American carnage

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We are asked to believe that a bunch of elderly billionaires, mostly with some very dubious and illiberal aspects to their backgrounds, are really going to give the power back to the people, work for social justice, create jobs at above minimum wage, offer a rational health scheme to replace Obamacare, get rid of all the poor Latinos who the rich depend on to get richer, and end endless wars.

Give me a break!  What this is is a cementing into place of the oligarchy we all know we live under, but which people don’t like to admit because they are brought up wedded to the idea of ” democracy”. The latter would be a good idea, by the way.

Trump’s inaugural speech was ungracious,  and any kind of olive branch to those who oppose him sadly lacking. By undoing most of the rules that protect the workers and the public, and by spending huge sums Trump will probably succeed for a time in producing an (over-heated) economy, which, I forecast, will crash, as per 2008.  Around 2020? Anyone like a bet?

And the poor, jobless and dispossessed, who are now de-skilled and many  unsuited to many jobs in the new economy, these people will be no better off.  They will just see even more immigrants brought in to do skilled jobs, more will lose their homes owing to unbridled banking, civil protections will have disappeared, and there will be more and richer billionaires.   And Trump? He will blame Congress, Obama and the Washington elite and persuade his base to re- elect him, because the ability to persuade the poor to vote against their best interests is one of the true miracles of the American system.

I fear this is a rant.  It is a rant because I follow Epicurus in advocating moderation, cooperation, working things out with people and treating them with respect and thoughtfulness.  So far, there has been no sign of anything approaching these values. Thus, one cannot stand by and retreat into one’s shell, hoping it all goes away.  It won’t.

 

We misunderstand the word “elite”

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“Words change. When Donald Trump, Arron Banks or Nigel Farage rail against ‘the elite’, they don’t mean rich, powerful men like themselves. They mean liberals. They mean middle-class, degree-educated, city-dwelling progressives; the do-gooders, the tree-huggers, the PC brigade. And that is the definition their audiences hear. They know who Trump and Farage are talking about. People who think they’re so damn smart. Who think they know so much better than the rest of us. Who look down their noses at the rest of us. The swots. The know-alls. The teachers’ pets. That’s what Hillary Clinton looked like to the anti-elitists. The biggest swot in school.”  (Michael Deacon in The Daily Telegraph)

Actually, they refer to the very people, the “elite” baby boomers mainly, who  installed neo-liberal policies, monetarised every thing in sight, encouraged the gig economy, promoted globalisation, made money while factory workers lost their jobs, pared down the social services, ran everlasting wars, presided over the 2008 financial debacle, talked a good game about racism and sexism, but ignored the  jobless and the poor.  Unfortunately, the best candidate in the US election, Bernie, didn’t make it, but he got the message right.  Not all the “know-alls” know/knew nothing, but too many of the “elite” had it coming to them.

Today we see the outcome. Personally, I shall be working at home, ignoring all the hullabaloo and trying to be peacefully quiet.

What you may not know about Mattis

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In 2011, when Iranian-backed insurgents in Iraq, using Iranian-supplied rockets, were killing American troops, Marine General James Mattis,  head of U.S. Central Command, grew increasingly incensed. As a result, he formulated a plan, which made it to (and was rejected by) the Obama White House, to launch a direct American “dead-of-night” attack on Iran either to take out a power plant or an oil refinery. This “World War III scenario” — the willingness to take a chance, that is, on sparking a regional conflagration — and the urge to act preemptively (including against “Iranian swarm boats” in the Persian Gulf) finally led to his being replaced as CENTCOM commander five months early. ( extracted from an article by Greg Jaffe and Adam Entous, Washington Post).

This, dear Reader, is the man billed as one of the ” grown-ups” in the new Trump Administration.  If this is a serious, thoughtful member of the Cabinet, then we are in dire trouble.  Epicurus might well  appoint psychological councillors for the whole lot of these bomb-throwers and sentence them to intensively growing cabbages in his Garden for two full years.

Seriously though, this points up the reason why the American system puts control of the military in civilian hands – under normal presidencies.  Trump has chosen several military people in place of civilians, to control key aspects of national security and the military.  Why is this being allowed?  Where is judgment?

Britain up for sale

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Britain runs a big trade deficit. The last time there was a surplus was in 1984, when it was modest 0.3% of GDP. The current rate is 6%. Leaving the effect of Brexit aside, the government is temporarily averting a balance of payments crisis by selling the country’s gold and silver – the basic infrastructure.

Yes, Britain is for sale. Its infrastructure has gradually been sold off since the days of Thatcher. One third of all energy, water, transport and travel infrastructure has already been sold. The water Brits drink is supplied by a French company, the National Grid gas pipelines are being sold to a consortium of foreign Chinese and Qatari investors led by the Australian investment bank, Macquarie. Macqaurie owns the biggest car parking company, National Car Park, along with Glasgow, Southampton and Aberdeen airports The state-owned green investment bank will soon be owned by them as well. A French firm, using Chinese funding, is building a new nuclear power station. Three quarters of the rail franchises in the UK are foreign-owned, the companies concerned using the profits earned to keep down the travel costs of people in Holland, Germany etc. Power distribution is dominated by French, German and Spanish companies. Add to all this the fact that the car, steel, cement and most of food processing is owned by foreigners, and even aerospace industry is succumbing.

The City of London makes huge commissions out of the sales, making profits now and hoping for the best for the future. When the government organise trade delegations overseas they are not encouraging inward investment; they are flogging off assets paid for over decades by the British taxpayer. Every time a big piece of infrastructure is sold it has, until Brexit at least, increased the value of the pound sterling, and thus made exporting products that much more difficult. The situation now is that the UK-owned assets, lumped together, are worth less than UK assets owned from overseas. And as a result, there is now a net out flow of interest, dividends and profits from the UK that cannot go on much longer without having serious economic effects.

Britain is unique in being totally open to foreign ownership, in contrast to almost every other country. Others can block takeovers deemed not to be in the interest of their countries (for the record the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US makes decisions on what is and is not in the nation’s interest). Only carelessness or a short-sighted ideology on the part of conservative government could explain the utter stupidity of the policy. One has to wonder who, apart from the bankers might be profiting?

Thought for the Day

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The following is a quotation from the Vatican documents on Epicureanism:

S. 17. It is not the young man who should be thought happy, but the old man who has lived a good life. For the young man at the height of his powers is unstable and is carried this way and that by fortune, like a headlong stream. But the old man has come to anchor in old age as though in port, and the good things for which before he hardly hoped for, he has brought into safe harbor in his grateful recollections.