More on Ms. Rubin: WaPo Double Standard Edition

Adam L. Silverman, PhD*

The Washington Post's Ombudsman, in an email exchange with a reader (that the ombudsman has not denied, just refused to comment on), seems to pretty clearly indicate that a clear double standard was in play.  If Ms. Rubin had retweeted remarks that had made the same or similar assertions about Jews and/or Israelis, or called for them to killed, then it was quite possible that Ms. Rubin would have been fired.  This has led to a number of interesting remarks, from, among others Glenn Greenwald, Dr. Farley at LGM (who gets the hat tip as I saw it there first), and from the King of Snark Tbogg (which is where Farley seems to have found it).

What I find the most interesting about all of this is both the double standard (not that it surprises me that it exists), but that it seems to always be applied to analysts, pundits, commentators, and in some cases elected and appointed officials (often who seem to revolve between being analysts, pundits, and appointed officials) that not only seem to have a consistent track record of being wrong about what they are remarking on, but also get the shield portion of the double standard: they are never hurt by the remarks.  It does not seem to matter how wrong they are, how ill informed, how bigoted, they just seem to continuously be rewarded with another fellowship or think tank gig or staff position or column or tv or radio slot.  I think that of all the things that future generations, whether of Americans or of other nationalities, conclude about us is that we have willingly become ignorant.  Not only would the founders and framers be dismayed by this, but many of the subsequent generations of Americans - elite, notable, or not, as well.

* Adam L. Silverman, PhD is the Culture and Foreign Language Advisor at the US Army War College.  The views expressed here are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the US Army War College and/or the US Army.

Comments

[arbogast]

Well, that's one way of putting it.

Another way is to say that Reagan didn't topple the Soviet Union, he imported it.

Pravda. Nomenclatura.

Can you fit a thin dime between the USSR then and the USA today?

Some will say I have been extreme... But what counts is the result. And in the US there is a solitary result.

Obama is perhaps the poster child for this. The people who elected him and what he said to get elected bear no relation whatsoever with what he has done in office. The election was a sham that must have Joe Stalin in stitches in his special corner of Hell.

[AnonAF]

I recall recently reading Walter Russell Mead's review of Ann Coulter's "Demonic" on the Foreign Affairs website. He noted that it was, in a way, reassuring, because her views were similar to those of an earlier age. In that light, I ask, why elevate the founders and framers to having been above politics (as we now know it)? Surely there is some case to be made that the internet has changed the enterprise. Yet I doubt they would have been unfamiliar with double standards, or - to use a phrase I like, although I'm wrenching it slightly out of context - "asymmetric vetting" (Googleable). I suspect more continuity than change can be seen in what is occurring, however odious Ms. Rubin's comments may be.

[William R. Cumming]

The failure to have curiousity and be able to critically think is going to sink the world in an abyss IMO. Another helpful post Dr.Silverman.

[elkern]

My favorite example supporting Dr S's assertion in paragraph 2 (purveyors of pro-Israeli propaganda fall up) is the relative fate of pundits for & against the invasion of Iraq (2002-3). There were a few voices in the "MSM" who spoke/wrote against the invasion; they were sidelined & demoted. Those who promoted it - left & right - were in turn promoted. Many of those on the (relative) "Left" have since recanted, but when it mattered, they knew which side of their bread was buttered & toed the line. Those who didn't are toast.

Oil may have been Cheyney's motivation for the invasion, but Israel was the reason the Democrat's didn't stop it.

[arbogast]

You want to know what's wrong with the US? Well, Dr. Silverman's post gives us part of the answer. And this is the rest:

http://www.americanbanker.com/bankthink/lax-law-enforcement-means-mf-global-mistakes-will-be-repeated-1044009-1.html

Government collusion in crime. The Government are criminals. Tell me a single other way to interpret it. Criminals. The article, which is superb, kind of moans and groans that the SEC doesn't enforce the law.

If a cop fixes a parking ticket and he gets caught, he gets arrested, right? You don't enforce the law, you're a crook. I'm sorry. There is no other way of looking at it.

As I said, Joe Stalin must be in stitches in Hell.

[arbogast]

Perhaps you are referring to the Constitutional endorsement of slavery and the fact that the United States Senate was designed, as was the electoral college, to guarantee the survival of slavery?

However, two wrongs do not come close to making a right, and it would be a pity to lose another 600,000 soldiers' lives to fix the problem.

[Babak Makkinejad]

The link that you have supplied complains about the disappearance of hundreds of millions of dollars of wealth.

However, as long as the US Financial Sector was creating paper wealth while US manufacturing was declining (the way a cancerous tumor grows at the expense of the body) no one was complaining.

Hundreds of millions of dollars of wealth were created out of the thin air and people were quite happy. No one - except the late Paul M Sweezy or Patrich Buchannan - complained.

As for government lawlessness: Did the Federal Government have a right to go to war against the Confederate States of America? Was not that war illegal? Why wasn't Abraham Lincoln impeached for suspending Hbeas Corpus?

Why wasn't Andrew Jackson impeached for his refusal to enforce the US Supreme Court decision on the Cherokee Nation?

Next we come to the late Mr. Nixon and late Mr. Reagan. One was obstructing Justice to protect his friends and the other was lying to US Congress.

One was threatened with impeachement and was forced to resign and the other one was left in office - albeit as a lame duck.

Next came Mr. Clinton who was impeached on lying about une affair de Coeur but was not convicted.

Take your pick as to where Justice lies.

[Adam L Silverman]

AnonAF: You are quite correct that the founders and framers, not to mention their immediate political descendants, were a sharp tongued and sharp elbowed group of folks. You'll get no argument from me on that point. Rather, what I was trying to convey was how they, as learned, well read, and predominantly Enlightenment thinkers, would be appalled by the willful and woeful ignorance that many Americans seem to have decided is worth reveling in.

This is beautifully summed up by a single quote from Charles Pierce's 2005 essay on what he calls Idiot America:
"And in Dover, Pennsylvania, during one of these many controversies, a pastor named Ray Mummert delivers the line that both ends our tour and, in every real sense, sums it up:

"We've been attacked," he says, "by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture.""
(the article can be found here: http://www.esquire.com/features/ESQ0207GREETINGS) Just stop and (I'd recommend sitting myself...) think about Pastor Mummert's remark. In one way it evokes sympathy - for Reverend Mummert and his congregation as they feel they have somehow been passed by or betrayed by those they perceive as being better educated. In another it makes one want to reach for the whiskey.

[Adam L Silverman]

Elkern: That is my favorite quote about the Kristols, but it also sums up, as unintentional satire, so much of the self made mythos BS we have in the US were we've somehow mucked up understanding individualism, individuality, and individual responsibility. How many times have we seen Americans stand up and talk about how they got where they were based on hard work. Great, no doubt. Maybe you should try thanking your parents? Teachers? The men and women who saw some worth in you and made sure an opportunity was available whether you knew about it or not? I know how I got to where I am: because a lot of folks, some that I didn't even know about at the time, were looking out for me. And aside from buying them the occasional drink or meal, the only real thank you is making sure I do it for others as they did it for me.

[Adam L Silverman]

Arbogast: I think its more complicated than that. While we've moved more and more to (or back to) an elite and ultra elite driven society, I don't think its Stalinist. Or, rather, any more Stalinist than it would be Francoist or Pinochetist or Maoist. Basically I think the problem or reality that you've identified is one of making it to a place of power and then doing everything possible to consolidate that position for oneself and one's allies.

[turcopolier]

arbogast

"the great compromise" had nothing to do with slavery and everything to do with the unwillingness of the small states to join a union in which they would be minor provinces. BTW slavery wasa legal all over the north at the time of the adoption of the cositution and it was the northern states that insisted that Slaves should be counted as a fraction of a person. they did that because the number would be used for apportioning the HoR. pl

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_states

[walrus]

I have pointed out in numerous forums since at least 2000 that willful ignorance and the bad decision-making associated with it is a recipe for the suicidal statecraft that will kill your Republic. I don't think you have much longer to wait; the Congressional "Super Committee" will report shortly.

John Quiggin has coined the term "Zombie Ideas" for the endlessly recycled myths that are foisted on the public by NeoCons. As soon as the intelligent, educated part of the community bury them again, some billionaire friend of the Koch Brothers pays to have them disinterred.

The classic example that I heard yet again last week from FauxNews: - The Community Reinvestment Act made banks lend money to poor people, causing the GFC.

Then of course every American knows all Muslims hate us and want to institute Sharia law, etc. etc.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/10/15/five_zombie_economic_ideas_that_refuse_to_die

[MChampney]

In reply to Babak Makkinejad

The amount of “notional" wealth that was created by the financial sector runs in the trillions, not billions.

How exactly is wealth generated when a synthetic derivative is created - a bet on the behaviour of an instrument, between two parties neither of which (sometimes the parties are ‘bots, not humans) has any actual financial interest in the underlying instrument? Answer: It is not.

But because so may parties hung their hats and impaled our collective cojones on this “wealth”, when later it was found to have been created out of whole cloth, its evaporation is our problem, in a big way.

WRT to the mortgage-based CDOs I would say “show me the paper”, somewhere along the line some whiz-kid decided that the sale of a mortgage no longer required that an actual piece of paper be filed at the county courthouse. Huh?

Mark

[AnonAF]

Adam Silverman:

I actually wrote, then deleted, a follow-up comment to my original one, elements of which I'll extract now. Unfortunately, I couldn't open the link you included. But basically, you mentioned lack of curiosity and lack of analytical thinking. It's been the experience of my adult life that nominally intelligent adults can exhibit said intelligence in remarkably segregated and distinct spheres. COL Lang's reaction to Rachel Abrams utterly despicable blogpost summed it up quite well, I thought: *this* woman is the scion of an intellectual family? Ann Coulter, to return to her, has suceeded in our educational system (Cornell, Michigan Law), and while I read her columns primarily and really only when I seek to be angry at her overall idiocy, is skilled at prosecuting her intended victims. Her analytical skills do not, cannot, seem to be applied to, say, such tricky conundrums as the Arab-Israeli tragedy. I think that emotions trump intelligence. It is more comforting to pick a right side and array the evidence accordingly than to acknowledge a remarkably gnarled thicket of difficult facts. As for intellectual curiosity, that is, I think, even easier to explain away: some people have it, some people don't, and even those who do have it may only have it regarding certain topics and certain topics only. Sadly, the human condition is such that few if any are capable of undaunted, unencumbered analysis, and even those intrepid souls who go further than most are still subject to universal human foibles. The human condition applies as well to curiosity.

All that having been said, I think the way to consider the Framers is as, quite frankly, from what little I know about them, remarkable men. They valued rationalist precepts in a way that few did before, presently, or after. And so you're right: they would be appalled.

Regards, and thanks for your response,
AnonAF

[turcopolier]

walrus

Thank you for your condemation. Do you not think that you should give up your US citizenship?

[walrus]

Col. Lang,

I'm not condemning, I'm trying to sound a warning and at least put a name to the problem - "Zombie Ideas" are part of Dr. Silvermans "willful ignorance" as demonstrated by the serious peoples non - response to Abrams and Rubin.

I stand by my statement that continued willful ignorance leads us into error and possibly Toynbees Suicidal Statecraft.

By way of example, I read the Murdoch press opinion pages over the weekend - full of sober commentary on the profligacy of the Eurozone countries like Greece and Italy without a single mention of Americas public debt, which according to the IMF is on a par with Spain, Portugal and Britain! It is therefore going to be highly instructive when the Congressional "super committee" reports on 23 November and delivers its own dose of "Austerity" as prescribed to the Eurozone. This is not schadenfreud on my part as I have American relatives who are already hurting.

This website is an island of sanity in an increasingly willfully ignorant world.

[Babak Makkinejad]

Thank you for your comment.

Once one reads the story of Issac B. Singer, "The Gentleman from Krakow" and internalizes its message, then one becomes less critical of the financiers and more critical of the will-fully ignorant sheep that followed them.

Harry Markopolos, of Madoff whistle blower fame, has stated that he began to fear for his life and therefore stopped his efforts in alerting US authorities to Mr. Madoff shennanigans.

By the way he also has stated that the State Street and Bank of New York each stole billions of dollars from pension funds around US, three-tenths of one percent off every transaction.

And then there was Don Nelson (who served with NASA for 36 years until he retired in 1999) and his letter in Summer of 2002 to President George W. Bush imploring him that his 'intervention' was necessary to 'prevent another catastrophic space shuttle accident'.

He was ignored as well; willfully - and Space Shuttle Coloumbia was lost with all hands in February of 2003.

[Green Zone Cafe]

arbo, your posts bring to mind some things that John Robb and Dimitri Orlov have been saying: that the USA is as much a centrally-planned economy as the USSR was, but it's planned by crony capitalists and government, and this planning is now leading to collapse.

I'm in a hotel in Italy now, flipping TV channels between Max Keiser on Russia Today and Al Jazeera English. I never thought the Wall would come down, and I certainly never thought I would one day wish that Russian and Arab TV were available in the USA to counteract the relentless propaganda environment there.

[Neil Richardson]

"By way of example, I read the Murdoch press opinion pages over the weekend - full of sober commentary on the profligacy of the Eurozone countries like Greece and Italy without a single mention of Americas public debt, which according to the IMF is on a par with Spain, Portugal and Britain! It is therefore going to be highly instructive when the Congressional "super committee" reports on 23 November and delivers its own dose of "Austerity" as prescribed to the Eurozone. This is not schadenfreud on my part as I have American relatives who are already hurting."

Correlation does not equal causation. Are you familiar with the history of the international monetary system? Kindleberger and other adherents of the hegemonic stability theory blamed the United States for our unwillingness to act as a hegemon in the 1930s (i.e., a countercyclical lender who'd run up BOP deficit). After 1945, we deviated from the original Bretton Woods plan and assumed the hegemonic role as it became clear that there was a liquidity crisis. The entire West and our Asian allies (including Australia) *benefited* from our institutional balance of payment deficits. We were blamed for this as far back as the early 1960s even though it facilitated unprecedented economic growth. (See the Triffin Dilemma or the N-1 problem) The French benefited in the short run and forced the United States to abandon the dollar-gold standard (And who paid the cost?). How stable was the post-Bretton Woods system? Does stagflation ring strike a note of regret?

If it weren't for the United States actively facilitating the recycling of the petrodollar after the OPEC embargo, we would've had a series of financial catastrophes in the 1970s and 1980s. Well, what would be the microeconomic outcome of such an arrangement? Cheaper oil prices equals wasteful consumer behavior in the US. It's hard to break a terrible habit when we'd assume the role of hegemon and others benefited as free-riders. If we were to assume draconian measures of austerity, the first impact would be a significant reduction in trade level as well as calls for protectionism here in the US (now we hear in both parties which I never thought would happen in my lifetime). And Australia would be affected just as terribly as our East Asian allies. Forty years from now another generation of economic historians would blame the US leadership for shortsighted economic policies.

I'd be the first to rejoice if the United States were to drastically reduce our foreign commitments and stabilize our public debt situation. However, it's not as simple as you describe them above. Public debt level is an intertemporal phenomena which is subject to exogenous variables (e.g., sudden rise in productivity, the end of the Cold War, etc etc). Linear assessments aren't that useful

[steve]

@Dr. Silverman

I understand your point regarding the pastor.

Yet I think it's fair to say that we have in fact been attacked by the educated meritocracy in think tanks, academia, lobbyist groups, financial services, and in politics, including by our ivy league educated presidents of the past 20 some odd years.

[walrus]

Mr. Richardson, I am not criticising anyone, least of all the population of the United States, nor the role of the U.S. in recycling petrodollar, etc. I am merely pointing out that Americans are bombarded daily with recycled "Zombie Ideas" by paid commentators working for lobbies.

Dr. Silverman shone the light on two purveyors of this crap Rubin and Abrams, that are part of AIPAC. We already know how lethally effective this lobby is - costing at least 4000 American lives and perhaps 100,000 Iraqi lives, based on a whole series of zombie ideas that refused to die - "Sadaam has WMD" and countless others.

It is critical that people understand that the same technique of continuously recycling falsehoods is also driving economic policy today - by a lobby paid for by the very rich 0.01%. The result of this so far has been the "Austerian" (as Paul Krugman calls them) prescription for the problems of Europe, that don't have a snowballs chance in hell of working.

All I have opined is that the Austeriains are going to prescribe exactly the same treatment for the American people, and they will start their assault via the Super Committee report on Nov. 23rd. Their prescriptions are wrong and will exacerbate the situation because they will cause tax revenue to fall even further. We need to understand that this lobby is even more dangerous to the average American than AIPAC.

There are very few economists who are trying to stand up to the attack. Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong are Two examples. In the grand scheme of things they point out that deficits don't matter that much for reasons I won't go into.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/

And as an aside, I heards a FoxNews commentator talking this morning about "The people of Europe must take their bitter medicine" - which is casting economics as a morality play - which it isn't.

[Fred]

arbogast,

'the people who elected him'? That's 50% of the people who voted. Sham elections? Like those in Ohio in 2008? Be a bit more precise in your choice of language. I don't care for what Obama's done since he got elected, I'm certainly not a Stalinist.

[William R. Cumming]

Be interested in the take of posters and commentators on this blog of the validity of the following today and perhaps the corruption of a specific segment of US society, specifically that segment identified in the following:
The Power Elite
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Power Elite is a book written by the sociologist, C. Wright Mills, in 1956. In it Mills calls attention to the interwoven interests of the leaders of the military, corporate, and political elements of society and suggests that the ordinary citizen is a relatively powerless subject of manipulation by those entities.

The structural basis of The Power Elite is that, following World War II, the United States was the leading country in military and economic terms.

The book is something of a counterpart of Mills' 1951 work, White Collar: The American Middle Classes, which examines the growing role of middle managers in American society.

A main inspiration for the book was Franz Leopold Neumanns book Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism in 1942, a study of how Nazism came into a position of power in a democratic state like Germany. Behemoth had a major impact on Mills and he claimed that Behemoth had given him the "tools to grasp and analyse the entire total structure and as a warning of what could happen in a modern capitalist democracy". (C.Wright Mills: Power, Politics and People, (New York, 1963 p.174)).
Contents
[hide]

1 The book
1.1 Chapter 1: The Higher Circles
1.2 Chapter 11: The Theory of Balance
1.3 Chapter 12: The Power Elite
1.4 Chapter 13: The Mass Society
1.5 Chapter 14: The Conservative Mood
1.6 Chapter 15: The Higher Immorality
2 See also
3 External links

[Neil Richardson]

"It is critical that people understand that the same technique of continuously recycling falsehoods is also driving economic policy today - by a lobby paid for by the very rich 0.01%. The result of this so far has been the "Austerian" (as Paul Krugman calls them) prescription for the problems of Europe, that don't have a snowballs chance in hell of working."

I'm not sure what you mean by "a snowball's chance in hell of working." If the goal is to preserve the bulk of the eurozone even if it means cauterizing a terrible wound (e.g., Greece, Ireland) while saving the rest, well I think it's still a better bet than Germany and France pursuing an open-ended expansionary fiscal policy. I keep reading Krugman readily dismissing the impact of capital mobility on the US dollar (he might be right in the short term although you never know with some of these Tea Party idiots in the House who seem to enjoy self-inflicted wounds). Yet he ignores the basic political fact of life namely Germany and France are democratic states where there isn't much support for countercyclical lending. This is where I find academic economists frustrating and annoying. Someone will have to pay the cost of becoming a financial hegemon, but nobody including Krugman or Stiglitz can say who *will* do so while overcoming the collective action dilemma. Well, we live in the real world of divided state sovereignty.

"All I have opined is that the Austeriains are going to prescribe exactly the same treatment for the American people, and they will start their assault via the Super Committee report on Nov. 23rd. Their prescriptions are wrong and will exacerbate the situation because they will cause tax revenue to fall even further. We need to understand that this lobby is even more dangerous to the average American than AIPAC."

I don't pay attention to Fox or any of their fellow travelers as life is too short. However, I find many of the neo-Keynesian ideologues just as tiresome.

"There are very few economists who are trying to stand up to the attack. Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong are Two examples. In the grand scheme of things they point out that deficits don't matter that much for reasons I won't go into."

Deficits don't matter provided you can grow your way out of it. The United States is a consumer economy. The rest of the world wants the United States to be "the consumer of last resort " yet again even though idiots like Putin called the US a parasite. The problem is how do we transition from a consumer to a more balanced economy. Krugman and DeLong have their usual Keynesian panacea while some of us aren't that sure of ourselves. Incidentally I don't recall either of these economists sounding the alarm on derivatives market regulation until it was too late. We aren't in 1985 any more as we can't negotiate a "soft landing" as we did with the Plaza Accord if the projections are flawed. Although Keynesian economists are very sure of themselves, I am not certain if stagflation can be ruled out even if the leading economies can coordinate a bigger round of stimulus. There are exogenous variables such as a war with Iran.

[securecare]

If one has an Apple iOS device one can watch Al Jazeera (English) in the U.S. by downloading their app.