Recommended Readings Review: Six Faces of Globalization: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why It Matters by; Anthea Roberts, Nicolas Lamp

 

 

The 6 perspectives "Rubik" model

The book proposes a clever, innovative, multi-perspective model to understand and analyze more than globalization itself, the politics, and political reactions to it.

The authors do not take sides but offer what can be a useful tool to foresee and even negotiate policies beyond politics that address the impacts and unintended consequences of globalization processes and their ups and downturns.

It is a good complement to my "cat whiskers' analysis methodology.

Here I quote their main theses for the sake of brevity:

1. "The Top Face of the Cube: Everybody Wins

 

According to some economists, if you think that globalization impoverishes countries and destroys communities, you have it all wrong. Sure, you may have lost your job because workers. 

in other countries are paid less, but that is not at all different from losing your job because workers in the factory next door are more efficient or because technological progress has rendered your skills obsolete. The market is simply doing its work. You should improve your qualifications to get a better job; in the meantime, you still benefit from globalization since it gives you access to cheaper products. The process of adjustment may be hard at times, but it is a short- term cost that we have to accept in the interest of long- term prosperity. The end result will be a more efficient economy, lower prices, and more abundant consumer choice. In this view, the pushback against economic globalization by people who feel that they have lost out is simply a natural reaction to the creative destruction cycles.

We call this “everybody wins” view the establishment narrative, because it was the dominant paradigm for understanding economic globalization in the West in the three decades following the end of the Cold War. The view reflected a consensus of the main political parties in most Western democracies and beyond, and it has been espoused by many of the institutions that serve as the guardians of the international economic order, such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the WTO. Many powerful actors still endorse this narrative, arguing that free trade not only increases prosperity but also supports other goals, such as promoting peace. Since the establishment narrative has been ruling the world and also represents the sunniest view of globalization, we visualize it as situated on the top of the cube.

The Four Sides of the Cube: Winners and Losers 

"The establishment narrative now finds itself besieged from all sides. Concerns about the impact of free trade on workers and the environment have bubbled up previously, but discontent with economic globalization tended to be suppressed in mainstream circles in the West. In the decade following the global financial crisis, however, narratives that highlight how economic globalization produces both winners and losers have returned to the center of political debate. These currents have pushed us off the sunny top of the cube, over the edges, and down to the four faces on the cube’s sides (Figure 1.2). Instead of relatively limited squabbles between the center- left and center- right 

Proponents of the four challenger narratives do not necessarily contest that economic globalization has produced absolute economic gains at the aggregate level, whether measured nationally or globally. However, they focus on the distribution of those gains, both within and across countries, and derive much of their energy from channeling the disappointment, fears, and anger of the losers. 

2. On the left of the political spectrum, we see two narratives that emphasize how gains from economic globalization have flowed upward to rich individuals and multinational corporations. The left- wing populist narrative focuses on the ways in which national economies are rigged to channel the gains from globalization to the privileged few. 

Left- wing populism expresses itself in vertical hostility; its proponents stand up for the ordinary people who have lost out to the corrupt elite. 

Whereas some proponents point the finger at chief executive officers (CEOs), bankers, and billionaires (the top 1 percent), others take aim at the educated professional class and the upper middle class more broadly (the top 20 percent). 

Instead of singling out domestic elites, proponents of the corporate power narrative argue that the real winners from economic globalization are multinational corporations, which can take advantage of a global marketplace to produce cheaply, sell everywhere, and pay as little in taxes as possible. 

The left-wing populist narrative zeroes in on domestic problems, highlighting the explosion of inequality within countries. 

The corporate power narrative, by contrast, adopts a transnational approach and treats multinational corporations and the transnational working class as the key actors. 

The two narratives are often intertwined in places such as the United States and the United Kingdom, where many on the left are broadly critical of owners of substantial capital, whether individual or corporate. 

In many western European countries, by contrast, where levels of domestic inequality are lower, the corporate power narrative features more prominently, as was evident in the protests across Europe in 2015 and 2016 against the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). 

3. In the right- wing populist narrative, workers, their families, and their communities lose from globalization, both economically and in a cultural sense. 

This narrative’s emphasis varies in different countries. In the United States, where the loss of blue- collar jobs to China and Mexico has devastated manufacturing communities, the narrative has a strong anti- trade element. 

In western Europe, anti- immigrant sentiment and concerns about a loss of sovereignty are central features of the narrative, whereas anxieties about the impact of international trade are less pronounced. 

In the United Kingdom, for instance, many of those who voted for Brexit did not oppose free trade; they rebelled against what they perceived as dictates from the EU institutions in Brussels and longed to regain control over immigration. 

The right-wing populist narrative shares with the left-wing version a deep distrust of elites, but the two narratives part company on what they blame the elite for. 

 

whereas left- wing populists fault the elite for enriching themselves at the expense of the working and middle classes, right- wing populists denounce the elite for failing to protect the hardworking native population from threats posed by an external “other.” 

The right- wing populist narrative thus has a strong horizontal us- versus- them quality, whether expressed through concern about protecting workers from the offshoring of jobs or guarding them against an inflow of immigrants who might compete for those jobs, live off the welfare system, or threaten the native community’s sense of identity. 

The right- wing populist narrative also highlights geographical divisions within countries, such as the diverging fortunes of thriving cities 

The geoeconomic narrative also focuses on an external threat, but of a different kind: it emphasizes economic and technological competition between the United States and China as great- power rivals. 

Although the narrative features most prominently in America, it is gaining ground in other Western countries as well, where China is increasingly regarded as a strategic competitor and a potential security threat rather than merely as an economic partner. Instead of applauding trade and investment as enhancing economic welfare and increasing prospects for peace, the geoeconomic narrative emphasizes the security vulnerabilities created by economic interdependence and digital connectivity with a strategic rival.

Although both the right- wing populist and geoeconomic narratives emphasize external, horizontal threats, they differ in key ways. 

The former focuses on cultural as well as economic losses, while the latter is more mindful of relative economic power of countries and its capacity to undergird political and military power.
 
The former primarily laments the loss of the manufacturing jobs of the past, while the latter focuses on winning the race in the technologies of the future, such as fifth- generation (5G) networks and artificial intelligence.
 

And the former targets Polish plumbers who undercut local workers, whereas the latter casts a critical eye on Chinese scientists and engineers who might steal Western technology.

4. The Bottom Face of the Cube: Everybody Loses

 

"on the bottom face of the Rubik’s cube, we locate narratives that see all of us as at risk of losing from economic globalization in its current form. These narratives portray economic globalization as a source and accelerator of global threats, such as pandemics and climate change. 

Some of these narratives focus on how global connectivity increases the risk of contagion, both of the viral and economic kind. 

 Others warn that the skyrocketing carbon emissions associated with the global diffusion of Western patterns of production and consumption are endangering both people and the planet.

Interesting comments and debate

  

Get the book

My Review of Six Faces of Globalization

 

The Rubik analogy is a rich and thought-provoking framework to "frame" political and social reactions toward globalization. The book presents five reactions to the "mainstream" idea of globalization as "faces" or "sides" of the Rubik cube. The Rubik analogy frames the analysis within certain constraints or pre-condition that can help or hinder the search for practical problem-solving alternatives:

1.       There is no one "optimal" "win-win" but 6ⁿ possible options. The Rubik model presents the non-zero-sum, "win-win" option as "the establishment narrative" (two popular populist derogatory terms) and "the dominant paradigm" (another). To find a "win-win" option within the tangled Rubik model, all other facets must be fulfilled on their terms -whether they might be objectively correct or wrong, feasible or not. Everybody has to be happy to find a happy ending, or at least, the problem-solver has to conciliate six positions at politically, ideologically, and socially odds with each other.

2.      All six facets are presented antagonistically, which defeats the purpose of the Rubik model, which has multiple collaborative solutions to "fill" the six desired sides' optimal" (no facet can have "mixed" or blended elements).

A         All six "facets" in the Rubik model are political and ideological "narratives", not objective country/ industry ./ social segment, region objective P&L data

3.      There is a "lose-lose" mandatory option to solve all other five, and Rubik's simplistic logic does not have a 'losing side."

The Rubik analogy is academically and visually attractive but intrinsically drives to endless unsustainable "solutions" unless there is an optimal "win-win," non=zero-sum alternative.

Such an alternative requires "mixing" elements of each side

And also to have a "guiding star": a solution that is not "a side" but a multi-dimensional "win-win" optimal, like the Prisoners' Dilemma.

How about a Minimal Ideal Vision (MIV) for a shared, sustainable human future?

That goes beyond quick fix diplomacy and appeasement. We got one in 1945-48 after two World wars. And a third, with the fall of the USSR.

We must find a new MIV or get entangled in an unsolvable, unstable mess of a self-made maze.

Smart Debates: The Populist reaction against Liberal progress

  

On February 18th, 2019, Intelligence Squared brought together a panel of experts to argue the causes behind the rise of populism and to debate what should happen next. Should mainstream parties adopt the policies of the populists in an attempt to appeal to people who have hitherto felt unheard? Or should liberals refuse to abandon principled and economically necessary immigration policies? Hear the arguments and have your say.They are today even more valid than then.

Check the Source

The three stages of populism: institutional degradation, popular dictatorship, imperialist expansion

The term populism (or populist) has become a placeholder for a growing gamut of extreme politics. Let's look at some common components of populism and its stages of evolution.

Definitions 

Merriam-Webster

Definition of populist

 (Entr

y 1 of 2)

1: a member of a political party claiming to represent the common peopleespecially, often capitalized: a member of a U.S. political party formed in 1891 primarily to represent agrarian interests and to advocate the free coinage of silver and government control of monopolies

2: a believer in the rights, wisdom, or virtues of the common people

Brittanica

populism is a political program or movement that champions, or claims to champion, the common person, usually by favorable contrast with a real or perceived elite or establishment.

Populism usually combines elements of the left and the right, opposing large business and financial interests but also frequently being hostile to established liberal, socialist, and labor parties.

The term populism can designate either democratic or authoritarian movements. Populism is typically critical of political representation and anything that mediates the relation between the people and their leader or government. In its most democratic form, populism seeks to defend the interests and maximize the power of ordinary citizens, through reform rather than revolution

Political Science (Francis Fukuyama) 

 

 Common characteristics:

1. "Anti-Elitism": Politics that blame the situation of a group -usually considered a majority of low and middle income "native" working class- on the policies and privileges of "elites" or minorities with un-earned access to wealth, property, power, or education, including foreigners, immigrants and ethnic or religious groups (Jews, Arabs, White, Men, European)  or industries (Finance and banking, oil, Technology) and places (rural, small towns vs, big cities, high-end vs poor neighborhoods and slums)
2. Zero-sum, victimization logic: the "gains" and superior wealth, status, and access to education of "the elites" is taken away from "the people" by an unfair system. 
3. Group and class antagonistic and unresolvable (by institutional and peaceful means) conflict there is no "middle ground" or 'melting pot" but segregation, expulsion, or warfare among classes, ethnic groups, locals vs foreigners.
4. Protectionism, nationalism
5. Secessionism, autonomism, separatism
6. Isolationism, anti-"cosmopolitanism"
7. Xenophobia and "kin-based" trust (and distrust)
8. Extreme conspirative views shared in "communication bubbles" with highly exclusive beliefs and even language and behavioral codes
9. Highly emotional, passion-based motivations (mostly rage)
10. Self-reinforcing, partisan politics
11. Distrust in liberal institutions and rule of law
12. Strong leaders totally empowered by  faithful followers
13. Avoidance of "unpopular" positions. "The people" are always right.
14. Use of direct and circumstantial majorities: rule by the crowd, rally, street, referendums.

Evolution and Stages

1. Institutional degradation

Populist politics and policies erode those institutions designed to check and balance power. They usually start by defacing and storming the Congress -as in the cases of 19717 Russia, 1924 Italy, 1932 Germany, 2003 Venezuela, 2020 US, and 2022 Chile.

Soon Congress's compromise and legislation are replaced by referendum and special executive orders justified by some kind of "national emergency".

      2. Popular Dictatorship

Contrary to conventional wisdom, dictators most often are popularly elected; Mussolini and Hitler reached office by vote and were reelected by 90% of the popular vote. Chavez, Maduro, and Putin stayed decades in power through elections. 

Populist leaders "elect" their voters in exchange for benefits. Patronage, fraud, and opposition illegalization make indefinite reelections safe. Nepotism and dynastic succession secure power beyond life terms.

Common policies:

1. Protectionism
2. Clientelism & patronage
3. Anti-free market capitalism
4. State and crony capitalism

   3. Imperialist Expansion

The constant depletion of wealth and resources to sustain corruption and clientelism requires continuous expansion -"Lebensraum" - Hitler's term for our modern "secure borders". Hitler's annexation of Sudetes and Putin's of Crimea follows that same pattern. Hitler's outright invasion of Poland (with Stalin's help) and Putin's invasion of Ukraine show the same type of escalation.

In its imperial expansionist phase, populist dictatorships provoke territorial wars culminating in global conflicts until their regimes are destroyed with large devastation and loss of lives.

Recommended readings: Liberalism and its discontents by Francis Fukuyama

In his book "Liberalism and its discontents", Francis Fukuyama revisits critically his earlier views of "The End of History" and makes new observations about the status of liberal democracy twenty years into the 21st century. 

Fukuyama starts by defining liberalism in the widest possible way:

By “liberalism,” I refer to the doctrine that first emerged in the second half of the seventeenth century that argued for the limitation of the powers of governments through law and ultimately constitutions, creating institutions protecting the rights of individuals living under their jurisdiction. 

Classical liberalism is a big tent that encompasses a range of political views that nonetheless agree on the foundational importance of equal individual rights, law, and freedom.  

And makes a clear distinction with plain democracy: 

Democracy refers to rule by the people, which today is institutionalized in periodic free and fair multiparty elections under universal adult suffrage. 

Liberalism in the sense I am using it refers to the rule of law, a system of formal rules that restrict the powers of the executive, even if that executive is democratically legitimated through an election.

He finds that, after a triumphant expansion after the fall of the Soviet Union and China's opening to some degree of free market, global capitalism, a new series of challenges have risen from within liberal democracies, both established and new.

Right- and left-wing populism has captured the dissatisfaction of those groups left relatively behind or even threatened by global liberal democracy and free markets.

From the right, rising immigration from developing and Third World countries exacerbated by liberal policies pursued in the US by the Democratic party and in the EU by the center from the left Schengen consensus combined with the 2008 financial crisis and rising unemployment has fueled the rise to power of strong nationalist and xenophobic right-wing populism.

In established liberal democracies, it is the liberal institutions that have come under immediate attack. Leaders like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Poland’s Jarosław Kaczyński, Brazil’s Jair Bolsanaro, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and America’s Donald Trump were all legitimately elected, and have used their electoral mandates to attack liberal institutions in the first instance. These include the courts and justice system, nonpartisan state bureaucracies, independent media, and other bodies limiting executive power under a system of checks and balances."

And also a rise in left-wing populism in Spain, the US, and Latin America

Liberalism has been challenged in recent years not just by populists of the right, but from a renewed progressive left as well.The critique from this quarter evolved from a charge—correct in itself—that liberal societies were not living up to their own ideals of equal treatment of all groups.

There is ample evidence that democracy not necessarily favors liberal systems, particularly when these bring rising unequal outcomes for certain groups -blue-collar native whites on the Right and immigrants from illiberal cultures on the Left.

These new realities are turning upside down the traditional Right and Left political constituencies and clientele: blue-collar workers vote for Far Right candidates and immigrants fleeing Third World socialism vote for an open-borders Left in the EU.

A growing polarization goes hand in hand with ethnic, class, and nationalistic divisions fueled by populist vote-capturing rhetoric. 

Fukuyama notices a growing number of democracies that are turning illiberal by exacerbating the power of an executive strongman favored by local ethnic majorities: blue-collar whites in the US follow if not Trump, "trumpist", 'Tea Party" nationalistic ideas. In Europe, France's centrist government is under siege from the "yellow jackets" disaffected native French rejecting liberal "elites" that tolerate massive unassimilated Islamic immigration. The same situation occurs in all of Western Europe. Russia is also promoting a pan-Slavic, pan-Russian redesign of the post-WWII borders following ethnic and linguistic lines.

The Left wing's challenge to liberal democracy in Latin America and Europe also exploits historical ethnic nationalism -from the pre-Colombian descendants in Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina carving land through rewriting constitutions and referendums to the Catalan and Basque separatists in  Spain-.

The world that Fukuyama describes bears an eery resemblance with the one that preceded WWI a hundred years ago. The war in Ukraine resembles the territorial annexations and alliances that triggered both World Wars of the 20th century.

 

 

Putin in Ukraine 2: Autocracy vs democracy in the battlefront

 

Russian military's embarrassing failure in invading Ukraine shows an interesting contrast between autocratic and democratic governance, not just in the civilian but in the military action.

 Reports from the front are eloquent:

Russia’s failings appear to trace to factors ranging from the Kremlin’s wrong assumptions about Ukrainian resistance to the use of poorly motivated conscript soldiers. They suggest that Russia and the West overestimated Moscow’s overhauls of its armed forces, which some military analysts say appear to have been undermined by graft and misreporting.

miles-long convoys of tanks and support trucks have stalled on highways out of fuel,

Hundreds of Russian military vehicles have been destroyed and others abandoned, sometimes because of mechanical breakdowns and poor-quality equipment, said Western officials and military analysts closely following the campaign. 

Russian troops turned to use open telephone and analog radios following the failure of encrypted communications systems, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry has said, making them vulnerable to intercept or jamming. Russian officers were likely targeted after their positions were exposed by their use of open communications, Western military analysts said

Russian military uses central planning where all decisions are made at the top and unmotivated draftee soldiers wait for orders and are punished if they act on their own,. The jammed lines of vehicles reflect the lack of experience and leadership that makes soldiers pack together in fear, offering a better target to their rivals.

The WSJ reports:

The movement of troops in bumper-to-bumper convoys is a clear sign of “soldiers who are untrained or undisciplined,” said retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, a former commander of U.S. Army forces in Europe and now chair in strategic studies at the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington. “You need sergeants or NCOs constantly telling them to spread out. It’s a human instinct to huddle together when you’re in danger,

Ukrainians follow an opposite set of rules, gotten from their NATO and Marine Corps trainers, who emphasize mobility, individual initiative, and taking the decision level to the soldiers on the battlefield, 

The contrast reminds of Rambo, the Silvester Stallone "army of one" marine beating up dozens of marshalls and regular soldiers by improvising on the terrain.

Ukrainians play Rambo while Russians fight as the clumsy marshalls in the film.

This is, actually, a contrast between liberal democracy, based on free initiative and entrepreneurship, and autocratic rule, based on central planning, fear, rigid rules, and punishing independent thinking.

There are, of course, other factors, such as one army defending its country and another of invaders that don't even know well the land (there are reports of Russian tank crews lost in the backroads asking locals for directions), but the key difference is between nimble and resourceful, well-motivated militias (such as those that George Washington led to defeat the British in the American Revolution War ) and what Milton Friedman called "An Army of slaves" when he proposed ending the draft during the Vietnam War,

One last note: autocracies are slow, clumsy learners, prone to repeat mistakes.

Francis Fukuyama seems to be right in his dire forecast for Putin's invasion.

I’ll stick my neck out and make several prognostications:Russia is heading for an outright defeat in Ukraine.

Putin in Ukraine: The Mouse that Roared

Putin's invasion of Ukraine seems to defy logic. From The Long View perspective, based on analyzing societal performance over time, it is a crystal-clear example of perverse incentives at work. Putin got a 620 billion USD war chest from the hikes in oil price provoked by his previous military invasions of Crimea and Georgia. Those billions went to his war chest to cover military expenses, further military buildup, cover the finances of his failing economy, and feed a corrupt oligarchy that includes Putin himself.

Armchair psychologists' analyses about Putin's personality or madness are both puerile and irrelevant. If anything, Putin's behavior and decisions are perfectly rational responses to a perverse incentives system that reminds that of the old Peter Sellers film The Mouse that Roared. In the film, a small Andorra-like European country declares war on the US, seeking to be occupied and rebuilt with American aid.

Putin is doing exactly the same calculation: war pays in higher oil revenues and increased bargaining power with an oil-dependent EU. 

Iran builds nuclear armament for the same reason. Sanctions are compensated with higher oil prices and bargaining power. Pakistan built and supports the Taliban and fundamentalist terrorism to get US aid to... fight them -not too hard-

Let's remember a simple principle of human and societal performance:

behavior is a function of consequences

And ask two fundamental questions:

1. Are there rewards for bad behavior?
2. Are there punishments for good behavior?

Obviously, Putin received 620 billion dollars for 1. and complains about 2, explaining that if he does nothing, NATO enrolls former allies around Russia, turning them into viable threats and rivals.

It doesn't take a Nobel laureate to figure this out. Just looking from The Long View perspective and using a little societal performance analysis.

How can you stop Putin?

Just put a real punishment or disincentive to his military adventures. Not sanctions, but cheap oil. If the US opens its shale spigot as it did before, oil prices can go down fast enough to paralyze the Russian tanks on their tracks. Just a credible announcement from POTUS would change Putin's personality on a dime (or a few billions more)

Why is it so hard, then?

The answer is simple: domestic   US and EU politics.

US: 

Biden has outsourced his energy policy to his Left, putting dogma before results. Shale is bad, green is good, and Putin knows it and exploits that weakness.

EU

Here green dogma has been the law for years and special interests pushing wind, solar and other green industries blocked shale long ago, More dramatically, outsourced energy to... Putin, who has now control over the gas spigots to force the EU into a quick surrender,  toasting with Vichy water.

The Political Pandemic

The anti-vaccine movement -which has taken on a lethal dimension and impact in this pandemic- unites the extreme right with the extreme left and has very old roots that go back to Eduard Jenner's first vaccination in the 18th century. 

Even then there were movements of organized ignorance and rumors against vaccinations. This continued with polio and other pre-COVID diseases and will surely continue because there are lobbies of lawsuit attorneys in the US who have bulti a cottage industry out of making lawsuits for alleged negative effects of vaccines. 

Although those lawsuits invariably fail, they generate billionaire fees for the lobbyists who make a living from them.

Among them, the eldest son of Robert Kennedy, Robert Kennedy Jr, stands out sadly these days. Kennedy Jr. has broken with his family and combines the power of his last name with a mix of left-wing environmentalism and anti-vaccine propaganda supported by Donald Trump.

 This movement, whose factual base descends into a mix of the most grotesque ignorance and disproven claims by repentant authors of discredited papers, is dangerous due to the billionaire figures it mobilizes in social media, lobbies, and paid militants. 

It is another example of the reactionary nature of extremism -coming from the Left or from the Right end of the political spectrum-.

Slavery: when the past is not even past

 

Slavery -or human trafficking, as it is called in the 20th and 21st centuries- is a present practice in contemporary Africa, as Nobel Laureate from Uganda Wole Soyinha explains in a recent Podcast about writing and African politics.

Any cursory consideration of historical and contemporary evidence shows that slavery and bondage are common practices amongst African and Middle Eastern nations.

Professor Thomas Sowell wrote and explained extensively about the role of African tribal leaders and practices in the slave trade. 

Europeans rarely ventured into the Continent to capture and enslave Africans. Slaves were largely captured and sold in local markets by African warlords as a common practice documented since the 15th century -way before 1619 or 1776-.

Looking after current slavery in Africa we can find that there is an active and lucrative industry in many Subsaharan Africa countries, led by African human traffickers, fundamentalist terrorists and Middle East human traders:

"Uganda is a source and destination country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and sexual exploitation. Ugandan children are trafficked within the country, as well as to Canada, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia for forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation. Karamojong women and children are sold in cattle markets or by intermediaries and forced into situations of domestic servitude, sexual exploitation, herding, and begging. Security companies in Kampala recruit Ugandans to serve as security guards in Iraq where, at times, their travel documents and pay have reportedly been withheld as a means to prevent their departure. These cases may constitute trafficking.[1]

Pakistani, Indian, and Chinese workers are reportedly trafficked to Uganda, and Indian networks traffic Indian children to the country for sexual exploitation. Children from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (D.R.C.), Rwanda, and Burundi are trafficked to Uganda for agricultural labor and commercial sexual exploitation. Until August 2006, the terrorist rebel organization, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), abducted children and adults in northern Uganda to serve as soldiers, sex slaves, and porters. While no further abductions of Ugandan children have been reported, at least 300 additional people, mostly children, were abducted during the reporting period in the Central African Republic and the D.R.C.[1]"

Source: Wikipedia 

Well before European traders came in, African kingdoms practiced slavery and bondage in open markets. During the Middle Ages, African-captured slaves were sold internally and exported through maritime and land routes.

These facts do not by any means make slavery less abhorrent. On the contrary, they show that rather than the "original sin" of a single country or race, this practice has been the shared shame of almost all countries and races, and also that Africa -the cradle of the Homo Sapiens species- has also been and continues to be the place where it's more prevalent.

Present-day human trafficking, bondage, and slavery explain why millions of desperate migrants try to reach countries where the practice has been abolished in search of not just better economic conditions but of basic human dignity and human rights.

Independent readers interested in this dramatic reality that flies in the face of political agendas on the Left and the Right will find these two lectures by 1984 Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinha highly educational:

And with regard to the US Founding Fathers, it might be also good to look at slavery from a historical instead of an anachronistic perspective based on contemporary politics:

The Madisonian Republic at work

 

A recent op-ed in the New York Times shows the enduring influence of James Madison -a Democrat- in modern times. 

Madison's constitutional design sets limits not only to direct democracy (which has turned California into referendum-driven chaos for taxpaying residents and businesses) but also to big-spending, high-impact legislation such as Obamacare and now Built Back Better.

Madison's Republic combines the empowering of states (Electoral College) and SCOTUS with midterm elections -POTUS, COTUS- to check what he called "slim majorities" from overreaching and passing major legislation without bipartisan consensus.

Regardless of the merits of Obamacare and Build Back Better, they have been curtailed for lack of what Madison called a "fixed majority". In 1791, Madison explained that:

"Public opinion sets bounds to every government, and is the real sovereign in every free one.

As there are cases where the public opinion must be obeyed by the government; so there are cases, where not being fixed, it may be influenced by the government. This distinction, if kept in view, would prevent or decide many debates on the respect due from the government to the sentiments of the people." (For The National Gazette, 1791)

Biden's slim majority -likely to be reversed in the coming midterm elections like almost all the presidents since LBJ- doesn't meet Madison's requirement for major legislation -what we now call a "mandate" supported by a landslide majority such as those behind the New Deal and the Great Society structural legislation-.

Despite progressives' urge for rushing to pass BBB before they lose control of the Senate and House, the Madisonian rule is likely to prevail. If not, the fluctuating majority will block or modify its implementation.

And those are good news for the US economy and political stability. A house divided cannot stand unless it has checks and balances that force negotiation.

US self-correcting system works again: first it stopped Trump, now it stops Biden

 

James Carville's anger after the Democrats' midterm beating channeled the feeling of the Democratic center almost as well as Lynn Cheney's anger at Trump's preposterous attempt to obstruct the peaceful transfer of power. 

Voters in Virginia, New Jersey, and Baltimore send a clear message of rejection to the Democrats' Far Left agenda. David Brooks summarized it in an opinion piece in the NYT alerting about the growing disconnect between the "woke" agenda pushed too far and too fast by the progressives and the priorities of a country that still is 73 % white and 

center-right:

Washington Post's columnist Gary Abernathy's analysis of the causes of the Democratic defeats on the moderate liberal PBS Newshour and his debate with progressive Democrat columnist Jonathan Capehart captured the perspective of the middle America that pushed back against the Far Left agenda.

"For most voters, the 2020 election was not about policy promises. It was a referendum on Trump. To present an alternative palatable to the largest pool of voters, Democrats settled on their most inoffensive candidate. During the campaign, Biden promised support for parts of the far-left agenda, but voters understood he had to pay lip service to that wing. They didn’t elect Biden to do big, historic things. They elected him to restore a sense of calm."

At the New York Times, columnists Maureen Dowd explained how "wokeness derailed the democrats" and their colleagues Gail Collins and Brett Stephens warned that the Far Left policies can drive the Biden administration to an early failure.

So far, even the much-maligned "liberal media" was fast in reacting -although after the fact- and asking the current Democratic administration and COTUS leadership to correct course away from the Far Left agenda items that turn off critical constituencies -such as the "Farmers and Labor" that once were part of the official name of the Democratic Party in some states or other non-urban, non-college-educated segments of the 73% white voters majority-. Thus, the Fourth Power worked slowly but did work.

The other two controls over POTUS did work as well.

Let's start with SCOTUS :

Much to the chagrin of conservatives in the Right and Far Right, Trump appointees to the Supreme Court decided against attempts by the Trumpist governor of Texas to circumvent Roe v. Wade and allow vigilantes to sue women who abort in the State.

COTUS also worked with remarkable effectiveness. Two moderate Democratic senators blocked the unpopular 3.5 trillion-dollar budget pushed by the progressives and six progressive representatives voted against the popular 1 trillion Infrastructure bill that finally passed with Republican votes in a bipartisan way as the voters who voted Trump out of office and Biden in wanted.

Both parties and their partisan media (Fox for the Republicans, CNN, and MSNBC for Democrats) claims that US democracy is dysfunctional are in part bogus. Parties are supposed to be dysfunctional and... partisan. That is part of a democracy, but the United States is first and foremost a Republic -as Benjamin Franklin famously explained in 1787-  but voters and SCOTUS seem to know better and the constitutional institutions created by the Framers to control them demonstrated that checks and balances work. 

As for POTUS, Donald Trump is no longer president and Joe Biden got a serious warning to turn to the center or become a lame duck. 

The Economist also noticed another feature of the US constitutional system that works wisely to prevent parties from obtaining what Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci called "hegemony" - the eternal extremist dream-.

Parties that control the Executive tend to lose seats and control of COTUS during the midterms. The hurry to push critical legislation on a temporary partisan majority -brought as coattails by presidential elections- is contained precisely by midterms. President Obama learned that lesson the hard way with Obamacare. Republicans learned that SCOTUS is not COTUS shortly after when Bush-appointee Justice Roberts gave the deciding vote to prevent them from striking down Obamacare.

The fundamental institutions of the United States have been tested twice in the last two years and passed the test successfully:  in 2020, when COTUS certified a legitimate election despite an insurrection promoted by a defeated President refusing to concede, and in 2021, by voters and COTUS preventing a partisan minority from exceeding its mandate-.

De-Polarizing US elections: Two New Ideas

 

In his recent book Forward, former presidential and New York majoral candidate Andrew M. Yang puts forward two promising and concrete ideas: (1) open primaries and (2) ranked-choice voting.

Yang argues that these two mechanisms might correct the current process of polarization by creating positive stimulus for candidates to respond to the 51-61 percent of the electorate that has moderate, pragmatic views instead of those who espouse fringe Far Right or Far Left, unrealistic and dogmatic positions.

Both mechanisms have been proven in Alaska, allowing an anti-Trump Republican moderate such as Senator Lisa Murkowski to resist and survive reelection.

Ranked-choice elections in New York also kept in check the Far Left candidacies that brought before the extreme and disastrous tenure of Bill de Blasio.

Food for thought. 

I, for one, will read Yang’s book in the hope that moderation and common sense can find a way back to where they should be since they represent a steady majority of the American electorate.