For what it is worth I still assume most pundits are right in guessing slightly increased and more Trumpist majority in Senate and small Democrat majority in House.
But “small” is really too close to call either way for House.
Daily voter approval polls currently fluctuating around 50% for and against Trump:
I would have expected both sides to try harder to avoid having majority in House.
Cannot tell whether Democrat pathetic campaign is intentional or they just cannot help themselves.
GOP focus is on Senate but they could still end up with another 2 years of majority in both houses plus Supreme Court and President. That would make it harder in 2020 to blame Democrats for Trump not having achieved much.
Trump doesn’t seem able to focus hard on losing while Democrats can do that by instinct. Though he has managed to not say as much about economy as he would if he actually WANTED more GOP and less Democrats in House because he does need the opposite for ease of pre-2020 deficits infrastructure spending and healthcare plus still being able to rant about building wall and he DOES know it. Just cannot put his heart and soul into losing.
Meanwhile John Stewart has some sound advice for liberal journos, but they don’t seem capable of getting it, let alone acting onn it:
‘… an ongoing commitment to revolutionary politics have pulled me up and enabled me to appreciate that 280 odd years ago Montesquieu identified what was vital and, in terms of social relations, revolutionary about the city. His heroes, were a couple of expat Sultans (what else), caught up in the thrall of the street where everybody is unveiled. “Here everything speaks out; everything can be seen; everything can be heard; the heart is as open as the face”. And it wasn’t long before the fact that “everything can be seen” exposed the Bourbons and the aristocracy in general as emperors with no clothes’.
Thanks to Tom Griffiths for this contribution.
* * * *
New York, New York, So Good They Named it Twice…
And the rest goes…
New York, New York, all the scandal and the vice …
I love it.
New York New York, now isn’t it a pity
What they say about New York City?
I loved this song when it came out, its cheek, irreverence and capacity to laugh at itself. And I couldn’t help being reminded of it as I was reading the late Marshall Berman’s On The Town, One Hundred Years of Spectacle in Times Square. Both seemed to be singing from the same song sheet.
While this post has been prompted by my reading of Berman’s final book my point in doing so springs from my view of how important the city – urban life and experience – is in human development and how ‘missing the boat’ much of the left has been in accepting both the opportunities and challenges this development has thrown up. The politics I will be drawing attention to (and where the left is, or should be in relation to it) can be summarised in the distinction to be made between the politics of the House and the politics of the Street. And let me be clear, I’m for the politics of the Street. I will give some space to the House further down, but first lets go for a walk because the modern city creates an essential link in providing individuals, in particular working class individuals, with opportunities for personal development and growth (they are individuals as well as members of a class, remember) opportunities for them to break free of the constraints imposed by the House.
What impressed me about Berman’s book – the spin Berman puts on the maelstrom that is the modern world generally and of which Times Square is a highly concentrated symbol – is its vitality and its liberating aspect. And in saying this I in no way wish to downplay or ignore the challenges that have accompanied this. Berman makes no claim to being the first to highlight this and makes reference to two French writers of past centuries to point out that the link between modernity and the Street, while an essential feature of modernity, is not new. A key Enlightenment figure, Montesquieu wrote of it in his Persian Letters (1721), and over a century later the poet Baudelaire identified the modern urban centre as a space where old (pre modern) boundaries were broken down and new possibilities opened up, coining the term “the heroism of modern life’ in the process. Times Square, the flawed hero of Berman’s book has lived, or should I say enabled, Baudelaire’s heroism in concentrated form since the 1890’s.
Berman gets down to business straight away describing the modern city as a place that enables an individual to be both oneself and someone else. Being social animals we carry the seeds of curiosity, a desire for growth and an empathic sensibility within us and the possibilities described by Berman enables their germination and growth. What is made possible here is to expand beyond oneself, beyond formerly socially or family imposed boundaries and constraints, to be able to transcend these limits and grow.
In the early 21stC the Islamic fascists are acutely aware of and threatened by this possibility and this helps explain their violent hatred of modernizing influences that disrupt and transform social and family relations. Please note that social and family relations are not being spoken of here as abstract relations, but as relations that still have pre modern or medieval hooks embedded in the flesh of the men, women and children who are the real life players in those relations. Those who identify with the left should not be too smug about this because although what now passes for the left have never approached the loony killjoy levels of the Islamic fascists or Islamic fundamentalists generally, it has historically contained a strong current of killjoyism of which the odd parallel can be drawn – that being the antipathy and mistrust felt about the unconstrained individual, let loose from the ‘safe’ bonds of the House where, historically, the teaching and maintenance of family and social hierarchy were enacted.
“One of the primary human rights is the right to the city” argues Berman, the right to a space and an opportunity for individual and social transformation. But how does the city enable this, what makes it happen? And, in any case, anticipating mutterings coming from the background, aren’t there casualties, I mean cities are hardly beds of thornless roses and many with progressive pretensions think thorns is about all they have or have come to have.
Enter Times square, what it represents and opens up.
Times Square as we know it – an entertainment and commercial centre – came into its own with electrification and by the 1890’s had already developed a ‘reputation’ that scandalized the morally precious of the day by giving them innumerable reasons to hyperventilate and complain about falling moral standards. It takes little imagination to write their script – the denunciation of public spaces like bars, theatres, dance halls, cafes and the like as “brothels” or to understand it as a voice belonging to the House.
Initially this group had, to rope in modern terminology, some diversity, being a collection of traditional moralists, including secular moralists and evangelicals. Low hanging fruit one might think. But by the early 20thC their number came to include secular intellectuals with left politics “who wanted the masses to be radical and militant and to struggle for their rights…” [just so long as these rights didn’t extend to expressions of individual and sexual freedom] “…who believed that commercial mass culture was corrupting their minds”. In spite of the cultural shift in social attitudes to sexual mores this whinge remains a very contemporary trope. And it wasn’t just (or even, if we are to be honest) commercial mass culture that was the main corrupting element, it was sex. No surprises here of course.
Both men and women had good reason to be drawn to the Square’s promise, to be able to break free of the rigid stereotypes and expectations of the House, stereotypes and expectations that had been particularly constraining on women. A good way of looking at the complaints of the moralists (of whatever hue) – the Mary Whitehouse set and the Iranian and Saudi moral police being more contemporary equivalents – was that they were complaining about the breakdown between the rigid separation of the House and Street and the power relations between the sexes that were reflected in this. This distinction rang bells for me in two ways. Most importantly (and most recently) it summed up a lot of what I have seen in the work I have been doing in the family violence arena and the refugee/new settlers arena where individuals and families have come from regions where the transition from the traditional to the modern is unfinished business. Here women are supposed to belong in the House; it is not only their domain, it is where they belong and where they have been kept.
In western societies women have been on the Street and fighting for their right to be there for a considerable period as the examples of Montesquieu, Baudelaire, Jacques Brel (see below), amongst others and Times Square indicate, but for many coming from backward or relatively undeveloped regions this fight is in its early stages. By way of example a former colleague had recorded a series of interviews with three former refugees from Africa dealing with family based violence and “upside down families”. The female interviewee, entering middle age and with dependent children, had likened traditional marriage in Africa to “a prison” where she was obliged to obey her mother in law and submit to the overall authority of the men of her husband’s family. She initially found the situation in Australia so different and confusing that, she explained, “for two years we go mad”. She meant by this that the breakdown of the rigid and hierarchical boundaries between the House and the Street was so exhilarating and discombobulating that it took, in her experience, two years for the penny to drop that with this new freedom came the opportunity for personal growth and, contained in this package, personal responsibility. That being said, she was under no illusions that upside down was the right way up.
Baudelaire’s ‘heroism of the street’ spoke of this development in the mid 19th century, but over a century earlier Montesquieu had noticed that the cat was already coming out of the bag in his Persian Letters. Montesquieu and I go back a long way, to my first year at university and we parted company soon after (read almost immediately) and too soon for me to really get was he was on about when it came to urban life and modernity. Time, Berman and an ongoing commitment to revolutionary politics have pulled me up and enabled me to appreciate that 280 odd years ago Montesquieu identified what was vital and, in terms of social relations, revolutionary about the city. His heroes, were a couple of expat Sultans (what else), caught up in the thrall of the street where everybody is unveiled. “Here everything speaks out; everything can be seen; everything can be heard; the heart is as open as the face,”” And it wasn’t long before the fact that “everything can be seen” exposed the Bourbons and the aristocracy in general as emperors with no clothes.
And this brings me to the second bell ringing aspect of the distinction between the House and the Street and that is the overtly political aspect, that which should be the bread and butter of those holding revolutionary or radical pretensions. Here I found Berman’s take on Times Square (and by implication its equivalents elsewhere) refreshing, thought provoking and speaking directly to the synthesising sensibility that sits at the analytic heart of Marxism – or, rather, should sit at its heart. Above I had touched upon the modern cities transformative qualities, qualities that enable growth and that throw up new challenges. Berman describes Broadway street culture as being created by the sons of migrants, especially from the more backward areas of Europe, who had come to America seeking a better life. With them they not only brought aspirations that challenged the old ways, but constraints that contained them, a cultural drag from the old times, representing the mores of the traditional House. One of the aspirations of the sons was for this street culture to include women. Women also wanted that space and stepped in, although not yet as equals. It was a task of the daughters (and granddaughters …) to begin to renegotiate the rules of the dance.
But from the word go the daughters were part of the action and as early as 1892, a mere eight years before the formation of the International Ladies’ Garment Union in New York, a writer wrote of working class women, lonely after a working day venturing out of their hall bedroom, cold and lonely ”to lose herself in the unending procession on Broadway.” Berman points out that “there may never have been such a vast variety of women thrown together in any one place before.”
The square emerged as a place where men, women, kids from all over the world dreamed of ‘making spectacles of themselves’, of being unveiled. Picking up the same theme late Belgian singer/songwriter, Jacques Brel, in his song Timid Frieda picked up in the mid 20thC where Montesquieu and Baudelaire had left off in the preceding two. And in doing so he was able to highlight the tensions and challenges of the politics of the Street that had now fully matured. Timid Frieda:
Will they greet her
On the street where
Young strangers travel
On magic carpets
Floating lightly
In beaded caravans
Who can know if
They will free her
On the street where
She comes to join them
There she goes
With her valises
Held so tightly in her hands
Timid Frieda
Will life seize her
On the street where
The new dreams gather
Like fearless robins
Joined together
In high-flying bands
She feels taller
Troubles smaller
On the street where
She’s lost in wonder
There she goes
With her valises
Held so tightly in her hands
Timid Frieda
Won’t return now
To the home where
They do not need her
But always feed her
Little lessons
And platitudes from cans
She is free now
She will be now
On the street where
The beat’s electric
There she goes
With her valises
Held so tightly in her hands
Timid Frieda
Who will lead her
On the street where
The cops all perish
For they can’t break her
And she can take her
Brave new fuck you stand
Yet she’s frightened
Her senses heightened
On the street where
The darkness brightens
There she goes
With her valises
Held so tightly in her hands
Timid Frieda
If you see her
On the street where
The future gathers
Just let her be her
Let her play in
The broken times of sand
There she goes now
Down the sidewalk
On the street where
The world is bursting
There she goes
With her valises
Held so tightly in her hands.
It is a fabulous song. As one would anticipate after 200 plus years Brel’s lyrics picks up Montesquieu’s identification of early promise and Baudelaire’s more developed 19thC depiction and exposes a fully developed dialectic. The left I identify with walk with Timid Frieda offering encouragement if asked for – although she seems to be doing pretty well under her own steam. The square, the Street simultaneously liberated women and presented them (and the guys) with new challenges. But there was no turning back. If the rules of the dance were to be renegotiated you needed to be on the dance floor.
As touched upon above revolutionary parties or organisations (or those with pretensions), have a pretty chequered history when it comes to jumping onto the dance floor, letting their hair down and encouraging others to join in. And when it comes to understanding the transformative possibilities inherent in this they didn’t even make it onto the dance floor. The irony here is that the proverbial masses – and most were working class remember – were showing us the way and embracing “the street where the future gathers.” In doing so they ignored the cautionary, if not disapproving tones coming from comrade central about bourgeois frivolity and self indulgence undermining class solidarity and commitment to ‘the struggle’.
Breaking out and having fun, especially where sex is stirring the pot, has been more House than Street with communist parties and organisations stepping around the issue rather than embracing it. Class struggle and revolutionary politics were serious business (this aspect is true) and demanded a commitment that found the ‘letting one’s hair down’ side of things diversionary (read, with Russian Accent) petty bourgeois individualism. This aspect is not true and is a false antithesis; it is a voice coming from the House.
This is not to suggest that the tension between the serious aspect and being “on the street where the beats electric” is ever in abstract balance. Letting one’s hair down for those revolutionaries in occupied Europe during WW2 was not an option and needed to be put on ice while confusing right wing bourgeois democrats as ‘fascists’ and drawing parallels with Nazism is simply nutty and a sign of isolation. Please pass the bucket of cold water.
What the politics of the Street does, in effect, is ‘invite’ us to look forward, to grapple seriously with the contradictions inherent in its development, those affecting personal development, our place in the dance, in particular and to try and identify the synthesising processes that take us forward, that open up new possibilities and new challenges. But this remains an invitation; free will, choice and responsibility cannot be avoided whether we accept the invitation or not. While it would be drawing a long bow to say that the left’s collapse has been due to its inability to transcend the politics of the House and embrace that of the Street – its failure to get on top of economic challenges and present credible revolutionary alternatives having a bit to say about this collapse too – the left’s conflation of the development of individuality with bourgeois individualism has seen it trailing rather than leading.
This aspect has been a primary interest of mine since my work as a relational and group therapist has forced me to confront the place of choice and personal responsibility within the context of group and family dynamics and by implication social dynamics. This has taken a sharper form with the work I have done over the past 10-15 years with individuals and groups from within what is called new and emerging communities – primarily refugee communities – where the politics of the House, the traditional understandings or role and place, have been predominant. The link between this and the transformative possibilities of the Street became impossible to ignore. Nor was the link to the left’s ambivalence and its failure to confront and transcend its own assumptions regarding individual growth and development, especially as this related to the place of women. We need to get back onto the dance floor and formulate a few moves of our own.
Social media can be good, as we saw with the Egyptian uprising, but it can also be dumb-arsed awful. The latest example of the latter is a clip mourning the death of a gorilla named Koko. The clip has gone viral.
Non-human animals can be taught to respond in particular ways through reward. It’s commonplace and known as operant conditioning. Koko was very good at it, and also displayed a capacity for affection outside her species. A youtube clip showing her caring for a kitten also went viral.
I feel sorry that an impressive beast like Koko has died. On the other hand, not being in her natural environment, not being in the wild, she lived to a long age for a gorilla – 46 years.
What is truly gob-smacking about the latest audio-visual mourning of Koko’s passing is the suggestion that somehow Koko had a wisdom that ‘Man’ does not possess. As Koko puts it, via her ‘sign language’ – of course, as interpreted by her long-time human trainer:
“Man stupid”…
“Fix Earth. Help Earth!”
“Koko love Earth”, “Hurry!” and, a not-so-subtle warning: “Nature sees you”. (The Three Stooges would have responded to the threat with nyaaaahhhh! )
Thus far, the clip has had twenty million views and ten thousand comments. Overwhelmingly, the comments are of the self-righteous, reactionary, Nature worshiping kind that belittles humanity and places the wisdom of the beast/Nature above humanity.
I wonder whether any of those posting such comments have reflected on the fact that they are doing so thanks to the Internet – something no beast could comprehend let alone create. (Not to mention the art of Leonardo or the music of Monk). Etc Etc.
It’s all very reminiscent of the Nazi philosophical commitment to a ‘religion of Nature’ and the ‘wisdom of the forests’. As German National Socialist propaganda put it:
Deep in the forest Will be born the nation’s knowledge
In fundamental contrast to the ‘religion of Nature’ outlook, the social media commentary about Koko brought to my mind Karl Marx’s reference to another famous simian, Kanuman, in his article on the British rule in India in the New York Times in 1853.
Marx wrote that,
‘We must not forget that these little [Hindustan] communities were contaminated by distinctions of caste and by slavery, that they subjugated man to external circumstances instead of elevating man the sovereign of circumstances, that they transformed a self-developing social state into never changing natural destiny, and thus brought about a brutalizing worship of nature, exhibiting its degradation in the fact that man, the sovereign of nature, fell down on his knees in adoration of Kanuman, the monkey, and Sabbala, the cow.
‘England, it is true, in causing a social revolution in Hindostan, was actuated only by the vilest interests, and was stupid in her manner of enforcing them. But that is not the question. The question is, can mankind fulfil its destiny without a fundamental revolution in the social state of Asia? If not, whatever may have been the crimes of England she was the unconscious tool of history in bringing about that revolution’.
* * * *
People, and people alone, are the motive force of History!
US Democrat Senator, Elizabeth Warren, seems to think she has scored some kind of point against Trump by proving in a DNA test that she might have 1/64th or 1,024th Native American ancestry going back six to ten generations. All she has achieved is making the Democrats look even sillier than they have thus far in taking every morsel of Trump bait in the absence of alternative practicable policies.
Something else she achieved was condemnation from the Cherokee Nation whose spokesman rightly saw the claim as patronizing.
But, really, for heaven’s sake, what does it matter? Has our political culture moved so far to the Right that it is now acceptable to believe that DNA is connected to culture? That one’s ‘race’ or ethnicity influences, in some organic way, one’s outlook? That there is a ‘white outlook’ and a ‘black outlook’? Etc. Etc.
I expect this when it comes from the racialist overt Right – like the Hansonites in Australia and ‘Proud Boys’ in the US – but it is just crazy when it comes from people who identify as being on the left. A core left-wing belief for at least 170 years has always been that humanity rises above the volk, and it is our common humanity that matters.
The left that I joined back in the Sixties argued that we were all one, ‘coloured’ and ‘white’ together, with a common class enemy, and that all outlooks are stamped with the brand of a class as the overriding factor, not by the brand of skin tone.
* * * *
Some comments on the above from comrades:
‘I was glad to see the Indian response was to tell Warren to go forth and multiply.
‘The disturbing and deeply reactionary undercurrent to all this is the defacto valorizing of and return to tribalism. My guess with the Cherokee position is that tribalism is a place we have come from – the Toronto piece was pretty explicit with this, speaking of Indigenous peoples as opposed to this or that tribe – not a place we wish to simply return to. Part of the synthesizing journey is to take pride in where you have come from, in other words. The current fetish with identity stuff promotes a stepping back. In the very old and tribal days other tribes people were regarded with mistrust and as not really human, meaning ‘not like us’ and were devalued accordingly. There are parts of Jared Diamond’s The World Until Yesterday, describing his lengthy contact with remotely located hill tribes in New Guinea where he describes precisely this. And I seem to have heard of a time in the 30’s and 40’s of last century when identity politics became a big ‘thing for some Ayran mob…
‘Warren is an opportunist joke. What she is appealing to is as reactionary as all blazes’.
****
‘I agree but think the point is that the Democrats like the ALP are not left. Not sure if we can rescue the “left” or socialism and I prefer to focus on the ideas and drop the labels. The democrats are right wing but it doesn’t matter just that their policies, ideas are wrong and so are the Republicans. They represent the same people and want to focus on the real difference between them, their personalities. Think most people want change and unfortunately there seems no alternative.
‘Am not sure if they are taking the Trump bait or whether Trump is aware they have no option. They cant debate policy as most of their members have the same policies’.
****
‘The Wall Street Journal had an article pointing out that millions of American whites have a speck of African or Indian. So we are all oppressed minorities now.
‘I haven’t really been following “identity politics” closely, so I can’t say too much. It seems hard to counter without being given a nasty label. And the right is having a field day. Great for class unity, not’.
One of my best friends, Peter Gelling, died at the end of September, aged 58. He was a brilliant musician across a range of styles and instruments but mainly blues and guitar and harmonica.
My obituary-feature for him was published in ‘The Canberra Times’.
At the wake for Peter, held at Tilley’s Devine Cafe in Canberra, a recording of his alternative national anthem, ‘Australia we don’t care’, was played – everyone stood for it. He would have loved that.
Peter was frequently annoyed by musicians who claimed to be blues artists yet invariably played rock. When I first saw him play, at a gig where he accompanied Wendy Saddington in August 1990, his subtlety, sophisticated syncopation and authentic blues sensibility jumped out at me, as it was so rare in Australia.
Perhaps for this reason, Peter was able to readily grasp the concept of ‘pseudo-left’, that a left position needs more than an individual or group adopting a label for its justification – just as it takes more than a ‘blues’ label to make one a genuine blues musician.
I’m not aware that he ever adopted an “ism” but he was a deep dialectical thinker and repudiated both the pseudo-left and the overt conservative/reactionary Right. He occasionally checked out C21st Left, and would be pleased for me to pay tribute to him here. He didn’t have formal university qualifications but was better than most academics I know, when it comes to literature and philosophy and critical thought.
A humanist, atheist, and gentle man who continued his service to others in Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous for decades after getting ‘clean’, he liked to quote an anecdote told by Buddy Guy about BB King, which relates to ‘cultural appropriation’:
BB King and I were in Memphis once and this lady ran up to him and said, ‘Hey man, these white people are taking the blues from us.’ BB said, No ma’am. They didn’t take it. You just quit listening to it.’
Peter wrote, performed and recorded his alternative national anthem, ‘Australia we don’t care’ around 2001. It expresses his support for refugees and satirizes nationalism.
Please share it.
Vale Peter.
Here’s another of Peter’s songs – ‘Ought to be ashamed’ – about male chauvinism, reflecting his support for women’s empowerment.
On Thursday, like many other days, President Donald Trump boarded the presidential plane Air Force One. But eagle-eyed onlookers noticed something unusual was tagging along for the ride: a bit of paper stuck to the president’s left shoe.
The gaffe occurred during the president’s trip to Minnesota where he held a rally in Rochester on Thursday calling upon his supporters to reject what he called Democratic attempts to “destroy” his Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
In the video, which has been widely shared on social media, Trump exits his vehicle and makes it all the way to the top of the steps, paper in tow. After he turns to wave and enters the plane, the piece of paper is dislodged.
Trump is soon followed by four men in suits, the last of whom actually bends down to pick up the paper.
The faux pas has sparked speculation about what exactly was stuck to Trump’s shoe. Many Twitter users wondered why none of his staff alerted him to the issue.
Perhaps this is a reporter’s rebellion against being assigned to report twittering?
Or perhaps they have figured out that they will actually be even worse off if Democrats win the House in mid-terms than the mere catastrophe of Trump pressing home victory. It the sort of “gaffe” and “faux pas” and “speculation” that one might write about if ordered to actively campaign for liberals to stay home in despair.
“Excuse me, Mr. President, I believe you have some toilet paper stuck to your shoe” — said no one.
Alas, President Trump made an embarrassing climb into Air Force One on Thursday with what appeared to be some sort of paper product attached to the bottom of his shoe.
Video showed him step out of a limousine in front of the aircraft at the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport and start up the staircase with a couple squares of toilet paper or, perhaps, a napkin, billowing in the wind with each step. What about the dozen or so people surrounding him? (Bueller? . . . Bueller?)
As he reached the top, the president — seemingly oblivious — turned around and waved goodbye.
Historically, toilet paper and shoes have gone together much like humiliating faux pas and deep, tear-inducing belly laughter.
Those who had the privilege to see it happen — either live or later on while watching videos on social media — couldn’t help but share it.
CNN political commentator Ana Navarro posted a clip on social media. “Starting the day with a little comic relief,” she wroteFriday on Twitter.
If, as is plausible, somebody with access to illegal Russian stockpiles did this without authority one would expect the Russian government to try to evade responsibility while being extremely cooperative and anxious to help establish the facts so as to ensure any culprits were found and stopped from seriously damaging Russian as well as other interests.
Instead Russia is churning out the usual stuff from Sputnik and threatening retaliation.
If that is the result of ineptitude on the part of both the British and Russian governments that is not terribly unusual.
But there is the other alternative that the Russians were deliberately testing Western responses. So far those responses are completely inadequate if based on a firm conclusion that the Russian government is either complicit in testing Western responses or unable to control its security personnel who decide to do so without authority.
I feel rather less comfortable about the Russian State not being able to manage its own agencies that are equipped with nerve agents.
If they weren’t clowns they would know how to remotely monitor WiFi networks instead of sitting in a car with the equipment
While enjoying the collapse of mainstream politics I would have thought there would be some insistence that the clowns with nerve gas be dealt with rather than ridiculed. Is nobody functioniing?
Despicable Democrat treatment of GOP establishment judicial nominee has convinced important never Trumpers to back Trump for 2020.
Looks like there won’t be much of a split in GOP, while a Democrat majority in House will be split with culture wars while also passing huge deficits, infrastructure, health care, protectionism etc together with Trumpists against any remaining GOP rump.
On the other hand its getting so bad Rasmussen polls currently give Trump 50% approval so there is some risk he will be stuck with a GOP majority in House if Democrats enthusiasm for grotesque stupidity wanes and they don’t turn out as previously expected.
My guess is he’ll have to go all out on fresh outrages to ensure enough Democrats do turn out for mid-terms.
Having reached the answer to Life The Universe and Everything, I’ll talk about something else.
But first, Trump’s approval rate among likely voters has already bounced back since ending the shutdown and the latest (2019-02-11) hit 52% approval to 47% disapproval, with 39% each for “Strongly”. That may be an outlier but the Democrat celebrations have certainly proved premature.
It seems plausible that the prospective meltdown of aviation as air traffic controllers called in sick after missing two pay packets was a major factor:
If that had been organised by Democrats they would have a victory to celebrate. But it wasn’t. Democrats and the media are still just milling around in confusion.
…Some people were disappointed the interim report contained no recommendations – no tougher legislation, no referrals to the legal authorities – but I was heartened by Commissioner Kenneth Hayne’s grasp of the root cause of the problem and the smart way to tackle it.
Too often, he found, the misconduct was motivated by “greed – the pursuit of short-term profit at the expense of basic standards of honesty . . . From the executive suite to the front line, staff were measured and rewarded by reference to profit and sales”.
Just so. But what induces seemingly decent people to put (personal) profit before people? That’s a question for psychologists, not lawyers. We’re social animals with an unconscious, almost irresistible urge to fit in with the group. A tribal urge.
Most of us get our sense of what’s ethical behaviour from the people around us in our group. If what I’m doing is no worse than what they’re doing, that’s ethical. Few of us have an inner moral compass (set by our membership of other tribes – religious or familial) strong enough to override the pressure we feel under from what our bosses and workmates are saying and doing.
Sociologists call this “norms of acceptable behaviour” within the group. When regulators first said that banks had an unhealthy corporate “culture”, business leaders dismissed this as soft-headed nonsense. Now, no one’s arguing.
But, we’re told, how can you legislate to change culture? Passing laws won’t eliminate dishonesty.
Fortunately, that’s only half true. Rationality tells us people’s behaviour flows from their beliefs, but psychologists tell us it’s the other way round: if you can change people’s behaviour, they’ll change their beliefs to fit (so as to reduce their “cognitive dissonance”).
Hayne says “much more often than not, the conduct now condemned was contrary to law”, which leads him to doubt that passing new laws is the answer.
So what is? His hints make it pretty clear, and I think he’s right. Make sure everyone in banking knows what’s illegal, then police the law vigorously with meaningful penalties. Fear of getting caught will override greed, and a change in behaviour will be reinforced by an improvement in the banking culture.
Ross Gittins is theHerald’seconomics editor.
The above long excerpt and the following sentence is as far as I got.
Or as Uncle Joe put it, change the situation and the beliefs will follow. Assign somebody to do a task and somebody else to check.
That sentence explains the title. But I didn’t have time to read the interim report so I decided to wait for the final report.
I don’t have time to read the final report either and am doubtful that the news reports I have read were written by people who did. I guess my uninformed opinions are as useless as the rest, but here goes.
There are many abuses that have been fixed by enforcement of legislation. Adulteration of food, the factory acts etc. All required inspectors. I have no idea whether or not there will now be some improvement in enforcement and inspection of retail banking. I gather Ross Gittens is still more optimistic but his optimism seems to be based on a prospective shakeup of the agencies that were supposed to enforce banking law. That may happen but there would be more grounds for believing it if whoever was responsible for prosecuting people who take money for services not rendered to dead people was themselves prosecuted for misconduct in public office rather than merely reminded of their duties.
Naturally a billion dollar commission conducted by lawyers will be oriented to solutions that require more lawyers and that do not disband agencies staffed by lawyers or send their leading personnel to prison. But it seems obvious that a culture of greed cannot be avoided by enforcement of laws in a system of property relations oriented around greed as the driving force.
Those abuses that can be fixed eventually will be. But changing business culture requires changing the ownership of business. A working class that owns the economy will certainly need a system of inspectors to enforce laws and prevent the re-emergence of greed as the driving force. Perhaps some smart former corporate lawyers could be retained as technical advisors. But those inspectors cannot be regulatory bodies staffed by lawers. They will have to be based on full transparency enforced by workers doing the checking themselves. The name “cheka” has good historical connotations.
For regulating banking we will have to understand how banking works while actually running it.
Far more important issues than retail ripoffs depend on understanding how banking and finance works. The financial crash we are headed towards as a result of the underlying economic cycle will have much more devastating consequences. As long as workers don’t understand it but “only work here” we are stuck with whatever our saviours from on high deliver.
There seems to be only one recommendation from the inquiry that will remain controversial. Eliminating mortgage brokers. This favors the bigger banks and eliminates about 20,000 sales commission workers pretending to be brokers acting as intermediaries between workers financing homes and banks that are themselves supposed to be financial intermediaries between lenders and borrowers.
I guess its probably a good idea. But its food for thought as to how such matters should be handled in transition from capitalism.
We would still have working class households that want to own their home. As well as the actual construction and urban infrastructure development there will have to be facilities for allocation, transfer etc. People administering “social property” will be in the same position as bankers etc today and as the herd managers who became herd owners in primitive societies.
Under capitalism, without mortgate brokers, workers will go to the big banks for their mortgate loans and be “helped” by bank sales staff paid on a commission basis by banks to increase bank profits. The advantage I see is simply that they will have to learn more about banking.
That will be helpful in figuring out how to organize things ourselves in transition from capitalism. Otherwise such matters that we don’t understand must continue to be organized by people doing it for their own benefit.
1. I take some comfort in this New York Times piece on “Why Trump Will Win a Second Term”:
It worries me that I spend so much time scanning Trump news items. But at least I don’t watch TV at all nor browse social media.
When I did catch occasional TV I found “Reality” shows especially repulsive – like twitter a reminder of how capitalist culture keeps the masses backward.
NYT confirms my view that Trump’s political skills are closely related to his skills as a reality TV “celebrity” (though they don’t mention the “professional wrestler” element or the related skillful trolling because naturally they cannot analyse his main success in encouraging the splodey heads to splode).
According to the article prime time TV audiences have doubled and at least the chattering classes are glued to the Trump reality TV show while others are inclined to vote for him as entertaining.
It would be quite impossible to analyse political developments while glued to prime time TV.
2. Recent themes from the splodey heads have wandered around more than usual, with “explosive” revelations of Stormy Daniels opinions on Trump’s genitalia, transparently vicious #MeToo maneuvers against a Supreme Court judge (with a never-Trump GOP Senator Flake achieving a brilliant own goal by forcing an FBI investigation) and endless snark about Trump being a laughing stock at the UN.
This report from “The Atlantic” seems more accurate on that last point:
As for the rest of the article it takes comfort that other nations are not inclined to actually support Trumpist anti-globalism but does not discuss the likelihood that any plausible Democrat successor to Trump will reinforce populist isolationism and protectionism.
The blind spot is highlighted in this:
The leader of a self-styled nation of immigrants had argued that the “only long-term solution to the migration crisis” is to make the countries that migrants are leaving “great again.”
That argument is self-evidently absurd to the writer. But for revolutionary internationalists solidarity with migrants is part of solidarity against the regimes whose countries are being held back and driving people to leave. We are for a world of open borders with people moving freely not being pushed out of their homes by stagnation and oppression. “Great Again” doesn’t cover it. But a long term solution very clearly does require active and indeed revolutionary measures to fix the countries that are driving people out.
3. As for the own goal there isn’t much doubt that Democrats deliberately leaked allegations at last minute to optimize chances of impacting the mid-terms (not as reported in hope of having a Senate majority after mid-terms, which is still unlikely). Here’s a hint on possible consequences of having demanded FBI involvement:
Whether or not it pans out, there is clearly nobody who can think tactically, let alone strategically in a position to stop Democrats flailing around and doing whatever best suits Trump. Bill Maher’s insistence on Trump being a moron in Steve Bannon video clip confirms they aren’t able to even wrap their minds around the concept that they are being played.
4. Steve Bannon says Stormy Trump’s self-promoting lawyer could be an effective Democrat candidate fighting Trump.
What if President Trump did popular stuff on policy?
In particular, what if Democrats do well in the midterms and take the House and start passing bills, and then Trump takes their most popular ideas and agrees with them? Or at least with watered-down versions of them?
So maybe Trump signs a bill to hike the minimum wage to $12 an hour, a deficit-financed surge in infrastructure spending, some version of a DREAM Act paired to wall funding, and maybe even something like the Manchin-Toomey background check bill.
Up until now, Trump has governed like a very hardline conservative except on trade. But except for authoritarian views on immigration and crime, Trump doesn’t have any personal history of consistency as a conservative. And even during his 2016 campaign, he put forth a much more eclectic, heterodox version of himself than how he’s governed.
Of course, maybe that won’t change no matter what happens in 2018. Maybe he’s a true prisoner of the conservative movement. Maybe he’salwaysharbored Heritage Foundation sympathies and they are just now blooming. But I think a reasonable person should have some humility about his ability to foresee the future and admit that this bipartisan, populist Trump is at least a possibility.
Trump’s path to victory
One immediate consequence of this would be that it would give guys like Ben Sasse and Mike Lee, who sometimes like to position themselves as more high-minded than Trump, the opportunity to actually vote against the president sometimes. Any Trump-Pelosi deal could easily weather a dozen or so defections from the right that would allow that crew to own the brand of “true conservatives” without needing to do anything to check Trump’s corruption or authoritarianism.
Conversely, it would greatly empower the left of the Democratic Party because it would cost more moderate factions their resistance branding.
Trump’s electoral base wouldn’t mind a handful of ideological betrayals since rank-and-file Republicans are really here for the culture war stuff and not for the concrete policy anyway. So Trump would enter the 2020 campaign with his base intact but also with the brand as a freethinking moderate who’s at odds with the right wing of congressional Republicans. Democrats would end up nominating someone with a relatively extreme rejectionist profile, and Trump would be in a good position to improve his approval ratings and get reelected.
Think of it as basically a rerun of Bill Clinton in 1995-’96 with “triangulation.”
Now, of course, there are other historical models. Richard Nixon signed a lot of moderately progressive legislation to try to salvage his presidency, and it didn’t work. And the fairly productive Bush-Pelosi 110th Congress didn’t restore the GOP’s popularity.
Anyway, who knows? But I think the odds of a Trump rebound are underrated.
This is an abbreviated web version of The Weeds newsletter, a limited-runnewsletter through Election Day, that dissects what’s really at stake in the 2018 midterms.Sign up toget the full Weeds newsletter from Matt Yglesias, plus more charts, tweets, and email-only content.
