Of Nepotism and Ethics in a Banana Republic

The following is a quote from the New Yorker:

"Having sent Tillerson home from Beijing spouting Communist Party mantras, Xi’s envoys have turned their attention to the representative they really care about: Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. From a Chinese perspective, Kushner’s role in the White House is a clannish arrangement that they know well. Many of Trump’s current courtiers may be gone in a year of two, but the members of his family will remain. For a while, China appeared to be preparing to endear itself to Kushner in a way that only it can: Anbang, a financial conglomerate with close ties to the Party leadership, was nearing a deal that would have unlocked billions of dollars to help Kushner save a troubled investment in a skyscraper on Fifth Avenue. Last week, the Kushner family announced that talks had broken off, for reasons that were not clear. It’s certainly possible that a surge of negative publicity was making one side or the other uncomfortable."

Let me repeat part of that: "Anbang, a financial conglomerate with close ties to the Party leadership, was nearing a deal that would have unlocked billions of dollars to help Kushner save a troubled investment in a skyscraper on Fifth Avenue."

So let me get this straight. Jared Kushner, Senior Advisor to his father-in-law Liar Trump is in China negotiating a deal with a Chinese financial conglomerate to protect one of Jared Kushner's investments?

I expect to read articles like this concerning the antics of third world dictatorships (or corporate CEO's), but not about members of the president's inner circle, and especially not if they are related to the president.

From the cabinet of billionaires to the buffoons masquerading as counselor to the president and presidential press secretary it looks like a ridiculous sitcom parodying a tinpot dictatorship.

Unfortunately it is not a TV show despite the best efforts of Trump in conjunction with various outlets of the media who are determined to push their view that news in general and politics specifically are just another form of entertainment to be used by Liar Trump for self-enrichment and by the media to increase ratings in order to sell commercials.

It is real life geopolitics.

I can only hope that Liar Trump might be learning the lesson that despite his desire to phrase everything for the benefit of third graders the real world is a lot more complex. Cue Health Care, Tax Reform, Syria, China and just about everything else he will encounter.

While he's on that learning curve I have to maintain my faith in the integrity of the American form of governmental checks and balances to save us from HL Mencken's "narcissistic moron".

Little Britain

I have been so overwhelmed by the cascade of garbage emanating from the White House and certain parts of Capitol Hill that I have found it difficult to reflect on anything else thus putting what I view to be one of the most self-destructive acts undertaken by a sovereign state into the shadows.

Of course I am referring to brexit.

I am not going to go over all of the inanities of the the referendum. I am not going to fall into the category of a "remoaner" as the brexiteers like to tar anyone who was against brexit from the beginning and is still incredulous at the we've drunk the kool-aid and brexit means brexit brigade.

No.

I am going to quote Tony Blair, who, for all his faults, came out with a concise description of where we are.

The brexiteers have made the decision that they don't like the house they are currently living in because the "utilities" are somehow controlled by people who don't live in their neighborhood. Their solution is to sell their homes without ever having looked at what their new home will look like, how much it will cost, what repairs will be necessary and whether the "utilities" will be any better once they are controlled by their neighborhood.

But I can report that the brexiteers tell me that I am wrong, that Tony Blair is certainly wrong, and then continue to bleat their brexit means brexit refrain.

I therefore now have chosen a different tact.

I tell them how happy I am that brexit means brexit and that now the NHS will finally get the funding it requires as brexit means Britain will save £350 million a week which will be put into the NHS.

You guessed it. They look at me with a perplexed look and tell me that I can't possibly believe that the NHS is really going to get £350 million a week.

And I can't possibly believe that they really voted for brexit.

Throwing the Baby out with the Bath

I recently read William Cohan's "Why Wall Street Matters". It was a good explanation of all the good things banks do: finance governments, finance corporations; provide credit which is the grease that makes the economy run. It was all good stuff with one major problem.

His argument is that with all the negative press the banks garner everyone seems to forget all these good things that banks do.

Really?

Is there something inherent in banks that in order to do good they have to also be rife with immoral if not criminal behavior?

It's not that I'm expecting banks to be populated by saints. But I am puzzled by this idea that if you punish the bad bankers then the good one's won't be able to function.

Maybe Mr Cohan should spend less time praising bankers for doing what they are supposed to do and come down a bit heavier on those bankers who knowingly abuse their knowledge and position to game the system in a 'heads they win tails we lose' casino.

That might have been Bernie Sanders point.....

A Perfect Storm

I recently got into a somewhat heated exchange with two friends over my equating of Trump with Hitler. For the record I must state that neither of them are Trump supporters. One is a staunch Democrat and Hillary supporter and the other a Libertarian with Republican leanings, but as I mentioned, aggressively anti-Trump.

To be fair my foray into the comparison was predicated on an article I had read (http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wissen/michel-houellebecq-und-der-untergang-des-abendlandes-13373949.html). The article was actually an analysis of Michel Houellebecq's novel "Submission" in conjunction with Oswald Spengler's "The Decline of the West".

What got the exchange started was my quoting Spengler's "Caesarisim"- his theory that democracies are susceptible to populism and as such subject to an inherent tendency to dictatorship. Spengler was writing in 1918 and his hypothesis found its realization in Hitler and Mussolini.

That is when the discussion went ballistic.

How could I possibly compare Trump to Hitler? He would never murder 6 million people.

That was my mistake. Hitler was an extreme version of autocracy. They were right. I am unsure how far Trump will go in his pursuit of power. To equate him with Hitler is somewhat disingenuous on my part. It moves the discussion from the rational to the emotional.

So I will rephrase my statement.

The United States is at a tipping point. We are closer than at any other time in our history to fall prey to a populist with autocratic ambitions that could dismantle our democratic institutions and replace them with a dictatorship in all but name. To resist this temptation takes a person of staunch republican values. Someone who recognizes the limits of power as proscribed under the constitution. And someone with the moral fibre and integrity to understand that the office of the presidency is not a platform for personal aggrandizement but rather an almost sacred seat from which one rules for the benefit of the nation.

Trump has done nothing to demonstrate that even if he were aware of the intellectual, personal and moral discipline required to maintain the presidency that he would submit his own ego and narcissism to the requirements of the office.

So I was wrong to compare Trump to Hitler. Hitler is but one in a long line of despots who rode into power on the coattails of some semblance of a democratic process and then systematically destroyed that very same process to wrest absolute power for themselves.

The founding fathers were fully aware that they were on the cusp of something not really ever seen before. They were following on from the ideas of the Enlightenment where the concept of the rights of mankind were understood and well defined. They were creating a land where personal freedoms would be protected by law and where the power of the people would be measured and moderated in a representative government that itself would be controlled by a series of checks and balances intended to guard against absolutism.

But these checks and balances were predicated on a statement, while fraught with all sorts of baggage given the position of the Native Americans, slaves and women just to name a few, still sang out: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Let me repeat that. "We hold these truths to be self-evident...".

They don't require any further discussion. They were written to explain why they were declaring their independence from absolutism. They were planning to put in its place a system predicated on the rule of law with a rash of freedoms enshrined in the document by which they would rule.

One of the things I kept hearing during the presidential campaign was that in the separation of the judicial, legislative and executive offices we have a carefully crafted system of checks and balances that would keep Trump in check.

I have seen nothing to suggest this is happening.

I also heard after the election that Trump was elected and it was his responsibility to fulfill his mandate granted by that electorate.

What everyone seems to forget is that Hitler too was elected to power. He too had a popular mandate, provided by the same barbell that catapulted Trump to power: the disaffected mob and the industrial complex.

But neither was elected to dismantle the democratic state. Neither was elected to trample over the rule of law in creating their autocracies.

Trump has entered the White House in a whirlwind.

He is following a time honored method to segue from democracy to autocracy.

Muzzle the press.
Rule by decree.
Find a scapegoat.
Dismantle the organs of government:
The Judiciary
The Intelligence Agencies
The Central Bank


Trump has declared the press the enemy. He and his staff are working hard to undermine their role as an organ of opinion and analysis and to replace them with "Alternative Facts".

Trump has essentially declared a state of national emergency, sidestepping the standard procedures of state and ruled by executive order.

Trump has declared immigrants, refugees and Muslims as all members of an undesirable group, the root of all evil, and under the mantra of national security is systematically removing whatever vestige of human rights they might have. For the record he is also going after women.

He is replacing independent "civil servants" with his own people. Trump has removed the Director of National Intelligence and the Chief of Staff from the National Security Council and has replaced them with Steve Bannon who I have not yet decided if he is Josef Goebbels or Martin Bormann. by his own admission he himself draws inspiration from Leni Riefenstahl so I can't be far off.

The next assault will be on the judiciary. It will begin with the nomination for the Supreme Court that the Republican Congress refused to even entertain under the Obama Administration.

I also expect the independence of the Federal Reserve to come under pressure when Janet Yellen's term ends in February 2018.

So perhaps I was a bit overzealous with my comparison of Trump with Hitler.

Let it please be so.

You Reap what you Sow.

Although I have not read the recent 35 page dossier published by BuzzFeed and actually think it was poor judgement to release unverifiable material somehow I can't dismiss the report out of hand.

First and foremost, according to the Politifact scorecard Trump was True 4%; Mostly True 11%; Half True 15%; Mostly False 19%; False 33% and Pants on Fire 18% of the time. This means he blatantly lied 51% of the time and was very judicious with the truth 34% of the time. For him to suddenly find religion and denounce others for lying seems very much in tune with what I would expect from Trump.

Making unverifiable accusations was meat and potatoes to his campaign, so his denouncing this dossier as lies and slander doesn't help in discovering the truth. He denounces everything he doesn't agree with as lies.

I am interested however that the material made it into a classified briefing from the intelligence agencies to the President and President-Elect. I am sure the intelligence community sees a lot of bizarre material, but I would doubt that they include it all in their briefing material.

Somewhere there must be a concern that there are at a minimum parts of this report that merit disclosure, at least at a classified security briefing. Otherwise it would have been dismissed out of hand.

Still, I think BuzzFeed was wrong to publish it. There is more than enough garbage being spewed daily by Fox News, Breitbart and the like that I would have thought BuzzFeed wouldn't want to be put into that category. They actually have lowered themselves to the level of that bastion of journalistic endeavor and one of Trump's favorite sources the National Enquirer. But that is their cross to bear.

Trump has helped introduce and relished in the post-factual age and then complains when it is turned against him.

He should grow up.

Is it Treason?

Over New Year I had an interesting conversation with an M&A lawyer who is deeply concerned about President-elect Trump and that his allegiance apparently lies not with the United States but rather with the Trump empire as personified by himself.

My friend went on to discuss Trump's disregard for the establishment framing him as an anti-political agitator, indeed that he is in denial of politics itself which in essence means he is against the democratic process which is the only alternative to government by coercion and the tyranny of the majority.

This last point is important. Trump's approach is to constantly harp on about the will of the people while trampling not only on the rights of minorities but actually on the rights of the minority. Anyone who raises objections to the "will of the people" is branded as an enemy of the people.

Such an anti-democratic stance I would suggest is diametrically opposed to the Constitution which Mr Trump will be swearing to uphold on January 20 but I am also aware that it would be very difficult to prove until it is too late. What appears to me to be less difficult to prove is Trumps response to charges that Russian cyber attacks on the United States intentionally interfered with the democratic process during the election. Mr Trump has chosen to come down decidedly on the side of Wiki-Leaks and the Russian Intelligence community against the 17 US Intelligence agencies, outside cyber experts, Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill and even at least one Trump adviser all expressing either misgivings or outright accusations about Russia's cyber activities in the context of the election.

The definition of Treason in Article III of the Constitution states that "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court". (The bold type is my own).

I would maintain that Trump is flirting with treason: I question that he indeed intends to uphold the Constitution and I feel strongly that he is adhering to enemies of the United States.

The Ghost of Saul Alinsky

Last August I attended a dinner with the CEO's of a number of major US corporations who unsurprisingly were staunchly Republican but in the main had not yet jumped on the Trump bandwagon with one vocal exception.

She was rabidly for Trump and equally ferocious in her denunciation of Obama, roundly criticizing him as a disciple of Saul Alinsky.

To be fair I did not know Mr Alinsky. When I questioned just what it was about him that she objected to she accused him of being a radical organizer. When pushed, she could not substantiate her accusations as she had never read anything written by him and it was obvious she was just parroting what someone else had said.

Given the setting I decided not to indulge in what would certainly be a difficult discussion about someone that neither of us had read and chose instead to purchase one of his books and try and understand what all the fuss was about. The next day I duly went to the bookstore and bought a copy of the "Rules for Radicals", published in 1971.

He is essentially a community organizer with a Marxist/socialist bent believing that our society could be transformed for the better. This of course explains why he is on the receiving end of so much abuse.


For the record the book was a great read. It had a list of 12 rules which Glen Beck thought so powerful he put them on his website.

His rules are not left or right wing. They are simply how to go about achieving your goals. They are opportunistic. They believe the end is more important than the means. They are harshly realistic and yet simple. But most importantly they require that the leaders of a movement understand what they want to achieve and how to mobilize a constituency in reaching their targets.

Glen Beck, annoying as he might be understood what Alinsky was about. He also understood how dangerous these rules for radicals could be in the wrong hands. Bizarrely I would posit that Beck was equally distraught that Obama had used the rules so effectively to get elected twice, and that Trump, or at least his advisers had also read the rules and appeared to understand how to apply them.

Obama, like most left of center politicians/democrats, had focused on the demographic shifts taking place in the USA and was able to mobilize the myriad minorities into a coherent block paving the way to the presidency as well as a democratic election the first time round.

But that is where Obama made his gravest error. The single largest "minority" in the USA are women. But women are not monolithic. And just as the largest group in the USA are ethnically white, approximately 50% of that majority are women.

And when push comes to shove white women vote with white men. The Tea Party saw this.

Alinsky foresaw it in 1971.

He realized that the middle class college radicals were rebelling against their parents, taking up the banner of the minorities in confrontation with the "silent majority". That backlash brought us Nixon, Reagan and eventually Trump.

But I get ahead of myself.

Throw into the mix the decline of the middle class towards working class at the same time that the captains of industry and their lieutenants are busy feathering their nests and you suddenly find the white "majority" circling their wagons against the encroaching minorities and the economic and political elites. Trump understood this. He understood that the silent majority had lost faith in the economic and political elites. They felt threatened that they were being squeezed in the middle and that no one had their (white American) interest at heart.

Of course neither does Trump. But that is irrelevant.

The liberal establishment thought demographics would win the day. The populists knew to exploit the (in part valid) concerns of the white middle/working class knowing full well that they would not be able to make good on half of what they promised. Indeed, an analysis of Trump's campaign by the German Public News agency found that 70% of his rhetoric was untrue, although they failed to recognize that this was irrelevant.

While the liberal elites focused on the inanity of Trump, belittling his support base, Trump happily followed one of the main tenets of Alinsky- the end justifies the means.

If your lies feed into the desires of the electorate you need to win an election, why tell them the truth?

We can't castigate every Trump supporter as an uneducated white racist. Some are. But many are truly filled with existential fear.

Trump believes it is a zero sum game and so has embraced the white majority at the expense of basically every minority.

The challenge is to create a policy that understands there is enough room in the boat for everyone and minorities are not the problem....