Posts
American painter Grant Woods (1891-1942) and news photographer Josh Haner capture an abiding American animus.
©roski
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©roski
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Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Monday, February 20, 2012
The Irony of Germania
In an interview with Der Spiegel, Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff, stated that "Germany has been the winner in the globalization process" because it "has an innovative industrial sector whose high quality products are very much in demand in emerging economies."
Ah, the ironies!
In 1943, SS Brigadefuhrer, Otto Ohlendorf wrote a memorandum concerning the global economy in the post war era. Ohlendorf was interested in the analyses of Ludwig Erhard, a civilian German economist, who had written a lengthy but secret manuscript examining the transition to a post-war economy after the defeat of Nazi Germany.
Ohlendorf was opposed to the American-style, mass-production techniques introduced into Germany by Reichminister Albert Speer. In Ohlendorf's view Chaplinesque assembly-line bolt-torquing was incompatible with the uplifting role expected of labour in Aryan society. It was a Meistersinger kind of thingie.
Besides, on the field of mass-production, there was no way Germany could compete with Japan and the United States. Let those countries take care of producing mass-consumer crap, Ohlendorf wrote. To Germany, the niche economy of high-quality crafted goods (think Leica) that only German skill could produce.
And so it was. German industry rose phoenix like from the ashes It's no longer called Germania but Europa.
Ohlendorf was hanged upon conviction of mass-murder in the Ukraine; Ludwig Erhard went on to be come Chancellor of Germany.
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Ah, the ironies!
In 1943, SS Brigadefuhrer, Otto Ohlendorf wrote a memorandum concerning the global economy in the post war era. Ohlendorf was interested in the analyses of Ludwig Erhard, a civilian German economist, who had written a lengthy but secret manuscript examining the transition to a post-war economy after the defeat of Nazi Germany.
Ohlendorf was opposed to the American-style, mass-production techniques introduced into Germany by Reichminister Albert Speer. In Ohlendorf's view Chaplinesque assembly-line bolt-torquing was incompatible with the uplifting role expected of labour in Aryan society. It was a Meistersinger kind of thingie.
Besides, on the field of mass-production, there was no way Germany could compete with Japan and the United States. Let those countries take care of producing mass-consumer crap, Ohlendorf wrote. To Germany, the niche economy of high-quality crafted goods (think Leica) that only German skill could produce.
And so it was. German industry rose phoenix like from the ashes It's no longer called Germania but Europa.
Ohlendorf was hanged upon conviction of mass-murder in the Ukraine; Ludwig Erhard went on to be come Chancellor of Germany.
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Friday, February 10, 2012
Teapot Tempest
As if the American political vaudeville were not DaDa enough, the president has now deftly managed to stir up a teapot tempest over the Sanctity of Flow.
Let the starting point be clear. Having thoroughly betrayed every intimation of progressive change he puff talked in 2008, Wall Street's Mr. Fetch n' Shuffle is now trying to curry favor with those same progressives by frantically scrounging up whatever chicken feed he can find to throw at them. Thus, last year's uptick in Veteran's benefits and minimalist pseudo relief on student indebtedness and this month's Bank Immunity Act paid for by nominal foreclosure relief for a the qualifying few. Given these Herculean efforts in the cause of Progressivism, it was hardly surprising that Obama should now scrounge up free morning after pills for women working at Catholic hospitals. What cheaper way to appear the valiant progressive ever forging onwards in the fight for full and equal validation for women?
But in his eagerness to appear progressive, Obama forgot that, when it comes to crumbs from the table, no one excells the Roman Catholic Church.
No sooner had Obama pronounced than Cardinal Dolan pounced. And, from the looks of it, when Dolan pounces the floor boards tremble. To high hoist was the Banner of Freedom run up amid roars about the Sanctity of Conscience and Life's Natural Flow.
To be fair about it, the Catholic Church's sexual doctrine is not quite the monstruousity it is made out to be by its liberal opponents who wax and roar indignant over any embarrassment to the Sanctity of Personal Pleasure or to the Equal Right of Womyn to Sex without Consequences. The Church's doctrine is grounded in an existential world view that prizes the full spectrum of life as sacred, from the alpha to the omega. That may be overly philosophical for some, but it is a fully respectable position which is by no means exclusively Catholic.
The Church's hypocricy, equal to Obama's, is that it calls for Jihad over minute alphas while contenting itself with pro-forma "position papers" on the omegas. Where were the cardinals when Romney gallically shrugged off the poor with the remark, n'ont pas les pauvres de brioche?
Where is the Church's outrage over the millions who don't have health insurance at all and over the 40 millions of now structurally unemployed and homeless? It is all well and good to trumpet the sanctity of life, but that does not end with sperm, it continues on with what the Church itself calls God's preferential option for the poor. (See Luke 1:46-55)
Ever being fair, the outrcry was not raised only by the Church. "We are all Catholics now," intoned Mike Huckabee, the Baptist politico of the last electoral season. Alas, no rabbi echoed the sentiment. Au contraire. "Not us! Not us!" cried the High Priests of 42nd Street, who studiously buried mention of the fact that equally irredentist and conservative Jews had joined the chorus of protest. After all, in the New York Time's liberal cosmology of things the Catholic Church is the bete to be beaten even if Jews or others indulge the same passions or beliefs.
Be since we are all Catholics now or since only Catholics are dastardly enough to protest against Obama's chicken feed, we can safely cast the issue as a fight to the finish between between the Administration and the American Conference of Catholic Bishops.
What we have been treated to in the end is nothing but a colossal mud wrestle over a peanut by two sumi wrestlers larded with hypocricy.
Let the starting point be clear. Having thoroughly betrayed every intimation of progressive change he puff talked in 2008, Wall Street's Mr. Fetch n' Shuffle is now trying to curry favor with those same progressives by frantically scrounging up whatever chicken feed he can find to throw at them. Thus, last year's uptick in Veteran's benefits and minimalist pseudo relief on student indebtedness and this month's Bank Immunity Act paid for by nominal foreclosure relief for a the qualifying few. Given these Herculean efforts in the cause of Progressivism, it was hardly surprising that Obama should now scrounge up free morning after pills for women working at Catholic hospitals. What cheaper way to appear the valiant progressive ever forging onwards in the fight for full and equal validation for women?
But in his eagerness to appear progressive, Obama forgot that, when it comes to crumbs from the table, no one excells the Roman Catholic Church.
No sooner had Obama pronounced than Cardinal Dolan pounced. And, from the looks of it, when Dolan pounces the floor boards tremble. To high hoist was the Banner of Freedom run up amid roars about the Sanctity of Conscience and Life's Natural Flow.
To be fair about it, the Catholic Church's sexual doctrine is not quite the monstruousity it is made out to be by its liberal opponents who wax and roar indignant over any embarrassment to the Sanctity of Personal Pleasure or to the Equal Right of Womyn to Sex without Consequences. The Church's doctrine is grounded in an existential world view that prizes the full spectrum of life as sacred, from the alpha to the omega. That may be overly philosophical for some, but it is a fully respectable position which is by no means exclusively Catholic.
The Church's hypocricy, equal to Obama's, is that it calls for Jihad over minute alphas while contenting itself with pro-forma "position papers" on the omegas. Where were the cardinals when Romney gallically shrugged off the poor with the remark, n'ont pas les pauvres de brioche?
Where is the Church's outrage over the millions who don't have health insurance at all and over the 40 millions of now structurally unemployed and homeless? It is all well and good to trumpet the sanctity of life, but that does not end with sperm, it continues on with what the Church itself calls God's preferential option for the poor. (See Luke 1:46-55)
Ever being fair, the outrcry was not raised only by the Church. "We are all Catholics now," intoned Mike Huckabee, the Baptist politico of the last electoral season. Alas, no rabbi echoed the sentiment. Au contraire. "Not us! Not us!" cried the High Priests of 42nd Street, who studiously buried mention of the fact that equally irredentist and conservative Jews had joined the chorus of protest. After all, in the New York Time's liberal cosmology of things the Catholic Church is the bete to be beaten even if Jews or others indulge the same passions or beliefs.
Be since we are all Catholics now or since only Catholics are dastardly enough to protest against Obama's chicken feed, we can safely cast the issue as a fight to the finish between between the Administration and the American Conference of Catholic Bishops.
What we have been treated to in the end is nothing but a colossal mud wrestle over a peanut by two sumi wrestlers larded with hypocricy.
©WCG, 2012
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Sunday, February 5, 2012
Moats in the Other's Eyes
In what can only be described as a work of art, Amir Eshel, Israel's newly-appointed Air Force commander, warned that a nuclear Iran would lead to proliferation across the the Middle East.
Uh... let's get a grip here. Who started the proliferation if not Israel? If Israel did not want to see nuclear proliferation she should not have acquired nuclear weapons.
Is this sort of palaver cheek or an ingrained cognitive defect of some sort?
Of course, Israel's supporters will truck out the old hobby horse of an "existential threat." This hardly serves as an excuse given Israel's track record of soundly defeating opposing forces. The fact is that nuclear weapons create existential threats for others. But that, apparently, is of no account.
Is this sort of palaver cheek or an ingrained cognitive defect of some sort?
Of course, Israel's supporters will truck out the old hobby horse of an "existential threat." This hardly serves as an excuse given Israel's track record of soundly defeating opposing forces. The fact is that nuclear weapons create existential threats for others. But that, apparently, is of no account.
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Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Faux Again
From the New York Times:
"[T]he question [is] how far governments must bend or even bow to the power of markets.Simple and candid truth; from the Times nonetheless! There is a Santa Claw after all.
"Mr. Obama sees retaining the stability of markets and the confidence of investors as a primary goal of government and a prerequisite for achieving any major changes in public policy.
"Mrs. Merkel views the financial industry with profound skepticism and argues, in almost moralistic fashion, that real change is impossible unless lenders and borrowers pay a high price for their mistakes." [ 1 ]
We had thought there was something faux about Obama's rediscovered "New Nationalism". Herber Croley's "The Promise of American Life (1909), from which Theodore Roosevelt cribbed the main points of his Osawatomie Kansas speech (1910), had been inspired chiefly by the Great Otto von Bismark's progressive social compact which put in place the foundations for the present European social state.
The essential idea of that compact is that the two principal economic classes of the state must be coordinated for the good of the whole social fabric. Bismark's compact did not abolish private property, nor did it suppress labor; it imposed social responsibility on Capital and Labor, requiring both to work cooperatively for the good of the State.
Because it steered a course between free-market Liberalism and proletarian Socialism, Bismark's compact has been described as the "Third Way". It has also been called "fascism," "state-socialism," "national-socialism," and "social-democracy." As Bismark famously said, "Call it socialism or what you will, it's all the same to me."
In the United States, thanks to a cunning equivocation by Franklin Roosevelt, half-steps down the third way is called "liberalism" (as in "generous") -- which is why Americans are the most politically disoriented people on Earth. But, whatever it is called, the idea is the same: social and economic discipline is required of the worker; social and economic responsibility are imposed on corporations. As Herbert Croly put it,
"The national economic interest demands, on the one hand, the combination of abundant individual opportunity with efficient organization and, on the other, a wholesome distribution, of the fruits."In Croley's view the French and American notions of "autonomy" and "souverainité" and "individualism" led to disintegration, inequity and chaos. "American, democracy," he wrote, "needs above all to be thoroughly nationalized."
Croley went on to found the Atlantic and the so-called "Progressive Movement;" Theodore Roosevelt went on to play the Bull Moose who roared in Osawatomie Kansas,
"The New Nationalism puts the national need before sectional or personal advantage. It is impatient of the utter confusion that results from local legislatures attempting to treat national issues as local issues. . . . It is still more impatient of ...[the] legal cunning, hired by wealthy special interests, to bring national activities to a deadlock. . . . [T]his means that our government, national and State, must be freed from the sinister influence or control of special interests."T.R. went on to decry corporations "who twist the methods of free government into machinery for defeating the popular will." He called for "prohibition" of all corporate funding of political purposes, for the "publicity of corporate affairs" and for "a graduated income tax on big fortunes". TR concluded,
"The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not the master of the commonwealth; who insists that the creature of man's making shall be the servant and not the master of the man who made it."
Does this sound like Obama?
In Osawatomie, Obama cribbed copiously from Roosevelt's "fair shake" and "fair deal" rhetoric; but he studiously omitted even the contours of Roosevelt's Bismarkian New Nationalism.
At least the Times got it right, albeit mirabilis dictu. Obama sees the role of government to be the assuaging of Capital and the coddling investor interests. The real "progressive" (or whatever name you choose au gout) believes that private capital is the "servant" of the commonwealth.
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