classic post and references said almost it all

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2011/08/re-earlier-post-mentioning-kindleberger.html

Sunday, August 28, 2011

RE EARLIER POST MENTIONING KINDLEBERGER AND VERNON HERE IS SNIPET FROM KOBRIN THE PARDONER'S TALE CHAUCER

Here is Kobrin:


'The dramatic expansion of the Multinational Enterprise (MNE) after 1960 produced a 
‘first wave’ of literature in the popular and academic press.  The opening lines of Raymond 
Vernon’s best known book capture its tenor well: ‘Suddenly, it seems, the sovereign states are 
feeling naked.  Concepts such as sovereignty and national economic strength appear curiously 
drained of meaning’ (Vernon 1971, p 3).
3'

'In a seminal series of lectures two years before the publication of  Sovereignty at Bay, 
Charles Kindleberger (1969, p 207) argued that the ‘nation-state is just about through as an 
economic unit.’ ' 


They had hoped, back then, for a 'united states of the world', (ANALOGOUS TO STEINGART'S UNITED STATES OF THE WEST, which however now excludes of course the pesky non West) 


based on expanding trade investment and political unification, 
and thereby the taming of the murderous nation state concept itself, that would make war obsolete. 


The nation state was the devil that needed to be exorcized. 


(Problem: the US itself is a nation state needing to be exorcised by virtuous Cobdenist multinational enterprise.)


Rather like the Pardoner's Tale, in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, really.

The Drew Pearson Fallacy goes farther back than this unfortunately

"Now sadly, what Ms. Roberts said in 2000--that to many Americans, the reference to Dingell-Norwood sounded like a "guy from Washington doing Washington-speak"--probably had an element of truth.  But to me, then and now, that was something for journalists (and historians) to fight against, for the simple reason that a citizenry that no longer cares about the legislation Congress does or does not pass will yield the field to lobbyists and contributors who still do.  Yet Cokie Roberts was not only accepting, but welcoming, the new world of the 21st century in which journalism--especially tv journalism--began pandering to an uninformed public.  Indeed, the implication of what she said was that politicians would be foolish to try to do educate voters.  And I was amazed that someone with her background could take such a position--but there it was." DK

"Indeed, the implication of what she said was that politicians would be foolish to try to do educate voters." DK

What about what I have dubbed the Drew Pearson Fallacy implication: 

that journalists (not politicians, or academicians) would be foolish enough to try to educate voters?

But also, the political structural problems giving rise to this sad journalistic heritage has never been directly addressed politically here. It is written into the constitution....

(Lorch) Newspaper Editor's retort to assembled Scholars (read: Professor Kaiser): 

"Don't you know what the newspaper business is all about, you bloody fool...For the past ten minutes you've been trying to make me out as some kind of hideous ogre devoid of any shred of social consciousness.

"You act as though you think the job of a newspaper is to be an educational institution for the masses.

"Education is your job, not mine.

"I run a business. That business is to make money. My stock in trade is something called 'news'. It isn't really news all the time-- it's entertainment in the guise of news quite often.... I am not going to print educational stuff that'll put me in the poor house."  Terms search: Lorch

The pamphleteering heritage of colonial rebellion, the contagion of liberty, so to speak, never dies unless properly extinguished by other institutions.

HAMILTON FIRST REPORT ON THE PUBLIC CREDIT

http://www.schillerinstitute.org/economy/2015/hamilton-first_report_on_the_public_credit.pdf

audience today snapshot

Entry	Pageviews
United States	47
Portugal	3
Bahrain	1
China	1
Germany	1
France	1

boop

Got a wild hair, and bought a bag of pepper chips.

CONFRONTING THESE SO CALLED AMERICAN CONSERVATIVES

are a highly fragmented motley array of the dregs of the so called Enlightenment. 

What always passed for the Enlightenment over here.

I HESITATE TO PUT IT THIS WAY RE CRUZ SO CALLED CONSERVATISM

Americans do not know, really, what conservatism is.

Why?

Because they never ever had it here.

One explanation is that they never had anything much politically to conserve. 

They had repudiated the possible sources of conservatism at the founding, except perhaps for a radical Whig lower gentry ideal. I do not consider this enough conservatism, really, to matter, in the larger scheme of things. It was more or less mainly ignorant anarchic rural superstition. 

If you want to call that American conservatism, fine; that is more or less what it still is, and all it is, but with many right wing city dwellers now in a similar benighted state added to it.

ONE IRONY RE REPUBLICAN SUPREME COURT APPOINTMENTS

For a far right administration, the Court itself, though still well stocked with conservatives, will be very inconvenient.

They would probably try to curtail or eliminate it.

WHAT WAS THE LAND FLOWING WITH MILK AND HONEY EXODUS PASSOVER ETC

non coastal Palestine, or Egypt?

Take a guess....

Who Wrote The Bible, pb p 196, 82,
The Bible Unearthed, hb p 52.

As Rufus Fears recounted, an old observation I am sure, the Middle East (I would add: especially the wasteland of Palestine) is The Graveyard of Empires.

Why had Canaanites ended up in Egypt in the first place in great numbers? Necessity mingled with opportunity. The Bible Unearthed, hb p 52.

OBAMA'S PRESIDENCY LIKE SO MANY OTHERS

has been more or less a zero, like several presidents on the run up to the Civil War.

Endemic political structural drift. 

1 percent of Australia being sold to China

It is bigger than Ireland.

China has already bought enormous minerals in Australia.

Smell the coffee. Game over.

RE FASCISM NOT OUR PROBLEM

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2016/04/re-fascism-is-not-our-problem.html

Following up on the above post, what if the turn toward fascism here turns out to be a walkover of the liberal bipartisan establishment, without even a full development of a violent radical left?

After all, the right has been slamming the liberal, so called vital, center, very effectively, for decades now.

THE BIG BOYS ARE DISPLACING THE PROFESSIONS

Don't kid yourself about that.

FOR BLITT PRIMATES PARK AVENUE STAND YOUR GROUND

We show a scene from the side at the climax:

A nearby street sign says " Park " 

A sidewalk confrontation viewed from the street, side view.

A Queen Bee red bag lady has charged a nobody blue bag girl.

The Queen is standing threateningly over her whom she has just knocked down into the street from the sidewalk on her back.

The blue bag girl, on the ground, has pulled her piece, now holding with both hands, and is discharging it upward toward her assailant, point blank, while lying on her back in the street. 

(Maybe she misses! See Randall Collins' current post, micro sociology. Excerpt:
This explains another, as yet little recognized pattern: when violence actually happens, it is usually incompetent. Most of the times people fire a gun at a  human target, they miss; their shots go wide, they hit the wrong person, sometimes a bystander, sometimes friendly fire on their own side. This is a product of the situation, the confrontation.  We know this because the accuracy of soldiers and police on firing ranges is much higher than when firing at a human target. We can pin this down further; inhibition in live firing declines with greater distance; artillery troops are more reliable than infantry with small arms, so are fighter and bomber crews and navy crews; it is not the statistical chances of being killed or injured by the enemy that makes close-range fighters incompetent. At the other end of the spectrum, very close face-to-face confrontation makes firing even more inaccurate; shootings at a distance of less than 2 meters are extremely inaccurate.)

Their dogs are peeing on each other nearby.

RE WHAT HAS MICRO-SOCIOLOGY ACCOMPLISHED?

Re primates, bonobos, violence, etc.

See Collins' most recent post. Great stuff.

RE FASCISM IS NOT OUR PROBLEM

Some discussion re Weimar may be instructive...

Were a Republican elected, even with a Republican Congress, he would most likely face social disorder from extremists in and out of his own party on the Right, in the first instance, because they are much more violent, well armed, and organized in opposition to any federal government, whereas Democrats are less violent, not well armed, and not opposed to a federal government.

Similarly, the Social Democrats, the party in power in Weimar faced determined violent opposition in the first instance from German extremists on their left although they were a left leaning party. (If I say anything erroneous here, Professor Kaiser can perhaps set me straight with a post on his blog.)

As Kennan pointed out in 'The Rise Of Hitler', in Russia and The West Under Lenin And Stalin, this German extremist left group was supported heavily by the Soviet Communists after 1928, and stayed that way until WWII really began, even though the rise of fascism should have been something to cause Stalin, of all people, great alarm.

RE THE BIG SHORT Thurston POSTPOSTSCRIPT

"HUD is a federal agency led by Julián Castro that is supposed to “create strong, sustainable, inclusive communities and quality affordable homes for all.” HUD’s “Distressed Asset Stabilization Program” (DASP) is supposed to help homeowners stay in their homes. Instead, under Julián Castro’s leadership, this program has been a huge giveaway to Wall Street.

"In 2015, 98% of the homes sold under this program went to Wall Street (15,309 out of 15,624). These homes were also sold to Wall Street at steep discounts, averaging 45% off for some of the biggest banks in Wall Street. What’s worse, a majority of the loans went to The Blackstone Group, a huge private equity company notorious for its foreclosures. Blackstone tenants have dealt with roach infestations, harassment, and even attempts at illegal evictions."

RE FASCISM IS NOT OUR PROBLEM

If as DK says the US suffers from some of the same problems as the Weimar Republic, even though he convincingly contrasts our situation with that one in terms of widespread street violence of right and left, why then is not Fascism, after all, also our problem, if not now, then real soon?

FOR BLITT HOW ABOUT CRUZ AND TRUMP IN A BOXING RING FINAL CAMPAIGN ROUNDS

Trump, as a fagged Macaire, in a smoker, is almost on his back in his corner, half facing viewer, Cruz is a Daumier midget and still a frisky bantam, in mid ring, half turned away.

OR SAY CHRISTIE AND TRUMP