athousandruts

United States of Depravity

2011-05-12T11:15:00.000-04:00

this is the text of the conclusion of Obama's remarks on the occasion of the killing of bin Laden by American military forces conducting a mission inside Pakistan:

But tonight, we are once again reminded that America can do whatever we set our mind to. That is the story of our history, whether it’s the pursuit of prosperity for our people, or the struggle for equality for all our citizens; our commitment to stand up for our values abroad, and our sacrifices to make the world a safer place.

Let us remember that we can do these things not just because of wealth or power, but because of who we are: one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

just so there is no misunderstanding here, i am not expressing support for bin Laden in any way shape or form. i am saying i find it morally repulsive that the president said state-sanctioned killing is an example of "America can do whatever we set our mind to." that nauseating bit is followed by the unwitting hilarity of proclaiming that the US has "liberty and justice for all."

i could go on about this, but really, there's no need. think about the conjoining of these words with that event, and if you are not repulsed you should be a foam finger waving American if you know what's good for you. the rest of us will throw up in our mouths a little. i am starting to be a bit more unhappy with Obama than with Bush. Bush at least believed whatever people told him; Obama once knew better.

Only the lonely

2010-12-03T00:48:00.003-05:00

Post things like this (originally written as a comment at balloon juice but i decided to put it up here as well):

after two years of an Obama presidency, it is past time to continue to blame the media, blame the Rs, blame everyone except the person (and his party) who, sophistry aside, began with a tremendous amount of power. the Ds, their leadership and their national chief have muffed, blown, or frittered away every advantage they gained in 2008, so much so that a bunch of buffoons had no difficulty making a campaign based on blaming the Ds for the continued destruction of post—WWII america.

it was easy for the Rs to do so, because while they lied about the why, the evidence of where true power lies was there for all to see. bankers and insurance companies made out like bandits while Obama declared himself lord high executioner and appointed “deficit commissioners” who told the working class to drop dead. the Ds found themselves unable to counter the inanity because they could not; after all, they had continued the wealth transfer the Rs started. all the Ds had was rhetoric that bore an increasingly tenuous relationship with reality, though it continued on its lofty, lonely rhetorical heights. at least the Rs could pretend they believed in a crackpot theory while the Ds were, indeed, socialists who lacked even a fig leaf of rhetoric to cover their servitude. but then, a socialistic oligarchy is not the stuff of great populist phrasemaking.

to put it a bit more precisely, on every single major issue, this administration has sided with the wealthy and the profiteers and poltroons of perpetual war and the attendant destruction of civil liberties. after this amount of time, one can continue to concoct rationalizations, or one can start to, perhaps, infer that something is amiss with this picture, namely, that the Ds don’t side with their voters, because that’s not who they represent.

it is undoubtedly difficult to come to terms with the idea that the political party you have worked in, for, and perhaps most of all, have believed in, sees you as a commodity rather than its principal. but then, why should they see you as anything other than cattle? their true principals don’t sit in smoke filled rooms, or man picket lines or call centers. they don’t even run unions, though Ds might in a few places still care about those relics. no, these commanders of the spigots of jobs and cash run board meetings and can be found at places like Aspen that are properly fenced off from the increasingly impoverished voters.

now, someone will say that this overstates the case and that of course the Ds care about their “voters”. and yes, they do. like the Rs did during Junior’s tenure, they can throw the “base” a few trinkets along the social lines so as to have something to point to. and it’s not as if their masters mind these gestures: after all, the end of DADT means more cannon fodder and coffins to sell, and it’s a hell of a lot easier to write the health insurance regulations in DC where you don’t have to deal with those pesky state regulators. just don’t even think of changing the tax rates. come to think of it, don’t even talk about it.

even assuming one considers all of the above, it’s still difficult to think about. on top of that, there’s any number of clever people, some paid, some not . . . who continue to argue that you should just ignore what has actually happened in favor of what might have happened otherwise, or how much legislation has been enacted. until this administration, i had never been alerted to the notion that quantity of legislation was more important than its substance. anyway who cares what they say because they are just negative haters. the Ds can only be failed by disloyal Ds not by their party, just as america is still a great, special nation that’s just having some problems at the moment.

perhaps here lies part of the problem. leaving the R mouthpieces, jingoes and out and out fascists aside, it’s interesting to note how the vast majority of americans are wholly unable to come to terms with the notion that perhaps the country they inhabit is, well, pretty much like every other empire has been. in a word, icky. that’s if you are a citizen of said empire. if you are not, well, you take your chances; after all, the perception of safety amongst the citizenry of the empire is much more important than your life.

it may also be true that those of us who have come to the view that the US has become something much closer to a merchant of death have been too strident about making such arguments. after all, to some extent we are talking about feelings and beliefs and ideology, despite the many clever references to policy and pragmatism. or perhaps it is just a failure of imagination on my part; i just don’t get how it’s pragmatic to kill people in other countries for domestic political reasons. perhaps those are the same folks who say it’s pragmatic to write toothless bills and champion them as “reforms”. and since nothing else could be done, this was necessarily the best of all possible outcomes. because, you see, nothing else could be done. yes.

Memorial

2010-05-30T22:17:00.002-04:00

It's Memorial Day weekend, and here in South Florida I was struck by the amount of gasoline being consumed both on and off the water, but mostly on. As I watched people scoot around atop the water while burning fuel that was appearing in the raw hundreds of miles away, I couldn't decide whether I was watching the equivalent of a last hurrah or playing with matches at a gas pump. Not really a surprise that humans aren't really wired for the long view; we'd never reproduce if we understood where we're driving the planet.

upside? or upside down

2010-05-25T10:17:00.003-04:00

there's a post over at balloon juice about how the supposed "repeal" of the homophobic "don't ask, don't tell" policy of the US military was done away with by the Obama administration. leaving aside the argument that perhaps it was really Congress getting out in front of the WH, it does seem to moi that there are perhaps more important issues afoot with the military. but then i am a crazed loon. anyway, here's my comment from there. ignore my idiotic formatting fail, as the bold shouldn't be there (boxes are quoted text from today's NYT).

it is kinda silly to posit that a decision to hand over control of the issue to the people who oppose it (the armed forces) is somehow progress.

from the NYT

It was not clear whether the deal had secured the votes necessary to pass the House and Senate, but the agreement removed the Pentagon’s objections to having Congress vote quickly on repealing the contentious 17-year-old policy, which bars gay men and lesbians from serving openly in the armed services.

House Democratic leaders were meeting Monday night and considering taking up the measure as soon as Thursday. But even if the measure passes, the policy cannot not change until after Dec. 1, when the Pentagon completes a review of its readiness to deal with the changes. Mr. Obama, his defense secretary and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff would also be required to certify that repeal would not harm readiness.

so if you want to pretend that this is a big deal, feel free, but don’t be surprised when people like me say that most of you all seem to be as deluded as most Bush-GOP supporters were/are.

incidentally, it’s really rather telling that this is somehow a bigger deal than that the US continues to wage war against the rest of the planet. i, for one, would think that not killing people is more important but i guess in the land of permanent war that’s not the case, as long as it’s a non-discriminatory murder machine.

NYT today, again

The secret directive, signed in September by Gen. David H. Petraeus, authorizes the sending of American Special Operations troops to both friendly and hostile nations in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa to gather intelligence and build ties with local forces. Officials said the order also permits reconnaissance that could pave the way for possible military strikes in Iran if tensions over its nuclear ambitions escalate.

While the Bush administration had approved some clandestine military activities far from designated war zones, the new order is intended to make such efforts more systematic and long term, officials said.

nice to see that everyone has their priorities in place.

history is bunk! chapter n

2010-05-20T10:38:00.002-04:00

So apparently the latest fad is arguing for repeal of the 17th Amendment, which provided for the direct election of U.S. Senators. Normally I don't bother with this stuff but for some reason I got a bit exercised about it. My guess is it's because I know just enough history of the Progressive Era to be able to say this argument is based on a lie. I don't think the people who are pushing for it will care, as they seem to be ok with the notion that everything is fungible. Except of course when it isn't or when it is an idea--not a fact. It is odd that we have entered an era where theories require consistency but facts can be disposed of. I guess the thinking is that if you are high enough on Maslow's hierarchy you can believe whatever you wish because you will be immune to the consequences. Or it's just the angry white folks' version of relativism.

Anyway, here's my cranky post from Balloon Juice

sigh. another crap idea backed by crap scholarship.

i'd like to agree with the poster who suggested the Rs have been reading too much Foucault, but i think it's more likely they've been listening to too much Frank Luntz. or is it watching too many reruns of "Mad Men"?

perhaps the teabaggers would do something else to promote their faith in a non-existent past. maybe they could do something like build temples to their pretend ideology instead of playing pretend with history. dealing with this crap is like dealing with "the protocols of the elders of zion": no matter how many times you smush it, it pops up again, like a stubborn weed. i am not certain who coined the term, but "zombie argument" is apt here.

so, a brief rebuttal:

a. citing yourself does not constitute proof

the Dean piece quoted above cites to a Zywicki book review from the mid 1990s that claims that a public choice analysis demonstrates that major interests wanted the 17th to pass. guess who he cites in supporrt of this idea? Jay Bybee (yeah, that Jay Bybee) and himself.

b. for lawyers, history IS bunk

what you have here is the usual lawyer trick of pretending that history (that is the actual facts) don't matter when you have a more clever explanation as to what occurred. and if the facts don't fit, well you just ignore them in favor of your overarching theory. as an aside, never trust a lawyer's argument about history, especially when, as here, the intent is to prove a theory. see, it's just a notion to them, and being "different" is a good way to be noticed and get tenure.

c. out damned facts!

here are a couple of those pesky facts: the initiative was taken up in the states, not at the federal level, where it was initially opposed in the senate. next, for this argument to be correct it would require that all of the supporters for the thirty years before it was passed including such favorites of the plutocrats as the Populist Party were secretly working for Standard Oil. i could keep going, but you get the drift. i would be remiss if i didn't include this famous line from The Atlantic (yes, that one):

The Standard has done everything with the Pennsylvania legislature, except refine it.

H.D. Lloyd, Story of A Great Monopoly, The Atlantic, March 1881, n.p.

d. reality bites

incidentally, the better explanation is that the move towards an expanding federal government was being made, but not that many were paying attention. those ideas would be picked up and used in the 1930s, not the 1910s (excepting some of Wilson's more reprehensible civil liberties manouvers--like Bush, he did a lot of damage whilst mouthing off about democracy).

anyway, to repeat, this is a clever lawyer trick, nothing more. it is an effort to pretend that history is bunk, in that it can be rewritten at will. an analogy would be the recurring argument that the Civil War was not about slavery.

Earth As Seen from Mars - Marvin the Martian's front lawn : citynoise.org

2010-04-24T16:28:00.000-04:00

Earth As Seen from Mars - Marvin the Martian's front lawn : citynoise.org

Nice little planet ya got there....

You Are Where You Eat aka Linkfest

2009-07-22T13:43:00.002-04:00

Via Ethicurian, U.S. Food Policy's Google Earth display of ten sites illustrative of US agriculture practices that you probably don't know about.
What I always find fascinating about these displays are the deep complexities in policy that arise over time, growing like an incredible organism until we arrive at the end point of an incomprehensible jumble of blinkered desire, or, to be a bit less polite, greed.

Linkfest, first of ?

2009-07-22T13:17:00.006-04:00

I've decided that someone ought to get something out of my perusing the intertubes, and that might as we be you. So, the first in well, probably a lot of links:

Steven Colbert + Glenn Greenwald= Be still, my psyche!

In re: birthers. I have always been fond of Richard Hofstadter, and used to sit in his corner in Butler Library when reading. So I was pleased to find, via LGM this link to The Paranoid Style in American Politics.

Enjoy!

Notes From All Over

2009-07-22T13:17:00.001-04:00

Hilzoy has decided to stop blogging. Sorry to see her go; I know of no one else who has been unfailingly rigorous in her attempts to deal with the distortions passed off as accurate in the blogosphere.

Like, no WAY!

2009-04-01T13:58:00.000-04:00

CADIE rickrolled me.
OMG.

Meet the New Boss

2008-09-06T08:48:00.003-04:00

Yeah, so this is a little obscure. My point is just that with the bailout of Fannie/Freddie (a) the US has to pay for it and (b) someone else called the shots. Ergo meet the new boss. Maybe it was like this in the Middle Ages, too: the king screws up so the peasants have to tithe more hay. Whee!
(video via Calculated Risk)

Post-Modernism Final Exam

2008-09-03T21:56:00.001-04:00

Post-Modernism Final Exam

So apparently the GOP has decided to go all in on its post-modern vision of the US. I am continually impressed by the fervency that the Party displays in its message discipline and, really in The Message. The discipline perhaps comes more easily to everyone when you believe that there is no reality other than The Message, whatever it is these days.

Is this 1984? The Handmaid's Tale? Does it matter? I don't think so. The arch reason is that since it's all a construct, attempting to bind this nonsense to a static theory of anything is futile. The non-arch, and possibly the only non-trivial reason for not bothering with this overmuch is that because it is nothing more than whatever the reader chooses to read into it, it's not possible to make sense of it.

Another way to put this is that it is nothing but pure emotion. It doesn't play to anything other than a “narrative” that's already known. In other words, it's like telling a familiar story but with different names. Is a bedtime story with the names changed a different story? No, as anyone bored by the tale or a bored copyright lawyer can tell you. But it has one great great advantage over any other kind of story: we already know how it comes out. There's no worry, and we discount that at our peril.

And that is in a sense the genius of the GOP. They have managed to make the truly abnormal, the berserk fringe in American politics, the normal. It's a story that has been repeated so many times: “bad Democrats”, “someone is out to get us”, “they want to take something away”, “some nasty people are not like us”, ad nausem, that the only effort entailed in this is shoehorning the opposition into the right box. 2004 is perhaps the best example of this, as a pliable Democratic slate lacked the suppleness to evade categorization. My point is merely that like an old shoe this is a narrative that doesn't require much effort on the part of the narrator or reader.

There is one thing that it does require and here, I think, is the real GOP gamble. It requires credulousness on the part of the voter. Credulousness for authority. In 2000 the GOP was able to fool enough people into accepting an unknown. The situation is not quite the same in 2008 because the GOP has been in power since then and the current occupant of the White House is not loved. So the institutional authority that lends power to the narration (the deep voice, if you will) is missing. Thus we see the various efforts to create it out of whole cloth by incessant repetition of the Vietnam War, as if sitting in a cell in North Vietnam somehow confers … something. Again, my point is not that it confers judgement or experience. It's pretty obvious that in this case it does neither. But what it can do is provide a patina of respect, which can be jiggled a bit to look like authority. The point, again, is that if the narrative track is well-worn enough, it's only necessary to make it fit into the existing framework reasonably well. There are no calipers in the voting booth.

So we come to the point: can the GOP sustain a narrative when the facts that might otherwise sustain it point rather profoundly against the narrator? Success here requires both agility and luck, and IMO I think the franchise has run up against two real problems. The first is, as mentioned above, those pesky facts that seem to suggest that the narrator is not the benign all-powerful caretaker the weary anxious voter may take refuge under. The second problem is one the modern (post-Nixon) GOP has not encountered: an opponent who cannot be easily caricatured. Clinton, whatever his skills at oratory, could not resist giving the GOP a bottomless ammo dump. Obama is, in contrast, much more like the Teflon-coated Reagan so that there's really nothing that has stuck to him. Just as important is his grasp of the rhetorical niceties that had been the exclusive province of the GOP till now.

Faced with these perils, the GOP went all out for what it knows best: firming up its base whilst suggesting something else. Thus as any number of Important People have suggested the Palin selection was brilliant, though not for the reasons they have put forth. What I mean is that it was strategically (and, yes, tactically) brilliant in that it allows the GOP to tell the story it likes best—again. But whether it can do it with this particular pick and against this particular opponent at this particular point in time is a different question. Less than 172 hours after the news of the selection, Palin is dogged by stories that are generating friction with GOP efforts to fit her into the narrative. Can the friction be overcome? I doubt it, because all of Palin's problems are problems anyone can understand, and she cannot hide behind the White House. And if you cannot retell the narrative without someone interrupting all the time, then you've lost in the post-modern ring. The truly interesting question, of course, is whether the GOP is correct that politics in the US is, in the TV age, nothing more than a Punch and Judy show signifying nothing. It appears that's the case in good times. We are now entering a double-blind cognition test phase. Cognitive dissonance chin-ups, anyone?

The Nation's Open Letter

2008-07-30T15:39:00.003-04:00

Here is a link to The Nation's open letter to Obama. Please take a look at it and if you agree, sign it or pass it on to someone. Thanks!

Update: Bad linky!

Caucus Of Course

2008-02-08T14:54:00.000-05:00

Florida and Michigan should hold caucuses. Holding caucuses would give the vote back to these two states (and thus energize the Democratic voters in both states), and might—note might—eliminate a Clinton-Obama deadlock. There’s no guarantee that either contest would, but it is difficult to see what the downside of holding a caucus would be. Outside of Camp Clinton, no one seriously contends that either primary was representative, so it is difficult to argue that a do-over would be antidemocratic. Probably the biggest problem at this point would be the logistical issues, especially if the state parties are unwilling to take on the issue. Apparently the FDP is unwilling to hold a caucus; I leave to your imagination as to why that might be. Can the national Democrats get it together to hold a caucus in Florida and Michigan before the convention? Hard to say, though it looks as if there is no particular urgency on anyone’s part to make either caucus happen. It would be a nice reversal of fortune if these two states could have a role, given the closeness of the Democratic primary race.

History in the Making

2007-09-20T14:19:00.000-04:00

It’s difficult to see turning points when they occur if they are not large events. Only later does the thread appear. But today might be different. Here’s some of what happened today:

The United States Senate proved unwilling to pass a measure restoring habeas corpus.
It also refused to articulate any direction regarding the tragedy in Iraq.
It did, however, manage to pass a resolution expressing unhappiness with a newspaper ad.

At the same time, the President held a news conference expressing confidence in the US economy.

While these events were transpiring, the US dollar fell to parity against the Canadian dollar.

For Sale:
One Country. Large, empty in spots. Cheap. Good views; some resources. Clowns included.

Meta-Paris

2007-06-10T17:45:00.001-04:00

I confess: I was fascinated by visions of Paris this last Friday. More precisely, I was fascinated by the response to her physical return to the system. I thought at first it was just garden-variety schadenfreude but after a bit of reflection (such as it is) I think the episode speaks more to the importance the public attaches to an unspecified but deeply felt sense of fairness. I don’t think it’s that important, or even possible, to define exactly where this line lies; it’s probably not possible to do so, even if someone were foolish enough to try (hello?). But it does exist, and it’s dangerous to cross it, so I’m going to try to delineate its shape rather than its precise location.

We have three points this week for location purposes. First, we have Paris and the general outpouring of unhappiness at the idea that she would be released from jail before serving a certain number of days. I don’t think it matters whether its 23 days or 45 days; what matters is that it not be less than a week. In other words, her release triggered a sense of unfairness in that she should receive the same treatment as a similarly situated poor person might.

Point number two for the week was the defeat of the immigration bill. As recounted in the NYT a great number of “ordinary” people made their opposition to the immigration bill known, and the upshot was the bill’s defeat. For many people it seems that the question was one of fairness, as the story illustrates by quoting a woman who’d performed volunteer work but thought it was unfair to give out benefits to people who’d broken the rules. (Note to my three readers: I’m not taking a stance on a solution to the illegal immigration debacle here.)

Point number three is interesting because it comes from an unlikely source: a U.S. District Judge. I’m referring to the footnote where the judge, in the course of granting a motion for leave to file an amicus brief on behalf of Mr. Libby, suggests that the prominent conservative academics running to support Mr. Libby should also expect to be called upon to use their skills on behalf of less well-heeled defendants. Now, it’s true that strictly speaking, this is more snark than claim of fairness. But still, it makes its point by bluntly comparing the spectacle of these academics rushing to Libby’s defense with the lack of resources that other, poorer defendants face in the system. (There’s another take on the Paris-Scooter juxtaposition at Balkinization.)

Taking these three points together, what we have are three examples of an unwillingness to accept a degree of unfairness that seems beyond the norm. In other words, two of these events roused the general public, and the third roused a District Judge to protest elite “business as usual.” What’s my point? Just this: Americans will tolerate a great deal of structural unfairness, perhaps in the service of particular ideologies, preferences, or wants, but somewhere there’s a notion of fairness that kicks in when pressed hard enough. I know of no one who wouldn’t agree that one’s experience in the legal system is likely to be a better one if one has more money. Most people accept that, just as they accept a certain amount of imbalance in other aspects of their lives. At some point, however, the limit of tolerance is reached, and the cry of “unfair” goes up. Why does this matter? It matters because it’s useful to get a sense of where the bottom line in unfairness resides; it’s a fault line through American life. Perhaps all these episodes demonstrate is that the floor of unfairness is pretty low. Still, it’s reassuring to know that there’s some point beyond which even Americans resist the call of self-indulgence.

Things to Thank the Bush Administration For

2007-05-18T12:02:00.000-04:00

Good Faith Matters.
Perhaps.

If there’s anything that may come of the various GOP attempts to destroy government at the Federal level, perhaps one of the most salient will be a recognition that institutions are more than just a collection of people operating under political authority. The Bush administration has operated government as if it is politics all the way down. A corollary of this kind of thinking is treating the unwritten norms of a government institution—EPA, DOJ, FEMA, for example—as if they had no effect or weight. This includes the apparently quaint notion that one holding a position of authority should act in good faith. The end result has been obvious but what I want to point out is not the obvious damage such as the raw incompetence, chicanery, fraud, self-dealing and theft this approach has brought about, but rather the insidious but more long-lasting harm to the mores of the institutions the Administration has assaulted. In other words, as Mr. Rove has repeatedly demonstrated, it’s possible to destroy an institution by refusing to accept good faith as a constraint on the exercise of power. Comey’s testimony this week demonstrates this doctrine in action: when you don’t get the answer you want, just try to game the system to achieve a different outcome. In this particular instance, apparently the gambit did not work but that was probably due to the threat of wholesale resignations. It is a sad but revealing comment on the decay of official Washington that it took a dramatic scene out of the Godfather movies to make at least a few official voices recognize that at least a few people in positions of power still believed that the government had some meaning independently of the individuals holding power at the moment. What the defenders of the status quo (e.g., what was called in an earlier day the Establishment) appear to have, finally, realized is that at the end of the day if the people in power simply refuse to act in good faith, no governmental body will be anything other than a Party apparatus. Time will tell whether it is possible to recover from this poisonous self-dealing.

I am of the opinion that if we as a country continue to exalt cleverness without compunction ("Yes, you're clever. Now sit down.") whatever democracy in the US is left will be destroyed. The remnant will be a shell—a nice marble façade, but a false front. Eventually the gap between pretense (accountable, democratic government) and reality (political power exercised without accountability) will be so great as to resemble the gap between the Soviet constitution and the Soviet state. I don't care to speculate on what kind of havoc that situation would

Here, and here are two of the most thoughtful posts I've seen on the Comey testimony and its implications.

Better Late Than Never

2007-02-26T20:51:00.000-05:00

So I haven't written for a while. My bad, but I haven't had much to contribute to the ether of late, so it hasn't been a real loss. (This is where someone might insert an emoticon, if they so desired.) Generally, I don't post when someone I read has already said what I was thinking: I have plenty of ego, but I don't feel the need to be an echo chamber. I am making an exception now because I am finding only a few bloggers have made the following point.

It appears that the U.S. of A. (you know, us) is planning to attack Iran. There's plenty of chatter about it, and the administration has made a series of maneuvers that look as if they are designed to provide a rationale for an attack. I don't want to argue about those points. The greater problem, at least for me, is that the U.S. seems to have adopted the Bush Administration's argument in favor of wars of aggression without any serious discussion. In other words, while there are discussions about the validity of evidence regarding Iran's intentions, and the consequences of an attack on Iran, almost no one is making the point that the U.S. has no business attacking nations that have not attacked it. I find it astounding that there's no discussion on this point in the mainstream press; so far as I can tell, the discussions center on procedural details and policy questions about the effects of an attack. No one seems to question the notion that the U.S. can bomb another country that has not attacked it; the only issue is whether it's a good idea to do so. Have we all been so brainwashed that we don't even stop to think about what we are doing? Can we really have arrived at the point where our only concern about waging war is whether it's good for us?

So what to do? Well, if you think the U.S. should not be engaged in these kinds of actions then I encourage you to write to your representatives and let them know that you are opposed to making offensive war. Period. Don't give the game away by demanding that the U.S. require more evidence before engaging in more war. The question is whether the U.S. should wage offensive war. I would have thought the answer was no. It may well be no. We might be misguided enough to say yes (it's not as if we haven't done it before). But at least we ought to try to have a discussion about it, no?

Politics: for children only?

2006-12-12T09:43:00.000-05:00

The Washington Post has an exceptionally silly editorial today about Gen. Pinochet. Aside from being disgenuous tripe that, as usual, attempts in an underhanded way to glorify authoritarianism, it throws in an even sillier attempt to claim that Jeanne Kirkpatrick was correct. Both claims are so wrong-headed as a factual matter that I find myself being once again puzzled by the willingness of "grownups" to write and publish material that belongs in a high school diary. As usual, I fall back on my theory that only narcissism explains this kind of silliness.

The Post had a great deal of credibility. Too bad they have decided to throw it away on conservative crack binging.

Hope Springs Eternal

2006-10-31T12:06:00.000-05:00

I took a peek at the Althouse site today.(My bad, but I was curious to see if I was right. Fortunately for yours truly, I was. Whew!) What I saw there gave me some hope, in a kinda perverse way. Instead of actually talking about something remotely resembling an election or issues, the posters there were discussing John Kerry. If, in a covertly rabid partisan blog you have to resort to bashing someone who isn't even running, well then maybe there's hope after all.

Also reading those wacky posts cleared out the bile from reading the WP's bit about how the President of the United States said this: "However they put it, the Democrat approach in Iraq comes down to this: The terrorists win and America loses."

No, I didn't make that up. The President of the United States actually said that about the opposition party. Why not just have them declared enemy combatants and be done with it?
At least the ugliness that is the GOP machine is finally out in the open. It's like a sci-fi story where the attractive human is revealed as horrible ugly monster. As the LAT pointed out the other day, even Nixon (Nixon!) never went this far. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/la-na-outlook29oct29,0,2375674.column

Maybe this is the right's version of the destructive mayhem of the early 1970s? Only, since they are already in power, they want to take all of us down with them.

The Althouse site itself also appears to be becoming a pallid imitation of Red State. Perhaps they could effect a civil union. The Red Staters can do the heavy thinking and Ann can do Styles. It'd be just like the NYT. How nice!

Forget? I hope not.

2006-10-24T10:10:00.000-04:00

Via Altercation http://mediamatters.org/altercation/ I came across this parody:
http://www.thewarofthewords.net/

Quite well done. But I confess that my primary initial emotion ran more along the lines of "humans can be pretty scary" than anything else. Sometimes it seems like technology just gives us the power to be scary messianic idiots more quickly. And I do mean all of us.

Dis-enchantment

2006-10-23T18:43:00.000-04:00

Despite having switched to Apple machines several years ago, I liked to think that I was not zealous about the product. I preferred it, true, but also recognized that as a closed system there were certain things you couldn't do with a mac that you could do with a pc. But those all seemed fair tradeoffs, as you were getting something more reliable both as to hardware and software.

I am here to report that it just ain't so. I have owned a powermac, an ibook, and now a macbook. The powermac has never given me a minute of trouble. The ibook was a great machine, except that it was one of those ibooks with a faulty logic board. Apple did replace the board each time it failed (3x!) but still, it would be better to not have a pervasive fault. But, ok, these things happen. So after Apple stopped covering the ibook, I bought a "refreshed" macbook. That failed after 48 hours. So after some hassles, Apple took that back without charging me. So I got a bright and shiny new macbook, and it has had continuous software issues since I updated it to 10.4.8. It's calmed down a bit after I erased the hard drive and started over, but just yesterday it crashed after installing Flash. The upshot of all of this is that while I still think the Apple products are pretty good--and am not planning to return to pc-ville--I will say that it's a mistake to think they will be problem free. Whether these problems are particular to me or whether they are indicative of growing pains with Apple only time will tell.

Evidence of Evidence?

2006-10-23T17:54:00.000-04:00

So I was reading David Brooks' review of Andrew Sullivan's most recent book in the NYT today. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/22/books/review/Brooks.t.html?ref=books

And I come across this:
I have a rule, which has never failed me, that when a writer uses quotations from Jerry Falwell, James Dobson and the Left Behind series to capture the religious and political currents in modern America, then I know I can put that piece of writing down because the author either doesn’t know what he is talking about or is arguing in bad faith.

And then a bit further on there's this:
The people who are most destructively closed-minded in America are people like Donald Rumsfeld, Ann Coulter and Howard Dean, and they are not exactly religious nuts.

Now, there are any number of observations I could make here. I could, for example point out that there's only one political operative named here. Or that no one has actually explained why, precisely, Mr. Dean is "closed-minded." Perhaps its because he's a Democrat who thinks Democrats should win. In that case, I suppose it would be difficult to decide who on the Republican side should be chosen since, apparently, they all think just that same way. Or, if we are talking real (as in fatal) destructive closed-mindedness, why the President wasn't put on this list. But what fascinated me was the use of the same rhetorical maneuver of selective naming employed by the person who levelled the initial criticism of selective naming.

Admittedly, we could stop here, with a simple Bravo! But let's press on, shall we?
If, in light of the observations made about this particular listing, we apply the writer's own "rule," we can see that he is either (a) ill-informed or (b) "arguing in bad faith." Label (a), definitionally, cannot apply here, since the writer has made a living creating a pseudo-typology of American psychologies. So that leaves us with (b). I for one am encouraged to see a commentator so forthrightly display his blade. Reminds me of a charming post at Redstate, wherein the "values" folks attempted to extol the virtues of hypocrisy.

Reactionary

2006-09-28T14:55:00.000-04:00

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

2006-09-27T09:02:00.000-04:00

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

2006-09-22T09:01:00.000-04:00

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.

Unity

2006-07-28T19:41:00.000-04:00

I am sick of the #$%%##@! baby boomers. First they were sure they were right in the 1960s. Lots of really bright ideas then. Now they are older and have the power levers. Guess what? They still think they're right, even though they seem to have changed their rigidity, from "left" to "right". Frankly it looks more like an exchange of one kind of vapidity for another. Perhaps the next generation will simply be pragmatic cynics. At least we can hope...

plagarism

2006-03-24T17:52:00.000-05:00

Got curious today about the Washington Post/Red America/Domenench [sp] debacle, so I poked around a bit. Two observations: people with strongly held political beliefs are ready to believe all kinds of nonsense. At first the left thought it was a right-wing conspiracy, and now the right thinks the event was a setup by the Post to discredit it. Funny how we're all wired the same way--paranoid--regardless of our political beliefs. Probably time to revisit Hofstader's The Paranoid Style in American Politics, which I have a copy of but confess to not having read. [My bad.]

The other point is a bit different, but also a broad social one. Older people (anyone over say 50) I think doesn't really grasp how far this country has moved in its acceptance of cheating. Most research I've seen indicates that at least 30% of all resumes have fabricated material on them, which, if you think about it, is an astounding fact. Upwards of 80% of students think it's ok to cheat. My experience bears this out. When I taught two years ago, many of the students simply lifted material without attribution, and when I called them on it they acted offended. My point is that the notion of cheating as morally ok is so deeply entrenched today that it would be foolish for the old-line institutions such as the daily papers or any other entity where honesty still matters to not thouroughly vet their new hires. The cognitive dissonance in America (we all believe in heaven but cheating/stealing/etc. is ok) is rapidly becoming a roar. Boomers, ugh.

A small idea

2005-12-19T12:29:00.000-05:00

If we are really enmeshed in a "war on terror" that is so serious as to require abrogration of rights in this country, shouldn't we bring back the draft first?

Narcissism

2005-11-01T13:26:00.000-05:00

Have been reading (rereading, technically, but I confess to being unable to remember the first go-round) Lasch's Culture of Narcissism and found it an unsettlingly accurate preview of where we are today. Here is an assessment from the Hoover Institute: http://www.policyreview.org/oct05/rosen.html
This decline of self-reliance would explain our perpetual hysteria these days. I've been a bit surprised by the lack of resilience in the American grain. We've had many many faults, but to discover that lurking behind the SUV-ribbon-Bush chest-beaters is nothing other than anxiety is alarming. Alarming because when people are afraid they make bad policy choices. Retreating to a gated community and telling the rest of the planet to get lost is not, in the long term, a workable solution to anything.

apocryphal?

2005-10-31T14:12:00.000-05:00

Heard the other day via the radio that 20% of the US population thinks the sun revolves around the earth. It appears that you CAN fool some of the people ALL the time.

Maureen Dowd

2005-10-31T13:48:00.000-05:00

So what exactly does she want? Glamour? A nice guy? What?

My experience is that most successful women have a hard time finding guys for two reasons. First, like guys, they become too enamored of themselves. I suspect it is more difficult to find men who will put up with this. Women are a bit more savvy about human nature and recognize that putting up with a blowhard is a lesser evil than singledom. Second, unlike men, overachieving women are not willing to date down. I have no doubt, for example, that Ms Dowd would not date me, simply on the ground that I am not enough of a power figure. When powerful women are willing to drop their version of male modeling (needing a co-powerful partner) then they will be more likely to find a mate. Assuming they want one.

Some thoughts on going to law school

2005-09-09T16:58:00.000-04:00

A few thoughts for those of you thinking about law school this fall. Somebody else can talk about strategy and how great it is to be a lawyer. I'm going to make a few observations about the realities of taking that path. I'm not saying "don't go." I am saying "be sure you know what you and 40,000+ people per year are getting into."

DISCLAIMER: What follows are some observations about the daily life of a lawyer.
IT IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE AND IT IS NOT ACADEMIC ADVICE. [can you tell I went to law school?]

1. Assuming you will get rich is dangerous. A few lawyers make a lot of money (more than a million dollars a year); a greater proportion make a fair amount of money (somewhere between 100,000 and a million), some others make a bit less, and many lawyers earn around the median income. Unless you are a very good lawyer or entrepreneur, chances are you aren't going to make that much money. Some law school graduates find themselves unable to pay off their law school loans. "But what about those 150k starting salary jobs", you may be thinking. The truth is that there aren't that many of those, and there are many many lawyers graduating from law schools each year. It's a numbers game: Unless you are attending a first tier law school or do well (top third of the class, for example) you probably are not going to get one of those jobs. You may not even get interviews for those jobs. So law school is not necessarily a great investment, at least as a moneymaking strategy.

2. Law school is not a good general education. The subject matter is of no use to you outside of law. Nobody besides other lawyers will care about your knowledge of civil procedure. Skills? Law school teaches—and rewards—a very narrow set of skills: reading comprehension, technical writing, and legal advocacy. Because of the peculiarities of law teaching, none of these skills are taught in a way that has much utility outside the field of law. There are some non-lawyer jobs where a JD might be useful, or even required, but generally speaking it's not necessary. If you want to go into business, do so and hire a lawyer to tell you what the rules are.

3. Being a lawyer is, usually, not particularly exciting. This observation is the one you may have encountered before. It needs to be repeated, over and over. Much legal work is clerical, detail work, and this is true of both litigation and non-litigation work. If you do non-litigation work, you will be endlessly redrafting documents for other people. If you do litigation, you will be drafting documents for courts, wading through mountains of paper and your adversary's incomprehensible papers. The vast majority of cases settle so there is precious little opportunity for actual courtroom work. Even then, good courtroom work is the product of months of painstaking attention to detail. Don't do it unless you love detail work.

4. Lawyers don't change the world. An unfortunate misconception to the contrary apparently arose in the 1970s at the high water mark of public interest litigation. That notion--that lawyers do change the world--has stubbornly and unfortunately resisted dying. Law is a deeply conservative practice. It's difficult to argue with that proposition; after all, if law was unstable, an orderly society would be much more difficult to maintain. Lawyers may, sometimes, address or alleviate a grievance or injustice, but that is a world away from changing society. Ask someone who works in public interest law--not a law teacher--about this.

5. The law is a jealous mistress. The phrase is useful, if a bit dated and sexist. All it means is that law is time-consuming and not conducive to doing other things. A full-time legal job will usually require more hours than another full-time job that may pay equally. Do not assume you can do other things in your off hours, because you may not have any off hours. Also, if you practice law, ethics rules may preclude involvement in other activities, moneymaking or otherwise.

Now, if you've looked at these observations and still want to go, more power to you. I STRONGLY encourage you to talk to a lawyer in whichever field you are interested in. There are many great legal jobs, and many people who practice law are quite happy doing just that. Make sure you're one of them. Good luck!

C. Hitchens & Justifications for Iraq

2005-09-09T16:50:00.000-04:00

A few thoughts, in no particular order. I should note that I usually post only when I have something to say that hasn't already been said somewhere else. Or so I'd like to believe.

1. C. Hitchens. I can't say that I understand the man, or that I agree with him all that much. Still, I think he at least has the courage of his convictions, which is more than can be said for many of us. But, I find I have difficulties with some of his recent pronouncements, such as the Weekly Standard piece, or his performance last month on The Daily Show (Jon Stewart's show). Here's my first problem with his arguments about Iraq. He may well be right that dethroning Hussein was the right thing to do. But the problem with his approach is that while it may be morally superior, in that it is really a humanitarian argument, it ignores the unpleasant fact that the Bush people did not use that argument as a justification for invading the country. And this, I think, is the reason that so many people would like to leave the affair. Since we were sold a bill of goods, why should we continue to put up with being there? It's all well and good to point out how bad the Baathists were—and I am willing to accept everything Hitchens says on that point. But that's not the reason the US government gave as the reason for the invasion, probably for the simple reason that we wouldn't have gone there, any more than we would have invaded Bosnia or Rwanda. A war started under a false pretext that bogs down will necessarily run into problems, just as this one has done, because it would not have started but for the enabling lies (use inaccuracies if you think that word is too strong—the result is the same). This is another way of saying words do matter.

So at the end, then, we are left with an awkward variation of the ends justifies the means: it's ok that we fibbed our way into this war because it was for a good cause. There may be some scenarios where it's ok, even necessary to lie to achieve a policy. I don't think war should be one of them, as there is something troubling about killing people, ours or theirs, in the service of a rationale that we know is incorrect. And, as we see, once the original, unsustainable rationale is exposed as hollow, the will to see the fight through, which was inextricably linked to that rationale, evaporates, leaving the promoters of the war in an untenable position. Put more rhetorically, we can convince people to fight, kill, and die for certain ideas, but it's dangerous to ask them to fight for something that is demonstrably false.

A related problem with Hitchens' argument is his specific justification for the Iraq war. So far as I can tell, he seems to be suggesting that we saved lives by going in when we did. The problem with that idea is that it too is a switch, though a different kind of switch than the rationale switch. Here, he's adopted a utilitarian justification for an action that is a moral action. There are countries that pose demonstrably greater risks to the US than Iraq did: North Korea, for example. So Iraq was a moral imperative rather than a utilitarian imperative. That's fine, but he's adopted, at least implicitly, a utilitarian argument—means justifies ends—in the service of a moral good. This seems to be a deeply incoherent form of thinking. Since invading Iraq is a moral rather than a utilitarian exercise, the justification should be of the same kind. It is deeply incoherent to justify a moral act (invading Iraq) through a utilitarian strategy (it's ok to mislead people if that gets us into the war). It may well be that there are times when the ends justify the means, or it is either morally acceptable or otherwise useful to mislead the citizenry. War does not appear to fit into those categories as a general proposition (that is not to say that it doesn't happen), and this particular conflict seems an excellent example of the danger of employing mix and match rationales.

My second quarrel involves his "test" of when it's ok to invade a country. The problem with his four conditions is that most countries would probably flunk them. The US certainly would. So should we invade ourselves?

Problematic but brilliant or is it the converse?

2005-05-02T13:12:00.000-04:00

I must hand it to the White House. They once again have managed to make a bad situation at least appear to look good for themselves. I am referring to the recent announcement that Social Security should be more explicitly labeled--and rejiggered--as a progressive benefits program. Social Security has always had a progressive, that is, redistributive, component to it, but that bit of information is not, I think, widely known. I didn't know it until I took a course dealing with Social Security. The genius in making the pitch explicit is this: first, it creates a wedge amongst the Democrats and those who prefer to see the program continue to have a redistributive element to it. So it looks like Democrats and others who oppose the White House are somehow against helping poor people. Second, and here's the more important long-term point: it cuts the cord that FDR used to ensure that Social Security would not be ended. The original genius of Social Security was its inclusiveness. Everyone shared in a piece of the pie, so that no one cared that much about the sizes that were doled out. Making Social Security explicitly a means-tested program will destroy its universal support. Why would the middle class support a program that doesn't benefit it? So, down the road, the program will wither--probably not die, but wither so that it is not the all-encompassing success it is perceived of today. Krugman makes a similar point in today's NYT. In other words, the objective is to kill indirectly what can't be done directly. This method is consistent with other White House stratagems--always make your real objective look like something else. This allows you (a) to bamboozle most people and (b) to mischaracterize the opposition and (c) to frame the debate, since most people can't be bothered, don't have the time, or aren't inclined to dig into this kind of issue.

Oh, by the way, there are two reasons this ploy is just that--a ploy. The first is this administration's resolute hostility to means-tested programs. There is no reason to think that this hostility, which is, after all, ideological, not pragmatic, has somehow disappeared. After all, if that were the case, the administration could simply push the point it floated in the past: raise payroll taxes on the richest Americans and leave the benefit structure intact. Second, the timing here is fishy. Only after it became quite obvious that the administration plan was not going to fly did this divide and conquer strategy float to the surface. This administration is quite adept at setting ideological goals, but oddly awkward about responding to changed events, whether those events are 9/11, Terry Schaivo or, to use last week's example, higher gas prices.

Question for the Administration: if people are in fact capable of choosing the best path for themselves, which, as you observed last November, included more votes for your guy, why is it that you, as avatars of a wonderful ideology, find it necessary to cloak your goals in misleading rhetoric? If these ideas are as great as you think they are, why can't they stand on their own?