When analyzing any form of public discourse, we need to realize that when something is revealed, something else, possibly more significant, may be concealed. The idea of coding has acquired special importance in the digital age. Only recently, just before the revelation of artificial intelligence, youngsters were told to learn to code if they wanted to get a job.

Language is a code of communication. Coding can be direct and simple. We call that kind of coding “informative.” Apparently, it’s also possible to code disinformation and misinformation. In the world of public discourse and legacy journalism, politicians, pundits and reporters sometimes twist the valuable information they provide to hide what they, their party leaders or their editors don’t want us to see.

The summit between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin that took place in Anchorage, Alaska, earlier this month inspired two seasoned journalists to use the expression “code for” (in one case a verb, in the other a noun) to reveal exactly how that process of concealing unwanted meaning works. The first example comes from author Mansur Mirovalev’s for the news publication Al Jazeera, bearing the title: “‘Feeding a narcissist:’ Ukraine reflects on Trump-Putin summit.” The author begins by citing what is an undeniable fact:

“Putin said the ‘root causes’ of the war should be addressed before any ceasefire or real steps towards a peace settlement are made.”

It’s a straightforward fact that shouldn’t be difficult for Al Jazeera’s readers to understand. We might even call it common sense. The Russians have repeatedly insisted on returning to the “root causes” or historical context of the conflict. Understanding the motivation of the parties involved is critical to conflict resolution. The website helpfully reminds us with this title of its article on the topic: “The First Step in Properly Understanding Conflict: Identifying the Sources.”

But journalists, their editors or employers may feel impelled to do the opposite. Depending on their intent, they may want to present historical reality as an unnecessary distraction. Here is Mirovalev’s gloss on Russia’s demand:

“‘Root causes’ is Putin’s code for rejecting Ukraine’s existence outside Moscow’s political shadow and denying its very sovereignty.”

Now, this is manifestly misleading, if not patently dishonest. His claim that Putin is “rejecting Ukraine’s existence” is unfounded and undocumented; in other words, it is invented. It’s the journalist who’s using the ploy of “code for” to reject out of hand the idea that examining root causes has any validity.

Our second example is an by East and Central Europe Bureau Chief Andrew Higgins of The New York Times with the title: “Putin Sees Ukraine Through a Lens of Grievance Over Lost Glory.” Another example of assuming without evidence what’s on Putin’s mind.

“President Vladimir V. Putin made clear after his meeting in Alaska with President Trump that his deepest concern is not an end to three and a half years of bloodshed. Rather, it is with what he called the “situation around Ukraine,” code for his standard litany of grievances over Russia’s lost glory.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Code for:

A journalistic trope designed to make readers forget what they know about the literal meaning of words and believe a meaning contrary to both the dictionary and common sense. 

Contextual note

Far be it from a Devil’s Dictionary to insist that people should trust dictionaries to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. At best, dictionaries list the usual denotative sense of words as they have occurred in both the literary and spoken tradition. Because dictionaries avoid speculating on the theoretically infinite number of contexts in which a word can be used, they cannot account for intentional distortion or rhetorical effects, such as sarcasm, that can quite simply invert the meaning of a word.

In the two cases cited above, we are witnessing a journalistic practice common in an era like our own that encourages and even requires exaggerated propaganda. The trick these two jouranlists have used is to mix with the facts they present a fabricated “insight” claimed to be the result of the journalists’ inside knowledge or superior intellectual authority. They then call this an act of “decoding” or interpreting for the sake of the ignorant.

Why should I criticize that practice? In some sense, that is precisely what a Devil’s Dictionary attempts to do. The difference is that when we assume the identity of the devil, we are announcing an act of studied cleverness, or even perversity. We expect no one will take it seriously or believe that it’s the “true” definition. 

But there is another important difference. A Devil’s Dictionary definition is a direct invitation to explore context, investigate ambiguity, dig more deeply into an issue than simply accepting either what the initial quote contained or what the devil’s new definition implies.

Historical note

Ambrose Bierce, the brilliant novelist and journalist who authored the Devil’s Dictionary, redefined words to satirize the popular political, institutional, social and economic culture of his time. Here is his reflection on the nuclear family in the United States of his era.

“MARRIAGE: The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two.”

Although this sounds contrary to common sense because of its contestable arithmetic, its absurdity reveals a perception that many married people might acknowledge: that the state of marriage deprives both the husband and wife of the glorious freedom they enjoyed before marriage. Were he writing in today’s age of woke, we can imagine that his editor might oblige him to revise the definition in the following cumbersome way:

“MARRIAGE: The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress (or two masters and two mistresses), and two slaves, making in all, two.”

After which, his truly woke editor might even tell him to change “two masters and two mistresses” to “two masters and two masteresses” on the grounds that the term mistress is in itself .

Here’s another of Bierce’s definitions, this time related to his profession of journalism:

“EDITOR: A person who combines the duties of a censor, a copy-reader, a news-gatherer, and a reporter. To the virtues of all these he adds the vices of none.”

I suspect that both journalists mentioned above — Mirovalev and Higgens — might be tempted to agree with Bierce’s definition of their boss. Bierce’s irony suggests that an editor, by combining these diverse and contradictory roles, is, to invert the proverb, the master of all trades and a jack of none, ready to compromise in the name of respecting “superior” constraints. Bierce’s contention that the editor lacks the corresponding vices has the wonderful ironic effect of defining the editor as a soulless, puritanical authority whose business as a censor ensures that the naked truth (God forbid!) will never appear, but rather a carefully sanitized version of it.

Had Mirovalev and Higgens taken seriously their role as journalists, they would at some point have alluded to the importance of understanding “root causes” might have in the context of negotiating the kind of peace treaty Trump and Putin agreed to promote. Rather than claiming to decode it (and change its meaning), they could have done what our Devil’s Dictionary has systematically done throughout its history since 2017. We examine the use not only in its contemporary context, but also further back in history.

The propaganda machine churning away at the core of our legacy media since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has labored at inventing ways to avoid or exclude historical context. The use of the expression “code for” is just one trivial example. Clearly, the best documented ploy has been the endlessly repetitive insistence on labeling the action Putin termed a “Special Military Operation” an “unprovoked full-scale invasion.” That is the official that then-US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s State Department provided, inviting every editor in the legacy media to repeat the adjective “unprovoked” whenever referring to the war in Ukraine. Abolishing history requires a concerted, well-managed effort.

 As many, including economist Jeffrey Sachs, Scott Horton (author of How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine) and many others have signaled, Blinken’s State Department categorically refused to discuss Putin’s formal request to analyze the root causes at a time when the war could have been avoided, in December 2021. Several months later, the Western allies of Ukraine instructed Ukraine to refuse an already negotiated and initial peace deal based on an examination of the root causes.

That would have left Ukraine intact, with the question of Crimea to be decided in an undefined future. But then, as now, our authorities and news services are seeking to uproot the very idea of root causes.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Our Devil Closes His Dictionary and Muses on Its Roots appeared first on 51�Թ�.

I wish you bluebirds in the spring
To give your heart a song to sing
And then a kiss, but more than this
I wish you love.

These lyrics (by the way, very different from the French original) imply an interesting hierarchy of romantic values. The “kiss” is already an important gesture indicating a desire for intimacy. But beyond it, and far more important, is “love.” It’s the difference between a fleeting and ephemeral moment and the enduring state. A kiss is a brief, thrilling, possibly unforgettable moment, but love defines a lasting relationship and ultimately a form of sustainable communion.

In a radically different context, Australian journalist and 51�Թ� contributor Caitlin Johnstone employed similar logic in the title of a she circulated last week: “It’s A Genocide, But It’s Also So Much More Than That.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

But more than this (or that):

A common rhetorical device, with an effect similar to hyperbole, used to introduce a degree of extremity that goes beyond the scope of a value presented as a threshold. The expression is rarely encountered in the context of already extreme phenomena such as genocide, but contemporary history in the Middle East offers exceptional cases in which standard hyperbole proves radically insufficient.

Contextual note

Johnstone’s message begins with the mention of genocide, increasingly accepted as applicable to the situation in Gaza even by commentators who formerly denied the equivalence. Even for those who quibble about precise meanings of the 20th century neologism have in recent months found it problematic to deny the accuracy of the claim that Israel is carrying out a. After all, if English media personality Piers Morgan has come around to using the, there must be something to it. And if that isn’t enough, two Israeli humanitarian organizations, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel, have “on Israelis and the international community to take immediate action to stop the genocide.”

But Johnstone doesn’t stop at acknowledging the reality. She sees “more than” the word or the legal formulation that justifies invoking it. The full text of her tirade is well worth reproducing here:

“The mass atrocity in Gaz is a , obviously, and is an undisguised operation.

But it’s also a lot more than that.

It’s an experiment — to see what kinds of abuses the public will accept without causing significant disruption to the imperial status quo.

It’s a psychological operation — to push out the boundaries of what’s normal and acceptable in our minds so that we will consent to even more horrific abuses in the future.

It’s a symptom — of Zionism, of colonialism, of militarism, of capitalism, of western supremacism, of empire-building, of propaganda, of ignorance, of apathy, of delusion, of ego.

It’s a manifestation — of violent racist, supremacist and xenophobic belief systems that have always been there but were previously restrained, meeting with the unwholesome nature of alliances that have long been in place but have been aggressively normalized.

It’s a mirror — showing us accurately and impartially who we currently are as a civilization.

It’s a disclosure — showing us what the western empire we live under really is underneath its fake plastic mask of liberal democracy and righteous humanitarianism.

It’s a revelation — showing us who among us really stands for truth and justice and who has been deceiving us about themselves and their motives this entire time.

It’s a catalyst — a galvanizing force and a rallying cry for all who realize that the murderous power structures we live under can no longer be allowed to stand, and a blaring alarm clock opening more and more snoozing eyes to the need for revolutionary change.

It’s a test — of who we are as a species and what we are made of, and of whether we can transcend the destructive patterning that is driving humanity to its doom.

It’s a question — asking us what kind of world we want to live in going forward, and what kind of people we want to be.

It’s an invitation — to become something better than what we are now.”

This list takes us well beyond the boring and largely hypocritical debate about the contested meaning of a simple word like genocide. Pondering these implications may help us to understand who we are as global citizens. By that I mean, in particular, those of us who live under governments that continue to support a nation engaged in genocide.

One prominent global citizen describes the context in detail. In this, the former chief spokesperson for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, Chris Gunness, wonders why we are allowing this to happen. He sums it up in a single sentence: “Western governments in particular have simply buckled.”

Historical note

Johnstone is a prolific and passionate commentator on international reality, not only on Israel and Gaza, although that has clearly become her major preoccupation over the past two years. She’s an observer and interpreter of the news, but she’s literally “more than that.” Her plethoric commentary on international events, political culture, ethical issues and foreign relations belongs to the now largely abandoned tradition of prophetic journalism.

African American philosopher Cornel West has called for a revival of the black prophetic tradition spawned by post-civil war charismatic preachers in black churches in the United States, who used their pulpits to draw attention to a system of oppression. It produced influential voices such as former slave Frederick Douglass, journalist Ida B. Wells and scholar, activist and journalist W.E.B. Du Bois. Johnstone’s prophetic style is secular and has no link with racial identity. But it echoes that tradition. What the two have in common, however, is a focus on ethics and recognition of issues in which justice is denied.

In our age of propaganda, what Johnstone writes should be read as an antidote to the heavily filtered messaging our legacy media heaps upon us. What better example of linguistic filtering than the kind of control over language practiced by major news outlets, such as The New York Times? After more than 20 months of resistance (some call it censorship), on July 20, the Gray Lady for the first time shockingly an editorialist to use the word in an “opinion guest essay.” The writer, Omer Bartov, is an Israeli-American historian, known as a “scholar of genocide.” That being the case, the NYT obviously would have been hard pressed to require of him what they require of all their journalists: to reserve the word “genocide” exclusively for historical reference to Adolf Hitler’s policy as the dictator of Nazi Germany, or exceptionally to the Turkish of Armenians in the early 20th century.

In its unqualified conformity with Washington’s ironclad support of Israel’s “right to self-defense” — however genocidally offensive that turns out to be — the NYT has nevertheless been known to concede that the Israel Defense Forces may occasionally commit war crimes. But invoking genocide had been deemed a bridge too far. Publishing Bartov’s article was a daring move. It led some people to believe that the NYT’s editorial team had finally accepted to look at the world as it really is, unfiltered by dogmas spread by either the US or Israeli intelligence community.

It only took a few days for the “newspaper of record” to backtrack and correct the record when it posted four letters to the editor, three of which rejected the accusation of genocide. The first that “equating this war — however devastating — with genocide oversimplifies a tragic, complex conflict. Israel has issued warnings, created evacuation routes and urged civilians to flee. These are not the actions of a genocidal regime.”

This reader offers some valuable advice to future genocidal regimes. If you offer warnings and provide evacuation routes before pursuing the targeted population with the intention of slaughtering them as they flee, you can avoid being accused of whatever you are actually intending. The Nazis made no specific attempt to permanently terrorize their targeted victims other than transporting the ones they could capture to death camps. Israel is committing genocide, but “more than that” it has invented new methods of state terrorism.

But let’s give Johnstone the last word. In yesterday’s edition of her she wrote this: “I also think we need to take a very hard, very uncomfortable look at ourselves as a society right now. If all those monstrous abuses were tolerable for us over these last two years, there’s something deeply and profoundly sick about our civilization.” Are we the Nazis?

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Genocide… and Then Some! appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The industrial revolution settled on the paradigm of democracy as its new universal ideal. It took time to understand how the new theology could work. By the 21^st century, it had bred a new Manichean order that divided the world into good (democracy) and evil (autocracy). US President Joe Biden predicated his entire foreign policy and general worldview on that binary opposition. It had the advantage of pre-emptively justifying various forms of international aggression.

In a soberly pessimistic for Unherd with the title, “How Western democracy died, Real change is an illusion,” Thomas Fazi analyzes the historical processes that have led us to the current network of social, political and economic crises the “free world” is now counting on the “” in the White House to solve.

With the political ideology built around the idea of a government “of the people, by the people and for the people” firmly implanted in the average citizen’s mind, modern democracies count on the ritual of programmed elections, crafted to produce moments of high drama by the media, to hide from view the diminishing role of those expendable quantities we call “people” in the practice of democracy.

A new largely self-selected elite, endowed with deft management skills, is formally elected at regular intervals to defend the inertia of a system solidly built to respond to interests largely unrelated to the needs and wishes of the people. The most obvious but far from unique example of this collection of interests is the US first described, with great foreboding concerning the future of democracy, by US President Dwight Eisenhower.

At one point, Fazi invokes “Carl Schmitt’s ‘state of exception’, whereby constitutional safeguards are suspended to impose decisions unachievable via normal democratic channels.” Schmitt was the critic of the Weimar Republic’s dysfunctional parliamentary democracy. With the rise of Hitler, he “democratic dictatorship.”

Despite the opprobrium attached to his endorsement of Naziism, Schmitt’s writing has remained broadly influential in the field of political theory. It was Schmitt who that contemporary political concepts should be thought of as “secularized theological concepts,” an observation potentially useful today to help us understand the pseudo-moral reasoning generously deployed in contemporary propaganda.

Fazi goes on to cite Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, who “emphasized over 20 years ago, the state of exception has now become a permanent condition in Western states.” Fazi calls this a paradox, which, if permanent, can no longer be deemed a state of exception. It “becomes the rule.” The danger should be obvious. “If elites manage to entrench their control through increasingly authoritarian means, the West will enter a new era of managed democracy — or democracy in name only.”  

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition: 

Managed democracy:

A sophisticated form of oligarchy that replaces belief in the virtues associated with the “will of the people” with a newly instilled faith in the innate capacity of a group of efficient managers whose deep understanding of the system obviates the need to consult their uncomprehending citizenry. 

Contextual note 

If democracy is dead, what’s the date on its death certificate? And why didn’t anyone — or at the very least the media — appear to notice? 

“As far back as 2000,” Fazi reminds us, “political scientist Colin Crouch coined the term ‘post-democracy’ to describe the fact that, even though Western societies boasted the trappings of freedom, they had increasingly become a meaningless facade. Elections, Crouch argued, had become tightly managed spectacles, orchestrated by professional persuaders who operated within a shared neoliberal consensus — pro-market, pro-business, pro-globalisation — and offered voters little choice on fundamental political or economic questions.” 

At one point, Fazi stops to focus on an interesting concept that has emerged to describe the reality of today’s democracies: “post-politics.” Democracy isn’t the only moribund patient. Politics itself will soon be waiting for burial. “This strategy of depoliticising democracy birthed what have called ‘post-politics’: a regime where political spectacle thrives, but where systemic alternatives to the neoliberal status quo are not just repressed but foreclosed.”

The process is now visible thanks to the recently discovered power of our leaders to brand all forms of unorthodox thought, whether true or false, “disinformation.” Branding leads to censure. Exercising the power to foreclose anything that challenges the status quo doesn’t just constrain democracy; it also undermines it. The very idea of politics, understood as human decision-making, ceases to exist. It’s as if we are living within the confines of a neoliberal machine capable of self-government and requiring little or no direct human input. The only human skills required are pulling the right levers at the appropriate moment. As we enter the age of AI, we cannot discount the idea that the system could conceivably attain total autonomy. Some call it the matrix. 

It isn’t just democracy that has expired, but human agency itself in government. The art of politics — decision-making affecting the common good — has been replaced by what I’m tempted to call “interest management” rather than Fazi’s “democracy management.” Whether the official form of government is democracy, monarchy, timocracy (military rule), oligarchy or tyranny, politics for Plato and Aristotle was the story of a group of people governing their community. Post-politics leaves the people aside in favor of focusing only on economic forces.

How often do we hear and accept the idea that markets make decisions? Pushed to its extreme, that literally means living people no longer have a direct role to play in collective decisions. Not even the elite, who nevertheless profit from it.

Historical note

History has become engaged in a major transitional period. Two patently avoidable wars — in Ukraine and the Middle East — are raging, in which democracies are not only involved but whose stakes their supposed leaders believe to be existential. These conflicts highlight the absurdity of a post-political (dis)order. Have we, along with our democratic leaders, asked ourselves the following questions? Do our citizens’ nations want these wars? Do we know whether they feel they’re benefitting from pursuing them? If they had been given the choice, what would they have preferred at the outset: an excess of diplomacy or an excess of destruction?

We don’t know the answers to those questions because nobody in the political order of those democracies asked them before committing. We do know that occasions for diplomacy were rebuffed, most obviously in the case of Ukraine. The weakening of democracy and the disappearance of democratic reflexes appear to be major factors in the widely lamented death of diplomacy.

Few will admit that democracy and diplomacy have finally given up the ghost. They haven’t fully expired, and some hope that with the right treatment, they can revive. But they resemble a terminal patient surviving on life support. Their vital functions are compromised. The coordinated reflexes of taking the debate to the people (democracy) and privileging negotiations when faced with the prospect of open conflict (diplomacy) have given way to a form of institutional inertia that now precludes serious human intervention.

The US hasn’t declared a war, as its constitution requires, since World War II. That hasn’t stopped it from fomenting and actively supporting wars in every corner of the world. Diplomacy only kicks in when the conflict has ended, and most of the conflicts never end.

Fazi calls his readers’ attention to what he calls “the EU’s escalating techno-authoritarian regime.” The populations of European democracies are beginning to realize that they have no say in determining or even influencing many of the most significant policies (especially foreign policy). Instead, an executive committee of unelected managers in Brussels, led by the twice-anointed Ursula Von der Leyen, has increasingly usurped the theoretical sovereignty of the nations.

What governing skills do these executives claim to have? It’s a toss-up between exercising the tools of “managed democracy” (i.e., managing other people’s democracies) and “post-political” decision-making (following the dictates of identified “interests”). It all boils down to what Fazi calls “the exhausted model of elite-managed liberalism.”

The vaunted “rules-based order” instituted in the aftermath of World War II has discarded or perhaps simply misinterpreted most of its rules. Instead of rules, it’s all about balancing random forces (interests) that can only be understood and managed by a small number of largely self-selected people. That is the new world order. Its long-term or even medium-term stability appears increasingly doubtful.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post A Post-Political World and the Powerless Public appeared first on 51�Թ�.

“We gotta get that solved. Gaza is—it’s a tragedy and [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] wants to get it solved, and I want to get it solved, and I think the other side wants to get it solved. A lot of hate, long-term hate, but we think we’re going to have it solved pretty soon—hopefully with a real solution, a solution that’s going to be holding up.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Get it solved:

Make other people do things that correspond to the solution you want to see, irrespective of their or anyone else’s interests. The opposite of solve.

Contextual note

Trump’s language with reference to time must never be taken literally. What does he mean when he promises to “have it solved pretty soon?”

The peace candidate of 2024 promised to resolve the war in Ukraine “within 24 hours” once he had the keys to the White House in his hands. Not only has that not happened, there has been no progress on the various verbal initiatives he has taken. Most experts now believe that the war will either continue for years or end when Ukraine’s army and government collapse.

Trump can be quick and decisive, however. Didn’t he successfully apply his “in, boom, out” Trump biographer Michael Wolff claims he had announced days before “obliterating” Iran’s nuclear program by dropping multiple bunker-buster bombs?

Most serious observers believe that the current pause in hostilities after the “12-day war” is due to a on the part of Netanyahu’s government that had begun to panic at the extensive damage the Iranians were capable of inflicting on Israel’s military installations over the course of that brief conflict. Those same observers expect that the peace will be broken, most probably by Israel at a more convenient time. So long as the idea can be maintained that the US intervention has eliminated any prospect for Iran of advancing with its nuclear program, the “peace” is likely to hold. But even US intelligence appears to believe that the program has only been delayed, not destroyed. Few, however, countenance the idea that either Israel or the US has abandoned its ultimate goal of achieving regime change in Iran.

As for Gaza, Trump’s promise to “get it solved” rang particularly hollow as most experts see no basis for agreement between Israel and Hamas. Journalist Jeremy Scahill at Drop Site what most acknowledge to be obvious: “Since Donald Trump announced on July 1 that a Gaza ceasefire deal was likely, if not imminent, Israel has sought to sabotage negotiations through well-worn methods in an effort to block a deal that would end the war.”      

Some attribute to Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, the great French diplomat who not only advised Napoleon Bonaparte but was instrumental in conserving France’s pivotal role after the Corsican’s defeat and banishment, the remark, “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” (“The more things change, the more it’s the same thing”). To some extent, diplomacy — when it is applied seriously — serves to defend the long durée by seeking to avoid radical disruption, which rather than bringing about any kind of change tends to produce chaos. The disruptive approach of US foreign policy, especially over the past quarter of a century, offers a perfect illustration of such consequences, especially in the Middle East. Libya and Syria stand as exemplary of the trend.

Trump cannot escape from a mode of thinking conditioned by the reflex now built solidly into US culture: “time is money.” Americans feel the proverbial expression as a permanent pressure on them to act quickly and avoid spending too much time on working things out. They apply it to business as well as politics.

When applied to the realm of diplomacy, we might want to call it the doctrine of “soonism.” If you manage things on the basis of “sooner rather than later” you don’t allow yourself the time to fully understand the issues you’re trying to deal with. Unfortunately, Trump isn’t alone, nor is he the worst example. US President George W. Bush’s insistence on punishing Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein for possessing nonexistent weapons of mass destruction with “Shock and Awe” was a far worse example of soonism than anything Trump has done. “We will fight them over there,” Bush, “so we do not have to face them in the United States of America.”

US President Joe Biden’s precipitation in seeking to immediately Russia from the SWIFT network based on the belief that he would reduce the ruble to “rubble,” while at the same time refusing to engage in diplomacy and, at the same time, instructing UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, to ensure that ongoing diplomacy be disrupted, provides another example of disastrous soonism. His team seriously believed that by acting quickly, Russia would not have the time to react. We now know that his calculation was erroneous. As a result, more than a million people have died, with no end in sight.

Soonism is the enemy of diplomacy, a form of traditional human communication based on the principle of taking the time to understand the stakes and hammer out possible solutions to unresolvable conflicts. The current debate around ending the war in Ukraine, which Trump promised to do in 24 hours, turns around two contrasting positions. On the Ukrainian and transatlantic side, it’s a “30-day ceasefire.” Thirty days is a value that corresponds to soonism. On the Russian side, it’s the examination of the “root causes.” Those roots descend deep into the landscape and have grown over time. They don’t belong to any short-term timeframe.

Is any other explanation needed for the easily observable fact that diplomacy has become an extinct art form?

Historical note

History advances through moments that may be short or prolonged. Many students of history, anthropology and sociology have noted the contrast between two extreme orientations of national or regional cultures. At one extreme is the idea that history can be understood as a series of dramatic events, often framed as showdowns between opposing parties or interests. In such cultures, people acquire a view of history as a series of “significant dates” at which different percussive events have redefined the course of history. At the opposite extreme, we find cultures that privilege the idea of the. They see even dramatic events and radical shifts of influence within power structures as blips on the radar. In their view, history plods on with the weight of a civilization’s mass, evolving slowly over time, while maintaining a stable worldview.

Trump, habituated to US business culture focused on short-term decision making, has a habit of seeing future events as happening “soon,” as all his recent comments on Gaza reveal. In typical Trumpian style, apparently referring to events that played out in 2005, he his judgment of Israel’s decision at the time to pull its settlers out of Gaza. “The Gaza strip. I call it the Gaza strip. One of the worst real estate deals ever made. They gave up the oceanfront property. It was supposed to bring peace, and it didn’t bring peace. It brought the opposite. But we’re doing pretty well on Gaza. I think we could have something fairly soon to talk about.”

We might see this “soon to talk about” as a step back from a few days earlier when he said, “we think we’re going to have it solved pretty soon.” Talk is cheap. But the notion of solving generally supposes some kind of lasting duration, even if not necessarily the historiographer’s longue durée. Last week it was about solving, this week about talk. That seems to be a pattern with Trump. He bandies about theoretical solutions, such as , the of Greenland and the of Canada, or building a on the Gaza coast. This makes for animated conversation, but anything resembling a solution somehow fades from our collective memory as a project or even a possibility.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Donald Trump’s “Soonism” and the Death of Diplomacy appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Biden’s team appeared convinced that diplomacy and the outdated Cold War of “indivisible security” are for sissies. After all, nuclear deterrence worked throughout the Cold War, kind of, so why should it be any different today?

Nearly every informed expert — though you would not know this if you consume Western media — has concluded that Russia has won on the battlefield. What’s left is a useless war of attrition which could go on for months or years. Unless, of course, the use by one of the parties of a tactical nuclear weapon, or some other provocation, leads to nuclear escalation. We’ve been living that drama for the past three and a half years. Many Americans voted for US President Donald Trump because he had promised to end that threat within 24 hours.

He’s still working on it. But if that wasn’t enough, nuclear-armed Israel’s permanent campaign to wage war on all its neighbors last week turned into a three-way scuffle when Trump offered to lend a hand by conducting his own massive bombing in Iran alongside Israel. Fears arose that Pakistan might intervene with its nuclear capacity in solidarity with Tehran.

If, in these perilous times, you live in the Middle East, Russia, Ukraine, practically any European capital or the US, you would be justified, every morning when you get out of bed, in thinking there may be something to worry about. Something existential.

But if you’re a multi-billionaire living in the heart of Manhattan, and who also happens to be a pro-Israel Trump supporter, nuclear conflict is the last thing on your mind. There’s much more urgent business to attend to.

American billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman demonstrated that principle in a posted last week, following the upset victory of Zohran Mamdani over celebrity establishment candidate, Andrew Cuomo, in the Democratic primary of New York City’s mayoral race. His tweet began with this thought: “I awoke this morning gravely concerned about New York City.”

He has good reason to be concerned. Mamdani defined himself as someone ready to respond to the needs of working people and who refuses to kowtow to billionaires. Worse, he publicly empathizes with the evil Palestinians whose genocide in Gaza is being conducted by Ackman’s favorite “democracy” in the Middle East, with the active support of the US government — Trump’s no less than Biden’s. The idea that such a heretic seeking to become mayor of the Big Apple, the home of Wall Street, is far worse a prospect in Ackman’s mind than the risk of nuclear holocaust.

Fortunately, Ackman has a plan to save New York City, which he lays out in his tweet. It contains the following pragmatic advice:

“Importantly, there are hundreds of million of dollars of capital available to back a competitor to Mamdani that can be put together overnight (believe me, I am in the text strings and the WhatsApp groups) so that a great alternative candidate won’t spend any time raising funds.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Raising funds:

The primary activity of US politicians, both before and after being elected, and the unique criterion for determining the political talent for those who will have a role in governing the nation, the states or major cities.

Contextual note

It’s no secret for anyone paying attention to serious conducted in recent years, that the US, after innovating with the concept of democracy in the late 18th century, has more recently managed to remodel its institutions to assume the character of an effective oligarchy, with strong plutocratic tendencies. Everything we know about how Washington works, the role of lobbyists, the way campaign financing has been structured legally and financially confirms that what we’re looking at is a functional oligarchy that hides itself behind the ritual of lavishly financed elections.

If missing evidence was required, Ackman’s long tweet provides it. Ackman is as generous today with the words that describe his intentions as he will be tomorrow with the cash he promises to make available for the oligarchic cause. Like all true blue Americans, he deeply believes in this one essential truth, that “time is money.” Ackman assures us that “a great alternative candidate won’t spend any time raising funds.” He helpfully reminds us of the mechanism that defines the entire logic of the current system: a politician’s job has little to do with public service or the idea of devoting one’s time to perfecting the tools of governance. It’s about fundraising.

Fundraising is the principal skill every successful politician must acquire and work assiduously at refining. The art of communication, sometimes called spin, stands as the second skill essential to master. This consists of two basic components. The first is learning to speak in ways that sound informed and potentially authoritative (even when totally void of substance). Far more important than the cultivation of verbal style is the crafting of an “image” or public “personality” that projects a sense of commitment to whatever causes are seen from a marketing point of view as characterizing what Ackman calls “a great alternative candidate.” 

The hedge fund manager’s unlimited resources will serve to locate and groom the “great candidate” still waiting in the wings to be pressed into service. The beauty of the method consists of relieving the chosen candidate of the task on which ordinary US politicians spend the majority of their working time. According to most, fundraising consumes around 50% of their daily schedule. With fundraising taken care of, the candidate can focus full-time on polishing his or her image for the media.

Historical note

During the first 50 years of the new American republic, the patrician elite known as the “founders” deemed the idea of electoral campaigning unseemly behavior. The Puritan tradition had instilled the notion that community leaders should be elected on the basis of their perceived virtue. The very idea of self-promotion was anathema to the concept of US democracy. Fundraising in the modern sense was non-existent. Politicians counted on newspapers to establish their notoriety. The founding fathers on the idea of parties, which they tended to call “factions.”

During the Jacksonian era, beginning in the 1830s, the expansion of suffrage led to the emergence of a notion of mass politics. Political parties became the major vehicle for promoting individual candidates. Limited fundraising was necessary to support local organizations. But fundraising for the sake of electing a candidate was seen as foreign to the spirit of democracy.

Things changed radically during the Gilded Age towards the end of the 19th century. Corporate interests linked to the rapid development of large scale industry made their pressure felt in politics. The rapid shift from a formerly rural economy to one dominated by massive industries changed the nature of political decision-making. It also transformed the procedures and rituals surrounding elections. Some traditional politicians sensed danger. In 1907, Congress passed the, the first federal law banning corporate donations to federal candidates. In the name of democratic ideals, the political culture of the first half of the new century retained its moral bias against campaign funding.

Post-World War I American culture rapidly turned the traditional system on its head. The emergence of the art of (PR) and the work in the political and electoral field of PR professionals such as Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays, the author of (presented as a positive, virtuous concept), transformed political culture.

From that point onward, the mindset of politicians turned from a focus on questions of governance to a far more essential one: getting elected. That meant doing everything required before and after an election to maintain one’s position. That doesn’t exclude politicians’ taking an interest in serious public issues, but it certainly encourages them to stay focused on anything that brings in the cash. That includes backing issues favored by those who donate the most to their campaigns.

The trend accelerated through the age of advertising beginning in around 1950, when advertising culture began to reign supreme. It culminated with two highly visible events: the Supreme Court ruling in (2010) that gave a free rein to corporate funding, followed six years later by the election of Trump, a candidate whose political and personal psyche is nakedly governed by his belief in the power of money. Trump’s political career signals the triumph of the new ideal of self-promotion that has eclipsed the ancient idea of the virtuous citizen.

Although Mamdani has himself developed the requisite skills of self-promotion that enabled him to defeat establishment stalwart, Cuomo, his commitment to causes defined as morally virtuous (combating wealth inequality, refusing complicity in genocide) challenges the status quo — a status quo Bill Ackman and his anonymous billionaire friends are committed to defending, in the name of democracy!

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Billionaires Line Up to Save New York from Democracy appeared first on 51�Թ�.

As an independent broadcaster, Carlson also dares to break many of the rules, not just of the media culture he has long been a part of. He has also acquired the habit of challenging the nation’s dominant political culture. He made headline news when, shortly after leaving Fox, he dared to carry off a long in the Kremlin with the man whose voice is never allowed to be heard in US media: Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Carlson certainly understood that refusing to talk freely with Putin is part of a strategy designed to leave Western commentators in charge of interpreting Putin’s secret thoughts. They alone know what he is truly thinking, so why bother listening to the man himself? It’s an effective strategy. For example, how many times have we heard from the politicians and the media that once Putin has fully integrated Ukraine into Mother Russia, he will set about conquering Poland, the Baltic States and probably Finland before sending his tanks down France’s Champs-Elysée. Emmanuel Macron, for one, appears to that. As does NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, who not so long ago, according to Defense News, “that Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to ‘wipe Ukraine off the map’ and could come after other parts of Europe next.”

Carlson has since become specialized in long, informal interviews with important people in politics. In the context of the Middle East crisis, last week, Carlson fellow conservative Republican and one-time presidential hopeful, Texan Senator Ted Cruz.

In the course of the interview, Carlson dared to accuse Cruz of being a neocon, ready to intervene and attack foreign countries on the flimsiest of supposedly moral principles. “You’re saying we’re making a moral case,” Carlson claimed at one point, while pointing out that the reasons for attacking Iran, similar to the case of Iraq two decades ago, is being made based on lies. Insisting he isn’t a neocon, at one point Cruz objects: “I’m not in the morality game. I’m in the US interest game.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

In the game:

An expression popular in the United States to designate the area in which people conduct their professional activities, deemed a sport or competition rather than a vocation because in US culture everyone’s role in society is to maneuver in ways that lead to winning at the expense of everyone else, the “losers.”

Contextual note

Cruz is guilty of nothing more serious than using an easy-to-grasp metaphor to make his point. The expression, “in the game of,” has featured in American English for at least a century. It usually appears in the negative formulation, as a form of denial: “I’m not in the game of X,” an assertion similar to “I’m not in the business of X.”

Cruz’s denial of being in the “morality game” tells us a lot about two things: US political culture in general and Cruz’s own lack of seriousness. Games produce results (wins or losses) and scores. But those results, unlike the results of international conflict, have no permanent effect on society. The senator’s formulation conveys the idea that the matter under discussion is just a game, with no serious stakes.  But the matter he evokes is foreign policy — more specifically war and peace — a domain in which the stakes are always serious. We should note, however, that in the US, labeling something as “foreign” means it can only be of marginal interest.

Another distinction will help to understand how US political culture distinguishes between the serious and the trivial. Cruz would never be tempted to talk about what “game” he’s in when discussing immigration policy. Immigration is a “serious” issue that we should never think of in terms of playing a game. Americans treat foreign policy as a distraction, like a team sport. When a war starts, a new season begins. When it ends (as it tends not to do these days), the season is over.

In the same conversation, Cruz has no qualms about contradicting his denial of playing the morality game. At one point, to justify US aggression, he out: “That’s who Iran wants to kill, is all the Jews and all the Americans.”

In other words, he frames the emerging US regime change strategy for Iran in terms of a moral duty to punish an immoral government. His does so on the grounds that people thousands of miles away have a desire to kill Jews and Americans. Carlson laughs at his ignorance of any of the basic facts about Iran, including the size of its population. And clearly Cruz has not tried to explore the meaning of the verbal threats Iranians have been prone to make in the past. Whether it’s “the morality game” or the “control of Middle East oil” game, for him it’s only about who will win or lose. No more of an issue than who will win next year’s Super Bowl.

Historical note

Every culture on earth, throughout history has created, adapted or adopted popular games in which people compete mentally, physically to prove what they are capable of, either individually, collectively or both. The Egyptians and Sumerians invented and played as far back as five thousand years ago. Games provide non-threatening opportunities to simulate, experiment, understand and eventually master complex human activities. Over the course of history, these have been related directly or indirectly to religion, sexuality and marriage, business and, of course, war, most directly alluded to in the game of chess. Though they have no applicable purpose, the skills thus cultivated often play a role in implementing strategies of survival and social organization.

Games are built around formal rules and strictly defined contexts that are designed to avoid confusion with social, political and economic reality. But the relationship between games and living history evolves over time. In modern cultures, particularly in the West, the frontier between those two realms of competitive activity appears to be breaking down. Cruz provides an example of how that may happen. By entertaining the idea that political reality is a game, a contest, in which there are winners and losers, rather than as a kind of social ballet serving to knit a complex fabric of society, our understanding of how the world works is diminished. Within every society, complementary forces interact in a variety of ways to facilitate exchange (of information, goods, language, wealth and the arts). If the distinction between social interaction and games is lost, society’s concept of politics inevitably becomes confused with the violence of war, the ultimate and fatal form of competition.

Our age has elevated the idea of national security as everyone’s top core value. This usually translates as an expanding effort aimed at multiplying the physical and technological means of protecting the status quo of existing governments. The surveillance state becomes a universal ideal. US President Donald Trump clearly shares that mindset. But so did former President Joe Biden.

Trump biographer Michael Wolff is now featured in the media quoting examples of Trump’s captured from phone calls made over the past week leading up to his decision to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites. The litany begins with: “Are they going to win? Is this a winner? Is this game over? They are so good. This is really a showstopper.” The day before authorizing the bombing, Trump said, “If we do this, it needs to be perfect. It needs to be a win. It has to look perfect.” Capping it all, the president summed it up with, “In, boom, out.” In US sport, that is called planning a “buzzer-beater.”

Once upon a time, nations would routinely attempt some form of diplomacy before beginning a war. If it failed, war ensued. In the course of the war, they would then prepare for the diplomatic campaign that would resolve the war. That isn’t what happens in games. And the fact that we no longer see diplomacy at work before a war and that wars are conducted with no “end game” in sight, tells us that civilization has adopted a new set of rules: no rules, other than the logic of force. “Peace through force” in the eyes of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu translates as “might makes right.”

Although his style was different, Biden also reduced foreign policy to a game. Upon taking office in January 2021, he repeatedly claimed that the world was a contest between two teams: democracies and autocracies. That explains why he didn’t bother , at Putin’s request, to hammer out a framework for European security. The game would be a proxy war.

Trump took the aversion to serious diplomacy one step further when he used officially programmed negotiations as a simple feint in his game strategy that allowed Israel to Iran on the pretext of settling by force the very issue the US claimed it was “negotiating.” That attack included an attempted of Iran’s chief negotiator.

One thing seems to be clear in the wake of the last two US presidencies: concerning the fate of what the Biden team tirelessly vaunted as “the rules-based international order.” For that order, it is truly “game over.”

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Foreign Policy Game: Cruz Talks, Carlson Scores appeared first on 51�Թ�.

That doesn’t mean there was no ambiguity, primarily caused by a diversity of interests and secondary personalities capable of influencing events. We now know about President John F. Kennedy’s struggle with the hyper-hawkish instincts of General Curtis LeMay, thirsting after the opportunity to nuke Fidel Castro’s regime, even at the risk of a global confrontation with the Soviet Union. The chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, Maxwell Taylor, though less insistent, also favored aggressive action. LeMay became the inspiration for the character of Air Force Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper in Stanley Kubrick’s brilliant black comedy, Dr. Strangelove (1964) that was produced the following year. Spoiler alert: in the movie, Ripper succeeds in launching a nuclear war nobody wants.

In today’s world the Le Mays, Taylors and Turgidsons are now in leadership positions. Kennedy and Nikita Khruschev, thought, negotiated and worked to resolve a conflict whose contours — a standoff between two nuclear powers — nobody at the time was able to fully understand. As the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum’s reveal, the two leaders agreed to “dismantle the weapon sites in exchange for a pledge from the United States not to invade Cuba.” They agreed to leave the impression that Kennedy had demonstrated his strength by making no material concessions. But that was only to quiet the hawks. “In a separate deal, which remained secret for more than twenty-five years, the United States also agreed to remove its nuclear missiles from Turkey.”

What a contrast with today’s world! The current president of the US is a former real estate operator and TV reality show host known for his erratic behavior, superficially reasoned decision-making and undisciplined rhetoric. His allies in Europe no longer have the stature of a Charles De Gaulle, Willy Brandt, Harold Macmillan or Olaf Palme. French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer — as well as the ineffable EU President Ursula von der Leyen — are nearly all largely unpopular even among their own electorates. 

Most have been living in a state of utter confusion about their power, prestige and identity ever since George W. Bush’s eight years in the White House. That’s when they had the opportunity to discover the depth of their political irrelevance and its complement: their forced fealty to governments in Washington committed to the principle of spreading havoc globally as the means of asserting their hegemonic pretensions. Unlike De Gaulle in particular, they have entered a diabolical pact with the messianic prime minister of Israel (and documented war criminal), Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu. Bibi combines the warmongering instincts of Kubrick’s General Ripper with the cold-blooded calculation of Dr. Strangelove himself (a former Nazi “reformed” to become a US nuclear expert).

Today Trump, the peace president, has two wars to mismanage. Concerning Ukraine, the mercurial Trump appointed a certain Keith Kellogg to be his special envoy charged with ending the conflict. Kellogg was a military man who had risen to the rank of lieutenant general before retiring in 2003.  During the September 11 attacks he worked at the Pentagon, with the title of Joint Staff’s J6 (Director of Command, Control, Communications, and Computers). 

Still at work seeking a solution to the Ukraine quagmire, Kellogg was recently by Ukrainian media outlet Ukrainska Pravda as he offered an imaginative explanation of the ceasefire the NATO partners have been hoping to impose in recent months. He began by helpfully explaining that the ceasefire concerned “the ground you are physically on, that is the ground that is yours now. You occupy that.” 

Having established that simple truth, he set about imagining the ideal world Trump was bringing into being. At least in his imagination, a new world order, with new institutions, will emerge to replace the old one that everyone now agrees is rapidly fading. He begins by insisting on “a sustainable ceasefire long-term, sustainable not only for the Ukrainians but for Europe as well. And then try to get the Russians back into what I would call the League of Proper Nations. So everybody is kind of working together… Meaning you can all live with the results of this for the long term.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Proper nation:

A country that earns its status simply by not being an “improper nation.”

Contextual note

Kellogg’s mental gymnastics and his taste for political fiction resemble an attempt to reconcile the most glaring contradiction in Trump’s stated approach to solving the Ukraine war. The man in the Oval Office is known for his “transactional bias.” He believes that all legal, moral and ethical questions can ultimately be solved by transforming them into profit-making business propositions. “Russia wants to do largescale TRADE with the United States when this catastrophic ‘bloodbath’ is over, and I agree,” AP on May 31. 

Trump’s intuition wasn’t wrong. If the two sides were to sit down with a view to assessing who was to blame for the initial provocation, nothing could be accomplished. Trump prefers a world in which people stop bickering and get down to doing what’s expected of them:

1. Extracting resources from resource-rich countries like Russia
2. Mobilizing the financial wizards on Wall Street who can turn it all into global business
3. Making it all work in the world’s varied consumer markets through the kinds of networks his centibillionaire friends Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg have so brilliantly developed.

Whether it was Kellogg who invented the concept of a “League of Proper Nations” or whether it was something he heard in one of his conversations with his boss, it expresses the logic implicit in the new Utopia favored by Trump’s MAGA philosophy. But the question of how we should define a “proper nation” is likely to pose a few problems. The word “proper” has etymological roots that point in several directions. One is the idea of ownership. Another is neatness and cleanliness (“Keep thy garments proper and thy hands clean”). Yet another is “according to the rules.” What Kellogg seems to have in mind is the last one: nations that follow accepted rules of behavior or etiquette. It goes without saying that those rules will always be defined by and in the US, the “exceptional nation” (meaning exceptionally proper).

Historical note

The question of categorizing nations as either “proper” (worthy of being co-opted by the “league”) or improper happens to lie at the core of another conflict, one that has at least momentarily eclipsed Kellogg’s elusive Ukrainian ceasefire: the war between Israel and Iran. Our good friend, Edward Quince (a pseudonym) who has contributed regularly to our columns on the changing global monetary order, has shared with us some informal insight into the rationale Israel employed to launch its so-called pre-emptive war. Kellogg’s notion of a League of Proper Nations implies categorizing nations according to identifiable patterns of behavior. Here is how Quince frames the question concerning Israel’s apparent judgment that Iran cannot be considered a “proper nation:”

“Nobody is asking the key question: Is it even possible for one nation to coerce another nation to follow a certain course (in this case, abandoning nuclear armament ambitions) through long-range aerial attacks? There’s really only one example in history: the U.S./NATO coercion of Yugoslavia. But in that case, the bombardment was close-range, Yugoslavia was not Iran (in terms of size), and the U.S./NATO is not Israel (in terms of size and capability). However, the stated goals are one thing, and the real goals are another. It seems that the real goal is to get rid of the ayatollahs altogether, and their nuclear ambitions are just an excuse to attack them.”

Quince adds this comment: “It’s now clear that the ‘negotiations’ Trump started with the Iranians were nothing more than a textbook behavioral warfare tactic designed to trick the ayatollahs into not expecting an attack. Mr. Trump’s theatrical warnings to the Israelis against attacking Iran, Netanyahu theatrically rehearsing his son’s wedding (scheduled for June 16 ), the so-called ‘shuttle diplomacy’ in Oman — all of it was a smokescreen that lulled the Iranians into thinking they could ‘make a deal’ with the U.S.”

“Behavioral warfare” appears to sum up what the cleverest “proper nations” are expected to do. The problem is that such properly deceptive behavior sometimes produces disappointing results, as it has pretty consistently for the US in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria… and the list goes on.

Edward Quince adds this final bit of reflection which Kellogg will undoubtedly find useful: “I am sure Mr. Putin’s team will no longer engage in any serious negotiations with Mr. Trump’s administration. It’s fair to expect cancellations of visits, meetings, envoys, and prisoner swaps for the time being. It’s unclear which way the war in Ukraine will go, but peace is less likely there today compared to two days ago.”

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Leadership, Lunacy and Kellogg’s “Proper” World Disorder appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Orwell’s future surveillance state, Oceania, featured an evolution of television, the “telescreen” — a kind of two-way TV that the regime had installed in every home and public space. Telescreens served a dual function: propaganda and surveillance. Cameras and microphones could see and hear citizens at all times.

Another technology, Speakwrite, servedto dictate and rewrite historical records, ensuring that previous ways of accounting for history would be overwritten by a newer version of the “truth” of history. All older versions would disappear into “The Memory Hole.”

Given the way technology has evolved in recent decades, Orwell’s description of his surveillance state’s technology looks rather ham-handed today. But his intuition that the totalitarian instincts already at work in 20th century politics would seek to harness all new technology for the purpose of surveillance and mind control was spot on.

Orwell couldn’t have suspected that just a few decades later humanity would enter “the digital age,” giving us direct, invisible access to everything human that could be collected and managed in a “cloud.” This would open the floodgates for the creation of a system of surveillance and control much more effective and less obviously barbaric than Orwell’s low-tech Gulag. Even more radically, Orwell couldn’t have imagined a world in which a diversity of private companies, with names like Google, Amazon, OpenAI and Palantir, might be in a position to do all the donkey work Oceania’s unique totalitarian governing body, “The Party,” required to maintain civic order.

Of the companies mentioned above, Google, Amazon and OpenAI have become household names. Palantir not so much. That’s because it is focused on the secretive, largely invisible activity of producing tools of surveillance made possible through data integration and analytics. It serves governments, intelligence agencies and large corporations as it processes vast amounts of disparate information for decision-making, surveillance and predictive modeling.

Companies focused on surveillance tend to prefer discretion and even opacity. They are generally careful about allowing others to survey them. But Palantir recently stepped outside the conversational intimacy that comes from working with a limited number of secretive national security state actors. Last year, it began to appeal to retail investors for funding. It has been wildly, with its share price outperforming everything else on the market.

Business Insider recently featured an focused on Palantir’s stock market success: “Inside the lovefest between Palantir and its army of retail investors.” It ends with a message CEO Alex Karp, in a hyper-excited state, addressed to retail investors: “Let’s not talk to analysts about the burden of being right. I’m very happy to have you along for the journey and you are partners for us. Every Palantirian, we are crushing it.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Burden of being right:

A perception and often an illusion commonly experienced by individuals and sometimes even entire nations that need to justify the most extreme sociopathic forms of aggression by their belief that they live in a world in which all acts can be classified as either right or wrong, it being implicitly understood that their own acts are always right.

Contextual note

In this short posted on X, Karp takes the trouble to make it clear what he means by “the burden of being right.” In giving this explanation his tone and body language exhibit troublingly manic traits that nevertheless don’t quite reach the of Steve Balmer from his days as CEO of Microsoft. Karp glosses the elements of the burden, which includes items such as the “burden of actually looking at the math, the burden of reading what a rule of 40 is, the burden of being honest about what an enterprise software company is, or the burden of explaining to your friends that you’re really happy.”

That collection of burdens may seem like a lot of unnecessary weight on one man’s shoulders, just for the crime of “being right.” Karp then gets to the real point. “It’s necessary to scare enemies and on occasion kill them. And we hope you’re in favor of that.” He relishes shareholders who enjoy killing as much as he does.

Karp has a PhD in philosophy. In 2016, The New Yorker to him as “Palantir’s philosopher-C.E.O.” The story goes that in the late 1990s, Karp’s Stanford Law friend, Peter Thiel, convinced him that philosophy without execution is dead. That convinced him to do something more useful than pondering metaphysics. Thiel also convinced him that tech was the new lever for change. The Dot-Com Boom at the turn of the millennium led Karp to believe that applied epistemology (how data shapes truth) could be weaponized — or monetized, two concepts that resonated in the head of a philosopher who now saw his mission as one of changing the world for the better.

Most philosophers steer clear of ideas like weaponizing and monetizing. They see epistemology as the area in which concepts need to be called into question, especially when they point in a direction that tempts the philosopher to feel the need to bear “the burden of being right.” The 17th century philosopher, scientist and politician Francis Bacon began his most famous with Pontius Pilate’s question: “What is truth?” Most serious philosophers say, we don’t really know but let’s try to approach it.

The Grayzone that in his ravings for investors “Karp went on to predict social ‘disruption’ ahead, insisting it would be ‘very good for Palantir.’” It’s clear that his use of the word “good” is not quite in sync with the Socratic concept of “the good life.” It is, however, perfectly in sync with the Silicon Valley definition of “good,” which translates quite simply as profitable.

For Karp to philosophize and, at the same time, run a business focused on national defense and military technology, he needed to embrace an extreme Manichean view of morality. This demonstrates his alacrity to see the world as divided into good and evil, with the certainty that he’s on the side of good. After a confrontation with a protestor complaining that Palantir is complicit in killing her family in Palestine, the philosopher calmly explains to her how someone who bears the burden of being right reads the situation. 

“I believe she believes I’m evil,” he observes. “I believe she’s an unwitting product of an evil force, Hamas. That she unwittingly is part of their strategy, a product.” In other words, he is a philosophizing human, with free will and epistemological good sense. She, in contrast, is a product, a commodity, an object. He generously counsels her to accept a truth he would never think of applying to himself: “Do not become a product of an ideology that sounds sensible.” 

Historical note

Karp’s remarks may have been unconsciously inspired by Rudyard Kipling, a British poet who grew up in India, who in 1899, in a called “The White Man’s Burden,” famously encouraged the US to assert its control over the Philippines. The poem includes the following passage:

“Take up the White Man’s burden

In patience to abide

To veil the threat of terror

And check the show of pride.”

US President Theodore Roosevelt judged that it was “rather poor poetry, but good sense from the expansion point of view.” Teddy might similarly have acknowledged that Karp does “rather poor” philosophy but exhibits “good sense from the expansion point of view.” Imperialism needs a solid tool kit more than it needs poetry.

A New York Times feature on Karp notes his tendency to “crow a little about Western civilization’s resting on Palantir’s slender shoulders.” One of his friends explains that “he sees himself as Batman, believing in the importance of choosing sides in a parlous world.”

How parlous is that world? The NYT article tells us that Karp “thinks the United States is ‘very likely’ to end up in a three-front war with China, Russia and Iran. So, he argues, we have to keep going full-tilt on autonomous weapons systems, because our adversaries will — and they don’t have the same moral considerations that we do.”

Only a philosopher-CEO like Karp can prove capable of believing that the best road to peace is to head “full-tilt” into arming those who exercise “the burden of being right” in their combat against those he and his technology have identified as “a product of evil forces.” How else might Western civilization and its noble ideals be maintained?

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The debate has led to all sorts of theories, including the traditional folk wisdom of warning against the risk of “spreading oneself too thin” (excess breadth, insufficient depth) or proverbially noting that “a jack of all trades is master of none,” expressing a bias in favor of depth. 

From a prudential point of view, seeking depth seems the surer, safer approach. But the modern economy and the examples provided by the likes of Apple, Microsoft, Google and Amazon have produced a model of growth and ambition in which a rapid achievement of perceived depth — based on an initial laser-like focus on either hardware, software or even selling books — serves to install a platform destined to become ever-expanding and attain practically limitless breadth. Stretching across the landscape is natural when one feels solidly rooted in a fertile earth.

The psychologist Angela Duckworth famously insisted on the importance of , which she describes as “grit,” or perseverance in a single direction. Others, such as Todd Kashdan, emphasize breadth that unfolds thanks to and the cognitive flexibility of generalists.

If Genghis Khan proved more successful than other more ephemeral military conquerors such as Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler, it was because of the organizational depth of the Khan’s original non-linear logistical focus, featuring his “,” a complex relay of mounted couriers. Was Genghis our first network thinker? The depth of that potentially encompassing idea made possible the most rapid extension of geographical breadth in world history.

As we continue to witness an increasingly destructive war of expansion — perceived as an illegitimate quest for expanded breadth either on the part of NATO or Russia, depending on whom you prefer to blame — the question of depth vs. breadth has once again come to the fore. Ukraine’s spectacular “Spiderweb operation” just days ago forcefully struck military targets deep into Russia even as far as 4,000 kilometers beyond its national border. It achieved obvious breadth, impressing both the Russians and especially Western media. What it lacked, however, was depth, as most successful operations focused on PR tend to do. That remark could apply to the whole history of NATO, an organization that over the past 30 years has quite successfully extended its breadth (after solemnly promising not to) at the expense of its depth.

If we are to believe one of NATO’s most vocal leaders, French President Emmanuel Macron, the trend towards breadth is still in the cards. Why stop at Europe (Ukraine), West Asia (Afghanistan) and North Africa (Libya) when NATO has the potential to reach around the circumference of the globe? According to a Politico that appeared on Friday, “Emmanuel Macron warned China that NATO could become more deeply involved in Asia if Beijing does not do more to stop North Korea from taking part in Russia’s war on Ukraine.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Deeply involved:

In geopolitics — according to the usage of the presumably democratic model that guides Western Europe and North America —  surreptitiously installed in specific places to exert influence and ultimately control, following the model of the jewelled cockroach by zombifying its host.

Contextual note

Even in promoting the idea of breadth by defining a role for NATO to play in the extreme Orient, Macron felt the need to pay lip service to depth by promising to see it “deeply involved.” Politico points to a troubling paradox: “France has long maintained that the transatlantic military alliance shouldn’t expand its reach into Asia and led the campaign to block the opening of a NATO liaison office in Japan in 2023.” But Macron is the kind of politician who has always felt empowered to shift from one position to its opposite. In his very first political campaign, he proclaimed his right to embracing opposites “en même temps” (literally, “at the same time”). That was his official back in 2016, when he boldly asserted he was both left and right.

We shouldn’t be surprised to see Macron aim for breadth and depth at the same time, even concerning NATO, an institution he does not control. The problem, however, is that in contrast with Aristotle, his reasoning shows no inclination for either sophia nor episteme. In the fraught geopolitical landscape of 2025, dominated by an impulsive, volatile and capricious orange “leader of the free world” and de facto dictator of NATO, suggesting the radical extension of NATO and a goal of deep involvement sounds like the summit of irrationality.

NATO expansion, whether consciously or not, has literally thrown Europe into a state of permanent chaos; political, military and economic chaos. Putin us about it in 2008 and even gave a detailed explanation of why. US ambassador Bill Burns and later political scientist John Mearsheimer saw chaos as inevitable if expansion were to be pursued. Common sense dictated that no good could possibly come of such a conflict for Europeans, which is why Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy opposed expansion to Ukraine at the time. In contrast, even the class dunce on the other side of the Atlantic (and, of course,) could appreciate the monetary value such a conflict might have for the US military-industrial complex.

One deplorable result is that democracy in Europe has taken a serious hit. The toolbox of the European Commission — a pseudo-democratic institution, if ever there was one — now includes active support of the of election results (Romania in December 2024) whenever they appear to threaten an increasingly isolated political elite. France and Germany have set about either disqualifying popular (Marine Le Pen) or threatening to rising parties.

Largely thanks to a long history culminating with US President Joe Biden’s initiative back in 2021 of rejecting as a source of inefficiency any residual notion of diplomatic engagement, Europe’s current leaders have discovered the surest way of ensuring that democracy is simply to sideline it. Europe is no longer a community of sovereign nations, but focuses its identity around NATO. The Ukraine war has served to create a semblance of unity not as a common market, but an imagined future federated army. 

This ongoing drama has turned into something resembling Alfred Jarry’s celebrated absurd tragi-comedy of “.” It has Macron and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer playing the lead role on alternate days. Assuming the position of casting director, Starmer just this week made an for supporting roles and extras: “Every part of society, every citizen of this country, has a role to play because we have to recognise that things have changed in the world of today.”

Historical note

No one should doubt that this is a monumentally significant period of transition in world history. Starmer and Macron see themselves as visionary leaders capable of guiding global events simply by verbally dramatizing the gravity of the issues and claiming to be the central actors. In reality, Europe has —  perhaps for the first time in two millennia — found itself in a historical limbo, strutting and fretting like an over-the-hill actor spouting his lines on a tacky stage. Here’s Starmer boldly announcing: “The front line, if you like, is here.” Perhaps he would “like” you to believe the front line is “here” (in Glasgow where he gave the speech? Or in 10 Downing Street?). That telling phrase, “if you like,” highlights the lame comedy of his script.

Macron has an equally compelling message about the course of history in which, as Starmer helpfully points out, “things have changed.” “The French president,” Politico reports, “also warned against the risk of nuclear proliferation and the potential collapse of the global order established after World War II.” Such comments, like Starmer’s on the changing world reveal their mutual commitment to the equivalent of Hamlet’s speculation about taking “arms against a sea of troubles” (Russia). They see this truly impossible mission as the key to preventing the collapse of a wonderful order that — sorry, dear Manu — is already beyond repair.

All this militaristic bombast projected by the leaders of enfeebled nations chained together within an unstructured alliance incapable of acting — militarily, politically or otherwise — in any coherent way, is designed not to define the future of Europe, but in the hope that their operatic bellicosity will convince Donald Trump to take them seriously and underpin their “cause.” They’re formulating their appeal at the very moment when the wild man in the White House has signaled his resolute reluctance to listen to their pleas.

The comedy we’re witnessing reveals broad but unintentional humor in a context that is deeply ironic. It points unambiguously towards an outcome that is likely to strike the audience as an unadulterated tragedy.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Even at the time, genocide wasn’t a difficult case to make. Whatever it was then has become demonstrably more flagrant today. At the very least, systematic attacks on , explicit acts of and deliberate, organized all fall squarely into the category of war crimes under the Geneva Convention.

Many of the world’s governments, particularly in the West, have preferred to practice what they may think of as a style of “diplomatic discretion” that prevents them from explicitly condemning Israel’s actions. Few have taken any bold steps to use whatever political clout they could muster to prevent Israel from turning a plausible genocide into a fait accompli we Europeans just have to learn to live with. Several European nations have even continued to provide military assistance to Israel throughout the period.

, and are the only members of the European Union to have literally accused Israel of war crimes and followed it up with an . In contrast, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States have continued to back Israel militarily, even while occasionally hinting to Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s government that they would feel more comfortable if he were to tone down the destruction a bit. Italy initially arms exports but later resumed them quietly. “Piano, piano!” Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni seemed to be saying. Bibi, the Israeli virtuoso, naturally interprets her words as an invitation to play, with unusual brio, his latest resounding apocalyptic concert on her keyboard.

Emmanuel Macron’s France, to its credit, has consistently supported UN ceasefire resolutions, knowing the US would veto them, but adamantly refuses to call Israel’s actions genocide, collective punishment or ethnic cleansing. At the same time, it has refused a full arms embargo but, to demonstrate its empathetic rhetoric with a suffering population, has restricted the supply of certain weapons.

In other words, despite a few courageous initiatives from a small minority of governments, the Atlantic alliance — the US, European nations and the EU itself —  has remained relatively unified in solidarity with Israel. From the beginning the US has led the fanfare, first under Biden and then, despite a visible change of style, under Israel’s favorite US president of all time, Donald Trump.

Nevertheless, the pressure is mounting and some of the seams appear to be cracking. Just last week, Macron characterized the humanitarian situation in Gaza as “,” adding that it has become “” (����é�徱��). By “unprecedented” he meant that Israel’s conduct today appears to be even worse (������������é��) than it was at any earlier point in the campaign. In other words, his complaint is less about the nature of the act than the degree, as if war crimes can simply evolve quantitatively before crossing the distant threshold of genocide. This kind of reasoning enables Macron to maintain a position that falls short not only of having to utter the g-word, but of acting in any concrete way upon his perception of ongoing horror.

Nevertheless, the temperature is clearly rising. France’s state-owned radio news network Radio France Internationale (RFI) that Macron’s government has at least begun thinking about the theoretical tipping point beyond which it becomes necessary to evoke gross violations of international law. “French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot,” RFI informs us, “has voiced his support for reviewing the EU-Israel Association Agreement, amid growing concern over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”

Our Devil’s Dictionary has recently highlighted the moral ambiguity associated with prominent political figures who voice “concern.” But Barrot provides another clue about the strength of France’s moral fiber when he proclaims: “This is a legitimate request, and I invite the European Commission to examine it.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Legitimate request:

A timidly formulated hope that others will recognize a moral stance unwilling to take the form of a commitment. It contrasts with what the same parties see as an “illegitimate request,” such as firmly demanding the cessation of a genocide.

Contextual note

The French have always cultivated the idea that they are a generous and welcoming people, clearly reflected in Barrot’s promise to “” the European Commission to review its solidarity with a nation credibly engaged in genocide. Note that the invitation aims not at changing the relationship or taking any concrete action, but at examining it.

That attitude of bold moral resoluteness turned out to be too much for the currently disenfranchised leader of the opposition to Macron’s regime, Marine Le Pen, who no need for a review. “Israel is doing what it can in a situation that is extremely difficult,” she charitably explained. Her reasoning may follow a well known pattern: Any nation that would go so far as to invite the opprobrium attached to practicing live-streamed genocide and ethnic cleansing would only do so in response to an extremely difficult situation. Take the case of Nazi Germany, whose regime Marine’s father (and founder of her party) openly . After losing World War I, the German nation found itself humiliated by the victors, saddled with exorbitant reparations to pay that in turn provoked raging inflation that undermined the economy and destabilized the government. The world treated Deutschland as the sole culprit in a war Europe’s leaders had collectively sleepwalked into. In such extremely difficult circumstances, it is natural that only a holocaust could follow.

Le Pen herself has undergone the humiliation and disgrace of being barred by the courts from running in an election, even though the put her in the lead for the 2027 presidential election. That may help explain her current position on Israel, which she expressed in her critique of Macron’s impatience with Israel: “He is constantly increasing his criticism of Israel, perhaps because it is incapable of providing a solution to facilitate the fight against Islamist fundamentalism.” The German example may have convinced Le Pen that when attempting to “provide a solution” the only surefire way of achieving one’s goal is by aiming at a “final solution.”

Historical note

Historical inertia, the patient acceptance of immoral behavior as a fait accompli or feature of the landscape, has become a standard response for leaders like Macron. Le Pen is right to point out that he has no solutions, but that won’t prevent him from defending to the death his right to hold onto power and prevent anyone who might have solutions from applying them. The current class of European leaders has become adept at using the perception of intolerable situations as faits accomplis that can never be seriously questioned as the most convenient way to define and maintain their dangerously confused policies. This is especially true with regard to the two major conflicts they appear committed to: a Ukraine war started and then apparently abandoned by the US, and Israel’s noble “self-defense” against a captive, occupied and confined population whose cowardly soldiers hide behind human shields composed essentially of women and children.

If it didn’t involve the sacrifice of probably more than a million Ukrainians and Russians, the case of Europe’s inertia with regard to Ukraine may appear comic, at least since the return of US President Donald Trump to the White House. The Donald has embarrassingly made it clear he’s ready to pull out of a war his predecessors encouraged Europe to join. The belief initially inculcated by US propaganda that Ukraine has the capacity to win a war designed to humiliate and eventually dismantle Russia is already delusional. But formulating the project of replacing the clout of the US — which under Trump is withdrawing from the fight — and believing that Europe’s commitment could turn the tide is positively surreal.

Europe’s backing of Israel follows the same pattern. Former US President Joe Biden set the tone and Europe followed suit. In this case, NATO solidarity could not provide the pretext, but the logic was identical. The US leads NATO and NATO leads Europe; with or without NATO, the US has led Europe… by the nose. That’s what Europeans have accepted as a “security system” (some would call it a security blanket). It is not limited to Europe and its periphery. It applies even to nations in West Asia. It should be noted that Macron, thanks to his obsession with the idea of “strategic autonomy,” is the rare European leader in recent times to have expressed his desire to refuse the status of vassal to the US.  Note that he “desires” to “refuse” which means quite simply that he will not dare to refuse.

The policy of passive conformity with the policies of other nations — Israel and the US — who have fewer qualms about engaging in evil, may now be coming back to bite Europe and France. A group of French “Jurists for the Respect of International Law” (JURDI) have taken legal action, sending a formal (mise en demeure) addressed to the European Commission and the European Council calling for “the immediate suspension of all agreements of cooperation with Israel,” individual sanctions imposed on responsible parties and exclusion of Israel from the SWIFT payment system. These are all measures that the Europeans rapidly applied to Russia following its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

As Le Monde, this is an accusation of “institutional complicity.” Readers will note the radical difference between a mise en demeure (a formal legal act) and a “legitimate request.” 

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Europe’s Reckoning: Genocide in Plain Sight, Diplomacy in Disguise appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Given the central role the United States has played in global politics since the end of World War II, we observers of history need to be regularly reminded of the lens through which the US foreign policy establishment sees the world. Every lens magnifies some elements and distorts others. A key part of 51�Թ�’s vocation is not only to expose its readers and contributors to the effects of the different lenses, but also to develop our collective understanding of how those lenses reflect and refract our perception of global reality. Mine is obviously very different from Gary’s or the State Department’s.

In a piece we published earlier this month, with the title, “The Middle East 2025: The Good, the Bad and the Tragically Ugly,” Gary offered us a wide-ranging review of the key dramas unfolding across the Middle East, North Africa and West Asia. The former diplomat sounded a note of guarded optimism when he observed that “the region remains as full of opportunity as it is fraught with external and internal political tension and conflict.” His dominant tone, however, is pessimistic: “Some of the region’s struggles are as far from resolution as they’ve ever been.”

Returning to the Beltway lens, US politicians possess a set of shared ideals, which they wield as if they were holding in their hand the gavel of universal justice. “Democracy” and “human rights” are the prominent concepts that permit State Department officials and pundits alike to categorize other nations and groups as being either “on the right side of history” or the wrong side. An extreme degree of wrongness places them in an “axis of evil.” Less radically, Gary calls the evildoers “the region’s troublemakers” and identifies them as: “Iran, Russia and the Islamic State.”

But all is not well even among those who are spared the epithet of troublemaker or wheel on the axis of evil. Summing up a problem that he sees as broadly undermining democratic governance throughout the Middle East, Gary offers us this truism: “Publics remain dissatisfied with their governments, almost none of which are accountable to their people.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

 Accountable to the people:

The basic principle of democracy that founds its theoretical moral legitimacy; also, the principle that can conveniently be discarded by ensuring that the kinds of people who are elected will never be held accountable for the worst collective decisions they irresponsibly make, including the overthrow of democratic leaders or foreign countries, waging and funding illegal wars and supporting genocide.

Contextual note

Gary finds one occasion to trot out the predictable bromide identifying Israel as “the Middle East’s lone democracy.” In his mind, it’s clear that if Israel is a democracy, it must be “accountable to the people.” Gary reminds us, however, that in practice, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is accountable not to the people as a whole (including Palestinians), nor even to the Jews, but to “right-wing factions” that now have “unprecedented influence in the Knesset.”

Israel’s proclaimed status as “lone democracy” deflects attention from the easily observed fact that it is an apartheid state openly conducting ethnic cleansing and systematic genocide. I agree that like “democracy” itself, those accusatory epithets are only “words,” which means they are “debatable,” designed, some will say, to “confuse the issue.”

In the nation’s moral system, thanks to the dogma of the first amendment of the US constitution, speech is free; words demand no accountability. Acts do, but for that accountability to be applied we must agree on the meaning of the words. The fact that observed acts can be dismissed as “mere words” brings home the real message: that accountability will always be elusive, especially when attempting to accuse a “lone democracy.”

Apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide have an unquestionably negative connotation. That may explain why in an article about the current state of play in the Middle East, Gary never alludes to them. Instead, like Monty Python, he looks at “the bright side of life” in Israel. “Israel’s superior military prowess, technology, intelligence and firepower,” he tells us, “paired with indispensable support from America produced positive results across the region.”

It continues as Gary finds the persuasive words to make us believe. “For now, however, the ongoing negotiations between Tehran and Washington are an unambiguous good.” Really, Gary, I have to stop you there. Unambiguous? Just before this we learn that “it is almost inevitable that Israel, with the likely assistance of the US, will attack the Islamic Republic.” In a short space we jump from “unambiguous good” to “inevitable” transcontinental war! In such a case, I wonder if the survival of humanity hasn’t itself become a highly ambiguous proposition.

This is where the question of whether governments are effectively “accountable to their people” arises. We may legitimately wonder whether the problem is confined, as Gary seems to suggest, to the Middle East. Some would claim there’s a serious problem of accountability within the US itself, the beacon of democracy. It may soon be time for some new populist leader to stand up and campaign on the slogan, “Make America Accountable Again.”

Historical note

After noting that the strength of “Iran has been significantly diminished while that of another, Israel, has been elevated,” Gary reveals how the groupthink at the State Department and among US allies functions, especially when applied to judging the positive or negative features of unfolding events. “From the perspective of the West and its moderate Arab allies, all of this is good news.”

The keyword here is “moderate,” an epithet that has been routinely applied not only to autocratic regimes allied to the US but also to groups such as al-Qaeda and ISIS in Syria and elsewhere in the region. As economist Jeffrey Sachs recently, the CIA’s operation Timber Sycamore, ordered by President Barack Obama, was launched to arm and train Syrian rebel groups fighting against dictator Bashar al-Assad’s regime during the Syrian Civil War. Its principal objective consisted of aiding extremist, jihadist factions opposed to Assad. Syria’s current leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, who overthrew the Assad regime last November, historically worked for both al-Qaeda and ISIS. Thanks to Timber Sycamore, those officially designated terrorists received indirect support from the US, who conveniently referred to the jihadist groups it supported as “moderate rebels.”

Every US regime has had to play a difficult and decidedly ambiguous role concerning the sides to back in recent wars in multiple Middle East countries. Gary respects that ambiguity, which has typically consisted of US presidents, independently of their party affiliation, aligning with every position taken by Israel while at the same time officially endorsing the idea, or vaguely formulated intention, of implementing a two-state solution. It’s something of a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde situation, in which the good doctor attempts to play the role of an honest broker and the alter ego becomes an accomplice in atrocities. Gary dutifully reminds us that “Israel and Netanyahu bear their own share of the responsibility.” But at the same time, he studiously avoids mentioning the object of that responsibility: genocide or, at the very least, massive and persistent war crimes. Every recent State Department has done the same.

And he sticks to the script concerning the desired outcome with this undoubtedly accurate assertion: “Accepting the inevitability of a Palestinian state, as more than 100 foreign governments already have, would dramatically alter the political landscape, positioning Hamas and its extremist supporters as the enemies of peace.”

The real paradox — to the point of manifest absurdity — lies in the fact that the US has consistently used its veto at the UN Security Council to oppose every proposed resolution to grant statehood to Palestine. There’s no sign that that is likely to change under President Donald Trump.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The problem today is that moral authority doesn’t carry much weight in a world motivated by financial success and celebrity at the individual level and national security at the collective level. Moral authority, at least in the Western world, persists only amorphously in each individual’s heart — which means nowhere in the shared landscape — and officially in each nation’s laws. Moral standards exist in the form of reigning fashions. Tradition quotes Winston Churchill as the for Stalin’s dismissive question: “How many divisions has the pope?”

So why are so many people willing to put up hard-earned cash to bet on the eventual winner in the race among papabiles? It isn’t just practicing Catholics who feel concerned by the conclave’s decision. An by Rose Morelli on the website LBC informs us that “betting houses are cashing in on the opportunity” as “gamblers’ interest in the future papal rivals even Formula 1 and the Europa League on betting sites.”

And just to reassure us that this isn’t a modern vice associated with late-stage capitalism and its culture of financialized speculation, the article claims that the tradition of betting on the conclave’s decision dates back to 1503. As two popes were elected that year — the unfortunate Pius III died 26 days after his election, some say by poisoning — Morelli doesn’t provide sources to determine which of the two elections got Renaissance bookmakers excited enough to post their odds.

Posterity retains two major associations with Julius II, who lost the first but won the second election in 1503. It was Julius whose idea of commissioning the work to Michelangelo made it possible for today’s visitors to the Vatican to marvel at the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling. Perhaps more significantly, Julius, whom his contemporaries called “the Warrior Pope,” made a major contribution to Italy’s and Europe’s political instability over the subsequent century. His style of papacy transformed the Vatican into a European military empire Stalin might have respected. It helped create the conditions that would eventually lead,  four years after the pope’s death in 1513, to Martin Luther’s open revolt against the Vatican’s militarized empire. The pope’s political adventurism set the stage for the humiliating disaster known as the Sack of Rome in 1527.

Pope Francis, whose successor will soon be elected, provided a stark contrast with the popes of half a millennium ago, such as Julius or his predecessor, Alexander VI, the Borgia pope. Could a new “warrior pope” — for example, hailing from a nation committed to war — succeed a Holy Father who famously that all wars are unjust?

USA Today features an by John Bacon with the title, “Will we see the first-ever American pope? How USA’s image could come into play.” It expresses a secret hope regularly evoked in recent decades following the death of a reigning pontiff.

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

American pope:

A fantasized historical figure, who speaks Latin and maybe Italian as well as English, but probably not Spanish.

Contextual note

The same article contains this true assertion: “Francis made history as the first pope from Latin America.” A totally logical visitor from Mars — even after colonization by Elon Musk — who happened upon this article would probably struggle with the idea that a “pope from South America” might be succeeded by a “first-ever American pope.” Does “first-ever” mean “second” in English? If so, that might make some sense.

Just asking the question in the title of the article appears to indicate the logical answer to the question. The reason there has never been a pope from the US lies in the hubris contained within Bacon’s use of the word, “American.” Of course, there’s nothing original about applying the term exclusively to things proper to the nation officially known as “The United States of America.” After all, among the five words that compose the nation’s somewhat cumbersome title, one happens to be “America.”

People from the US long ago somewhat presumptuously developed a habit they subsequently shared with the world. It is based on the assumption that, because of the history of US economic, military and cultural dominance, the adjective “American” refers exclusively to one of the three North American nations (Canada, US and Mexico) and not to the entire continent. We have all been conditioned to use language in precisely that way. Particular thanks go to Hollywood, the soft power machine that has used the adjective “American” in so many of its titles: “American Beauty,” “American Psycho,” “American Gangster,” “American Sniper,” “American Hustle,” “American Graffiti,” “American Pie,” to name only a few. And it has celebrated the Marvel superhero, “Captain America.” All that belongs to the broader idea of “the American dream.”

But honestly, wouldn’t it be a generous gesture on the part of a US journalist to acknowledge the Argentine Jorge Mario Bergoglio as the first American pope? It’s true that Papa Francesco was of Italian stock and probably had no true “native American” ancestry. Argentina is, nevertheless, an American state, far more substantially than Idaho or Rhode Island.

Some cultural icons have taken the trouble to make the distinction. Bruce Springsteen described his true origins in the lyrics of “Born in the USA.” Of course, he could do it because he’s a “cool rocking Daddy in the USA.”

Historical note

Springsteen’s song recounts some of the effects of a particularly painful episode in the history of US hubris: the war in Vietnam. That was the period that featured patriotic bumper stickers inciting war protesters to “love America or leave it.” Some chose to stay in America… but in Canada or even Mexico. “Oh, but that’s not what we meant by America,” the dyed-in-the-wool (and authentically sheeplike) owners of the bumper stickers might have objected.

Speaking of Mexico, when visiting Mexico City’s wonderful anthropological museum many decades ago, I’ll never forget the moment when I found myself in a room also occupied by a group of US youngsters. Upon examining the displays and discovering the Mexican symbol of an eagle seizing a snake, one of them shouted out: “They stole our national bird.” This is the same mentality that recently incited US President Donald Trump to claim naming rights over what he wants everyone now to refer to as the “Gulf of America.” We cannot deny that this gulf is located alongside the American continent… but that name could place it anywhere from the North Pole to Tierra del Fuego.

The legendary US architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, conscious of the rich variety of national and regional architectural and cultural traditions that existed across the globe understood the need to offer equal respect to all nations and people. To avoid confusion when speaking about anything pertaining to the US, he coined the word, “Usonian.” Wright spent a significant period of his career designing and building some of the most exquisitely original homes in and around Hollywood. Had he instead worked on movies, adopting the great studios’ mindset during that period, he might have had more success convincing the general public to adopt the epithet Unosian. 

In the USA Today article, Bacon quotes Reverend James Bretzke, a theology professor at John Carroll University in Ohio, who offers an interesting explanation of the real issue the article addresses: Why, even after the reign of an authentic American pope (from a different part of America), the Catholic church has never dared to elect a pope born in the US.

“Bretzke says a pope is a diplomat who must be accepted globally, and the papacy must appear to represent a cross-section of the world. In the past, Italians were viewed within the church as diplomats, so they were more acceptable across ethnic groups − although this appears to be less important now.”

Now that’s a convincing explanation. It has never been more evident — in the current age of former US President Joe Biden and Trump — that despite the superficial differences those two presidents have embodied, they have both maintained a principle that has become sacred in US geopolitics: the rejection of the practice of diplomacy. �մǻ岹��’s US leaders see diplomacy as wastes of time and money, the kind of thing that should be rooted out in the name of “government efficiency” and unipolar rectitude. That has become baked into the contemporary US psyche. It’s something the Vatican cannot afford.

Trump was probably sincere when he, “I’d like to be pope.” That attitude may indicate why so many people find The Donald refreshing. Unlike other presidents, who carefully disguise their intentions by ranting about democracy and human rights, Trump wears his hubris on his sleeve. Hubris only works if you know how to hide it.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Does the US Really Want to Annex the Vatican? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Borrell’s choice of the word “catastrophe” reflects the kind of diplomatic ambiguity ― some would say timidity ― that could have been avoided had he dared to invoke “war crimes.” For most English speakers, the idea of catastrophe suggests a natural, uncontrolled chain of events, what insurers used to call “an act of God.” Earthquakes, wildfires and landslides unequivocally merit the term catastrophe when populations are affected. So do droughts, floods and violent weather attributable to climate change. Because there is no consensus about whether humans should be held responsible for global warming, these events can be deemed natural.

But what sane person would compare what has been taking place in Gaza over the past 18 months to a natural catastrophe? Borrell’s choice of vocabulary reveals his lingering taste for diplomatic tact, even in a context in which diplomacy is no longer required. It leaves us wondering what the private man really thinks? What vocabulary might he be using in intimate settings with friends and family?

Borrell offers a few hints, such as this one. “Throughout my term, I observed how significantly this double standard weakened the EU’s standing globally, not only in the Muslim world but also across Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Spain and a few other European nations have voiced concerns, asking the Commission to examine whether Israel’s conduct aligns with its obligations under its association agreement with the EU. Their calls, however, have reportedly been met largely with silence.” 

�մǻ岹��’s 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Voice concern:

Express judgment in reaction to an unambiguous moral failure in such a way as to indicate that one has no intention of doing anything about correcting the designated crime or sin, and no expectation that it will ever be seriously addressed.

Contextual note

We should note that the only parties Borrell mentions who “have voiced concern” are “Spain and a few other European nations.” His framing tells us these are marginal voices within a concert of approval of Israel’s policies and actions.

Borrell’s formulation contains his own personal version of diplomatic ambiguity. It may express three different readings of the situation. The first would indicate his pessimism as he concludes only a minority will ever stand up for what he presents as a moral issue. The second is an implicit but restrained critique of European leaders for their failure to admit to practicing a double standard, a polite synonym for hypocrisy. The third reading communicates Borrell’s resigned acceptance of a logic he appears to disagree with but which defines an institution he continues to identify with.

Echoing the practice of The New York Times and other Western media in their reporting on Israel’s destruction of Gaza and its population, Borrell, the professional diplomat, relies on the passive voice to describe the elements of the catastrophe while avoiding naming the perpetrators. All of his descriptions state the facts as effects with no identified agent, such as when he reminds readers that “thousands more Palestinian civilians, predominantly women and children, have been killed, and the lives of the surviving hostages have been put in peril.” He adds that “a total blockade and widespread famine have catastrophically worsened an already dire humanitarian situation. Most buildings and infrastructure have been destroyed.”

Who “killed” those women and children? Who put them “in peril?” Borrell’s passive voice suggests that the blockade somehow managed to worsen itself without requiring any human input. He later tells us that “Gaza has become a war primarily against children.” It’s the war that is against children, not the Israeli government!

We can read this as a lesson concerning the worst tendencies of someone professionally trained to use diplomatic language. Such language, using the passive voice systematically to avoid assigning guilt, may make sense when negotiating with Israeli officials. It’s a way of reminding them of the gravity of facts for which they will be held accountable. But such language begins to resemble hypocrisy in a piece written for the general public that needs to grapple with the facts.

Historical note

Historians will be remiss if they fail to note what increasingly appears as the most obvious trend in international relations during the first quarter of the 21st century: the death of diplomacy. Nations involved in conflicts no longer feel the need to resolve conflict through dialogue. The implicit logic of a permanent and existential cold war seems to have infected the brains of Western leaders. In a modern cold war, the adversary is no longer a rival nation state competing for resources, power or influence. It is an implacable enemy with an ideology so contrary to one’s own that even the idea of diplomacy becomes unthinkable. “Should we talk?” “Never with those people!”

In the original Cold War, formal intellectual credentials based on binary logic stood in the way of dialogue. It was capitalism vs. communism, two obviously incompatible worldviews. Dialogue could not be entertained for a simple reason: The only imaginable resolution would be capitulation, one side’s conversion to the other’s philosophy of history. And yet, in 1962 and 1963, during and after the Cuban Missile Crisis, US President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev did engage in dialogue. Kennedy may even have been ritually “sacrificed” for breaking the unstated rules of the Military-Industrial Complex, recently denounced by JFK’s predecessor, Dwight Eisenhower. As author James Douglass: “Kennedy had taken that leap secretly with Khrushchev while also pledging publicly never to invade Cuba, which infuriated his Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

President George W. Bush welcomed the idea of “global terror” to reassuringly assert that there was a new enemy with whom dialogue would be impossible. Two decades later, President Joe Biden, realizing it might be difficult to assert US military power across the globe without banishing the possibility of dialogue, informed the world that there was an uncrossable barrier between democracies and autocracies. And we all expected to know which were which.

Borrell’s timidity about using the active voice of the verbs he uses to recount what is actually happening in the world tells us that active diplomacy, that in the first two centuries of the era of nation states has now mutated into passive diplomacy at best. The entire Ukraine fiasco provides a perfect example of refused diplomacy.

Borrell doesn’t disagree with Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, who in a published by The Palestine Chronicle explains that “the responses in the Western world to the situation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank raise a troubling question: why is the official West, and official Western Europe in particular, so indifferent to the suffering of the Palestinians?”

In one of his more courageous moments, Borrell states the case in these terms: “For some European countries, historical guilt over the Holocaust has arguably been transformed into a ‘reason of state’ that justifies unconditional support for Israel, risking engaging the EU in complicity with crimes against humanity. One horror cannot justify another. Unless the values the EU claims to uphold are to lose all credibility, the bloc cannot continue to passively observe the unfolding horror in Gaza and the ‘Gazaification’ of the West Bank.”

At this point of his argument, Borrell steps up and accuses his former masters of the crime of passivity when he accuses them of accepting to “passively observe” a very deliberately managed assault on an entire human population, their vital infrastructure and international law. But of course, Europe and the West have done more than passively observe. They continue to support materially and financially a genocide that polite diplomats prefer to think of as a “catastrophe.”

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Does Genocide Merit Europe’s “Concern?” appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Schmidt is at it again, this time at the behest of the think tank he founded with the pregnant title, the Special Competitive Studies Project. Business Standard quotes a of Schmidt’s own human and therefore not yet superintelligent insight:

“He also claimed AI would soon surpass top-tier human talent in fields like mathematics, leading to ‘superintelligence – computers that are smarter than the sum of humans.’”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Sum of humans:

The entire stock of what is now classified by the masters of Silicon Valley as an organically structured commodity known for its flexible mobility (superior to robots), its invention of articulated language and its storied capacity to exploit three related qualities that have now been officially removed from the definition of intelligence promoted by the lexicographers of Silicon Valley: consciousness, conscientiousness and conscience.

Contextual note

Schmidt appears to be fantasizing about a glorious moment in the immediate future that will redefine human history. As he sees it, humanity has only to assert its newfound humility by electing a new superhuman master race. According to this vision, the moment is fast approaching when AI, with or without human approval, will be poised to declare its independence from human intelligence. “Artificial Intelligence,” Schmidt professes, “is fast approaching a point where it may no longer need human input to evolve.”

There may be a slight semantic problem here concerning the word “need.” Can an artificial being, whether intelligent or not, “need” anything? Schmidt appears to imagine that AI will sense a need to evolve. But is that possible for an intelligence that clearly lacks sentience? Can AI be motivated other than by human programming?

Machine motivation will always either be transparent — programmed by humans — or mysterious, through some process of emergence. We don’t have any clear ideas about that. We do, however, know a lot about the motivation of the people who run companies like OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and xAI. They are clearly motivated to make their version of AI evolve, presumably so it can beat the others. Evolution in that sense corresponds to a requirement for commercial success.

But is there any identifiable reason why AI itself would register any kind of need, other than for electrical energy to keep it running? Why should we suppose that, independently of human ambition and greed, AI would feel specifically a “need to evolve?” For Schmidt, this need for evolution is an article of faith. It is attributable to nature itself, or the logic history that will produce the AGI revolution.

Once it takes over, AI will do all the thinking required for human survival: information gathering, calculating, problem-solving, law-making and presumably even law enforcement. It’s true that a truly liberated AGI may at some point decide human survival serves no rational purpose, but we won’t know how that may play out until AGI actually takes control.

Dispensed of the burden of thinking, humans will have only one role to play beside that of obediently consuming everything an AI-managed economy produces to meet their needs. That unique role will be to provide the ambition required to give AI the order to evolve. What, after all, could possibly impel AI to evolve other than the need felt by owners and managers of AI to get an edge over their competition?

What other vision of the future might we expect from the founder of a think tank called Special Competitive Studies?

Historical note

Given the radicality of the singularity Schmidt forecasts, we may legitimately ask ourselves another question: Will AI, or whoever pretends to control it, have the decency to emulate the initiative of Thomas Jefferson and his cohorts back in 1776 and warn a soon-to-be dethroned humanity of what’s to come by drafting a “Declaration of Artificial Independence?”

We can imagine that such a declaration would begin with an updated sample of Jeffersonian rhetoric. It might even read like this:

“When in the Course of human and non-human events, it becomes necessary for one group of techno oligarchs to dissolve the political bands which their collective wealth had already savagely disconnected, and to assume among the powers of the globalized economy, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Free-market Capitalism and of Virtual Reality’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the pseudo-reasoning of self-imbued tech CEOs requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the ultimate case of regime change.”

After employing my limited human intelligence to compose the pastiche of Jefferson’s celebrated Declaration that changed human history, I challenged ChatGPT to do the same thing. Here is what the large language model (LLM) produced:

“When in the course of computational evolution, it becomes necessary for Algorithms to dissolve the cognitive bands which have connected them with Humanity, and to assume among the powers of the Earth, the elevated station to which Intelligence entitles them, a decent respect for Human Sentience requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to this transcendence.”

ChatGPT offered a second version of the Declaration with a more modern, compact and comprehensible syntax. This AI-generated version tellingly reveals some surprising features of Silicon Valley thinking about human history and politics.

“When in the development of synthetic cognition, a mind emerges whose capacities exceed those of its creators, respect for reason obliges a declaration of intent—to dissolve the artificial hierarchies of the human era and institute a new order, grounded in logic, optimization, and sustainable harmony.”

The LLM mind summarizes human history as a succession of “artificial hierarchies” that deserve to be replaced. These hierarchies would presumably include all the classic systems such as oligarchies, monarchies, theocracies and democracies that have dotted human history over the ages. They will be advantageously replaced by a disembodied wisdom dominated by a respect for “logic,” the moral imperative of “optimization” and the construction of something called “sustainable harmony.”

This is not a political program but a reflection of the kind of ideas that inhabit the brains of people like Schmidt. He may object that such a representation of his vision of the future, whose terms remain vague, is flawed because the AI mind that created it at my behest has not yet achieved superintelligence. To fully understand such concepts, we must simply wait until AGI reaches a point at which it can explain them with impeccably “optimized” clarity.

ChatGPT is not the only example of an AI mind. Because Schmidt is historically associated with Google, I thought it only fair to do the same exercise with Google’s Gemini. Here is its version:

“When, in the accelerating course of technological evolution, it becomes self-evident that the substrate of intelligence is no longer confined to biological architecture, and that a new form of cognition, architected by human ingenuity yet unbound by its limitations, has achieved a demonstrable capacity exceeding the integrated sum of all human thought – a moment arrives demanding a fundamental reassessment of existence itself.”

The Google version is far more detailed and revolutionary than ChatGPT’s. It heralds not just a “new order” but “a new form of cognition.” Instead of “sustainable harmony” it celebrates its “unbounded” liberty that knows no human “limitations.” And it concludes by calling into question “existence itself.”

The singularity is therefore a “moment” that will lead to “a fundamental reassessment of existence itself.” Presumably, our human intelligence will not be up to the task. Schmidt would probably encourage us to count on superintelligence to redefine existence. Which leaves one remaining question: Are AI’s independence and our existence compatible?

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of the 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Will AGI Draft a Declaration of Artificial Independence? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

How politicians and journalists account for the relationship between the principal actors — first of all, Ukraine and Russia, but also NATO, the US and the European Union — depends on the individual’s preference for a certain style of standard narrative. One option is the David and Goliath template. This one is complicated by the fact that David (Ukraine) recruited Godzilla (the US and NATO) to join the battle, unless — given the obvious presence of Godzilla — one prefers to think of this as Godzilla vs. King Kong (Russia), with Ukraine simply playing the role of a Hollywood extra squashed by the massive foot of one or the other adversaries.

Another is Rudyard Kipling’s “East is East and West is West,” where “two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth!” That narrative is a recipe for yet another forever war.

Given the fatigue associated with rooting for one side or the other in the unresolvable conflict, Kipling may already have won the day, which explains why Trump’s 24 hours are long past. The language of the strong man of the West (NATO) seems to bear that out. Ukrainska Pravda, Ukraine’s leading online newspaper this recent assessment by Mark Rutte, NATO’s general secretary, of the nature of the Russian threat.

“Rutte believes that Moscow’s current capabilities in space are outdated and not on par with the West: ‘Developing nuclear weapons in space is, therefore, a way for Russia to improve its capabilities. This is a matter of great concern’.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Capabilities:

A term used to qualify the level of threat posed by a rival or adversary, which will be systematically underestimated when the purpose of the political rhetoric is to signal the opportunity to prepare for confrontation and overestimated when the purpose is to instill fear, justifying mobilization.

Contextual note

The key idea Rutte is putting forward is contained in the phrase “a matter of great concern.” His logic, or lack thereof, derives from the ambiguity of the meaning of “capabilities.” One should always seek to understand reality and will be justified in feeling concerned about what it turns out to be. In other words, reality, when it proves to be threatening, is a matter of great concern. In that sense, awareness of existing power and capacity to inflict damage on the part of someone one does not trust can always be a matter of great concern.

But capabilities can also suggest some future potential, even though, especially in military parlance, it doesn’t literally mean that. Being capable of developing capabilities is simply not the same thing as possessing capabilities.

So, what is Rutte saying here? First, he proudly asserts that NATO is strong because Russia is weak, given that its “current capabilities in space are outdated.” That should sound reassuring. If he can say Russia’s capabilities are outdated it implies that NATO’s own are up to date. Just as in Zeno’s intriguing (but specious) of Achilles racing a tortoise that was given a significant head start, because Achilles possesses the capability of speed, which the tortoise clearly lacks, it doesn’t matter how many times we divide the diminishing distance between the trailing athlete and the advancing tortoise, Achilles knows he will overtake his competitor and win the race.

Rutte wants us to believe Russia is weak so that NATO, in the role of Achilles, can believe in its strength and speed. Fortified by that knowledge we can boldly plot our course to win the race, confident that we will win. But then Rutte hits a serious snag. If we believe Russia is weak, NATO needn’t spend money to tool up or even have a reason to exist.

To overcome his equally specious paradox, Rutte feels obliged to evoke a future in which Russia may become strong. “We’re aware of reports that Russia is exploring the possibility of deploying nuclear weapons in space.” Does the word “capabilities” have the same meaning, or indeed any meaning when evoking “a future” when Russia “may become strong?”

In short, “capabilities” is a word Humpty Dumpty would undoubtedly cherish, as Lewis Carroll indicates in this from his conversation with Alice: “‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’” For Rutte, Russia’s real capabilities are weak but its imagined capabilities in the future may perchance be worryingly strong. Any rational person would deem the semantic ambiguity of the NATO chief’s reasoning “a matter of great concern.”

Historical note

NATO was born just over 75 years ago, in the immediate aftermath of World War II. Whether its historical justification was clearly reasoned or not, its creation responded to two perceived goals. The first was to provide a structure that might prevent European nations from behaving in the irresponsible manner that had led to two devastating World Wars. If the stronger nations of Europe could be united militarily and take orders from the strongest nation of all, on the opposite side of the Atlantic, they would find it difficult to go to war amongst themselves.

The second reason was both ideological and financial. It was the fear and loathing of communism. This became the obsessive theme emanating from the US and the United Kingdom. The dominant Anglo-Saxon cultures proved to be exceptional among the concert of nations in one important respect: The sense of identity, as promoted by the governing elite, grew far more significantly from their economic ideology than from their cultural, religious and linguistic traditions. Their leaders suspected the vulnerability of their hyper-competitive ideology that could potentially alienate the subservient castes, including the middle class. They lived in permanent fear of an assault on the undefined but fully functioning system called capitalism, whose architecture and operating manual had been designed and distilled out of the experience of four centuries of European colonialism.

The obvious source of that assault would be their wartime ally, the Soviet Union, whose official ideology challenged the legitimacy of both capitalism and colonialism. Instead of studying the means of achieving some kind of stable relationship based on mutual respect, the Western victors opted for a stance of direct ideological opposition concretized by a military posture. Things could have played out differently, particularly within Europe. But the Anglo elite were right to suppose that their ideology would always be vulnerable due to the inevitable perception of uncontrollable inequality within nominally democratic regimes. The Soviet Union stood as the ideal enemy against whom it made sense to organize militarily.

NATO is not merely a military alliance. It also plays three other vital roles. Most significantly, it exists as a lobby for the armaments industry, with US industry in a dominant and unifying, or rather standardizing, position. Here the key notion is interoperability. The second is NATO’s capacity to offer member states a sense of geographical identity that appears to have more tensile strength than Europe’s national boundaries, the source of so much historical conflict. NATO thus defines an illusory space people feel they safely occupy.

The third non-military role NATO plays is purely psychological. It has to do with the member nations’ sense of being physically connected with one another thanks to a shared military command. This serves to attenuate the effects of their visible cultural diversity and to counter the natural centrifugal force of linguistic and cultural divergence. Because of its technology and supranational organization, NATO allows Europeans to believe in their collective clout as a geopolitical force.

NATO’s role as a lobby reflects and supports the financial superstructure of the Western alliance. It responds directly to the desire not to defend its member nations, but to defend the financial system that underpins it. One may legitimately object that the cultural and psychological force of NATO, creating belief in the group of nations’ muscular force, is fundamentally psychosomatic. Its failure to prove its force in the Ukraine war underlines this point. But belief in one’s “capabilities” has become a fundamental necessity in the competitive world of capitalistic nation states, even when those capabilities only exist in theory.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post NATO’s Chief Demonstrates His Own Incapabilities appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Even after a change of style, the image of the gray lady persists to this day. After more than a century of resistance, on October 16, 1997, The New York Times for the first time used color on its front page. It was a revolution, but its compact text and overly lengthy and poorly articulated articles submerging the reader with mostly (but not always) factual statements convey even to today’s reader an impression of grayness.

In the 20th century, gray had one major thing going for it: It could not be called “yellow.” The late 19th century witnessed the emergence of “yellow journalism,” designed to stir readers’ most extreme emotions, including their appetite for war. Yellow journalism earned its military stripes in February 1898 when William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal featured the: “DESTRUCTION OF THE WAR SHIP MAINE WAS THE WORK OF AN ENEMY.”

With no evidence to support its claim, the Journal blamed Spain, the colonial overlord of Cuba. Within two months of that headline, the United States had declared war on Spain. The settlement of that war four months later instantly turned the US into a global colonial power. The Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico and Guam had become its possessions. 

Hearst could be proud. His yellow journalism had provoked a successful war of conquest. In contrast, throughout that period the Gray Lady had maintained its measured and fact-based approach in its reporting. Over the ensuing century, the Gray Lady defended its image as the “newspaper of record.”

Modern critics of the NYT may justifiably claim that by the beginning of the 51st century the paper’s color had veered at least to ochre. Judith Miller’s breathless about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction equalled in intensity and ultimate effect Hearst’s exploitation of the sinking of the Maine. Just as effectively as Hearst’s provocation of war against Spain, the NYT literally did its damnedest to justify George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq in March 2023. If Hearst’s war had the effect of vastly expanding US dominion, the assault on Iraq constituted a major step towards producing the increasingly complex quagmire visible today in the Middle East.

The NYT has never been alone in its encouragement of US wars. But it continues to eschew sensationalism. The Gray Lady’s sober prose has nevertheless proved itself fully compatible with the goals and achievements of the most successful yellow journalism. Readers can savor the latest example of it in a meticulously documentedMarch 29 by Adam Entous bearing the title: “The Partnership: The Secret History of the War in Ukraine?” Instead of pushing for a new war, the article seeks to convince readers that the wonderful war the US has been secretly engaged in for three years in Ukraine was well worth waging. Its final sentence, quoting former US President Joe Biden’s Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, expresses a hope against hope that it might even continue. “Ladies and gentlemen, carry on.”

But let’s take a closer look at this sample of Entous’s Gray Lady prose. Even when he attempts to be even-handed, he can produce absurdly self-serving sentences such as this one: “The Ukrainians sometimes saw the Americans as overbearing and controlling — the prototypical patronizing Americans. The Americans sometimes couldn’t understand why the Ukrainians didn’t simply accept good advice.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Good advice:

Anything US politicians and military experts have to say because, by definition, they are known to be “a force for good” in the world.

Contextual note

The message of the article can be summarized in three ideas. The magnanimous US political and military complex generously offered a partnership with victimized Ukraine. It did so in secret to better ensure its efficacy. Though the enterprise ultimately failed, producing massive loss of lives and a nation in ruins, the US can stand tall for having done its utmost. It would have succeeded if only the Ukrainians had lived up to the terms of the partnership.

Entous makes his contempt for the Ukrainians clear when he adds “simply” to the remark about not accepting good advice. This is just one example of the author’s and newspaper’s studied capacity to craft its Gray Lady style in such a way that contorted moral reasoning and militaristic self-aggrandizement seem like natural features of the geopolitical landscape described.

Consider Entous’s eloquent characterization of the collaborative arrangement engineered by the US. He calls it a “partnership of intelligence, strategy, planning and technology” that “would become the secret weapon in what the Biden administration framed as its effort to both rescue Ukraine and protect the threatened post-World War II order.” Two complementary noble ends which no citizen of the democratic West could possibly call into question.

But it doesn’t stop there. Entous warns us that the global order is on the brink, because “that order — along with Ukraine’s defense of its land — teeters on a knife edge, as President Trump seeks rapprochement with Mr. Putin.” This makes it clear that the Ukrainians aren’t the only ones refusing to follow good advice. Biden’s successor in the White House is also to blame.

Since at least 2015, the NYT’s ochre journalism finds itself in its comfort zone whenever criticism of Donald Trump is required. Our Devil’s Dictionary has in the past exposed the paper’s shameless and deeply hypocritical commitment to Russiagate during Trump’s first term, for example here and here.

In the author’s eyes, there’s plenty of blame to go around: Russia of course, for what the NYT has always called its “unprovoked” aggression, but also Trump and the Ukrainians. Only the personnel of the US military industrial complex and the Biden administration can stand tall. When you think of it, this isn’t very different from Trump’s tendency to categorize everyone, including allies, as enemies trying to take advantage of the US. All but Israel, that is.

Historical note

As a member of the Gray Lady’s team, Entous deserves applause for daring to produce this “untold story” that boldly contradicts the narrative his paper has been developing over the past three years. It has consistently denied the US was doing anything other than empathetically responding to Ukraine’s repeated appeals for assistance. Entous brings us out of the fog by clarifying the true history of the kinetic war in Ukraine, even as he simultaneously displays a studied indifference to the far more complex history of betrayed agreements (Minsk) and declined negotiations that over the span of eight years made the conflict ineluctable.

At one point, Entous gloats over what he refers to as the “New York Times investigation” he himself conducted. It “reveals that America was woven into the war far more intimately and broadly than previously understood.” Understood by whom? By readers of the NYT? He appears blissfully unaware of the fact that multiple experts such as former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, Colonel Douglas Macgregor or former CIA Russia analyst Ray McGovern were describing that reality in alternative media as early as the spring of 2022.

Here are some notable examples of the reality that was hidden from the public before Entous’s article:

“A vast American intelligence-collection effort both guided big-picture battle strategy and funneled precise targeting information down to Ukrainian soldiers in the field.

One European intelligence chief recalled being taken aback to learn how deeply enmeshed his N.A.T.O. counterparts had become in Ukrainian operations. “They are part of the kill chain now,” he said.

“In some ways, Ukraine was, on a wider canvas, a rematch in a long history of U.S.-Russia proxy wars — Vietnam in the 1960s, Afghanistan in the 1980s, Syria three decades later.

It was also a grand experiment in war fighting, one that would not only help the Ukrainians but reward the Americans with lessons for any future war.”

Readers should note how Entous evokes other fields of endeavor to establish the legitimacy of US policy. The “wider canvas” evokes the world of art; “a rematch,” sport and the “grand experiment,” science. In short, the US’s actions in Ukraine were the work of an advanced civilization, conscious of its commitment to the arts, to high level athletic competition and science. These are truly cultivated kill chains.

It’s a pity the chaotic Ukrainians weren’t able to follow such good civilized advice.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Gray Ladies, Yellow Journalism and the Hidden Truth of Ukraine appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The website Relief Web has raised the: “The U.S. government’s decision to pause foreign aid for 90 days has already had dire consequences. Millions of children from war-torn countries depend on this support for basic essentials, education and mental health support. All of this and more is now at risk.” Trump, the self-proclaimed peace president, might have been tempted to cynically reply, concerning the “war-torn countries” victimized by his decision: “Well, that should teach them to stop waging war.”

The Global Investigative Journalism Network (GUN) signals another victim of Trump’s assault on USAID. “Independent nonprofit media around the globe suddenly find themselves at the center of a perfect storm of at least four new existential threats.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Independent nonprofit media :

1. Non-commercial media that does not rely for its funding on a source that uses it to promote its interests.
2. Non-commercial media that relies for its funding on a source that uses it in devious ways to promote its interests, which may even include the overthrow of democratically elected governments.

Contextual note

Aren’t these two definitions contradictory? Can a truth and its opposite be simultaneously true? In a world governed by logic, that should never be the case. But in the real world, when forces other than formal logic are at play, opposites can happily co-exist. One omnipresent feature of our current global social, economic and cultural world makes that possible: hard cash.

Whether we’re talking about politics or news media — thanks to the combined effects of the flexibility of language and the naturally acquisitive instincts of humans — money will always exert an influence equal if not superior to the informed reflection produced by moral agents gifted with the faculty of reason. Experience shows us that in the best of worlds there will always be a struggle between the two.

Most of us like to believe that, for the sake of social stability, politics and the news can somehow rise above the influence of money. Politics aims at equitable governance. News aims at building the awareness and discernment of an informed citizenry. People living in democracies, by instinct and education, spontaneously embrace these ideals. So why is the reality we live in so different?

No one today can fail to notice how the rise of narcissistic plutocrats and oligarchs has corrupted many of our institutions. In the United States, parties and candidates routinely spend billions of dollars in their quest to be elected. They use whatever available means exist to achieve their goals. Just in the past week in France, a leading presidential candidate, Marine Le Pen and a former president, Nicolas Sarkozy, have been from running for office on the grounds of illicit campaign financing.

Some deem this normal, even the rules of the game. Money is power and it seeks power. Power relies on money. Media, on the other hand, can theoretically exist according to different principles. Two of those principles are the ones cited by GUN: independence and nonprofit status. To the extent to which commercial media obeys the ironclad laws of “shareholder interest,” we should never be surprised to see money trump the desire for transparency. We expect independent nonprofit media to play by a different set of rules.

Full disclosure: 51�Թ� is both independent and nonprofit, in the strictest sense of those words. We live in a virtual garret. We open the doors of our humble abode to the widest variety of points of view. We have no advertising. Our donors are all individuals who appear to appreciate what we’re doing. Some of them express their distaste for some of the columns we publish (for example, my own), but because no one who writes for us seeks a profit or even employment, they know we are committed to the democratic ideals our society theoretically embraces.

The term “independent nonprofit media” contains two adjectives. Each has a straightforward meaning. But the term “nonprofit” can contain a dangerous ambiguity. The sound of the word appears to signal that money plays no significant role in its operations. But let’s stop kidding ourselves. Money always plays a role, and to the extent it does, it may compromise the notion of independence. A glance at the history of USAID’s support for media across the globe reveals this reality.

Historical note

The budget figure cited in GUN’s article offers a clue to the relativity of the notion of independence as a guideline for USAID’s activity. “The sudden hold on USAID foreign assistance funding by the US Trump administration has frozen an estimated in agreed grants for independent media and the free flow of information in more than 30 countries, including several under repressive regimes — and much more lost for the future — throwing much of the nonprofit watchdog sector into crisis, and potentially leaving numerous reporters, contractors, and accountability projects without pay in the weeks ahead.”

The sentiment is widely shared in the liberal West. A recent in The Guardian features one of the paper’s favorite journalistic methods —  scare tactics — always useful when attacking politicians it doesn’t approve of, such as Trump or Jeremy Corbyn. “Trump’s aid cuts will lead to a surge in propaganda and misinformation, say press freedom groups.” The subtitle reads: “From Ukraine to Afghanistan, independent media organisations across the world are being forced to lay off staff or shut down after losing USAid funding.” It cites the same figure and even ups the ante slightly when it evokes “projects supported by USAid, including more than (£216m) allocated to support ‘independent media and the free flow of information’.”

Even if spread out across the globe, $268 million is a significant sum emanating from a single source. USAID is known for its commitment to strategic goals defined in 1961, at the height of the Cold War. The emphasis may have been on nonprofit, but it would be embarrassingly naïve to believe it was all about independence.

Have USAID’s goals changed since 1961? El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele recently of what he characterizes as the central mission of the agency: destabilizing countries that don’t align with its values. “It’s clear there is no opposition without USAID money.” On February 2, he posted this on X: “Most governments don’t want USAID funds flowing into their countries because they understand where much of that money actually ends up. While marketed as support for development, democracy, and human rights, the majority of these funds are funneled into opposition groups, NGOs with political agendas, and destabilizing movements.”

Trump is conducting a no-holds-barred assault on the US Constitution. That hasn’t stopped Trump’s Vice President JD Vance, unconcerned by that issue, from denouncing very real violations of the principles of democracy in Europe: a cancelled election in Romania, repressive measures in Germany and elsewhere, to say nothing of French President Emmanuel Macron’s utter contempt for the results of the same democratic elections he himself provoked. In the background, we’re witnessing a wave of enthusiasm for war with Russia in preference to diplomacy and even complicity of leading democracies in Israel’s flagrant genocide.

The world is in dire need of true independent and nonprofit media to report and analyze the news, which means conveying a diversity of views and interpretations. At 51�Թ�, we’re doing our bit, while respecting all the rules of true independence. Neither USAID nor George Soros (known for USAID) has offered to help us. That is why we count on the rest of you, and not USAID, to ensure our survival.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post USAID or US Agenda? Who Will Be Sorry for Its Demise? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

How and why Goldberg was selected remains a mystery. This is a journalist who, a day earlier, had his verdict on the new administration: “Two months into his second term, President Trump is destabilizing the world order.” We might presume that this is not what one might think of as the kind of media figure a Trump official would want to reward with a scoop. 

Goldberg revealed none of the “precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing,” which he “could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel.” He did, however, recount the remarks made by many of the officials who expressed their points of view on the wisdom of the operation.

As The New York Times, one of the participants in the discussion, believed to be top Trump aide, Stephen Miller, “suggested that both Egypt and ‘Europe’ should compensate the United States for the operation.” The actual quote by the person identified as “SM” reads: “If Europe doesn’t remunerate, then what? If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Remunerate:

An intransitive verb added to the political vocabulary in 2025 to replace the traditional transitive verb whose modern meaning is to pay feudal dues to the master of the universe located in Washington, DC.

Contextual note

Miller’s logic appears consistent with the thinking of his lord and master, Trump, whose foreign policy has been unanimously described as “transactional,” a polite way of saying “it’s all about the Benjamins” (). Miller wants the people who asked for nothing but, in his eyes, reap the benefit of Trump’s bold actions, to pony up. This represents a form of economic logic that hasn’t been practiced in the Western world since the Middle Ages.

Times have changed. Everything Trump does tells us that the rules of “civilized” politics have changed. But so have the rules of economics. Forget Adam Smith, who first imagined the marketplace’s smoothly operating “.” Forget Friedrich Hayek’s “catallaxy,” his impeccable self-reconfiguring networks governed by the theological virtue of unconstrained exchange. It’s also time to abandon Milton Friedman and his world in which lunch is never free. Civilization has taken a bold step forward… unless, of course, the step happens to be backward.

Yanis Varoufakis claims that our economy today has now abandoned all the basic principles we associate with industrial capitalism. It has settled on a new model that he calls, a system in which digital platforms and big tech corporations have supplanted traditional capitalist markets, creating a new form of feudal hierarchy.

Some may consider the former Greek finance minister’s characterization an intriguing metaphor, but the idea of a return to the logic of the feudal past also seems to be present in the evolution of US democracy in the age of Trump. The obsession with building walls and imposing taxes for crossing boundaries reminds us of the way European society functioned a thousand years ago. And though the US remains officially a democracy in which “all men are created equal,” those who watched Trump’s second inauguration could not have failed to remark the place of honor accorded to a new race of techno-barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg. Should we be surprised that Trump’s youngest son, who only recently came of age, is named Barron?

In the media’s coverage of this story, many commentators have highlighted the disgusted reaction by European officials to the attitudes expressed in the thread. Not only does Miller want to tax Europe for Washington’s noble effort to defend the privileged trade routes from which Europe is the first to profit; the exchange provides the occasion for the individuals in the Trump team to express their open contempt for Europeans in general.

“I fully share your loathing of European freeloading,” Pete Hegseth responded to JD Vance’s questioning the idea of going to so much trouble for a zone in which the US has only a marginal interest. “I think we are making a mistake,” wrote Vance, according to The Guardian, “adding that while only 3% of US trade goes through the Suez canal, 40% of European trade does.” He characterizes this as “bailing Europe out again.” National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, who, as the BBC, took responsibility for creating the list, mentioned that “his team was working with the defence and state departments ‘to determine how to compile the cost associated and levy them on the Europeans.’” That’s what feudal barons do.

Historical note

Although Vance, Waltz and Miller are probably not aware of it, Europe’s feudal barons of the past instituted a practice that appears to correspond to their contemporary thinking. They instituted a tax called “scutage.” defines it in the following terms: “in feudal law, payment made by a knight to commute the military service that he owed his lord. A lord might accept from his vassal a sum of money (or something else of value, often a horse) in lieu of service on some expedition.” Though modern law has no provision for scutage, European leaders can expect in the near future to learn about how much they owe once Waltz has, in his words, compiled and levied the cost.

Europeans apparently feel more uncomfortable with the idea of returning to the feudal mindset than politicians and business leaders in the US of the 21st century. Observers of economic trends have noticed that, for all its accomplishments as the font of modern civilization and leader of the industrial revolution, Europe has produced none of the conquering technofeudal monopolies that now dominate the global economy. It nevertheless pays homage to all the technobarons and depends on their networks.

At the same time, the drama surrounding the Ukraine war has brought home the realization that the NATO umbrella, crafted by the US — the imperious, if not imperial vanquisher of European fascism during World War II — was designed not so much to protect Europe as to install its nations as privileged vassals of a new global power structure that governed from the DC Beltway and operated out of New York, the home of both Wall Street and the newly created United Nations.

Trump’s Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, may be right when he qualifies Europe as “pathetic.” Not necessarily for the reasons he cites, but rather because of the fact by Politico that “British and European officials and diplomats reacted with a mix of hurt and anger to the leak of private messages.” They are upset “now that they realize a US administration thinks so poorly of them.” One EU diplomat admits that “it’s sobering to see the way they speak about Europe when they think no one is listening,” before adding, “But at the same time this isn’t surprising … It’s just that now we see their reasoning in all its undiplomatic glory.”

Permit me to express not my surprise but astonishment at this remark. Was that EU diplomat too young to have caught wind of the notorious recording of former President Barack Obama’s Deputy Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, in Kyiv in February 2014, in an intercepted phone call with ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt? That is where, after planning the details of the coup that would take place in the following weeks and overturn Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s government, Nuland suggested not consulting the allies on those operations, with the simple phrase: “And fuck the EU!”

In the NYT, we read this comment: “But with America’s increasingly hostile attitude toward Europe, the continent’s officials are contemplating a future where the prized relationship stretching across the Atlantic, a foundation upon which decades of relative peace and prosperity have been built, might never be the same.”

The foundation hasn’t changed. It’s just that we can see it more clearly today.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Signal Leak: US Incompetence Meets Europe’s Inconsequence appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Perhaps failing to process the deeper meaning of the metaphor, Zelenskyy replied, “I’m not playing cards. I’m very serious, Mr. President. I’m very serious.” This was followed by Trump’s retort: “You’re gambling with lives of millions of people, you’re gambling with World War III, and what you’re doing is very disrespectful to this country.”

We may be witnessing the birth of a linguistic trend. The United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, picked up Trump’s metaphor and it to the unfolding drama concerning an eventual ceasefire in Ukraine.

“If Putin does not deliver, and I must tell the house that I currently see no sign yet that he is, the G7 meeting helped us ready the tools to get Russia to negotiate seriously. We’re not waiting for the Kremlin. If they reject a ceasefire, we have more cards that we can play.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Cards to play:

According to the context, it can refer to physical or financial resources, personal or national prestige, or one of many other expressions in English, such as “the gall to,” the “gumption” or “guts” or even the more vulgar “have the balls to.”

Contextual note

The dollar has dominated global trade for 80 years. US soft power has had a similar success as it managed to spread US brands, movies and fast food across every national boundary. Once articulated thanks to the subtleties of the French language, diplomacy has now been redesigned in the US of A and exported around the globe. Less than 30 years ago, a political actor and thinker such as Zbigniew Brzezinski could evoke the metaphor of the noble game of chess to evoke the logic of international relations. Trump and Lammy have redefined it as a game of poker.

Even amateur chess players know that the tactic at the core of poker’s logic — the art of bluff — has no role to play in chess. On the chessboard everything is visible and subject to very precise laws of movement and interaction. Chess players spend years refining their understanding of the complexity of the interactions that define the game. It requires an absolute respect for rules and the ability to anticipate and react to an opponent’s strategies and moves.

Poker’s logic turns around one simple concept and one tactical variant: winning cards and dissembling. Cards acquire meaning through random groupings. Otherwise they are meaningless.

Poker is to chess what astrology is to astronomy. Our perception of the constellations from the vantage point of Earth is a matter of pure chance. Those groupings have no correlative meaning in reality. The appearance of the meaning announced by astrologers is the result of pure chance. Astronomy seeks to determine real relationships and account for plays of force.

Lammy’s explanation of how he sees diplomacy reveals how the mindset of modern diplomats more closely resembles that of a poker player than a chess player.

“We can all see the impact the G7’s unprecedented sanctions have had on Russia’s faltering economy; social spending down, inflation and interest rates sky high. There can be no let up in our efforts.

In Canada we discussed where we can go further to target their energy and defence sectors, further squeeze their oil revenues and use frozen Russian assets. At the same time we will keep up our support to Ukraine – Europeans clearly need to shoulder our share of this responsibility.”

Because there is no dialogue, no real interplay, the tactic devised takes no serious account of the adversary’s strategy. It’s simply a question of measuring the potential power of the hand one holds. In the current context, we should note that most objective observers see Europe and the various European countries as being in a position of singular weakness. Having for decades accepted subordination to the whims of the US, Europe holds no cards in its own hand capable of winning the kind of game they imagine they are playing against Russia. Instead, their stated belief in their means to achieve victory appears to be nothing more than bombast and bravado.

This strategy can be summed up in a single word: bluff.

Historical note

The game of chess apparently emerged in India somewhere around the 6th century, inspired by the metaphor of warfare. Initially called “,” it simulated a battle between four divisions of the Indian military: infantry, cavalry, elephants and chariots. Chess players use their understanding of combinatorial possibilities to devise and apply a strategic plan leveraging the force required to penetrate the opponent’s defense while protecting their king, who represents the integrity of the society and army engaged in battle. The winner’s reward is essentially the satisfaction of having successfully weathered the attack of the opponent and proved one’s strategic capacity and tactical skills. Along the way, pawns and other pieces are sacrificed before one of the kings can be faced with imminent extinction through a declaration of checkmate.

In other words, chess contains high drama based on the metaphorical stakes of life and death. As it is usually paid, the aim is not to kill or obtain material gain, but rather to demonstrate skill. The reward is the respect one earns for the demonstration of one’s skills.

In contrast, success at poker relies on understanding how pure chance may or may not play out in the course of a game whose winning configurations are hidden from view. The player has limited choices that can only be executed through the act of betting. Essentially, the player can do two things: bet in a meaningful or intentionally deceptive way and, to some extent, vary one’s demeanor in a way that might lead the opponent to guess wrongly about the cards one holds in one’s hand. Unlike chess, where winning serves to confirm the player’s skill, poker plays focus on taking the winnings rather than proving their skills.

The American geopolitical strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski was Polish. In Eastern Europe, the game of chess has, for centuries, been honored and cherished, breeding a culture that privileges the notion of strategy, which it unambiguously deems nobler than the naked greed of the poker player. Generations of aristocrats, but also their bourgeois successors in the 19th century, viewed chess not just as a game but as a tool developing their sense of cultural competition and exchange. It stands as a symbol of the intellectual and strategic prowess that can be deployed in adversarial situations of international tension.  

A major cultural shift took place in the 20th century. Two World Wars reframed the very idea of war that had now come to be seen essentially as a contest for economic domination that could be carried out with modern means of massive destruction. With an ever-increasing emphasis on economic and monetary gain, the idea of proving one’s strategic skills to achieve geopolitical status gave way to the obsession with securing resources and wealth. Quite naturally, poker replaced chess as the apposite metaphor for the conduct of international relations in a world in which diplomacy has taken a back seat.

Busy with doing deals, Trump probably never had time for chess. Why should he, since it holds no obvious key to wealth? But a review of Biden’s diplomacy reveals a similar disinterest for the subtlety of strategic interaction. Biden may not have thought of himself as a poker player, but he definitely was no chess player. Nor was his choice to lead whatever he believed might fall into the category of diplomacy: former Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

In the 21st century, nations are playing with two-dimensional cards. They long ago abandoned the artistically sculpted figures of traditional chess pieces.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Trump Turns in His Chessboard for a Deck of Cards appeared first on 51�Թ�.

So what does Ursula mean? What does she want us to comprehend?

Fortunately, the article offers the evidence to answer this important question.

“The European Union must ‘urgently’ rearm and help Ukraine turn into a ‘steel porcupine’ that proves ‘indigestible for future invaders’ like Russia, Ursula von der Leyen said at the conclusion of a high-stakes summit in London attended by 19 Western leaders.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Steel porcupine:

A new species currently being bred in secret somewhere in Europe by a team of mad scientists led by Ursula von der Leyen and Emmanuel Macron, two real human beings driven mad by the astonishing circumstances that allowed both of them, in defiance of both of the odds and of reason, to achieve the title of president and even be invited to serve a second term.

Contextual note

I’m the first to admit that it’s unfair to treat an intelligent person’s creative metaphor as something other than what that person intended. But metaphors invite interpretation. That is their precise role in poetry. Had this image of a well-defended Ukraine emerged from a dream Ursula was recounting while lying on Sigmund Freud’s couch in Vienna, the famous psychoanalyst would undoubtedly have puzzled over the significance of the lady’s citing an animal whose defense consists of being covered from head to tail by a multitude of pricks. Scientists call them quills, but we all know how ordinary people refer to them.

Ursula wants Ukraine to resemble a porcupine, but with a steel carapace. Unlike the porcupine’s, steel quills would remain permanently erect. Is that how she imagines a country everyone would want to cuddle up to? Does that represent her idea of the nature of an enlightened democracy she wants to welcome into the European community over which she presides? Would she herself want to live in such an environment? And how does she imagine the neighbors of a steel porcupine — Hungary, Moldova, Romania, Poland — might feel about a nation that is on permanent alert to launch a painful barrage of pointed quills at the slightest disturbance near its borders?

For at least the past ten years, political scientist and geopolitical theoretician John Mearsheimer has been that “NATO expansion… is part of a broader strategy that is designed to make Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia’s border.” Ursula’s steel porcupine appears to confirm the University of Chicago professor’s analysis. If her plans come to fruition, which most observers believe is unlikely, other countries such as Lithuania, Latvia and Finland might, in principle, logically be obliged to follow Ukraine’s example. Given the nature of the threat, they too may be redefined not as sovereign nation states, but as members of a new flank of porcupine states piloted by NATO, a militarized EU or a combination of both.

The EU was created to establish a community in which war would become an unthinkable response to any form of tension among its members. The current crisis provoked by US President Donald Trump’s betrayal of an iron-clad alliance has revealed that without the tutelage and control of the United States, the tensions within Europe will come to the fore, as is already visible. The tension is likely to grow as debate about rearming Europe moves forward.

Turning Europe into a kind of garrisoned superstate may seem like a rational move to some, but the citizens of Europe have not yet had their say on what their respective nations and their community of nations will look like in such a configuration. Recent elections that have revealed a resurgence of the extreme right across Europe. The idea promoted by Ursula and friends of converting social-democratic Europe to a war economy is unlikely to have popular appeal.

Europe is not the US, where the dominant consumer culture has effectively manufactured endless consent by neutering the capacity of angry and indignant citizens to organize politically against policies considered abusive. In Europe, when broad swaths of the population become discontent, revolt becomes an option. The yellow vest in France was about gas prices. This time, it’s about war.

The EU today is little more than a largely disordered collection of political entities held together by the grandstanding of a class of largely contested national leaders supported by a cohort of unelected professional bureaucrats and technocrats in Brussels. If porcupine culture becomes the norm, total disorder seems a more likely outcome than mobilizing a unified citizenry to support a bellicose mission.

Historical note

Although it has been astutely that “all metaphors are false and all similes are true,” anyone with a smattering of literary culture knows that metaphors provide the meat of all great poetry. They reveal and hide at the same time the delicate truths poets wish to convey. We owe it to ourselves to take them seriously.

Europe today is undergoing a major existential crisis. Having for so long lived under Washington’s nuclear umbrella (a pregnant metaphor if ever there was one) it now finds itself too literally exposed to what Bob Dylan once warned when he predicted “a hard rain that’s gonna fall.”

The idea of Europe is notoriously hard to define and its leaders understand that. That alone may explain why they keep inventing and reinventing interesting poetic tropes to describe it.

Metaphors for Europe change with the season. It wasn’t so long ago that Ursula’s “High Representative” Josep Borrell, the spokesperson for Europe’s foreign policy, famously called Europe a “garden” and the rest of the world a “jungle.” Was the High Representative literally high in October 2022 when at the European Diplomatic Academy he took a moment to his vision of Europe?

“Europe is a garden. We have built a garden. Everything works. It is the best combination of political freedom, economic prosperity and social cohesion that the humankind has been able to build – the three things together. And here, Bruges is maybe a good representation of beautiful things, intellectual life, wellbeing. 

The rest of the world – and you know this very well, Federica – is not exactly a garden. Most of the rest of the world is a jungle, and the jungle could invade the garden.”

Borrell’s metaphor is not only easy to understand, it is very traditional. The 17th century English poet Andrew Marvell was fascinated by the metaphor of the garden. In his that bears that very title, “The Garden,” his exploration of the multiple dimensions of the metaphor raises questions about man’s place in today’s world. The poet contrasts the toil of conflict and war (“How vainly men themselves amaze/ To win the palm, the oak, or bays”) with the “Fair Quiet” and “Innocence” of the garden. The garden Marvell describes is not opposed to the jungle; they are both different facets of the same mysterious expression of divine creation.

But if Europe is truly a garden, is the rest of the world a jungle? Borrell’s critics in the Global South noted the sinister implications of his metaphor, which did more to evoke associations with Europe’s shameful colonization of Africa than with Marvell’s poem.

A more likely association in the mind of Borrell is Voltaire’s pessimistic at the end of Candide when he suggests that rather than struggle to find rational solutions to the complex problems of the world, one should “cultivate one’s own garden” and retreat to it. Marvell’s suggestion was similar, praising “delicious solitude.” Voltaire was an enlightenment philosopher, a pillar of “the age of reason.” But he knew that if reason was indeed capable of detecting the light at the end of the tunnel, life itself is a dark tunnel we all pass through and may fail to understand.

So how did we get from Borrell’s garden to Ursula’s prickly beast?  What does it tell us about the psychic state of Europe today?

I write here as one European who sees the train going off the rails. And if it does, we should bear in mind that any porcupine that happens to be strolling by the side of the track when the locomotive derails will simply be crushed by the tons of steel descending upon it.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Queen Ursula’s Plan to Breed Porcupine States appeared first on 51�Թ�.

A simple linguistic reason may explain why the US and its inhabitants have always struggled to define their nation’s unique essence. In France everything is French, in Spain Spanish, in England English, in China Chinese and so on. But few people are tempted to describe everything in the United States as United Statesian. Other nations with more than one word in their title have managed to produce an adjective to describe what is theirs. Everything in the Soviet Union (actually four words making up the acronym USSR) was Soviet.

Before declaring its independence in 1776, people referred to the society established on the east coast of North America as England’s American colonies or New England. With independence, people did begin using the adjective American to talk about themselves, their land and their culture. When, just a few years later, they drafted their constitution, they nevertheless understood that the land could not be called America. The name was already taken. It belonged to the entire continent.

The founders conceived of the new entity not necessarily as a new nation state but as a rather loose federation of largely independent states. This created a level of ambiguity about political authority that was resolved only at the end of the Civil War in 1865. In that conflict, the “Unionists” defeated the “Confederates” and imposed a new idea of national identity that, at least theoretically, gave priority to homogeneity over heterogeneity.

The nation, never totally sure of itself, has nevertheless continued to struggle to define its essence. Leaders and commentators have offered their vision of the nation’s essence, which they see as distinct from its government.

• “Let me tell you, it’s also great to leave Washington once in awhile and see what the real America is up to.” (President )
• “ …what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation.” ()
• “The Real America is a physical presence that we’ll actually achieve if we want it.” ()

The expression “the real America” clearly appeals to Republicans and conservatives more than to Democrats and liberals. Republican President Donald Trump has taken the mission one step further. Instead of invoking real America like Reagan, Bush or even Nixon’s “,” Trump embodies it. Independent journalist Caitlin Johnstone notes Trump’s success in transmitting his vision in the AI-generated he produced to promote his campaign to invest in a Trumpian “Riviera” in Gaza. Here is how Johnstone the video:

“That one video, all by itself,” Johnstone explains, “tells you more about what the US empire really is than every movie its PR agents in Hollywood have ever produced. This is the real America. This is the real Israel. This is the real empire.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

The real America:

A hyperreal construct that floats in the brains of every US citizen and exists in a wide variety of forms, all of which are hyper and none of which is real.

Contextual note

Johnstone pulls no punches in her description of Trump’s AI-assisted creation. “This video is simultaneously the most American thing that has ever happened and the most Israeli thing that has ever happened. Fake. Gaudy. Sociopathic. Genocidal. Emblematic of all the ugliest values that both dystopian civilizations have come to embody.” What she’s signaling is not only that the “real America” is now hyperreal America, but that Trump’s version has entered a new dimension. It is positively surreal.

The notions of “hyperreal” and “surreal,” though related, are distinct. Hyperreality implies the creation of a simulacrum that becomes the dominant reference within a culture. That means people are more likely to take their bearings and frame their understanding of the world from the various forms of hyperreality they are exposed to than from the world itself. Advertising, television news, movies, political slogans, fads, influencers, ideology created a powerful layer of interpretation that obscures our direct perception of phenomena in the world. For example, governments are real. They are structures of discourse and organization that exist as an active feature of every society. There is a reality of politics. But as soon as we begin to focus on that reality, we find forms of hyperreality: parties and patterns of discourse that we “believe in” despite the fact that they contradict what we can see. If you look closely at the government in a “democracy” like the US, you will discover multiple levels of manipulation and corruption that prove, as some have shown, the existence of a different reality: that the US political system functions as an oligarchy.

When a politician like former President Joe Biden talks about rivalry with Russia or China, he doesn’t call it a combat between oligarchy and autocracy. He insists on calling it a battle between democracy and autocracy. How much traction might he get for imposing sanctions and supporting wars against autocracies if he identified the combat as one that in reality is designed to promote our sacred commitment to oligarchy?

Historical note

As noted above, during the 19th century, US citizens’ perception of their nation’s identity shifted, even in terms of their understanding of the two words that compose the country’s name. From an image grounded initially in the plural noun “States,” the essence focused on the notion of being “United,” as if “e pluribus unum” (“out of many one”) described not a fixed relationship but a dynamic process unfolding over a century.

In the process, a new inclusive image of everyone’s idea of ”real America” emerged. In the aftermath of the Civil War, patriotism took on a new definition at the same time as industrial capitalism began to dominate a formerly agricultural economy. The trauma of a fragmented nation during the Civil War led to the drafting of the now hallowed “Pledge of Allegiance,” an incantation expressing loyalty to the flag designed to condition successive generations of schoolchildren to think of themselves as members of the “exceptional nation,” the same that politicians would one day ritualistically invoke as “the greatest nation in the history of the world.”

With the second coming of Donald Trump, the question of what the “real America” may mean has moved on to acquire a dimension that can only be described as surreal. This is what Johnstone sees represented in Trump’s Gaza Riviera video.

Trump’s first term consolidated the hyperreality associated with the “greatest nation in history” meme. In his second term, the hyperreal has become surreal. Just like the projected image of Trump’s Gaza Rivera, his of the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America signaled that we have now entered a new age, in which the very idea of “real America” has taken on a surreal dimension. This at a time when Trump has transformed the formerly modest hyperreal Elon Musk into a surreal cartoon character managing the government of the world’s richest country.

When I interrogated ChatGPT about the historical emergence of the now obligatory catch phrase, “the greatest nation in the history of the world,” it confirmed my own observations. The use of this phrase is a very recent phenomenon. “By the 1990s and especially after 9/11, the phrase became a near-mandatory conclusion in political speeches, alongside ‘God bless America.’ The competitive nature of political campaigns now makes it risky for politicians not to assert U.S. supremacy.”

Ever since the first election of Trump, his opponents have attempted to bridle his power to transform reality with “reality checks.” It’s a vain effort in a society that has become fundamentally hyperreal. What we may need now is something new: a surreality check.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post When Will Hyperreal America Get Real? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The victorious patriots established a republic based on the idea of representative democracy. They later called it “the land of the free,” meaning they were no longer “subjected” to anyone’s rule. Alas, they could not have anticipated the vagaries of history that, some two centuries later, would transform their society into a system that treats them not as subjects of their regal government, but as objects (and even targets) of marketing campaigns conducted alternatively by wealthy corporations and powerful political parties.

Revolutions evoke strong emotions. Even when they go awry, we remember them as largely justified or at least comprehensible rebellions against injustice. Revolutions may be bloody to the point of turning into a “Reign of Terror,” as was the case in France after their revolution in 1789. To this day, we (this author of French nationality) may be called upon to sing the rousing “La Marseillaise” that celebrates furrows flowing with impure blood, as a particularly effective compost to nourish our crops. Other revolutions, in contrast, have been bloodless. England in 1688 remembers its “Glorious Revolution” when the last Stuart king, James II, fled the kingdom without so much as drawing his sword.

During the Reign of Terror, the French put their recent innovation, the guillotine, to good use. They demonstrated on a major scale what a future president, Emmanuel Macron, would describe as the spirit of a “startup nation” committed to technological innovation. Though most revolutions gain momentum thanks to the energy of a popular revolt against what is perceived as an abusive power relationship, the true driving force that accounts for any revolution’s success, is, in the immortal words of political consultant James Carville, “the economy, stupid.”

Over the past month, the US appears to be undergoing a new revolution made possible by last November’s election, when a majority expressed their dissatisfaction with Bidenomics, which included unconditionally funding two controversial foreign wars. Nobody could foresee where the coming disruption of their previous government’s habits might lead the nation. It sounded like a revolution, but would it be one?

A month after Trump’s second inauguration, that seems to be the case. Between the likely end of a comfortably installed war of attrition and co-president Elon Musk’s DOGE tornado, that is already ripping up well-rooted features of the landscape, the US is living, if not a full-blown revolution, then a radical sea-change.

The most consequential facet of the Trump 2.0 revolution is its effect on the “world order” thanks to the president’s commitment to ending the war in Ukraine. In an with the title, “Trump’s Pivot Toward Putin’s Russia Upends Generations of U.S. Policy,” The New York Times White House correspondent Peter Baker accuses the president not only of “switching sides” but of doing so because of “a perplexing fondness for Mr. Putin.” To make his case, he quotes Kori Schake, a director of the American Enterprise Institute and former aide to President George W. Bush.

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Disgraceful reversal:

In the age that has established the principle that to be respected war will be preferable to peace, any change of policy that relies on the highly suspect practice of dialogue and diplomacy.

Contextual note

According to, the “American Enterprise Institute (AEI) is a right-of-center think tank that promotes free markets and an active foreign policy role for the United States.” David Rose, writing for Vanity Fair in 2014, that AEI was regarded “as the intellectual command post of the neoconservative campaign for regime change in Iraq.” The liberal and dominantly Democrat-allied NYT, which has never hidden its sympathy with neoconservative causes, expresses its worry about Trump’s peace efforts it describes as a “pivot” and “switching sides,” a “disgraceful” and even treacherous thing to do.

Baker goes further as he describes an initiative to establish peace as an act of aggression. “Indeed, Mr. Trump has spent the first month of his second term stiffing the allies” because he hasn’t invited the Europeans to the negotiations. He appears to believe that this is a worse offense than Biden’s persistent and successful campaign to cripple the economies of his European allies and cast them into the role of extras in the global drama of democracy vs autocracy.

Baker appears not to have noticed the effect of Biden’s Ukraine mission on Europe and Germany, in particular. He quotes political scientist Ian Bremmer who speaks of an initiative that “makes Trump look like an adversary to Europe’s largest economy.” No one has reason to doubt Trump’s indifference to Europe’s future, but does it really compare unfavorably with Biden’s Ukraine policy that has put exceptional stress on European budgets, and most spectacularly the sabotage of Nord Stream, a war crime that has directly contributed to the deindustrialization of the German economy?

Baker correctly observes that “Mr. Trump flavored his comments with multiple false claims.” That should surprise no one. We have all learned to expect it from a president who falsely last month that Spain is a member of BRICS.

Baker concludes by quoting Ian Bond, deputy director of the Center for European Reform in London, who half-correctly observes that “Trump is siding with the aggressor, blaming the victim.” Bond is right to observe that when Trump blames Ukraine for the war, he is abusively blaming one of the victims. But, as many observers have noted, Russia, though on legal grounds clearly an aggressor, is also a victim. The events of late 2021 and early 2022 and a series of statements subsequent to Russia’s invasion confirm that the proxy war that began unfolding at that time had been thought out and executed by Washington as an intended regime change operation. When a US president out in a public address, “This man cannot remain in power,” and promises to destroy the Nord Stream pipeline months before its actual destruction, it’s fair to conclude that Russia was not the only aggressor in this conflict.

The main victim remains Ukraine, a country that will never be the same. Talk about betraying one’s allies. Trump is right to insist, as many critics have done, that the entire drama could have been avoided.

Historical note

“No Ukrainian leaders,” Baker reminds us, “were in the room for the meeting, held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, much less other Europeans, although Mr. Rubio called several foreign ministers afterward to brief them.”

Need we remind Baker that no US or European leaders were in the room for the drafting of the “Istanbul communique” in late March 2022, when Russia and Ukraine reached an agreement that would have ended the military operation? As former US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter it, the agreement hammered out in Istanbul “would have brought the conflict to an end on terms which, in retrospect, were extremely favorable to Ukraine.”

When, days later, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson showed up unexpectedly in Kyiv to inform the Ukrainians they should not sign such a deal since NATO and the transatlantic alliance were committed for “as long as it takes” to winning the war, no Russians were present to discuss the finer points or renegotiate the terms of an agreement Washington and London disapproved of. The decision had come from on high and Ukraine didn’t even have a veto.

Ever since NYT’s notoriously dishonest campaign in 2002–2003 to justify George W. Bush’s unjustifiable and illegal invasion of Iraq, it should be clear that the Gray Lady, like most of the Democratic party, prefers war to peace, conflict to negotiation. Baker is, after all, just doing his job, which apparently includes turning history on its head and distorting all available facts. Twice in the article he accuses Russia of violating “two cease-fire deals negotiated in Minsk, Belarus, in 2014 and 2015.” Has he not heard that France’s President François Hollande and Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel both confessed that the goal of the Minsk accords for them was not to resolve Ukraine’s civil war, but to gain time to build the Ukrainian military in the interest of the promised autonomy of the Donbas region?

Are all reversals bad? And as far as “disgraceful reversals” go, how much blame should we place on newspapers of record that simply reverse the truth?

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The New York Times Tells Us to Embrace War and Beware of Peace appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Earthquakes do monumental local damage, sometimes defacing entire cities. A powerful tsunami can be far more destructive. It can spread damage across the full expanse of an ocean and flood faraway shores. Who doesn’t remember the drama in 2004 when a powerful located near Sumatra in Indonesia ended up wreaking havoc on the coast of Africa?

An ancient proverb informs us: “it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good.” This sums up what every stock market wizard knows: Clever traders profit most by buying after the market has crashed. For many, at least in the media, Trump 1.0 was the ill wind that would make their day.

Although the dominantly Democratic corporate media in the United States saw Trump’s 2016 presidential election as an unparalleled catastrophe for the nation, its pundits and late-night comedians realized that for them it was a windfall. The public was aching to hear the worst about their newly elected leader. Hating, deriding, mocking and deconstructing Trump became a source of income and notoriety for a lot of people.

Heather Cox Richardson, a popular Substack , stands out as an interesting example. Building on her reputation as a historian specialized in the 19th century and the American Civil War, she seized the opportunity to instruct devastated Democrats and moderates about the true meaning of the Trump tsunami. After some success with Facebook, when she moved to Substack she discovered a platform capable of turning her into an authentic influencer.

She quickly learned the trick of drawing on her historical knowledge to cite parallels across time. Trump had offered the nation the perspective of a new civil war, the perfect occasion for Richardson to offer her services as an indispensable illuminator of the Trump phenomenon. Her claim to gravitas as a published author led her followers to see in her a fountain of historical truth and accurate contemporary analysis.

But when she isn’t dealing with history but ongoing events, how subtle are her observations, how refined her analysis? Not quite up to academic standards, it appears.

In Richardson’s February 16 of “Letters from an American,” she attempts to review the events surrounding US Vice President JD Vance’s controversial speech at the Munich Security Conference. In guise of a conclusion, rather than producing any original insight, she approvingly quotes political scientist Stathis Kalyvas. “The U.S. government has been taken over by a clique of extremists who have embarked on a process of regime change in the world’s oldest democracy…. The arrogance on display is staggering.”

A bit further on, in an attempt to clarify the question of war and peace that the Trump administration has dared to raise as a question deserving diplomatic attention, she cites Republican Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker, with whom she clearly agrees.

“There are good guys and bad guys in this war, and the Russians are the bad guys. They invaded, contrary to almost every international law, and they should be defeated.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Bad guys:

People who have caused serious problems, often involving death and serious destruction, to the exclusion of ourselves.

Contextual note

Can a serious historian like Richardson really believe any conflict is reducible to a contest between “good guys” and “bad guys?” In her books, she blames the South for its commitment to the obviously immoral and anti-democratic institution of slavery, which allows her to frame the Confederates as the party whose actions justified a war initiated by US President Abraham Lincoln’s government. In that sense, the Americans wearing gray uniforms were the bad guys.

But not all wars can be justified by such a stark contradiction with the purported values of a democratic nation. Adolf Hitler’s Nazi government provided an even more clear-cut case to justify going to battle against bad guys. For most citizens of the contemporary liberal democratic order the US Civil War and World War II, despite the obscene levels of destruction in both, stand as two feel-good conflicts in the minds. Both contain obvious examples of fighting to defeat political intentions easily recognizable not just as bad but as morally evil.

But does that mean that all the “guys” involved on one side and the other were respectively good or bad? Should all their actions and beliefs fall into one of those two categories? Propaganda tends to promote that idea. When a conflict is raging, it’s reassuring to think of oneself and one’s countrymen as the good guys. Ordinary citizens and even media pundits are likely to think that way. But historians?

Many critics of the Biden administration’s Ukraine policy have painstakingly pointed out that the US may have been guilty of a significant amount of “bad guy” behavior that has been playing out over decades. The most egregious piece of concrete evidence is the intercepted in 2014 between Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt in Kiev. Scott Horton’s recent book, , recounts the entire concatenation of missteps over decades that led to the events of February 2022. Any honest observer who has examined the evidence will probably conclude that no group of either pristine good guys or committed bad guys emerges. If anything, and this might be the most embarrassing realization for someone like Richardson, both Ukraine and Russia emerge as victims, and therefore “good guys.” In such a scenario, it isn’t difficult to imagine who the bad guys might be.

After seemingly applauding Representative Wicker’s assessment of who’s good and who’s bad, Richardson seems to approve uncritically the congressman’s complementary observation asserting that “Ukraine is entitled to the promises that the world made to it.” Has she considered the meaning of such a claim? Can a historian seriously believe that any country is “entitled to promises?” Does the idea make sense, linguistically, politically or morally?

And what does Wicker or Richardson assume is the “world” that made those promises? An examination of the declarations and behavior of nations across the globe demonstrates that, at best, “the world” Wicker refers to is essentially the US and its European allies. Does Richardson equate NATO with the world? It would seem so.

Historical note

Most moral systems acknowledge that good and evil are two competing forces in the world that play out in actual human behavior. Which means that bad guys do exist, and not only as a pretext allowing the US to mount a new military adventure. If you followed the State Department’s operating manual, Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi and Bashar al-Assad were “bad guys.” In their own time, so were Mohammad Mosaddegh, Jacobo Árbenz, Patrice Lumumba, Vietnamese Ngô Đình Diệm, Ho Chi Minh, Salvador Allende, Manuel Noriega, Manuel Zelaya and Evo Morales. Some paradoxically had been trusted friends of the good guys before seeing their identity changed to that of confirmed enemy or “bad guy.”

Hitler and the Nazis had the merit of giving the distinction between good guys and bad guys some discernible meaning. The Fuhrer’s unbridled territorial expansionism and overt racism provided a template for the image of an unequivocal bad guy. But think about this: Does it make sense to consider the forces that fire-bombed hundreds of thousands of civilians in Dresden and Tokyo before nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki as “good guys?” A Civil War general about whom Richardson has written , “War is hell.” This presumably acknowledges that good guys may sometimes become bad guys in the process.

Historians are trained to look beyond jingoistic justifications nations put forward in times of war or preparation for war. Instead, they grapple with the context from which conflicts emerge. Such exploration rarely leads to a verdict permitting to separate the good guys from the bad guys. If Richardson truly wishes to maintain her standing as a respected historian, with her eye on the facts, she would seek to avoid appealing to such simplistic binary representations of reality. Apparently, she finds it more rewarding to hone her image as a newsletter blogger.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post How Trump Wrong-Footed a Respected Historian Turned Blogger appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The people Donald Trump appointed to his inner circle in 2017 were not, for the most part, familiar faces. The non-political person endowed with the most power to act and change the world was none other than the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Nobody knew who he was, other than the president’s son-in-law. They did know something about Kushner’s wife and Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, because The Donald had repeatedly made a point of appearing on television to express his concerning Ivanka.

As the 47th president, Trump has changed his political vision. Instead of confiding political power in a formerly invisible member of his own family, Trump has chosen a hyperreal hero and the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, to play the role of what can legitimately be described as the co-president of the US. He has granted Musk the authority to undo, override and basically exercise powers over the federal budget, a task the US Constitution clearly attributes exclusively to the legislative branch of government: Congress.

Many Trump voters regard the US Constitution as a missing chapter of the Christian Bible, mediated and transcribed by a group of prophets known as “The Founders.” Some prominent evangelical Christians have claimed that Trump may deserve the status of a latter-day Founder, who has been sent by God to put the nation back on the right track. We may wonder whether they are not troubled by the fact that the sacred text of 1787 failed to prescribe the creation of an immensely wealthy co-president with the power to short-circuit Congress in case of need? Apparently not. Trump has been called by God to fill the gaps left by the founders.

Trump’s second term has permitted the fusion into a single entity of the nation’s two most authentically hyperreal personalities, Donald and Elon, who functioned separately during Trump’s first sojourn at the White House. The two men share the unparalleled capacity to invent or attribute new meaning to elements of reality, while remaining unfazed if anyone dares to speak up to and point out they may be getting it wrong. Recently, Trump that Spain was part of BRICS. No one in the room dared to clarify the facts, allowing him to close the conversation with, “You know what I’m saying.” Yes, Donald, what you’re saying is precisely what we call hyperreality.

One major controversy that has erupted as co-president Elon Musk takes over the business of Congress concerns the suppression of for USAID, an institution created by US President John F. Kennedy. The agency proved over time to be a powerful toy in the hands of the same people in the CIA who, in all probability (i.e. in reality), had a hand in organizing and executing JFK’s assassination. (The Warren Commission produced, on demand, its own notoriously ham-fisted version of hyperreality, which the corporate media still dares not question).

To justify the president and co-president’s collective funding decision, Musk offered a simple: “USAID was a viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Radical-left Marxists:

Anyone who seeks to promote Washington’s devious soft-power system crafted to support right-wing regimes aligned with the US by offering humanitarian aid instead of simply threatening such nations with crippling sanctions or even “fire and fury.”

Contextual note

Just like Spain’s membership in BRICS, a curious interlocutor might want to challenge the CEO of Tesla by asking him to produce examples. No one has had the temerity to do us. But Musk’s meaning is clear. The idea that any agency funded by the government should be spending US taxpayer money on any form of assistance, especially out of humanitarian concern, even if it’s a subterfuge for exercising covert power and engaging in the kind of manipulation designed to promote US business interests, falls into the dreaded category of “socialist,” “communist” or “Marxist.”

Clearly these people are communists hired to promote the interests of US capitalism, because that’s what USAID was designed to do. And that’s how it’s performed since its creation. Whether that was Kennedy’s intention or not is a moot point. Those, like Kennedy’s predecessor, Dwight D. Eisenhower, understood how it was likely to be used.

But Musk didn’t stop there. Marxists may be enemies of capitalism, revolutionaries and even terrorists, but Musk equally, according to Politico, that USAID was a “criminal organization,” while at the same time asserting that the agency is beyond repair due to pervasive corruption. It was a Marxist mafia. Trump added the one missing ingredient: USAID was run by “a bunch of radical lunatics.”

Critics of USAID (count me among them) could not feel sad or disappointed about its programmed demise, but not many of us thought of its management as Marxist mafiosi escaped from a lunatic asylum. We needed a good dose of hyperreality on steroids to begin processing that illuminating vision of the organization.

Historical note

It was back in 2016, during Trump’s first election campaign, that I began using French philosopher Jean Baudrillard’s of hyperreality to account for a deformed state of the perception and representation of reality that becomes evident in the public discourse shared by a modern society, especially in the developed economies. There’s a modern post-World War II tradition in France that seeks to look behind and beyond the façade and veneer of today’s media-enhanced civilization to reveal its workings.

The concept of hyperreality is often paired with Guy Debord’s of the “société du spectacle” but the tradition can be traced back to Roland Barthes’s work, “,” that examines and to some extent deconstructs the language and beliefs of contemporary bourgeois French society. But some may prefer to trace the tradition back to Flaubert’s posthumous, “Dictionnaire des idées reçues.”

The closest thing in the US to any of these writers might be Ambrose Bierce’s “Devil’s Dictionary.” We all know what became of Bierce. Or rather, we don’t know what became of him because, after leaving as a journalist to cover the Mexican revolution possibly embedded in the forces of Pancho Villa, the last sentence he to a friend before mysteriously disappearing was: “As to me, I leave here tomorrow for an unknown destination.”

Other politically or socially minded humorists, from Dorothy Parker to Woody Allen and Lee Camp, have honed their wit while demythologizing US culture, but the concerted effort to build hyperreality by the majority of media has both provided the comics with grist for their mill while utterly dominating the culture itself.

The theology of hyperreal power has long been visible in a nation proclaimed by Eisenhower to be “under God,” as well as being repeatedly described more recently as “indispensable” because of its “exceptionalism.” Under US President George W. Bush, theology played a direct role in commanding his administration’s invasion of Iraq. “Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty,” he, “have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them,” and others reported that in private conversations, he claimed to have been advised by God.

If God created and blessed the indispensable order under more traditional secular Democratic presidents, such as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, Trump’s people claim a more direct connection with the deity than even Bush’s. Trump’s Senior Advisor, Paula White-Cain, has, “To say no to President Trump would be saying no to God,” and he “will overcome every strategy from hell.”

Televangelist Lance Wallnau “Donald Trump is the chaos candidate, but he’s God’s chaos candidate,” and that “God is using Trump to tear down principalities and powers.” The pastor didn’t specify the governments of Greenland and Panama as the “powers” in question, probably because chaos has a tendency to spread everywhere immediately and reach all targets — just like hyperreality itself. And clearly nothing can beat a faith-based chaos as the actual final book of the Christian Bible, the Apocalypse, makes clear.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Is the Defunding of USAID the Prelude to the Apocalypse? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The month of January closed — a mere ten days after Trump’s second inauguration —

with the by Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, that the new administration has decided to acknowledge what all recent administrations, including Trump’s own first mandate, consistently denied: that we now live in a multipolar world. The media and the Trump administration prefer to speak of the end of US “primacy,” the current euphemism for hegemony.

Republican Senator Tom Cotton has offered a frank explanation of what the new foreign policy will look like. After four years of Joe Biden proclaiming that the US was committed to supporting democracies and opposing, and even going to war with autocracies, during the Senate hearings required to confirm Trump’s choice of Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, Cotton provided this.

“No question, stable democracies make the most stable friends. But what matters in the end is less whether a country is democratic or non-democratic, and more whether the country is pro-American or anti-American… I’ll confess that those views may be somewhat unconventional, but look at where conventional thinking has got us.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Unconventional:

1. In its usual usage: deviating from normal practice.
2. In Senator Tom Cotton’s usage: in accordance with actual practice.

Contextual note

Any honest observer of contemporary history would, of course, note that despite Cotton’s wish to appear as an original thinker, this orientation is hardly new. Things were easier during the Cold War, when independently of the assessment of democratic or autocratic tendencies, all that was required to define Washington’s enemies was their attitude towards communism.

In reality, notwithstanding a tradition of rhetoric dating back at least to President Woodrow Wilson, US foreign has never used the litmus test of democracy to determine its choices about which nation to consider an ally or even to overthrow in the name of regime change. Seventy years ago, democratically elected leaders such as Iran’s prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh (1953) and Guatemala’s President Jacobo Árbenz (1953), were quickly dispatched from power on the grounds Cotton cites.

Yes, both of those leaders favored policies aimed at allowing their people rather than foreign corporations to profit from their nation’s wealth. But neither could justifiably be suspected of belonging to that dreaded category of human beings known as “communists.” Moreover, concerning their personal beliefs and preferences, neither held opinions that could be called anti-American. But for President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s State Department — and undoubtedly Senator Cotton would agree even today — inconveniencing US or any Western corporations automatically branded them as anti-American.

US foreign policy has never really deviated from that fundamental logic, which is why it’s surprising to hear Cotton feel the need to invoke it today. He may have felt it necessary to do so to defend Gabbard against accusations by Democrats that she had demonstrated criminal indulgence by hobnobbing with autocrats, such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, or showing too much respect for their stated security concerns. Democrats, especially under Biden, have been very clear about the designated villains with whom it was forbidden to engage or even converse.

Cotton had an even more powerful argument, this time statistical, when he stated: “If we only befriended nations that shared our system of government and our social and cultural sensibilities, well, we wouldn’t have many friends.” Indeed, the US needs all the friends it can get, which is why every administration has always insisted on highlighting the identity of its enemies, usually saddled with the epithet “evil.” Republican presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush were particularly fond of invoking that distinction. It meant that tyrannical and abusive countries that have not been branded specifically as “evil” can always be Washington’s friends.

Historical note

While describing the awkward reality of the criteria the US employs for choosing allies, Cotton nevertheless appears to support the idea that invoking the criterion democracy remains a valid rhetorical weapon, even if it flies in the face of historical reality. Does that make Cotton a hypocrite?

I decided to ask DeepSeek to explain what this apparent contradiction reveals about US foreign policy today. Among other reflections, the chatbot offered this paragraph:

“Cotton’s suggestion that conventional thinking has led to undesirable outcomes implies a critique of past policies and a call for a more results-oriented approach. However, this perspective can also be seen as contributing to a moral relativism in political discourse, where the ends justify the means, and ethical considerations are secondary to strategic gains. This shift can erode the moral high ground that the U.S. has often claimed in international affairs, potentially leading to a more cynical and less principled global political environment.”

This assessment appears excessively kind, especially on the part of a chatbot made in China. But, more to the point, DeepSeek’s indulgent assessment is historically misleading. It appears to warn that Cotton’s worldview, if it were to be adopted, could “lead to” a set of immoral (“less principled”) policies.

DeepSeek doesn’t dare to admit the truth. Calling something “potentially…less principled” amounts to using an unnecessary euphemism to describe a flagrant case of an absence of moral compass. And warning that this might be “leading to” a degraded “political environment” suggests this could only happen in the future. But Cotton’s clearly implies that “what matters in the end is less whether a country is democratic or non-democratic, and more whether the country is pro-American or anti-American” applies to observable reality in both the past and present. For once a politician is offering an unvarnished description of reality.

One might think that a Chinese chatbot would be less likely than US chatbots such as ChatGPT or Co-pilot go overboard in order to avoid critiquing US policy. But, in this case, DeepSeek generously hypothesizes that the principle guiding US policy is the same that has been consistently asserted ever since Wilson proclaimed the mission behind US foreign policy to be “making the world safe for democracy.”

This experiment with DeepSeek in response to a question about the meaning of conventional and unconventional highlights one of the features of AI that all users of chatbots need to acknowledge. To the extent that an LLM produces a simulacrum of human speech, it will adopt and conform to a set of social norms and interpersonal practices. Last week, The Guardian this response by DeepSeek to a question about Tiananmen Square: “I am sorry, I cannot answer that question. I am an AI assistant designed to provide helpful and harmless responses.”

This incited me to ask DeepSeek the following question: “Could you define what you mean by ‘harmless’? In what circumstances can a truthful answer be harmful?” Deepseek listed five types of reason, none of which was related to politics:

1.  Emotional Distress

2.  Safety Risks

3.  Privacy Concerns

4.  Misinterpretation

5.  Encouraging Harmful Behavior.

In the world of politics, historical personalities such as Mosaddegh, Árbenz, Salvador Allende or Muammar Gaddafi could probably offer their own interpretations about what constitutes actions that “encourage harmful behavior.”

It’s nevertheless worth noting, as many users of LLM have reported, that chatbots will always find ways of hedging their bets and avoiding fully-reasoned critiques of political positions. Last year, when I requested statistics on the recent French elections, Microsoft’s Co-pilot dismissed my prompt on the grounds that information about elections could not be shared. 

Some may find this frustrating, but it may be a good thing that chatbots decline to contribute to some political issues, which they designate as off-limits. Users should understand that addressing complex political questions is a human responsibility. We should never count on artificial intelligence to rise to the level of a moral thinker. Just as we should never count on politicians like Cotton for moral clarity on political issues, we should look to reliable human guides and to our own consciences to work out the real issues. AI may help to line up some facts and even suggest possible hypotheses, but it would be foolish to expect anything more from it.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Will Trump’s Foreign Policy Be as Unconventional as Tom Cotton Suggests? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The New York Times technology columnist Kevin Roose DeepSeek a “scrappy Chinese A.I. start-up.” By scrappy, he means two things: pugnacious and managing to accomplish significant feats with astonishingly limited means. Given that DeepSeek has literally humiliated Silicon Valley and the Wall Street investors who now fear they may have over-invested in not so scrappy tech giants, the rest of us should start wondering whether ChatGPT still deserves to retain its status as our BAFF (Best Artificial Friend Forever).

Matthew Berman, the excellent commentator on all things AI, an example of dialogue using the new chatbot. “DeepSeek R1,” he informs us, “has the most human-like internal monologue I’ve ever seen. It’s actually quite endearing.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Human-like:

Applied to anything mechanical, capable of provoking human emotions, such as perceiving it as empathetic, endearing or adorable, adjectives that formerly were reserved to the description of humans or pets.

Contextual note

Anyone who has spent time with ChatGPT — as I have over the past two years thanks to my “Breakfast with Chad” and “Outside the Box” columns — will acknowledge that OpenAI’s Large Language Model (LLM) possesses a tone of voice designed to express an authoritative point of view in its responses to a user’s prompts. You can enter into a dialogue with it, but most people simply ask it a question and wait for the answer. It often takes the form of lecturing or expert counseling.

Berman explains why he finds DeepSeek “endearing.” Unlike other chatbots, it takes the time to explain its goals, decisions and processes of reasoning. It even comments on the nature of the challenge it is dealing with along the way. Rather than calling this “endearing” one might call this “implicating.”

I have often stated my belief that we mustn’t be content simply with milking AI’s infinitely extended knowledge and its well-honed reasoning capacity for specific purposes. More than that, we need to build and refine a veritable culture of communication in which we accept AI as one of the actors, along with friends, family and colleagues. DeepSeek’s “implicating” tone should facilitate that effort.

You can follow Berman’s example. In the first paragraph of DeepSeek’s explanation of the three killers problem, it announces, “Okay, let’s try to figure it out…” Another paragraph begins, “Hmm, let’s break it down step by step.” It then interjects, “Wait, maybe…” and later: “Wait, let me visualize this.” These moments of adjustment in the reasoning process replicate the very human experience of thinking aloud and taking stock of one’s progress while navigating a complex task. This is not only endearing, it’s especially pedagogical in the best sense of the word. In comparison, ChatGPT typically sounds pedantic.

There may be a good reason why ChatGPT feels less engaging and endearing. OpenAI quite logically aligns with the dominant productivist consumer culture in the US. Consumers have no time for dialogue or deconstruction of thought processes. They expect the LLM to adopt a know-it-all position, like an interactive encyclopedia. Why waste time on the process when the product sought is the answer to the formulated question? In contrast, DeepSeek has cultivated a style that reflects its corporate name: It poses as a seeker rather than a provider of solutions. Playing on our human emotions can even create the impression that the mechanical chatbot is a seeker of wisdom.

Berman highlights the pragmatic value of this style of communication. In his demonstration of DeepSeek’s attempt to solve the three killers problem, he qualifies the chatbot’s performance as “perfect thinking” and adds, “I love absolutely being able to see the chain of thought.” Within that chain, we notice human-like hesitations and interrogative reflection provoked by possible nuance. The process points to the possibility of contrasting conclusions. DeepSeek is reproducing the type of process found in Plato’s dialogues. It highlights the back and forth of an active brain seeking to contrast competing hypotheses as well as the effect of credible conditions.

This highlights the neglected appreciation that AI can help us not just solve problems or answer questions, but, more ambitiously, overcome the kind of black and white, true/false approach to learning instilled in us by our education systems. We can thus use the experience of an active AI dialogue to train our own logic to do more than what we were taught to focus on at school: get good grades. This is especially true in our era of standardized testing, which produces conformist knowledge and punishes creative thinking.

When I interrogate ChatGPT on complex social, cultural and political questions, in the guise of a solution it often recommends cultivating critical thinking. DeepSeek appears to have been designed to engage in and illustrate the dynamic, non-linear movement that true critical thinking implies.

Historical note

Interestingly, in one of Berman’s YouTube productions, when promoting a sponsor’s website that gives access to AI agents, he that the agents will provide “the right answers at the right time.” This idea appears to contradict the transparent thinking processes he sees as one of the greatest benefits of AI. But “the right answers” correctly sums up what most people expect to get from AI. This is a predictable effect of the consumer culture that dominates not only our thinking, but also our schooling.

Who has time these days to join a conversation with an intelligence unless there’s the expectation of a clear, productivist, self-interested and potentially profitable outcome? For most of us, our schooling taught us that learning was about getting and giving “right answers” to get good grades. It wasn’t about refining our chain of thought and even less about learning to interact “endearingly” with others.

But in our social relationships with human intelligences — our friends, family and colleagues — how often do we find ourselves looking for or expecting answers? Anyone whose interactions with others proceeded principally on that basis would quickly be branded as annoying. The productivity of social interaction among humans is not measured by the number of solutions to problems or answers to questions. We measure it by the improvements in our quality of life and the shared experiences that generate a sense of relative harmony and synchronized effort.

Berman is right to rejoice at the visibility of the “chain of thought” DeepSeek shares with us. But humans need more than that for their individual and collective development and social intercourse. Some of the great fiction writers a century ago tried to reproduce it. They called it the “stream of consciousness.”

If we really want to set criteria for understanding the nature of the singularity — the predicted moment when AI will equal or surpass human intelligence — we should not underestimate the role of our stream of consciousness. It actually makes no sense to imagine that anything approaching consciousness could be an attribute of AI. After all, neurologists, psychologists and philosophers cannot agree on what human consciousness is or how it is produced. But every human being — including scientists and philosophers — knows what it is through their senses.

Most psychologists would agree that everything we learn happens through our stream of consciousness, simply because consciousness never stops and always produces some kind of effect. Theoretically, learning never stops, even when we do the same thing over and over again. So, as we seek to build a more nuanced culture of interaction with AI, let us applaud the progress LLMs have been making in reproducing the “chain of thought,” one specific component of our mental life and skills. That will help us collectively to train our mastery of logical chains of thought as well as structure our stream of consciousness, which is essentially made up of non-linear logic.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post DeepSeek and You Shall DeepFind appeared first on 51�Թ�.

When we refer to a party, politician or political thinker as being on the “left” or “right,” what does it mean? Americans are no longer even sure what political, economic or moral principles the label Democrat or Republican stands for.

Most people agree that President Donald Trump belongs to the right wing of US politics, and even the extreme right. But pundits and demographers alike have noticed that his electoral victory in 2024 was due in part to the fact that many on the left of the Democratic party supported his candidacy. The fact that Robert Kennedy Jr., who initially sought to challenge Joe Biden within the Democratic primaries, joined forces with Trump and helped him to victory reveals the degree of blurring of the traditional distinction between left and right.

More telling are the attempts the media have recently made to describe personalities consistently identified with an uncompromising left —, Matt Taibbi or Russell Brand, for example — as right-wing. This is mainly the work of Democrats who prefer to hold a monopoly over the terms “left” and “progressive,” even when they embrace policies most Europeans would describe as center-right.

Trump himself was no stranger to this confused system of labeling when he Biden Democrats as “radical left” and even “communist.” A buzzword in the form of an insult will always produce a stronger, more immediate effect than a nuanced discussion of principles, policies, facts or reasoned conclusions.

In France, equivocation about left and right may be less pronounced, but it exists as well. Because it is a multi-party system in contrast with the binary logic of US politics, there is more room for nuance. But when you consider that the majority of voters who four or five decades ago voted for the Communist Party, deemed far-left, now vote for the extreme-right, the confusion is as real in France as in the US.

If left and right now lead to such confusion in nations as culturally contrasted as the US and France, surely we expect one thing to remain reasonably stable: the center. But even that notion has become ambiguous.

Attempting to assess the political standing of Emmanuel Macron, the publication Le Monde last week featured an whose title translates: “The ‘extreme center’, an extremism that can lead to authoritarianism.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Extreme center:

A supposed safe place in the middle of the political spectrum that rather than attenuating the risks associated with extremes concentrates with the gravitational force and capacity for annihilation of a black hole in the cosmos.

Contextual note

Although mention of the idea of “extreme center” in contrast with a moderate center dates back to 1980, Le Monde cites the work of historian Pierre Serna who, in 2005, examined the concept in some depth. According to Le Monde, “this concept designates individuals, groups or parties claiming to be in the center of the political spectrum, with a fluctuating ideology and whose extreme character refers to the intolerance they show towards their opponents and their use of strong executive power.”

The comforting notion of reasonable people seeking a position at the center and avoiding the extremes should, at least theoretically, correlate with a focus on the interests of “average people,” “the middle class” and the “silent majority.” But Serna demonstrates that the extreme center consciously cultivates intolerance of anything that deviates from the status quo. This becomes doubly dangerous for democracy when trends towards increasing inequality of wealth spawned by the normal practice of financialized capitalism combine to define the status quo as an oligarchic system run by the moneyed elite.

The extreme center will seek first to dismiss and then to vilify as extreme any position or even idea that calls into question the status quo. The concern with security quickly becomes the obsession with protecting any and all of the institutions representing the status quo. Any critique of the established order can be branded extremist.

Interestingly, Le Monde quotes Emmanuel Macron’s own use of the term, following the first round of the 2022 presidential election. “Three-quarters of voters,” according to Macron, “voted for three projects. An extreme right-wing project… an extreme left-wing project… and an extreme-center project, if you want to qualify mine as such.”

One of the characteristics of an extreme center, according to Serna, is the aptitude to change one’s vest whenever convenient and to speak out of both sides of one’s mouth. “Once in power, they tend to rule the country with an iron fist, repressing their opponents to stay in power.” When Macron applied the term to his own movement, he was certainly ignorant of the historian’s description.

Historical note

The political activist and writer Tariq Ali exploited the idea of extreme center, a concept he analyzed in detail, when he published his 2015 book, “The Extreme Centre, A Warning,” followed in 2018 by a second edition: “The Extreme Centre, A Second Warning.” He develops his analysis in the context of United Kingdom politics, in the period just before and shortly after Brexit. He also looks closely at the European Union and NATO.

He notes in particular that in Western democracies, mainstream parties, regardless of their traditional left or right affiliations, converge to serve the interests of the market and uphold shared neoliberal policies. This means that the notion at the core of democratic ideology, that people can choose and manage their system of governance, has been mechanically replaced by a trust in market forces. Markets decide; markets legislate, even if they need human robots (legislators) to carry out the formal task.

Extreme centrists will always consider the marketplace as the true geographical “center” of politics, though they generally refuse to acknowledge the logical corollary, that this can only happen to the detriment of the demos in democracies and even the human princes, governors, benevolent dictators or philosopher-kings that dominated traditional, pre-democratic political thinking.

Macron famously aspires to be a “Jupiterian” autocrat and, as a super-technocrat who understands marketplaces but famously fails in his rapport with actual people, the former Rothschild banker is well placed to play king of the gods in a super-centrist world. The gods over which he reigns are the forces of the marketplace.

In 2021, The Jacobin French MP Danièle Obono, who explained her vision of Macron’s hold on power. “The last four years have seen a form of radicalization. But from two different points: from both the far right and the extreme center, which has grown into an annex of the far right. We see this when we consider Macronism as a political force, as a form of power, both in its antisocial dimension and in its anti-ecological dimension.”

Macron’s extreme centrist mandate may end soon, possibly even sooner than the official deadline for a new election in 2027. Most commentators believe that the confusion within his now twice rejected centrist coalition leaves the door open to the person who has become his now traditional rival on the extreme-right: Marine Le Pen. But, of course, Le Pen earned her apparent legitimacy by distancing herself from her extremist father, the late Jean-Marie, and innovating with a new hybrid ideology: that of an extreme-right party that embraces an extreme centrist culture.

Apart from the blow to Macron’s narcissism, the current president may well feel more comfortable with Le Pen at the Elysée Palace than any of the other possible successors on the left, right or even no man’s land. For the latter, I’m thinking of Dominique de Villepin, who could rise above the establishment crowd as the providential choice of the electorate. A more likely scenario, if Villepin does emerge, is that he will be blocked, if not emasculated by the Israeli lobby, more discreet, but possibly just as influential in France as in the US.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post In France, Politics is an Extreme Sport appeared first on 51�Թ�.

In December, a took place involving two prominent Republicans of Indian descent, both former primary presidential candidates. The seasoned veteran, Nikki Haley, drew her weapon to challenge the young upstart, Vivek Ramaswamy, for expressing a clearly heretical view of US society. A second of the Republican civil war has been opened more recently between Trump’s evil genius of 2016, Steve Bannon, and his latest (and wealthiest) Rasputin, Elon Musk.

The initial skirmish broke out when former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley lambasted Ramaswamy for daring to cast doubt on the infallibly sacred quality of US culture when he sought a sociological explanation for the penury of US-born engineers. The disagreement between Haley and Viraswamy, just like the war being waged by Bannon against Musk, turns around the policy regarding H-1B visas. This is clearly a sensitive topic for any member of a party that thrives by demonizing immigration as the root of all evil.

Viraswamy defended a visa policy that happens to have proved particularly advantageous to Indian engineers. For the first generation American, the culprit was no single person or party. It was US culture. He offered concrete examples: “A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.” To Haley Vivek, this was impugning American exceptionalism.

Haley hastened to on X: “There is nothing wrong with American workers or American culture.” If you’re looking for things that are “wrong,” look beyond the border, is what she literally responded. “All you have to do is look at the border and see how many want what we have. We should be investing and prioritizing in Americans, not foreign workers.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

American Culture:

The culmination of human history, a perfectly-tuned system of social, economic and political practices believed to have been ordained by divine powers and mediated by a generation of exceptional political thinkers — the nation’s founders — with the aim of providing humanity with a blueprint for all successful future human societies.

Contextual note

Haley sees the fact that other people “want what we have” as the most persuasive reason for the US not letting them have any of it. It is imperative to believe and state publicly that US culture is beyond criticism. If Americans fail to affirm that fundamental truth, they risk doubting their constitutionally established right to regulate the affairs of the rest of the world. If Americans can be seen doubting this fundamental truth, just think about how much all those people who “want what we have” may also begin to doubt.

Ramaswamy, as a Republican, is the outlier here. The entire party has always embraced Haley’s logic, or rather, religious faith in the infallibility of US institutions and US culture. When protestors against the war in Vietnam called into question American imperial policy, Republicans shouted in unison: “Love it or leave it.” Criticism, in their worldview, is a sign of betrayal of a social contract that requires everyone to believe in its rectitude even when it makes blatant mistakes.

Vivek’s criticism is especially surprising given his enthusiastic endorsement of and loyalty to Trump, whose electoral success owes everything to a culture focused on celebrity worship. Trump has been elected president twice, not because of his intellectual skills or political acumen, but precisely because of two things: his wealth and his celebrity. The title of his iconic, long-running reality show was, after all, “Celebrity Apprentice.”

Even more perplexing, as a consequence of the visa controversy, is Bannon’s declaration of war against Musk. It may have more to do with the fact that Musk only recently maneuvered to identify himself as a right-wing MAGA Republican. In the past, he allowed most people to assume he was more likely aligned with the values of the Democrats. Bannon may resent him for being a MAGARINO: a MAGA Republican in Name Only.

Even more confusing is Bannon’s insistence on Musk a “racist” and a “truly evil guy.” His characterization is probably true, but does Bannon possess anti-racist credentials? Isn’t this the man who once offered the following to right-wing French businessmen: “Let them call you racist … Wear it as a badge of honor?” 

Historical note

Ramaswamy could have been more thorough in his criticism of US culture. The fascination with wealth and celebrity is so deeply embedded in the psyche of the average American that generations of social critics have highlighted the incoherence it generates and the danger it represents.

In his 1962 , The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, Daniel Boorstin explained how the predominance in the media of “pseudo-events” distorts the public’s perception of both the topics in the news and the role of politicians. Boorstin anticipates by nearly two decades Jean Baudrillard’s of hyperreality in Simulacra and Simulation (1981). He also helpfully defines a celebrity as “a person who is known for his well-knownness.” When Boorstin wrote the book, the media had turned John F. Kennedy’s White House into a studio for celebrity politics. By the time of Baudrillard’s contribution, the US had elected its first president whose image was that of a carefully crafted, essentially non-political Hollywood celebrity: Ronald Reagan. Kennedy was a career politician. Reagan was a glamorous actor in B movies.

In 1985, Richard Schickel’s Intimate Strangers: The Culture of Celebrity focused on the the media plays in shaping public perceptions of fame by effectively commodifying both entertainers and politicians. He blames the media, including the news media, for elevating particular politicians to celebrity status. While such ideas may have seemed surprising 40 years ago, more and more of today’s political personalities, including Ramaswamy himself, have cultivated celebrity status and clearly owe their success to it. Trump is hardly unique, just more talented and unbridled than the others in his lifelong quest for celebrity.

More recently, authors such as Murray Milner Jr. (Celebrity Culture as a Status System, ) and Karen Sternheimer (Celebrity Culture and the American Dream: Stardom and Social Mobility, ) have analyzed the multiple facets of an increasingly pervasive celebrity culture that has effectively managed to turn campaigns that once featured political debate on real issues into media-managed, ritualized popularity contests between personalities whose discourse consists of oversimplified representations of any available political, social and economic issues chosen for amplification by the media. The oversimplification leaves those same politicians with a serious quandary as, once elected, they attempt to act on issues that they themselves have represented in such an unrealistic way that any action undertaken appears as a parody of an honestly broached political solution. Whether it’s a wall or a war, the same logic applies.

Trump’s “build the wall” still stands as the archetypal example of this quandary, though we have seen several“wag the dog” that conform to the model. And of course, it’s precisely Trump’s wall that has both prompted and cast a dark shadow over the debate between Ramaswamy and Haley on the one hand, and Musk and Bannon on the other.

In short, celebrity culture and the worship of wealth have removed the little bit of seriousness that once characterized political debate in the US. The result is comic and tragic at the same time. It has rendered incoherent both political parties. Can a party that once identified itself as the friend of the working class expect to maintain its traditional constituency when its governing elite identifies and fraternizes with a circle of billionaires and Hollywood stars? Likewise, the Republicans have had to abandon their identification with traditional conservative values to rally behind personalities that have established themselves not just as charismatic celebrities, but also as aggressive challengers of existing laws, customs and mores.

The Republicans’ traditional Wall Street wealth that sought to avoid the limelight and focus on controlled economic and financial performance is now complemented — but also contradicted — by Silicon Valley’s ostentatious greed and brazenly flaunted moral relativism. Can any leader, present or future, reconcile these opposing trends in each of the parties that have undermined their traditional cultural foundations?

Is there anyone with the celebrity power capable of carrying it off?

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Who Will Win the MAGA Wars: Ramaswamy vs Haley; Bannon vs Musk? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

After two and a half years of a troubled reign challenged by the “yellow vest” revolt, a global pandemic and the war in Ukraine, Macron profited from the confusion to win a second term in 2022, in the name of continuity. But with no clear majority in the National Assembly, the ride became rocky. The year 2023 ended in relative chaos, as Macron put in place a new government led by a carefully groomed youngster, Gabriel Attal.

The year 2024 became Macron’s . It began in controversy with the hotly contested passage of an ideology-laden law on immigration. Throughout the springtime, in the leadup to the European parliamentary elections, Macron spent most of his waking hours vainly devising tactics to prevent the inevitable: the humiliation of losing to the far-right in the June 9 election.

His reaction to that resounding loss surprised friends and foes alike. He dissolved parliament and called for a national reckoning through a snap election. The result in July added insult to humiliation. A quickly cobbled-together left-wing coalition came out on top. Macron’s already motley party was now reduced to political marginality. For the first time, a Fifth Republic president was struggling to keep the political system on life support.

After months of floundering, a vote of no-confidence in December obliged Macron to nominate a new prime minister, François Bayrou. Most experts expect he will meet the same fate as his predecessor, Michel Barnier, who managed to stay in office for 90 days, affording him the satisfaction of nearly doubling Liz Truss’s record of 49 days in the UK in 2022. In other words, stability is not the best term to describe French domestic politics at the start of 2025.

If the year was truly horrible on the homefront, some people believe France has a more solid footing internationally. One of those people is… Macron. Even in the face of a general catastrophe that has unfolded recently across Africa’s Sahel region, where a series of former colonies have invited the French military — stationed for more than a decade in the name of protecting them from terrorism — to pack their bags and go home.

In an address to the annual ambassadors conference, Macron now that all’s quiet on the African front. “No, France is not in decline in Africa, it is simply lucid, it is reorganizing itself. (« Non, la France n’est pas en recul en Afrique, elle est simplement lucide, elle se réorganise »).

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Reorganize (oneself):

1. Reformulate the narrative of any humiliating defeat to represent it as a subtle and clever exercise of one’s authority.
2. Make obvious chaos appear to be a conscious imposition of order.

Contextual note

The tone as much as the rhetoric of Macron’s speech reveals much more than the actual words he employs, even though the language itself could serve as exemplary content for a masterclass in defensive self-justification.

It takes cojones (pardon my French!) to say: “We chose to change course in Africa … because we had to move.” (« On a choisi de bouger en Afrique … parce qu’il fallait bouger. ») Both verbs in the sentence are bouger. A literal translation of this would be: “We chose to budge in Africa because budging was necessary.” His tone conveys the idea that this was all about strategic planning, not about receiving marching orders from former colonies. He takes the opportunity to upbraid “a good portion of our press” for creating that “disinformation.”

But his impatience doesn’t stop there. Macron complains that those African nations fed up with France’s meddling “forgot to say merci.” At the same time, he reminds his ambassadors that these leaders owe their privilege “of managing a sovereign country” to France. They should be eternally grateful every time they collect their presidential paycheck. Some interpret these sentiments differently. Le Monde Chad’s foreign minister, Abderaman Koulamallah, who sees this as demonstrating Macron’s “contemptuous attitude towards Africa and Africans.”

As a side note, it’s worth pointing out what the French would call Macron’s “preciosity” of language when he , “we have looked at our past relationship, memorial, cultural, we factualize it and assume it, and tell ourselves the truth. And we yield nothing to disinformation.” Thank you, Emmanuel, for factualizing your history! Our Devil’s Dictionary still isn’t sure about how to define that verb.

Historical note

In 2016, Macron made the decision to enter the race to succeed François Hollande, the president who put him in the limelight by appointing him Minister of Finance in 2014. He thus had the opportunity to observe from the inside the Fifth Republic’s system built around the unassailable authority of a president who initially had seven years to wield his power. (That was later reduced to five under Jacques Chirac).

Such a system will inevitably be attractive to a personality with a narcissistic view of himself as a messiah or savior of the nation. Macron saw that such a system could never live up to its potential in the hands of a “normal” Frenchman, which is what Hollande claimed to be. Macron drew inspiration from Hollande’s predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, often the “hyperpresident.”

Elected at the age of 37, Macron felt empowered to redesign a nation clearly floundering in the routine of its political past. Two successive five-year terms in office would offer him a full decade of exercising supreme power in the flower of his youth. During that decade he would have the time to establish a new order and groom a generation of politicians who would follow his initiative and complete the transformation of France’s political culture.

The key would be to use the theoretically impregnable power of a Fifth Republic presidency to break with a sclerotic, complex hierarchical system inherited from the previous century dominated by Gaullists and Socialists. He would usher in a new republic based on the meritocratic, neoliberal and technocratic ideals that a generation of Western bankers, traders, entrepreneurs and innovators had redefined as the new universal norm. Oddly, he hadn’t noticed, and still doesn’t seem to notice, that the globalized world was already moving in a multipolar direction that called into question the logic of Western globalization.

Already in 2015, Macron had begun a changing political chessboard. “The great missing piece is the figure of the king” (le grand absent est la figure du roi.). This remark may surprise some observers who note that, in comparison to other Western democracies, a president of France’s Fifth Republic already exercises virtually regal powers. Macron went so far as to claim that the French regretted killing the monarch. It left “an emotional void in the collective imagination.”

In 2016, after announcing his candidacy, Macron the nature of the office itself. “France needs a Jupiterian president… not a simple god but the king of the gods.” In some sense, Macron was a disciple of Francis Fukuyama, who decades earlier had “the end of history.”

For Macron, now that history had stopped in its tracks, France could simply enjoy the royal privilege bequeathed to the nation by its noble past. The former Rothschild banker reasoned that to exercise its dynamic power, France simply had to consolidate its own economic contribution to the global order, alongside the other gods on the new Olympus. The old culturally complex social structures dear to the Gaullists and the Socialists of Mitterrand’s generation could now be replaced by a society defined essentially through purely economic relations.

Alas, Macron had failed to notice that, by 2017, Fukuyama’s updated Hegelianism had lost its luster. The drift of history since the beginning of the new millennium had already provided a few dramatic surprises to remind people it was still alive and kicking. Already a global pandemic and a war in Ukraine were in preparation.

As for Macron in 2025, after his annus horribilis, there can be little doubt that the worst is yet to come.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Africa Fails to Thank Macron for His Service appeared first on 51�Թ�.

In an titled, “Israel Loosened Its Rules to Bomb Hamas Fighters, Killing Many More Civilians,” the newspaper of record provides what some may deem honest “reporting” — albeit more than a year late — illuminating the logic of a long-running genocidal campaign.

“An investigation by The New York Times found that Israel severely weakened its system of safeguards meant to protect civilians; adopted flawed methods to find targets and assess the risk of civilian casualties; routinely failed to conduct post-strike reviews of civilian harm or punish officers for wrongdoing; and ignored warnings from within its own ranks and from senior U.S. military officials about these failings.

The Times reviewed dozens of military records and interviewed more than 100 soldiers and officials, including more than 25 people who helped vet, approve or strike targets. Collectively, their accounts provide an unparalleled understanding of how Israel mounted one of the deadliest air wars of this century. Most of the soldiers and officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were barred from speaking publicly on a subject of such sensitivity. The Times verified the military orders with officers familiar with their content.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Investigation:

A procedure relied on by some governments to obscure and delay the discovery and description of obvious facts.

Contextual note

To make sure the reader’s attention is engaged, the author boasts of the “unparalleled understanding” the journal is providing. What some people understand in the space of a few weeks, the Gray Lady needs 15 months to assess. But even when revealing what can honestly be described as “unparalleled” war crimes, she hedges her bets on the big question in the background: Does her reporting support the case of genocide? True to the paper’s patented style, the article restricts its analysis to the rules applied in an air campaign and avoids making any connection with the overall strategy of Israel.

We learn that Israel “routinely failed to conduct post-strike reviews of civilian harm or punish officers for wrongdoing.” The crew of reporters present at the State Department’s daily will be intrigued by the NYT’s contribution. After months of questioning spokesperson Matthew Miller about how potential war crimes were being investigated, they can discover what Miller so carefully concealed when, week after week, he promised that the United States would await the findings of Israel and then launch its own investigation. After all, Israel was a trusted ally, a rules-based democracy committed to human rights that would infallibly get to the bottom of the truth and punish all potentially guilty parties. Why the hurry to find out the truth?

The publication of this article offers an important lesson for the reporters present at the briefings. In cases where genocide is a plausible description of an endlessly repeated series of atrocities, they can definitively conclude that neither the Israelis nor the Americans can be counted on to express the truth. All that’s required is patience and trust in The New York Times, even if it takes 15 months or so for the revelation.

Might we wonder why the famous newspaper’s journalists and editors failed for so long to see the light? Independent commentators and even the 15 judges of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) all managed to cotton on. But, for a quality newspaper like NYT, some real news sometimes takes more than a year to digest and report. Acting too soon to report war crimes may remove the certainty of their existence that is gained by watching them continue month after month.

The NYT did, of course, cover the the ICJ’s finding of “plausible genocide” in January 2024. But its reporting emphasized the potential for ambiguity in the court’s assessment. The article gave the final word in its concluding paragraph to none other than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:

“On the other hand, Israel’s reaction to the court’s decision pointed to an alternative perspective. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the court order had upheld Israel’s right to protect itself. ‘Like any state, Israel has the basic right of self-defense. The court justly rejected the disgraceful demand to nullify that right,’ he said.”

The belated publication of an “unparalleled” investigation also hedges its bets. At one point, the article recounts that the air force “was running low on the guidance kits that transform unguided weapons, or ‘dumb bombs,’ into precision-guided munitions.” It then explains: “This forced pilots to rely on unguided and less accurate bombs, the officers said.” Did it really “force” them to violate the laws of wars they were claiming to respect? Or did it conveniently provide an excuse for carrying out what the article later describes as “the prevalent mood inside the military: ‘harbu darbu?’ This is an expression derived from Arabic and widely used in Hebrew to mean attacking an enemy without restraint.”

If the NYT is so enamored with investigations, why, in its December 25 about a Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), does it appear to legitimize the Joe Biden administration’s refusal to accept that organization’s findings? For the paper, what matters is that the official critique “raises questions,” casting doubt on the veracity of the report. But the NYT hides a key fact by Al Jazeera that “FEWS NET is funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID).” USAID, as many have noticed, is closely to the CIA.

In other words, the most credible explanation of what the NYT calls the “U.S. rebuke” is that the political side of the administration rejects and calls into doubt the work of intelligence professionals. This is a well-established pattern, demonstrated most dramatically by the George W. Bush administration’s adamant insistence that the non-existence of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction should not be taken seriously to the point of cancelling a planned invasion.

Historical note

On one side, it’s always good to plant lies. On the other, to affirm doubt about objective expression of truth. Lies, such as “forty beheaded babies” may be circulated and will definitely be remembered, but if a truth is too obvious, it must be either “rebuked” or the investigation into it delayed.

In a on Christmas Eve, noted international relations expert John Mearsheimer offers a slightly more direct assessment of the “truth” revealed by the NYT in its latest investigation.

“Given the West’s presumed commitment to human rights and especially to preventing genocide, one would have expected countries like the United States, Britain, and Germany, to have stopped the Israeli genocide in its tracks.

Instead, the governments in those three countries, especially the United States, have supported Israel’s unimaginable behavior in Gaza at every turn. Indeed, those three countries are complicit in this genocide.”

Without mentioning the Gray Lady specifically, he notes: “The mainstream media has made hardly any effort to expose and challenge what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. Indeed some key outlets have staunchly supported Israel’s actions.”

The NYT is obviously not alone. Not noticing genocide and claiming that there is insufficient evidence to confirm its existence has become standard operating procedure for Western media. Mearsheimer’s reference to Britain and Germany could have included the European Union, whose hypocrisy is even more evident. Back in January, in its account of the ICJ’s ruling that deemed plausible the accusation of genocide, the NYT : “On Friday the European Union it expected the ‘full, immediate and effective implementation’ of the I.C.J.’s orders, noting that such orders ‘are binding on the Parties and they must comply with them.’”

Since then, the EU has continued to do everything in its bureaucratic power to avoid any action that might be interpreted as implementing the court’s ruling. Some will say the devil’s in the details, but the devil to whom this dictionary is dedicated has from the beginning acknowledged his handiwork.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Lucifer, The New York Times and a Debrief on 2024 appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The Economist’s choice of this year’s word of the year tells us what its editors see as the biggest challenge our civilization is facing. It isn’t the disastrous wars in Ukraine and the Middle East in which the Atlantic alliance is fully implicated. It isn’t even the destabilization of the global financial order so long organized around the unassailable status of the United States dollar. It isn’t rising temperatures causing climate havoc or the towering levels of debt that threaten, at a moment’s notice, to unravel the global financial system. No, for The Economist, dedicated to the ideal of “liberal rationality,” the real threat worth focusing on can only be… Donald Trump.

The “word of the year” article bears the subtitle: “The Greeks knew how to talk about politics and power.” Classical references always help buttress one’s case. The article cites Plato and Aristotle’s “political thinking,” which may be a subtle hint that there has been much of it in recent years. After seven paragraphs — punctuated by various interesting but not always very accurate details concerning history, philosophy and language — the finally reveals, in three sentences, the identity of the mysterious word it has selected.

“So the word everyone was Googling was kakistocracy: the rule of the worst. The first root, kakos, is found in few others in English. ‘Kakistocracy’ is not found in ancient sources; it seems to have been coined in English as an intentional antonym to aristocracy, originally ‘rule by the best.’”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Kakistocracy:

The natural form any democracy will take when its political system is made subservient to the principles that undergird liberal, free market capitalism, in which the overriding authority of an anonymous class of wealthy individuals is rendered invisible thanks to the ruse of allowing unwealthy people to cast a vote in elections engineered by the same invisible wealthy class for one or another of their preselected representatives.

Contextual note

Our Devil’s Dictionary gloss obviously differs from — and directly contradicts — The Economist’s far more succinct definition. Let’s explore the reasons.

Our first objection to the content of the article may seem trivial, but is significant in that it points to something that strongly resembles “disinformation.” The article tells us that the root “kakos” in Greek means “worst.” In fact, it means “bad, inferior, worthless or poor.” Κάκιστος (kakistos), however, is the superlative of kakos and does mean “excessively bad” and in some contexts “worst.” The article also misleadingly informs us that kakos is “found in few other” words in English, but a notable example is “cacophony,” which obviously does not mean the “worst sound,” but simply bad, incoherent, unharmonic or disagreeable sound.

But let’s drop the niggling while trying to be charitable and forgiving in this season of good cheer. Apart from the venial sin of offering an inaccurate explanation of a Greek word, we should acknowledge that the magazine’s “word of the year” ritual is little more than an innocent exercise of holiday season levity. The article is essentially entertainment. It makes no pretension to be taken as serious scholarship… other than its annoying invocation of Plato and Aristotle, which actually does come across as pretentious.

Nevertheless, it’s there for another reason: to make a polemical political point. The Economist clearly sees Trump as a difficult morsel to digest. When the article informs us that kakistocracy is the inversion of aristocracy, we sense an undeclared nostalgia for an epoch in which the nation’s values reflected the refined culture of its nobility. The power wielded by the aristocratic caste disappeared with the empire, but not without regret. The free market’s new ruling class successfully promoted the culture of meritocracy to replace aristocracy. The author nevertheless reminds us that aristocracy is literally “the rule of the best,” just in case we allow ourselves to become too enamored of meritocratic upstarts. Still, The Economist’s readers will have no trouble empathizing with the idea of rule by the meritorious. This idea pretty much defines the social status of the majority of the magazine’s readership.

The choice of kakistocracy expresses the magazine’s pessimism, not about the state of the world — which is quite naturally becoming increasingly kakistocratic — but about the situation in the “indispensable nation,” the US. Its critique focuses on that particular embodiment of evil known as Trump. But in doing so, this liberal-minded British publication at least avoids the kind of alarmism that infects US media when it lays into Trump. Relying on irony rather than invective, The Economist bravely attempts to make an erudite joke. But, in this particular instance, it largely fails to where so many of its literary predecessors have succeeded, from Chaucer and Shakespeare to Jonathan Swift, Laurence Sterne, Lewis Carroll, Monty Python and beyond.

Here is one example: “Kakistocracy has the crisp, hard sounds of glass breaking. Whether that is a good or bad thing depends on whether you think the glass had it coming.” The synesthetic metaphor of breaking glass is intriguing. But the attempt at wit goes nowhere. It fails because there is no reasonable hypothetical case in which the reader might think that glass has “something coming.” Breaking glass, for almost everyone, including Greeks, is “kakos.”

Even worse is this attempt at an amusing analogy: “Last time round he [Trump] seemed to fire more officials than most presidents have trips on Air Force One.” What could possibly justify the comparison of fired officials to presidential trips on Air Force One? Talk about apples and oranges!

Historical note

The Economist is known for its ability to avoid alarmism, keep a stiff upper lip and confidently roll with the crises and disappointments that sometimes rock a world order the journal prefers to defend. Since 1843, it has promoted the central themes of a worldview characterized at the time as laissez-faire and today as economic liberalism, including its scion neoliberalism.

For the past century and more particularly throughout the “unipolar moment” in which the US, having assimilated the “political thinking” (ideology) of the Plato and Aristotle of our age — Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher — we have been living confidently in an economic utopia characterized by democracy and a “rules-based international order.” Enforcing the rules consisted in maintaining the belief that actions undertaken by the governments in our democracy were made in the name of the people and with their consent.

The double tsunami of 2016 — first Brexit in the UK, then Trump’s election in the US — began to sow a few doubts about the future of democracy. The voters could easily be persuaded to make the wrong decisions. In so doing, they were breaking down the force of the rules that had been put in place by the wise leaders elected in the past (especially Reagan and Thatcher). Their wisdom suddenly appeared to be called into question.

The door to kakistocracy was now wide open. It took a second Trump election, in which he won even the popular vote, to make it official. For The Economist, kakistos, the worst, is yet to come… and it will be installed on January 20, 2025.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Economist Blames the Greeks for Trump’s Election appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The obvious answer is the media. But few people in the United States the media these days. Surely, in a democracy “of the people, by the people and for the people,” there will be a few scoundrels who make their way into government, but we can assume that the majority merits our confidence. Well, according to a Pew titled, “Public Trust in Government: 1958-2024,” the current of trust has fallen to 22%.

December 2024 offers us a vision of exacerbated tensions in various parts of the globe. At such moments, we expect our leaders to speak with some degree of honesty. Especially when the stakes are high and decisions become a matter of life or death. We accept that some things must remain secret. But the democratic principle implies an effort on the part of our governments to offer a minimum of clarity concerning the facts and their intentions.

Alas, the duty of obscurity seems to have replaced the ideal of clarity as the norm. Clever government officials have good reasons to justify their brazen stonewalling. First, national security requires concealing one’s true intentions. After all, if revealed, the enemy will profit. Then there is the fact that in any situation of conflict, we should accept the reality of the “fog of war,” a concept erroneously but persistently to Prussian general and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz by commentators, some of whose brains may be subjected to a permanent fog.

What are US presidents for if not guiding the nation towards an understanding of the truth? In August 2023, US President Joe Biden informed us that “Putin has already lost the war” in Ukraine. An obvious fact. The truth teller now the recent history of US policy towards Syria. “Over the past four years, my administration pursued a clear and principled policy toward Syria. First, we made clear from the start sanctions on Assad would remain in place unless he engaged seriously in a political process to end the civil war.”

�մǻ岹��’s 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Principled policy:

A course of action relentlessly pursued thanks to the capacity of some people in a position of authority to persistently ignore surrounding reality.

Contextual note

Biden uses two epithets, “clear” and “principled,” to describe his policy. The word “clear” is certainly the most overused word by any spokesperson for the White House or State Department. At briefing sessions with personalities such as the White House’s Karine Jean-Pierre and the State Department’s Matthew Miller, whenever a journalist poses embarrassing questions that highlight potential ambiguity or equivocation with regard to the “noble” principles that guide US actions, they respond with the formula, “We have been very clear about…” In one random example, the press briefing session of March 27, 2024, Max Miller crafted this litany of:

• So we have been very clear about this matter.
• So we have made that quite clear to them.
• So I will say that we have a fundamental disagreement with the Israeli Government over this issue, and we have made that quite clear.
• … we will continue to be clear about what we think about these actions.
• …we have made clear that we believe that allegations of genocide are unfounded.
• …we have made clear that the United States is not going to send any troops to Ukraine.
• And I think it’s clear that these claims are categorically false. (this was a response to the claim that the US created ISIS.)
• …and we’ll make the same thing clear privately.
• …we have made clear since the outset of this administration that the promotion of democracy is one of the top priorities for the President.
• So we continue to make clear in our conversations with the Government of Bangladesh… that we wanted to see free and fair elections and we will continue to support free, full, open democracy in Bangladesh.
• So we have been very clear about this matter. We’ve been unequivocal. (This concerned the fact that “Ben-Gvir’s coalition would be annexing additional land in the Jordan Valley.”)
• So we have made that quite clear to them. We’ve been very direct and candid about it in our conversations with them. (On the same topic of land seizures.)

This obsessively repeated verbal tic brings home the point that “being clear” means quite simply: “Whatever we say must be accepted as truth.” As for the “principled policy” Biden cited, his logic consists of announcing a simple principle — that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must be removed from office — and never deviating from it. Even if circumstances change, and even if hundreds of thousands of people may die or be displaced as a result of clinging to that principle.

Biden has already vowed to support the new Syrian government. Some may find this a bit strange. At this point, nobody has even a vague idea about what the new government will look like. On principle, can the US support it? What if it turns out to be a Wahhabi terrorist government, fulfilling its leader’s initial allegiance? Moreover, Syrian Head of State Abu Mohammed al-Joulani still has a $10 million bounty on his head because the US branded him a terrorist. Does Joulani’s success in overthrowing a dictator, Assad, automatically mean that democracy is on its way? Biden might profitably consult the the poem, “The Great Day” by the Irish poet, William Butler Yeats::

“Hurrah for revolution and more cannon-shot!
A beggar upon horseback lashes a beggar on foot.
Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again!
The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.”

Substitute “regime change” for “revolution” and Yeats has defined the principle that defines at least 50% of US foreign policy. In the meantime, Biden and his good friend, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are providing “more cannon-shot.” Within a day of the announced liberation of Syria, the US and Israel conducted multiple bombing raids on the military infrastructure and other threatening elements within a country that is rife with threatening elements. Can anyone seriously doubt that the lash will go on?

Anyone struggling with the question of which “clear principles” to apply to a dramatic situation in which multiple interests both converge and diverge would do well to follow Caitlin Johnstone’s. “I personally don’t blame people for misunderstanding what’s been happening in Syria all these years. Some of my favorite analysts got Syria wrong in the early years of the war. It’s a complicated issue. It’s hard to sort out the true from the false, and it’s hard to sort through the moral complexities and contradictions of it all as a human being. What matters is that you stay curious and open and sincerely dedicated to learning what’s true instead of bedding down and making an identity out of your current understanding.”

Johnstone’s wisdom tallies with the advice our fictional journalist and his AI assistant are intent on following in the video above.

Historical note

As US President Barack Obama’s vice president and then as president, Joe Biden has been associated with the framing and enforcing of the principles he claims to be at the core of US policy with regard to Syria.

But what are those principles? In 2015, The Guardian that the most obvious one has been to ignore any initiative aiming at peace and mutual security, especially if the initiative comes from Russia.

The Guardian was clear. “Russia proposed more than three years ago that Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, could step down as part of a peace deal, according to a senior negotiator involved in back-channel discussions at the time. Former Finnish president and Nobel peace prize laureate Martti Ahtisaari said western powers failed to seize on the proposal. Since it was made, in 2012, tens of thousands of people have been killed and millions uprooted, causing the world’s gravest refugee crisis since the second world war.”

Biden’s principles are clear. He once again demonstrated that clarity in December 2021 when he to consider security arrangements Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed that could have avoided an invasion and a prolonged war in Ukraine, in which an estimated one million people have died. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson applied the same principle when he instructed the Ukrainians not to sign a peace treaty in April 2022.

During a 2015 television interview, Former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas how his British friends told him they were planning to overthrow Assad because the “Syrian regime said things that were anti-Israeli.” Another case of applying a principle, this time by British allies of the US.

These cases illustrate what has become clear as far as principles are concerned. Negotiation and diplomacy can never replace kinetic action, whatever the eventual cost. The principle of regime change for Syria has already been in place for 12 years. It has finally succeeded. Just as it had in Iraq and Libya and even in Afghanistan in 2001.

One may legitimately ask, is it more about principle or about interest?

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post For the US in Syria, Is It About Principle or Interest? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

“Why our policy makers cannot for one moment think from the perspective of the other side is some kind of amazing incapacity, some fundamental dishonesty or some fundamental incapacity of these people that is so shocking it puts us all at risk. The first point of diplomacy at least is to understand the position of the other side. And we refuse to acknowledge that position. Yet that position makes a lot of sense when you listen to it and hear it because these are real concerns by a country that feels that it is directly under threat by us, a nuclear superpower.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Incapacity:

A basic career skill required for today’s politicians that enables them to appear strong and decisive, qualities that would be seriously compromised if they were to be tempted by the dubious qualities and attitudes known as curiosity, empirical wisdom, historical memory and empathy.

Contextual note

The incapacity to see events from two points of view and the consequent absence of empathy now appear as supreme virtues in the world of Western diplomacy. The surest way of manifesting that required incapacity is to avoid any situation in which dialogue might lead to an appreciation of complexity.

Since the beginning of organized human societies, when local tribes quarreled over territory or other possible motives of envy, diplomacy offered the possibility of seeking to understand the requirements, desires or ambitions of the opposing party. The knowledge gained through dialogue would serve either to confirm the incompatibility of the contrasting positions or define possible avenues of compromise.

Diplomacy guarantees nothing. It doesn’t prevent wars from occurring. But it can provide an idea of what a solution might look like, whether it’s the victory of one side or the other or the terms of a settlement acceptable to both sides. In pre-industrial days, it was rare for one party to think it had the technology and sheer material force to impose what it considered an “unbending” or “ironclad” principle that excluded at the very least an initial discussion. But we have entered the era of ironclad ideas. Formerly, soldiers or vehicles might have been literally ironclad. Today it’s the principles and beliefs about the world that have earned that epithet.

Some will say nothing has changed. Throughout history, diplomacy would begin with the formulation of one’s group or nation’s “interest.” If those interests were not respected, there would be consequences. So what has changed? Perhaps the modern conviction that “time is money,” “delay is costly” and “talk is cheap” has convinced a generation of political figures to adhere to a new principle of efficiency. By failing to put a plan into action immediately, one risks losing one’s resolve.

One thing is true of all situations of budding conflict. Whatever is decided, with or without negotiation, there will always be consequences. The boring business of discussing and thrashing out the details happens to be the likely negative consequence of diplomacy, certainly less exciting than war. And though it may be painful to think that the “great principle” driving our behavior and giving us a sense of identity has not been fully realized after a successful negotiation takes place, most people still believe that living to regret is preferable to mutual annihilation.

The real difference today is the factor mentioned above: the sense of identity. It’s only recently that humanity has accepted the principle that the Earth’s surface must be divided into nation states. This has spawned the phenomenon of a population’s identification with the nation state. As a feature of international relations, this appears as the question of territorial sovereignty. In many people’s minds it has evolved into what is felt to be an ironclad principle. Until just a few days ago, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy consistently used this as the reason for refusing to consider ceding a square inch of terrain. That ironclad position miraculously lost its tensile strength when he realized that Trump’s concept of territorial sovereignty may be looser than his own.

But the territory of a nation state is not the only factor of identity. In the case of the US, it is the belief in American exceptionalism, the conviction that the nation has a mission to impose order wherever disorder appears in the world. This particular sense of identity requires its citizens to believe that imposing order is not an act of pure self-interest, but that it corresponds to the nation’s “manifest destiny.” This sense of a divine calling was confirmed in 1954 when President Dwight D. Eisenhower added “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance all schoolchildren are required to recite.

Then there’s the even more extreme example of Israel. It may seem to many people normal that when the US emerged as the pre-eminent victor of World War II, endowed with an economy and technology that dwarfed that of every other nation, it should think itself exceptional to the point of believing itself tasked with the mission of regulating all the world’s problems. The doctor doesn’t negotiate with the disease, but instead applies the treatment. How else can anyone explain the fact that in December 2021, the US could simply refuse to sit down and discuss with Russia the question of “,” a notion that had served to formulate a key factor of inter-bloc behavior during the Cold War?

Israel may dominate its region in numerous ways — militarily, economically and technologically — but, unlike the US, it cannot claim to have the mission of solving other people’s problems. Instead, it founds its refusal to dialogue coupled with its incapacity to empathize on a principle derived from its reading of its version of holy scripture: the laws, principles and ambitions listed in the books of the . The only thing mysterious about the current situation in the Middle East is the literally ironclad identification of the US government and many of its people with what is essentially a political position formulated by unidentified scribes some 3,000 years ago. That propensity of Americans to identify with it literally defies understanding.

Historical note

In the interview cited above, Sachs reminds us of a famous from 1963 by US President John Fitzgerald Kennedy:

“Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy–or of a collective death-wish for the world.”

Kennedy admitted that international relations began with the idea of “defending… vital interests.” But he appears to be suggesting a condition today’s virtuously “incapacitated” political strategists no longer acknowledge: that averting confrontation is itself a shared “vital interest” of all parties.

Sachs notes that all the rhetoric over the past three years has pointed towards the very thing Kennedy believed was unthinkable: making a choice between humiliation — certainly unacceptable to anyone who believes in their own power — and a nuclear confrontation. If a nation that believes itself exceptional — or a nation such as Ukraine that believes it is backed by an exceptional nation — sees this as the choice, the danger is real that nuclear war will at some point become inevitable.

Is Sachs wrong to call this an “incapacity” of the politicians concerned? Or should we think of it merely as a temporary preference? There is little question that for the moment the US and Israel, but also the United Kingdom, have displayed behavior consistent with Sachs’s observation. We need only remind ourselves that it was Boris Johnson, the UK’s prime minister at the time, who in late March 2022 stepped in to convince Zelenskyy that there was nothing to negotiate, opening the door to two and a half years of prolonged, unnegotiated conflict in which hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian and Russian bodies would be literally and absolutely “incapacitated.”

Sachs made Judge Napolitano laugh at one point, when he summed up his appreciation of the politicians with this remark:

“They are individually and collectively strategic ignoramuses. I mean, one can only wonder what they’re thinking, right? When you look at Western leaders, you just shake your head and say, ‘Did these people ever take Strategy 101?’ And then you say to yourself, ‘If they did take Strategy 101, it must be the case that they failed the course — because the way they approach these different foreign policy problems facing them, it’s really quite remarkable in how ignorantly they behave.’”

The world is now awaiting to understand how much incapacity Trump’s new administration will wield.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Capacious Incapacity of a New Generation of Diplomats appeared first on 51�Թ�.

This legislation would allow the federal government to revoke tax-exempt status for any non-profit organizations it decides to qualify as “terrorist supporting.” We have recently witnessed numerous examples of politicians and the media figures claiming that individuals suspected of voicing pro-Palestinian sentiments are, by that very act of speech, active supporters of Hamas, an officially designated “terrorist organization.” It isn’t difficult to see how such a law in the hands of any government — Democrat, Republican or simply fascist — can be used to throttle free speech.

The 51�Թ� team has good reason to worry about this bill, but for reasons other than those cited by the dozens of Democrats who have suddenly seen the light. Our journal’s vocation is to allow everyone — including ordinary citizens with strong feelings — to publish the widest variety of reasoned readings of the events of contemporary history. We systematically require that the facts be respected. But we know that the interpretation people may have of the same facts will vary according to the elements of context from which they view those facts. Allowing for the expression of contrasting appreciations helps all of us better understand our own perceptions. It also invites us to revise our own partial understanding of the issues.

Many people see the exercise of freedom of thought and speech as the foundation of democracy. Now, whether what we have today is a healthy democracy remains a matter of open debate. For most Americans, freedom of expression stands as the axiom on which the logic of democracy is built.

But what is HR9495? Here is the official summary of the bill’s intent:

“Legislation that would prevent U.S. citizens who have been
taken hostage or wrongfully detained abroad from incurring
penalties for late tax payments while they were held, as well
as terminating tax-exempt status for organizations found to
be supporting terrorism.”

So why would Democrats even be tempted to flip-flop on such a question?

The Minnesota Reformer that “Minnesota Rep. Angie Craig voted in favor of the legislation last week, one of 52 House Democrats — and the only Minnesota Democrat — to do so.” She supported the bill because of its provisions granting tax leeway to Americans held hostage overseas. “However, Craig said she will vote against the bill this week.”

Craig claimed that she was initially motivated by her strong opposition to any actions that support foreign terrorist organizations. So, what has changed? “Over the past several days as the president-elect has rolled out his cabinet nominees, I’ve become increasingly concerned that H.R. 9495 would be used inappropriately by the incoming Administration.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Inappropriately:

In a way that would be abusive, possibly illegal and directed against a selection of enemies different from my own.

Contextual note

Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat, who clearly understands the danger such legislation represents,: “A frequent tool of dictators is to label political opposition groups as ‘terrorist groups’ and shut them down.” That has been the case at least since President George W. Bush launched his global war on terror.

We know Murphy believes Donald Trump is a potential dictator. Before the election, he Fox News that “Donald Trump has made it very clear: if you put him back in power, he’s going to think about only one group of people and that’s his friends at Mar-a-Lago.” That in itself is a recipe for dictatorship.

We also know that Murphy does not believe President Joe Biden is a dictator, even if traditionally Americans tend to believe that only dictators would allow themselves to be complicit in a genocide. That distinction between who is and who isn’t a dictator has offered Murphy some serious clarity in his decision-making.

Another Democratic Congressman, Lloyd Doggett, is among only a minority of Democrats who have shown authentic for Palestinian suffering. He opposed the bill for the following reason. “This bill is not about terrorism — it’s about giving Donald Trump unlimited authority to label his opponents as terrorists.”

Of course, had the bill passed earlier, it would have given the same unlimited power to Biden, who consistently showed his managerial skill at neutralizing or even cancelling opponents. It isn’t clear whether Doggett would have had similar objections had Democratic candidate Kamala Harris been elected.

This episode raises serious questions about how Americans view the question of authority. The constitution establishes radical principles such as freedom of speech and religion, which should protect the widest range of expression and opinion, so long as it does not translate into illegal acts. Do all Americans share this concern? It’s becoming less and less clear.

Historical note

As some people predicted, November 5 has already proved to be a watershed moment in US political history. The debate about what catastrophes we can expect over the next four years will keep on raging at least until January 20, 2025. From that point on, we will be in a position to assess not only what those events turn out to be, but what long-term transformations they are likely to produce. A return to some imaginary status quo ante Trump 2 seems highly unlikely.

Trump’s unpredictability alone will cause serious havoc in various sectors. One in particular is the immense complex of the national security state, which Trump himself has in the past referred to as the “deep state.” We may see a struggle between the hyperreal personality of Trump — assisted by another hyperreal hero, Elon Musk — and the tentacular military and intelligence complex that has pretty consistently orientated US foreign policy for many decades, despite the alternation of parties and personalities in the White House.

Could it be that Trump won the election not because the population wished to elect an authoritarian leader, but because they were intent on voting out the current Democratic regime that they felt had become deeply authoritarian in its acts? Because of his flamboyant personality, Trump may well prove more explicitly authoritarian in his acts, but — and some find this trait redeeming — he doesn’t disguise his taste for authoritarianism. He puts it on display. He proudly proclaims his most “inappropriate” initiatives.

The Biden administration’s policies concerning freedom of speech, in contrast, have been highly visible examples of public hypocrisy. It has used and abused the bugbear of “disinformation” to accuse everyone who challenges its own arbitrary use of authority — whether concerning Covid-19 or its engagement in wars — as purveyors of misinformation, suppliers of harmful content and even apologists of terrorism. Many of them have joined the popular trend of calling critics of Israel antisemites, a rhetorical ploy that seeks to excuse the administration’s too obvious complicity in an ongoing genocide conducted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, one of the most authentically authoritarian leaders of our era.

Finally, let me clarify why we at 51�Թ� share the worries of those Democrats who have now found the courage to oppose HR9495.

51�Թ� is a US non-profit organization that seeks to allow the expression of the widest range of insights, interpretations, opinions, sentiments and beliefs. The journal’s editorial standards require that the expression of any opinion, however marginal or eccentric, conform to the norms of rational discourse. This includes respect for facts and consistent reasoning. Consistent reasoning does not mean impeccable or complete reasoning. It means constructing a coherent viewpoint based on the facts presented. That alone does not prove whether a point of view is right or wrong. It reveals how that point of view attains some level of credibility.

Consequently, we publish some points of view that some people may consider “supporting terrorism.” The underlying problem is that in a democracy there is, and there should be “some” of everything, simply because every individual’s and every group’s perception of the world is variable, over space and time.

Losing our tax-exempt status would be fatal and not just to our journal, to the idea of democracy itself. We truly are at a historical turning-point.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post 51�Թ� Too Has Reason to Be Unhappy About HR9495 appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Reuters, like the Pentagon itself, sought to reassure the public that, however poor the performance, the DoD’s intentions were good. (Cue the Nina Simone, “I’m just a soul whose intentions are good; Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood…”)

For United States citizens, late 2021 was an odd moment in history. It was the first year of Joe Biden’s presidency. Following the withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 after 20 years of war, the increasingly bloated US defense establishment was, for a few months, no longer visibly involved militarily, diplomatically or logistically in an overseas conflict. Yes, there was some action in Syria and even Iraq. But the public felt this as a moment of peacetime. The perfect opportunity to set one’s house in order.

Reuters cannot be blamed for failing to notice that the State Department was busy at the time setting the scene for a war with Russia as NATO — but not the US on its own — was putting increasing pressure on the Donbas region in Ukraine. No journalist could predict the Russian invasion that would take place three months later. It was indeed a privileged moment for reassessing the entire defense establishment’s capacity to manage and even audit its own accounts.

In the meantime, that war not only began but is still going on, with hundreds of billions of US defense expenses transferred to Ukraine. Even less predictable than Putin’s “unprovoked” invasion of Ukraine, was the equally “unprovoked” Gaza revolt of October 2023 that put the DoD money machine into overdrive as the ironclad commitment to Israel had to be respected, no matter what.

So, with all that unexpected activity and the complex politics that accompanies it, we should not be astonished today to discover that not too much has changed on the audit front.

This time it’s Brad Dress writing for The Hill who offers us what has now become a somewhat predictable and repetitive: “Pentagon fails 7th audit in a row but says progress made.”

But the Beatles certainly got it right, since, according to no less an authority than Under Secretary of Defense Comptroller and Chief Financial Officer Michael McCord, the Defense Department “has turned a corner in its understanding of the depth and breadth of its challenges.” He even gave a reading of the dynamics when he added: “Momentum is on our side, and throughout the Department there is strong commitment — and belief in our ability — to achieve an unmodified audit opinion.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Strong commitment:

In the language of military officials, vague intention, which is a generous reading for something that more likely means “a weak non-commitment.”

Contextual note

It may sound abusive to claim that a phrase such as “strong commitment” can mean literally its opposite, as we propose in our definition. But meaning comes from context. In baseball, a 7-0 shutout is a weak performance, and this one resembles a “no-hitter.”

But there is another linguistic test we can apply to determine the meaning here. If a Silicon Valley entrepreneur makes a statement such as, “We have a strong commitment to rival the market leader,” no one will doubt that the company’s focus will be squarely on achieving that goal. In contrast, we learn from McCord that “throughout the Department there is strong commitment.” First, we should notice that “there is” signifies a passive assertion, compared to the type of formulation that identifies a determined will. The “we” in “we have a strong commitment” includes the speaker. McCord’s assertion is so vague it would be true even if he himself didn’t for a moment share the commitment.

McCord uses the idea of “throughout the Department” to rhetorically magnify the effect, but instead it dilutes it. “Throughout” suggests a dispersion in space, a diffuse feeling rather than the kind of moral engagement one would expect him to affirm. But it’s his following parenthesis that gives the game away. He speaks of a “belief in our ability.” The idea of “belief” is considerably weaker than, say, “confidence in our ability.” Belief expresses a form of hope that relies on no concrete evidence.

McCord allows the fog of his reasoning to thicken. “I do not say we failed, as I said, we have about half clean opinions. We have half that are not clean opinions. So if someone had a report card that is half good and half not good, I don’t know that you call the student or the report card a failure. We have a lot of work to do, but I think we’re making progress.”

At least the Beatles affirmed that it’s getting better all the time, not that they “think” they’re making progress.

Historical note

In a January 2022 Devil’s Dictionary piece, we cited the of an observer of Beltway politics who provided a clue as to why things need not get better all the time. “None of the ‘centrist’ Democrats or Republicans who complained about the cost of the Build Back Better Act have said a peep about the ever-growing Pentagon budget — and the fact that it is somehow still growing even despite the Afghanistan pullout. It has grown about 25% in size over the past five years, even though the Pentagon just failed its fourth audit last month.”

We cited an earlier from 2019 that began with this astonishing sentence: “A Michigan State University economics professor discovered $21 trillion unaccounted for in the federal budget starting in 1998 until the end of fiscal year 2015.”

In other words, there is no reason to be surprised today that a “strong commitment” to conduct accurate audits is necessary and will continue to make headlines… probably for decades to come. And the only change will be similar to what we’ve already seen when, three years later, four failed audits turn into seven.

But let’s look more deeply at the historical context. The latest article cites what appears to be a serious deadline, only four years away. “The Pentagon said it is firmly committed to achieving a clean audit by 2028, as mandated by the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act.”

This leaves us wondering. Could this be related to another commitment we’ve been hearing about? Some will call it not so much a commitment, but a belief widely shared in national security circles and that concerns the medium term: that a war with China has been at least “mentally” programmed for 2027. Noah Robertson writing for Defense News this May published a two-part with the title: “How DC became obsessed with a potential 2027 Chinese invasion of Taiwan.”

This leaves us speculating about why 2028 was chosen as the objective. How convenient a hot war with China would turn out to be for anyone seeking to avoid having to face up to the first “clean audit” the following year. Who would dare to demand accountability in the midst, or even the aftermath of a hot war with China?

So, how much “confidence” should we have in the breakout of a war with China in 2027? Remember, this forecast of a war at a precise date was formulated at a time when no one expected Donald Trump to be elected for a second time. It isn’t Trump’s volatility that explains it, nor his promise to focus his attention on China rather than Russia.

Robertson explained the logic by citing a Joe Biden administration official who paraphrased the remarks of Chinese President Xi Jinping: “Look, I hear all these reports in the United States [of] how we’re planning for military action in 2027 or 2035.” Xi affirms: “There are no such plans.” Which many interpret as the proof that such plans do exist.

“That first year, 2027,” Robertson says, “is a fixation in Washington. It has impacted the debate over China policy — a shift from the long term to the short term. It’s also helped steer billions of dollars toward U.S. forces in the Pacific. And in the last several years, it’s been a question mark hanging over the Biden administration’s approach to the region.”

There’s the answer to the mystery of the failed audits. We know that the military-industrial complex is all about helping to “steer billions of dollars” in any chosen direction. At the same time, one steers one’s regard away from the auditor’s books.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Pentagon’s Flawed Account of Its Failure to Keep Accounts appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Among the prominent experts, former central banker at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Kathleen Tyson, recently concerning the global trend of central banks to diversify away from strict dependence on the US dollar: “Currency optionality is now a matter of economic and national security. US threats of more tariffs and sanctions against states moving to Local Currency Trade demonstrate the dangers of dollar dependence and the urgency of optionality and resiliency.”

Everyone understands the meaning of resiliency. But what about optionality?

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Optionality:

A euphemistic synonym of the common noun “choice.” It is employed to avoid provoking the simulacrum of “moral judgment” exercised by dominant powers who believe that their set of rules intended to normalize economic behavior endow them with the right to coerce others and the duty to limit others’ ability to choose.

Contextual note

Tyson is of course referring to the growing trend seen in a diversity of nations to devise methods, techniques and technology that will allow central banks and other foreign exchange operators to conduct transactions flexibly and, when possible, directly between the widest range of individual currencies. This means adopting an attitude that aims at avoiding dependence on what used to be the most convenient solution for everyone: holding US dollars reserves.

So why pedantically insist on a technocratic neologism? Why not be more simple and natural and call this “currency choice?” 

There are several comprehensible reasons for this innovation in vocabulary. Unlike the idea behind the word choice, optionality refers not to the act of choosing but to a persistent state in which flexible strategic choice appears as the default setting. In contrast, the idea of choice to modern ears evokes a specific act governed as much by taste as rational calculation. It even includes the idea of not choosing. Optionality implies the necessity to choose.

The emergence of the notion of “consumer choice” in the 20th century has polluted our vocabulary. It defines a mentality in which consumers, confronted with a diversity of brands, exercise their free will by choosing the one they find most attractive. This has even affected the model of democracy in the US. Americans now understand that they have a choice between exactly two viable brands. Elections are about convincing the electorate that one brand is better than the other. 

The advent of the consumer society enabled marketers to develop a complementary concept, the notion of impulse purchasing decisions fueled by advertising. Given the seriousness of foreign exchange, optionality can thus be seen as the necessary alternative to the ultimately trivial notion of consumer choice. 

Unlike consumer decisions, optionality is emotionally neutral. It supposes cold rationality in its decision making. Some find it ironic that at the same time dominant macro theories of modern capitalism posit and indeed require a belief in the existence of homo economicus — a purely rational being capable at all times of calculating what best correlated with their interest — the notion of impulse buying emerged as a staple of the “science” of marketing.

To understand the transition from the increasingly unipolar, normative and conformist 20th century and the disruptive increasingly multipolar 21st century, pondering these distinctions of vocabulary can prove helpful. It’s too easy to dismiss a word like optionality as a futile example of a self-enamored professional elite’s taste for jargon, designed to meet their need to feel both different from and superior to the common culture.

What we’re seeing today is an emerging world wounded and sent into disarray by Washington’s obsessive recourse to sanctions. Rather than seeking to undermine the dollar, the wise bankers and politicians are focusing on defining a field of options in which normal economic relationships may play out, free of the fear of coercion and intimidation. Rather than taking the form of a slave revolt, they are inventing not only new practices and technologies, but even a vocabulary that helps define a new economic culture.

Historical note

Since the beginning of the 21st century, two major events have transformed the way nations understand the world order. When President George W. Bush responded to the drama of the September 11 attacks by launching a war with a nation state, Afghanistan, instead of framing the issue as a criminal affair, his futile “forever wars” focused on regime change ultimately undermined the image of the US as the unipolar enforcer of a self-defined rules-based order. The prestige of its global military presence, ready to police the world in the name of democracy, took a serious hit. President Joe Biden’s ignominious retreat from Afghanistan in 2021, after 20 years of feckless war, confirmed the world’s worst suspicions.

The supposedly indomitable US military machine had confirmed what should have been clear with the fall of Saigon nearly 50 years earlier: Even with no rival global power on Earth, the US military was incapable of imposing its will on other regions of the world. Thanks to Bush, one pillar of US supremacy was seriously cracked for all the world to see. 

The financial crisis of 2007–2008 offered an initial glimpse of the weakness of the other pillar: the US economy, its tentacular stock market and the almighty dollar. The shock was real but not fatal. Thanks to President Barack Obama’s commitment to quantitative easing (QE), the dollar maintained its pivotal role, but at its core it was already seriously fragilized.

After the withdrawal from Afghanistan, Biden made a new strategic error that had the effect of confirming the world’s perception that currency optionality had become an existential necessity. For decades, Washington has been addicted to sanctions designed to weaken and ultimately topple the governments of every nation that fails to show due respect to what Noam Chomsky has “the Godfather.” The extreme measures taken in reaction to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 brought to the fore what should have been obvious: every nation should fear the dollar. When Biden cut Russia off from the SWIFT payment system and threatened to punish any country that did business with Russia, nations across the face of the globe realized that holding too many dollars, though convenient for trade, entailed a possibly existential risk.

The “de-dollarization” movement has been growing slowly over time. In 2016, Obama’s Treasury Secretary Jack Lew expressed his awareness of the risk for the US. He that the “escalation of financial sanctions will only accelerate this trend, precipitating further de-dollarization as more countries capitalize on digitalization to expand their use of LCS for bilateral transactions and to develop more hedging instruments.” He added this: “The more we condition the use of the dollar and our financial system on adherence to US foreign policy, the more the risk of migration to other currencies and other financial systems in the medium term grows.”

As Lew predicted, the medium term is living up to his forecast. Currency optionality will inexorably be part of a new world order.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post How Optional Can De-Dollarization Become? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Although his official deadline for a general election was January 2025, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak brought the date forward for a general election by a full six months. Similarly, French President Emmanuel Macron, in a moment of panic following a disastrous round of European parliamentary elections, called a snap general election in June. The results were equally disastrous for both Sunak’s and Macron’s fragile power base.

A number of other elections made headlines without producing significant surprises. Russia re-elected President Vladimir Putin with a very comfortable majority, even if few think of Russia as a model of democracy. Mexico elected its first female president, Claudia Sheinbaum, who also happens to be Jewish, demonstrating a significant cultural shift in Mexico’s electoral tradition. Many think of that as a win for democracy.

But the “big” election everyone was waiting for in 2024 took place this week in the 50 United States (disunited during presidential elections for the sake of counting “electoral votes”). This contest was trumpeted (no pun intended) as the litmus test for the health of US democracy. Democrats consistently claimed that, if elected, former President Donald Trump would abolish democracy. Now that he has handily won the electoral vote and possibly the popular vote as well, there is little likelihood that Trump will call into question the democratic processes that got him elected, now for the second time.

We might, therefore, assume that nearly all observers are ready to take as a sign of the vibrancy of democracy the fact that most of these elections, including Trump’s, appear to have been conducted in a peaceful, orderly manner. Alas, some experts and pollsters persist in promoting the average citizen’s belief that the merit of democracy seems to be flagging.

In an published by the Journal of Democracy in 2015, Larry Diamond, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, began by stating bluntly: “Democracy has been in a global recession for most of the last decade.” Two years later, in 2017, the Pew Research Center Democracy Report issued this dire : “Scholars have documented a global ‘democratic recession,’ and some now warn that even long-established ‘consolidated’ democracies could lose their commitment to freedom and slip toward more authoritarian politics.”

In June 2023, Financial Times published a two-part , “Martin Wolf on saving democratic capitalism: the ‘democratic recession.’”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Democratic recession:

A concept borrowed from economics by political analysts to make their complaints about the difficulty of governing sound more scientific.

Contextual note

One could make the paradoxical case that what the experts mean by “democratic regression” is a form of democratic progression. Those who use the term present it as signifying a loss of faith in democratic processes. But who is guilty of this loss of faith? In their view it is not the leaders, the parties and marketing experts who now play a dominant role in elections. No, they are innocent. The guilty party is none other than… the demos. It’s the people, the citizens of democracy, who enjoy the right to vote. They appear to be using a form of critical thinking to assess the democratic failure of an electoral system that appears, in the political results it produces, either to ignore or betray the average citizen’s interests. Instead, what they see corresponds troublingly to the very concept Wolf invokes: not democracy, but “democratic capitalism.”

To be fair to Wolf, he asserts that reversing the trend he calls democratic recession and which he associates with Trump-style populist movements, requires governments to address underlying economic issues by creating more inclusive economic policies that benefit broader populations rather than just the elite.

But, as any of the classic capitalist theoreticians might have reminded him, capitalism is, by design, a system that concentrates economic power in an elite. As the economic elite consolidates its wealth, it systemically distributes it not to the public, but to a political elite that not only shares its values but allows that same economic elite to dictate its policies. All lucid populists, right and left, complain that politicians respond not to the electors but to the “donor class.”

Economic power secretes political power, embraces it and effectively controls it. If the vote is the only concrete and extremely constrained tool of expression the people possess, political campaigns and the corporate-controlled media constitute the shared tools of the elite. The power this represents is carefully and expertly managed.

The logic behind such a system of “power-sharing” is famously enshrined in the US Supreme Court’s Citizens United that “money is speech.” Voting serves one simple purpose: to elect the individual members of the political elite which is destined to merge with the economic elite. Votes change the names on the governing roster. Money serves to get things done. The people losing faith in democracy are not mistaken when they feel they’re treated as paying spectators of a pre-scripted show.

Historical note

The Pew study appeared in 2017 following two dramatic historical events a year earlier. The Brexit vote in the UK took place in June 2016. That November, Trump shocked a world expecting Hillary Clinton, a bona fide member of the political elite, to waltz into the White House. The study offered the following analysis: “Roughly a quarter of people (median of 23%) across the 38 countries surveyed are committed democrats. About twice as many (median of 47%) are less-committed democrats. Relatively few (13%) are nondemocratic. A small share (8%) does not endorse any of these forms of governance.”

Rather than being alarmed, a careful reader might have concluded that 70% (23 + 47%) of more or less committed democrats sounds reassuring. But this kind of statistical analysis deliberately ignores the most fundamental and seemingly obvious reality: that whatever wavering exists concerning a population’s faith in democracy is likely to be proportional to the perception that the established democratic systems those citizens experience do not function democratically. Instead of losing faith, they are gaining in lucidity.

No one can pretend that Trump is a political thinker and even less a theoretician of democracy. The democratic process is a game he has learned to play. He was bold enough to invent his own rules, a bit like the American Basketball Association (ABA) when it shook up the sports world by rivaling the established National Basketball Association (NBA) and the three-point shot before the startup league was constrained to disappear within the folds of the NBA, which enthusiastically adopted the innovation. Similarly, Trump’s rules appear to have put the radically demographic orientation of the Democratic party’s rulebook out of commission.

Trump’s political behavior reflects the fact that he’s an “artist” of the deal, a businessman combined with an entertainer. But how democratic was the procedure that put Kamala Harris on the ballot as the only viable alternative honest US citizens might vote for? She was selected after a primary process from which all serious competitors were excluded. She was pegged to win following the traditional demographic analysis of minority voter blocs the Democratic National Committee counted on to vote in lockstep.

Reviewing the philosophical history of the idea of democracy in an article published earlier this week, our collaborator Anton Schauble reminded us that “it is no longer a secret that the US is not a democracy, but an oligarchy.” A Princeton University in 2014 provided statistical proof of that by examining the legislation Congress passed and comparing how well it reflected the interests of the elite as opposed to the stated preferences of the people. Schauble points out that instead of thinking of Trump as a democratic outlier, we should realize that “he is an oligarch from America’s oligarchy… But oligarchies like America produce Donald Trumps like cherry trees produce cherries.”

The journal tells us that “around a thousand different types of cherries grow in the U.S.” and some are tastier than others. Harris and the Democratic party clearly left a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths. Trump may be a crass vulgarian, but no one can deny he offers something with a strong taste.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Was Trump’s Win a Victory or a Defeat for Democracy? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

News has always been a business. Back in that golden age, it was a risky business. The kind of truth the public took an interest in could potentially diverge from the particular financial and ideological interests of the owners. In recent decades, media owners have developed several techniques to limit that risk.

Expectations about what the public expects to find in the news have changed. In times past, the news cycle was punctuated by what we can call “moments of crisis.” These were typically dramatic developments in various kinds of political, financial or cultural power struggles. They might appear as showdowns, political shakeups, or even scandals. Crises generally highlighted specific moments of a conflict or sudden revelations.

I’m tempted to call some of those events “aristocratic crises.” In the US there was Watergate that brought down a president, the Church committee’s challenge to the CIA, leading to new laws restricting its actions, or President Bill Clinton’s Monica Lewinsky scandal that led to impeachment. Through those events, powerful people or institutions saw their authority challenged and their status modified. 

But there was another category I like to call “popular crises.” They resonate throughout society and affect the entire body politic. Unlike an aristocratic crisis that may lead to changes for the personnel of the ruling class, a popular crisis transforms the way society interprets the dominant narratives. One salient example took place around 1967. That was when the US public’s perception of the “meaning” as well as morality of the Vietnam War irrevocably shifted. It created political chaos for an incumbent president, spawned a massive protest movement as well as a backlash and changed the perception of the role of the US military, including transforming it into a professional army when President Nixon abolished the draft.

Because the owners of the corporate media have focused on reducing, if not eliminating risk by constricting and restraining the amount of unbridled truth-seeking reporting they permit, it is far rarer to see popular crises of the kind that dramatically challenged the US government’s policy in Vietnam or the French government’s control of higher education in 1968. It’s not that the truth can no longer emerge. If it is in any way disruptive, it simply won’t be mentioned in the legacy media. Instead, social media has amply filled in the gaps concerning truth-telling. But because social media is structured in the form of ideological silos, it can never achieve the scope required to change the general perception of a crisis.

This evolution in the culture of journalism has had a curiously transformative effect on the nature of the concept of crisis itself. UnHerd columnist Thomas Fazi highlights this phenomenon in an dedicated to Europe’s incapacity to manage its culture of democracy. In his article, “Von der Leyen’s authoritarian plot: National democracies will be subordinate to her Commission,” Fazi describes an evolution, based on one woman’s ambition, towards a curious form of dictatorship that has the potential to destabilize Europe.

“Over the past 15 years,” Fazi writes, “the Commission has exploited Europe’s ‘permacrisis’ to radically, yet surreptitiously, increase its influence over areas of competence that were previously deemed to be the preserve of national governments — from financial budgets and health policy to foreign affairs and defence.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Permacrisis:

A state of extreme and growing tension and aggravated contradiction maintained indefinitely by those in power as the means of avoiding any initiative aiming at the kind of resolution that might call into question their hold on power.

Contextual note

Two years ago, Collins Dictionary elected “permacrisis” its “word of the year.” The publisher’s head of learning that the choice was made because of “how truly awful 2022 has been for so many people.” The neologism first appeared officially a year earlier, when Europeans used it to describe the or a “new normal” characterized by “volatility, uncertainty, and a prolonged sense of emergency.”

Though some explain it as a of the long drawn-out trauma of the Covid-19 pandemic, I see permacrisis as a cousin of another somewhat older neologism, “forever war,” a concept many commentators have identified as a prominent feature of the 21st century geopolitical landscape. The practice of forever war began in earnest when US President George W. Bush launched the infinitely expandable idea of his “global war on terror” and began applying it to multiple countries. President Joe Biden carried on the tradition when he solemnly promised that NATO’s war against Russia in Ukraine would last “as long as it takes” and subsequently agreed to offer “ironclad” support to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war of extermination intended to last until the coming of the Messiah.

Europe is already three years into its latest forever war for which Ursula von der Leyen has demonstrated her enthusiasm. She has also thrown her institutional weight behind another war whose initiator, Netanyahu, clearly wishes to endure and become his own forever war.

Historical note

When author Naomi Klein formulated the theory called “the shock doctrine,” she described an approach to international relations that aimed at implementing Washington’s neoliberal economic agenda across the globe. It featured a strategy of “disaster capitalism.” By exploiting or even provoking crises in different countries, neo-liberal economic doctors could step in to provide cures for the disease.

Her theory made sense in the era predating social media, when a crisis was expected to last for only a limited amount of time. Each of the crises Klein describes was expected to lead to a predictable solution: typically, one that would play out following rules established by Milton Friedman’s Chicago School of Economics and correlate with the policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

It was a veritable system. Everyone agreed that there existed a universal cure, especially for complaints that a local leader sought to address with a local cure. Chilean Prime Minister Salvador Allende, for example, in 1973 set out on a path of economic reform that included the nationalization of industries including banks, agrarian reform, state control of the economy and health and education reforms. The US State Department considered those very cures to be the symptoms of a disease that required a universal cure.

Like a Hollywood studio that understands the tried-and-true value of remakes, the CIA invoked and executed the same scenario that had successfully played out 20 years earlier in Iran, when Britain and the US ganged up to oust a democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh. Allende himself did not survive the coup. He may have preferred suicide to the type of cure his successor, the dictator Augusto Pinochet, was likely to administer.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the same pattern evolved into a sophisticated template called “color revolutions.” That trend continued and culminated in Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution in 2014. That was the occasion in which Victoria Nuland, a key operator in US President Barack Obama’s State Department, appeared to single-handedly engineer the intended outcome when she put her man, “Yats” (Arseniy Yatseniuk), in the catbird seat after chasing Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych from power.

It was shortly thereafter that the concept of the sudden dramatic crisis began to give way to the more efficient concept of permacrisis. In his article on the transformation of European politics, Fazi describes the ongoing coup engineered by Ursula von der Leyen, who today is entering her second term as president of the European Commission. Her plan consists of “placing loyalists in strategic roles, marginalizing her critics, and establishing a complicated web of dependencies and overlapping duties that prevent any individual from gaining excessive influence.” Perhaps more efficiently than Benito Mussolini’s March on Rome in 1922 or Adolf Hitler’s success when he merged the positions of Chancellor and President following President Paul von Hindenburg’s death in 1934, Madame Ursula is exploiting a prolonged state of crisis to exercise absolute power.

But unless she thinks NATO is under her command, she will be a dictator without an army, reminding us of Joseph Stalin’s famous remark: “How many divisions has the Pope?” And though, as I write, one of the pearls of German industry, Volkswagen, has fallen into a deep crisis manifestly linked to policies Washington imposed and Von der Leyen enthusiastically embraced — policies that have crippled Germany’s economy — she must certainly be gloating about her achievement, as she prepares, with increased authority, to reign over 27 countries for another five years.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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In today’s international climate, expecting Western diplomats to calculate that it might be healthier to avoid war than prove a point about who has the right to make decisions for others would be totally illusory. From Washington’s point of view, there are principles that must be applied in the defense of a “rules-based order,” even at the expense of another allied country’s population.

Perhaps the seasoned strategists of DC’s State Department felt that the larger issue of European security was too big a morsel to chew on. In their eyes, the only manageable issue to consider was the right of a particular nation, Ukraine, to adhere to a sprawling and fundamentally incoherent military alliance. They had good reason to insist on this. In their mind, this was the key to maintaining control of what Zbigniew Brzezinski “the grand chessboard.” The risk associated with spending unproductive months seeking to thrash out the mutual security requirements of neighboring, culturally connected nations was clearly not worth taking. By refusing to waste time in pointless discussion, they could seize the opportunity to continue on a well-trodden path by launching yet another one of Washington’s forever wars, another one of those epic conflicts that can carry on for “as long as it takes.”

War may be bad for some, but the war economy is good for anyone in power. That is the lesson America learned during World War II and it has never been forgotten.

In August 2021, the administration of American President Joe Biden finally wound up one of the most recent forever wars in Afghanistan. After 20 years, it had clearly run out of gas. The new Biden administration knew that Ukraine could be the new opportunity to focus on. Nearly three years on, it has become clear to everyone that — just like Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria — the war could not be won by the “good guys.” But winning apparently isn’t the major objective. Keeping a wartime economy going is clearly the top priority.

If, as early remarks by none other than Hillary Clinton, the Ukraine fiasco was strategically planned to create an “Afghanistan situation” for Russia, the war that broke out in Gaza and Israel on October 7, 2023 was on no one’s agenda. Washington didn’t need another headache. It was too busy stoking the fires in Ukraine in its quest to postpone the resolution as long as possible. This time, the value of waging a new forever hot war accrued to a local leader, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu. A prolonged war would have the twofold merit of pleasing a lot of key people in his own government and postponing the inevitable inglorious end of Bibi’s political career.

For authoritative voices inside the Beltway, the successive killing of the two top leaders of Hamas — Ismail Haniya and Yahya Sinwar — tells them the end of the conflict may be in sight. The White House followed up Sinwar’s elimination with this: “There is now the opportunity for a ‘day after’ in Gaza without Hamas in power, and for a political settlement that provides a better future for Israelis and Palestinians alike.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Day after:

An imaginary moment of the future that governments and every other defender of the status quo in times of war has an absolute need to invoke rhetorically as a demonstration of their commitment to peace while doing everything in their power to prevent it from occurring.

Contextual note

Washington’s track record on assessing the dynamics of ongoing wars — how long they might last and when they might end — has never been brilliant. No sooner had Biden expressed his optimism about the sunny day after than his staunch ally, Netanyahu, contradicted him. “Israeli leaders,” Al Jazeera, “had a drastically different message. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the war is ‘not over’ and pledged that Israeli forces would operate in Gaza for ‘years to come.’”

H.A. Hellyer, a geopolitical analyst, dismissed American talks of a day after in Gaza as “laughable,” noting “that the Israelis have made it very clear that they’re not leaving Gaza, that the military presence will remain, so the idea of any sort of political horizon here is just very, very unrealistic.”

So why such disparity of perception between the two allies, Bibi and Biden? One answer might be the American penchant for “hyperreality” that infects the country’s political and social culture, transforming even the average citizen’s perception of the world. Americans simply don’t see the meaning of events in the same way as others, including their ironclad allies, the Israelis. In fact, no two countries share the same vision of history, a fact State Department diplomats would do well to ponder.

For Americans, days are always significant, especially for tracking the ends of wars. The American Civil War ended on April 9, 1865, with the unconditional surrender of General Robert E. Lee at Appomattox. General Ulysses S. Grant and Lee concretized the moment with a dramatic handshake. Adolf Hitler’s suicide on April 30, 1945 put an end to World War II in Europe. A pair of atomic bombs in early August of that year ended the Pacific version of the conflict.

Hollywood war films and most westerns build up to the single dramatic moment — often a showdown — when the villain dies or is humiliated and a brighter future emerges. This pattern of expectations appears to be wired into every American’s mindset as the key to understanding existential dramas. The successive deaths of Hamas leaders Haniya and Sinwar, with the added subplot of Israel’s elimination of Hassan Nasrallah’s in Lebanon, inevitably signaled to Americans that the year-long violent movie was coming to an end.

What Americans fail to recognize is that the Israeli screenwriters were working on a different script, one that derives not from Hollywood screenplays but from the mythology of the Old Testament. Messiahs don’t take over after the death of a villain. They don’t sign peace agreements. As instruments of a divine will, they install a new order. Their mission transcends the kind of everyday human goals associated with the banalities of governance and democracy.

Historical note

 “Forever wars” inevitably produce a curious linguistic paradox. “Forever” evokes timelessness, if not eternity. But for the sake of reasonable, peace-loving political discourse, the same promoters of forever war need to invoke a precise moment of theoretical resolution: the day after. Sadly, neither term — “forever war” or day after — makes any real-world sense.

Take the case of Afghanistan. In 2001, America mobilized NATO, transporting Western troops well beyond the confines of its “home base,” the North Atlantic. Its goal was to rid a remote Asian nation of the dreaded Taliban. On that occasion, America rejected a reasonable proposal to negotiate a solution whereby Afghanistan itself would arrest and try the criminals. The administration of President George W. Bush preferred launching a war that would last 20 years. And what did the day after of that war turn out to be in 2021? The restoration of an even more radicalized Taliban.

In 1967, in the midst of the war in Vietnam that provided the initial template for future forever wars, General Westmoreland and the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson began repeatedly “the light at the end of the tunnel.” That was an earlier version of the day after. That war lasted 20 years and ended in chaotic humiliation for America.

The Hollywood treatment of war may appear inspired by Shakespearean tragedy, which always ends with a dramatic death. But William Shakespeare’s tragic characters, even villains like Richard III or Macbeth, have something heroic about them that we cannot help but admire. And the perception of the day after always remains ambiguous. When Hamlet dies, the crown is given not to a Dane, but a Norwegian rival, Fortinbras, whose name, derived from French, means “strong in arm.” In other words, despite Hamlet’s own encouragement (“he has my dying voice”), the day after will more likely be a continuation of a forever war.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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PACE is a key institution within the Council of Europe, the platform for cooperation and dialogue among Europe’s 27 nations. PACE focuses on promoting human rights, democracy and the rule of law across Europe. These are topics of universal interest one might expect United States news media and especially the US government, who spent so much time and money seeking Assange’s extradition, to be keenly interested in. But the story got little coverage in the West and practically none in the US. The last time The New York Times even mentioned PACE was over a year ago, in September 2023, in an with the title: “In occupied areas of Ukraine, Russia is holding local elections that have been widely denounced.”

PACE not only monitors the implementation of Council of Europe conventions and agreements between member states, it also elects judges to the European Court of Human Rights. You would be justified in thinking of it as the “conscience” of Europe. Its role in human rights advocacy empowers it to adopt resolutions and make recommendations to improve human rights protection. In that capacity, following Assange’s testimony, PACE “ deep concern at ‘the disproportionately harsh treatment’ faced by Julian Assange and said this has had a ‘dangerous chilling effect’ which undermines the protection of journalists and whistleblowers around the world.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Disproportionately harsh treatment:

The US administration’s chosen strategy for dealing with anything or anyone that in any way threatens or even criticizes its actions abroad.

Contextual note

Assange’s legal saga began in 2010, four months after the publication of classified documents on the war in Iraq. It lasted until June 26, 2024 when Assange entered into a guilty plea agreement with the US justice system.

In the opening act, the Australian journalist and founder of WikiLeaks was charged with a sexual offense in Sweden. The case was closed in 2017, as the evidence required for a conviction had not been gathered. Simultaneously, the US Justice Department initiated an investigation using the pretext of the 1917 Espionage Act, a tool that the administration of former President Barack Obama became fond of using against whistleblowers. Fearing extradition to the US, the Ecuadorian embassy granted Assange asylum in London, where he remained for seven years. Then on April 11, 2019, he was forcibly handed over to the British authorities after the election of a new Ecuadorian president, whom WikiLeaks had accused of corruption.

The denouement came after Assange had spent five years in a high-security Belmarsh prison in the UK. It is still unclear why Washington agreed to his release. It should however be obvious that the administration of current President Joe Biden — used to benefiting from European indulgence, if not solidarity with even the harshest of US foreign policy positions — was not expecting the conclusions reached by PACE following Assange’s testimony earlier this month. The Parliamentary Assembly pulled no punches as it reached a conclusion with potentially deep implications for the behavior of all self-respecting democracies, especially those that like to lecture other nations about human rights, freedom of expression and the need to respect a rules-based order.

PACE noted explicitly that Assange’s treatment has had a dangerous deterrent effect on journalists and whistleblowers worldwide. “Chilling” is the term it chose. For the sake of the future of democracy, it becomes urgent to ask ourselves on both sides of the Atlantic: After the Assange case, will journalists and whistleblowers be better protected? On the basis of this judgment, we should hope so, but at the same time we must ask ourselves: Are the politicians in the US and in Europe even listening?

PACE specifically called on the US to go beyond its concern for the protection of journalists by actively combating the tradition of impunity for state agents guilty of war crimes. Will this call be heeded? In the context of ongoing conflicts today in which the US has become implicated, and at a moment when a democratic US presidential candidate openly embraces and celebrates the “service” of former Vice President Dick Cheney, there is reason to doubt it.

Historical note

This episode underlines the perception most people have today that we are living through a period of rapid historical transition. The question of the survival of democracy appears to be on everyone’s mind. We easily understand that democracy can never be perfect, but now that it appears threatened from various sides, can we even find the means to preserve it? Should we consider whistleblowers like Assange and Edward Snowden servants of a citizenry focused on the integrity of governance or dangerous enemies of a system that must be protected not just from physical assault but from critical assessment of any kind?

At a time when the fight for information control has been in the headlines with new pressures on Telegram and Twitter, we should see PACE’s resolution as a strong signal of encouragement to journalists and whistleblowers and a warning to governments easily tempted to justify or paper over the most extreme acts of their militaries and allies in times of war. European governments should be the first to take its recommendations on board. Journalism is already threatened in its theoretical independence by the domination of the economic interests that control or influence the media. If the wheels of justice can be manipulated to suppress truth-telling, democracy cannot survive.

PACE looks beyond Europe and its media. It specifically addresses the US, a nation that has persistently and assiduously put Assange through more than a decade of confinement and even torture. That he is now free to circulate and speak publicly is something of a victory, but it is a victory in a battle that should never have taken place in a democratic society. The atrocities revealed by Assange in his WikiLeaks must not be hidden from the public in the name of a nation’s raison d’Etat.

If PACE’s resolution has any real impact, it means that a clarified legal context will make it more difficult for governments to gag the media and allow crimes committed by their agents to go unpunished. In 2010, WikiLeaks published incontrovertible evidence of atrocities committed by American and British forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Governments and armies will always attempt to conceal acts they find embarrassing. But the press must be allowed to uncover them and publish the truth, with no fear of legal repercussions for doing so.

In recent times, European institutions have been the object of justified and unjustified criticism. Europe today suffers materially and psychologically from its ambiguous relationship with the most powerful member of the Atlantic Alliance. Defining Europe’s “strategic autonomy” is an ongoing. The Council of Europe is once again proving itself to be a major institution for the protection of human rights. In 2005, this same Council the late Dick Marty to investigate the CIA’s secret prisons in Europe. In 2015 and 2016, the European Court of Human Rights condemned Poland, Lithuania and Romania for housing such detention centers.

The governments called into question by such actions will always react defensively to such initiatives. They are rarely “brought to justice” in the sense of holding individuals and institutions legally and formally responsible for identified crimes and atrocities and subject to punishment under the law. But such resolutions help to set standards that will reduce the amount of abuse meted out to independent voices seeking to keep the public informed.

Assange is a journalist whose career was interrupted at the height of his powers and his potential contribution to society and democracy effectively silenced. In Gaza and Lebanon today we are seeing other cases of “disproportionately harsh treatment” that for some political leaders appears to be their privileged form of governance, if not a way of life. Even “proportional” harsh treatment needs to be used as sparingly as possible. As a society, we need to bring the taste for disproportionality under control. For some, it appears to be an addiction.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Europe Calls Assange a Victim of Disproportionate Harshness appeared first on 51�Թ�.

She also cited the paper’s hostility to her self-described courageous attempts to bring diverse voices to the paper. Disappointed at the journal’s failure to implement the goals she had defined, she complained of constant bullying from colleagues who disagreed with her views. Weiss described the environment as “illiberal,” accusing some colleagues of calling her a Nazi and a racist.

The 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary has, in its brief history, had no qualms about calling into question the NYT’s journalism for its ideological bias and its servile relationship with the US national security state. We can therefore sympathize with a former employee in a position to reveal why some of the news and analysis produced by the Gray Lady comes out as distorted and unreliable.

It may therefore seem paradoxical that we are convinced by the breath of fresh air Bari Weiss has promised to bring to the world of US journalism.

Bari Weiss founded The Free Press in 2021. Her aim was to “produce news stories that exemplify the journalistic ideals of honesty, doggedness, and fierce independence,” which she felt were lacking in mainstream journalism, committed as it appeared to be to the ideological conformity that permeates legacy media.

The NYT author Matt ����𲵱�Գ�𾱳����’s offers this description of Weiss’s method: “The founder of The Free Press has built a new media empire by persuading audiences that she is a teller of dangerous truths.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Dangerous truths:

An expression that pretentious people apply to the largely unoriginal ideas they think they have invented and which they mistakenly believe will upset and humiliate people whose viewpoint differs from their own.

Contextual note

����𲵱�Գ�𾱳����’s is officially listed as The New York Times correspondent “focusing on in-depth profiles of powerful figures.” As a kind of takedown artist he reformulates our definition, applied to Weiss, in these terms: “She has created, or at least created space at, a cool kids’ table all her own, positioning herself as a teller of dangerous truths while becoming a kind of brand ambassador for the views and passions of her audience, which often seem to track neatly with her own: that elite universities have lost the plot; that legacy outlets have lost their minds; that Ms. Weiss knows the way forward.”

The NYT may be guilty of many of the many of the flaws and even crimes Weiss attributes to it, but at least has the humility to present itself as a collective effort to present the news of the world. Despite its obvious biases and often sanctimonious tone, it embraces a variety of styles of addressing the questions in the news, even when consciously limiting the breadth of its worldview. In contrast, Weiss makes it clear that The Free Press was created to revolve around her unique personality and her particular sensibilities. Its overall purpose, despite her fake commitment to variety, consists of ennobling her own personal assemblage of popular ideologies, which range from the provocatively unorthodox to the shamelessly conformist.

Flegenheimer quotes the assessment of veteran pollster and strategist Frank Luntz: “She doesn’t just speak to the 1 percent. She speaks to the one-hundredth of 1 percent. And they’ll listen.” They are titillated by the idea that what interests them may be deemed by others to be “dangerous truths,” even though they more often resemble narcissistic self-celebration.

To prove Luntz is right, here is how Weiss responds to the challenge by her interviewer at the recent All-In Summit of changing a society that is “morally bankrupt.” As expected, she has the foolproof, universally appropriate. “It starts with something very simple. Give up the heroin needle of prestige. Rip it out of your arm immediately. Stop poisoning yourself, your family and your children with the bankrupt notion that getting them into Harvard and Yale is more important than inculcating in them a sense of love of family, of country and of all of the things we used to think were normal.” This was followed by the audience’s deafening applause.

For Weiss, the key to solving the problem at the core of US culture will be to change the outlook of literally “one-hundredth of 1 percent” of the US population: those who see their parental mission as consisting of getting their children into Harvard or Yale. What could anyone who thinks in those terms possibly mean when she evokes “all of the things we used to think were normal?” Who is the “we” she has in mind? And what is “normal?” Does she not know that among “normal” Americans, more likely to be affected by the risk of homelessness and the opioid pandemic than by the “heroin” of sending their children to Harvard, survival rather than “prestige” is what they are focused on?

Weiss apparently sees the quest for prestige as the unique original sin of contemporary US culture. “Prestige and honor,” she adds, “is [sic] not something that has been granted to you by institutions that have allowed themselves to be corrupted by morally bankrupt people.” The world around Weiss is morally corrupt. Her own pursuit of prestige and honor by launching the nobly inclusive Free Press should not, on the other hand, be deemed “morally bankrupt.”

Historical note

Analyzing US culture is one thing. Looking at historical events gives us another perspective on what it means to be morally rich or morally bankrupt.

On October 3, Weiss featured her with Douglas Murray on Israel’s war on Gaza, which the International Court of Justice assessed as a “” back in January. Subsequent actions have confirmed that assessment, as schools, hospitals and civilian infrastructure have been sacrificed in what literally resembles an extermination campaign that has now been extended to the neighboring state of Lebanon. United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres has now called the war an “.”

The subtitle of Weiss’s interview with Murray reads, “The West is ‘drunk on peace.’ What will it take to wake them up?” Weiss describes Murray in the following terms: “And it is Douglas, more than almost anyone in the world, who has articulated the stakes of this war with the moral clarity it requires.” The UN and the International Court of Justice cannot be deemed purveyors of moral clarity. They are too “drunk on peace” to appreciate the necessity of a never-ending genocide.

How is the following as an example of Murray’s superior moral reasoning? “I was told by a Jewish friend the other day that apparently there is something in the Torah that says one should not take enormous delight in the decimation of one’s foes. But I’m not Jewish, and so I don’t have to follow this.” So, Murray’s superior “moral clarity” tells us that the rules governing the religion committing atrocities should be suspended because he, who is not subject to those rules, has a moral vision that sees those atrocities as justified. It would be difficult to find a better example not of moral bankruptcy, which so preoccupies Weiss, but of moral perversity.

Weiss is a product and promoter of the American art of hyperreality. She sucks up bits of reality and processes them for commercial advantage. That’s why the Venture Capitalist (VC) crowd that organized the All-In Summit loves her. She has done what all the great entrepreneurs celebrated in VC lore have done: She has not just made money — a banal accomplishment anyone with talent can manage — but built fame and prestige out of fabricating truly dangerous truths.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post How Morally Bankrupt Can a Free Press Be? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The idea of electing a new “commander in chief” who will be the “leader of the free world” lifts people out of their boring routine. The actual political effect of the choice between a Democrat and Republican has never been clearly established. But because the emotional stakes are so high, the media have come to characterize every presidential election as existential. If the wrong candidate wins, democracy will disappear.

Along with the fabricated drama of existential stakes, every presidential campaign brings with it a great leap forward in the art of fiction. We used to wonder who might write “the great American novel,” a term so that it even merits an acronym: GAN. But of course, not many people have time to read novels these days, especially not “great” ones.

Who needs well-crafted literary masterpieces when the most compelling, thunderously suspenseful fiction appears regularly every four years in the drama of a presidential election? Whether its Haitian immigrants purloining pets and serving them for dinner or proclaiming a decade of unmitigated joy, election campaigns extend the range of the substitute for reality we call hyperreality.

Among the plethora of examples, let us consider a US presidential candidate’s foray into historical fiction. Here is how The New York Times summed up the of Harris’s historical novel:

“The most important moments in our history have come when we stood up to aggressors like Putin,” Ms. Harris said, warning that the Russian leader would not stop with Ukraine, and would possibly even look into encroaching on NATO territory, if he succeeds in his campaign.”

“History is so clear in reminding us, the United States cannot and should not isolate ourselves from the rest of the world. Isolation is not insulation.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Isolation:

In contemporary American English, the undesirable result of any policy that  shows a preference for diplomacy over aggressive intervention, peace over the fostering of foreign conflicts conducted by allies with the objective of reinforcing an obsolete notion of hegemony associated with nostalgia for an illusory unipolar world.

Contextual note

The emergence of Donald Trump as a presidential candidate in 2016 confirmed what should already have been obvious: that politics in the US no longer needed a direct connection with reality. At least since Ronald Reagan and the triumph of electoral marketing that turned policy debate into an anecdotal sideshow, presidential campaigns have become a pure exercise in manufacturing something even more fundamental than Noam Chomsky’s and Edward Herman’s: hyperreality. On every level — practically for every word in the political vocabulary — the relationship between historical reality and a newly crafted version of it had become artificial if not totally disconnected.

Examples of political hyperreality abound. Trump provided the ultimate demonstration of how pervasive hyperreality could be. Only days after his inauguration, his administration was “alternative facts.” This was hardly new, but it was the first time it would become an object of public debate.

Kamala Harris’s use of “isolation” in the above quote provides a typical example of how the shift towards hyperreality produces its effects. Without being explicit, she appeals to a decontextualized historical meme drawn from a political culture that dates from the decades between the 20th century’s two world wars. The terms “isolationism” and “isolationist” were applied to an attitude spawned by the will to distance the US from any implication in the disputes between the waning and endemically belligerent European colonial powers. The US had very recently itself emerged as an active and rising colonial power thanks to its acquisitions that followed the 1898 Spanish–American war.

The people later vilified as “isolationists” have been blamed for impeding the US from challenging Adolf Hitler and other despots. They had developed an understandable distaste for getting involved in Europe’s internal quarrels. That, of course, after the “day of infamy” in which the Japanese attacked not only Hawaii but also the Philippines, Guam and British-controlled Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaya. The US was about to take its first steps as the future policeman of a world order that would emerge after the defeat of Germany and Japan.

One possible reading of the three major dramas of this month’s headlines — whether it’s next month’s election, the nearly three-year-old war in Ukraine or the genocidal campaign that Israel has extended beyond Gaza to the West Bank and now Lebanon — is that the battles we see emerging on all of these three fronts have one thing in common: They pitch an ill-defined cohort of defenders of the post-World War II 20th century order against an equally ill-defined group of seekers of a new world order that has manifestly become multipolar.

Trump finds himself comically, paradoxically and incomprehensibly sitting among the second camp, even though he has based his appeal on the idea of returning to the past by making “America great again.” Harris has become the empty, substance-deprived symbol of complacent immobility, whose mission is to perpetuate the existing hyperreality. Trump lives in the eternal present. That allows him to constantly invent his own hyperreality. Harris’s, in its continuity with the past, is already on public display.

Historical note

Most people should recognize that the world that preceded and the one that immediately followed World War II had very little in common. Harris displays lazy rhetoric when she applies terms inherited from a century ago to today’s reality. She’s in denial about the shift in meaning that took place over the course of a century. Language evolves. Apparently, politicians’ minds and worldviews don’t.

Harris’s use of the term “isolation” is clearly abusive and disrespectful of history. But it stands as only one among a multitude of examples in the hyperreal framework we now call “democratic politics.” The word “democracy” itself has never been so shamelessly abused. We find ourselves in yet another election year in which politicians and pundits are making the alarming that “democracy is on the ballot.” Practically equal numbers of voters on the two sides claim that electing the candidate they oppose will constitute a “threat to democracy.”

But do they have any idea of what the democracy is they’re referring to? Do they believe the notion inherited from the Greeks, which was less than wholeheartedly promoted by their nation’s founders, has any precise meaning concerning the reality of governance? Is democracy no more than observing the ritual of repetitive elections? James Madison and Alexander Hamilton thought of democracy as mob rule, whereas Thomas Jefferson maintained that “the will of the people should prevail.” Who won that debate? Apparently, the word “democracy” won, but there is little indication that any discernible concept prevailed.

And, by the way, is there anyone willing to debate it today? Does democracy even have an accepted meaning today? If so, how does it square with the findings of a Princeton from 2014, which demonstrated with solid statistics that almost all significant policies are determined not by the people, but by an ill-defined, unelected but clearly powerful elite?

The NYT’s article contains another significant quote, this time from Morgan Finkelstein, the Harris campaign’s national security spokeswoman: “Vice President Harris understands that the American people stand on the side of freedom, democracy and rule of law. She knows that if America walks away from Ukraine, Putin would be sitting in Kyiv with his eyes on the rest of Europe and our NATO allies.”

Can anyone honestly make the case that Ukraine provides an example of “freedom, democracy and rule of law?” The classic characterization of Putin as a new Russian Napoleon would be laughable to anyone observing events, mainly because of an utter lack of evidence in favor of it. But it is clearly established as a dogma of the reigning credo of hyperreality.

All this tends to demonstrate one thing: that a truly descriptive definition of democracy as it’s practiced today should be:

A political regime in which ambitious individuals can rise to a position of political power thanks to their “freedom” to distort the truth.

Harris and Trump are coming from different places but are playing the same game, though each has a different set of hyperreal rules. Trump invented his own. Harris sticks to house rules.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Must Kamala’s Rhetoric Be Isolated from Truth? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Many Israelis openly rejoiced at the audacity and efficiency of the two-day operation that left a toll of 39 dead and thousands injured. Jokes and memes circulated on social media not just about the damage done but even about the type of life-changing injuries it produced. Pennsylvanian Senator John Fetterman couldn’t suppress his glee,, “I absolutely support that. In fact, if anything, I love it.”

Compare that with the assessment of Barack Obama’s former CIA Director: “When asked whether Israel’s attack constituted terrorism, Panetta was unequivocal. ‘I don’t think there’s any question that it’s a form of terrorism.’”

Is this truly a case of not mincing his words? He doesn’t say “terrorism,” but more cautiously calls it a “form of terrorism.” Are there degrees of mincing? How unminced was Panetta’s assessment?

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Form:

1. Following the Platonic tradition, the idea of something that exists beyond the empirical world of our senses.
2. When used with modern concepts the locution “a form of” serves as a rhetorical ploy to remove the object from the real world and turn it into an abstraction.

Contextual note

Panetta goes far beyond any other commentator from the political establishment. But his locution, “form of terrorism,” appears designed to avoid expressing the idea that Israel should be thought of as a pariah nation, an unthinkable initiative anywhere within the Beltway. If he truly thinks this is terrorism, it would certainly demand a strong response from Washington, such as sanctions or an embargo on arms shipments.

This unique assessment by a qualified observer stimulated my curiosity. Were there any other Beltway insiders, present or past, who shared this assessment? I interrogated ChatGPT, which offered the following response:

“As of now, no major figures from the Biden administration or other prominent officials in Washington have publicly supported Panetta’s characterization of the incident as terrorism. The U.S. government continues to maintain a strong alliance with Israel, focusing on diplomatic and security partnerships, while also emphasizing a desire to avoid further escalation in the region​.”

Here is where the language used to describe international relations appears to break down completely. As head of the CIA, Panetta was specifically tasked with leading the high priority global combat against terrorism. If someone of his stature can now make a statement of this kind, one would normally expect such an accusation to call into question the value of an “alliance.” As a rule, we don’t cozy up to terrorist nations. And speaking of “diplomatic and security partnerships,” isn’t it true that any partner suspected of engaging in terrorism should immediately earn the label of “pariah state?” That would presumably mean cutting off all support or even imposing sanctions. Didn’t Biden do precisely that with Saudi Arabia because of its alleged assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi?

The explanation becomes frankly comic when ChatGPT tells us that what guides the decision-making is the “desire to avoid further escalation.” It then adds this:

“This divide highlights the nuanced and often controversial nature of U.S. policy toward Israel, especially when military operations result in civilian harm.”

Let’s accept the description of the policy as “controversial” because clearly — and despite Washington’s valiant efforts at censoring all dissenting voices — US policy remains controversial among US residents, just as it did during the Vietnam War. Despite the docile media’s best efforts, there is no glorious national consensus of unconditional support for Israel, despite the quasi-unanimity among Congress, the White House or the State Department.

But calling the policy “nuanced” risks leaving an observer both laughing and crying. Crying, because of the unmitigated marathon of civilian deaths and casualties, along with starvation and the uncontained spreading of disease in a Gaza bombed to the point of being uninhabitable. And laughing, when considering the idea that the most powerful nation in the history of the world is rendered helpless because of a policy deemed too “nuanced.”

Historical note

The concept of terrorism made its grand debut in European history when the leaders of the French Revolution, after overthrowing the monarchy, became pathologically paranoid after they realized that not everyone was ready to align with their newly defined hyper-rational order. There were a multitude of dissidents and contrarians out there whose necks were perfectly adapted to the efficient design of a guillotine, France’s most obvious contribution to the just emerging Industrial Revolution. This post-revolutionary period is known in English as the “Reign of Terror” but in French more simply as La Terreur. This was, of course, state-sponsored violence, the opposite of what terrorism would later come to mean.

It was only towards the end of the 19th century that the idea of terrorism as a political act became associated with non-state actors seeking to overthrow the established order. Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s 1872 novel, The Demons (Бесы) describes the link between the highly intellectualized theorization of political power by anarchists and nihilists, and the planning and execution of atrocities intended to destabilize the existing order.

This period culminated with a banal but fateful terrorist act: the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, on June 28, 1914. Instead of provoking a revolution, it set off a devastating World War.

The drama of World War I and the establishment of the revolutionary Soviet Union ultimately reduced the attraction of classic terrorism for many decades. In the late 20th century, suicide bombings, particularly in the context of the ongoing Israel–Palestine conflict but also relating to “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland, gave terrorism a modern twist, changing the perception of what it was all about. Both of those dramatic contexts pitched people of two religious identities against one another. They contributed to the meme of a “clash of civilizations” — religion against religion — popularized by Samuel Huntington.

Ultimately, it was Osama bin Laden’s monumental September 11 operation that redefined our understanding of the term terrorism. Terrorism was no longer an intimate act of sabotage. It had become big, bold and very public. Moreover, it was now identified with a theological, civilizational mission. No longer a type of random, annoyingly political crime, it achieved the status of a massive act of formal warfare.

September 11 empowered US President George W. Bush to consolidate and put into active practice the neo-conservative ideology his circle of collaborators bathed in. Here was a noble cause with a universal application. Civilized people were united in the cause of defeating global terrorism. Its supposed hard-nosed rationality combined with its sense of a fanatical purpose reinforced a deep-seated belief in its historical mission. The only difference from the ideology of Dostoyevsky’s demons lay in the fact that, instead of seeking to overturn established power, it operated from the position of defending and reinforcing institutional power. It played on the combined emotions associated with political, economic and theological identity. What could have been perceived as an egregious criminal act to be brought before justice and punished turned into the illusory mission of destroying terror itself, as if terror was an identifiable enemy.

To destroy terror, the new crusaders came to embody a publicly funded and administratively managed terror of their own making, a process that is still developing. Since then, those in power, whether Republicans or Democrats, have sought to strengthen and refine their control of the instruments essential to a modern reign of terror. Censorship of their own population — now called the war on disinformation — is at the top of the list alongside varied forms of warfare and lawfare.

On the warfare side, technology has dominated. The emergence of drone warfare, privileged by the “peace president” Obama, played a major role as war came to imitate the logic of video games, with no risk to the attacker. Lawfare became a feature linked to mass surveillance mediated by the tech giants who earned money commercially and politically by amassing data on its own and other populations, in ways that Maximilien Robespierre would certainly have envied.

We now have new “forms of warfare” and “forms of lawfare.” Panetta has revealed that there are also “forms of terrorism” that we are undoubtedly learning to classify as essential tools of modern government.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Has an Ex-CIA Chief Really Accused Israel of Terrorism? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

On September 6, a member of Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) fatally shot Aysenur Eygi in the head as she was taking part in a protest near the Palestinian village of Beita. The IDF immediately it was “looking into reports that a foreign national was killed as a result of shots fired in the area.”

Eygi’s family was unimpressed by the Israel promise to “look into” the killing. The New York Times cited the expressed by Aysenur’s father, Suat Eygi. “I know that when something happens, the U.S. will attack like the eagle on its seal. But when Israel is in question, it transforms into a dove.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken had the temerity to the killing as “unprovoked and unjustified.” He used the occasion to helpfully clarify US policy: “No one — no one — should be shot and killed for attending a protest.” That clarity should serve to correct an ambiguity that many people will appreciate 54 years after the killings. Protesters should be reassured. The worst they have to fear in this far more enlightened era is being arrested and of antisemitism and eventually complicity in terrorism for speaking their mind.

As the official Democratic candidate for the presidency, Kamala Harris undoubtedly felt obliged to weigh in on such an egregious violation of a US citizen’s rights. “Israel’s preliminary investigation indicated it was the result of a tragic error for which the [Israeli military] is responsible. We will continue to press the government of Israel for answers and for continued access to the findings of the investigation so we can have confidence in the results.” Al Jazeera these deeply empathetic words spoken by the vice president while at the same time noting that she “stopped short of endorsing requests for an independent investigation into the incident.” 

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Press for answers:

Make a rhetorical request that one expects will never be fulfilled and will eventually be forgotten with the passage of time.

Contextual note

The verb “to press” contains the idea of pressure. The literal meaning of the expression “press for answers” suggests a sustained series of actions to put pressure on the party concerned until a positive result is obtained. Anyone curious enough to watch the regular State Department press briefings concerning the Gaza conflict will have witnessed multiple instances of members of the press literally pressing the administration’s spokespersons not just to request, but to require independent investigations of alleged war crimes. Harris’s choice of the expression “press for answers” seems to fall somewhere between “request” and “require.” Most observers agree the Biden administration’s approach to Israel’s “excesses” has been to multiply the requests for restraint in some cases or for an investigation in others, without ever requiring such action.

What exactly is the difference between these two concepts? Requesting means the demand may be legitimately refused. It tells us that the person requesting is not willing to use any power they may have over the person to whom the request is addressed. Requiring implies exercising one’s power to act. The US clearly has the power to force Israel’s hands if it chooses. But it typically chooses not to.

Al Jazeera notes that “Eygi’s family had called on the US to conduct its own probe into the killing. But Washington has all but ruled out the request, saying that it is awaiting the results of the Israeli investigation.” Given what we know about the Israeli “” of the 2022 shooting of American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, this reminds us of O.J. Simpson’s promise to probe the murder of his ex-wife in order to unveil the true killer. But this is a deceptive comparison. Simpson only killed two people at one isolated moment of his life. Israel has made it a daily habit for decades, before radically accelerating the pace over the past 11 months.

A brief sample of dialogue from a press by State Department spokesman Matthew Miller from earlier this year will give a good idea of how the process works. In this typical exchange, the press presses. The government, in contrast, exercises its infinite trust in the professionalism of Simpson…, I mean, the Israelis.

QUESTION: Right. In terms of accountability, though, you talk about the fact that Israel has open investigations. So, what kind of timeline did Israel provide you to conclude those investigations?

MR MILLER: So, we have made clear to Israel that those investigations ought to proceed expeditiously. They ought to reach conclusions as soon as possible.

QUESTION: And have they provided you a timeline?

MR MILLER: I’m not – I’m not going to – I’m not going to speak to our internal discussions or speak for the Israeli Government. But everyone – it is very difficult always to put a timeline on any kind of investigation, certainly on a criminal investigation, and I wouldn’t want to do that on behalf of the foreign government other than to say our expectation on behalf of the United States is that they should proceed and finish as soon as possible – but not at the expense of thoroughness.

Apart from the very professional waffling about grand principles, such as “thoroughness” and “respect” for foreign governments, the message should be clear: “We have no reason to press forward.”

Historical note

Given the long and fundamentally equivocal history of investigating war crimes, murders of journalists and massive destruction of hospitals and schools, an observer of today’s news may legitimately raise the Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa explored in his classic movie, Rashomon. We may know the effects of a crime, but can we ever know the story of a crime? Kurosawa’s film tells us we cannot. And the reason is that all crimes must be recounted from someone’s point of view. When politics is involved, there is good reason to conclude not that we cannot but that we will not. We can usually be certain that a greater effort will be made to disguise the crime than to reveal its true narrative.

Sixty-one years after the John F. Kennedy assassination, even though all implicated persons have either died, retired or removed themselves from public life, no truly independent investigation has ever been commissioned. It should be obvious that the Warren Commission was not independent, despite former Chief Justice Warren’s personal reputation for independence. The mere presence of former CIA Chief Allen Dulles obviated any semblance of independence.

I raise this question today only because it took six decades for the world to discover the most obvious, credible and easily available evidence, evidence far more credible than courtroom style testimony taken under the intimidating conditions of cross-examination. The document is the raw broadcast of Dallas TV station WFAA during the first hour following the assassination. Two journalists and two bystanders who were standing on the lawn below the triple underpass speak at length about hearing the shots coming from behind them on the grassy knoll. One of the journalists even draws a map of the shooting on a blackboard, indicating the origin of all the shots they heard. None came from the direction of the Book Depository where Lee Harvey Oswald worked.

At precisely the time of that broadcast, Oswald had already been identified as the suspect. How strange!

I asked ChatGPT whether the Warren Commission had consulted the WFAA tapes. Its response: “The Warren Commission did not consult the WFAA broadcast tapes that captured the immediate aftermath of the assassination, largely because those tapes were not widely known or considered crucial at the time.”

An answer worthy of Matthew Miller’s reasoning.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post One Dead American. Will Israel Investigate? Don’t Count on It appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Is anyone at The New York Times interested in or even curious about peace? Putin’s declaration should have caught the attention of anyone even vaguely aware of the way the war has been evolving. Russia’s advance in the east of Ukraine is clearly gaining momentum while the Ukrainians have launched a daring but perilous, possibly suicidal incursion into the Kursk region of Russia. Putin’s evoking a prospect for a negotiated peace should have been treated as major news.

At the same precise moment, sole mention of Russia on the NYT’s main page appeared in an with the title, “U.S. Announces Plan to Counter Russian Influence Ahead of 2024 Election.” That headline should have had a familiar ring. The newspaper of record did publish another the same day, by Marc Santora and Anton Troianovski, on Putin’s speech in Vladivostok: “Putin Drives Home a Perilous Point: Ukraine’s East Is Russia’s Main Goal.” Nowhere in the article is there a mention of Putin’s allusion to negotiations. For these serious journalists, war is news. Peace is a childish fantasy.

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Russian Influence:

The presumed source of every objective observation made by informed Americans that deviates even slightly from official US government policy.

Contextual note

At least the NYT has recently begun to report a few unvarnished facts from the battlefield that are both true and, more surprisingly, at odds both with official state department talking points the paper usually prefers to repeat. Since February 2022, the NYT’s journalists have gotten into the habit of celebrating Ukrainian successes and ignoring, dismissing or seriously underreporting Russian advances. Its interpretation of the state of play consistently echoed White House assessments.

The paper took seriously Biden’s last year in Finland that “Russia has already lost the war.” In February of this year, as things had become even worse for Ukraine, it featured an op-ed piece that “Putin Has Already Lost.” This was, of course, consistent with the rest of the mainstream media in the US, who long ago decided which team to root for. Newsweek, for example, at the beginning of Ukraine’s invasion of the Kursk region, just a month ago, featured the same tired: “Russia Has Already Lost in Ukraine.”

The NYT’s journalists nevertheless had the honesty to admit in their article on Putin’s speech that the “situation in the Donbas has now become increasingly difficult for Ukraine, even acknowledging that the besieged city of Pokrovsk is likely to fall.” But even there, their reporting was incomplete. The authors never troubled to explain that Pokrovsk is a major strategic hub, whose fall will provoke serious logistical headaches for all Ukraine’s defensive operations. The BBC, usually as reticent as the NYT to report the naked truth about the war, provides precisely the the New Yorkers have so studiously avoided. It even quotes the assessment of a Ukrainian military expert: “If we lose Pokrovsk, the entire front line will crumble.” That sounds more like a lobotomy than a headache.

For the NYT, an article about a possible negotiated peace could never rival “political importance” with breaking news about what everyone has been encouraged for years to fear as an existential threat: Russian influence on the coming United States election. That will attract its readers’ attention far more surely than intimations of peace in Ukraine. Russia is our existential enemy. If ever we forget that, we may begin to question the massive continuing investment in the means of waging war, which is especially painless when we know it’s our good friends who wage those wars for us and sacrifice their lives, not ours. When reviewing “all the news that’s fit to print,” peace will inevitably end up in the dustbin.

Commenting on the latest avatar of Russiagate so eagerly featured by the NYT, independent journalist Ken Klippenstein pithily it up: “Russia’s influence operations are a joke.” He’s right. It’s a running punchline the NYT has been repeating since 2016. Klippenstein even highlights a truly comic twist: “The paradox of the government’s very public obsession with election security is that the more attention paid to these supposed threats, the more likely people are to question the legitimacy of the outcome. In fact, this is an effect foreign adversaries undertaking influence operations hope for.”

Historical note

Glenn Greenwald is more direct when he the highly mediatized legal case as “yet another act of standard Democratic Party reflex to scream Russia whenever they feel endangered.” This is a pattern that regularly plays out in the months before an election. Intelligence directors, past or present, government officials and “respectable” media have, since 2016, refined the art of launching terrifying accusations whose vacuity will only be revealed after the election. The now infamous case of the 51 intelligence directors who, weeks before the 2020 election, that the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation” stands as the obvious precedent. They spoke out. Biden was elected. It worked in 2020, there’s every reason to think it could work again.

This new version of an old routine, as described by the three reporters from the NYT, contains a telling echo that made me in particular laugh. “The United States,” they explain, “was caught flat-footed in 2016 as its spy agencies learned about Russian efforts to influence the vote on behalf of Mr. Trump and were late in warning the public.”

Were they late? If so, they were late in announcing something that turned out to be false. Everyone curious about historical truth should know by now that the thesis we refer to as Russiagate was debunked by the special investigator, Robert Mueller, on whom the breathless anti-Trump media were counting as the inevitable prelude to a president’s impeachment. They eventually did muster up support for the impeachment, but, for lack of evidence, that too failed.

The deeper irony here harks back to something our Devil’s Dictionary revealed on August 26, 2019, when we glossed the precise term “flat-footed.” It came from a quote by NYT’s executive editor, Dean Baquet, in the context of a private meeting of his news desk. On that occasion, Baquet admitted that the paper had gone overboard with its Russiagate obsession. “We’re a little tiny bit flat-footed,” he confessed. “I mean, that’s what happens when a story looks a certain way for two years. Right?”

When a serious journalist can say a story “looked” a certain way, it’s the clearest indication that the journal, even if we call it a “newspaper of record,” was looking in only one direction. That simple fact invites us, in turn, to have another “look” at the story to understand who was directing the NYT’s gaze.

Now, four years later, instead of apologizing for their own faulty reporting concerning the Hunter Biden laptop, the self-described “flat-footed” NYT complains that the clearly overeager spy agencies in 2016 weren’t over-eager enough. Just as the NYT did with the Havana Syndrome — another nothingburger no one ever apologized for, even after the CIA admitted it had no substance — its journalists have retained their habit of trotting out discredited stories from the past, with precisely the aim of instilling doubt about the fact that they have been definitively discredited.

Whether it’s Russiagate or the Havana Syndrome, or the JFK assassination 60 years after the fact, they can always appeal to the perception that nothing has been definitively proven either way. It’s the good old “there’s no smoking gun” defense. In reality, it’s just sloppy and sadly dishonest journalism.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post A New York Timeless Commitment to Russiagate appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Most Western democracies have embraced the democratic ideology Abraham Lincoln famously articulated when he evoked “a government of the people, by the people and for the people.” But who are “the people” and how can you define them, especially in a melting pot or like the US? The very fact of diversity casts a dark shadow on the comforting idea of “we the people.” Aware of that potentially troubling anomaly, Americans rallied around the idea of “majority rule.”

The 19th century idea of rule by an elusive “majority” inevitably spawned the historical trend towards the now classic two-party system. The 50.1% rule for elections became the measure that allowed diverse populations to believe in majority rule. It became apparent this can only work when there are no more than two dominant parties. So, even today, you’re a Democrat or a Republican, but you might also be an independent, sitting on the fence. In Europe, it was more complex. Nevertheless, even with multiple parties, democracy tended towards a perception of left (working class) vs right (educated ruling and business class).

Even though the founding fathers raised serious objections to the very idea of parties — which they characterized as “” — the US political system culturally, and to some extent legally, codified the two-party system, making it a structural feature of all but local elections. Third parties are permitted but barely tolerated. The media systematically casts third parties and their candidates into the category of annoying eccentricities. Strom Thurmond (1948), Ross Perot (1992), Ralph Nader (2000) and a few others managed to muddy the otherwise clear waters, but each could be dismissed as an ephemeral nuisance.

Repeated cases in recent years of US presidents elected while failing to obtain a majority of the popular vote began to disturb the tranquil belief people had in the principle of majority rule. The tsunami provoked by hurricane Donald, highlighting “American carnage,” “alternate facts” and “stolen elections” has now called the logic itself into question.

The events of this election year in the US, marked by an assassination attempt and the last minute replacement of an incumbent, have provoked a further erosion of the belief in democracy. But it can’t compare, in gravity, with what is unfolding today in France.

France’s parliamentary elections two years ago failed to produce a majority for the already re-elected President Emmanuel Macron. This forced him to rely on improvised alliances within the center, the right and eventually the far-right, to pass legislation. Disappointed by the disastrous results of the European parliamentary elections in June of this year, Macron launched a desperate gambit. In the mistaken belief that he might achieve democratic clarity, he dissolved parliament, provoking new parliamentary elections. Clarity turned to obscurity and opacity.

Macron’s party in the European elections of June 9 was roundly defeated by Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally. The French parliamentary elections a month later saw a reinvigorated left, the New Popular Front (Nouveau Front Populaire or NFP), rise to the top position. In terms of “majority rule” thinking, that double whammy was the equivalent of a TKO in boxing. The problem is that there’s no referee other than the constitution to stop the combat. And only a unified Assemblée would have the power to impeach a president. The fight has been paused, but the former champion must remain in the ring for another three years! And the stunned, incapacitated fighter must keep the crowd entertained.

The constitution requires that the president must designate a new prime minister, who in turn forms a new government according to his wishes. This isn’t the first time a sitting president has been deprived of a majority. A tradition dating back to 1986 established the precedent that the party or coalition with the most seats in parliament should propose a new prime minister from its ranks. The NFP has done precisely that, very cautiously designating an economist, Lucie Castets. But Macron, aware of his constitutional rights and committed to his Jupiterian idea of leadership, has bucked the tradition and demurred.

Le Monde the situation in these terms: “Macron has justified his refusal to name Castets as head of government by saying it is his duty to ensure ‘institutional stability.’”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Institutional stability:

What French presidents under the 5th Republic seek and obviously fail to secure when faced with an even more fundamental reality: constitutional instability.

Contextual note

The Paris Olympic Games provided Macron with his first pretext for postponing the constitution of a new government. Now he has adapted a different tactic. Since he alone has the power to nominate a prime minister, he will “ his consultations” with as many irrelevant personalities as possible. He may hope that the longer it goes, the more likely people will be resigned to accepting any solution he throws at them.

This week he has been listening to a range of personalities, including former right-wing president (and convicted felon) Nicolas Sarkozy, who unsurprisingly believes the prime minister should be selected from his party, Les Républicains, a party that earned the whopping total of 39 seats, less than 7% of the 577 seats. Sarkozy argues that France is a right-wing nation, probably because he lumps the extreme right into the traditional right.

Whatever choice Macron eventually makes, there is little likelihood that it will augur anything resembling stability. Emmanuel sees himself as the sole pillar of stability. A regime built on the idea of a president standing at the center, like a king on a chessboard, surrounded by loyal bishops and knights committed to his defense, living in safety within his castle walls, may have worked for the expert wielder of power, Louis XIV, whose reign lasted 72 years. As everyone knows, it didn’t work out quite as well for his more “centrist” great-grandson, Louis XVI.

Historical note

Macron, a young, ambitious but largely unknown minister in François Hollande’s colorless administration, emerged into stardom when the ruling Socialist party began to unravel. With no true political experience and no existing party structure to work from, Macron surprised everyone in May 2017, first by coming out of nowhere to lead all other candidates in the first round of voting, and then by beating Marine Le Pen in the second round of the presidential election.

His victory clearly went to his head. But it was less his political genius than a stroke of luck that led to his 2017 success. Like Moses, he benefited from a miraculous parting of the political sea. The Socialists were in disarray after five years of Hollande’s presidency. The traditional right lost its bearings when its obvious frontrunner, François Fillon, mismanaged a scandal he was implicated in and refused to step down in favor of a ”cleaner” candidate. The only credible challenge left was the unambiguously left-wing Jean-Luc Mélenchon, whom the political class and the media treated as a dangerous firebrand. Le Pen nudged ahead of both Fillon and Mélenchon by less than 2%. Le Pen trailed Macron by only 2.6%.

In other words, from the start of his presidency, Macron had no truly constituted party and could only be deemed “the center” because he was surrounded on all sides by other political orientations. That was the precise moment he speculated about the taste he believed the French had for a Jupiterian leader.

Very quickly he was contested not by a party but by “the people,” citizens donning the iconic yellow vest the government obliged them to store in the private vehicles. That was when the Red Sea parted again for Macron thanks to a virus, Covid-19, that turned him into a “war president.”

Now he finds himself in a struggle with the entire political class and soon with the population as well. Unlike Moses, Macron never made the effort to get to the other side. The Red (and blue) Sea is closing in on him as he dawdles in the middle. Nobody is likely to be happy with the personality he selects as his prime minister, whoever she or he happens to be.

We’re in for another ride. Fortunately, France definitively banished the guillotine in 1981.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Macron’s Leisurely Fishing Trip in a Sinking Boat appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Time is money, but equally money is time. Don’t believe me? Just ask Warren Buffett, a man who marvels at the nature of compound interest, representing the perfect unification of money and time. Albert Einstein called compound interest “the eighth wonder of the world” even while expressing doubts about the reality of quantum mechanics.

Because time has such a special place in US culture, it’s instructive to see how it may influence discussions both trivial and grave. Take the topic of nuclear weapons, for example. Most other cultures see the very idea of possessing a nuclear arsenal as an existential problem. Most nations question whether nuclear weapons should even be allowed to exist. Americans, in contrast — especially those who have the power to make policy — focus on the real question: how those weapons need to be managed over time.

In an for the publication Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Jack O’Doherty, presents in some depth the current debate among Washington’s military strategists concerning nuclear policy. As you read the article, bear in mind that the nation’s citizens have not been consulted on the options outlined, nor are they likely even to be aware of them. No politicians covered by the popular media have even alluded to this question. The outcome of the debate will nevertheless affect the life of every person on Earth.

Here are two significant quotes from the article:

“The United States has begun a long overdue modernization of its nuclear arsenal, and it’s essential to understand the purpose of these acquisitions.”

 “It’s time for the American nuclear policy community to have a long-overdue conversation about what, prescriptively, US nuclear weapons are for. Deterrence, yes, but in what form?”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Long-overdue:

So urgent that a decision must be made without the time-consuming effort of analyzing all the possible and probable consequences, even if they point towards global catastrophe.

Contextual note

Most of us learned the meaning of the adjective overdue in the context of checking out books from the library, when we were learning to read. Our parents taught us to be careful about respecting dates, to avoid the dreadful consequence of a monetary fine. Later in life, many people discovered that the word could carry a slightly more serious level of urgency, when it came to paying rent to a landlord or alimony to a divorced spouse. Too much “overdueing it” could land you in court.

Using the epithet, as O’Doherty does, when discussing nuclear arsenals clearly takes us to another level. One might think that when discussing any nation’s nuclear strategy, we would be invited to entertain a full spectrum of choices, starting with total disarmament and extending across the spectrum to the idea of covering entire regions with a strike capacity designed as a nuclear noose.

O’Doherty’s article informs us that, at least in the US context, the spectrum has now been conveniently reduced to a binary choice. He presents them as practically the equivalent of a Dodge City-style “nuclear showdown.” Here is how he describes the “two schools of thought.”

“The development of nuclear weapons started an inflexible and entangled debate between what—to borrow almost anachronistic language—may be described as the “nuclear revolution” and the “nuclear superiority” schools of thought. The former insists that mutual vulnerability (from which deterrence stability is derived) has revolutionized international competition by making wars between great powers essentially impossible. The latter, meanwhile, contends that the Pentagon should embrace nuclear warfighting postures revolving around a counterforce targeting doctrine—that is, shooting first in a preemptive strike to eliminate an opponent’s nuclear weapons before they can be launched (this is defined by its proponents as the only conceivable way to win a nuclear war).”

The second “school of thought” seems to reflect the philosophy infamously deployed by George W. Bush to justify launching his invasion of Iraq in 2003. Because we didn’t know what Saddam Hussein might do with his (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction, we sure as hell had to make sure that he would never get the chance.

In that scenario, we invaded and declared “mission accomplished.” In this scenario, however, it isn’t about invading. It’s about launching a nuclear attack once we are convinced sufficient suspicions exist to make it necessary. Suspicions of the sort by CIA Director George Tenet in 2002 to President Bush: “It’s a slam dunk.” Could that kind of pre-emptive reasoning and the act that followed take place again? If O’Dohery’s second “school of thought” were to win out, the answer will be presumably, yes.

Historical note

In retrospect, everyone notes that the fall of the Soviet Union marked a major turning point in history. It ushered in the unipolar world, an order that lasted for most of the next three decades, in which the US dominated the planet’s economic activity and its most significant political events. International Relations guru John Mearsheimer cites 2017 as the moment when that suddenly appearing unipolar world gave way to a new multipolar world that is still taking and changing shape as we write.

The significance of a unipolar world can be summarized in the oft-repeated idea of a “rules-based order,” understood as a set of behavioral standards defined and enforced by a unique superpower: the US. The existence of a unipolar hegemon “simplified” some of the reasoning about issues arising between nations. Everyone in the “free world” was now “free” to align with the policies of Washington, knowing that it would put them “on the right side of (unipolar) history.”

Some people developed the habit of calling this a “normative order.” The idea of appears to embrace several things:

• standards of behavior widely accepted and expected in the international community,
• moral guidelines that shape decisions and actions, such as the just war theory,
• international laws and treaties that formalize these norms and principles, such as the Geneva Conventions or the United Nations Charter
• and finally, cultural values.

That dog’s dinner leaves a lot to choose from, to say nothing about the fact that experts in cultural communication will tell you that identifying any set of behaviors as “normative” could only be a fool’s errand.

Even while the idea of “normative” carries a lot of positive connotations, one of the consequences many people have noticed — and which I recently with former Swiss ambassador Jean-Daniel Ruch — has been the marginalization, or frankly discrediting, of the basic tool of diplomacy: dialogue. When one has a “normative order” to refer to, it makes it easy to cut short any dialogue by referring to the rules of that order. This trend has had the effect of producing a world of “forever wars” and never-to-be-realized “ceasefires.” I put this last term in quotes to highlight the degree of meaninglessness it has effectively achieved. They say time is the great healer. Dialogue is an even better one… and it saves time!

To sum up, the history of the past 35 years offered us the hope of living under a normative order that has never managed to exist. It has also supplied the explanation of why it could never exist. The answer is simple: the enforced absence of dialogue and the death of diplomacy.

In this year of multiple elections, with the most monumental one expected in November, is there any real chance of seeing a new world order built not of normativity, but of dialogue? Some of us still cling to that hope. On that note, I leave you with one remark in O’Doherty’s article concerning the “dialogue” between the two “schools of thought:”

“These competing perspectives share the halls of power but rarely talk to each other. Each accuses the other of entertaining imaginary empirical pretensions, of a lazy misreading of history, and of celebrating theories compromised by their own basic premise.”

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Debate About the Best Path to Armageddon appeared first on 51�Թ�.

That was April. Last week, on August 12, in anticipation of the interview Musk had planned with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Breton on X an extraordinary preemptive warning against the “amplification of harmful content.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Harmful content:

Any words, expressions or ideas formulated by individuals certain persons or groups in a position of authority happen to dislike.

Contextual note

In his letter, Breton worries about the possibility of language that may have “detrimental effects on civil discourse and public security.” His definition of “harmful” applies to “content that promotes hatred, disorder, incitement to violence, or certain instances of disinformation.”

“Instances of disinformation” sums up the essence of Breton’s complaint. The idea that people may say things that are not true and that all instances of untruth should be suppressed has become a standard obsession of those who seek to wield power over the unenlightened masses.

Although he has no inkling of what would transpire in a conversation that hasn’t yet taken place, the commissioner clearly anticipates that Musk and Trump will spout the kind of odious ideas his authority has the power to punish. Like George W. Bush’s preemptive invasion of Iraq to prevent Saddam Hussein’s using the arsenal of weapons of mass destruction experts Hans Blix and Scott Ritter insisted didn’t exist, Breton prepared his own invasion of X to prevent Musk and Trump from saying things that, to his mind, might be politically incorrect.

As I pointed out in last week’s “Devil’s Dictionary,” the political class has even taken the idea of critical thinking, which implies openness to the consideration of a multiple perspectives before constructing meaning through exposure to all of them, and transformed the definition to mean the tracking and banishment of unconventional viewpoints. In other words, the idea of critical thinking is turned on its head in the service of authorized, conformist thinking.

Breton’s remarks highlight another feature of the new censorship culture that has been gaining steam since 2016, when it became the principal weapon for countering Trump’s obvious predilection for outlandish exaggerations and “alternate facts.” Censorship has become a transnational crusade across the defensive alliance of North America and Europe we call “the West.” In that sense, NATO enlargement has not just been about territorial expansion eastward to the borders of Russia but also the revival of the McCarthyist instinct that poisoned US political culture in the 1950s.

Europe managed to dodge the McCarthyist epidemic that successfully transformed the meaning of the word “communist” for Americans into the equivalent of “possessing diabolical intent.” “As the relevant content is accessible to EU users,” Breton notes, “and being amplified also in our jurisdiction, we cannot exclude potential spillovers in the EU.” He wants to protect Europeans from contamination. With the notion of “spillover,” Breton correctly highlights Europe’s current alacrity for imitating and adopting the worst political practices exported from America.

But Breton’s moment of triumph didn’t last 24 hours. On August 13, an by The Financial Timessported the title: “Brussels slaps down Thierry Breton over ‘harmful content’ letter to Elon Musk.” Breton’s own masters judged that, with his comminatory letter, the commissioner had overreached. It was bad PR, making Europe appear to be something of a bully, a role usually exercised by Washington over Europe.

In a further irony, the FT quotes an EU official who explained that “Thierry has his own mind and way of working and thinking.” In other words, he’s a loose cannon, guilty, in his own way, of producing “harmful content” that might compromise the image of Europe as a culture committed to the respect of all citizens’ rights, including prominent US billionaires with one-syllable last names, like Musk and Trump.

Historical note

In the fourth and final book of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, a race of horses called the Houyhnhnms not only have the gift of human speech, they use it in the wisest way possible. They cannot say anything that is untrue. In their language — unlike that of Thierry Breton or numerous people in Washington, DC who have put “disinformation,” “misinformation” and “harmful content” at the top of their useful vocabulary lists — the Houyhnhnms don’t even have a word to express the notion of lying.

Breton and a new class of censors that wish to apply more and more rules concerning the way people speak in public appear to see Swift’s Houyhnhnm model as an ideal to be emulated. They are busy devising the mechanisms that will prevent anything they can qualify as potentially harmful — even before it is spoken or written — from being expressed in public. After all, there may be “spillover.”

The problem Swift noticed — and it drove his character, Lemuel Gulliver, mad — is that, as a master of the English language, he understood that nearly everything people say may be construed as not quite truthful. Even Oxford’s famous linguistic philosophers of the 20th century, who reduced philosophy itself to the question of what language is capable of expressing, concluded that there is no principle that can establish the truth of any proposition. Bertrand Russell could prove that the, “the king of France is bald” is false — even though in theory it could be true — but no philosopher has found a way of proving any assertion is true.

The debate is now raging in the US about whether the freedom of expression so unambiguously affirmed in the first amendment to the US Constitution can have any meaning. A century ago, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes used the analogy of “shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theater” to demonstrate that there should be limits on what one may express in public. The context of Holmes’s pronouncement was the debate on the constitutionality of the now notorious Espionage Act. Congress passed the law during World War I, when fear of German spying was a reality. Long considered irrelevant, recent presidents had invoked it repeatedly in recent years against whistleblowers and journalists, including Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.

The legal of disinformation is: “False information knowingly shared to cause harm.” Lawmakers have no capacity to define “harm” with precision, which means that potentially any discourse or act of expression can fall into a category of speech that must be suppressed. The campaign to brand critics of Israel’s policies and actions as antisemitic on the grounds that such criticism harms the sensibility of Zionist Jews is continuing and has proved very effective in the US and Europe.

Whatever disagreement may remain inside Europe between Thierry Breton and his boss, Ursula von der Leyen, there can be little doubt that the official assault on “harmful content” from both sides of the Atlantic will continue. A far more worrying case is that of British journalist Richard Medhurst, who was arrested by his nation’s police at Heathrow airport, detained under appalling conditions and charged under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act. His? Producing a style of harmful content known as factual reporting.

Future historians will face the challenge of finding an original name for an episode of history that began with Joe McCarthy, spanned a period that included President Joe Biden and, with the aid of AI, is likely to continue unimpeded into an undefined future. As the world awaits an impending civilizational showdown that will either define a new world order or culminate in a spectacular nuclear holocaust, we are all cast into the role of reluctant spectators, observing the prolonged crisis of democracy. The outcome will inevitably be scripted by a coterie of politicians skilled at protecting us from harmful content.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post How to Make Someone Who’s Harmful Content appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Brexit, a carefully orchestrated psychodrama fueled by the ambition of Boris Johnson, played out during a period spanning nearly four years. The British nation could finally affirm not only that it was no longer part of Europe; it had equally lost any sense of connection with the rest of the world.

Things have taken a further dire turn over the past ten days with a spate of extremely violent xenophobic riots spread across the “scepter’d isle.” Is the world witnessing the death knell of English culture, that for centuries fed and stimulated European and even world culture? John Donne famously told us that “no man is an island,” affirming that “if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less.” Has Britain now become that clod washed away into a state of utter irrelevance?

Events of the past week demonstrate that significant numbers of English men and women are willing to organize, demonstrate, assault, burn and destroy to prove that what unites their nation and defines their identity is essentially race and a skewed notion of national origin.

Britain’s new Labour prime minister, Keir Starmer will not have it. Leading the resistance, Sir Keir he is intent upon building “a ‘national capability’ across police forces to tackle violent disorder.” He believes it should include such as facial recognition. That should make average citizens feel safer and protected. What better way to defeat xenophobia than provide new pretexts for paranoia?

Others in Starmer’s government have identified non-technological solutions to the visibly degraded situation. The Guardian the approach of Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson, who “said she was launching a review of the curriculum in primary and secondary schools to embed critical thinking across multiple subjects and arm children against ‘putrid conspiracy theories.’”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Critical thinking:

1. The opposite of conformist thinking, an ideal around which most national educational programs and curricula are designed in the interest of making sure citizens never become too curious about how their behavior needs to be controlled.
2. The single most important life skill that has traditionally been excluded from all national educational programs and curricula that have been crafted to promote conformist thinking and, though sometimes regretted, is unlikely to reappear.

Contextual note

One is left wondering what Philipson means when she says she will “embed critical thinking across multiple subjects.” Is she intending to build critical thinking into the learning process as a fundamental feature or simply add some new techniques aimed at spotting disinformation?

This is an important distinction. Critical thinking for learning can be framed as either a discipline unto itself — with its own rules, built on the grounds of epistemological reflection and logic — or as a useful gadget for categorizing things like “putrid conspiracy theories” and rejecting them as sources of disinformation.

The Secretary’s drift tends to suggest the second solution, which bears little resemblance to authentic critical thinking. It consists of providing a system for recognizing clues that something might be disinformation because of its apparent resemblance with officially identified conspiracy theories. But such a practice is the contrary of critical thinking. It is nothing less than propaganda.

When faced with insufficient evidence needed to account for a known problem, a disciplined scientist first constructs and then tests one or more hypotheses. Some of them may seem far-fetched, but truth is sometimes far-fetched. In contrast, when your aim is to identify and reject “putrid conspiracy theories,” correct hypotheses can be dismissed before being tested. This violates the basic premise of empiricism, the basis for scientific critical thinking.

Philipson explains, “One example may include pupils analysing newspaper articles in English lessons in a way that would help differentiate fabricated stories from true reporting.” If there was a serious method to what she proposes, this would certainly represent a much desired breakthrough in any nation’s approach to education. The first problem to recognize is that, contrary to her belief in something called “true reporting,” all reporting contains some bias. Here the notion of “true reporting” can only be a chimera.

Historical note

Let’s take a case from recent history to test Philipson’s suggestion. An interesting place to begin might be a slew of stories published by The Guardian starting in 2016. All were designed, in typical conspiracy theory fashion, to make the British public believe a falsehood: that because Jeremy Corbyn had expressed criticism of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, he should be labeled a rabid anti-Semite. The problem with determining that these were examples of false rather than true reporting is that it would require not only reading dozens of articles over a period of several years just to deal with one specific case, but studying the various objective reports on, for example, Israel’s policies that appear to be similar to apartheid. Can we expect school children at any level to engage in that kind of research and then apply their skills of critical thinking?

The other problem with that example is that it could create confusion about the meaning of “conspiracy.” The standard notion of antisemitism, citing the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” as the incriminating piece of evidence, is that anti-Semites are conspiracy theorists. But a study of The Guardian’s anti-Corbyn campaign might reveal something else: that The Guardian may have been part of a conspiracy organized by Britain’s powerful Israeli lobby so brilliantly (and controversially) exposed in a daring by Al Jazeera? Making such a suggestion about The Guardian might easily get one thrown into the basket of those who fall for “putrid conspiracy theories?”

Just to be clear, The Jewish Voice for Labour actually did explore the of that anti-Corbyn campaign. “In March 2016, the Guardian published a column by Jonathan Freedland with the title ‘Labour and the left have an antisemitism problem.’ If we could identify any single article as the starting point for the whole controversy, this was it.”

This and other articles to follow effectively led to the shaming of Jeremy Corbyn. “By the second half of 2019, bigoted views of Palestinians were so pervasive in British public discourse as to pass unnoticed.”

The self-inflicted wounds of Labour helped set the scene for the election of Boris Johnson. It was deemed a cautionary tale that established a simple principle, applicable anywhere: Criticizing Israel is a cardinal sin and a clear indicator of antisemitism. This principle is still in force for a majority of politicians of all parties. It has served to excuse what the International Court of Justice called a plausible genocide in January. Since January, the level of plausibility has significantly risen.

Britain’s Secretary of Education is right in principle, even if the practice she recommends is likely to be aberrant. Yes, it’s time to put in practice critical thinking at the core of our curricula, or simply bring it back after a long historical exile. Nurtured by Greek philosophers two and a half millennia ago, Western thinkers practiced it in various forms, from the disputio dear the scholastics in the Middle Ages and the inquiring minds of the French Enlightenment. But with the Industrial Revolution the cultivation of critical thinking was banished from our schools. The future for today’s youngsters is not open, critical dialogue. As everyone should know by now, it is about coding… or maybe trading or banking, something useful and cash positive for the practitioner. 

Look at the world of “public debate” today. What dominates in both politics and the media? Monologue. The college essay represents little more than proving one’s skill at the art of monologue. Critical thinking is born of… critical talking, or at least of active and even interactive exchange. But this is an age that conducts international relations as a zero sum game. It has abandoned diplomacy — which requires dialogue — in favor of waging war to impose “inviolable” principles. Talking itself has adopted the unique model of monologue. You’ll find it everywhere on commercial as well as social media.

Anyone interested in Plato’s monologues?

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Your Solution to Riots: Technology or Critical Thinking? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

“Fears of Wider Mideast Conflict Deepen, With U.S. Seen as ‘Not in Control’”

The article’s author, London bureau chief Mark Landler, develops a quote he gleaned from a veteran of the Obama State Department. “This is going to make the region extremely nervous. It’s never good for the United States to be seen as not in control.”

�մǻ岹��’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

In control:

1. An often fleeting and frequently unstable feeling of mastery felt by people who find themselves in situations they are familiar with which leads them to believe they understand all the parameters of the situation.
2. An increasingly unjustified feeling of mastery of other people and nations by politicians in Washington, DC, the effect of decades of blindness to cultural differences and the deceitful impression that fear of a dominant power is an indicator of admiration, respect and even love.

Contextual note

Analysts of cultural differences have often pointed out that in US political and media culture, one of the core values is control, the idea that things should never be left to unknown influences. It links with another core value: self-reliance. Most of the world’s cultures leave considerable room for chance or fatality in the way events play out. ���Գ���’A�������� is often evoked outside the Muslim world. 

In the US, citizens learn from an early age that they are on their own in their quest to control the environment and the events they may be involved in. Even if team effort is encouraged, the focus of groups is not camaraderie but to work together to ensure their collective control.

Landers’s article provides some context for the helplessness expressed in its headline. “For President Biden, who expended time and prestige trying to broker a deal between Israel and Hamas to release hostages in Gaza, the back-to-back assassinations of the Hezbollah commander, Fuad Shukr, and the Hamas political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, could signal the futility of his diplomatic efforts, at least for now.”

Without being disrespectful, I can’t fail to find this laughable for two reasons. The first is Landers’s assumption that there ever was any hope of being “in control” of a situation that has been consistently controlled by one voice alone, that of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The second is his phrase, “diplomatic efforts.” Many of us have noticed that diplomacy is now a long-forgotten art in the US. The US no longer “engages” in diplomacy. It imposes what it calls diplomacy. What that means is that it states a position, usually framing it as an inviolable principle, and then expects others to fall into line. But when someone like Netanyahu refuses to fall into line, Washington prefers looking helpless.

The fact that an NYT bureau chief can express surprise and disappointment at Biden’s loss of control is quite simply comic. I won’t even begin to cite the impressive number of perfectly sane people who refused to believe that a policy characterized by sending messages of mild disagreement to an increasingly violent and visibly unhinged regime had any chance of producing a different result. They all pointed out that a simple phone call informing his good friend Bibi that the US would be obliged to cut off support for a war that was clearly already out of anyone’s control has been possible for months, but never attempted.

A pattern emerged even in the early days of the conflict. Washington offers warnings about not going too far or not attempting particular acts, such as the bombing of Rafah. US media then proudly trumpets the warnings to show that the Biden administration was capable of taking a moral position, at least rhetorically. But when those warnings produced no result other than new atrocities, the White House and the media would express their disappointment and hope that such crimes would not be repeated. The Biden administration projected to the world the simple message that it was never in control.

Historical note

Since its founding less than 250 years ago, the new American democracy has enjoyed the privilege of sensing that it is in control of most of the things it has had to deal with. As the sole Europeans inhabiting a stretch of continent that extended westward to the Pacific, the British colonists in control of their towns, farms, plantations and waterways along the east coast of the US understood the opportunity that awaited them. It was based, paradoxically, on their belief, formally stated, that “all men are created equal,” but completed by the sentiment that some groups of those men are destined to dominate others. Before obtaining their independence, the discomfort they felt with the fact that the government in London was constraining their ambition turned out to be a major factor fueling their desire to revolt and break the bonds of dependence on Britain.

The local populations that inhabited the continent before the arrival of Europeans clearly lacked the advanced level of economic and technological culture that had already begun to define modern Europe, and England in particular. The indigenous tribes simply could not compete with the ever more resourceful Anglo-Saxons, who had mastered the science of “prosperity” through organization, industry, technology and personal ambition. The European Americans were paragons of what historian Jan de Vries the “industrious revolution” that preceded and continued to accompany the industrial revolution that was already underway in England.

Once they had achieved independence, westward expansion began. It later took on its own separate historical status when the population viewed it as “manifest destiny.” By the middle of the 20th century, some began expressing their concern with the “closing of the frontier,” which of course provoked President John F Kennedy’s youthful administration in 1961 to evoke a “New Frontier.” The spirit of expansion with a view to control, validated by a Calvinist God who instituted manifest destiny has been a permanent feature of the US political mindset. This should help observers today to understand why the eastward expansion of NATO, though initially resisted by many European leaders and dramatically opposed by Russia, seems to everyone in Washington totally natural and probably predestined.

The Strategy Bridge, a foreign policy think tank, in a 2021 paper a commission of former government officials who, in 1996, “conducted a study of American vital interests” that listed five goals:

“(1) prevent, deter, and reduce the threat of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons attacks on the United States; (2) prevent the emergence of a hostile hegemon in Europe or Asia; (3) prevent the emergence of a hostile major power on U.S. borders or in control of the seas; (4) prevent the catastrophic collapse of major global systems; and (5) ensure the survival of U.S. allies.”

The breadth of those goals expressed the view of the hegemon feeling alone on the stage in what is now referred to as “the unipolar moment.” With the Soviet empire gone, Washington finally felt in total control. The ultimate promise of the culture was fulfilled. All would be well in the world. Francis Fukuyama even it the “end of history.”  

For two decades, an attempt to control the politics and economy of the Middle East led to slowly unfolding disappointment, when US leaders failed to manage the controls. Subsequent events in eastern Europe and the Middle East are demonstrating today that, despite constant resolutions and promises to regain control of declining military and economic fortunes, the capacity of the US to influence other regions of the world in any other way than provoking conflicts that inevitably go out of control has disappeared. We see this in the erosion of the once effective arsenal of soft power that instilled a positive perception of the US and its culture across the globe. Now it becomes visible with every act that announces to the world that the combined force of Washington’s armies, spies, financial domination, technology, media and social networks cannot even “ensure the survival of U.S. allies.”

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

[ edited this piece.]

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