Question Point

Janan Ganesh in the Financial Times ($) theorizing that what makes a stereotypical "British" accent novel to the American ear is not the intonation per se, but the absence of uptalking/ upspeaking:

Upspeak in excess can be unlistenable. I have given up on an otherwise illuminating podcast about American politics because the hosts pile slanted sentence upon slanted sentence, sometimes ten in a row, each cresting a bit higher until the final words are lost on all but our canine friends.

He's too polite to say that he surely means the Vox Weeds politics podcast, a self-admitted den of Harvard-influenced uptalkers. 

Moscow Mailbag

Message to Edward Snowden, you’re banned from @MissUniverse. Unless you want me to take you back home to face justice!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 21, 2013

Donald Trump might be feeling shy about asking Vladimir Putin to extradite the Russian agents named in Friday's indictment for the DNC hack. He had no such shyness in 2013 when he was demanding that Edward Snowden be extradited to the USA to face charges for the NSA leak, and he used multiple opportunities to link his demand for Snowden's return to Trump's own trip to Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant in November 2013. The above tweet is just one example. Incidentally, the Moscow trip is the one with the infamous allegation about that tape. But tape or no tape, can't Trump at least tweet a request for the extradition of the Russian government hackers?

God Bless England

Donald Trump in the already infamous Sun interview --

We presented him with an England shirt when we interviewed him at the US Embassy in Brussels on Wednesday, ahead of the Nato summit. “Oh wow. I love gifts,” he said, happily obliging our photographer Paul Edwards by holding the personalised top up with a trademark grin. “You don’t hear the word England as much as you should,” he continued. “I think England is a beautiful name.”

Trump at the National Day of Prayer in May --

Jon and Richard, you are a living testament to the power of prayer. (Applause.) Your story reminds us that prayer changes hearts and transforms lives. It uplifts the soul, inspires action, and unites us all as one nation, under God. So important. And we say it here. You know, a lot of people — (applause) — they don’t say it. But you know what? They’re starting to say it more. Just like we’re starting to say, “Merry Christmas” when that day comes around. (Applause.) You notice the big difference between now and two or three years ago? It was — Paula, it was going in the other direction rapidly. Right? Now it’s straight up.

In his world, there are forbidden words like God, Christmas, and England, and that animates his politics, and no doubt, his supporters. 

That new Brexit plan in full

Er, that's it!

But seriously, that's figure 1 from the Brexit white paper chapter on institutional arrangements for the UK - EU relationship. An amateur Powerpoint chart with none of the boxes yet filled in.

Damascus Gate

The al-Assad / Maduro fanboys are so certain in their worldview that there's not much that could disrupt it, but one wonders if they ever do a moment's reflection on why, if Bashar al-Assad is so great, and Vladimir Putin is so great for supporting him, that Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin seem well aligned on where things are headed? Above, Netanyahu popped into the Kremlin on Wednesday before heading to the England v Croatia match. 

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy

If your view of American conservatism is that it's all driven by 1 percenters, then you're going to be a tad surprised that Brett Kavanaugh, Supreme Court nominee, is, in cash terms, broke. The incipient faux-scandal to cause a pothole for his nomination is that he's been running up revolving debt on a credit card to pay for, gasp, major league baseball tickets. But as we've gone hoarse (metaphorically) stating, if you think there's a political salience to the distinctive role of the upper middle class in American politics, then it's all completely unsurprising. Kavanaugh is asset-rich, cash-poor, and exhibit A for status-income disequilibrium, a Brooksian category with which much of liberal punditry refuses to engage. 

Croatia

Brilliant cinematography in From Russia With Love as the train journey from Istanbul through eastern Europe is conveyed through station signs and alphabets, with Zagreb being the first one in the Roman script. A subtle way to convey the diversity of what was then one country, Yugoslavia.

Bobos in minivans

Liberal pundits have their blind spots. None is more obvious at the moment than their ability to pivot from ridiculing attempts to draw attention to the upper middle class as a group politically relevant to America's polarization (see the reactions to Richard Reeves and David Brooks) to being outraged at favourable media coverage of Trump's US Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh drawing from his professors at Yale and his carpool parent friends.

Of course, if you're an actual Marxist, it's easy: Kavanaugh is simply a bourgeois tool of the all-controlling 1 percent whose own views and lifestyle are inconsequential.

But without that lens, you're looking at the politics and trying to figure out: how is it that amid all the possibilities and Trump volatility, the Ivy Leaguer, the diligent Catholic school parent with his own upbringing of "deferred gratification" parents, and yes, the reliable carpooler, came out of the mix? The horrible possibility is that it's the political power of that class that keeps them in the top layers of government even with severe cross-currents below.

UPDATE: The Tiger Mom (Amy Chua) endorses Kavanaugh on the basis of her daughter's (a Yalie) successful judicial clerkship with him!

Up the Republic

Donald Trump, capping what rolling news endlessly hyped as his Supreme Court "reveal," referred to the Constitution as "the Crown Jewel of our Republic." Which reveals that he doesn't understand that two words in there are direct contradictions of each other. 

Which country is a monarchy?

Resignation letters of Boris Johnson and David Davis to Theresa May, compared to that of Scott Pruitt to Donald Trump. 

Pictures came and broke your heart

The U.S. is working very closely with the Government of Thailand to help get all of the children out of the cave and to safety. Very brave and talented people!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 8, 2018

Not that we needed proof of Donald's Trump co-dependence with cable news, but he woke up this morning, like every morning, expecting to be the dominant topic, and he wasn't. So he had to find a way to enter the drama. 

Her darkest hour

Financial Times on latest Theresa May sales pitch for her still unseen commercial borders plan --

An EU diplomat said Mrs May was asking her European allies to put pressure on other European leaders and Brussels to make sure her Brexit white paper was not rejected out of hand when it was published next week. “She wants to ensure it is not shot down straightaway,” said one EU diplomat. “She doesn’t want to be fighting on two fronts.”

Is it really a good idea to be presenting your tactical problem to a group including Germany in terms of the difficulties of a two-front war? Of course, if she wants to take that analogy seriously, you pick the front where you can score the more rapid victory first.

Middle class drinking

Bild --

Am Samstagabend hatte Merkel Innenminister Horst Seehofer noch ins Kanzleramt eingeladen. Bei Wasser (Seehofer) und Wein (Merkel) versuchten sie, in ihrem erbitterten Asylstreit eine Lösung zu finden.

Saturday night, Angela Merkel met with her turbulent Interior Minister Horst Seehofer to discuss the asylum crisis.

He drank water. She drank wine. 

Magic orb

From Saudi Press Agency, the oblique palace version of the Trump - Salman phone call which Trump says resulted in agreement that Saudi Arabia would raise oil production by up to 2 million barrels per day:

The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud received a telephone call from President Donald Trump of the United States of America. During the meeting, they discussed the distinguished relations between the two countries, as well as discussing developments in the region and the world. During the call, the two leaders stressed the need to make efforts to maintain the stability of oil markets and the growth of the global economy, and the efforts of producing countries to compensate for any potential shortage of supplies. 

There's nothing about 2 million barrels, and nothing about any specific commitment on any country to do anything -- producing countries could just as well refer to the United States!

Among other things, Trump doesn't realize that if he creates an expectation that there is a 2 million barrel per day increase coming, which does not materialize, the price of oil will go ... up!

Princely stroll

William Windsor and Jordanian Crown Prince Hussein bin Abdullah take a casual-clothes walk through Jerash yesterday.

Photo via Petra.

Quote of the Day

Rana Foroohar in the Financial Times --

Two of the richest counties in America sit outside our nation’s capital, which is now stuffed with boutique hotels and top-notch eateries. There are 34 billionaires living within a 25-mile radius of the city. Even the fashion seems less dowdy to me that it used to be (though here I must be a superior New Yorker and say that it amazes me that you still occasionally catch women wearing toast-coloured stockings). All this might be good for those of us who must live or work in the beltway, but it’s terrible for making and enforcing good policy.

Up Yours Slobo

It's fascinating to watch the same "anti-establishment" Putin / al-Assad / Maduro fanboys who revel in ignoring, mocking, or denying MH17, Crimea, chemical weapons, indiscriminate bombing and artillery attacks, and social disaster brought about by economic lunacy suddenly get very upset at an image -- that of Swiss winger Xherdan Shaqiri symbolizing his Kosovar Albanian ancestry in a goal celebration. They may not like that decades after the original atrocities committed by their heroes (as Slobodan Milošević bizarrely was in the pre-social media era), the victims might get some cultural self-expression.

Image: Martin Divisek / EPA

Bobos in Deflection

In the FT, Rana Foroohar reviews Squeezed,  by Alissa Quart:

Quart is particularly sharp on behavioural psychology and the economics of class. In a chapter entitled "The Rise of 1 per cent Television," she charts the popularity of shows such as Downton Abbey, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Desperate Housewives, and Billions, all of which constitute a kind of "bling porn" that not only fuels anxiety among the lower 80 per cent of the socio-economic spectrum, but allows the upper 20 per cent to feel a sense of self-righteousness in relation to this profusion of greedy, narcissistic anti-heroes, culminating in our TV president.

State versus children

Before there were screaming children at the US southern border, there was Iraq. This famous photograph is of Samar Hassan, then 5 years old in January 2005, whose parents had just been killed by US soldiers who treated their car as hostile when it approached a checkpoint. The photographer who took it, Chris Hondros, was killed years later during the Libyan war.

The New York Times did a great story in 2011 to find out what happened to Samar. Her circumstances were OK, but not great, and certainly no recovery from the disaster captured in the image.

If the trajectory of the country is that every so often, a child terrorized by its actions becomes the signature image, it's time to reflect on a fundamental problem. 

Pacific Rim

Wall Street Journal on the personal dynamics at the G7 summit:

At one point, Mr. Trump brought up migration as a big problem for Europe and then told Mr. Abe, "Shinzo, you don't have this problem, but I can send you 25 million Mexicans and you'll be out of office very soon," according to the senior EU official who was in the room.

Killed in action in a country the Commander-in-Chief can't spell

They'll eventually correct it.

He does not want to wear the ribbon

Trump is the only leader at the G7 (plus EU) summit in Quebec who didn't wear the summit symbol badge. He's wearing the stars and stripes pin, and that's it. 

This one table explains why the media can't help helping Trump

		TV Channel B
		Cover Trump	Don’t Cover Trump
TV Channel A	Cover Trump	(-2, -2)	(0, -3)
	Don’t Cover Trump	(-3, 0)	(-1, -1)

It's the Prisoner's Dilemma, adapted to the world of TV news competition. There are two TV channels, A and B. A's strategy is in the rows, and B's strategy is in the columns. The first number is A's loss, and the second number is B's loss. So (-2, -2) means A loses 2 and B loses 2 when they both cover Trump, etc.

Trump benefits from the endless media coverage, regardless of substance, so the cooperative solution would be to not cover Trump -- the lower right cell. It's still not an ideal world (after all, Trump is still President). But the problem for each TV channel is that if one of them decides not to cover Trump (e.g. A) while the other still does (B) -- the lower left column of the table -- then A loses all the viewers to B, because they still want the spectacle of Trump. The optimal strategy for each TV channel is therefore to cover Trump, even though the better outcome for A and B together is not to cover him!

On Norms

There are frequent references to how the Trump Presidency is characterized by "norm violations." Here is Josh Marshall arguing that the term has become a way to avoid addressing outright criminal or at least guilty-mind conduct. But what did violating norms ever mean? Here's German sociologist Niklas Luhmann in The Reality of the Mass Media on that exact topic (and, yes, we've quoted Luhmann before, in the belief that he's a genius) --

Norm violations are especially selected for reporting [by the media] when they can be accompanied by moral judgements, in other words, when they are able to offer an opportunity to demonstrate respect or disdain for people. In this regard the mass media have an important function in the maintenance and reproduction of morality. However, this should not be taken to mean that they are in a position to fix ethical principles or even just to raise society's moral standards towards good behaviour. No person or institution in modern society is able to do that - neither the Pope nor a council, neither the German parliament nor Der Spiegel. It is only wrongdoers caught in the act who demonstrate to us that such criteria are needed. It is only the code of morality which is reproduced, in other words the difference of good and bad, or evil, behaviour. The legal system is ultimately responsible for setting criteria. The mass media merely provide a constant irritation for society, a reproduction of moral sensibility at the individual as well as the communicative level. However, this leads to a kind of 'disembedding' of morality, to moralizing talk which is not covered by any verifiable obligations. The way morality is imagined and its ongoing renovation is linked to sufficiently spectacular cases - when scoundrels, victims, and heroes who have gone beyond the call of duty are presented to us. The receiver will typically align herself with none of these groups. She remains - an observer.

Now apply this insight, that the media treatment of norm violations is "moralizing talk which is not covered by any verifiable obligations" to the current political context in the USA. How did things get to the point where restraints on power were almost a play, a show, with standards that could only be verified when broken? That's quite a constitution you have there, America.

Quickly reconciled

Mark Dubowitz has been telling the Washington foreign policy community that on the Iran nuclear deal, he was a "fixer" not a "nixer" i.e. that he wanted to improve the deal rather than end it, and he has edged his predictions for what would happen now with all sorts of qualifications about whether Trump can successfully implement a new approach. As Peter Beinart points out, having done all the lobbying that could be done to kill the deal, he now claims that he never wanted it ended -- cynically recognizing the risk of being associated with a failed alternative that he enabled.

Anyway, here is in the opinion page of Tuesday's Wall Street Journal (writing with Richard Goldberg) --
America’s new strategy also presents European leaders with a choice: Either help curb all of Iran’s malign activities in exchange for major American economic and diplomatic concessions, or cast their lots with the repressive theocracy responsible for a 2012 terror attack in Bulgaria, and for the bloodshed in Syria that created a refugee crisis in Europe.

Does this sound like someone with regrets about the new course of American strategy? Instead, it sounds like someone who got what he wanted -- the ability to wage an all-out economic war against Iran, regardless of the direct and collateral damage.

How to get on in society

Last year, Richard Reeves published a book, Dream Hoarders, arguing that the focus on the top 1 percent was distracting from the obstacles to mobility caused by the upper middle class. Liberal writers headed to the nearest keyboard to debunk Reeves (e.g. Mike Konczal in the Crimson-hued Vox) with the debunking taking the form of interpretations of charts of income and wealth distributions, while minimizing by assertion the significance of the cultural and class analyses in his book -- and indeed making the topics of culture and class a source of mockery when they were picked up by David Brooks.

It was therefore to the great annoyance of the debunkers that Matthew Stewart took another run at the Reeves argument in The Atlantic and this time it's Jordan Weissman who steps forward in the Crimson-hued Slate, again with the aid of income and wealth distribution charts, to debunk Stewart. And again refuses to engage with the social and cultural aspects of the argument, while allowing that there might be a bit of a point on housing and education capture by the upper middle class.

Anyway, the most telling omission in the Konczal and Weissman articles is politics. They take it for granted that the 1 percent, or the 0.1 percent, must be having an outsized gilded age influence on politics. But they don't want to extend that to pondering how the merely very wealthy -- but far more numerous -- upper middle class might be influencing politics, both in the issues and approach they champion, and in the reaction to that that is drawn from further down the income and wealth distribution.

It's only coincidental, but it's an especially strange week to have such a blind spot in your political analysis: the death of Tom Wolfe, who chronicled in real time the transition of an influential cohort from radical to, er, chic, and there are the numerous reflections on Paris 1968 and its American parallels, where the fact that this was an emerging consumerism associated with a new class is now taken as an initial given -- at least for people who care about the sociology of it all. How did that class rise from being in the streets in 1968 to dominate the professions and the political-cultural complex now?

But somehow, a certain type of economics has become a shield for a certain type of liberal from having to think about that question, because it is a question about class.

Liability

Texas Governor Greg Abbott uses a wheelchair because, in 1984, he went jogging after a storm and an oak tree fell on him and paralyzed him below the waist.

He sued the landowner and won a US$10 million settlement.

After the Santa Fe high school shooting yesterday, he was reduced to the usual NRA-friendly platitudes and simply dodged the question of the responsibility of the gun owner -- the shooter's father.

Why does he believe in accountability for landowners of fallen trees but not for gun owners of mass murder weapons?

Quote of the Day

Jo Ellison in the Financial Times:

One wonders whether the choice to wear a designer who melds a British artistic sensibility with a French house fabled for its classic silhouettes and minimal allure could mark the announcement of globally focused, pro-European tastes within the house of Windsor? It probably does. At least when it comes to clothes.

Handshake or handcuff

Above, Bashar al-Assad on an unannounced visit to Sochi today to meet his main backer, Vladimir Putin. There was no indication afterwards that Russia had used any of its leverage to extract new concessions on a political process for the conflict. Incidentally, despite the energetic efforts of the Al-Assad/ Maduro fanboys on Twitter, the booing at the Eurovision song contest on Saturday is probably a more reliable indicator of how Russia's foreign policy stances are viewed abroad. 

Image problem

It's not among the top 10 things that's wrong with Israel's security forces shooting Gaza border protesters, but somewhere down that list is the fact that Israel's rationale for using lethal force doesn't hold together. Suppose that a few hundred or even a few thousand protesters were determined enough to break through the fence. Then they'd be ... in Israel, with nowhere to go, no support base, no logistics, just facing inevitable pursuit and capture. But what would be gone with their incursion is the psychological barrier, that Israel can literally and figuratively fence itself off from the Palestinian question. And that doubt, that fear of the hordes, justifies in Israeli eyes what by usual standards would be a disproportionate response. All the embassy gloating in Jerusalem can't remove that idea from people's heads.