Orlando and Trump’s America
Omar Mateen, the Florida shooter who had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, just ushered Donald Trump to the White House, Britain out of the European Union, Marine Le Pen to the French presidency, and the world into a downward spiral of escalating violence.
Aged 29, Mateen is the Gavrilo Princip of the early 21st century, the young man who ripped up an old, decaying political order. Like the 19-year-old Bosnian Serb nationalist whose bullets ignited World War I, Mateen has set a spark to a time of inflammable anger.
Of course, these somber imaginings may prove to be no more than that. Mateen has not yet changed the world; he may never.
But there is no question that the largest mass shooting in American history comes at a time of particular unease. In both the United States and Europe, political and economic frustrations have produced a groundswell against the status quo and an apparent readiness to make a leap in the dark. Washington and Brussels have become bywords for paralysis.
Trump and “Brexit” represent action — any action — to shake things up. They are, to their supporters, the comeuppance smug elites deserve.
On top of this, and feeding this, Islam is in epochal crisis. Its Sunni and Shiite branches are mired in violent confrontation. Its adjustment to the modern world has proved faltering and agonized enough to produce a metastasizing strain of violent anti-Western jihadist beliefs to which Mateen — like the San Bernardino shooters — was apparently susceptible.
That he shot revelers in a gay club suggests once again that Islam and sexuality constitute a particularly combustible realm. Liberal Western sexual mores are the most troubling affront to a certain strain of Islam. The resultant confrontation incubates explosive violence.
More...
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/06/14/op ... erica.html
FORMS OF GOVERNANCE
Nationalism and the Brexit Vote
Extract:
And so the British referendum has become something of a battleground for all Western democracies where anti-immigrant hostilities are building.
And even if the “Remain” side prevails on Thursday and Mr. Trump is decisively rejected in November, Western democracies will need to take a long, hard look at the social divide, the insecurities, the alienation, the nationalism and racism that have invaded so many political battlegrounds.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/20/opini ... 87722&_r=0
Extract:
And so the British referendum has become something of a battleground for all Western democracies where anti-immigrant hostilities are building.
And even if the “Remain” side prevails on Thursday and Mr. Trump is decisively rejected in November, Western democracies will need to take a long, hard look at the social divide, the insecurities, the alienation, the nationalism and racism that have invaded so many political battlegrounds.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/20/opini ... 87722&_r=0
Another Age of Discovery
Have we been here before? I know — it feels as if the internet, virtual reality, Donald Trump, Facebook, sequencing of the human genome and machines that can reason better than people constitute a change in the pace of change without precedent. But we’ve actually been through an extraordinarily rapid transition like this before in history — a transition we can learn a lot from.
Ian Goldin, director of the Oxford Martin School at Oxford University, and Chris Kutarna, also of Oxford Martin, have just published a book — “Age of Discovery: Navigating the Risks and Rewards of Our New Renaissance” — about lessons we can draw from the period 1450 to 1550, known as the Age of Discovery. It was when the world made a series of great leaps forward, propelled by da Vinci, Michelangelo, Copernicus and Columbus, that produced the Renaissance and reshaped science, education, manufacturing, communications, politics and geopolitics.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/22/opini ... 87722&_r=0
Have we been here before? I know — it feels as if the internet, virtual reality, Donald Trump, Facebook, sequencing of the human genome and machines that can reason better than people constitute a change in the pace of change without precedent. But we’ve actually been through an extraordinarily rapid transition like this before in history — a transition we can learn a lot from.
Ian Goldin, director of the Oxford Martin School at Oxford University, and Chris Kutarna, also of Oxford Martin, have just published a book — “Age of Discovery: Navigating the Risks and Rewards of Our New Renaissance” — about lessons we can draw from the period 1450 to 1550, known as the Age of Discovery. It was when the world made a series of great leaps forward, propelled by da Vinci, Michelangelo, Copernicus and Columbus, that produced the Renaissance and reshaped science, education, manufacturing, communications, politics and geopolitics.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/22/opini ... 87722&_r=0
Some leading opinions on the impact of Britain leaving the EU.
"If the people — usually a repository of common sense and practicality — do something that appears neither sensible nor practical, then it forces a period of long and hard reflection. My own politics is waking to this new political landscape. The same dangerous impulses are visible, too, in American politics, but the challenges of globalization cannot be met by isolationism or shutting borders.
The center must regain its political traction, rediscover its capacity to analyze the problems we all face and find solutions that rise above the populist anger. If we do not succeed in beating back the far left and far right before they take the nations of Europe on this reckless experiment, it will end the way such rash action always does in history: at best, in disillusion; at worst, in rancorous division. The center must hold."
Tony Blair was the prime minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from 1997 to 2007.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/26/opini ... 05309&_r=0
******
"And if this Britain has shown itself vulnerable to nationalist, antiglobalization and anti-immigrant sentiments, what of the populist rebellions that have spread through other European states? Will the British precedent embolden other xenophobic movements, weakening the remaining union? And what will be the impact on the credibility of the North Atlantic alliance now that Europe’s leading military power has shown its reluctance to participate in European affairs?"
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD JUNE 24, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/25/opini ... d=45305309
********
"The colossal leap in the dark that a traditionally cautious people — the British — were prepared to take has to be taken seriously. It suggests that other such leaps could occur elsewhere, perhaps in Trump’s America. A Trump victory in November is more plausible now because it has an immediate precedent in a developed democracy ready to trash the status quo for the high-risk unknown.
Fifty-two percent of the British population was ready to face higher unemployment, a weaker currency, possible recession, political turbulence, the loss of access to a market of a half-billion people, a messy divorce that may take as long as two years to complete, a very long subsequent negotiation of Britain’s relationship with Europe, and the tortuous redrafting of laws and trade treaties and environmental regulations — all for what the right-wing leader Nigel Farage daftly called “Independence Day.” Britain was a sovereign nation before this vote in every significant sense. It remains so. Estrangement Day would be more apt."
Britain’s Brexit Leap in the Dark
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/25/opini ... pe=article
"If the people — usually a repository of common sense and practicality — do something that appears neither sensible nor practical, then it forces a period of long and hard reflection. My own politics is waking to this new political landscape. The same dangerous impulses are visible, too, in American politics, but the challenges of globalization cannot be met by isolationism or shutting borders.
The center must regain its political traction, rediscover its capacity to analyze the problems we all face and find solutions that rise above the populist anger. If we do not succeed in beating back the far left and far right before they take the nations of Europe on this reckless experiment, it will end the way such rash action always does in history: at best, in disillusion; at worst, in rancorous division. The center must hold."
Tony Blair was the prime minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from 1997 to 2007.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/26/opini ... 05309&_r=0
******
"And if this Britain has shown itself vulnerable to nationalist, antiglobalization and anti-immigrant sentiments, what of the populist rebellions that have spread through other European states? Will the British precedent embolden other xenophobic movements, weakening the remaining union? And what will be the impact on the credibility of the North Atlantic alliance now that Europe’s leading military power has shown its reluctance to participate in European affairs?"
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD JUNE 24, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/25/opini ... d=45305309
********
"The colossal leap in the dark that a traditionally cautious people — the British — were prepared to take has to be taken seriously. It suggests that other such leaps could occur elsewhere, perhaps in Trump’s America. A Trump victory in November is more plausible now because it has an immediate precedent in a developed democracy ready to trash the status quo for the high-risk unknown.
Fifty-two percent of the British population was ready to face higher unemployment, a weaker currency, possible recession, political turbulence, the loss of access to a market of a half-billion people, a messy divorce that may take as long as two years to complete, a very long subsequent negotiation of Britain’s relationship with Europe, and the tortuous redrafting of laws and trade treaties and environmental regulations — all for what the right-wing leader Nigel Farage daftly called “Independence Day.” Britain was a sovereign nation before this vote in every significant sense. It remains so. Estrangement Day would be more apt."
Britain’s Brexit Leap in the Dark
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/25/opini ... pe=article
Revolt of the Masses
Extract:
There’s now a rift within the working class between mostly older people who are self disciplined, respectable and, often, bigoted, and parts of a younger cohort that are more disordered, less industrious, more celebrity-obsessed, but also more tolerant and open to the world.
Trump (and probably Brexit) voters are in the first group. They are not poor, making on average over $70,000 a year. But they perceive that their grandchildren’s world is quickly coming apart.
From 1945 to 1995, conservative and liberal elites shared variations of the same vision of the future. Liberals emphasized multilateral institutions and conservatives emphasized free trade. Either way, the future would be global, integrated and multiethnic.
But the elites pushed too hard, and now history is moving in the opposite direction. The less-educated masses have a different conception of the future, a vision that is more closed, collective, protective and segmented.
Their pain is indivisible: economic stress, community breakdown, ethnic bigotry and a loss of social status and self-worth. When people feel their world is vanishing, they are easy prey for fact-free magical thinking and demagogues who blame immigrants.
We need a better form of nationalism, a vision of patriotism that gives dignity to those who have been disrespected, emphasizes that we are one nation and is confident and open to the world. I’m thinking we have a lot to learn from Theodore Roosevelt, but that’s a topic for another day.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/28/opini ... d=71987722
Extract:
There’s now a rift within the working class between mostly older people who are self disciplined, respectable and, often, bigoted, and parts of a younger cohort that are more disordered, less industrious, more celebrity-obsessed, but also more tolerant and open to the world.
Trump (and probably Brexit) voters are in the first group. They are not poor, making on average over $70,000 a year. But they perceive that their grandchildren’s world is quickly coming apart.
From 1945 to 1995, conservative and liberal elites shared variations of the same vision of the future. Liberals emphasized multilateral institutions and conservatives emphasized free trade. Either way, the future would be global, integrated and multiethnic.
But the elites pushed too hard, and now history is moving in the opposite direction. The less-educated masses have a different conception of the future, a vision that is more closed, collective, protective and segmented.
Their pain is indivisible: economic stress, community breakdown, ethnic bigotry and a loss of social status and self-worth. When people feel their world is vanishing, they are easy prey for fact-free magical thinking and demagogues who blame immigrants.
We need a better form of nationalism, a vision of patriotism that gives dignity to those who have been disrespected, emphasizes that we are one nation and is confident and open to the world. I’m thinking we have a lot to learn from Theodore Roosevelt, but that’s a topic for another day.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/28/opini ... d=71987722
The Myth of Cosmopolitanism
NOW that populist rebellions are taking Britain out of the European Union and the Republican Party out of contention for the presidency, perhaps we should speak no more of left and right, liberals and conservatives. From now on the great political battles will be fought between nationalists and internationalists, nativists and globalists. From now on the loyalties that matter will be narrowly tribal — Make America Great Again, this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England — or multicultural and cosmopolitan.
Well, maybe. But describing the division this way has one great flaw. It gives the elite side of the debate (the side that does most of the describing) too much credit for being truly cosmopolitan.
Genuine cosmopolitanism is a rare thing. It requires comfort with real difference, with forms of life that are truly exotic relative to one’s own. It takes its cue from a Roman playwright’s line that “nothing human is alien to me,” and goes outward ready to be transformed by what it finds.
The people who consider themselves “cosmopolitan” in today’s West, by contrast, are part of a meritocratic order that transforms difference into similarity, by plucking the best and brightest from everywhere and homogenizing them into the peculiar species that we call “global citizens.”
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/opini ... ef=opinion
NOW that populist rebellions are taking Britain out of the European Union and the Republican Party out of contention for the presidency, perhaps we should speak no more of left and right, liberals and conservatives. From now on the great political battles will be fought between nationalists and internationalists, nativists and globalists. From now on the loyalties that matter will be narrowly tribal — Make America Great Again, this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England — or multicultural and cosmopolitan.
Well, maybe. But describing the division this way has one great flaw. It gives the elite side of the debate (the side that does most of the describing) too much credit for being truly cosmopolitan.
Genuine cosmopolitanism is a rare thing. It requires comfort with real difference, with forms of life that are truly exotic relative to one’s own. It takes its cue from a Roman playwright’s line that “nothing human is alien to me,” and goes outward ready to be transformed by what it finds.
The people who consider themselves “cosmopolitan” in today’s West, by contrast, are part of a meritocratic order that transforms difference into similarity, by plucking the best and brightest from everywhere and homogenizing them into the peculiar species that we call “global citizens.”
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/opini ... ef=opinion
Queen Rania's Speech at Harvard
This video is about governance issues arising from different perspectives and narratives between the East and the West. Very insightful analysis of the global issues facing mankind.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6ht1rw3ik9s
This video is about governance issues arising from different perspectives and narratives between the East and the West. Very insightful analysis of the global issues facing mankind.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6ht1rw3ik9s
Are We on the Path to National Ruin?
San Antonio — I never really understood how fascism could have come to Europe, but I think I understand better now. You start with some fundamental historical transformation, like the Great Depression or the shift to an information economy. A certain number of people are dispossessed. They lose identity, self-respect and hope.
They begin to base their sense of self-worth on their tribe, not their behavior. They become mired in their resentments, spiraling deeper into the addiction of their own victimology. They fall for politicians who lie about the source of their problems and about how they can surmount them. Facts lose their meaning. Entertainment replaces reality.
Once facts are unmoored, everything else is unmoored, too. People who value humility and kindness in private life abandon those traits when they select leaders in the common sphere. Hardened by a corrosive cynicism, they fall for morally deranged little showmen.
And then perhaps there’s a catalyzing event. Societies in this condition are culturally tense and socially isolated. That means there are a lot of lonely, alienated young men seeking self-worth through violence. Some wear police badges; some sit in their rooms fantasizing of mass murder. When they act, the results can be convulsive.
More..
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/12/opini ... ef=opinion
San Antonio — I never really understood how fascism could have come to Europe, but I think I understand better now. You start with some fundamental historical transformation, like the Great Depression or the shift to an information economy. A certain number of people are dispossessed. They lose identity, self-respect and hope.
They begin to base their sense of self-worth on their tribe, not their behavior. They become mired in their resentments, spiraling deeper into the addiction of their own victimology. They fall for politicians who lie about the source of their problems and about how they can surmount them. Facts lose their meaning. Entertainment replaces reality.
Once facts are unmoored, everything else is unmoored, too. People who value humility and kindness in private life abandon those traits when they select leaders in the common sphere. Hardened by a corrosive cynicism, they fall for morally deranged little showmen.
And then perhaps there’s a catalyzing event. Societies in this condition are culturally tense and socially isolated. That means there are a lot of lonely, alienated young men seeking self-worth through violence. Some wear police badges; some sit in their rooms fantasizing of mass murder. When they act, the results can be convulsive.
More..
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/12/opini ... ef=opinion
The New Ideology of the New Cold War
HAMBURG, Germany — In its heyday, Communism claimed that capitalism had betrayed the worker. So what should we make of Moscow’s new battle cry, that democracy has betrayed the voter?
It’s a worldview that has become increasingly clear through the era of Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, via a mosaic of public political statements, off-the-record conversations with academics and intelligence insights. Let’s call it “orderism.”
Orderism has started to challenge democracy in many parts of the world — Turkey, Poland, the Philippines. But Mr. Putin’s Russia believes it holds the copyright on this formula, and sees it as the sharp end of the wedge it is trying to drive among the nations of the West.
The ideology’s basic political premise is that liberal democracy and international law have not lived up to their promise. Instead of creating stability, they have produced inequality and chaos. The secular religion worshiped in the Western parliaments was globalization (or, in the European Union’s case, Europeanization). These beliefs, according to the orderists, overlooked the downsides.
The most obvious downside, according to orderism, is that open borders and global trade have led to vanishing jobs and mass migration. At the same time, a mental borderlessness has shaken liberal societies: With potentially every traditional value now up for negotiation, no habit, custom or institution is sacred. The same leniency that allows for the free sale of marijuana, same-sex marriages and the crowning of a bearded drag queen named Conchita Wurst as the winner of the 2014 Eurovision song contest also tolerates militant Islamism within Western borders.
It is the same moral weakness and decadence, orderism warns, that preceded the fall of previous empires. Like Nero, the establishment is fiddling in its palaces while Rome burns.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/02/opini ... ef=opinion
HAMBURG, Germany — In its heyday, Communism claimed that capitalism had betrayed the worker. So what should we make of Moscow’s new battle cry, that democracy has betrayed the voter?
It’s a worldview that has become increasingly clear through the era of Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, via a mosaic of public political statements, off-the-record conversations with academics and intelligence insights. Let’s call it “orderism.”
Orderism has started to challenge democracy in many parts of the world — Turkey, Poland, the Philippines. But Mr. Putin’s Russia believes it holds the copyright on this formula, and sees it as the sharp end of the wedge it is trying to drive among the nations of the West.
The ideology’s basic political premise is that liberal democracy and international law have not lived up to their promise. Instead of creating stability, they have produced inequality and chaos. The secular religion worshiped in the Western parliaments was globalization (or, in the European Union’s case, Europeanization). These beliefs, according to the orderists, overlooked the downsides.
The most obvious downside, according to orderism, is that open borders and global trade have led to vanishing jobs and mass migration. At the same time, a mental borderlessness has shaken liberal societies: With potentially every traditional value now up for negotiation, no habit, custom or institution is sacred. The same leniency that allows for the free sale of marijuana, same-sex marriages and the crowning of a bearded drag queen named Conchita Wurst as the winner of the 2014 Eurovision song contest also tolerates militant Islamism within Western borders.
It is the same moral weakness and decadence, orderism warns, that preceded the fall of previous empires. Like Nero, the establishment is fiddling in its palaces while Rome burns.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/02/opini ... ef=opinion
Why America’s Leadership Fails
We’ve clearly had a failure of leadership in this country. The political system is not working as it should. Big problems are not being addressed.
But what’s the nature of that failure? The leading theory is that it’s the corruption: There is so much money flowing through Washington that the special interests get what they want and everyone else gets the shaft. Another theory has to do with insularity: The elites spend so much time within the Acela corridor that they don’t have a clue about what is going on beyond it.
There’s merit in both theories. But I’d point to something deeper: Over the past few decades, thousands of good people have gone into public service, but they have found themselves enmeshed in a system that drains them of their sense of vocation.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/23/opini ... tml?src=me
We’ve clearly had a failure of leadership in this country. The political system is not working as it should. Big problems are not being addressed.
But what’s the nature of that failure? The leading theory is that it’s the corruption: There is so much money flowing through Washington that the special interests get what they want and everyone else gets the shaft. Another theory has to do with insularity: The elites spend so much time within the Acela corridor that they don’t have a clue about what is going on beyond it.
There’s merit in both theories. But I’d point to something deeper: Over the past few decades, thousands of good people have gone into public service, but they have found themselves enmeshed in a system that drains them of their sense of vocation.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/23/opini ... tml?src=me
Identity Politics Run Amok
Once, I seem to recall, we had philosophical and ideological differences. Once, politics was a debate between liberals and conservatives, between different views of government, different views on values and America’s role in the world.
But this year, it seems, everything has been stripped down to the bone. Politics is dividing along crude identity lines — along race and class. Are you a native-born white or are you an outsider? Are you one of the people or one of the elites?
Politics is no longer about argument or discussion; it’s about trying to put your opponents into the box of the untouchables.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/02/opini ... &te=1&_r=0
Once, I seem to recall, we had philosophical and ideological differences. Once, politics was a debate between liberals and conservatives, between different views of government, different views on values and America’s role in the world.
But this year, it seems, everything has been stripped down to the bone. Politics is dividing along crude identity lines — along race and class. Are you a native-born white or are you an outsider? Are you one of the people or one of the elites?
Politics is no longer about argument or discussion; it’s about trying to put your opponents into the box of the untouchables.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/02/opini ... &te=1&_r=0
Time for a Realignment
Extract:
Politics is catching up to social reality. The crucial social divide today is between those who feel the core trends of the global, information-age economy as tailwinds at their backs and those who feel them as headwinds in their face.
That is to say, the most important social divide today is between a well-educated America that is marked by economic openness, traditional family structures, high social capital and high trust in institutions, and a less-educated America that is marked by economic insecurity, anarchic family structures, fraying community bonds and a pervasive sense of betrayal and distrust.
These two groups live in entirely different universes. Right now each party has a foot in each universe, but those coalitions won’t last. Before too long the politics will break down into openness versus closedness, dynamism versus stability, what Ronald Brownstein of The Atlantic described in 2012 as the Coalition of Transformation versus the Coalition of Restoration.
.......
We don’t normally think that politics is divided along trust lines. But this year we’re seeing huge chasms depending upon how much trust you feel toward your neighbors and your national institutions. Disaffected low-trust millennials see things differently than the Hollywood, tech, media and academic professionals who actually run the party.
This sort of divide is being replicated all around the world. The distinctly American feature is race. If the Republicans can drop the racial wedges — which admittedly may be a big ask — and become more the party designed to succor those who are disaffected from the globalizing information age, then it might win over some minority voters, and the existing party alignments will unravel in short order.
Polls suggest Democrats will win among college-educated voters and Republicans among whites without college degrees. The social, mental and emotional gap between those two groups is getting wider and wider. That’s the future of American politics. Republicans are town. Democrats are gown. Could get ugly.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/09/opini ... rc=me&_r=0
Extract:
Politics is catching up to social reality. The crucial social divide today is between those who feel the core trends of the global, information-age economy as tailwinds at their backs and those who feel them as headwinds in their face.
That is to say, the most important social divide today is between a well-educated America that is marked by economic openness, traditional family structures, high social capital and high trust in institutions, and a less-educated America that is marked by economic insecurity, anarchic family structures, fraying community bonds and a pervasive sense of betrayal and distrust.
These two groups live in entirely different universes. Right now each party has a foot in each universe, but those coalitions won’t last. Before too long the politics will break down into openness versus closedness, dynamism versus stability, what Ronald Brownstein of The Atlantic described in 2012 as the Coalition of Transformation versus the Coalition of Restoration.
.......
We don’t normally think that politics is divided along trust lines. But this year we’re seeing huge chasms depending upon how much trust you feel toward your neighbors and your national institutions. Disaffected low-trust millennials see things differently than the Hollywood, tech, media and academic professionals who actually run the party.
This sort of divide is being replicated all around the world. The distinctly American feature is race. If the Republicans can drop the racial wedges — which admittedly may be a big ask — and become more the party designed to succor those who are disaffected from the globalizing information age, then it might win over some minority voters, and the existing party alignments will unravel in short order.
Polls suggest Democrats will win among college-educated voters and Republicans among whites without college degrees. The social, mental and emotional gap between those two groups is getting wider and wider. That’s the future of American politics. Republicans are town. Democrats are gown. Could get ugly.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/09/opini ... rc=me&_r=0
Put Globalization to Work for Democracies
Extract:
The bigger worry today is that unmanaged globalization is undermining democracy. Democratic politics remain tethered to nation-states, while institutions that make the rules for global markets are either weak or seem too distant, especially to middle- and lower-class voters.
Globalization has deepened the economic and cultural divisions between those who can take advantage of the global economy and those who don’t have the resources and skills to do so. Nativist politicians like Donald J. Trump have channeled the resulting discontent as hostility to outsiders: Mexican or Polish immigrants, Chinese exporters, minorities.
We need to rescue globalization not just from populists, but also from its cheerleaders. Globalization evangelists have done great damage to their cause not just by underplaying the real fears and concerns on which the Trumps of this world thrive, but by overlooking the benefits of a more moderate form of globalization.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/opini ... inion&_r=0
Extract:
The bigger worry today is that unmanaged globalization is undermining democracy. Democratic politics remain tethered to nation-states, while institutions that make the rules for global markets are either weak or seem too distant, especially to middle- and lower-class voters.
Globalization has deepened the economic and cultural divisions between those who can take advantage of the global economy and those who don’t have the resources and skills to do so. Nativist politicians like Donald J. Trump have channeled the resulting discontent as hostility to outsiders: Mexican or Polish immigrants, Chinese exporters, minorities.
We need to rescue globalization not just from populists, but also from its cheerleaders. Globalization evangelists have done great damage to their cause not just by underplaying the real fears and concerns on which the Trumps of this world thrive, but by overlooking the benefits of a more moderate form of globalization.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/opini ... inion&_r=0
The Age of Reaction
In the normal telling, history is driven by visionaries and revolutionaries. If you studied history in school you probably plowed through book after book about this revolution or that one — the American Revolution or the French, the industrial revolution or the information one. In the normal telling of the past, events are driven by revolutionaries, and the few reactionaries who stand in the way get run over.
But really, history is often a volley between revolutionaries (who take control in some periods) and reactionaries (who drive events in others). Today, as the Columbia political theorist Mark Lilla points out in his compelling new book, “The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction,” reactionaries are in the saddle.
Reactionaries, whether angry white Trumpians, European nationalists, radical Islamists or left-wing anti-globalists, are loud, self-confident and on the march.
Reactionaries come in different stripes but share a similar mentality: There was once a golden age, when people knew their place and lived in harmony. But then that golden age was betrayed by the elites. “The betrayal of elites is the linchpin of every reactionary story,” Lilla writes.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/27/opini ... ef=opinion
In the normal telling, history is driven by visionaries and revolutionaries. If you studied history in school you probably plowed through book after book about this revolution or that one — the American Revolution or the French, the industrial revolution or the information one. In the normal telling of the past, events are driven by revolutionaries, and the few reactionaries who stand in the way get run over.
But really, history is often a volley between revolutionaries (who take control in some periods) and reactionaries (who drive events in others). Today, as the Columbia political theorist Mark Lilla points out in his compelling new book, “The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction,” reactionaries are in the saddle.
Reactionaries, whether angry white Trumpians, European nationalists, radical Islamists or left-wing anti-globalists, are loud, self-confident and on the march.
Reactionaries come in different stripes but share a similar mentality: There was once a golden age, when people knew their place and lived in harmony. But then that golden age was betrayed by the elites. “The betrayal of elites is the linchpin of every reactionary story,” Lilla writes.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/27/opini ... ef=opinion
If War Can Have Ethics, Wall Street Can, Too
Extract:
Despite the recent urging of high-profile figures like Pope Francis and Senator Bernie Sanders to establish a “moral economy,” we have not. Free-market advocates hold fast to justifications that amount to variations on the “invisible hand” theory of Adam Smith — that the economy is not a moral space, but one that relies on a free and fair market, self-interested (as opposed to selfish) actors and amoral (as opposed to immoral) calculation to arrive at the most efficient and innovative outcomes. The invisible hand of the market must be allowed to act; placing moral limits on the economy, they argue, would hinder this flourishing.
To some, the unbridled force and overarching goal to be pursued is the efficiency of the market, even to the detriment of society, transforming market theory into a sort of divine scripture, to be faithfully followed. The suggestion of a moral economy is decried for the inefficiencies that moral limits would place on behavior in the market. It is as if society exists to serve the market, not the other way around.
The pursuit of a comparative advantage in the market has come to justify nearly any behavior and its consequences. The result of this approach in the United States is already well-known — a staggering level of economic inequality and widespread, devastating effects on millions of citizens struggling against this tide.
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/03/opini ... ef=opinion
Extract:
Despite the recent urging of high-profile figures like Pope Francis and Senator Bernie Sanders to establish a “moral economy,” we have not. Free-market advocates hold fast to justifications that amount to variations on the “invisible hand” theory of Adam Smith — that the economy is not a moral space, but one that relies on a free and fair market, self-interested (as opposed to selfish) actors and amoral (as opposed to immoral) calculation to arrive at the most efficient and innovative outcomes. The invisible hand of the market must be allowed to act; placing moral limits on the economy, they argue, would hinder this flourishing.
To some, the unbridled force and overarching goal to be pursued is the efficiency of the market, even to the detriment of society, transforming market theory into a sort of divine scripture, to be faithfully followed. The suggestion of a moral economy is decried for the inefficiencies that moral limits would place on behavior in the market. It is as if society exists to serve the market, not the other way around.
The pursuit of a comparative advantage in the market has come to justify nearly any behavior and its consequences. The result of this approach in the United States is already well-known — a staggering level of economic inequality and widespread, devastating effects on millions of citizens struggling against this tide.
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/03/opini ... ef=opinion
Among the Post-Liberals
THE Western system — liberal, democratic, capitalist — has been essentially unchallenged from the inside for decades, its ideological rivals discredited or tamed. Marxists retreated to academic fastnesses, fascists to online message boards, and Western Christianity accepted pluralism and abandoned throne-and-altar dreams.
The liberal system’s weak spots did not go away. It delivered peace and order and prosperity, but it attenuated pre-liberal forces – tribal, familial, religious — that speak more deeply than consumer capitalism to basic human needs: the craving for honor, the yearning for community, the desire for metaphysical hope.
Those needs endured, muted but not eliminated by greater social equality and rising G.D.P. Nonetheless the liberal consensus seemed impressively resilient, even in the midst of elite misgovernment. 9/11 did not shake it meaningfully, nor did the Iraq war, and it seemed at first to weather the financial crisis as well.
Now, though, there is suddenly resistance. Its political form is an angry nationalism, a revolt of the masses in both the United States and Europe. But the more important development may be happening in intellectual circles, where many younger writers regard the liberal consensus as something to be transcended or rejected, rather than reformed or redeemed.
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/09/opini ... 87722&_r=0
THE Western system — liberal, democratic, capitalist — has been essentially unchallenged from the inside for decades, its ideological rivals discredited or tamed. Marxists retreated to academic fastnesses, fascists to online message boards, and Western Christianity accepted pluralism and abandoned throne-and-altar dreams.
The liberal system’s weak spots did not go away. It delivered peace and order and prosperity, but it attenuated pre-liberal forces – tribal, familial, religious — that speak more deeply than consumer capitalism to basic human needs: the craving for honor, the yearning for community, the desire for metaphysical hope.
Those needs endured, muted but not eliminated by greater social equality and rising G.D.P. Nonetheless the liberal consensus seemed impressively resilient, even in the midst of elite misgovernment. 9/11 did not shake it meaningfully, nor did the Iraq war, and it seemed at first to weather the financial crisis as well.
Now, though, there is suddenly resistance. Its political form is an angry nationalism, a revolt of the masses in both the United States and Europe. But the more important development may be happening in intellectual circles, where many younger writers regard the liberal consensus as something to be transcended or rejected, rather than reformed or redeemed.
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/09/opini ... 87722&_r=0
Pawns for Fascism
This piece from 1937 envisions the forces that make a demagogue like Trump possible
Stephen Bates gives Reinhold Niebuhr his “Nostradamus moment” in an essay articulating how the political philosopher “envisioned the forces that make a Trump possible.” “A shrewd demagogue,” Bates writes, “may catalyze a mass movement by preying on their social anxiety, playing to their anti-collectivism, and directing their resentment toward scapegoats.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Of the various strata of human society the small tradesmen, clerks, white-collar workers and poorer farmers, who constitute the so-called lower middle class, would seem to the casual observer to be least capable of fulfilling a fateful role in contemporary social history. Yet the indications are that they hold a position in modern society of such strategic significance that the fate of modern civilization may well be decided by them. If this should prove true it is also fairly certain that their decision will be an unfortunate one.
The significance of the lower middle class does not derive from its possession of any particular political virtue or capacity. On the contrary it exceeds all classes in political ineptitude. But recent developments in lower middle class politics prove that social desperation may be compounded with political confusion into an independent political impulse of such fanatic power and such ambiguous direction that it may become the chief source of confusion in an age of confusion. Individual life is probably under stricter personal discipline in lower middle class existence than anywhere else in society. In that sense the genteel poor are a force for stability in a social structure. But they are least able to find themselves amidst the complexities of a technical civilization and the perplexities of a period of change. They are therefore potentially the chief source of social disease in modern history.
More....
https://theamericanscholar.org/pawns-fo ... urce=email
This piece from 1937 envisions the forces that make a demagogue like Trump possible
Stephen Bates gives Reinhold Niebuhr his “Nostradamus moment” in an essay articulating how the political philosopher “envisioned the forces that make a Trump possible.” “A shrewd demagogue,” Bates writes, “may catalyze a mass movement by preying on their social anxiety, playing to their anti-collectivism, and directing their resentment toward scapegoats.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Of the various strata of human society the small tradesmen, clerks, white-collar workers and poorer farmers, who constitute the so-called lower middle class, would seem to the casual observer to be least capable of fulfilling a fateful role in contemporary social history. Yet the indications are that they hold a position in modern society of such strategic significance that the fate of modern civilization may well be decided by them. If this should prove true it is also fairly certain that their decision will be an unfortunate one.
The significance of the lower middle class does not derive from its possession of any particular political virtue or capacity. On the contrary it exceeds all classes in political ineptitude. But recent developments in lower middle class politics prove that social desperation may be compounded with political confusion into an independent political impulse of such fanatic power and such ambiguous direction that it may become the chief source of confusion in an age of confusion. Individual life is probably under stricter personal discipline in lower middle class existence than anywhere else in society. In that sense the genteel poor are a force for stability in a social structure. But they are least able to find themselves amidst the complexities of a technical civilization and the perplexities of a period of change. They are therefore potentially the chief source of social disease in modern history.
More....
https://theamericanscholar.org/pawns-fo ... urce=email
The Social Physics of Trump’s Shock Tactics
Even as some describe his campaign as being in “melt-down mode,” political scientists and pundits are still searching for ways to explain the “Trump phenomenon.”1 They attribute his success in the Republican primaries to a host of factors, from the American public’s frustration with establishment politics to their belief that he can provide national and economic security.
But political scientists are not the only ones curious about Trump—physicists are, too.
Chief among them is Serge Galam, director of research at the National Center for Scientific Research, in France, and “the father of sociophysics,” which uses statistical physics techniques to analyze social phenomena. In the 1980s, he began developing a threshold model to explain how minority opinions can, in a democratic, majority-rule voting system, end up dominating the discourse. According to the model, people update their opinions by adhering to the majority opinion of local groups (made of two to six members). This is usually straightforward: If an opinion is held by more than 50 percent of a given group, its members will adopt it and spread it to other groups they end up joining.
But when the opinion in those local groups is split evenly, Galam found, something odd happens: Minority opinions become much more likely to dominate due to the presence of latent prejudices in the population. These run the gamut from sexism and racism, to more innocuous beliefs that are simply unexamined or inherited. Voters usually suppress their prejudices. But suppose an agent comes along that legitimizes some of them, causing some percentage of the electorate to begin trying to convince their friends and neighbors of them. Galam’s model shows that an opinion held by only 15 to 25 percent of the population can spread to eventually be held by the majority. So, in an evenly split electorate, these ideas—unleashed by an inflammatory candidate—may be enough to surmount the low 15-25 percent threshold necessary for them to dominate. (Just think of a phase diagram and its “tipping point.”) In order for the majority opinion to take control, it needs to start at above an 85 percent share of the population.
More...
http://nautil.us//blog/the-social-physi ... f-60760513
Even as some describe his campaign as being in “melt-down mode,” political scientists and pundits are still searching for ways to explain the “Trump phenomenon.”1 They attribute his success in the Republican primaries to a host of factors, from the American public’s frustration with establishment politics to their belief that he can provide national and economic security.
But political scientists are not the only ones curious about Trump—physicists are, too.
Chief among them is Serge Galam, director of research at the National Center for Scientific Research, in France, and “the father of sociophysics,” which uses statistical physics techniques to analyze social phenomena. In the 1980s, he began developing a threshold model to explain how minority opinions can, in a democratic, majority-rule voting system, end up dominating the discourse. According to the model, people update their opinions by adhering to the majority opinion of local groups (made of two to six members). This is usually straightforward: If an opinion is held by more than 50 percent of a given group, its members will adopt it and spread it to other groups they end up joining.
But when the opinion in those local groups is split evenly, Galam found, something odd happens: Minority opinions become much more likely to dominate due to the presence of latent prejudices in the population. These run the gamut from sexism and racism, to more innocuous beliefs that are simply unexamined or inherited. Voters usually suppress their prejudices. But suppose an agent comes along that legitimizes some of them, causing some percentage of the electorate to begin trying to convince their friends and neighbors of them. Galam’s model shows that an opinion held by only 15 to 25 percent of the population can spread to eventually be held by the majority. So, in an evenly split electorate, these ideas—unleashed by an inflammatory candidate—may be enough to surmount the low 15-25 percent threshold necessary for them to dominate. (Just think of a phase diagram and its “tipping point.”) In order for the majority opinion to take control, it needs to start at above an 85 percent share of the population.
More...
http://nautil.us//blog/the-social-physi ... f-60760513
Consider a Monarchy, America
Southmoor, England — As a foreigner with dual British and Russian citizenship, it is not for me to comment at length on the merits of the rival candidates for the presidency of the United States. But it seems uncontroversial to say that neither appears to be a Washington or a Lincoln, and that the elective presidency is coming under increasingly critical examination.
That their head of state should be elected by the people is, I imagine, the innate view of almost all American citizens. But at this unquiet hour, they might well wonder whether — for all the wisdom of the founding fathers — their republican system of government is actually leading them toward that promised “more perfect union.”
After all, our American cousins have only to direct their gaze toward their northern neighbor to find, in contented Canada, a nation that has for its head of state a hereditary monarch. That example alone demonstrates that democracy is perfectly compatible with constitutional monarchy.
Indeed, the modern history of Europe has shown that those countries fortunate enough to enjoy a king or queen as head of state tend to be more stable and better governed than most of the Continent’s republican states. By the same token, demagogic dictators have proved unremittingly hostile to monarchy because the institution represents a dangerously venerated alternative to their ambitions.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/06/opini ... d=71987722
Southmoor, England — As a foreigner with dual British and Russian citizenship, it is not for me to comment at length on the merits of the rival candidates for the presidency of the United States. But it seems uncontroversial to say that neither appears to be a Washington or a Lincoln, and that the elective presidency is coming under increasingly critical examination.
That their head of state should be elected by the people is, I imagine, the innate view of almost all American citizens. But at this unquiet hour, they might well wonder whether — for all the wisdom of the founding fathers — their republican system of government is actually leading them toward that promised “more perfect union.”
After all, our American cousins have only to direct their gaze toward their northern neighbor to find, in contented Canada, a nation that has for its head of state a hereditary monarch. That example alone demonstrates that democracy is perfectly compatible with constitutional monarchy.
Indeed, the modern history of Europe has shown that those countries fortunate enough to enjoy a king or queen as head of state tend to be more stable and better governed than most of the Continent’s republican states. By the same token, demagogic dictators have proved unremittingly hostile to monarchy because the institution represents a dangerously venerated alternative to their ambitions.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/06/opini ... d=71987722
President Donald Trump
President Donald Trump. Get used to it. The world as we knew it is no more.
To give Trump credit, he had a single formidable intuition: That American anger and uncertainty in the face of the inexorable march of globalization and technology had reached such a pitch that voters were ready for disruption at any cost.
Enough of elites; enough of experts; enough of the status quo; enough of the politically correct; enough of the liberal intelligentsia and cultural overlords with their predominant place in the media; enough of the financial wizards who brought the 2008 meltdown and stagnant incomes and jobs disappearing offshore. That, in essence, was Trump’s message. A New Yorker, he contrived to channel the frustrations of the heartland, a remarkable sleight of hand. Ohio and Wisconsin lurched into the Trump camp.
This upset victory over Hillary Clinton, the representative par excellence of the American political establishment, amounted to Brexit in American form. Ever since Britain’s perverse, self-defeating vote last June to leave the European Union, it seemed plausible that the same anti-globalization, often xenophobic forces could carry Trump to victory.
And so it proved. The disenfranchised, often living lives of great precariousness, arose and spoke. Clinton never quite seemed to understand their frustrations, as her challenger for the Democratic nomination, Bernie Sanders, did.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/10/opini ... &te=1&_r=0
*******
Let’s Not Do This Again
If I had to sum up the election of 2016 in one clause, I would say it has been a sociological revolution, a moral warning and a political summons.
Sociologically, this campaign has been an education in how societies come apart. The Trump campaign has been like a flash flood that sweeps away the topsoil and both reveals and widens the chasms, crevices and cracks below.
We are a far more divided society than we realized. The educated and less educated increasingly see the world and vote in different ways. So do men and women, blacks and whites, natives and immigrants, young and old, urban and rural.
We like to think of democracy as a battle of ideas and a process of individual deliberation, but this year demography has been destiny. The campaigns have pushed us back into our tribal bunkers. Americans now seem more clannish, and more incomprehensible to one another.
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/08/opini ... tml?src=me
President Donald Trump. Get used to it. The world as we knew it is no more.
To give Trump credit, he had a single formidable intuition: That American anger and uncertainty in the face of the inexorable march of globalization and technology had reached such a pitch that voters were ready for disruption at any cost.
Enough of elites; enough of experts; enough of the status quo; enough of the politically correct; enough of the liberal intelligentsia and cultural overlords with their predominant place in the media; enough of the financial wizards who brought the 2008 meltdown and stagnant incomes and jobs disappearing offshore. That, in essence, was Trump’s message. A New Yorker, he contrived to channel the frustrations of the heartland, a remarkable sleight of hand. Ohio and Wisconsin lurched into the Trump camp.
This upset victory over Hillary Clinton, the representative par excellence of the American political establishment, amounted to Brexit in American form. Ever since Britain’s perverse, self-defeating vote last June to leave the European Union, it seemed plausible that the same anti-globalization, often xenophobic forces could carry Trump to victory.
And so it proved. The disenfranchised, often living lives of great precariousness, arose and spoke. Clinton never quite seemed to understand their frustrations, as her challenger for the Democratic nomination, Bernie Sanders, did.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/10/opini ... &te=1&_r=0
*******
Let’s Not Do This Again
If I had to sum up the election of 2016 in one clause, I would say it has been a sociological revolution, a moral warning and a political summons.
Sociologically, this campaign has been an education in how societies come apart. The Trump campaign has been like a flash flood that sweeps away the topsoil and both reveals and widens the chasms, crevices and cracks below.
We are a far more divided society than we realized. The educated and less educated increasingly see the world and vote in different ways. So do men and women, blacks and whites, natives and immigrants, young and old, urban and rural.
We like to think of democracy as a battle of ideas and a process of individual deliberation, but this year demography has been destiny. The campaigns have pushed us back into our tribal bunkers. Americans now seem more clannish, and more incomprehensible to one another.
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/08/opini ... tml?src=me
Trump’s world
The new nationalism
With his call to put “America First”, Donald Trump is the latest recruit to a dangerous nationalism
WHEN Donald Trump vowed to “Make America Great Again!” he was echoing the campaign of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Back then voters sought renewal after the failures of the Carter presidency. This month they elected Mr Trump because he, too, promised them a “historic once-in-a-lifetime” change.
But there is a difference. On the eve of the vote, Reagan described America as a shining “city on a hill”. Listing all that America could contribute to keep the world safe, he dreamed of a country that “is not turned inward, but outward—toward others”. Mr Trump, by contrast, has sworn to put America First. Demanding respect from a freeloading world that takes leaders in Washington for fools, he says he will “no longer surrender this country or its people to the false song of globalism”. Reagan’s America was optimistic: Mr Trump’s is angry.
Welcome to the new nationalism. For the first time since the second world war, the great and rising powers are simultaneously in thrall to various sorts of chauvinism. Like Mr Trump, leaders of countries such as Russia, China and Turkey embrace a pessimistic view that foreign affairs are often a zero-sum game in which global interests compete with national ones. It is a big change that makes for a more dangerous world.
More...
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/2 ... /8146166/n
The new nationalism
With his call to put “America First”, Donald Trump is the latest recruit to a dangerous nationalism
WHEN Donald Trump vowed to “Make America Great Again!” he was echoing the campaign of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Back then voters sought renewal after the failures of the Carter presidency. This month they elected Mr Trump because he, too, promised them a “historic once-in-a-lifetime” change.
But there is a difference. On the eve of the vote, Reagan described America as a shining “city on a hill”. Listing all that America could contribute to keep the world safe, he dreamed of a country that “is not turned inward, but outward—toward others”. Mr Trump, by contrast, has sworn to put America First. Demanding respect from a freeloading world that takes leaders in Washington for fools, he says he will “no longer surrender this country or its people to the false song of globalism”. Reagan’s America was optimistic: Mr Trump’s is angry.
Welcome to the new nationalism. For the first time since the second world war, the great and rising powers are simultaneously in thrall to various sorts of chauvinism. Like Mr Trump, leaders of countries such as Russia, China and Turkey embrace a pessimistic view that foreign affairs are often a zero-sum game in which global interests compete with national ones. It is a big change that makes for a more dangerous world.
More...
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/2 ... /8146166/n
The Rage of 2016
Extract:
A quarter-century after the post-Cold War zenith of liberal democracies and neoliberal economics, illiberalism and authoritarianism are on the march. It’s open season for anyone’s inner bigot. Violence is in the air, awaiting a spark. The winning political card today, as Mr. Trump has shown and Marine Le Pen may demonstrate in the French presidential election next year, is to lead “the people” against a “rigged system,” Muslim migration and the tyrannical consensus of overpaid experts. The postwar order — its military alliances, trade pacts, political integration and legal framework — feels flimsy, and the nature of the American power undergirding it all is suddenly unclear. Nobody excites Mr. Trump as much as Russia’s Vladimir V. Putin, who is to democracy what a sledgehammer is to a Ming vase. Strongmen and autocrats everywhere — not least in Egypt and the Gulf states — are exulting at Mr. Trump’s victory.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/opini ... &te=1&_r=0
Extract:
A quarter-century after the post-Cold War zenith of liberal democracies and neoliberal economics, illiberalism and authoritarianism are on the march. It’s open season for anyone’s inner bigot. Violence is in the air, awaiting a spark. The winning political card today, as Mr. Trump has shown and Marine Le Pen may demonstrate in the French presidential election next year, is to lead “the people” against a “rigged system,” Muslim migration and the tyrannical consensus of overpaid experts. The postwar order — its military alliances, trade pacts, political integration and legal framework — feels flimsy, and the nature of the American power undergirding it all is suddenly unclear. Nobody excites Mr. Trump as much as Russia’s Vladimir V. Putin, who is to democracy what a sledgehammer is to a Ming vase. Strongmen and autocrats everywhere — not least in Egypt and the Gulf states — are exulting at Mr. Trump’s victory.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/05/opini ... &te=1&_r=0
Democracy Under Pressure
Extract:
With the collapse of the Soviet Union 25 years ago, it seemed inevitable that democracy would prevail — the market democracies that had triumphed over communism were also the world’s most prosperous and free societies. Democracy can seem less appealing in a time of stagnating incomes, social inequality and terror, especially in situations where money is having a disproportionate influence on politics. And yet citizens’ movements in societies as disparate as Burkina Faso, Hong Kong and Venezuela show that democratic aspirations around the world remain vital.
I sometimes hear that democracies have lost their sense of purpose. This isn’t so. Democracy’s purpose is to create conditions in which free citizens can lead the most fulfilling lives possible that they themselves choose. Human beings need not only livelihoods and security but also freedom, dignity and justice.
Democracy, whatever its flaws, is the political system that can best respond to those needs. May next year’s elections bring positive news for democracy, with all the gifts it can provide.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/06/opini ... ef=opinion
Extract:
With the collapse of the Soviet Union 25 years ago, it seemed inevitable that democracy would prevail — the market democracies that had triumphed over communism were also the world’s most prosperous and free societies. Democracy can seem less appealing in a time of stagnating incomes, social inequality and terror, especially in situations where money is having a disproportionate influence on politics. And yet citizens’ movements in societies as disparate as Burkina Faso, Hong Kong and Venezuela show that democratic aspirations around the world remain vital.
I sometimes hear that democracies have lost their sense of purpose. This isn’t so. Democracy’s purpose is to create conditions in which free citizens can lead the most fulfilling lives possible that they themselves choose. Human beings need not only livelihoods and security but also freedom, dignity and justice.
Democracy, whatever its flaws, is the political system that can best respond to those needs. May next year’s elections bring positive news for democracy, with all the gifts it can provide.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/06/opini ... ef=opinion
This is the most dangerous time for our planet
Stephen Hawking
We can’t go on ignoring inequality, because we have the means to destroy our world but not to escape it
As a theoretical physicist based in Cambridge, I have lived my life in an extraordinarily privileged bubble. Cambridge is an unusual town, centred around one of the world’s great universities. Within that town, the scientific community that I became part of in my 20s is even more rarefied.
And within that scientific community, the small group of international theoretical physicists with whom I have spent my working life might sometimes be tempted to regard themselves as the pinnacle. In addition to this, with the celebrity that has come with my books, and the isolation imposed by my illness, I feel as though my ivory tower is getting taller.
So the recent apparent rejection of the elites in both America and Britain is surely aimed at me, as much as anyone. Whatever we might think about the decision by the British electorate to reject membership of the European Union and by the American public to embrace Donald Trump as their next president, there is no doubt in the minds of commentators that this was a cry of anger by people who felt they had been abandoned by their leaders.
It was, everyone seems to agree, the moment when the forgotten spoke, finding their voices to reject the advice and guidance of experts and the elite everywhere.
What matters now, far more than the victories by Brexit and Trump, is how the elites react
I am no exception to this rule. I warned before the Brexit vote that it would damage scientific research in Britain, that a vote to leave would be a step backward, and the electorate – or at least a sufficiently significant proportion of it – took no more notice of me than any of the other political leaders, trade unionists, artists, scientists, businessmen and celebrities who all gave the same unheeded advice to the rest of the country.
What matters now, far more than the choices made by these two electorates, is how the elites react. Should we, in turn, reject these votes as outpourings of crude populism that fail to take account of the facts, and attempt to circumvent or circumscribe the choices that they represent? I would argue that this would be a terrible mistake.
The concerns underlying these votes about the economic consequences of globalisation and accelerating technological change are absolutely understandable. The automation of factories has already decimated jobs in traditional manufacturing, and the rise of artificial intelligence is likely to extend this job destruction deep into the middle classes, with only the most caring, creative or supervisory roles remaining.
This in turn will accelerate the already widening economic inequality around the world. The internet and the platforms that it makes possible allow very small groups of individuals to make enormous profits while employing very few people. This is inevitable, it is progress, but it is also socially destructive.
We need to put this alongside the financial crash, which brought home to people that a very few individuals working in the financial sector can accrue huge rewards and that the rest of us underwrite that success and pick up the bill when their greed leads us astray. So taken together we are living in a world of widening, not diminishing, financial inequality, in which many people can see not just their standard of living, but their ability to earn a living at all, disappearing. It is no wonder then that they are searching for a new deal, which Trump and Brexit might have appeared to represent.
‘In sub-Saharan Africa there are more people with a telephone than access to clean water.’ Photograph: Andy Hall for the Observer
It is also the case that another unintended consequence of the global spread of the internet and social media is that the stark nature of these inequalities is far more apparent than it has been in the past. For me, the ability to use technology to communicate has been a liberating and positive experience. Without it, I would not have been able to continue working these many years past.
But it also means that the lives of the richest people in the most prosperous parts of the world are agonisingly visible to anyone, however poor, who has access to a phone. And since there are now more people with a telephone than access to clean water in sub-Saharan Africa, this will shortly mean nearly everyone on our increasingly crowded planet will not be able to escape the inequality.
The consequences of this are plain to see: the rural poor flock to cities, to shanty towns, driven by hope. And then often, finding that the Instagram nirvana is not available there, they seek it overseas, joining the ever greater numbers of economic migrants in search of a better life. These migrants in turn place new demands on the infrastructures and economies of the countries in which they arrive, undermining tolerance and further fuelling political populism.
For me, the really concerning aspect of this is that now, more than at any time in our history, our species needs to work together. We face awesome environmental challenges: climate change, food production, overpopulation, the decimation of other species, epidemic disease, acidification of the oceans.
Together, they are a reminder that we are at the most dangerous moment in the development of humanity. We now have the technology to destroy the planet on which we live, but have not yet developed the ability to escape it. Perhaps in a few hundred years, we will have established human colonies amid the stars, but right now we only have one planet, and we need to work together to protect it.
To do that, we need to break down, not build up, barriers within and between nations. If we are to stand a chance of doing that, the world’s leaders need to acknowledge that they have failed and are failing the many. With resources increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few, we are going to have to learn to share far more than at present.
With not only jobs but entire industries disappearing, we must help people to retrain for a new world and support them financially while they do so. If communities and economies cannot cope with current levels of migration, we must do more to encourage global development, as that is the only way that the migratory millions will be persuaded to seek their future at home.
We can do this, I am an enormous optimist for my species; but it will require the elites, from London to Harvard, from Cambridge to Hollywood, to learn the lessons of the past year. To learn above all a measure of humility.
• The writer launched www.unlimited.world earlier this year
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... inequality
Stephen Hawking
We can’t go on ignoring inequality, because we have the means to destroy our world but not to escape it
As a theoretical physicist based in Cambridge, I have lived my life in an extraordinarily privileged bubble. Cambridge is an unusual town, centred around one of the world’s great universities. Within that town, the scientific community that I became part of in my 20s is even more rarefied.
And within that scientific community, the small group of international theoretical physicists with whom I have spent my working life might sometimes be tempted to regard themselves as the pinnacle. In addition to this, with the celebrity that has come with my books, and the isolation imposed by my illness, I feel as though my ivory tower is getting taller.
So the recent apparent rejection of the elites in both America and Britain is surely aimed at me, as much as anyone. Whatever we might think about the decision by the British electorate to reject membership of the European Union and by the American public to embrace Donald Trump as their next president, there is no doubt in the minds of commentators that this was a cry of anger by people who felt they had been abandoned by their leaders.
It was, everyone seems to agree, the moment when the forgotten spoke, finding their voices to reject the advice and guidance of experts and the elite everywhere.
What matters now, far more than the victories by Brexit and Trump, is how the elites react
I am no exception to this rule. I warned before the Brexit vote that it would damage scientific research in Britain, that a vote to leave would be a step backward, and the electorate – or at least a sufficiently significant proportion of it – took no more notice of me than any of the other political leaders, trade unionists, artists, scientists, businessmen and celebrities who all gave the same unheeded advice to the rest of the country.
What matters now, far more than the choices made by these two electorates, is how the elites react. Should we, in turn, reject these votes as outpourings of crude populism that fail to take account of the facts, and attempt to circumvent or circumscribe the choices that they represent? I would argue that this would be a terrible mistake.
The concerns underlying these votes about the economic consequences of globalisation and accelerating technological change are absolutely understandable. The automation of factories has already decimated jobs in traditional manufacturing, and the rise of artificial intelligence is likely to extend this job destruction deep into the middle classes, with only the most caring, creative or supervisory roles remaining.
This in turn will accelerate the already widening economic inequality around the world. The internet and the platforms that it makes possible allow very small groups of individuals to make enormous profits while employing very few people. This is inevitable, it is progress, but it is also socially destructive.
We need to put this alongside the financial crash, which brought home to people that a very few individuals working in the financial sector can accrue huge rewards and that the rest of us underwrite that success and pick up the bill when their greed leads us astray. So taken together we are living in a world of widening, not diminishing, financial inequality, in which many people can see not just their standard of living, but their ability to earn a living at all, disappearing. It is no wonder then that they are searching for a new deal, which Trump and Brexit might have appeared to represent.
‘In sub-Saharan Africa there are more people with a telephone than access to clean water.’ Photograph: Andy Hall for the Observer
It is also the case that another unintended consequence of the global spread of the internet and social media is that the stark nature of these inequalities is far more apparent than it has been in the past. For me, the ability to use technology to communicate has been a liberating and positive experience. Without it, I would not have been able to continue working these many years past.
But it also means that the lives of the richest people in the most prosperous parts of the world are agonisingly visible to anyone, however poor, who has access to a phone. And since there are now more people with a telephone than access to clean water in sub-Saharan Africa, this will shortly mean nearly everyone on our increasingly crowded planet will not be able to escape the inequality.
The consequences of this are plain to see: the rural poor flock to cities, to shanty towns, driven by hope. And then often, finding that the Instagram nirvana is not available there, they seek it overseas, joining the ever greater numbers of economic migrants in search of a better life. These migrants in turn place new demands on the infrastructures and economies of the countries in which they arrive, undermining tolerance and further fuelling political populism.
For me, the really concerning aspect of this is that now, more than at any time in our history, our species needs to work together. We face awesome environmental challenges: climate change, food production, overpopulation, the decimation of other species, epidemic disease, acidification of the oceans.
Together, they are a reminder that we are at the most dangerous moment in the development of humanity. We now have the technology to destroy the planet on which we live, but have not yet developed the ability to escape it. Perhaps in a few hundred years, we will have established human colonies amid the stars, but right now we only have one planet, and we need to work together to protect it.
To do that, we need to break down, not build up, barriers within and between nations. If we are to stand a chance of doing that, the world’s leaders need to acknowledge that they have failed and are failing the many. With resources increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few, we are going to have to learn to share far more than at present.
With not only jobs but entire industries disappearing, we must help people to retrain for a new world and support them financially while they do so. If communities and economies cannot cope with current levels of migration, we must do more to encourage global development, as that is the only way that the migratory millions will be persuaded to seek their future at home.
We can do this, I am an enormous optimist for my species; but it will require the elites, from London to Harvard, from Cambridge to Hollywood, to learn the lessons of the past year. To learn above all a measure of humility.
• The writer launched www.unlimited.world earlier this year
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... inequality
These are the 12 things most likely to destroy the world
A report claims to offer "the first science-based list of global risks with a potentially infinite impact where in extreme cases all human life could end." Those risks, the authors argue, include everything from climate change to supervolcanoes to artificial intelligence.
By "infinite impact," the authors — led by Dennis Pamlin of the Global Challenge Foundation and Stuart Armstrong of the Future of Humanity Institute — mean risks capable of either causing human extinction or leading to a situation where "civilization collapses to a state of great suffering and does not recover."
The good news is that the authors aren't convinced we're doomed. Pamlin and Armstrong are of the view that humans have a long time left — possibly millions of years: "The dinosaurs were around for 135 million years and if we are intelligent, there are good chances that we could live for much longer," they write. Roughly 108 billion people have ever been alive, and Pamlin and Armstrong estimate that, if humanity lasts for 50 million years, the total number of humans who will ever live is more like 3 quadrillion.
That's an optimistic assessment of humanity's prospects, but it also means that if something happens to make humans go extinct, the moral harm done will be immense. Guarding against events with even a small probability of causing that is worthwhile.
So the report's authors conducted a scientific literature review and identified 12 plausible ways it could happen:
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/the ... ut#page=11
11) Future bad governance
This is perhaps the vaguest item on the list — a kind of meta-risk. Most of the problems enumerated above would require some kind of global coordinated action to address. Climate change is the most prominent example, but in the future things like nanotech and AI regulation would need to be coordinated internationally.
The danger is that governance structures often fail and sometimes wind up exacerbating the problems they were trying to fix. A policy failure in dealing with a threat that could cause human extinction would thus have hugely negative consequences.
A report claims to offer "the first science-based list of global risks with a potentially infinite impact where in extreme cases all human life could end." Those risks, the authors argue, include everything from climate change to supervolcanoes to artificial intelligence.
By "infinite impact," the authors — led by Dennis Pamlin of the Global Challenge Foundation and Stuart Armstrong of the Future of Humanity Institute — mean risks capable of either causing human extinction or leading to a situation where "civilization collapses to a state of great suffering and does not recover."
The good news is that the authors aren't convinced we're doomed. Pamlin and Armstrong are of the view that humans have a long time left — possibly millions of years: "The dinosaurs were around for 135 million years and if we are intelligent, there are good chances that we could live for much longer," they write. Roughly 108 billion people have ever been alive, and Pamlin and Armstrong estimate that, if humanity lasts for 50 million years, the total number of humans who will ever live is more like 3 quadrillion.
That's an optimistic assessment of humanity's prospects, but it also means that if something happens to make humans go extinct, the moral harm done will be immense. Guarding against events with even a small probability of causing that is worthwhile.
So the report's authors conducted a scientific literature review and identified 12 plausible ways it could happen:
Slide show:
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/the ... ut#page=11
11) Future bad governance
This is perhaps the vaguest item on the list — a kind of meta-risk. Most of the problems enumerated above would require some kind of global coordinated action to address. Climate change is the most prominent example, but in the future things like nanotech and AI regulation would need to be coordinated internationally.
The danger is that governance structures often fail and sometimes wind up exacerbating the problems they were trying to fix. A policy failure in dealing with a threat that could cause human extinction would thus have hugely negative consequences.
The Rise and Fall of European Meritocracy
SOFIA, Bulgaria — When you can’t understand why people behave in a certain way, the easiest thing to do is to convince yourself that people do not know what they are doing. This is what European political, business and news media leaders have done in response to the populist wave that is sweeping the old Continent. They are shocked that many of their compatriots are voting for irresponsible demagogues. They find it difficult to understand the sources of the rage against the meritocratic elites best symbolized by the well-trained, competent civil servants in Brussels.
Why are the “exams-passing classes” so resented at a time when the complexity of the world suggests that people need them most? Why do people who work hard so that their kids can graduate from the world’s best universities refuse to trust people who have already graduated from these universities? How is it possible that anybody can agree with Michael Gove, the pro-Brexit politician, who said people “have had enough of experts”?
It should seem obvious that meritocracy — a system in which the most talented and capable, the best educated, those who score highest on the tests, are put in leading positions — is better than plutocracy, gerontocracy, aristocracy and, perhaps, even the rule of the majority, democracy
But Europe’s meritocratic elites aren’t hated simply because of populists’ bigoted stupidity or the confusion of ordinary people.
Michael Young, the British sociologist who in the middle of the last century coined the term “meritocracy,” would not be surprised by the turn of events. He was the first to explain that even though “meritocracy” might sound good to most people, a meritocratic society would be a disaster. It would create a society of selfish and arrogant winners, and angry and desperate losers. The triumph of meritocracy, Young understood, would lead to a loss of political community.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/17/opin ... dline&te=1
******
An Odd Moment for Davos
The World Economic Forum opened its annual meeting of the world’s richest and most powerful in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday against the backdrop of spreading revolts against global elites. The question now is whether these gilded champions of globalization will choose to address inequality or proceed with the business of wining and dining as usual.
As if to underline the stakes, on the day the Davos meeting began, Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain delivered a speech in London outlining her country’s exit from the European Union. The meeting will end on the day Donald Trump — who has cheered the breakup of the European Union, threatened to undo trade agreements and called climate change a Chinese hoax against the United States — is sworn in as president.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/opin ... dline&te=1
SOFIA, Bulgaria — When you can’t understand why people behave in a certain way, the easiest thing to do is to convince yourself that people do not know what they are doing. This is what European political, business and news media leaders have done in response to the populist wave that is sweeping the old Continent. They are shocked that many of their compatriots are voting for irresponsible demagogues. They find it difficult to understand the sources of the rage against the meritocratic elites best symbolized by the well-trained, competent civil servants in Brussels.
Why are the “exams-passing classes” so resented at a time when the complexity of the world suggests that people need them most? Why do people who work hard so that their kids can graduate from the world’s best universities refuse to trust people who have already graduated from these universities? How is it possible that anybody can agree with Michael Gove, the pro-Brexit politician, who said people “have had enough of experts”?
It should seem obvious that meritocracy — a system in which the most talented and capable, the best educated, those who score highest on the tests, are put in leading positions — is better than plutocracy, gerontocracy, aristocracy and, perhaps, even the rule of the majority, democracy
But Europe’s meritocratic elites aren’t hated simply because of populists’ bigoted stupidity or the confusion of ordinary people.
Michael Young, the British sociologist who in the middle of the last century coined the term “meritocracy,” would not be surprised by the turn of events. He was the first to explain that even though “meritocracy” might sound good to most people, a meritocratic society would be a disaster. It would create a society of selfish and arrogant winners, and angry and desperate losers. The triumph of meritocracy, Young understood, would lead to a loss of political community.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/17/opin ... dline&te=1
******
An Odd Moment for Davos
The World Economic Forum opened its annual meeting of the world’s richest and most powerful in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday against the backdrop of spreading revolts against global elites. The question now is whether these gilded champions of globalization will choose to address inequality or proceed with the business of wining and dining as usual.
As if to underline the stakes, on the day the Davos meeting began, Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain delivered a speech in London outlining her country’s exit from the European Union. The meeting will end on the day Donald Trump — who has cheered the breakup of the European Union, threatened to undo trade agreements and called climate change a Chinese hoax against the United States — is sworn in as president.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/opin ... dline&te=1
Where History Is Being Made
Extract:
Today, I’d say the most pivotal spot on earth is Washington, D.C. The crucial questions will be settled there: Can Donald Trump be induced to govern in some rational manner or will he blow up the world? Does he represent a populist tide that will only grow or is some other set of ideas building for his overthrow? Are the leading institutions — everything from the Civil Service to the news media to the political parties — resilient enough to correct for the Trumpian chaos?
Washington will either preserve the world order or destroy it.
More....
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/07/opin ... inion&_r=0
Extract:
Today, I’d say the most pivotal spot on earth is Washington, D.C. The crucial questions will be settled there: Can Donald Trump be induced to govern in some rational manner or will he blow up the world? Does he represent a populist tide that will only grow or is some other set of ideas building for his overthrow? Are the leading institutions — everything from the Civil Service to the news media to the political parties — resilient enough to correct for the Trumpian chaos?
Washington will either preserve the world order or destroy it.
More....
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/07/opin ... inion&_r=0
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How Should One Resist the Trump Administration?
How should one resist the Trump administration? Well, that depends on what kind of threat Donald Trump represents.
It could be that the primary Trump threat is authoritarianism. It is hard to imagine America turning into full fascism, but it is possible to see it sliding into the sort of “repressive kleptocracy” that David Frum describes in the current Atlantic — like the regimes that now run Hungary, the Philippines, Venezuela and Poland.
In such a regime, democratic rights are slowly eroded. Government critics are harassed. Federal contracts go to politically connected autocrats. Congress, the media and the judiciary bend their knee to the vengeful strongman.
If that’s the threat, then Dietrich Bonhoeffer is the model for the resistance. Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor who became an anti-Nazi dissident. Between 1933 and his capture in 1943, he condemned the Reich, protested the persecution of the Jews, organized underground seminaries and joined the German resistance. In the face of fascism, he wrote, it was not enough to simply “bandage the victims under the wheels of injustice, but jam a spoke into the wheel itself.”
If we are in a Bonhoeffer moment, then aggressive nonviolent action makes sense: marching in the streets, blocking traffic, disrupting town halls, vehement rhetoric to mobilize mass opposition.
Gerald Ford is one possible model for resisting the threat Donald Trump may create. Credit George Tames/The New York Times
On the other hand, it could be that the primary threat is stagnation and corruption. In this scenario, the Trump administration doesn’t create an authoritarian regime, but national politics turns into a vicious muck of tweet and countertweet, scandal and pseudoscandal, partisan attack and counterattack.
If that’s the threat, St. Benedict is the model for resistance. Benedict was a young Umbrian man who was sent to study in Rome after the fall of the empire. Disgusted by the corruption all around, he fled to the wilderness and founded monastic communities across Europe. If Rome was going to sink into barbarism, then Benedictines could lead healthy lives and construct new forms of community far from the decaying center.
If we are in a Benedict moment, the smart thing to do is to ignore the degradation in Washington and make your contribution at the state and local levels.
Karlyn Bowman of the American Enterprise Institute notices that some of the interns in her think tank are thinking along Benedictine lines. In years past they were angling for career tracks that would land them in Washington, but now they are angling to go back to the places they came from.
The third possibility is that the primary threat in the Trump era is a combination of incompetence and anarchy. It could be that Trump is a chaotic clown incapable of conducting coherent policy. It could be that his staff members are a bunch of inexperienced second-raters.
Already the White House is back stabbing and dysfunctional. The National Security Council is in turmoil. Mussolini supposedly made the trains run on time, but this group couldn’t manage fascism in a phone booth.
It could be that Trumpism contains the seeds of its own destruction. The administration could be swallowed by some corruption scandal that destroys all credibility. Trump could flake out in the midst of some foreign policy crisis and the national security apparatus could have to flat out disobey him.
If the current reign of ineptitude continues, Republicans will eventually peel away. The Civil Service will begin to ignore the sloppy White House edicts. The national security apparatus will decide that to prevent a slide to global disorder, it has to run itself.
In this scenario, the crucial question is how to replace and repair. The model for the resistance is Gerald Ford, a decent, modest, experienced public servant who believed in the institutions of government, who restored faith in government, who had a plan to bind the nation’s wounds and restored normalcy and competence.
Personally, I don’t think we’re at a Bonhoeffer moment or a Benedict moment. I think we’re approaching a Ford moment. If the first three weeks are any guide, this administration will not sustain itself for a full term. We’ll need a Ford, or rather a generation of Fords to restore effective governance.
When this country was born, several of the founders wanted to feature Moses on the Great Seal of the United States. They didn’t want to do it because he liberated his people from tyranny. That was the easy part. They wanted to do it because he bound his people to law.
Now and after Trump, the great project is rebinding: rebinding the social fabric, rebinding the government to its people, and most of all, rebinding the heaping piles of wreckage that Trump will leave in his wake in Washington. Somebody will have to restore the party structures, rebuild Congress, revive a demoralized Civil Service.
These tasks aren’t magic. They are for experienced professionals. The baby boomer establishment polarized politics, lost touch with the voters and paved the way for Trump. We need a new establishment, one that works again.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/14/opin ... &te=1&_r=0
How should one resist the Trump administration? Well, that depends on what kind of threat Donald Trump represents.
It could be that the primary Trump threat is authoritarianism. It is hard to imagine America turning into full fascism, but it is possible to see it sliding into the sort of “repressive kleptocracy” that David Frum describes in the current Atlantic — like the regimes that now run Hungary, the Philippines, Venezuela and Poland.
In such a regime, democratic rights are slowly eroded. Government critics are harassed. Federal contracts go to politically connected autocrats. Congress, the media and the judiciary bend their knee to the vengeful strongman.
If that’s the threat, then Dietrich Bonhoeffer is the model for the resistance. Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor who became an anti-Nazi dissident. Between 1933 and his capture in 1943, he condemned the Reich, protested the persecution of the Jews, organized underground seminaries and joined the German resistance. In the face of fascism, he wrote, it was not enough to simply “bandage the victims under the wheels of injustice, but jam a spoke into the wheel itself.”
If we are in a Bonhoeffer moment, then aggressive nonviolent action makes sense: marching in the streets, blocking traffic, disrupting town halls, vehement rhetoric to mobilize mass opposition.
Gerald Ford is one possible model for resisting the threat Donald Trump may create. Credit George Tames/The New York Times
On the other hand, it could be that the primary threat is stagnation and corruption. In this scenario, the Trump administration doesn’t create an authoritarian regime, but national politics turns into a vicious muck of tweet and countertweet, scandal and pseudoscandal, partisan attack and counterattack.
If that’s the threat, St. Benedict is the model for resistance. Benedict was a young Umbrian man who was sent to study in Rome after the fall of the empire. Disgusted by the corruption all around, he fled to the wilderness and founded monastic communities across Europe. If Rome was going to sink into barbarism, then Benedictines could lead healthy lives and construct new forms of community far from the decaying center.
If we are in a Benedict moment, the smart thing to do is to ignore the degradation in Washington and make your contribution at the state and local levels.
Karlyn Bowman of the American Enterprise Institute notices that some of the interns in her think tank are thinking along Benedictine lines. In years past they were angling for career tracks that would land them in Washington, but now they are angling to go back to the places they came from.
The third possibility is that the primary threat in the Trump era is a combination of incompetence and anarchy. It could be that Trump is a chaotic clown incapable of conducting coherent policy. It could be that his staff members are a bunch of inexperienced second-raters.
Already the White House is back stabbing and dysfunctional. The National Security Council is in turmoil. Mussolini supposedly made the trains run on time, but this group couldn’t manage fascism in a phone booth.
It could be that Trumpism contains the seeds of its own destruction. The administration could be swallowed by some corruption scandal that destroys all credibility. Trump could flake out in the midst of some foreign policy crisis and the national security apparatus could have to flat out disobey him.
If the current reign of ineptitude continues, Republicans will eventually peel away. The Civil Service will begin to ignore the sloppy White House edicts. The national security apparatus will decide that to prevent a slide to global disorder, it has to run itself.
In this scenario, the crucial question is how to replace and repair. The model for the resistance is Gerald Ford, a decent, modest, experienced public servant who believed in the institutions of government, who restored faith in government, who had a plan to bind the nation’s wounds and restored normalcy and competence.
Personally, I don’t think we’re at a Bonhoeffer moment or a Benedict moment. I think we’re approaching a Ford moment. If the first three weeks are any guide, this administration will not sustain itself for a full term. We’ll need a Ford, or rather a generation of Fords to restore effective governance.
When this country was born, several of the founders wanted to feature Moses on the Great Seal of the United States. They didn’t want to do it because he liberated his people from tyranny. That was the easy part. They wanted to do it because he bound his people to law.
Now and after Trump, the great project is rebinding: rebinding the social fabric, rebinding the government to its people, and most of all, rebinding the heaping piles of wreckage that Trump will leave in his wake in Washington. Somebody will have to restore the party structures, rebuild Congress, revive a demoralized Civil Service.
These tasks aren’t magic. They are for experienced professionals. The baby boomer establishment polarized politics, lost touch with the voters and paved the way for Trump. We need a new establishment, one that works again.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/14/opin ... &te=1&_r=0
Democracy, Disrupted
As the forces of reaction outpace movements predicated on the ideal of progress, and as traditional norms of political competition are tossed aside, it’s clear that the internet and social media have succeeded in doing what many feared and some hoped they would. They have disrupted and destroyed institutional constraints on what can be said, when and where it can be said and who can say it.
Even though in one sense President Trump’s victory in 2016 fulfilled conventional expectations — because it prevented a third straight Democratic term in the White House — it also revealed that the internet and its offspring have overridden the traditional American political system of alternating left-right advantage. They are contributing — perhaps irreversibly — to the decay of traditional moral and ethical constraints in American politics.
Matthew Hindman, a professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University and the author of “The Myth of Digital Democracy,” said in a phone interview that “if you took the label off, someone looking at the United States would have to be worried about democratic failure or transitioning toward a hybrid regime.”
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/02/opin ... rc=me&_r=0
As the forces of reaction outpace movements predicated on the ideal of progress, and as traditional norms of political competition are tossed aside, it’s clear that the internet and social media have succeeded in doing what many feared and some hoped they would. They have disrupted and destroyed institutional constraints on what can be said, when and where it can be said and who can say it.
Even though in one sense President Trump’s victory in 2016 fulfilled conventional expectations — because it prevented a third straight Democratic term in the White House — it also revealed that the internet and its offspring have overridden the traditional American political system of alternating left-right advantage. They are contributing — perhaps irreversibly — to the decay of traditional moral and ethical constraints in American politics.
Matthew Hindman, a professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University and the author of “The Myth of Digital Democracy,” said in a phone interview that “if you took the label off, someone looking at the United States would have to be worried about democratic failure or transitioning toward a hybrid regime.”
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/02/opin ... rc=me&_r=0