Broke It

Yesterday voters of the United Kingdom may well have done what Hitler could not do: they set the UK on a path of destruction.  Who would have believed that it would end with conscious self-destruction.

 Until this day it was possible to believe that the referendum that started the bloody process of taking Great Britain out of the European Union had been an aberration, a combination of misunderstanding, apathy and sinister manipulation. But it appears this time the voters went into this with no doubt of what they were voting for.

They voted to retain as their Prime Minister their very own blond monster, the British Trump, Boris Johnson. Like Trump’s Republicans, the Conservative Party abased itself to serve him. Remember that Johnson literally threw out of the party those members of Parliament who dissented from his orders. This totalitarian act should have been met with institutional censure and his removal, but the Conservative Party swallowed it, and now they are owners of Johnson’s ongoing evil.

The effects of this vote may take some time to see, but eventually the UK will likely suffer enormous economic and political consequences, that will probably ripple through western Europe and around the world. Scotland is almost certain to secede, and Northern Ireland is more likely to rejoin the Republic of Ireland or become completely independent than it is to remain in the UK.  That is, if Brexit turns out to be real and not just the politically popular marquee on an illusion.

If the world is to address its greatest threats—most of them related to the climate emergency-- it will need to be more united, not less. Most importantly, it will need a common body of laws to keep its conflicts from becoming self-destructive. This is a big step in the wrong direction.

It can only shake any confidence that the US will right its own course in its 2020 elections. Right now the Republican Party is, without dissent, shamelessly and consciously defying the Constitution that is the most sacred of America's body of rules, that embodies the principles that are the very backbone of the nation. And it looks increasingly like they will get away with it, and enhance their chances of retaining the White House and continuing the country’s current path to totalitarian self-destruction.

The US and the UK survived Hitler because they had extraordinary leaders in FDR and Churchill. There was no such leader to oppose Boris Johnson in the UK, and it is beginning to look like there may not be one in the US to successfully oppose Trump.  Some pundits point out that a (slight) majority of UK citizens wants to stay in the European Union, but they keep losing elections.  Let's hope that's not prophetic in our case as well.

Back in the UK: The Great US/UK/EU Unravel Continues

President Obama spoke in Montreal on June 6.  Though he didn't directly mention it as an anniversary of D-Day, the launching of the massive Allied military campaign to finish the Nazi dominance of Europe, he shaped his address (of 30 minutes, see above) by describing the past 70 years of relative peace, growing prosperity and democracy in the West as first of all a result of what began to be created as a consequence of World War II.  It is possible to think anew and act anew, he said, because that's what we did then.

If you need an immediate sense of the widespread hunger for change in America and England during World War II, click on one of the broadcasts by Norman Corwyn that can be heard on Youtube or elsewhere on the Internet.  It came from the bottom up.

Corwyn's broadcasts on CBS radio were enormously popular. For example, one English officer in a Corwin script insists that after the war “things are never going to be the same as they were...We’ve discovered that the idea of every-man-for-himself, that the old class distinctions have outlived their usefulness...” Ordinary soldiers and their families must insist “on a new life—by demanding that the same tremendous sacrifice and energy, the same resources of men and material that are put into a successful war be put into a successful peace.”

Corwin wrote about “the little guy” in America as well, who proved his mettle and judgment in the war, who could do great things when given the opportunity, and who deserved good housing, health and education.

These sentiments were the underpinning for what wartime and postwar leaders did ("though not without hypocrisy" as President Obama noted in Montreal.) He talked briefly about the establishment of an international order, beginning with the creation of the United Nations, that not only kept the peace (mostly) but increased freedom and quality of life.  The changes were "based not only on power but on principle."

The role of political leadership cannot be underestimated, beginning with FDR but including Europeans whose names are not so familiar here.  But that leadership, which began during the war, not only created new international structures and new national institutions (like democratic governments in the defeated nations of Japan and Germany) but by empowering ordinary people, not only politically but in terms of opportunity, income, health and education.

In the United States, there was the GI Bill of Rights, instituted mostly to provide income for returning soldiers in the period of postwar adjustment.  But it was the less emphasized provision for a period of free higher education that changed everything.  Most soldiers didn't use their free money, but many more than anyone believed possible went to college.  Moreover, the GI Bill was one of the few postwar programs that did not discriminate against minorities.  The GI Bill built the future for millions of Americans.

The US partnered with western European nations in the Marshall Plan that went beyond saving millions from starvation to creating economic stability and paths for growth.  As part of that process, closer relationships among nations resulted in the Common Market and eventually the European Union.

Meanwhile, the hunger for change for ordinary people resulted in the Labour government in the UK immediately after World War II that created the institutions referred to as the welfare state.  Both the US and the UK also did two very important things: first, they supported the growth of labor unions which, for all the corruption that tainted them later, were instrumental in lessening income disparity as well as weakening the rigid class system in England and in growing the middle class in both countries.

Second, they both instituted high rates of taxation on the rich, partly to pay for infrastructure and institutions that served the entire society, and furthered economic prosperity. In the UK, this money paid for National Health and nationalized industries. In the US this money built highways, airports, public utilities and subsidized housing in suburbia and well as the cities.  (It also bought a huge military industrial complex, which nevertheless transformed the US map and provided middle class incomes.) Various expansions of rights (sometimes after conflict, as in the Civil Rights movement) and benefits continued.

But for at least the past 35 years, in the age of Reagan and Thatcher, many of the underpinnings of the middle class expansion and a strong and shared public sector were eroded, weakened and destroyed, along with the public support that sustained them.  It seems the further we get from the time when the rationale for creating them was clear, the less we understand their importance.

The victims of these collapses were persuaded to blame each other, but certainly to find fault with governments and political leadership.  Now we find ourselves in a period of deep confusion and disarray, in both the US and UK.  The recent UK election has created political chaos there.  It seems to have revealed a polarization of left and right as complete as the US version, but because of the parliamentary system, it has risked the possibility that a government cannot be formed.  The Conservatives are in disarray, and need additional minority party help they can barely tolerate and may not get anyway, while Labour and its possible allies don't add up to the majority necessary.

I've listened to a lot of BBC radio lately as well as reading analyses, and it seems nobody can agree what the message of that election is, or why it came out as it did. Was it just a matter of a bad campaigner running a bad campaign, versus a tech-savvy Bernie Sanders type of candidacy that brought out young voters hungry for free college tuition and radical change?  Was it terrorism?  Brexit?  Income inequality?  Nobody knows, especially on Brexit, as neither major party leader mentioned it in the campaign.  Update: Here's a later--and more upbeat-- analysis by John Cassidy that makes the most sense so far: Corbyn changed the dynamic by running against austerity, for taxing the rich to fund public services, and for a less severe break with the EU.

And just as Russia won the US election, some observers say that Russia seems the clear victor in the UK, with the government weakened, negotiations with the EU and consequently the EU itself in disorder, and either a weak Conservative leader or a leftist with a reputation as a pro-Russia EU skeptic (or as they say over there, sceptic.)

From this distance it seems that the UK as well as the US is suffering at a particularly unfortunate time from not having good leaders or even good potential leaders.  Just as it's hard to think of a candidate for President worth voting for who could actually win, it's hard to think of a British leader with the stature to bring together a stable government.

But apart from the acute deficiency in the quality of leaders today (imagine if we'd had them in the 1940s)  this larger context created after World War II and especially its deterioration in the past several decades go a long way in accounting for the mess we're in.      

Update: A more optimistic (if news hooky view) on a resurgent EU here at Politico.

Echoes

The suddenly consequential rift between Europe and the US continues to grow, with melancholy echoes of the past we were supposed to learn from and never repeat.

Our dictator apprentice continued his petulant verbal sniping at Germany on Tuesday, "perplexing" this key ally.   Meanwhile the new president of France followed his symbolic handshake refusal to be dominated by our feckless grandstander with a blistering critique of Russian iniquities presented to Putin in person.  As Slate reporter Elliot Hannon observed:

Two weeks into his term, the 39-year-old Macron struck an assertive, principled tone that you would have expected from an American president meeting with an increasingly assertive adversary. Macron met with his Russian counterpart privately, and then stood at a podium next to Putin and accused Russian state news organizations of an intentional disinformation campaign.

Apart from emphasizing the stakes in the Russian Connection to the White House, this moment is even more powerful in the context of Germany PM Merkel's suggestion that Europe can no longer count on its US partner.

But stronger leadership from veteran Merkel in Germany and the surprising young Macron in France may not be enough to maintain the peace.  For instance the New York Times reports on the continuing US neglect of Italy--we don't even have an ambassador there--while the Russians are aggressively courting the country and its government.

This is a profound echo of that dangerous period just after World War II, when Italy and its loyalty were up for grabs.  In the face of rampant unemployment and terrible shortages, facing a winter when widespread starvation looked likely, the Italian communist party grew powerful.  It may well have been only the timely and material attention of the US that prevented the country from becoming a Soviet ally.  This was the key turning point moment leading eventually to NATO and the EU.

A different sort of echo is found in the New Republic piece on how swiftly the Nazi Germany regime changed that country's culture and arguably European culture as well, to reflect fascist ideology.  It concludes:

Martin’s fine study of cultural diplomacy reminds us that ideas are mercenary creatures, always available to serve new masters. In the 1930s and 1940s, the extreme right borrowed the prestige of artistic genius and the internationalist spirit to smash the idea of a free, tolerant Europe. The example is a chilling one. And as authoritarian nativists reach once again for the reins of the international system, we will need to remember, perhaps desperately, that the trappings of civilization are not the thing itself.

The tragedy in Portland and its continuing aftermath ("You call it terrorism, I call it patriotism!" and especially the shocking suggestion by an Oregon Republican leader that hate group militias be officially deputized to protect his fellow Rs), as well as the spectacle in the Texas legislature that included a mortal threat of gun violence, suggest the depths and volatility of our current internal conflicts.  Despite its blundering, the current White House regime is always just a few steps away from dictatorship.  We need to keep learning from European history, in all kinds of ways.

Falling Apart

After the two most devastating wars in human history started and were largely fought on its soil, Europe began in a few short years after World War II to forestall the possibility of it happening again.  A visionary dream of several centuries, expressed by a character in James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man as "the United States of Europe"  began its several decades of coming true, at least as far as the European Union.

The United States of America was an essential partner and even instigator.  The first actual institutional cross-border cooperation--especially between enemies of a few years before, France and Germany--were part of the Marshall Plan directly after World War II, the massive U.S. effort to pull Europe out of imminent starvation and economic collapse.  

These closer relationships and the US involvement were very much in the shadow of the Soviet Union, expanding its empire into eastern Europe and seeking influence if not hegemony in western European countries in crisis.  A few years later the mutual defense pact called NATO was most of all meant as protection from Soviet expansion, while these fragile democracies and alliances could grow stronger.  It was at about this time, in fact, that Winston Churchill called for a United States of Europe.

It must be emphasized that this process of unification was accompanied by growing recognition of universal human rights as well as representative democracies.  At the behest of H.G. Wells and others, those rights were spelled out for the first time in one of the founding documents of the United Nations.  They were part of the vision--the full quote from Joyce's 1916 novel is: "I'll work and act for the social liberty and equality among all classes and sexes in the United States of the Europe of the future."  Today the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Charter of Fundamental Rights are part of the EU charter, as guarantees to all citizens of member nations.

For all its flaws and ongoing difficulties, the European Union stands as a rebuke to those who believe that humanity can't change, that national as well as tribal suspicions and hostilities cannot be overcome by a common ethic that becomes a common culture without erasing other cultural characteristics that don't conflict with it.

Everyone knows that given global dangers like nuclear weapons, and global economic, technological, political, artistic and cultural interrelationships, closer relationships are needed, including universal rights if not common governance.

The significance of the Paris agreements on addressing the climate crisis goes beyond that transcendent danger: it was the first truly global response to a global problem, an agreement to cooperate, because the problems ultimately cannot be overcome separately.

But reactionary forces have made relatively sudden and definitely devastating inroads.  First Brexit, and the British government's stubborn and suicidal policies of separation, with the majority population helpless because of tragically mediocre opposition politicians.

Now our dictator apprentice, failing to support NATO and the "all for one/one for all" clause that has only been invoked once--to defend the US after 9/11; sniping at NATO with his usual inaccurate fulminations, questioning the basis for the EU and failing to join allies in reaffirming the Paris agreement.  Word among his supporters is going around that he will soon withdraw the US from that agreement.
All of this while conspicuously embracing leaders of countries with terrible human rights records, but saying not a word about it.

So it is little wonder that Sunday the German PM Angela Merkel said that Europe can no longer completely rely on "others", a fairly sinister circumlocution, referencing the UK but especially the US.  After meetings with our homemade Hitler, she said that Europe must take its fate into its own hands.

Without a strong and reliable partner in the US, as well as one of the stronger member states in the UK, Europe is weakened, and the already challenged EU is more fragile.

No one could be happier than Russia.  A major foreign policy goal is being achieved.  In his analysis in the Atlantic, David Frum (senior editor and former GW Bush speechwriter) notes the fractures in the alliance over the Bush II disastrous war in Iraq and the continuing difficulties despite some healing in the Obama years.  He also notes the history and cultural differences that make for a complex German and American relationship in the best of times.  But he concludes that this trip was nothing short of catastrophic for US relations with Europe:

Donald Trump is doing damage to the deepest and most broadly agreed foreign-policy interests of the United States. He is doing so while people associated with his campaign are under suspicion of colluding with Vladimir Putin’s spy agencies to bring him to office. The situation is both ugly and dangerous.

What he does not quite say is that a paid agent of the Russian government could not have done more.

Apart from that--which seems both unbelievable and increasingly possible--there is the tragedy of this unraveling.  Not only does it endanger peace and economic stability, victimizing the most vulnerable individuals as well as harming unknown others remote from the cause, it wounds the world's ability to respond sanely to the effects of the climate crisis, as they grow in volume, rapidity and intensity, as well as to address the causes in the only effective way: together.

In other words, precisely when we need global governance and cooperation, supple and capable, with shared resources and skills, we are moving in the opposite direction.  And notably in the countries concerned, there is a relevant crisis of leadership.

President Harry Truman, whose administration began and ran the Marshall Plan, carried in his wallet a piece of paper with part of a poem by Tennyson, first published in 1842. The first lines were: “For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,/Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be...”
The final lines were: “Till the war-drum throbb’d no longer and the battle-flags were furl’d/ In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.”

Instead of coming together to confront planetary challenges--if not as a Federation of the world, in some other form as one planet-- we are falling apart, in every relevant way.

Brexit On Our Minds

A Marshall Plan poster

We pause our unreality show called the presidential campaign for this message from Overseas.

The new PM of the UK  has announced that the formal process of Brexit--Britain's exit from the European Union-- will start by the end of March.  A major country leaving the EU has never happened, and so even with these past months of commentary and debate, this is a traumatic moment, and a very disturbing one.

The UK is already seeing the prospect of adverse economic consequences, and there are fears for the European Union itself.  The latter is especially troubling if you know the history.

At the end of World War II Europe was in shambles.  Major cities were clotted with rubble, there was widespread hunger and homelessness.  Things didn't improve fast enough in the later 1940s and nations were near collapse, with the Soviet Union ready to pick up the pieces.

Then came the Marshall Plan, which brought billions in US aid and financing but with meaningful direction from European governments.  Partly to make the Marshall Plan work, and partly to help strengthen Europe in the long term, the US used its leverage to encourage economic integration across national borders.

The breakthrough came when France and West Germany shared their coal and steel industries.  The first steps to the European Common Market and then to the European Union were taken.  Europe returned to pre-war levels of prosperity and exceeded them.

 Eventually, economic integration, common currency and free movement of people and goods had cultural and political effects.  Apart from keeping themselves free of Soviet domination, the countries of this continent--where two devastating world wars began, where hundreds of years of wars were fought--became unified to an extent that warfare among them was almost impossible.

But from the beginning, England resisted this integration.  After a couple of centuries as an imperial power, England had much stronger economic relationships with its former colonies--the Commonwealth--than it did with Europe.   But gradually and inevitably, that changed.

From this remove, there seems no broad economic reasons for the UK to leave the EU.  In terms of governance, the argument has been made that the EU is too bureaucratic and not sufficiently responsive, or democratic.  President Obama alluded to this at the UN:  "In Europe, a well-intentioned Brussels often became too isolated from the normal push and pull of national politics. Too often, in capitals, decision-makers have forgotten that democracy needs to be driven by civic engagement from the bottom up, not governance by experts from the top down."  In fact, while US commentators tended to view this address only through the lens of US politics, much of it applies directly to the dilemma of Europe and Brexit, including underfunded institutions and income inequality.

That's particularly true of its central theme of the push-pull of global integration vs. renewed national, ethnic, tribal, religious identity and resulting hostility towards the Others.

This is an undeniable part of Brexit. To an extent still debated, it was fueled by anti-immigrant rhetoric and sentiment.  Its passage apparently unleashed more violence against immigrant workers, particularly Polish workers, including one death.

Reactionary sentiment is what shocked the UK and disturbs the US.  Voters for leaving the EU also were almost twice as likely to deny the climate crisis, and so on.  The fears are made explicit with the news that one of the main Brexit advocates who is also a Brit version of an alt.right politician, is hurrying over the Atlantic to coach Donald Trump for his next debate.

Even in victory the hard reactionaries are pushing for a Hard Brexit--an immediate exit without negotiation with the EU, or hope of negotiating continuing if changed relations.  Update: In an interview reported Sunday, PM May specifically supported limiting immigration as part of Brexit, regardless of its economic effect in free trade with Europe.  So she is apparently siding with the reactionaries.

While the UK still seems in a dizzy denial, seemingly without adequate leadership anywhere--certainly not of the quality that got the UK and Europe through the postwar years.

And many in the US look at this and know that it can happen here, with nightmares of waking up November 9 feeling like a lot of Brits did when Brexit passed, despite utter disbelief (including by pollsters) that it would.

The European Nightmare

Things are getting a little too interesting in Europe.  The European bailout deal with Greece, dictated by Germany and the big banks, is getting some very bad reviews.

Writes Suzanne Moore in the Guardian: "By infantilising Greece, Germany resembles a child who closes its own eyes and thinks we can not see it. We can. The world is watching what is being done to Greece in the name of euro stability. It sees a nation stripped of its dignity, its sovereignty, its future."

John Cassidy in the New Yorker called it "an agreement that is perhaps the most intrusive and demanding contract between an advanced nation and its creditors since the Second World War."  He characterized it as a Greek "surrender" to the demands made principally by Germany and its allied banks,"at great cost to the country’s [Greece's] political sovereignty, the political landscape of the continent looks different, and not a little ominous."  The headline on the article reads "A Humiliating Deal for Greece."

In general, these articles support the basic pattern which N. Klein exposed in The Shock Doctrine, in which entire nations are forced into policies and debt that enriches the rich, the banks and big corporations, at the expense of the 99% and the nation as a whole.

It has been contrasted to the forgiveness of German loans after World War II that enabled Germany to prosper.

The new and perhaps most unsettling element is the role these articles attribute specifically to Germany and its Chancellor Merkel.  Cassidy's article ends: "But if what happened over the weekend doesn’t quite amount to a coup, it has nevertheless been a ruthless display of power politics on Germany’s part and a chilling reminder of the remorseless logic of a monetary union dominated by creditors and pre-Keynesian economics. In the words of Paul De Grauwe, a well-known Belgian economist who teaches at London School of Economics, a “template of future governance” of the eurozone was written over the weekend: “Submit to German rule or leave.” In the years and decades ahead, Germany may discover that many Europeans would prefer the second option."

According to the New York Times:"The strict terms of the deal imposed on Greece by fellow members of the eurozone on Sunday inspired hundreds of thousands of comments on social networks deriding the agreement as the equivalent of a coup against the left-wing government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras."

An unsigned editorial in UK's Telegraph also refers to the deal as "nothing less than national humiliation. The country that quarried the foundation stones of Western civilisation is now humbled, forced to impose more austerity measures and allow billions of euros of state assets into an internationally-controlled trust because its creditors do not trust its politicians to keep their promises. All this only days after the Greek people clearly voted against austerity as a condition for international bailouts."

Later this editorial also puts its finger on the nature of the crisis precipitated by the deal itself: "There is a certain bleak irony to the Greek agreement. Europe has gone to extraordinary new lengths to stop the integrationist project falling apart, yet never has that project looked so unstable and unsustainable as it does today."

There is more turmoil to come as the government of Greece will debate accepting these terms.  But at first blush this looks like the most serious challenge to what had been the most hopeful international project of the past 100 years or more: what Jeremy Rifkin called "the European Dream": the peaceful, democratic unification of Europe, previously the center of centuries of war, culminating in the two most destructive wars in human history.

Update/Last Word: In a Washington Post piece entitled "Greece has surrendered but Europe loses too" Matt O'Brien begins: "At least they still get to call it Greece." 

Stirring the Potpourri

A couple of ongoing stories not all that prominent in the news media... Starting with the NBA Sterling/Silver affair, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stepped up his criticism of the racism enshrined in the name of Washington DC's National Football League team, calling on NFL Commissioner Goddell to have it changed.  Then he organized 49 Dem Senators to petition the club's owner Daniel Snyder to change it himself.  Snyder refused and went on the offensive against Reid, fomenting a Twitter war against him.  So far it is backfiring, as Washington club fans are taking to Twitter to demand the Washington Racists change their name.

European elections last week showed surprising gains for far right parties in France, the UK, Denmark and Austria, widely interpreted as resurgent nationalism and rebukes to the European Union.  I don't know enough about European politics and economics unfortunately but Matt Yglesias has a persuasive critique and I note that in his interview a few weeks ago in the New York Review of Books, George Soros predicted that there would be political upheaval coming as a result of recent EU policies.  Yglesias notes the austerity and widespread unemployment that may be fueling restive anger.  EU policymakers need to take heed.

 The European Union is a developing historic dream and bumps in such an ongoing project are to be expected.  But the timing is worrisome, not only for the world economy, but for the prospects of action on the climate crisis in the upcoming cycle.  

Common Thread

European Parliament building in Strasbourg, France via Flicker

Here in the U.S. when we wring our hands about our rabid right wing, its racism, violent rhetoric and embrace of ignorance, we tend to see it as a local aberration, a national failing.

But it's not entirely limited to the U.S.  Thanks to the Mayor of Toronto, we're more cognizant of a Tea Party rightist trend in Canada, which has affected national as well as local politics and policy.

Now an oped in the New York Times asserts a widening of something similar in Europe, and not simply within countries.  It is deliberately attacking the European Union, so it is happening to Europe.

Andrea Mammone writes:

 It may seem bizarre that two far-right, nationalist politicians — Marine Le Pen of France and Geert Wilders of the Netherlands — have reached across borders to form a Pan-European group dedicated to weakening the European Union. Their aim is a transnational political alliance that would compete in the May elections for the European Parliament; once in power, they would cooperate to try to rein in the power of Brussels.

While the Tea Party in Canada may be partly an American import, Mammone traces the history of the European model:  "But in fact, since the early 20th century, Europe’s far-right nationalists have often united in search of an “other” to oppose, exclude, resist, restrict or oppress... "

The most extreme and famous example is the Nazis.

This vision did not die with the end of World War II. Transnational links among right-wing parties, based on common fears of minorities and immigrants, endured. The right-wingers, while speaking different languages, borrowed ideals, strategies, slogans and theorists from one another... 

So when observers marvel about the “new” nationalist parties of Europe, they are capturing only part of the truth. These right-wingers mistrust or even detest the Continent’s core institutions — the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the European Parliament — but they are perfectly happy to join up with extremists in other countries to weaken those institutions. 

Anti-immigrant racism and a deathly hostility to government characterize European as well as North American far rightists. They seize upon economic troubles:

Soaring youth unemployment, stringent fiscal policies, German-led monetary clout and the presence of Muslim immigrants have created a perfect target for the likes of Mr. Wilders and Ms. Le Pen, who blame outside forces like the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Union for their nations’ woes. Conveniently, they overlook structural problems like the costs of social welfare and pension programs, declining birthrates, aging populations, stagnant labor productivity and intensifying competition from the economies of Asia and Latin America. 

But Mammone also suggests that bureaucratic remoteness has left the European Union open to such attacks. These parties may gain enough votes in coming elections to cause trouble. "Even as a tiny, noisy voice within the European Parliament, this alliance could create a lot of trouble. Just think of the successes that Tea Party Republicans have had in impeding decision making in the United States."

How would these right-wingers reshape Europe? They say they would give power back to nations by dismantling the technocratic decision-making power amassed in Brussels and returning powers back to individual member states. They would pause, if not quite reverse, six decades of growing integration.

Two elements in this analysis seem especially appropriate to a more cogent analysis of what's going on in the U.S.  First is relating it directly to movements in the American past.  Some efforts have been made but none seem as effective as the vigorous pushback in the 1960s to the extreme right surge during the administration of the first U.S. President to be of the alien Catholic faith (while today's rightists include many Catholics). Richard Hofstader's Anti-Intellectualism in American Life comes to mind, a history of ignorance-proud extremism, and a best-seller in the early 60s.

The second is related: the inability of defenders of government and liberal democracy to respond to the challenge.  President Obama has been eloquent in his redefinition of this political ethic, and while the media establishment etc. ignores him (and even liberals criticize him for not saying what in fact he is saying.)  In policy and political terms, there are some political signs: the elections of progressive populists Senator Elizabeth Warren and Mayor of NYC de Blasio.  The rabid right as a more extreme version of the policies born in a new flurry of right wing think tanks a few decades ago suggests that new progressive organizations, notably the Center for American Progress, may be crucial in creating more momentum .  But at the moment, the progressive defense seems insufficient.

Here's Mammone's conclusion about Europe:

Tragically, in the face of this assault, calls for European solidarity are few. This is a sign of how far Europe has come from the dream that helped lift it from the ashes of war. It is a sign of the fading of the vision — common markets, democratic institutions and societal integration — promoted by the postwar founders of European integration: thinkers and statesmen like Konrad Adenauer, Winston Churchill, Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman and Altiero Spinelli.

The European Union must reclaim its reputation as a champion of the people. Its leaders should abandon their embrace of technocratic solutions, their support for the banking sector and their stoic austerity. Unless they deliver more jobs, and more of a sense that citizens are in charge, the far right will only keep growing."

It's about more than Europe. It's global economic policy that favors the wealthy, that sets the rest against each other for the crumbs, gets the majority poor to hate the minorities and vote against those who might use government to constrain the rich and enforce economic justice. That's the common thread, isn't it?  Encouraged by needless austerity, racial flashpoints, and a comfortably complacent or otherwise helpless governing class. 

Good News from Gee, Ate

Good news from the Gee, Ate meeting at Camp David.  Seriously.  President Obama announced that the European emphasis is shifting from austerity to jobs and economic expansion.  He noted that the path of encouraging growth while working on reducing longterm deficits has been his own policy, and left the conclusion to observers who might note that the U.S. economy is growing while Europe mostly isn't.  Unemployment in some countries is 20%--for young men, 50%. 

We'll see if policy follows but if it does, it is a test that European democracies pass--the ability to change to avert disaster, which doesn't seem within the capabilities of the U.S. political system at the moment.

Paul Krugman is among those who warned of such disaster if Europe--especially Germany--remains stubbornly committed to austerity, though in recent days he seemed fairly confident that they would be able to contain the Greece situation.  I expect he'll see this as an unexpectedly good sign, provided there is something more than rhetoric behind it.

If Europe averts crisis and the brightening prospects of defusing the Iran situation move towards fruition, then the major drag on the American economy comes from the GOPers and their wealthy supporters who want the U.S. economy to be as bad as possible.

President Obama also announced progress on combined plans to confront the Climate Crisis.

A little media note.  When the President made his statement today, the networks didn't carry it; MSNBC was in prison, CNN started it late and cut it off abruptly, apparently afraid of their viewers attention span--they had to get back to rerunning segments from Friday.  Only FOX news carried the statement from beginning to end, and did a fair summary afterwards.

Update: Here's a more detailed story from the NY Times.

"What do you think, Barack?"

So here's a line leading a Reuter's report on the financial crisis in Europe that caught my eye: "Use the Reuters Breakingviews stress test calculator to calculate how the Target core Tier 1 capital ratio and sovereign haircut levels affect the amount of capital banks need to pass the stress test."

Right.  Well, apart from George III instructing his barber to take a little off the sides, I have no idea what a sovereign haircut level could mean.  So I have no idea what's actually going on in the European debt crisis, except that if it isn't solved, it could mean another recession in the U.S.

President Obama was in France meeting with European leaders on the crisis.  Apparently there was a deal in the works that fell apart at least temporarily due to more problems in Greece.  President Obama had expected to be on hand to express support for the done deal, but as it turned out he became an advisor to the European leaders.  He essentially chaired a panel discussion, and offered advice based on U.S. experience with the banking crisis of 2008-9.  According to an aide, the leaders wanted to know "What do you think, Barack?"   Regardless of the ignoramuses who think America leads with bluster and intimidation or is weak, this indicates actual respect for our President (though they are certainly mindful of U.S. economic power.)  Partnership and mutual respect-- the way to a better future.

As to what actually did and didn't happen at the G20, this Monitor article seems a decent summary.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"Dedalus, you're an antisocial being, wrapped up in yourself. I'm not. I'm a democrat: and I'll work and act for social liberty and equality among all classes and sexes in the United States of Europe of the future."

A character in A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man (1916) by James Joyce

Climate Debate in the UK: It's a Little Different

UPDATE: a version of this has been "Rescued" at Daily Kos.

Like, the US, the UK has its more "liberal" party (Labour), which is currently in power, and its more conservative, the Tories. So their differences on the Climate Crisis would be similiar, with Labour backing carbon limts, and the Tories yelling that global heating is a hoax?

Not exactly. According to the Guardian:

The Tories are to challenge Labour on a key plank of their green policy by adopting a far more ambitious target for cutting harmful greenhouse gases.

Experts asked by David Cameron to look at climate change have concluded that they should set a target of reducing carbon emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, a substantial advance on Labour's commitment to 60 per cent. Many scientists believe the 80 per cent figure must be achieved in developed countries if the average temperature around the world is to rise by no more than 2C over the next 40 years. Any rise greater than that represents what scientists believe to be the 'tipping point', when climate change would start to have a devastating impact, with floods, hurricanes and the loss of eco-systems.

If you've been accustomed to recent American politics, you might conclude this is a cynical attempt to show up the opposition, with no actual intention to pursue such a policy. Maybe. But it doesn't sound like it:

Nick Hurd, MP for Ruislip-Northwood and chairman of the group, said: 'We are under no illusions about the political challenge, not least in securing an international agreement on a global emissions framework. However, the politics must fit the science and not the other way round.' The group's recommendation was endorsed last night by several environmental groups, including WWF, Christian Aid and the Tearfund.

All the national politicians take the Stern Report seriously, which says that the UK needs to devote 1% of its budget to addressing the Climate Crisis now, or it will be paying far more in the future. Although the UK is not meeting its CO2 reduction goals yet, there is far more awareness generally there than in the US, and more debate on "how" rather than whether anything is necessary. The citizenry appears far more aware of the transformations that are coming, one way or another. If the US doesn't wake up soon, we are going to be--at the very least--the Ford to the world's Toyotas: because of a lack of foresight and will: obsolete and whining.

Time to Wake Up to the European Dream

Americans as a rule know little about Europe, possibly even less than Europeans knew about America a half century ago, when Europeans seemed to think Al Capone was still running Chicago and cowboys roamed the West....On the other hand, maybe they were onto something.

Today’s American ignorance is less innocent. Along with the smug complacency and disbelief that we Americans could possibly learn anything from foreign lands, our ignorance of today’s Europe consists of holdover imagery carefully nurtured by big business Repubs, neocons who don’t want their delusions of empire spoiled by the hard-earned insights of Europe, and rabid rightists who certainly don’t want Americans to see European economic successes, particularly the vibrant manufacturing coupled with strong labor unions, universal health care and other social support---and workers with greater job security, shorter work week and more vacations!

Consider this: the nation with the highest labor costs in the world is also the world's champion exporter. And it's in Europe.

MORE HERE