Reactionary

For some time now, I've been puzzled by the reaction to terrorism in the US. 9/11 was a horrible, frightening event (I was in Manhattan that day, though not downtown). But the responses in this country--assuming that every event is terrorism related, throwing out our legal system, a blank check for adventures abroad, and so on--seem wildly disproportionate. The US response seems especially over the top when you look at Europe. Europeans have had to deal with post 9/11 terrorism and other forms as well, especially in the 1970s and 80s, yet the have not upended their institutions as the US has. So what can account for this disproportionate response? I am not a psychologist by training, so my suggestions are just speculation, but I think it's worthwhile to at least raise them if only to broach the subject.

The first notion is that the response in the US is the reactionary expression of the arc of the baby boomer mind. This is of a piece with the notion that boomer liberalism of the 1960s was narcissistic indulgence rather than experimentation. That thread, which became easier to see in the 70s and 80s, suggests that the reaction today is disproportionate not because of actual fear, but because of the heightened response of a narcissist to a perceived threat. Because terrorism is an unknowable, it is a wild card, and thus difficult for a narcissist to sustain the illusion of control against it.

Second, the reaction might also be a function of a certain kind of atavism. The people running the show today grew up in the 50s, a time of repeated fear-mongering about nuclear war. Duck and cover was a popular idea then, even though in a real nuclear attack it would do no good for anyone near a targeted site. Perhaps terrorism evokes--unconsciously--this older fear from childhood, and the response today is really the response to the Soviet Union of the 1950s.

Thoughts?

Quitting Time

So I decided to stop reading and commenting at the Althouse blog today. I did this because the politics posts there have become indistinguishable from GOP talking points. When I started putting up comments I was under the impression that a variety of people read the points there. But I turned out to be wrong. There are a few thoughtful conservatives there, and once in a while a misguided person like me turns up, though most of the folks there are hard core GOP followers. But the main problem I have is with the owner, who prefers to be disingenuous than actually make a substantive point. What I mean by this is that there's never a direct engagement with an argument; instead, for example, there's a criticism of the form of criticism. Now, everyone in blogland is certainly entitled to say what they want. But that doesn't mean I have to play along with it. And after I saw the post yesterday about the NIE, I thought enough was enough. Why did that push me over the edge? Because it was a lift of a sentence that a fair reader would recognize as a selective mischaracterization, and used as the basis for a conclusion that was, literally, nonsense, in that it didn't follow. At some point, you realize that people are not interested in a good faith discussion, but only in playing games. To play Althouse games is to lose, since they are, almost without exception, rigged from the start, or simply distractions from the substantive issue at hand.

If, god forbid, someone actually reads this, I am not saying that the owner of that blog is actually a GOP shill. She may be, or not. Maybe she just wants blog traffic. I don't know. But I do know that there's a persistent pattern of playing games in a fashion that's very similar--though not identical--to the administration and the GOP, and that to go along with those games is, in a deep way, to falsify what little clear discourse is out there.

Dreams Die Hard

When I was younger and more of a naif than I am now, if that's possible, I believed in a few silly notions. I thought that while politicians might lie because they had to, that no one would start a war based on a lie. I turned out to be wrong about that.

Now I'm wrong about something else, too. I thought the US actually stood for something other than selfishness. Sure we're a bunch of materialistic buffoons, sometimes, but we're also fundamentally good-hearted and somewhere, deep inside the wallet, have aspirations of creating a government that, imperfect though it must be, at least strives for something other than self-preservation. No more. I still have a hard time wrapping my mind around the idea that Americans think it's ok to torture people. When you realize that most of the people in a position to know think that torture is a bad idea, then the little light bulb goes on. This isn't about results, or getting things done; it's just primal fear, and a desire to submit to authority. More fool I, for buying into the silly idea that we aren't as craven as the next country, clutching our possessions while we sell our souls. Maybe we are all just materialists, and that's all there is.

I always wondered what it might be like to live through a dark period in American history. Perhaps I'll live long enough to find out. But that, of course, requires us to come out of it. And maybe that's just another dream.