Main Currents of Political Science and Economics — Over a Cataract

Duke professor Jedediah Purdy highlights a NY Times essay by Molly Worthen, particularly the following passage:

"The left can’t talk openly about ideology, while the right pretends to ignore its own identity politics. The country’s political conversation is boring and unsatisfying precisely because its unspoken rules forbid politicians from acknowledging what is really going on and encourage them to talk past one another. 

"The right has so thoroughly captured the terms of economic debate that American liberals — uniquely in the Western world — champion cultural issues like same-sex marriage equality while avoiding serious confrontation with the structural sources of socio-economic inequality. Their ideological cowardice has left them turning sensible reform proposals like single-payer health insurance into the Frankenstein’s monster of government-subsidized private enterprise that is the Affordable Care Act."

Before the elections, the Times was running a side by side comparison of several models predicting the outcome of the campaigns. I haven't found an account of how those models actually shaped up in the actual outcome.

One way or another, the "conversation is boring and unsatisfying" also captures something about the state of political science exemplified in those models. It's badly missing something. And I don't think it's any accident that it has bought so completely into the methods of the main current of economics that so badly missed critical trends of the past 35 years (not just the past 7 years).

Roger Cohen's False Balance

Roger Cohen's July 24th essay in the New York Times is a masterpiece of deceptive construction and lying by omission. "Hamas establishes a stranglehold over 1.8 million Palestinians squeezed into ... the 'open-air prison' of Gaza" — as if it were Hamas that maintains that prison; as if Palestinians had not chosen Hamas because the grossly corrupt and ineffectual Palestinian Authority had not proved itself more loyal to Likud than to Palestinians.

No mention of attacks on civilians sheltered at UN facilities.

No mention of Palestinian-hating Israelis like Rabbi Dov Lior or Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman ... or Benjamin Netanyahu.

No mention of the support of American anti-Palestinian bigots like Michael Bloomberg or Chuck Schumer. ...Or Barack Obama, who will never dare support the kinds of sanctions against Israel that he has brought against Russia, though by _any_ measure Israel's crimes are far worse.

No mention of how the "Middle East's only democracy" is clamping down on free speech and democracy for Palestinians _and_ for Israelis like those at B'Tselem, which has been barred from airing the names of the children Israel has killed.

Israel is firmly convinced it can win because of American support. And many people who claim to support peace refuse to condemn Israeli crimes or American support for those crimes — people like Roger Cohen.

When American 'Moderates' Try to Sound Moderate

"[D]ecades of perceived humiliation by the West." Thus Roger Cohen characterizes Iran's many complaints against the US (and a handful of other nations, most notably Britain).

Inability to place blame where blame is due when doing so would undermine American jingoist mythology — an essential requirement for any American pundit.

Perceived humiliation?

The 1953 overthrow of Mossadegh. Years of of support for the brutal Shah. The 1988 attack on Iran Air Flight 655, killing 290 (after which the Vincennes Capt. Rogers was rewarded). Years of increasingly brutal sanctions whose only substantive impact is on average Iranians. Overflights by American drones. Likely US support for military incursions into Iran (as reported by Seymour Hersh), which are acts of war under the international law the US demands Iran obey. The placement of US forces in nearly every country bordering Iran. The Stuxnet attack concocted by the US and Israel. A constant stream of invective and bigotry from Americans against Iranians and Islam. US support for and training of the MEK and blind eye turned toward express violations by prominent Americans (like Rudolf Giuliani) of US laws against support for terrorism.

And Mr. Cohen's most glaring omission: The slavish obedience of American politicians (and pundits) to Israel's Likudniks, including AIPAC.

What about this is just perceived? What about it would given any Iranian, even the most liberal, any reason to trust the US?

The real question is what humiliations remain unperceived, still secret.

Some Lies Are More Equal Than Others

Another tempest in a tiny, tiny teacup. In the past 18 hours (it's 4 pm on the East Coast), a fake Bill Keller op-ed has made the rounds. Within a few hours it was exposed as fake. The real giveaway was that it was better than any actual Bill Keller writing. The first I heard of the Bill Keller op-ed was as a fraud this morning, so it never even got to me as possibly genuine. I feel I missed out.

As for The New York Times and 'truth'. It's no coincidence that the traditional media trumpeted by the Times and by Glenn Greenwald's soon-to-be colleague at The Guardian are so much more expensive. The sheer cost of print or television serves as a gate-keeping device to keep out us proles who haven't gone through the brain-washing at the Columbia School of Journalism or the Kennedy School of Government.

Consider the largely-forgotten epitome of Times fraud — Judith Miller. People were pointing out her lies and fabrications about the Middle East, especially about Israel and Palestine, for nearly 20 years before she was finally ditched by the paper and editors that loved her.

The traditional media is just upset that the frauds being swallowed now aren't always theirs. Or worse — that the frauds exposed are theirs. John Burns, Bill Keller, Thomas Friedman, Walter Isaacson, and their ilk hate being caught out in lies. It's embarrassing when they go to the parties in the Hamptons or on Martha's Vineyard thrown by the people who paid for the lying.

Glenn Greenwald writes today of the impending extradition of Julian Assange to Sweden and the likely rendition to the United States, where he will be persecuted by the Obama organized crime syndicate. I have some thoughts on the motivation of politicians and journalists who evidently feel deeply threatened, and certainly deeply angered, by Assange.

There are two issues, tangential to Glenn Greenwald's points, that deserve attention. Both revolve about the problem of perception and reality.

Greenwald notes that the New York Times's Bill Keller is the son of former Chevron CEO George Keller. So Keller is very unlikely to identify at all with poorer or middle class Americans. Increasingly, this is true of elite American journalists generally. They come out of elite universities, often having entered those schools out of elite backgrounds. They identify with the elite. This identification is bolstered by careful management by politicians and business titans. Andrew Ross Sorkin's close ties to Wall Street executives is a perfect example of this. Cokie Roberts, John Burns, Anderson Cooper, and many others, are excellent examples of this. They are very nearly diametrically opposed to a past generation of journalists who came up from nothing — people like Walter Cronkite or Bill Moyers. We see similar patterns in the Supreme Court, now proudly Harvard Law grads (but for one or two members, I think). Congress isn't quite so homogeneous, but it's going that way.

When the revelations of Wikileaks or others challenge the lies of government or industry, these elite journalists themselves feel challenged. What is Keller's whining about an unkempt Julian Assange if not a tacit assertion that Assange is 'beneath' Keller and those with whom Keller associates.

Comments like Glenn Greenwald's or revelations like those of Wikileaks threaten to make bare the reality of a media system that sees itself as part of the power structure, not investigating it. Nevertheless, Keller or Roberts or Burns want to believe their own lies, so they confront cognitive dissonance as they try to find reason to condemn Wikileaks.

There is a comparable, more specific, problem of perception and reality for Obama. He is a servile wannabe, but he wants to see himself as an outsider, a challenger — the challenger that many thought they were voting for in 2008. Why is Obama so determined to destroy whistleblowers? Because, more than most politicians in recent times, his public identity, and possible his personal one, rests on deception. He is not what he represents himself to be. He sees those who challenge that representation as threatening him personally. So he lashes out. Obama takes the Wikileaks revelations and other whistleblowing personally.

Coddling Conservatives

Dean Baker speculates about the obviously different treatment of op-ed essayists at The New York Times, namely the welcome for the often-wrong David Brooks versus Paul Krugman or Bob Herbert. Baker's points can be generalized to the mainstream media and politics.

The obvious question is: When do 'mistakes' rise to something more serious? On a host of issues, Brooks has been corrected again and again, by people like me and by people with infinitely more public presence. Yet he has frequently gone on to repeat [i]exactly[/i] that on which he was corrected. So is he just lying for propaganda purposes?

Brooks does this on international issues, economics, politics — you name it. Unlike a Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann, Brooks is more decorous in his misrepresentations (lies) — as is the New York Times generally.

Dean Baker is quite right, but he poses his case rhetorically, neither raising nor answering another obvious question: Given that liberals would indeed be treated as he describes and given that conservatives get just the opposite treatment, why is this the case? (There's a perfectly good reason for Baker to write so — we all know the answers!)

There is a parallel case with Barack Obama. Obama has coddled conservatives like Alan Simpson. He has packed his team with the likes of Geithner, Bernanke, Summers. He has systematically excluded liberals from discussions on labor, financial reform, education and health care. Currently, he is hunting for an excuse to [i]not[/i] nominate Elizabeth Warren.

The most simple — and plausible — explanation is both cases is that the executives [i]agree[/i] with their conservatives. Times editors agree with Brooks or Douthat (the far dimmer Brooks clone). Obama agrees with Summers, Geithner, Bernanke, Rubin — despite his vague and infrequent gestures in the direction of liberals and progressives.

What concrete evidence we do have confirms this. The Times has pretty clearly joined the Clinton-style 'moderates' against social security. It has been dragged into a tiny handful of stories revealing Israeli crimes, but largely continues to ignore them. It has repeatedly misrepresented issues of housing, banking, etc. Former reporters like Chris Hedges, John Hess, Sydney Schanberg have provided first-hand accounts.

And a handful of inside-reports on Obama — from people who have been in touch recently (e.g., Rashid Khalidi) and in the past (e.g., Penn professor Adolf Reed, Jr.) — confirm the same with the administration of President Zero.

The process of critics of the Times or Obama can be treated as a scientific one. We have a set of observations of consistent behavior. What explains it? What explains the near-total absence of Palestinians from the op-ed pages of the Times or the Post but the regular and frequent appearance of Israelis and their supporters? What explains the total absence of single-payer advocates from Obama discussions on health care reform? What explains the continued employment of Timothy Geithner or Alan Simpson but the quick abandonment of Charles Freeman? One or two isolated cases would allow endless speculation. The uninterrupted pattern of the Obama administration or The New York Times leaves far less room for interpretation.

My Letter to Ross Douthat

Sent Wednesday, 18 August, after I suffered through the idiocy of Ross Douthat on PBS's NewsHour, hosted by the even more racist Jim Lehrer:

Mr. Douthat:

You're a master of the New York Times art of sounding reasonable while advocating bigotry.

Where is your condemnation of Pamela Geller, who profits by the most unambiguously racist diatribes? Where is your condemnation of the Israeli desecration of a Muslim cemetery (Mamilla) in Jerusalem, ostensibly for purposes of building a "Museum of Tolerance"?

You need to confront some realities about yourself. You're a racist.

Sincerely,

Hugh Sansom

Ross Douthat — Just Another New York Times Racist

Ross Douthat, like Thomas Friedman or David Brooks, is a New York Times artist — a master of dressing viciousness, bigotry and just raw stupidity in 'delicate' language. The test of a Douthat (or Brooks or Friedman) essay is to replace the targeted ethnic group with the name of another. As yourself then how you react to his "reasonable" blanket assertions.

Today, Douthat weighs in — with pathetic predictability — on the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque" controversy. How a person names the proposed development is the first indicator of where he or she falls in the spectrum of American bigotry. Douthat is marginally less awful than the loudest bigots on the Islamic cultural center. He's roughly in the Abe Foxman/ADL camp. Also predictable for Douthat, who spends a good deal of time trying such up to perceived power.

We could call this Harvard-Times Bigotry. It is the kind of bigotry that will lead a Harvard president (Larry Summers) to condemn as anti-Semitic calls for divestment from Israel but remain silent (Drew Gilpin Faust) on a Israeli professor's (Martin Kramer's) explicit call for genocide against the Palestinians. It is what allows the Times to equivocate on an Islamic cultural center while supporting Israeli atrocities in Gaza.

Harvard-Times Bigotry takes a specific form. It begins with a token 'recognition' of the weaknesses of the privileged oppressor. So Israeli suffers from an "excessive" (but "understandable") obsession with self-defense. Americans enjoy the "wonderful tradition" of democracy and tolerance mixed with the "social norms" of Anglo-Saxons.

Douthat can't even get his history right — cultural or even simple, basic factual.

"... where the newest arrival to our shores is no less American than the ever-so-great granddaughter of the Pilgrims." Really?! I thought the Constitution expressly stipulates a birth requirement for the American presidency.

That's just one example of the shallow apologies Ross Douthat offers for American racism and bigotry. By doing so, he betrays himself as one of those bigots.

Douthat is the second person I've seen refer to American "nativism". (See also Robert Schlesinger in US News & World Report." We can translate "nativism" to what it really means in 2010 America — racism. Racism. And Ross Douthat is unambiguously (though he tries to mask it) defending — indeed, advocating, racism.

Douthat differs from Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich only by toning down sweeping, unfounded assertions about Islam and Muslims.

We know — conclusively — how the Times would respond of such sweeping claims were made about Jews and Judaism. Such claims are made with regard to Israel's war crimes in Occupied Palestine, something Douthat has never and will never critique or criticize, when some condemn all Jews for the crimes of one state.

Likewise, the Times would condemn – probably bar — blanket condemnation of Christians and Christianity, a condemnation many might find quite reasonable given the past 1000 years of intolerance and war in most Christian nations.

So why is Douthat allowed to commit exactly the vile wrongs that would rightly be damned if committed against any group other than Muslims and Islam?

New York Times Reports on Anti-Muslim BigotryWith NO Mention of Bigotry

Laurie Goodstein reports in today's New York Times (Sunday, 8 August 2010) of opposition to mosques anywhere and everywhere across the US. The story is amazing for the total absence of keywords like "bigotry," "discrimination," "intolerance," "racism," etc.

As the character of Cromwell says in A Man for All Seasons, "This silence speaks." Why does the Times studiously avoid use of certain words with regard to Muslims — words it would absolutely use in any other comparable instance involving any other ethnic group?

My email to Laurie Goodstein this morning:

Dear Ms. Goodstein:

How is it that a story on what certainly seems to be widespread American bigotry and intolerance includes not one use of any of the words that would normally be used: bigotry, intolerance, racism, discrimination, etc.

The closest your story comes is "anti-immigrant". But is transparently obvious that the hostility to mosques _anywhere_ is not about immigrants. The lower Manhattan center is being advocated by Americans, not immigrants.

Do you think a story on hostility or outright (often violent) opposition to a synagogue _could_ be written without raising the issue of anti-Semitism?

Sincerely,

Hugh Sansom

And my letter to Arthur Brisbane, the new Times "Public Editor."

Dear Mr. Brisbane:

I wonder what goes on in the heads of Times editors, especially on hot-button topics where the Times engages in linguistic contortionism to do ... something. The use of the word "torture" to describe American war crimes (note my use of words) is a good example.

Today's Times provides another example — one for textbooks — Laurie Goodstein's report on opposition to mosques across the US.

In New York City, there have been threats of violence, including _bombing_, against mosque projects — not just the project near the World Trade Center, but at ones on Staten Island (killed by opponents) and another in Brooklyn (see NYT, June 10: "Heated Opposition to Proposed Mosque" http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/nyregion/11mosque.html )

Remarkably, Laurie Goodstein makes no mention at all of threats of physical violence — ones that would be called terrorism were they al Qaeda threats against Americans (or Arab threats of any kinds against any Westerner).

Equally remarkably, Laurie Goodstein makes no mention whatsoever of bigotry, discrimination, racism, intolerance....

Can you imagine a story on repeated, often threatening opposition to synagogues that would _not_ raise the issue of anti-Semitism?

Sincerely,

Hugh Sansom

.

The American Prospect

Below is my response to "Time Is Running Out," Bob Herbert's February 6 essay in The New York Times:

For most Americans, the economy Bob Herbert fears may develop has been an established fact for some time. The Reagan years marked the start of a steady decline in prospects. Younger Americans and many in middle age have little if any expectation of living better than their parents. The servile grovelling of Obama and Congress at the feet of Wall Street and the Health Insurers are really only a reminder that the US has institutionalized oligarchy in every sense but the constitutional one.

Worse, the uninterrupted militarism of the past 60 years is actually escalating under Obama, hard as that may be to believe. At least medicare and social security unambiguously help Americans, if (perhaps) somewhat inefficiently (certainly no more inefficiently than private insurers do). The obscene military budgets have been blown on needless wars evidently calculated to inflame hatred of the US around the world.

Frankly, the lives of people in Germany look pretty good. They have health care, five weeks of vacation for all, and need not fear a life of abject poverty after retirement. They still value science, engineering and art. And they are aware that it is necessary to live with the rest of the people of the Earth -- a fact most Americans flatly deny.

Below, the section of Herbert's essay that I respond to:

Speaking at a conference here on Wednesday, Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania said that if we don’t act quickly in developing long-term solutions to these and other problems, the United States will be a second-rate economic power by the end of this decade. A failure to act boldly, he said, will result in the U.S. becoming “a cooked goose.”

Neither the politicians nor much of the mainstream media are spelling out the severity of these enormous structural problems or the sense of urgency needed to address them. Living standards are sinking in the United States, and there is no coherent vision or plan for reversing that ominous trend over the long term.

The conference was titled, “The Next American Economy: Transforming Energy and Infrastructure Investment.” It was put together by the Brookings Institution and Lazard, the investment banking advisory firm.

When Governor Rendell addressed the conference on Wednesday, he used words like “stunning” and “unbelievable” to describe what has happened to the nation’s infrastructure. His words echoed the warnings we’ve been hearing for years from the American Society of Civil Engineers, which tells us: “The broken water mains, gridlocked streets, crumbling dams and levees, and delayed flights that come from failing infrastructure have a negative impact on the checkbook and on the quality of life of each and every American.”

The conference was sparked by a sense of dismay over what has happened to the U.S. economy over the past several years and a feeling that constructive ideas about solutions were being smothered by an obsessive focus on the short-term in this society, and by the chronic dysfunction and hyperpartisanship in much of the government.

I was struck by the absence of grousing and finger-pointing at the conference and the emphasis on trying to develop new ways to establish an economy that is not based on financial flimflammery, that enhances America’s competitive position in the world, and that relieves us of the terrible burden of reliance on foreign energy sources.

I was also struck by the pervasive sense that if we don’t get our act together then the glory days of the go-go American economic empire will fade like the triumphs of an aging Hollywood star. One of the participants raised the very real possibility of Americans having to get used to living in an economy “that won’t be number one,” an economy that perhaps is more like Germany’s.

Delusions of the Economic Right-Wing

Ross Douthat has one of the stupidest, least informed (or most dishonest) essays on the economy that I've seen in The New York Times . . . ever. He does little more than toady for an equally dishonest though better-sounding (emphasis on "sounding") Jim Manzi in National Affairs.

Briefly, they offer a toned-down but otherwise very familiar conservative economic diet so that the US can maintain its economic primacy in the world — something they seem worried about in much the way that men fret over the size of their penises.

Here, my response:

A complete account of the flaws and misrepresentations in Ross Douthat's essay and Jim Manzi's in National Affairs would require more space than Douthat's essay takes in the first place.

Here are a few of the glaring problems:

1. Both Manzi and Douthat, particularly Manzi, treat American economic leadership as some kind of national security issue. They both come off as narrow-minded jingoists, or as men worried about their penises. We can be sure that the American companies relocating production and off-shoring labor to Asia are less concerned about American economic leadership than they are about lining their own pockets — in its sheer extremes, a decidely American ethos that the crimes of Wall Street and the health industry prove amply.

2. Manzi is absurdly sloppy in his use of language. He, and Douthat copying him, talk of "America's global output" compared to Europe, China, India. In dollars or tonnage or what? Is this the Europe including the eastern countries of the former Soviet bloc? Is the vaunted US output including the fantastically wasteful military production? (The US has effectively remained on a constant war footing for 30 years and has effectively been at war continuously for 60.) Does US output include the fools' wealth of the housing bubble and the ponzi schemes of Wall Street? Nothing in Manzi's or Douthat's essay provides any answer.

3. Most glaring: Standard of Living. Douthat and Manzi both make passing reference to the American standard of living and then let it drop — for obvious reason: the US standard of living is a disgrace for a country as productive as Douthat and Manzi claim. All of the major western European nations, with the likely exception of Britain (which of the European nations has most closely tried to copy the American Standard), have a higher standard of living than the US. The Scandinavian countries, with the most 'socialistic' economies have the highest standards and the greatest levels of satisfaction among their populations.

4. Our "politics are polarized"? Hardly. The vast majority of Democrats have bent over double to copy the Republicans. It is the right-wing Republicans, who now constitute the entire Republican party in Congress, that have sought at every turn to torpedo political and economic consensus.

5. Obama Democrats returning to "European-style social democracy"? Does Douthat read the news — at all. There is little if any Obama or Democratic move to reregulate Wall Street or to regulate the health industry beyond a few token measures that will likely be easily evaded. Obama offers environmental measures as "suggestions". The FDA may get some regulatory teeth back, but only after 3 decades of disaster, thanks to Reagan and Clinton. "Micromanaging industry"? How? Where? Can Douthat offer even one example beyond, perhaps, the banning of denial of health insurance coverage on the basis of pre-existing conditions? There is simply no basis in fact for Douthat's or Manzi's assertions. They offer nothing more than Friedman/Greenspan style conservative economics.

6. Partnerships "between Big Business and Big Government"? What partnership? We the People bailed out Wall Street after vague threats by overpaid executives? We bailed out the auto manufacturers only after it became clear they really would fail, taking with them tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of jobs. Republicans fought the aid to Detroit tooth and nail. Our health insurance and Wall Street "partners" continue to fight any change that might threaten their grossly over-sized bonuses. Again Douthat shows a childish ignorance of or a willful (very Republican) indifference to fact.

Last, "We're all in this together"?! You've got to be kidding. If the past two years prove anything at all, it is that we are *not* all in this together. The wealthiest 1% to 5% of Americans (or fewer) and their paid representatives in Congress have immunized themselves against the conditions of the vast majority. In this respect, the US is doing quite well at keeping pace with China.

Roger Cohen in Defends the Faith of The New York Times

Roger Cohen offered a weak essay lauding the wonders of America. He was inundated with criticism. He responded with a tip of the cap and further defenses. Here, my response.

Dear Mr. Cohen:

Perhaps you can answer how the Times decides when to end new comments on op-ed essays. My guess is that the Times reacts against critical trends, and it's understandable why responses to you recent essays are overwhelmingly critical.

To be blunt, you sound like a 5th grade school teacher -- in keeping with a newspaper that doesn't remotely measure up to the standards it claims to set. More like Defender of the Faith than a defender of America.

The US has military bases in how many countries? One hundred fifty? More? The nation has been at war _continuously_ for over sixty years (undeclared and arguably all unconstitutional). No Third World War? Tell that to Vietnamese, Iraqis, Iranians, Cambodians, Laotians, Chileans, Guatemalans, Nicaraguans, Timorese....

Racism towards Arabs (whom you neglect to mention in your quasi-mea culpa) is soaring. Members of Congress brazenly tar all Arabs, all Muslims.

Two successive administrations, including the one hailed as the most liberal in generations, have missed _no_ opportunity to attack civil liberties. Civil liberties "haltingly advanced"? Obama is halting, not advancing.

As your colleague Paul Krugman and many other moderates and liberals have noted, the US is substantively an oligarchy. The "American dream" is dying. Wealth rules, with the eager support of all three branches of government, including, again, the "most liberal" President Obama. The president has acted to advance poverty and inequality, which are growing rapidly.

Though environmental disasters are widely recognized, the government and people show, at best, blithe indifference. Perhaps on no other count can the worst of the US be seen. The Times takes part as it focuses attention on China, though the US towers in its responsibility for ecological catastrophe. The US has repeatedly fought legislation in Europe to regulate GM foods, pesticides and plastics. Some aim.

We are indeed heirs of fortitude and foresight. Obama shows NO sign of heeding this. And you do nothing for future progress by carrying on the grade school teacher's mission of indoctrination.