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We have become obsessed with prescience. Or rather, a kind of reverse-prescience that sees old books (from Orwells Nineteen Eighty-Four to Margaret Atwoods The Handmaids Tale to Arendts The Origins of Totalitarianism and Radioheads OK Computer) invested with a new vitality. These works, and their authors, are hailed for their farsightedness and acute judiciousness, for their ability to speak to our troubled times. But more often than not, its a case of too little, way too late.

Reading the Stalinist parable Nineteen Eighty-Four to make sense of Trumpism feels about as useful as scanning the instructions on a bottle of bear spray while your torsos already half-digested by a savage Kodiak. Still, we laud the old works and the old masters for their seeming ability to forecast the present, even if they do so in hazy, generalizing terms. The esteemed quality of prescience thus reveals itself as conservative, keeping us fixed on the past, lost in our fantasies of foregone foresight. Damn, if only we could have seen it coming back then.

Few pop-cultural objects carry this burden of prescience like RoboCop, Paul Verhoevens sci-fi satire/Detroit dystopia/Christian allegory, which turns 30 this summer. Set in a near-future Motor City beset by corporate greed, with slums being rebuilt as privatized skyscraper communities and public services seized by profiteering private contractors, much of RoboCops critical legacy hinges on its seemingly spooky ability to predict the future: from the militarization of American police forces, to the collapse (and rebirth) of Detroit, to the way in which politics has become increasingly beholden to private money.

Never mind that all these things were already happening when RoboCop was released theatrically at the ass-end of the Reagan administration. What matters is how the film is regarded as effectively anticipating whats happening now. Problem is: claims of the films prescience arent just overstated. Theyre fundamentally incorrect. And if were to believe as many seem to that RoboCops near future is meant to be our present, then we must reckon with one of its greatest oversights: its depiction of business-suited capitalists as crass, corporatist, unfeeling heels. What RoboCop got wrong was its depiction of the bad guys of those greedy corporate profiteers looking to razz Detroits crumbling ghettos, quarterback private police militias and trap the hearts and minds of good, honest, working men inside hulking robotic exoskeletons.

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On the commentary track bundled with Criterions now out-of-print 1998 home video release of RoboCop, producer Jon Davison summed up the movies message. He called it fascism for liberals. As Davison puts it: The picture is extremely violent, but it has a nice, tongue-in-cheek, were-just-kiddin quality. Indeed, RoboCop, like many of Dutch expat Paul Verhoevens other films (The Fourth Man, Starship Troopers, Basic Instinct, Showgirls, even the recent Elle) function through this sort of deeply embedded irony; this were-just-kiddin quality. The sex, the violence, the way they flirt with ideological reprehensibility Verhoevens films are calibrated to invite reaction, even disgust. And yet thats never the end in itself.

When a heavy artillery urban pacification tank shoots up a boardroom meeting early in RoboCop, in one of the films most legendarily over-the-top sequences, the joke isnt the display of gore itself, but rather the reaction. When the scowling CEO of Omni Consumer Products (referred to with mock-affection as The Old Man, and played by Dan OHerlihy) witnesses the wanton display of machine-on-man violence and mutters to sniveling underling Dick Jones (Ronny Cox), Im very disappointed in you, thats the joke a critique of the corporate worlds utter disdain for human life, packaged in a parody of Reagan-era paternalist condescension. This, presumably, is what Davison is talking about. RoboCop offers visions of violence, of top-down, totalitarian corporate control, and the crumbling of the American Dream itself that proves fundamentally comforting in its cheekiness and ironic distance. Yes, the world it depicts is bad. But we know its bad. And thats good.

Yet this idea fascism for liberals runs even deeper into the movies DNA. What its capitalist parody doesnt anticipate is the current entanglements of corporatism and politics. While the ascent of celebrity capitalist Donald Trump may play like something out of a direct-to-video RoboCop sequel, the film fails to address the more pressing threat of smiling, do-gooder philanthrocapitalists: guys like Michael Bloomberg or Mark Zuckerberg who increasingly set the agendas of American (and global) politics, while retaining the image of selfless saviors. These are the people who, increasingly, represent the corporatization of everyday life, albeit in a way that RoboCop-style corporate villainy cant account for.

When Donald Trump announced that America would be backing out of the Paris Climate Agreement, ex-NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg promised to pick up the tab with his private money. Likewise, before Amazons Jeff Bezos announced he was buying the Whole Foods supermarket chain last week a move that boosted Bezoss stock while sapping that of competitors like Wal-Mart and Target he canvassed Twitter for ideas on charities to which he could donate money. This is the face of modern consumerist capitalism: lead with a benign-seeming charitable gesture, follow through with a massive, bottom line-boosting buyout.

The fundamental weakness of 80s-era, RoboCop-ian businessman bad guys is their conspicuousness. They are vulgar and cruel, they divulge their scheming master plans in Bond villain-style monologues, and mainline cocaine and throw their henchmen out of moving vehicles. They are obviously (too obviously, maybe) villainous. They are unabashedly wolfish and competitive. This is not meant as a dig at RoboCop itself, which is a perfect film. Rather, its a critique of the automated reaction to praising the film for its farsightedness in a way that seems blinkered and myopic, even from the perspective of today.

Because today, things are altogether different. The billionaire super-capitalists seeking to monopolize the experience of daily life tend to appear not as smirking super-villains with spindly fingers steepled together as if it say Im scheming. Rather, theyre the good guys. They donate money to charity (while exploiting tax loopholes), they care about the environment and schools and LGBTQ rights and the health and wellbeing of the Democratic Party. Some even want to go to Mars. They orbit around politics without seeming overtly political. (The obvious exception in this glad-handing rogues gallery is Bloomberg, though his move from mayor of Americas largest city back to private citizen and super-rich guy tends to be regarded as just that, a return or a retirement from political life.) And this seeming isolation from the sphere of politics is their greatest strength.

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In 1831, French bureaucrats dispatched Alexis de Tocqueville to America to study the national prison system. He skipped the prisons, surveying instead the whole broad expanse of American society. The resulting study, Democracy in America, is an exhaustive account of life and liberty and the then-fledgling republic.

One thing that struck de Tocqueville was the cleaving of church and state. Unlike France, where the Bourbon Restoration had reinstated privileges of nobility granted to the clergy that had been largely stripped during the Revolution, and where the Catholic Church was state religion, Americas deep religiosity existed outside (or alongside) the political realm. In America, de Tocqueville observed, the clergy never hold public office and are not politically active. While the power of religion seems diminished without an alliance with political power, it is actually stronger. Where the political sphere is constantly in a state of flux and is always changing according to public opinion, religion provides a stabler common morality.

De Tocquevilles observations on the American clergys power were explicitly translated to the political-social realm by economist Friedrich Hayek and other so-called Austrian School economists. As Linsey McGoey writes in her 2015 critique of philanthropy No Such Thing as a Free Gift, these economists grasped the that in order to wield lasting power it was important to make sure their efforts appeared as non-political as possible. Unfailingly, whenever confronted with a choice between overt political engagement and more surreptitious political lobbying, Hayek would recommend the second strategy. This sense of standing outside the muck and mire of politics itself, of living above the fray, grants billionaire corporatists inordinate power in the public imagination (to wit: during his presidential campaign, Donald Trump successfully spun his lack of experience in politics into a virtue, and similarly framed his inordinate wealth as a mark of his incorruptibility).

Capitalism, or even just gauzier ideas of business and the market, provide their own contemporary common morality (or they appear to, anyway). This is the ultimate liberal fantasy: that all we need to solve massive social problems is more money, that the way to fight against billionaires is with different kind of billionaires. And this is not even to say that Bloomberg, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Bill Gates, Carlos Slim et al. are necessarily bad or evil. But this altruism and aloofness is the essence of their menace. They use wealth, power and influence that results in a net negative of the democratic experiment. While appearing benevolent, they set the agenda, all without the consultation of the broader public (save for the occasional Twitter poll). They consolidate their power and restrict possibilities, delimiting democracy and wrangling into a plutocracy of smirking good Samaritans. This is the sort of stuff that never frighten liberals, who are happy to see their vested interests fortified in the hands of those who think just like them.

And this, perhaps, is why I reserve a certain fondness for director Fred Dekkers often-mocked 1993 sequel RoboCop 3. There, the films namesake robotic constable functions not as a metalloid Christ cleansing the temple of American industry from conspicuously chicanerous capitalists, but as a hero of the disenfranchised. Hes an android golem, fighting on behalf of a ragtag revolutionary army of down-and-out Detroiters and pensionless public servants against the encroachment of corporate control (both domestic and foreign) and the steamrolling of Old Detroit.

Despite the films arch-cartoonishness and family-friendly feel (it pares back the blood and gore for scenes of Robo battling Japanese ninja androids and whooshing around in a jetpack), RoboCop 3 has little in the way of the originals beloved tongue-in-cheek, were-just-kiddin quality. Its fueled by a more intersectional, revolutionary energy, in which everyday people band together to defend their retirement funds and stand up for their communities. Its the sort of story that might actually trouble institutional liberals and do-gooder philanthrocapitalists, one in which a legitimate #Resistance rises up and asserts itself, with or without the help of a reprogrammed robotic police officer. Its a message that, one might hope, will one day too be trumped up and over-hyped as acute and totally visionary.

Or maybe the better hope is to forgo the backward-looking fetish for prescience altogether, to turn away from Oceania and Gilead and Delta City and cast a caustic eye on the present, to ferret out the culture that will seem ahead of its time well down the line, and to see whats coming right now.

Read more:
Fascism for liberals: RoboCop at 30 and the problem with prescience - Salon

A new poll shows most voters are growing tired of the allegations of collusion with Russian officials made against the Trump administration.

According to the most recent Harvard-Harris Poll, 56 percent of voters said they want Congress and the media to move on from the Russian investigation. Sixty-two percent of respondents said they believe the investigations will lead to the end of the Russia inquiry. Thirty-eight percent said they believe Trump will eventually be impeached.

Additionally, 64 percent of the voters in the poll said they believe the investigations into Russia and President Trump are hurting the country.

The survey was conducted June 19-21 and included responses from 2,237 American adults who say they vote. When asked which political affiliation they usually identify with, 35 percent of respondents said Democrat, 30 percent said independent, 29 percent said Republican, and 6 percent said other.

Interestingly, the poll also shows 52 percent of respondents said they have a favorable view of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who scored the highest of all the political figures asked about. Mike Pence finished second, with 47 percent of voters saying they have a favorable view of the vice president. Trump finished third (45 percent) and his 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton finished fourth (39 percent).

The poll represents a remarkable shift from just one month ago, when Harvard-Harris found 75 percent of voters supported former FBI Director Robert Muellers investigation into the possibility Trumps campaign team may have colluded with the Russian government to win the election.

After a rocky May, Trumps approval ratings have steadily improved as Democrats have been unable to show any evidence of their claims about Trump and Russia. The Real Clear Politics average of polls which includes polls that survey all Americans, not just voters showed Trumps approval rating throughout most of May and early June to be below 40 percent, bottoming out at 38.6 on June 13. Since then, Trumps average approval rating has consistently risen. Its currently sitting at 40.6 percent.

Excerpt from:
Poll reveals Americans are changing their minds about Russia liberals won't be happy - TheBlaze.com

Liberals pumped out an urgent-looking mass fundraising email hours after the throne speech. Uncertain and unstable situation. We could be back in another election any time, went the pitch.

It was a dire warning from new Technology, Innovation and Citizen Services Minister Jas Johal: The NDP are planning to take power with the support of the Green Party, and implement an agenda thats dangerous for jobs, families and communities throughout B.C.

But wait a minute. That dangerous agenda is the one the B.C. Liberals just ransacked and cut-and-pasted into their own throne speech. How can you ask people for help in fighting an ominous threat to jobs, families and communities throughout B.C, when you just borrowed huge gobs of that dangerous agenda and made it your own?

Any other time this would be a fairly significant question. But the Liberals have so many discrepancies and contradictions piling up, this one is just of passing interest.

As the import of Thursdays quick and dirty emergency remake of the Liberal government sinks in, its starting to look like the leadership of the B.C. Liberal Party is as uncertain and unstable as the situation itself.

It was pretty delusional to expect a quick course change would break an MLA or two loose from the deal the NDP and the Greens put together to unseat the Liberals. All 44 of them signed their names to it just 23 days ago.

The idea of someone bolting because Clark has seen the light was improbable. But that seems to have been the premise the speech was based on.

Clark could have bowed to the inevitable and surrendered on a few key things such as campaign finance reform and welfare-rate increases. That would have signalled that lessons were learned and serve as a marker for the new approach theyll be needing in opposition.

But to abandon positions they held for years and shoplift new ones from their opponents, then promise a billion-dollar spending spree on top of it, boxes them into some new corners.

Its increasingly likely the Liberals and NDP will switch government and opposition seats next week. How does Clark plan to critique an NDP throne speech this summer, after shes just finished adopting much of it?

The Liberals standard line of attack on NDP fiscal ineptitude is going to look a little weak, when she just promised to spend every surplus nickel at hand.

It will take some imagination to criticize NDP child-care policies, when she just promised a ludicrous expansion of programs that is likely physically impossible to come anywhere close to fruition.

And further out, how will she differentiate the Liberals, when everybody looks to be in the mushy middle now?

The one enduring characteristic of the party through 16 years in power is that the leader can do literally anything he or she wants. Party members dont spend a lot of time agonizing over policy or doctrine. They contribute time and money to maintaining a formidable political organization, then they entrust it to a leadership to use as they see fit.

Former premier Gordon Campbell made huge swerves on issues such as First Nations rights and climate change without consulting anyone in the party. Members scarcely batted an eye.

Its amusing to turn the tables and picture NDP Leader John Horgan attempting what Clark tried to do this week. The party would have a collective stroke. The purity of the doctrine committee, or some such thing, would be in emergency session and Horgan would be called up on charges before the provincial council.

But a B.C. Liberal leader has command and control of the whole enterprise. All they have to do is keep winning. Clark hasnt lost yet, but the remarkably grim array of faces on the government side during the speech made it clear they expect it to happen soon.

When moving day comes and they have to find new desks on the other side of the aisle, Opposition Leader Christy Clark might have to spend some time doing something Liberal leaders rarely have to do explain herself to her party and reassure members she knows what shes doing.

lleyne@timescolonist.com

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Les Leyne: Liberals boxed in as endgame nears - Times Colonist

Outgoing Liberal party federal director Andrew Bragg (left) shakes hands with Andrew Hirst, the new party director in Sydney on Friday. Photograph: Dan Himbrechts/AAP

Australias Liberal party has launched a new website that it says will help seduce swing voters its way and challenge rival campaigning organisations such as Getup!.

The acting Liberal party director, Andrew Bragg, launched The Fair Go website on Saturday, which is operated by the party.

Bragg used his speech to the partys federal council as a call to arms to modernise or perish. He said the party had to deal with a cashed up cabal of opposition to its interests.

Senior members of government and Liberal figures have been taking aim at organisations such as Getup!, which have excelled at developing novel and effective digital campaigns at a time when the Liberal party has struggled to keep pace.

The Fair Go site appears to be, in part, a response to some of these new types of campaigning and, according to Bragg, will help bolster the partys efforts to seize the opportunities in the digital age.

The WordPress site includes posts with titles such as Women are just people, Whos your grand-daddy? and From laissez-faire to much, much fairer.

It also includes three words of the week that will change weekly. The inaugural locutions are needs based, union and slamming.

A review of the partys last election campaign by Andrew Robb set out a series of concerns with the Liberal partys election campaign efforts, and found they were being outgunned and outspent by Labor and progressive activist groups.

Bragg told the federal council: Publish or perish must be our credo.

He said the website will be a publication which reaches beyond the existing cohort of fellow travellers to speak to undecided and swing voters.

It is designed to support the Coalitions overarching narrative into social platforms and arm supporters with bottom up perspectives on public policy issues.

The website appears to feature a cast of characters mostly linked to the Liberal party.

Parnell McGuiness, a communications consultant who is the managing director of Thought Broker, is listed as the editor of the site. Penny Fischer, a Camden Liberal councillor and the daughter of Pru Goward, has also produced work for the site. Brigid Meney, a policy officer at Cornerstone Group Australia and former Liberal party political adviser, has contributed as well.

The sites privacy policy makes it clear that the Liberal party collects users personal information and may contact them if they sign up to the site.

It is Braggs final speech in his role as acting director of the party following Brian Loughnanes departure. Former Liberal party staffer Andrew Hirst has been named the new director.

It is not the first time major parties have attempted more aggressive communication strategies.

The Labor party launched the Labor Herald in 2015, which produced news and analysis for the party faithful.

It no longer publishes content, and the website now directs users to a page that says it is currently on hiatus.

Read more:
Liberals launch website to lure swing voters and take on activist groups - The Guardian

Kevin DrumJun. 23, 2017 2:33 PM

A couple of days ago I wrote a post responding to Peter Beinarts recent article about Democrats and illegal immigration. It was a bit of a dogs breakfast. I intended to write one thing and then ended up writing something else, which made the post a little disjointed. Then it turned out Id made an arithmetic mistake, and had to rewrite a chunk of the piece on the fly. Blecch.

But I did promise to eventually write the piece I initially had in mind, so here it is. Im a little pressed for time, so Ill keep it short.

Statistics aside, one of Beinarts main points was not that liberals should become big opponents of immigration, but that they should be willing to admit that there are drawbacks as well as benefits to large flows of illegal immigration. Its complicated stuff.

I agree completely, and this is hardly a problem limited to immigration. Its the way almost everything has evolved. I blame it mostly on conservatives, but I imagine conservatives blame it mostly on liberals, so Ill skip trying to assign blame. Either way, the upshot is that there never appears to be any political advantage to admitting that an issue has both upsides and downsides. But every issue important enough to be worth talking about does. Its just that theres hardly any audience left that cares.

I have no idea what, if anything, we can do about this. But I will say this. I lurk on a number of message boards populated by liberals, and what they say privately is very often more nuanced than what they say publicly. On immigration, there are probably lots of liberals willing to concede that there needs to be a limit to the flow of undocumented workers. There are cultural, economic, and nationalistic reasons for this. But theres little benefit to saying so in public. It just invites massive, social media swarms insisting that youre a closet racist.

Ive long been on record as a moderate liberal on immigration. I think there are benefits to keeping illegal immigration to a moderate level, and details aside, I think the answer is a rigorous version of E-Verify along with tough employer sanctions. In my own personal utopia, Id pair this up with a national ID card. Basically, if undocumented immigrants cant get jobs, theyll stop coming. Theres no need for a wall.

I wonder how many liberals agree with me, more or less? I wonder how many are waiting for someone else to say it before they do? I wonder how many just flatly dont consider it worth the blowback, so they stay quiet? Questions, questions.

As you might imagine, this is partly because the boards Im attracted to arent run by shouters and nutballs. Still, Im curious: is the same true of moderate conservative boards? Any wingers out there care to comment?

And drawbacks to getting too tough on illegal immigration. There are good reasons to protect our borders, but there economic, humanitarian, and police state reasons not to have a goal of zero illegal immigration.

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Liberals and Immigration - Mother Jones