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The Atlantic Politics & Policy Daily: The Final Countdown

On April 1, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

What We’re Following Today

It’s Friday, March 29.

‣ Linda McMahon, a former pro-wrestling executive and the current head of the Small Business Administration, will reportedly resign from her position to chair President Donald Trump’s super PAC, America First Action.

Here’s what else we’re watching:

Will the Public Ever See the Mueller Report?: Attorney General William Barr said he plans to share with Congress Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report by mid-April, if not sooner. In his letter to Senator Lindsey Graham and Representative Jerry Nadler, heads of Congress’s two judiciary committees, Barr also said that he will not share the contents of the report with the White House before releasing it, and noted that his summary of the findings from last week was “not an exhaustive recounting” of Mueller’s report, which is nearly 400 pages long.

But that doesn’t mean the public will see the review in full, reports Natasha Bertrand. “Between the withholding of grand-jury and privileged material and the redaction of classified information, the public could be left with a shell of the original report.”

Listen to this week’s episode of Radio Atlantic, in which the staff writers Edward-Issac Dovere and McKay Coppins discuss what all this means for 2020.

Remember the Pee Tape?: Many of the president’s critics were disappointed last week when Barr declared that Mueller’s investigation all but cleared the president of wrongdoing. But the “seeds of the disappointment” were planted two years ago, when BuzzFeed News first published an unverified—and unverifiable—dossier compiled by the British-intelligence operative Christopher Steele, argues David Graham. The salacious document “set the stage for the political response to investigations to come—inflating expectations in the public, moving the goalposts for Trump in a way that has fostered bad behavior, and tainting the press’s standing.”

Call Me a Socialist!: Joe Sanberg, a multimillionaire investor, might be running for president.  Sanberg supports Medicare for all, the Green New Deal, increased regulation, and expanding the social safety net. He has no name recognition, but in an election where Trump has painted the Democrats as radical socialists, Sanberg thinks he has an edge: “Good luck to them if they want to call me a socialist, because businesspeople aren’t socialists,” he told Edward-Isaac Dovere.  

— Elaine Godfrey and Madeleine Carlisle

Snapshot

Three-year-old Ailianie Hernandez waits with her mother, Julianna Ageljo, to apply for the nutritional-assistance program at the Department of Family Affairs in Bayamón, Puerto Rico. The island’s government says it lacks sufficient federal funding to help people recover from Hurricane Maria amid a 12-year recession. (Carlos Giusti / AP)

Ideas From The Atlantic

Barbara Bush’s Long-Hidden ‘Thoughts on Abortion’ (Susan Page)
“In 1980, when George H. W. Bush was making his first bid for the presidency, Barbara Bush covered four sheets of lined paper with her bold handwriting, then tucked the pages into a folder with her diary and some personal letters. She was trying to sort out what she believed about one of the most divisive issues of the day.” → Read on.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act Is Confusing Taxpayers (Mark Mazur)
“Although the most recent IRS data show that average income-tax refunds are closely tracking the average refund from last year, taxpayers have been complaining in interviews with journalists and on social media that their refund is smaller than expected or that they unexpectedly owe additional tax. Given that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was all about tax cuts, how can this be?” → Read on.

Quit Harping on U.S. Aid to Israel (James Kirchick)
“U.S. assistance to Israel demands far less—in both blood and treasure—than many other American defense relationships around the world.” → Read on.

What Else We’re Reading

‣ An Awkward Kiss Changed How I Saw Joe Biden (Lucy Flores, New York)
‣ Our President of the Perpetual Grievance (Susan B. Glasser, The New Yorker) (? Paywall)
‣ Former Trump Family Driver Has Been in ICE Custody for 8 Months (Miriam Jordan, The New York Times) (? Paywall)
‣ Is Pete Buttigieg a Political Genius? (Alex Shephard, The New Republic)
‣ The Blue State Trump Thinks He Can Flip in 2020 (Alex Isenstadt, Politico)

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Jordan Peterson & His Mission

On April 1, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

Last week, Jordan Peterson spoke at the Liberty University convocation (full video here). It was an unusual venue for a secular man, a clinical psychologist who is decidedly not an Evangelical in his style or his belief. Esther O’Reilly at Patheos talks about something that happened during the Q&A portion of his talk.  If you want to see it, go to the main video, and fast-forward to the 21:00 mark. That’s when it happens:

A young man rushes up and grabs a microphone, on the verge of tears: “My name is David [full name redacted], and I need help! I need help! I just wanted to meet you. I’m unwell…I want to be well…”

Peterson says, “I hope you can get the help that you need.” Spiritual director David Nasser walks over to calm the student as security guards appear. The student says more that’s not quite discernible, but you can make out “I’ve called 911” and “I want to know him better…”

Then he falls on his knees and begins sobbing. Tearing, wailing sobs.

Peterson begins to walk over himself as the video feed cuts out, but audio is still rolling. You can put together that the guards must have begun to remove the student, because Nasser’s voice can be heard saying firmly, “Stop. Stop. Stop pulling him.”

While the student is still wailing, Nasser says a short, simple prayer. He prays that God would heal the student, that the Spirit would work in him, and that he would be encouraged in this moment to know that everyone is on his side. After he finishes, the wails have subsided. The last thing he says to the student is, “Hey buddy. We’re for you.” Then the conversation resumes, as well as it can be resumed after a disturbance like that. Peterson is badly shaken and breaking up, trying to collect himself. Falwell opens his mouth and says something or other. Nasser is reassuring and earnest, patting Peterson’s shoulder and forthrightly attempting to salvage what can be salvaged of the convocation. Things stumble forward towards an eventual conclusion. But the disturbance hangs over it all.

If you listen to the episode, and the agonized wailing of this young man, you can see how and why it colored everything. That poor soul is in so much pain. No wonder it knocked Peterson off his game for a bit.

In her Patheos blog entry, O’Reilly meditates on the culture clash between Peterson and the Liberty folks, and how they worked together surprisingly well, despite it. In this passage, O’Reilly refers to the convocation’s opening ceremony, which involved a full worship band, and students singing along with their hands in the air:

For his part, Peterson seems genuinely touched. Partway through, he pauses to say something about the opening ceremony. I had hoped, cringing inwardly, that perhaps he was backstage and had missed it, but I realized that in fact he had been sitting through it the whole time. Yet what he said humbled me. He said that he loved it. He said that one of his greatest fears was the spread of undue (and unearned) cynicism among our young people. But the warmth and the sincerity exuded by the young people during the opening encouraged him. There was something “beautiful” about it.

You have to watch this short clip at the very end of the event. Pastor David Nasser asks Peterson how he (Nasser) can pray for him in the week upcoming. Peterson fights back tears, and gives an answer of startling humility:

Here is a link to the entire Liberty convocation with Peterson. 

I was really moved by the way Peterson handled himself here — moved, but not surprised. I’ve spent the past week or so listening to Peterson lectures about the psychological meaning of the Bible. Obviously I know who Peterson is, but I had never heard more than the odd interview with him before this past week. Devoting hours to hearing him talk really did reveal to me why he has such a following, especially among lost young men. Whatever flaws Peterson has, he leaves no doubt that he really cares about the people he’s trying to reach. A lot of what he says is just common sense, but he has a way of making it sound like he’s speaking right into one’s life.

He spoke into my life, I’ll tell you that. I have been struggling for a long time, trying to untie a certain knot that has long resisted my efforts in prayer and contemplation to undo. I didn’t turn to Jordan Peterson for advice — in fact, I can’t remember why I started listening to these Peterson lectures at all — but in truth, Peterson’s insights have given me a new way to think about the complicated problem, and the first hope I’ve had in a long time that there might be a solution. It’s a little too personal to discuss here, but the point I want to make is that I’m not a lost young dude, but rather a middle-aged man (only five years younger than Peterson) who has been unable to think or pray his way around a particular challenge that has weighed heavily on my mind. Peterson didn’t solve it for me, but he did restore hope that I am not helpless to solve it.

Peterson is not a  theologian or even a churchgoer (which is why Christians shouldn’t take his insights as Gospel truth), but I’ll tell you, church for me this morning was more meaningful than it has been in a long, long time, because of the words I heard Jordan Peterson — an unbeliever! — say about the Bible this past week. Peterson made me think about my own religion and its holy book in a fresh and life-giving way. It has been ages since I heard someone speak hope to me in this way, and believe me, I needed to hear it. This, I think, is why it kind of got to me to see Peterson near tears there at the end of the Liberty convocation, and to hear the prayer request he made (watch it above, if you haven’t yet).

UPDATE: Reader Luke B. comments:

This moment is a metaphor.

Many have asked why Jordan Peterson has had this moment over the last year. Few of his ideas are novel in Western philosophy, yet for some reason he had an impact no other popular or academic intellectual has had.

He filled a gap. The gap should not have existed. It was a lack of father figures, a lack of purpose and meaning. In the world of youtube videos he insufficiently fills that gap, but that’s asking too much of one man.

A mentally broken man, leaning down in a last desperate hope that an online intellectual could replace for him the meaning that used to be given by a thousand years of inherited culture. Overlaid by an evangelical giving a well intentioned but generic prayer.

Something is going to snap soon.

Reader Heidi:

I have to say this; watching this video is a really good example of why people are “following” Peterson instead of turning to their own pastors, teachers, priests, whoever else. Compare Nasser and Peterson’s responses, depth of knowledge and identification with the young man David who was sobbing. In short, Peterson got it, Nasser didn’t.

Don’t get me wrong, Nasser did well in preventing the poor kid from being jerked off the stage; however, Peterson is not offering pat phrases or anything surface level, he’s interested and responding to the human condition at the deepest level, which is why he (Peterson) was so impacted by what just happened. The sob of the young man shows he is begging for meaning, something so deep that he can rebuild his psyche on it… Peterson is actually offering more of that depth than the evangelical Christian, and I say that as a Protestant Christian who doesn’t think Peterson has the full answer because he doesn’t believe in the objective reality of Jesus’ resurrection (at least not yet).

We need a Peterson who is fully Christian, or for Peterson to become fully Christian and then watch out world, there would be another revival IMO. I was one who recommended Peterson, specifically his Bible lectures, to the reader whose message you (Rod) posted awhile back; he was looking for the same meaning in life. My husband and I work in the mental health field (he’s a Clinical Psychologist, and I’m a Master’s level Christian Counselor), we use Peterson with people, esp. young men, who are not Christians because Peterson at least gives a reason for hope, and moral living in a way that atheists and agnostics can respect.

The world hasn’t seen a charismatic Jungian Evolutionary Clinical Psychologist who speaks on a vast stage before now, it’s really fascinating to see it unfold. I believe Peterson will check on the young man from the video. I hope so. And, yes, I pray for him and hope he finds Truth and Peace.

The Cuban Nationalization of US Property in 1960: the Historical and Global Context

On April 1, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

In moving toward at least partial implementation of Title III of the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, the Trump administration has resurrected the issue of Cuban nationalization of U.S. properties in Cuba in 1960.

The conflict between the United States and Cuba over the nationalized U.S. properties is a particular case in a historic and still unfolding global conflict between the global powers and the Third World.  The conflict became manifest in 1955, when leaders of twenty-three newly independent Asian and African nations met in Bandung, Indonesia.  They sought to restructure the global economic patterns established during European colonial domination, and to this end, they advocated unity and economic cooperation among the newly independent nations, among other strategies.

The leaders of the emerging Third World project met in 1961 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, where they founded the Non-Aligned Movement. Among the founders were the giants of the era: Tito, Sukarno, Nasser, Zhou En-lai, Nkrumah, and Ben Youssef.  Cuba was among the founders, represented by the President of the Revolutionary Government, Osvaldo Dorticós. Revolutionary Cuba and Latin American movements, reflecting on their historical semi-colonial and contemporary neocolonial situation, were forging a perspective similar to the newly independent nations of Africa and Asia.

The Non-Aligned Movement drew from the principals of the UN Charter, including the “equal rights and self-determination of peoples” and “the sovereign equality of all” nations.  And the Third Word project took seriously the Charter declaration that “the United Nations shall promote higher standards of living . . . and conditions of economic and social progress and development.”

At the same time, the Third World project discerned the need to formulate principles from the perspective of the neocolonized peoples, and accordingly, it developed a proposal for an alternative world-system not built on a colonial foundation.  The “Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order,” adopted by the UN General Assembly on May 1, 1974, expressed twenty principles on which the new international economic order should be founded.

The principles affirmed by the “New International Economic Order” included the right of states to nationalize properties, necessary for newly independent nations, if they are to exercise sovereignty over their natural resources and to promote economic and social development.  The document further maintained that no nation should be subjected to coercion in order to prevent it from exercising this right.

The political, economic, and social situation in Cuba in 1959 demanded that the Revolutionary Government exercise its right to nationalize.  More than half of agricultural land was in foreign hands, and eighty-five percent of peasants worked land they did not own.  Agrarian Reform had been an article of the 1940 Cuban Constitution, but it was not implemented by subsequent governments.  In his October 16, 1953 self-defense, known as “History Will Absolve Me,” Fidel Castro revealed a revolutionary program that included an initial redistribution of land to tenant farmers and sharecroppers, with compensation to the owners; and a subsequent agrarian reform law, based on further study. On October 10, 1958, the Rebel Army in the Sierra Maestraemitted a law giving ownership to small peasants of the land on which they worked.  When the Revolution came to power, the revolutionary leadership considered agrarian reform an essential economic measure, necessary for the social and economic development of the nation; and it found overwhelming support for it among the people.

The Agrarian Reform Law was emitted by the Revolutionary Government on May 17, 1959.  The Law set the maximum quantity of land per proprietor at 406 hectares.  It recognized the constitutional right of the proprietors to compensation, and it put the value of the compensation at what owners had declared in tax reports.  It established payment in the form of “Agrarian Reform Bonds,” which were to accumulate at an annual interest of no more than 4.5%, and they would be redeemable in twenty years.

The Agrarian Reform Law struck at the heart of the economic relation between Cuba and the United States, and it defined the anti-neocolonial character of the Revolution.  The U.S. government immediately launched an ideological campaign against the Cuban Revolutionary Government, invoking the phantom of communism.  On March 17, 1960, the Eisenhower Administrated initiated the planning of a U.S.-backed military invasion carried out by Cuban counterrevolutionaries based in Miami.  On July 2, 1960, the U.S. Congress authorized the President to amend the U.S.-Cuba sugar quota; and on July 6, President Dwight Eisenhower reduced the U.S. sugar purchase to 23% below the quota, seeking to provoke economic difficulties in Cuba.  Following the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion of April 17, 1961, the U.S. government turned to an embargo on trade with Cuba and to support of terrorist activities on the island, supporting counterrevolutionary terrorist organizations based in Miami.  The goal of U.S. policy was what we today call regime change, seeking to reestablish a government subordinate to U.S. interests, in accordance with the requirements of the neocolonial world order.

The Cuban Revolution did not want conflict with the United States; it wanted cooperation on a foundation of respect for its sovereignty. The Cuban perspective is evident in Law 851, emitted by the Revolutionary Government on July 6, 1960. The Law authorized the President and the Prime Minister of Cuba to nationalize U.S. properties by means of a Joint Resolution.  It established compensation for the nationalized properties through government bonds at 2% annual interest, with payment to begin in a period of no less than thirty years.  The Law mandated the National Bank of Cuba to create a fund that would be fed by Cuban government deposits in an amount equal to 25% of the value of the U.S. purchase of Cuban sugar in excess of the sugar quota.  The Law, therefore, proposed a mutually beneficial resolution, linking compensation for nationalized properties to the U.S.-Cuban sugar trade. By means of a higher U.S. sugar purchase and Cuban use of the additional income to finance compensation and invest in industrial development, Law 851 pointed to the transformation of core-peripheral exploitation into North-South cooperation.  The Cuban proposal, however, was rendered impractical by the simultaneous reduction of U.S. purchases below the sugar quota (announced on the same day, July 6), and by its subsequent policy of regime change.  Nevertheless, thirty days later, in the announcement of Joint Resolution #1, Fidel appears to remain hopeful that the U.S. government will accept the proposal of compensation through U.S. purchase above the sugar quota.

Joint Resolution #1 was announced on August 6, 1960. The Resolution declared the compulsory purchase of twenty-six U.S. companies, including twenty-one sugar companies.  The Resolution explained the historical context and the necessity of the expropriation of U.S. owned sugar lands, noting that “the Sugar Companies seized the best lands of our country” in the first decades of the twentieth century, during an invasion of “insatiable and unscrupulous” foreign capitalists, who “have recuperated many times the value of what they invested;” and noting that “it is the duty of the peoples of Latin America to be inclined toward the recuperation of its national riches, taking them away from the control of the monopolies and foreign interests that impede the progress of the peoples, promote political interference, and infringe upon the sovereignty of the underdeveloped peoples of America.”  In accordance with the Agrarian Reform Law of 1959, the expropriated land was used to develop state-managed agricultural enterprises; or it was distributed without charge to peasants who worked on land they did not own, each receiving a “vital minimum” of 26.85 hectares, and all encouraged to form voluntary agricultural cooperatives.

Joint Resolution #1 also nationalized a U.S.-owned electricity company and a U.S.-owned telephone company, both of which charged notoriously high rates, the reduction of which had been a popular demand prior to the triumph of the revolution.  In addition, the Joint Resolution nationalized three oil refineries, which historically had set a higher price for Cuban distributors; and which recently had refused to process Soviet crude that had been purchased at a favorable price by the Cuban government, compelling the government to invoke a 1938 agreement and order the refining of the oil.   Under state ownership, electricity and telephone rates and gasoline prices were significantly reduced.

Joint Resolution #2 of September 17, 1960 nationalized the three U.S. banks in Cuba.  Historically, the crediting policies of the U.S. banks had favored Cuban exportation of raw materials and importation of U.S. manufactured goods, thus restricting Cuban industrial development.  Since the triumph of the Revolution, the banks had adopted policies designed to reduce U.S.-Cuban commerce, supporting the efforts of the U.S. government to suffocate the Cuban economy.

Joint Resolution #3, issued by the Revolutionary Government on October 24, 1960, authorized the nationalization of the remaining 166 U.S. properties in Cuba. They included 28 insurance companies, 18 chemical companies, 18 mining companies, 15 machines importing companies, 11 hotels and bars, and 7 metallurgical companies.  These nationalizations were a response to the continuing aggressiveness of the U.S. government toward the Cuban Revolution, including its October 19 prohibition of the export of U.S. merchandise to Cuba.

The government of Cuba repeatedly declared its disposition to negotiate with the government of the United States any demands that might emerge from U.S. proprietors adversely affected by the nationalizations.  Consistent with this disposition, the government of Cuba negotiated agreements with five nations, settling the demands of their citizens resulting from the Cuban nationalizations: France (agreement of March 16, 1967); Switzerland (March 2, 1967); United Kingdom (October 18, 1978); Canada (November 7, 1980); and Spain (January 26, 1988).

Lacking support from the U.S. side for cooperation, revolutionary Cuba continued on its sovereign road, which included the proclamation of the socialist character of its revolution; and the development of popular democracy, with mass organizations, mass assemblies, neighborhood nomination assemblies, and assemblies of popular power, alternatives to the structures of representative democracy.  The United States, meanwhile, continued with its policy of regime change, maintaining a prohibition of economic, commercial, and financial transactions with Cuba.  The Helms-Burton Act of 1996 grants the U.S. government the right to continue with coercive economic measures until Cuba replaces its structures of popular democracy with those of representative democracy.

The Cuba-USA conflict continues unresolved because the North-South global conflict, to which it pertains, also remains unresolved. The neocolonial global powers ignored the adoption by the UN General Assembly of the New International Economic Order.  Moving in the opposite direction, they imposed neoliberal economic policies on the neocolonies of the world; and subsequently, with the expansion of a new form of terrorism as a pretext, they launched wars of aggression in the Middle East.

Just as revolutionary Cuba persisted in its sovereign road, the governments of the Third World have persisted in their proposal for a new international economic order.  The persistence of the Third World project is evident in the evolution of the Non-Aligned Movement, which has grown to 120 member-nations today. The Movement was highjacked by accommodationists to neoliberalism from 1982 to 2006, but since 2006, when Cuba assumed the presidency for the second time, the Movement has retaken the principles of the period 1955 to 1982.  At the same time, during the last twenty years, Latin America and the Caribbean have developed regional associations, putting into practice the Bandung call for unity and economic cooperation.  These regional associations and the progressive governments of the region have been developing economic cooperation and political alliances with China, Russia, Vietnam, and Iran, whose leaders invoke the discourse and the spirit of Bandung.

In the context of the sustained structural crisis of the world-system and the relative economic decline of the United States, U.S. imperialist policies toward Latin America are no longer viable.  The Trump policy of aggression toward Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua has even less possibilities, inasmuch as greater militarism and economic aggressiveness accelerate the U.S. economic and commercial decline, and they exacerbate the structural contradictions of the world-system. A world-system founded on cooperation and mutually beneficial trade, persistently proposed by the neocolonized peoples, is the necessary road for humanity.