The DOJ and corrupt media join forces

The passages below are from Jim Tarantos' daily WSJ Online column, and cuts to the chase on the Treyvon Martin-George Zimmerman hoax trial currently underway in Florida.  For anyone following the trial and evidence and cast of outside characters involved, this affair has been a very bad joke from the beginning. In short  the tragic and unfortunate incident was used by the grievance mongering crowd as a means, not to seek justice, as they claim, but to find a way to cash in of the television coverage and white guilt over racism to earn another huge payday along the lines of Pigford I&II. These passages also point out the utter corruption of NBC with their attempt to shape the narrative of this case with selective editing of transcripts.  Any one who watches NBC (and the other two networks as well, for that matter) is never going to get anything important right with regard to the news.  One has to feel sorry for these people who are being duped so flagrantly.

Salon's Joan Walsh, author of a book whose actual title is "What's the Matter With White People?," denounced "white grievance-mongers" who do not care for the word "cracker":

My God, don't these people get tired of themselves? So much of the trumped-up racial upset on the right, generally, is about language: If black people can use the N-word, why can't we? . . . Now we're moving on to: If the N-word is racist and forbidden, words like "cracker" should be, too.

But "cracker" has never had the same power to demean, or to exile, or to sting. No social order has ever been devised whereby African-Americans oppress people they deride as "crackers."

Walsh is surely correct in observing that "cracker" is less harsh than the antiblack racial slur to which she alludes--the one that in recent years has become so taboo that it's usually just called "the N-word."

But so what? In the context of the Zimmerman trial, the comparison is irrelevant. Nobody has claimed that Zimmerman used "the N-word." In fact, as we noted in April 2012, a report on NBC News, Al Sharpton's network, included an audio clip of Zimmerman telling a 911 dispatcher, in reference to Martin: "This guy looks like he's up to no good. . . . He looks black."

It turned out a Sharpton colleague had deceptively edited the recording to Zimmerman's disadvantage. The exchange actually went like this:

Zimmerman: This guy looks like he's up to no good. Or he's on drugs or something. It's raining and he's just walking around, looking about.

Dispatcher: OK, and this guy--is he black, white or Hispanic?

Zimmerman: He looks black.

In context, Zimmerman's observation that "he looks black" is entirely innocent. But the relevant point today is that if NBC's version of the recording had been truthful, it would have been problematic for Zimmerman not because he said "black" instead of the politically correct "African-American," but because even without any slur, it would have been evidence of racial profiling.

Martin's description of Zimmerman as a "creepy-ass cracker" is problematic for the same reason the phony NBC quote would have been. It would have been no less problematic for the Zimmerman-profiled-Martin theory of the case if Martin had described Zimmerman as, say, a "creepy-ass white dude" instead.

Walsh's observation that "no social order has ever been devised whereby African-Americans oppress people they deride as 'crackers' " is, in the main, true. Today there is systematic discrimination against whites, but to call it "oppression" would be a gross overstatement.

But whatever George Zimmerman's culpability in Martin's shooting, he is not to blame for the social order of pre-civil-rights America. He has every right to mount a vigorous defense, and the judge and jury have a duty, as in any criminal trial, to give the defendant the benefit of any reasonable doubt.

The rightful term to describe a criminal trial that serves as a "referendum" is "show trial."

Claire Berlinski on Turkey today.

Claire Berlinski, a free lance reporter, has lived in Istanbul for many years and may know Turkey and the Middle East better than anyone.  Having read her work for nearly a decade, there is no better source for brining sense out of what is going on in Turkey today.  Here's her take on recent events.

Notes on the Turkish Troubles by Claire Berlinski - City Journal

President Obama surely knows that the current unrest in Turkey, which has left at least four dead, 12 blind, and some 7,000 injured, many critically, does not remotely compare—as a humanitarian disaster or as a threat to American interests—to the unremitting carnage in Syria; to the urgency of evaluating the meaning of Iran’s elections and what they portend for its nuclear program; to the rapidly deteriorating security situation in Iraq; to our imminent defeat in Afghanistan; or to at least half a dozen other foreign policy crises of greater moment, not least in the Pacific. It is entirely understandable that Turkey would not be the president’s chief concern.

What is not understandable is that the situation does not appear to be the chief concern, or indeed of any concern, to America’s ambassador in Turkey, Frank Ricciardone. Who knows what Ambassador Ricciardone knows, other than Ricciardone himself? Perhaps a perfectly logical explanation exists for his apparent inaction and indifference. He is hardly inexperienced. His acquaintance with this region dates from 1976, when he taught at a community school in Iran. His most recent posting was to Kabul, where he served as deputy ambassador; before that, he served for three years as the U.S. ambassador to Egypt. He clearly knows Turkey well. He speaks fluent and occasionally colloquial Turkish; he was the political advisor to American and Turkish generals assisting the Kurds during Operation Provide Comfort in 1991. No doubt an able staff provides him with a daily summary of the Turkish-language press.

But Ambassador Ricciardone’s appointment here was controversial. Over the Senate’s strenuous objections, Obama installed him by means of a recess appointment. The opposition derived, among other things, from what some held to be his weak performance in Egypt. Critics believed him excessively deferential to deposed Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak on matters of human rights. In 2006, Ricciardone introduced Egyptian students participating in a model American Congress with these words: “President Mubarak is well known in the United States. He is respected. If he had to run for office in the United States, my guess is he could win elections in the United States as a leader who is a giant on the world stage.” In the same year, speaking to the Egyptian media, he downplayed concerns about the country’s treatment of its Coptic Christians. “Naturally, here in Egypt as in the U.S., there is freedom of speech, so it is possible for anyone to complain about any personal or social problem. If there is a problem, there are legal ways to deal with it, whether here or in the U.S.” These words proved strikingly unprophetic about Egypt’s future but all too familiar to those of us living in Turkey.

The president also surely knows that the U.S. relationship with Turkey is of tremendous strategic importance. Turkey lies in the middle of the Balkans, the Caucasus, the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, the Black Sea, the Mediterranean and the Aegean. As any visual review of the region’s history will show, the route invaders take to go from west to east and east to west is right through Anatolia—pretty much every time. Three-quarters of the world’s proven oil and gas reserves are in this neighborhood, and you can’t get oil and gas from the landlocked Caspian region to Europe—not, at least, without going through Iran or Russia—save by going through Turkey.

America has withdrawn from Iraq, which is now a quasi-Iranian satrapy, so our military ties with Turkey are particularly vital. Turkey is a crucial logistics hub, supporting U.S. forces in Afghanistan. It is difficult to conceive of any future military intervention in this region without Turkish cooperation. During the Iraq war, more than 70 percent of U.S. air cargo moved through Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base, also the primary refueling stop for flights to Afghanistan. Turkey hosts our X-band radar station in Malatya, west of the Iranian border. Not incidentally, Turkey is also home to some 65 tactical nuclear weapons, under the control of NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR). Also, Turkey has one of the largest standing armies in the world and the second largest in NATO. It can deploy a sizable army corps to conduct joint operations at short notice. The Turkish Air Force operates one of NATO’s largest combat aircraft fleets and can conduct air assault operations with a lift capability of up to six battalions at a time, day and night. It no longer has 20 percent of its most experienced admirals and generals (because they’re in jail), but perhaps it can manage without them. As Stalin found out, you never know until you try.

Moreover, Turkey has taken in 363,000 refugees from Syria, at great cost to its social stability and to the lives of its citizens. On May 11, 52 Turks perished in a terrorist attack in the southern province of Hatay. While many here are not entirely persuaded by the government’s insistence that the bombing was the work of Turkish far leftists linked to Bashar al-Assad, most are persuaded that it had something to do with Syria.

So yes, without a doubt, Turkey is a strategically important country, one that we very much want to keep in the American orbit, particularly since it appears that we’re about to do something mysterious in Syria—or at least so reports the Los Angeles Times, which claims that the CIA and U.S. special forces have been training Syrian rebels on Turkish bases. What is U.S. policy on Syria, and what is it supposed to achieve? Who knows?

For all of the above reasons, the United States should not alienate Turkey. And America and Turkey, allies since 1952, have stuck together through much darker times. Turkey wasn’t a libertarian paradise before the rise of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The United States has no good reason to intervene in Turkey’s internal affairs. Turkey’s problems are Turkey’s to solve.

But there is one small thing I do expect. I expect the American ambassador to tell the Turkish people the truth about our country. There is no earthly reason for him publicly to lie or prevaricate about what makes the United States an extraordinary country, unique in the world, for all its failures. There is a particular urgency to telling the truth in a country like this, moreover, where lies are spread daily about the United States by the government, the press, and by Turkey’s sycophantic intellectuals.

In early May, peaceful protests over the proposed demolition of a small park near Istanbul’s central Taksim Square were met with brutal police violence. Secretary of State John Kerry was reportedly “concerned” by this, as was Vice President Joe Biden. On June 6, State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki confirmed that Kerry had spoken to Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, expressing “ongoing concerns about the situation on the ground.” Kerry, she said, “also welcomed the update on efforts to calm the situation,” noting that “we have had concerns over the past couple of days about instances of police brutality, and we continue to call for, of course, the acceptance of peaceful protest . . . Obviously, the protests and the incidents that we’ve talked about a little bit over the past couple of days that have happened on the ground, reports of police brutality and injuries and even a couple of deaths, that’s concerning. And we continue to call for acceptance and support for peaceful protest not just in Turkey, but around the world. That’s our consistent belief and our consistent feeling.” Psaki noted that “what is most helpful is for all the officials, as some have, to encourage calm and encourage peaceful—and accept peaceful protest. And language and verbiage that’s not doing that is not helpful toward moving forward.”

All fine, all appropriate and diplomatic. But that was also pretty much the last we heard from the State Department. Since then, the situation may be summarized thus: Throughout the country, protests sparked by the sight of cops kicking the snot out of peaceful protesters have been met by more cops kicking far more snot out of (largely) peaceful protesters. It’s true that some protesters have lost their cool and broken windows, smashed cars, and—in one remarkable case—hotwired a sizable backhoe to face down the police. But even the most violent protester is no match for what is, effectively, an army. Not a day goes by without reports of protesters getting pummeled. And that is not the worst of it: Not a day goes by without reports of arrests. What this means, in Turkey, is that hundreds of families may never see some of their loved ones again.

In Ankara, reports say, armored cars patrol Kennedy Avenue constantly. People there claim to have lost count of the water cannon and tear-gas attacks to which they’ve been subjected only for walking down the street. The Internet is replete with countless images and videos of elderly men vomiting from tear gas. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been tear-gassed for the violent crime of sitting quietly in my apartment. There have been confirmed reports of thugs loyal to the AKP storming through cities with cleavers and knives. A particularly alarming incident took place the other day in Yeniköy, the Sausalito of the Black Sea, a wealthy Istanbul neighborhood known for its seafood restaurants. Locals were holding a community forum—these have sprung up spontaneously in the past weeks, open-air gatherings to discuss new ways of doing politics. AKP loyalists attacked the forum, reputedly under the watch or perhaps even on the orders of the district muhtar (an elected local official) shouting, “Allah, Allah, you’re the sons of Greeks!” Multiple videos confirm this. The reason this attack is so disturbing is that Yeniköy once was a Greek community, the bulk of which left in the population exchange of 1924 that followed the Greco-Turkish war. The mob attacks of September 1955, orchestrated by the government of Prime Minister Adnan Menderes, eliminated all but the last vestiges of the Greek population here. Menderes—whom the military subsequently hanged—is one of Erdoğan’s idols.

Countless people tell me stories of outrageous treatment by the police. There are plausible (but unconfirmed) accounts of police threatening female protesters with rape. There are confirmed stories, documented with videos, of police beating women for no discernible reason. Several blocks away, the police have more than once used water cannon and thrown tear gas into hospitals. They have used heavy tear gas, as well, in other enclosed spaces, including the Divan hotel near Taksim Square, where people fled for refuge after the police, without warning—and indeed, after the governor explicitly promised that protesters there would be safe—attacked and destroyed the encampments at Gezi Park. The police turned the luxury hotel into a sea of gasping, weeping, vomiting, and wounded victims, then refused for hours to permit ambulances to collect them. The very same governor then advised medics not to treat wounded protesters. The hotel’s owner has been threatened with legal action for sheltering them.

The height of this absurdity was the arrest of protesters for standing. The “standing man” stood in front of the Ataturk Cultural Center in Taksim, just looking at the thing. It took nearly six hours for anyone to notice that he was not just standing, but protesting. Once others figured it out, they began standing silently next to him, their hands in their pockets. Finally, the police realized this was a protest and detained them. The headline in one local paper: “Police radio: Arrest all standing still.”

By June 17, the government was so spooked by protests throughout the country that Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arınç warned that if need be, he would call in the army to put down the unrest. The markets tanked faster than journalists could type. Wasn’t the Erdoğan government’s proudest achievement “sending the military back to the barracks?” Hundreds have been detained and the markets have continued to plummet. The Turkish lira has gone into a nosedive, and with every word that comes out of the prime minister’s mouth, foreign investors turn a more horrified shade of pale. These “terrorists,” as the government calls them, include dozens of doctors, lawyers defending the protesters, and a few political opponents for good measure.

The press has been mired more or less in its usual lockdown, so it’s possible that much of the country, if they receive their news from broadcast media, has no idea that any of this is happening. Famously, during the initial days of the crackdown, CNN Turkey aired a documentary about penguins precisely as the international media showed the chaos on Istanbul’s streets to the rest of the world. Erdoğan has been holding rallies around the country, prompting journalists to join betting pools to see whether he can exceed his previous speech in insanely provocative rhetoric. No one who bets against him ever wins. The rallies are called “festivals of democracy,” or more alarmingly, “Respect for the National Will,” the latter suggesting that he has hired the ghost of Leni Riefenstahl as his campaign manager.

The Turkish Education Ministry has ordered schools to hand over the names of any teacher who has participated in the protests. The pro-government media (that is, most of it) has entered territory so bizarre that one example will suffice: The pundit Yiğit Bulut insists—in all seriousness—that foreign powers are using telekinesis to try to kill the prime minister. Alarmed Jews the world over have written to me about the anti-Semitic rhetoric emerging from these quarters, but I keep reassuring them that they are not being singled out: Erdoğan and his entourage are blaming these protests on everyone from the Masons to the Martians.

How has the rest of the world responded to all of this? Amnesty International has sent out messages to all who will hear: “Turkey: End the Incommunicado Detention of Istanbul protesters.” Human Rights Watch: “Turkey: A Weekend of Police Abuse. Many Protesters Arrested; Hospital Targeted.” Reporters Without Borders: “Mounting Police Violence Against Journalists Covering ‘Occupy Gezi.’” The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, called for an investigation into “violations of international human rights standards,” which she demanded be “prompt, thorough, independent and impartial.” The perpetrators, she said, “should be brought to justice.”

The European Parliament passed a resolution expressing its “deep concern at the disproportionate and excessive use of force in response to the peaceful and legitimate protests.” This is astonishing language for that body, which has thus far reserved such terms only for the condemnation of Israel. German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared herself “appalled” by the violence and described the crackdown as “horrible.” The official German position was clearly expressed on the Ankara Embassy’s Twitter account: “#merkel ‘Shocking pictures from #turkey‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬show that course of action was too harsh. Situation not consistent with freedom of assembly + speech.’” No doubt the Germans were particularly aggrieved because the police gassed their consulate, which is near Taksim Square, and followed up by attacking a delegation of German MPs, including Green Party co-chair Claudia Roth. The water cannon they used was spiked with astringent tear gas, turning Roth’s pale German skin crimson and blistered. Berlin promptly blocked the opening of EU regional policy negotiations. The Serbs, predictably, went bonkers when their consulate was gassed—so much so that the Serbian ambassador was recalled from the post for violating laws of diplomatic service. The Dutch, French, and British consulates were also gassed, and British and French cooperation with Turkey on matters Syrian is in doubt. I knew that the police had definitively lost their minds when they gassed the Russian consulate. The Russians have not commented upon this officially. No doubt they will respond, in their own way.

Leigh Turner, the British consul-general, has shone brightly throughout, responding on Twitter with wit and principle: “Tear-gas canister over wall of #British‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬Consulate #Istanbul‬‬‬‬‬‬—‬‬‬‬all here OK. Grateful if all concerned can try to avoid gassing us if poss.” He provided regular updates, including firm diplomatic condemnation of the violence and statements of Britain’s position on the right to freedom of expression and assembly. His timeline set the standard for dry consular updates and offered clear indications that—to British sensibilities—these were by no means pleasing events.

The United States has, for security reasons, moved its consulate so far away from the city center that perhaps the Americans neither smelled the gas nor heard the screams. Considering things charitably, this may be the reason U.S. officials failed either to grasp or communicate the abnormality of this situation. When one’s consulate is halfway to the Bulgarian border, it’s more difficult for diplomats to put their fingers on the pulse of the street. Perhaps that explains why, throughout this, our embassy Twitter feed consisted of nothing but irrelevant updates such as these:

Department of State ‏@StateDept‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬ 7 Jun (Video) #SecKerry‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬ on #LGBT‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬Pride Month: No matter where you are, and no matter who you love, we stand with you. http://youtu.be/1KeaoB-kAGY ‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬

Erdoğan considers his friendship with President Obama far more valuable than that with any European leader. It was clear to all that the only hope of controlling Erdoğan was a call from the White House, one that unequivocally put the hammer down. Many Turks asked me hopefully whether the United States would now “let” Turkey have a new government. (It is widely believed here that nothing happens in Turkey without the United States’ approval.) But Obama said nothing, and the embassy remained as enigmatic and aloof as the elderly Greta Garbo. Only when Erdoğan insisted that his response to the protests had been mild compared with the U.S.’s crushing of Occupy Wall Street—he claimed that American government forces had killed 17 protesters—did the embassy issue a feeble tweet saying no, that wasn’t so. Then, some hours later, for reasons mysterious, the tweet disappeared.

On June 17, the first working day after the storming of the park and the siege of the Divan, Ambassador Ricciardone paid a visit to the AKP headquarters. What remains of the opposition press indulged in some hopeful speculation. Radikal reported that he had been dispatched to issue a “strongly worded message to the headquarters of the ruling party.” If true, that message went unheeded. Speaking to reporters afterward, Ricciardone explained, “I reaffirmed our support for Turkish democracy, for the principles that we share of freedom of expression, freedom of peaceful assembly. There is no difference between us and the government of Turkey and the governing party on those principles.” The ambassador went on: “I’m quite confident that our relations are strong and healthy. And will continue. I’m very confident about Turkish democracy. You are having a conversation within your Turkish family. The United States is not participating in it, except with full-out faith in you, the Turkish people, and the Turkish government. And we will stand by you as you have your conversation about your future. I believe this is a friendly country to the United States. It’s a good place for American trade and investment, business, visitors, tourism and I intend to enjoy the summer here in Turkey.” Asked whether he discussed the Gezi events, Ricciardone simply reiterated the United States’ support “for Turkey, Turkey’s democracy, for freedom of expression, for freedom of peaceful assembly . . . .” And that was it. Not one reference to what has been going on all around us.

Ricciardone is a diplomat. It is his job to be diplomatic. Clearly, Erdoğan is unhinged and rebuking him in public could prompt the opposite of the desired effect. And affirming that the United States has no desire to participate in Turkey’s “family conversation” was a shrewd thing to say in a conspiracy-minded country. But the rest of Ricciardone’s comments are outrageous. “For the principles that we share of freedom of expression, freedom of peaceful assembly, there is no difference between us and the government of Turkey and the governing party on those principles?” No difference? It may be true that we both support the principles of freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. But in the United States, we also support the practice of freedom of expression and assembly, not to mention supporting freedom after the practice of free expression and peaceful assembly. To suggest that the United States and Turkey have remotely similar perspectives about these principles is ridiculous. It should insult every American, and it should insult every Turk.

Turks are genuinely confused and misinformed about the United States. After all, they’re told daily that what they are experiencing is normal, and that this is what all “advanced democracies” do. It would have been better by far to say nothing than to confirm these lies and better still to explain that in the United States, you’re unlikely ever to be arrested for demonstrating peacefully, nor will you ever be arrested for anything you say, and that it is very much our hope that Turks will one day experience this extraordinary freedom that we cherish.

Ricciardone’s remarks caused real harm. The Turkish government immediately exploited his words. Headlines in the local papers announced, “Gezi Park protests are not exaggerated by White House.” The deputy prime minister proudly told the nation that at least the United States, unlike those bigoted Europeans and screeching human rights’ groups, had a sense of perspective—in contrast with the international media, which persisted in “exaggerating” these “normal” incidents. At roughly the same time, media outlets associated with Erdoğan’s party—and by “associated,” I mean that on one day, seven of them ran exactly the same headline—were placing the blame for the unrest on what the state-run Anatolia media agency called the “American Entrepreneurs Institute,” which it alleged had been plotting this “coup” for months. Did Ricciardone say a word about this? No. So of course the United States didn’t exaggerate these incidents. We didn’t even acknowledge them.

In other words, whatever was actually said in that meeting, the Turkish people learned that America had emerged from it saying: “Green light. We have no problem. Keep going.” And keep going Erdoğan’s government has. The next day, Interior Minister Muammer Güler announced that the government was preparing laws to fix “legislative gaps” in the regulation of social media—the one place where Turks might have a chance of finding actual news. The week prior, Erdoğan had described Twitter as the “worst menace to society.” It may well be a menace to Erdoğan. Unlike in Egypt, which had anything but a “Facebook Revolution,” rates of social-media penetration here are high—almost in the range of the United States. And unlike in Egypt, 90 percent of the tweets about the unrest here have originated in Turkey. In Egypt, 70 percent of the tweets originated outside of Egypt. No one misunderstood, despite the government’s soothing blandishments, what Güler was really saying: “From now on, watch your every word, because we’ll be watching yours.”

The Turkish press has reported that the government plans to monitor social media with U.S. assistance. Obviously, as recent leaks have suggested, the United States government has considerable experience in this department. Whether it is true that the United States plans to help Turkey transform itself into an advanced police state, I don’t know. But if it is true, shame on us. If it is not, Ricciardone should have immediately rebutted the claim. He didn’t. Nor has the ambassador objected to any other slander about the United States uttered by the prime minister, his subordinates, or their press organs—with one possible exception. In a June 18 press briefing, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki rejected the claim that any American group or individual was responsible for escalating the protests in Turkey. She offered boilerplate remarks urging all sides to “exercise restraint and avoid violence,” noted the reports about the prosecution of medics who had treated injured protesters, and said that “all of these reports are greatly concerning and we’re very focused on monitoring it closely. We, of course, deplore the use of excessive force in any of these cases.” But you would not have known she said this from the U.S. embassy Twitter feed, which issued only this: “US rejects claims Americans fomenting Gezi Park unrest in Turkey.” That tweet was promptly buried under a slew of irrelevant information: the text of John Kerry’s remarks at PEPFAR’s 10th anniversary celebration, his travel schedule in Bandar Seri Begawan, and so on.

It is not entirely Foreign Minister Davutoğlu’s fault that his “zero problems with the neighbors” foreign-policy plan has resulted in a “100 percent problems with the neighbors” outcome. This is not a good neighborhood, period. But it is a fact that Turkey has only one powerful friend left—the United States. And we have been the only relevant country or entity in the world that has failed to express more than a few platitudes about what’s going on in Turkey, to say nothing of what we surely do think: that we find it repulsive to shoot out the eyeballs of peaceful protesters. And no, we don’t do this back home.

From where I sit, the United States’ flabby, indulgent attitude toward this cruelty appears both craven and strategically idiotic. It is in neither America’s nor Turkey’s interest for Turkey to go down this path. Our silence has confirmed the worst suspicions of everyone but the AKP base, hardly our natural friends. We have confirmed their fondest suspicions about us—to wit, that we’re fools.

The United States may be permanently alienating the next generation of Turks, the ones with whom we really do want to be friends. When rumors that kids who are getting brutalized have been screaming, “Please help us, Obama” circulate over the Internet, followed by statements from our ambassador that the United States and Turkey share “the same ideas” about freedom and democracy, it confirms every suspicious instinct Turks have about the gulf between what America says about human rights and what we mean. When the Turkish government publicly boasts that it has the United States on its side—well, you don’t have to live here to guess the impact.

This is hardly the first time that Ricciardone has appeared eager to take abuse from Turkish officials. It has not been widely reported in the American press that Turkish officials have rebuked the diplomat on numerous occasions for making tepid comments about Turkey’s human rights record. After Ricciardone expressed “puzzlement” that Turkey appeared to be arresting all of its generals—events in which we do have a legitimate interest, given that NATO is not a human rights alliance but a military one—Erdoğan dismissed him as a “rookie ambassador who should know his place.” When our ambassador expressed further “puzzlement” that “journalists are being detained on the one hand, while addresses about freedom of speech are given on the other,” he nonetheless attempted to express his warmth toward Turkey by means of a Turkish proverb, to the effect that this was like eating pickled cabbage on a salt-reduction diet. (Turkish proverbs lose much in translation.) Fuat Tanlay, the prime minister’s chief advisor, told Ricciardone that if he was so keen to learn Turkish proverbs, he should learn this one: Don’t piss on a mosque wall. Doesn’t that say it all? Under ordinary circumstances, one would at least expect the Turkish ambassador to Washington to be summoned and read the riot act. If he was, the news wasn’t widely reported.

Is there any strategy to American silence? Is the Obama administration making a conscience decision to alienate the Turkish people in the service of some larger and more important goal? Obviously, the United States needs to cooperate with Turkey on matters ranging from Syria to Iran and beyond. But we have an ocean between us and those maniacs. Turkey doesn’t. In other words, they need us more than we need them. So must we really be so afraid of their wrath that we behave like cowering bunnies when they kill their own children? What do the folks in the Situation Room know that we don’t?

Claire Berlinski, a City Journal contributing editor, is an American journalist who lives in Istanbul. She is the author of There Is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters.

Bill Whittle on Political Correctness

How bad is it in 2013?

I regret to say I agree with the POV put forth in this article by Selwyn Duke.  Regrettably, the drift to socialism and its concomitant autocracy, has resulted in a dumbed down electorate and political class that has perfected the means of perpetuating itself in power.  The only solution to this state of affairs is to create a political solution that allows like-minded people to form the kind of state they want and the mechanism by which to permit a separation form each other.  Those who want a socialist state go one way and those who want a capitalist system with Constitutional restraints on the government go another.  It of course would be insanely difficult to pull this off, however the alternative is to watch and participate in the loss of freedoms both personal and economic for everyone.  We've seen all this in the past in Nazi Germany, the USSR, and Mao's Communism.  We are witnessing the downside of our experiment in a Representative Democratic Republic.

The Bright Side of Amnesty By Selwyn Duke

Saying there’s a bright side to amnesty may seem much like talk of the advantages of malignant cancer. But this won’t be a pie-in-the-sky article about the “economic benefits” of new workers, expanding the tax base or the wonders of “diversity.” There is no Ayotte-Rubio flip-flop here; in fact, for those who don’t know me, I’ve long called for a halt to even legal immigration. And understanding why is necessary to put amnesty’s “bright side” in perspective.

It is an inconvenient and ignored truth that the main problems posed by illegal migration are essentially the same problems of legal immigration. Are you concerned about an influx of low-skilled workers driving down wages and competing with native Americans? Legal immigration also floods the nation with low-skilled workers. Do you worry that amnesty will grow Democrat voter rolls? A vast majority of legal immigrants also vote Democrat. Most significantly, do you fret that millions of unassimilable foreigners with values contrary to Western ideals are transforming our culture into something distinctly non-Western? Legal immigrants are essentially of the same demographic, with 1965’s Immigration Reform Act ensuring that 85 percent of them hail from the Third World and Asia. The lesson?

Illegal migration isn’t the problem.

It’s an exacerbation of the problem.

To worry about it while accepting our current legal-immigration model is like losing sleep over the occasional counterfeiter while batting nary an eye at our government’s legalized counterfeiting (“quantitative easing”).

Of course, there is the difference that we can’t scrutinize undocumented Democrats and ensure that they’re not carrying bombs along with their bad ideology. But with respect to the only thing that matters over the long term — the destruction of Western culture in America — the most relevant way to define the types of migration isn’t “legal” and “illegal,” but good and bad. And, for the most part, the US has only one kind: the bad.

For those who would dispute this and say “Hey, everyone eventually assimilates; it just may take a couple of generations,” know that neither today’s immigrants nor today’s US are what they once were. For starters, approximately 50 percent of our new arrivals hail from Mexico alone, and 67 percent of American Hispanics have origins in that nation. University of Edinburgh professor Stephen Tierney explains what this means in his book Multiculturalism and the Canadian Constitution, writing:

In a situation in which immigrants are divided into many different groups originating in distant countries, there is no feasible prospect of any particular immigrant group’s challenging the hegemony of the national language [Tim Kaine’s español, anyone?] and institutions. These groups may form an alliance among themselves to fight for better treatment and accommodations, but such an alliance can only be developed within the language and institutions of the host society and, hence, is integrative. In situations in which a single dominant immigrant group originates in a neighbouring country, the dynamics may be very different. The Arabs in Spain, and Mexicans in the United States, do not need allies among other immigrant groups. One could imagine claims for Arabic or Spanish to be declared a second official language, at least in regions where they are concentrated, and these immigrants could seek support from their neighbouring home country for such claims — in effect, establishing a kind of transnational extension of their original homeland in their new neighbouring country of residence.

And the blindness to the above helps explain the logic to many Republicans’ capitulation on amnesty. If the main threats posed by the two separated-by-legality migrations are the same and people don’t recognize them with respect to one, why should we be shocked that they don’t recognize them with respect to the other?

The truth is that amnesty is inevitable. If not the current version, a future one; if not today, tomorrow. This is because the nation has long been moving left, and when it slides far enough, all of the liberal agenda will be realized. And the importation of socialist-minded voters is a major factor in this transformation. Oh, I know that some — notably Ann Coulter in an excellent article recently — point to polls showing that amnesty isn’t very high on Hispanics’ priority list. But this argument overlooks two things. First, all the polls mean is that Hispanics care about issues such as the economy and health care more, not that they don’t care about amnesty at all. Second, it’s much as with many blacks’ current opposition to amnesty. It’s irrelevant in a practical sense as long as, driven by anti-Republican prejudice and a desire for big government, these two groups continue supporting Democrats. People don’t smoke because they want tar in their lungs, but it comes with the choice.

Worse still, there will be no such thing as an amnesty with teeth, no matter what the Rubios of the world claim. Ultimately, there will be no significant border enforcement, no denial of benefits, no true accountability for illegal migrants. How do I know? It isn’t just that there never has been despite our having offered seven amnesties, and the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. It is because law means nothing without a certain necessary ingredient.

Will.

The left continually proves this. The Defense of Marriage Act is law, but Barack Obama simply refuses to enforce it. We have long had sanctuary (i.e., lawless) cities and those that refuse to obey federal drug laws. And, of course, there are literally thousands of more obscure laws on the books that are routinely ignored by states and localities, and our government has been trampling much of the supreme law of the land — the Constitution — for 100 years. Even more to the point here, the Obama administration has refused to enforce immigration laws already on the books and has granted a form of amnesty by executive order. So why suppose that a few more immigration laws would make a difference?

And the truth here is a sort of Catch-22: What would it mean if we really had the will to secure the border and enforce unwelcome rules on legalized illegals?

It would translate into our saying in the first place, unabashedly and unashamedly, “Get the heck out of our country.”

If our will is so wanting that we’ll pander on the big thing and not do what any sane nation does instinctively — deport invaders — it’s beyond silly to think we’ll suddenly man-up on the little things (especially since we have no history of doing that, either).

Given the dark picture I’ve painted, you may wonder what its bright side might be. Amnesty is inevitable, but even if it weren’t we’d still be finished because of our bad legal migration? Pass the hemlock. Yet there is a possible lemons-into-lemonade outcome.

Americans have become inured to the legal-immigration problem, accepting a no-go status quo like that proverbial frog in the frying pan of water. So the question is, how can you awaken reptilian-brain voters, who can’t sense steadily rising heat, to their impending 212-degree demise?

You turn up the flame.

High.

And along with the other ways that power is causing the left to stir the pot — the IRS abuses, ObamaCare, the anti-traditionalist rhetoric and violence — amnesty may help do just that. This could add fuel to the only hope for avoiding a descent into Third World autocracy. What is that hope? Well, if you have a severely gangrenous limb, you don’t entertain the fancy that the infection won’t spread if you simply label necrotic tissue healthy.

You cut your losses.

And our only hope is just that: the secessionist movement.

Hopefully, before states have to try to separate from Mexico Norte.

Lest I be misunderstood, this doesn’t mean I won’t fight the good fight. I’ll still oppose amnesty because doing so accords with truth. But I’ll also say that inside-the-box solutions are hopeless because that is the truth. And I’ll point out, as Christians would say, that God can bring good out of bad because that is the truth.

And we’d better hope and pray that this happens because, as far as our options go, bad is all we’ve got.

Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com

Another look at Turkey and Erdogan

Fouad Ajami of the Hoover Institute weighs in on the riots and recent history of Turkey.  This crossroads country has been in cultural flux since Atatark began its westernization in the mid 1920's.  The road to modernization and the West has been bumpy.  Erdogan is in many ways a blend of the authoritarian East and the democratic West, as his handling of the recent riots has demonstrated.  

  

Turkey Between Ataturk and Erdogan

June 23, 2013

by Fouad Ajami (Senior Fellow and cochair, Working Group on Islamism and the International Order)

What role should political Islam play in the country’s future?

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Istanbul – I write before my scheduled departure from this bewitching and overwhelming city. It is morning, the sky is brilliant blue, the color of the waters of the Golden Horn. The famed postcard silhouette—Hagia Sophia, Sultanahmet, the Suleymaniye Mosque—makes it achingly difficult to depart. For the days I spent here, I had been unable to settle down to record what I had seen.
I had arrived in Istanbul from Iraqi Kurdistan, and its two principal cities, Suleimaniyah and Erbil. I had been prepared for Kurdistan’s exertion, and for a break in Istanbul. The reverse had happened: There was peace in Kurdistan, shopping malls and swanky hotels in Erbil, and the charm of the town of Suleimaniyah, still doing its best to keep urban sprawl at bay. It was moving to see what the Kurds had done: where a feared fortress of the old regime once stood, there was now a park, Azadi (Freedom) Park with playgrounds and open-air dining.
  
  Photo credit: SpirosK photography

The Red Prison in Sulemaniyah, a notorious torture center, is now a museum. The floor above the suffocating prison cells there are displays and installations of Kurdish culture: the bright, colorful dresses of women, the old rifles, the simple reproductions of daily life. Across the street, the men and women of today’s Kurdistan bring to life the green and landscaped lawns of a nearby restaurant—smiles and conversations animating the neatly arranged tables under the stars.

After this tranquility, it was Istanbul that was beset with political troubles. An Istanbuli friend had sent me a message that reached me in Kurdistan, advising me to stay away. It was hard to get around, he said (it is hard in the best of times—Istanbul traffic is a nightmare) and he knew that the larger neighborhood of Taksim Square would be my destination. I pushed on with my plans.

The protests had given Taksim a kind of revolutionary aura. My friend was right with his advice. The protesters had inflicted their damage, brick pavements had been dug up on the approaches to Taksim, barricades had been erected, cars torched and overturned in the confrontation between the police and protesters. The troubles had begun on a Friday, I had arrived, with my wife, on Monday. Routine has its power, the desire to return to familiar corners in an unfamiliar place. No sooner had I unpacked than I set out for Bebek, a tony neighborhood on the Bosporus.

The expensive, smart shops and the young, trendy mothers playing with their children in Bebek Park, were pleasantly unremarkable. The revolution had not come here. The Bosporus was enchanting, and the wonder of the big ships from everywhere so close to the boardwalk never ceases to amaze. A small mosque stood right next to a café where outdoor seating accommodated a young and hip clientele. The muezzin calling the believers to mid-day prayer as everyone went on with their routine was a reminder of the genteel ways of Turkish Islam. No enforcers turned up to herd this smart set into the mosque. Islam here had to contend with modernity.

There were two women in bikinis, taking in the sun on the lawns of the park in proximity to the mosque. Bebek, admittedly, was not Turkey, but it is a piece of it. Bebek was not hiding its loyalties: Turkish flags—bright red, with the star and crescent—adorned the local park. The flags had a superimposed portrait of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, with his military kalpak, on them. This elegant crowd was Ataturk’s progeny. He had forged them; he had severed their ties with the Islamic world to their south and east; he had told them that salvation lay westward; and they were not about to be herded back into the past.

The return from Bebek back toward Taksim was what I had been warned against. Our driver did his best, but was thwarted at every turn. He navigated the impossibly steep hills and narrow streets, always meeting debris and blocked access. He gave it up, let us out, and we made our way toward Taksim. There was no menace, only young people eager to give directions, so many of them were methodically picking up and clearing away the trash and crumbled metal remnants of the barricades that, no doubt, they and their friends had thrown together there just the day before. It was a commentary on the earnestness and orderly temperament of the Turks.

If comparisons had been made between Tahrir Square in Cairo and Taksim—and indeed there is a running debate on this question—Taksim was by far a more genteel affair. No less than 850 people had perished in Tahrir; hooligans on horseback and camels had attacked the protesters; a police sniper had a specialty: he shot his victims in the eye.

None of that in Taksim. A stylish woman in a red dress provided an iconic image: a policeman directed a blast of pepper spray toward her and it sent her long dark hair flying horizontally as she turned away. Say what you will about the Turkish state and the obtuseness of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, this isn’t the Arab world with its malignant hatreds and the estrangement between the rulers and ruled. Mr. Ergogan may be a stubborn man, at heart an authoritarian, a prude in a fairly modern society, but the rules of the game are determined by the ballot box.

“The minority cannot rule the majority,” Mr. Erdogan proclaimed as he set out to face down the protests. “The one thing Erdogan believes in is the ballot box,” Cengiz Candar, a noted Turkish columnist, one of his country’s most astute cultural interpreters, observed to me. “He and his party have won three elections since 2002, and this has given him a sense of political entitlement. He is convinced that the great mass of the population is with him. It was the ballot box that enabled him to curtail the power of the military in Turkish political life. And it was with the ballot that he broke the power of the ‘white Turks’—the social and economic elites who had been dominant for a long time.”

***

By accident, I found myself in the middle of a boisterous demonstration making its way up Istiklal Street, from Taksim. The crowd wasn’t particularly young, as I had assumed it would be. There were middle-aged men and women and young people alike. They held aloft the Turkish flags with the arresting image of Ataturk. This crowd made clear the fault-lines of this struggle: Turkey—its identity, its place among the nations, the nature of its public life—is being fought over between two men, the legendary founder who died in 1938, and the new claimant who rose out of a tough Istanbul neighborhood to position himself as the republic’s second most consequential leader. In the best of worlds, a compromise would be struck between these rival visions. But Erdogan has polarized the country.

In every way, Ataturk was the nemesis of what Erdogan stands for. Where Erdogan is severe on drinking and alcohol, Kemal was addicted to raki, the country’s anise-flavored liquor. In fact, Ataturk had died of cirrhosis of the liver at age 57. He was a military officer and a conqueror, and he took drinking as a manly prerogative. Erdogan had all but called Ataturk a drunkard, and that kind of blasphemy had not been well received by a population raised to a tradition of reverence for the founder.

Ataturk, it should be recalled, had sought nothing less than the extirpation of the old cultural order: He had abolished the old Ottoman order and declared a republic; he had abolished the caliphate; he had outlawed the fez and the turban; he had shifted the calendar from the Muslim to the Christian era; he had changed the alphabet from Arabic script to Latin letters; and he had declared null and void the provision that Islam was the religion of the state. No Westernization program was more ambitious. He saw himself as a man of the Enlightenment, and Turkey was to partake of Western culture. He was no Democrat. He lived by an authoritarian creed: “For the people, despite the people.”

No wholesale purging of a culture can be totally successful. Ataturk died in 1938, with his creed ascendant. But Islam never exited the stage. It went underground, and was to reappear in the 1990s. The officer corps, the guardians of the Kemalist temple, did not have the country to itself. Political Islamists made their presence felt, and a military coup against them in 1997 did not do the trick.

Five years later, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his political party were carried to power via an election. Two big electoral victories were to follow. Erdogan had prepared for his ascendancy: he had been a great success as a mayor of Istanbul in the 1990s. He was blunt and courageous. The military had sent him to prison for his open advocacy of political Islam. “The minarets are our bayonets, the domes our helmets, and the mosques our barracks,” he famously declared. If Kemalism was the civic religion of the republic, this driven man was determined to glorify the Ottoman past.

The crisis upon Turkey broke out when Erdogan made public his intention to uproot a small park in Taksim and on the grounds build an Ottoman barracks. Neo-Ottomanism was a frontal assault on the Kemalist edifice that had been in place since the founding of the republic in 1923.

Erdogan’s way broke with another central tenet of the Kemalist creed. Ataturk had severed the ties with the Arab states; there was nothing in that Arab world that interested him. Several years into his political primacy, Erdogan took a plunge into Arab politics. He became one of the Syrian dictator’s most outspoken critics. He opened the borders of his country to a large refugee population from Syria. He put forth the Turkish example—Islam and a successful economy—as a model for Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya to follow. There was genuine zeal in his pan-Islamism.

Last May, he spoke of a Turkish role in the world, beyond the confines of the nation-state. “We are not like other states. We are not a state that will keep quiet to protect its interests. Today, they are saying prayers for us. They are praying for us in Gaza, Beirut, and Mecca. This is the massive responsibility we are shouldering.”

Several days later, on May 11, two car bombs exploded in the town of Reyhanli, in the southern province of Hatay, killing 51 people. This is, alas, the sad norm in Beirut, Baghdad, and Damascus. But this was new in Turkey. There remains in a majority of Turks unease about the Arab world, and a desire to stay away from its furies. The Neo-Ottoman calling was not a popular endeavor.

Erdogan’s Syria policy remains distinctly unpopular among his people. In one recent poll, only twenty seven percent of those surveyed supported the government’s Syria policy while fifty-four percent opposed it. His inability to pull President Barack Obama into the struggle for Syria was politically devastating. Erdogan had staked much on his ties to Obama. The passivity of American policy left Erdogan facing the aversion of the Turkish people to Arab quarrels.

***

In his landmark book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order(1996), the late Samuel P. Huntington memorably dubbed Turkey as a “torn country.” A torn country, he wrote, is possessed of “a single, predominant culture which places it in one civilization but its leaders want to shift it to another civilization.” The process of identity redefinition is never easy, he warned. The public will have to be willing to acquiesce in the redefinition of identity and the host civilization—that of the West—will have to be willing to take in the convert.

Kemalist Turkey had given the process of redefinition its all. But the rise of Erdogan, his belief that Europe is an ailing continent, and his nostalgia for the Ottoman past, offer evidence that the trajectory of “torn countries” is never simple or straightforward.

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Fouad Ajami is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the cochair of the Herbert and Jane Dwight Working Group on Islamism and the International Order. From 1980 to 2011 he was director of Middle East Studies at the Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of The Arab Predicament, Beirut: City of Regrets,The Dream Palace of the Arabs, and The Foreigner's Gift. His most recent publication is The Syrian Rebellion (Hoover Institution Press, 2012). His writings also include some four hundred essays on Arab and Islamic politics, US foreign policy, and contemporary international history. Ajami has received numerous awards, including the Benjamin Franklin Award for public service (2011), the Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism (2011), the Bradley Prize (2006), the National Humanities Medal (2006), and the MacArthur Fellows Award (1982). His research has charted the road to 9/11, the Iraq war, and the US presence in the Arab-Islamic world.

A typical left wing interpretation of history

This somewhat interesting analysis of recent U.S. history (since the 30's) given the background of the author, predictably tilts strongly leftward.  Packer seems to think the unraveling of the wonderful world and economy left us by Roosevelt's New Deal has been the result of the emergence of evil right wingers like Newt Gingrich along with greedy bankers and businessmen. Thus they are pretty much the root causes of the downfall of American society.  Many of us see different root causes, like the manipulation of the currency by the government and the FRS, the hyper growth of government agencies and their bureaucracies (i.e., the growth of socialism), the evolution of the regulatory and administrative state, globalization and attendant competition from leaner and meaner foreign companies.  To suggest Jimmy Carter and FDR had us on the right track is simply a lefty manipulating history.

Decline and fall: how American society unravelled

Youngstown, Ohio, was once a thriving steel centre. Now, the industry has all gone and the city is full of abandoned homes and businesses. Photograph: Brian Snyder/Reuters

In or around 1978, America's character changed. For almost half a century, theUnited States had been a relatively egalitarian, secure, middle-class democracy, with structures in place that supported the aspirations of ordinary people. You might call it the period of the Roosevelt Republic. Wars, strikes, racial tensions and youth rebellion all roiled national life, but a basic deal among Americans still held, in belief if not always in fact: work hard, follow the rules, educate your children, and you will be rewarded, not just with a decent life and the prospect of a better one for your kids, but with recognition from society, a place at the table.

This unwritten contract came with a series of riders and clauses that left large numbers of Americans – black people and other minorities, women, gay people – out, or only halfway in. But the country had the tools to correct its own flaws, and it used them: healthy democratic institutions such as Congress, courts, churches, schools, news organisations, business-labour partnerships. The civil rights movement of the 1960s was a nonviolent mass uprising led by black southerners, but it drew essential support from all of these institutions, which recognised the moral and legal justice of its claims, or, at the very least, the need for social peace. The Roosevelt Republic had plenty of injustice, but it also had the power of self-correction.

Americans were no less greedy, ignorant, selfish and violent then than they are today, and no more generous, fair-minded and idealistic. But the institutions of American democracy, stronger than the excesses of individuals, were usually able to contain and channel them to more useful ends. Human nature does not change, but social structures can, and they did.

At the time, the late 1970s felt like shapeless, dreary, forgettable years. Jimmy Carter was in the White House, preaching austerity and public-spiritedness, and hardly anyone was listening. The hideous term "stagflation", which combined the normally opposed economic phenomena of stagnation and inflation, perfectly captured the doldrums of that moment. It is only with the hindsight of a full generation that we can see how many things were beginning to shift across the American landscape, sending the country spinning into a new era.

In Youngstown, Ohio, the steel mills that had been the city's foundation for a century closed, one after another, with breathtaking speed, taking 50,000 jobs from a small industrial river valley, leaving nothing to replace them. In Cupertino, California, the Apple Computer Company released the first popular personal computer, the Apple II. Across California, voters passed Proposition 13, launching a tax revolt that began the erosion of public funding for what had been the country's best school system. In Washington, corporations organised themselves into a powerful lobby that spent millions of dollars to defeat the kind of labour and consumer bills they had once accepted as part of the social contract. Newt Gingrich came to Congress as a conservative Republican with the singular ambition to tear it down and build his own and his party's power on the rubble. On Wall Street, Salomon Brothers pioneered a new financial product called mortgage-backed securities, and then became the first investment bank to go public.

A steelworker in Youngstown, Ohio, in 1947. Under the old deal, his hard work was to be rewarded. Photograph: Willard R. Culver/National Geographic/Corbis

The large currents of the past generation – deindustrialisation, the flattening of average wages, the financialisation of the economy, income inequality, the growth of information technology, the flood of money into Washington, the rise of the political right – all had their origins in the late 70s. The US became more entrepreneurial and less bureaucratic, more individualistic and less communitarian, more free and less equal, more tolerant and less fair. Banking and technology, concentrated on the coasts, turned into engines of wealth, replacing the world of stuff with the world of bits, but without creating broad prosperity, while the heartland hollowed out. The institutions that had been the foundation of middle-class democracy, from public schools and secure jobs to flourishing newspapers and functioning legislatures, were set on the course of a long decline. It as a period that I call the Unwinding.

In one view, the Unwinding is just a return to the normal state of American life. By this deterministic analysis, the US has always been a wide-open, free-wheeling country, with a high tolerance for big winners and big losers as the price of equal opportunity in a dynamic society. If the US brand of capitalism has rougher edges than that of other democracies, it is worth the trade-off for growth and mobility. There is nothing unusual about the six surviving heirs to the Walmart fortune possessing between them the same wealth as the bottom 42% of Americans– that's the country's default setting. Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates are the reincarnation of Henry Ford and Andrew Carnegie, Steven Cohen is another JP Morgan, Jay-Z is Jay Gatsby.

The rules and regulations of the Roosevelt Republic were aberrations brought on by accidents of history – depression, world war, the cold war – that induced Americans to surrender a degree of freedom in exchange for security. There would have been no Glass-Steagall Act, separating commercial from investment banking, without the bank failures of 1933; no great middle-class boom if the US economy had not been the only one left standing after the second world war; no bargain between business, labour and government without a shared sense of national interest in the face of foreign enemies; no social solidarity without the door to immigrants remaining closed through the middle of the century.

Once American pre-eminence was challenged by international competitors, and the economy hit rough seas in the 70s, and the sense of existential threat from abroad subsided, the deal was off. Globalisation, technology and immigration hurried the Unwinding along, as inexorable as winds and tides. It is sentimental at best, if not ahistorical, to imagine that the social contract could ever have survived – like wanting to hang on to a world of nuclear families and manual typewriters.

This deterministic view is undeniable but incomplete. What it leaves out of the picture is human choice. A fuller explanation of the Unwinding takes into account these large historical influences, but also the way they were exploited by US elites – the leaders of the institutions that have fallen into disrepair. America's postwar responsibilities demanded co-operation between the two parties in Congress, and when the cold war waned, the co-operation was bound to diminish with it. But there was nothing historically determined about the poisonous atmosphere and demonising language that Gingrich and other conservative ideologues spread through US politics. These tactics served their narrow, short-term interests, and when the Gingrich revolution brought Republicans to power in Congress, the tactics were affirmed. Gingrich is now a has-been, but Washington today is as much his city as anyone's.

It was impossible for Youngstown's steel companies to withstand global competition and local disinvestment, but there was nothing inevitable about the aftermath – an unmanaged free-for-all in which unemployed workers were left to fend for themselves, while corporate raiders bought the idle hulks of the mills with debt in the form of junk bonds and stripped out the remaining value. It may have been inevitable that the constraints imposed on US banks by the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 would start to slip off in the era of global finance. But it was a political choice on the part of Congress and President Bill Clinton to deregulate Wall Street so thoroughly that nothing stood between the big banks and the destruction of the economy.

One of the 99%: an Occupy Wall Street protester in Union Square, New York, in 2011. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Much has been written about the effects of globalisation during the past generation. Much less has been said about the change in social norms that accompanied it. American elites took the vast transformation of the economy as a signal to rewrite the rules that used to govern their behaviour: a senator only resorting to the filibuster on rare occasions; a CEO limiting his salary to only 40 times what his average employees made instead of 800 times; a giant corporation paying its share of taxes instead of inventing creative ways to pay next to zero. There will always be isolated lawbreakers in high places; what destroys morale below is the systematic corner-cutting, the rule-bending, the self-dealing.

Earlier this year, Al Gore made $100m (£64m) in a single month by selling Current TV to al-Jazeera for $70m and cashing in his shares of Apple stock for $30m. Never mind that al-Jazeera is owned by the government of Qatar, whose oil exports and views of women and minorities make a mockery of the ideas that Gore propounds in a book or film every other year. Never mind that his Apple stock came with his position on the company's board, a gift to a former presidential contender. Gore used to be a patrician politician whose career seemed inspired by the ideal of public service. Today – not unlike Tony Blair – he has traded on a life in politics to join the rarefied class of the global super-rich.

It is no wonder that more and more Americans believe the game is rigged. It is no wonder that they buy houses they cannot afford and then walk away from the mortgage when they can no longer pay. Once the social contract is shredded, once the deal is off, only suckers still play by the rules.

George Packer's The Unwinding is published by Faber & Faber at £20

Here's what deToqueville had to say on the subject of regulations et. al., after he visited the U.S. in the 1840's (last paragraph in the following from Nial Ferguson's article).

The last time regulation was cut was under Ronald Reagan, when the number of pages in the Federal Register fell by 31%. Surprise: Real GDP grew by 30% in that same period. But Leviathan's diet lasted just eight years. Since 1993, 81,883 new rules have been issued. In the past 10 years, the "final rules" issued by our 63 federal departments, agencies and commissions have outnumbered laws passed by Congress 223 to 1.

Right now there are 4,062 new regulations at various stages of implementation, of which 224 are deemed "economically significant," i.e., their economic impact will exceed $100 million.

The cost of all this, Mr. Crews estimates, is $1.8 trillion annually—that's on top of the federal government's $3.5 trillion in outlays, so it is equivalent to an invisible 65% surcharge on your federal taxes, or nearly 12% of GDP. Especially invidious is the fact that the costs of regulation for small businesses (those with fewer than 20 employees) are 36% higher per employee than they are for bigger firms.

Next year's big treat will be the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, something every small business in the country must be looking forward to with eager anticipation. Then, as Sen. Rob Portman (R., Ohio) warned readers on this page 10 months ago, there's also the Labor Department's new fiduciary rule, which will increase the cost of retirement planning for middle-class workers; the EPA's new Ozone Rule, which will impose up to $90 billion in yearly costs on American manufacturers; and the Department of Transportation's Rear-View Camera Rule. That's so you never have to turn your head around when backing up.

President Obama occasionally pays lip service to the idea of tax reform. But nothing actually gets done and the Internal Revenue Service code (plus associated regulations) just keeps growing—it passed the nine-million-word mark back in 2005, according to the Tax Foundation, meaning nearly 19% more verbiage than 10 years before. While some taxes may have been cut in the intervening years, the tax code just kept growing.

I wonder if all this could have anything to do with the fact that we still have nearly 12 million people out of work, plus eight million working part-time jobs, five long years after the financial crisis began.

Genius that he was, Tocqueville saw this transformation of America coming. Toward the end of "Democracy in America" he warned against the government becoming "an immense tutelary power . . . absolute, detailed, regular . . . cover[ing] [society's] surface with a network of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear a way."

Tocqueville also foresaw exactly how this regulatory state would suffocate the spirit of free enterprise: "It rarely forces one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one's acting; it does not destroy, it prevents things from being born; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes, and finally reduces [the] nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd."

If that makes you bleat with frustration, there's still hope.

Mr. Ferguson's new book "The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die" has just been published by Penguin Press.