The troubadour Mike Gravel:
28 December 2007
Pakistan for dummies
Like everyone else, I've been following the ongoing political crisis of the past several months in Pakistan, but never really felt like I had my head around it and, after yesterday's assassination of Benazir Bhutto, it's likely to get even more complicated. So let's see if you and I can figure it out like the couple of 'Murican yahoos we are.
In 1999, chief of the army Pervez Musharaf takes power in a military coup after rising tensions between the army and civilian leader Nawaz Sharif. Musharraf is relatively secular and moderate, so after 9/11 we bribe him into becoming a key ally in the War on Terra. (Remember, kids, we like democracy, but it works so much better if we can cut out the middle man!)
But after five years or so of happy vassalage, the strain on the relationship starts to show. Musharraf's complicity in the GWOT is making him increasingly unpopular with his own public which starts to realize that, hey, it's been awhile since we've had one of them "elections." He realizes he now has to play both sides to stay in power, but neither bites. The US in particular is unhappy with his reluctance to crack down on the various Islamist factions who control the remote tribal regions of Pakistan, and begins to question his commitment to Sparkle Motion.
We also conveniently realize it's been awhile since Pakistan's had some elections. Time for some democracy action! Meaning--as it always does--getting someone more compliant to our wishes in power.
Enter Bhutto, a Western-educated former prime minister and scion to a famous political family (the Pakistani version of the Kennedys) who still has a significant base of support inside the country. Both of Bhutto's terms as prime minister ended prematurely on corruption charges, which Bhutto claims were manufactured by political opponents. But other accusation of shady dealings have continued to dog Bhutto and--particularly--her husband Asif Ali Zardari during their Western exile. During Bhutto's time in power, Zardari earned the nickname "Mr. Ten Percent" for his various business dealings. Bhutto, who may once have had radical tendencies many years ago, has since remade herself as a safe, pro-Western secular liberal. (We like secular liberals when they run Muslim countries).
This is where things begin to get (even more) murky. Many sources believe Bhutto had cut a deal with Washington and London to continue their War on Terra' and economic neoliberalism policies in exchange for a Western-negotiated power-sharing deal with Musharraf. We hoped this would simultaneously pacify the pro-democracy uprising among the middle classes and keep the right-wing Islamic forces at bay while still maintaining a Western puppet on the throne. The question here, of course, is why Bhutto would accept such a deal when the recent outcome was always uncomfortably high.
The other natural question is: Who did the deed, then? The best guess seems to be Islamist sympathizers within the lower ranks of the Pakistani security apparatus, which Musharraf doesn't really control, and perhaps doesn't want to. It doesn't seem likely he would jeopardize his already tenuous position by ordering outright the assassination of his main rival. Why not let other elements take their course instead? (He's learned much from Bush and Blair in that regard).
So, what did I miss?
Other readings:
Juan Cole here and at Salon
Tariq Ali on Bhutto from the London Review of Books and The Guardian.
More background from the Socialist Worker (UK)
In 1999, chief of the army Pervez Musharaf takes power in a military coup after rising tensions between the army and civilian leader Nawaz Sharif. Musharraf is relatively secular and moderate, so after 9/11 we bribe him into becoming a key ally in the War on Terra. (Remember, kids, we like democracy, but it works so much better if we can cut out the middle man!)
But after five years or so of happy vassalage, the strain on the relationship starts to show. Musharraf's complicity in the GWOT is making him increasingly unpopular with his own public which starts to realize that, hey, it's been awhile since we've had one of them "elections." He realizes he now has to play both sides to stay in power, but neither bites. The US in particular is unhappy with his reluctance to crack down on the various Islamist factions who control the remote tribal regions of Pakistan, and begins to question his commitment to Sparkle Motion.
We also conveniently realize it's been awhile since Pakistan's had some elections. Time for some democracy action! Meaning--as it always does--getting someone more compliant to our wishes in power.
Enter Bhutto, a Western-educated former prime minister and scion to a famous political family (the Pakistani version of the Kennedys) who still has a significant base of support inside the country. Both of Bhutto's terms as prime minister ended prematurely on corruption charges, which Bhutto claims were manufactured by political opponents. But other accusation of shady dealings have continued to dog Bhutto and--particularly--her husband Asif Ali Zardari during their Western exile. During Bhutto's time in power, Zardari earned the nickname "Mr. Ten Percent" for his various business dealings. Bhutto, who may once have had radical tendencies many years ago, has since remade herself as a safe, pro-Western secular liberal. (We like secular liberals when they run Muslim countries).
This is where things begin to get (even more) murky. Many sources believe Bhutto had cut a deal with Washington and London to continue their War on Terra' and economic neoliberalism policies in exchange for a Western-negotiated power-sharing deal with Musharraf. We hoped this would simultaneously pacify the pro-democracy uprising among the middle classes and keep the right-wing Islamic forces at bay while still maintaining a Western puppet on the throne. The question here, of course, is why Bhutto would accept such a deal when the recent outcome was always uncomfortably high.
The other natural question is: Who did the deed, then? The best guess seems to be Islamist sympathizers within the lower ranks of the Pakistani security apparatus, which Musharraf doesn't really control, and perhaps doesn't want to. It doesn't seem likely he would jeopardize his already tenuous position by ordering outright the assassination of his main rival. Why not let other elements take their course instead? (He's learned much from Bush and Blair in that regard).
So, what did I miss?
Other readings:
Juan Cole here and at Salon
Tariq Ali on Bhutto from the London Review of Books and The Guardian.
More background from the Socialist Worker (UK)
20 December 2007
Song of the year
I have a "country mouse" relationship to this entire record, which is indelibly about city life (thought it opens with a pastoral image, curiously). It conjures up the glimmering glass palace images of the urban world for me, which I don't think is its intention. I was quite taken with it, though, in spite of this, or perhaps because of it.
I especially like this rendering of the song with the extended coda.
I especially like this rendering of the song with the extended coda.
By our own making
Nothing gets the liberal sphere quite as worked up as arguing the merits of the so-called "new atheists"*. See these two threads at LGM, for example, which clocked in at over 200 posts where a typical thread might run around 15 replies. I have an idea why that may be, but it'll have to wait for a moment. First, I wanted to make a remark about something I noticed in there before they went off beyond my education level (alas, there might have been a time when my comprehension could've hung in longer, but not anymore).
It's mentioned at some point that the more prosperous and egalitarian societies in the world tend to be post-religious as well. This makes sense, but, to use biblical verbiage, which begat what? Among the most persistent reasons people turn to supernatural faith is that the existence they are offered in this life is dreary, miserable, and absent of any hope or understanding for prosperity. Religion and its promises of posthumous redemption is the best they can do in the absence of any more material route out of their decrepit existence. This fact is the genesis of Marx's oft-quoted but seldom understood line that "religion is the opiate of the masses." It's odd, in this sense, that liberals who wouldn't favor the law enforcement approach to drugs--attacking the symptoms rather than the disease--believe an effectively similar approach would work with religion.
In a way, the contemporary anti-religious aren't radical enough (quite intentionally, of course, of the trinity only Hitchens could have been considered of the left at any point). We know God doesn't exist, or at least not on the field in which theism arguments are usually contested. So those people following the more culturally repressive strains of religious thought cannot, as they claim, be merely following the dictates of a non-existent being. Presumably, it's human compulsion, but the anti-religious seem to feel eliminating the non-existent God from the equation clears up the problem. We are to believe, apparently, that any positive historical legacy attributed to religious believers--the work of Gandhi, Cesar Chavez, or Dr. King, to cite three 20th century examples--could have been just as easily accomplished without anything we would recognize as spiritual belief at all. However, the more pernicious legacy of religion--oppression, brutality, intolerance--are unique, and dismembering the institutions of religion will magically do away with great chunks of it.
This won't do. It's too narrow. A far greater threat to humanity in recent history has been, and remains, rampant nationalism, for which religion has only served as a subservient booster. Out here in the heartland, American exceptionalism has ascended to a kind of quasi-religious belief itself, and people routinely jump between Americanism and fundamentalist Christianity to justify whatever prejudice they happen to be on about today. To plagiarize Stephen Colbert; I believe in America. I believe that it exists. I don't ascribe it any inherent superior qualities compared to other nations, but the anti-religious can't get me that far. They tend to be focused on the familiar, recognizable symbols of religious influence, but ignore, purposefully or not, this authoritarian impulse to create new mechanisms to justify themselves.
When I was reading 1984, it struck me that Orwell's totalitarian state could well have been modeled on some future projection of a theocratic state. But, as far as I know, Orwell never considered this explicitly. He was concerned only with the totalitarianism itself. A few weeks ago I pointed out some anti-theist consternation that the Hollywood production of The Golden Compass scrubbed the explicit religious nature of the primary antagonist, a secretive, authoritarian body called the Magisterium. Granted I have only read some press and seen the trailer for the film, but this seems like an unnecessary lament. If you'd like to see parallels to authoritarian religion, that option remains open to you. For the anti-religous, though, that won't be good enough. Religion is necessarily authoritarian, and vice versa.
This narrow prescription I mentioned earlier from the Big Guns and their liberal boosters in the USA is drawn from the small field of interest each of them is trying to stake out. Dawkins, for example, is chiefly concerned about what he sees as faith jutting into the world of science. A certain variety of American liberal is primarily fighting social and cultural issues, for which he sees fundamentalist Christianity as his primary opposition. Neither is concerned with much beyond eliminating an immediate threat to their own interests. Many flavors of it smell like personal score-settling, a temptation we all succumb to at some point.**
*Still don't like this term.
**Indeed, much of my own resentment for the anti-religious comes from their ridiculous insistence that the moderate/liberal religious are merely revisionists of the "true" fundamentalist faith, and are themselves liable to bust out the billy clubs at any moment! (Oh noes, authoritarian Quakers! Run for you lives!)
It's mentioned at some point that the more prosperous and egalitarian societies in the world tend to be post-religious as well. This makes sense, but, to use biblical verbiage, which begat what? Among the most persistent reasons people turn to supernatural faith is that the existence they are offered in this life is dreary, miserable, and absent of any hope or understanding for prosperity. Religion and its promises of posthumous redemption is the best they can do in the absence of any more material route out of their decrepit existence. This fact is the genesis of Marx's oft-quoted but seldom understood line that "religion is the opiate of the masses." It's odd, in this sense, that liberals who wouldn't favor the law enforcement approach to drugs--attacking the symptoms rather than the disease--believe an effectively similar approach would work with religion.
In a way, the contemporary anti-religious aren't radical enough (quite intentionally, of course, of the trinity only Hitchens could have been considered of the left at any point). We know God doesn't exist, or at least not on the field in which theism arguments are usually contested. So those people following the more culturally repressive strains of religious thought cannot, as they claim, be merely following the dictates of a non-existent being. Presumably, it's human compulsion, but the anti-religious seem to feel eliminating the non-existent God from the equation clears up the problem. We are to believe, apparently, that any positive historical legacy attributed to religious believers--the work of Gandhi, Cesar Chavez, or Dr. King, to cite three 20th century examples--could have been just as easily accomplished without anything we would recognize as spiritual belief at all. However, the more pernicious legacy of religion--oppression, brutality, intolerance--are unique, and dismembering the institutions of religion will magically do away with great chunks of it.
This won't do. It's too narrow. A far greater threat to humanity in recent history has been, and remains, rampant nationalism, for which religion has only served as a subservient booster. Out here in the heartland, American exceptionalism has ascended to a kind of quasi-religious belief itself, and people routinely jump between Americanism and fundamentalist Christianity to justify whatever prejudice they happen to be on about today. To plagiarize Stephen Colbert; I believe in America. I believe that it exists. I don't ascribe it any inherent superior qualities compared to other nations, but the anti-religious can't get me that far. They tend to be focused on the familiar, recognizable symbols of religious influence, but ignore, purposefully or not, this authoritarian impulse to create new mechanisms to justify themselves.
When I was reading 1984, it struck me that Orwell's totalitarian state could well have been modeled on some future projection of a theocratic state. But, as far as I know, Orwell never considered this explicitly. He was concerned only with the totalitarianism itself. A few weeks ago I pointed out some anti-theist consternation that the Hollywood production of The Golden Compass scrubbed the explicit religious nature of the primary antagonist, a secretive, authoritarian body called the Magisterium. Granted I have only read some press and seen the trailer for the film, but this seems like an unnecessary lament. If you'd like to see parallels to authoritarian religion, that option remains open to you. For the anti-religous, though, that won't be good enough. Religion is necessarily authoritarian, and vice versa.
This narrow prescription I mentioned earlier from the Big Guns and their liberal boosters in the USA is drawn from the small field of interest each of them is trying to stake out. Dawkins, for example, is chiefly concerned about what he sees as faith jutting into the world of science. A certain variety of American liberal is primarily fighting social and cultural issues, for which he sees fundamentalist Christianity as his primary opposition. Neither is concerned with much beyond eliminating an immediate threat to their own interests. Many flavors of it smell like personal score-settling, a temptation we all succumb to at some point.**
*Still don't like this term.
**Indeed, much of my own resentment for the anti-religious comes from their ridiculous insistence that the moderate/liberal religious are merely revisionists of the "true" fundamentalist faith, and are themselves liable to bust out the billy clubs at any moment! (Oh noes, authoritarian Quakers! Run for you lives!)
18 December 2007
Swallow it whole
One more obstacle to complete hegemonic control over the nation's media will likely go under the knife later today, when the FCC votes to remove the restriction against publishing companies owning broadcast outlets in the same market.
See Bill Moyers for more.
Stop Big Media.
16 December 2007
Jurassic park
The cat is out of the bag, the chickens are coming home to roost, Frankenstein's monster has awakened to terrorize his master, et cetera cliché ad nauseam.*
The sphere is alight with the heads of Bidness Wingers popping like bottles of sparkling wine over the emergence of Mike Huckabee. The rank-and-file foot soldiers of the Big Jeebus empire have suddenly discovered they don't need the puppet strings of the Bidness elite, and their former puppeteers are in a huff something awful. Brad R. of Sadly, No! has been following the coalition crackup this week. He writes:
Having a functioning aristocracy in a democracy means, by necessity, convincing people outside of the aristocracy to support it by promising them some scraps from the table while you continue to take their money. It works, so long as the proles don't realize they can get what they want without the aristocracy's approval. Then along comes Huckabee, fouling up the pool. You can buy off some of the media figureheads of Big Jeebus with their own places in the aristocracy, but the hard-working, salt-of-the-earth inhabitants of Jesusland were promised their thirty shekels, and they're coming to collect the bill.
What's curious, though, is that Huckabee isn't much of the sort of economic populist that really puts the fear in the hearts of the Bidness Wingers. Hell, he even supports the national sales tax pipedream that's long been the golden cow of the hardcore anti-tax crusaders. As I see it, they have two main problems with Mike "Chuckles" Huckabee:
1) He seems to think the first three words of the U.S. Constitution aren't "Fuck the Poor."
2) He's not fully on board the neocon Bombs'n'Torture gravy train.
Their problem, then, rests not so much in Huckabee himself. It's that Huckabee could represent a transitional fossil**, the kind of figure who could separate the loyal rubes of Jesusland from their aristocratic masters. Huckabee himself has only the faintest flickering of real populism***, but he may make the world dangerously safe for Jimmy Carter, and from Carter it's a short road to the ambulatory corpse of William Jennings Bryan terrorizing the heartland, and that's the real Hell they fear.****
*Mixin' languages...
**Yes, a Huckabee-evolution joke. Sadly, I was beaten to the punch, but I couldn't resist anyway.
***Which is why I think Huckabee isn't much of a threat to win the general election. I think he will poll better than he is now (he doesn't have much name recognition yet), but he won't be able to expand much of his populist base outside of conservative Christians, and that won't be enough to carry him. The current Big Bidness Media fascination with him is a curious anomaly, but it will dissipate quickly.
****Bryan wouldn't approve of my blasphemy, of course.
The sphere is alight with the heads of Bidness Wingers popping like bottles of sparkling wine over the emergence of Mike Huckabee. The rank-and-file foot soldiers of the Big Jeebus empire have suddenly discovered they don't need the puppet strings of the Bidness elite, and their former puppeteers are in a huff something awful. Brad R. of Sadly, No! has been following the coalition crackup this week. He writes:
The GOP has, generally speaking, done close to nothing for its Values Voters, much like the Democrats have done little for union voters in recent years. The reason that unions and the Christian Right keep voting for Democrats and Republicans, respectively, isn’t because those parties support their political interests. Rather, it has to do with voting against the other party, which they see as actively hostile to their interests. Despite being more liberal socially, the cash-rules-everything-around-me, C.R.E.A.M., get-tha’-money dolla-dolla-bill-y’all wing of the GOP has been willing to tolerate the social cons’ views on abortion, gay marriage and Hollywood as long as they don’t interfere with the tax cuts, which are more important than anything else. And besides, it’s not as if the GOP leadership ever planned to enact any of the social cons’ agenda in the first place.John Cole, an ex-moderate Republican, also has some fine excerpts from The Meltdown.
Having a functioning aristocracy in a democracy means, by necessity, convincing people outside of the aristocracy to support it by promising them some scraps from the table while you continue to take their money. It works, so long as the proles don't realize they can get what they want without the aristocracy's approval. Then along comes Huckabee, fouling up the pool. You can buy off some of the media figureheads of Big Jeebus with their own places in the aristocracy, but the hard-working, salt-of-the-earth inhabitants of Jesusland were promised their thirty shekels, and they're coming to collect the bill.
What's curious, though, is that Huckabee isn't much of the sort of economic populist that really puts the fear in the hearts of the Bidness Wingers. Hell, he even supports the national sales tax pipedream that's long been the golden cow of the hardcore anti-tax crusaders. As I see it, they have two main problems with Mike "Chuckles" Huckabee:
1) He seems to think the first three words of the U.S. Constitution aren't "Fuck the Poor."
2) He's not fully on board the neocon Bombs'n'Torture gravy train.
Their problem, then, rests not so much in Huckabee himself. It's that Huckabee could represent a transitional fossil**, the kind of figure who could separate the loyal rubes of Jesusland from their aristocratic masters. Huckabee himself has only the faintest flickering of real populism***, but he may make the world dangerously safe for Jimmy Carter, and from Carter it's a short road to the ambulatory corpse of William Jennings Bryan terrorizing the heartland, and that's the real Hell they fear.****
*Mixin' languages...
**Yes, a Huckabee-evolution joke. Sadly, I was beaten to the punch, but I couldn't resist anyway.
***Which is why I think Huckabee isn't much of a threat to win the general election. I think he will poll better than he is now (he doesn't have much name recognition yet), but he won't be able to expand much of his populist base outside of conservative Christians, and that won't be enough to carry him. The current Big Bidness Media fascination with him is a curious anomaly, but it will dissipate quickly.
****Bryan wouldn't approve of my blasphemy, of course.
Sunday Debs
On Susan B. Anthony, 1909:
I can still see the aversion so unfeelingly expressed for this magnificent woman. Even my friends were disgusted with me for piloting such an “undesirable citizen” into the community. It is hard to understand, after all these years, how bitter and implacable the people were, especially the women, toward the leaders of this movement.
As we walked along the street I was painfully aware that Miss Anthony was an object of derision and contempt, and in my heart I resented it and later I had often to defend my position, which, of course, I was ever ready to do.
The meetings of Miss Anthony and her co-workers were but poorly attended and all but barren of results. Such was the loathing of the community for a woman who dared to talk in public about “woman’s rights” that people would not go to see her even to satisfy their curiosity. She was simply not to be tolerated and it would not have required any great amount of egging-on to have excited the people to drive her from the community.
To all of this Miss Anthony, to all appearance, was entirely oblivious. She could not have helped noticing it for there were those who thrust their insults upon her but she gave no sign and bore no resentment.
I can see her still as she walked along, neatly but carelessly attired, her bonnet somewhat awry, mere trifles which were scarcely noticed, if at all, in the presence of her splendid womanhood. She seemed absorbed completely in her mission. She could scarcely speak of anything else. The rights and wrongs of her sex seemed to completely possess her and to dominate all her thoughts and acts.
On the platform she spoke with characteristic earnestness and at times with such intensity as to awe her audience, if not compel conviction. She had an inexhaustible fund of information in regard to current affairs, and dates and data for all things. She spoke with great rapidity and forcefullness; her command of language was remarkable and her periods were all well-rounded and eloquently delivered. No thoughtful person could hear her without being convinced of her honesty and the purity of her motive. Her face fairly glowed with the spirit of her message and her soul was in her speech.
But the superb quality, the crowning virtue she possessed, was her moral heroism.
Susan B. Anthony had this quality in an eminent degree. She fearlessly faced the ignorant multitude or walked unafraid among those who scorned her. She had the dignity of perfect selfreliance without a shadow of conceit to mar it. She was a stern character, an uncompromising personality, but she had the heart of a woman and none more tender ever throbbed for the weak and the oppressed of earth.
No leader of any crusade was ever more fearless, loyal or uncompromising than Susan B. Anthony and not one ever wrought more unselfishly or under greater difficulties for the good of her kind and for the progress of the race.
13 December 2007
Vulcanization
Currently reading Jesus Christ: The Gospels, part of Verso's ongoing repackaging of important revolutionary texts (other titles include the Declaration of Independence and "Terrorism and Communism"). While the bulk of the book is just the text of the four gospels themselves--which is, of course, readily available--it's a different experience to read them all at once uninterrupted, which is rarely done. The English Marxist literary critic Terry Eagleton wrote the introduction, which you can read an excerpt from at the Guardian's website.
I hope to have more to say about the book itself later, but first a thought came up while reading the comments at the link above:
It's a favorite parlor trick of the Dawkins/Harris/Hitchens crowd to play--as a grand finale after they've been working you up and down--the final trump card in their deck by claiming that no historical person named Jesus of Nazareth ever existed. Ta-da! I bet you hate religion now. Seriously, though; I've actually studied under mainstream scholars at a secular university (hardly rightwing Christian partisans all) and this isn't taken terribly seriously among them, primarily because it's based on a desperate, 2nd century dating of the gospels that is generally rejected. Certainly the historical personage of Jesus didn't say or do a great many of the things attributed to him, but claiming total nonexistence, while possible, requires an enormous amount of skepticism (of which our friends have no lack).
It's that last point which makes me question the wisdom of such an assertion in the first place. If you're trying to discredit the literal miraculous and supernatural elements of the gospel accounts as actual events, there's ample ammunition to be found from the same mainstream scholarship. So why the need to jump the extra hurdle? Is it shock value, scoring cheap points, or is there something else going on?
I'm also (slowly and intermittently) working my way through Karen Armstrong's The Battle for God, a history of modern fundamentalism. Armstrong argues that our contemporary fundamentalism didn't come about in opposition to the Enlightenment so much as a adaptation to it. The Enlightenment debate between rationalism and empiricism as the only avenues to truth, and the re-defining of truth as the tangible or reasonable, shutting out religious and mystic notions of mythos. Thus, religion had to adapt to to the new, logos-dominated world, and thus was born the fundamentalist obsession of searching for historical proof of all events in the Bible, and a denial of scriptural metaphor or allegory. If Jonah wasn't really in the belly of the whale for three days, the entire satire of haughty, self-righteous prophets loses all meaning.
If Marx or Kant (pick a philosopher, any philosopher!) hadn't existed, but instead their works were cobbled together by anonymous scribes and given a supernatural bent (the adventures of SuperLeibniz!), would that change the worth of the message? If you were to claim, as some do, that Jesus was merely repeating a collection of Hellenic myths, would you also dismiss the works of, say, Eugene Debs for being recycled from Marx and other socialists? Or Martin Luther King for reinterpreting Christian myths about justice? (I love how those start to pile up).
The new anti-religious, again resembling and complementing the fundamentalists, are rank modernists. They lend no weight to the worth of mythos, and agree that the fundamentalist view is the only way religious texts can be read. Both, therefore, equally scorning the mainstream-to-liberal religious as revisionists. I don't dispute that their call for reasonable pluralism and common ground in the civic and political realm is a laudable one, but their rhetoric often goes much further. They see an idealized version of humanity in the Vulcans of Star Trek; coldly rational, calculating, emotionless. This ascension of "Enlightenment values" to such a personal level as a replacement for religious mysticism not only threatens to emulate the worst religious proselytizing in its arrogance, but likewise deny us of basic components of humanity which have existed for as long as we can gauge. Empirically, of course.
I hope to have more to say about the book itself later, but first a thought came up while reading the comments at the link above:
It's a favorite parlor trick of the Dawkins/Harris/Hitchens crowd to play--as a grand finale after they've been working you up and down--the final trump card in their deck by claiming that no historical person named Jesus of Nazareth ever existed. Ta-da! I bet you hate religion now. Seriously, though; I've actually studied under mainstream scholars at a secular university (hardly rightwing Christian partisans all) and this isn't taken terribly seriously among them, primarily because it's based on a desperate, 2nd century dating of the gospels that is generally rejected. Certainly the historical personage of Jesus didn't say or do a great many of the things attributed to him, but claiming total nonexistence, while possible, requires an enormous amount of skepticism (of which our friends have no lack).
It's that last point which makes me question the wisdom of such an assertion in the first place. If you're trying to discredit the literal miraculous and supernatural elements of the gospel accounts as actual events, there's ample ammunition to be found from the same mainstream scholarship. So why the need to jump the extra hurdle? Is it shock value, scoring cheap points, or is there something else going on?
I'm also (slowly and intermittently) working my way through Karen Armstrong's The Battle for God, a history of modern fundamentalism. Armstrong argues that our contemporary fundamentalism didn't come about in opposition to the Enlightenment so much as a adaptation to it. The Enlightenment debate between rationalism and empiricism as the only avenues to truth, and the re-defining of truth as the tangible or reasonable, shutting out religious and mystic notions of mythos. Thus, religion had to adapt to to the new, logos-dominated world, and thus was born the fundamentalist obsession of searching for historical proof of all events in the Bible, and a denial of scriptural metaphor or allegory. If Jonah wasn't really in the belly of the whale for three days, the entire satire of haughty, self-righteous prophets loses all meaning.
If Marx or Kant (pick a philosopher, any philosopher!) hadn't existed, but instead their works were cobbled together by anonymous scribes and given a supernatural bent (the adventures of SuperLeibniz!), would that change the worth of the message? If you were to claim, as some do, that Jesus was merely repeating a collection of Hellenic myths, would you also dismiss the works of, say, Eugene Debs for being recycled from Marx and other socialists? Or Martin Luther King for reinterpreting Christian myths about justice? (I love how those start to pile up).
The new anti-religious, again resembling and complementing the fundamentalists, are rank modernists. They lend no weight to the worth of mythos, and agree that the fundamentalist view is the only way religious texts can be read. Both, therefore, equally scorning the mainstream-to-liberal religious as revisionists. I don't dispute that their call for reasonable pluralism and common ground in the civic and political realm is a laudable one, but their rhetoric often goes much further. They see an idealized version of humanity in the Vulcans of Star Trek; coldly rational, calculating, emotionless. This ascension of "Enlightenment values" to such a personal level as a replacement for religious mysticism not only threatens to emulate the worst religious proselytizing in its arrogance, but likewise deny us of basic components of humanity which have existed for as long as we can gauge. Empirically, of course.
11 December 2007
Reitman
By now every hipster in America has seen "Juno" at least twice, except for me, of course. But I heard David Edelstein's review on NPR in which he mentions Jason Reitman's earlier film "Thank You for Smoking," so I thought I'd take a moment to revisit that film myself.
Essentially I agree with much of Edelstein's own print review. "Thank You for Smoking" purports to be a satire of spin-based Washington lobbyists, but Reitman and Buckley, libertarians both, admire their apparent targets too much to really savage them. The result, though it does contain some witty banter between the lobbyists of vice, is mostly saggy and half-hearted. It's as if the film aimed a vicious roundhouse punch at your face then, a foot from connecting with the bridge of your nose, it pulled up and patted you on the head instead.
The climactic scene, the film's big political payoff at a Congressional hearing, is a particular head-scratcher. While there's nothing inherently objectionable about the Aaron Eckhart tobacco lobbyist's "freedom to choose" speech, his assertion that "everyone knows the dangers of smoking" smells of question-begging bullshit. As he would surely know, the industry he serves has hardly been forthcoming about the addiction and health risks in cigarette smoking, having long abetted the former and obfuscated the latter. Only through whistle-blowers and government intervention did this become the widely known truth it is today.
William H. Macy's character is a humorless, broadly-drawn caricature of meddling Big Gummit, and it's hard to see where Reitman and Buckley disagree with his or the actual U.S. government's position on tobacco. Cigarettes remain legal, with a government-mandated warning label giving the public all the information they need to make the "personal choice" libertarians so value. Perhaps they feel such disclosures should be voluntary submissions by the industry which, in light of its own history, can't be taken a serious argument of any stature.
"Personal choice," while sounding great in platitudes, is ultimately limited. Much as I might like to pilot an automobile, my personal choice is quite rightly limited by the public-through-government's rightful objection that my choice would be a danger to society. But who would enforce such matters in a Libertarian Utopia? Bring it on, I say.
Essentially I agree with much of Edelstein's own print review. "Thank You for Smoking" purports to be a satire of spin-based Washington lobbyists, but Reitman and Buckley, libertarians both, admire their apparent targets too much to really savage them. The result, though it does contain some witty banter between the lobbyists of vice, is mostly saggy and half-hearted. It's as if the film aimed a vicious roundhouse punch at your face then, a foot from connecting with the bridge of your nose, it pulled up and patted you on the head instead.
The climactic scene, the film's big political payoff at a Congressional hearing, is a particular head-scratcher. While there's nothing inherently objectionable about the Aaron Eckhart tobacco lobbyist's "freedom to choose" speech, his assertion that "everyone knows the dangers of smoking" smells of question-begging bullshit. As he would surely know, the industry he serves has hardly been forthcoming about the addiction and health risks in cigarette smoking, having long abetted the former and obfuscated the latter. Only through whistle-blowers and government intervention did this become the widely known truth it is today.
William H. Macy's character is a humorless, broadly-drawn caricature of meddling Big Gummit, and it's hard to see where Reitman and Buckley disagree with his or the actual U.S. government's position on tobacco. Cigarettes remain legal, with a government-mandated warning label giving the public all the information they need to make the "personal choice" libertarians so value. Perhaps they feel such disclosures should be voluntary submissions by the industry which, in light of its own history, can't be taken a serious argument of any stature.
"Personal choice," while sounding great in platitudes, is ultimately limited. Much as I might like to pilot an automobile, my personal choice is quite rightly limited by the public-through-government's rightful objection that my choice would be a danger to society. But who would enforce such matters in a Libertarian Utopia? Bring it on, I say.
10 December 2007
On the trail
Matt Taibbi has a new article from the campaign trail in Iowa. It's all worth a look, but I think I few graphs warrant their own attention.
And I love Taibbi's metaphor for them.
This is an important message for progressives who may be swayed by Clinton's periodic overtures to the left: Follow the money. Every 12-year old knows politicians "forget" what they say on the campaign trail, but they never forget who their real owners are.Downstairs, John Edwards is being even more explicit. After whipping the crowd into a frenzy with an impassioned speech blasting the influence of lobbyists and corporate campaign contributors, he turns the gun on his own party. "The presidential candidate who has raised the most money from Washington lobbyists is not a Republican," he says. "The candidate who has raised the most money from insurance companies isn't a Republican. The presidential candidate who has raised the most money from defense contractors isn't a Republican."
He pauses, then smiles. "The answer to all those questions, you probably already know, is Hillary Clinton," he says.
Obama is a tough guy to figure. He's a tremendous, magnetic speaker when he is facing a big crowd and has a prepared address in his pocket, but his extemporaneous stumpery in smaller settings is sometimes weirdly nervous and maladroit (in Grundy Center, he recently barked at an elderly town-hall questioner, insisting that he takes terrorism "deadly serious"). His much-hyped decision to take a "forceful stand" against Hillary in recent weeks smacked of the worst kind of hot-air horse-racing bullshit, with the candidate suddenly jumping through hoops to prove to the media that he could exhibit the requisite "aggressiveness" before he'd even decided what issues to "take a stand" about. The overall impression is of a soft-spoken intellectual who's suddenly desperate to show that he's ready to be as full of shit as it takes to win the White House -- a psychological state that put Mike Dukakis in a tank, John Kerry in a duck-hunting costume and killed off many a highbrow candidate who blinked in the punishing glare of The Process.This is a great peg of Obama, whose progressivism is often taken for granted and similarly overrated--by me, among others, when I carelessly lumped him together with Edwards in the earlier post. Obama has been caught in a number of bizarre maneuvers since the start of the campaign, most recently clashing with Paul Krugman over his healthcare proposal. Obama has pitched himself as a Washington outsider, and he may have started the game with that reputation, but his messages of transcending Washington partisanship is beginning to show its recycled Broderist root.
The trouble for Hillary actually started in early October, at a campaign stop in New Hampton, Iowa. Clinton teed off on an audience member named Randall Rolph, who asked her a pointed question about her vote to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. "The premise of the question is wrong," Clinton snapped. "Somebody obviously sent it to you." Rolph angrily objected to the implication that he was a plant, leading to a poisonous exchange.Well, if anyone knows a planted question, it would be the Clinton campaign.
And I love Taibbi's metaphor for them.
And when Hillary errs, as she has done many times in recent weeks, she tends to err on the side of burning the ordinary schmuck and sticking to the inside play. You don't see too many Fortune 500 CEOs complaining that Hillary stiffed them on a tip; no, that only happens to some Iowa diner waitress, at the same time the lavishly funded Hillary is out on the trail trying to explain her support of the Wall Street crowd's sweetheart Peru Free Trade Agreement (to Midwest audiences that already know all they need to know about the NAFTA her husband passed). This is the significance of all the stumbling and audience-rigging and Rove-ing of debate opponents and carping at the Randall Rolphs of the world that we saw in recent weeks; they have exposed Hillary as a New York Yankees-style villain who buys all the best players but seems to resent having to actually win it between the lines.There's a lot more I like in there, but that's enough lengthy quoting for one day.
I can has parity?
Facing the prospect of having both a winless and undefeated team in the same season, the NFL's "any given Sunday!" hokum may finally die an overdue death, though I wouldn't hold my breath waiting. Perhaps there is the matter of the latest dynasty being in a media-friendly East Coast city. Or perhaps America's sportswriters are just wandering hobos without the NFL's public relations department.
Speaking of Boston, which has replaced Chicago as the city bearing my wrath toward all its athletic manifestations, I suppose the self-satisfied righteousness with which much of the liberal blogosphere embraces the Red Sox and Patriots shouldn't come as a surprise. Rooting for the rich against the superrich as well as the socially-improper poor could serve as a broader metaphor for a good chunk of American liberalism itself. But justifying your rooting interest with politics is never more than superficial (the Rockies are all Jesus freaks!, Colts fans are all rednecks! Tony Dungy hates gay people! Blargh, Gregg Easterbrook!); you can dig deep enough into virtually every team, city or player to find something politically incorrect* to satisfy you. My God, man, it's the farking players' wives charity.
And you wonder where the Midwest got the stereotype of being more grounded in sense.
*I use this term in its original Stalinist sense, not the bastardized, all-purpose epithet of right-wing frat boys everywhere.
Speaking of Boston, which has replaced Chicago as the city bearing my wrath toward all its athletic manifestations, I suppose the self-satisfied righteousness with which much of the liberal blogosphere embraces the Red Sox and Patriots shouldn't come as a surprise. Rooting for the rich against the superrich as well as the socially-improper poor could serve as a broader metaphor for a good chunk of American liberalism itself. But justifying your rooting interest with politics is never more than superficial (the Rockies are all Jesus freaks!, Colts fans are all rednecks! Tony Dungy hates gay people! Blargh, Gregg Easterbrook!); you can dig deep enough into virtually every team, city or player to find something politically incorrect* to satisfy you. My God, man, it's the farking players' wives charity.
And you wonder where the Midwest got the stereotype of being more grounded in sense.
*I use this term in its original Stalinist sense, not the bastardized, all-purpose epithet of right-wing frat boys everywhere.
07 December 2007
Mitt's fit
Everybody's chatting about Romney's try at a Kennedyesque speecher yesterday in which he attempted to stem the exodus of evangelicals to the Huckabee camp by assuring them that he too, loves authoritarian religion because all authoritarian religion is basically the same thing.
Wait, what? Let's see:
What Romney is attempting to do, of course, is convince the conservative Christians that his Mormon beliefs are irrelevant because, while they have theological differences, they share the same values of practical application. You'll notice how similar this sounds to a point this blog frequently makes about the relationship between fundamentalist Christians and Muslims. Indeed, in another surprise, Romney even invokes the other "M" word himself.
That's oddly syncretic, and doesn't seem like it would appeal to people who despise syncretism as an evil above all others. But the old guard of the Christian Right ultimately values political power more, and they realize that splitting votes between Huckabee and Romney ultimately benefits the distrusted Giuliani. Some of our elders can even remember a time when fundamentalist Protestants thought Catholics were the great insidious enemy infecting America, necessitating the aforementioned speech by Kennedy which Romney imagines himself emulating here. I suspect they could even make nice with Muslims, if there were an election at stake.
Wait, what? Let's see:
It is important to recognize that while differences in theology exist between the churches in America, we share a common creed of moral convictions. And where the affairs of our nation are concerned, it’s usually a sound rule to focus on the latter – on the great moral principles that urge us all on a common course. Whether it was the cause of abolition, or civil rights, or the right to life itself, no movement of conscience can succeed in America that cannot speak to the convictions of religious people.
What Romney is attempting to do, of course, is convince the conservative Christians that his Mormon beliefs are irrelevant because, while they have theological differences, they share the same values of practical application. You'll notice how similar this sounds to a point this blog frequently makes about the relationship between fundamentalist Christians and Muslims. Indeed, in another surprise, Romney even invokes the other "M" word himself.
I believe that every faith I have encountered draws its adherents closer to God. And in every faith I have come to know, there are features I wish were in my own: I love the profound ceremony of the Catholic Mass, the approachability of God in the prayers of the Evangelicals, the tenderness of spirit among the Pentecostals, the confident independence of the Lutherans, the ancient traditions of the Jews, unchanged through the ages, and the commitment to frequent prayer of the Muslims.
That's oddly syncretic, and doesn't seem like it would appeal to people who despise syncretism as an evil above all others. But the old guard of the Christian Right ultimately values political power more, and they realize that splitting votes between Huckabee and Romney ultimately benefits the distrusted Giuliani. Some of our elders can even remember a time when fundamentalist Protestants thought Catholics were the great insidious enemy infecting America, necessitating the aforementioned speech by Kennedy which Romney imagines himself emulating here. I suspect they could even make nice with Muslims, if there were an election at stake.
05 December 2007
Uncle Strom's cabin
From Lawyers, Guns and Money, a historical image to remind you what the euphemism "states' rights" actually represents.
Resistance is futile
The current issue of The American Prospect flopped in my mailbox last week with the question on everyone's lips, "Has Hillary Locked it Up?" The question itself is partially self-fulfilling, since projecting an aura of inevitability has been part of the plan from the start (and one which the Republicans have been happy to indulge, but I'll get to that.)
There is some hope, and from an unlikely source.
Two polls released from Iowa last week show Obama in the lead for the first time. In a moment of possible reflexive panic, the Washington Post ran a ridiculous front page story about Obama's non-existent secret life as a Muslim cobbled almost entirely from harebrained right-wing innuendo. I'm no fan of our primary system and it's structural arrangement to deliver the most conservative Democrat possible, but I may need a Faustian exception in this case. Clinton, of course, continues to have a large lead in national polls, but there is a possible explanation, if you buy it, which says Iowa voters have had much more exposure to the candidates and spent much deeper meditation on making their selection, a process that will ramp up around the nation as the primary season proceeds. Here's a case where I hope something to be true that I don't actually believe myself.
But, around the web I sense a growing acceptance of the inevitability narrative, and, as another long war between the DLC Sensible Liberals and the progressives begin, the rationalizations are starting to spring forth. One of the most persistent, not to mention ludicrous, has the GOP being all a-feared of a Clinton candidacy, which is why her name is reflexively invoked by Republican candidates during debates as the default nominee. As some of us have been saying for over a year now, nothing could be further from the truth. This is borne out in another recent poll showing Edwards and Obama prevailing in hypothetical matchups over all five major Republican candidates, and Clinton losing to all five. These polls shouldn't be taken too seriously at this point, naturally, but they do suggest the public sees a distinction between the Democrats that they don't among the GOP.
And that they don't like Clinton, which the Republicans well know, and thus their inability to recognize any other Democrat running. As I hinted earlier, this also has the byproduct of reinforcing the inevitability doctrine the Clinton campaign has soaked itself in. If even the Republicans believe she has it locked up, then what use is there to resist?*
There's also undoubtedly a lot of anti-Clinton sentiment inside the Democratic Party and the loosely-associated left but. in accordance with the long lamented tale of left-liberal politics, that sentiment can't find a candidate to settle with. I suspect if you polled Edwards and Obama supporters, very few of them would list Clinton as a second choice. But all that means is that Clinton would lose in an idealized instant-runoff ballot. In the system we have, though, she's likely to walk away with 35 percent and the nomination. Say this for the centrists: Bayh, Vilsack and Warner all bailed early. They know how to take care of their own.
There is the possibility that one of the two challengers--most likely Edwards now--will post an unexpectedly dismal showing in both Iowa and New Hampshire and withdraw. The chances of this are slim for two reasons. First, with the newly compressed primary schedule neither is likely to fall behind far enough and fast enough to be compelled into quitting. Secondly, because such a move would be interpreted as being exactly what I outlined above; throwing the election away from Clinton to the other of the two. And that won't be tolerated by the press or the keepers of intra-Party harmony.
*Another popular rationalization is the Revenge Factor, which suggests sticking the Republicans with the "dreadful" Clintons is the perfect way to get even for years of abuse and misrule. It's important to keep in mind here that what the Right fears and what it thinks you should fear so it can benefit politically are often quite different things, and that Ole Bill isn't derisively called a great Republican president for nothing.
There is some hope, and from an unlikely source.
Two polls released from Iowa last week show Obama in the lead for the first time. In a moment of possible reflexive panic, the Washington Post ran a ridiculous front page story about Obama's non-existent secret life as a Muslim cobbled almost entirely from harebrained right-wing innuendo. I'm no fan of our primary system and it's structural arrangement to deliver the most conservative Democrat possible, but I may need a Faustian exception in this case. Clinton, of course, continues to have a large lead in national polls, but there is a possible explanation, if you buy it, which says Iowa voters have had much more exposure to the candidates and spent much deeper meditation on making their selection, a process that will ramp up around the nation as the primary season proceeds. Here's a case where I hope something to be true that I don't actually believe myself.
But, around the web I sense a growing acceptance of the inevitability narrative, and, as another long war between the DLC Sensible Liberals and the progressives begin, the rationalizations are starting to spring forth. One of the most persistent, not to mention ludicrous, has the GOP being all a-feared of a Clinton candidacy, which is why her name is reflexively invoked by Republican candidates during debates as the default nominee. As some of us have been saying for over a year now, nothing could be further from the truth. This is borne out in another recent poll showing Edwards and Obama prevailing in hypothetical matchups over all five major Republican candidates, and Clinton losing to all five. These polls shouldn't be taken too seriously at this point, naturally, but they do suggest the public sees a distinction between the Democrats that they don't among the GOP.
And that they don't like Clinton, which the Republicans well know, and thus their inability to recognize any other Democrat running. As I hinted earlier, this also has the byproduct of reinforcing the inevitability doctrine the Clinton campaign has soaked itself in. If even the Republicans believe she has it locked up, then what use is there to resist?*
There's also undoubtedly a lot of anti-Clinton sentiment inside the Democratic Party and the loosely-associated left but. in accordance with the long lamented tale of left-liberal politics, that sentiment can't find a candidate to settle with. I suspect if you polled Edwards and Obama supporters, very few of them would list Clinton as a second choice. But all that means is that Clinton would lose in an idealized instant-runoff ballot. In the system we have, though, she's likely to walk away with 35 percent and the nomination. Say this for the centrists: Bayh, Vilsack and Warner all bailed early. They know how to take care of their own.
There is the possibility that one of the two challengers--most likely Edwards now--will post an unexpectedly dismal showing in both Iowa and New Hampshire and withdraw. The chances of this are slim for two reasons. First, with the newly compressed primary schedule neither is likely to fall behind far enough and fast enough to be compelled into quitting. Secondly, because such a move would be interpreted as being exactly what I outlined above; throwing the election away from Clinton to the other of the two. And that won't be tolerated by the press or the keepers of intra-Party harmony.
*Another popular rationalization is the Revenge Factor, which suggests sticking the Republicans with the "dreadful" Clintons is the perfect way to get even for years of abuse and misrule. It's important to keep in mind here that what the Right fears and what it thinks you should fear so it can benefit politically are often quite different things, and that Ole Bill isn't derisively called a great Republican president for nothing.
So what does Rupert Murdoch not own?
What could Uncle Rupert want with the religious website Beliefnet? Waitaminute, don't answer...
Oh, and the last answer to the above question is, evidently, this website. C'mon Rupe, what kind of an offer will it take to make me switch sides? (again.)
Oh, and the last answer to the above question is, evidently, this website. C'mon Rupe, what kind of an offer will it take to make me switch sides? (again.)
03 December 2007
The democracy frontier
One wonders if this will temper some of the "OMG Teh Commie Dictator!" hysteria regarding Chavez in the American press. I somehow doubt it. Although the right "won" the referendum by a very slim margin, they needed a lot of help from Chavez supporters abstaining or voting no due to the more controversial aspects of the reforms that would have centralized power to the executive. I expect, however, that it will be spun as a more sweeping rebuke of the Chavez program than what it actually represents.
Around the Web: Ken Silverstein at Harper's
The Sideshow:
Around the Web: Ken Silverstein at Harper's
I’m glad Chavez lost the referendum, but Venezuela during his tenure has never resembled the totalitarian dungeon that is portrayed in American op-ed pages. And it’s a world apart from the real dictatorships run by America’s closest allies around the globe, and of which pundits like Cohen and Diehl are far more indulgent
The Sideshow:
I think Chavez' suggested changes were a bad idea, and I'm unsurprised that the people were not enthusiastic about them. But you can hardly argue that Chavez is a dictator because he asked the people if they'd let him make those changes, while at the same time pretending that Bush is not a dictator when he simply ignores the laws that the people don't want him to change. And the people have spoken.Venezuela is looking a lot more like a democracy than some other countries I could name....
Lenin's Tomb:
Independent polls suggested beforehand that among likely voters, Chavez would probably win it, and furthermore that Chavez's call for socialism to be made part of the constitution was broadly supported. Leaving aside the probably limited effect of 'Operation Pliers', the reality is probably that Chavez's supporters were simply unwilling to turn out to vote for a constitution among whose main priorities was to enhance executive power. This was always the most problematic aspect of Chavez's reforms. Unfortunately, this result will probably strengthen the rightist opposition, despite the continuing popularity of Chavez and his other reforms.I think this is a win-win situation all-around. Chavez's more autocratic tendencies were defeated, and he wins a propaganda victory by coyly subverting his image in the Western media as a power-hungry dictator at the same time. From his own reaction, you'd almost believe Chavez planned it that way...
29 November 2007
Dick Morris in Kenya
Ah, another wonderful American export. From the indispensable Global Voices Online, former Clinton advisor Dick Morris showed up to back the frontrunner in the upcoming presidential election, only to be hustled out of the country a day later on work permit-related issues.
This gives me a chance to recommend the excellent documentary Our Brand is Crisis, about the adventures of the Clintonite political gurus of Greenberg Carville Shrum on behalf of ex-Bolivian president Gonzalo Sanchez "Goni" de Lozada. Not to spoil the ending (which is rather impossible to do with a historical documentary anyway), but you might note that Goni is currently in the United States being sheltered from extradition on corruption charges by the Morales government. But that doesn't surprise you, does it?
EDIT: And apparently it's being remade as a feature by George Clooney. Interesting.
EDIT II: Firefox's spellchecker is near-useless.
This gives me a chance to recommend the excellent documentary Our Brand is Crisis, about the adventures of the Clintonite political gurus of Greenberg Carville Shrum on behalf of ex-Bolivian president Gonzalo Sanchez "Goni" de Lozada. Not to spoil the ending (which is rather impossible to do with a historical documentary anyway), but you might note that Goni is currently in the United States being sheltered from extradition on corruption charges by the Morales government. But that doesn't surprise you, does it?
EDIT: And apparently it's being remade as a feature by George Clooney. Interesting.
EDIT II: Firefox's spellchecker is near-useless.
27 November 2007
At the edge of the abyss
Here comes your man! The New York Times Caucus blog has dug into the candy bowl and--surprise!--unearthed that perpetual icon of American elections, the Disaffected Moderate.
And what it wants is, always and ever, the Status Quo. So every election cycle we are treated to the same picture of the American electorate; hopelessly disaffected from both parties (which are controlled by extremists) and always in search of the Vital Center, the bedrock of American Democracy. Regardless of what the parties actually represent, the truth is somewhere in the blessed middle, where the majority of good, politicized Americans reside. I call this tendency Broderism, after its most tireless public advocate, the Washington Post columnist David Broder.
Of course, the myth of the great yawning chasm between the two parties is just that, a hollow, nonsensical fable. You'd need three tubs of Vaseline and a bulldozer to squeeze someone into the narrow space where American political discourse is presently contested. But there we have the corporate press, delivering us people like Mr. Harnelink, who totally doesn't conveniently reinforce their narrative at all!
Now conservatives long ago figured this out and learned to play the game to their advantage, by dragging the national discourse to the right, knowing full well the good Broderists would always be able to find the Mushy Middle. I suspect that Democrats are aware of this as well, but simply have no interest in pulling their own weight. Beware the Left Hand of God, where the sinners lie. Broad is the path that leadeth to destruction of the form of fewer campaign contributions.
Oh, about that. You might have read that Democrats are doing ahistorically well in the fundraising department this year. Behold the glorious return of the prodigal son, Big Bidness, back into our waiting arms. I'm sure that won't return with any...complications.
But Big Bidness is also restless. His temporary alliance with the social conservatives has backfired, creating an unpopular monster he can no longer fully contain. Yet he also worries that Democrats will not be able to keep the populists and dirty hippies off his back. Behold, the Broderist fantasy, Unity 08, funded almost entirely by a small group of big donors. Don't worry, though, they'll find popular support. And you'll see it on CNN.
Of course, if the Democrats could be coaxed into supporting that nice Hillary Clinton, perhaps they could be made to reconsider. After all, she's not a flaming liberal or anything.
OK class, time for a little professorial intervention. Many people have wasted a great deal of brain energy trying to pin down that scurrilous idea of "media bias." Let me break it down for you. In our era of heavily deregulated media, the press, when it comes to the Beltway establishment, no longer has to serve anyone else's interests. It is its own monster. It serves itself.
Afterward, I asked Mr. Harmelink – who was raised Republican and votes for candidates from both parties these days – if he had an answer to his own question.“Well, she doesn’t sound like a flaming liberal,” he said.
“It was interesting, she wasn’t just on a rampage against Republicans,” Mr. Harmelink added. “I’m so tired of the extremes on both the right and the left. I’m looking at any candidate who is off the fringes, who wants to work things through in a rational way.”
And what it wants is, always and ever, the Status Quo. So every election cycle we are treated to the same picture of the American electorate; hopelessly disaffected from both parties (which are controlled by extremists) and always in search of the Vital Center, the bedrock of American Democracy. Regardless of what the parties actually represent, the truth is somewhere in the blessed middle, where the majority of good, politicized Americans reside. I call this tendency Broderism, after its most tireless public advocate, the Washington Post columnist David Broder.
Of course, the myth of the great yawning chasm between the two parties is just that, a hollow, nonsensical fable. You'd need three tubs of Vaseline and a bulldozer to squeeze someone into the narrow space where American political discourse is presently contested. But there we have the corporate press, delivering us people like Mr. Harnelink, who totally doesn't conveniently reinforce their narrative at all!
Now conservatives long ago figured this out and learned to play the game to their advantage, by dragging the national discourse to the right, knowing full well the good Broderists would always be able to find the Mushy Middle. I suspect that Democrats are aware of this as well, but simply have no interest in pulling their own weight. Beware the Left Hand of God, where the sinners lie. Broad is the path that leadeth to destruction of the form of fewer campaign contributions.
Oh, about that. You might have read that Democrats are doing ahistorically well in the fundraising department this year. Behold the glorious return of the prodigal son, Big Bidness, back into our waiting arms. I'm sure that won't return with any...complications.
But Big Bidness is also restless. His temporary alliance with the social conservatives has backfired, creating an unpopular monster he can no longer fully contain. Yet he also worries that Democrats will not be able to keep the populists and dirty hippies off his back. Behold, the Broderist fantasy, Unity 08, funded almost entirely by a small group of big donors. Don't worry, though, they'll find popular support. And you'll see it on CNN.
Of course, if the Democrats could be coaxed into supporting that nice Hillary Clinton, perhaps they could be made to reconsider. After all, she's not a flaming liberal or anything.
24 November 2007
All killer
ACADEME, n. An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught.
ACADEMY, n. [from ACADEME], a modern school where football is taught.
-Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary.
TomDispatch has the latest must-read Lipsyte. It's fortunate that new Lipsyte only appears bi-monthly, we would be paralyzed with awesomeness if we could ingest it any more frequently.
ACADEMY, n. [from ACADEME], a modern school where football is taught.
-Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary.
TomDispatch has the latest must-read Lipsyte. It's fortunate that new Lipsyte only appears bi-monthly, we would be paralyzed with awesomeness if we could ingest it any more frequently.
From Pop Warner at the Carlisle Indian School through Bear Bryant at Alabama to Tom Osborne at Nebraska -- who, after I questioned his repeated "forgiveness" of a felonious running back, asked me if I'd rather have the player loose in my neighborhood -- the unstated mission of coaches has been to provide a model for controlling and exploiting young manhood for factories, corporations, and armies.
Coach as God (in their parishes, they are generally referred to without the article), or as Father, or Boss, or at least autocrat of the breakfast table is a model for many ranting, hard-driving business chiefs. I've worked for a few, particularly in television, but only one was honestly upfront about his own role model.
In the past I've written about the vicarious authoritarian thrill many people seem to glean from amateur athletics; dreaming of themselves as coach-avatar whipping the uppity kids into a life of docile servitude; reminding them how lucky they are to donate their slave labor to such a worthy cause. This was before my politics had become too radicalized, but now, of course, it makes sense. One thing leads to another. I also had the fortune of living in one of those regions of the country where this subtext is barely concealed. Other Indiana folks will recognize the name of Murray Sperber, an IU professor and advocate of college athletics reform whose frequent clashes with our dear departed General was a source of much glee for the local yokels, for whom Saint Bobby was a marvelous stand-in, battling the forces of jelly-legged academia, the press, and anyone else who dared stand in the way of iron-fisted capitalism.
20 November 2007
The strategy
Markos Moulitsas is prepping us for the inevitable Democratic half-assery in 2008.
The Democratic Party: Not-Republican Since At Least 2003!
Consequently, to stand any chance of winning next year, Republicans must pray for a national amnesia to erase the previous eight years from the minds of voters. But amnesia only happens in soap operas—and that's why Democrats will win in 2008. As long as Democratic candidates remind voters that the Republican platform and Bush's record are one and the same, victory will be assured.
The Democratic Party: Not-Republican Since At Least 2003!
19 November 2007
Smut in the halls of power
Activist filmmaker Robert Greenwald, whose Brave New Films was behind the anti-Fox News documentary "Outfoxed," recently unleashed a new salvo at Uncle Rupert's fascist flagship. Turns out those stalwart defenders of humble American values have an inveterate affinity for softcore porn (video possibly not work-safe, if applicable). It's all in the name of good journalism, of course. Bill O'Reilly just wants you to be aware of all that scandalous behavior (ohhhh!) that those evil, evil secularists (ohhhhhh!) are trying to foist on your innocent children (wheeze).
This shouldn't come as much of a surprise. In fact, it's basically what you'd expect according to the laws of Puritans and Pornographers, the symbiotic cycle of outrage required to sustain each and who, as a result, tend to be represented by the same interests. An industry that is fueled by moral outrage needs something to perpetually provide the energy, and an industry relying on the allure of transgression needs someone to maintain that taboo. I've recently re-read Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas?, where he sits flummoxed at our Moral Guardians unwillingness to confront the mainstream merchants of sleaze driven by free-market capitalism while trying to pin down an elusive "liberal elite" who secretly control all of the entertainment world. And why should they? That would be self-indictment! (Not to mention bad for business.)
Let me take a moment to invoke Orwell again. You may remember in 1984 that, while the skin magazines were produced by the Party itself, they were strictly forbidden for Party members.. They were for proles only. This isn't a perfectly similar situation, but it is analogous, particularly when you consider the kinds of stories much of the Fox-smut is attached to.
I think there is another angle at work here among the kind of audience Fox typically attracts. I'm talking about the kind of conventionalist suburban professional who benefits politically from the Moral Guardians (and indeed may outwardly be one himself) but who is a little bit embarrassed by their prudery at times. After all, he likes to let his pants down after a hard day running over the American worker as much as the next shlub. I use the male term purposefully, since I suspect these people are almost universally men, and their compromises with the moral compass always have to do with sex. The rules for them can be bent, among other things. And as bad as he thinks those scolding Sunday-school teachers may be, he's sure the hippies are worse.
I'm fond of the saying that there's a fine line between Saturday night and Sunday morning. It's no longer a surprise to anyone that the anchors of our moral code are the ones frequently found violating it. Bill O'Reilly himself is a famous example, settling a sexual harassment suit out of court in 2004 in which his unique affinity for falafel was revealed to the world. But Papa Bear knows his place in the world; to keep you forever pointed in the wrong direction, away from his bosses who actually produce much of the degenerate entertainment the Guardians decry. Indeed, all the proof you need for this relationship's existence is in the Fox network itself, which regularly pushes the boundaries for sex and violence on broadcast TV.
Naturally, they doth protest just enough.
This shouldn't come as much of a surprise. In fact, it's basically what you'd expect according to the laws of Puritans and Pornographers, the symbiotic cycle of outrage required to sustain each and who, as a result, tend to be represented by the same interests. An industry that is fueled by moral outrage needs something to perpetually provide the energy, and an industry relying on the allure of transgression needs someone to maintain that taboo. I've recently re-read Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas?, where he sits flummoxed at our Moral Guardians unwillingness to confront the mainstream merchants of sleaze driven by free-market capitalism while trying to pin down an elusive "liberal elite" who secretly control all of the entertainment world. And why should they? That would be self-indictment! (Not to mention bad for business.)
Let me take a moment to invoke Orwell again. You may remember in 1984 that, while the skin magazines were produced by the Party itself, they were strictly forbidden for Party members.. They were for proles only. This isn't a perfectly similar situation, but it is analogous, particularly when you consider the kinds of stories much of the Fox-smut is attached to.
I think there is another angle at work here among the kind of audience Fox typically attracts. I'm talking about the kind of conventionalist suburban professional who benefits politically from the Moral Guardians (and indeed may outwardly be one himself) but who is a little bit embarrassed by their prudery at times. After all, he likes to let his pants down after a hard day running over the American worker as much as the next shlub. I use the male term purposefully, since I suspect these people are almost universally men, and their compromises with the moral compass always have to do with sex. The rules for them can be bent, among other things. And as bad as he thinks those scolding Sunday-school teachers may be, he's sure the hippies are worse.
I'm fond of the saying that there's a fine line between Saturday night and Sunday morning. It's no longer a surprise to anyone that the anchors of our moral code are the ones frequently found violating it. Bill O'Reilly himself is a famous example, settling a sexual harassment suit out of court in 2004 in which his unique affinity for falafel was revealed to the world. But Papa Bear knows his place in the world; to keep you forever pointed in the wrong direction, away from his bosses who actually produce much of the degenerate entertainment the Guardians decry. Indeed, all the proof you need for this relationship's existence is in the Fox network itself, which regularly pushes the boundaries for sex and violence on broadcast TV.
Naturally, they doth protest just enough.
18 November 2007
16 November 2007
America forever
From last night's Democratic debate in Las Vegas:
What we say goes.MR. BLITZER: So what's more important, human rights or national security?
SEN. DODD: Well, obviously national security, keeping the country safe. When you take the oath of office on January 20th you promise to do two things, and that is to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and protect our country against enemies both foreign and domestic. The security of the country is number one, obviously, yes, all right?
MR. BLITZER: All right. Okay, thank you.
SEN. DODD: Now secondly, this doesn't mean -- elections are only one note, as they say, in the tune of democracy here. Be careful what you wish for. If they were totally free elections in many of these countries we're talking about today, the Islamic jihad or the Islamic Brotherhood would win 85 percent of the vote. That's not a great outcome for us at this point here.
MR. BLITZER: All right.
....
MR. BLITZER: You say national security is more important than human rights.Senator Clinton, what do you say?
SEN. CLINTON: I agree with that completely. I mean the first obligation of the president of the United States is to protect and defend the United States of America. That doesn't mean that it is to the exclusion of other interests.
And there's absolutely a connection between a democratic regime and heightened security for the United States. That's what's so tragic about this situation. After 9/11, President Bush had a chance to chart a different course, both in Pakistan and in Afghanistan, and could have been very clear about what our expectations were. We are now in a bind, and it is partly -- not completely, but partly -- a result of the failed policies of the Bush administration.
ATNNFFARP
All The News Not Fit For a Real Post
Remember the fan consortium attempting to buy an English football club? They've found one; Ebbsfleet United of the Blue Square Premiere, the fifth tier of English football.
Awesome-sauce story of the week. The U.S. Women's Bridge Team has caused a worldwide furor with a spontaneous anti-Bush sign at an international competition. The local brownshirts are unhappy.
A Tiny Revolution explains the world. It's important to remember that, by their nature, right-wing nationalist regimes will inevitably come in contact with each other and, as a result, adopt legitimate critiques of the other. There's no need for progressives to feel embarrassed about the neocons sudden concern for human rights in Iran, being as transparently opportunistic as it is now that they'd like to bomb the Iranian regime. It's not easy to do this, of course, but important.
Remember the fan consortium attempting to buy an English football club? They've found one; Ebbsfleet United of the Blue Square Premiere, the fifth tier of English football.
Awesome-sauce story of the week. The U.S. Women's Bridge Team has caused a worldwide furor with a spontaneous anti-Bush sign at an international competition. The local brownshirts are unhappy.
A Tiny Revolution explains the world. It's important to remember that, by their nature, right-wing nationalist regimes will inevitably come in contact with each other and, as a result, adopt legitimate critiques of the other. There's no need for progressives to feel embarrassed about the neocons sudden concern for human rights in Iran, being as transparently opportunistic as it is now that they'd like to bomb the Iranian regime. It's not easy to do this, of course, but important.
15 November 2007
13 November 2007
On the wall
I've been meaning for awhile to put up a more thorough analysis of the recent explosion of aggressively anti-religion* literature and its tripartite vanguard of evangelists Hitchens, Harris and Dawkins. Mostly because I have little interest in actually reading any of their screeds, which seem to amount to little more than "fundamentalism sucks, therefore all religion is a cancer." It also reeks of the kind of intellectual elitism ("easy enlightenment through rejection of theism!") that tends to be incompatible with genuine left-populist politics (witness the decline of the aforementioned Hitchens, whose "bomb Teh Moozlims!" repetition has soured some of the AAR crowd but shouldn't surprise them.).
There is also the occasional habit of these folks to exhibit some of the more annoying features of the religious fundamentalists they claim to abhor. Most recently, concern that the Hollywood film version of Phillip Pullman's The Golden Compass will downplay the book's anti-religious sentiment. Flip sides and reverse two years, of course, and you could have found much the same thing being said about the film version of Lewis' The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.** Altemeyer's book only describes in detail what he calls "right-wing authoritarians" (RWA) and the difference between them and anti-authoritarians. However, he does mention in passing left-wing authoritarians, the kind of people who slavishly follow whichever leaders are trying to overthrow the established order. Altemeyer doesn't elaborate much on this except to cite some radicals of the 60's and 70's as potential examples of LWAs. I think I have an idea where he might find a few of them remaining.
*I don't like to use the term "atheist" to describe them, since their beliefs typically greatly exceed the limited definition of atheist, which is simply a metaphysical statement about the existence or non-existence of a deity. It has nothing to say about "delusional, irrational, child-abusing God-botherers." "Anti-religious" casts a much wider net, and dismisses the term "fundamentalist atheist," which the AARs love to claim is a contradiction in terms (which it may be, but it's also irrelevant, as they aren't merely atheists.)
**Not coincidentally, in a way, since Pullman intended His Dark Materials to be a counterpoint of The Chronicles of Narnia. General consensus seems to be that Pullman was moving along fine through the first two books, before the third book devolved into an anvilicious nightmare. Which is what you'd expect from someone who doesn't trust his unenlightened audience to appreciate the Very Important Message he's preaching.
There is also the occasional habit of these folks to exhibit some of the more annoying features of the religious fundamentalists they claim to abhor. Most recently, concern that the Hollywood film version of Phillip Pullman's The Golden Compass will downplay the book's anti-religious sentiment. Flip sides and reverse two years, of course, and you could have found much the same thing being said about the film version of Lewis' The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.** Altemeyer's book only describes in detail what he calls "right-wing authoritarians" (RWA) and the difference between them and anti-authoritarians. However, he does mention in passing left-wing authoritarians, the kind of people who slavishly follow whichever leaders are trying to overthrow the established order. Altemeyer doesn't elaborate much on this except to cite some radicals of the 60's and 70's as potential examples of LWAs. I think I have an idea where he might find a few of them remaining.
*I don't like to use the term "atheist" to describe them, since their beliefs typically greatly exceed the limited definition of atheist, which is simply a metaphysical statement about the existence or non-existence of a deity. It has nothing to say about "delusional, irrational, child-abusing God-botherers." "Anti-religious" casts a much wider net, and dismisses the term "fundamentalist atheist," which the AARs love to claim is a contradiction in terms (which it may be, but it's also irrelevant, as they aren't merely atheists.)
**Not coincidentally, in a way, since Pullman intended His Dark Materials to be a counterpoint of The Chronicles of Narnia. General consensus seems to be that Pullman was moving along fine through the first two books, before the third book devolved into an anvilicious nightmare. Which is what you'd expect from someone who doesn't trust his unenlightened audience to appreciate the Very Important Message he's preaching.
08 November 2007
The great commission
Saw this sad bit of business at LGM on Monday.
Something I've rattling around in my head for a couple of months--mainly due to my Orwell binge last summer--is the idea of the USA as a parallel to the mid-to-late stage Soviet Union, particularly in its willing ignorance of The Rest of the World (TROTW). The Soviets, of course, tried to convince the population of the decadent West, which, because it was depraved and unsustainable and always facing imminent collapse, was always scheming and plotting ways to choke off the Motherland. Americans likewise have a fantasy about TROTW and its far-reaching anti-American conspiracy fueled by its Godless, socialistic heresies which, any day now, will bring it to its knees.
During the Cold War, Americans used to boast that they were electing "the leader of the Free World." It was never suggested that the rest of the Free World should perhaps get to vote on the people who are going to have such monumental influence over their lives. But American voters have never taken the thought of voting with a more global conscience particularly seriously. And, as anti-immigrant stories like the one above show, we're increasingly shutting out how TROTW lives from our consideration.
I'll write more about some of the possible institutional reasons for this phenomenon when I write about Michael Moore's Sicko this weekend.
Something I've rattling around in my head for a couple of months--mainly due to my Orwell binge last summer--is the idea of the USA as a parallel to the mid-to-late stage Soviet Union, particularly in its willing ignorance of The Rest of the World (TROTW). The Soviets, of course, tried to convince the population of the decadent West, which, because it was depraved and unsustainable and always facing imminent collapse, was always scheming and plotting ways to choke off the Motherland. Americans likewise have a fantasy about TROTW and its far-reaching anti-American conspiracy fueled by its Godless, socialistic heresies which, any day now, will bring it to its knees.
During the Cold War, Americans used to boast that they were electing "the leader of the Free World." It was never suggested that the rest of the Free World should perhaps get to vote on the people who are going to have such monumental influence over their lives. But American voters have never taken the thought of voting with a more global conscience particularly seriously. And, as anti-immigrant stories like the one above show, we're increasingly shutting out how TROTW lives from our consideration.
I'll write more about some of the possible institutional reasons for this phenomenon when I write about Michael Moore's Sicko this weekend.
07 November 2007
Paulyannas
Greenwald yesterday had an interesting piece on Ron Paul, the Libertarian-slash-Republican presidential candidate who caused a stir recently by announcing a record day of internet fundraising ($4.2 million in 24 hours). He salutes Paul for making waves outside of the acceptable boundaries set up by mainstream pundits, and the Republicans have been playing Whack-A-Mole trying to make him go away. Even though this is only really true of Paul's foreign policy stances, it's still worth celebrating modestly.
Paul's views on interventionism have been getting him a lot of mainstream attention, and he obviously enjoys a lot of support from techno-libertarians who prowl the internet like predators looking for any mention of Paul they can pounce on.* What's particularly disappointing, however, is that Paul is sucking up a lot of support that could be occupied by a similarly antiwar but progressive candidate were they not all cowed by the ever-present smears of "Naderism." Paul even sprinkles his antiwar messages with terms like "imperialism" that you'd expect to hear from a hippy-dippy lefty, but the best we can do remains bumblin' Dennis Kucinich. Kucinich, God love him, seems like a nice guy who's only running because he's the only one naive enough to think he can make the Democrats pay any attention to the progressive caucus of their party.
Of course, I have a long list of disagreements with the rest of Paul's political philosophy, and even his isolationism is based more on old-fashioned chauvinism** than international cooperation, but if the Paulites manage to somehow pull it off in the Republican primary it would be an unequivocally positive development. Reforming the imperial strategy will, I think, be the most important issue of the 2008 election, and he is infinitely saner than all the other Republicans, and even some Democrats, here. If nothing else he would throw the Democrats a curveball of the standard Republican bogeyman they've grown so accustomed to attacking.
It's also possible, as I mentioned in a previous post, that Paul could jump ship and run as a third-party, particularly if he fares well in the primaries. I don't think this is terribly likely, but Paul is 72 years old and might just go for the hell of it. He has previously run as the Libertarian nominee in 1988. All these possibilities for major party crackups are just too delicious to be true. If Paul does win the Republican nomination, they will almost certainly prop up a Big "Murica establishment candidate against him, possibly Bloomberg who, although no longer a Republican officially, would have a niche to fill. You have the Dobsonites threatening to split if Rudy's the nominee, though they'd likely settle for the anti-abortion Paul. You have the Broderist wet-dream Unity08, which deserves its own post. And any combination or all of this would liberate a lot of progressives from the yokes of Democrats whining about spoilers, especially if Hillary is the nominee, which seems nearly inevitable now. If only we could find a candidate....
*Elsewhere at Salon, Andrew Leonard considers the prevalence of the techno-libertarian. It's a compelling case, but I see it as more simply a belief in inevitable improvement through technological progress with themselves as the vanguard, who ought not be encumbered by the concerns of the non-interfacing mortals ("who will rid me of these troublesome proles?").
**I disagree with Greenwald here that Paul's connections to extremist groups are entirely irrelevant. While this isn't to say he endorses all of their doctrines, there is a good reason why he tends to be the favorite of white supremacists and ultra-nativists.
Paul's views on interventionism have been getting him a lot of mainstream attention, and he obviously enjoys a lot of support from techno-libertarians who prowl the internet like predators looking for any mention of Paul they can pounce on.* What's particularly disappointing, however, is that Paul is sucking up a lot of support that could be occupied by a similarly antiwar but progressive candidate were they not all cowed by the ever-present smears of "Naderism." Paul even sprinkles his antiwar messages with terms like "imperialism" that you'd expect to hear from a hippy-dippy lefty, but the best we can do remains bumblin' Dennis Kucinich. Kucinich, God love him, seems like a nice guy who's only running because he's the only one naive enough to think he can make the Democrats pay any attention to the progressive caucus of their party.
Of course, I have a long list of disagreements with the rest of Paul's political philosophy, and even his isolationism is based more on old-fashioned chauvinism** than international cooperation, but if the Paulites manage to somehow pull it off in the Republican primary it would be an unequivocally positive development. Reforming the imperial strategy will, I think, be the most important issue of the 2008 election, and he is infinitely saner than all the other Republicans, and even some Democrats, here. If nothing else he would throw the Democrats a curveball of the standard Republican bogeyman they've grown so accustomed to attacking.
It's also possible, as I mentioned in a previous post, that Paul could jump ship and run as a third-party, particularly if he fares well in the primaries. I don't think this is terribly likely, but Paul is 72 years old and might just go for the hell of it. He has previously run as the Libertarian nominee in 1988. All these possibilities for major party crackups are just too delicious to be true. If Paul does win the Republican nomination, they will almost certainly prop up a Big "Murica establishment candidate against him, possibly Bloomberg who, although no longer a Republican officially, would have a niche to fill. You have the Dobsonites threatening to split if Rudy's the nominee, though they'd likely settle for the anti-abortion Paul. You have the Broderist wet-dream Unity08, which deserves its own post. And any combination or all of this would liberate a lot of progressives from the yokes of Democrats whining about spoilers, especially if Hillary is the nominee, which seems nearly inevitable now. If only we could find a candidate....
*Elsewhere at Salon, Andrew Leonard considers the prevalence of the techno-libertarian. It's a compelling case, but I see it as more simply a belief in inevitable improvement through technological progress with themselves as the vanguard, who ought not be encumbered by the concerns of the non-interfacing mortals ("who will rid me of these troublesome proles?").
**I disagree with Greenwald here that Paul's connections to extremist groups are entirely irrelevant. While this isn't to say he endorses all of their doctrines, there is a good reason why he tends to be the favorite of white supremacists and ultra-nativists.
05 November 2007
Dead certainty
Charles Ferguson's No End in Sight is the kind of no-nonsense, straight-laced documentary that has the critics swooning and Academy Award nomination written all over it. While I don't think it is the be-all and end-all for Iraq films, it is very powerful inside its limited scope, though I did find it lacking one important element.
The great majority of the film concerns the calamitous first six months of the occupation, where one disastrous decision after another by the Bush Administration quickly ended any possibility of a peaceful transition to democracy (provided any such possibility ever existed, which I'll talk about in a moment). Widely praised for his strict adherence to "insiders" as talking heads, former reconstruction officials, journalists, etc., Ferguson covers a time period which often goes forgotten and chronicles the policy of ignorance and outright callousness that is frequently shocking and always infuriating.
It began with the reassignment of Iraqi reconstruction from the State Department to the Pentagon, ignoring the piles of research State had already compiled. Rumsfeld then turned a deaf ear to several of his top generals suggesting that far more troops would be needed for the occupation and instead sent in a force inadequate to stop the widespread looting and trashing of the country that immediately followed the end of the war--including the destruction of much of the Iraqi National Museum, home to some of the most prized treasures of ancient Mesopotamian archeology.
The film interviews at length Gen. Jay Garner, the man initially left in charge of the reconstruction without much in the way of a plan or support from his superiors, a oft-repeated lament from other reconstruction staffers. Garner was quickly replaced by L. Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority, which proceeded to turn a budding disaster into a hellish catastrophe. Bremer staffed much of the CPA with the recently-graduated sons and daughters of Republican donors, often in positions where they had no experience or training, such as handing over control of Baghdad's traffic control to one fresh-faced "intern" with no municipal planning experience. Years later, the rest of the world would learn of the American preference for cronyism when we found out the hard way that the man in charge of emergency response was much better qualified to maintain Arabian horses (but he was Somebody who knew Somebody, and that's how our capitalism works).
The dizzying failure climaxed with "deBa'athification", the firing of much of the former government staff, and the disbanding of the Iraqi military. Not only did this remove a large pool of ready-made knowledgeable civil servants and security forces, it left many influential people angry and unemployed, a great many of whom were also very well-schooled in the art of blowing things up.
What the film doesn't offer is any kind of explanation for why Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Bremer made those disastrous decisions. There's never any suggestion of whether there was an official malicious philosophy or whether they were simply Very Stupid People making Very Bad Decisions. The film did take some antiwar criticism for providing cover to the "incompetence dodge" of liberal hawks who claim everything would have gone just swell if only they had been in charge rather than Bush's bumbling band. There might be something to this, although we should perhaps give Ferguson some benefit of the doubt; none of the aforementioned Bush dead-enders would appear on camera, and no one suggests that a more competent reconstruction would have justified the military action. (As you might guess, I think there were reasons, but they'll have to wait until I get to Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, which has been sitting on my desk waiting for a review for a few weeks now.)
Despite its flaw, though, the movie does have its utility, particularly for those few straggling remnants of the Gospel Band looking for American benevolence in Iraq, convinced every bit of bad news is courtesy of the stab-in-the-back liberal media. If their persistence survives No End in Sight, they are truly impervious to reality.
No End in Sight trailer
The great majority of the film concerns the calamitous first six months of the occupation, where one disastrous decision after another by the Bush Administration quickly ended any possibility of a peaceful transition to democracy (provided any such possibility ever existed, which I'll talk about in a moment). Widely praised for his strict adherence to "insiders" as talking heads, former reconstruction officials, journalists, etc., Ferguson covers a time period which often goes forgotten and chronicles the policy of ignorance and outright callousness that is frequently shocking and always infuriating.
It began with the reassignment of Iraqi reconstruction from the State Department to the Pentagon, ignoring the piles of research State had already compiled. Rumsfeld then turned a deaf ear to several of his top generals suggesting that far more troops would be needed for the occupation and instead sent in a force inadequate to stop the widespread looting and trashing of the country that immediately followed the end of the war--including the destruction of much of the Iraqi National Museum, home to some of the most prized treasures of ancient Mesopotamian archeology.
The film interviews at length Gen. Jay Garner, the man initially left in charge of the reconstruction without much in the way of a plan or support from his superiors, a oft-repeated lament from other reconstruction staffers. Garner was quickly replaced by L. Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority, which proceeded to turn a budding disaster into a hellish catastrophe. Bremer staffed much of the CPA with the recently-graduated sons and daughters of Republican donors, often in positions where they had no experience or training, such as handing over control of Baghdad's traffic control to one fresh-faced "intern" with no municipal planning experience. Years later, the rest of the world would learn of the American preference for cronyism when we found out the hard way that the man in charge of emergency response was much better qualified to maintain Arabian horses (but he was Somebody who knew Somebody, and that's how our capitalism works).
The dizzying failure climaxed with "deBa'athification", the firing of much of the former government staff, and the disbanding of the Iraqi military. Not only did this remove a large pool of ready-made knowledgeable civil servants and security forces, it left many influential people angry and unemployed, a great many of whom were also very well-schooled in the art of blowing things up.
What the film doesn't offer is any kind of explanation for why Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Bremer made those disastrous decisions. There's never any suggestion of whether there was an official malicious philosophy or whether they were simply Very Stupid People making Very Bad Decisions. The film did take some antiwar criticism for providing cover to the "incompetence dodge" of liberal hawks who claim everything would have gone just swell if only they had been in charge rather than Bush's bumbling band. There might be something to this, although we should perhaps give Ferguson some benefit of the doubt; none of the aforementioned Bush dead-enders would appear on camera, and no one suggests that a more competent reconstruction would have justified the military action. (As you might guess, I think there were reasons, but they'll have to wait until I get to Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, which has been sitting on my desk waiting for a review for a few weeks now.)
Despite its flaw, though, the movie does have its utility, particularly for those few straggling remnants of the Gospel Band looking for American benevolence in Iraq, convinced every bit of bad news is courtesy of the stab-in-the-back liberal media. If their persistence survives No End in Sight, they are truly impervious to reality.
No End in Sight trailer
31 October 2007
Democracy, limited
It's easy to forget, if indeed one was even aware if it at all, that before Ralph Nader became Public Enemy Number One among limousine liberals he was, for a time, one of the most admired and respected voices among ordinary Americans. The recent documentary An Unreasonable Man traces Nader's career from the groundbreaking consumer advocate of the 60's and 70's to his controversial presidential run in 2000 which, to hear partisan Democrats tell it, is solely responsible for the disasters unleashed by George W. Bush.
Nader's breakthrough to the public consciousness came in 1965 when, as a young Washington lawyer, he published Unsafe at Any Speed, a landmark expose of the poor safety records of the American automakers, in particular General Motors, which hired goons to try, in vain, to dig up evidence of personal malfeasance to use against him at the Congressional hearing. In the 1970's, he organized a loose collection of recent college graduates the press called "Nader's Raiders" who tirelessly to protect consumer safety from corporate myopia. It came to an end during the Carter Administration, which failed to pass Nader's dream of a federal Consumer Protection Agency and, according to his critics, sent him on his way to being an egomanical malcontent.
During this time, the enormously popular Nader was often considered a potential candidate for national office, and was supposedly even contacted by the McGovern campaign in 1972, but he found it better to remain outside of the partisan fray. But after Reagan rolled back most of his gains in the 1970s, and Clinton proved equally intractable, the nascent Green Party tapped into Nader's disillusionment and, they hoped, his celebrity for their presidential ticket in 2000. And the rest, as they say, is history.
The film does a fine job of knocking around some of the myths that have persisted about that fated 2000 election season; for example, the idea that Nader purposefully tried to throw the election by focusing his campaign in swing states (Nader's former campaign manager says they spent 28 days in California compared to two and a half in Florida). Then there was Nader's battle with the Commission on Presidential Debates, a private entity sponsored by many of America's biggest corporations which refused to allow him or any other third-party candidate into the all-important debates. When Nader acquires a ticket to view the first debate at the University of Massachusetts from an auxiliary theater, the Commission's hired security guards refuse to let him in,
The basic liberal claim against Nader, as you well know by now, is that he stole voters in key areas who would otherwise have voted for Al Gore. This, of course, is fundamentally undemocratic, since no one is obliged to vote for someone when there is someone better aligned to them available. But, in a way, you can't blame Democrats for believing this, as they have long felt a proprietary right to left-wing votes even as they do very little to actively acknowledge them. As they party continues to lurch rightward into the waiting arms of Big Bidness, they have turned to invoking the spectre of Republican Disaster as reason enough to support their latest mushy effort.
They've also successfully turned any serious discussion of third-party candidates onto a personal evaluation of Nader and his most fervent supporters, who are usually dismissed as unserious stoners. And Nader likely made a mistake by attempting to run again in 2004 as an independent, though the Democrats did show their true colors by going to court to keep him off the ballot in many states (Nader is currently counter-suing). Of course, the Democrats went on to lose a race they should have won easily, and with minimal interference from the Devil Nader; their own incompetence just making them hate him all the more. This is unfortunate because, with the Dems again prepared to nominate the most hawkish, corporate-friendly candidate they can find in the party, a discussion of how to wrest back control is badly needed. (And no, Al Gore isn't going to swoop in and save us; his newfound status as a Progressive White Horse is likely a revision of his 2000 campaign to make Nader seem More Evil.)
Nader also made a mistake in claiming that there is "no difference" at all between the two parties--if indeed he ever said such a thing--because this only plays into the Democrats' hand. Their only play at this point is just keeping left enough of the Republicans to be visible. Though there are, of course, many important ways in which they are indistinguishable. Both are equally invested in the continued perpetuation of the restrictive, winner-take-all two-party system, the anachronistic, undemocratic Electoral College, and the exclusive, money-decides-everything primary system.
For the final word today, I'll turn to the much more eloquent Dennis Perrin.
Nader's breakthrough to the public consciousness came in 1965 when, as a young Washington lawyer, he published Unsafe at Any Speed, a landmark expose of the poor safety records of the American automakers, in particular General Motors, which hired goons to try, in vain, to dig up evidence of personal malfeasance to use against him at the Congressional hearing. In the 1970's, he organized a loose collection of recent college graduates the press called "Nader's Raiders" who tirelessly to protect consumer safety from corporate myopia. It came to an end during the Carter Administration, which failed to pass Nader's dream of a federal Consumer Protection Agency and, according to his critics, sent him on his way to being an egomanical malcontent.
During this time, the enormously popular Nader was often considered a potential candidate for national office, and was supposedly even contacted by the McGovern campaign in 1972, but he found it better to remain outside of the partisan fray. But after Reagan rolled back most of his gains in the 1970s, and Clinton proved equally intractable, the nascent Green Party tapped into Nader's disillusionment and, they hoped, his celebrity for their presidential ticket in 2000. And the rest, as they say, is history.
The film does a fine job of knocking around some of the myths that have persisted about that fated 2000 election season; for example, the idea that Nader purposefully tried to throw the election by focusing his campaign in swing states (Nader's former campaign manager says they spent 28 days in California compared to two and a half in Florida). Then there was Nader's battle with the Commission on Presidential Debates, a private entity sponsored by many of America's biggest corporations which refused to allow him or any other third-party candidate into the all-important debates. When Nader acquires a ticket to view the first debate at the University of Massachusetts from an auxiliary theater, the Commission's hired security guards refuse to let him in,
The basic liberal claim against Nader, as you well know by now, is that he stole voters in key areas who would otherwise have voted for Al Gore. This, of course, is fundamentally undemocratic, since no one is obliged to vote for someone when there is someone better aligned to them available. But, in a way, you can't blame Democrats for believing this, as they have long felt a proprietary right to left-wing votes even as they do very little to actively acknowledge them. As they party continues to lurch rightward into the waiting arms of Big Bidness, they have turned to invoking the spectre of Republican Disaster as reason enough to support their latest mushy effort.
They've also successfully turned any serious discussion of third-party candidates onto a personal evaluation of Nader and his most fervent supporters, who are usually dismissed as unserious stoners. And Nader likely made a mistake by attempting to run again in 2004 as an independent, though the Democrats did show their true colors by going to court to keep him off the ballot in many states (Nader is currently counter-suing). Of course, the Democrats went on to lose a race they should have won easily, and with minimal interference from the Devil Nader; their own incompetence just making them hate him all the more. This is unfortunate because, with the Dems again prepared to nominate the most hawkish, corporate-friendly candidate they can find in the party, a discussion of how to wrest back control is badly needed. (And no, Al Gore isn't going to swoop in and save us; his newfound status as a Progressive White Horse is likely a revision of his 2000 campaign to make Nader seem More Evil.)
Nader also made a mistake in claiming that there is "no difference" at all between the two parties--if indeed he ever said such a thing--because this only plays into the Democrats' hand. Their only play at this point is just keeping left enough of the Republicans to be visible. Though there are, of course, many important ways in which they are indistinguishable. Both are equally invested in the continued perpetuation of the restrictive, winner-take-all two-party system, the anachronistic, undemocratic Electoral College, and the exclusive, money-decides-everything primary system.
For the final word today, I'll turn to the much more eloquent Dennis Perrin.
An Unreasonable Man trailer.
Critique either these fantasies or the corrupt system that make them necessary, and the liberals will vomit all over you. You are insane, in need of professional help, a Naderite, a Bush supporter, a Christo-fascist, or at the very least a very stupid person who doesn't understand the Two Party System. Is it perfect? No, they'll concede. But that's all there is, all there could conceivably be, so shut the fuck up, vote Dem early and often, and focus all of your critical energies on Michelle Malkin and David Horowitz.
James Wolcott once compared liberal bloggers to 18th century pamphleteers, and indeed there are similarities, primarily in the Publish Yourself realm. But many of those early polemicists were radical democrats who saw a world beyond that of Crown and Church. That world had yet to exist, but this didn't stop them from pushing for its realization in the face of tremendous opposition and derision. They were told by the liberals of their day that direct democracy was a boy's dream, that the radicals needed to grow up and get with the existing program. A world beyond Crown and Church? Tosh, pish-posh, and twaddle.
Today's liberals, many of them, anyway, cannot see a world beyond that of Global Corporate Order, which is why they'll continually serve one of the GCO's control mechanisms, the Democrats. The corporate mules know of and count on this acquiescence every election season. And you wonder why Hillary smiles so much.
29 October 2007
The crack-up
The Sunday Times magazine yesterday had a lengthy piece by David Kirkpatrick on the growing state of political detoxification of American evangelicals, covering the same general topics I've touched on in the past year or so but with much more detail and exposition. Kirkpatrick in particular cites several examples of the laity revolting against the single-track gospel-as-Kulturkampf message preferred by the powers-that-be. (Another possible explanation is that, being authoritarian followers, they are uneasy with the prospect of no longer being on the winning side.)
The indispensable Jeff Sharlet writing in The Revealer, however, worries that Kirkpatrick's article will be the latest in a long history of declaring conservative evangelicals prematurely dead as a political force. Sharlet points out that the trickling of evangelicals away from the Republican party has less to do with a leftward political drift from their part as much as the Democrats careening rightward to try to win them over. (The DLC-Blue Dog Dems would love nothing more than to trade in their leftist base for docile, corporate-friendly petty bourgeoisie.)
This shake-up has produced some strange and seemingly inexplicable outcome, such as the support for Rudy Giuliani among some evangelicals while others in the Old Guard plot a third-party bid if the thrice-married, pro-choice Giuliani wins the Republican nomination.* Giuliani's popularity, I think, can be atributed to being a Unity Candidate in an otherwise lackluster field; he is the biggest Big "Murica hawk of the bunch, surrounding himself with the likes of Norman Podhoretz and Daniel Pipes, the Architects of the architects that delivered Bush's imperial presidency.
*The possibilities for third-party candidates in 2008 could turn out to be quite intriguing. Will Michael Bloomberg throw his billions into the ring (creating the possibility of a three-way all-New Yorker race)? Will Ron Paul take his newfound national fame to the Libertarian Party ticket--on which he's appeared before? I'll take this opportunity to note the Socialist Party has recently unveiled its 2008 ticket.
EDIT: By the way, not running for President? Lyndon LaRouche.
The indispensable Jeff Sharlet writing in The Revealer, however, worries that Kirkpatrick's article will be the latest in a long history of declaring conservative evangelicals prematurely dead as a political force. Sharlet points out that the trickling of evangelicals away from the Republican party has less to do with a leftward political drift from their part as much as the Democrats careening rightward to try to win them over. (The DLC-Blue Dog Dems would love nothing more than to trade in their leftist base for docile, corporate-friendly petty bourgeoisie.)
This shake-up has produced some strange and seemingly inexplicable outcome, such as the support for Rudy Giuliani among some evangelicals while others in the Old Guard plot a third-party bid if the thrice-married, pro-choice Giuliani wins the Republican nomination.* Giuliani's popularity, I think, can be atributed to being a Unity Candidate in an otherwise lackluster field; he is the biggest Big "Murica hawk of the bunch, surrounding himself with the likes of Norman Podhoretz and Daniel Pipes, the Architects of the architects that delivered Bush's imperial presidency.
*The possibilities for third-party candidates in 2008 could turn out to be quite intriguing. Will Michael Bloomberg throw his billions into the ring (creating the possibility of a three-way all-New Yorker race)? Will Ron Paul take his newfound national fame to the Libertarian Party ticket--on which he's appeared before? I'll take this opportunity to note the Socialist Party has recently unveiled its 2008 ticket.
EDIT: By the way, not running for President? Lyndon LaRouche.
27 October 2007
Over there
Let's all cool our heads for a moment from thinking of how the @^$@$%^@!! Red Sox make us want to kill and eat children and talk about something a little more humorous and agreeable.
The NFL will hold its first ever regular season game in Europe tomorrow when the Giants and Dolphins meet at Wembley Stadium in London. Michael Silver at Yahoo! Sports has a related puff piece on how brilliant and innovative the NFL's marketing plan is. And what does this innovative, brilliant plan entail? Apparently, realizing there is, in fact, a rest of the world.
One doesn't expect the latest attempt by the NFL to get anyone other than bloodthirsty Americans to watch their damn game to be any more successful than the previous tries, but that won't stop the league and its fawning legion of sportswriter lackeys from regaling us with tales of milk and honey in the promised land. Here is Silver in a particularly grand moment of hubris
Silver, in fact, wants to go for the whole cow and send the Super Bowl itself overseas. After all, since ordinary fans can't attend the game anyway, who cares where it's held?
The NFL is less secure as the dominant player in American sports than people realize. Major League Baseball is close to catching the NFL in total revenue, something unthinkable just a few years ago. It has two major problems going forward; the absence of global expansion being one. The other is being tied to the medium of sit-on-your-ass television that is becoming slowly obsolescent. Football came in with the uniquely late-20th-century ubiquity of television and its promise of allowing ordinary folks to see every game their team played with a modest expenditure of effort. It will go out with the exploding accessibility of wireless internet, satellite radio, and digital video recording.
And because only violence-crazed Americans want any part of it.
The NFL will hold its first ever regular season game in Europe tomorrow when the Giants and Dolphins meet at Wembley Stadium in London. Michael Silver at Yahoo! Sports has a related puff piece on how brilliant and innovative the NFL's marketing plan is. And what does this innovative, brilliant plan entail? Apparently, realizing there is, in fact, a rest of the world.
One doesn't expect the latest attempt by the NFL to get anyone other than bloodthirsty Americans to watch their damn game to be any more successful than the previous tries, but that won't stop the league and its fawning legion of sportswriter lackeys from regaling us with tales of milk and honey in the promised land. Here is Silver in a particularly grand moment of hubris
Sunday's game at Wembley Stadium between the New York Giants and Miami Dolphins is only the beginning, the equivalent of the Beatles' 1964 foray to the States that spawned the British Invasion.They'll welcome us with tea and scones! "What is this game you call Foot Ball, and why have we never heard of it before!" The goalposts are already on their way, to be set up at Old Trafford and Stanford Bridge by the end of the month!
Waller here is obliquely referring to the NFL's failed venture to create a developmental league called NFL Europe which was finally scrapped last year after 15 forgettable seasons. At the bitter end, NFL Europe had five of its six teams in Germany, the only country where it could sustain a modicum of interest. He is trying to convince us that the failure of the NFL's international expansion has been due to not sending out NFL-quality product. We will have to remind him that this has not stopped the much more successful export programs of baseball and, particularly, basketball, because no one else, least of all Silver, is going to point this out.You'd might as well start calling it the IFL, because it's becoming increasingly clear that the new national pastime is no longer ours to hoard.
"If you want to grow something, you've got to share it," Mark Waller, the NFL's senior vice president of sales and marketing, said Thursday during a break in the conference. "Once this takes root here, and it will, people are going to expect to see the best, in the same way that you know the World Cup is the ultimate for soccer and the Olympics is the ultimate for track and other sports. If (the Super Bowl) travels, it makes you part of what the world is today, which is truly a global community.
Silver, in fact, wants to go for the whole cow and send the Super Bowl itself overseas. After all, since ordinary fans can't attend the game anyway, who cares where it's held?
Usually, adopting a tone other than Voice of the Proles is forbidden territory for sportswriters. But this is the NFL we're talking about here, and some things just take precedence. The proles must submit themselves to the Greater Good of the NFL's bottom line. (I will, for now, avoid the appallingly vile first half of that paragraph which I didn't blockquote, which deserves its own book.)
Another argument against going overseas is that the Super Bowl draws working-class fans of the competing teams, and they won't be able to afford a trip to London. That may be true for some fans, but not most of the people I see during Super Bowl week, who are paying $500 or more per ticket and seem to have plenty of disposable income. This isn't George Mason reaching the Final Four and a bunch of starving students hopping on Greyhounds; the typical Super Bowl fan, in my anecdotal experience, tends to be Joe from Sales on a company-approved junket, and he'll probably fly to London as readily as he will to Phoenix.
The NFL is less secure as the dominant player in American sports than people realize. Major League Baseball is close to catching the NFL in total revenue, something unthinkable just a few years ago. It has two major problems going forward; the absence of global expansion being one. The other is being tied to the medium of sit-on-your-ass television that is becoming slowly obsolescent. Football came in with the uniquely late-20th-century ubiquity of television and its promise of allowing ordinary folks to see every game their team played with a modest expenditure of effort. It will go out with the exploding accessibility of wireless internet, satellite radio, and digital video recording.
And because only violence-crazed Americans want any part of it.
Baseball Farm
Serious Orwell
The creatures outside looked from Red Sock to Yankee, and from Yankee to Red Sock, and from Red Sock to Yankee again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
The creatures outside looked from Red Sock to Yankee, and from Yankee to Red Sock, and from Red Sock to Yankee again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
24 October 2007
World Serious: One last grasp at salvation
In brief, a few reasons to hope the Rockies overcome the odds and spare us the sanctimony of Red Sox Nation:
Coors Field: Even in the days when they were awful, the Rockies have always been a formidable foe at home in the rare air of Denver. The park doesn't play as severe as it once did, thanks to the use of a humidor, but it still packs a wallop on unfamiliar foes. As the Minnesota Twins can tell you, being dominant at home is a great card to have in your pocket in a short series. Unlike those Twins teams, the Rockies don't have the four games at home, but they should have enough to drag out the series and bring it down to the final games where anything can happen. Then there is Coors' famously cavernous outfield....
Defense: The Rockies are not "the best fielding team of all time," which is widely touted in the press because of their all-time high fielding percentage, but they are awfully good, and certainly a fair shot better than the Sox, especially if Boston resorts to playing David Ortiz in the field during the middle three. And there is Manny Ramirez, who may get lost in the Coors outfield and never return. The Rockies defense should also help them to adapt better to Fenway, where they also played a three-game series during the regular season.
A serviceable DH: It's my opinion that AL teams have a bigger advantage regarding DH maneuvering in the World Series because they construct their team with an additional slugging first baseman, while NL teams often have to slot in a light-hitting utility player. Colorado, however, has Ryan Spillborghs available, a very respectable hitter who played most of the final two months of the season in center field.
The weather. Mother Nature is a great randomizer, and the chance for lousy weather in the World Series is once again high (honestly, how much more can the series be pushed back into late fall? Will we eventually have the Winter Classic?). The Rockies practiced in the snow last weekend, though at last check none is forecast for Denver this coming weekend. (Though with these things one should always be careful. Veterans are usually more reliable mudders, and Boston has many more of those.)
They're actually good: Winning 21 baseball games out of 22 is by definition a fluke. But the Rockies current run is also too long to be merely a fluke. A cursory glance at the talent the Rockies have assembled here makes you think they could easily win 95-100 games over a full season. They shouldn't be underestimated just because they needed a torrid run down the stretch (and a lot of help from elsewhere) to sneak into the playoffs.
It's the World Serious. Enough said about that.
Coors Field: Even in the days when they were awful, the Rockies have always been a formidable foe at home in the rare air of Denver. The park doesn't play as severe as it once did, thanks to the use of a humidor, but it still packs a wallop on unfamiliar foes. As the Minnesota Twins can tell you, being dominant at home is a great card to have in your pocket in a short series. Unlike those Twins teams, the Rockies don't have the four games at home, but they should have enough to drag out the series and bring it down to the final games where anything can happen. Then there is Coors' famously cavernous outfield....
Defense: The Rockies are not "the best fielding team of all time," which is widely touted in the press because of their all-time high fielding percentage, but they are awfully good, and certainly a fair shot better than the Sox, especially if Boston resorts to playing David Ortiz in the field during the middle three. And there is Manny Ramirez, who may get lost in the Coors outfield and never return. The Rockies defense should also help them to adapt better to Fenway, where they also played a three-game series during the regular season.
A serviceable DH: It's my opinion that AL teams have a bigger advantage regarding DH maneuvering in the World Series because they construct their team with an additional slugging first baseman, while NL teams often have to slot in a light-hitting utility player. Colorado, however, has Ryan Spillborghs available, a very respectable hitter who played most of the final two months of the season in center field.
The weather. Mother Nature is a great randomizer, and the chance for lousy weather in the World Series is once again high (honestly, how much more can the series be pushed back into late fall? Will we eventually have the Winter Classic?). The Rockies practiced in the snow last weekend, though at last check none is forecast for Denver this coming weekend. (Though with these things one should always be careful. Veterans are usually more reliable mudders, and Boston has many more of those.)
They're actually good: Winning 21 baseball games out of 22 is by definition a fluke. But the Rockies current run is also too long to be merely a fluke. A cursory glance at the talent the Rockies have assembled here makes you think they could easily win 95-100 games over a full season. They shouldn't be underestimated just because they needed a torrid run down the stretch (and a lot of help from elsewhere) to sneak into the playoffs.
It's the World Serious. Enough said about that.
22 October 2007
Say it ain't so
I've always thought you could basically carve up the Republican Party into three core factions: Big Bidness (neocons and corporations), Small Gummint (paleocons and libertarians) and Big Jeebus (religion and social cons). Like the three superpowers in 1984, these three regularly exchange alliances and modest internecine scuffles which are held together by duct tape and, when the time comes to face the rest of the nation, a mutual love of Big 'Murica.
For example, the current administration is mostly Big Bidness, with a veneer of Big Jeebus for show. This has confused and alienated Small Gummint, and also given them a built-in excuse for its failures. But Big Bidness will never actually care about Small Gummint per se; only as much as Small Gummint serves its interests. Big Bidness also doesn't care about Big Jeebus beyond utilitarian ambition; as soon as Big Jeebus becomes an albatross (with offensive social views that threaten profit prospects) away it will go.
With that in mind, let's take another look at Mike Huckabee. Huckabee should, by all accounts, be the favored son of Big Jeebus in the Republican race. He hits all of their favorite social marks with a gusto hardly anyone has seen before, and does it with a geniality which naturally deflects media attention from his extreme social views. Huckabee cruised to victory at last weekend's Values Voters Summit, a kind of Big Jeebus party congress.
Yet there is something conspicuously absent from this.
Despite his booming popularity with the congregation, Huckabee hasn't yet caught an endorsement from any of the Big Jeebus bigwigs, and his fundraising hasn't followed his rising stock. How could this be, when they could hardly ask for anyone more ideal?
Well, Huckabee has a problem. Two problems, in fact. Big Bidness and Small Gummint. While governor of Arkansas Huckabee crossed the unspeakable threshold guaranteed to immediately unite both of them, he raised taxes and expanded government spending for social programs. Even though Huckabee supports replacing the IRS with a "fair tax" system--a favorite crusade for Small Gummint--they still don't trust him enough, especially when there are nearly a dozen other dogs ready to slobber for them.
But wait, won't Big Jeebus stand up for their man? Would Perkins, Colson, Mohler et.al. buck the flock and back another horse?
Yup.
Because they're not Big Jeebus at all.
What, you thought these guys were right-wingers because of "moral values?" Ho ho, weren't we all taken for suckers. The base is, oh yes. The proles filling the pews on Sunday believe Huckabee's trope that illegal immigration is a byproduct of abortion. Their political clergy may or may not; it isn't required. Their job is to reliably deliver Big Jeebus to Big Bidness (Small Gummint hasn't quite realized it's the junior partner in this relationship yet).
This time, Big Jeebus might have its own plans.
Luckily, Mike Huckabee is no William Jennings Bryan. William Jennings Bryan is the most dangerous man in American politics. Except he's been dead 80 years, and couldn't get on the ballot of either major party if he were alive. Bryan thought a conservative theology led to progressive economic policy. Imagine that! You say you want a class war? Bryan would give you one. He wasn't quite a Christian Socialist, though he was sometimes reasonably close.
Yes, there used to be such creatures. Francis Bellamy was a Christian Socialist. He wrote the original draft of the Pledge of Allegiance, and he didn't even put "under God" in it. The nerve!
For example, the current administration is mostly Big Bidness, with a veneer of Big Jeebus for show. This has confused and alienated Small Gummint, and also given them a built-in excuse for its failures. But Big Bidness will never actually care about Small Gummint per se; only as much as Small Gummint serves its interests. Big Bidness also doesn't care about Big Jeebus beyond utilitarian ambition; as soon as Big Jeebus becomes an albatross (with offensive social views that threaten profit prospects) away it will go.
With that in mind, let's take another look at Mike Huckabee. Huckabee should, by all accounts, be the favored son of Big Jeebus in the Republican race. He hits all of their favorite social marks with a gusto hardly anyone has seen before, and does it with a geniality which naturally deflects media attention from his extreme social views. Huckabee cruised to victory at last weekend's Values Voters Summit, a kind of Big Jeebus party congress.
Yet there is something conspicuously absent from this.
Despite his booming popularity with the congregation, Huckabee hasn't yet caught an endorsement from any of the Big Jeebus bigwigs, and his fundraising hasn't followed his rising stock. How could this be, when they could hardly ask for anyone more ideal?
Well, Huckabee has a problem. Two problems, in fact. Big Bidness and Small Gummint. While governor of Arkansas Huckabee crossed the unspeakable threshold guaranteed to immediately unite both of them, he raised taxes and expanded government spending for social programs. Even though Huckabee supports replacing the IRS with a "fair tax" system--a favorite crusade for Small Gummint--they still don't trust him enough, especially when there are nearly a dozen other dogs ready to slobber for them.
But wait, won't Big Jeebus stand up for their man? Would Perkins, Colson, Mohler et.al. buck the flock and back another horse?
Yup.
Because they're not Big Jeebus at all.
What, you thought these guys were right-wingers because of "moral values?" Ho ho, weren't we all taken for suckers. The base is, oh yes. The proles filling the pews on Sunday believe Huckabee's trope that illegal immigration is a byproduct of abortion. Their political clergy may or may not; it isn't required. Their job is to reliably deliver Big Jeebus to Big Bidness (Small Gummint hasn't quite realized it's the junior partner in this relationship yet).
This time, Big Jeebus might have its own plans.
Luckily, Mike Huckabee is no William Jennings Bryan. William Jennings Bryan is the most dangerous man in American politics. Except he's been dead 80 years, and couldn't get on the ballot of either major party if he were alive. Bryan thought a conservative theology led to progressive economic policy. Imagine that! You say you want a class war? Bryan would give you one. He wasn't quite a Christian Socialist, though he was sometimes reasonably close.
Yes, there used to be such creatures. Francis Bellamy was a Christian Socialist. He wrote the original draft of the Pledge of Allegiance, and he didn't even put "under God" in it. The nerve!
19 October 2007
Opulence
George Saunders at the Burj Al Arab in Dubai, from his new book The Braindead Megaphone.
Satirist Stephen Colbert's nascent presidential campaign (he claims to be running only in his native state of South Carolina) gives us a brief glance into the dues you owe to be a real-live candidate.
The Burj Al Arab is the only seven-star hotel in the world, even though the rating system only goes up to five. The most expensive Burj suite goes for twelve thousand dollars a night. The atrium is 590 feet from floor to ceiling, the largest in the world. As you enter, the staff rushes over with cold towels, rosewater for the hands, dates, incense. The smell, the scale, the level of living, fascinated attention you are receiving, makes you realize you have never really been in the lap of true luxury before. All the luxury you have previously had--in New York, L.A.--was stale, Burj-imitative crap. Your entire concept of being inside a building is being altered in real time. The lobby of the Burj is neither inside nor out,. The roof is so far away as to seem like sky. The underbellies of the floors above you grade through countless shades of color from deep blue to, finally, up so high you can barely see it; pale green. Your Guest Services liaison, a humble, pretty Ukrainian, tells you that every gold-colored surface you see during your stay is actual twenty-four-karat gold. Even those four-story columns? Even so, she says. Even the thick, four-story arcs the size of buses that span the columns? All gold, sir, is correct.
Satirist Stephen Colbert's nascent presidential campaign (he claims to be running only in his native state of South Carolina) gives us a brief glance into the dues you owe to be a real-live candidate.
An unusual public appearance in America for a man who has not been christened an Enemy of the State, but will be. Bolivian president Evo Morales on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.However dismissive Mr. Dawson may be about Mr. Colbert’s plans, he said that he did not believe the Republicans could stop him from seeking both Republican and Democratic delegates.
“There is nothing in our filing that would prohibit him from running on both ballots, if he chose to pay the filing fees,’’ Mr. Dawson said.
And what is that fee? A steep $35,000, said Mr. Dawson.
“The great thing about America,’’ Mr. Dawson said, “is if you can meet the constitutional requirements to run for president of the United States, you can do so. In Mr. Colbert’s case, we look forward to his paying the filing fee before Nov. 1.’’
17 October 2007
Obey
Bob Altemeyer is a Canadian social scientist who has dedicated his career to studying the "authoritarian mindset," both those who seek out power and those who obediently follow it. His work was cited extensively in John Dean's book Conservatives Without Conscience (which I haven't read), and decided to write a brief, non-technical distillation of his ideas and release it as a free PDF (get it here).
I've only read the first chapter, but I have to make a note of something because it reinforces a recurring idea that I was kicking around last month.
The paper is available for free, so I encourage you to go have a read. Of particular interest as well is the result of a global simulation done once with people of little authoritarian bent and another with their high-RWA counterparts. The outcome calls to mind a quote I once saw on the web, paraphrased: "That someone wants to be president is reason enough to declare them unfit for the job."
I've only read the first chapter, but I have to make a note of something because it reinforces a recurring idea that I was kicking around last month.
"RWA" is an abbreviation of "right-wing authoritarian," which doesn't necessarily mean the political right, but rather an adherence to convention and tradition; the current Establishment, whatever it may be. I was listening to Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's commentary for The Lives of Others when he noted somewhat casually that, after the Berlin Wall fell, many of the old GDR bureaucrats landed upright on the boards of major corporations. It makes one question exactly how sincerely they believed in the official Communist byline they once recited religiously.
Thanks to Mikhail Gorbachev (Thanks so much, Mikhail!) I can show you how
thoroughly some high RWAs sop up the teachings of another set of authorities, their
government. As soon as Gorbachev lifted the restraints on doing psychological
research in the Soviet Union an acquaintance of mine, Andre Kamenshikov,
administered a survey to students at Moscow State University with the same freedom that western researchers take for granted. The students answered the RWA scale and as well a series of questions about who was the “good guy” and who was the “bad guy” in the Cold War. For example, did the USSR start the arms race, or the USA?
Would the United States launch a sneak nuclear attack on the Soviet Union if it knew
it could do so without retaliation? Would the USSR do that to the United States? Does the Soviet Union have the right to invade a neighbor who looks like it might become allied with the United States? Does the USA have that right when one of its neighbors starts cozying up to the USSR? At the same time Andre was doing his study, I asked the same questions at three different American universities.
We found that in both countries the high RWAs believed their government’s
version of the Cold War more than most people did. Their officials wore the white
hats, the authoritarian followers believed, and the other guys were dirty rotten
warmongers. And that’s most interesting, because it means the most cock-sure belligerents in the populations on each side of the Cold War, the ones who hated and blamed each other the most, were in fact the same people, psychologically. If they had grown up on the other side of the Iron Curtain, they probably would have believed the leaders they presently despised, and despised the leaders they now trusted. They’d have been certain the side they presently thought was in the right was in the wrong, and instead embraced the beliefs they currently held in contempt. (boldface mine)
The paper is available for free, so I encourage you to go have a read. Of particular interest as well is the result of a global simulation done once with people of little authoritarian bent and another with their high-RWA counterparts. The outcome calls to mind a quote I once saw on the web, paraphrased: "That someone wants to be president is reason enough to declare them unfit for the job."
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