that neither Trump or his supporters understand the very basic concepts of separation of powers and checks and balances. They believe that he can just order people around and “get things done.” They think that he can bully foreign leaders the way he bullies out of favour beauty pagent contestants. They think that he can resort to personal insults, to include fat, slut and disability-shaming, to deter his adversaries and critics. They would be mistaken in those beliefs and it is a shame that the US educational system has produced so many people without even an elementary grasp of how government works or why civility is a value. That one such ignorant person is the nominee of a major political party is a clear sign of its demise.

It will interesting to see what happens over the next few weeks of the campaign. It looks like Trump is starting (?) to come unglued as the pressure mounts and his blustery facade begins to crumble under the light of scrutiny. Clinton pounded him into the ropes in the first debate (I scored it a TKO), and if he decides to bring up Bill Clinton’s affairs in future conversation he will be eviscerated on the hypocrisy rack. From my perspective, the election campaign is just getting better.

One thing is certain: ignorance is not bliss and Drumpf is about to find that out in spades.

 

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Such a nice crowd.

Unfortunately I know people, to include some in my own family, who are Trump supporters and who think that Fox News is “fair and balanced.” I also know some people, including one here at KP, who think that voting for Trump is all good because it will break the status quo politics represented by Hillary Clinton.

Many of the people I know that have chosen the Trump/Fox News view of the world bristle at the suggestion that they have issues with race/ethnicity/gender/Islam/sexuality/foreigners/poor people/disabled people/whatever. Some of those who think that voting for Trump is an anarchic stroke of tactical genius appear to ignore the concerns raised by these suggestions or believe them to be untrue. Allow me the right of rejoinder with one link.

It may not be a statistically significant sample of opinion among the Trump/Fox News “nation,” but I believe that this compilation is emblematic of what lies at its core. And if this is the base sentiment behind Trump that is being championed by Fox News, then the situation, if not the very character of his campaign, is indeed a giant basket of deplorable.

Say what you want about Ms. Clinton (and I shall write something about the false narrative about her at some point), she does not attract this type of folk. In fact, she repels them, which is as good enough reason to vote for her as is anything else.

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Moment or Movement.

Barring some disaster, Hillary Clinton will win the US presidential election in November. That poses an interesting question for the US Left, because the defensive support for her offered by Sanders supporters and other progressives in the face of the Trump alternative can only be considered to be more than a short-term tactical ploy if her administration adopts progressive policies. Otherwise it is, as many have accused, continuation of politics as usual or Obama 2.0. This is, of course, at the heart of the negotiations between the Sanders camp and Clinton’s people at the DNC policy platform meetings, and it remains to be seen if the Clintonites will make good on their promises.

That brings up the perennial problem for political activists: how to turn a moment into a movement. US commentators are already using the phrase with regard to the Sanders primary run and the impact it will have on a future Clinton presidency. Some think that he has run his course, that status quo Democratic policies will prevail, and that the forces that his campaign galvanised will either go mainstream or dissipate into another pool of apathy and disenchantment. Others believe that to the contrary, the Sanders campaign has stirred new life into the American Left and that his campaign legacy will have an impact on how Clinton approaches the Oval Office.

It is a tough one to call. It is clear that Clinton needs to cater to Sander’s supporters in order to win the election. She cannot dismiss them before November 8 but could in theory do so afterwards, especially if the Democrats regain control of the Senate (they only need to win four seats) and make inroads into the Republican House majority (the Democrats would need a turnover of more than thirty seats to regain control of the lower chamber). The situation is made worse for progressives if Clinton wins by a landslide (anything over seven points) because she can point to a “mandate” that does not include them. That will be also be the case if political nihilists on the Left opt to “blow up the system” by voting for Trump or minor party candidates in large numbers. The latter will tighten the race unnecessarily (in Clinton’s eyes) and will, should she win, see her turn her back on the post-modern New Left wing of her party (I use the term “New Left” not in the sense of the 1960s Left but in the sense that post-modern progressives in the US are not in their majority affiliated with unions or other traditional organisational sources of Democratic electoral power). After all, she can say that they turned on her and she still won because the US political centre preferred her over Trump. She can feel justified in believing that she does not need the New Left to govern and therefore should not push policy initiatives at their behest.

Assuming a Clinton victory, the ideal situation for US progressives is twofold: most of Sanders’ supporters and others on the Left opt to vote for Clinton and she wins by a relatively close margin (say, between 3-5 points); and vote for Democratic candidates in key congressional districts knowing that a progressive presidential agenda needs congressional support in order to become law. That requires voter education (on the whys and hows of linking down-ballot choices to the presidential race and how executive-legislative relations can impact decisions with long-term consequences such as Supreme Court nominations) as well as mobilisation in favour of the progressive policies adopted by the DNC at the platform negotiations (and perhaps more).

In that preferred scenario, because Clinton will understand that she absolutely required a groundswell of New Left voters to win a close race, it will be harder to abandon them once victory is achieved. Even more so, it will be virtually impossible to renege on the progressive agenda if key wins by Democrats in Congressional races were owed to the participation of New Left voters.

So the Bernie “moment” in the primaries also has to become a dual proposition in the general election and post-election phases of the campaign if it is to become a movement. The New Left need to continue to mobilise in support of Clinton during the weeks leading up to November 8 and they need to continue to pressure her administration, both directly and through the elected Congressional candidates who needed their support to win, after she assumes the presidency and the 115th US Congress is convened in January 2017.

In other words, the transformation of the Sanders moment into a New Left movement requires one other “M:” momentum. That momentum has to be sustained through November and into the next administration and congressional term if the moment is to become a movement.

That is where some dark clouds arise on the Clinton electoral horizon, and they are not caused by Trump. In the purported interest of “balance” (regardless of the outright campaigning on his behalf by conservative media outlets), mainstream news organisations are delving into her emails while Secretary of State, into her relationship with Clinton Foundation donors while in office, into why she does not hold press conferences (which is patently self-serving on the news agencies part) and even into spurious conspiracy theories about her health. These investigative efforts go beyond reporting on official FBI investigations of Clinton’s use of a private email server during her tenure as SecState and in spite of the fact that none of her activities while in office have been linked to any policy decision or personal favour offered on her part. For reasons known only to Julian Assange and his comrades, Wikileaks has targeted her communications and those of the DNC, both independently as well as in cooperation with Russian-based hackers, while neglecting to do so with those of Trump and the RNC.

Any one of these lines of inquiry have the potential to divert attention and resources away from her policy agenda and could even derail her campaign if found to contain seriously negative substance (nothing of which has been found so far in spite of the best efforts of the Trump campaign and its media lackeys). So the onus is on Clinton to re-energise her support base in the face of these dishonest and scurrilous attacks and to re-focus on the policies that she will bring to the Oval Office and share with her Congressional colleagues. That is where the New Left vote is vitally important. Just as Trump has his core base in middle aged white working class lower educated people, Clinton has a core base in urban professionals. But both of them need to expand their appeal outside of those cores, and it is the New Left that Clinton needs to court most assiduously. That gives the New Left leverage on her and they need to know how to judiciously take advantage of it.

To be sure, the GOP is working to separate the New Left from Clinton. It may not get the attention that trying to divorce Trump from down-ballot GOP candidates has received from the RNC, but Republicans clearly want the Sanders crowd to alienate from Clinton whether or not they vote for another candidate like Jill Stein (Green). For the GOP, getting the New Left to stay at home rather than vote is just as important as getting them to adopt the nihilist approach of voting for spoilers.

This is made interesting by the fact that Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson is polling at around 10-12 percent and has received financial backing from erstwhile big GOP donors, while Jill Stein is polling around 5 percent. Usually third party candidates barely receive 10 percent of the vote in a US general election, so the fact that these candidates could receive 15  percent or more changes the dynamics of the presidential race quite dramatically. That reinforces the need for Clinton to get out the New Left vote on her behalf in significant numbers, something that will allow her to build momentum in the run up to election day and which in turn means that she must accept the fact that the Bernie moment has become a progressive movement. This will annoy her backers on Wall Street and corporate America, but they also can see the dangers of having a populist demagogue with Tea Bagger tendencies occupying the White House. For them as well as many on the New Left, she is the lesser evil.

It will be interesting to see how things play out over the next 9 weeks. Two things are certain: every vote will count this time around and what is now a moment of opportunity can only be transformed into a sustainable movement if the New Left puts, however reluctantly or sceptically, its collective weight behind the Clinton campaign in order to build the momentum of progressive change beyond election day.

Let’s hope that I am not wishful thinking.

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No Hard Feelings?

Sources in the US Navy have revealed that it will send an Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyer to the RNZN 75th anniversary celebrations in November. The details of the participating ship have been sent to the New Zealand government but have not yet been released. However, I have it on good information that the ship will likely be the USS William P. Lawrence (DDG110). It is part of Pacific based Destroyer Squadron 21 and home ported at Naval Station San Diego. It is a relatively new ship, having been launched in 2009, christened in 2010 and entered into service in 2013.

Arleigh Burke class destroyers are gas turbine propelled and under peacetime conditions carry no nuclear munitions. So whether it is the USS Lawrence or a sister ship, the requirement that the visiting US grey hull be neither nuclear propelled or armed will have been met.

If indeed it is the ship being sent, the USS Lawrence has an interesting recent history. In May 2016 it participated in the freedom of navigation exercises the US Navy conducted in and around the Fiery Cross Reef in the disputed territories of the South China Sea that China has been building a reclaimed island upon. It has also conducted anti-poaching patrols and fisheries inspections in the Western Pacific in conjunction with local and regional fisheries agencies as well as the US Coast Guard, and undertook a recent port of call in Suva, Fiji. It most recently participated in the 30-nation Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercises off of Hawai’i. In its present deployment it serves as something akin to a regional USN “guard ship” for the Southwestern Pacific. It even has its own Facebook page.

Readers will know that I publicly suggested that the US send the USS Mercy, a hospital ship home ported at Pearl Harbour. My reasoning was that the hospital ship could symbolise the humanitarian side of US naval operations (something that is a core mission of the RNZN) and could even do stop-overs in island states on the way to and from Auckland in order to offer check ups and exams, vaccinations and other medical assistance to disadvantaged Pacifika populations. Sending a hospital ship would be good PR for the US Navy and would also help defuse some of the opposition to the visit because it would look pretty silly for an activist flotilla to try and block an unarmed humanitarian vessel when other nation’s gunships received no such hostile welcome.

But no. That would be too much to ask of the US Navy. Instead, what they are sending is a ship of the destroyer class that succeeded the class of which the USS Buchanan (DDG-14) was part. In 1985 the USS Buchanan had pretty much the same role that the USS Lawrence does today. So after all of these years of acrimony, the US Navy has decided to send NZ the same, updated version of the boat that it tried to send in 1985.

Symbolism, much?

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Watching it Bern: Why its OK to vote for Donald Trump

I’m going to get flak for this little rant but those that know me know I relish debate and will do my best to honestly defend my position.

So let’s address what I see as the 200 kilogram reptillianoid in the room; the fear driven media hyperbole around Donald Trump possibly being president.

At its simplest the argument runs something like this: better the lesser of two evils, Vote Hillary.

Your average democratic voter might make the partisan argument that Hillary Clinton is actually a good candidate while Donald Trump is a bad one. So vote Hillary.

More articulate commentators will go with the position that The Don is the death of the democratic system in the US so in order to save the system vote for Hillary!

None of these arguments (or related others), I believe, actually does the situation justice and all are essentially falling for the false front articulation that it’s better to save the system than destroy it by allowing a vote for Trump which has been articulated through a range of hysterical hyperbole about trump while simultaneously minimizing or obscuring any concerns or criticisms about Hillary.

Now I am not here to praise or bury either of these two dingbats. I find both to be representative nadirs of their respective political parties, and I am not alone in this, as record numbers of US voters on both sides of the line also have a queasy feeling in their stomach when thinking about ticking the box for either of these political bottom feeders.

But I am here to point out that the dialog being had is not always representative or balanced and in fact the current surge in popularity for anti-establishment candidates (something which I have described as “Fukyoo” politics) is in fact a good thing, an antidote to the sick and dying political systems in the US and democracies around the world.

Conversely attempts by establishments and their respective parties to hold onto their power and position by shutting out candidates like Trump and Bernie Sanders at the expense of everybody else is in fact far worse than allowing these people to genuinely poll. It is in essence highly undemocratic and represents a clear step away from democratic practice and principle and a rather elitist move towards Oligarchy or worse by demonizing potential voters through their choice of candidate.

But I can already hear the howls of outrage and the tensing of fingers on keyboards to point out that this is exactly what Donald Trump is advocating. Really? Is that what Trump represents?

US political history from Watergate on has been a slow starting then sudden plunge into the sleazy abyss in which it now finds itself. Scandals like Iran/Contra, both Gulf Wars, Bush I and II, Clinton, Wag the Dog (the practice of bombing other countries by Clinton to detract from his own scandals in the US), the pardoning of Nixon by Ford, almost everything Ronald (and Nancy) Regan (and their minions) did while in office, Dick Cheney, the Neo Cons and all the blow-back from nearly 70 years of Imperial US rule have preceded both Trump and Sanders. They are the true avatars and inheritors of the toxic spill that US politics has become.

Straddling all this is the two party system which now has a stranglehold on the political discourse, a discourse which filters a plurality of views and opinions through two very large and very coarse partisan viewpoints (if only the had considered MMP!). Third party candidates or dissenting views are not allowed and to outsiders the whole thing has the reek of the protestant vrs catholic religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe. Heresy abounds and you’re either for or against, no dissenting opinions allowed!

“But…” I hear you cry “what about democratic manipulators like Putin in Russia, Berscolini in Italy, Mugabe in Zimbabwe and Blair in the UK, who got in under democratic means then decided to stay by gaming the system in their favour all the while perpetuating hideous crimes against their own people and sometimes other nations? That’s what Trump represents, we have to stop him!”

Easy there Tiger, hold on a second. As disgusting as these candidates appear in retrospect did they actually get power through undemocratic means? Did they seize arrive via a coup? No they did not, they made it in through free and (reasonably) fair elections.

And this is the painful and somewhat upsetting thing about democracy; anyone can run for the top job, be they ex KGB spooks, media tycoons, former freedom fighters or centrist politicians. Speculation about what they will do once in power should not preclude them from running for office. For example who has the highest body count attached to their name out of the four I have listed above? Answer Blair for his involvement in the Invasions of Iraq and the blood in the Balkans. Yet he got genuinely elected by popular mandate. Go figure!

And this is the profoundly undemocratic narrative coming forth in all the anti-trump screeching. Yes he has said some bizarre and at times disturbing things but in many ways he is the same as a candidate who makes all sorts of rash promises while on the campaign trail, only to get a reality check once in office by not being able to deliver on them. Wall on the border with Mexico; not going to happen just on costs alone, banning all Muslims; easier said than done; gold plated trump logo on the White house; … well that’s a possibility.

And in some cases, such as the WW3 worries or Madeline Albright’s comment about “giving the nuclear codes to a man who praises Vladimir Putin and Saddam Hussein” could be defused (no pun intended) by pointing out that Trump has said that US involvement in NATO will be conditional which does not sound like the ranting of a warmonger no matter who his idols are. This also leaves aside Albright’s grim record regarding civilian deaths in Iraq but that’s another story.

But the playing field is not level it seems, as recent revelations about the DNC being secretly opposed to Bernie Sanders and actively working to undermine him all the while saying they were “neutral” have shown. And its duplicity which has torn the Democratic convention in Philadelphia apart with Sanders being booed by his very own supporters when he fronted for Hillary even after the ugly truth of the DNC campaign against him was revealed.

If pressed for an honest answer the DNC might say that they were saving the party from taking the final step off the cliff by preventing  Sanders socialist rhetoric from killing the parties chances in the coming election when in reality Sanders socialist rhetoric was what was making him so popular! And in doing so Sanders was actually stepping away from the wreck of the Democratic Party, at the bottom of the cliff!

And it’s the same for Trump. His message has resonated much stronger than any other Republican contender (not surprising given the morally vacuous shells that got pushed out into the spot light) despite the often ugly tones of his individual statements and in doing so has tapped into the deep wellspring of discontent that has been bubbling away in the US long before Ross Perot ran for president as an independent in 92.

And with Sanders now falling into line behind Clinton all that frustration with the same old faces and the same old system has to go somewhere, which to some extent will go to Trump if Sanders supporters are to be taken at their word (which has been “Anyone but Hillary!”).

So back to the hyperbole, back to the desperate need to avoid Trump by voting Hillary under the assumption that such an action has merit when you don’t really want Hillary either. This is the position more than one possible Hillary voter has taken and talking to my brother and friends in the US has revealed a fear of Trump that’s been stoked by the fires of media manipulation to an extent that they would vote for one person they don’t really want to stop another person they don’t really want.

At the end of the day much of the blame lies with the monolithic two party system in the US which has mechanized politics to such a degree and entrenched various factions so deep into the system that, like the alien face huger in the movie Alien, the victim dies if it is removed. The irony being is that once the face hugger is on its too late as the egg is already implanted in the host and soon the little alien will burst forth in a shower of gore, killing the host in the process. They don’t call them chest bursters for nothing.

Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are those aliens. They have come forth in a shower of entrails but they are not the problem; they are the result of the state the system is in. And Hillary Clinton is not Sigourney Weaver running around with a flame thrower and pulse rifle saving the day in this rather tortuous analogy, she is the sinister android, secretly serving the Company by protecting the alien until it’s too late to stop it.

Clinton’s record with her emails, Benghazi and elsewhere is far more demonstrable evidence of dangerous and untrustworthy behavior than anything trump has done.

Clinton has breached national security protocols; Trump has not (yet!). Clinton has narrowly, and many say unfairly, avoided prosecution by the US Justice Department (the head of which was visited, the day before its decision was announced, by Bill Clinton in a completely unconnected, “just happened to be passing” visit) for having a private email server for official government business as Secretary of State no less; Trump has some bankruptcy and a dodgy university to contend with but again this is not on par with exposing state secrets or being considered up for prosecution for doing so.

So I am not buying into the hyperbole and nor will I be regurgitating phrases delivered to me via a compliant media. I wouldn’t be voting for Trump either, I might add, if I was a US citizen but then neither would I be voting for Hillary.

US politics has reaped what it has sown and now it’s time to pay its dues and sinister fantasies about Trump being the harbinger of WW3 are just as much a fiction as the smoke clouds of virtue billowing around Clinton. The two heads, one body, monster that is US politics is dying of its own toxicity and the establishment parasites which have lived off it are dying also.

In short it’s the Arab Spring, US style, writ large across Western Democracies as average citizens come to realize that those who are supposed to represent them are not fulfilling the task they were elected to do and are now expressing extreme discontent by delivering spoiler candidates into the fold, not as a genuine alternate (although I think Sanders could have pulled that off until he turned Judas) but as a resoundingly Joker like solution to the failure of the system. As Alfred says in the Dark Knight, “Some people just want to watch the world burn”

In this context both Trump and Hillary are two fiddlers fighting over who gets to play while Rome burns spectacularly. I think Machiavelli would be very disappointed in both of them.

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A note on the US navy ship visit.

So the US has agreed to send a ship to the RNZN 75th anniversary celebrations in November. That means that it has accepted New Zealand’s non-nuclear policy and will send a ship that is neither nuclear armed or propelled. It may have taken 33 years for it to finally loosen up on its “neither confirm or deny” policy when it comes to nukes on board, but the US realises that the geopolitical and strategic environment in which that policy was adopted is long gone and has been replaced by another in which continuing to adhere to it is a matter of hubris that is both churlish and counterproductive. Given the pressing realities of Chinese strategic competition in the Western Pacific and elsewhere, the US needs to consolidate its alliance commitments in the region. If acknowledging New Zealand’s non-nuclear stance is one way of doing so, than any loss of face is well worth it.

Pundits on the NZ Left and Right have claimed that NZ has “won” in its dispute with the US and that it is a great “victory” for the anti-nuclear movement that took to the waters of the Waitemata Harbour three decades ago. Quite frankly, I find the crowing about victory to be infantile because there were many other factors at play and decisions such as this are not a simple matter of win or lose. Moreover, with the Wellington and Washington agreements and RNZN participation in the annual US-led RIMPAC naval exercises, the bilateral military relationship between New Zealand and the US is pretty much back to first-tier partner status regardless of the symbolic stand-off about nukes. Add to that the fact that US nuclear submarines regularly patrol around (and some suggest in) NZ territorial waters, and the reality is that NZ’s non-nuclear status does not impede US naval operations near its shores regardless of what is said in public.

The issue of the US “relenting” is all about context. First off, the strategic environment has changed considerably. It is well known that US surface ships, with the exception of carriers, are all diesel power and as of 1991 have not carried tactical nuclear munitions. Even if resurgent, Russia no longer poses the global nuclear threat to the US that it once did, and although China has emerged as the giant’s rival in the last two decades, it still has limited capacity to project blue water force deep into the Pacific in a measure that would constitute a direct challenge to US maritime interests. However, the Chinese are working hard to address that imbalance, evident in their land reclamation projects in the South China Sea and their overtures to South Pacific island states with regard to naval port visits and fishing rights, something that the US views with concern and which in part motivates Vice President Biden’s whirlwind tour of the region this week. Likewise, the re-establishment of the Russian Pacific Fleet also signals that the era of US maritime supremacy is now subject to contestation, so the US well understands that it needs all of its military allies working off of the same page when it comes to these new challenges. Recognizing the RNZN on its anniversary is one small way of doing so.

More importantly, from the moment President Obama stepped into the Oval Office he made de-nuclearization a cornerstone of his foreign policy. The Iran nuclear deal, the increased sanctions levied on North Korea, the slowing of advanced weapons sales to Pakistan, the repeated attempts to engage in bilateral strategic ballistic missile reductions with Russia–all of these efforts were undertaken as part of Obama’s vision of a safer world. It is therefore completely logical given his commitment to a world without (or at least with lesser amounts of) nuclear weapons, that under his administration the US would relent on the issue of NZ’s non-nuclear policy. In fact, it can be argued that the Obama administration wants to highlight its agreement with the principled commitment to a non-nuclear stance by authorising a US ship visit on a ceremonial occasion with symbolic significance given that several other nuclear powers will be among the 30 odd nations sending naval vessels to the celebrations–including its new competitors.

I have publicly suggested that the US send the USS Mercy, a hospital ship home ported at Pearl Harbour. It would symbolise the humanitarian aspects of naval deployments that the RNZN claims as one of its core missions and would defuse the grounds for opposition of protesters who see US warships as imperialist death platforms. Surprisingly, this suggestion has been ridiculed by some (most on the Right) who say that a ship without guns is not “exciting” and is not a real naval vessel. Given that navies around the world have tenders, tankers, tugs, intelligence collection vessels and assorted other non-combat ships, it strikes me as strange that some people think that the US decision to send a navy ship is a victory for NZ and yet that victory must be confirmed with a warship visit as opposed to something with a non-combat purpose. Given that the NZDF spends much time publicising its non-combat, peacekeeping and humanitarian roles, I would have thought that a visit by a US naval vessel whose purpose was something other than kinetic operations would be perfectly suited for the occasion.

In the end the decision by the US to accept the invitation to send a ship to the RNZN anniversary celebrations was a triumph of good sense over bureaucratic intransigence within the US defense establishment, pushed as much by the president’s commitment to a nuclear weapons-free world as it is by the evolving strategic realities in the Western Pacific Rim that require the US to consolidate its military alliance commitments in the region. Some in NZ may think that it “won” and the US lost with its change of posture, but a simple glance at geopolitical realities suggests that it was not the NZ non-nuclear movement that forced the change so much as it is the influence of much broader factors in a context when haggling about nukes on board is about as relevant to modern naval warfare as is arguing about the relative merits of spinnakers and mainsails.

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The Language of Violence

There was an attempted coup in Turkey on the weekend. So far there are no real details on why and militaries can end up intervening in politics for a variety of reasons. Jets were scrambled, an attack helicopter was shot down and people massed in the streets and suddenly as it started it was over.

What is known is that while Erdogan is back in power I don’t think this is really a victory for democracy as he has become increasingly authoritarian over time and been connected to more than one scandal while in government.

Already the media has been talking about “purges” of both bad military personnel and anyone else who happens to oppose him so don’t expect the underlying issues which sparked the coup to go away anytime soon.

Add to this an ongoing bombing campaign in Turkey, often directed at military personnel and the “fun fun fun” next door in Syria and it’s not too difficult to see what may have been going through the minds of the plotters when they decided to have a coup.

The death toll from all of this is around 300 and it appears that those in the coup maker’s side decided to fire on civilians at least once, which while not the turning point, would not have been a recommended means to gather support when overthrowing a government.

Meanwhile in the US more police officers are dead in what is starting to appear to be tit for tat style killings in response to police killing various black American males.

While tragic I can’t help but feel somewhat concerned that in a nation full of guns and racial tensions (among other things) this is not going to be the last time this happens. An example has been set and if the police continue to use guns as a means to enforce the law then expect others to do so as well in response to issues of police behaving lawlessly.

And while somewhat peripheral to the situation, killings those tasked to enforce the law is a text book indicator of a brewing insurgency. Usually these acts happen to not only send a message and destabilize the current authority (allowing the insurgent to substitute its own authority) but to also acquire weapons to which further the struggle but in gun crazy USA there is no need to worry about getting your hands on high power weaponry (thanks NRA!) so consider this just a message sent.

Politicians and pundits wring their hands, the president says something reassuring but I can’t see any political means for the US to step away from this. The US looks more and more like an apartheid state every day and nothing I hear from friends and family living there gives me any indication that the horrible momentum of a dying super power will be arrested before the inevitable fall happens (for those who would like to get an indicator of how this goes I strongly recomend Gibbons Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire as a text book read for how Empires fail).

And over in Asia the sabers are being rattled after the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) decided to enforce the UNCLOS (United Nations Law of the Sea) against Chinese actions in the South China Sea, deeming them illegal.

Will that actually stop China from building islands and military bases on coral reefs and atolls and behaving belligerently? Probably not as the immediate response out of Beijing was to declare it “rigged” in favor of the West which I would normally consider an appropriate response from China but in this instance just smacks of sour grapes.

In fact I expect immediate action form China in the wake of this as its already verbally blasted Australia for commenting unfavorably on this and I wonder if our current trade spat with China might be related to our not kowtowing to China on this issue.

What is clear that this one has been slow brewing for the past half-decade and even longer once you get into the history of it (one of my specialist areas of Masters study) and with natural resources like fishing, possible oil, and territorial sovereignty on the line among China, Taiwan, The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and Japan (as something similar is brewing between Japan and China over disputed islands between them) no body is likely to be able, or willing to back down.

Add to this increased naval and related weapons sales to all parties and the US firmly opposed to China on this issue and you have all the makings of a cold war style thriller (which, if I remember correctly, was actually predicted by some Cold War style Tom Clancy type novelist in the 1980’s, whose names escapes me at this time).

And finally in NZ we have two individuals shot dead by the Police in one week. Both may have been in self-defense and both may have been justified (as details, while sketchy, seem to indicate that it was a means of last resort or in the face of imminent threat) but again the message is clear and unlike the US not (at least yet) a common occurrence in our society.

There is no common thread among these events except one which is, as the song* says, that “death is the silence” in the language of violence.

*-The Language of Violence by The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy

 

 

 

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Media Link: The US election circus.

I have just returned to NZ after a month traveling in the US. While there I spent a fair bit of time talking with political friends and former colleagues, and it has been refreshing to see that there are plenty of people who see the situation for what it is rather than succumb to the uncritical and conservative media-induced notion that Donald Trump represents a genuine alternative to the political status quo and a real hope for positive change.

Now that he has chosen a troglodyte conservative white male governor from one of the most reactionary states as his Vice Presidential running mate, the die has been cast for one of the most remarkable acts of party self-destruction in modern times. That will become apparent over the next few days as the Republican convention unfolds in Cleveland. Expect riots both inside and outside the convention arena, and with less than a handful of significant senior national level Republicans and at least four (other) Trumps on the speakers list, this could be one of the best inbred political dog and pony shows ever seen. Let the fireworks begin!

I shall write more on the US elections between now and November (when the general election is held). For the moment here is a NZ radio interview I did while in the US that covers some recent developments.