There is a whole lot going on out there, and I welcome any visitor to spend a few minutes perusing the links to the right. I am in the midst of politics fatigue, however, and would much rather write about this. I did find an an interesting article at Alternet that is a response to Richard Dawkins. The article itself, by historical theologian Alistair McGrath, is an echo of much of what I have written, and that is why I have little to add to it; the comments, though, are kind of fun because they prove the very point McGrath and others are maing, viz., that there is an almost incoherent rage among atheists at "religion", and it drives them to irrational distraction. I fail to understand the reasons why this is so, but it is almost comical.
Music does not exist in and of itself. It is not a "thing" to which one can point. It is totally dependent upon human activity and agency to exist at all, and as such is part and parcel of human life, not something independent of it. A musical score, a lead sheet, charts, and a musical recording are not "music" but records of various kinds that point to music; a musical recording comes closest to being "music", but only as long as we do not abstract it from the men and women performing. Once we do, we are off into Plato's world again, and much of the discussion becomes mindless drivel. Musicology that focuses on such things as the structure of a piece - its tone pallet and chordal structure; the relationship between various musical modes and the theme(s) of the piece; possible questions concerning the relationship between the musical elements and lyrics - are meaningless if we do not consider that these are a product of human beings acting in certain ways. Meaning in music comes both from those who perform it and the audience - it is a human thing, not a musical thing.
Musicians do a strange thing. They give life to something that would not exist without them. No matter how "durable" a particular piece of music may be (how often it is played, how long recordings of it exist, how long scores of it are republished), the music itself only lives through their action in performance. We forget that music is a fragile thing, dependent upon individuals who are, very often, fragile themselves. Consider Mozart, Charlie Parker, and Jimi Hendrix as just three examples of people who, though geniuses of incomparable depth and power, were too haunted by various demons to escape them. We so often focus on their weaknesses and forget the strengths they each had. We also forget that, as music is a human product of unique, discreet individuals, the weaknesses were as much a part of the creative process as the strengths. We need to hold this firmly in our minds when we listen to a Mozart symphony, "Salt Peanuts", and "Foxey Lady". Dividing up a human life to find some "msucial area" that is immune to all other areas does violence to the human reality that is music and musical creativity.
A couple years ago I heard a discussion on NPR about Miles Davis and the creation of the album Kind of Blue. A caller to the show was outraged that no one mentioned the fact that Davis was, to put it mildly, a difficult person with which to get along, and harbored much hostility toward whites. The discussion that followed, including former Davis colleague Wayne Shorter, missed the point entirely because it tried to create a distinction that cannot exist between Miles Davis the individual who had a nasty temper and did not suffer musical fools and Miles Davis the brilliant and thoughtful musician. First, just because Davis was difficult to get along with shouldn't exclude him from consideration as an important personage; Beethoven was hardly one with whom others could sit and enjoy a pint. Davis' vocal hostility to whites did not preclude him from working with many, many gifted white musicians. His anger was the honest result of frustration over the exploitation of black musicians by an industry that took advantage of and stole from them time and time again. What is to argue with here?
Musicians are a strange lot, to be sure. Yet they are the sole link between us and this strange, wonderful thing that brings us, by turns laughter, tears, rage, love, lust, and the inescapable desire to get up and dance. We rely upon them for so much, and they fail as often as they succeed; how many times have we heard or read of them being frustrated that they could not reproduce the sounds they heard in their heads? Yet, they keep trying because to surrender, to give up trying to make those sounds would be worse than death. That we live in a society that takes advantage of this desire, rewards and punishes these men and women for their failures and successes, makes them heroes and villains, relevant and irrelevant is a sad commentary upon us (of course, as the saying goes, 'twas ever thus). We need to hold on to them, nurture them, not concern ourselves with the famous but with those who give us as much as they can and ask nothing else but to be given another chance to give it to us again.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Friday, January 26, 2007
Music II: Critics
I detest music critics. Music criticism is too often marked by an almost total ignorance of music. It pretends to an objectivity that hides personal preference behind a claimed understanding that too often falls short. Popular taste can become a good measure of musical ability, only to the point where the critic discovers faults with the audience. The best example, given in a review of British progressive rock, Rocking the Classics, is a quote from a review of a Black Sabbath song, in which both the musician and audience are belittled as "neanderthals". Another example (although one with which I happen to agree for the most part) is a quote concerning the 70's stadium band Styx, in which an album was compared to a parking lot full of whale vomit, and it was said that no one liked them except for their fans. At the time, Styx was selling millinos of records and selling out entire tours, so perhaps, depite certain musical failings, they were on to something the critics, in love with Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Cramps, might have been missing.
Music critics tend to be Platonists. Despite a veneer of radicalism that in itself shows their shallowness, they would rather ignore the audience, the performers, indeed each performance of a piece, and concentrate on the music as if it fell from the sky somehow, unencumbered by the messiness of actual people who performed and listened to it. They ignore the social setting in which musics rise, become popular for a while, then fade. They hype music that is inconsequential. The most famous example, of course, is the love music critics had for British punk in the mid- to late-1970's, too often to the embarrasment of their own reputations. The quintessential punk band, The Sex Pistols, were a put-on, a get-rich-quick scheme by a plucky, conniving, unscrupulous entrepreneur who used up his musicians in an effort to make money. The musicians were exploited; the press was manipulated - and the critics thought they had something. Even today, the critics protest that, even though all that is true, The Sex Pistols were still important because of what followed in their drug-addled wake. It is true that bands sprang up imitating not only their "style" (which was nothing more than a variation on the roots rock of The Ramones), but their attitude as well. This does not alter the fact that they were as fake and manufactured as The Monkees or The Village People, and possessing as little musical ability as the latter two groups.
What works and what doesn't work for the public is never knowable beforehand; musicians play what they play and the public responds or not, depending upon a variety of factors, many of them inarticulate and unconscious. Even the most gifted musician - Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Eric Clapton, Steve Vai, Miles Davis - has ups and downs (if they live long enough; in Parker's case, I'm not quite sure the rule applies) based upon the vagaries of popular taste. Sometimes a musician comes along who is so different that they are completely misunderstood; Art Tatum was a bop pianist playing in the swing era; Robert Fripp wanted (and probably still wants) to play Kind of Blue with variations over and over again until he and the musicians he gathers around himself get it right (although, one night in New York in 1981, according to Fripp, they did get it right); Miles Davis saw no reason electric instruments could not serve as vehicles for jazz, even with the limitations inherent in such a construction. To reduce these three to, in order, a master of technique; a rocker who wishes he were a jazz musicians; a musician yearning for acceptance and respectability by an audience growing tired of acoustic jazz - these "narratives" are not only shallow, they are, in the end, false because they completely ignore the depth of commitment, the stated preferences of the people in question, and the whole context in which these musicians lived and worked. I use these three as examples because they are so flagrant, but the list could include, for example, those who lump the Beatles with The Rolling Stones as similar bands (it would be better to compare the Stones with Led Zepelin); those who compare The Who with Led Zepelin (it would be better to compare The Who with Marvin Gaye; they were an electric R&B band while Zep was a blues band). Even the dismissal of bands such as Journey, REO Speedwagon, Foreigner, and Loverboy as bad is wrong. They aren't so much bad as they were just middling, mediocre bands, producing not so much bad music (the worst rock music was too often performed by the best bands; can anyone say The Magical Mystery Tour?) as it was music that was dull and uninventive.
Of course, critics complain about the mediocrity of such bands, and often get excited by the wrong new thing, but if a form of music is popular - progressive rock in the early- to mid-1970's (and enjoying a revival for the past decade or so), and heavy metal continually since the late-1960's - but unappealing to critics, for whatever reasons (the aforementioned Rocking the Classics has an interesting, even compelling, but I think incomplete, explanation - a combination of phony elitism and faux-political radicalism combined with that streak of Platonism of which I wrote before), then stand back, because not only is the music in for attack, but the public who likes such music is ignorant, benighted, and being taken for a ride by corporate interests only interested in the bottom line. Such arguments are so erroneous on their face one wonders why and how they could or should be taken seriously, but they are.
Music criticism is based upon the false idea that there are objective standards that can be applied without prejudice or favor across any and all genres of music. Once a critic insists the music he or she is "serious" enough, they get to work applying those standards. It is silly, it is easily disproven, but it still holds. Rarely do critics take a piece of music and let it stand on its own merits, as the product of an individual or group within a broader context, existing within a larger musical milieu with which to understand, appreciate, and criticize.
Music is a human invention, existing not in and of and for itself, but because of, by, and through human agency. As such, it can only be understood as a product of a huge variety of factors, too many to adequately address in its entirety. Rather than say this, and surrender to the inevitable truth that they write about music they like based upon personal preference, they hide behind all sorts of nonsense and an assumed intellectualism to try and prove that they are actually applying standards that make their choices and observations and criticisms true.
Nonsense.
Music critics tend to be Platonists. Despite a veneer of radicalism that in itself shows their shallowness, they would rather ignore the audience, the performers, indeed each performance of a piece, and concentrate on the music as if it fell from the sky somehow, unencumbered by the messiness of actual people who performed and listened to it. They ignore the social setting in which musics rise, become popular for a while, then fade. They hype music that is inconsequential. The most famous example, of course, is the love music critics had for British punk in the mid- to late-1970's, too often to the embarrasment of their own reputations. The quintessential punk band, The Sex Pistols, were a put-on, a get-rich-quick scheme by a plucky, conniving, unscrupulous entrepreneur who used up his musicians in an effort to make money. The musicians were exploited; the press was manipulated - and the critics thought they had something. Even today, the critics protest that, even though all that is true, The Sex Pistols were still important because of what followed in their drug-addled wake. It is true that bands sprang up imitating not only their "style" (which was nothing more than a variation on the roots rock of The Ramones), but their attitude as well. This does not alter the fact that they were as fake and manufactured as The Monkees or The Village People, and possessing as little musical ability as the latter two groups.
What works and what doesn't work for the public is never knowable beforehand; musicians play what they play and the public responds or not, depending upon a variety of factors, many of them inarticulate and unconscious. Even the most gifted musician - Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Eric Clapton, Steve Vai, Miles Davis - has ups and downs (if they live long enough; in Parker's case, I'm not quite sure the rule applies) based upon the vagaries of popular taste. Sometimes a musician comes along who is so different that they are completely misunderstood; Art Tatum was a bop pianist playing in the swing era; Robert Fripp wanted (and probably still wants) to play Kind of Blue with variations over and over again until he and the musicians he gathers around himself get it right (although, one night in New York in 1981, according to Fripp, they did get it right); Miles Davis saw no reason electric instruments could not serve as vehicles for jazz, even with the limitations inherent in such a construction. To reduce these three to, in order, a master of technique; a rocker who wishes he were a jazz musicians; a musician yearning for acceptance and respectability by an audience growing tired of acoustic jazz - these "narratives" are not only shallow, they are, in the end, false because they completely ignore the depth of commitment, the stated preferences of the people in question, and the whole context in which these musicians lived and worked. I use these three as examples because they are so flagrant, but the list could include, for example, those who lump the Beatles with The Rolling Stones as similar bands (it would be better to compare the Stones with Led Zepelin); those who compare The Who with Led Zepelin (it would be better to compare The Who with Marvin Gaye; they were an electric R&B band while Zep was a blues band). Even the dismissal of bands such as Journey, REO Speedwagon, Foreigner, and Loverboy as bad is wrong. They aren't so much bad as they were just middling, mediocre bands, producing not so much bad music (the worst rock music was too often performed by the best bands; can anyone say The Magical Mystery Tour?) as it was music that was dull and uninventive.
Of course, critics complain about the mediocrity of such bands, and often get excited by the wrong new thing, but if a form of music is popular - progressive rock in the early- to mid-1970's (and enjoying a revival for the past decade or so), and heavy metal continually since the late-1960's - but unappealing to critics, for whatever reasons (the aforementioned Rocking the Classics has an interesting, even compelling, but I think incomplete, explanation - a combination of phony elitism and faux-political radicalism combined with that streak of Platonism of which I wrote before), then stand back, because not only is the music in for attack, but the public who likes such music is ignorant, benighted, and being taken for a ride by corporate interests only interested in the bottom line. Such arguments are so erroneous on their face one wonders why and how they could or should be taken seriously, but they are.
Music criticism is based upon the false idea that there are objective standards that can be applied without prejudice or favor across any and all genres of music. Once a critic insists the music he or she is "serious" enough, they get to work applying those standards. It is silly, it is easily disproven, but it still holds. Rarely do critics take a piece of music and let it stand on its own merits, as the product of an individual or group within a broader context, existing within a larger musical milieu with which to understand, appreciate, and criticize.
Music is a human invention, existing not in and of and for itself, but because of, by, and through human agency. As such, it can only be understood as a product of a huge variety of factors, too many to adequately address in its entirety. Rather than say this, and surrender to the inevitable truth that they write about music they like based upon personal preference, they hide behind all sorts of nonsense and an assumed intellectualism to try and prove that they are actually applying standards that make their choices and observations and criticisms true.
Nonsense.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Music I: Listening to America
I am tired of politics. I am tired of journalists. I am tired of being told what America thinks by people who have no idea what America thinks. I am tired of the President, the Vice-President, Gen. Petraus. I am tired of John McCain, I am tired of Joe Lieberman, I am tired of Joe Klein, I am tired of Thomas Friedman, I am tired of the whole FOXNews gang. I am tired of people talking about "religion" when they know nothing about it. I am tired of the press pushing the next Presidential election. God Almighty, I am tired of all the nonsense.
Mid- to late-winter brings me around again to another of my annual perusings of Ken Burns' Jazz. Now, before anyone takes me to task, I am well aware of its limitations and faults, not the least of which is the ridiculousness and utter stupidity of some of those - Gary Giddins, Wynton Marsalis - Burns turned to to create this flawed masterpiece. With all its faults, it nevertheless captures something of the essence both of the music and its role in American life that I enjoy. Like all traditional histories, it misses as much as it captures, but it is the first comprehensive look at an art form that is singularly American. Among the things Marsalis says with which I agree are his words in the first episodes in which, to paraphrase, he says that jazz gives us America at its best because it refuses to deny the realities with which we are faced, but forces us to deal with them. It is not tolerance; it is the difficult work of inclusivity, of integration, of acceptance of difference and compromise through the recognition of the legitimacy of difference.
The focus on Armstrong and Ellington - two very different musicians and personalities, the latter of whom I would call jazz only with an asterisk - I find difficult to countenance, although I suppose every such story needs some kind of through-line to hold the viewers' attention. The treatment of Miles Davis, of Charles Mingus, the neglect of such contemporary artists as Pat Metheny, Wayne Shorter (only a mention as part of Davis' mid-60's quintet), Cannonball Adderley, Joe Zawinul - these also give one pause as how to make a different history of jazz, an honest, better history. In many ways, like the standard history of rock and roll - The Rolling Stone History of Rock and Roll - it does the job both right and wrong, and gives us all the strength to figure out new ways of shaping that history to make room for different interpretations.
It is singular, however, because it is comprehensive; it is honest; it gives us a glimpse of both the strengths and weaknesses of the music, those who perform it, those who listen to it - and in this glimpse we see and hear America struggling to be what America can be, although part of that struggling is listening to Studs Terkel and Gerald Early (I guess i can only tolerate my own pontificating, not that of others). I would offer a watch to all who care a whit about America, who desire desperately for a way out, because jazz ofers us a way out - through improvisation, but the genius of improvisation, the genius that has given us America. If we have to put up with James Lincoln Collier along the way . . . oh, well.
Mid- to late-winter brings me around again to another of my annual perusings of Ken Burns' Jazz. Now, before anyone takes me to task, I am well aware of its limitations and faults, not the least of which is the ridiculousness and utter stupidity of some of those - Gary Giddins, Wynton Marsalis - Burns turned to to create this flawed masterpiece. With all its faults, it nevertheless captures something of the essence both of the music and its role in American life that I enjoy. Like all traditional histories, it misses as much as it captures, but it is the first comprehensive look at an art form that is singularly American. Among the things Marsalis says with which I agree are his words in the first episodes in which, to paraphrase, he says that jazz gives us America at its best because it refuses to deny the realities with which we are faced, but forces us to deal with them. It is not tolerance; it is the difficult work of inclusivity, of integration, of acceptance of difference and compromise through the recognition of the legitimacy of difference.
The focus on Armstrong and Ellington - two very different musicians and personalities, the latter of whom I would call jazz only with an asterisk - I find difficult to countenance, although I suppose every such story needs some kind of through-line to hold the viewers' attention. The treatment of Miles Davis, of Charles Mingus, the neglect of such contemporary artists as Pat Metheny, Wayne Shorter (only a mention as part of Davis' mid-60's quintet), Cannonball Adderley, Joe Zawinul - these also give one pause as how to make a different history of jazz, an honest, better history. In many ways, like the standard history of rock and roll - The Rolling Stone History of Rock and Roll - it does the job both right and wrong, and gives us all the strength to figure out new ways of shaping that history to make room for different interpretations.
It is singular, however, because it is comprehensive; it is honest; it gives us a glimpse of both the strengths and weaknesses of the music, those who perform it, those who listen to it - and in this glimpse we see and hear America struggling to be what America can be, although part of that struggling is listening to Studs Terkel and Gerald Early (I guess i can only tolerate my own pontificating, not that of others). I would offer a watch to all who care a whit about America, who desire desperately for a way out, because jazz ofers us a way out - through improvisation, but the genius of improvisation, the genius that has given us America. If we have to put up with James Lincoln Collier along the way . . . oh, well.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Will Thomas Friedman please, for all our sakes, just shut up?
Over at Faith in Public Life.org, they have a reprint of today's column from Thomas Friedman, proving once again that blaming the victim is not limited to Bill O'Reilly. Looking around the mess made by the United States in Iraq, a mess, by the way, that was predicted again and again; such predictions dismissed again and again by Friedman as he helped rush us to war - Friedman bewails that there is no Muslim Martin Luther King, Jr. (hence the title of the column, as insulting as it is ignorant) to bring peace between Sunni and Shia. He manages to find quotes from various Arab and Muslim democracy activists and a Syrian poet to create the illusion that he has any idea what he is writing about - and to give his insulting words and ideas the veneer or respectability they do not deserve.
In Friedman's world, it is up to Muslims to fix the problems in Iraq created by the United States. Of course, there is a certain truth to this; yet the idea behind the entire column is one of blame-shifting, very similar to President Bush's statement that the Iraqis have shown little thanks for their "liberation". Wondering why there can't be a Muslim Martin Luther King, Jr. is such an ignorant, awful thing to write, and occurs in a column so filled with ignorance and bigotry - this from a man who accussed liberals of anti-Muslim bigotry because we supposedly refuse to believe them capable of the hard work of democracy - it is hard to figure out where to begin.
It is for that reason alone that I ask, I plead, I implore Thomas Friedman to please, for the love of all that is good and true in this world, to shut up. Don't write any more. Don't appear on television. Realize what an ignoramus you are - please, please, please. Be quiet.
Please.
In Friedman's world, it is up to Muslims to fix the problems in Iraq created by the United States. Of course, there is a certain truth to this; yet the idea behind the entire column is one of blame-shifting, very similar to President Bush's statement that the Iraqis have shown little thanks for their "liberation". Wondering why there can't be a Muslim Martin Luther King, Jr. is such an ignorant, awful thing to write, and occurs in a column so filled with ignorance and bigotry - this from a man who accussed liberals of anti-Muslim bigotry because we supposedly refuse to believe them capable of the hard work of democracy - it is hard to figure out where to begin.
It is for that reason alone that I ask, I plead, I implore Thomas Friedman to please, for the love of all that is good and true in this world, to shut up. Don't write any more. Don't appear on television. Realize what an ignoramus you are - please, please, please. Be quiet.
Please.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Obama in the Race (Pun Intended)
Over at Alternet.org, Philip Barron has a piece criticizing a piece in Slate.com by Mickey Kaus and a piece written by Stanley Crouch in The Daily News (which latter piece you can read here) in which the issue of race and the prospective run for the Presidency by Sen. Barack Obama is addressed. The interesting thing about Barron's piece - especially after reading Crouch's column which apparently stirred up a hornet's nest from people who either didn't read it or didn't understand it - is he falls on the very sword he attempts to wield against Kaus and Crouch, viz., they don't understand race all that well. The gist of Barron's criticism of both Kaus and Crouch is that, by complicating race matters (speaking of them in terms much broader than skin color, but the social, political, and historical dimensions in which "race" has come to be understood in the United States) they fail to understand that , quite simply, Barack Obama is a black man.
Memo to Barron - having dark pigmentation is not necessarily what race is about. In the Kaus piece, we are reminded that Hillary Clinton has a record on race matters that Obama does not. Crouch takes the whole issue a step further and discusses Obama's ethnicity (and potential appeal) in terms of "race" as a socio-cultural category. Barron wants us to see race quite literally in black-and-white, and it is not not nor has it ever been that simple. It isn't about "blood" or skin tone. It isn't about who "represents" whom. As Crouch rightly notes in his column, even Obama himself says that he has not experienced racism in the same way other Africa-Americans have. In citing this, Crouch is defending a position that has the merit of resting on American history. Race matters run so deep, and their currents are so strong - so many have drowned in their horrible waters - that to reduce "race" to skin tone is a lowering of IQ (to steal Barron's headline).
Obama is, in many ways, the Democratic version of Colin Powell, an African-American liberals can like. More radical, and well-liked among blacks, leaders such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton (both of whom have a longer list of accomplishments than Obama) are unappealing because - well, let's face it, blacks like them so they are unacceptable. As in the case of Powell, who has broader appeal than other black Republicans such as Alan Keyes, Obama is someone white liberals can accept precisely because he has such a short public resume and hasn't made the mistakes of Jackson (fathering a child out of wedlock) or Sharpton (Tawanna Brawley will haunt him until the day he dies) and hasn't engaged in the kind of confrontational politics that both men have done. Obama sounds nice, he talks about appealing across political and racial lines and aboundaries, and he makes white liberals feel good about supporting a black man for President.
None of this is to say that Obama is not, potentially, an excellent Presidential candidate, or that his racial bona fides aren't as acceptable as those of other potantial African-American candidates. What I am saying is that Obama's candidacy, and his appeal to white liberal voters, has much to do with racial politics in America, their history, their complexity, and their hiddenness and unspeakability. To dismiss out of hand criticisms of Obama's potential appeal based upon race isn't racist so much as it is simple-minded. Race isn't about skin color or ethnicity. It is about the whole history of experiences and interactions between Europeans and Africans since the landing of the first slave-ships in Virginia almost four hundred years ago. Obama is a participant in that history, to be sure; all Americans are. It is Obama's place in that story that is being discussed, and how he fits into the larger narrative about race (and implicitly, about America) that is at issue. For Barron to dismiss such discussions because "race makes us stupid" misses an opportunity to really grapple with the issue.
Memo to Barron - having dark pigmentation is not necessarily what race is about. In the Kaus piece, we are reminded that Hillary Clinton has a record on race matters that Obama does not. Crouch takes the whole issue a step further and discusses Obama's ethnicity (and potential appeal) in terms of "race" as a socio-cultural category. Barron wants us to see race quite literally in black-and-white, and it is not not nor has it ever been that simple. It isn't about "blood" or skin tone. It isn't about who "represents" whom. As Crouch rightly notes in his column, even Obama himself says that he has not experienced racism in the same way other Africa-Americans have. In citing this, Crouch is defending a position that has the merit of resting on American history. Race matters run so deep, and their currents are so strong - so many have drowned in their horrible waters - that to reduce "race" to skin tone is a lowering of IQ (to steal Barron's headline).
Obama is, in many ways, the Democratic version of Colin Powell, an African-American liberals can like. More radical, and well-liked among blacks, leaders such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton (both of whom have a longer list of accomplishments than Obama) are unappealing because - well, let's face it, blacks like them so they are unacceptable. As in the case of Powell, who has broader appeal than other black Republicans such as Alan Keyes, Obama is someone white liberals can accept precisely because he has such a short public resume and hasn't made the mistakes of Jackson (fathering a child out of wedlock) or Sharpton (Tawanna Brawley will haunt him until the day he dies) and hasn't engaged in the kind of confrontational politics that both men have done. Obama sounds nice, he talks about appealing across political and racial lines and aboundaries, and he makes white liberals feel good about supporting a black man for President.
None of this is to say that Obama is not, potentially, an excellent Presidential candidate, or that his racial bona fides aren't as acceptable as those of other potantial African-American candidates. What I am saying is that Obama's candidacy, and his appeal to white liberal voters, has much to do with racial politics in America, their history, their complexity, and their hiddenness and unspeakability. To dismiss out of hand criticisms of Obama's potential appeal based upon race isn't racist so much as it is simple-minded. Race isn't about skin color or ethnicity. It is about the whole history of experiences and interactions between Europeans and Africans since the landing of the first slave-ships in Virginia almost four hundred years ago. Obama is a participant in that history, to be sure; all Americans are. It is Obama's place in that story that is being discussed, and how he fits into the larger narrative about race (and implicitly, about America) that is at issue. For Barron to dismiss such discussions because "race makes us stupid" misses an opportunity to really grapple with the issue.
When Bad Journalism Happens to Good Papers and Liberal Web Sites Call Them On It
Those who Ana Maria Cox calls "humorless but dedicated" (as opposed to being full of fun but slackers? full of fun but dedicated? I'm not sure what the modifier refers to here, other than the fact that the media doesn't like someone actually calling them on their nonsense) - Media Matters for America - started the ball rolling questioning a recent story by John Solomon that tried to raise questions about John Edwards recent home sale. Now, not only Media Matters but Talking Points Memo here, here, and Greg Sargent-written spin-off The Horses Mouth continue to pound home the fact that the story lacked substance. In fact, in the Horses Mouth piece, Solomon insists that, though the story lacks anything like sourcing, relevance, or even a hint of scandal (a populist candidate for President sells his house to a corporate player is news?), it still justifies being considered (a) journalism, and (b) on the front page of a major daily newspaper because there are "questions" Edwards needs to answer. What those question are, how, when and in what manner they are to answered we are never quite told; there are implications, however, that simply because the piece may have created a cloud, Edwards should now be on the defensive.
Except, it now seems, from the sources linked above, that it is Solomon who is on the defensive. Even the ombudsman at his own paper is going to go after him - this after two of his fellow reporters questioned the article. We may actually see a journalist brought to heel because of an attack on a Democrat. The heat is not dissipating on Solomon, and Media Matters, TPM, and the rest of the big-time bloggers and web-sites should be proud of the work they have done dragging this particular cockroach out of the corners. As I noted last week, I waffle about the whole taking-on-the-media thing, but we are actually starting to see results - and if the pressure is kept up, we might see even more.
As Glenn Greenwald notes, when journalists actually do their jobs, the results are pretty surpring (this in reference to the attempted right-wing smear of my Senator, Barack Obama, specifically that he attended a "madrasa" as a child living in Indonesia). The funny thing is (perhaps it's funny; perhaps it's just a bit of schadenfreude) that journalists are always taking bloggers to task for their lack of standards, yet it has been bloggers and web-sites that have managed to call this particular journalistic dog to heel. One wonders what the implications of this are. . . .
Except, it now seems, from the sources linked above, that it is Solomon who is on the defensive. Even the ombudsman at his own paper is going to go after him - this after two of his fellow reporters questioned the article. We may actually see a journalist brought to heel because of an attack on a Democrat. The heat is not dissipating on Solomon, and Media Matters, TPM, and the rest of the big-time bloggers and web-sites should be proud of the work they have done dragging this particular cockroach out of the corners. As I noted last week, I waffle about the whole taking-on-the-media thing, but we are actually starting to see results - and if the pressure is kept up, we might see even more.
As Glenn Greenwald notes, when journalists actually do their jobs, the results are pretty surpring (this in reference to the attempted right-wing smear of my Senator, Barack Obama, specifically that he attended a "madrasa" as a child living in Indonesia). The funny thing is (perhaps it's funny; perhaps it's just a bit of schadenfreude) that journalists are always taking bloggers to task for their lack of standards, yet it has been bloggers and web-sites that have managed to call this particular journalistic dog to heel. One wonders what the implications of this are. . . .
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Taking the Opponent Seriously
Glenn Greenwald has apparently reached the end of his tether with the neo-con apologists for the Bush Administration, as evidenced by this post in which he says, at the end that the neo-cons hold "twisted and bloodthirsty tenets" which "are not rooted in some rotted, coherent geopolitical doctrine as much as they are rooted in rotted personality disorder." I found myself commenting that such psychological reductionism is wrong because it dismisses the history of the movement, and dismisses as well the commitment to its ideals and principles those who hold them continue to have. I was taken to task by another commenter who insisted that, in fact, the neo-cons do not have political commitments, because it has cost them nothing to hold them. I find such dismissal peurile, and even dangerous; we underestimate those with whom we disagree politically at our peril, because the neo-conservatives have both a history and a wealth of intellectual and political resources at their disposal - not the least of them being access to a variety of media - with which to press home their views.
Gary Dorrien, a professor at Kalamazoo College in Michigan, has written two books, The Neo-Conservative Mind and Imperial Designs, that trace the history of the movement, the process and change and development of its major strains of thought, through an analysis of its major figures, both first and second generation. In taking the movement, its ideas, and its personalities seriously, Dorrien presents a movement that emerged initially from the disputes within the New York Marxist community and its literary and intellectual outgrowths. There was, and still is, a depth of thought to the neo-cons, and a commitment to America as the world's only superpower that drives them forward. It is precisely because their views are rooted both in a certain Stalinist/Marxist absolutism, only dedicated to American supremacy, that they come across as authoritarian and arbitrary - we are witnessing what happens when Marxists lose their faith; like Augustine after Platonism, they merely transfer their way of thinking to America as capitalist hegemon, rather than the Soviet Union as communist hegemon.
By reducing the politics of the neo-conservatives to facile psychological categories and equating the politics of George W. Bush with neo-conservatism, Greenwald makes two errors. First, he dismisses the seriousness of political opponents in such a way as to make himself a less-serious interlocutor. It is one thing to focus on the nepotism of the neo-cons - I asked in my comment what Bill Kristol or John Podhoretz have done that we should take them seriously - and another to take this a step further and speculate on the psychology behind this nepotism. The other error is that, while George W. Bush does have neo-con support, he is not himself a neo-conservative. Indeed, i find it hard to believe that George Bush has any coherent political beliefs at all, other than the expansion of Presidential power beyond constitutional boundaries, judging by his record as President. By throwing around a term loosely, whether, as I discussed earlier it is "left", "right", "center", "victory", and "defeat" or as in this case "neo-conservatism" - a term which in face has both a very precise meaning, a coherent core of beliefs, and very definable boundaries (William F. Buckley and Pat Buchanan are not neo-cons, and both loathe the idea that these Johnny-come-latelies have achieved the kind of political access they have been denied), Greenwald robs the word of meaning, and cheatgs us of a deeper understanding, understanding which we could use in opposition to them.
If we say, with Greenwald, that they're all just a bunch of authoritarian, anti-democrats stuck in pre-adolescent parent-worship because of stunted psychological development, why should we be taken any more seriously than those we quite rightly criticize for their own peurile analysis of liberals and progressives? What is good for the liberal goose is not always good for the conservative gander. It behooves us to take the neo-conservatives as seriously as we progressives wish to be taken seriously, not dismiss them out of hand with shallow psychologizing that might just miss some important facts and realities. Even though we might find their beliefs, and the practical results of those beliefs, reprehensible, we owe it to ourselves and to the country for which we are fighting and arguing, to accept that those beliefs are sincerely held, have an intellectual and (I would argue) even a moral core. We would be much better spending our time discussing the ideas and teachings and results of neo-conservatism than about the neo-cons themselves. We would also be much better making sure we are clear who is in fact a neo-conservative and who is not. It is important, indeed it is vitally necessary, to know one's opponent, and to know about differences within the opposition in order to exploit whatever weaknesses might exist within them. Shallow psychological analysis does not serve us well, and I do not accept Greenwald's argument that we are fully justified in so arguing.
Gary Dorrien, a professor at Kalamazoo College in Michigan, has written two books, The Neo-Conservative Mind and Imperial Designs, that trace the history of the movement, the process and change and development of its major strains of thought, through an analysis of its major figures, both first and second generation. In taking the movement, its ideas, and its personalities seriously, Dorrien presents a movement that emerged initially from the disputes within the New York Marxist community and its literary and intellectual outgrowths. There was, and still is, a depth of thought to the neo-cons, and a commitment to America as the world's only superpower that drives them forward. It is precisely because their views are rooted both in a certain Stalinist/Marxist absolutism, only dedicated to American supremacy, that they come across as authoritarian and arbitrary - we are witnessing what happens when Marxists lose their faith; like Augustine after Platonism, they merely transfer their way of thinking to America as capitalist hegemon, rather than the Soviet Union as communist hegemon.
By reducing the politics of the neo-conservatives to facile psychological categories and equating the politics of George W. Bush with neo-conservatism, Greenwald makes two errors. First, he dismisses the seriousness of political opponents in such a way as to make himself a less-serious interlocutor. It is one thing to focus on the nepotism of the neo-cons - I asked in my comment what Bill Kristol or John Podhoretz have done that we should take them seriously - and another to take this a step further and speculate on the psychology behind this nepotism. The other error is that, while George W. Bush does have neo-con support, he is not himself a neo-conservative. Indeed, i find it hard to believe that George Bush has any coherent political beliefs at all, other than the expansion of Presidential power beyond constitutional boundaries, judging by his record as President. By throwing around a term loosely, whether, as I discussed earlier it is "left", "right", "center", "victory", and "defeat" or as in this case "neo-conservatism" - a term which in face has both a very precise meaning, a coherent core of beliefs, and very definable boundaries (William F. Buckley and Pat Buchanan are not neo-cons, and both loathe the idea that these Johnny-come-latelies have achieved the kind of political access they have been denied), Greenwald robs the word of meaning, and cheatgs us of a deeper understanding, understanding which we could use in opposition to them.
If we say, with Greenwald, that they're all just a bunch of authoritarian, anti-democrats stuck in pre-adolescent parent-worship because of stunted psychological development, why should we be taken any more seriously than those we quite rightly criticize for their own peurile analysis of liberals and progressives? What is good for the liberal goose is not always good for the conservative gander. It behooves us to take the neo-conservatives as seriously as we progressives wish to be taken seriously, not dismiss them out of hand with shallow psychologizing that might just miss some important facts and realities. Even though we might find their beliefs, and the practical results of those beliefs, reprehensible, we owe it to ourselves and to the country for which we are fighting and arguing, to accept that those beliefs are sincerely held, have an intellectual and (I would argue) even a moral core. We would be much better spending our time discussing the ideas and teachings and results of neo-conservatism than about the neo-cons themselves. We would also be much better making sure we are clear who is in fact a neo-conservative and who is not. It is important, indeed it is vitally necessary, to know one's opponent, and to know about differences within the opposition in order to exploit whatever weaknesses might exist within them. Shallow psychological analysis does not serve us well, and I do not accept Greenwald's argument that we are fully justified in so arguing.
Fighting Meaninglessness
Greg Sargent has a piece at Talking Points Memo on the emptiness of the journalistic uses of the terms "middle", and the correspondent emptiness of the words "left" and "right". Following his lead (alas), I would like to suggest that there are other terms we need to force the media to stop using because they have become meaningless as well.
It has been commonplace since the early 1900's to dismiss much blather about "liberal", "conservative", "left", and "right" as so much left-over baggage from an era where they might have meant something. Their continued use has not pinned down their spcific meaning any more than simply defining them would, and most of us are left wondering what in the world they refer to in the world around us when journalists, pundits, and politicians throw them around, because they do not correspond to anything we might understand about what is actually happening. Labels are useless if they are empty of meaning. They cloud our understanding rather than enhance it (perhaps that is the goal?).
There are other words I would add to the list. When President Bush speaks of "victory" in Iraq, or of "defeat", when he brings up a "new plan", or a "policy", journalists should not just transcribe these words without thought, but press him and others in the Administration as to what they mean. As far as I can discern, neither "victory" nor "defeat" have any referent in the situation in Iraq. Equally non-existent is anything like a "plan" or "policy" as these have traditionally been understood. If there is a policy, the American people need to hear it. If there is a plan, we need to know at least the outlines of this supposed plan besides merely sending more targets for the Iraqi factions to kill and maim (for myself, I will cease to use the term "insurgent" because the situation in iraq has degraded so far that there is no "insurgency" in the singular, but multiple factions killing each other and Americans). Indeed, this is neither a plan nor a policy, but the simple hope that the sheer weight of numbers will create a situation favorable to the United States.
Of course, "success" of this "policy" would not be victory, nor would the failure of the plan be defeat because neither word has any meaning in Iraq right now. We are left, then, back at the beginning, demanding answers with real meaning, real meat on their verbal bones. Perhaps it is too much for us to ask mainstream journalists to either press the Administration to elaborate or to simply stop using these words all together. I think, however, we need to continue to push them for clarity. That would be the function of the press in America, one would think - clear up the messiness so that we can understand, and on this understanding, act.
It has been commonplace since the early 1900's to dismiss much blather about "liberal", "conservative", "left", and "right" as so much left-over baggage from an era where they might have meant something. Their continued use has not pinned down their spcific meaning any more than simply defining them would, and most of us are left wondering what in the world they refer to in the world around us when journalists, pundits, and politicians throw them around, because they do not correspond to anything we might understand about what is actually happening. Labels are useless if they are empty of meaning. They cloud our understanding rather than enhance it (perhaps that is the goal?).
There are other words I would add to the list. When President Bush speaks of "victory" in Iraq, or of "defeat", when he brings up a "new plan", or a "policy", journalists should not just transcribe these words without thought, but press him and others in the Administration as to what they mean. As far as I can discern, neither "victory" nor "defeat" have any referent in the situation in Iraq. Equally non-existent is anything like a "plan" or "policy" as these have traditionally been understood. If there is a policy, the American people need to hear it. If there is a plan, we need to know at least the outlines of this supposed plan besides merely sending more targets for the Iraqi factions to kill and maim (for myself, I will cease to use the term "insurgent" because the situation in iraq has degraded so far that there is no "insurgency" in the singular, but multiple factions killing each other and Americans). Indeed, this is neither a plan nor a policy, but the simple hope that the sheer weight of numbers will create a situation favorable to the United States.
Of course, "success" of this "policy" would not be victory, nor would the failure of the plan be defeat because neither word has any meaning in Iraq right now. We are left, then, back at the beginning, demanding answers with real meaning, real meat on their verbal bones. Perhaps it is too much for us to ask mainstream journalists to either press the Administration to elaborate or to simply stop using these words all together. I think, however, we need to continue to push them for clarity. That would be the function of the press in America, one would think - clear up the messiness so that we can understand, and on this understanding, act.
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Various Things
1. Over at Alternet.org, David Sirota has an article that articulates as clearly as possible the reasons for Internet anger and frustration at mainstream journalists. The lack of accountability, in fact the rewarding of those whose political views and pronouncements are demonstrably erroneous, and the persistent, perhaps even obstinate refusal to admit error - and the angry, defensive tone they always take when called to account for errors of fact, of analysis, of prediction, of tone; there has to be a way, more than just through "the marketplace of ideas" by which these people can be held accountable for the role they have played in propping up Bush and his and McCain's and Lieberman's war.
2. While we are on the subject of mainstream journalists, ThinkProgress.org has an item on Thomas Friedman that defies description. Friedman has been a war booster from the beginning, even dismissing the main casus belli presented by the Administration - the alleged and since-proven-false WMDs - once it was shown to be false. His comments, which boil down to an accusation of liberal racism and cultural imperialism (why do our pundits sound more and more like Ann Coulter?), show him so completely out of touch, missing the point, and frustrated with criticism (how could he be taken seriously after writing The Lexus and the Olive Tree, I ask you) that he is becoming incoherent, like his sould-mate, Joe Klein.
3. It's a slow news day - what Saturday in January isn't? - so Sen. Hillary Clinton's announcement that she is running for President; Sen. Sam Brownback's announcement that he is running for President; former representative, UN Ambassador, and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson's planned announcement tomorrow that he is running for President all become hot news item. My question is, despite the discussions at MyDD and elsewhere - who cares, besides horse-race-besotted journalists? Should the netroots mimic the worst of the mainstream by becoming dragged into discussions of the various strengths and weaknesses of candidates so far out? Should we become so process-oriented that we forget that the process aims at a goal, governance, and right now that should be our focus?
4. Tuesday is the State of the Union address, and we should be looking for Bush's numbers to fall on the heels of the speech, as they have done in the wake of his recent speech to the nation, and interviews on 60 Minutes and The News Hour. An unpopular President with poor communication skills pursing policies antithetical to the wishes of a majority of Americans has little power, and his bully pulpit becomes more a squirrely pulpit.
5. I have broken down and linked to another Portuguese blog, Wind's Web Club. "Wind" is an artist, a poet, a photographer, and a remarkable human being. Her posts consist of photos and poems (in Portuguese, with Babelfish translations that, of course, do not do them justice). The photos are often erotic, always tasteful and beautiful, and the words captivating. I urge a visit, as I always find a bit of serenity and joy after a visit there. Tell her who sent you.
6. As has been reported all over the place, Fire Dog Lake's Jane Hamsher is un the midst of her third bout of cancer, having had surgery this week. While I do not know her own faith stance, and couldn't care less anyway, I pray for her, her loved ones, and all those who know and are awed by the work she does at FDL. She may neither acknowledge nor care, but I feel she is doing the Lord's own work - along with many others - and I pray for a swift recovery and an easy (as easy as possible under the circumstances) treatment. God Bless, Jane.
2. While we are on the subject of mainstream journalists, ThinkProgress.org has an item on Thomas Friedman that defies description. Friedman has been a war booster from the beginning, even dismissing the main casus belli presented by the Administration - the alleged and since-proven-false WMDs - once it was shown to be false. His comments, which boil down to an accusation of liberal racism and cultural imperialism (why do our pundits sound more and more like Ann Coulter?), show him so completely out of touch, missing the point, and frustrated with criticism (how could he be taken seriously after writing The Lexus and the Olive Tree, I ask you) that he is becoming incoherent, like his sould-mate, Joe Klein.
3. It's a slow news day - what Saturday in January isn't? - so Sen. Hillary Clinton's announcement that she is running for President; Sen. Sam Brownback's announcement that he is running for President; former representative, UN Ambassador, and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson's planned announcement tomorrow that he is running for President all become hot news item. My question is, despite the discussions at MyDD and elsewhere - who cares, besides horse-race-besotted journalists? Should the netroots mimic the worst of the mainstream by becoming dragged into discussions of the various strengths and weaknesses of candidates so far out? Should we become so process-oriented that we forget that the process aims at a goal, governance, and right now that should be our focus?
4. Tuesday is the State of the Union address, and we should be looking for Bush's numbers to fall on the heels of the speech, as they have done in the wake of his recent speech to the nation, and interviews on 60 Minutes and The News Hour. An unpopular President with poor communication skills pursing policies antithetical to the wishes of a majority of Americans has little power, and his bully pulpit becomes more a squirrely pulpit.
5. I have broken down and linked to another Portuguese blog, Wind's Web Club. "Wind" is an artist, a poet, a photographer, and a remarkable human being. Her posts consist of photos and poems (in Portuguese, with Babelfish translations that, of course, do not do them justice). The photos are often erotic, always tasteful and beautiful, and the words captivating. I urge a visit, as I always find a bit of serenity and joy after a visit there. Tell her who sent you.
6. As has been reported all over the place, Fire Dog Lake's Jane Hamsher is un the midst of her third bout of cancer, having had surgery this week. While I do not know her own faith stance, and couldn't care less anyway, I pray for her, her loved ones, and all those who know and are awed by the work she does at FDL. She may neither acknowledge nor care, but I feel she is doing the Lord's own work - along with many others - and I pray for a swift recovery and an easy (as easy as possible under the circumstances) treatment. God Bless, Jane.
Friday, January 19, 2007
Can't Think, Can't Write, Shouldn't be Listened To
Joe Klein has an aboslutely stunning post over at Swampland today, a site that is earning its name as a fetid cesspool of nonsense, proving to the Internet political community again and again why we do not like the mainstream media. In a short post, Klein manages to mangle reason, prove he can neither argue nor write, and prove why he should never be taken seriously again (as if proof were needed). The worst part, of course, is that I think I understsand what Klein was attempting to say - he supports the use of covert action in Iraq as opposed to traditional military action, which has consistently failed. One can agree or disagree with this position, but that becomes irrelevant by the way Klein frames the entire issue within a short paragraph.
In what follows, I am not going to treat with the substance, such as it may be, of Klein's post. I find it hard to deal with that substance for the simple reason that Klein comes off as so incoherent one wonders what the point of his entire post is. As Klein has continually derided bloggers for their seeming lack of journalistic virtues (whatever they may be), I suppose it not unkind or untoward to apply certain blogging virtues to Joe Klein's blogging. Sauce for the goose, as it were.
He attempts to answer a question posed by a commenter concerning reports that much of the sectarian violence is fueled by Iraqi militias trained by American counter-insurgency troops. Rather than address the question, Klein attempts to claim support for covert military action in Iraq. By American troops.
This is not the question the commenter raised, and by changing the subject, Klein makes himself sound as if he supports death squads. In an update, Klein tries to deflect what would be an obvious inference from what he had written, and in so doing, comes across as snide, superior, and still does not refute the allegation that he may just support the US training Iraqi facitonalist militias who operate as death squads in the civil war over there.
For someone who is contemptuous of bloggers for being snarky and ridiculous, Klein has certainly caught the vibe, as it were. His tone, in this post and in most of his posts, is one of disdain for his commenters, his readers, indeed anyone who does not heed the obvious wisdom and insight of a premiere journalist and author of eight books. The problem, sadly, is that Klein shows, in a short paragraph, totally incapable of framing an argument coherently, of writing out that argument thoughtfully, and in so doing totally undermines any confidence any non-commital reader may have in either his reliability, professional abilities, or indeed his professionalism. To others who have long since made their minds up about Klein, this particular blog post should only solidify the view that Klein's view of Klein is much inflated, and that reality hardly measures up.
In what follows, I am not going to treat with the substance, such as it may be, of Klein's post. I find it hard to deal with that substance for the simple reason that Klein comes off as so incoherent one wonders what the point of his entire post is. As Klein has continually derided bloggers for their seeming lack of journalistic virtues (whatever they may be), I suppose it not unkind or untoward to apply certain blogging virtues to Joe Klein's blogging. Sauce for the goose, as it were.
He attempts to answer a question posed by a commenter concerning reports that much of the sectarian violence is fueled by Iraqi militias trained by American counter-insurgency troops. Rather than address the question, Klein attempts to claim support for covert military action in Iraq. By American troops.
This is not the question the commenter raised, and by changing the subject, Klein makes himself sound as if he supports death squads. In an update, Klein tries to deflect what would be an obvious inference from what he had written, and in so doing, comes across as snide, superior, and still does not refute the allegation that he may just support the US training Iraqi facitonalist militias who operate as death squads in the civil war over there.
For someone who is contemptuous of bloggers for being snarky and ridiculous, Klein has certainly caught the vibe, as it were. His tone, in this post and in most of his posts, is one of disdain for his commenters, his readers, indeed anyone who does not heed the obvious wisdom and insight of a premiere journalist and author of eight books. The problem, sadly, is that Klein shows, in a short paragraph, totally incapable of framing an argument coherently, of writing out that argument thoughtfully, and in so doing totally undermines any confidence any non-commital reader may have in either his reliability, professional abilities, or indeed his professionalism. To others who have long since made their minds up about Klein, this particular blog post should only solidify the view that Klein's view of Klein is much inflated, and that reality hardly measures up.
Standing on Principle
I have been thinking more about "agreeing to disagree", with the whole way we argue and confront one another on matters, great and trivial, and the ways in which we very often hurt one another and exclude each other in pursuit of whatever goals we are trying to achieve. I have been thinking, in short, of what it means to take a stand on principle, regardless of cost, and whether or not there are alternatives to this. As both a Christian and a political lefty, I often find myself agreeing with a variety of things people say who regard my religious faith either as a delusion or as some sign of my intellectual or emotional immaturity or stuntedness, or whatever. Because my political beliefs march hand in glove with my faith - I couldn't tell you which came first, or which shaped the other more, and trying to do so is irrelevant - I find it necessary, at times, to ignore insulting, demeaning, or just plain erroneous talk about "religion" in order to pursue certain common interests. At other times, however, I take a stand, refusing to back down, and call people on whatever particular nonsense or prejudice they may be spouting off about. I will not insult or degrade (except for Sam Harris, who is a joke), but I refuse to budge in certain areas.
Yesterday, I wrote about frequent commenter and fellow blogger Democracy Lover, and our occasional disagreements. I will not deny that they have at times become quite heated. I will also never waiver in my gratefulness for his comments and thoughts, because he is as insistent on his own viewpoints as am I. I have a healthy respect for him, even when I disagree, and I believe and hope the feeling is mutual. We can disagree without ever feeling personally affronted; we can disagree without ever thinking it was necessary to convince the other of their error. We can even disagree and refuse to believe it necessary to come to some kind of fake agreement! The issues on which we disagree are vital to each of us, indeed, for my part I would call them matters of principle, perhaps even first principles. I do not think DL is either sinful or evil or awful, however, because he does not think or believe (in his case, not believe) as I do, because, as I have said many times, I am neither the font of all truth nor the holder of the secrets of the universe. Even in matters as vital as those concerning my faith, and faith in general, I concede I may be as wrong as snow in July, or Bush any day of the year. This healthy (to my way of thinking) skepticism of my own powers of intellect and insight is part of what keeps me from throwing in the towel - I recognize I may be wrong even when i am convinced I am right.
On a larger scale, I feel about taking stand on principle the same way I feel about ideological blindness - once we replace the reality with which we are faced with our beliefs about how things ought to be, and deny reality in favor of the illusional ideal, no matter how appealing aesathetically or ethically or politically, we are on the road to being no better than Bush and his cohorts, who are in such a delusional state concerning our current predicament they actually do the opposite of what people want them to do.
There is also a relevant story here. In the mid-1920's, European theology went through a bit of a renaissance, as a movement towards researches in scriptural studies, new methods of theological thought, and an insistence on the radical differentiation between the divine and the created orders swept over German-speaking (and non-German speaking as well) caught fire and ignited imaginations. As the 1920's ended and the 1930's began, however, cracks began to appear in the great wall of theological union, as political divides began to separate those formerly close friends. Karl Barth and Emil Brunner, two Swiss Reofrmed theologians, began to disagree sharply, their disagreements hidden behind turgid, and often barely readable, academic prose. Finally, as the German social, cultural, and political collapse came closer in 1932, Barth removed himself from much of the theological debate in a famous front-page editorial in the journal he started, Zwischen dem Zeiten (Between the Times), entitled simply "NO!". In it, Barth insisted he had nothing more to say to interlocutors on issues of reason versus revelation, natural theology versus revealed theology, because any inch given in this debate only aided and abetted the backers of the new, growing German primitivism and paganism. He completely broke with Brunner, and even when the latter was on his death-bed, and asked Barth for a visit, Barth refused, saying that Brunner's obstnate refusal to deny to natural humanity a capacity for divine understanding was not something that was, for Barth, forgiveable. Barth saw Brunner as an intellectual aid to the horrific paganism of Nazism, which of course was not true. Yet, Barth was taking a stand on principle, and in so doing, missed an opportunity to visit an old friend and see him off.
More than anything else, it is this story that effects me the most. When ideological fervor, and insistence on principle, interferes with human relations; when ideology replaces reality; when principle becomes more important than people, that is where I cease to stand on principle. Perhaps that is my principle - people are more important than ideas. People are more important than beliefs. Real, breathing, thinking, feeling people - even those with whom I disagree on matters of vital urgency and importance - are far more important than those matters. Perhaps it is that, more than anything else, that separates me from s many others. I will bend and even break if another person is hurting or in need or reaching out in an honest way. I will not grant them correctness in their beliefs; I will not concede an inch in any disagreements we may have. But I will be their friend if they need it. I will help if they ask. I will support them as one individual to another if they need anything at all.
Perhaps getting along doesn't necessitate going along, you know?
Yesterday, I wrote about frequent commenter and fellow blogger Democracy Lover, and our occasional disagreements. I will not deny that they have at times become quite heated. I will also never waiver in my gratefulness for his comments and thoughts, because he is as insistent on his own viewpoints as am I. I have a healthy respect for him, even when I disagree, and I believe and hope the feeling is mutual. We can disagree without ever feeling personally affronted; we can disagree without ever thinking it was necessary to convince the other of their error. We can even disagree and refuse to believe it necessary to come to some kind of fake agreement! The issues on which we disagree are vital to each of us, indeed, for my part I would call them matters of principle, perhaps even first principles. I do not think DL is either sinful or evil or awful, however, because he does not think or believe (in his case, not believe) as I do, because, as I have said many times, I am neither the font of all truth nor the holder of the secrets of the universe. Even in matters as vital as those concerning my faith, and faith in general, I concede I may be as wrong as snow in July, or Bush any day of the year. This healthy (to my way of thinking) skepticism of my own powers of intellect and insight is part of what keeps me from throwing in the towel - I recognize I may be wrong even when i am convinced I am right.
On a larger scale, I feel about taking stand on principle the same way I feel about ideological blindness - once we replace the reality with which we are faced with our beliefs about how things ought to be, and deny reality in favor of the illusional ideal, no matter how appealing aesathetically or ethically or politically, we are on the road to being no better than Bush and his cohorts, who are in such a delusional state concerning our current predicament they actually do the opposite of what people want them to do.
There is also a relevant story here. In the mid-1920's, European theology went through a bit of a renaissance, as a movement towards researches in scriptural studies, new methods of theological thought, and an insistence on the radical differentiation between the divine and the created orders swept over German-speaking (and non-German speaking as well) caught fire and ignited imaginations. As the 1920's ended and the 1930's began, however, cracks began to appear in the great wall of theological union, as political divides began to separate those formerly close friends. Karl Barth and Emil Brunner, two Swiss Reofrmed theologians, began to disagree sharply, their disagreements hidden behind turgid, and often barely readable, academic prose. Finally, as the German social, cultural, and political collapse came closer in 1932, Barth removed himself from much of the theological debate in a famous front-page editorial in the journal he started, Zwischen dem Zeiten (Between the Times), entitled simply "NO!". In it, Barth insisted he had nothing more to say to interlocutors on issues of reason versus revelation, natural theology versus revealed theology, because any inch given in this debate only aided and abetted the backers of the new, growing German primitivism and paganism. He completely broke with Brunner, and even when the latter was on his death-bed, and asked Barth for a visit, Barth refused, saying that Brunner's obstnate refusal to deny to natural humanity a capacity for divine understanding was not something that was, for Barth, forgiveable. Barth saw Brunner as an intellectual aid to the horrific paganism of Nazism, which of course was not true. Yet, Barth was taking a stand on principle, and in so doing, missed an opportunity to visit an old friend and see him off.
More than anything else, it is this story that effects me the most. When ideological fervor, and insistence on principle, interferes with human relations; when ideology replaces reality; when principle becomes more important than people, that is where I cease to stand on principle. Perhaps that is my principle - people are more important than ideas. People are more important than beliefs. Real, breathing, thinking, feeling people - even those with whom I disagree on matters of vital urgency and importance - are far more important than those matters. Perhaps it is that, more than anything else, that separates me from s many others. I will bend and even break if another person is hurting or in need or reaching out in an honest way. I will not grant them correctness in their beliefs; I will not concede an inch in any disagreements we may have. But I will be their friend if they need it. I will help if they ask. I will support them as one individual to another if they need anything at all.
Perhaps getting along doesn't necessitate going along, you know?
The Great Writ
In an exchange between Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, the Attorney General asserted that there is no grant of habeas corpus in the Constitution. When I first heard of the exchange yesterday, I was in the midst of other things, concerns, etc., and wanted to have time to consult a transcript to read for myself what Gonzalez said. Well, Think Progress has it, and he actually said it. One of the copies of the Constitution I have says, in Article I, section 9: The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it. By inference, if the privilege can only be suspended under very certain, named circumstances (the mechanism for such suspension is a matter of controversy, and Lincoln used that controversy by suspending the writ in Maryland during the Civil War through executive order; the Supreme Court rulings on this instance are muddled, but generally supportive) one would have to assume the privilege exists without regard to the status of the person in question. Of course, as that old middle-school taunt goes, when you "assume" you make an "ass" out of "u" and "me", so perhaps Gonzalez is taking nothing for granted here.
I'm sorry, I couldn't even continue that line of thought. We are approaching the 900th anniversary of the signing of the Magna Carta, in which the sovereign, at the time King John, agreed, among other things, to consultation with his nobles over legislation. He also agreed that he was beholden to certain legal limitations in his action as jurist, and if presented with a writ, had to produce a person imprisoned and present publicly the charges and evidence against that person. At the beginnings, the Great Writ, as it has become known, was a very limited affair, but the dual principle of the limitations of judicial power and the claims of the individual over and against arbitrary abuse and imprisonment by the state were implanted and have grown steadily over the centuries.
I wonder where Gonzalez went to law school. I wonder where Gonzalez practiced law. I wonder . . . I wonder a lot of things. Most of all, I wonder how, after making such a statement, the Senate didn't immediately demand he step down from the office of Chief Law Enforcement Officer of the United States, as he has shown, if through no other action but this one, that he is singularly unqualified to hold the office to which he is entrusted. Of course, that would be on par with the rest of the Bush group; last week, new Secretary of Defense Robert Gatges said he "wasn't an expert" on military matters. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice was tossed under the bus by Robert Novak for bad management at Foggy Bottom. Gonzalez' DoJ is replacing career prosecutors at US Attorney offices with political hacks as these career prosecutors go after corruption cases with links to the Administration (Talking Points Memo continues to be on this case; thank God, quite literally, for Joshua Micah Marshall). The end is listless, as they say, and we are left to shake our heads in baffled confusion - how did this happen?
My suggestion is that we send AG Gonzalez a copy of the Constitution, with the particular passage in question highlighted; a dictionary with all the words conained in the clause highlighted; an introductory level logic textbook so that Gonzalez can learn about inference, about hidden premises, and the uses of syllogisms in drawing conclusions. All this with a bus ticket - why spring for airfare for this joker? - back to Texas, where he can hang his shingle out and practice law, arguing against all sorts of things that are in the Constitution.
I'm sorry, I couldn't even continue that line of thought. We are approaching the 900th anniversary of the signing of the Magna Carta, in which the sovereign, at the time King John, agreed, among other things, to consultation with his nobles over legislation. He also agreed that he was beholden to certain legal limitations in his action as jurist, and if presented with a writ, had to produce a person imprisoned and present publicly the charges and evidence against that person. At the beginnings, the Great Writ, as it has become known, was a very limited affair, but the dual principle of the limitations of judicial power and the claims of the individual over and against arbitrary abuse and imprisonment by the state were implanted and have grown steadily over the centuries.
I wonder where Gonzalez went to law school. I wonder where Gonzalez practiced law. I wonder . . . I wonder a lot of things. Most of all, I wonder how, after making such a statement, the Senate didn't immediately demand he step down from the office of Chief Law Enforcement Officer of the United States, as he has shown, if through no other action but this one, that he is singularly unqualified to hold the office to which he is entrusted. Of course, that would be on par with the rest of the Bush group; last week, new Secretary of Defense Robert Gatges said he "wasn't an expert" on military matters. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice was tossed under the bus by Robert Novak for bad management at Foggy Bottom. Gonzalez' DoJ is replacing career prosecutors at US Attorney offices with political hacks as these career prosecutors go after corruption cases with links to the Administration (Talking Points Memo continues to be on this case; thank God, quite literally, for Joshua Micah Marshall). The end is listless, as they say, and we are left to shake our heads in baffled confusion - how did this happen?
My suggestion is that we send AG Gonzalez a copy of the Constitution, with the particular passage in question highlighted; a dictionary with all the words conained in the clause highlighted; an introductory level logic textbook so that Gonzalez can learn about inference, about hidden premises, and the uses of syllogisms in drawing conclusions. All this with a bus ticket - why spring for airfare for this joker? - back to Texas, where he can hang his shingle out and practice law, arguing against all sorts of things that are in the Constitution.
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Intellectual Debate
First, I think it is wonderful that linked blog and frequent commenter Democracy Lover has returned to posting on his blog. While we agree to disagree on a variety of issues, especially religion, I am grateful for his presence, because he keeps me on my toes. I have respect for anyone who refuses to back down because he or she recognizes that intellectual debate is more than just a sparring of words but tied into life. We are agreed on one point, and I think it overcomes the differences between us, differences I think might have created a great rift at another time - we are under the rule of a criminal Administration, unconstrained by law or any sense of duty towards the commonweal and health of the society it supposedly governs. Alberto Gonzalez' appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee today is a case study in their obstinate refusal to (a) live or govern by the rule of law; or (b) accept responsibility or admit their failings.
With DL's return, and because of my admiration for him (or her, I have never figured out which), I want to address the whole issue of intellectual debate. Of course, while I have been mulling this particular issue, Atrios, Matthew Yglesias, DKos, and other big-name bloggers have addressed it as well, but I insist that I am not following them (I refuse to link to them because I am not following them; if you want to read their views, follow the links on this site) although my own conclusion to the internal debate in my head echoes many of their concerns. I have come to my conclusions as a result of my own experiences, including preparing to get a doctorate in philosophy (can't get more egregiously intellectual than that, I suppose). As I was finishing up my course work, I discovered that my studies were guided not only by my intellectual interests, but my existential interest as well. Philosophy of science as a sub-generalization is good practice for a larger understanding of the ways in which we come to understand our world. It branches out, through Wittgenstein and Kuhn, to the pragmatism of Richard Rorty and from there to the radical Christian socialism of Cornel West (if you follow any argument far enough, you wind up at the beginning again, having discovered you have walked in a big circle!). In other words, I wasn't studying Karl Popper, Rudolf Carnap, and Thomas Kuhn because I found them intellectually stimulating but because I was trying to figure out, for myself, how and why we think the way we do, and how to be honest about what I believe in as thorough a manner as possible. The detachment I found among my fellow students I found disheartening; they studied what they did because it might find them a good position at some university somewhere. There was no commitment there, no sense that intellectual debate was tied to the great substantive issues of our time and of our lives.
When I engage any other blogger on an intellectual level, I am not just throwing around bullshit for the sake of showing how smart or educated I am (although that occasionally creeps in, and when it does, I would hope others would call me on it). What I have learned, my teachers once removed as it were, is part and parcel of my identity. I am who I am partly because this great cloud of witnesses to whom I return time and again have given me the tools to figure out my world, to understand it, and to move and think and live within it with as much integrity as anyone.
Intellectual debate for its own sake I find not just hollow and shallow, but horrific in its dishonesty. Anyone can take up a position and argue it regardless of their personal commitments; lawyers do this all the time. The times we live in, however, are much too perilous, and the stakes far too high, to think that we can or should play games. Not only do we have to get our facts right, we have to get our thinking about these facts right as well. I have no illusions about how consistenly this will happen or my own role in this process, but I still think it is necessary, and that is why I continue to blog even when I recognize, as I did a couple days ago, that we are on the cusp of a serious constitutional crisis, one in which blogging may be re-arranging the deck chairs on the ship of the American state. The only choice I have, is to do what I can with the tools I have. All I am saying here, in as round about a fashion as possible, is that intellectual debate is not worthless, or nonsensical bullshitting, but the role I find not only most comfortable for myself, but pushes the limits both of my abilities and my time and energy.
With DL's return, and because of my admiration for him (or her, I have never figured out which), I want to address the whole issue of intellectual debate. Of course, while I have been mulling this particular issue, Atrios, Matthew Yglesias, DKos, and other big-name bloggers have addressed it as well, but I insist that I am not following them (I refuse to link to them because I am not following them; if you want to read their views, follow the links on this site) although my own conclusion to the internal debate in my head echoes many of their concerns. I have come to my conclusions as a result of my own experiences, including preparing to get a doctorate in philosophy (can't get more egregiously intellectual than that, I suppose). As I was finishing up my course work, I discovered that my studies were guided not only by my intellectual interests, but my existential interest as well. Philosophy of science as a sub-generalization is good practice for a larger understanding of the ways in which we come to understand our world. It branches out, through Wittgenstein and Kuhn, to the pragmatism of Richard Rorty and from there to the radical Christian socialism of Cornel West (if you follow any argument far enough, you wind up at the beginning again, having discovered you have walked in a big circle!). In other words, I wasn't studying Karl Popper, Rudolf Carnap, and Thomas Kuhn because I found them intellectually stimulating but because I was trying to figure out, for myself, how and why we think the way we do, and how to be honest about what I believe in as thorough a manner as possible. The detachment I found among my fellow students I found disheartening; they studied what they did because it might find them a good position at some university somewhere. There was no commitment there, no sense that intellectual debate was tied to the great substantive issues of our time and of our lives.
When I engage any other blogger on an intellectual level, I am not just throwing around bullshit for the sake of showing how smart or educated I am (although that occasionally creeps in, and when it does, I would hope others would call me on it). What I have learned, my teachers once removed as it were, is part and parcel of my identity. I am who I am partly because this great cloud of witnesses to whom I return time and again have given me the tools to figure out my world, to understand it, and to move and think and live within it with as much integrity as anyone.
Intellectual debate for its own sake I find not just hollow and shallow, but horrific in its dishonesty. Anyone can take up a position and argue it regardless of their personal commitments; lawyers do this all the time. The times we live in, however, are much too perilous, and the stakes far too high, to think that we can or should play games. Not only do we have to get our facts right, we have to get our thinking about these facts right as well. I have no illusions about how consistenly this will happen or my own role in this process, but I still think it is necessary, and that is why I continue to blog even when I recognize, as I did a couple days ago, that we are on the cusp of a serious constitutional crisis, one in which blogging may be re-arranging the deck chairs on the ship of the American state. The only choice I have, is to do what I can with the tools I have. All I am saying here, in as round about a fashion as possible, is that intellectual debate is not worthless, or nonsensical bullshitting, but the role I find not only most comfortable for myself, but pushes the limits both of my abilities and my time and energy.
Taking on the Press
This is an issue on which I have flip-flopped - like John Kerry and John McCain I was for it before I was against it before I was for it before I . . . well, you get the idea - and I am shifting in the particular winds of our current troubles to thinking that, in fact, there is a utility to addressing issues, not so much of bias in the news (at least ideological bias), so much as questions of simple erroneous reporting. This is why, for example, I think it serves little purpose to highlight the most egregious examples of right-wing nonsense (Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage) as Media Matters continues to do. On the other hand, I think Spocko's battle with KSFO is a more appropriate approach - frought with hazards as the case proves. It is not enough to simply highlight the most awful political pornography, but to actually do something about it - in Spocko's case, send emails including clips, to show the sponsors what their money is paying for.
On the other hand, Media Matters, The Daily Howler, and, as a specific example, this from Greg Sargent at TPMmuckraker, do serve the public by highlighting the ways in which the limited intellect, certain personal and institutionals biases, and just plain stupidity (the piece by Sargent shows not so much Millbank's stupidity as intellectual dishonesty in service to a bias against Sen. Clinton). I say this because I see the effects of such reporting uopn the public. I doubt we shall see a change in journalistic practices any time soon, but at least we will have watchdogs to make sure that any serious nonsense is called out.
I also see the ways in which reporting on the net has an actual effect on the way our elected leaders behave, and it was on display today in a Senate hearing room. Josh Marshall has been all over the story of the replacement of close to a dozen US Attorneys by the DoJ under a provision of the USAPatriot Act. In one case, in San Diego, the replacement is a political hack with direct ties to Karl Rove. This story, which would have fallen below the radar of traditional media because of its obvious obscurity and seeming lack of relevance to most Americans, has not been let go, and today Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez was questioned, indeed "grilled" is an appropriate term of art in this case, on this issue, and his dodges were not up to the persistence of the Senators.
I am not completely covinced of the efficacy of all such reporting and careful scrutiny of the press. I do think, however, that when it is done well - and Joshua Marshall does it very, very well - it becomes a kind of meta-journalism, giving us information stripped of institutional bias, beholden to no agenda other than a recognition that government exists to serve the public interest. There is a healthy skepticism without the faux cynicism of so much of our Washington Press Corps, too many of whom think they have it all figured out.
I am sure my mind will change again at some other time, perhaps when I fail to see results from all the efforts of various members of the internet community. For now, however, I think the work ispaying off, so my pragmatic support for such efforts will continue.
On the other hand, Media Matters, The Daily Howler, and, as a specific example, this from Greg Sargent at TPMmuckraker, do serve the public by highlighting the ways in which the limited intellect, certain personal and institutionals biases, and just plain stupidity (the piece by Sargent shows not so much Millbank's stupidity as intellectual dishonesty in service to a bias against Sen. Clinton). I say this because I see the effects of such reporting uopn the public. I doubt we shall see a change in journalistic practices any time soon, but at least we will have watchdogs to make sure that any serious nonsense is called out.
I also see the ways in which reporting on the net has an actual effect on the way our elected leaders behave, and it was on display today in a Senate hearing room. Josh Marshall has been all over the story of the replacement of close to a dozen US Attorneys by the DoJ under a provision of the USAPatriot Act. In one case, in San Diego, the replacement is a political hack with direct ties to Karl Rove. This story, which would have fallen below the radar of traditional media because of its obvious obscurity and seeming lack of relevance to most Americans, has not been let go, and today Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez was questioned, indeed "grilled" is an appropriate term of art in this case, on this issue, and his dodges were not up to the persistence of the Senators.
I am not completely covinced of the efficacy of all such reporting and careful scrutiny of the press. I do think, however, that when it is done well - and Joshua Marshall does it very, very well - it becomes a kind of meta-journalism, giving us information stripped of institutional bias, beholden to no agenda other than a recognition that government exists to serve the public interest. There is a healthy skepticism without the faux cynicism of so much of our Washington Press Corps, too many of whom think they have it all figured out.
I am sure my mind will change again at some other time, perhaps when I fail to see results from all the efforts of various members of the internet community. For now, however, I think the work ispaying off, so my pragmatic support for such efforts will continue.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Why Did He Bother Writing This?
At the end of his latest column, Charles Krauthammer tries and fails to make an allusion to a literary classic, Goethe's Faust, and fails. Faust was not interested in the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, but merely to enhance himself. Faust made no promises to anyone, except himself, and even then he realized his deal with Mephistopheles was not so much evil as misguided. A better literary example, perhaps, would have been Shelley's Frankenstein, where the "modern Prometheus" oversteps the boundaries of morally acceptable behavior out of a concern not only for knowledge in and for itself, but out of a desire to serve humanity. His creation turns on him precisely because it refuses to be a means, but as a living creature with both will and understanding, should be an end in and of and for itself. Even here, I suppose the analogy breaks down (as all analogies do and must in the end) because, unlike Frankenstein's creation, emrbyos and stem cells aredevoid of even that level of being that Frankenstein's monster attains.
I point out the failure of Krauthammer's allusion as an object lesson. It points out the utter uselessness, indeed pointlessness, of the column. If one takes him at his word within the context of the column itself, it is, in the end quite literally meaningless, and his praise of Bush equally meaningless. To make an incorrect allusion to Faust only illustrates how utterly vacuous a thousand or so words can be.
In the column, praising Bush for limiting stem cell research funding, Krauthammer sets out his objections to Bush's original policy: he had no problem with stem-cell research; he had no problem with experimentation upon embryos that would have been discarded (although Krauthammer uses the morally loaded term "killed"); he was opposed to Bush's original policy for a variety or reasons.
Yet, somehow, Bush outsmarted even Dr. Krauthammer, because, lo and behold! they have found stem cells in amniotic fluid that are capable of the kind of manipulation that embryonic stem cells are. So, you see, Bush was right, even though he was wrong, because now we don't have to experiment on embryos even though he has no problem with such research (although he does make the rather strange, and equally meaningless statement that embryos aren't "nothing"; well, if they aren't nothing, which is both true and irrelevant, wwhat are they because that is the heart of the issue). He faults those who promoted such research for promising too much, which of course they did not ever do. They offered the possibility that embryonic stem cell research offered promising results, but that research was necessary in order to find out exactly how promising. With the funding for such research cut off, there was no way for any of the promises potentially existent within embryonic stem cells to be shown to be hollow or not. Krauthammer admits that religious fundamentalism was behind the decision, but calls the charge loaded, because secularists can be troubled by embryonic stem cell research, too. That such arguments weren't used, Krauthammer acknowledges, it is just that they could have been.
So, Bush was right even though he was wrong. Krauthammer was wrong even though he was right. Bush's critics were wrong even though they were right, and Krauthammer agreed with them. And Faust promised us nirvanna.
I haven't read such cocakmamie drivel since someone compared Bush's speechifying to Winston Churchill.
Oh, wait, that was Krauthammer, too.
Maybe he should go back to psychiatry, but take a logic course, first.
I point out the failure of Krauthammer's allusion as an object lesson. It points out the utter uselessness, indeed pointlessness, of the column. If one takes him at his word within the context of the column itself, it is, in the end quite literally meaningless, and his praise of Bush equally meaningless. To make an incorrect allusion to Faust only illustrates how utterly vacuous a thousand or so words can be.
In the column, praising Bush for limiting stem cell research funding, Krauthammer sets out his objections to Bush's original policy: he had no problem with stem-cell research; he had no problem with experimentation upon embryos that would have been discarded (although Krauthammer uses the morally loaded term "killed"); he was opposed to Bush's original policy for a variety or reasons.
Yet, somehow, Bush outsmarted even Dr. Krauthammer, because, lo and behold! they have found stem cells in amniotic fluid that are capable of the kind of manipulation that embryonic stem cells are. So, you see, Bush was right, even though he was wrong, because now we don't have to experiment on embryos even though he has no problem with such research (although he does make the rather strange, and equally meaningless statement that embryos aren't "nothing"; well, if they aren't nothing, which is both true and irrelevant, wwhat are they because that is the heart of the issue). He faults those who promoted such research for promising too much, which of course they did not ever do. They offered the possibility that embryonic stem cell research offered promising results, but that research was necessary in order to find out exactly how promising. With the funding for such research cut off, there was no way for any of the promises potentially existent within embryonic stem cells to be shown to be hollow or not. Krauthammer admits that religious fundamentalism was behind the decision, but calls the charge loaded, because secularists can be troubled by embryonic stem cell research, too. That such arguments weren't used, Krauthammer acknowledges, it is just that they could have been.
So, Bush was right even though he was wrong. Krauthammer was wrong even though he was right. Bush's critics were wrong even though they were right, and Krauthammer agreed with them. And Faust promised us nirvanna.
I haven't read such cocakmamie drivel since someone compared Bush's speechifying to Winston Churchill.
Oh, wait, that was Krauthammer, too.
Maybe he should go back to psychiatry, but take a logic course, first.
Playing with Identity - the anti-narcissism of Jim Carey
I was going to post something of a long follow-up to yesterday's post, but I got all depressed just thinking about it, so I am turning to film-crit today as an antidote.
With the exception of his first film vehicle, Ace Centura Pet Detective, most of the major films Jim Carey has done have revolved around issues of identity. Whether it is the inane Liar Liar or the sublime The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Truman Show or the missed opportunity Bruce Almighty, Carey plays characters who wrestle with the question, "Who am I, really?" This was taken to new heights when he played the late Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon, as Kaufman himself played with identity constantly, even in real life. I want to argue in what follows that the search for identity, as portrayed by Carey at least in his films, is the essential opposite of the general narcissism first analyzed by Christopher Lasch in his best-selling The Culture of Narcissism.
As Lasch describes it, narcissism is the opposite of selfishness, although both the word and his work have too often been misinterpreted this way. Rather than selfishness, narcissism is a character disorder in which the individual's sense of self is actually void. In a desperate search for filling this void, the narcissistic personality seeks to fill this void, the obsessive search leading to "reading into" reality nothing less than a reflection of the empty self of the individual. In other words, a narcissist does not know who he or she is, and compensates by creating a world that fills this void through the externalization of certain wish-fulfillments and desires. The world becomes a mirror of all the individual wishes were true about him- or herself, or conversely believes to be true but is afraid to admit.
Carey's characters, on the other hand, reach a crisis of identity at some point in the film. An amoral attorney is forced to tell the truth; a frustrated local TV news reporter is given the opportunity to be God; a man whose entire life is a television show breaks the bonds placed upon him by the rules of the show; a man discovers that he has used a tool for removing memories of a love-affair. A comedian pushes the boundaries of what constitutes comedy - pushing role-playing into real life. All these roles' create dramatic tension and action by forcing the characters to confront the fact that they are not who they think they are. There are both limits against which an individual should not push - becoming god, removing a part of one's identity in a search for emotional peace - and false limits that inhibit the full realization fo the self - the artifical rules of a television show; the propriety of playing a character off stage. At their best, these films show that what does and does not constitute a "limit" is often unclear the closer one gets to understanding these limits, and this provides a remarkable flexibility as to how one should respond. Andy Kaufman can insist he is someone else - an obnoxious agent, a pro-wrestler - and force others to accept the reality of these characters, even though they know he is "only" acting; Bruce can manipulate reality to fit his own desires through divince powers, only to find that in so doing, he distorts reality (Bruce Almighty could have been a great film if the producers, writers, and director had placed restrictions and discipline upon Carey and upon the story-telling; they did not and the film fails in the end to explore the meaning of what Carey's character experiences); Truman Burbank's world is both smaller and more artificial than he realizes, and rejects the definitions placed upon him by those who seek to control him for entertainment purposes.
Truman's rebellion is the most interesting to me. On the one hand, I have always felt that, having lived within the studio and within the rules set by the studio all his life, his rebellion makes little sense. He has few tools beyond those granted him to understand who he is, where he lives, how he lives, and what constitutes "normal" human behavior and the structure of his surroundings. When confronted with the artificiality of it all, it provokes not a profound ontological crisis and break with the "reality" with which he is faced, but a recognition of its inherent artificiality and a refusal to accept it. I often wonder what Truman does after he walks through that door at the end of the film. What tools does he possess to actually function in society? His resilience in fighting against the limitations of the only world he has ever known would hardly constitute the stuff of which sound living are made.
Despite all his flaws and limitations as a performer, I find Carey's films consistent on one point - the characters he plays do not seek to compensate for a lack of self by projecting onto the world their wishes and/or fears (the exception, I supppose, is The Mask, but even here, Carey rejects the mask and what it means, preferring to be himself even if living so presents a threat to himself) but rather are insistent assertions of the wholeness of the self and its resources, even within limits, in a world where too often such are denied. His characters, as goofy and ridiculous as they are at times, have not only an inner strength, but a certain moral and personal core that is impervious to the assaults of a world that insists that personhood is a construct of social forces, but void in and of and for itself.
In coming back again and again to these themes, one wonders if Carey is not saying something about himself in choosing these roles. Is he showing his own inner strength and centeredness as an individual? Is he giving us, the viewers, an object lesson in what is possible if one denies the deniers? Do we learn about our own strength in the face of the opposite threats to selfhood presented by the limitations placed upon us and the limitlessness of personal development? As to the last, I hope so. A fully-developed personality would be able to hand over divine duties to god in the end without a sigh or whimper. Even a stunted and under-developed personality, constrained by artificiality, if strong and possessing an understanding of self that accepts, in the end, this very artificiality, can win in the end. Losing the memory of a painfully lost romance robs us of part of our identity; pain is as much a part of who we are as pleasure, and choosing an easy way out steals our souls.
I am a reluctant fan of Jim Carey, but, like with Robin Williams, when forced through strong direction and the discipline of good scripts to rein in his own penchant for acting goofy, he provides consistent performances and offers a healthy view of a surprising type - the anti-narcissist struggling against the dicates of a culture that wants us all to be empty vessels. His film carrer is less than two decades old, but I think he has a whole lot left in him, and the possibilities, based upon his previous choices, are very good for all sorts of accolades and honors.
With the exception of his first film vehicle, Ace Centura Pet Detective, most of the major films Jim Carey has done have revolved around issues of identity. Whether it is the inane Liar Liar or the sublime The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Truman Show or the missed opportunity Bruce Almighty, Carey plays characters who wrestle with the question, "Who am I, really?" This was taken to new heights when he played the late Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon, as Kaufman himself played with identity constantly, even in real life. I want to argue in what follows that the search for identity, as portrayed by Carey at least in his films, is the essential opposite of the general narcissism first analyzed by Christopher Lasch in his best-selling The Culture of Narcissism.
As Lasch describes it, narcissism is the opposite of selfishness, although both the word and his work have too often been misinterpreted this way. Rather than selfishness, narcissism is a character disorder in which the individual's sense of self is actually void. In a desperate search for filling this void, the narcissistic personality seeks to fill this void, the obsessive search leading to "reading into" reality nothing less than a reflection of the empty self of the individual. In other words, a narcissist does not know who he or she is, and compensates by creating a world that fills this void through the externalization of certain wish-fulfillments and desires. The world becomes a mirror of all the individual wishes were true about him- or herself, or conversely believes to be true but is afraid to admit.
Carey's characters, on the other hand, reach a crisis of identity at some point in the film. An amoral attorney is forced to tell the truth; a frustrated local TV news reporter is given the opportunity to be God; a man whose entire life is a television show breaks the bonds placed upon him by the rules of the show; a man discovers that he has used a tool for removing memories of a love-affair. A comedian pushes the boundaries of what constitutes comedy - pushing role-playing into real life. All these roles' create dramatic tension and action by forcing the characters to confront the fact that they are not who they think they are. There are both limits against which an individual should not push - becoming god, removing a part of one's identity in a search for emotional peace - and false limits that inhibit the full realization fo the self - the artifical rules of a television show; the propriety of playing a character off stage. At their best, these films show that what does and does not constitute a "limit" is often unclear the closer one gets to understanding these limits, and this provides a remarkable flexibility as to how one should respond. Andy Kaufman can insist he is someone else - an obnoxious agent, a pro-wrestler - and force others to accept the reality of these characters, even though they know he is "only" acting; Bruce can manipulate reality to fit his own desires through divince powers, only to find that in so doing, he distorts reality (Bruce Almighty could have been a great film if the producers, writers, and director had placed restrictions and discipline upon Carey and upon the story-telling; they did not and the film fails in the end to explore the meaning of what Carey's character experiences); Truman Burbank's world is both smaller and more artificial than he realizes, and rejects the definitions placed upon him by those who seek to control him for entertainment purposes.
Truman's rebellion is the most interesting to me. On the one hand, I have always felt that, having lived within the studio and within the rules set by the studio all his life, his rebellion makes little sense. He has few tools beyond those granted him to understand who he is, where he lives, how he lives, and what constitutes "normal" human behavior and the structure of his surroundings. When confronted with the artificiality of it all, it provokes not a profound ontological crisis and break with the "reality" with which he is faced, but a recognition of its inherent artificiality and a refusal to accept it. I often wonder what Truman does after he walks through that door at the end of the film. What tools does he possess to actually function in society? His resilience in fighting against the limitations of the only world he has ever known would hardly constitute the stuff of which sound living are made.
Despite all his flaws and limitations as a performer, I find Carey's films consistent on one point - the characters he plays do not seek to compensate for a lack of self by projecting onto the world their wishes and/or fears (the exception, I supppose, is The Mask, but even here, Carey rejects the mask and what it means, preferring to be himself even if living so presents a threat to himself) but rather are insistent assertions of the wholeness of the self and its resources, even within limits, in a world where too often such are denied. His characters, as goofy and ridiculous as they are at times, have not only an inner strength, but a certain moral and personal core that is impervious to the assaults of a world that insists that personhood is a construct of social forces, but void in and of and for itself.
In coming back again and again to these themes, one wonders if Carey is not saying something about himself in choosing these roles. Is he showing his own inner strength and centeredness as an individual? Is he giving us, the viewers, an object lesson in what is possible if one denies the deniers? Do we learn about our own strength in the face of the opposite threats to selfhood presented by the limitations placed upon us and the limitlessness of personal development? As to the last, I hope so. A fully-developed personality would be able to hand over divine duties to god in the end without a sigh or whimper. Even a stunted and under-developed personality, constrained by artificiality, if strong and possessing an understanding of self that accepts, in the end, this very artificiality, can win in the end. Losing the memory of a painfully lost romance robs us of part of our identity; pain is as much a part of who we are as pleasure, and choosing an easy way out steals our souls.
I am a reluctant fan of Jim Carey, but, like with Robin Williams, when forced through strong direction and the discipline of good scripts to rein in his own penchant for acting goofy, he provides consistent performances and offers a healthy view of a surprising type - the anti-narcissist struggling against the dicates of a culture that wants us all to be empty vessels. His film carrer is less than two decades old, but I think he has a whole lot left in him, and the possibilities, based upon his previous choices, are very good for all sorts of accolades and honors.
Monday, January 15, 2007
The Irrelevance of Everyone and the Possibilities for an Individual of Courage
With Vice-President Cheney's appearance on Fox and the President's interview on 60 Minutes yesterday, we were given a glimpse of the new America. No more are we in a land where the voice of the people matters. No more do we act through our elected representatives in Congress. No more are our views important, relevant, or otherwise a part of policy decision-making. No more are our pundits, bloggers, coffee house banter, work-place discussions, church social-hour talk at all meaningful or helpful. Journalism is a thing of the past. We are to sit still and follow our leaders. If we don't follow, too bad because they are leading anyway.
In his Politics, Aristotle called tyranny the end of political life. Because there was no way, within a tyrannical system, to redress grievances, to formulate policy based upon balancing interests, or to check the power of the ruler, political life, for all intents and purposes, comes to an end with the rise of a tyrant. George Bush, and with him Dick Cheney, have now declared for all the nation and world to see and hear, that they do not consider public opinion or Congress worthy of governance or a role in governance. They formulate policy and carry it forward without regard for legal niceties, constitutional checks on power, or the pro forma consultation with Congress. They are now, for all intents and purposes, putting an end to politics in America, at least at a national level. All the discussion, debate, resolutions, and even laws can and will continue to go forward, but they will have no effect upon the actions of the White House. The President feels himself unconstrained by anything or wnyone, and his VP argues forcefullly that the President, as commander-in-chief, can do what he wants in a time of war. Period.
On this day, when we remember the courage of one man who stood against law and custom to proclaim that we had yet to become a great nation because of our failure to grant legal and human dignity to millions among us; when we remember the courage that faced the hatred of Bull Connor, the scheming of J. Edgar Hoover, the manipulations of the Kennedy brothers, the fractiousness of his fellow Civil Rights leaders, the rage of the growing Black Power movement, and his own growing irrelevance as time and events outstripped his desire to shape a movement for all Americans - when we remember all this, we should find strength in knowing that one person, who faces fear and hatred, dogs and hoses and bullets and bombs, can make a difference. Who among us today is willing to stand up to the tyrant in the White House and call him out for what he is? Who among us is willing to stand up to a corrupt establishment, blind to the realities around them, announced around them, and tell them - press and pundits, House and Senate, courts and lawyers - that they no longer matter, and will continue to matter no more as long as they refuse to work to end what has become, for all practical purposes, the assertion of tyrannical authority?
In saying that "everyone" is irrelevant, I am suggesting that this is a unique moment, perhaps unprecedented in American history. We have an Executive officer of the United States, asserting without compunction or fear, that he can do what he wants when he wants to, and there is no authority to stop him. As long as members of the various checks upon power in this country - journalists and pundits, Congressmen and Senators, the courts and the lawyers - continue to treat him as just another President, saying and doing things in a political manner (thus rendering his words, for all practical purposes meaningless in and of themselves) there are no more institutions in this country to stop him. As long as we all play the game, go through the motions, register our defiance on blogs, in letters to the editor, in special order speeches on the floor of the House or debate in the Senate, in argument before the Supreme Court, no one will know that our liberty has been stripped from us, our rights taken away in the utterance of a few words, leaving us bereft of choices and places to turn.
One person, or perhaps many individuals in many places, not acting together, but each acting out of the realization that the situation had reached a point beyond the control of all our normal checks on power, can make a difference. Shout it from the rooftops, whisper the words - "tyrant", "lawless", "dictator" - among yourselves, get yourselves used to them and thier use as applied to our current Administration. Once they become familiar within a small group, spread these words to others. Talk at work, at church, synagogue, and mosque or around the kitchen table.
Perhaps we will have one person, one individual with the courage to stand and say, softly enough to be heard under the chatter and blather that is now as meaningless as a debate in Esperanto, "Stop!" Perhaps an individual will emerge who can take all these other individuals and make them into something greater than themselves as individuals - a movement to open the eyes of the American people and American ruling class that, in the course of one short January day, they were all rendered irrelevant by the President and Vice-President, that we no longer have a funtioning polity, and that we have to fight to get it back.
There was a time when I would have thought such talk as this was fear-mongering of the worst sort. Hearing the words of Bush and Cheney yesterday, and taking both of them at their words - trusting that they truly meant what they said in the midst of all the blather and nonsense and fabrications and lies - I can no longer pretend that anything less than some kind of citizen action to stop them is necessary. In closing off all recourse to political action as it should be constituted, they leave us little room for anything else. Most radically, I do not believe impeachment would matter, because, if convicted by the Senate, I do not believe for one moment that either man would leave office. They have already said quite clearly they do not consider the actions of Congress relevant; why should impeachment be any different than any other Congressional act?
On this day, when we remember a man of hope, of courage, of energy and intellect, a man of peace and love (not squishy, sentimental love but the tough love that comes from facing harsh realities) we should not just pray but act to ensure that his legacy - an America where politics matters, where people matter, where the actions of government matter in the lives of individuals - does not end on one January Sunday in the words of a failed President and an embittered Vice-President. We should honor Martin Luther King, Jr. by starting today to spread the word that we have to act now, right now, to ensure our democracy, our republic, still stands.
In his Politics, Aristotle called tyranny the end of political life. Because there was no way, within a tyrannical system, to redress grievances, to formulate policy based upon balancing interests, or to check the power of the ruler, political life, for all intents and purposes, comes to an end with the rise of a tyrant. George Bush, and with him Dick Cheney, have now declared for all the nation and world to see and hear, that they do not consider public opinion or Congress worthy of governance or a role in governance. They formulate policy and carry it forward without regard for legal niceties, constitutional checks on power, or the pro forma consultation with Congress. They are now, for all intents and purposes, putting an end to politics in America, at least at a national level. All the discussion, debate, resolutions, and even laws can and will continue to go forward, but they will have no effect upon the actions of the White House. The President feels himself unconstrained by anything or wnyone, and his VP argues forcefullly that the President, as commander-in-chief, can do what he wants in a time of war. Period.
On this day, when we remember the courage of one man who stood against law and custom to proclaim that we had yet to become a great nation because of our failure to grant legal and human dignity to millions among us; when we remember the courage that faced the hatred of Bull Connor, the scheming of J. Edgar Hoover, the manipulations of the Kennedy brothers, the fractiousness of his fellow Civil Rights leaders, the rage of the growing Black Power movement, and his own growing irrelevance as time and events outstripped his desire to shape a movement for all Americans - when we remember all this, we should find strength in knowing that one person, who faces fear and hatred, dogs and hoses and bullets and bombs, can make a difference. Who among us today is willing to stand up to the tyrant in the White House and call him out for what he is? Who among us is willing to stand up to a corrupt establishment, blind to the realities around them, announced around them, and tell them - press and pundits, House and Senate, courts and lawyers - that they no longer matter, and will continue to matter no more as long as they refuse to work to end what has become, for all practical purposes, the assertion of tyrannical authority?
In saying that "everyone" is irrelevant, I am suggesting that this is a unique moment, perhaps unprecedented in American history. We have an Executive officer of the United States, asserting without compunction or fear, that he can do what he wants when he wants to, and there is no authority to stop him. As long as members of the various checks upon power in this country - journalists and pundits, Congressmen and Senators, the courts and the lawyers - continue to treat him as just another President, saying and doing things in a political manner (thus rendering his words, for all practical purposes meaningless in and of themselves) there are no more institutions in this country to stop him. As long as we all play the game, go through the motions, register our defiance on blogs, in letters to the editor, in special order speeches on the floor of the House or debate in the Senate, in argument before the Supreme Court, no one will know that our liberty has been stripped from us, our rights taken away in the utterance of a few words, leaving us bereft of choices and places to turn.
One person, or perhaps many individuals in many places, not acting together, but each acting out of the realization that the situation had reached a point beyond the control of all our normal checks on power, can make a difference. Shout it from the rooftops, whisper the words - "tyrant", "lawless", "dictator" - among yourselves, get yourselves used to them and thier use as applied to our current Administration. Once they become familiar within a small group, spread these words to others. Talk at work, at church, synagogue, and mosque or around the kitchen table.
Perhaps we will have one person, one individual with the courage to stand and say, softly enough to be heard under the chatter and blather that is now as meaningless as a debate in Esperanto, "Stop!" Perhaps an individual will emerge who can take all these other individuals and make them into something greater than themselves as individuals - a movement to open the eyes of the American people and American ruling class that, in the course of one short January day, they were all rendered irrelevant by the President and Vice-President, that we no longer have a funtioning polity, and that we have to fight to get it back.
There was a time when I would have thought such talk as this was fear-mongering of the worst sort. Hearing the words of Bush and Cheney yesterday, and taking both of them at their words - trusting that they truly meant what they said in the midst of all the blather and nonsense and fabrications and lies - I can no longer pretend that anything less than some kind of citizen action to stop them is necessary. In closing off all recourse to political action as it should be constituted, they leave us little room for anything else. Most radically, I do not believe impeachment would matter, because, if convicted by the Senate, I do not believe for one moment that either man would leave office. They have already said quite clearly they do not consider the actions of Congress relevant; why should impeachment be any different than any other Congressional act?
On this day, when we remember a man of hope, of courage, of energy and intellect, a man of peace and love (not squishy, sentimental love but the tough love that comes from facing harsh realities) we should not just pray but act to ensure that his legacy - an America where politics matters, where people matter, where the actions of government matter in the lives of individuals - does not end on one January Sunday in the words of a failed President and an embittered Vice-President. We should honor Martin Luther King, Jr. by starting today to spread the word that we have to act now, right now, to ensure our democracy, our republic, still stands.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
A Time to Break Silence
In searching through the writings of Dr. King for something to post tomorrow, I ran across his speech given at Riverside Church one year to the day before his assassination in Memphis. What strikes me most about this speech is its contemporary relevance. One would think that, changing "Vietnam" to "Iraq", King had given this speech within the past few weeks or months. I shall be excerpting, and the full speech is contained in A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr, James Washington, Editor. The text is found beginning on page 231.
Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover when the isses at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.
Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement well and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.
--
There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was as shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor - both black and white - through the povery program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the prgram broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly complelled to see the war an as enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.
Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our soceity and sending them eight thousand miles away to gurantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on the same block in Detroit. I could no be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.
--
Now it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Still Not Listening
Apparently, Bush doesn't understand how policy is arrived at in a republic where legislative and executive functions are divided between co-equal branches of government. Having proposed an increase in troop levels for Iraq, and having the suggestion roundly condemned, not just by Democrats and liberals, but by Republicans and conservatives, Bush is allowing petulance to substitute for political delaing and diplomacy. In a piece on Yahoo News from the AP Bush is quoted as saying, "To oppose everything while proposing nothing is irresponsible." Apparently he missed the fact that, for months, Democrats have talked about everything from complete withdrawal to a "phased redeployment", code talk for complete withdrawal to areas beyond the Iraqi hot zones, but available if need be. As such plans have much wider support from the American people than the President's own decision to offer 21,500 more American service lambs to slaughter, and as such talk echoes Joe Klein, we wonder who, in fact Bush listened to on his infamous "listening tour" just before Christmas.
The story continues:
Parsing such a quote is difficult, because there are so many ways one could go.
First, Bush has not offered a plan. Bush is simply shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic. Second, "success" has no definition; if the idea is "ending the violence", offering more troops is not the answer, because it only adds fuel to an already raging inferno. Of course, wanting competent diplomacy from Condoleeza Rice's State Department is probably too much to ask, but diplomacy is the way to go. There is no way more guns, more bullets, more dead bodies will achieve whatever goals Bush thinks are achievable.
Let me be even more explicit. There is no policy, plan, ROE or TOE, in short nothing America can do to solve Iraq's problems. We may have created a chaotic situation, but it has spiralled so far out of anyone's control that fixing it is beyond the capacity of anyone currently in charge in the Executive Branch of the United States government. For our country's sake, for the the sake of the lives of our service men and women, for the sake of the lives and security of the American people, getting out and allowing Iraqi politics to take whatever course they might take is the only course of action guaranteed to keep the US from collapsing.
As far as Congress "expressing their views", forcefullly or otherwise, Bush just doesn't get the role Congress plays. This isn't about being vocal. It is about overseeing what the President does, of approving or disapproving, of ensuring that what the President proposes is in the best interests of the United States. It is the President who can express his views, offer a policy, and be forceful about it. It is Congress that decides the final form of that policy. Primus enter parum of the three branches of the federal government, Congress is the place where the people's representatives figure out what is best for all of us. It is messy, to be sure, and there are all sorts of disagreements and horrid politics that go on. Sadly, that is the way our country's government was designed, and it is well that Bush was reminded of that fact this week as his Secreataries of Defense and State appeared before Senate committees charged with oversight of Executive Branch policy-making. Rather than the Republican railroad on which we've all been riding since 2001, we are now witnessing how Congress and the Executive work as they are designed to work. The President proposes, Congress disposes.
No one need answer the President's challenge, of course, because the premises at the heart of the challenge are either wrong, nonsensical, or just plain wrong. It is the President who must do what has to be done to pull his own chestnuts out of the fire. It is the President who has the power to offer constructive solutions to the Iraqi mess, but consistently refuses to do so. It is the President who has brought us to this point, and he must be made to realize that, having done so, he must pull us back from the brink on which we currently hang.
Which means, of course, that we are, most likely, in for a very rough time. Echoing sentiments voiced by Sen. McCain, Bush most likely considers "failure" and "defeat" unthinkable, even though the first is entirely applicable to our current situation, and the last has no meaning of which I am aware. As the President has said repeatedly that withdrawal equals defeat - again, no meaning! - he won't even hear these proposals, so that leaves us with his as the only option available to America. It is a nice, neat, meaningless circle in which Bush arrives at policy and speaks to the American people. Since he has closed off the possibility of considering alternatives, to him, there aren't any. Our choices are few, and our options for dealing with such irrational intransigence are fewer. I fear for us over the next few months as this dynamic plays out.
The story continues:
Bush said lawmakers "have a right to express their views, and express them forcefully. But those who refuse to give this plan a chance to work have an obligation to offer an alternative that has a better chance of success."
Parsing such a quote is difficult, because there are so many ways one could go.
First, Bush has not offered a plan. Bush is simply shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic. Second, "success" has no definition; if the idea is "ending the violence", offering more troops is not the answer, because it only adds fuel to an already raging inferno. Of course, wanting competent diplomacy from Condoleeza Rice's State Department is probably too much to ask, but diplomacy is the way to go. There is no way more guns, more bullets, more dead bodies will achieve whatever goals Bush thinks are achievable.
Let me be even more explicit. There is no policy, plan, ROE or TOE, in short nothing America can do to solve Iraq's problems. We may have created a chaotic situation, but it has spiralled so far out of anyone's control that fixing it is beyond the capacity of anyone currently in charge in the Executive Branch of the United States government. For our country's sake, for the the sake of the lives of our service men and women, for the sake of the lives and security of the American people, getting out and allowing Iraqi politics to take whatever course they might take is the only course of action guaranteed to keep the US from collapsing.
As far as Congress "expressing their views", forcefullly or otherwise, Bush just doesn't get the role Congress plays. This isn't about being vocal. It is about overseeing what the President does, of approving or disapproving, of ensuring that what the President proposes is in the best interests of the United States. It is the President who can express his views, offer a policy, and be forceful about it. It is Congress that decides the final form of that policy. Primus enter parum of the three branches of the federal government, Congress is the place where the people's representatives figure out what is best for all of us. It is messy, to be sure, and there are all sorts of disagreements and horrid politics that go on. Sadly, that is the way our country's government was designed, and it is well that Bush was reminded of that fact this week as his Secreataries of Defense and State appeared before Senate committees charged with oversight of Executive Branch policy-making. Rather than the Republican railroad on which we've all been riding since 2001, we are now witnessing how Congress and the Executive work as they are designed to work. The President proposes, Congress disposes.
No one need answer the President's challenge, of course, because the premises at the heart of the challenge are either wrong, nonsensical, or just plain wrong. It is the President who must do what has to be done to pull his own chestnuts out of the fire. It is the President who has the power to offer constructive solutions to the Iraqi mess, but consistently refuses to do so. It is the President who has brought us to this point, and he must be made to realize that, having done so, he must pull us back from the brink on which we currently hang.
Which means, of course, that we are, most likely, in for a very rough time. Echoing sentiments voiced by Sen. McCain, Bush most likely considers "failure" and "defeat" unthinkable, even though the first is entirely applicable to our current situation, and the last has no meaning of which I am aware. As the President has said repeatedly that withdrawal equals defeat - again, no meaning! - he won't even hear these proposals, so that leaves us with his as the only option available to America. It is a nice, neat, meaningless circle in which Bush arrives at policy and speaks to the American people. Since he has closed off the possibility of considering alternatives, to him, there aren't any. Our choices are few, and our options for dealing with such irrational intransigence are fewer. I fear for us over the next few months as this dynamic plays out.
The First Angry White Guy
Note: I can't get the link to the specific post to work, so I will just link to Digby's blog, and scroll down until you see a puffy face on the cover of Time magazine, and you'll know you're in the right place.
As a follow on to yesterday's post on left-wing anger, I think it wise to recall a bit of history. This is always a chancy thing, as we are a notoriously historically ignorant people. Our media are infected with this virus, to the point they cannot even bring themselves to remember what a politican said last week (unless it's one of Tim Russert's "gotcha" moments on Meet the Press, and that's not history but political and journalistic theater designed to catch a liar or hypocrite; I digress). I think it is important to recall, as Digby does, that anger is not a political phenomenon that is new or limited to the left. I also think it is important to think about that previous manifestation of political rage, and its mouthpiece, Newton Leroy Gingrich.
I think it is safe to say some generalities about the Republican take-over of Congress in 1994. First, there were multiple displays of political anger at the time, but what most fascinated me, then and now, was that they were directed not at America as it was then constituted, but rather at the counter-culture. Conservatives viewed Bill Clinton as the counter-culture icon par excellence, the archetype of the anti-war protestor/pot smoking/long-haried-hippie-freak who had tried to repudiate his past. Of course, they were not going to allow him to do that. Neither were they going to allow him to continue in office, as the Republicans in general, and conservatives in particular, viewed the Oval Office as theirs by right (to a certain extent they were correct; the times should have dictated a Republican President, but George H. B. Bush was so abysmal, he was tossed on his ear; that he is viewed with nostalgia by many today should tell us a whole lot about our current state of affairs; again, I digress). Clinton was not just Democrat, but a former pot-smoking/war-protesting/long-haired-hippie-freak who wanted to pretend he was reformed. The Republicans aimed their legislative and overight agenda at the 1960's in general and Bill Clinton specifically because they understood that they owed their existence as a reaction to that counter-culture. They wanted to erase any trace of it from the American consciousness.
Into this political-cultural mix was thrown the most unlikely figure one can imagine. Gingrich first made his name in the mid 1980's when, after a special order speech to an empty house, he was reprimanded by then-Speaker Thomas O'Neill in a rare intervention. Gingrich knew the rules of the House, and got the Speaker's words striken from the record. It was the first strike against a House establishment as bloated as the Tipster's nose.
His next target was House Speaker Jim Wright of Texas. In a deal not nearly as lucrative as one Gingrich would negotiate once he ascended to the Speaker's chair, Wright managed to wrangle all sorts of money out of a publisher for a book. Gingrich demanded an investigation and Wright was gone. The final stroke was the 1994 election, and the defeat of Speaker Thomas Foley for re-election, and Gingrich's rise to the top. Those who thought he was just a firebrand who could only stand against a fat, tired, and long-since dessicated Democratic majority did not know our Newt. They hadn't seen anything yet.
In a collection of essays originally published in The New York Review of Books, Political Fictions, Joan Didion had an amazing article that was bio/analysis of Gingrich the man-as-budding-political-figure. Two of the most striking things from that particular essay have stayed with me, because they have a certain resonance with my own experience in life.
First, Gingrich had a restless, almost hyperactive mind. Not necessarily a great thinker, Gingrich was wedded to a certain aphoristic approach, jotting notes he kept in shoe boxes. There was rarely any connections amongst the various thoughts, except for the fact that they were spawned in Gingrich's head.
As a precocious child myself, I recognize the almost constant stream-of-consciousness that Gingrich put on paper. I was not nearly as disciplined as the young Gingrich, devoting the time to putting on paper all that flitted through my head. As an intellectual discipline, however, such early habits are antithetical to analytical ability; part of being able to think is to follow connections between things, to be critical of one's own thought and thought processes, to use not just logic and analogy but all sorts of sources to move from A to Z. Impressed with his own precociousness, Gingrich never graduated to the analytical stage. The conclusions he managed to draw was that having a plethora of thoughts equaled genius and wisdom; actually it just means he probably should have taken Ritalin. Never having developed a critical stance toward his own intellect, he never developed an analytical habit; there were seldom conlcusion that could be drawn from all the thoughts scratched on scraps of paper, except within the fertile mind of the future Speaker.
The other thing I remember very distinctly is that Gingrich was a devotee of science fiction. Growing up with an older sibling who was also one such, I can attest that science fiction is poor soil in which to plant the seed of serious, critical thought. Rather, it cultivates a pre-adolescent fixation on "things", on the possibilties inherent in technology. As an antidote to the too-often messy, irrational world of politics, science fiction offers a view of the world that says, "What if we just . . ." and then fills in the ellipse with all sorts of improbables. Because these improbables "exist" within a certain limited rationality of science fiction - I say limited because they are justified from a story point-of-view, but the background to these stories is rarely examined in detail - to the devotee, they seem less improbable than they might otherwise. As my one sibling who still harbors a love for S-F has said, why aren't we mining the asteroid belt, since there are all sorts of minerals out there for the taking. That such a thought could occur, detached from any other reality, and be taken as a serious economic/industrial query, shows the corrosive effects of S-F upon one's perception of reality.
Taken together - the lack of analytical ability in a hyperactive/precocious child, and the fascination with the technical possibilties offered by science fiction - create a world in which the messy realities, especially of politics, interfere with the possibilities inherent in humanity. This combination is exemplified in Gingrich's almost constant preference for techinical over political solutions; if we just allowed people to invent new things, all our problems would be solved. Such techinical entrepreneurship, however, is stifled by liberals with all their concerns for social welfare, for the regulation of business, for their preference for a politics of the political and social rather than a politics of technique. If we just freed American mind from the strictures of the social, the political, and the analytical, all sorts of possibilities open up.
Of course, such a view is so devoid of reality, shallow, and lacking in the humility and recognition of human limitations that it is difficult to grant it anything other than a chuckle. Yet, the lower house of Congress, and the Republican Party, was once controlled by one who thought this way. I say "thought" only in the sense that, as a private citizen, Gingrich no longer lives in the public eye. There is no doubt he still thinks this way, as evidenced by his announcement concerning a possible Presidential bid. Rather than go the usual route - exploratory committee, surrounding himself with backers and donors, getting the word out, etc - Gingrich insists a movement will somehow coalesce itself in America that will demand his leadership, and he will not-so-hunbly acquiesce to this demand. These are not so much the thoughts of a deranged mind as the thoughts of an undisciplined, non-analytical mind still wedded to non-existent possibilities he first read in the stories of Isaac Asimov and Ben Bova.
As a follow on to yesterday's post on left-wing anger, I think it wise to recall a bit of history. This is always a chancy thing, as we are a notoriously historically ignorant people. Our media are infected with this virus, to the point they cannot even bring themselves to remember what a politican said last week (unless it's one of Tim Russert's "gotcha" moments on Meet the Press, and that's not history but political and journalistic theater designed to catch a liar or hypocrite; I digress). I think it is important to recall, as Digby does, that anger is not a political phenomenon that is new or limited to the left. I also think it is important to think about that previous manifestation of political rage, and its mouthpiece, Newton Leroy Gingrich.
I think it is safe to say some generalities about the Republican take-over of Congress in 1994. First, there were multiple displays of political anger at the time, but what most fascinated me, then and now, was that they were directed not at America as it was then constituted, but rather at the counter-culture. Conservatives viewed Bill Clinton as the counter-culture icon par excellence, the archetype of the anti-war protestor/pot smoking/long-haried-hippie-freak who had tried to repudiate his past. Of course, they were not going to allow him to do that. Neither were they going to allow him to continue in office, as the Republicans in general, and conservatives in particular, viewed the Oval Office as theirs by right (to a certain extent they were correct; the times should have dictated a Republican President, but George H. B. Bush was so abysmal, he was tossed on his ear; that he is viewed with nostalgia by many today should tell us a whole lot about our current state of affairs; again, I digress). Clinton was not just Democrat, but a former pot-smoking/war-protesting/long-haired-hippie-freak who wanted to pretend he was reformed. The Republicans aimed their legislative and overight agenda at the 1960's in general and Bill Clinton specifically because they understood that they owed their existence as a reaction to that counter-culture. They wanted to erase any trace of it from the American consciousness.
Into this political-cultural mix was thrown the most unlikely figure one can imagine. Gingrich first made his name in the mid 1980's when, after a special order speech to an empty house, he was reprimanded by then-Speaker Thomas O'Neill in a rare intervention. Gingrich knew the rules of the House, and got the Speaker's words striken from the record. It was the first strike against a House establishment as bloated as the Tipster's nose.
His next target was House Speaker Jim Wright of Texas. In a deal not nearly as lucrative as one Gingrich would negotiate once he ascended to the Speaker's chair, Wright managed to wrangle all sorts of money out of a publisher for a book. Gingrich demanded an investigation and Wright was gone. The final stroke was the 1994 election, and the defeat of Speaker Thomas Foley for re-election, and Gingrich's rise to the top. Those who thought he was just a firebrand who could only stand against a fat, tired, and long-since dessicated Democratic majority did not know our Newt. They hadn't seen anything yet.
In a collection of essays originally published in The New York Review of Books, Political Fictions, Joan Didion had an amazing article that was bio/analysis of Gingrich the man-as-budding-political-figure. Two of the most striking things from that particular essay have stayed with me, because they have a certain resonance with my own experience in life.
First, Gingrich had a restless, almost hyperactive mind. Not necessarily a great thinker, Gingrich was wedded to a certain aphoristic approach, jotting notes he kept in shoe boxes. There was rarely any connections amongst the various thoughts, except for the fact that they were spawned in Gingrich's head.
As a precocious child myself, I recognize the almost constant stream-of-consciousness that Gingrich put on paper. I was not nearly as disciplined as the young Gingrich, devoting the time to putting on paper all that flitted through my head. As an intellectual discipline, however, such early habits are antithetical to analytical ability; part of being able to think is to follow connections between things, to be critical of one's own thought and thought processes, to use not just logic and analogy but all sorts of sources to move from A to Z. Impressed with his own precociousness, Gingrich never graduated to the analytical stage. The conclusions he managed to draw was that having a plethora of thoughts equaled genius and wisdom; actually it just means he probably should have taken Ritalin. Never having developed a critical stance toward his own intellect, he never developed an analytical habit; there were seldom conlcusion that could be drawn from all the thoughts scratched on scraps of paper, except within the fertile mind of the future Speaker.
The other thing I remember very distinctly is that Gingrich was a devotee of science fiction. Growing up with an older sibling who was also one such, I can attest that science fiction is poor soil in which to plant the seed of serious, critical thought. Rather, it cultivates a pre-adolescent fixation on "things", on the possibilties inherent in technology. As an antidote to the too-often messy, irrational world of politics, science fiction offers a view of the world that says, "What if we just . . ." and then fills in the ellipse with all sorts of improbables. Because these improbables "exist" within a certain limited rationality of science fiction - I say limited because they are justified from a story point-of-view, but the background to these stories is rarely examined in detail - to the devotee, they seem less improbable than they might otherwise. As my one sibling who still harbors a love for S-F has said, why aren't we mining the asteroid belt, since there are all sorts of minerals out there for the taking. That such a thought could occur, detached from any other reality, and be taken as a serious economic/industrial query, shows the corrosive effects of S-F upon one's perception of reality.
Taken together - the lack of analytical ability in a hyperactive/precocious child, and the fascination with the technical possibilties offered by science fiction - create a world in which the messy realities, especially of politics, interfere with the possibilities inherent in humanity. This combination is exemplified in Gingrich's almost constant preference for techinical over political solutions; if we just allowed people to invent new things, all our problems would be solved. Such techinical entrepreneurship, however, is stifled by liberals with all their concerns for social welfare, for the regulation of business, for their preference for a politics of the political and social rather than a politics of technique. If we just freed American mind from the strictures of the social, the political, and the analytical, all sorts of possibilities open up.
Of course, such a view is so devoid of reality, shallow, and lacking in the humility and recognition of human limitations that it is difficult to grant it anything other than a chuckle. Yet, the lower house of Congress, and the Republican Party, was once controlled by one who thought this way. I say "thought" only in the sense that, as a private citizen, Gingrich no longer lives in the public eye. There is no doubt he still thinks this way, as evidenced by his announcement concerning a possible Presidential bid. Rather than go the usual route - exploratory committee, surrounding himself with backers and donors, getting the word out, etc - Gingrich insists a movement will somehow coalesce itself in America that will demand his leadership, and he will not-so-hunbly acquiesce to this demand. These are not so much the thoughts of a deranged mind as the thoughts of an undisciplined, non-analytical mind still wedded to non-existent possibilities he first read in the stories of Isaac Asimov and Ben Bova.
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