My country tis of thee, cash on delivery
Saul Bellow, writing in “To Jerusalem and Back” describes the secrets we keep from ourselves.
What is “known” in civilized countries, what people may be assumed to “know,” is a great mystery … I am am if anything, surprised at myself and at my own assumptions. A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.
We keep mysteries from ourselves, but they are not as great the mystery of what the New York Times allows itself to say. It writes that it’s been hacked. Moreover, “the question is no longer who has been hacked. It’s who hasn’t?”
The Washington Post can be added to the growing list of American news organizations whose computers have been penetrated by Chinese hackers.
After The New York Times reported on Wednesday that its computers as well as those of Bloomberg News had been attacked by Chinese hackers, The Wall Street Journal said on Thursday that it too had been a victim of Chinese cyberattacks.
So everybody has been cralwed over. But it’s not right to say “the question is no longer who has been hacked.” It’s why they are admitting to it only now. It’s as if some permission to depart from the narrative had been given. It’s OK to admit it now. But why? A clue to the answer may lie in Walter Russell Mead’s observation that there’s a revival underway in the “national greatness lobby in the Democratic Party”.
Google’s Eric Schmidt has a new book coming out (co-authored by former State Department whiz-kid Jared Cohen), and it looks like it will be quite provocative.
Things rarely happen by coincidence. As Mead explains the backstory is this: China has been become increasingly competitive in IT areas once totally dominated by US companies. Therefore:
Silicon Valley has rediscovered the state. Companies that once tried to fly below the radar are now much more aware of the importance of government policy for their industry. This runs very much counter to the popular idea that in the modern world, multinational corporations will lose a sense of connection to their ‘home country’. Google, for one, seems to be getting more patriotic lately.
This has implications for the politics of American defense policy, and foreign policy generally. Silicon Valley is a major donor to Democrats, and it seems to be moving toward an understanding of the importance of a strong and outward looking America. Historically, cutting edge corporations have supported the rise of American power partly as a way of assuring that U.S. foreign policy and power would support their corporate agendas and help them get fair treatment in a world where foreign corporations enjoyed clear backing from their governments. It’s beginning to look as if Silicon Valley is heading down this well-trodden trail.
God Bless America. Rally round the Flag boys! The Fourth of July. Yee-ha. It’s possible that “Engine” Charlie Wilson got it all wrong when he famously said “for years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa”. Perhaps the correct formulation is “what’s good for the Democratic Party is good for the country”.
I hope Schmidt remembers to add that what’s good for the Democratic Party is determined by the highest bidder. Otherwise people might get the wrong idea. That completes the other side of the equation and leaves everything perfectly clear.
For years the highest bidders have been talking about “multiculturalism” and buying the world a coke. Thus people who knocked down two of the tallest buildings in the world were referred to as emissaries from a religion of peace. And people streaming across every unguarded border were simply misunderstood. And hacking … well we didn’t talk about such things in polite company.
Now the narrative may be changing. But why?
The big mistake of conservatives was to to think these propositions were debated rationally; so they adduced arguments; advanced evidence. Argued themselves blue in the face on talk shows. They had forgotten what Bellow said: a great deal was “invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep”.
The solution was not to appeal to the politician’s better angels but to their basest greed. Of course there’s nothing inherently wrong that. Wheeling and dealing runs a close second to apple pie as being American.
The policies of the Democratic Party have finally hit or are starting to hit their constituency where they live. It’s costing the members of the Big Tent money to keep singing the same old song. The unions are finding their pensions unfundable; their members unemployable. And Julia hasn’t got job — the Lily Ledbetter act notwithstanding. The NYT and the Washington Post have been hacked. Maybe the banks have been hacked but they just ain’t telling.
It’s not working out, this buying the world a coke business.
So the Democratic Party discovers National Greatness again, natch. Maybe one should be glad. This is the way politics is supposed to work. Not’s “what’s right” but “who sent you?” It makes a difference when you say that Google sent you.
Reality feeds back on policies. And for too long the Democratic Party has been living in that invincible ignorance which Bellow describes as being the staple they ate at great cost. This may be changing. Not everybody has woken up to smell the coffee. But maybe we can hear them starting to grind the beans.
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It has been policy of the US government at least from the first Obama term that economic growth would come from highly educated folks in the high tech sphere. There would be about 10% of the workforce, very well paid, innovating and creating all this wonderful wealth of ideas. As for the rest of the people, well, we have extended unemployment benefits and maybe a subsidized call center in Arkansas.
I guess it isn’t working out as planned. Who would have thought?
Glenn Reynolds links to a WSJ article describing how the administration picked winners and losers at AIG.
Taxpayer’s money is being treated like the “commons” since it belongs to ‘everybody’ and besides, they can always print some more. The idea of the existence of this stash, which can be increased or lowered by simply declaring that enemy aliens are about to invade planet earth, as per Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, is a pernicious idea.
Public money is apparently free. Or it is so regarded. This is the agency problem again. Nobody is looking out for the taxpayer, least of all those sworn to do so. But if public money is unreal money, the union and Silicon Valley monies are all too real.
Hence one solution to the problem is to create an alignment of interests between the holders of real money and the providers of unreal money — the taxpayers. If what is good for the country is good for Google, then the taxpayers have a friend of court via an alignment with a Democratic party constituency. Otherwise they are SOL.
The reason why globalization weakened elite accountability in many countries is because their interests became divorced from their national origin. If you made your money in Asia, why should you care about some shmucks in North Dakota?
But if China is all of a sudden freezing you out of the foreign markets, you start to care once again about them good old Americans. It may be cynical, but like it says in a book more than a hundred years old, “where your treasure is, there shall your heart lie.”
Nobody who has something to lose (like Eric Schmidt) profits from chaos and anarchy.
What Obama proposes was always political chaos, not anarchy. He knows best how to manipulate political chaos, being an Alinsky guy and a commnunity organizer. In fact, that’s really about all he knows, which goes back to his invincible ignorance. And there’s a great deal invested in not admitting what that guy really is. Because he also has offered a corporatist state to Google, GM, GE, etc.
But by advancing the corporatist state, he is also advancing anarchy, because he is undermining the rule of law, or at least what we have been doing as the illusion of the rule of law, to the rule of Obama’s whim. And though Obama won’t admit it, a few people are beginning to realize that the investment in the illusion of Obama is starting to cost them a lot of money.
Yes, the next few years are going to be filled with wheeling and dealing and all the illusions of democracy that can be conjured up. Because this country is planted thick with laws, and as the Obama Regime is intent on cutting a lot of them down to get after that devil of free market capitalism, don’t be surprised if another real Devil turns on him. And can he stand the storm that follows, with all the laws cut down? (to paraphrase Thomas More)
It’s a little late to think about watertight integrity after you hit the iceberg, Wretchard. The fact that soem democrats are finally thinking about national greatness is of course welcome, but what does that mean, exactly? Are we about to hear great speeches on how national greatness requires the USA to live within her means, stop borrowing 40 cents for every dollar spent, stop dismantling her armed forces and kowtowing to Islamic Fascists? That would be most welcome.
Or, more likely, are we about to hear that national greatness requires fully funding union pensions, fully funding Obamacare, confiscating all privately owned guns, more taxes, more regulation, and so forth and so on? The democrats have spent the last decades making it perfectly clear that they consider people like me to be, at best, a resource to be used. I am not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt now. The democrats have mocked and insulted my beliefs on every subject under the sun. I do not intend to trust them now.
The democrats have made their contempt for republicans plain enough. They have embraced multiculturalism and the buy-the-worl-a-coke ideology of their own will. They have chosen to be fools, why should I not let them suffer the consequences?
I’ve said this for some time, it isn’t a case anymore of what the Libs, Dems( or whatever you call these people) want to do, it’s now what they have to do. They gained power by such a method that to keep it will require some rather nasty means and they are trapped into doing it. Viewed this way it’s rather easy to see what’s coming from these people. If it’s any consolation I think they are losing on all fronts, apparently very slowly, but losing none the less.
Well Wretchard we’re living in an age where if some Al-Nusra guys make a YouTube video declaring death to America and how they’ll wage jihad against the US and Israel upon seizing power in Damascus — @PhillipSmyth or some other hack at the Saban Center can just say Assad’s people made it up. Hacked emails released saying UK mil firm wants to bring a chem shell from the Duck of Death’s rusted arsenal to Syria? The Iranians made that up too. Apparently nothing is real except that which they want you to see. Israel and Qatar have now bought the world a coke, together. Friends forever or until the Muslim Brotherhood decides to start reigning ordinance on the Golan Heights. In which case the neocons in their eternal chutzpah will say, “See, we told you America should’ve directly invaded Syria all along to prevent this…”
Wot BotP said @4. Huzzah!
David/3: “But by advancing the corporatist state, he is also advancing anarchy, because he is undermining the rule of law, or at least what we have been doing as the illusion of the rule of law, to the rule of Obama’s whim.”
The people recognize the descent into lawlessness. It is what has been draining the shelves of gun shops across America for five years now. This is a country preparing for war. A country preparing to defend its Natural Rights from a tyrannical government. Watch this video of the NY State Police holding a town hall meeting to discuss Emperor Cuomo’s new gun laws: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTdhVxva5KU. They ask what the consequences of non-compliance would be and the officials have no answer. There is no law, there is no enforcement, there is no justice system. The DHS brands anyone who supports the originalist understanding of the Constitution a “domestic terrorist”, and in their eyes they are. The government has operated lawlessly for at least four years, failing to pass a budget to fund its operations. The executive branch selectively enforces laws on the books and creates new “rules” by fiat.
The government knows that they have enraged the people. They have co-opted the media as a propaganda arm. They have co-opted the banking system to drive the middle class into poverty. Now they are trying to disarm the people to eliminate any future resistance. We’ve seen this movie before in other countries. It can’t happen here, right?
Wretchard wrote:
“Multiculturalism is arguably the ideology of delegitimizing community.”
It is elegent, to-the-bone insights like this, sir, that put you up there with the Founding Fathers and other great thinkers in history.
Keep up the good work.
8. novanglus,
You misunderstand- this is only a drill they are doing. Like the pretend hostage standoff that’s happening, the government makes you angry now so you’ll be able to fight back someday. Also like Jimmy Carter who scared folks into praying for dear life in the Middle East. That was a good plan.
You don’t appreciate being used for an exercise, but you could someday.
Well well well.
The democrats have discovered ‘National Greatness.’
I’ll believe it when they all stand and sing a dozen choruses of “It’s a Grand Old Flag” at the next convention.
Untill then, I’ll reflect on a few lines from Martin Luther Kings favorite poem;
“The Present Crisis” by James Russell Lowell;
“Then to side with truth is noble, when we share her wretched crust,
Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and ’tis prosperous to be just;
Then it is the brave man chooses while the coward stands aside,
Till the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied.”
“I do not know,” she said seriously. “Perhaps one day we will know the answers to many things. What I do know is this; time does not exist. Time is a perception, a device created by intelligent beings. Do you think the birds in the garden have a concept of time? Or the fish of the sea? No, there is no such thing as time. There is no such thing as reality. All is illusion.”
“How can that be, Hanane? No such thing as reality? Reality is all around us. Telescopes see deep into space, see galaxies spinning. Microscopes see deep into the structure of living organisms. Surely the living organisms are real. Surely you and I are real. I pinch myself and I feel the pain. I am real, Hanane, and if I am real than there is reality.”
“You are real and I am real, the lemon tree is real, the birds in the garden are real, but am I real when you are not with me? Is the lemon tree real when you are not here to see it, to smell it? Are the birds real when you are not here to hear them sing? We invest our lives in illusion. Arek. We know what we think we know we know, but in truth we know next to nothing. When we are apart, you do not exist for me and I do not exist for you. We may remember, we may think of each other, but that too is part of the illusion.”
“Too much too soon, Hanane,” he said wearily. “If you don’t mind I’ll continue to hold to my illusions. I shall continue to believe that what I can see and touch is real.”
“Yes, that is best,” she said.
Excerpt from ILLUSION, a forthcoming novel by Walter Erickson
A thread that I missed almost slipped under the radar. I may be less efficient than a Sinobot but I do find things.
China as a government has been effectively waging war against the United States since at least the Bush 41 years. Inquiring minds may want to find out if there was a formal change of policy or inflection point that shows they chose to risk hostile acts or is it simply that they discovered while trying every hotel door that the Democrats were willing co-conspirators.
The apparent shift among some Democratic Party allies may simply be a sign of how far the Republicans have fallen. Obama effectively stole the election twice in broad daylight with the support of senior media elites with overt fraud and by publicly pulling down the pants of two decent men, John McCain and Mitt Romney, and gratuitously humiliating them. By their standards the Donks “won” and have nothing to fear domestically. Campaigns against guns or trans-fats or traditional marriage are mere filler to justify increased governmental authority and demonize what they see as cartoon targets. They want to get a rise out most of the people who comment here. With the domestic struggle as they see it over they now have to sort out their position among the global elites they fancy themselves as belonging to.
The model for the relations of local leftist elites to those in Beijing may not be found in classic International Relations texts or even less in recent legal process or popular sovereignty and sociology models beloved by liberal academics. Far more useful may be studies of internal power struggles within authoritarian regimes. Consider how Stalin dealt with all the Old Bolsheviks. The pretentious poohbahs of the American Left may soon meet the kind of hard men who would dispose of a Rahm Emanuel without pausing.
The New York Times has an interesting article on how much it costs to qualify for the post of US ambassador.
What a refreshing article. No beating around the bush. No euphemisms or doubletalk. Just straight up cash on the barrel. President Obama has made good one promise. This is the most transparent administration in history. All they have to do now is put it up for bidding on EBay.
To be sure this is how a lot of politics has always worked. Even during the revolutionary days there were people looking to make a buck. It’s just that progress being what it is, the price of everything has gone up. Thus the Founders tried to fix things so that one party’s scoundrels would checkmate the other party’s scoundrels. The terms is Checks and Balances. But what it comes down to is the Founders had anticipated the plot of Aliens Vs Predator. Only by watching the politicians cut each others can the little guy survive in the confusion.
So when they say that the Constitution is just an old piece of paper that nobody reads any more; that it stands in the way of even more government, of the New Bill of Rights that Cass Sunstein wants, that Julia and Sandra Fluke crave, it may be well to remember that there was a reason it was written the way it was.
1. derek
It has been policy of the US government at least from the first Obama term that economic growth would come from highly educated folks in the high tech sphere.
Yup. Till they need a plumber.
Google is now siding with the US against China? Nonsense. Go to Google Earth and look up Scarborough Reef in the Philippines. As you zoom in you will see the outline of some islands and then those disappear under a blue haze made to look like a cloud. Google doesn’t want people to see what the Chicoms are doing at Scarborough Reef. Google have sold their souls to the Chinese for 30 pieces of silver.
derek @ 1 –
It has been policy of the US government at least from the first Obama term that economic growth would come from highly educated folks in the high tech sphere. There would be about 10% of the workforce, very well paid, innovating and creating all this wonderful wealth of ideas. As for the rest of the people, well, we have extended unemployment benefits and maybe a subsidized call center in Arkansas.
I guess it isn’t working out as planned. Who would have thought?
There is a whole bunch of revolutionary energy technology acoming. And it is due to the efforts of highly educated folks in the high tech sphere.
It is NOT windpower, or solar. It is stuff like bio-gasoline. Gasoline is refined from a fraction of the raw crude oil, which in turn is the product millions of years of slow cooking biomass under high pressure.
What if we could take raw biomass, such as grass clippings, put it under pressure and temperature in a de facto pressure cooker, and make gasoline suitable for use in your existing car?
Any takers?
One of my customers may just have made 100 gallons of the stuff. No promises, just a rumor at this stage, but still.
Consider the possibilities if we, the highly educated folks in the high tech sphere, can turn grass clippings into gasoline?
But the reality is that this kind of Real World advancement was initiated by Dick Cheney and George W. Bush when they held their super secret energy summit in 2001, not on Obama’s watch.
George Bush did it.
Perhaps we are looking at this the wrong way.
The way I see it, Google et al are like any entity that wants to cement its income stream and power and then grow both. The desire to do so isn’t new and has always been there, but the ability to prevail upon the government with conversation and writing didn’t exist. Prior to now they had political leaders with whom they were hostile, largely by choice. Now that they have a wholly owned government with a mighty military, one over which they can exert some influence to use against their enemies.
In other words, they have always know of the “greatness”, but loathed it right up until the point when they could wield it. They don’t respect the institutions, or the philosophy and sacrifice that made them possible, just the utility, in our throwaway society (ironic that most of them are “green” and believers in recycling etc.).
“Those are OUR planes, now”, as was once famously said.
wretchard (#14) wrote “So when they say that the Constitution is just an old piece of paper that nobody reads any more” Wretchard this was by design, When the Democrats Progressive captured Academia they quickly phased out American history, barely gets a mention K-12, if only to point out its Slavery, Racism and Oppression of everyone by the Evil Whiteman, America was subverted from melting pot to tribalism, the Constitution is Anti Tribalism and must go because it is the words of the Evil Oppressing White men who did the worst of the worst every where they went.
I would like to recommend that everyone read Bellow’s “To Jerusalem and Back” especially the last two chapters; it furthers my thesis that we are living through events that had their seeds planted in the 1970s. It’s all there in Bellow, the shape of things to come…leading to 9/11…
MP/17, the ability to do it technologically has been known for quite some time, the Germans in WWII did it, the South Africans did it to deal with the result of sanctions. It is not doing it, it is doing it cost effectively to compete with pulling it out of the ground. Getting capital and operating costs down to the point where it can compete with the cost of pumping it out of the ground. There is a company who has been doing it at (very small, in energy terms) commercial scale for years call ‘changing world technologies” there was an article years ago about them called ‘anything into oil’ in one of the pop science magazines.
They are still trying to figure out how to do it at scale profitably for things like agricultural waste, or municipal sewage. One of the biggest challenges is an energy rich feedstock available at volumes (measured by energy industry scale volume), preferably being paid a tipping fee for taking it.
Knowing how to do it from a science and engineering perspective is very different from being able to do it economically. Think of it this way, that knowledge keeps a long term ‘cap’ what is not economic at $60 or $90 per barrel oil may be marginal at $140, and easy at $180/bbl. The threat of displacement is ultimately why those who control oil supplies do not and cannot abuse us too much. If the mideast racket gets too expensive, we get a different racket.
Ah, the new “patriotism,” where Tom Hanks calls people like us “unAmerican” for daring to criticize the government.
Keep in mind that the first wave of Progressives gave us many elements of our current “patriotism.” Francis Bellamy, a self-professed “Christian Socialist,” gave us the Pledge of Allegiance, complete with what was to be come the fascist salute. Progressives went to great lengths to get the waves of Eastern Europeans and other immigrants to assimilate and become solid Americans. They helped give us “public schools” so we could be more “unified” as a people. It is/was what it was, and did indeed have upsides that the American people accepted. Now the ideological descendants of the old progressives are giving us a new version to replace the century-old one. This time they are going full-Rousseau and equating the State with the Nation.
I’m a bit surprised that Wretchard hasn’t posted anything on the recent developments in Syria, re: Israel’s cross-border strike(s?) and threats of recriminations from Assad and Iran. I’d love to hear his analysis of the current situation, especially in light of the mysterious Fordow explosion.
16 @David Archibald
Very good point, thank you. It looks like they did the same with a significant portion of the Spratly Islands, another Chinese-contested place.
Don’t be evil, my ass.