We live in “crazy” times, – we better be careful!

Posted on by in Blog, Foreign Policy and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

 

Somehow, the whole world appears out of joint; crazy stuff seems to be happening in all spheres of life. Just think about the statistical likelihood that in the same one year the NBA finals would be won by a team three to one games behind, even if that team has LeBron James; that the Chicago Cubs (the Chicago Cubs!) after 108 years would win the World Series of Baseball, also being three to one games behind, and in overtime of game seven away from home; and that after being 28 points behind, the Patriots would rally to win the Superbowl in the first overtime game ever played.

That alone would be more than enough to declare 2016 the most “crazy” year in decades. Add to that BREXIT and, of course, the election of Donald J. Trump as the 45th President of the USA, and whatever other crazy things are happening all around the world, from ISIS medieval regressive behavior, North Korea’s obviously insane leadership, Pakistan’s poorly secured nuclear arsenal, over Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism all over the world, Russia’s and China’s newly expansive behavior, Erdogan’s dream of reversing Kamal Atatürk’s historic definition of Turkey as a Muslim but, nevertheless, secular state, the European Union on the verge of collapse, the Middle East, a tinder box, – ever-closer to explosion and then, returning to the U.S., as likely never before in history since the Civil War of 1861-1865, a radically divided nation, with both sides, seemingly, incapable of even talking to each other.

These are dangerous times, – likely the most dangerous since the 1930s, which were followed by the last big authoritarian world revolution that, ultimately, brought fascism and communism to power in large swaths of the world. World War II defeated fascism but, by doing so, led to the division of the world between Western democracies, led by the U.S., and Communist authoritarian dictatorships, led by the no-longer existing Soviet Union. It took almost half a century to defeat the socio-fascist concept of post-World War II Communism before the Soviet Union imploded and the Berlin Wall came down in November of 1989.

The disappearance of Communist eastern Europe led to the expansion of an, until recently, increasingly united and democratic Europe under the framework of the European Union. This expansion, however, in recent years increasingly ran out of steam, and the European Union is currently in imminent danger of collapse, as governments of Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and even France, are under increasing pressure from their citizenries to leave the Union, as the UK, with BREXIT, obviously already did.

Concomitantly, authoritarian forces, long believed morally disqualified from ever again finding access to power, are in almost all European countries battling for government positions on the left and right, recreating a potentially frightening world of increasing authoritarianism, instability and radical conflict between liberal and conservative view points, with on both political extremes, the most extreme setting the agenda.

Mostly unrecognized, this trend has been under way for a good number of years. One could argue It started in authoritarian Russia and China before reaching the West, including the U.S., with Putin pursuing much more radical domestic as well as foreign policy agendas after his return to the presidency, and China, by selecting Xi Jinping as president, demonstrating the most repressive domestic and most aggressive foreign policy since Mao Zedong. Even democratic Japan elected a relative radical conservative in prime minister in Shinzõ Abe, who only years earlier would have been considered unelectable because of many of his conservative view points.

Similarly, conservative extremists have been in power in Hungary since 2010, when Viktor Orbán was for the second time elected Prime Minister and in Poland when the Law and Justice Party in 2015 won an absolute majority in parliament. In Greece and Italy, on the other hand, leftist parties have swept to power, though strongly opposed by an at least equally radical right in the opposition. It, indeed, looks all like the 1930s all over again, where the extreme left and right were battling each other in most European nation states, only for ultimately allowing Fascism and Nazism to gain the upper hand.

One, indeed, could also argue that it all started with the Green revolution in Ukraine, followed by the Arab Spring, both national movements of discontent. Remarkable is, however, how this worldwide discontent has failed in leading to even minimally satisfying political solutions. Ukraine is anything but a functioning democracy and the Arab Spring has given rise to an unprecedented political, societal and humanitarian disaster, consuming almost all the Middle East, and resulting in the biggest wave of refuges since World War II.

As the election of Trump and BREXIT well demonstrated, the discontent with current governance is not only restricted to past Communist countries and the developed world. Indeed, discontent in the Western world may be even more intense. Observing the first three weeks of the Trump administration must be troubling for every U.S. citizen, whatever side she or he may be on. The break down in political decorum is unprecedented and further accentuated by a President, completely irreverent for longstanding presidential traditions.

Such unanimity of worldwide discontent has not been witnessed since the Great Depression (1929-1939) and, like then, must be viewed a pre-revolutionary. It is in times when national discontent reaches such levels, and political opponents are increasingly dehumanized, that revolutions tend to overthrow existing orders. To a degree, Trump’s election can, because of his advocacy of radical (in contrast to evolutionary) changes, be viewed as a revolutionary occurrence; but, because this change took place via the ballot box, it does not fulfill the definition of a revolution. If one views the evolving anarchy on university campuses and streets of major cities since Trump’s election, one, however, does see rather characteristic initial features of a truly revolutionary movements with no love for democratic order.

The Canary has warned before in these pages that we live in pre-revolutionary times. We, indeed, more than ever are convinced that former president Obama, likely as the only leading politician in the country, not only recognized this fact but, especially over the last 2 years of his presidency, used these circumstances as an opportunity to enhance the chances of a revolutionary overthrow of the country’s current order by instigating conflicts between races and reinvigorating class warfare, diminishing the government’s authority, whether on the nation’s borders, by diminishing the credibility of law enforcement, weakening the military or conducting an internationalistic rather than nationalistic foreign policy.

Trump’s election was the natural repeal of such revolutionary policies by a basically, overall, still mildly conservative country. His election, however, now mandates rapid changes to demonstrate to the American people that there, indeed, is a better option than Socialism for improving the quality of life for most citizens. The financial crisis of 2008 left even strong proponents of Capitalism with considerable doubts. Trump now must demonstrate with lightning speed that “honest” Capitalism, if not allowed to become Crony-Capitalism (as it, unfortunately, has become under prior Democratic as well as Republican administrations), is, still, the best economic system the world offers for those who wants personal freedom and ability to accumulate property.

If economic reforms will not succeed quickly, as we already have been witnessing, the left will become increasingly aggressive in promoting revolutionary steps toward an increasingly socialist market structure with full support by the Democratic Party establishment, which is frightened to death by the party’s base of supporters, mostly made up of Bernie Sanders supporters, the most radically left wing of the party.

Emigration reform, as important it is, should, therefore, receive less priority than tax reform, gaining control over medical costs and, finally, after almost 20 years of failure to do, supporting the middle class with adequate availability of well-paying jobs and reasonable social as well as medical security. In absence of rapid economic improvements, the radical left will start gaining strength, threatening the democratic as well as geographic stability of the Union. Like the current California Independence Movement, BRXIT also once started as a “crazy” fringe idea, and look where it brought us to! We are living in “crazy” times, where, if the Cubs can become baseball champions, almost everything can happen. We better be careful!

 

The Left’s Increasing Trend toward Authoritarianism

Posted on by in Domestic Politics, Psychology of Obama and tagged , , , , , , , .
CANARY IN THE MINE BLOG - The Left’s Increasing Trend toward Authoritarianism

The world was easy to understand during the Cold War: The evil power of Nazism had been defeated, but the other evil ideology of Bolshevik Communism had to be dealt with. While Stalin did not murder innocent people as viciously as Hitler did, his regime was still responsible for the death of millions, as was Mao Zedong’s in the People’s Republic of China, and as were other Communist leaders’, from Cambodia to North Korea and Cuba. For half a century, the struggle between Western democratic-capitalism and Soviet-style Communist dictatorship defined the two principal eco-political options in the world.

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 26, 1991, the ideology of Communism appeared largely defeated. In 1992 the prominent political scientists Francis Fukuyama published his now infamous book The End of History and The Last Man, in which he concluded that Western liberal democracy had “won” the culture war and likely “represented the final form of human government.”

Only 14 years later, it appears rather obvious that his conclusion was as premature as Karl Marx’s prediction that Communism would replace capitalism in his version of the end of history in his book Das Kapital, between 1867-1894.

During the years of Communist-capitalist ideological confrontations, Western capitalist societies were anything but homogenous. While united in support of a capitalist economic model, liberal democracies developed distinctly different social ideologies from the left (democratic socialism) to the right. Indeed, clearly influenced by Marxist principles, left-leaning, social-democratic parties all over Europe very quickly entered mainstream politics, establishing themselves as alternatives to right-leaning conservative/religious political parties.

In the U.S. a similar constellation evolved, with the Democratic Party representing the left and the Republican Party the more conservative and/or religious right. But until relatively recently the Democratic Party maintained a broad variety of opinions, including a distinctive “right wing” of the party. Since Bill Clinton’s presidency, this right wing of the party has progressively shrunk, and completely disappeared with the ascendancy of President Obama and his allies. As a consequence, the Democratic Party of today is practically indistinguishable from Europe’s social-democratic party model, with different degrees of Marxist leanings.

As long as Communist regimes ruled a significant part of the world, social-democratic political parties found it essential to differentiate their Socialist-Marxist ideologies from dialectic Communism/Marxism. With the defeat of Communism, this distinction became less important and less relevant for political success at the ballot box. As memories of Communist-run nations faded into history, the public’s short historical memory allowed for a rebirth of Marxist utopianism, especially among the young, who have never witnessed the catastrophic failures of the Socialist/Marxist economic model.

Even in the U.S., Socialism is no longer considered a “dirty” word, as so well demonstrated by the surprisingly successful current campaign of Bernie Sanders, a declared Socialist from Maine, for the Democratic presidential nomination. Other examples demonstrating a clear shift to the more radical left are very obvious all around the world in the election of Jeremy Corbyn, a radical Marxist outsider, as new head of the British Labour Party, and by explosive growth of radical leftish political parties in Greece, Spain and elsewhere in Europe.

Shifts toward the Marxist left are, however, rarely only dialectic. Indeed, likely the crucial step for Karl Marx’s transition from Socialism toward Communism was his conclusion that the world will not change simply based on ideas, and that any desired change requires proactive interventions. In other words, an inherent component of Marxist Socialism is the forceful intervention into the democratic process, because setbacks in personal freedoms are a small price to pay for the ultimate “good” of a Socialist utopia. An example of this is Castros’ Cuba, admired as a model for Socialist states across the globe.

So, any shift toward Marxist dialectic will automatically be accompanied by increasing trends toward authoritarianism. And this does not only apply to what we observe in third world countries, like Venezuela, where the political shift toward Marxism has led to a de facto dictatorship. Increasing authoritarianism can also be seen in democracies like Argentina and even in the U.S., where President Obama attempts to legalize hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens by decree, even though, as a constitutional lawyer, he must have known that such a step without Congress’s approval is likely unconstitutional (he, indeed, had made statements to that effect in public, and a judge’s temporary restraining order has halted the process).

An even more authoritarian political step was the agreement that the Obama administration signed with Iran, in which Obama circumvented Congress by inappropriately declaring it an Executive Agreement between governments rather than a “treaty” (only treaties require congressional approval). Then he also had his allies in Congress block a debate of a disapproval motion with only a minority of votes in both houses. In doing this, the president imposed what may turn out to be the most consequential international agreements for the nation’s security in decades, even though a majority of Congress in both houses opposed the agreement (and, indeed, based on opinion polls, two-thirds of the U.S. population did as well).

But, likely the most egregious evidence of authoritarianism is the selective interpretation of prosecutorial powers under the Obama administration. Not even under the Nixon and Clinton administrations was the Justice Department as politicized and corrupted as in the Obama administration in failing to prosecute very obvious abuses of power and in using the criminal justice system in pursuit of political goals. None of the scandals that have come to light during the administration were ever pursued by the Justice Department: not the IRS scandal, not the Veterans Affair Scandal, and not the Bengasi scandal (where, totally overlooked by the media, the real question is not where was Hillary Clinton and the degree of her involvement but where President Obama was, and the degree of his involvement). And yet on the other extremes, perfectly-timed threats of prosecutions or actual prosecutions have silenced political opponents more than once (General Petraeus and Senator Menendez are good examples, and Hillary Clinton may become one).

In order to equalize economic conditions for the underclass, the ultimate aim of all permeations of Socialism, of course including Marxism, has historically been “revolution.” Only a revolution of the masses can against the capitalist system can end their discrimination (under Communist dogma, the masses are represented by the “proletariat” under a professional leadership), and initiate the masses’ ascent to power. Since the power of the masses represents the ultimate achievement of any form of Socialism, it should not surprise that such revolutions rarely voluntarily transfers government power back to opposition forces. As contemporary Venezuela well demonstrates, once in power, Socialist/Marxist governments become increasingly authoritarian. They are supportive of liberal democracy as a tool to obtain power but, once in power, quickly dispose of democratic pretense.

Though these movements are often corrupt and outright anti-democratic within their own areas of power, even within the Western capitalistic system, political parties on the left demonstrate strong allegiances to revolutionary movements (see new York’s openly Socialist Mayor de Blasio, a longstanding supported of the Marxist Sandinista movement in Nicaragua or the new Labour Party’s Chief in the U.K., Jeremy Corbin, an avowed supported of Hamas, which is not only radically anti-democratic and homicidal, but also religiously fanatical). Allegiance to the internationalist Marxist view of worldwide solidarity between Marxists and poor, mostly brown and black exploited people, very obviously supersedes any defense of humanitarian and/or democratic principles on the extreme left. As class warfare all around the world appears to come into fashion again, the world will, therefore, witness increasing authoritarianism, while liberal democracies will find themselves under increasing siege.

Though in his upbringing and belief system he is very clearly a Marxist Socialist, President Obama avoided these labels in his election campaigns, and on multiple occasions even went so far as to demean opponents who described him as a Socialist. But in his very obvious contempt for Congress and especially the Republican opposition, he increasingly demonstrates the authoritarianism of his Marxist ideology, characterized by the dictum that ultimate goals have to be achieved by whatever means. His party appears to support him. The party discipline Democrats have exhibited in support of Obama’s policies is indeed remarkable, but better fits Soviet than U.S. parliamentary history. This country can expect considerable authoritarian tendencies from the president in his last 14 months in office.