Monday 1 August 2016

America's Troubled Waters

All Come To Look For America: Tens-of-thousands accepted the call from this improbably grandfatherly “democratic socialist”, and to their astonishment and delight Bernie’s quest took on the bright aura of plausibility. Was it possible that the white-haired Senator from Vermont might win the Democratic nomination? No. Life is not a song and quests are seldom fulfilled in the way that those who set out upon them imagine. Hillary Clinton drew her political power from a grid several orders of magnitude larger than Bernie’s. Twenty-five years of “Third Way” Democratic Party politics were not about to be overturned by a college graduates’ crusade.
 
BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER – that was the song Paul Simon sang to the Democratic National Convention. No doubt the nearly 2,000 delegates pledged to Bernie Sanders would have preferred their theme-song “America”. Simon gifted Sanders the rights to the song at the very beginning of his extraordinary quest. The campaign advertisement it accompanied was easily the best of the 2015-16 primary season.
 
There is something in the song that touches the hearts of more than the ageing Baby Boomers who recall the song from their long-haired, hitch-hiking days in the 1960s and 70s. Perhaps it is the mixing of what is, after all, a love story, with an account of being caught up in a much larger narrative.
 
“Cathy, I’m lost” whispers the song’s protagonist. “I’m empty and aching – and I don’t know why.” All those college kids who flocked to Bernie’s banner, did they too feel the tug of history’s currents pulling them out into the at once thrilling and terrifying deeps of political commitment?
 
“All come to look for America” runs the refrain. It was both a description and a challenge. Tens-of-thousands accepted the call from this improbably grandfatherly “democratic socialist”, and to their astonishment and delight Bernie’s quest took on the bright aura of plausibility. Was it possible that the white-haired Senator from Vermont might win the Democratic nomination?
 
No. Life is not a song and quests are seldom fulfilled in the way that those who set out upon them imagine. Hillary Clinton drew her political power from a grid several orders of magnitude larger than Bernie’s. Twenty-five years of “Third Way” Democratic Party politics were not about to be overturned by a college graduates’ crusade.
 
Not overturned, that was too much to hope for, but, even in the offices of the Democratic National Committee, Hillary’s people were “feeling the Bern”. Like it or not (and if Wikileaks is to be believed they did not like it at all) the Clinton juggernaut was being influenced by the Sanders insurgency. Obama had beaten Hillary Clinton to the nomination in 2008 on the strength of his famous slogan: “Yes we can”. Now, thanks to Sanders’ “political revolution” from below, Hillary was making sure of the nomination by declaring: “Yes I will”.
 
This was the message Sanders had, somehow, to deliver to his followers as, after a poignant reprise of his “America” campaign ad, he stepped on to the stage of Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Centre. They weren’t about to make it easy for him. The cheers and the chants went on and on as if, by dint of their undiminishing fervour, they could will another, happier outcome.
 
For there was sadness in the faces of Sander’s delegates – even among the cheers. One black woman looked on, her face a carved portrait of despair. Tears rolled unchecked down the cheeks of another young woman as she held aloft a placard promising “A Future To Believe In”.
 
What followed was thirty minutes of uncompromising political education. Sanders acknowledged his followers disappointment, but he refused to let them wallow in it. He may not have won the nomination, but he and his movement had played a crucial role in writing what he called “the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party”. And, like Wendy reattaching Peter Pan’s shadow, Bernie fastened Hillary to the Democratic Party platform with chains of rhetorical steel. The revolution would go on.
 
Pondering Sander’s masterful address, it occurred to me that “Bridge Over Troubled Water” was the right choice after all. It’s a song of two parts. In the first, the singer declares:  “When you’re down and out/When you're on the street/When evening falls so hard/I will comfort you”. In the second part, the focus shifts: “Sail on silver girl/Sail on by/Your time has come to shine/All your dreams are on their way”.
 
Yes, this is Hillary Clinton’s time to shine. She has devoted her entire life to the hugely difficult task of changing the United States of America. That the task has required compromises goes without saying. It may even be true that in her suppers with the Devil she brought too short a spoon. But, it is not only in comparison with the alternative that Hillary shines. She will make a fine President in her own right.
 
And Bernie will be sailing right behind.
 
This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 29 July 2016.

28 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've got to praying little silent prayers that Hillary will win.

I am not a religious person.

Good piece ,well done.

Wayne Mapp said...

A fine piece of writing, that for me sums up the choice the US now faces in the election.

jh said...

By promoting immigration we love everybody Hillary is in bed with the devil because population issues are real and always have been.


Laurence Kotlikoff
for President, 2016
The real issue with immigration is legal immigration. We are adding 1 million legal immigrants to the population each year. The great majority are unskilled. This isn’t hurting investment bankers or the software engineers at Google. This is hurting low-skilled U.S. workers. It’s the last thing we need if we are trying to restore our middle class.

Population Explosion

Legal immigration is also fueling a veritable population explosion. Unless we reduce legal immigration, our population will rise by one-third – over 100 million people – in just 45 years. That’s the current population of the Philippines. Most of these additional people will locate in the nation’s major cities. Driving in our major cities at peak hours is already a major challenge. With one-third more people, driving in our major cities may be like driving in Manila – an experience I don’t recommend.

https://kotlikoff2016.com/

Closer to home (speaking of the devil)
"As well as doing away with minimum dwelling sizes, the independent hearings panel has recommended the deletion of density limits, minimum sizes for main living rooms and bedrooms, minimum ceiling heights, separation between buildings and requirements for a front fence".

Great. Not everyone wants or can afford the same thing. I have far greater trust in the decision making by the person building the house as they have to find someone who will buy it and want to live in it.

http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2016/08/unitary_plan_panel_went_for_flexibility.html

And it couldn't have happened without "anti-racists"; "progressives" (people who don't understand human nature, ecology, or how the world really works.
http://www.massey.ac.nz/massey/about-massey/news/article.cfm?mnarticle_uuid=1E27606A-CA5C-9A61-06BA-1D96F4285A37

Guerilla Surgeon said...

"Devoted her life to changing America"? I would argue that she's devoted her life to keeping it much the same, in line with the people who pay her enormous amounts of money for doing very little. I.e. the banksters. The woman may be socially liberal – with a bit of a push – but she is fiscally extremely conservative, and a hawk. She is, however reasonably predictable (so some say) which some might see as an advantage. Unlike trump, for whom the best we can hope is that he takes good advice.
I feel sorry for the Americans having to choose between a narcissist/fantasist, and someone who is already being captured by the 1%. If you read the comments sections of many American political websites, you'll notice that many people are really conflicted about this. I think it's going to be interesting, in the Chinese sense. A contest between the number of Republicans who will vote for Hillary rather than Trump, and the number of Democrats who will stay away rather than vote for Hillary.

greywarbler said...

jh
The main problem with housing is that State housing has not been added to each year, and the existing houses maintained or in areas away from services sold off. Then growing good relations and conditions established by meeting and holding workshops with tenants on house care, giving them some responsibility and rewards for good upkeep.

Then joint local and government planned subdivisions of suitable housing for first home buyers and certain criteria for people with good savings records, and at reasonable prices and mortgage interest. And private developers would have certain areas they could build in to certain criteria such as two-storey, reasonable room size etc. My first home was 1000 sq feet, one storey, and in summerhill stone, three bedroom and we got a State Advances loan at 5%. People without three jobs could get 3%. Lovely house. Now something similar, semi-detached would still be fine if there was separating fences and individual driveways.

Immigration as now would still have been a problem, but not causing the debacle it has. Your constant diatribes are repetitive jh. As GS says change the record.

Andrew Nichols said...

A plague on both of them. One an ubernationalist and narcissist who will be a disaster for the USA - the other a neocon miltarist and existential threat to humanity who WILL start WW3 with Russia. Dems repubs - same sh..t different piles. I'm amazed at how enamoured of Clinton you are Chris. I thought you were more intelligent.

Patricia said...

But what will happen if Trump loses. Trump has given the disaffected in America a view of what America could be like again; the hope of jobs returning. Do you think those disaffected people will just lie down and say okay the people have spoken? I don't. America is a violent place and Americans are violent people in thought and action. They have been brought up on that. Their films and TV programmes all use violence as an acceptable way of achieving a goal.

Anonymous said...

I watched most of the Dems Convention on CNN & what I could stomach of the Repubs Convention.

What struck me of the Dem's Convention was the supreme quality of the speech writing for the main speakers.

And the attention to stage-craft.

No such talent exists in New Zealand.

Dennis Frank said...

I'm inclined to agree with Andrew. If Trump is defeated, the only hope for the USA is if their new government includes Sanders in an influential role, thus healing the Democrat division sufficiently, then launches a genuine attempt to benefit most of the electorate - not just Goldman Sachs.

Can the Clintons actually be authentic? I'll believe it when I see it...

Sideshow Bob said...

But Chris.....Trump wants to raise the wages of the blue collar working classes by limiting illegal immigration and he wants to create more jobs by bringing back manufacturing from China - isn't he the socialist out of the two? He also wants to stop the TPPA - isn't that a policy of the left in this country. Apart from having a bad haircut and a no tolerance for political correctness why wouldn't the working classes vote for him? Is he racist because he wants to limit illegal migration into the country and wants to manage legal migration to suit his purposes? I don't think so, isn't that what the UK, Australia and New Zealand do? Whats the difference? I think he's going to win.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

"Apart from having a bad haircut and a no tolerance for political correctness why wouldn't the working classes vote for him? "
Because he knows nothing about government, and can't actually fulfil his promises? Not to mention that his policy is either non-existent or all over the place. And no, he is not necessarily racist because he wants to stop illegal immigration, he's racist because he says racist things, and allows his racist supporters to say racist things without disassociating himself from them. There, answered that for you. You're welcome.

Anonymous said...

Sideshow Bob, you are being facetious but also serious, he wants to lower wages and then try and bring manufacturing back to the US. How low does he want to go?
He does not understand the TPP and is saying anything that his audience wants to hear, he does not under-stand that to sell you have to buy.
He is racist because he is a white supremist.
He does not have a bad haircut, he does have a carefully managed and dyed hair transplant going on full-time.
He is right and so would we be if he and we demand that new immigrants swear to our way of life and a commitment to parliament democracy.
He will not win.

Anonymous said...

Dos Sacos says

Hillary eh?
Chains of rhetorical steel huh?
Can you pass on the name of your dealer bro? Some good strong gear must have produced that bit of writing.
Dude.....


Don Robertson said...

Well, we all understand how hard it must be for you to judge intelligence.

Btw - when was the last time the us declared war on someone even remotely as powerful as they are? Grenada and Panama fine, but Russia? Venal and corrupt they may be, but they're not stupid. You'd have to go back to ww1 - when Germany was already bled pretty dry - or the war of 1812 - when Britain had their hands full with Napoleon - to find an example of the us starting a war with anyone with a real army.

Don Robertson said...

So a country of 300 million puts on a better show than a country of 4 million? Will knock me down with a feather.

Don Robertson said...

Yeah, his policies aren't that different from Australia's, and who calls Australia racist?

jh said...

Bill Bonner predicts a credit system crash: http://pros.bonnerandpartners.com/1606BBLFALLDWN19/PBBLS718?_ga=1.187030828.543232211.1470134571&h=true

Sideshow Bob said...

Trump may have no experience of running the USA but what was Obama's experience? Bill Clinton's? I think people want change - a quiet revolution really. The so called working classes are sick of the social elites making all the decisions in their own favour. I think they are over being looked down on by all 'those who would know best'.

Sideshow Bob said...

http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2016/07/29/reuters-ipsos-poll-change-methodology/
I think this is worth a read. It would appear that Reuters/Ipsos and so possibly others are manipulating the 'Neither' answer in the polls to give Hillary the majority. On a straight choice Trump was clearly in front so they decided to interpret the 'neither' answer and give most of them to Hillary with an up to 8.8 percentage points difference. Manipulation clear and simple. Fraudulent I would have thought.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

"Bill Bonner predicts a credit system crash: http://pros.bonnerandpartners.com/1606BBLFALLDWN19/PBBLS718?_ga=1.187030828.543232211.1470134571&h=true"

So? Why do you insist on posting stuff without reference to why the hell you're doing it? I could also ask why you insist on posting stuff from conspiracy theorists. What's next? Alex Jones? This guy essentially sells fear. He is a right-wing libertarian whack job who claims to have predicted stuff. And usually when people claim this it's after the event anyway, but even so I can't be arsed checking up whether he predicted correctly or not – except to say that some people think that he's wrong more often than he's right. And that's 10 minutes of my life I won't get back. :)

jh said...

Germany's Troubled waters

Tensions in Turkey are spilling over to Germany
http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21703296-most-german-turks-support-recep-tayyip-erdogan-tensions-turkey-are-spilling-over-germany?

Germany is finding it has a population divided by ethnicity. Hillary would have talked Turkish immigration up ("in Germany we celebrate diversity") and Trump talked it down. I suspect Trump would have been right. And what happens here if China goes to war over the Sprattleys?

jh said...

GS
I thought that for anyone watching it it would have been self explanatory.
....
I could also ask why you insist on posting stuff from conspiracy theorists. What's next? Alex Jones? This guy essentially sells fear. He is a right-wing libertarian whack job who claims to have predicted stuff. And usually when people claim this it's after the event anyway,
.....
I prefer to concentrate on his argument rather than prejudge it.

Dennis Frank said...

Re Bill Bonner: 2.4 million subscribers makes it a substantial operation regardless of the verifiability of his prediction claims. You did well to bail out after 10 mins GS - I stuck watching his Urgent Public Announcement around that long too, but went into multi-tasking while continuing to listen another 20 mins.

First mistake: assuming that an urgent announcement can be spun out that long. Even with credible content, my bullshit detector kicked in & pulled the plug when he went into detail about folks in ex-Soviet republics reacting to crises. That's a history lesson. Not an urgent announcement. Thing is, I knew about him previously, knew to expect a sales pitch. I've been sympathetic to Ron Paul's stance (read End the Fed). Just think the reversion to the 19th-century plan of the right-wing rebels isn't feasible.

Second mistake: no time-line so viewers can't discover how long the spiel goes for, nor a pause button! So his design is to imprison viewers in his electronic screen - captivated by the doomster narrative. He's probably correct about the dangers of the 60 trillion imaginary dollars keeping everyone alive, and the ratio to the 10 trillion canceled by the gfc & the 250 billion real dollars in circulation is sobering. Even so, a public-service announcement not compressed into a user-friendly time-span isn't intelligent design, even if it isn't merely sales-pitch for his investment fund (or both). Younger generations have an attention-deficit disorder that is extremely contagious, so he's already lost them. Mind you, few will have spare money to invest, or lose in the next crash...

Guerilla Surgeon said...

'I prefer to concentrate on his argument rather than prejudge it.'

And that is exactly why you are taken in by every conspiracy theorist nut job there is. Because you (and I) essentially don't have enough expertise to judge his argument on its merits. Not without a shitload of research. What you first do is find out what he does for a living, and by implication why he says what he does. And if he sells stuff, be very wary.

I mean, who knows without spending hours on the Internet whether this guy actually made the predictions he did, at the time that he said he did, or whether he just told everybody he predicted something after it had happened.

Plus he's talking about economics. It's cyclical. You can predict pretty much anything and know that at some time in the future you are going to be proven right.
For instance, I predict that in the next 10 years there will be another depression. Possibly in the next five. I predict that gold will continue to go up in price. I predict that within the next five years oil will increase in price.

More to the point, I predicted the 1929 stock market crash. Now prove me wrong.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

"http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21703296-most-german-turks-support-recep-tayyip-erdogan-tensions-turkey-are-spilling-over-germany?"

Yes. But you neglect to mention that half the Turks in Germany still have Turkish citizenship. You also neglect to mention that Turks only really started migrating to Germany in the 1960s and 70s, so there are a lot of first and second-generation migrants. You also neglect to mention that Turks were at first guest workers, and everybody thought they'd bugger off home, and weren't too pleased when they didn't.
Again, you're just posting stuff and assuming that it means what you think it does.

Anyway, do you think perhaps that the German migrants to New Zealand from the 19th century onwards take much interest in German politics? My parents were migrants from England. Do you think I cheer for England when we play them at football? Do I get upset if Conservatives win the election in Britain – only academically. Mostly I don't give a toss. People eventually become assimilated. Assuming they're treated halfway decently.
And the US has been accepting migrants for well over 100 years now. From many different ethnic groups. And they all became American. So do you see Norwegian politics upsetting people in the midwest? Dammit sometimes I get tired of explaining stuff.
Do you think you could give as a rest from immigration? Several people have asked you to do this. And do you think that if you are going to mention it that maybe you could do a bit more research than just grabbing the first anti-immigration article you can think of and posting it online.

jh said...

GS
Do you think you could give as a rest from immigration? Several people have asked you to do this. And do you think that if you are going to mention it that maybe you could do a bit more research than just grabbing the first anti-immigration article you can think of and posting it online.
....................
1. People don't want diversity. They want the security of their own place.People are by nature ethnocentric.They value their identity. People and place aren't fungible.Ethnocentrism is moderated by oxytocin.
2. this is not a situation social scientists think is desireable so they are bloody minded to engineer social change.This is one of the roles of the Race Relations office and Human Rights Commission.
3. this is welcomed by the property construction industry (Harcourts Shanghai).
4. immigration benefits the migrants but not the host population [Australian Productivity Commission, Michael reddell, Kerry McDonlad, Don Brash, Paul Krugman]
5. the media is under the control of an oligopilly [eg. katherine Ryan James Lui interview/Mike Hosking] who are pro migration.
....
Professor Spoonley called a foreign buyer register a "throwback to old fashioned racism" >Professor Lui said when under threat we engage our monkey brain and don't think; for example foreigners were being blamed for the Auckland property market, yet, it turns out they only represented 5%.This was the exact same figure cited for vancouver yet a 15% tax on foreign buyers has seen prices plummet.

greywarbler said...

GS
Chris doesn't want to be interfering and moderating and I think that trying to attune jh to reasoned argument may lead to a loss of opportunity for the future. Maybe a soapbox in Coventry would be a nice niche for him.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

The USA accepted 600,000 immigrants – mostly displaced persons – after World War II. And yes people created a fuss because they were Jews or Catholics or whatever. But now they are Americans. And their children are Americans. And it doesn't seem to have done the USA a great deal of harm. Now as I said, I am in favour of changing the laws on immigration to this country, particularly the laws on foreign ownership of houses, because we have no reciprocity. But migration as such, and diversity as such simply doesn't hurt that much.