Daniel Carney’s father was a British diplomat who had a rough Second World War.[1] Daniel (1944-1987) was born in Beirut,[2] then the family lived in Tehran before “coming home” to Britain in 1948.  Apparently, it never seemed much like home to Daniel Carney.  Or perhaps he just wanted a more adventurous life than Britain and its crumbling empire could provide.  When he was 19, he went to Southern Rhodesia, which had just broken from the Black-ruled Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland.  Here he joined the British South Africa Police (BSAP).  This national police force contained para-military units fully involved in the “Bush War” against Black nationalists operating from neighboring countries.[3]  They might be described as “a toughish lot, but very go ahead.”[4]  Carney spent three and a half years with the BSAP, doing stuff and listening to the tales of other people.  Then he packed it in for real estate and writing. 

Carney wrote fiction about what he knew and believed.  The descendants of White settlers seeking a better life at the price of a more rugged life dominated Southern Rhodesia, which had a vastly larger Black population.  Like most of the other “White Africans” who descended from European settlers in Algeria, Kenya, South Africa, Mozambique, and Angola, they saw themselves as besieged defenders of Western civilization.  They saw their opponents as pre-civilized “savages” who were being used by the Soviet Union which often supported their efforts at national liberation.  Before cancer killed Carney at a young age, he wrote two novels that expressed the settler view.  Both were made into movies. 

The Whispering Death (1969).  A former BSAP officer and his loyal African tracker hunt the guerrilla who murdered his fiancé.  He succeeds, but his killed by Army troops for going off the reservation.  Made into “Albino”/”Whispering Death”/”Night of the Askaris” (Dir. Jurgen Goslar, 1976), reviewed by right-thinking film scholars as “a nasty, repugnant tale of racial hatred and revenge.”

The Thin White Line (1978).  Former mercenaries from the Congo are hired to save a charismatic African president from captivity—so that he can be exploited by a Western mining company.[5]  Made into “The Wild Geese” (Dir. Andrew McLaglen, 1978).  One right-thinking reviewer described it as “deadly dull” even as it “exploits racism as some kind of sporting entertainment.”  It was the 14^th highest grossing movie that year, so maybe not that dull. 

Carney wrote two later thrillers, but neither has anything to do with Africa: The Square Circle (1982), which was made into “The Wild Geese II” and Macau (1985).  His novel Under a Raging Sky (1980), perhaps offers insight into Carney himself: a young man chucks a boring white-collar job to seek adventure in Rhodesia.  He finds it. 

It is reported that, after his death, Carney’s heirs opposed republication of his books. 

[1] Various postings in China during the Sino-Japanese War; captured by the Japanese at Shanghai in early 1942;

 eventually exchanged for Japanese diplomats; posted to Natal, South Africa, and then Beirut. 

[2] Where the British were trying to keep the Free French and the Arab nationalists from duking it out before the whole Hitler thing had been sorted out.

[3] See Rhodesian Bush War – Wikipedia 

[4] Sam Collins to George Smiley, in John LeCarre, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974).  Collins is describing the criminals who own the gambling joint which he manages since being unjustly forced out of MI-6. 

[5] See: Wilbur Smith, Dark of the Sun (1965); Frederick Forsyth, The Dogs of War (1974); and John LeCarre, Mission Song (2006) for similar themes. 

            Once upon a time, Martin Short asked Mel Brooks “So, what’s your big beef with the Nazis?”[1]  He could ask Andrew Weissmann the same thing about Donald Trump.[2]  In a recent op-ed Weissmann makes several important points about the “raid on Mar-a-Lago.” 

            First, state secrets are STATE secrets and thus government property, not the personal property of any government employee or private citizen.  The government has the duty to defend the security of that information.  That went for the Pentagon Papers and the Edward Snowden revelations,[3] so it has to apply to the stuff that Donald Trump took with him into “a sunny place for shady people.”[4] 

            Second, the government had been trying to get the stuff back for quite a while.  Trump had returned some stuff, but not everything.  (In contrast, at the end of Bill Clinton’s second term, he and Hilary Clinton took home some furniture and other odds and ends that had been meant for the White House.  When they got called on it, they sent them right back.[5])  Meanwhile, the material in question was being stored in a room in Trump’s home.  Eventually, the Feds got fed up.  Nothing short of breaking down Trump’s front door with a battering ram and a warrant would work.  Feds shouldn’t have to get fed up in a situation like this. 

            It seems to me impossible to believe that whatever lawyers Donald Trump had representing him couldn’t figure out all of this, even if they had to refer to WestLaw on-line.  It seems impossible to me to believe that the lawyers didn’t tell him as much.[6]  So, in Weissmann’s words, the “redacted affidavit is further proof that Mr. Trump’s flouting of criminal statutes persisted for a long time and gives every appearance of being intentional.” 

            Third, “Mr. Trump’s penchant for hyperbole and spin to his base will be ineffective in a forum where the rule of law governs.”  That may be true if the intelligence community decides that Trump’s retaining the documents actually compromised American security or if Attorney General Merrick Garland decides that Trump retained them from a demonstrable corrupt purpose.  Either of those cases would likely trigger a prosecution.  Probably lawyers could cite many other legitimate charges.   One real question would be if Garland wants to prosecute the likely Republican presidential nominee in 2024.  Trump himself is shameless, so being charged with something isn’t likely to deter him from running for office.  Trial, verdict, appeals if not acquitted or if there isn’t a hung jury: all this could string out the proceedings for a long time. 

            Finally, an American election isn’t a “forum where the rule of law governs.”  Rather, it is a place where—too often—”hyperbole and spin” are the common currency on both sides.  If Trump loses, that’s one thing.  If Trump wins, it could mean a third impeachment trial.  Or not.  What if there really is a Republican wave in 2022 and 2024? 

[1] Mel Brooks & Jiminy Glick – YouTube Start at 4:41 for the line, but the whole routine is worth a watch. 

[2]  On Weissmann, see Andrew Weissmann – Wikipedia  and on his account of the Mueller investigation, Where Law Ends – Wikipedia

[3] In both of those cases, it seems to me that the revelations served the larger public interest. 

[4] As someone once described Monaco. 

[5] See: Clintons Began Taking White House Property a Year Ago – Los Angeles Times (latimes.com) 

[6] OK, he didn’t pay no never mind to Bill Barr or Pat Cipollone.  Perhaps his current lawyers are sitting around with their heads in their hands going “What was I thinking?” 

            Journalism professor Peter Beinart refers to “this age of rising authoritarianism.”[1]  In what sense is this an “age of rising authoritarianism”? 

The history of Russia is a history of authoritarianism.  The appalling Tsarist monarchy gave way to the even worse Communist era, which gave way to the appalling Putin dictatorship.  The point is, Russia has been an authoritarian state for virtually its entire history.  The history of China is the history of authoritarianism.  The Qing monarchy gave way to the “age of the warlords” until the Kuomintang (KMT) established a national dictatorship.  The Communists replaced this dictatorship with their own—even worse—dictatorship in 1949.  Much has changed in China since the 1980s, but it remains a highly effective authoritarian state.  Since gaining independence from Britain in 1949, India and Pakistan have been, at best, false-front democracies hiding real authoritarianism.  The list of Less Developed Nations that are anti-democratic horror stories is as long as your arm and has been for decades. 

“Well, well, authoritarianism is rising in places like Europe.”  No, it isn’t.  If anything, we have been witnessing are nationalist revolts against threatening authoritarianism.  Poland and Hungary have resisted the encroachments of the anything-but-liberal and German-dominated administrative state of the European Union (EU).  In 2003, French President Jacques Chirac said that Eastern European countries who supported the American invasion of Iraq had “missed the chance to shut up.”[2]  One particular flash-point in this resistance came when semi-authoritarian Turkey used the refugee/migrant weapon against the EU.  German Chancellor Angela Merkel responded by issuing quotas of illegal immigrants to be absorbed by each EU member state.  It is possible to see Ukraine’s resistance to Russian’s invasion in the same light, even if the situation and the Ukrainian response are both more extreme.  Yet no one questions the legitimacy of Ukraine asserting its own independence against clanking, rather than creeping, authoritarianism. 

Then there is “Brexit.”  That went well beyond whatever the Poles and Hungarians have done.  It is best understood by an upwelling of English patriotism among an older generation for whom nationality still has some meaning.[3]  In contrast, the much-feared “Grexit” never happened because the Greeks bent before EU (and especially German) pressure. 

If authoritarianism isn’t “rising,” why claim that it is?  I suspect that is because it allows Progressive people to set Donald Trump in a particular framework.  “[T]oday you do not need to have a dictatorship or a one-party state in order to accomplish your goals. You can take a democracy and change it through expansions of executive power and other repressions until you have the same effect on the subject population and a quasi-rubber-stamp parliament, without declaring a dictatorship….Now with Trump, he uses fascist tactics.”[4] 

What might worry some people is that such a characterization might be used to justify exceptional measures in defense of “our democracy.”  

[1] Peter Beinart, “Has the Right Against Antisemitism Lost Its Way?” NYT, 28 August 2022.  The op-ed piece itself is really good on its subject. 

[2] See: CNN.com – Chirac lashes out at ‘new Europe’ – Feb. 18, 2003 

[3] I suspect that it really began with the referendum on Scottish independence.  In the background of television news reports I noticed growing numbers of “Cross of St. George” flags.  That’s the English half of the more familiar “Union jack” created after the Act of Union (1707). 

[4] LISTEN: Ruth Ben-Ghiat on how Trump is already using “fascist tactics” | Salon.com 

            Will the newly-passed “Inflation Reduction Act” actually reduce inflation?  No, it will not.[1]  First, it does nothing to reduce inflation now and isn’t even intended to do so.  Over the course of a decade it will reduce budget deficits by about $300 billion.  Excess money, compounded by supply chain problems and delays in restarting oil refining, are what drives the inflation we have.  The Fed is tightening interest rates to reduce that inflation.  Most of Inflation Reduction Act’s deficit reduction will come between 2027 and 2031.  The Inflation Reduction Act is just a time-sensitive label plastered onto a bill dealing with other matters.[2] 

Second, in the last year Congress has passed bills[3] that increase deficits over the next decade by about $614 billion in the estimate of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).[4]  As they taught us in elementary school, “612 take away 300 leaves 312.”  Is that reality dangerously inflationary?  No it is not.  In 2021, US Gross Domestic Product (GDP) fell just short of $23 trillion.[5]  Spread over a decade, the $312 billion amounts to about 0.1 percent of GDP. 

So, is it just pretty much a wash given the size of the American economy?  Not in the eyes of conservative critics.[6]  The abandonment of the “small government” Reagan Revolution since the start of this century has renewed the expansion of government programs without seriously expanding the taxation to pay for it.[7]  Businesses have one responsibility: to make a profit for their owners within the law.  For them, economic efficiency is—or should be—a little tin god.  However, governments act from a complex of motives, not all of them purely economic.  National security is one such imperative.  A Navy Carrier Strike Group is a big, complex, and expensive operation.[8]  Now, nobody needs a Carrier Strike Group.  Until they do.  Then they need it in a hurry, not in ten years’ time.  The United States Navy has eleven of them.  Efficient?  No way in Hell.  Something to think about if you’re Xi Jinping?  You betcha’.  The same rationale applies to things like climate change. 

In one sense, a question becomes how much we want the inefficient-by-necessity federal government expanding into new areas to shape production and consumption.[9]  Eventually, over time, the addition and expansion of programs with subsidies, regulations, and the impact of lobbyists can slow the economy.  The underlying economy has provided much of what makes America different from other places.  It is stronger, of course, than other states and able to influence change.  It also has—mostly–provided the chance for individual improvement. 

[1] Greg Ip, “Fiscal Agenda Doesn’t Help With Inflation,” WSJ, 12 August 2022. 

[2] See: The treachery of images (This is not a pipe), 1928 – 1929 – Rene Magritte – WikiArt.org 

[3] Either in a bipartisan fashion or through reconciliation. 

[4] $278 billion for the veterans affected by toxic “burn pits”; $257 billion for the infrastructure bill; and $79 billion for the semi-conductor aid bill.  That doesn’t mean that these things aren’t worth doing.  Just means that we are going to put a big chunk of the cost on the credit card. 

[5] United States (USA) GDP – Gross Domestic Product 2022 | countryeconomy.com 

[6] Conservatives are the only critics of these policies.  Back in the 2020 elections season, Progressives talked openly of “running the economy hot” to achieve their social policy goals.  Our current experience is what they meant. 

[7] See: A Time of Change. | waroftheworldblog  OK, citing myself.  How self-reverential. 

[8] See: Carrier battle group – Wikipedia 

[9] See: Apoorva Mandavilli, “States Blame Federal Mix-Ups As Monkeypox Shots Are Lost,” NYT, 16 August 2022; David Fahrenthold, “Pandemic Fraud Claimed Billions Meant for Relief,” NYT, 17 August 2022.  Front page stories in the Times two days running for pity’s sake.