Here's the thing, and it explains just how the Donald got as far as he did ...
When any passing loon comes out with a loonish idea and lets out a shriek at the wonder of it all, you can rely on the reptiles to go the big bash and faithfully regurgitate it ...
By the time it reached the Terrorists, they couldn't resist a little spin ...
It was the Currish Snail that let the hare loose ...
A stupid woman, with a stupid solution, though to be fair, no more stupid than the current Malware logarithm solution ...
But why did the Snailers give it the front page treatment? Why did they blow it up and blossom it forth?
The answer lies at the very bottom ...
333 comments at the time the pond went looking, or if you will, exactly half the devil's number 666.
That's why. It's pure, unadulterated click bait, a controversy for the day, job done, sackings and retrenchings deferred for another day ... and never mind the intrinsic absurdity of finger prints as the way forward ...
The reptiles seem determined to send the pond into a frenzy, when Friday afternoon should be a chance to do a lazy kickback and a relax with some piece of lightweight nonsense ...
On the other hand, the reptiles of Oz, as the outpost of the WSJ - the Huff Post of the right down under - kept the heat on the pond by offering up something purportedly serious and deep, which turned out to be a genuine piece of lightweight fluff, a slice of fairy floss economics wrapped on a stick of prejudices ...
Actually how could it be, this globalism as an ideology?
Was it ideology that saw humanity originally surge out of Africa and spread like cockroaches all over the world? What's so ideological about that, as opposed to innate and biological?
What about all the other empires that followed? All ideological, as opposed to testosterone and territoriality and aggrandisement and self-interest?
Me, me, me, and mine, and my heirs and successors is now an ideology?
Was it ideology that saw humanity originally surge out of Africa and spread like cockroaches all over the world? What's so ideological about that, as opposed to innate and biological?
What about all the other empires that followed? All ideological, as opposed to testosterone and territoriality and aggrandisement and self-interest?
Me, me, me, and mine, and my heirs and successors is now an ideology?
Never mind, Ip is determined to be irritating.
Whenever an ideological hammer sees a nail, it must surely be an ideological nail ...
And so this is how the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper of shallow, superficial analysis, which has the cheek to present Carrier as a success story ...
And then to follow that up with the notion that the Poms weren't self-consciously intent on a global empire, which presumably in Ip's world makes them globalists ...
Presumably in Ip's world, they were also unconscious, inert globalists ...
That's the trouble with the pond. It thinks words count, but instead it should have understood that glib stereotypes of the Davos man kind were more appropriate ... especially when discussing the Donald, who though a billionaire brand and TV celebrity, is seemingly an example of a man who has had nothing to do with globalism ... in much the same way as Nigel Farage apparently never moves outside Downe in Kent for fear of getting nose bleed ...
And so to a bit of China bashing, which we're going to see much more of in the coming year, and quite possibly a bit of sea adventurism to top it off, because somehow the United States imagines that the South China sea is part of its globalist interests ... or wait, is that its nationalist interest?
So hard to tell when doing a simple 1 and 0 digital divide in thinking and analysis ...
So hard to tell when doing a simple 1 and 0 digital divide in thinking and analysis ...
It's impossible to begin to summarise the many ways this analysis irritates the pond ... and still it rolled on and on ...
There's ample reason for scepticism? Secularism?
Sessions, a deeply devout Methodist, responded: “Well, I’m not sure.” But Whitehouse chose to move on and not follow up on Sessions’ head-scratching answer. (Politico here).
“Ultimately, freedom of speech is about ascertaining the truth,” Sessions, an Alabama Republican, told Horowitz’s audience on Nov. 14, 2014. “And if you don’t believe there’s a truth, you don’t believe in truth, if you’re an utter secularist, then how do we operate this government? How can we form a democracy of the kind I think you and I believe in… I do believe that we are a nation that, without God, there is no truth, and it’s all about power, ideology, advancement, agenda, not doing the public service.” (Daily Beast here).
Fundamentalist Christianity is just Islamic fundamentalism in a different kind of drag ... but now the WSJ has to wring its hands and seek some sort of half-baked, half-arsed way out of the mess the Murdochians have helped land the country in ...
It is, in its own way, a piece doing its level best to explain and soften the racism inherent in Trump and his rhetoric and his policies, just as day the Currish Snail was doing its level best to make the redhead seem like a bearer of credible policies for ways to persecute the poor ... as opposed to being just a messenger of fear and xenophobic loathing ...
Out of it all, it seems only thing is certain. Neither Hanson nor Trump will do the slightest bit of good for the mugs who voted them into positions of power ...
Give the pond some of that old fashioned globalist music ...
Oh yes, get down in funky town, and give the pond some of that good old fashioned Murdochian music moaning about globalism ... no doubt as the Chairman hastily sells down his international empire, or more likely as the pond starts absent-minded Friday afternoon dreaming ...
God Miss; hard yards for a Friday.
ReplyDeleteStill you've gotta give us what them reptiles cough up I suppose.
Anonpossum
I found the WSJ article particularly irritating because much of the fundamental premise went to custard in the first grab (para 4). It conflates globalisation of trade and commerce with the global movement of people and repeatedly uses that error to support positions which must, perforce, be bogus. It is entirely possible to be pro-globalisation and anti-immigration, or vice versa, or pro-both or anti-both (all four exist right now).
ReplyDeleteThe article talks about the first era of their neologism "globalism" ending in 1914. But that notion is based on the false implication that free trade and free-everything-else ruled. That is not remotely correct - there was a mix of free trade and protectionism, varying in both time and place. One of the root causes of the American Civil War was this very issue - the North wanted to protect their domestic industry from European competition, the South was free-trade because they wanted to export into Europe unhindered. In the mid-19th century, Prussia sought to create a customs union that would ensure free-trade between the many states that would become Germany, to the exclusion of other economies. Joseph Chamberlain (Colonial Secretary and father of Neville) floated the idea of an "Imperial Preference", which would bind the British Empire together with economic ties to match the societal, political and military ties that already existed, again, to the exclusion of all others (at least, where their goods were in competition with a producer within the Empire). There was simply no such thing as a globalised trading economy in the 19th century. Currency movement was far more regulated than now. But interestingly, the movement of people was barely restricted at all (except by poverty or slavery) until the latter part of the 19th century, when governments made their first baby steps at regulating (and taxing) the movement of people - originally, these were aimed at limiting exploitative labour practises not much different to slavery, but by the 1900's more countries wanted to keep out the horde of Russian Jews, who were fleeing persecution, but you know, they look different and worship differently, and smell funny and don't assimilate and they're probably involved in terrorism...
The First World War fundamentally changed that, and we saw the rise of economically and demographically nationalistic governments, but a countervailing increasing in the free flow of capital (which is why Wall Street laying an egg in 1929 was disastrous for many countries, more so than the US itself). That said, some countries, such as France remained open to immigrants, at least from their colonial empire to metropolitan France.
The post war regime has seen an increase in free trade and a decline of currency controls, but a draconian restriction on the movement of people. Both of these trends have sharply accelerated in the last 25 years.
The consequences are obvious - 100-some years ago, people were free, if they could afford it, to move to where relatively highly paid work was available (at least, vastly more lucrative than growing manglewurzels on the Pontic Steppe). The jobs stayed pretty much where they were created, fed by immigration from areas that had not yet boarded the industrialisation train (which limited wage increases by ensuring supply kept up with demand).
Now, labour movement is massively regulated, but commerce is a free-for-all, and the obvious move for the eager young plutocrat is to reverse the earlier paradigm and move the demand to where there is an abundant (and therefore cheap) supply.
150 years ago "nativist" Americans would beat up immigrants because they had come to America and competed for their jobs for less pay. They can't do that anymore, because instead of the labour going to the work, the work has gone to the labour. The guy they want to punch is a half a world away...
probably tl;dr, but so was the WSJ.
Almost, FD, but not quite, so you had at least one reader. After all, I did enjoy your take on some "ancient" Greek Mills and Boon fiction too.
DeleteSo, one doesn't really need to go as far back as the original hominid diaspora to note that people had "free movement" for quite a while. I can think, for instance, of the massive Goth/Vandal "migration" into Europe and the near east not so very long ago (about 1900 or so years I think) and of the magnificent 'empire' that resulted therefrom (Santa Sophia, anyone ?).
Or even more recently, say, the great "migration" into Australia during the Victorian gold rush - back when the boomtown of Melbourne expanded to nearly 540,000 occupants and held nearly half of Australia's total population. And a lot of them were Americans, so one might have expected our WSJ reptile to have heard of that.
But then, as an American based journalist, one might also have expected that he'd have heard of Ellis Island and the 12 million or so "immigrants" who passed through there from 1892 t0 1954 (plus about another 13 million or so "visitors" over the same period). Yes, there were some controls implemented on Ellis Island but the great majority of immigrants got through to become, progressively, the next set of American "industrial fodder".
And even more recently, what about the 2 1/2 million (or so) Turkish 'guest workers' who came into Germany from the 1960s onwards. Apparently there's still "almost 3 million people having at least one parent immigrated from Turkey" according to the 2011 German census.
So yair, I reckon our WSJ reptile doesn't know the smell of his own farts when it comes to history.
But the thing is, how did he get this way ? Did he miss out on a decent education ? Maybe we should sic Donnelly onto his school(s) to see if he can improve things.
Or is this just some catechism entry that right wingnuts have to learn and spruik ? Because the whole thing about 'people movement' is just recent, isn't it - if you believe Trump and the Tea Party, anyway.