The Political Landscape Has a New Architecture

the four plus or minus two or three American narratives
(source: blog of Yastreblyansky)
no copyright infringement intended

Two articles deserving a discussion: The Four American Narratives (David Brooks in NY Times) and The New Class War (Michael Lind in American Affairs). Let me add to this that some time ago Aaron Astor made on his Facebook page a subtle distinction between left versus right globalism and left versus right populism. If I find it I will put it here. I should come back to all this.

The Four American Narratives https://t.co/7ejcSXxzF6

— Pierre Radulescu (@pierreradulescu) May 26, 2017

https://t.co/vzB5DfhqK1

— Pierre Radulescu (@pierreradulescu) May 27, 2017

(Zoon Politikon)

Aaron Astor: We Need To Rethink Our Models of Political Ideology

Aaron Astor
(image source: twiter)
no copyright infringement intended

Aaron Astor (Historian of the 19th Century U.S. and Associate Professor at Maryville College) on Facebook:
We need to rethink our models of political ideology, both in the US and around the world. There are right wing nationalists, left wing nationalists, right wing globalists and left wing globalists. There are gradations along each axis. Trump, Putin and the European far right parties are right wing nationalists. They emphasize cultural traditionalism and economic protectionism. Right wing globalists are the neo-conservatives, and the Reagan-Thatcher conservatives who believe in the universal power of free markets and the necessity of military intervention to advance global capitalism. Left wing nationalists have been strongest in Latin America but there is an element of it in Bernie Sanders' approach. They speak mostly of taking care of all the people at home and they refuse to take the ethnic and racial culture war bait. Left wing globalists believe that borders themselves are mostly antiquated hindrances to human rights and that international institutions should be vested with the power to advance basic human rights throughout the world. Again, there are gradations of each.
One consequence of viewing politics along these two axes is to see where opposition is most likely to arise. When a right wing globalist is in charge (like George W. Bush), the opposition is likely to take the form of left wing nationalism (Think of the charge: Why are we building schools in Iraq and not building schools at home?). When a right wing nationalist is in charge, the opposition is likely to advance left wing globalism (support for refugees, universal values of democracy, freedom and human rights). When a left wing nationalist is in charge (Chavez in Venezuela is the most extreme modern example), the opposition is likely to take the form of right wing globalism, advocating more free and open markets. When a left wing globalist is in charge (or one who is perceived to be a left wing globalist, like Obama), the opposition is likely to take the form of right wing nationalism.


(Zoon Politikon)

Bardstown Road in Louisville, KY

Bardstown Road in Louisville, KY
(https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150877085767842&set=a.10150165245412842.306965.731397841&type=1&theater)
no copyright infringement intended

Aaron Astor posted this image on Facebook, and added to it,  free buttermilk pie tonight!

Of course, this image generated a discussion among friends:

- Now that's what I like about the South!
- Please tell me more about buttermilk pie! Sounds Very promising
- Like chess pie. No pecans. Pure goodness! Especially after ribs:)
- Must. investigate.buttermilk.pie.
- I had homemade buttermilk pie for the first time the other night, it was delicious!

Well, I should give a shot to it. It sounds fine.

(America viewed by Americans)

The Creator of Betty Boop Was Born Hundred Years Ago Today

no copyright infringement intended
(http://www.pooler-georgia-homepage.com/betty-boop.html)

Lillian Friedman Astor , the first female movie animator, who created Betty Boop, was born on April 12, 1912: hundred years ago today.

It happens that one of her grandsons, Aaron Astor (who teaches History at Maryville College in Kentuky) is honoring me with his Facebook friendship. So I had the opportunity today to read his account on Lillian Friedman's life and work:

She grew up in NYC and shortly after high school joined Fleischer Studios as an inker. She later became an inbetweener and then was promoted (secretly at first) to animator - the first female studio animator in history. She drew some Popeye cartoons but is best remembered for drawing - and very likely creating - Betty Boop.

And a bit later Aaron Astor came with more details:

Just to flesh out the story a bit - Betty Boop was originally a dog with long ears. At some point - likely under my grandmother's pen - Betty Boop was transformed into a flapper girl (a nostalgic image in the early 1930s as the spreading Depression dampened the appeal of urban Jazz Age sexuality). The long ears became long earrings. Max Fleischer took official credit for creating Betty Boop, but Lillian is most likely (according to her peers and family lore) the one who drove the creative energy by the new character. In 1937, during the cartoon animators' strike, she actually followed Fleischer to Florida. Whether she was a scab or a spy is hard to know - though probably a spy considering her love of the Animators Guild. Anyway, she applied for a job with the rival Walt Disney Company in 1939. And my aunt still possesses the rejection letter from Disney - with color-monogrammed Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs on the top - stating that they do no hire girls for creative work. That was the end of her career. She and my grandfather moved to Upstate NY and had my two aunts and my father in the early 1940s.


Here is a short animation movie from 1934. Lillian Friedman appears in the credits (at 0:19).

Betty Boop's Prize Show (1934)
(video by Volterra Channel)

Here is another web page about Lillian Friedman:

http://popeyeanimators.blogspot.com/2007/10/lillian-friedman-astor-pioneer-woman.html

(Filmofilia)

Aaron Astor: The Party Spirit on Trial

an 1863 cartoon from Harper’s Weekly, showing copperheads menacing the Union
Library of Congress collection
(Aaron Astor in NY Times)

Looking at the 2012 US presidential race that is now warming, you can note the party spirit on trial: will the Republicans accept Romney despite all their doubts about his fidelity to GOP universe? To say nothing that also for the Democratic base the incumbent president seems situated too much in the center.

The two party system has always been the norm in US politics, except that the parties have not been always the same. It started with Federalists and Democratic-Republicans. That was in the early days. By 1830 the two opponents were the Democrats and the Whigs. The Republicans entered the picture in the eve of the Civil War. And it was the Civil War that shook all long established political alliances. Suddenly there were Democrats fighting for the Confederacy, Democrats faithful to the Union while against the war, Democrats fighting in the war on the Union camp. And it was not only about the Democratic Party. Everywhere across the political spectrum the party spirit was put on trial.

Aaron Astor (who teaches history at Maryville College in Tennessee) has an interesting article in NY Times, about what happened in the eve of the Civil War, during the war and after:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/the-party-spirit-on-trial/

(Blogosphere)

Aaron Astor: Hotel Switzerland from Jim Thorpe, PA

The photo was taken by Aaron Astor who uploaded it on Facebook.

I enjoyed the photo enormously. It was capturing a universe that was very Americana. The narrow building with an unexpected name (Switzerland Hotel, no more, no less), the post placed on the street with another name that was unexpected (Carbon County), the special light, suggesting a rainy day, or more a windy day, the people who were absent, while their presence was somehow suggested by the whole setting of buildings, and cars, and posts: it was a world of busy people, so busy with their small businesses and small or bigger industries that they could not afford the luxury to be visible.

Well, if you look at the post in the photo, it says that the town is Jim Thorpe in Pennsylvania (it had been named Mauch Chunk and became Jim Thorpe in 1954, to honor the memory of a Native American athlete), also it explains the reason the region is named Carbon County (the rich deposits of anthracite).

I asked Aaron to allow me to publish this photo here on the blog. He kindly agreed and gave me some information about the place:

It was one of the most important towns in the American industrial revolution in the mid-19th century. It used to be called Mauch Chunk (Lenape for... sleeping bear because of the shape of the nearby mountain) and was a critical railroad town connecting the anthracite coal region to the west with the Lehigh Valley and the city of Philadelphia to the South. It also connected, by rail, to New Jersey and on to New York City. Anthracite is an unusually hard grain of coal and is only found in this section of Pennsylvania. It is also one of many places to call itself the Switzerland of America.

(By the way, from an article of Aaron Astor published in NY Times I learned about another Switzerland of America: East Tennessee)

(America viewed by Americans)

Aaron Astor: The Spirit of 1861 - and 2011

It's like having two piles of laundry in your home and instead of deciding which to wash, you decide to burn the house down.

(Sam Harris about the debt ceiling fight)

Aaron Astor

Aaron Astor teaches history at Maryville College, Tennessee. He has this article in The Moderate Voice (an Internet hub for moderates, centrists, and independents, with domestic and international news, analysis, original reporting, and popular features from the left, center, and right):

From the moment John Brown led his failed raid on the Federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia on October 16, 1859 the American South went into battle mode. Decades of economic rivalry, mutual cultural denigration, tragicomic assaults on the honor of politicians, and tense negotiations over Western expansion had now reached a point of genuine crisis. To the slaveholding South, the election of a President whose party contained elements approving a large-scale, murderous slave insurrection meant the virtual dissolution of the Union.

Or so the argument went among the so-called fire-eaters in 1860.

The reality, however, was that most white Southerners had not yet come to the conclusion that the Union could no longer protect the vital social and economic institution unique to the South. Throughout 1860 a debate circulated back and forth in the Cotton States over whether or not the Southern states should secede immediately upon the likely election to the Presidency of Republican Abraham Lincoln, or whether or not the slave states should demand a series of Constitutional protections against the potential assault against the system of slavery.

But this debate was not one carried on by rational politicians. Instead, it was hijacked by fire-eaters like William Lowndes Yancey of Alabama, Robert Toombs of Georgia, and Robert Barnwell Rhett of South Carolina, who stormed out of the Democratic Presidential convention in Charleston and nominated their own candidate, Kentuckian John C. Breckinridge.

When the inevitable happened, and Lincoln won election with less than 40% of the popular vote – sweeping the North while not even appearing on most Southern ballots – the fire-eaters jumped into action. They had little trouble convincing South Carolina to take the lead on December 20, 1860. Georgia and five other Deep South states quickly followed suit. Alexander Stephens, a well-respected conservative Georgian, counseled repeatedly against secession as folly. While the South’s position was morally and ideologically right, according to Stephens, it was unwise and dangerous to blow apart the Union over principle. As legions of other conservative Southern Unionists argued, secession may be defensible in theory, but it would lead inevitably to Civil War and the likely destruction of the very social order that Southerners seceded to protect.

The conservatives lost that battle and most, like Stephens, threw in their lot with the new Confederate States of America. Four years later, the Revolution of 1861 ended in total catastrophe for the slaveholding South. The slaves were emancipated and the owners uncompensated; the land was physically ruined; much of the white male population was dead or maimed; and the dreaded industrial wage labor system began its march into the South.

Never before or since has a wealthy and powerful subset of America risked so much for ideological purity and honor – and lost it all in a fit of hubris.

Never, that is, until now.

The issues are obviously completely different. And I certainly do not mean to imply that the explosive issues of race and slavery are somehow at play again today. But the region leading the intransigence today – South Carolina, Georgia and the rest of the South – was the same that led the great disaster of 1861. I can’t explain why it is that the GOP delegations from the Deep South are the most opposed to the debt ceiling increase. But I can say that the folly these politicians are expressing rivals that of their ancestors.

The cost of failing to raise the debt ceiling is either catastrophic, confusing or some combination therein. What is certain, however, is that interest rates will spike as the US government will have effectively refused to pay its minimum balance on a credit card debt already accrued before today. Not only will this raise the likelihood of falling deeper into recession, it will make the Republican Party look completely amateurish and will hand full and complete power back to a Democratic Party committed to more of the same spending that infuriates the Tea Party right.

The saner conservatives – Fred Thompson and Charles Krauthammer, for example – loathe the large-scale spending. But they understand that the GOP has already gotten the best deal it could possibly get – a deficit cutting bill with no tax increases! Why throw that away in a pique of ideological purity? How could the Tea Party and the right wing of the GOP not see the benefit of compromise here today and fighting the larger fight tomorrow – and on ground that the Democrats have already conceded?

At the Andrew Johnson Historic Site in Greeneville, Tennessee, it is Fred Thompson who plays the voice of the great East Tennessee Unionist Senator in the museum’s orientation video. One can imagine Johnson – as Fred Thompson today – issuing the same warning against the folly of refusing to raise the debt ceiling just as he admonished Tennesseans in 1861 to eschew disunion.

Instead, we’ve entered the surreal phase where the Tea Party right demands even more delusional provisions, like linking a second round of debt ceiling increase to PASSAGE of a Balanced Budget Amendment by both houses of Congress. I would suggest that this is even more obscene than the pathetic Crittenden Compromise of early 1861, where the North was asked to agree to an unamendable Constitutional amendment recognizing the permanent right of states to maintain chattel slavery. Nobody expected the North to agree with that provision – and the South had already concluded the gig was up anyway. Does anybody really think a Balanced Budget Amendment is going to pass THIS Congress (or any Congress, for that matter)? The unseriousness of this proposal shows just how far off the deep end the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party has gone.

But it may be too late. The Tea Party has finally re-awoken the maverick John McCain and exposed huge rifts within the GOP. It has completely alienated Independents from the GOP. And it may have thrown the entire economy into a catastrophic death spiral. It will be up to the remaining adults in the room to clean up the mess, and leave today’s fire-eaters in the dustbin of history.


-----------------------------------


Well, here is a last-minute info:

In a last-minute stab at compromise, Republican congressional leaders and the White House made significant progress Saturday night toward a deal to avert a government default threatened for early next week, according to officials familiar with the talks.

Under the plan, the nation's debt limit would rise in two steps by a total of about $2.4 trillion and spending would be cut by a slightly larger amount, these officials said. The first stage — about $1 trillion — would take place immediately and the second later in the year.

What to say? We are living interesting times. And I am very cautious when it comes to interesting times.

(Zoon Politikon)

East Tennessee, the Switzerland of America

a view of Knoxville, East Tennessee, during the Civil War
(http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/06/07/opinion/disunion_knoxville/disunion_knoxville-jumbo.jpg)

Aaron Astor, who teaches history at Maryville College in Tennessee, has an interesting article in NY Times, in which he addresses the way East Tennessee responded to secession during the Civil War:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/the-switzerland-of-america/

(Blogosphere)

Kentucky, the Bluegrass State

An 1861 cartoon criticizing Kentucky Gov. Beriah Magoffin’s policy of neutrality between North and South
(http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/05/06/opinion/disunion_kentucky_cartoon/disunion_kentucky_cartoon-jumbo.jpg)

For a today's presidential candidate the key is Ohio. It hasn't been always like that. For President Lincoln, the key was the Bluegrass State, the Commonwealth of Kentucky: the most Southerner of the Union states, up to the point to consider that there were three actors in the Civil War: the Unionists, the Confederates, and the Commonwealth of Kentucky. No wonder Lincoln famously said in 1861, I hope to have God on my side, but I must have Kentucky.

Well, the key wasn't only Kentucky, of course. It was also Maryland, as it was also Virginia. Each one chose its side. For each one it was not an easy choice.

Aaron Astor is is the author of the forthcoming book Rebels on the Border: Civil War, Emancipation and the Reconstruction of Kentucky and Missouri. He is teaching history at Maryville College in Tennessee, and besides that he knows Scottish accents, southern slang, hillbilly, South Side of Chicagoan. If you'd like to understand a bit more the complex situation that was in the months before the Civil Wat started and in the first months of the war, the delicate balance between North and South, you should read Aaron Astor's op-ed on today's NY Times

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/07/bluegrass-blues-and-grays/?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=thab1

(A Life in Books)