Large standing military and security forces have troubled ruling regimes from the dimmest tribal pasts down to today. Governing ideology doesn’t matter: totalitarian, Marxist-Leninist, Mao-ist or American corporatist democracy/demotic – all rely on and are often threatened by these – in political science terms – ‘power institutions.’
All the Interwebs are buzzing about de-railing the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its Senate counterpart, Protect IP Act (PIPA). Those kidz at Reddit started a campaign against a company (GoDaddy) so dull (it registers Internet domains and sells email) it gets marginal mindshare deploying quasi-strip tease acts for ads designed to be blocked at the Super Bowl. Technology companies flirting with the IP crowd are now backing away.
SOPA is kitchen table talk now. Perhaps everyone wants to at least feel like they’re ‘in’. Like Tina Fey-kinda-in. It’s a simple talking point, too. Why, allowing Hollywood lawyers to tell backbone companies to block websites the lawyers deem carrying pirated material? That would “break the Internet.” Angry Birds would die. Mafia Wars end. And so on.
We won’t rehearse all the original machinations of the Motion Picture Association of America, the Business Software Alliance (MSFT eta al.). You’ve seen it elsewhere. And of course, watching MSFT and others at BSA cave to pressure and retreat is not un-fun. But it’s the same old story of IP holders’ greed and fear from the DMCA days. Turned up a notch. Except now there’s social media – like Reddit. And it bit them in the backside but fierce.
Still, it’s a bread and circuses thing. We’re just puzzled why Amerikhuns care more about access to online porn, Pirate Bay wannabees and LOLCats than, say, oh, their personal freedom. Nobody lifted a finger to slow PATRIOT down then. Except Dick Armey and a few who demanded and got sunset provisions. OK, it was right after 9/11. Feelings were raw.
Feelings weren’t that raw when Democrats and Republicans voted to blow past the original sunsets. How raw could feelings be with the Boy King in office? To get *expansions* to the PATRIOT Act, notwithstanding its classified offshoots. Chirp. Chirp. You’d think this would be something custom made for social media, ala Cairo, etc. But alas, people can’t conceive of losing something that’s not tangible, like a shiny new iPad suddenly no longer showing a favorite website.
So if you go to one of those usual suspect aggregators news sites proclaiming this ‘dramatic’ SOPA victory to ‘preserve the Internet’, just remember, sure, Amerikhuns may get LOLCats unimpeded. And the torrents running free in Sweden.
High fives all around. Because, like, saving the “integrity of the Internet” is so much more important than a constitutional republic. You know we’re right.
Tonight’s debate confirms Ed Rollins was right: it’s a Perry Romney race. We’ve only had one direct lengthy conversation with Rollins (and it was earlier this year). We felt him, of course, as he was a big presence down in Texas during the Perot bubble. He should be relieved to be out of that seat.
Perry showed steadinesss and vacuity that will soothe his oligarchical backers. His ‘social security is a ponzi scheme’ a calculated gamble. We disagree with the talking heads that see Romney as the clear winner. Perry’s dog whistles seismic. From South Carolina on we see Romney struggling – except possibly Florida.
Newt increasingly comes across as an aging hair metal band crashing a Gathering of the Juggalos. He seems content to suck up to everyone to maintain his perch as ‘ideas’ man. In his own mind, he probably has cast himself as Colonel House calling the shots in someone else’s White House.
The fossilized nature of ‘conservative thought’ striking but irrelevant. All the issues pushed around are camouflage. Wisconsin, Ohio and New Jersey more realistic models for the cloaked oligarchical agenda. It’s true enterprise zones were novel when Jack Kemp pushed them in the late 1970s/1980s. The Laffer Curve/supply side economics, too. If the Republican Party intended to be overt about its actual governing strategy the lack of intellectual innovation would be problematic. Now, it’s only for rubes.
So are we there yet? Some thoughts as they occur, probably to be consolidated in an omnibus post.
We begin where we are. Political science and philosophy lead to the same diagnosis: today’s America is a hybrid demotic-oligarchy. The hybrid qualifier? Existing institutions are deployed as both hammer and victim. Oligarchy, while increasingly bold, prefers to act through intermediaries. Economic difficulties may highlight oligarchical self-serving action. They still remain, good times or bad. But you already knew that.
All should know by 2011 oligarchy and the Movement are momentarily bed fellows. Koch money et al. funds the Movement. To agitate on tax cuts or issue X. The Movement remains distinct. Across history oligarchies typically are overthrown by authoritarianism. See, e.g. Venice, Genoa, Rome (and even Athens, which was never a republic but a democracy) Or your own example.
Oligarchical rule is never sustainable. It’s primarily extractive and self-interested nature leads to dissipation or opposition, usually chaotic or disorganized because political institutions have atrophied. Thus enters the Man on the White Horse to restore order. (Oligarchical money of course also famously funds Democrats).
Howard Fineman’s ‘we are watching slow rolling secession (from democratic pluralism)’ sums it up. He’s late to the realization; still a nice turn of phrase. We should be clear what this means. When societies reach this devolutionary point, there usually is no ‘re-set’. Things don’t just go ‘back to the way they were’ (see post on Audacity’s failure below).
Politics and society have changed. A by-product of Obama’s refusal to implement (and defend) roll-back of the 2001-2008 corrosion. We should adapt accordingly. For the post-Obama world.
Do Democrats want to challenge the game? Today’s circumstances demand a thorough intellectual re-boot. Secession from pluralism requires a new ideological response. Even if Dems must play the money game without reform. The hardest part? Just beginning it all. Democrats have paralyzed themselves with tropes like seeing a snapshot poll and muttering “America is center right anyway”. Forgetting *that’s* the result only after decades of almost totally unopposed Movement AgitProp. How far do Democrats really want to move the cheese?
History will record the brief American intoxication with the Obama Audacity Campaign a reckless gamble. Strategically, the Campaign had two components necessary for success. The first was to overwhelm and penetrate Republican/Movement ranks with the power of personality to seize control of American government in 2008. The second, assuming opponents’ psychological surrender, was to govern by verbosity, intention and situational accommodation via the existence of a wholly undefined ‘new politics’.
That Campaign failed. Its second phase rout fueled the seemingly impossible: Obama re-energized, strengthened and then mainstreamed the most radical Movement elements. From being mere marginalized ghosts gnawing on themselves in the shadows 3 years ago Obama planted their radicalism firmly in the center-most heart of American politics. It is a catastrophe of almost unimaginable proportions.
The Audacity Campaign’s core failure is that its second phase, successful control of government and validation through re-election, was non-sensical from the outset. The entire venture’s success would be possible only if its opponents agreed to cooperate, stand down and join the so-called ‘new politics’. Audacity meant Obama never controlled his victory conditions, nor his future (and the Nation’s).
The importance of this ‘new politics’ to the Audacity Campaign is almost always overlooked by political pundits. In phase two Obama did not intend to govern as a traditional political figure. But neither he (nor his advisors who asked for more crises) thought to ask why would political opponents so recently defeated cooperate in their further eclipse? Naturally no contingency plans laid out.
Bemusing that even today, most ‘mainstream’ political commentators and elected Democrats are surprised by and ill-equipped to deal with the Movement phenomenon. You, Dear Reader, look at the Hill and see: (x) a non-structured ideological phenomenon; that (y) exists apart from traditional institutional entities; that (z) when it wins elections retains primary loyalty to itself, not the institution. Others see something unprecedented.
A Movement is anchored to ideological purities as it lacks any formal structure. Moreover, ideology must evolve, imparting Movement direction and dynamism. Movements manufacture or benefit from crisis mentality for that dynamism and individual self-identity. All is cast in binary terms: victory or defeat, forward or back, with us or against us. Never compromise.
Membership retention and recruitment occur via public theater (protests, rallies, votes). Movements naturally flourish in times of social upheaval and fear (often creating or exacerbating those very circumstances).
The amorphous nature of Movements ensures that there may be sub strands or variants participating. Align with and internal loyalty to core polestar tenants key, not the optics from an external ‘other’ point of view.
Wherever Movements successfully assumed political control after infiltration they swept aside traditional, conventional political behavior. Wherever Movements failed? They co-mingled with existing norms and thus lost ideological dynamism, self-generating radicalism and members.
All of the above summarizes our long running conversation. Professional elected Democrats and pundit class still don’t understand what they’re seeing. Consumed by frisson of tactical minutiae. Lessons learned the hard way.
Let’s turn to the Movement’s next steps. Where are they?
This Collection is available to the public.
_______________________
Haven’t posted because nothing has changed. And the trajectory of likely developments along a course we’ve all covered together, yes?
When matters are bleak one can only expect Tom Friedman to rise (or sink) to the occasion. His endorsement of the nebulous ‘politically centrist Internet alternative Americans Elect’ plumbs new depths of unblinking vacuity. Harsh? In the maestro’s own words:
Our goal is to open up what has been an anticompetitive process to people in the middle who are unsatisfied with the choices of the two parties,” said Kahlil Byrd, the C.E.O. of Americans Elect, speaking from its swank offices, financed with some serious hedge-fund money, a stone’s throw from the White House.
Adding to the fin de stupide, McConnell and Reid embrace decadence by declaring the Congress unable to function as a co-equal branch of government. Dear Reader, naturally, you might say ‘of course’. Didn’t they willingly devolve into a hapless Duma under the Warlord, with Rockefeller writing letters to his desk drawer and the like? Abandoning oversight for fealty and so on? All true. Our intrepid Remus and Romulus propose a new ‘super Congress’, a formal gang of 12 from each chamber, and each party. These Supremos would be entrusted to make the hard choices that elude the merely elected.
It’s funny how it’s exactly the same idea and language that Bob Walker tried to float around D.C. in 2005. Walker was trying to solve Bush’s dysfunction. The Administration clearly couldn’t govern, oversee or make hard choices. Walker proposed creating ‘Super Secretaries’. They would be entrusted with larger portfolios to empower coordination.
We (happily) broke D.C. code by pointing out how dim it all was. Bluntly we told Walker (in an evening bull session of 12 or so organized at the D.C. offices of a performance car company) he missed the point. The institutions are fine. Hire competent secretaries and appointees, fire the incompetent. More to the point, since the Republican/Movement apparat has spent generations attacking the efficiency of government, what can one expect when they man an administration with people who loathe functioning government in the first place. The ideology and recruitment were both proximate causes. Why not have Republicans in public embrace good government, sound non-PR-wedge issue management?
That was a lead zeppelin. A-w-k-w-a-r-d.
We weren’t invited back. Best for all involved. We’d have been twice as impatient and even less sense of lèse majesté over a congresscritter turned lobbyist. (But he’s a friend of Newt’s! Look at his clients!).
The point is that Reid and McConnell have succumbed to the same imbecility. The institutions — House and Senate — have not failed. Article I has not failed. The people in those positions are failures. The solution is not some extra-constitutional, ever more baroque organizational legerdemain. Organizational change (with incumbents staying) is passing the buck.
It’s not all Reid or even McConnell’s fault in one sense. Many of the institutional problems and people are there because of Obama. Or more precisely by Obama’s refusal to act as president. He wouldn’t stoop to use the presidency for political effect in the years before Nov. 2010 (and does so now). Remember Gibb’s laughing on national TV in August 2010 that the House might ‘go.’ Hilarious. Perhaps no one could have saved the House. We’ll leave the counterfactual stuff for Newt’s novels. Just note: Obama never tried.
We’ll close by making an observation. Political systems historically devolve into greater baroque complexity seeking ad hoc, temporary solutions not because of weakness from below but at the top. Expect more of these ‘solutions’ to come.
The most important thing we learn hearing that the Boy King disregarded the legal advice of OLC and the AG, together with DoD’s General Counsel isn’t the outcome. Presidents always make the call for the Executive Branch. Rather, it’s how the Administration got there. The informality raises questions for the future.
The specific issue is how to interpret “hostilities” in Section 5(b) of the War Powers Resolution. If the U.S. is deemed engaged in hostilities in Libya, that conclusion triggers termination events. People say they’re for an “expansive” definition of hostilities to end operations or a “narrow” one if they’re for the current situation. Put that aside.
Let’s turn to how the Administration made its decision. Usually, when a legal analysis of this magnitude confronts the Executive Branch, OLC serves as coordinator. OLC will typically reach out to affected agencies and departments. Then OLC renders a written formal opinion (even if third-tier law school junk retroactively withdrawn per last Administration).
Here the White House actively avoided that formal structure (and remove from the issue at hand, even if it’s more appearance than fact). Instead, the Administration specifically asked OLC initially only to provide informal advice. Meanwhile, the WH itself solicited legal opinions from around government. Apparently there were a few meetings and some phone calls. That’s it. Then the WH asked for submission of rival analysis. The politics are clear. Amorphous, informal = maximum control. It’s the Diet Coke of Donilon’s exhaustive whirlybird thing-a-jig.
Big problem. Such unstructured process is not a system that can support first rate legal decision-making. Even more than ‘policy’, law is dependent on structure, integration, coherence.
Read more…
We didn’t expect much. He lived up to that.
Pre-empting ‘Jeopardy’ tonight, Obama served up the same vague, content-less platitudes that intoxicated his enablers in 2008. He spoke almost Bach-like, leaving the audience to deliver the counter-fugue. “We are not a nation that stands by when tragedy happens.” Except when we do. Clinging to the humanitarian theme, Obama underscored regime change is *not* an American objective. Yet it is; he’s demanded Khaddafi go several times already, etc.
Obama spent most of his energies justifying why he unilaterally declared war on Libya. (Even Dick Cheney for God’s sake went through the motions to observe form. Bush secured two Authorizations to Use Military Force (2001 and 2002)). We can only offer a sad smile to the chuckleheads running around 2007-2008 declaring Obama ‘a constitutional scholar’ (We know personally something about who is entitled to that honorific). It doesn’t matter. His intentions are pure and prudent.
His fugal theme of intentions and prudence tried to cover a strategic vacuity. He developed no harmonic themes defining success, concrete objectives or why he believes he can choose sides in a civil war without cost. His chordal progressions avoided any program or agenda. Just pure, prudent intentions.
Thus, his critics must be mute; his intentions, after all, are noble.
Obama claimed his one-man war on Libya is born of unique circumstances:
(a) the UN agrees (meaning China and Russia abstained);
(b) the Arab League gave a fig leaf;
(c) Sarkozy is about to be crushed in French elections and cut off by his wife – he’s desperate;
(d) Cameron in London is unusually dunder-headed and clueless;
(e) other than the Germans and Turks fussing about, NATO was signed, sealed, delivered;
(f) Americans watching Japan are already on ferrin neyooz overload; and
(g) best of all, because no one really knows what the hell is going on over there, Americans generally will be down with bombing brown people provided some smile on CNN. (Americans love people who thank the U.S. for dropping bombs on their country).
Most (all?) of the above is, of course, ex-post facto rationalization. The truth is far uglier. You, Dear Reader, know that Obama simply pulled . . . an Obama.
It’s all of a piece. Libya is no different than his collusion and subsequent 9 month abdication on health care reform. Same with his absence from securing meaningful FinReg. The BP episode? Escalating in Afghanistan while promising to leave? Letting banks walk on foreclosure fraud? His embrace of Addington’s Unitary Executive? Silent disengagement from the Movement 2009-11 at State and Federal levels? Yup, yup, yup, yup. . . yup. And so on.
The Arab League is delighted to divert American frustration to Libya. Bomb him, go to town, do your thing. And shut up about protestors shot in the streets. London and Paris need a foreign diversion. Need to roll out freedom again? By all means. Having some trouble with your virility? Take 112 Tomahawks and call in the morning. There can be no Obama Doctrine because expediency is one word.
Pure intentions are always used to cajole Americans. War to end all wars. War to make Democracy safe. No more Munichs in the Mekong blah blah blah. Works every time initially. Sentiment, however, blinds all to the opportunity costs. People have only so much bandwidth. A burn and churn maw in Libya will divert focus from matters of genuine strategic import. There’s a reason Beijing abstained. For the record history will note Libya worse than a crime, a mistake.
When a man stands for nothing he can always cobble together a narrative to justify where the wind blew him. But like tonight’s speech that narrative can’t tell us where he wants to go and how he intends to get there.
More than that, it’s obvious to anyone Obama isn’t a fighter. He’s never drawn a line personally, taken bloody, pulverizing punches. He’s never been rocked back, fallen down, stood up and retaken ground. (2008 isn’t a valid comparison. His first major challenge was the self-destructing HRC campaign. His second was riding Bush, global economic catastrophe and oh, John McCain to the finish line). Every capital in the world has this PDF file by now.
As we wrote before, to paraphrase Forrest Gump, “Half-assed is as half-assed does.” And like Gump, Obama may saunter to an objectively undeserved second term. Who here thinks Newt, Barbour, Tpaw, Romney et. al will force Obama to at least shuffle, if not dance, floating like a butterfly? Thought so.
Recent Comments