Politics

PHILIP DRU: ADMINISTRATOR

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Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, and the ghost of Edward Mandell House

Tuesday, 28 March 2017

Jacksonian revolt? At least that was the mile wide and inch deep characterization of the Trump Administration provided by an essay in the current issue of Foreign Affairs. The Trump Administration has packed its cabinet and top advisors with generals, investment bankers, and oil executives who serve the global military industrial complex and corporate interests of central banks the world over. The irony here is of course that Andrew Jackson railed against the power of central banks and corporate power, and counted as his crowning achievement the winning of the so-called Bank War in 1841, fought over the rechartering of the Second Bank of the United States (another irony is of course that for all Jackson’s hatred of central banks, his face was put on the $20 bill – a central bank note). He argued that giving a bank the power to control the money supply is unconstitutional. Imagine that argument being proffered in mainstream political discourse today.

To use a form of the now well-known “literally vs. seriously” heuristic so popular with Trumpism, populist is what the Trump Administration is rhetorically, corporatist is what it is in practice. A glaring and ignored question among those who view the Trump presidency as an effort to attrit the power of the Deep State is: If Trump is an enemy of the Deep State, why is the balance of the executive branch and key economic positions within the government now run by corporate financial interests (Rothschild and Goldman Sachs in particular)? This administration appears to represent an intramural game between factions of the Deep State, and not outsiders attempting to upend the status quo. All the discussion around deconstructing the administrative state, which on its face would indeed make government more responsive to those it purports to represent, i.e., the voters, seems like a red herring, as what is actually happening is one power faction wresting control from another.

If returning the power of government back to the people was the goal, an immediate effort to do the following would ensue: the reinstitution of Glass-Steagall (update) or an equivalent, a radical reformation of campaign financing laws which focuses on transparency and stringent limits on political donations, passing a law requiring all electronic voting machines be auditable via a paper trail and run by open source code software. And if they were truly serious, the Executive Branch could work with Congress to take back its constitutionally mandated power to print money under Article I, Section 8, Clause 5, and take it out of the hands of private corporations (repealing the Federal Reserve Act of 1913). This would be a good start. (more…)

TILTING AT WINDMILLS

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Red herrings, identity politics, and the futility of the coming culture wars

Tuesday, 24 January 2017

The Left is in high dudgeon, but for the wrong reasons. Identity politics and the culture wars are turning political ideologies on their heads, with California, a bastion of collectivist social policies, now rebuking the power of the federal government, with some even invoking the Lone Star State secession card. Liberal elites are falling over themselves decrying the end of civilized society with the inauguration of the short-fingered vulgarian, and the professional classes are lamenting the poverty of American culture as all the fascists, racists, and ignorant plebes are now behind the wheel of government and have been given the nuclear codes. The hyperbole has been something to behold among the most frenzied sectors of the Left’s Social Justice League.

The Left has been sleeping with the enemy for decades, and has been co-opted by its own supporters at the highest levels of the public and private sector, as governments and foundations all play their part. Left movements are so often futile because they are all funded by social engineers that have no interest in the goals and values of the citizens at the ground level trying to affect change. A recent case in point: The Clinton Foundation set up a textile factory in Haiti that provides jobs for women, which sounds like a noble mission. A GPS company was then brought in to provide free cell phones and microfinancing to these women, with the ostensible purpose of giving them access to communication tools, capital, and the ability to start their own businesses. Everyone can feel good about public-private cooperation and the spirit of American philanthropy at this point. What was the actual purpose of this venture? (more…)

THE FOURTH PHILOSOPHY

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The Russian Federation, the Trump Administration, and the coming global multipolar system

Sunday, 13 November 2016

From the perspective of the United States and the West more broadly, Russia has always represented those who would not bow down or atone for their refusal to recognize the Son with the same reverence as the Father. The debate surrounding the filioque has been emblematic of the conflict between the East and West for thousands of years, and up until quite recently, the West has been winning.

According to historian and Roman propagandist Josephus Flavius, the “fourth philosophy” is a term synonymous with the nationalist Jewish revolutionary sect the Sicarii, which was active during the reign of Roman Emperors’ Vespasian Flavius and his son Titus. The Sicarii articulated their conviction that they would not worship the Flavian Emperor as God and refused to submit to Roman rule. And just as Christianity was used as an agitprop against the Sicarii to vilify the Jews and supplant their God with Jesus Christ (Titus Flavius), so too was communism used against Russia in order to attenuate its imperial aspirations and limit its power and influence of Central Asia, i.e., the Heartland.

The fourth philosophy referred to by Josephus Flavius has another ideological connection with Russia. In Aleksandr Dugin’s aptly titled book, “The Fourth Political Theory,” Dugin, a one-time advisor to Putin much like Brzezinski in the West (only not as influential) and thought-leader among some on the Alternative Right, outlined the long term strategic thinking of Russia (more…)

SINS OF OMISSION

 

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Conspiracy theories, covert operations, and the Deep State

Friday, 7 October 2016

Henry G. Frankfurt remarked in his book, “On Bullshit,” that: “Bullshit is a greater enemy of truth than lies are.” It should also be said that the most ubiquitous enemies of truth – and most insidious lies – are sins of omission, which are far more corrosive to the pursuit of truth in that they are an attempt to create the impression that something never happened or simply does not exist.

The information revolution ushered in by the internet has created both opportunities and threats, as well revealed the strengths and weaknesses possessed by students and teachers in terms of their understanding of the world and the choices that flow from that understanding. Access to large amounts of information has required a greater degree of critical thinking and discernment across all of the academic disciplines. Consequently, both students and teachers are deeply vulnerable to institutional propaganda and the use of what Reinhold Niebuhr referred to as “emotionally potent oversimplifications.”

Like the elusive sighting of a baby seagull, the teaching and learning of history possess a glaring intellectual blind-spot in the minds of both students and teachers. The “who, what, why, and how” of history are fundamental questions whose orthodox answers are misleading at best, and at worst, wrong. This assertion suggests that there is a great deal of historical revisionism taking place, which should be properly understood in this context as an interpretation of history whose purpose is to obfuscate and mislead.

The orthodox writers of history are, by ignorance or by design, engaged in something far more corrupting than that, because historical revisionism implies (more…)

AMERICAN AGITPROP

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Socio-cultural myth and the problem of American exceptionalism

Thursday, 8 September 2016

Associated colloquially with the Special Snowflake Syndrome, American exceptionalism has permeated the minds of its citizens since The Founding. And for all of America’s imperial ambitions, its root hog, or die attitude will not likely cause it to outlast or outshine the great empires of antiquity.

Those on the Left who have made their bones engaging in polemics of American exceptionalism are engaged in the most profound kind of irony, in that their activities are primarily funded by the same plutocrats that have promulgated the very myth that they seek to dispel, wholly unaware that they are participating in a controlled opposition campaign.

This reality has been well understood since before the American Founding, and was articulated quite explicitly by historian Oswald Spengler in his seminal two-volume work, Decline of West, where he explained the nature of Homo economicus and its spiritual degradation:

“There is no proletarian, not even a Communist, movement that has not operated in the interest of money, in the directions indicated (more…)