Red lines, red stains

Posted on June 14, 2013 by B Psycho

Syria is in a civil war of sorts. The U.S. government has been involved in it, backing the side of the rebels against the ruling Assad regime. Up to this point, that aid has been claimed as being limited to “non-lethal” things, in complete ignorance of the fact that getting non-lethals for free opens up money for replenishing weaponry, thus having effect similar to as if just given funds for arms. Also, the CIA has been involved, them being inside the country treated as an open secret. Further involvement has been regularly threatened, on the basis of a “red line” that Syria’s military not use chemical weapons — or else.

We knew this was coming: the red line hath been declared crossed:

Syria has crossed a “red line” with its use of chemical weapons, including the nerve agent sarin gas, against rebels, a move that is prompting the United States to increase the “scale and scope” of its support for the opposition, the White House said Thursday.

The acknowledgment is the first time President Barack Obama’s administration has definitively said what it has long suspected — that President Bashar al-Assad’s forces have used chemical weapons in the ongoing civil war.

“The intelligence community estimates that 100 to 150 people have died from detected chemical weapons attacks in Syria to date; however, casualty data is likely incomplete,” Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, said in a statement released by the White House.

“While the lethality of these attacks make up only a small portion of the catastrophic loss of life in Syria, which now stands at more than 90,000 deaths, the use of chemical weapons violates international norms and crosses clear red lines that have existed within the international community for decades,” Rhodes added.

One hundred fifty. Maybe, if the data is accurate, which it is admitted it may not be. Out of 90,000+. If anyone is wondering what the point would be in Assad using a little bit of his chemical weapons arsenal when any use of it triggers further U.S. involvement (if you’re that nuts you might as well go whole hog with it), you aren’t alone. I’m wondering the same thing. Yet there’s reports from U.N. investigators suggesting that the opposition has used chemical weapons as well. If both are correct, then the “red line” was mutually crossed, which should pose a dilemma for the rationale behind intervention.

Should, but doesn’t.

By the way, that involvement is discussed as including enforcement of a No Fly Zone. Which means bombing Syrian air defenses. Which also meant last time a No Fly Zone was established (during the Libyan war) bombing things that have absolutely nothing to do with air war.

Here’s the kicker though: the key force among the rebels is Islamists. Islamists openly aligned with al-qaeda. You know, the claimed reason we must be molested at airports & constantly spied on.

The U.S., Turkey, Jordan, & Saudi Arabia are involved, and on Assad’s side Russia & Hezbollah from Lebanon. Among these expanding conflagrations, who will win? Why, shareholders of war profiteers, of course!

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Party Hard (Headed)

Posted on June 10, 2013 by B Psycho

The smack of American realization of just how huge & pervasive the security state is, due to the revelations of (obviously now former) employee of “defense” contractor Booz Allen Hamilton Edward Snowden — who actually outed himself, on purpose – has reverberated for awhile now. There’s been Obama basically saying “yeah, so what?”, the tech companies named as partners with the government in treating everyone as a suspect giving oddly formulaic denials, most of congress saying it’s no big deal, the freakin’ author of the Patriot Act former rep Jim Sensenbrenner saying “woah…”, calls online and in the media for Snowden as well as Glenn Greenwald (!!) to be executed as traitors, a competing organization in support of Snowden’s exposure, and a petition started on that “We The People” thing on the White House site to pardon him.

So, with all that, it’s been long enough to poll about it. Pew Research Center & the Washington Post ran the acceptability of this dragnet of everybody because TERROR!! TERROR!! by some folks, and got an all too unfortunate majority somehow in favor. This, even though you should more fear cancer, heart disease, your own vomit, or the police more than terrorism if concerned about keeping yourself alive.

But it doesn’t stop there. Oh, yes, there was a partisan breakdown:

nsa polling

Note the flips. 2006 Republicans by a huge margin declared questioning Dubya’s surveillance powers UnAmerican, while this year they could flip a coin on Obama’s use of them.
Dems in ’06 by a significant majority railed against the Bush Administration’s Shredding of The Constitution! Now that it’s Obama running the shredder they’re cool with it.

Limitless power: “It’s OK if MY team does it!” Argh…

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The Undemonstrated

Posted on June 7, 2013 by B Psycho

First, an explanation, since normally I don’t get into this kind of thing: In a post on his blog CK Macleod criticized Daniel Larison’s response to (finally) this post, a longform by Elliot Abrams in “defense” of “neo-conservatism”.  I provided the following in comments at CK’s, referring to difficulty nailing down who & who isn’t one and how little I frankly care considering their one unifying thread:

If people mean “warmonger” by a phrase, I think it’d be more helpful & direct to just use “warmonger”. The arguments of the spread of people referred to as “neo-cons” when they try to get philosophical about it are too cluttered & contradictory for the most part anyway, so the coherent relevancy left over is merely knee-jerk support for war.

CK seemed to take offense to that. I started to reply further, but figured it’d get long, so instead decided I’d expand here, bouncing off of the longform. First off, here’s how Elliot Abrams defines “neo-conservatism”:

[...] patriotism, American exceptionalism, a belief in the goodness of America and in the benefits of American power and of its use, and a conviction that democracy is the best system of government and should be spread whenever that is practical. It should not be shocking that such views win wide popularity in the United States, though perhaps that last idea — spreading democracy — is the most controversial.

As I stated in my 2nd comment on CK’s site, this is meaningless sloganeering. Defining ones own philosophical view by “patriotism” assumes that anyone who disagrees with you is automatically Un-Patriotic (by which the user tends to mean “evil”). There are some who question the propriety & logic of patriotism itself as a concept, a group which I’d throw my own name in due to feeling that while peoples continue to be defined by states, the sentiment leads to more harm than good. However, not all opponents of “neo-conservatives” are this way, and it’s ridiculous to claim they are.

“The goodness of America” is an extension of the above, and also a sleight of hand: how they define “America” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there if the term is to mean anything beyond Mom, Baseball & Apple Pie type rhetoric.

I think baseball is deadeningly dull, by the way.

Anyway, about that phrase:
-If they mean good in the sense of fulfilling their personal preferences… ok, why should the rest of the world care? You like what you like, a global view that doesn’t make.
-If qualitatively good, the extent to which class rigidity has shown itself takes the luster off of those per capita income numbers, for one example. For another, the U.S. has less than 5% of the world’s population but holds a quarter of the world incarcerated population. Just saying, it’s not all cake & ice cream here, ok?
-Good people? There’s good people everywhere, no place has a monopoly on them.
-If he means goodness of the American government…well, when anyone asserts goodness of government, I reach for my gun. Or I would if I had one, so I just snicker.

“The benefits of American power”. A remark of benefit to *any* country’s power on the rest of the world should automatically trigger reply of “for whom?” Iraq hasn’t even worked out for the U.S.’s benefit, to say nothing of the death & destruction caused & the sectarian chaos that still goes on there for the Iraqis. The same talk that led to that invasion wafts around the air on Iran, and even fuels threats to further intervene in Syria. The latter threats exist despite constant reports that the ones trying to use chemical weapons are actually the rebels, whose main forces are aligned with the group that the U.S. government points to to justify the last 12 years. You don’t have to think Assad is somehow not an authoritarian dick to realize there’s no dog in that fight worth rooting for.

As for the bit about democracy as “best form of government” and spreading it… for sake of argument, set aside that I believe there’s no such thing as a good form of government. Read it as “less blatantly terrible” just to move on. How one “spreads democracy” again makes a huge difference — advocating for the concept versus attempting to impose it. Also, “democracy” the ideal clearly conflicts with “democracy” the practice when it comes to U.S. foreign policy. If not, then the one asserting otherwise should explain why the overlap of Places Where Democracy Is Not Practical with Regimes That Support U.S. Political Interests (own citizenry be damned) exists.

See, the thing about national interests is that they can conflict. If a country that under a crown or a despot plays ball with the U.S. government would if given some measure of self-determination stop doing so, true emphasis on and promotion of (again, the ideal of) democracy would not see that as a mitigating factor. Instead, the practice is “um, not so fast…”.

Abrams makes another version of this formulation later, stating as historical root of “neo-conservatism” seekers of “a foreign policy that was both muscular in promoting American interests and moralistic in promoting freedom”. The same snag applies: free people who are not Americans can seek interests that conflict with that of the American government. Which one wins the fight? Abrams’ peers, in all denial, say “well America, of course!” To be blunt, it ends up bullying & bullshit.

He then goes on to call Obama’s current policy “McGovernism”, insinuate that because a few critics of “neo-conservatism” fixate on claimants who happen to be Jewish all criticism is intractably tied up in anti-Semitism, and say of the rare Republican questioning of any current involvements they’re just No Confidence votes in the face of “reluctance to engage forcefully enough to win”…at which moment I came to question this entire endeavor & prepared to do something else.

tl;dr: They say “neo-conservatism”, I hear “imperialism & militarism”. I’m anti-imperialism and anti-militarism. Hence, “warmonger” is what I use.

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Invert Your Premise

Posted on June 6, 2013 by B Psycho

I guess it’s NSA Revelation Week.

Adding to the fact of Verizon’s network being mass mined, The Guardian keeps the flow going, finding that U.S. government back doors are directly installed on the servers of several major companies:

The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian.

The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called PRISM, which allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats, the document says.

The Guardian has verified the authenticity of the document, a 41-slide PowerPoint presentation – classified as top secret with no distribution to foreign allies – which was apparently used to train intelligence operatives on the capabilities of the program. The document claims “collection directly from the servers” of major US service providers.

Emails, chats, files, all with no warrant. Of anybody. Everybody, really. All are effectively treated as suspects by default, via the symbiosis of state and corporate power. Really, as I ponder it myself, the term “back door” is inaccurate, as it implies a need for discretion that is not reflected in any way whatsoever by the demonstrated powers herein. They’re simply being given the keys to the front, no worry about disturbing the sleeping inhabitants, might as well go The Full Sitcom & shout “honey, I’m home!” upon login.

After the Verizon story, though seemingly before the Everybody Else story, John Sides over at The Monkey Cage considers whether there will finally be a backlash against the surveillance state. His conclusion is skeptical for two reasons, one absolutely laughable & sad, and the other most accurately seen as a damning of the very soul of any claimed desire of liberty on this portion of the planet called America:

1) The Laughable: lack of opposition, especially bipartisan opposition, in Congress. What we were constantly told in public government school was that the system we have is “representative” — that is, those in power are ostensibly supposed to listen to The People & respond accordingly, a measure of say by proxy in just what the hell goes on. Sides instead describes the tail as wagging the dog, a public that effectively sits in standby mode until the Right & slightly-less-Right hands of the formalized ruling class establish their roles on the particular matter, to which the masses then respond like one giant Improv comedy troupe — “I, with the (Elephant/Donkey) pin on my lapel, shall call this act of the ones with (Donkeys/Elephants) on their campaign swag an utter travesty…and propose to merely nibble at it if anything!”, followed by a hypocrisy duel death spiral in rare moments worthy comedic material but usually just mind-numbingly dumb. At the moment both “sides” shrug & see squat wrong for the most part, so John Sides says John & Jane Q Puppy — excuse me, public — will not be growling at the intruders. Does it even need to be said that if his interpretation is remotely correct, we are a civic failure? Need I even explain how inherently Beside The Damn Point the views of “our” elected officials are to the concept of PUBLIC backlash?

2) The Damning: Sides mentions an article about a survey on public concern about surveillance:

In a recent article (gated)*, political scientists Samuel J. Best, Brian S. Krueger, and Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz reported the results of a 2007 survey in which they explicitly asked whether Americans were anxious, worried, or scared about “the government monitoring the activities of people like you.”  Only about 30% of Americans said that they were “somewhat” or “very” anxious, worried, or scared.  Best and colleagues note that this is more than some commentators and scholars have suggested.

“People like me? I’ve done nothing wrong, why worry?”

Argh…that isn’t how it’s supposed to work, people. The percentage of any population violating others is generally not a critical mass (except when such violation is organized by identifiers such as flag, race, or religion of course), so the question of “people like me” obscures more than it reveals, especially since intentions of those who would do so aren’t commonly announced in advance. Thus, presumptions of suspicion on everybody are unfounded.

Until given credible indication by act that you intend to do harm to others, here’s how much standing *anyone* has to care what you’re doing, who you’re talking to, and/or where you’re going:

 

Note that I typed absolutely nothing in the above space.

The opposition should be massive precisely because both sides of the formal body of the ruling class generally see nothing wrong. We should be outraged because there is no reason to watch absolutely everyone.

The gist of the last few days news says we’re basically living a dystopian sci-fi novel, but less exciting. The obscene is the common, the common is the obscene. But we were promised flying cars…

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Dirt mining: Every Dig a Winner!

Posted on June 5, 2013 by B Psycho

Every call, every day, on Verizon, one of the largest phone networks, both within the U.S. and having a party outside the U.S., for months. That is what the NSA has been collecting thanks to a secret court order — which itself actually bars Verizon from even admitting it or discussing the matter.

When your field of surveillance is that huge, you cannot possibly be looking for something of merit.  This is simply doing it just to see if you can get away with it, a complacency test, a heat check. As time goes on, these kind of stories become “Breaking: Dog Licks its Own Crotch” territory.

 

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“Limited” Statism

Posted on May 25, 2013 by B Psycho

You may have heard off and on that immigration reform is being discussed in the U.S. Senate. Ideas swirling around within that include expanded guest worker visas (which themselves are structured as to belittle & restrain the immigrants using them), a “path” to citizenship including various fees over several years for those in the country undocumented, and the always ubiquitous “Secure The Borders” call. The other day, Painfully Obvious 2016 Presidential Candidate/Senator Rand Paul chimed in — of course — to criticize what looks like a route to a national ID card system:

I think there are better ideas that err on the side of individual privacy while still strengthening our borders. We should scrap a national identification database and pass immigration reform that secures the border, expands existing work-visa programs and prevents noncitizens from access to welfare. These simple ideas will eliminate the perceived need for an invasive worker-verification system and a government citizenship database.

I am against the idea that American citizens should be forced to carry around a National Identification Card as a condition of citizenship. I worry that the Senate is working to consider a series of little-noticed provisions in comprehensive immigration reform that may provide a pathway to a national ID card for all individuals present in the United States — citizens and noncitizens. These draconian ideas would simply give government too much power.

The invocation of “Papers, please” has the commonly understood root of authoritarian government holding a constant cloud of suspicion on the populace, the state as ever-seeing eye — that eye waiting to send signals to the brain which then result in swinging of fists.  For the relative, right-libertarians within his base, this understandable fear serves the same purpose as the smell of weed at a Redman concert: you just know. The gathering has been signified.  Yet Rand Paul is not for the ultimate immigration reform of open borders. In fact, he wants a fence on every inch of that imaginary line. This, plus his remark about undocumented immigrants and welfare, which conjures up a stereotypical Latinofied version of the Reaganite Welfare Queen meme (swarthy young machos in lowriders eating steak tacos!), are the wink & nod delivered to the section of Paul backers known as Hardcore Conservatives.

Ladies & gentlemen, this is what Triangulation looks like.

Now, ponder the concessions made to each subgroup being pandered to. The relatively libertarian inclined oppose a national ID card specifically, and oppose the idea of government demanding a trail for your every move in general. The hard-right types oppose… the free movement of people & the slight possibility immigrants may get something. In order to police this, you need ways of distinguishing immigrants from citizens, and what distinguishes immigrants that have not been documented from everyone else is lack of papers. So asking for those on a regular basis gets tedious & time consuming, and next thing you know you’re saying “how about we have a—” you get the rest.

This is just a sign of the large blind spot in conservatism. Somehow in the U.S., conservatism has an undeserved reputation for opposing “big government”, while having a tight attachment to the defining features of state authority. The policeman. The soldier. There is also a revulsion against the intermingling & gradual change of cultures, a nostalgic attachment to Country (As It Is Right Now). The idea of their neighborhoods and their Country browning is a nightmare, one they believe it is just fine for state power to combat however possible. Fighting to freeze culture is like herding cats with laser beam eyes.

Regardless of what Rand Paul, in all his ambition, emits from his cakehole, the conflict is clear: You can have individual liberty, or you can have cultural protectionism. Pick one.

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A Profound Lack of Self-Awareness

Posted on May 23, 2013 by B Psycho

Barack Obama gave a speech earlier today, supposedly a “big picture” type thing about U.S. conduct in the War on Terror. Didn’t watch it, as I had more important things to do (and also I’d rather not find out the effect throwing my shoe at it in disgust has on a flatscreen TV). Yet I do have a few remarks about it, since the text of it is up:

* He starts off speaking as if the ills of the war were entirely the last president’s fault, like he was a horrified bystander who ran for president to put an end to it all — “We unequivocally banned torture*, affirmed our commitment to civilian courts, worked to align our policies with the rule of law and expanded our consultations with Congress” he says.  Well, if the Constitution actually holds as the law part of that slogan “rule of law” here, then Obama may want to crack open his old books about it and consider Article 6. Treaties agreed to count as law, and back in 1988 the Convention Against Torture was agreed to by the U.S. government. Among the requirements of it are that ordering or acquiescing to torture is a crime, to be prosecuted. Has anyone that has authorized torture been prosecuted for it yet?

* After acknowledging the length at which this latest war has gone on, and the cost in (American only, of course) lives and money, Obama decided the following was a good place to turn next:

So America is at a crossroads. We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us, mindful of James Madison’s warning that “No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” Neither I, nor any President, can promise the total defeat of terror.

Yet in another part of the speech, he points to the Authorization to Use Military Force and attributes absolute blanket powers to it. Just what condition would he see as sufficient to repeal that blank check? Has he noticed that as the fighting has gone on, the occurrence of groups declaring themselves al-qaeda affiliates has spread (and that this includes elements in Syria that a substantial portion of congress wants to send weapons to)? How can a war defined by a tactic, fought in ways that reproduce it, ever end?

* Referring to regional extremist groups (all emphasis mine):

While we are vigilant for signs that these groups may pose a transnational threat, most are focused on operating in the countries and regions where they are based. That means we will face more localized threats like those we saw in Benghazi, or at the BP oil facility in Algeria, in which local operatives – in loose affiliation with regional networks – launch periodic attacks against Western diplomats, companies, and other soft targets, or resort to kidnapping and other criminal enterprises to fund their operations.

If they’re concerning themselves with their own country, how are they our issue? Especially how in the hell is an attack on a BP facility in Algeria readable as threat to the U.S.? Surely BP can afford their own security (since we didn’t bankrupt them like we should’ve after that Gulf disaster), right?

Our involvement in these areas, over time, cannot help but convince those there of the importance of the U.S. overriding that of whoever they’re fighting in their country. That’s how you end up with transnational threats, by teaching a mere national or local threat that their current opponent is irrelevant.

* About the roots of terrorism:

Most, though not all, of the terrorism we face is fueled by a common ideology – a belief by some extremists that Islam is in conflict with the United States and the West, and that violence against Western targets, including civilians, is justified in pursuit of a larger cause.

Yes, violence against civilians is never justified. Now explain why the term “collateral damage” even exists, and why the definition of a combatant in a drone strike area is stretched to include all military-age males…

Whether it’s an AQ sympathizer bombing a market or a missile from U.S. planes hitting one, it doesn’t matter, dead civilians = evil. It’s called being consistent.

* In the course of claiming to make restraints on use of force, Obama touches the latest unavoidable object by saying the following:

For the record, I do not believe it would be constitutional for the government to target and kill any U.S. citizen – with a drone, or a shotgun – without due process.

“…and now here’s why I did exactly that which I just said was unconstitutional.”

That’s not how it works. Briefing congress is not due process. By the way, even if your blather about how much of a Bad Guy Awlaki was did somehow cancel out the unconstitutional nature of what you just said was unconstitutional, it says absolutely bupkus about why his son was later killed.

It is my understanding that this was televised when delivered. This means the president of the United States, amidst all the cliche talk that when observed makes one think he forgets that he’s president, admitted to multiple violations of the Constitution. On camera. And nothing will come of it.

“Rule of Law”, my ass…

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Garbage In, Garbage Out

Posted on May 14, 2013 by B Psycho

If I had a nickel for every time some “progressive” blogger’s critique of libertarianism 1) completely ignored that there are skeptics of capitalism at all within it, 2) assumed It All Began With Ayn Rand, despite her hating libertarians during her life & her closest ideological offspring being bigoted warmongers, and/or 3) boiled down to “I’ll call Hayek a Libertarian, Hayek supported Pinochet, ergo libertarianism is inherently pro right-wing dictator, suck it” as Freddie does at his own site, I would never have to work another day in my entire life.

No, Freddie, there is internal criticism, you just don’t see it because you picked the most stereotypical circle of “libertarians” to observe. The ones you’re pointing at as proof of anti-reformist tendencies in fact are the reformists, in the sense that they are compromising with the current system — which is the problem with them in my view (they’re defending stolen property). Supporting murderers & oppressors is not in any way consistent with libertarianism, Hayek revealed himself to be a statist prick in doing so regardless of that damn book he wrote.

BTW: about this crack of his, referring to supposed enforcement of orthodoxy:

If someone suggests that, say, the federal free lunch program isn’t a matter of creeping authoritarianism, they are swiftly dispatched.

I’ve long been describing social welfare spending by the state as revolt insurance, meant to prevent mass rejection of a rigged economic system. I have yet to be kicked out. Oh yeah, and the original reason for the school lunch program wasn’t simple generosity & concern for hungry kids, but a way to dump surplus farm goods & thus prop up food prices. Seriously, look it up.

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Ed Kilgore’s Late Pass

Posted on May 6, 2013 by B Psycho

upsidedown-flag

The National Rifle Association — that group that simultaneously claims to uphold the right to bear arms for the purpose of resisting tyranny while calling for more government employees to be heavily armed, with no cognitive dissonance — has a new president, James Porter. As if he were a “progressive”-derived stereotype of an imagined high ranking NRA member simply brought to life, he’s a white male in his 60s from Alabama who refers to the Civil War as “the War of Northern Aggression”. Over at the Political Animal blog, Ed Kilgore hears this bell and gives the expected reaction:

Am I perhaps being unfair to these people in suggesting that they are behaving like America-haters and are flirting with treason? I don’t think so. Porter and those like him could dispel this sort of suspicion instantly, any time they wanted, by just saying: “Let’s be clear: the kind of ‘tyranny’ we are arming ourselves to forestall is something entirely different from anything Americans have experienced since we won our independence—a regime engaged in the active suppression of any sort of dissent, and the closure of any peaceful means for the redress of grievances. We’re not talking about the current administration, or either major political party, as presently representing a threat of tyranny.”

I’m not holding my breath for any statements like that to emerge from the NRA, or indeed, from the contemporary conservative movement. (emphasis mine)

While the NRA holds no claim to consistency when it comes to defending liberty, Ed here is calling for Mr Porter to, in order to calm the nerves of those picturing right-wing armed rebellion, make what is a testable claim: that suppression of dissent is a pre-Revolution thing, nothing they’re claiming to see now or even that has been the case. Let’s test that claim, shall we?

  • Sedition Act of 1798: printing harsh criticisms of then-president John Adams could get you put in prison.
  • Sedition Act of 1918 (yes, there were two of them): voicing opposition to the war, or “insulting or abusing the U.S. government” could get you put in prison. Eugene Debs found this out the hard way.
  • 1920′s: people still being arrested for speech.
  • 40′s and 50′s: loyalty oaths, criminalizing party affiliations, “Are you now, or were you ever, a communist?” (the accusations even extended to people who merely thought blacks should be treated as equal citizens).
  • COINTELPRO…just put it in a search, ffs.
  • …and of course we remember the Occupy crackdown. Singular, not plural, because it was a national effort coordinated with the FBI — with the involvement of several of the finance companies being protested, and the Federal Reserve.

Suppression of dissent “entirely different” from the American experience? Sure, if you never said anything, swallowed whatever you were fed & didn’t happen to be a member of any group defined on sight as un-American. Otherwise, suppression has been there all along in some form.  Funny of Ed to suggest James Porter should say different, since if he did then that’d further solidify the Stereotypical Base Conservative archetype by injecting historical cluelessness on the basis of race & class privilege, with a Colbertesque sheen to it even.

That the definition of tyranny to people like Mr Porter boils down to “a black Democrat is in the White House” does not mean all is well. Has it really ever been though? Or is punishing dissent as American as denying people you disagree with apple pie?

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Strangling the Reformist Goose

Posted on May 1, 2013 by B Psycho

On May Day, noted neo-liberal blogger Matt Yglesias wonders aloud if Marx had a point. Bouncing off a Brad DeLong post basically claiming a rationally interested ruling class would gladly keep up the revolt insurance, thus heading off rejection of the system, Matt observes what he calls “Wall Street Journal editorial page” tendencies spreading in opposition:

You see a rising tide of Rand-inflected moralism about market outcomes and a reduced emphasis on Friedman-style pragmatism. You also see a sharply reduced emphasis on belief in any kind of macroeconomic stabilization policy, in favor of a “let them eat cake slash move to North Dakota*” moralism about unemployment. Last but by no means least, it really has become the conventional wisdom among American elites that the appropriate policy response to fiscal imbalance in a time of high and rising income inequality is to restore balance by reducing the scope and generosity of social insurance programs.

I assume by “Friedman-style” he’s referring to Milton** and the Monetarist emphasis on central banking & the money supply as economic levers in contrast to Keynes.  That is, skepticism of the stated means of Keynesian economics but agreeing to the end — think Fed Not Congress.  Matt’s view of the reason for that rejection, given the phrase he uses to describe this overall tendency, paints it as inherently right-wing, no doubt having visions in his head of a Tea Party swagged out lynch mob massing towards Ben Bernanke’s residence in the middle of the night. Well given the demonstrated institutional corruption within the Fed, and the effect of their actions being to subsidize concentrated wealth, he might wanna make room in that fever dream for some OWS veterans.

“Macroeconomic Stabilization policy” itself is a curious thing when you think about it. The critique commonly assumed of it is that 1) spontaneous market order (AKA “the free market”) will take care of itself & 2) what we live within right now is consistent with spontaneous market order. The second part of that is such obvious nonsense that anyone claiming it as truth with a straight face I will gladly laugh off. More often though, the criticism is political rather than anything coherent in economic terms: think GOP politicians whining about the national debt while simultaneously proposing high-end tax cuts & more military spending by the largest arms dealer (and user!) in the world. They want “stimulus” too, they just call it Protecting The Homeland or Reasserting American Leadership. That said, both the progs concerning themselves with the shift away from social programs & the ones calling for the return of Keynes have a point — though not one either will like once they read it through…

-To the Keynesians: demand crater is describing surplus capital with nowhere to go from the other end. Saying government must spend to fill the gap & “create jobs” admits a zero-sum game has been constructed with regard to capital & labor. The more labor loses, the less mass consumption can be expected — without debt at least, which empowers high finance. So either people have less & less money, surplus capital piles up, & things stagnate, or people shift to debt until it pops & things collapse…to then stagnate. You’re performing maintenance on a giant hamster wheel.

-To the progs: ironically, Keynes has convinced the ruling class that they don’t need you & your “safety net”. Why bother when they can just holler at the Fed & limit any future serious investment to defense contractor stock? I hear some people in Syria have high aggregate demand for weapons…

So to Matt, I say keep going. It’s not cyclical, the rulers don’t give a shit, and the reason they call it “stabilization” is because the foundation is wobbly. Feel free to Wobble right back at it.

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