Orbán’s political takeover – buttressed by a German industrial lobby that relies on cheap labour in Hungarian plants – has largely been bankrolled by cash plundered from the European Union that he rails so fervently against. A 2019 New York Times investigation found that Orbán uses billions of euros in EU subsidies as a patronage fund that enriches his allies, protects his political interests and punishes his rivals. “The ideology is a ruse. The money is where the action is,” said Lane Scheppele.
What has the medieval world — its views of humanity and related political methods — been doing in our modern one?
Perhaps I’ve been naive about the evolution of the political management of power across time, for I have thought my modern American democracy and its many responsible and responsive institutions the most wonderful humanist and secular invention on earth and in history. However, some beg to disagree with the evolution of the optimal organization of open modern democratic communities, and here are we Americans saddled with surprisingly medieval mobs, an “authoritarian” president (on his way out) and, at least before the recent election, a senate full of head-bobbing lords before his questionable majesty.
Quite often on this theme, I’ve hauled in “Basic Training” — the pledge of America’s civilian and military officials and officers to the Constitution — or, as here, made mention of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, but as this morning’s start brought the following ‘graphs flying off my desktop, well, a copy-and-paste seemed fitting. The first comment addresses the basic issue of having the past dragging the world’s future backward toward what has been known not to work. 🙂 The second excerpt deals with Russia’s 19th Century political ambitions for what should be a thoroughly hopping 21st Century EU/NATO.
From the Awesome Conversation
I’ve come to see the great divide in the management of power as that between feudal-medieval political absolutism underpinned by desperation, dogma, and some propensities for evil and the MODERN open democratic distribution of the same by balanced and checked integrated systems and related processes. I think there’s difficulty in popular understanding of what has been deeply planted in the soul of medieval leadership where one inevitably finds the despotic and malignantly narcissistic among kings, essentially. In the milieu of despots and Presidents-for-Life remains the endowment we have inherited from the “Old World”, and while it is here in us, we are all together still part of an evolving New World. Putin and Xi see no necessity for it. Where one may place the present personalities may well have to do with that “Medieval v Modern” theme.
From the Imperial Period to the Bolsheviks to Putin, Russia has not been able to escape feudal-medieval political absolutism. Worse, is has been able to encourage the same in EU/NATO with reversions in political modality standing out in Hungary, Italy, Poland, and Turkey. Great Britain has been a little mixed up in this too with its reaction to 9/11, post-9/11 attacks, and the Moscow-Damascus driven forced migration from Syria. It too chose to “swell” (as flesh does with stings and other assaults) against greater cooperation with Europe in the interest of sealing and securing its own culture and traditions via BREXIT.
Putin’s promotion of Russia as a pious White Russian Nationalist enterprise belies its own multicultural reality — and you have seen the Grand Mosque opening video from2015 — but for the time being in Russia and the European states mentioned, a resurgent past holds sway.
What we cling to for assurance and safety, no less than mother’s dress, is always somewhere back in time.
I’d say Moscow has had a good and medieval run against an unprepared West, but if the problem is the persistence of the Medieval world in our Modern one, then we may proceed with the greater development of a more modern and democratic world. It’s all a bump on time’s highway, not a permanent turnaround into a much, much less desirable past.
Our nation was born forward of the Age of Reason and designed to defy absolute power in favor of a checked and balanced distribution of power to be managed through democratic methods. The nation has (to this point) succeeded with that. In the regions of personal behaviors, ethics, and morals, it has been generous with tolerance but some part has migrated from raised eyebrows and winks (naughty!) into criminally dark enterprise plainly criminal incidents. Such matters require investigative and Justice Department solutions, not cultural overhauls.
My conversational partner, a Canadian, fervently believes in the latest medieval rumor “Hammer and Scorecard” — a “Deep State” plot to pervert the election via the computing machinery — launched by the now surreal President Donald J. Trump.
From the Awesome Conversation
You should hate the kind of people who lie to you in order to keep you seduced for THEIR — not YOUR OWN — political purposes.
Trump and his cronies know that YOU cannot check out his claims yourself, and by attempting to derail the most dedicated and professional workers in his own government and in the press, he can get you to believe anything HE wants while delivering not very much at all to America’s working men and women.
Remember, our small business community and voters in all of the communities of labor across the land voted for Biden too.
I would love to have you reason critically about beliefs that have become familiar to you but have no basis in reality.
Fear mongering; rumor mills; accusations in a mirror — what HE would do himself, he accuses his opposition of doing to him . . . such have become the medieval tactics now being launched through Donald J. Trump’s political machinery. The victims of President Trump’s false claims and myriad lies are not his critics or America’s journalists or his business rivals — those most exploited are his own and most devoted fans who must turn their backs on the truth and swim into the chaos and darkness he prefers to have swirling around him.
The talk’s off the wall as one to some want an officer of the law to march into the Oval Office, pull him out of his chair, and subject him to a psychiatric evaluation.
The thought may inspire smiles, but I believe there are very few officials or officers warranted to intervene in what has become an absurdly surreal defiance of the Constitutional and cultural principles of the American state. Barr? White House Physician? Pence? Who else?
From the Awesome Conversation
There is no authority stepping up (yet) to do it — and we’re about to watch his minions march nationwide with themselves invalidating the election.
In a democracy, power rests with the will of the people as represented through elected assigns, and then it flows through legislatures and courts and is enforced by dutiful, honorable, and loyal military, paramilitary, and security forces. Well, we might see those forces tested in relation to their loyalty — as sworn — to the Constitution.
Trump appears so far to be pushing for the feudal or medieval solution: he’s the Great Leader; power is to revolve around himself and will be held together by the familiar carrots and sticks: patronage for those favored; threat and punishment for those inclined to resist his will.
How history may remember Trump’s Republican Zealots (to the extent that reasoning modern patriotic Republicans fail to find his behavior alienating) –>l
Sixteen federal prosecutors specially assigned to monitor 2020 election malfeasance told AG Barr in a letter today they saw no evidence of substantial voting irregularities, & asked him to rescind his recent policy change. w/ @thamburgerhttps://t.co/ncFQmpjn2Q
Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.
Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate . . . .
Start with Paul Manafort and ask why an urbane and sophisticated American businessman with his eyes on the Presidency would choose him for a campaign manager.
Raise that eyebrow again over Trump’s pressuring James Comey for personal loyalty as opposed to embracing him in the common project of defending America’s Constitution and Rule of Law.
Pause at the Helsinki Moment with Putin.
Revisit Trump’s impeachment and those who comported themselves and spoke truth to power like the American patriots they were — and those fired or sidelined for doing so.
Here’s today’s problem: those most enamored of America’s most cherished democratic principles and traditions, including the running of fair and free elections, have been methodically removed from powerful positions and placed beyond the President and Command in Chief’s direct sphere of control. The same may enjoy accolades and publish books, but absolute direct and personally loyal power now serves at the President’s discretion and pleasure, at least until the first official or officer refuses his order.
My fellow Americans — prepare to welcome Donald J. Trump’s New “American” Nobility as the power representative of our United States IF he continues consolidating what he believes is his grip on the Presidency. In the near term, at least, it won’t matter that Trump didn’t play fair — or behave like an American gentleman and patriot — but that on January 22, he arrived for work with military, paramilitary, all associated security forces, officials, and officers tied up behind him.
Well that was a bit of a rant.
I wonder what others think may happen if the President “pulls rank” and invalidates Joe Biden’s win by confronting the same with raw absolute command of America’s defenses leveraged and perverted to serve himself.
WHAT IF the United States of America were returned to aristocracy?
WHAT IF Americans less connected were returned to obedience to absolute authority?
Along the way, the Trump-hated Left has been off on its liberation trip with its eyes on universal basics and trashing of white male this and patrician that. What if the White Male Kingdom and America’s Old Money were gambling on some powerful representation themselves with the cooperation, of course, of police and military forces?
What if Trump’s World was primping to look like Putin’s World ordered by his loyal New Nobility and bounded by a corrupt faked up marriage between Church and State?
It took a century and a democratic revolution invoked by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) — a coalition of conservatives, reformed Islamists and Islamists that came to power in 2002 — for Turkey’s “Kemalist Occident,” or dalliance with the West, to end. With the mass resignation of Turkey’s military leadership last month, the last standing Kemalist institution, the army, has succumbed to the AKP’s decade-long political tsunami.
This political bookend for Kemalism suggests that AKP leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan is Turkey’s “new” Ataturk. He doesn’t have the cachet of being Turkey’s liberator, but he enjoys as much power as Ataturk once had.
The firing of Defense Secretary Mark Esper kicked off a rapid-fire series of high-level departures at the Pentagon on Tuesday, setting off alarms on Capitol Hill that the White House was installing loyalists to carry out President Donald Trump’s wishes during an already tense transition.
In quick succession, top officials overseeing policy, intelligence and the defense secretary’s staff all had resigned by the end of the day Tuesday, replaced by political operatives who are fiercely loyal to Trump and have trafficked in “deep state” conspiracy theories.
It’s about 10:30 a.m. EST here, and the reading listed immediately below has been prompted by Right Wing Nuts intent on repeating the latest in medieval conservative gossip circles . . . and I’m not sure they’re even doing that or anything other than inserting off-the-hook agitation and propaganda by way of accusations and false claims.
For the record — and this time — and concerning the Pennyslvania vote, no evidence has been brought to bear to prove that the incumbent and now lame duck President Trump and those who voted for him have been treated in the least measure unfairly.
In my opinion, and I know I am not alone in this, the President and his backers and supporters have chosen to delay the Biden Transition and degrade America’s democracy.
For the aggravation and energy involved (and that pesky measurement of cardiovascular health), I’m going to curtail for myself the idea that a human may compete with computers when it comes to assembling focused lists.
We’ve all been through this Man v Machine a few times in the past two centuries or so.
On Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez’s suggestion to create a worked-for-Trump blacklist. My conversational partner suggested that such a list would bring us back to Stalin. So, From the Awesome Conversation –>
It would bring us back to McCarthy.
We should live in a meritocracy with fine American judgment on the part of executives and managers throughout, but I’m certain we don’t.
The tension on which I have at times focused has been that between an incumbent or resurgent feudal absolutism — and all that implies — and a revolutionary democratic modernity.
Lists, nods, and whispers better define the former.
In life’s realpolitik, of course, most respond to the needs of family and friends first, and our friends are often people to whom we may relate, i.e., if enabled, we’ll hire the kind of people with whom we would like to work.
It has been said of whacked out paranoid Stalin that at the end, he felt he could not trust even himself.
On the political censoring of others and the question “Why?”
Narcissism.
For the malign and controlling, the process starts with “Narcissistic Mortification”, moves to covering (the damaged self) and splitting (an heroic new self). Along the way, these guys — “malignant narcissists” — bust through normal boundaries and limits and become deeply controlling manipulative (as with “gaslighting”). The Left-Right axis may be accidental or involve an attractive dogma, but the “grandiose and messianic delusion” that compels the peacock (or, sometimes, the fireman who sets the fire so that he may show up and put it out to public acclaim) always ends in the want of “unlimited narcissistic supply”, i.e., public acclimation, adoration, and validation without end. The cause matters less than the psychology.
The “Great Leader” has primarily his image to defend (so no free press as the stakes rise) plus always the want of astounding approval. Around them, the system becomes controlling, and around them, the seduced pick up the traits.
The professionals — like Jerrold Post — in the democratic west engaged pursue a dispassionate inquiry into political extremism.
A part of my journey has involved Soviet/post-Soviet issues, so I latch a little bit to the Communist legacy in the support of dictatorships. A look at the famous graduate of the Patrice Lumamba school may be revealing as would a look-see at the World Peace Council. While Moscow diminished the Communist Party in Russia, under Putin, it was to take up a hybrid 19th Century view a post-Imperial Era nationalism anchored popularly in a revived (and unfathomably corrupt) Russian Orthodox Church and Russian Army. The “blood and soil” format is recognizable and the stance persistently illiberal.
If possible, we should all choose the flag in the middle, as it were, but with sides, we (at least in America) Left-Far-Left and Right-Far-Right. I regard Left Fringe (who shout down their opposition) as holdovers from the Soviet Era and “The Party” way of doing business; the Right Fringe reminds of other reactionary movements, i.e., fascism in Europe and, perhaps, the “America First Party” in domestic politics in 1943.
In the way of some older men growing gray and tired, my patience for writing longer copy — and responding to endless online arguments — may be growing thin, so above I hope I’ve telegraphed a statement about political bullying, the sometimes ironic destruction of freedom by those who most pretend to represent it, and the related plundering of states by their own leaders. The “by any means” Far Out Left has indeed shouted down its favored targets, time and again, and it has carried forward from Russian anti-Semitic traditions its own brand of Jew-hate (reading recommended from other history: Michael Kellogg’s The Russian Roots of Nazism, Cambridge UP, 2009), but Orwellian Left seems to me far from the moderate liberalism known to the best of America’s Democratic and Republican Parties.
Similarly, one cannot overlook the effects of 9/11 (2001 for kiddies) on both the promotion of necessary state security organizations and (less necessary) reactionary nationalists. On that tack, Erdogan, Orban, and Trump suffice for examples of a want of return to a medieval and frequently ugly political absolutism. All who would become dictators cannot wait to get their mitts on a state’s army and treasury — and then have at it with their perceived competitions — while “the people”, Left or Right leaning, may be seduced by dogma and made ready for plundering and damnation, and much to the delight of breathtakingly enriched family and friends.
I will have to find again historian Richard Pipes’ observations on Russia’s struggle with constitutional monarchy and with the concept of sovereignty. For the most part, Russia’s assertion of sovereignty considered property and persons alike in its dominion, and proof would be the right to destroy either at will and with impunity.
Think of that when you reflect, if ever, on Russia’s behavior across the so far long nine years of the Syrian Tragedy.
Europe chose a different direction in its comprehension and — in the end — consideration of others.
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