Daily Archives: March 10, 2017

Chief strategist Steve Bannon, right, looms large in Donald Trumps White House. (Evan Vucci / AP)

There might be a new favorite novel among American conservatives these days. No, its not Ayn Rands Atlas Shrugged, which extolled the virtues of selfishness as a justification for free-market capitalism and once held pride of place on right-wing bookshelves. Rands book may well be displaced by one often referred to by White House chief strategist Steve Bannon: The Camp of the Saints written in 1973 by French writer Jean Raspail.

Raspail paints a vivid and terrifying picture of white Europeans being overrun by hordes of savage, brown-skinned Indian migrants. In his paranoid and overtly racist novel, liberal sentiments about tolerance and diversity pave the way for territorial takeover. The book, which succumbs to every imaginable ugly stereotype of Indians, has seen a recent resurgence in sales and is favored by white supremacists and an increasing number of conservatives.

Bannon, Donald Trumps most trusted adviser, seems to fear that Raspails xenophobic dystopian vision offers an appropriate warning for the contemporary world. The Huffington Post cites numerous references Bannon has made to the novel over the past few years, most often with respect to Europes refugee crisis. For example, in 2015 he said, during an interview with then-Sen. Jeff Sessions, Its been almost a Camp of the Saints-type invasion into Central and then Western and Northern Europe.

It is hardly a leap to draw links between Bannons references to the horrifically racist Camp of the Saints and his authorship of Trumps Muslim ban. Bannon clearly fears nonwhite immigrants taking over the spaces inhabited by white Americans. He has said as much, stating in an inaccurate rant that there are too many Asian CEOs in Silicon Valley. Recent attacks on South Asians in the U.S. suggest that this fear is being acted upon by angry, resentful whites.

Bannons paranoia is reminiscent of the dark era of American McCarthyism, when fear of communists infiltrating every aspect of American government and society led to witch hunts, baseless accusations and ruined lives. Sen. Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin, who led the aggressive attacks, has been rightly judged by history to be a villain. But Bannon appears to think McCarthy should have been vindicated. In 2013, during an interview with a conservative author Diane West, Bannon said, The place was infested with either traitors that were on the direct payroll of Soviet military intelligence or fellow-travelers who were kind of compliant in helping these guys get along. I mean, theres absolutely no question of it. Referring to McCarthy being seen as a villain today, Bannon asked, How has pop culture so changed it that white is black and black is white?

It is highly ironic that in a series of bizarre and baseless rants on Twitter on Saturday, Trump invoked the idea of McCarthyism in claiming President Obama wiretapped his phones. But it is a habit of this administration to depict the opposite of truth as reality.

Bannons fear of immigrants taking over the U.S. is reflected in the politics of racial resentment that drove Trumps election. Whiteness as the default identity of the nation is threatened by demographic shifts toward a browner country, and the backlash has taken the form of President Trump.

But even if Trump succeeds in restricting people from some Muslim-majority nations from entering the U.S., and even if he tries to round up and deport as many undocumented immigrants as possible, it is too late to stop the demographic manifestation of whiteness from shrinking in the U.S. The year 2011 was the first time more nonwhite babies were born in the U.S. compared with white babies, and 2050 is projected to be the year when the nation as a whole will become a majority minority state.

This inevitable trend frightens many white Americans. A 2014 psychology study showed as much, reporting that white respondents reacted negatively to ideas of diversity and multiculturalism when presented with graphics of this trend. One reviewer concluded that the study proved that when white people sense their special status is threatened, it changes how they view politics and the world. He added, quite presciently, Certainly worth keeping an eye on as American politics adapt to a changing demographic landscape.

We may imagine that young whites are more progressive than their elders. It is an often-expressed sentiment that racism in the U.S. will simply die out along with older, white Americans. A look at those who voted for Trump in last Novembers election reveals otherwise. Forty-eight percent of white Americans ages 18-29 voted for Trump, compared with 43 percent who voted for Hillary Clinton. Studies confirm that youthfulness among whites does not tame racist sentiments. Bannon, Trump and their ilk are desperately trying to save the sinking ship of white supremacy and are counting on white Americans, young and old, to back them.

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Get Used to It, America: Brown People Are Here to Stay - Truthdig

By George Will The Washington Post

WASHINGTON -- Although Americas political system seems unable to stimulate robust, sustained economic growth, it at least is stimulating consumption of a small but important segment of literature.

Dystopian novels are selling briskly Aldous Huxleys Brave New World (1932), Sinclair Lewis It Cant Happen Here (1935), George Orwells Animal Farm (1945) and 1984 (1949), Ray Bradburys Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and Margaret Atwoods The Handmaids Tale (1985), all warning about nasty regimes displacing democracy.

There is, however, a more recent and pertinent presentation of a grim future. Last year, in her 13th novel, The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047, Lionel Shriver imagined America slouching into dystopia merely by continuing current practices.

Shriver, who is fascinated by the susceptibility of complex systems to catastrophic collapses, begins her story after the 2029 economic crash and the Great Renunciation, whereby the nation, like a dissolute Atlas, shrugged off its national debt, saying to creditors: Its nothing personal. The world is not amused, and Americans subsequent downward social mobility is not pretty.

Florence Darkly, a millennial, is a single mother but such mothers now outnumber married ones. Newspapers have almost disappeared, so print journalism had given way to a rabble of amateurs hawking unverified stories and always to an ideological purpose. Mexico has paid for an electronic border fence to keep out American refugees. Her Americans are living, on average, to 92, the economy is powered by the whims of the retired, and, desperate to qualify for entitlements, these days everyone couldnt wait to be old. People who have never been told no are apoplectic if they cant retire at 52. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are ubiquitous, so shaking hands is imprudent.

Soldiers in combat fatigues, wielding metal detectors, search houses for gold illegally still in private hands. The government monitors every movement and the IRS, renamed the Bureau for Social Contribution Assistance, siphons up everything, on the you-didnt-build-that principle: Morally, your money does belong to everybody. The creation of capital requires the whole apparatus of the state to protect property rights, including intellectual property.

Social order collapses when hyperinflation follows the promiscuous printing of money after the Renunciation. This punishes those who had a conscientious, caretaking relationship to the future. Government salaries and Medicare reimbursements are linked to an inflation algorithm that didnt require further action from Congress. Even if a Snickers bar eventually cost $5 billion, they were safe.

In a Reason magazine interview, Shriver says, I think it is in the nature of government to infinitely expand until it eats its young. In her novel, she writes: The state starts moving money around. A little fairness here, little morefairness there. ... Eventually social democracies all arrive at the same tipping point: where half the country depends on the other half. ... Government becomes a pricey, clumsy, inefficient mechanism for transferring wealth from people who do something to people who dont, and from the young to the old which is the wrong direction. All that effort, and youve only managed a new unfairness.

Florence learns to appreciate the miracle of civilization. It is miraculous because failure and decay were the worlds natural state. What was astonishing was anything that worked as intended, for any duration whatsoever. Laughing mordantly as the apocalypse approaches, Shriver has a gimlet eye for the foibles of todays secure (or so it thinks) upper middle class, from Washingtons Cleveland Park to Brooklyn. About the gentrification of the latter, she observes: Oh, you could get a facelift nearby, put your dog in therapy, or spend $500 at Ottawa on a bafflingly trendy dinner of Canadian cuisine (the citys elite was running out of new ethnicities whose food could become fashionable). But you couldnt buy a screwdriver, pick up a gallon of paint, take in your dry cleaning, get new tips on your high heels, copy a key, or buy a slice of pizza. Wealthy residents might own bicycles worth $5K, but no shop within miles would repair the brakes. ... High rents had priced out the very service sector whose presence at ready hand once helped to justify urban living.

The (only) good news from Shrivers squint into the future is that when Americans are put through a wringer, they emerge tougher, with less talk about ADHD, gluten intolerance and emotional support animals.

Speaking to Reason, Shriver said: I think that the bullet we dodged in 2008 is still whizzing around the planet and is going to hit us in the head. If so, this story has already been written.

George Will (georgewill@washpost.com) is a columnist for TheWashington Post.

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Will: A wry squint into our grim future - Opinion - Daily Commercial ... - Daily Commercial

March 9th, 2017 by George Harvey

By the early 1900s, express passenger trains were fast enough that their stopping distances were well over a mile. At such a distance, if the engineer of a train saw something blocking the track ahead, it was usually already too late to stop the train in time to avoid a collision.

Accidents were avoided with signals, which had come into use in the 19th century. An engineer who saw a signal to proceed could have a high degree of confidence that the railroad was clear all the way to the next signal, even though he could not see that far ahead. But if the signal told him to stop, there was often no telling what the problem might be. A train could be stalled. A bridge could be out. There could be a wildfire. Even though many tracks were supposed to carry only trains going in the same direction, in an emergency a train might be coming from the opposite direction.

Let me put a question to you. Suppose someone decided to ignore a signal to stop. Perhaps he wants to keep up with his schedule. Perhaps he suspects the signal was broken. He has a train loaded with passengers, but he ignores their safety because he finds protecting their lives inconvenient. Suppose you were on a train whose operator did this. How would you feel about that?

That image is, unfortunately, where the United States is on climate change, under the Trump administration. It is headed toward a possible wreck, against the signal. In fact, the person at the throttle is making every indication of increasing speed.

Some people take comfort in the idea that the government in Washington is under the control of conservative Republicans, who are acting in good faith for the benefit of the people of this country. As a person who lived most of his life as a conservative Republican, I can assure you that this is not the case.

Conservative Republicans have historically protected the environment. Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, and Richard Nixon all signed acts or orders protecting environments, ecological systems, and species. They were responsible for national parks, wildlife preserves, and the creation of the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA). If they thought science was undecided on an issue, they erred on the side of caution, as Ronald Reagan did when he was confronted with the possibility of a hole in the ozone layer. What we see now is the reverse of this aspect of conservatism.

It is not the only area of traditional thinking that is being assailed. They claim to have Christian values, but attempts to exclude Muslims show clearly that they understand neither the Constitution nor the parable of the Good Samaritan. They do not hold to real conservative ideas on human rights, which many in the party started to abandon in the 1960s, shortly after Eisenhower enforced integration in the schools. They do not show a conservative approach to the empirical use of financial resources, for if they did, they would not be attempting to gut the EPA, which saves the country 10times as much money as it costs. They are not interested in education, which I was taught was necessary foreffective democracy. They are not interested in truth, and, in fact, appear to be horrified by it. Instead, they choose to follow ideology blindly.

A short look at the group in power in Washington shows that they do not represent the people of the country. They do not even represent traditional Republicans. In fact, they do not even represent big business. What they represent is the small portion of businesses and people that profit from fossil fuel extraction.

To excuse their deeds, many of them look for ideological guidance to the writings of Ayn Rand. And here, I believe, we can see where they have gone wrong. Ayn Rand is taken to be a great proponent of competence, but if you take a critical look at her writings, you can see fairly quickly that neither she nor her protagonists has any idea of what competence is.

Dagny Taggart was a main character of Atlas Shrugged. Early in the book, as an officer of a railroad, she ordered an express train full of passengers to proceed against a signal without any knowledge of why the signal told the train not to proceed. She did not belong in a railroad boardroom because of some ability she might have had. She belonged in prison because she recklessly endangered peoples lives for the sake of a schedule and her own convenience.

Ayn Rand did not understand that competence requires understanding and wisdom, and that means experience and knowledge. She was unable to see that assertive self-assurance, in the absence of wisdom and understanding, is merely a self-promotional form of gross incompetence. So she wrote about things she did not understand, creating horrors that looked attractive to people who also do not understand.

Combining the mindless egotism of Ayn Rand with what is termed a Free Market is having disastrous results. What is meant by Free Market is clearly anything but free, as it provides a framework within which the most powerful forces can exercise their greed without reference to the needs or rights of others. This concentrates power into the hands of a very few. It is a very few that may be competent at organizing a business or engineering takeover of a political system, but it is not made up ofpeople who can competently run a nation full of people in a world in such a crisis as climate change.

Adherence to Rands ideology is sufficiently blind that it ignores virtually all else. While conservative Republicans may claim other important issues on their agenda, hijackers have made it all subject to the free market, and the conservatives have been sufficiently grateful to the hijackers for their partys takeover of the Congress, that they have allowed themselves to be led by them.

This sort of capitalism is very flawed in part because it places the emphasis on the near term typically, next quarters profits. It fails badly at long-term planning. And it fails utterly at putting value on anything that cannot be monetized in the marketplace. The environment only has value if it is in a park that can attract paying visitors. A species only has value if it can be exploited. Science and truth only have value if they contribute to short-term profitability. For the current government in Washington, dignity has no value, honor has no value, and grace has no value. Faith, hope, and charity have given way to the of a religion that can be monetized, the worship of Mammon.

Even as the cost of dealing with climate change is growing, the cost of electricity from wind, solar, and storage is falling to the point where they can compete successfully with natural gas. The question is not, I believe, whether the fossil fuels industry is heading to a derailment, but how many plants, animals, and human beings will be hurt.

A real conservative pays attention to signals.

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Tags: American politics, Donald Trump, Global Weirding, Republicans

George Harvey After many years as a computer engineer, George Harvey retired. Now he writes on energy and climate change, maintains a daily blog on the same subjects, and has a weekly hour-long TV show, Energy Week with George Harvey and Tom Finnell.

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What Is Wrong In Washington? - CleanTechnica