SB on 23 May presented a New York Times article for our consideration. So, let’s do that.
Garbage in, garbage out.
Roger Cohen may be a fine writer, but if the premises he uses are false, so are his conclusions.
If it is true that the “idea” at the core of America is destructive of life, such love must logically be a dysfunctional sentiment. However, if the idea that most accurately represents America is the best currently available for addressing life-expanding needs, then it is not America that is a destroyer of life, it is those who believe otherwise who are threatening of life.
The idea that is “America” protects the benefits of free speech, the running argument. It brings the idea of liberty and its needed disciplines to the level of the individual citizen, thereby shunting the wasteful and destructive fashions of mob-think and groupthink into the background. It rewards, thus incentivizes the best talents to step forward and quickly address human needs. Should loss occur, it tells talent when to quit and direct attention toward profitable activities. By America’s idea being so productive of resources, an expanding population can most quickly and easily acquire its needed nourishments.
But Roger Cohen thinks differently:
He writes: “ The problem is that ‘our practice of capitalism is both putting the planetary ecosystem at risk and generating vast economic inequality.’ The nation-state is ‘inadequate for managing transnational challenges like global warming.’ And ‘representative democracy is neither truly representative nor very democratic as citizens feel that self-rule has given way to rule by corporations, special interests and the wealthy.’ “
Capitalism is blamed by Roger Cohen for an excessive use of carbon fuels, however the science of climate “warming” is not exact, and “America’s” capitalism does not exclude appropriate regulations when provided with reasoned clarity. Economic inequality is considered by him to be a negative. But it is the promise of profit and wealth that incentivizes the productivity that saves and enriches lives. Without this possibility we will have an equal poverty (That is, except for those who have been given, or took, power.) Those who are unequally wealthy in America’s system tend to be those who have produced the most life-enhancing, lifesaving, resources.
Cohen tells us that the nation state is “inadequate for managing transnational challenges like global warming.” But what if a particular nation is less likely than today’s United Nations to be corrupt, and is both a good manager and is sufficiently successful economically that it can best afford and influence other nations to address the common need?
Cohen states: “And ‘representative democracy is neither truly representative nor very democratic as citizens feel that self-rule has given way to rule by corporations, special interests and the wealthy.” We need to know if what citizens “feel” is justified. If it is true that a great number of citizens actually feel this way, we then ask if they have been manipulated to feel this way, by whom, and for what reasons. Given that we are a democratic republic designed to reduce the risk of tyrannical majorities we should expect to “feel” the tensions of competing interests. To “feel” otherwise, would not be wise.
Well written Dad. And depressingly accurate, I’m afraid.
Jeffrey E. Thomas, M.D., FAANS, FACS
Diplomate, American Board of Neurological Surgery
Medical Director, Cerebrovascular and Neurointerventional Neurosurgery
Washington Hospital and Washington Township Medical Foundation 2500 Mowry Ave., Suite 222 Fremont, CA 94538 510 818-1160
Chairman of the Board of Directors, Jeffrey E. Thomas Stroke Shield Foundation 3053 Fillmore St. , #268 San Francisco, CA 94123 (415) 830-6031 http://www.strokeshieldfoundation.org
daedal2207: Your narrative of the $.30 refund check I underscored the non-thinking or robotic attitude which is accepted as efficiency. It’s easy to associate George Orwell’s “1984” introduction of doublespeak. Efficiency? However, it’s more an insult to our common sense. Both examples of the narrative deal with a fundamental social commandment: respect. My comment has a broad brush, but it is influenced by a recent article which came to my attention: https://braveneweurope.com/richard-d-wolff-capitalism-vs-safety-health-an-old-story-again
The present pandemic has certainly made us face … whether we like it or not … the crossroad that’s before us in what appears to be a 100-year cycle for society’s order. The fall of the Roman Empire brought us feudalism. After 1,000 years, capitalism displaced the system with the understanding of trickle down benefits for the greater society. Six hundred plus years later, and with the benefit/curse? of greater/instantaneous communication, we find that man’s easy instincts are not “the better angels,” but rather the corrupt upper hand. As the world population keeps growing … ignorant taboos being major contributors … the present system of distribution is unsustainable. There are no boundaries to material wealth which is equally correlated to no boundaries to unspeakable poverty: health, food, and shelter. Desperation brings the realization that there’s nothing further to lose. Must we go through the pain of frustration?
“Once again we meet society’s need for transition to a worker-coop based economy.”
Working conditions/options will have to undergo through new models. The major cities are noticing their possible irrelevance … antiquities to visit like ancient ruins? Brick and mortar businesses are signs. With all the obvious effects, the one that must be addressed is the minimum wage … kept low by the immoral greed of those who make more than what can be spent in several lifetimes. Purchasing power by the many is what greases the wheels of consumerism = jobs? Healthcare is not a privilege … it’s a right earned through human evolution. And, if we don’t educate, we will have been truly complicit in our downward spiral. Why do we disparage the lessons of experience? All it takes is respect for one another. Simple. If not, Nature knows how to renew … just look at Mount St. Helens’ volcano surroundings. This might address the abuse of our environment and our obvious destruction of its elements … but, the ultimate commodity is water. Our aquifers are being drained/pilfered by the privileged who are only concerned with their present moment. I won’t be around … but, I deeply care about, at least, my progeny.
In not addressing the above factors, security measures are mere band-aids. No or false peace of mind.
Yes.The 2major ongoing myths are related.The first is that the world game will resume in time and that game is the preservation of a dominant class.The poor and misbegotten will pay for the interruption.
daedal2207: “… that game is the preservation of a dominant class.” It is receiving attention. If society does not adjust, it will pay dearly for that shortsightedness. To my remarks referencing “ Why do we disparage the lessons of experience?“, I would like to submit an example:
Germany’s Lessons for China and America
“ ‘The nation-state alone does not have a future,’ Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, said this week. It was a direct challenge to President Trump’s ‘America First,’ the slogan whose poison keeps on giving. His United States has become the most unserious of nations.
“ Easy, you might say, for a German to dismiss the nation-state. German history, after 1945, became the quest to emerge from national shame. This month, on the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German president, said:
‘Germany’s past is a fractured past — with responsibility for the murdering of millions and the suffering of millions. That breaks our hearts to this day. And that is why I say that this country can only be loved with a broken heart.’ “
“ I don’t think it’s easy, even for a German, to speak of brokenhearted love of country, nor to pronounce, as Merkel did, the demise of the ‘nation-state alone.’ Nationalism is the most facile and effective of political tools, as well as the most dangerous. It was important, in the midst of a pandemic that has revealed a world incapable of a coordinated response and devoid of American leadership, that Europe’s most powerful nation step forward with honor.”
“ For an American, suffering the daily drivel of the Blather-Mouth in Chief, Steinmeier’s statement is powerful — in its honesty, its humility, its seriousness, its decency, its morality, its courage. The Trump administration consigned all those words to the American past.”
“The German chancellor — who will not seek re-election next year, and who will be missed — signaled that innovation is needed. The world cannot return to where it was before the virus. The status quo ante is untenable. The nationalism of Trump’s America, Xi’s China and Vladimir Putin’s Russia is not the answer.”
“Stephen Heintz, the president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, has written of a crisis ‘that stems from the growing obsolescence of three core operating systems that have shaped civilization for the past 350 years: capitalism, fueled by carbon since the dawn of the Industrial Age and increasingly driven by global financialization; the nation-state system, formalized by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648; and representative democracy, a system of self-rule based on Enlightenment ideals of freedom, fairness, justice and equality.’ “
“The European Union, that entity with a stubborn heartbeat, has emerged better from the pandemic than China or the United States. The fear-driven Chinese cover-up of the coronavirus and the chaotic denialism of the Trump administration have been the two main contributors to the disaster. President Xi Jinping’s tightening despotism and the dilapidation of American democracy were evident.“
“It is not just the menaced citizens of Hong Kong who feel queasy about Xi’s China, and not just Americans who feel uneasy about the squalor of Trump. A fish rots from the head down. Both China and the United States traffic in lies.”
“In China, whistle-blowers die or disappear after speaking out on the country’s biological Chernobyl. In Trump’s United States, three inspectors general, including Steve Linick at the shameful Mike Pompeo’s State Department, are fired, and one deputy inspector general. A whistle-blower federal scientist, Rick Bright, is ousted. Oversight is the enemy of leaders who seek impunity in order to do their worst.“
“ Xi grabs power for life and Trump envies him. The most terrifying thing the pandemic has revealed about the two great powers of the 21st century is the ways in which they resemble each other.”
“In an important forthcoming report for the Council on Foreign Relations, Robert Blackwill, a former United States ambassador to India, and Thomas Wright, the director of the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution, speak of the ‘end of world order.’ America’s ‘reputation as a dysfunctional power’ and China’s growing ‘coercive power’ contribute to that. The virus ‘exacerbates tensions.’ “
“Merkel gave her judgment on the nation-state as Germany, for the first time, agreed to mutualize debt to help fund Europe’s weaker economies. She and Emmanuel Macron, the French president, announced an agreement on a recovery fund worth almost $550 billion to be financed by common borrowing. Merkel is a cautious leader capable of boldness inspired by principle. For Germany, whose perennial specters include the hyperinflation of the 1920s and whose perennial obsessions include fiscal discipline, this was a radical break and step toward a more federal Europe.”
“ The German chancellor — who will not seek re-election next year, and who will be missed — signaled that innovation is needed. The world cannot return to where it was before the virus. The status quo ante is untenable. The nationalism of Trump’s America, Xi’s China and Vladimir Putin’s Russia is not the answer.”
“ Stephen Heintz, the president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, has written of a crisis ‘that stems from the growing obsolescence of three core operating systems that have shaped civilization for the past 350 years: capitalism, fueled by carbon since the dawn of the Industrial Age and increasingly driven by global financialization; the nation-state system, formalized by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648; and representative democracy, a system of self-rule based on Enlightenment ideals of freedom, fairness, justice and equality.’ “
“ The problem is that ‘our practice of capitalism is both putting the planetary ecosystem at risk and generating vast economic inequality.’ The nation-state is ‘inadequate for managing transnational challenges like global warming.’ And ‘representative democracy is neither truly representative nor very democratic as citizens feel that self-rule has given way to rule by corporations, special interests and the wealthy.’ “
“ The virus and accompanying economic collapse have only redoubled the urgency of these reflections. This is the Age of Undoing — of world order, of international law, of truth, of America’s word. It is a dangerous time, as Germany knows better than any nation. Autocracy feeds on fear, misery, resentment and lies. It did in the 1930s; it does now. Better to love your country with a broken heart than to love it blind.”
Roger Cohen has been a columnist for The Times since 2009. His columns appear Wednesday and Saturday. He joined The Times in 1990, and has served as a foreign correspondent and foreign editor. @NYTimesCohen
“Class” and “tribal” are in most ways exactly the same. With our Constitution the founders created a system of disciplines that focused on individual rights and responsibilities (regardless group affiliations or hatreds). Thus, many of the ills of class distinction and tribal preference were bypassed, and/or shunted into the background. That is, until those with more love for A class or A tribe felt a need to destroy the original wisdom. Yes, we as individuals have a right to associate with anyone we wish. No, We do not by our original system have a right to dismiss any of the rights assigned to any individual citizen just because of their preferences of association. This created a pragmatic system that diminished the power of the Lemmings among us to be successful in their fashionable drives toward various forms of destruction.
The Octogenarians 
SB on 23 May presented a New York Times article for our consideration. So, let’s do that.
Garbage in, garbage out.
Roger Cohen may be a fine writer, but if the premises he uses are false, so are his conclusions.
If it is true that the “idea” at the core of America is destructive of life, such love must logically be a dysfunctional sentiment. However, if the idea that most accurately represents America is the best currently available for addressing life-expanding needs, then it is not America that is a destroyer of life, it is those who believe otherwise who are threatening of life.
The idea that is “America” protects the benefits of free speech, the running argument. It brings the idea of liberty and its needed disciplines to the level of the individual citizen, thereby shunting the wasteful and destructive fashions of mob-think and groupthink into the background. It rewards, thus incentivizes the best talents to step forward and quickly address human needs. Should loss occur, it tells talent when to quit and direct attention toward profitable activities. By America’s idea being so productive of resources, an expanding population can most quickly and easily acquire its needed nourishments.
But Roger Cohen thinks differently:
He writes: “ The problem is that ‘our practice of capitalism is both putting the planetary ecosystem at risk and generating vast economic inequality.’ The nation-state is ‘inadequate for managing transnational challenges like global warming.’ And ‘representative democracy is neither truly representative nor very democratic as citizens feel that self-rule has given way to rule by corporations, special interests and the wealthy.’ “
Capitalism is blamed by Roger Cohen for an excessive use of carbon fuels, however the science of climate “warming” is not exact, and “America’s” capitalism does not exclude appropriate regulations when provided with reasoned clarity. Economic inequality is considered by him to be a negative. But it is the promise of profit and wealth that incentivizes the productivity that saves and enriches lives. Without this possibility we will have an equal poverty (That is, except for those who have been given, or took, power.) Those who are unequally wealthy in America’s system tend to be those who have produced the most life-enhancing, lifesaving, resources.
Cohen tells us that the nation state is “inadequate for managing transnational challenges like global warming.” But what if a particular nation is less likely than today’s United Nations to be corrupt, and is both a good manager and is sufficiently successful economically that it can best afford and influence other nations to address the common need?
Cohen states: “And ‘representative democracy is neither truly representative nor very democratic as citizens feel that self-rule has given way to rule by corporations, special interests and the wealthy.” We need to know if what citizens “feel” is justified. If it is true that a great number of citizens actually feel this way, we then ask if they have been manipulated to feel this way, by whom, and for what reasons. Given that we are a democratic republic designed to reduce the risk of tyrannical majorities we should expect to “feel” the tensions of competing interests. To “feel” otherwise, would not be wise.
Well written Dad. And depressingly accurate, I’m afraid.
Jeffrey E. Thomas, M.D., FAANS, FACS
Diplomate, American Board of Neurological Surgery
Medical Director, Cerebrovascular and Neurointerventional Neurosurgery
Washington Hospital and Washington Township Medical Foundation 2500 Mowry Ave., Suite 222 Fremont, CA 94538 510 818-1160
Chairman of the Board of Directors, Jeffrey E. Thomas Stroke Shield Foundation 3053 Fillmore St. , #268 San Francisco, CA 94123 (415) 830-6031 http://www.strokeshieldfoundation.org
http://www.jeffreythomasmd.com
________________________________
Reblogged this on daedal2207's Blog.
daedal2207: Your narrative of the $.30 refund check I underscored the non-thinking or robotic attitude which is accepted as efficiency. It’s easy to associate George Orwell’s “1984” introduction of doublespeak. Efficiency? However, it’s more an insult to our common sense. Both examples of the narrative deal with a fundamental social commandment: respect. My comment has a broad brush, but it is influenced by a recent article which came to my attention: https://braveneweurope.com/richard-d-wolff-capitalism-vs-safety-health-an-old-story-again
The present pandemic has certainly made us face … whether we like it or not … the crossroad that’s before us in what appears to be a 100-year cycle for society’s order. The fall of the Roman Empire brought us feudalism. After 1,000 years, capitalism displaced the system with the understanding of trickle down benefits for the greater society. Six hundred plus years later, and with the benefit/curse? of greater/instantaneous communication, we find that man’s easy instincts are not “the better angels,” but rather the corrupt upper hand. As the world population keeps growing … ignorant taboos being major contributors … the present system of distribution is unsustainable. There are no boundaries to material wealth which is equally correlated to no boundaries to unspeakable poverty: health, food, and shelter. Desperation brings the realization that there’s nothing further to lose. Must we go through the pain of frustration?
“Once again we meet society’s need for transition to a worker-coop based economy.”
Working conditions/options will have to undergo through new models. The major cities are noticing their possible irrelevance … antiquities to visit like ancient ruins? Brick and mortar businesses are signs. With all the obvious effects, the one that must be addressed is the minimum wage … kept low by the immoral greed of those who make more than what can be spent in several lifetimes. Purchasing power by the many is what greases the wheels of consumerism = jobs? Healthcare is not a privilege … it’s a right earned through human evolution. And, if we don’t educate, we will have been truly complicit in our downward spiral. Why do we disparage the lessons of experience? All it takes is respect for one another. Simple. If not, Nature knows how to renew … just look at Mount St. Helens’ volcano surroundings. This might address the abuse of our environment and our obvious destruction of its elements … but, the ultimate commodity is water. Our aquifers are being drained/pilfered by the privileged who are only concerned with their present moment. I won’t be around … but, I deeply care about, at least, my progeny.
In not addressing the above factors, security measures are mere band-aids. No or false peace of mind.
… Susanna
P. S. H2O: The Molecule That Made Us … https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/molecule-that-made-us/
Yes.The 2major ongoing myths are related.The first is that the world game will resume in time and that game is the preservation of a dominant class.The poor and misbegotten will pay for the interruption.
daedal2207: “… that game is the preservation of a dominant class.” It is receiving attention. If society does not adjust, it will pay dearly for that shortsightedness. To my remarks referencing “ Why do we disparage the lessons of experience?“, I would like to submit an example:
Germany’s Lessons for China and America
“ ‘The nation-state alone does not have a future,’ Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, said this week. It was a direct challenge to President Trump’s ‘America First,’ the slogan whose poison keeps on giving. His United States has become the most unserious of nations.
“ Easy, you might say, for a German to dismiss the nation-state. German history, after 1945, became the quest to emerge from national shame. This month, on the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German president, said:
‘Germany’s past is a fractured past — with responsibility for the murdering of millions and the suffering of millions. That breaks our hearts to this day. And that is why I say that this country can only be loved with a broken heart.’ “
“ I don’t think it’s easy, even for a German, to speak of brokenhearted love of country, nor to pronounce, as Merkel did, the demise of the ‘nation-state alone.’ Nationalism is the most facile and effective of political tools, as well as the most dangerous. It was important, in the midst of a pandemic that has revealed a world incapable of a coordinated response and devoid of American leadership, that Europe’s most powerful nation step forward with honor.”
“ For an American, suffering the daily drivel of the Blather-Mouth in Chief, Steinmeier’s statement is powerful — in its honesty, its humility, its seriousness, its decency, its morality, its courage. The Trump administration consigned all those words to the American past.”
“The German chancellor — who will not seek re-election next year, and who will be missed — signaled that innovation is needed. The world cannot return to where it was before the virus. The status quo ante is untenable. The nationalism of Trump’s America, Xi’s China and Vladimir Putin’s Russia is not the answer.”
“Stephen Heintz, the president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, has written of a crisis ‘that stems from the growing obsolescence of three core operating systems that have shaped civilization for the past 350 years: capitalism, fueled by carbon since the dawn of the Industrial Age and increasingly driven by global financialization; the nation-state system, formalized by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648; and representative democracy, a system of self-rule based on Enlightenment ideals of freedom, fairness, justice and equality.’ “
“The European Union, that entity with a stubborn heartbeat, has emerged better from the pandemic than China or the United States. The fear-driven Chinese cover-up of the coronavirus and the chaotic denialism of the Trump administration have been the two main contributors to the disaster. President Xi Jinping’s tightening despotism and the dilapidation of American democracy were evident.“
“It is not just the menaced citizens of Hong Kong who feel queasy about Xi’s China, and not just Americans who feel uneasy about the squalor of Trump. A fish rots from the head down. Both China and the United States traffic in lies.”
“In China, whistle-blowers die or disappear after speaking out on the country’s biological Chernobyl. In Trump’s United States, three inspectors general, including Steve Linick at the shameful Mike Pompeo’s State Department, are fired, and one deputy inspector general. A whistle-blower federal scientist, Rick Bright, is ousted. Oversight is the enemy of leaders who seek impunity in order to do their worst.“
“ Xi grabs power for life and Trump envies him. The most terrifying thing the pandemic has revealed about the two great powers of the 21st century is the ways in which they resemble each other.”
“In an important forthcoming report for the Council on Foreign Relations, Robert Blackwill, a former United States ambassador to India, and Thomas Wright, the director of the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution, speak of the ‘end of world order.’ America’s ‘reputation as a dysfunctional power’ and China’s growing ‘coercive power’ contribute to that. The virus ‘exacerbates tensions.’ “
“Merkel gave her judgment on the nation-state as Germany, for the first time, agreed to mutualize debt to help fund Europe’s weaker economies. She and Emmanuel Macron, the French president, announced an agreement on a recovery fund worth almost $550 billion to be financed by common borrowing. Merkel is a cautious leader capable of boldness inspired by principle. For Germany, whose perennial specters include the hyperinflation of the 1920s and whose perennial obsessions include fiscal discipline, this was a radical break and step toward a more federal Europe.”
“ The German chancellor — who will not seek re-election next year, and who will be missed — signaled that innovation is needed. The world cannot return to where it was before the virus. The status quo ante is untenable. The nationalism of Trump’s America, Xi’s China and Vladimir Putin’s Russia is not the answer.”
“ Stephen Heintz, the president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, has written of a crisis ‘that stems from the growing obsolescence of three core operating systems that have shaped civilization for the past 350 years: capitalism, fueled by carbon since the dawn of the Industrial Age and increasingly driven by global financialization; the nation-state system, formalized by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648; and representative democracy, a system of self-rule based on Enlightenment ideals of freedom, fairness, justice and equality.’ “
“ The problem is that ‘our practice of capitalism is both putting the planetary ecosystem at risk and generating vast economic inequality.’ The nation-state is ‘inadequate for managing transnational challenges like global warming.’ And ‘representative democracy is neither truly representative nor very democratic as citizens feel that self-rule has given way to rule by corporations, special interests and the wealthy.’ “
“ The virus and accompanying economic collapse have only redoubled the urgency of these reflections. This is the Age of Undoing — of world order, of international law, of truth, of America’s word. It is a dangerous time, as Germany knows better than any nation. Autocracy feeds on fear, misery, resentment and lies. It did in the 1930s; it does now. Better to love your country with a broken heart than to love it blind.”
Roger Cohen has been a columnist for The Times since 2009. His columns appear Wednesday and Saturday. He joined The Times in 1990, and has served as a foreign correspondent and foreign editor. @NYTimesCohen
“Class” and “tribal” are in most ways exactly the same. With our Constitution the founders created a system of disciplines that focused on individual rights and responsibilities (regardless group affiliations or hatreds). Thus, many of the ills of class distinction and tribal preference were bypassed, and/or shunted into the background. That is, until those with more love for A class or A tribe felt a need to destroy the original wisdom. Yes, we as individuals have a right to associate with anyone we wish. No, We do not by our original system have a right to dismiss any of the rights assigned to any individual citizen just because of their preferences of association. This created a pragmatic system that diminished the power of the Lemmings among us to be successful in their fashionable drives toward various forms of destruction.