Chris Matthews loves replaying the scene from his show 2 weeks back in which Hillary’s strategist, Mark Penn, brought up Obama’s cocaine use. Matthews wants to keep the story alive–he’s a junkie, remember?–so he keeps holding debates on the subject of Hillary’s negativity. There’s an interesting pattern to these debates: Hillary’s surrogates have been establishment Jews. Congressman Anthony Weiner the other night. The night before, Mark Green (who hasn’t endorsed, but was standing up for Hillary). And in the first instance, Mark Penn. Each was squaring off against a populist or lefty representing Obama and Edwards, notably David Bonior for Edwards, somebody Axelrod from the Obama campaign, and Joe Trippi (Edwards again).
This pattern is emblematic of sociological trends I am citing all the time here. Jewish Clintonites, generally from New York, are the centrist "sensible" wing of the Democratic party against the populist hordes in the very same way that Rockefeller Republicans were the bulwark of the Republican establishment through the 60s and 70s, as the Reaganites swarmed the battlements. In both cases, a New York political figure went national as the representative of a ruling class. In the previous instance Rockefeller represented the blueblood establishment. This time around it’s the meritocracy. In both cases, the foundation for the rise was the same: New York finance. (They didn’t call them Rockefellers for nothing.) Even the pinstripe suits are the same. Clinton’s ascension in the 90s had this foundation too. An outsider himself, he put his chips on the new meritocratic class and as David Frum has observed, created the most philosemitic presidency in history. Two Jewish appointments to the Supreme Court, a virtually all-Jewish braintrust at the Camp David debacle in 2000.
Someone’s got to name this group. Watch this space.
Its an interesting criticism of Hillary, that she is "connected".
But, Jews participate in and assume responsibility (a good thing) in EVERY democrat's campaign (and most republicans).
Or, are you suggesting that Jews should NOT express their individual opinions, or go to work for those for whom they support.
I hope you won't consider yourself disqualified from expressing yourself, on that basis.
Phil – You should get out more. The vast majority of my jewish friends are most excited by an Obama ticket. Hilary is no slouch, but Obama has the potential to be a transformative president. I sure hope he won't deny himself working with talented Jews with a similar mindset.
Sorry. I find the most civility in the Edwards candidacy.
Civility must be the path to finding the social justice in this society.
Of course demonizing anybody who had some Jewish ancestors is the opposite of civility.
Phil is trying hard to balance his views.
We all need a OpenMindedness. The more the better.
Obama and Clinton are not OpenMinded enough for me.
Edwards is.
http://www.blog.johnedwards.com
If it weren't for the question of Israel this debate would be pointless. Within an American context it is only the connection to a "dangerous" foreign country that makes anyone who takes a normal hat size suspicious of Jewish people and their participation in American politics or any other facet of American life.
My wife is for Hillary, and notes that one of Hillary's top personal aides is a Muslim woman, which means that she is at least exposed to other perspectives. And the Jews who influence her are not, in any case, neocons. I suspect Hillary can think for herself, and the Clintons perfectly aware of the pluses and minuses of "the meritocracy". Huckabee won't be the GOP candidate, but if he were, he'd probably be running to the left of her on most issues.
I wouldn't count Huckabee out just yet Scott. Howard Dean has often said the "values voter" should not be awarded to the Republicans by default. Democrats could learn a lot by studying Huckabee.
I have no idea what is really behind Mike Huckabee's friendly facade, but he is making some interesting and nuanced noises for a southern populist and I think Democrats should take note of these nuances and make some of the same noises.
What are the nuances I'm talking about? For one thing, as far as I know he never uses Reagan-type racist code terms like, "state's rights", which is code for keeping black people from voting, or "welfare queen", which is another, racially loaded term. In fact I believe he is on record as saying that the major problem of the American prison system is that it is filled with people who are drug addicts, not criminals, and that instead of prison they should be in rehab. Since the majority of prisoners in American jails are persons of color, this statement is profoundly un-racist. And if you consider how much more caring, un-punitive and especially how much more expensive it would be to treat these unfortunates as sick people instead of criminals to be locked away, the statement is amazingly un-conservative. This is the sort of message that Democrats should be delivering.
Why are so many of the poor of America, white and black, socially conservative? Because without a welfare state, the only institutions that offer any comfort or protection are the church and the family. The family is the first welfare state. Here in Spain where we have a welfare state and a fine public health system, the traditional family is still in place. In the hospital system this means that the operations are fantastic, but the nursing is deficient, because normally the patients are surrounded by solicitous family members carrying bed pans etc and nurses only come around if patient suddenly takes a turn for the worse. In the USA there is no welfare state and the family is also under heavy pressure from the system.
Poor people are terrified: frightened people take comfort where they can. A divorced waitress with two kids who has to take them to an emergency room to treat their asma can't be criticized for being a "Left Behind" enthusiast. There is no better country than America in the whole world to be rich. It is probably the only country in the world where the rich are loved. Conversely there is no worse country in the world to be poor. Of course these people are paranoid, the system literally hates them.
We all know that Marx said that religion was the "opium of the people", but it could be argued that worshiping Jesus is less harmful to poor people than taking meths, heroin or crack. Very few people are equipped to take such suffering straight.
Huckabee sometimes talks just like an old fashioned, Huey Long type southern populist. In an amazingly un-Reaganlike statement Huckabee demolished the central Republican article of faith, "trickle down economics", claiming that cutting the taxes of the super rich is: "a false and callous assumption that the poorest people in our nation, with inadequate salaries, lack of nutritious food, substandard housing and nonexistent or underfunded health care, can somehow afford to patiently wait while someone else's wealth eventually splashes onto them.". Hell, that sounds like that other creationist, William Jennings Bryan! No wonder the conservative establishment is horrified by him. Where are the Democrats on this, only Edward's make these noises.
If Democrats were intelligent and, after 2004, this is in doubt, they would study Huckabee with the attitude of humble self-criticism and then triangulate him to death. I really doubt that they can and they will.
It would be a shame if a serious populist movement took off in the United States and the party of FDR was left out of it… But I'm afraid that's what might happen.
David, I have never seen Huckabee say a thing about imperialism, or about Jesus' being killed by the empire of his time, so well, he's a goddamn boring populist to me.
Where is the American Chavez?
The poor are ready for her or him. They have been ready.
The wealth disparity in the U.S. has already approached that of some Latin American countries. The debt is snowballing and Warren Buffet's secretary gets taxed at a higher rate than he does.
The imperialism is a vital revenue stream for a pretty large sector of the society, but at a tremendous cost to the society as a whole. How can this war machine have bent democracy to its will when the few are benefitting at the cost of the many?
Where is someone who is willing to say, We need a new constitution–this one has been broken? Broken by whom, now that is an interesting topic! A little witch-hunting never hurt anyone's popularity, and I am quite assured that corporations despite their personhood do not squeal or feel it when they are burned at the stake.
This country is of for and by the people, not capital. That has become a revolutionary idea.
The revolutionary ain't going to be Ron Paul either. Well, I don't think it is. Though he gets it about imperialism, he doesn't get it that for many people, in many scenarios, 'the free market' just plays out like social Darwinism. Libertarian means the ones with the most money got the most liberty.
No wonder talented, moneyed, privileged, Ivy-educated Jews are excited by Barack Obama–he is yet another spineless public relations hologram, the furthest possible thing from a guerrilla. And we need a guerrilla to combat this country's slide into fascism. And besides two angry old men and one odd dwarf, there isn't a single candidate who will camp out in the jungle to keep this system from sacking our democracy, there isn't one candidate who wouldn't sacrifice their political well-being for this country's advancement out of this mess, for this wealthy country to fulfill its potential as a flourishing democracy, as a land of freedom and justice under the law, as a cooperative member of the community of nations (including the ones in "its" hemisphere, or with "its" oil, and threatening its clients' regional hegemony) and yes, a world leader. As it has been in the past.
Not one of the media's chosen "contenders" has the courage to confront the forces that impede the U.S.'s transformation. (The corporatist, Zionist media is one of the major ones. The military industrial complex, the IRS and Federal Reserve are others.) And it happens that this transformation is in the hearts of a large majority of educated American youth, too, the ones who protested the Iraq war in huge numbers, regardless of stupid tribal affiliations and media fear-mongering and brainwashing, and many of the ones who needed college loans and got stuck in Iraq and are wanting to know why.
They need a smart populist, and they need one bad. The people will get behind someone who can really expose this mess.
Once the evangelical types get into motion anything can happen. People who have been manipulating them have been playing with fire.
It's not Huckabee they have to worry about, it's post-Huckabee.
The heated defense of obligatory healthcare to be purchased by the poor by Mr "Conscience of a Liberal" Krugman also belongs here. Krugman has published no less than three shrill anti-Obama hit pieces on the subjects of healthcare, social security and 527 interest groups. In all three cases Krugman defends moneyed interests: the cap on social security contributions, continued political influencing by big money interests via PACs and 527s, and, of course, the ultimate in non-solidarity: the healthcare mandate. Clearly, he too belongs to the galaxy outlined by David. Now I am waiting for a (muffled) mainstream version of: Can the son of a Muslim be good for the Jews. After all what David calls the Jewish meritocracy isn't only about money, it has its identity-political pet projects too.
Mondo, your obsessive focus on Jews is repulsive.
I entirely understand and agree with your positions vis a vis the evils of meritocratic society where the smarter and more talented get to lead wonderful lives and the rest of humanity have to suffer terrible sadness and privation.
I further agree with you regarding the need to rebel against the stifling of free-speech when it comes to talking about races of people, be they Jews, blacks or anyone else.
But you take the matter to Kapo levels. Not all Jews are of the meritocratic elite and not all members of the meritocratic elite are Jewish. Furthermore, Jews among the meritocracy are precisely those people who are more likely to support Communism, Socialism, the Green Party, the Democratic Party or the "Moderate" part of the Republican party. Among the elite, Jews are the ONLY ones who CONSISTENTLY donate their money, time and vote AGAINST their own self interests. Furthermore, "rebellion" against the PC lunatics is sufficiently accomplished by sharing the facts, not the exaggerations and insane conspiracy theories that you are oh so brave to enlighten us with. Furthermore, the Jews are a people in danger of mass-murder, always have been and likely always will be – a fact that you ought to consider as you stir up the hatreds of the masses of humanity who regard you a guru ("He's Jewish! And he's telling us how it is! ALL PRAISE WEISS!".)
So again, your rage against the evils of Capitalism are great, as is your lack of fear in sharing true generalizations about Jews — but the vast majority of what you have to say (and repeat and repeat…) about Jews is untrue, the opposite of truth and the harbinger of murder. So FUCK YOU, you diseased specimen of a human being.
mnuez
http://www.mnuez.blogspot.com
To: Mnuez
You claim that "the "Moderate" part of the Republican party…" ever heard of the neo Cons????
ever heard of AIPAC and the other lobby groups beating the drums for war with Iraq and Iran?
Israel has cost the US trillions….who lobbied for that?
who controls the media that beat the drums for war, that ignores Isreal's war crimes and its spying on its "friend" the U.S?
who lobbies for bailouts of the Jewish-dominated Wall Street firms while any supprort for manufacturing jobs is "protectionist"…
Jews vote against their own self-interest????….hmm I would say that they get a 10,000:1 return for their money in the pol process based off
1. what Israel costs us
2. the bailout of fin industry….
This guy 'mnuez' sure is a superb specimen of 'the chosen' – no contest to Phil Weiss.
Kevin MacDonald has a new post up where he continues the discussion with Phil over the subject of a hostile elite–
link to kevinmacdonald.net
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Here Colin Laney replies to Mnuez – Sailer's Blog – context obvious.
Mnuez: "This fantasy that fourteen million Jews are actually rowing in the same direction is endlessly entertaining to me."
Colin Laney:
[Quote]
Let me assure you, it is becoming less amusing to everyone else.
Don't think that your statement here isn't being seen – accurately – as yet another oar in the water: Nothing to see here – move along!
After the jokes, of course, then the more serious accusations will come out.
Then economic pressures.
Then press campaigns.
Suddenly, the target – even a great American hero like Charles Lindburgh – becomes an unperson for generations, if not forever.
Are you seriously asserting that this isn't how it works? There's the real barrel of laughs.
I suppose the real question, which neither you nor I can answer, is whether or not you know that you are engaged in ethnic strategizing.
In the meantime, I'd love to hear your explanation of how the virtually universal smear campaign against Mearsheimer and Walt – given the supposed 'fractiousness' of Jews – is combined with a very effective campaign to even deny them speaking outlets, by bringing to bear pressures against the venue.
Are we merely seeing Brownian motion here, the agitated movement of atoms that are completely uncoordianted?
Go on, pull the other one.
I would add that the nature of these pressures still hasn't been made public. I'm going to assume that some sort of economic embargo combined with the threat of universal pariah status imposed by the press is the threatened instrument.
Communists used to say they weren't monolithic, but at the level where it mattered – who was to be attacked, who was to be defended, what was to be kept hidden, and what was to be pursued, they did finally seem capable of some rudimentary forms of organization – not wholly unrelated to the forms of extreme group coherence which so excite mnuez' curiousity, and which you deny exist.
Indeed, you don't just deny their existence, you invite readers here to laugh at the idea of their existence.
For the record, I don't think you're taking orders from any centralized committe, but I do think you're acting on very powerful instincts, which you share with your co-nationalists. Coordination can often be arrived at without a committee in this way.
Any thoughts on Goldberg's reports on NCRAC? Or is that merely more fantasizing that tickles your funny bone?
Maybe Goldberg just made up all his facts and figures to spook the paranoid goyim? Do you think?
On the other hand, what becomes of your thesis if Mr. Goldberg's account of NCRAC is true? That would sort of tend to mitigate against your account of Jews as the hapless Keystone Kops of world politics, now wouldn't it?
To give an idea of just how highly organized "Organized Jewry" is, here is Goldberg on some of the manuevering that resulted in the 1965 Hart-Cellar act:
,Everyone agreed that the Jewish community must undertake a massive effort to repeal the quota system, but the ADL and the American Jewish Committee refused to join an operation under NCRAC auspices. Instead, Minkoff put NCRAC immigration specialist Jules Cohen in charge of a "non-auspices committee," operated by NCRAC under its "non-auspices." In 1955, this committee spearheaded the formation of a broad coalition for immigration reform, made up of civic associations, labor groups, and Protestant and Catholic groups. For a decade the coalition lobbied, leafleted, planted articles in magazines, and held public meetings on the racist nature of the immigration quota system. The entire operation was run by a steering committee of the "non-auspices committee," made up of four staffers from the three defense agencies and NCRAC. The quotas were finally repealed by the Immigration Reform Act of 1965, passed by Congress during the civil rights surge of President Lyndon Johnson's early years.
You, and everyone else here, may consult Mr. Goldberg's book Jewish Power, pg. 127, for further details. MacDonald extends this perspective fairly broadly over the twentieth century in Culture of Critique and the end results of what you insist is Jewish helplessness on account of factional infighting can be seen in the pages of Yuri Slezkine's The Jewish Century.
I don't see anything in those books that would interfere – even slightly – with the 'endless entertainment' you take from the fact that group strategies outcompete individual strategies. You should really pick up these books and read through them sometime – you'll laugh yourself silly!
[Unquote]
Anon – I appreciate the extra coverage. Quoting me saves me the bother of having to quote myself. Nevertheless, I'm afraid that you were not only quoting a piece that's entirely irrelevant to this blog, this blog post and my very comment but you were quoting me as having said something that was actually said by Sailor-blog's "Fred". In fact, had you have bothered to read the piece of text that you were cut n' pasting before having cut n' pasted you would have seen quite clearly that mnuez is not Fred and that Colin was aware of that ("the forms of extreme group coherence which so excite mnuez' curiousity, and which you deny exist").
No matter, I appreciate the opportunity to segue into linking to a post of mine composed of a few of my comments on Sailor's blog. Here it is link to mnuez.blogspot.com
. To be sure, I've written plenty more on ISteve, regarding Jews as well as other matters, but none of it is relevant to my point posted above. In fact the very link I've just provided is itself composed of irrelevant comments to the point I posted above. I post it simply on account of an obsessive interest in historical accuracy that demands that I send you to the actual mnuez comments relevant to the thread that the pseudonymous Colin was commenting on. Were I not cursed with this compulsion for accuracy I would stay silent (ye, how true for most of my utterances).
m
We had a Gallup poll out yesterday that showed that 80% of Americans consider themselves "Christians".
From the point of view of a person like me who would like to see the United States with a Scandinavian type welfare system and the social mobility that system creates, the question arises: how are you going to have a progressive, mass movement of any kind in the US that does not have a specifically Christian component?
Also, If, as Phil seems to maintain, Jewish people have become so successful that they no longer belong to unions or suffer social injustice and now belong to the "elite", which by definition does not belong to the masses, but which, again by definition, is in a state of contradiction with said masses, then what role do today's Jews have in this movement except that of the dilettante? This unavoidable antagonism is strictly a class issue and antisemitism has nothing to do with it, although when things get hot people call each other names.
BTW, I am really in stitches over MacDonald and Phill's idea of the WASP elite's sense of "noblesse oblige". What a hoot!
A considerable part of my youth was spent in the company of that elite (full disclosure: relatives of mine have chaired Monsanto, presided the American Home builder's Association and managed the finances of Bell Telephone when it was a monopoly) and I can tell you that when they spoke of FDR they frothed at the mouth and they opposed down the line every New Deal program that ever helped the "little man". Noblesse oblige? My aching overcoat!
Sorry, Mnuez, if I mistook you for one of your clones, but quoting them also saves me the bother of having to quote you. Call it preemptive quoting, if you like. It is not my desire to wound the sense of self importance of you guys but I was really using that comment as a bridge to KMac. Anyway thanks for exposing your indefatigable vanity.
Me thinks Mnuez has less of an ego and more of a sense of humor than you JD.