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 5.

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Immigration occupied the spot-light.  On the one hand, the Trump Administration’s ill-prepared travel ban got banned itself by a federal judge in Seattle, soon backed up by the Appellate Court of the 9th Circuit.[1]  On the other hand, the president got into an ugly spat with the prime minister of Australia.  President Obama had struck a bargain with Australia to take in 1,250 refugees, and President Trump ungraciously agreed to honor the deal even as he was trying to ban immigrants from seven majority-Muslim countries.  Media attention—in the United States and Australia—highlighted the president’s boorish behavior.  Little noticed in the scrum was Australia’s own sweeping ban on refugees from selected countries.  Refugees trying to reach Australia are intercepted at sea to prevent them from ever setting foot on Australian soil.  That would allow them to apply for asylum.  Instead they are diverted to “detentions centers” (i.e. prison camps) in places like Papua-New Guinea and Nauru.[2]

Far more important than these eye-catching events, however, was the proposal from two Republican senators to cut the number of “green cards” issued each year from 1 million to 500,000.  Immigrants, broadly defined, create about half of new start-ups.[3]

The president issued executive orders for a review of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act regulating Wall Street, and the not-yet-implemented Fiduciary Rule.[4]  Observers dispute whether Dodd-Frank offers a reasonable safeguard against the stupidity of bankers or imposes crippling burdens on American business.  Possibly it does both.  Worse, what if it does neither?

As for the Democrats, it seems widely agreed that they lost many former voters to Donald Trump because those voters found that the Democrats had moved too far to the left.  The party’s solution for now appears to be to hold fast to Democratic loyalists.  One columnist argued that they “will not tolerate any sign of accommodation” with the administration.  What they want, said another, is “total resistance” to the president.  The trouble is that the Republicans hold the House, the Senate, and the White House.  They are poised to take control of the Supreme Court as well.  The president nominated Neil Gorsuch to take the Supreme Court seat left vacant by the death of Antonin Scalia.  Democrats are calculating whether it makes sense to try to filibuster a vote on Gorsuch.  What the Democrats have been able to do is to use parliamentary procedure to slow down the confirmation of Cabinet members and to stage showy demonstrations, both in the streets[5] and in the corridors-of-out-of-power.  This hardly represents a long-term strategy.

The New York Times characterized the president’s fuming about the judge’s stay on his immigration order as an assault on “the most dependable check on his power.”  A columnist in the Washington Post situated the president’s continuing denunciations of journalists within his larger effort to weaken anyone or anything that “place serious, meaningful limits on his power.”  Another lampooned “Trump’s bug-eyed retreat into fear and vengeance.”[6]  Trump’s not alone.

Largely unremarked were signs that Trump may have begun to learn something.   Chief-of-staff Reince Priebus may be winning his power struggle with Chief Strategist Steve Bannon.  The president has moderated some diplomatic positions as well.[7]  Still, “many’s the slip….”

[1] See: https://waroftheworldblog.com/2017/02/07/the-selective-immigration-pause/

[2] “How they see us: Australia stands up to Trump,” The Week, 17 February 2017, p. 15.

[3] “Boring but important,” The Week, 17 February 2017, p. 6; “Noted,” The Week, 17 February 2017, p. 16.

[4] “Trump takes aim at Dodd-Frank,” The Week, 17 February 2017, p. 5.

[5] “Rowdy constituents,” The Week, 17 February 2017, p. 7

[6] “Travel ban challenged in court,” The Week, 17 February 2017, p. 4; “Democrats: Should they become the ‘party of no’?” The Week, 17 February 2017, p. 6.

[7] “The White House: An internal power struggle,” The Week, 17 February 2017, p. 16.

The Current Crisis of Political Islam.

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“Our minarets are our bayonets, our domes are our helmets, our mosques are our barracks.”[1]

In the wake of 9/11 the George W. Bush administration made a correct judgment about the origins of the terrorist attacks.  The Middle East is deeply messed-up for reasons that have little-to-nothing to do with Western imperialism or oil companies or American engagement with authoritarian regimes.  The Bush administration then made a spectacularly wrong decision about how to address the problem.  In 2003, the United States led a “coalition of the willing” in an invasion of Iraq.  The ripples from that attack have not yet subsided.  The Americans over-turned the long-standing domination of the Shi’ite majority by the Sunni minority; the Shi’ites hungered for revenge while the Sunnis launched a bloody insurrection; al-Qaeda poured gasoline on the fire when it had not before existed in Iraq, then–when defeated in Iraq—retreated into Syria, where it evolved into ISIS; and the Iraqi Kurds began to pull away to create a proto-state that would exert a magnetic pull on Kurds in Syria and Turkey, so an important American ally faced an existential crisis.

One additional effect appeared in the question whether an Islamist government could–or should–come to power by democratic means.  The implications of the question reach very far.

First, there is Islam in general and then there is Islam in the Middle East.[2]  Indonesia, the most populous Muslim nation, made a transition to democracy in 1999.  Islamists have made no head-way in gaining power there.  Although far from a democracy, in Pakistan Islamist parties have made little progress trying to displace the military-dominated government.  Both examples might encourage Americans seeking to understand the international security environment.

In contrast, for decades, Middle Eastern autocratic secularist governments built a dike of policemen and prisons to hold back a rising tide of popular support for Islamists.  As their numbers grew and as violence failed to open the road to power, Islamist political movements endorsed “democracy.”  Some observers believe that, for Islamists, democracy means “one man, one vote, one time.”[3]  Since its’ founding in 1979, Iran’s Islamic Republic has put meat on the bare bones of this suspicion.  The clergy always have the last say in political decisions and candidates for office often find themselves disqualified on the say-so of clerics.

The great problem is that Islamists believe that there is only one right road, not many roads, to Salvation.  They believe that they are in the left lane with an EZ-Pass and everyone else is on the off-ramp to Hell.  This is an idea that has not held sway in the West for hundreds of years.  The anti-unbeliever face of this belief troubles Westerners struggling to define a policy toward Muslims that does not violate their own core values.  At the same time, Westerners seem inattentive to the anti-wrong-believers face of this belief.  The Sunni-Shi’ite civil war is tearing apart the whole region.  Saudi Arabia has spent decades propagating a puritanical (Wahhabi) version of Sunni Islam that is congruent with radical Islamism.  The Shi’ite majority in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq immediately began to grind the faces of the suddenly displaced Sunni majority.  Relatively secularized Muslims recoil from even peaceful Islamists into the arms of the traditional authoritarians.

Tritely, values differ across cultures.  Politics follow.  Often, so does tragedy.

[1] Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

[2] Vladimir Trofimov, “The Crisis of Political Islam,” WSJ, 23-24 July 2016.

[3] Thus, Recep Tayyip Erdogan once said that he saw democracy as “a vehicle.” His course as prime minister and president of Turkey makes it clear that he doesn’t see it as an end in itself.

Looking back on Tahrir Square.

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We try not to look back at the “Arab Spring.”  The military autocracy in place since the coup in 1952 has oppressed the vast majority of Egyptians and been opposed by the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood.  Eventually, the Muslim Brotherhood forswore violence and the military dictatorship grew long in the tooth.  While many Egyptians disliked the autocracy, most found ways to adapt to living under its heel.  Meanwhile, largely un-noticed by Western observers, a younger generation of Egyptians entered the scene.  In 2011, an impulsive revolt in Tunisia set off a sympathetic detonation in Egypt.  Huge demonstrations took place in Cairo and other cities.  The autocracy appeared to buckle, but elections revealed that the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood commanded the will of many voters.  The new government, headed by Mohammed Morsi, soon alienated the young people whose demonstrations had opened his way to power.  In July 2013, after having covertly disrupted the efforts of the government, the military overthrew Morsi.

What went wrong?  Egyptian society is shot through with conflicts and individuals rebel against Western stereotypes; these truths extend unto the younger generation.[1]  Egypt remains a deeply “traditional” society in which women are constrained.  Egypt remains a Muslim society.[2]  While Western commentators have made much of the role of “tech-savvy” young people orchestrating protests through social media, the state has equal facility in this area.  Most of all, the “revolution” changed only the holders of some offices, not the underlying society.

As is so often the case, context matters.  Egypt has a long tradition of relying upon assertive leaders in government and religion.  Egypt is nationalist in ways that are now difficult for Westerners to comprehend.  Moreover, Egyptians, like many Muslims in the Middle East, are unusually prone to embrace conspiracy theories.  These cultural traditions limited the scope of action for even the most “Westernized” of people.

In journalistic fashion, Aspden limns the devotees of an Islamist televangelist who still wish to encounter Westerners; a secular Muslim who despises Christians; and a rebellious teacher under heavy pressure from her family to conform to her expected role.

Many/Most of these young people quickly turned against the Muslim government of Mohammed Morsi.  Some young people joined new protest movements under the illusion that they were reviving the spirit of Tahrir Square.  In fact, the new movements had been created by the intelligence services to give a sheen of populism to the coming coup.  Families exerted sustained pressure on their children to “be reasonable,” as families have always done.  Many children eventually bent before the pressure, as many children have always done.  They welcomed the military coup of July 2013.  What they did not welcome or expect was the repression launched by the “deep state” against the original sparks of the revolution.

“What kind of change is possible in the Arab world”?  “Why were so many young Egyptians willing to risk everything in 2011, and why,…just two years later in July 2013, were they willing to make another devil’s bargain with a despot”?[3]  These are important questions, not least because they are likely to arise again when unrest sweeps Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and—perhaps–Iran.

[1] Rachel Aspden, Generation Revolution: On the Front Lines Between Tradition and Change in the Middle East (2017).  Aspden now writes for the Guardian.  For a sense of her writing and views, see: https://www.theguardian.com/profile/rachel-aspden

[2] The apparent notion in the West is that Muslim countries are just like Western countries, except that they are nominally Muslim rather than nominally Christian.  This is an erroneous view.  In Muslim countries, both atheism and apostasy are crimes that will bring a swift and severe response.

[3] Thanassis Cambanis, “Youth Was Not Enough,” NYT Book Review, 12 February 2017.

The Logan Act.

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Deborah (“Debby”) Norris came from a prominent 18th Century Philadelphia family.[1]  She married Dr. George[2] Logan, another child of a prominent 18th Century Philadelphia family and a Loyalist.  “Lively times” followed.[3]  George Logan returned to Philadelphia after the Revolution.  Indeed, he became a friend of Thomas Jefferson and helped to found the Democratic Party.  So, reconciliation occurred between former enemies.

A similar spirit of reconciliation took hold in Anglo-American relations.  Jay’s Treaty (1795), negotiated by the Federalist government of George Washington, spackled over a bunch of cracks in the relationship with Britain.[4]  For domestic political reasons, the Democrats opposed letting bygones be bygones.

So far, so good.  A problem arose, however, because France had helped the United States achieve independence.  In return, the United States had agreed to repay to France substantial loans made to the revolutionary government and had signed a treaty of alliance with France.  Then the French Revolution broke out, the revolutionaries abolished the monarchy (1792), and the French—“in a rit of fealous jage”[5]—declared war on almost every other country in Europe, including Britain.  The alliance treaty required the United States to go to war against Britain.

The Americans declined to fulfill the terms of the alliance; the French got bent out of shape and launched a naval war against American shipping; and the two countries negotiated in search of a settlement.  However, several of the French delegates wanted bribes to bring the negotiations to a successful conclusion, so most of the Americans left in a huff.[6]  At this point, George Logan inserted himself into the negotiations as a private citizen.  This effort led nowhere, any more than had the official negotiations.  Upon learning of Logan’s free-lancing, the Federalists–outraged at Democratic meddling in diplomacy–passed a law forbidding private citizens from intruding in negotiations with a country with whom the United States was at odds.

The so-called “Logan Law” remains on the books.[7]  Michael Flynn, National Security Adviser to President Donald Trump, may have fallen afoul of this law.  Flynn had contact with the Russians during the period between the election of Trump and his inauguration.  Since Trump was not yet president, Flynn falls under the act.[8]

However, that isn’t the most interesting aspect of the case.  We know of these conversations because they were intercepted by American intelligence.[9]  On the one hand, Flynn–a former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), had a phone conversation he had every reason to believe would be intercepted.  The National Security Adviser is an idiot.

On the other hand, we know of the intercepts because someone in the intelligence community leaked the information to the press.  For reasons that I, at least, understand, Donald Trump rejected the early findings that the Russians had intervened in the 2016 election.  However, Trump has escalated his fight against the intelligence agencies.  Now they are fighting back by releasing secret information to discredit the president and his advisers.  That’s bad news.

[1] On Debby Logan, see: C. Dallett Hemphill, Philadelphia Stories (forthcoming).  I love you darling.

[2] Apparently NOT “Georgie.”  Go figure.

[3] See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVuAqLTmvFY

[4] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Treaty

[5] See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAnpfct1WaQ

[6] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XYZ_Affair

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

[8] Shane Harris and Carol E. Lee, “Flynn Discussed Russia Sanctions,” WSJ, 11-12 February 2017.

[9] That is, in all likelihood by the National Security Agency (NSA).

A Fateful Moment.

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Currently, the American list of terrorist organizations in the Middle East includes al Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas, and many other groups.[1]  Now the Trump administration is considering adding both Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard and the Muslim Brotherhood to the list.

What are the arguments for and against such steps?

A Sunni-Shi’ite civil war tears at the Middle East.  Russia has made a clear choice to back the Shi’ite side.  Iran leads the Shi’ite cause, is unique as an Islamist state, and is hostile to both the United States and Israel as well.  The Obama administration refused to choose, causing a good deal of distress among its Sunni allies and Israel.  Despite these real diplomatic problems, an attack on Iran’s nuclear program would have opened a larger conflict at a moment when Americans were fed-up with war in the Middle East and ISIS banged at the gates of Baghdad.

The Trump administration is re-thinking this policy.  The Revolutionary Guard is an independent military force that answers directly to the Supreme Leader of Iran.  Over the years it has also spread into a powerful position in the economy.  In addition, it plays a leading role in Iran’s covert operations.[2]  The Trump administration believes that Iran plays a disruptive, hostile role in the Middle East.  Targeting the Revolutionary Guard makes sense as a starting point.

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928.[3]  Eventually, getting nowhere with violence, the Egyptian core of the Brotherhood abandoned that in favor of concentrating on its other social programs.  The Egyptian movement has off-shoots elsewhere.  There are affiliates in Morocco, Tunisia, and Jordan.  Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, is another off-shoot.

In the wake of 9/11, the Bush and Obama administrations pursued a policy of engagement with any Muslim group that sought political power by peaceful and democratic means.[4]  Thus, in 2012 the Obama administration embraced the Muslim Brotherhood government of Mohammed Morsi in Egypt.  However, important American allies in the Middle East have long considered the Brotherhood to be a terrorist organization.  These allies include Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.[5]  Also, Israel is deeply hostile to Hamas.

Again, the Trump administration is considering reversing course by declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization.  However, Turkey’s Islamist government supports the Brotherhood, which it sees as a similar movement.  Since the Egyptian coup, the Brotherhood has been allowed to maintain offices in Istanbul and to operate a television station that broadcasts throughout the Middle East (including to Egypt).  Moreover, millions of Egyptians still support the Brotherhood, albeit they’re keeping their heads down at the moment.

The Muslim Brotherhood is an umbrella organization.  Many of its members in many Middle Eastern countries remain committed—for now—to peaceful means.  Would declaring the Muslim Brotherhood further alienate its members?  Would it drive some of them to using violence?

So, a fateful moment in which caution should prevail over bold action.  Bold action in 2003 led to the invasion of Iraq, “and all that implies.”

[1] Felecia Schwartz and Jay Solomon, “U.S. Weighs Terror Label for Two Groups,” WSJ, 9 February 2017.

[2] I realize that it is inflammatory to say so, but the historian in me sees organizational and political parallels between the Revolutionary Guard and the SS in Nazi Germany.  I do not mean to suggest any moral equivalence.

[3] Yaroslav Trofimov, “The Pitfalls of Blacklisting Muslim Brotherhood,” WSJ, 27 January 2017.

[4] While this is admirable in theory, one cannot help wondering if it is merely cosmetic in a region of authoritarian governments.

[5] That said, Saudi Arabia has eased up a little in its hostility to the Brotherhood.  Conversely, Egypt experimented with toleration for the Brotherhood in 2012-2013, only to restore the military dictatorship by a coup.

Pret-a-penser.

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“Americans’ deep bias against the political party they oppose is so strong that it acts as a kind of partisan prism for facts.”  It “now operates more like racism than mere political disagreement,…”[1]  The deepening antipathy to the opposition party seems to have begun in the 1980s.[2]

That is, disputes over policy issues now seem to entail a positive or negative judgment of the person making the argument.[3]  One researcher suggests that “we [now] hold party identity as something akin to gender, ethnicity, or race—the core traits that we use to describe ourselves to others.”[4]  Just as exogamous marriage (across racial or social class divides) is much less common than endogamous marriage, politically exogamous marriage is rare.  One survey found only 9 percent of marriages were between a Republican and a Democrat.

Apparently, neither Republican nor Democratic voters adopt a critical stance when evaluating information.  Instead, they tend to rely on the endorsement of that information by someone or some organization that they already trust.  Given the increasingly cloistered political communities in which they dwell, the people to whom others look for endorsement tend to be people with essentially the same beliefs.[5]  Deeply partisanized voters seek out or respond to negative stories about the opposition party and politicians.  The endless liking/sharing of political posts on Facebook publically affirms membership in the group.[6]  There is a greater danger than thrown drinks or thrown punches among individuals.[7]  Politicians have already cleared out the middle ground in most legislatures.  What if they are driven to adopt ever-more extreme positions to keep up with their bases?

Something similar happened in Europe between the two World Wars.  Pre-First World War politics had pitted conservatives against liberals, with rapidly growing socialist parties marginalized to the extreme left.  The war changed all this in many places.  Wartime grievances among workers at first enlarged the socialist parties.[8]  However, the Russian Revolution created the Communists as an entirely new and more radical party on the left.  At about the same time, a radical new party emerged on Europe’s right, the Italian Fascists.  Early in the Thirties, the Great Depression sent voters in many places streaming toward other parties of the radical right, like the Nazi Party in Germany and the various “ligues” in France.  The effect of the radical movements on the extremes came in the democratic Socialists having to talk more like the Communists and the conservatives having to talk more like the fascists.  The middle ground in politics, where compromise traditionally had taken place, began to clear out.  Democratic systems on the Continent became paralyzed as the need for action became dire.

Then came running and screaming.

[1] Amanda Taub, “Partisanship Is the Real Story Behind Fake News,” NYT, 12 January 2017.

[2] That would trace the roots to the period of the Reagan Administration, followed—eventually—by the Clinton Administration.

[3] This may include supposedly dispassionate researchers investigating the phenomenon.  One quoted in Amanda Taub’s story says “If I’m a rabid Trump voter and I don’t know much about public affairs,…”

[4] Can Republican and Democratic bathrooms be far behind?

[5] Thus, many Republicans would lap up news from Fox, while many Democrats would look to MoveOn.org for all their meme needs.

[6] We’ve got the “Australian ballot.”  Maybe we could use the “Australian opinion”?

[7] This link shows one example.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8HGTmANHyU  However, two cousins (Democrats) returning from the Midwest just after the Republican convention said that they felt threatened by the pro-Trump people on the plane.

[8] In the case of Britain, the Labour Party soon eclipsed the Liberal Party.

The Selective Immigration Pause.

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U.S. immigration law grants to the president the right to “by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or as non-immigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.”  All s/he has to do is to “find that the entry of any aliens or any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.”

The portion of immigration law that bars discrimination on the basis of race, sex, nationality, place of birth, or place of residence appliers specifically to the issuing of visas.  It appears to not supersede or to limit the right of the president to bar visa-holders from entering the country.

Little-noticed in the popular discussion of the case, Washington’s solicitor-general appeared to narrow the reach of the suit to a sub-set of the affected people.  “The focus of our claim is on people who have been here and have, overnight, lost the right to travel,… to visit their families,…to go perform research,…to go speak at conferences around the world.  And also, people who had lived here for a long time and happened to be overseas at the time of this order…and suddenly lost the right of return to return to the United States.”  In short, people with green cards or long-term visas.[1]  Judge James Robart appeared to accept this argument in his decision.

Washington Attorney-General Bob Ferguson went beyond this claim.  He acknowledged that the “courts generally give more latitude to the political branches in the immigration context.”  However, “Federal courts have no more sacred role than protecting marginalized groups against irrational, discriminatory conduct.”[2]  Are the Arab immigrants a “marginalized group”?  Is President Trump’s executive order “irrational”?

The Washington suit is likely to be sustained by the U.S. Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit.  It is the most liberal of the Courts of Appeal.  If these were normal times, then an appeal to the Supreme Court by the Trump administration probably would end with the Court of Appeal’s judgement being reversed.[3]  However, these are not normal times.  Republican refusal to pass on a replacement for the late Antonin Scalia has left the Supreme Court dead-locked between liberals and conservatives.  When the Supreme Court cannot agree, then the decision of the lower court is affirmed.[4]  So, it would appear that the immigration pause is about to go down in flames.

For most of the Obama administration, Republican attorneys-general sued to block executive orders and rules.   Many times, they won.  Now a Democratic attorney-general has sued to block President Trump’s temporary-for-the-moment ban on some immigrants and refugees.  It is curious that this one suit has brought on “a constitutional showdown that could leave a mark on the law for generations to come…”[5]   A constitutional showdown would arise only if the Trump administration refused to abide by a court decision.  Which it has not yet done.

But I’m not a lawyer.  Obviously.

[1] If this reading is correct, then Washington is not challenging the executive’s authority to bar refugees or new entrants to the United States.

[2] No one who grew up in the Pacific Northwest or California can have any doubt that Ferguson is referring to the criminalization of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast during the Second World War.

[3] A 2010 study by the American Bar Association found that of the small number of the Ninth Circuit’s decisions reviewed by the Supreme Court, 80 percent were overturned, compared for a national median of 68.29 percent.

[4] If I understand what I read.  Hmmm…

[5] Adam Liptak, “The President Has Much Power Over Immigration, but How Much?” NYT, 6 February @017.