The end of four legacy empires

Alfred McCoy is a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and the author of many books and articles on the nature of global power. He has written an article chronicling four legacy empires (France, Russia, China, and the US) and their declines.

He starts with France. The details of its colonial heyday were relatively unknown to me.

Let’s start with the French neocolonial imperium in northern Africa, which can teach us much about the way our world order works and why it’s fading so fast. As a comparatively small state essentially devoid of natural resources, France won its global power through the sort of sheer ruthlessness — cutthroat covert operations, gritty military interventions, and cunning financial manipulations — that the three larger empires are better able to mask with the aura of their awesome power.

For 60 years after its formal decolonization of northern Africa in 1960, France used every possible diplomatic device, overt and covert, fair and foul, to incorporate 14 African nations into a neo-colonial imperium covering a quarter of Africa that critics called Françafrique.
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Trump Day One agenda

Trump has made a lot of statements about what he will do on day one of his administration, so many that there will not be enough hours in the day to do most of them even if he were serious about the promises. But I know what his most important priority will be and that is to try and show that the crowds at this inauguration exceed in size what Barack Obama had in 2008. That his inauguration crowd in 2016 was much smaller than Obama’s was something that really rankled him to the extent that he made his then press secretary Sean Spicer look foolish by trying to argue otherwise when the aerial evidence clearly showed the opposite. Trump continued to lie about this long after everyone other than his cult followers knew that it was false. So brace yourself for this to be his top priority.

But what about the more consequential things that he has promised to do one day one?
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The phony debate over cutting the budget deficit

One of the longest running pointless discussions in US politics is about what to do about the federal budget deficit. This is simply the annual excess of all government spending over all government revenues. The cumulative total of all such deficits is the government debt. For the fiscal year 2024, the government had revenues of $4.92 trillion and spent $6.75. trillion, leaving a deficit of $1.83 trillion. The national debt up through November 2024 was $36.09 trillion.(See here for more.)

Different people have different views about how big of a problem the deficit is. One school of thought uses the metaphor of the government budget being like a family’s budget, and that a deficit means borrowing money that has to be paid back with interest later. They argue that running up deficits year after year means that the debt burden will become intolerable and that we are leaving future generations (our children in this metaphor) in a fiscal hole that they will have a hard time digging themselves out of. They view this as a horrible prospect.
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Blog comments policy

At the beginning of every month, I will repost my comments policy for those who started visiting this site the previous month.

As long time readers know, I used to moderate the comments with a very light hand, assuming that mature adults would know how to behave in a public space. It took outright hate speech targeting marginalized groups to cause me to ban people, and that happened very rarely. But I got increasingly irritated by the tedious and hostile exchanges among a few commenters that tended to fill up the comment thread with repeated posts about petty or off-topic issues. An email sent to me privately by a long-time lurker brought home to me how people might be hesitant to join in the conversation here, even if they have something to say, out of fear that something that they write, however well-intentioned, will be seized upon and responded to in a hostile manner by some of the most egregious offenders.

So here is a rule: No one will be able to make more than three comments in response to any blog post. Violation of that rule will result in banning.

But I also want to address a couple of deeper concerns for which a solution cannot be quantified but will require me to exercise my judgment.

It is well known that the comments sections on the internet can be a cesspool. I had hoped that the people who come to this site would be different, leading to more mature exchanges. But I was clearly too sanguine. We sometimes had absurdly repetitive exchanges seemingly based on the childish belief that having the last word means that you have won the argument or with increasingly angry posts sprinkled with puerile justifications like “They started it!”

The other issue is the hostility that is often expressed, often triggered by the most trivial of things. People should remember that this is a blog, not a journal or magazine. There are no copy editors, proof readers, and fact checkers. In such a casual atmosphere, people (and that includes me) will often inadvertently be less than precise or accurate in what they say. If the error is trivial but the meaning is clear, the error should be ignored. If the meaning is not clear, clarification can be politely asked for. If it is a genuine error, a correction can be politely made. If I think people are being rude or condescending or insulting (and I do not mean just abusive language but also the tone), I will ban the person.

For me, and I suspect for the other bloggers on this network, the rewards of blogging lie in creating space for a community of people to exchange ideas and views on a variety of topics. But that is pleasurable only if people post comments that are polite and respectful towards others, even while disagreeing. Some time ago, I wrote a post that a good philosophy of life is “Don’t be a jerk”. That would be a good rule to keep in mind when posting comments as well. There is absolutely no call for anyone to be rude or sneering or condescending towards others.

Almost all the commenters on this blog contribute positively and it is a pleasure to read their contributions and interact with them. It is a very few who think that a sneering, condescending, or abrasively argumentative tone is appropriate. My patience has been worn thin by some of their comments in the past. If I think, for any reason whatsoever, that someone is behaving like a jerk, I will ban them. I am in no mood to argue about this. I will not make any public announcement about who is banned. They will simply find that they can no longer post comments.

So I would suggest that in future commenters think carefully before they post anything, taking into account what they say and how often they say something. They should try to put themselves in the shoes of the person they are arguing with and think about how they might feel if their comment had been directed at them. They should also think about how their comments might look to others. It surprises me that people do not realize how badly this kind of behavior reflects on themselves.

Readers may have noticed that there are no ads on any of the blogs on this network. Nobody is making any money at all. In fact, it is a money sink and PZ Myers pays for the costs of the servers out of his Patreon account that you can contribute to if you would like to support the network. The bloggers here blog because they want to create spaces for conversations on issues that they care about. ‘Clicks’ have no monetary value. That means that I do not care how many people come to the site.

I realize that these guidelines are somewhat vague. So a good rule of thumb would be: If in doubt as to whether to post something because it might violate these boundaries, that is a good sign to not post it. I will be the sole judge of whether the boundary has been crossed.

I want to make it perfectly clear that I have zero tolerance for people who try to find ways to skirt the guidelines such as, for example, skirting the three comment limit by continuing it on another thread. I also reserve the right to make exceptions to the rules at any time, if I feel it is warranted. These decisions will be solely mine and will be final. There will be no discussion, debate, or appeal. If anyone objects because they think that I am being arbitrary, they are of course free to leave and never return.

The psychology of owning a pick up truck

As is often the case, commenters pick up on some aspect of a blog post that was not central to it and an interesting discussion develops around it.

In my post about poor people living on the edge who sincerely believe that Trump is going to act in their interests and not take any action that might harm them, some picked up on an item in the news report that mentioned that they owned a pickup truck or an SUV, and this was taken as a sign that they were willing to expend what little resources they had to purchase what others might consider a frivolous item they did not need. (Commenter flex entered the discussion with a very thoughtful post that I recommend reading.)

There are some things that are definitely true of life in the US. In most places, some kind of motorized vehicle is essential for people to get to work or fulfill other daily life chores. For many people living on the edge of ruin, what drives their vehicle choice is price. Sometimes an old truck may be all that they can afford. Their purchases are also often driven by the affordability of the monthly payment, not even the actual cost of the vehicle, and so can be persuaded to buy something because of its low introductory payment. Not all buyers are financially savvy and being financially savvy sometimes requires being financially solvent and stable. My choice of a compact sedan (Honda Accord) was made on considerations of its reputation for having low maintenance costs and being trouble free and after having it for 11 years, that has turned out to be true. I could definitely have bought a much cheaper car but could afford to weigh long-term factors over up-front cost. Not everyone has that luxury.
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Don’t believe the lies about the minimum wage

State and federal-mandated minimum wages set a floor for what employers can pay their employees. It benefits more than the minimum wage workers because it raises wages up the line. Hence it is should be no surprise that the capitalist class and its supporters hate raises in the mandated minimum wage and try to do everything in their power to keep them from being raised because it lowers their ability to exploit workers and increase their profits. In their mind, the there should be no mandated minimum wage and all wages should be set by the employer and the employee, negotiating freely. Of course they oppose unions as well since those too interfere in the glorious working of the free-market. In this world view, a single employee and a company or massive corporation are equally matched powers and thus the figure they arrive at would reflect the true market value of labor.

Of course this is a fantasy indulged by the capitalist class and has no basis in reality. There is a massive power discrepancy between employer and employee and you need the federal and state governments and unions to at least partially redress that imbalance.
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The true believers

The only good thing for me to personally emerge from the disaster that we are going through is that I have stopped paying too much attention to political news and have used the released time for other things. But I still read some articles and was struck by this one that looked at the reactions of poor people in one area of Pennsylvania about how they viewed the future under a Trump administration that has vowed to cut the federal budget by huge amounts.

The sad thing is that many of them are under the delusion that the cuts will affect other people, not them, that they will be magically spared and even benefited, because they think that Trump really cares about them and that cutting money spent on these other freeloaders will leave more for them.
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Back in the saddle again

This has been a somewhat long hiatus from blogging due to being down with flu. That may have suggested to readers that I was suffering from serious symptoms. But in actual fact, after the first two days, I was almost back to normal. ‘Almost’ in the operative word here. My temperature was back to almost normal but I could not get rid of a low-grade fever and had a residual dry cough. The latter is for me a common consequence to a flu, not to be shaken for a couple of weeks.

But what really kept me from blogging was sense of blahness that left me with no enthusiasm for doing anything, such as everyday chores or even an appetite. In that condition, the enthusiasm to write, which comes usually comes easily to me, deserted me until today. The fact that it took me this long to get back to normal may mean that this was a different flu variant or that as I get older it will take me longer to bounce back.

It is not that these days were totally wasted. I did find that I could enjoy reading and so took the opportunity to read books that I should have read a long time ago and watched some films and TV shows.
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