In a scene that was truly remarkable, Trump, who is not even the President yet, attended the reopening of Notre Dame and was given a royal welcome by Macron. It was quite a revelation to watch Macron behave in such an obsequious fashion towards a man he must secretly revile.
Macaron, Scholz and even Starmer are all, politically speaking, dead men walking though admittedly, Starmer has plenty of time to resurrect himself. Trump, on the other hand, strides on the world stage once again like a colossus. This must be infuriating and demoralizing for his political opponents in the United States, especially the Democrats.
Why is Macron treating Trump like a demi-god? Could it be because he fully understands that he (and his country) are bereft of power and influence and that his only hope to be consequential for the remainder of his term is to offer up his services as Trump’s errand boy?
Trump must surely be the most lucky man alive. The Assad regime is collapsing which means that Iran has lost virtually all of its Middle Eastern allies. Syria is gone; Hamas is gone, Hezbolah is gone and Lebanon has been neutered. Iran still has Iraq on its side but Iraq is too weak and poor (and as a result of Assad’s fall) too isolated to render Iran any assistance.
The Obama/Biden dream of strengthening Iran to serve as a counterweight to Israel and the Sunni Arab nations lies in ruins. The reputations of the Obama/Biden foreign policy nomenclatura have been decimated right along with Assad’s hold on power. Russia is also profoundly weakened and may well lose its access to Syria’s warm water ports. A weakened Russia might very well be more willing to cut a reasonable deal on Ukraine. Of course, if Iran and Russia are diminished by what is happening in Syria, so, to some extent is China.
Both Trump and Macron are smart enough to understand that the proximate cause of all this good news is Israel’s defeat first of Hamas and then of Hezbollah. Behold the Lord of Hosts; behold his mighty hand. Macaron and Trump will both realize that the Obama/Biden crew did everything possible to stay Israel’s hand. This clueless crew wanted a ceasefire in both theaters in the worst way because they wanted Hamas and Hezbollah to remain intact. Thank goodness the Israeli Prime Minister was smart enough and strong enough to tell Biden where to stick it.
All that remains for Trump when he enters the White House is to bring the venal Qataris to heel and to reinvigorate the pursuit of the Abraham Accords, which should be far easier now that Iran has been weakened. As for the Iran nuclear program, either the Ayotollahs will surrender it or it will be bombed out of existence by the Israelis, the United Ststes or both.
Its a bit befuddling how Trump can be so damn lucky. Its almost as if he's protected by the deity. First there was the fortuitous turn of the head which saved his life. Then there was this series of events in the Middle East which offers him the opportunity to bring real peace to the region for the first time in decades. When he succeeds, that Nobel Peace Prize that he craves will almost surely adorn his mantel.
Given his checkered history why would God or the Gods be so good to him. Its a conundrum. But, of course, the God of the Israelites loved and protected King David despite David’s lust for Bathshebs and his despicable behavior towards her husband, Uriah the Hittite.
Similarly, Athena loved and protected Odysseus despite his questionable character. After all, the Greek sojourner needlessly blinded Polyphemus and was remarkably brutal when killing the suitors.
Trump seems to be beloved of the deity in the same way as David and Oddysseus. How else can his astonishing good luck be explained?
Macron is smart enough to see all of this. He craves relevancy. The only way for him to remain relevant is to suck up to Trump. Count on the fact that he will. My guess is that France and the United States will get along famously for the next four years.
The question : “At some point, don’t we need masses who know better than to believe the liars? “ deserves a resounding “YES.” With the help of billionaire social and mass media owners, the right in the US convinced a myopic electorate that the price of eggs outweighed legitimate democratic principles with the result that 14 billionaires have now been nominated to destroy various government agencies whose prior purpose was to provide services and and protect those same voters.
Your question about irrationality haunts us all, or the rational remnant anyway. If “the irrationality is the point,” (h/t Adam Serwer), the best early analysis I’ve seen is in Zizek’s Substack after the election. Although I’m guessing you’re not a fan (!), I’d like to share the long quotation I found helpful. Others may not! But it certainly does way more than the writers you dissected. (IMO it also applies to French farmer strikes, Gilets Jaunes, and so on: “Give us back our stolen enjoyment!” I.e, “Make us great again.”)
Zizek (“From MAGA to Mega: After Trump’s Victory”):
“We are not talking here just about ideology in terms of ideas and guiding principles but ideology in a more basic sense—how political discourse functions as a social link. Aaron Schuster observed that Trump is “an over-present leader whose authority is based on his own will and who openly disdains knowledge—it is this rebellious, anti-systemic theater that serves as the point of identification for the people.” This is why Trump’s serial insults and outright lies—not to mention the fact that he is a convicted criminal—work for him. Trump’s ideological triumph resides in the fact that his followers experience their obedience to him as a form of subversive resistance. Or, as Todd McGowan put it: “One can support the fledgling fascist leader in an attitude of total obedience while feeling oneself to be utterly radical, which is a position designed to maximize the enjoyment factor almost de facto.”
Here we should mobilize Freud’s notion of “theft of enjoyment”: an Other’s enjoyment inaccessible to us (women’s enjoyment for men, another ethnic group’s enjoyment for our group…), or our rightful enjoyment stolen from us by an Other or threatened by an Other. Russel Sbriglia noticed how this dimension of “theft of enjoyment” played a crucial role when Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021: “Could there possibly be a better exemplification of the logic of ‘theft of enjoyment’ than the mantra that Trump supporters were chanting while storming the Capitol: ‘Stop the steal!’? The hedonistic, carnivalesque nature of storming the Capitol to ‘stop the steal’ wasn't merely incidental to the attempted insurrection; insofar as it was all about taking back enjoyment (supposedly) stolen from them by others (i.e., Blacks, Mexicans, Muslims, LGBTQ+, etc.), carnival was absolutely essential to it.” What happened on January 6, 2021 at the Capitol was not a coup attempt but a carnival.”
In this analysis, French protestors still lack a Lord of Misrule for their Carnival: will (s)he be found on the right or the left? Macron is so intelligent: did he not sense this dimension of the protests? I’m very curious about that.
Thank you for your essays, CB: light in a dark time!
Within the past 30 days, I built a scale-model (1:1000) of Notre Dame out of metal pieces. But, there was too much opportunity for imperfect positioning at each step. Perhaps I will leave it to Claire in my will.
I guess I am naive. I am astonished that French economists were allowed to cook the books for several decades without detection and punishment.
During the past four years, the American Federal Deficit increased from 1 trillion to $12 trillion.
While the situation is tragic, the way you write about it makes me smile.
Humans can be so shortsighted, idiotic or incompetent that all that is left to do is to laugh at these decedents of hunter gatherers attempting to organize themselves in the modern world they have created. The evolutionary baggage we all carry is a big part of what makes us human (for better and worse). It also makes it next to impossible for us to be perfect, but certainly, we can be way better than we are at the moment.
In reference to the second footnote about the Romanian election, it appears that the results of the first round of voting has been nullified by a Romanian court.
The CAC40 is a stock index of the forty largest publically traded French corporations. It’s roughly equivalent to the Dow Jones Industrial average which is an index of the thirty largest publically traded American companies. I read something the other day that was startling.
The market capitalization of the entire CAC40 is approximately $2.3 trillion. Remarkably, four American companies each have a market cap individually that exceeds the market cap of the top 40 French companies combined. The market cap of Apple is $3.7 trillion. The market cap of Nvidia is $3.5 trillion. The market cap of Microsoft is $3.3 trillion. The market cap of Amazon is $2.4 trillion. This means that Amazon alone is worth as much as the top 40 French corporations combined.
The per capita GDP of France is roughly equivalent to the per capita GDP of Arkansas, an American state that perpetually ranks as one of the poorest American states. This is no surprise. Can anyone name an innovation of consequence that's come out of France in the 21st century? I can't.
Something in Claire’s essay struck me. She indicated that Ms Le Pen was in a rush to bring the Government down before a potential conviction for using EU finds to pay her party apparachiks. Apparently a conviction would preclude her run for the French presidency. Once again, lawfare has the opposite effect than what elites hoped for. Just as the ridiculous criminal and civil cases against Trump enhanced the President-elect’s prospects rather than diminishing them, the absurd case against Le Pen motivated her to bring down the Government that she might otherwise have decided to save. Will elites on either side of the Atlantic ever realize that their lawfare strategy keeps boomeranging?
Its no mystery why the liberal west is collapsing. In no particular order, here are some of the factors:
1) Massive illegal immigration that eviscerates domestic comity and crowds out legitimate asylum seekers. The financial and cultural consequences of illegal immigration are tearing the West apart.
2) The breakdown of traditional values, especially the nuclear family. There is not a single nation in the West where a family can be supported if only one parent works. While the European safety net is stronger than the American safety net, it is a poor substitute for the prosperity that comes from a single worker being able to support his/her entire family.
3) The collapse of religious observance. There is nothing in the secular world that provides as clear a grounding in ethical behavior and generosity as religion.
4) The cult of financialization. The best minds in the western world devote themselves to developing ever more arcane financial instruments while the best minds in Asia devote themselves to the development of ever more productive manufacturing techniques.
5) Centralization. Nothing is a bigger anathema to innovation than centralization of political and economic power. In both the United States and Europe the by-product of centralization is an increasingly intrusive regulatory apparatus. Many if not most of these regulations are profoundly destructive and stifle innovation and inhibit productivity.
6) The rise of credentialism. When achievement is determined by academic success rather than accomplishments in the real world the entire society suffers.
7) Fear of disintermediation. Disintermefiation is far and away the most exciting opportunity for increased productivity that Western societies have. Nothing enhances productivity more than eliminating the middle-man. Every industry that has been disintermediated is far more successful and productive than it was before. But disintermediation never occurs without a fight. The two entities currently being disintermediated are the media, especially the press and government itself. Is it any wonder that the mainstream press hate substack, Twitter-X and Tik Tok? Did anyone expect the mainstream press to abandon its role as the arbiter of what’s true and what’s false without a fight? Governments jealously guard their role as sovereigns of the money supply despite their remarkable incompetentce. Did anyone expect governments to acquiesce to the new role of cryptocurrencies without trying to regulate crypto in a manner so intrusive as to strangle the baby in the bed?
8) Demographic suicide. There are many reasons that Western populations are collapsing. But there is one uncomfortable reality that is simply true. The two biggest factors that impede fecundity are female literacy and female participation in the workplace. In developing nations, as women learn to read, the number of children they have goes down, often way down. In developed societies the more women work outside of the home, the fewer children they have and the later in life they marry and have their first child. Its an awkward topic to discuss, but it is a reality.
I could go on and on. But the reasons for the decline of the West are staring us in the face. The question is whether we are willing to entertain an honest debate in the search for answers.
M. Wig-Wag, so many points in your essay and I agree to some extent with a few, but regarding Donald Trump's legal jeopardy -- "ridiculous" cases you call them -- I think you discount the seriousness of the crimes. Were they charged against any other mortal besides The Donald I have no doubt that they would be dealt with as the legal process in a somewhat similar manner, though with less public interest. The alleged perpetrator would be charged, tried, and if found guilty, sentenced. The cases are made ridiculous by the Supreme Court's ruling that not only are Presidents immune from prosecution, but so also are ex-Presidents. Then again, Trump re-election makes the cases moot. Perhaps that is just as well: at least the public can be spared the expense of installing gold-plated toilets in whatever Big House inmate Trump would be assigned to.
Regardless of whether you think the criminal cases brought against Trump were legitimate or not, its clear that many if not most Americans concluded that the cases were politically motivated. They listened to breathless coverage in the press about these cases for three years. After listening to this three year debate, a substantial number of Americans concluded that the cases were either meritless or nefariously motivated. Ironically, the vigor with which these cases were pursued made many Americans more likely to vote for Trump not less likely to vote for him.
People of good will can disagree about the Supreme Court’s decision about Presidential immunity. The Court’s decision was based on the need to preserve the separation of powers defined by the Constitution. The idea is that a president needs to perform his duties without fear of subsequent prosecution after he leaves office lest his decision-making process be hindered. Absolute immunity attaches to core presidential functions and presumptive immunity attaches to acts within the “outer perimeter” of official duties. There is no immunity for private acts.
There are legitimate arguments on both sides about this decision but it is fatuous to claim the decision has no merit whatsoever and was motivated exclusively by politics. There's no question that Trump benefited when the decision about this delayed his Federal trial in Washington, DC (the classified documents case in Florida has already been dismissed). But Biden will benefit as much or more than Trump.
Biden can preemptively pardon as many of his friends and family members and supporters as he wants to but he is unlikely to pardon himself. If called to testify against Biden personally, the people he pardons can no longer plead the Fifth Amendment’s protections against self-incrimination and refuse to testify because they are no longer legally vulnerable. The Supreme Court’s decision hinders Trump’s ability to go after Biden as much as it hindered the Biden Administration’s decision to go after Trump.
I don't know anything about the case against Ms Le Pen other than what Claire wrote in her essay. What I do know is that preventing a candidate from running for the French presidency because of a conviction for a crime as seemingly trivial as misallocating EU funds to pay her party apparachiks, has boomeranged, at least if Claire is reporting it accurately. What Claire told us is that Ms Le Pen just might have ordered her party members to vote against the no-confidence vote if she was not motivated by the need to run for the French presidency before a conviction. If Claire is right, the decision to prosecute her is a proximate cause of the collapse of the French Government. Regardless of whether her party supported the no-confidence vote bevsuse of this or not, millions of French voters want to vote for her. Preventing them from doing so because she missllocated funds from EU accounts to pay her people is likely to dramatically increase cynicism amongst her voters. Its the type of cynicism that undermines support for democratic institutions.
What seems strange to me is that so many of the people bemoaning the seeming collapse of liberal democracy in the West are remarkably disinterested in trying to figure out what went wrong. Is it possible that liberal democracy contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction?
I'm not sure about that but I can't help but notice is that as globalism becomes more entrenched and as global institutions become more ascendant the nations that respect those global institutions become more dysfunctional. Look at France, the UK, Germany, Canada and Australia. Look at the United States. The rise of globalism seems to go hand in hand with massive political turmoil in the most critical members of the Pax Americana.
Could it be globalism that's killing the goose that laid the golden egg?
Sad that those politicians who talk loudest about democracy are the most eager to hamstring their opponents (SPD trying to exclude AfD, British censorship, DOJ in the US).
And a significant percentage of the population in those countries are in favor!!
Dems in the US are completely unaware of the irony of using lawfare against Trump in the name of "protecting democracy".
Steve -- I will agree with your implied opinion that the legal system can be mis-used for political gain.
I disagree that prosecuting Trump for fraudulently lying to the State of New York is mis-use of the law (or "lawfare" as you have said). Trump's ridiculous prevarication to justify his attempts to keep classified documents was also law-breaking.
Similarly, I think what Trump did to whip up his supporters for a mass attack on Congress Jan 6 was clearly a legitimate reason for a Congressional investigation and impeachment.
I question how much it matters that a large number of Americans apparently believe these were trivial maters and not worthy of being pursued in court. It obviously is an issue of tremendous importance if we are to continue our experiment in democracy.
Of course, if Americans want to get away from all the messiness of parties, representation in Congress, established laws and procedures, why, Hell yeah let's do away with it all, why not? Whaddya got to lose, eh?
Meanwhile, it's the system we have, like it or not. and there is a legal way of changing things: holding a constitutional convention. Of course, that would open the door to all sorts of craziness; probably not a good idea.
I agree the masses, the people, are choosing incompetent leaders and risking disaster. It appears to me that the philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti was correct and that what humanity requires is a psychological revolution, otherwise we will continue down this self-destructive path.
What a fantastic roundup of French politics du jour!
Thank you for another tour de force.
awww. You're so welcome.
In a scene that was truly remarkable, Trump, who is not even the President yet, attended the reopening of Notre Dame and was given a royal welcome by Macron. It was quite a revelation to watch Macron behave in such an obsequious fashion towards a man he must secretly revile.
Macaron, Scholz and even Starmer are all, politically speaking, dead men walking though admittedly, Starmer has plenty of time to resurrect himself. Trump, on the other hand, strides on the world stage once again like a colossus. This must be infuriating and demoralizing for his political opponents in the United States, especially the Democrats.
Why is Macron treating Trump like a demi-god? Could it be because he fully understands that he (and his country) are bereft of power and influence and that his only hope to be consequential for the remainder of his term is to offer up his services as Trump’s errand boy?
Trump must surely be the most lucky man alive. The Assad regime is collapsing which means that Iran has lost virtually all of its Middle Eastern allies. Syria is gone; Hamas is gone, Hezbolah is gone and Lebanon has been neutered. Iran still has Iraq on its side but Iraq is too weak and poor (and as a result of Assad’s fall) too isolated to render Iran any assistance.
The Obama/Biden dream of strengthening Iran to serve as a counterweight to Israel and the Sunni Arab nations lies in ruins. The reputations of the Obama/Biden foreign policy nomenclatura have been decimated right along with Assad’s hold on power. Russia is also profoundly weakened and may well lose its access to Syria’s warm water ports. A weakened Russia might very well be more willing to cut a reasonable deal on Ukraine. Of course, if Iran and Russia are diminished by what is happening in Syria, so, to some extent is China.
Both Trump and Macron are smart enough to understand that the proximate cause of all this good news is Israel’s defeat first of Hamas and then of Hezbollah. Behold the Lord of Hosts; behold his mighty hand. Macaron and Trump will both realize that the Obama/Biden crew did everything possible to stay Israel’s hand. This clueless crew wanted a ceasefire in both theaters in the worst way because they wanted Hamas and Hezbollah to remain intact. Thank goodness the Israeli Prime Minister was smart enough and strong enough to tell Biden where to stick it.
All that remains for Trump when he enters the White House is to bring the venal Qataris to heel and to reinvigorate the pursuit of the Abraham Accords, which should be far easier now that Iran has been weakened. As for the Iran nuclear program, either the Ayotollahs will surrender it or it will be bombed out of existence by the Israelis, the United Ststes or both.
Its a bit befuddling how Trump can be so damn lucky. Its almost as if he's protected by the deity. First there was the fortuitous turn of the head which saved his life. Then there was this series of events in the Middle East which offers him the opportunity to bring real peace to the region for the first time in decades. When he succeeds, that Nobel Peace Prize that he craves will almost surely adorn his mantel.
Given his checkered history why would God or the Gods be so good to him. Its a conundrum. But, of course, the God of the Israelites loved and protected King David despite David’s lust for Bathshebs and his despicable behavior towards her husband, Uriah the Hittite.
Similarly, Athena loved and protected Odysseus despite his questionable character. After all, the Greek sojourner needlessly blinded Polyphemus and was remarkably brutal when killing the suitors.
Trump seems to be beloved of the deity in the same way as David and Oddysseus. How else can his astonishing good luck be explained?
Macron is smart enough to see all of this. He craves relevancy. The only way for him to remain relevant is to suck up to Trump. Count on the fact that he will. My guess is that France and the United States will get along famously for the next four years.
The question : “At some point, don’t we need masses who know better than to believe the liars? “ deserves a resounding “YES.” With the help of billionaire social and mass media owners, the right in the US convinced a myopic electorate that the price of eggs outweighed legitimate democratic principles with the result that 14 billionaires have now been nominated to destroy various government agencies whose prior purpose was to provide services and and protect those same voters.
Your question about irrationality haunts us all, or the rational remnant anyway. If “the irrationality is the point,” (h/t Adam Serwer), the best early analysis I’ve seen is in Zizek’s Substack after the election. Although I’m guessing you’re not a fan (!), I’d like to share the long quotation I found helpful. Others may not! But it certainly does way more than the writers you dissected. (IMO it also applies to French farmer strikes, Gilets Jaunes, and so on: “Give us back our stolen enjoyment!” I.e, “Make us great again.”)
Zizek (“From MAGA to Mega: After Trump’s Victory”):
“We are not talking here just about ideology in terms of ideas and guiding principles but ideology in a more basic sense—how political discourse functions as a social link. Aaron Schuster observed that Trump is “an over-present leader whose authority is based on his own will and who openly disdains knowledge—it is this rebellious, anti-systemic theater that serves as the point of identification for the people.” This is why Trump’s serial insults and outright lies—not to mention the fact that he is a convicted criminal—work for him. Trump’s ideological triumph resides in the fact that his followers experience their obedience to him as a form of subversive resistance. Or, as Todd McGowan put it: “One can support the fledgling fascist leader in an attitude of total obedience while feeling oneself to be utterly radical, which is a position designed to maximize the enjoyment factor almost de facto.”
Here we should mobilize Freud’s notion of “theft of enjoyment”: an Other’s enjoyment inaccessible to us (women’s enjoyment for men, another ethnic group’s enjoyment for our group…), or our rightful enjoyment stolen from us by an Other or threatened by an Other. Russel Sbriglia noticed how this dimension of “theft of enjoyment” played a crucial role when Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021: “Could there possibly be a better exemplification of the logic of ‘theft of enjoyment’ than the mantra that Trump supporters were chanting while storming the Capitol: ‘Stop the steal!’? The hedonistic, carnivalesque nature of storming the Capitol to ‘stop the steal’ wasn't merely incidental to the attempted insurrection; insofar as it was all about taking back enjoyment (supposedly) stolen from them by others (i.e., Blacks, Mexicans, Muslims, LGBTQ+, etc.), carnival was absolutely essential to it.” What happened on January 6, 2021 at the Capitol was not a coup attempt but a carnival.”
In this analysis, French protestors still lack a Lord of Misrule for their Carnival: will (s)he be found on the right or the left? Macron is so intelligent: did he not sense this dimension of the protests? I’m very curious about that.
Thank you for your essays, CB: light in a dark time!
Within the past 30 days, I built a scale-model (1:1000) of Notre Dame out of metal pieces. But, there was too much opportunity for imperfect positioning at each step. Perhaps I will leave it to Claire in my will.
I guess I am naive. I am astonished that French economists were allowed to cook the books for several decades without detection and punishment.
During the past four years, the American Federal Deficit increased from 1 trillion to $12 trillion.
While the situation is tragic, the way you write about it makes me smile.
Humans can be so shortsighted, idiotic or incompetent that all that is left to do is to laugh at these decedents of hunter gatherers attempting to organize themselves in the modern world they have created. The evolutionary baggage we all carry is a big part of what makes us human (for better and worse). It also makes it next to impossible for us to be perfect, but certainly, we can be way better than we are at the moment.
Thank you 👏💐👏
Alas humans will be humans
Therefore given the tiniest bit of leeway they'll work hard to create piles of interacting Catch 22s
😥🤷😥
To untangle a ball of very hairy wool Cats have been into is kid's play by comparison.
Silke, thank you! I'll send you a note in the chat.
In reference to the second footnote about the Romanian election, it appears that the results of the first round of voting has been nullified by a Romanian court.
https://www.politico.eu/article/romania-court-cancels-presidential-election-runoff-tiktok-russian-influence-calin-georgescu/
The CAC40 is a stock index of the forty largest publically traded French corporations. It’s roughly equivalent to the Dow Jones Industrial average which is an index of the thirty largest publically traded American companies. I read something the other day that was startling.
The market capitalization of the entire CAC40 is approximately $2.3 trillion. Remarkably, four American companies each have a market cap individually that exceeds the market cap of the top 40 French companies combined. The market cap of Apple is $3.7 trillion. The market cap of Nvidia is $3.5 trillion. The market cap of Microsoft is $3.3 trillion. The market cap of Amazon is $2.4 trillion. This means that Amazon alone is worth as much as the top 40 French corporations combined.
The per capita GDP of France is roughly equivalent to the per capita GDP of Arkansas, an American state that perpetually ranks as one of the poorest American states. This is no surprise. Can anyone name an innovation of consequence that's come out of France in the 21st century? I can't.
Something in Claire’s essay struck me. She indicated that Ms Le Pen was in a rush to bring the Government down before a potential conviction for using EU finds to pay her party apparachiks. Apparently a conviction would preclude her run for the French presidency. Once again, lawfare has the opposite effect than what elites hoped for. Just as the ridiculous criminal and civil cases against Trump enhanced the President-elect’s prospects rather than diminishing them, the absurd case against Le Pen motivated her to bring down the Government that she might otherwise have decided to save. Will elites on either side of the Atlantic ever realize that their lawfare strategy keeps boomeranging?
Its no mystery why the liberal west is collapsing. In no particular order, here are some of the factors:
1) Massive illegal immigration that eviscerates domestic comity and crowds out legitimate asylum seekers. The financial and cultural consequences of illegal immigration are tearing the West apart.
2) The breakdown of traditional values, especially the nuclear family. There is not a single nation in the West where a family can be supported if only one parent works. While the European safety net is stronger than the American safety net, it is a poor substitute for the prosperity that comes from a single worker being able to support his/her entire family.
3) The collapse of religious observance. There is nothing in the secular world that provides as clear a grounding in ethical behavior and generosity as religion.
4) The cult of financialization. The best minds in the western world devote themselves to developing ever more arcane financial instruments while the best minds in Asia devote themselves to the development of ever more productive manufacturing techniques.
5) Centralization. Nothing is a bigger anathema to innovation than centralization of political and economic power. In both the United States and Europe the by-product of centralization is an increasingly intrusive regulatory apparatus. Many if not most of these regulations are profoundly destructive and stifle innovation and inhibit productivity.
6) The rise of credentialism. When achievement is determined by academic success rather than accomplishments in the real world the entire society suffers.
7) Fear of disintermediation. Disintermefiation is far and away the most exciting opportunity for increased productivity that Western societies have. Nothing enhances productivity more than eliminating the middle-man. Every industry that has been disintermediated is far more successful and productive than it was before. But disintermediation never occurs without a fight. The two entities currently being disintermediated are the media, especially the press and government itself. Is it any wonder that the mainstream press hate substack, Twitter-X and Tik Tok? Did anyone expect the mainstream press to abandon its role as the arbiter of what’s true and what’s false without a fight? Governments jealously guard their role as sovereigns of the money supply despite their remarkable incompetentce. Did anyone expect governments to acquiesce to the new role of cryptocurrencies without trying to regulate crypto in a manner so intrusive as to strangle the baby in the bed?
8) Demographic suicide. There are many reasons that Western populations are collapsing. But there is one uncomfortable reality that is simply true. The two biggest factors that impede fecundity are female literacy and female participation in the workplace. In developing nations, as women learn to read, the number of children they have goes down, often way down. In developed societies the more women work outside of the home, the fewer children they have and the later in life they marry and have their first child. Its an awkward topic to discuss, but it is a reality.
I could go on and on. But the reasons for the decline of the West are staring us in the face. The question is whether we are willing to entertain an honest debate in the search for answers.
M. Wig-Wag, so many points in your essay and I agree to some extent with a few, but regarding Donald Trump's legal jeopardy -- "ridiculous" cases you call them -- I think you discount the seriousness of the crimes. Were they charged against any other mortal besides The Donald I have no doubt that they would be dealt with as the legal process in a somewhat similar manner, though with less public interest. The alleged perpetrator would be charged, tried, and if found guilty, sentenced. The cases are made ridiculous by the Supreme Court's ruling that not only are Presidents immune from prosecution, but so also are ex-Presidents. Then again, Trump re-election makes the cases moot. Perhaps that is just as well: at least the public can be spared the expense of installing gold-plated toilets in whatever Big House inmate Trump would be assigned to.
Regardless of whether you think the criminal cases brought against Trump were legitimate or not, its clear that many if not most Americans concluded that the cases were politically motivated. They listened to breathless coverage in the press about these cases for three years. After listening to this three year debate, a substantial number of Americans concluded that the cases were either meritless or nefariously motivated. Ironically, the vigor with which these cases were pursued made many Americans more likely to vote for Trump not less likely to vote for him.
People of good will can disagree about the Supreme Court’s decision about Presidential immunity. The Court’s decision was based on the need to preserve the separation of powers defined by the Constitution. The idea is that a president needs to perform his duties without fear of subsequent prosecution after he leaves office lest his decision-making process be hindered. Absolute immunity attaches to core presidential functions and presumptive immunity attaches to acts within the “outer perimeter” of official duties. There is no immunity for private acts.
There are legitimate arguments on both sides about this decision but it is fatuous to claim the decision has no merit whatsoever and was motivated exclusively by politics. There's no question that Trump benefited when the decision about this delayed his Federal trial in Washington, DC (the classified documents case in Florida has already been dismissed). But Biden will benefit as much or more than Trump.
Biden can preemptively pardon as many of his friends and family members and supporters as he wants to but he is unlikely to pardon himself. If called to testify against Biden personally, the people he pardons can no longer plead the Fifth Amendment’s protections against self-incrimination and refuse to testify because they are no longer legally vulnerable. The Supreme Court’s decision hinders Trump’s ability to go after Biden as much as it hindered the Biden Administration’s decision to go after Trump.
I don't know anything about the case against Ms Le Pen other than what Claire wrote in her essay. What I do know is that preventing a candidate from running for the French presidency because of a conviction for a crime as seemingly trivial as misallocating EU funds to pay her party apparachiks, has boomeranged, at least if Claire is reporting it accurately. What Claire told us is that Ms Le Pen just might have ordered her party members to vote against the no-confidence vote if she was not motivated by the need to run for the French presidency before a conviction. If Claire is right, the decision to prosecute her is a proximate cause of the collapse of the French Government. Regardless of whether her party supported the no-confidence vote bevsuse of this or not, millions of French voters want to vote for her. Preventing them from doing so because she missllocated funds from EU accounts to pay her people is likely to dramatically increase cynicism amongst her voters. Its the type of cynicism that undermines support for democratic institutions.
What seems strange to me is that so many of the people bemoaning the seeming collapse of liberal democracy in the West are remarkably disinterested in trying to figure out what went wrong. Is it possible that liberal democracy contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction?
I'm not sure about that but I can't help but notice is that as globalism becomes more entrenched and as global institutions become more ascendant the nations that respect those global institutions become more dysfunctional. Look at France, the UK, Germany, Canada and Australia. Look at the United States. The rise of globalism seems to go hand in hand with massive political turmoil in the most critical members of the Pax Americana.
Could it be globalism that's killing the goose that laid the golden egg?
Sad that those politicians who talk loudest about democracy are the most eager to hamstring their opponents (SPD trying to exclude AfD, British censorship, DOJ in the US).
And a significant percentage of the population in those countries are in favor!!
Dems in the US are completely unaware of the irony of using lawfare against Trump in the name of "protecting democracy".
Steve -- I will agree with your implied opinion that the legal system can be mis-used for political gain.
I disagree that prosecuting Trump for fraudulently lying to the State of New York is mis-use of the law (or "lawfare" as you have said). Trump's ridiculous prevarication to justify his attempts to keep classified documents was also law-breaking.
Similarly, I think what Trump did to whip up his supporters for a mass attack on Congress Jan 6 was clearly a legitimate reason for a Congressional investigation and impeachment.
I question how much it matters that a large number of Americans apparently believe these were trivial maters and not worthy of being pursued in court. It obviously is an issue of tremendous importance if we are to continue our experiment in democracy.
Of course, if Americans want to get away from all the messiness of parties, representation in Congress, established laws and procedures, why, Hell yeah let's do away with it all, why not? Whaddya got to lose, eh?
Meanwhile, it's the system we have, like it or not. and there is a legal way of changing things: holding a constitutional convention. Of course, that would open the door to all sorts of craziness; probably not a good idea.
Read Niall Ferguson's recent column about the changing mood.
He said it far better than I ever could.
I agree the masses, the people, are choosing incompetent leaders and risking disaster. It appears to me that the philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti was correct and that what humanity requires is a psychological revolution, otherwise we will continue down this self-destructive path.
"what humanity requires is a psychological revolution"...
What's the likelihood of that? (Asking for a friend)
Not high