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Poisonville.

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A couple of recent books have high-lighted the big changes that swept over one part of America.[1]  Charles Murray and Brian Alexander[2] have both tried to understand the situation of the folks “I left behind me” when I went East to grad school.  Murray adopted the macro-perspective, while Alexander preferred to flesh-out the story by looking at the home town he had abandoned and to which he later returned.[3]

Once upon a time Lancaster, Ohio, incarnated the prosperous, moderate, conformist America of the golden years that followed the Second World War.  No one in the Boston-Washington corridor would have thought of places like Lancaster as an American Athens.  However, some basic cultural values of the Classical Greeks also then prevailed in Middle America: moderation and self-restraint.  The wealthiest Lancastrians did not live in gated communities; most children went to the public schools; women of all social classes joined in the community initiatives.[4]

Then things went wrong.  Over the last thirty-odd years, Anchor Hocking, a glass-maker and the chief employer in town, got passed around by Wall Street investment firms and the bankruptcy courts.  Along the way Lancaster went from being a town of 29,000, of whom 5,000 worked for Anchor Hocking, to being a town of 39,000, of whom 1,000 worked for that same company.  Production down-shifted from high-skill to lower-skilled products; and workers’ commitment to quality down-shifted with it.  In the process, the company’s pension fund dried up and its’ obligations were passed to the federal insurance program; wages were held down; and the generous fringe-benefits once offered by the company were cut to the bone.  Demoralization spread among the workers.  One worker says his co-workers snort Percocet and Oxy on the job.

Brian Alexander—like everyone else, so far as I can tell—sees the modern economy as the snake in this Garden of Eden.  His rogues’ gallery includes foreign competition, Milton Friedman, the powerful bargaining of big box stores, and companies that put profits for stock-holders ahead of wages for workers.

What seems to be missing is any awareness of the rebounding of foreign economies after the Second World War, which created formidable competitors for American industry; the great labor offensive of the 1970s that led companies to shift production to “right to work” states or over-seas; the huge impact of automation on many industrial processes, which destroyed millions of jobs; the nostalgia for small shops that imposed a quaintness tax on consumers, which many sought to evade by going to Walmart; or the inadaptability of many older workers, which left them languishing in backwaters.

These changes have come in for a lot of attention because of the supposed political consequences.  That is, “Rust Belt” one-time Democrats put Donald Trump into the White House.  Now Democrats and mainstream Republicans are thrashing around trying to figure out what went wrong.  Neglect of/contempt for blue collar workers is an easy explanation.  Certainly, it has been my one.  Is it the right one?

[1] Maybe, just maybe, other people in my social group missed out on them as well?  IDK.

[2] Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 (2012); Brian Alexander, Glass House: The 1% Economy and the Shattering of the All-American Town (2016).  See Roger Lowenstein, “Why They Voted For Trump,.” WSJ, 18-19 February 2017.

[3] Alexander is not the first to explore these issues in this fashion.  See also https://waroftheworldblog.com/2015/03/22/our-kids/

[4] Many of the early thrillers by John D. MacDonald offer glimpses of this world.  See, for example, Area of Suspicion (1954).

“Chaebol.”

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“Chaebol” is a Korean word for “rich clan.”[1]  Probably, in the misty past, that meant families that owned a lot of farm land.  One way or another, they probably had connections to the government.  In the misty present, South Korea has become a major industrial and commercial society.  So long as the Japanese Empire ruled Korea, the country remained a subordinate part of the rough-draft of the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.”  That is, it provided cheap labor and raw materials to Japanese industry.[2]  Then, in 1945, came liberation and national independence, if not national unity.  Then, from 1950 to 1953, came the terrible Korean War.[3]

After the war, the government of the Republic of Korea (aka ROK, aka South Korea) set out to join the modern world.  Those were hard times and there wasn’t much to go around.  The government channeled the scant available resources toward companies that were “bullish” on South Korea.  The government also fended-off foreign competition and stepped down hard on the labor movement.  The government pushed a drive for export-led growth.

Hyundai, Samsung, LG, and Hanjin are among the leading “chaebol.”  Generally, these are conglomerates of related industries within sectors of the economy.  Samsung makes electronics, Hyundai makes cars, and Hanjin is a (now bankrupt) shipping company.  That is, they try not to compete with one another.  Each one has his share of the pie.[4]

A glance at the names of the “chaebol” demonstrates just how successful this effort proved to be.  A further glance north of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) at the Peoples’ Republic of Drudge,[5] shows an alternative strategy for development.  In any event, the “chaebol” have molted into families that own a lot of companies.  One way or another, they probably have connections to the government.  That is, rich people finance the election or re-election of pawns.

One “tarantula on a piece of Angel food cake” in this success story is the deep resentment felt by ordinary South Koreans.  In the 1950s and 1960s, the “chaebol” got scarce resources in very hard times.  Ordinary people had to do without.  That has become a folk memory.  Today, the “chaebol” continue to pile up wealth when South Korea no longer needs to fight for survival.  Ordinary people resent that selfishness.  The problem for the “chaebol” is that, in the 1980s, South Korea made the shift from a military-industrial complex government to something approaching a real democracy.  In these circumstances, no longer can every scandal involving the “chaebol” be swept under the rug.[6]

A second “tarantula” appears in the series of scandals and errors plaguing the “chaebol.”  The Asian financial crisis of the 1990s; Samsung phones catching fire; and the sinking of the ferry boat “Sewol”[7] all have called into question the ethics and competence of the “chaebol.”

Then there’s the sinking of the F.V. “Majestic Blue.”  But that’s unrelated.

[1] Carlos Tejada, “Money, Power and Family: Inside the Chaebol of South Korea,” NYT, 18 February 2017.

[2] Not that it has anything to do with economic policy, but you might want to see “The Handmaiden” (2016, dir. Park Chan-wook).  It has been described as an “erotic psychological thriller.”  JMO, but if this doesn’t get your motor running, then you’ve got issues.

[3] Americans commonly—and wrongly—believe that the horrors of that war are encapsulated in the Anabasis of the First Marines from “up on the reservoir” down to the sea.

[4] “Oh what a good boy am I.”

[5] I stole that from someone, perhaps from Walt Kelly.

[6] “There ain’t no clean way to make a hundred million bucks…. Somewhere along the line guys got pushed to the wall, nice little businesses got the ground cut out from under them… Decent people lost their jobs…. Big money is big power and big power gets used wrong. It’s the system.”–Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye (1953).

[7] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_MV_Sewol

“Bug Eyed with Fear and Vengeance.”

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In the opening scene of The Hamlet[1], Ab Snopes strides across his future landlord’s barnyard, then tracks manure into the front hall.  His behavior, and that of the whole scabby Snopes clan, deteriorates from there on across a trilogy of novels.  When David Mikkelson needed a user name for a group, he picked “snopes.”  Soon, impressed by the amount of sheer nonsense he encountered on the internet, he and his wife started a fact-checking site called Snopes.  To this day, the site tracks manure into the front hall of many internet fantasies.

Recently, the editor at the Snopes site reportedly told The Atlantic[2] that the majority of political false reports and rumors now come from or are aimed at liberals.  To follow one example ripped from the pages of Snopes, in February 2017 a story circulated that Donald Trump had met Vladimir Putin at an exclusive Swiss Alpine resort in June 2016. The story originated with three newly-created “fake news” sites.  “Redirects subsequently put in place for these fake news sites demonstrate that they were established as a promotional effort for the psychological thriller film ‘A Cure for Wellness’.”[3]

In similar fashion, surveys of Democrats conducted in July and November 2016 revealed an increase in a disposition to believe conspiracy theories from 27 percent to 32 percent.[4]  Political psychologists suggest that a belief in conspiracies is a coping mechanism on the part of people who have lost power or status in some fashion.  Thus the same survey that found an increase in Democrats’ conspiracy belief also found a decline in Republican conspiracy belief from 28 percent to 19 percent.[5]  As one academic expert on George Orwell put it, “people are hungry for frames of reference to understand this new reality.”[6]

Perhaps one sign of the post-election state of mind among Democrats is to be found in the surge of sales for “dystopian classics.”  George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984 topped the sales charts at Amazon.com.[7]  Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here[8] and Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, came close behind.  Sales of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1984) jumped 30 percent in 2016 and 100,000 copies were printed in the three months following the election.

It has been suggested that alarmed Democrats are turning to works of fiction because non-fiction journalism can’t keep up with reality.  It isn’t for want of trying.  To take one example, one “The Interpreter” column in the New York Times offered “scholars of authoritarianism” a platform from which to compare Donald Trump to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Vladimir Putin, and Rodrigo Duterte.[9]  Will all this turn out to be incitement to some rash act?

[1] William Faulkner, The Hamlet (1940).

[2] Which was read by a reporter at the New York Times, who quoted the Snopes editor in a story which I read and am now trying to write about for the blog which you are reading.  Just laying out the provenance here.

[3] See: http://www.snopes.com/trump-putin-switzerland/  The film was produced for Regency Films, owned by Amon Milchan.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnon_Milchan

[4] Brendan Nyhan, “More Democrats Turn to Conspiracy Theories,” NYT, 16 February 2017.

[5] It is curious (to me anyway) that in July 2016, essentially equal percentages of Democrats (27) and Republicans (28) were disposed to believe in conspiracy theories.  I wonder if that is just a result of an election campaign and that the numbers are lower between elections?

[6] Alexandra Alter, “Fears for the Future Prompt A Boon (sic) for Dystopian Classics,” NYT, 28 January 2017.

[7] Understandably, sales of his Homage to Catalonia (which details the murderous behavior of the Communists to their fellow-leftists during the Spanish Civil War) and The Road to Wigan Pier (which lambast middle-class contempt for the values and behavior of working people) failed to budge.

[8] The novel commonly is taken as an attack on Huey Long, the Louisiana demagogue and rival to Franklin D. Roosevelt until Long’s assassination.

[9] Amanda Taub, “The Travel Ban and an Authoritarian ‘Ladder of Violence’,” NYT, 2 February 2017.

Memoirs of the Addams Administration 4.

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In his second week in office, President Trump issued an executive order requiring that any new regulation must be accompanied by the removal of two existing regulations.[1]  Given the cumbersome mechanism for removing existing rules and regulations, this should put a stop to new rules and regulations for a year.[2]  (He allowed an exception for national security-related issues.)  A cost-benefit analysis of this issue is murky.  The Office of Management and Budget suggests that regulations drain-off $110 billion a year from the economy.  On the other hand, the same regulations may save the economy an estimated $872 billion a year.  The “benefits” of regulation actually are non-monetary and can be difficult to calculate in a conventional manner.[3]  In short, neither the “costs,” nor the “benefits” of regulation can be calculated.

President Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created when Antonin Scalia augured-in.  Judge Gorsuch is a highly-regarded jurist, as was Judge Merrick Garland, who was denied even a hearing in a shameless piece of Republican obstructionism.[4]  He’s also 49 years-old and could sit on the Court for decades, short-circuiting every Democratic initiative launched by the turn of semi-annual or quadrennial elections.  Democrats demonstrated dismay.  “This is a stolen seat,” declared Senator Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon); the “Republicans stole this seat from Obama” declared the Charlotte Observer (D-North Carolina); while the Atlantic (D-Massachusetts) denounced it as a “deal with the devil.”

Still, the Republicans controlled the Senate when President Obama nominated Judge Garland.  They weren’t going to approve a pro-Democratic Justice when the election tides had been running against the Democrats for three out of four successive elections.  Hearing followed by rejection isn’t any different than rejection through no hearings.  The assumption in the White House appears to have been that whichever party held the White House got to choose which ever justice it wanted for the Supreme Court.  If that’s true, then what about Robert Bork?[5]

[1] “Washington: Trump orders regulatory rollback,” The Week, 10 February 2017, p. 32.

[2] See Emmarie Huetteman, “How Republicans Will Try to Rescind Obama Regulations,” NYT, 31 January 2017.

[3] Perhaps not everything can be reduced to a balance sheet.  Still, do we want a flight into mysticism and “personal feelings” on behalf of people whose standard of living depends upon other people generating wealth?

[4] “Battle lines drawn over Supreme Court pick,” The Week, 10 February 2017, p. 5.

[5] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bork

Memoirs of the Addams Administration 2.

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During his first week in office,[1] President Donald Trump ended American participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement[2]; took the first step toward re-negotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) by arranging to meet the leaders of Canada and Mexico[3]; instructed the Department of Homeland Security to begin completion of the border wall; ordered that federal funds not go to any “sanctuary cities”[4]; indicated that he would lift President Obama’s blockage of the Dakota Access and the Keystone XL pipelines; began the process of “repealing and replacing” the Affordable Care Act by instructing federal agencies waive regulations that [the presidentially-appointed head of the agency] regards as burdensome; ordered the Environmental Protection Agency (E.P.A.) to pause in issuing grants and contracts; barred foreign aid funds from going to international agencies or groups that provide information on abortions[5]; and imposed a federal hiring freeze.[6]  All these steps appear to be reasonable efforts to fulfill promises that candidate Trump made during his campaign.

Furthermore, the president told a group of businessmen that he wanted to lower the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to the 15-20 percent range,[7] and to cut back federal regulation of business by 75 percent.

More alarming—to many if not all—was President Trump’s renewed claim that millions—up to five millions–of people had voted illegally in November 2016.  He promised to launch an investigation.  In addition, he seems eager for a war against the press/media, and he swats aside predictions of conflict of interest.  In addition, the president and his spokespeople have attacked the press—America’s last large unregulated industry—while trumpeting “alternative facts.”[8]  A 500,000-strong Women’s March on Washington had a divided impact.  Supporters saw it as “resistance”; while critics saw it as resistance to a democratic election.[9]

So, a fast start to his first term as president.

[1] “President Trump makes his mark,” The Week, 3 February 2017, p. 4.

[2] The agreement already was Dead-on-Arrival, given the shift in position by both parties during the 2016 election campaign.  Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton would have done the same thing.

[3] The two men signaled a willingness to negotiate.   Then came the whole personal spat.

[4] These are cities that refuse to co-operate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in searching for illegal immigrants.  They do, however, avidly pursue federal money for other projects.

[5] This does not prevent other countries from providing those funds.

[6] This freeze ensnared my son, a seasonal wildlands firefighter for the National Forest Service.  The freeze seems unlikely to last, especially once the West catches fire in July 2017.

[7] The nominal Canadian basic tax rate is 38 percent, but a “federal tax abatement” cuts it to 28 percent, and a general tax reduction cuts the effective tax rate to 15 percent.

[8] “’Alternative facts’: Is Trump at war with reality?” The Week, 3 February 2017, p. 6.

[9] “Women’s March: The progressive backlash against Trump,” The Week, 3 February 2017, p.16.

Memoirs of the Addams Administration 1.

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From 1945 to the very recent past, the United States led the capitalist world toward negotiation of an open world economy.  In recent decades, that policy has come back to bite the United States as Asian countries became ferocious competitors.  Eighty percent of trade-related job losses can be attributed to Asian countries (China, Japan, South Korea).  However, public hostility has focused on the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the least offending agreement.

In 1992, President George H. W. Bush completed the negotiations for NAFTA.[1]  The agreement ended tariffs and non-tariff barriers between Mexico, Canada, and the United States.  This would allow the free flow of assets across national borders.  Soon afterward, President Bill Clinton got the treaty passed by Congress.

“Comparative advantage” (a term in economics) suggests that low-wage, low-skill Mexican workers will manufacture one sort of product,[2] and high-wage, high-skill Canadian workers will manufacture another sort of product.  This seems to be the case under NAFTA, as Mexicans produce dashboards and Canadians produce transmissions for final assembly by Americans.  There’s nothing innovative about this.  Asian manufacturers have been doing the same diversification of the supply-chain thing for a while.  American manufacturers had to adapt to stay competitive.

Was NAFTA good deal for Americans?  Well, the United States now exports to Mexico goods worth 3.5 times as much as in 1993, even allowing for inflation.  On the other hand, Mexico still has run a trade surplus against the United States that amounts to $60 billion a year.  How many jobs—if any—did that amount to?  In the eyes of economists, NAFTA encouraged a migration of American “jobs” from lower-skilled and lower-paid to higher-skilled and higher-paid.  The political problem is that “jobs” are not the same thing as “workers.”  The “workers” who lost “jobs” didn’t shift into the new “jobs” that needed “workers.”  Instead, it seems somebody else—within the United States—got those new jobs.  This shift is not much discussed by political figures and media analysts.

So, trade experts and displaced American workers agree that it was a flawed deal.  It could be improved.  How and at what cost?  First, as is the case with “Brexit,” any country can withdraw from NAFTA by giving notice six months in advance.  Then further negotiations would define the new relationships between Canada, the United States, and Mexico.  However, what the Trump administration may be aiming at is a simple re-negotiation of terms.  Now Canada and Mexico have begun to establish positions for such talks.

The exact issues to be dealt with in any re-negotiation are complex, even if they become household words—in a small number of households—over the next several years.  “Country of origins,” “de minimus” exports, and Value Added Tax (VAT) rebates are all issues on which the Trump administration’s trade negotiators seek accommodation.  Conversely, the Mexican negotiators are going to claim equality-of-status with Canada when it comes to things like easy access to the United States for Mexican truckers and Mexican workers.

None of this is going to be painless.  Anything that comes out of the negotiations will be disruptive.  NAFTA itself has been painful and disruptive.  Then come the Asian economies.

[1] Neil Irwin, “Will NAFTA Be Attacked With Tweezers or a Hammer?” NYT, 26 January 2017.

[2] To further complicate matters, the basic components of the dash might have been manufactured in really-low-wage China (outside NAFTA), then exported to Mexico (inside NAFTA) for assembly for export to the United States for final assembly.  Thus, both Mexico and Canada serve as pass-throughs for counties not party to NAFTA.

What government can accomplish 1.

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People want to live in San Francisco.[1]  However, the price of housing is really, really high.  So, people want to live in Oakland as a fallback.  Here the price of housing is merely really high.  Even so, Oakland rents have spiked by 70 percent over the last five years.  Oakland rents for a one bedroom apartment now average $2,500 a month, or $36,000 a year.  However, many of the potential tenants are “artsy”—musicians and artists–so they don’t have any money.  (I suppose they could live in North Richmond.[2]  However, North Richmond lacks panache, in addition to other deficiencies.[3])  How to square this circle?

The Fruitvale[4] section of Oakland provided an alternative solution.  Chor Nar Su Ng had bought an old warehouse in 1988; in 2013, she rented the building to Derick Almena.  Almena then sub-let space in the warehouse at a really low rate of $600 a head.  This became the now-gruesomely-named “Ghost Ship” warehouse/art space/residence.

On 2 December 2016, a fast-moving, smoky fire broke out during a concert and party at the “Ghost Ship.”  In the end, 36 people died.  Now, people want to know why.

The state of California requires that certain buildings be inspected on a regular basis, but most other buildings are inspected on local initiative.  Oakland’s Fire Department compiled a database of buildings to inspect in about 2000.  According to Oakland authorities, the Fire Department’s database had become outdated.  Oakland’s Fire Department had been without a Fire Marshall for three years before Teresa Deloach Reed won the position in Spring 2016.  Oakland’s Fire Department still is 62 people under complement, in spite of adequate funding.

Reed had a lot of ground to make up.  Neither the Oakland Fire Department nor the Building Department had inspected the warehouse that came to house the “Ghost Ship” in thirty years.  However, several near-by businesses said that they had been inspected on an annual basis.  The warehouse had been inhabited for several years, but the men in the firehouse 200 yards down the street had never noticed people—rather than trucks—going in and out of the “warehouse” at all hours.  From 2014 to 2016, someone filed five complaints about the “Ghost Ship” building and an adjoining lot with the Building Department.  The complainants alleged “unsafe conditions.”  So, why didn’t anyone inspect the “Ghost Ship”?  Well, building inspectors needed the approval of the owner to enter the building.  Apparently, no such approval was forthcoming, so no inspectors entered the building.   Finally, the concert, during which the fire broke out, was required to be registered with the city.  No one registered it.

It turns out that the “Ghost Ship” is but one of at least a dozen similar arrangements.  There are hints that the city gave them a conscious pass on safety regulations. According to the New York Times, “Oakland is trying to strike a difficult balance: keeping residents safe without making them homeless.”

It is worth asking if there are limits to what government regulation can achieve.   This isn’t a libertarian tirade against all regulation.  Regulations have to be enforced to be effective.  Enforcement depends on adequate human and financial resources.   Those aren’t always available.  Regulations can increase faster than do resources.  Then, social and political circumstances can change, as when Oakland became home to an arts community.

To some—uncertain—degree, personal judgment and responsibility are essential.

[1] Thomas Fuller et al, “A ‘Ghost Ship’ All but Unseen, Until 36 Died,” NYT, 23 December 2016.

[2] See: https://www.roadsnacks.net/these-are-the-10-worst-bay-area-suburbs/

[3] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Richmond,_California

[4] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruitvale,_Oakland,_California

Saudi Arabia in Search of Allies.

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Saudi Arabia is preoccupied with the danger from Shi’ite Iran.[1]   Government spokesmen continually portray Iran as “expansionist and interventionist.”  Moreover, the basic values espoused by Shi’ite Iran clash with those that under-pin Sunni Saudi Arabia.  As one Saudi Shi’ite put it, “What we are asking for, we ask for everyone in Saudi Arabia…: We are against corruption, and we are for women’s rights, for elections, against sectarianism.”  The 2011 “Arab Spring” sparked widespread protests in the Shi’ite areas of eastern Saudi Arabia.  The government saw these as an Iranian effort to sow disorder.  A heavy repression (mass arrests, executions of leading dissidents) fell on the Shi’ites.  This has driven dissent underground.

Saudi Arabia pursued an equally vigorous course abroad.  In 2015, it intervened in Yemen’s civil war to prevent pro-Iranian Houthis from taking complete control of the country on Saudi Arabia’s southwestern border.[2]  Assisted by the Egyptian navy, the Saudis imposed a blockade of Yemen’s ports.  The Saudis also unleashed a devastating bombing campaign.

The struggle against Iran has sent Saudi Arabia in search of allies.  Egypt’s military government–in power since General Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, overthrew the Mohammed Morsi-led Muslim Brotherhood government in 2013—sees political Islam as the country’s chief danger.  This, in turn, means that the “moderate” Sunni rebels in Syria—with an ideological affinity for the Muslim Brotherhood—pose a greater danger than does the Assad government.  Then there is the even greater danger from the Islamic State.  Until 2015, Saudi Arabia also opposed the Brotherhood.  After the coup, Saudi Arabia poured in financial aid to the Sisi government.

Turkish president Recep Tayyib Erdogan is an exponent of political Islam who feels threatened by a military coup.[3]  An anti-Islamist military coup in Egypt might put ideas in the head of more secular Turkish generals.  So Turkey opposed the overthrow of Morsi.  Also, Turkey favored the Sunni “moderates” in Syria.  This created a divide between Turkey and Saudi Arabia.  In 2015, however, the succession to the Saudi throne of King Salman changed the Saudi position on the Muslim Brotherhood.  This opened the road to cooperation with Turkey.

Back in Summer 2016, Saudi Arabia had two chief allies in the struggle against Shi’ite Iran: Turkey and Egypt.  Turkey joined Saudi Arabia in supporting the Sunni rebels against Bashar al Assad in Syria.  Egypt played a valuable role in the struggle against the Houthi rebels in Yemen.  Owing to their different stances on the Muslim Brotherhood, however, those two allies were estranged from one another.

For the moment, Russian intervention has tipped the balance in favor of the Shi’ites.  The Russian alliance with Iran and Iraq to support the Assad government of Syria against the “moderate” rebels appears on the verge of winning the day in that struggle.  Turkey, which refused to break diplomatic relations with Iran after mobs ransacked the Saudi embassy to protest the execution of a Shi’ite imam, seems to be making its peace with Russia and its Shi’ite allies.  Meanwhile the economically costly Yemen war drags on as Saudi Arabia imposes austerity policies on its coddled subjects.  It’s trite to say, but alliances are complicated things.

[1] Yaroslav Trofimov, “Feuding Friends Frustrate Saudi Efforts on Iran,” WSJ, 1 July 2016; Yaroslav Trofimov, “Saudis See Time on Their side in Yemen,” WSJ, 23 July 2016; Yaroslav Trofimov, “Saudis Contain Shiite Unrest at Home,” WSJ, 2 September 2016.  Yes, I’m just cleaning out my files over Christmas break.

[2] Whether this posed an actual danger given the many problems of Yemen is open to question.  See: https://waroftheworldblog.com/2014/08/20/yemen-and-nomen-2/

[3] Also, he’s one of those guys with a sunburned personality who goes “Ouch” at every perceived slight.

Erdogan in 2017.

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Donald Trump is not a fascist, but there is good reason to think that Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Turkey, is a fascist.  He became prime minister as leader of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2002; then became president; then campaigned for much stronger powers for the president; then, in June 2015, saw the AKP blocked from winning an outright majority for the first time; then played the anti-Kurdish/antiterrorism card to regain a majority for the AKP in November 2015 elections; then ruthlessly exploited a failed in July 2016 to purge Turkey’s civil and military institutions of purported supporters of the coup; and then proposed a referendum on greater powers and time in office for the president.

One of Erdogan’s closest advisers told the Wall Street Journal that “In these lands [i.e. the Middle East], if you need to survive, you need a very strong system.”  The proposed constitutional changes include getting rid of the prime minister and transferring powers from parliament to the president.  If the voters in the referendum–tentatively scheduled for June 2016–approve his plan, Erdogan could remain president until 2029—or until the cows come home.[1]

The AKP has 316 seats in the legislature.  It needs 14 more have number required to win parliamentary approval for the referendum.  Where will Erdogan find the votes he needs?  One theory is that the conservative MHP party will support the legislation in hopes of gaining a voice in the new government.  However, between May and November 2015, Erdogan refused to form a coalition government when his party lacked a majority.  Why would the MHP view the offer of a vice-presidency in the new government for its leader as anything other than a short-lived transaction to get the referendum approved?  The MHP would soon find itself discarded.  Erdogan seems more likely to use national security issues to stampede support.

In the mellow, holiday-induced state of mind, it might be possible to view the prospects for the Middle East in 2017 with a certain optimism.  The horrible Syrian civil war appears to be grinding to an end with an Assad victory in western Syria.  In Iraq, the Shi’ite majority, with the backing of Iran and a lot of American airpower, are battering at the eastern borders of the ISIS caliphate.  The caliphate seems likely to collapse entirely in the coming year.[2]  The Iranian nuclear agreement has muted the drum-beat for a new war for the time being.

However, Erdogan’s justification for strengthening the powers of the president rests on a belief that things are going to get worse, not better in the Middle East.  First, there is the Kurdish problem.  With American backing, the Kurds of Iraq created an autonomous proto-state in northern Iraq.  With American backing, the Kurds of Iraq and Syria have played an important part in the containment of ISIS.  Turkey sees Kurdish nationalism as a grave threat to its national existence.  The Shi’ite majority in Iraq takes a similar view.  The Kurds are likely to rise to the top of their opponents’ To Do list once the fate of the Assad regime is settled and ISIS is defeated.  Attacks on the Kurds will pose problems for American diplomacy.

Second, there is the problem of Turkey’s future orientation.  Will Turkey remain in NATO and continue to press for membership in the European Union (EU)?  In 2016, Erdogan unleashed a flood of refugees and economic migrants on the EU in a bid to extort financial aid and revived negotiation on Turkish entry into the EU.  On the other hand, recently Turkey has patched up its several quarrels with Russia.  What real inducements can Vladimir Putin offer Turkey to shift its alliance?  Aside from the psychological affinity of two authoritarian leaders?

[1] Yaroslav Trofimov, “Violence Bolsters Erdogan’s Power Play,” WSJ, 23 December 2016.

[2] Surviving fighters are likely to flee abroad.  Many of these refugees will become a counter-terrorist policing problem in Europe and elsewhere in Arab countries.  ISIS itself will cease being a military problem.

Control-Alt-Right.

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Multi-Culti Political Correctness is on the March!  It targets whitemales!  So say the mainstream media and the liberal hate groups (whose stock-in-trade is panic) when describing the “alt-right.”[1]  Still, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.[2]

Is that the case with the “alt-right”?  The movement that called itself the “Alternative Right” sprang from disillusionment with mainstream conservatism in the 2000s.  Mainstream conservatism seemed to some people to be nothing more than compromise with liberal fascism.  Richard Spencer (1978- )[3] became the champion/lightning-rod of the movement.  In 2008, Spencer founded a magazine called Alternative Right to criticize mainstream conservatism.

Once upon a time, Jeffrey Herf wrote a fascinating book about the Nazis called Reactionary Modernism.[4]  According to Herf, German reactionaries combined a “great enthusiasm for modern technology with a rejection of the Enlightenment and the values and institutions of liberal democracy.”  Perhaps the same analysis applies to the Alternative Right: Rebranded as the “alt-right,” the movement’s members are particularly adept at using modern social media and on-line sites to propound its message.  Breitbart.com is the leader of the pack,[5] backed up by postings on Reddit and 4chan.

It appears that many conservatives are fed-up with the sacred cows created by orthodox liberalism.  Hillary Clinton’s notion that “half” of Donald Trump’s followers fall into the category of “deplorables” wildly over-states their numbers.[6]  However, some of the people who are fed-up also really are repellant: anti-Semites, white supremacists, and Islamophobes.  As a result, racist and anti-Muslim incidents occurred.  Donald Trump told one television interviewer who asked about offenses committed by his supporters, “If it helps, I will say right here to the cameras: Stop it.”[7]

Meanwhile, liberal hate speech continued to pour forth after the election just as it had before.[8]  Trump is “openly contemptuous of democratic norms”; he’s a “misogynist, xenophobic bully.”[9]  Some post-election anti-Trump demonstrations turned violent.  One poll reported that 23 percent of those who voted for Hillary Clinton did not accept Donald Trump as the president.[10]  One accused Trump supporter was beaten by some enraged citizens of the “Windy City.”  It’s worth pointing out that such extremists are only a tiny, loud, fringe of Hillary Clinton’s supporters.  (Indeed, apparently some of them didn’t even vote in the election whose results they now protested.)

[1] Why is ISIS the “so-called Islamic State,” while “alt-right” is just “alt-right”?

[2] “The rise of the alt-right,” The Week, 7 October 2016, p. 11.

[3] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_B._Spencer

[4] Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (1984).

[5] God, I’m old!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO_brEreGLw

[6] Her denunciations of Trump and those in the media (where journalists tilt overwhelmingly toward Clinton), may have fed into a nervous panic by liberals.  A story in Slate.com reported anecdotal evidence that the prospect of a Trump victory had sent many people to therapists.  See: Michelle Goldberg, “A nervous breakdown over Trump,” The Week, 7 October 2016, p. 12.

[7] “After election, protests and a spike in hate crimes,” The Week, 25 November 2016, p. 5.

[8] Trump is a “crude, shallow, sneering dissembler” and a “showboating huckster.”  “Driving away young voters for decades,” The Week, 2 September 2016, p. 12.  Media coverage of Trump’s many scandals is “not having the predicted effect” because “we’re a nation of idiots,” “The media: guilty of ‘false equivalence’?,” The Week, 30 September 2016, p. 16.

[9] “After election, protests and a spike in hate crimes,” The Week, 25 November 2016, p. 5.

[10] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 25 November 2016, p. 17.