Whig History

 

The Tories and the Whigs, Pulling for a Crown. Via History Collection.

Again:

It's religion that allows the excesses of authority, in exactly the way I describe, in that discussion and others: power is constrained by limits of force and, later — post 1215, as we're taught in school — by law (a concept that reaches its revolutionary fruition in the 18th Century, in America and France). For millennia the king had unlimited power, as an expression of ownership, he owned the country and sublet it to his Lords, who were called into service to defend it against other fiefdoms or countries. The point is that the whole thing was property + force = authority — two utterly concrete (meaning, not abstract) elements — until law was placed atop the hierarchy...

religion lets a particular group 1) control the framework of morality absolutely, undergirding states, treaties, laws, everything else...2) within that authoritarian mandate, lets a small group absolutely control the parameters...and 3) is designed to work in terms of the antiquated, the outmoded, and the medieval (so that the elements of civilization are, as they say, "deprecated"). It's the perfect formula for tyrannical control.

If I'm correct in my utopian predictions, the 21st Century will be remembered as the moment when humanity finally outgrew and cast off that ancient shackle. We can't pretend the question isn't being forced — we could hold onto all of it the way we retain so many outmoded rituals (like the father "giving away" the bride in marriage), but they're forcing us to call the question and dump it all.

Jordan's picture, which I may well have been reading wrong, and if so forgive me, looked to me like what they call "whig history", the picture of history developed in Britain after the end of the Napoleonic wars, as the Whig party was turning into the Liberals, characterizing the whole of history as

General Assembly

I know, everybody's talking about this.

I want to ask, first, is it whatever meds he's on or is his reading disorder (S-RCD) getting perceptibly worse? He sounds completely unable to guess what's coming next as he sounds out each word, and I don't think he knew what he was saying here until the sentence was over and the audience started laughing, even though the writer (most will think Bolton, because of the "sovereignty" theme but I'd say Miller, who believes the same garbage anyway) did a good job of putting it in his own voice.

The affable-sounding response to the laughter, "Didn't expect that reaction but that's OK," is extremely angry, I think. In the assertion that he's the one who decides whether it's OK or not. He often says things like that when he's frightened by his own rage—a favorite is when he's calling out some opponent's disrespect and says, "And that's fine." I can't stop myself from suspecting that Miller or whoever put the sentence in there on purpose, knowing how it would be received, to start moving Trump to think about withdrawing the country from the UN altogether ("The Atlantic Charter was the worst deal every made in history!"). The way somebody else tried last Friday to start Trump thinking about firing Rod Rosenstein. It's only the second best way to manipulate him, using his anger, but whoever it is is looking for results that flattery won't achieve.

Also see Aaron Blake/WaPo.

Taking Names

Partying hearty in Pyongyang after the ballistic missile test of August 2016. Photo by Reuters via The Independent.

Mean Girl Nikki Haley: "This vote will be remembered." True to threat, only the cool kids get to go to friendship party. BFFs like Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Togo invited, but sad face for 128 loser countries like UK, Germany, Japan! They were warned! pic.twitter.com/uk8XrDHQhq

— Roland B. Hedley Jr. (@RealRBHJr) December 22, 2017

Yes, 128 United Nations delegations insisted on sticking with their decades-long foreign policy and voting their disapproval of Emperor Trump's whimsical decision to declare Jerusalem the capital of the Jewish state without any acknowledgment of the interests of a Palestinian state that is supposed to have its capital in the same city, in contravention of decades of US policy as well and against the fervent pleas of his own national security advisers, even though Ambassador Haley had told them:

Haley writes: “As you consider your vote, I encourage you to know the president and the US take this vote personally.

“The president will be watching this vote carefully and has requested I report back on those who voted against us,” she continued.

He's taking it personally. This isn't just a political decision, it's an attack on the august person. I can't get over this. So Haley swung remorselessly into action, like my dear sister Nancy when she was around four or five and would say, when anybody disrespected her, "You're not coming to my party!" That's speaking softly and carrying a big stick, huh?

Coincidentally, when the Security Council unanimously adopted a tightened sanctions regime against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea last week, the Kim Jong Un regime was swift to make its move:

“We define this 'sanctions resolution' rigged by the U.S. and its followers as a grave infringement upon the sovereignty of our Republic and as an act of war violating peace and stability in the Korean Peninsula and the region,” North Korea's foreign ministry said in a statement on state media Sunday.

Kim will be having a party too, undoubtedly, but he won't be inviting any countries. Not even Guatemala and Honduras. That's how a real emperor does it. Eat your hearts out, running dog capitalist roaders!

Cross-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.

Red line district (addendum)

Updated 9/28/2012

From Wide Asleep in America. And read his post!

Prime Minister Netanyahu drew his red line!

He drew it on his own personal copy of Iran's nuclear bomb design, produced by Acme Mass Destruction Products, Ltd., of Monument Valley, Arizona, and brought it into the United Nations General Assembly for show and tell, so we could see how serious the situation was.

If this reminds you of General Colin Powell at the United Nations, keep in mind that the general's pictures were of actually occurring objects that simply happened, as it turned out, not to be mobile biological weapons labs, although if any mobile biological weapons labs existed they would probably look quite a lot like that. Whereas Prime Minister Netanyahu's picture is of an obviously fictional object, because what he is trying to persuade us of is not the empirical truth but the moral truth, which is that people really need to pay more attention to him and that line is really red. Not green, or thin and blue, or what have you.

#Netanyahu has drawn literal 'red line' on his diagram. Powerful message. Powerfull moment. #UNGA
— Tom Rogan (@troganthinks) September 27, 2012

What I'm saying. If he'd just drawn a figurative red line, what kind of impact would that have? Not powerfull, in any case. Just full. Of it.

Update 9/28

Bibi's use of that chart was one of the most effective, gripping, uses of a chart I've ever seen. Is the world listening??
— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) September 27, 2012

If the world's not listening, then "effective" is hardly the word you want; if the world is laughing, as seems to be the case, that wasn't the effect the PM was aiming at. It certainly didn't convince anybody to take the "threat" more seriously, whether they took it seriously at all in the first place or not. However "gripped" Ari Fleischer may have personally felt.

More interesting is the Times reading, that

the substance of his speech suggested a softening of what had been a difficult dispute with the Obama administration on how to confront Iran over its nuclear program.

This by putting some praise for Obama into the speech (maybe not a big thing, but not that easy for Netanyahu to push past his lips), and by an interesting feature of that red line, which is that although it is drawn on the cartoon bomb, it can move around on the calendar, and has now slipped over to next April, so that we can stop worrying about his Iran attack coming before the election. Which I interpret to mean that in the famous September 11 phone call Netanyahu lost the game of chicken, and that is extremely good news.

(The Times also mentions by the bye that

Right now, Iran does not possess enough [medium-enriched] fuel to make a single weapon. In fact, its stockpile of it has declined in recent months, as it has converted some for the research reactor.

Although it is also noted that they've got at least six years' worth of fuel for the medical reactor at this point, so I have to admit that as an excuse it is starting to wear a little thin.)

The only really regrettable thing is the suffering of ordinary Iranian people under sanctions imposed to placate this fool and keep him from causing any greater damage. And there may be a big element of bluff there, too, as I have sometimes imagined. That is, the suffering of Iranians may be caused less by the sanctions than by Ahmedinejad's economic mismanagement. They certainly don't seem to be having much trouble selling oil; I heard somewhere that they are producing less oil than they can sell, in the hope of jacking up the price, but Dr. Google can't seem to find me a citation. Here, in any case, is some evidence:

Iranian supply fell by 50,000 bpd to 2.80 million bpd, matching July's rate, the survey found. Output in July was Iran's lowest since 1988, according to figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Output from Iran is down sharply this year due to U.S. and European sanctions on the country over its nuclear program. The embargo bars EU insurance firms from covering Iran's exports, hindering imports by some non-EU buyers.

Some sources expected a small recovery in Iranian exports this month as some customers, including South Korea, returned. But some buyers say Iran's tanker fleet has been struggling to meet delivery schedules, slowing down exports.

"There is clearly a problem with the tanker issues and over the longer term it's probably going to get more and more difficult," said one industry source, who estimated Iranian exports in September were on a par with August's.

See what I mean? The authors of this don't, but this is a weird kind of embargo ("Sorry, we're fresh out—under embargo, so naturally the stuff is selling like hot, umm, springs").

It will be many decades, perhaps, before it's possible to cut through all this multilateral bluffing to find out what was in fact going on, but I think at that point it will become clear that Obama (or the team of Obama and Clinton) was as refined and ruthless a diplomatic maneuverer as Talleyrand, and that he has prevented some pretty awful things.