Erratic WSJ Screed Against Socialism Merely Indicts The Author (Roger Kimball) And His Irrelevant Arguments

There's no avoiding the fact the debased Neoliberal media goes to extreme lengths to try to deform public perceptions of both socialism and capitalism.  Hence, for the latter they try to tie in "freedom" and "wealth" for all whereas the truth is more how Chris Hedges has described it.  I myself  had little conception of  corporatist capitalism  until writing  'The Elements of the Corporatocracy' - later converted into a book.  My motivation was to expose the many lies that attempted to instill in citizens a false consciousness that twisted socialism into a terrifying caricature while extolling capitalism.

One of the hallmarks of a religion is that its dogmas and tenets are accepted without question, or challenge. These arrive from 'on high' so are presumed beyond experimental test, or testing via personal experience in the real world.  On account of the absence of reality testing even its myths are thereby integrated into a person's belief matrix and become unquestioned tropes.  In this sense, Bill Maher's  June 2, 2016 comparison of capitalism to religion in the final segment of his Real Time was spot on.  

For those seeking an in depth exposure of capitalism's multitude of defects there is Chris Hedges' book, 'The Empire of Illusion'.  Hedges pulls no punches in showing how  - when it comes to being "incurious"  - the corporate media gets medals, i.e. in demeaning democratic socialism while blindly elevating capitalism to preposterous heights. 

 Enter now a recent(Sept. 3rd) WSJ essay by Roger Kimball, entitled 'Socialism is for the Incurious' (p. A17).  The piece trots out assorted quotes from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Joseph Stalin, and Sir Roger Scruton - to end up with this nonsense:

"Human reality is drained of dignity and becomes material to be shaped and formed according to the scheme of utopian power."

But socialism is hardly utopian!  It is the practical means by which capitalism is inhibited from becoming a metastatic malignancy to the detriment of public welfare.   A sober essay  perspective is offered by Robert Freeman:

"Anybody here ever used the Internet? That was created by a government agency, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The technology itself was invented during the Nixon administration. Nixon was a Republican president. It was turned on by the same agency in 1983, under Ronald Reagan, another Republican president. That is socialism.

Anybody here ever been made safer by the military, or felt safer knowing that police or fire or first-responder services were there? That’s people coming together to solve problems that none of us could solve on our own. Socialism.

Anybody here ever fly on an airplane? Guess what, your safety was guaranteed by thousands of standards set by the FAA, and by air traffic control, run by the same agency. Socialism. Anybody here ever used prescription drugs, or drunk water or breathed air or eaten food that was made cleaner or safer by government rules and standards? Guess what? That’s socialism.

You get the idea. The truth is that without some elements of socialism, capitalism doesn’t work. It literally collapses of its own predatory greed. Don’t take my word for it.

That’s what happened in the 1930s. Capitalism, left to its own devices, destroyed itself. That’s what we call the Great Depression. It was the greatest economic event of the past century. And you know how it was solved? It was solved by socialism.  Roosevelt created Social Security (notice the word “social” in the name), unemployment insurance, regulations so that bank deposits would be safe, public service employment programs, and more. All socialist to the core."

For the take of a Danish woman, which echoes the above points, in answer to a fearful question on socialism by Oprah,  see e.g.

• Danish woman's perfect response to Oprah on their social ...

https://egbertowillies.com › oprah-danish-woman-democratic-socialism

By contrast, with so many citations of different actors from different epochs, it's no wonder that Kimball - at the end of his erratic screed- ends up with a miasma of disjointed,  incoherent rants.  For example:

"The cruel and suffocating intrusiveness of those dystopian experiments against reality are not so seamlessly or thoroughly implemented in American society as elsewhere."

What "cruel experiments"?  Kimball doesn't specify but because he earlier refers to "revolutionaries trading only in masses not individuals" we can infer he means any 'experiment' that attempted to right inequality - economic or other. So include Jacobo Arbenz'  nationalization of  Guatemala's resources in 1954 - which caused the CIA to overthrow him.  Or Premier Mohammed Mossadegh's efforts to nationalize Iran's oil fields in 1953 - which got him assassinated and paved the way for theocracy.   "Dystopian" experiments?  That's hardly the way Arbenz or Mossadegh saw it. They rather saw their mission as providing a more equitable distribution of resources for their own people - as opposed to fodder for capitalist profits.

But by mounting this warped jeremiad against "socialism" - or indeed any national effort ("experiment") to strive for civil betterment- it's no surprise Kimball also can write at the end of his previous remark:

"But anyone who looks around at the vast, unaccountable, self-engorging bureaucracy of the so-called administrative  state ... cannot help but mark the parallels with the remorseless incuriosity that stood behind the totalitarian juggernaut as it systematically discounted truth for the sake of the accumulation of power."

Seriously?   After reading this fulsome codswallop one wonders if Kimball was on an MJ  high maybe mixed with Oxy.  Maybe he vaped both, who knows?  Let's clarify by first asking what he's railing against when he cites the "so-called administrative state".

Far from being "so-called" this is the system of taxes, regulations and agency oversight the current structure of government supports. In other words, all those elements of the federal "bureaucracy" that ensure your milk is free of fecal matter, your burgers not infected with  E Coli., your drinking water not fouled by cow manure, perchlorates or lead.  Oh and your canned tuna free of botulism. Also that medical devices are properly manufactured and sterilized to acceptable standards (FDA regs), i.e. so when you get your colonoscopy the colonoscope didn't just come directly from insertion into another patient.

Taken literally, Kimball is conflating this protective bureaucracy-  recall that as economist George Lakoff has pointed out, e.g.

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/george-lakoff/71462/the-public-s-viewpoint-regulations-are-protections

Regulations are protections.

With some kind of ersatz Stalinism or some skewed, warped view of socialism  Worse, he's renouncing the Preamble of the Constitution wherein the central clause (general welfare) is an effective working government that has the general welfare as a primary role.  

So one can rightly say on this basis that any "remorseless incuriosity" - and even palpable ignorance-   is wholly on Kimball's side.  In effect, what started as a scattershot attack on statism and socialism ends up a hollow screed that is self-indicting and I'd add, self -refuting. 

Charles Reich poignantly notes in his book, Opposing the System, Crown Books, p. 103:

"When society itself comes to be modeled on economic and organizational principles, all of the forces that bind people together are torn apart in the struggle for survival. Community is destroyed because we are no longer 'in this together' because everyone is a threat to everyone else. "

This is the de facto model Kmiball would have us embrace, assuming we took his gibberish seriously..

See also:

• Corporate Media Pushes Socialism Bogey To Scare Vo...

The Migrant Crisis Is Ultimately A Global Population Crisis

Part of scene at Keleti Rail Station in Budapest, Hungary - a few days after we left.

It was on the evening of Sept. 2nd, 2015,  that we learned that thousands of migrants - mainly Syrian  refugees -   were flooding into Keleti train station in Budapest. The grim scenes  televised over the BBC into our hotel room were not encouraging, with thousands occupying the station - and mats, people spread all over. The word "bedlam" perhaps best described what we beheld.

After grabbing an early breakfast on Sept, 3rd, we went to the front desk to checkout, hoping to arrive at Keleti by no later than 9.55 a.m. to avoid any delays or confusion.  But Lili, the amiable hotel front desk  manager,  informed us that the station has been totally shut down - no trains running at all. Period. The existing chaos featured tens of  thousands of migrants attempting to board trains to Western Europe on their own, forced the authorities' decision.

By now we know the end result of that mass panic migration, which saw Angela Merkel's Germany taking in nearly 1 million immigrants, triggering enormous impacts - not only in Germany but across Europe.  (cf. WSJ, ' Europe Raises Barriers To Immigration',  June 30- July 1, p. A6).  To sum up: Merkel's right centrist party (CDU) which formed a governing coalition with the Bavarian CSU,  is on the ropes  (cf.  'Merkel Faces Showdown With Coalition Partners', Financial Times today)  splitting with the CSU's Horst Seehofer, over migrant issues. According to the FT account, "if the two fail to bury the hatchet, Horst Seehofer said he will resign, a move that would mark a historic rupture in the center right of German politics."

This is happening  even while Right wing, anti-immigrant governments have come to power in Austria, Italy and been powerfully re-elected in Hungary - with Viktor Orban..

In addition, the EU has been forced by popular pressure to consider diverting the incoming migrant masses,  shifting the processing of asylum claims to African countries.  African nations themselves have been reluctant to host what the EU calls "disembarkation platforms"  fearing they could become magnets for migrants and targets of jihadists.

The disembarkation platform concept itself  is inspired by a model long adopted by Australia, i.e. in which thousands of migrant boats have been turned back and sent to 3rd country centers run by local authorities. In other words, the Aussies have no more stomach to deal with processing migrant asylum requests themselves. Like Pontius Pilate, they are washing their hands of the problem.  Naturally, the Aussie solution has prompted international outrage (ibid.)

European leaders, mindful of the Australian experience, have assured one and all that  the disembarkation platforms will be operated in UN- approved centers within African and other 3rd party nations.  The "bloc has also pledged 500 million euro (about $580 m) to support African countries in managing migrations and to create a new fund to support border security".

The long and short of it is that migrants from whatever nation are getting hostile receptions on both sides of the Atlantic - as well as in the Pacific (with the Australians).  Put bluntly, the world doesn't want migrants. Not now, not ever. The "prosperous" world nations, at least, believe they can keep their quality of life if they prevent their borders from being traversed by millions of "others".  This is magical thinking, to be sure.

In the U.S. we learned ('Shifts In The Search For Asylum', WSJ,  op. cit., p. C4):

"The policy makers who crafted the 1980 Refugee Act never imagined that within a generation the U.S. would have a vast asylum bureaucracy ."

But they should have,  given the exploding global population which must be linked to exploding mass migrations.  It is common sense that if overall human numbers grow out of resource bounds in too many overpopulated, economically stressed nations, those numbers will overflow into other nations less besieged by problems.

The author of the piece, Maria Cristina Garcia,  also noted:

"From 1973 to 1980, only 23, 722 requested asylum....A decade later petitions for asylum increased dramatically due to political turmoil in Haiti and civil wars in Central America."

Noting that in the years from 1980-1991,  400,000 requested asylum.

Apart from the political instability let's note how the human numbers have changed in those cited years. For example, 3.9 billion populated the planet in 1973, compared to 4.4 billion in 1980. But then by 1990  it was 5.2 billion.  All other things being relatively equal one would expect an increase in migrants as well as asylum seekers given the added population. Flash forward now to 2015, the year of the great influx of Syrian and other refugees into Europe and we find the world at 7.4 billion - or 2.2 billion more people than in 1990.  Why wouldn't there be vastly more migrants, asylum seekers?

The false assumption of global planners is that nations ought to remain in population equilibrium and hence not see a third or more of their populations fleeing to 'greener pastures.'  But we know this isn't the case, and any nation can devolve into civil war or other instability if the right confluence of factors emerges, such as they did in Syria.  Let us also process the U.S. has had a major role in a lot of the incipient political instability over the years, especially in Central America. For example, in 1954, the U.S. overthrew the democratically elected Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, leading to 200,000 civilian deaths and  endless strife.  Arbenz sought to nationalize the vast banana plantations of United Fruit – but  was ousted in a U.S. engineered coup (“Operation PBSUCCESS”) in 1954. See :
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/

The U.S. also, in 1977, backed the bloodthirsty military regime in El Salvador, leading to 70,000 civilians massacred and paving the way for the internal strife and drug linked gangs operating with impunity now. Then starting in 1981, the Reagan administration trained and funded the 'Contras" in Nicaragua, leading to 30,000 civilian deaths and much civil upheaval.  In many ways, therefore, the U.S. could be said to have a direct responsibility to care for those fleeing the violence in Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala.

Will things get worse, and mass migrations vastly increase? Of course, because the most vulnerable nations are seeing the largest population increases, combined with severe resource depletion, including food crops (much of this from climate change).  Overpopulation in the African continent is especially worrisome,  as it ought to be to Europeans who fret over the numbers of asylum seekers liable to drown in risky crossings.

In the WSJ piece, 'Humans Lions Struggle to Co-Exist', Aug. 8-9,  2015, p. A7, it was noted:

"Africa's human population is the fastest growing in the world. In roughly the same period as the lion decline (42 percent over 21 years), the number of Africans has doubled to nearly 1.2 billion people. The population will double again to 2.5 billion by 2050 according to the United Nations."

In fact, short of a global catastrophe - say like an Avian flu pandemic or airborne Ebola -  it is projected to reach 5.8 billion by 2100. That means nearly 1 of every 2 people on Earth will be African. Where will the resources be to support them? The jobs? The water? The life quality?   Even if those billions are fortunate to have wise leaders with the best intentions, resource scarcity - including from enhanced climate change - is likely to defeat them, certainly without vast economic support.

Fact is, that the current  global population growth is unsustainable and means either vast numbers will perish, likely of disease, war or famine - or they will do everything they can to go to places with greater opportunity and resources- like Europe and the U.S.  By 2030, with the global population at nearly 8.8 billion, there will emerge total overshoot by one whole planet - that is, we will require an entire extra Earth's worth of resources, e.g.

This means we will need the equivalent of two Earths to support us by 2030, a physical impossibility.  Given the stress on African (and Central American, SE Asian) nations will be even greater, there will likely be migrant flows on the order of 200-400 million per year compared to the 68.5 million this year, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency which released its annual report 2 weeks ago.  The UN report noted refugees pouring out of diverse places, nations including: Syria, Myanmar, Congo and Venezuela.

Ms. Garcia, author of the last cited WSJ piece, correctly points out there are now "few opportunities for lawful entry" for Central American refugees, and the U.S. now -  under Trump - takes a dim view of whatever excuses most have to offer for coming. Basically, traversing Mexico to escape economic hardship simply doesn't cut it and U.S. immigration law "gives priority to those with financial means, education and skills necessary to the U.S. economy"

This is pretty well what Australia also demands, and what the EU is liable to require soon.  In other words, it's a tall order for refugees from any stressed nation to gain entrance to a more developed, economically secure or prosperous one.

What is the solution given the immense increase in numbers leading to overshoot day by 2030? It  is emphatically NOT to increase human numbers purely for economic purposes as some knot headed economists have proposed.  People need to grasp that by reproducing to appease a warped economic system they are merely perpetuating gross economic inequality by helping to sustain a vast pool of surplus labor.  If this numbers game is encouraged worldwide we are asking for a mass migration problem that will make the current one look like a walk in the park. (If labor is needed in the more prosperous nations, the OECD reports there are nearly 230m under or unemployed workers in its constituent nations. Also, there are millions of Central American, African and other immigrants willing to do the jobs Americans and Europeans won't, such as construction, landscaping, and farm labor.)

What to do?  If the U.S, EU, Australia and other centers of greater relative prosperity are serious in their unwillingness to take in millions more refugees they need to dispense more effective artificial contraception and on a scale that dwarfs what is presently available,  This will be most focused on the poorest regions - with fewest resources-  which can least afford more population stress.

This move is dictated by several propositions:

1) Human resources cannot sustain numbers at the overshoot level or even half the overshoot level

2) If those numbers increase, then concomitant mass migrations will as well

3) Since few newly reproduced people will be admitted to existing "prosperous" nations - without negatively impacting them - a solution to limit future population growth must be implemented.

4) If any nations or its leaders claim to oppose mass-dispensed artificial contraception then they are effectively saying they will accept the overflow migrant numbers, so the stressed nations "need not worry".

5) Nations cannot at the same time be against mass birth control programs AND mass migration!

If you are unwilling to limit the numbers on our planet, for whatever "moral" or other reason, you have no choice but to accept responsibility for the vastly added numbers of migrants - whatever their cause-  because of your opposition!

It's time the moralizers who spout off about "protecting life"   and even argue against birth control,  take moral ownership for their decisions and policies.

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/jim-hightower/79930/a-wall-wont-fix-immigration

And:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/jeff-biggers/79932/trump-is-following-arizona-s-playbook-on-immigration-we-know-how-to-fight-back

Neoliberal Weenies Go Nuts Piling Onto Russia for Giving Snowden Asylum

Oh, but to see just half the outrage and self-righteous verve on display (after Russia gave Ed Snowden temporary asylum for one year), directed at the REAL traitors and war criminals in this nation who are still walking Scott free. I am talking about Cheney, Bush, Wolfowitz, Perle, William Krystal and other Neocons who pumped up the phony basis for the Iraq invasion and occupation, instantly putting the U.S. on a par with Nazi Germany when it invaded Poland in Oct. 1939. But in this country these days, criminals walk - even if they practice torture, while those who expose wrong doing are tracked to the ends of the Earth.


But to behold the fiery rhetoric, i.e. from Neolib Weasel Chuck Schumer,  barking that "Russia has stabbed us in the back and each day Snowden is allowed to roam free is another twist of the knife!",  you'd think that nation was harboring a war criminal like Cheney or Bush, or a serial killer or genocidal madman, not a man who simply exposed the over reaching and trashing of the Constitution done by his own gov't.  Not a man who is a genuine patriot in every sense of the word, as opposed to a disgusting reprobate tool.

As for the unctuous Neoliberal Dems getting in bed with the Reeps to howl at the Russians for "destroying US- Russian relations" by giving Snowden temporary succor,  don't make me laugh! We've had quite enough failures of our leaders' rhetoric to pass assorted laugh tests, and this is one. In fact, the greatest damage to US- Russia relations was sown over a year ago when whatever asinine imps that hold sway in this fucked  -up country  (that dotes on the DOW's artificial numbers while its infrastructure crumbles) proposed a missile defense system in POLAND! Right on Russia's doorstep! Any one who's ever studied Russian history knows this was a stupid, foolish proposal!  It was solely designed to antagonize the Russians, and piss them off royally.  Giving Ed Snowden temporary asylum provided a relatively harmless way to get a dig out of crazy Uncle Sam, and let the world see him go nuts. Let me rephrase that: let the world see all the hollow Amerikkan paper patriots go nuts including all the useless politicos (like Chuck Schumer)  looking for a cheap bandwagon to grandstand on. Anything to appeal to the numskulls who want Snowden brought back and treated like Bradley Manning.

As I noted in an earlier blog post, http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/05/russian-angst-increases-over-us-missile.html

"why should the Russians believe the system isn't really designed to be used against them? Again, the U.S. militarists - driven by Paul Nitzke's feral document NSC -68  (mandating empire building)  end up putting their feet into their mouths, and at the same time possibly detracting from global nuclear security for all of us, if the Russians increase the megatonnage of their warheads in response."


Whoever proposed this system is also ignorant of Russian history going back to the czars, and Peter the Great. From long ago Russia has been suspicious and rightly so, of hostile munitions, forces, missiles assembled near its borders. In the same way the U.S. was in Oct. 1962 when it was learned Russian missiles were in Cuba. The U.S. went ape shit over 93 odd IRBMS and now expects the Russians to remain quiet while the U.S. assembles a "missile defense" system right on its doorstep.

Even the Poles themselves have been distrustful of this idiocy. As noted in the above referenced blog link. Stefan Niesiolowski, chairman of the defense committee in the Polish Lower House of Parliament pointedly observed such a missile system is not needed in Poland. As he pointed out ('Missile Gaffe Leaves Europen Unfazed', Wall Street Journal, April 22,  p. A8):

"There's no military threat and we haven't had a situation as secure as this in 300 years. The level of U.S. military engagement in Poland therefore is not of top importance."

Then WHY do it?

The answer is simple: the military -industrial complex ensconced in the U.S. wants to invent ever more specious reasons to piss away ever more billions of our taxpayer dollars.  This despite the fact our own domestic security is being compromised before our very eyes with crumbling highways, collapsing bridges and burst water and sewer lines. This is also why the M-I-C  want to have 30,000 unmanned drones airborne by 2015 - most to spy on us (the citizens of one Colo. burg plan to shoot them down if they fly anywhere near their town) and even trying to make a "deal" to keep us in Afghanistan beyond 2014.

Adding insult to injury: while  the Russians kept their side of the deal and expedited the dissolution of The Warsaw Pact (the putative counter to NATO during the Cold War Years), the U.S. - despite repeated warnings from expert Russianologists, made ever more "pacts" with former Russian satellites and expanded NATO to Russia's literal doorstep. This is stupid, ill-conceived.

The basis for this utter insanity? Paul Nitzke's nutso NSC -68 - the odious blue print for perpetual Pax Americana  -  which has fomented "hundreds of small wars" as well as the overthrow of democratically-elected governments such as that of Mossadegh in Iran (1953) and Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala. Read much of the sordid story behind the latter here:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/

Morris Berman notes (Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire, W.W. Norton, page 118):

"Nitze emphasized the importance of perception, arguing that how we were seen was as crucial as how militarily secure we actually were. This rapidly expanded the number of interests deemed relevant to national security”.

Of course, the US of A has no monopoly on such perceptions, so the Russians are also entitled to theirs, so they can be forgiven for taking steps to thwart the deployment of a missile shield embodied in U.S. "perceptions" of self-interest. They can also be forgiven for giving a hypocritical superpower the finger for its staunch refusal to see its own crimes (such as blowing up Cu-455 over Barbados on Oct. 6, 1976 using CIA contract hires, and overthrowing democratically elected governments) , never mind the blind assholes who make up what we call congress getting their panties in a snit over Snowden's temporary asylum. Wonder why this country is going to hell in a hand basket? Look at the useless turds  (of BOTH parties)  we have in congress who were even taken to task in a Denver Post editorial for being "AWOL" on NSA oversight until Snowden blew the whistle. (See e.g. http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_23778669/congress-silent-spying-far-too-long )

Meanwhile, we civil libertarians, ACLU members,  hope a leash can soon be put on the NSA "patriots" who think trashing the 4th amendment really protects us. 

Oregon senator Ron Wyden is currently at the forefront of a growing chorus of political voices criticizing the FISA court for being biased towards the executive branch to the exclusion of all other positions. "It is the most one-sided legal process in the US, I don't know of any other legal system or court that doesn't highlight anything except one point of view – the executive point of view."


Wyden added: "When that point of view also dominates the thinking of justices, you've got a fairly combustible situation on your hands."

Of course, former constitutional law prof Obama ought to know better than to condone or be any part of this refuse. But as I said before, and say again, I believe he is petrified to go against the entrenched national security system having seen what they did to JFK 50 years ago. (I will have a future blog discussing how JFK learned that security system betrayed him and why he vowed to "smash the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds".  )

What ought to immediately concern real citizens and real patriots, as opposed to the toadies, weasels and traitors in congress, is the recent way the New York Times has shown  how the court has secretly expanded its operations until it now holds the status almost of a parallel supreme court. 

The Times has also analyzed the make-up of the court and discovered an alarming bias within the ranks of its judges in favor of government. More than a third of the justices appointed to the court since its inception have had executive branch experience.

This is disturbing in the extreme and is reminiscent of the infamous Reich Courts operating under the Reich laws in Hitler's Nazi Germany.

If citizens don't soon wake up and light a fire under congress critters, Senators to get things done, we could soon very well be repeating history from 70 odd years ago.  As George Santayana once put it: "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it".

As for the howling and gnashing of teeth about Snowden's Russian  asylum, look at the tools doing it and then consider the source!  As for those pundits, or the ex-NSA tool that appeared on Chris Hayes' 'ALL In' the other night, damning Snowden for "running to Russia, a terrible civil rights flouter" - bull pockey. At least Chris' other guest, from Human Rights Watch, got it right: Snowden didn't "run to Russia" he was driven to Russia by the U.S.! It was the only nation with the chutzpah to stand up to the world's biggest bully. He surely wouldn't find any help among the European Union nations, all of whose leaders seem to have been converted to pod people by the NSA's tentacles.

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