This week I’m spreading the net a little wider to take in some pieces which aren’t as directly topical as usual, because a lot of the directly-relevant stuff is merely rehashing what has already been published by the WaPo and NYT and offers nothing much else.

Debate over the violent protests at the G20 in Hamburg continues. Jakob Augstein considers the issues:

In any other place at any other time, setting a car on fire would have been an insignificant act of vandalism. In connection with the summit, this is a political act – accepted by a small minority, rejected by a large majority, but seen in the right context by all. Anyone can put the burning cars at the G20 summit in the context of the militant rejection of this summit. Nobody would understand if they burn at a church meeting. But no one has ever heard of plundering Protestants.

How does this politically motivated violence work? Once accepted, the violators of Hamburg have won. It is assumed that in the foreseeable future such a summit will no longer take place in a German city. Would that be the capitulation of the legal state? Or is democracy a legitimate place for non-state violence?

These questions arise from the monopoly of power of the state – and therefore to the state itself.

Carolin Emcke, the peace laureate, twittered to Hamburg: “Every TV minute devoted to the violence of the Hooligans was a minute in which the decisions of the # G20 could not be criticized.” The question arises whether peaceful protests against the summit would have received just as much attention as the violent clashes. This is the essence of political protest in democratic capitalism: if it adheres to the rules, its effect remains weak. If it breaks the rules, it puts its acceptance at risk.

Now a nice bipartisan piece in La Stampa by Gianni Rotta:

Fate now seeks the break point of McCain, senator of Arizona, and in 2008 the Republican party candidate for the White House, inflicting on him a brain cancer, GBM glioblastoma, which will consume him in a few months. A nemesis of the legends, because the GBM felled, August 25, 2009, Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy: moving, re-reading biographies, discover McCain and Kennedy as twins, even before the hard diagnosis. Both born in the tragic Thirties of the twentieth century, ’32 for Ted, ’36 for John, scattered by historical dynasties.

…

Both for McCain and Kennedy the White House remained a mirage, Kennedy lost the nomination against Carter in 1980, with the legendary comment “The dream will never die,” McCain, nominated by Republicans 2008 against Obama, advancing to the Lehmann crisis, is then beaten by the young rival. Both of them gain on the field the unmistakable brand of maverick, a loose cannon. McCain has given a twist to President Trump, who hates him (privately calls him “ambushed” for not fighting in Vietnam), Kennedy had been a thorn in Carter’s side.

They both knew the bitter titles of scandals, deaths in a secret incident by secretary Mary Jo Kopechne, after a party for Kennedy in 1969, the case of “Keating Five”, the corruption of the 1989 Savings Cases for McCain. They have emerged, wounded, defeated, for their values, social solidarity for Kennedy, free personal spirit for McCain, rebellious rebels, children of an America who fought for politics-as in the World Tour in 80 days of Verne – but then went to drink a beer together, under the flag. An America that, as Ted and John feared, can now perish because nations as well as men have their point of breaking.

Linking McCain and Kennedy reminds us of when the Senate was a fairly useful deliberative body – before Turtle McTurtleface became leader of the Republican caucus – and politics was relatively sane. There are already 8752 theories about what caused the deterioration, but Nick Bryant has come up with an 8753rd:

It seems entirely fitting that OJ Simpson should reappear at this surreal juncture in American life because many of the trends that culminated in the election of Donald J Trump can be traced back to his arrest and trial.

Consider first of all the impact on the US media of that slow-motion car chase, as “The Juice” headed down the 405 freeway in the back of his white Ford Bronco pursued by a small armada of police cars and a squadron of news helicopters. With viewers glued to their televisions ­that day, Domino’s recorded a record spike in pizza deliveries.

It was the moment arguably that real-time, rolling news truly came of age.

That chase and the gavel-to-gavel coverage of the 1995 trial on CNN and Court TV demonstrated a voracious appetite for cable news. The OJ “trial of the century”, with its blend of tabloid sensationalism and serious analysis, established the formula for ratings success. In last year’s presidential election, the media fixation with Donald Trump demonstrated how that recipe still works now. His candidacy could almost have been tailor made to fit the requirements of real-time cable news and Twitter, its digital equivalent.

…

Here again there are parallels with the election of Donald Trump, when voters were presented with the same evidence, the same televised spectacle, and reached diametrically opposed opinions. Again America was riven, although the roots of that polarisation were different. With OJ, it was race. With Trump, it was class, education, gender and geography. Yet he, too, tapped into a shared sense of victimhood. He portrayed himself as the victim of the Washington political establishment and East Coast liberal media, essentially telling his supporters that the same elites sneering at him were the same elites sneering at them. Whereas Cochran played the race card, Trump deployed the rage card.

…

What struck me about last year’s election was how many voters were prepared to overlook Donald Trump’s truth-stretching and falsehoods because of their determination to exact revenge and send a message. Trump’s relied on slogans – Make America Great Again, Build the Wall, Lock Her Up – ­knowing they had more resonance than detailed policies. Feelings were more important than facts. Hillary Clinton became the perfect bogey woman. Someone who personified all that was wrong with the American body politic. Someone who used the “d” word, deplorables, to describe them.

Many of those who voted for Trump felt the political system was rigged against the white working class, just as some of the black jurors in the OJ trial felt the political system was rigged against them.

Getting even more abstract, Andy Martin discusses how POUTS causes good crime fiction:

There was once a cartoon in the New Yorker which featured a 19th-century editor, very Victorian, with long sideburns, and poring over a manuscript on his desk, giving a hard time to a young wannabe writer. “Come, come, Mr Dickens,” he is saying, “it can’t be both the “best of times” and the “worst of times”, can it now? Make your mind up!” It occurred to me at ThrillerFest in New York this week that this could be another of those times, both best and worst.

Worst because of rampant Brexitism and Trumpery. Best on account of the raft of forthcoming thrillers and mysteries in the new season.

…

The question is: could there be a connection? The worse the state of the world, the better the literature emerging out of our orgy of uncertainty and self-destruction? There is a case for saying that all great works reflect death, horror, murder, crime. Think War and Peace or Crime and Punishment. The Brothers Karamazov just naturally assumes that most sons will want to bump off their father. Turning it around, Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” is predicated on the belief that guys (and perhaps specifically Ted Hughes) have got it in for her.

They’re all Nazis at heart. Al Alvarez used to make the case that all the best poetry was written on the verge of nervous breakdown. Maybe that’s where we are now.

…

We have been programmed, in evolutionary terms, to find consolation and reassurance in these narratives that provide both an epistemological and moral pay-off: a puzzle is solved and justice is served. We wander the earth in a moral maze in which mysteries have a habit of remaining mysterious. We rely on the crime novel to bring us clarity and enlightenment where before there was only darkness. Maybe it is all we have left of the sublime.

Which I think explains why these narratives are so popular in the age of Brexit and Trumpery. The novel is more myth than mimesis, an “escape” in that it offers an imaginary solution of the ills that beset us and remains intractable in the real world. It is closer to religion than to nature because it insinuates that there is always Someone On Our Side. But they also suggest why, in turn, Brexiteers and Trump have of late been so insanely successful. It is because their penny-dreadful gospel claims to “save” us from a host of hazy crimes and misdemeanours, “carnage” and apocalypse.

In the Herald Scotland, Alison Rowat also looks at fiction and the current administration:

 WHEN it comes time to make a movie about the Trump presidency, some unfortunate screenwriter is going to find all the best titles have been taken. Creative tinkering will be required, particularly if the filmmaker wants to home in on the true tale of the president’s eldest son, Donald Jr, and his meeting with a Russian lawyer.

Would one plump, for example, for Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Numbskull? Eternal Sunshine of the Clueless Mind? Indiana Jones and the Temple of Dumb?

…

But the Russia story is different, is it not? With several congressional committees already investigating, this matter above all others has the potential to do momentous harm to President Trump. To be accused of accepting foreign help is shocking enough. If such accusations were proven it would amount to a scandal worse than Watergate, a shame that was at least home-grown. It is a delicate situation, therefore. The mother of all fine china shops, the kind of establishment that would bar entry to passing bulls and children. Enter, then, number one Trump son and 39-year-old political toddler, Donald Trump Jr.

…

 America seems to be suffering from a condition best described as Trump outrage fatigue. It reached a certain plateau after the election, and it spikes now and again, but essentially it continues on the same level. The patient seems unwilling or unable to shrug it off, to find some way to break the fever and move on.

But what does it matter? America has been divided for so long on so many issues the Trump presidency would hardly seem to make much difference. Yet it does. Leaving aside the wider, global harm that could follow from having a distracted and weakened America turning in on itself, there is the damage being done to democracy. Mr Trump was swept into office on a wave of disillusionment with the status quo. That same disenchantment, far from being reversed, is being fuelled further by the Russia claims. How this democratic disaster movie ends no-one, not even Hollywood’s most imaginative minds, knows.

POUTS has been in office for six months now, and a number of outlets have produced reports on what he’s done so far. Here’s the one from the Frankfurter Allgemeine:

Donald Trump has been in the White House for six months. That means a lot of noise, countless Twitter messages, chest-beating everywhere. His popularity is, according to surveys, as low as any other president at this time. Less than 40 percent of Americans say they are satisfied with their president. But politics were also made in the first term of office of the new president.

Thus, Trump withdrew the United States from the Transpacific trade agreement TPP, surprisingly, and tried to re-negotiate with Mexico and Canada the existing North American agreement (Nafta). With other countries, including Germany, he is at war with trade policy.

…

But the biggest failure of Donald Trump in his first six months in office was administered by his own party. He has not been able to comply with his electoral promise to abolish “Obamacare”, which has been hated by republicans and their voters because of high contributions . It was not because the Democrats had resisted or the constraints had been too great, but rather because his own party, despite their majority in both congress chambers, could not reach a consensus.

…

The American president also shows repeatedly that he has no experience in political life. In May, he met the Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov at the White House and told him that the United States had access to a spy within the “Islamic state”. This has put both the life of the agent at risk, as well as betraying important state secrets, which in the view of the American secret services has taken massive influence on the presidential election.

But along with all these negative things, positive things also happen, at least from the perspective of Trump and his supporters. Thus the White House is boasting that in the first six months of office, more than 860 regulations have been abolished. Most of them came from the Obama Administration and were about, for example, environmental protection. Trump sees these regulations as an obstacle to the economy and wants to reduce the influence of the state on the economy in a major deregulation campaign.

Elaborating on the failure (so far) of Deathcare, Peter Winkler looks at the fallout.

In essence, however, the drama about the health reform has exposed only the old trenches that keep the Republican Party holding its breath. Unlike in Europe, the major American parties are not bound by any program that would discipline their members and leaders. Rather, each deputy and senator herself defines what republican politics mean to her or him.

Radical anti-socialists, security-political hawks against libertarian statesmen, and the  a business-friendly establishment against the tea-party movement’s leaders. These and other schisms also make the party difficult to manage despite controlling all areas of the government. In addition to this, the iron political law for social works: once built, they turn into kryptonite, which is better not touched, because it even robbed Superman of his powers.

The reform of health was supposed to be the legislative project that the Republicans could quickly push through, then turn to other topics. There was, for example, the big tax reform, whose prospects are by no means better after the failure of the reform of the health system, or the law on the renewal of the infrastructure of a trillion dollars, which, as the blog “Politico” aptly describes – shows no signs of life.

Instead, the US once again looks into the abyss of a self-made insolvency if the statutory debt ceiling can not be increased in time. Such scenarios had marked several totally unnecessary power struggles between the Republicans in Congress and Obama at the White House. The diplomatic world then followed with astonishment how, in Washington, the creditworthiness of the United States itself was treated as a political football.

James Kirchik has a long article in the FAZ about how the Republican Party has become the pro-Russia party. It’s not too difficult a read despite its length.

How is it possible that the party which had moral clarity of a Ronald Reagan has turned into that of the moral emptiness that is Donald Trump? Russian intelligence is among the best in the world. I think they have carefully studied America’s political scene, and in the course of the Obama years realized that the conservative movement was ready for manipulation. Their basic counterpart to the “axis of evil” was long past. There only remains an intellectually and morally dried carcass, populated by high-rollers, opportunists, entertainers andcon-men, who operated extremely profitable publishers, radio empires, websites and television stations, and did not spread ideas there, but resentment.

If a political official from the Russian Embassy in Washington had visited the zoo which is the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, he would have seen a “movement” that lauded a ridiculous performance artist like Milo Yiannopoulos as if he were an intellectual heavyweight. When conservative bloggers are ready to accept hundreds of thousands of dollars from the authoritarian government of Malaysia to launch a dirt campaign against a democratic opposition leader, which they do not know the least about, it’s but a small step to the support and defense of an action of a brain dead Dauphin like Donald Trump jr., who is at least attempting collusion?

Why, in the face of this miserable picture, should not Russia try to “reverse” American rights, whose ethical rot is the necessary condition for her repulsive unscrupulousness? It is precisely this ethical decay that makes it possible for Dennis Prager, one of the more flexible professional moralists of the Right, to assert with an straight face: “The new media in the West is a far greater danger to Western civilization than Russia.” Why should a “religious right” celebrating a miserably immoral charlatan like Donald Trump, not close their eyes to the oppressive regime that prevails in Russia – or even expressly approve it like Franklin Graham?

Another long read is provided by Bettina Gaus in taz. I’ll warn you that it’s another examination of POUTS supporters, but it’s written out of curiosity rather than trying to advance an agenda and mercifully doesn’t attempt to come up with a Unified Theory.

Change of location. West Virgina, one of the poorest states in the USA. In addition to some income from tourism, this is mainly due to coal. Not surprisingly, Hillary Clinton did not score with her campaign for renewable energies.

Conrad Lucas is chairman of the Republicans in that state. A year ago he said, “I am 34 and the great hope of my party in West Virginia. If Hillary Clinton moves into the White House and possibly stays there for eight years, then I am 42 and someone else is 34 years old and the great hope of the Republicans. ”

Hillary Clinton has not become president. Lucas is now 35 years old and is considering to stand for congressional elections in the coming year. His family  settled here a few hundred years ago. He is – or seems to be – evangelical, homophobic, reactionary. So has good prospects in his party.

A small problem: He is also funny, sarcastic, intelligent. And he is not allowed to use any of these skills against Donald Trump, who is supported so far by so many Republicans that no candidacy could be successful against his political course. Conrad Lucas does not say a word against the US president. But he can not always resist the temptation to deliver a differentiated analysis. “The transition from a business man to a politician is always particularly difficult,” says Lucas, a graduate of  Harvard University. “There is a wealth of possibilities for action in business life, but only a few goals. There is also a wealth of possibilities for action in politics, and the number of goals is unbelievable. ”

A wise definition of politics, especially of foreign policy. This contains a sharp criticism of Donald Trump. Lucas formulates here the counterposition to the viewpoint of the dignitaries of East Aurora, according to which audacity is enough to achieve what one wants. He calls for a clear prioritization of political goals – that is, the opposite of the uneasy leverage, for which Donald Trump stands.

But does anyone notice this? Who is already interested in foreign policy? The longer and the more frequently you talk to Trump’s followers, the more it becomes clear that the US president is looking inside – and so he is understood. Whether he travels to Saudi Arabia or to the G20 summit to Hamburg, ultimately it is all about domestic politics.

 There’s little that seems to unite the people Gaus interviews beyond being fed up. Some are now fed up with POUTS as well.

The Norwegian ambassador also has some thoughts, as Jostein Matre reports:

Aas believes it is essential to understand that the United States is a divided society, where it is almost impossible for the Republicans and Democrats to reach compromises on the important issues. Thee ambassador points out that this is not new with Donald Trump as president. This was also the case under Barack Obama.

“Congress did not get anything done at all. They sat on each side of the aisle.”

…

“It was crucial even though other countries might criticize, from the start, we were clearly willing to cooperate with them, and we were clear why Norway is an important partner for the United States,” said Aas.

He refers to things like security and defense with cooperation in countries like Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq, as well as the United States Navy Corps on Værnes. But also for work on peace processes, such as Colombia and Afghanistan, trade, the Arctic, our relationship with Russia, and Norway actually contributing to creating jobs in the United States

…It’s just not easy yet. There are still a lot of posts in the various ministries Donald Trump has not been filled up with people. For the Norwegian Embassy, ​​the consequence is that they often simply do not have anyone to address, such as in the Foreign Ministry, the Pentagon and the National Security Council.

– We notice that the political people are not there. That’s how the communication between the political leadership and the career people who now work in political positions often breaks up. It will be a bit more choppy, “explains Aas.

Norway isn’t the only country which has noticed the lack of senior appointments by the administration. Ansgar Graw considers the recent announcements of ambassadors to Germany and Russia:

… many administrators in Washington are skeptical about the unpredictable president and do not want to work in his government. On the other hand, Trump is very suspicious and so he prefers to be with close confidants, if not relatives.
Trump does not have more than 500 confidants and relatives. It is true that the White House has submitted proposals for further 145 top-ranking officials, which now await confirmation by the Senate. But the gaps remain immense.

…

But that there is so far no regular ambassador among the US representation in Berlin, hardly anyone has registered. Because both countries cooperate closely, contacts have emerged at all levels that work without diplomatic action.

There are direct channels between the Bundestag and Congress, as well as between the Federal Ministry of Defense and the Pentagon , between the Foreign Office and the State Department, between the other Ministry of Defense, between the secret services and, of course, between the Chancellery and the White House.

…

Ambassadors are much more important in countries that are important to the world, but have less close contacts with Washington. Russia is one of them. Despite the obvious efforts in the Trump environment to establish confidential channels to Moscow, the contacts between the individual ministries or the military are still at the top level, but they are totally underdeveloped at the crucial work stages.

…

At a second glance, there is much evidence that the President desperately needed to get Huntsman out of DC. For the popular ex-governor of Utah had been considering to stand next year against the 83-year-old Senator Orrin Hatch. Hatch, who belonged to the Senate since 1977, promised in 2012 that the current legislative period was his last. At Trump’s request, however, the influential chairman of the Finance Committee announced another candidature in spring. The 57-year-old Huntsman would have been dangerous to him.

According to a survey conducted by the local newspaper in January, Huntsman led his opponent Hatch by 62 percent to 21 percent. In the Senate, an independent and clever head like Huntsman might have become an offense for Trump. In Moscow, on the other hand, the president can use him.

And that’s your lot for this week. Happy Sunday.

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POUTS has been off on his travels again, yet again having to put conversations with foreign politicians ahead of golf. No wonder he’s upset.

First stop was Poland, where he made a belligerent speech in front of a bused-in audience of RWNJs. This prompted Máriam M-Bascuñán to reflect on POUTS’s advisers’ choice of reading matter:

What is relevant in Trump’s speech is his substantialist vision of the values ​​of the West, which he says he wants to defend with relish against potential external and internal enemies as Le Pen already did with his “choix de civilization”: the war of interpretations within The West is served. And it is symbolic that Trump wielded it in Poland, where the government favors an intolerant and fundamentalist populism. Pericles prayed to the fallen in the midst of the war, and Trump turned to the martyrs and heroes of Poland as an example and model of what the struggle for freedom, family, country and God means. His warning is clear, a warning to sailors. Too bad his advisers read so much Thucydides instead of the Kant of Perpetual Peace!

On to Moscow, and a meeting with a Russian bloke POUTS barely knows and has never colluded with, not nohow, nosirree Bob. Maria Georgieva comments in Svenska Dagbladet:

The meeting lasted for more than two hours, much longer than expected, which makes Russia look good.

The Kremlin hoped to inject some clarity in what direction the relationships will take. It is important for Russia that the presidents find a common ground to stand on.

…

On the whole , it became a good day for Putin, who looked like a real statesman. But despite the expectations of excitement, the challenges remain. Russia still wants Trump to lift the economic sanctions, halt support for Ukraine – something that has not happened so far.

It also seems that the outside world wants to work out which of the presidents is the savannah’s wild lion on the one hand, while on the other hand, conclude that there is a wide-ranging “bromance” between them. Next to each other they looked like two elephants pushing and trying to drink from the same waterhole….

Regardless of what’s going on in the future, the Kremlin wants Putin to appear as the winner of the meeting, to ensure momentum against other world leaders. Therefore, President Putin’s facial expressions will continue to carry on passive expectations.

Then it was the G20. Let’s start with Andrés Rojo:

The G19 distanced themselves yesterday from the White House tenant by including in the final declaration of the Hamburg Summit a point declaring the climate change agreement in Paris “irreversible” and calling for “proceeding swiftly” to its implementation despite opposition from the United States. The delegation headed by Donald Trump included a note stating that the US “would work with third countries to use fossil fuels more effectively and cleanly”, a phrase that was supplemented, on the initiative of the France of Macron, with the addendum ‘and other renewable and clean energy sources’. Finally, the United States was not able to add to its proposal the support of Saudi Arabia or Indonesia (large oil producers) and the Americans were left alone, certifying a paradigm shift in the G20 summits, traditionally led and directed by the tenant of the White House on duty.

…

The other of the great points where a priori disparity of approaches existed between the US delegation and the rest of the G20 members was the chapter on free trade, which Trump had set afire with its serious charges against German business practices in the steel market against which it intends to raise tariff barriers. Finally, as in Hamburg, a compromise was reached: the final declaration enshrined the principles of global free trade but, at the same time, it recognized the right of states to play Trade defense. This last expression was universally understood to be a concession torn away by the delegation headed by the millionaire New Yorker. In any case, the text approved and signed by the US, China and the European Union proclaims the need for free and fair international trade with open markets and condemns discriminatory protectionism through tariffs or regulations.

Much comment is of a similar nature. The world is adjusting to the USA being out of step. Make America Irrelevant Again was probably not the original idea, but it seems to be working.

There were some pretty violent protests, which led to a lot of Germans asking whether it was worth holding G20s, especially in Germany. Christian Stöcker doesn’t think so:

1. A city like Hamburg is unsuitable as a venue.

Even before the first stone flew and the first car was burning, the summit had begun to paralyze Hamburg. There were hours of traffic jams, the city center was locked up, police cars on every corner and helicopters across the city produced a sense of siege. From the dissolution of the “Welcome to Hell” demonstration on Thursday evening, black-dressed hooligans began to hit the streets in various places in the city, lighting barricades and cars and generally spreading chaos.

…

If threr must be a G20 summit, then in the future please in the desert, on an island or an aircraft carrier.

2. The “black block” has nothing to do with politics.

The people who came from Europe to riot in Hamburg describe themselves as politically radical, as anti-fascists, anti-capitalists or anarchists. In truth, the past three days have once again shown, they are simply hooligans as soon as they put on the black gear. To light small cars and smash the windows of mom and pop stores with a hammer is not a political statement. And just because you have yelled a few times “Anti-Anti-Anticapitalista!” does not make a political symbol of the plundering of an electronic store. Writing  “Death to the police”  on walls and throwing stones at policemen is not an act of resistance in a democratic state.

…

4. These peaks bring nothing

The Chancellor’s summit conference was, to put it cautiously, no revelation. The US is still not involved in climate protection, one wants to take care of Africa somehow, all find free trade jolly good. Saying this as clearly as that could have been accomplished much more quickly if the ladies and gentlemen had held a teleconference.

Petra Pinzler disagrees:

Heads of government must be able to talk to each other, for example about climate protection . Moreover, in the months leading up to their meeting, they need to know which topics of international politics interest citizens. Talk about it, argue, write about it. All this would not happen if there were not such conferences. Without the G20 in Hamburg, not many thousands of citizens would have discussed world politics, if scientists had not made any reform proposals for global co-operation, and foundations had not invented new joint projects.

At the G20 in Hamburg, all of this led to the climate being on the agenda. In the end, nothing revolutionary was decided, but the G20 has passed the Trump test and put it at 19: 1 to take the resolutions of Paris seriously and to work on further joint strategies. It does not save the climate any better. Would we could get much more. For example, the Prime Minister of Turkey, Erdoğan, did not want to go on afterwards and wanted more money.

But the world does not consist mainly of friendly, environmentally friendly, democratic governments, with whom one likes to pass polite time by the Alster. That is why small steps in the right direction are already a success. It has been given on the G20 summit, with a few other topics as well. That’s why it was right to go to Hamburg.

Some people were surprised that POUTS didn’t attend some meetings, sending along his daughter instead, which is at least unusual. Matthew Norman discusses it:

In Hamburg, birthplace of his favourite food item, Donald Trump had warm words for his favourite female politician. Oddly, it wasn’t Angela Merkel, his hostess, or our own Lame Duck Boudica, Theresa May.

“I’m very proud of my daughter Ivanka,” declared 45th US President at the G20 summit, “always have been from day one… If she weren’t my daughter, it’d be so much easier for her. It might be the only bad thing she has going, if you want to know the truth.”

Of course we want to know the truth. We always do, though whether Trump is the go-to guy for that is a matter of opinion. George Washington had a stronger reputation in the field (Trump would have framed the cherry tree for suicide), and he was phobic about nepotism.

…

With America joining Britain in the death-spiral to isolationism, the free world begins to look for leadership to the unfree world, in the unlovely shape of China. However gruesome the paradox, geopolitics abhors a power vacuum, and unless and until the EU becomes a federal superstate, China will be the only candidate to replace the US not just as the world’s largest economy but leading power.

…

In the meantime, look forward to more nepotistic merriment, with Ivanka winning the $600m contract to supply US Army uniforms, Donald Jnr replacing Ulysses S Grant on the $50 bill, Eric made US Masters champion by executive order after shooting 197 and 212 in the first two rounds at Augusta, and 11-year-old Barron and his two favourite teddies given permanent situation room chairs in place of the National Security Adviser and a couple of four-star generals.

Only that nebbish Tiffany will continue to be overlooked, according to top DC sources. Far from being very proud of her from day one, the President wouldn’t date her even if she wasn’t his daughter.

Although golf was off the agenda, there was plenty of opportunity for POUTS’s other favorite sport, competitive handshaking. Marco Venturini analyses his matches at the G20 (This takes you to the original, where the actual videos being given the expert treatment will play.)

During the G20 there is always some attention on the handshakes , which are often used as a diplomatic message . Sometimes they are avoided, sometimes they are asked, they usually give themselves, formally.

The handshake communicates a lot, in a non-verbal way . In the case of the leaders reveals the relationship they have with each other and what they want to make outside . In many cases, a quick gesture of handshake tells us whether a leader feels submissive or wants to dominate the other.

…

This time, Trump preferred to avoid embarrassment and immediately stated, not verbally (with a gesture instead of words), his intention to shake hands at the German Chancellor.

We can see from it that Trump gives and opens his hand long before he gets to the point of contact with Merkel. Trump makes several steps with his hand pulled to the German leader .

This formality of handshake with an enemy, however, embarrasses Trump. His gesture was due but not heard . So to relieve tension and prove it has not changed, it breaks the pattern by giving them taps on the right arm as it goes.

The fear of distortion in the eyes of the world with that handshake makes him perform another unpopular gesture in typical Trump style: just before leaving the center of the scene, the provocative president shakes the fist closed in a gesture of exultation towards the photographers. As if he wanted to induce the cheer for him. An obvious discharge of tension at a time of embarrassment.

He went on from the G20 for another bout of handshaking with the current world champion, Emmanuel Macron. Most observers reckon that Macron won the epic 25-second tussle. POUTS was there as the guest of honor at France’s national day celebrations, in which the French naturally pay more attention to what their own President does. This was Macron’s first 14 July, just as ten days earlier had been POUTS’s first Fourth.

So it’s worth having a look at reviews of The Macron Show (with special guest). First, Vadim Kamenka:

Since the beginning of his mandate, the Head of State intends to embody a new foreign and European policy: his own. It is a break with his predecessors, Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande. Is it to reconnect with a gaullo-mitterrandian line? For Christian Lequesne, researcher at the International Research Center (Ceri), there is little doubt: “Emmanuel Macron takes the standards. There is a form of rupture with the previous two quinquenniums, which largely based their diplomacy on the question of respect for the great principles and democratic values. There seems to be a tendency in the French president to diplomatically pursue interests. It can be characterized as a kind of pragmatism “according to which” France must be able to discuss with everybody “.

…

The new head of state would be ready on Syria for military reprisals against the regime in the event of chemical attacks.

France would not hesitate to act alone in order to “respect its red line”, he affirmed, like Donald Trump who ordered a military strike against the Syrian army on April 4th. Macron did not break with Atlanticism at all. And the president goes so far as to invite Donald Trump for the celebrations of July 14, in Paris. A highly symbolic gesture, which the Élysée explains by a determination not to break the dialogue after an “opposition” on COP21.

It remains that Emmanuel Macron break with neoconservatism and interventionism seems overplayed.

The official goal is to celebrate “the 100 years of the United States’ entry into the war with French troops during the First World War”. Unofficially, the Elysee wants to bring the United States back into the process of fighting global warming and work together on conflicts in the Middle East, notably on the Syrian issue and the fight against terrorism.

Emmanuel Macron seems to want to draw inspiration from all the diplomatic lines. A method that could work for a while, but that “could become complicated if the aura surrounding it were to become fragile. For now, his success in the presidential election still serves him, but if his reforms in France become problematic, then he could lose credibility with other leaders, warns Christian Lequesne.

In Le Monde, Marc Semo again underlines that Macron is very much aware of being the new kid on the block and keen to make a strong impression on the world stage:

Mr. Macron loves history and its symbols. He had already shown it by inviting Vladimir Putin to Versailles for the inauguration of an exhibition celebrating the 300^th anniversary of the visit of Tsar Peter the Great. The centenary of the United States’ entry into the war in 1917, the start of their involvement in European politics in the name of a certain idea of ​​democracy, is even more important.

“He treats de facto Donald Trump even better than Vladimir Putin, stressing the importance of the alliance with Washington,” analyzes Bruno Tertrais of the Foundation for Strategic Research. Mr. Tertrais noted that the French president “invites above all the President of the United States, even beyond Donald Trump.”

It’s a bet for Mr. Macron. “He is buying Trump down, relying on the fact that the United States remains in any case unavoidable whatever the errors of their president,” notes a fine observer of the diplomatic scene. The unpredictability of the US president, his refusal to engage in the fight against global warming as his protectionist tendency in the name of “America first” complicate his relations with many international leaders, beginning with Angela Merkel. The German Chancellor has often had very harsh words against him.

Macron, for his part, took the lead in a diplomatic counter-offensive to recall the irreversibility of the Paris agreement. But both at the G7, where he still evoked his hope to convince Mr. Trump, that at the G20, the Head of State has multiplied the gestures of kindness towards him. “Personal alchemy works well between the two men,” said a White House official.

“I never despair of convincing, it is a trait of character,” explained Mr. Macron in Hamburg. With his diplomacy of “at the same time”, the French president has willingly posed, since his entry on the international scene, as a mediator taking advantage of the tensions of the last months between Moscow, Washington and Berlin. He is the political leader capable of snapping the wind at Angela Merkel, of talking in firmness with the strong man of the Kremlin and of keeping the ear of the real estate tycoon who runs the United States. The latter, ever more discredited, has everything to gain by displaying a French president with excellent image, including in the United States, whom he salutes as a “trailblazer” (pioneer).

I’ll finish this week’s miscellany with a piece by Slavoj Zizek entitled “Christian conservatives don’t support Donald Trump despite his vulgarity – they support him because of it”. Which is at least an intriguing title:

How to account for the strange fact that Donald Trump, a lewd and morally destitute person, the very opposite of Christian decency, can function as the chosen hero of the Christian conservatives? The explanation one usually hears is that, while Christian conservatives are well aware of the problematic character of Trump’s personality, they have chosen to ignore this side of things since what really matters to them is Trump’s agenda, especially his anti-abortion stance.

If he succeeds in naming conservative new members of the Supreme Court, which will then overturn Roe v Wade, then this act will obliterate all his sins, it seems. But are things as simple as that? What if the very duality of Trump’s personality – his high moral stance accompanied by personal lewdness and vulgarities – is what makes him attractive to Christian conservatives? What if they secretly identify with this very duality?

Exactly the same goes for Poland’s current de facto ruler Jaroslaw Kaczynski who, in a 1997 interview for Gazeta Wyborcza, inelegantly exclaimed: “It’s our f***ing turn” (“Teraz kurwa my”). This phrase (which then became a classic locus in Polish politics) can be vaguely translated as: “It’s our f***ing time, now we are in power, it’s our term”, but its literal meaning is more vulgar, something like: “Now it’s our time to f**k the whore” (after waiting in line in a brothel).

It’s important that this phrase was publicly uttered by a devout Catholic conservative, a protector of Christian morality: it’s the hidden obverse which effectively sustains Catholic “moral” politics.

…

The important lesson here is that this coming open of the obscene background of our ideological space (to put it somewhat simply: the fact that we can now more and more openly make racist, sexist and generally xenophobic statements which, until recently, belonged to private spaces) in no way means that the time of mystification is over, now that ideology openly displays its cards.

On the contrary, when obscenity penetrates the public scene, ideological mystification is at its strongest: the true political, economic and ideological stakes are more invisible than ever. Public obscenity is always sustained by a concealed moralism, its practitioners secretly believe they are fighting for a cause, and it is at this level that they should be attacked. To paraphrase the old Marx brothers joke, apropos Trump or Kaczynski: you look and act like a vulgar clown, but this should not deceive us – you really are a vulgar clown.

It goes on to theorize that Jeremy Corbyn’s appeal is because he’s so ordinary — he seems like a man of the people because he doesn’t really stand out from the crowd. I think Zizek is on to something, but my view is slightly different: Corbyn is a very nice man. He’s not given to firebrand rhetoric and while as a lefty he can’t entirely avoiding speaking in slogans, he doesn’t talk down to people. Some people can work themselves into quite a lather hating what he stands for, but it would be very difficult to hate him personally. You wouldn’t want to go and have a beer with him, but you’d probably be able to have a pleasant conversation while you sipped your coffee and he his tea in a local cafe.

The thing is, you’ve got to be who you are. Mother Theresa, stung by the criticisms that she’d been robotic about the Grenfell Tower fire, has been telling stories about shedding a tear when she saw the exit polls on polling night, presumably as part of an attempt to prove that she was born rather than assembled. I have to say that it’s not working. Like POUTS, she’s way out of her depth.

Survive Sunday.

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Today is election day in Albania. I spent some time digging around to try and come up with some useful coverage, but I didn’t do very well. They’re obviously aware that almost nobody speaks Albanian, and there are at least four English-language Albanian news sites, but unfortunately all of them are paywalled. Struggling with GoogleTranslate on some other sites, I couldn’t really find much which said what the issues are; the most recent stories are about measures to protect the integrity of the poll, with at least four parties being accused of widespread vote-buying and the Interior Minister threatening severe punishment for anyone doing anything illegal with regard to the election.

However, I did manage to establish that 140 people will be elected to their unicameral parliament on a party-list proportional system in 12 regions. There are three main parties, the Socialists (PS), the Socialist Movement for Integration (SMI), and the Democrats (DP). The SMI was formed by someone who broke away from the PS, but I can’t work out what the differences are between them. There is also a new center party, LIBRA, which just about figures in the polls. (GoogleTranslate manages to render their name variously as Libra, Libya and BOOKS) This piece reports on the opinion polls from 1st June and has some information about what the voters think the issues are; subsequent articles tracking the polls have consisted effectively of updates only and are unenlightening beyond there having not been much movement over the course of the campaign.

Compared to the 2013 elections, the SP and PD have increased their votes. PS 43%, PD 36%. So PS has increased by 1%, while PD has increased by almost 6 points. But what has marked a surge and can be considered a surprise is the SMI. So the SMI has received 12%, which means it has marked a big increase compared to the 2013 elections. Another surprise is Libya, which competes for the first time in an election process. Other parties are below the threshold. Commenting on the polls, survey expert Antonio Noto said that interestingly, he is comparisons with the 2013 elections, where PS has increased by 1.7%, while DP with 6 points. The SMI, according to him, is growing at the national level by 1.5 points. For Libra, he says we can not make comparisons that he was not in the election. While all other parties are below the threshold.

…

Questions addressed to the respondents: today in Albania live well PS voters answered 66.7%, DP 23: 0% while SMI 32.4%. While questioning that in Albania is “bad”, potential PS voters have responded to 26.3, DP 72.4% and SMI 50.6%. While Antonio Notto explains that determining whether to live well or badly is related to the parties. SP voters say they live well, while DP voters say they live poorly. So it is not an answer that relates to social conditions but to political representation. Analyst Artur Zheji commenting on this said that these results are similar to those that knocked Berisha’s government four years ago. “In 2013, the results of the response to unemployment and corruption are more or less the same as now. Precisely, the response to dissatisfaction and corruption, dropped Berisha’s government and caused the wheel we saw. Meanwhile, with the same index as compared to 2013-2017, then the Rama government should fall. Meanwhile, the answer is; We are better off. We are not worse, “he said. Also the survey expert Afrim Krasniqi emphasized that the trend is not positive for the Socialist Party. “The number of left-wingers who think they are going worse is bigger than the number of DP citizens that things go better.

This is interesting. Second, with the SMI, one thinks that things are going wrong with 50% and when compared to the past 4 years, they almost say the same. It is practically a comfortable position for the third political party, “Krasniqi said. Meanwhile, on the question of what are the three emergent problems that require solutions in Albania, respondents think that unemployment is the main problem with 67%, corruption by 36.3%, and salaries and pensions by 34.7%. Other problems that affect Albanians are the economic crisis, health service, poverty. But in spite of that, Albanians think they live better than four years ago. While Antoini Noto said the electoral campaign has just started, the data we give will not be the data of June 25, but the start of the electoral campaign. “It’s a picture today, dated May 31. There are two surveys, one at the national level. There are 2002 people asked to belong to different ages and gender, but also to different social strata. 52% of respondents are women. The second survey is just for Tirana. 1000 people were asked. The surveys were conducted on May 29 and 30, 2017, “he stressed.

I have also found a piece in the English-language version of the Luxemburger Wort, which appears to be AFP’s:

Albania votes in parliamentary elections on Sunday with hopes that a long tradition of polling fraud, violence, and disputed results will come to an end and propel the country towards EU membership.

The Socialist Party of Prime Minister Edi Rama, 52, appears to have just a slight advantage over the centre-right Democratic Party of Lulzim Basha, 43, according to opinion polls

….Although Basha, an admirer of US President Donald Trump, has officially led the Democrats for four years, his predecessor Sali Berisha, a former Albanian president and premier, remains a powerful and unifying figure on the right.

His party had threatened to boycott the election until a month ago, raising concerns about the vote being unfree and unfair. Although the two sides struck a deal, with the Democrats given key ministerial posts in the run-up to the vote, the rhetoric remains lively.

“Edi Rama has supported a handful of people who… got their hands on the economy, and a handful of criminals who seized power and made Albania a drugstore,” Basha said, referring to Albania’s illicit but lucrative cannabis trade.

Rama retorted that Basha “is an opposition leader who is not ready for the challenge of governing the country”.

On the campaign trail, he lampooned his rival for lacking experience, calling him “a watermelon that one must open to see if it is ripe or not”.

“Everyone is good for something, but Luli (Basha’s nickname) is only good for putting people to sleep,” the premier joked.

…

Polls will be open from 7am until 7pm CET under the eye of 3,000 election observers, including 300 foreigners.

So that fulfils the request made in last week’s comments at Daily Kos.

With no other elections going on right now, it’s time to get back to European coverage of POUTS and related matters. Beginning with a piece by Moisés Naím:

It is still too early to evaluate the presidency of Donald Trump. However, thanks to his behavior, the results of his management and his constant self-promotion, some things are already clear. For example, there are certain ideas that were commonly accepted before Trump’s arrival in power. No longer.

Truth: Trump, his spokespeople and his allies in the media and social networks (including Vladimir Putin) have shown that for them there are no incontrovertible facts and data. There is no such thing as “the truth”. Any statement, scientific data and even visual evidence such as, for example, photos showing the size of the crowd on the day of the inauguration of the new president can be questioned.

…

Directing a big company teaches how to run a government: This is a zombie idea: we believed it dead but every so often it revives. It is the belief that to be a good ruler helps to have been a successful entrepreneur.

…

The US president is the most powerful man in the world. Trump will prove that this is not so. Of course this president has at his disposal enormous resources and thousands of officials — including the best-armed military mankind has ever known. But the forces that limit their performances are equally enormous – if not even more powerful. These limitations to presidential power are domestic and foreign, legal and bureaucratic, political and economic. Despite being one of the presidents with the most pronounced imperial temperament, few of his orders are becoming realities.

…

The longevity of a democracy protects it from corruption and nepotism. In failing democracies, Congress, judges, or other State institutions fail to prevent a venal president from using the prerogatives of office for the benefit of his private business. Or name their relatives in important public positions for which they are not qualified. To a greater or lesser extent this happens everywhere. In African and Latin American countries these abuses become frequent and extreme, while in the United States or the United Kingdom they are comparatively less serious. Until now.

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Political apathy The Trump Government will make it painfully clear to millions of Americans that elections have very concrete consequences on their lives.

Europeans find American healthcare debates very weird, especially when they’re about making a poor and inadequate system even worse. Thorsten Schröder’s piece is entitled “Wholly beyond reality”:

Repeal Obamacare , Obamacare, became the core task of the party.

Now the opportunity is there: The Conservatives represent the majority in the House of Representatives, in the Senate and one of theirs is President. But the draft law, which Senate spokesman Mitch McConnell presented after weeks of secrecy , shows above all one thing: with their old promise, the Republicans themselves have pushed themselves into a corner and thereby are ever further removed from the political will of the citizens. The anger for Obama blinded the party. Because it still regards the fight against the hated Affordable Care Act as a top priority and has to win at all costs, while the rest of the US has long since turned away.

…

Despite all the reality checks , the conservatives in the congress have gotten into the old plan. The fact that they are now planning to replace Obamacare is only due to public pressure, which was not to be ignored in Washington. If it were up to most Republicans, they would remove Obamacare without compensation, leaving the decision about life and death to market forces. Now they are desperately trying a law that creates the balancing act between their own ideal and the annoying reality. Their ultimate goal seems to be that what comes out in the end does not bear the signature of former President Obama.

… The conservatives do not care about the well-being of their electorate, but are looking at the chance to destroy Obama’s success.

…A defeat for the Republicans would be desirable. Not because of political satisfaction, but because the party would then be forced to wake up at last – and to work with the Democrats to improve the status quo. Even liberals have now seen that the system of Obama is full of holes: the premiums are too high, the costs for insurers in many places hardly bearable, choice in some states hardly exists because the providers withdraw from the market. A return to a world before 2009 is not a solution. Instead of Trumpcare, America needs an improved Obamacare. If the Republicans do not learn that now, then hopefully by the next election.

Exposing splits in the Republican Party is always mildly amusing. Alexandra Endres looks at a Republican group’s scheme for tackling climate change:

Republican politicians in the US are not generally known as friends of an ambitious climate policy. But that just seems to change. For months now, a group that is close to the Republicans, called the Climate Leadership Council, is working on its own, a conservative climate protection plan.

Among the most important members of the initiative, the two Republican granders George Shultz , holders of various ministries under Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, and James Baker , who was under Reagan Finance and George Bush Senior Foreign Minister, and Henry Paulson , Finance Minister under George W. Bush.

…

[T]he plan of the Climate Leadership Council is intended to protect the climate, while allowing the market to expand freely within clear limits. This fits better into the conservative worldview. Its authors do not call their proposal a climate protection plan – framing is important – but a carbon dividend plan.

…

First, the state levies a tax on emissions, initially at $ 40 per ton of CO2. Fossil energy would be more expensive, climate-damaging behavior punished….

the second step in the plan – the state would have to return the entire revenue from the tax back to its citizens. “With a tax of $ 40 on each ton, a family of four will get about $ 2,000 in the first year,” the two economists Martin Feldstein and Gregory Mankiw, formerly advising Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush,

…

In order to protect domestic companies in the competition, the economists suggest climate imbalances on carbon-intensive imports and discounts for US exporters. This is the third step. As soon as the model runs, older climate change rules from the Obama era would be handled: step four and final.

In the New York Times, Feldstein and Mankiw praised the advantages of their proposal in the highest tones: not only climate protection, but also investment security for companies and thus economic growth. Those 70 percent of US citizens who earn less than the richer rest would profit, they write. That would be about 223 million people.

…

The power in the White House, however, still has other. Trump’s Energy Minister Rick Perry said a few days ago that carbon dioxide is not the most important cause of climate change ; Scott Pruitt, the head of the EPA, would like to put the scientific knowledge on climate change to a complete discussion – and the president himself seems to follow their line. That is why it will probably be years before the idea of ​​a carbon dividend has realistic prospects for winning majorities in the congress.

Killing Obama’s rules is one of POUTS’s objectives, but that hasn’t stopped him coming up with his own great ideas — such as making the Great Wall of Trump out of solar panels. Matthias Auer considers this brilliant concept:

We’re talking about the southern frontier,” Donald Trump said at an event before supporters in Iowa. “A lot of sun, a lot of heat – we think about constructing the wall as a solar energy that produces energy and pays for itself.” The higher the wall, which is supposed to keep illegal immigrants and drug traffickers from Mexico, “Trump said visibly enthusiastically,” A great show, right? It was my idea. “

…

Element Energy, a solar company based in Portland, estimates that a 1,000-mile-long wall would produce around 2,657 gigawatt-hours of electricity a year, which could currently be sold at around 106 million dollars. At a construction cost of ten billion, the Wall therefore will take a hundred years to recoup its costs.

But even these values ​​are still optimistic. They ignorea number of expensive secondary conditions: the concept of a solar panel with vertical panels is rather unconventional. It is estimated that the efficiency of the panels would drop by half as a result of the vertical installation. In addition, the solar panels would have to be oriented towards the south, ie Mexico. An answer to the question of how the Americans are to clean, maintain and repair their panels cost-effectively on this side of the border wall is still pending.

It is also open to anyone who is supposed to buy the electricity (we speak of electricity for up to 220,000 US households). Just two percent of US citizens live within a 40-mile radius to the Mexican border. They have little need for extra power. In order to find enough customers in the USA, Trump would have to lay long, expensive power lines. According to a study by the British “Institution of Engineering Technology” every mile of transmission line would come to about 8.8 million dollars.

…

Really thought out, however, the impact does not work. For Trump, he also opens another ideological flank: China produces almost all solar panels worldwide. One can be curious how the “America First” president will sell his voters this windfall to the economic rival.

We now move on to considering Cuba, in the company of Massimo Cavallini:

“In six months, or six years, or whenever it is, Cuba will be free . And when it is, the people of the island will say that the transition began here, in this theater, with a president who has done what must be done to restore freedom in the island of Cuba … “.

It was Marco Rubio , Senator of Florida – yes, that Rubio Rubio, who in the course of Republican primaries, Donald Trump had systematically humiliated by defining little Marco , – to pronounce these wise words, charged with a “historical” consciousness And of hope so pompous in form, as well as pathetically molded in substance.

…

Donald Trump … has found himself at ease in this atmosphere of unconditional adulation, even enlightened in a climate of generalized ecstasy, from the “happy birthday, Mr. president” (Trump has Reached its 71 years just a few days ago) sung by the whole theater. And it has been in this vaguely North Korean climate that the newly elected president has replied, doing what he knows best. That is, lying . More precisely: giving the most sclerotic part of the Cuban exile the lie which, from him, the latter waited. “The memorandum I came up with – said Trump to applause – is the total cancellation of the bad agreement with the Cuban government.

False.

…

In essence, Trump’s “new” policy towards Cuba starts from a premise that testifies to an extraordinary ignorance of the Cuban reality…

All that Trump offered last Friday in the jubilant atmosphere of “Manuel Artime” theater is just, when one looks at the facts, a change of rhetorical tones , a verbal return to the past . And this has made everyone happy. Himself, with the illusion of having destroyed another piece of the ” Obama’s legacy “. And the relics of the Cuban exile, ready as all the old descendants to rejoice in this sort of return to the childhood of their anti-Christianism (someone calls it a rebellion).

The problem is that, in politics, words count . And, though piously ridiculous, this return to the past inevitably announces difficult times (and perhaps the end of a hopeless hope) especially for those new sectors of Cuban society that were very marginally and slowly loosening the noose of Castrarian totalitarianism.

Last Friday, history – the story Barack Obama had been trying to set off – made Cuba take a step back . And it was a bad day (another “nasty” bad day) for everyone. For Cuba, the United States and the world.

As we’ve mentioned the ex-POTUS, let’s see what he’s been up to. Frauke Steffens has the goods:

A bodyguard is at the door, hundreds of people block the street, they cheer and take photos. This is how the former American President Barack Obama gets a coffee to take home, for example in February in New York.

Many Americans love Obama , and they don’t begrudge him the fun he is having in his “afterlife”. Whether he is photographed in a tuxedo or khaki shorts, his fans call him and his wife Michelle fashion icons on social networks. They also rejoice when Obama plays golf or with billionaire Richard Branson on the yachting holiday – because he deserved it. Obama can hardly do anything wrong. His popularity is 63 percent approval. The formerly most powerful man in the world does not have to make any unpopular decisions – and he and his wife Michelle look extremely good in photos.

“Nobody in history has managed being a pensioner better,” cheered the otherwise not particularly human-friendly celebrity blog “TMZ”. In the south of Los Angeles, we are discussing whether to name a road to Obama during his lifetime. And the American Association for the Advancement of Science lists nine newly discovered creatures named after Obama – including colorful fish and a bird, but also spiders and worms. Anyway, Theodore Roosevelt only got to seven.

…

In his role as a former president Obama did not want to interfere with the day-to-day political debates. Instead, he wanted to participate in long-term change processes, he said. To this end, he founded a foundation. In Chicago, where he used to live, an entire Obama center is to be built, with a library, sports and youth facilities. The center is to be located on the South Side. There are many African Americans where the successes of the black American middle class have not grown in recent decades – they suffer from poverty and violence. Obama’s center will mainly help young people. It is to cost up to 380 million dollars, financed partly by public money, which promises a renewal of the area. It is to be inaugurated in 2021.

…

After becoming aware of the latest bill, Obama decided to attack on his Facebook page. The Republican Bill provides tax relief for high earners, but at the same time higher contributions and self-participation for people who can not pay much. These plans, according to Obama, meant a “massive redistribution to the top”. The Senate now has to step back and understand what is really at stake, he wrote in a long statement. He has never attacked the present government so concretely and clearly.

It is about Obama’s political heritage, but probably not about the most important part of it. For he does not need to make much effort to protect his most lasting legacy: that there has been a black president at all.

Some tragedies, such as terrorist incidents and mass shootings, tend to produce op-eds which are roughly the same as they were after the last one. The Grenfell Tower fire in London, though, prompts some more general thoughts from Fintan O’Toole:

To understand why government in both the United States and the United Kingdom is in such an abysmal state consider the connection between two political utterances. One is very famous, because it brilliantly encapsulates an entire political philosophy in a single, easily grasped sentence. The other is an obscure but quite typical exercise in ministerial verbiage. But one is the offspring of the other, and between them they trace the path towards anarchy in the Anglo-American world.

The first utterance is one of the best-known lines delivered by that consummate performer Ronald Reagan as US president, in August 1986: “I think you all know that I’ve always felt the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”

The second is the Conservative minister of state for housing and planning in the UK, Brandon Lewis, explaining in 2014 why he would not make sprinkler systems compulsory in high-rise housing developments: “It is the responsibility of the fire industry, rather than the Government, to market fire sprinkler systems effectively.”

Reagan’s line was funny, folksy and supremely effective – all the qualities for which neoliberals continue to adore him. But it leads, among other places, to the blackened cage of Grenfell Tower that Ed Vulliamy memorably called, in the Observer, “the outrageous crematorium on the skyline” of west London.

…

It was a clever, insidious sneer at the very idea of public service: to be “here to help” is to be at best a well-meaning bungler. Government does not enable: it interferes. Regulation is redefined as molestation. Public service is a public nuisance. The freedom to live in squalor or to make money from those who do so is the ultimate value.

…

Never mind either that the neoliberal sneering at the idea of government being “here to help” was as hypocritical as a pious lecher. Right-wingers who venerate Reagan’s mockery don’t care to notice that in the very same speech he goes on to say that “America’s farmers should know that our commitment to helping them is unshakable”.

Tanks and bombs are always “here to help” when neoliberals decide that a foreign regime needs to be changed. Government is “here to help” when banks want to be bailed out with public money or when oligarchs need subsidies. Being here to help is only wrong when “here” is wherever ordinary citizens are struggling to make decent lives for themselves and their kids.

The sneering is no less effective for being so two-faced. Its acid has been corroding democracy in the anglophone world for decades. When government being “here to help” is a contemptible thing you end up with the grotesque reality that, even after a disaster, nobody from government really is there to help.

…

The right has played with the fire of anarchy, and now both the UK and the US are anarchic states, one in the grip of idiocy, the other of self-destructive fantasy.

Here’s another piece prompted by the fire — very indirectly, because it’s Brian Beacom’s reflection on journalism prompted by a BBC interview of Britain’s worst-ever prime minister.

 You could almost see Emily Maitlis’s fingerprints on Theresa May’s face after the stinging Friday night slap was administered. Across the country viewers cheered, some were stunned. At the very least, a very curious eyebrow was raised.

We’re speaking figuratively of course of Maitlis’s Newsnight interview in the wake of the Kensington fire tragedy, but the moment made its mark.

The usual deference given to PMs went out the window faster than a disturbed burglar. Rarely has the nation seen a journalist attack a senior politician armed not just with a list of demanding questions but a searing contempt.

 Maitlis pushed relentlessly for answers; “Where were you for two days? Why didn’t you speak to the locals? Where was the army? When will people be re-housed?” All valid questions, which were deaf-eared, TM returning time and time again to her press release line.

Then came the stinger. “They shouted coward at you when you left St Clements, Prime Minister.”

This wasn’t a question; it was a public shaming. And while it was not the expected comment it was apposite; Maitlis’s question refracted popular feeling.

…

Theresa May may well have felt major grief at the news of the Grenfell fire but she didn’t show it.

Maitlis clearly picked up on this. You could see anger, frustration in her face. But it didn’t mean she wasn’t doing her job. Her voice was representational. If anything, she could have gone further and demanded; “Prime Minister, why do you refuse to answer the questions I’m putting to you and in effect worsening your position?”

Maitlis’s questioning was laced with emotion, but it was measured. Her questions distilled a nation’s anger, gave it an outlet. She was uncompromising and ultimately the result was revealing.

And you could argue it was necessary. This is an era of fake news. The media is constantly be harangued by politicians, in an attempt to shape and control, to set the agenda, to set parameters for discussion. To get the answers, the journalist has to pull out all the stops, even if the result is an unleashing of raw emotion.

French writer Marguerite Duras once declared; “Journalism without a moral position is impossible. Every journalist is a moralist.” Maitlis is a moralist. And as such, the face slap was well deserved.

Here is yet another piece prompted by the fire which goes even further afield. Robert Fisk compares May’s remarks with those of Middle Eastern despots:

Could there be anything more ridiculous than hearing Maajid Nawaz, one of the founders of Quilliam – which boasts that it is the world’s first “counter-extremist” organisation – suggesting that extremists in the UK are trying to provoke “civil war”? He says that Isis has declared this as its aim – which is true – but why is Nawaz repeating it all again? It’s good publicity for Isis, unfortunately. It’s also good publicity for the Quilliam Foundation whose “think tank” – how I hate those words – is churning out this stuff.

Inevitably, the Grenfell fire – many of whose victims were Muslims – has become part of the “terror” story, which is just what a MailOnline report did last week. Had most of the fire victims been non-Muslims, I don’t believe this bit of dodgy “conflation” would have been made. On the other hand, it could well be argued that Lady May might have met the victims if they had not been “angry” Muslims. And after the van attack in Finsbury Park, we had to endure Corbyn’s psychobabble about how we must “reach out” to the “pain and stress” of victims.

I’m not sure how you “reach out” to “stress” – though Jeremy seems to think it’s about hugging people. In fact, responding to “terror” – of the Islamist, fascist or fiery variety – is a difficult one for political leaders, especially when one of them – the unsympathetic lady – may soon be out of a job and the other one is busy trying to create “unity” even if he hasn’t been terribly successful in doing it in his own party.

…

In the Middle East, we’re always suspicious when a local dictator talks about “unity” – wahda in Arabic – because it usually means he’s in trouble. Calls for national unity in Tunisia and Egypt preceded the fall of Ben Ali and Mubarak. Autocrats often try to cement this “unity” with stifling praise for their security forces who protect their “nation” from “foreign plots”. This has faint parallels with the UK today.

All politicians praise the police – whose failure to protect the public often becomes buried in applause for their courage – and Isis certainly fits the “plots” bit, although Cardiff hardly counts as “foreign”. Other parallels are troublingly closer to the mark. The countries which talk most about “unity” – President-Field Marshal al-Sissi in Egypt today, for example – are often those facing Islamist violence. Or nations which have substantial minorities of different faiths. Think Lebanon. Or Syria. Or Iraq. All three endured or are enduring civil wars of the kind which Mr Nawaz is waffling on about.

…

And “justice”, of course, is exactly what many Arab demonstrators were demanding in the Arab revolutions. Justice, needless to say, was not what the dictators intended them to have – nor did the West, which insisted on claiming that protestors wanted “democracy”. And in London, after the fire, one thing which, I suspect, irked those who demonstrated on the streets was that their original demands for fire-risk-free homes had been largely ignored in an environment in which the poor, the unemployed or Muslim refugees had long been vilified on social media – thus making their warnings unworthy of serious attention. This was the “injustice” they suffered from.

And “injustice” in the Middle East – by us and our satrap dictators and our sale of billions of dollars of weapons to them and our invasion of Iraq and our bombings – has helped to create Isis. It is justice – home and abroad – that Maajid Nawaz and his chums should be discussing. But I guess a UK civil war gets more hits right now.

One doesn’t have to perform many mental contortions to translate the specifics of the Grenfell fire in that piece to, say, Katrina, Ferguson or Flint — as O’Toole pointed out, callous, self-serving responses by government are equally likely in the UK and the USA.

That’s your lot for this week. Have as pleasant a day as you can manage.

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We had an election in Britain this week. The Conservatives won, though not quite convincingly enough to have a majority in Parliament on their own. Since the seven elected on the Sinn Fein ticket will not be taking their seats (they won’t take the oath of office which involves pledging allegiance to the Crown), the magic number is 322 — and the Conservatives are 4 short of that. For all the praise being lavished on Jeremy Corbyn, Labour are 60 short of that figure, having gained 30 seats. Theresa May continues for the moment as PM, since she’s going to make some accommodation with the Democratic Unionists, a bunch of anti-abortion, anti-gay climate deniers from the Northern Irish Protestant community.

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This coming Thursday is Britain’s general election. The polls are variable enough that anything from a hung parliament to a 100-seat Conservative majority is possible (the SNP would have to disappear for Labour toget an overall majority), but one thing is certain: the prime minister who will lead the country while the Brexit negotiations proceed will be a fourth-rate incompetent. Jeremy Corbyn is a nicer guy and has been more relaxed and confident on the campaign trail, but would be a hopeless PM, while Theresa May is currently PM and is hopeless at it. Nor can we look round the rest of their parties’ leadership teams for any comfort, since they have both surrounded themselves with talentless morons.

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This week, I had planned to feature a lot of stuff relating to the UK Election, but it’s proved very difficult to find any useful or enlightening comment, so you’re going to have to put up with my take on where things are.

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