American-based, humanist, and classically liberal and democratic BackChannels here adds just one more biker video:
BackChannels Frame
Feudal-Medieval Political Absolutism
v
Modern Democratic Checked and Distributed Power
Between “Active Measures” and America’s inherent internal tensions, citizens may feel channeled toward a fascistic Far Right new nationalism or a dippy Far Left socialist revival, but BackChannels reminds that there may be — there should be — a more grounded and spacious Middle American Way and some wish to rediscover and renew that more coherent nation.
There’s a slight possibility 🙂 that Trump understands his job, its duties, and his obligations as an American president.
Whatever his character, whatever he may say, and however he may feel, especially as regards feudal authoritarianism, he seem to err consistently with the greater American program in democracy. We have not left NATO; Ukraine has not been abandoned (and it has been receiving offensive weapons with America’s blessing); and Israel remains as it has for past American presidents, i.e., the persistent bridgehead of the west, an island of democratic processes and liberal values set against the absolutism of surrounding of dictatorships and generally repressive political cultures.
We may grant President Trump credit for doing his duty as the nation’s top elected official despite his many character issues and personal problems.
BackChannels acknowledges the book in which it first encountered the term:
Soldatov, Andrei and Irena Borogan. The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia’s Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB. New York: Public Affairs, 2010.
However, this post is not going to be about powerful and self-enriching KGB/FSB spies and their bureaucracies.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Viktor Orbán, and Donald J. Trump seem to this blogger more the “New Nobility” that Russian President Vladimir Putin may have had also in mind as he launched his revenge on the western world for the demise of the Soviet Union on December 25, 1991 — a very good Christmas morning indeed for the United States of America and in the defunct godless realm then represented by the Kremlin a not very special day at all.
In the 26 years that have passed since that morning (for political purpose, it was over at noon), Russia and her leadership have had to think about what it has meant to be “Russian”.
“Old Vikings”?
Formed of conquest, contracting and expanding through the brutality of feudal wars, unable ever to police — mere civil policing — its territorial writs, Russia has been a state that has better known barbarism and the depths of inhumanity through violence (give a nod for the extra special dose brought by the Mongols) than civility through accommodation and trade. In that regard, the “Vory”, the once brutalized mafia within, may in their inglorious legend represent the pure expression of the heart of the state.
Backing the tyrant in Syria?
Invading a settled Ukraine and baldly lying to the world about its purpose?
Bombing hospitals?
Pursuing feudal absolute power — unquestionable ownership of persons as things — with the Assahola in Tehran?
All of the above: true.
So what good new things has Russia brought to the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization?
BREXIT: While Great Britain has been happy to pile on “Asian” labor, it has not been so happy with grooming gangs, suspect neighborhoods, and “Allahu Akbar” explosions, much less the impositions posed by the refugees of war in Syria. Response: the Newest Nationalism expressed in renewed insularity and refreshed Anglican pride.
While it’s good for a state to recall what it’s about, some among the most zealous should factor in how they have been played by Moscow.
Erdogan: Prime Minister, President, and now, apparently, President for Life has never encountered serious resistance for his taking apart what Mustafa Kemal Atatürk bequeathed in bureaucratic and military legacy. The empire’s back, baby, and dig the symbolic significance of the leaders new crib.
Impressed?
Dig this cool new statistic on press freedom in Erdogan’s new estate (italics added).
The 2018 index ranking marked Turkey’s 58 point-decrease over the past 13 years, lagging just behind Rwanda, Belarus and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Nonetheless, the American President’s behavior, personal as well as political, has left him also, as with the Erdogan and Orban, associated with the terms “autocratic”, “narcissistic”, and “nationalist”. While it’s good to take pride in one’s nation and defend her interests with tough negotiations, it may not be so good for the head of a modern democratic state to promote the image of himself as a feudal lord, securing prizes for family and friends on the basis of loyalty, and doing out favors (“You all just got a lot richer”) to surrounding nobility.
President George W. Bush also made light of the “have and have mores”, but for Americans struggling with fixed retirements, healthcare premiums, perhaps the full suite of basic and complex costs of survival, and, for the young, jobs that fail to deliver even a modicum of financial independence and pride, much less security, the implied further reduction to peonage must sting.
As long as the terms are black v white / capitalism v communism-socialism, the conversation seems bound to be boxed in or circular as well as suffocated by events and personalities locked in the past and best left there as well. A better springboard would be to query the character and nature of potential political power as groomed today and whether “power” needs be responsible power.
I’ve tried this framing: “Feudal Political Absolutism v Democratic Checked and Distributed Power”.
It’s too much of a mouthful but fully observable in Syria, east v west “contests”, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the rifts of the Islamic Small Wars. All involve feudal personalities applying martial power to plowing forward into the more dismal regions of their own political pasts.
I’m a little lazy now and this summer believe I should be reading (on deck: Goldman’s Lord of the Flies, Brodie’s Thomas Jefferson), settling down, regathering myself for what beyond my 60+ years looks like a still daunting and frightening future for myself and tens of millions of Americans as well as the middle classes and the surviving and struggling of the nations worldwide. Time seems to have produced too many drowning in arms and drugs, directly related insecurity against depredation, general economic dissolution and isolation, and general political miasma and upheaval.
The desire for human dignity and freedom exacts a price from all who would have both in security perpetually. In the silhouette, an American Civil War cannon faces southwest in the direction of General Robert E. Lee’s then retreating Confederate army (Sept. 17-18, 1862). In BackChannels’ humble opinion, the one bloody day of battle marked the beginning of the end of absolute power, landed aristocracy, and slavery in the soon to be reunited and reconstructed United States of America. We should wish today not to return — or be returned — to the feudal past, its abuses, criminality, excesses, and inhumanity, however complex, convoluted, and modern the legal, political, and technological means.
The gun men came from the hills, armed with guns and machetes under the cover of an afternoon rain. They split into groups and selected remote areas within walking distances of between 40 and 50 minutes to unleash mayhem on innocent lives.
Before then, they had laid ambush on mourners returning from a funeral service in Kakuruk village and simultaneously raided nearby villages, shooting, stabbing and maiming anyone at sight. Even the youthful and agile were helpless as the scoundrels massacred and soiled the land with tears and blood. Witnesses said the carnage lasted for hours and travellers evacuated their vehicles and fled into the bush.
Last weekend 238 Christians were killed in a number of attacks by militia in Plateau State, a region in the heart of the country.
Campaigners are warning it is just the latest example of “pure genocide” in a country ravaged by religious division.
A joint statement issued by the Christian Association of Nigeria said more than 6,000 Christian worshippers – “mostly children, women and the aged” – had already been killed this year.
Fulani brigades appear to arrive in numbers great enough to surround their targets and destroy them with automatic weapons and petrol. For Christian defense: nothing — not weapons, which are confiscated by the government to discourage “vigilante actions”, not terrain, which is rugged but short on natural barriers to foot and vehicle assault, not military or police, who are either spread thin and easily confused or disinterested — and that last has become a point in political contention about the sincerity of Nigerian Muslim President Buhari in relation to his commitment to secure the Christian community in Nigeria.
The blue frown refers to the 200 Nigerian recently killed by Fulani raiders in Plateau State.
United States Ambassador in Nigeria, Mr W. Stuart Symington has enjoined both the Nigerian leaders and citizens to make concerted efforts to stop the killings currently ravaging the country. The ambassador was speaking at ceremonies marking the 242 years of Independence for the United States of America.
Symington speaking on the situation in Nigeria said every day, people’s hopes are stopped by unnecessary deaths and by those whose acts reflect no good and served no cause.
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