Everlasting warfare

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The US is now fighting in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Somalia. Yet “no vital American interest is at stake” in any of these places. In 1980, president Jimmy Carter declared that any challenge to American positions in the Persian Gulf would be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the US, but back then we were engaged in a standoff with the Soviet Union and depended on oil supplies from the Persian Gulf. That’s no longer the case. Today, the US’s naval presence in the Gulf “serves mainly to increase tensions” and “escalate conflicts”. And the only beneficiary of that is the US arms industry.

Regarding Hillary  Clinton, one of the  things I felt uncomfortable about was her readiness to use military force and her support of the various wars in the Middle East.  It would be one thing if the wars were brutal, short and successful, but they never seem to be. Trump appears to be much less militaristic, and this is promising, if true,  and if he is not captured by the miltary-industrial complex.

Tomorrow, I would like to discuss some of the things Trump says he wants to do early on in his Presidency. Some are predictably damaging, but others look promising, if hard to deliver. Epicureans try to keep an open mind.

A point of view from an organisation representing liberal millionaires

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Part of a letter this morning from Patriotic Millionaires:

–  Before he beat Hillary Clinton, Trump beat the entire GOP establishment. Our friends in the Republican Party should think very carefully before they start ringing the victory bells. By no stretch of the imagination was this some kind of embrace of Republican ideology, rather it was a full throated rejection of what voters perceive as establishment economics. Given the deplorable levels of economic and political inequality in this country, that reaction is both understandable and on some level entirely predictable.

– Underneath all that anger, a lot of fundamentally decent people are scared to death. That fear is real, its important, and its centered in economics. Fear makes people do crazy, destructive things. Perhaps this will force rational Republican politicians and their Chamber of Commerce allies to face the results of their decades long attack on working people. Maybe just maybe, this radical turn of events will force them to consider slicing the pie differently in the years ahead.

– While voters rejected the candidacy of Hillary Clinton, they embraced a new economic deal for working people. Yesterday, four states voted to raise the minimum wage to at least $12 an hour and another voted to not lower it for younger workers. That’s a 100% victory for “decent wages,” one of the Patriotic Millionaires core values. That is a powerful sign of things to come.

Let’s hope so!  (Ed.)

That sinking feeling

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The writer was born in London and divides his time between Washington and London.  When the Brexit results were announced I felt I had lost my country.  I now feel I have lost the other one.  To lose two countries within months of one another would seem to be a bit careless,  but it is not by choice.

Ataraxia = 0.  Resignation= 1

Seriously, I believe that the ascent of Trump will be seen in the sweep of world history as marking the end of America world power, as the rest of the world scrambles to do deals with China (or Russia), or seeks new accommodations and arrangements in other ways.

Millions of men now opt for idleness

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A “quiet catastrophe” has befallen America, says George F. Will.   Almost unnoticed, millions of American men have left the job market. A study has revealed the percentage of males of prime working age (25 to 54) in jobs today (84.4%) is smaller than it was as the Great Depression neared its end in 1940, when the unemployment rate was above 14%. Rather than being a product of recession, today’s retreat from the workplace appears to be “largely voluntary”: of the men in this age group who didn’t do any paid work in 2014, only about 15% say they were unemployed because they couldn’t find a job; the rest just didn’t want to find a job, preferring to live on benefits. “In 1965, even high school dropouts were more likely to be in the workforce than are the 25-to-54 males today.” A lot of men, it seems, have given up on the traditional rites of adult life – working for a living, getting married, raising a family. Whether welfare reforms or other policies can reverse this process remains to be seen. Still, one manifestation of this social regression, the rise of Donald Trump, “is perhaps perverse evidence that some of his army of angry young men are at least healthily unhappy about the loss of meaning, self-esteem and masculinity that is a consequence of chosen and protracted idleness”. (George F. Will, The Washington Post, 15 October 2016)

George Will, a crusading conservative, cannot connect the dots. He supports the Republicans (to his credit, not Trump), but cannot see that the Republican strategy of concentrating on lowering taxes for the rich and pandering to the same, and then totally ignoring the interests of the ordinary Republican voter has produced the revolts led by Trump (and Bernie). It’s the policies, stupid!

The incompetence of voters

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In the Guardian Weekly of October 14th George Monbiot quotes the work of social science professors Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels, who say that most people possess almost no useful information about political policies and their implications, have little desire to improve their knowledge, and have a deep aversion to political disagreement. We base our political decisions on who we are, not what we think. We act politically – not as individual, rational beings, but as members of social groups, expressing a social identity . We seek out political parties that seem to correspond to our culture, with little regard to whether their policies support our interests. And we remain loyal to political parties long after they have ceased to serve us.

I am not sure that this is a new thought, but it certainly fits the people and the political parties whom we see about us. In an American context, Republicans continue to vote for the Republican party even though it brazenly represents a tiny number of very rich people and corporations and does little or nothing for its voters. In fact, it does nothing, period. The Democrats are not far behind, are also in bed with the rich, are advocate for globalisation and immigration etc, and are , or were,  either ignorant or unaware of the hurt and desperation of many of its voters. Hence Bernie.  Everyone I know fears or half expects a Brexit surprise tomorrow, despite the polls and overwhelming evidence of the unsuitability of Trump as prospective President.

The situation in Britain parallels that in the US. The whole “blow the whole thing up” vote for Brexit was an emotional reaction  of working class (perhaps we should call them “former working” class) people, feeling out of luck and mad about Tony Blair, the fat cats, the EU and East European fellows who have taken the jobs.  Wide knowledge of policies there was and is none.

This is why we elect representatives, paid to understand and address the complexities of modern life, and why it is important to have interested, capable, experienced and informed representatives.  Regrettably, nowhere are we getting the brightest of the bright, or the most honest, and this is a threat to any democratic system.  Nor does it look very likely will be done to improve the situation.

As an Epicurean, I don’t like it , but can see what is happening and am not surprised.  We have to retire to the “Garden” and cultivate what ataraxia we can summon up.