Blue People

Asymmetry

Just finished reading Paul Waldman's "Being Right is Not Enough", which falls into the general category of "advice to Democrats and/or progressives", a category that has been well-filled since the defeat of John Kerry in 2004. Waldman's book is tight and crisply written, showing good rhetorical skills, but most importantly an unsentimental grasp of the predicament in which progressives find themselves today.

The core of Waldman's thesis is that progressives must set aside the notion that ultimately they will win because the public sides with them on the issues. In Waldman's view this is a necessary but not sufficient condition, because clearly conservatives have been winning elections even as polls and studies show that on most issues the majority of the public disagrees with them. What Waldman advises most of all is "getting tough", responding in kind to the brutal attacks which typify Republican campaigning in the Karl Rove era. Waldman's poster child is the failure of the Kerry campaign to respond quickly and forcefully to the "Swift Boat" attacks, possibly because the Kerry forces believed - wrongly - that their candidate's record as a decorated veteran provided an impregnable shield against such attacks.

The problem, as always with such books, is that description is easy, prescription is hard. While Waldman makes a creditable effort, the sad fact is that few of his suggested slogans could resonate with the public the way conservative slogans do, and at times Waldman seems well aware of it. He even knows why: today's conservatives are mining the dark side, the destructive side, of human nature, and the hard fact is that giving in to these dark emotions and impulses provides a kind of gratifying "rush" that is available only in this context. There's a reason why, in earlier times, public executions were festive occasions.

Today's Republican party is carrying out - and profiting from - the kind of ceremonial public murder which in earlier times was associated with, say, the Inquisition, or the Jacobins. Its purpose is at least twofold: first, to serve as an outlet for the dark emotions mentioned above, and second, to intimidate. The difference, of course, is that victims of the Republican party don't (usually) die, at least not physically, but certainly the kind of deep, paranoid, vicious hostility directed by Republicans at liberals is a close relation to that directed by the Inquisition at "witches" and heretics.

This is not a pattern of behavior, politically successful though it may be, that can be emulated by progressives. While there seems to be little doubt that progressives are going to have to find a way to use anger and resentment as political tools, it can't be done quite the way that conservatives have done it. And progressives can't really make resentment the bedrock of their platform, the way conservatives have. The progressive platform must remain idealistic and positive at its core, no matter how boring this stance may be within the context of the political campaign.

This asymmetry is at the heart of the progressive dilemma, and unless the political climate changes considerably (which it may finally be in the process of doing), running tough, effective campaigns that nevertheless remain true to progressive ideals is going to be an exercise in futility. The hard fact is that people respond much more readily to negative appeals, so we can unfortunately expect to be treated - for the foreseeable future - to the spectacle of campaigns working to outdo each other in their harshness, crudity, and brutality.

What a prospect for American democracy.

Hard Cases

It's said that "hard cases make bad law". Given the state in which we find American politics today, one could make an analogy concerning the relationship of national traumas to the political developments which follow in their wake.

The recent - and powerful - example is, of course, September 11, a trauma which was followed by the so-far disastrous "Global War on Terror". But a quick scan through postwar American history reveals the same pattern, over and over again. Here is a partial list of shocks that have been inflicted on the American body politic since the end of WWII:

The Russian A-bomb
The "loss" of China
The Sputnik launch
The Cuban missile crisis
The Kennedy assassination
The Tet offensive
The RFK/MLK assassinations
The first oil embargo
Watergate
The second oil embargo
The Iran hostage crisis
etc.

Many if not all of these events were, for the most part, unforeseen, and were experienced as sudden and unexpected. In reviewing the list, one could argue that what is now seen as a placid, even boring era was in fact thoroughly riven with disturbance and crisis. And what is now most noteworthy about virtually all of these events is that fact that our responses to them have ranged from the inadequate to the disastrous.

America is a country that has long believed that is exceptional, in many dimensions, but most importantly in the moral dimension. In simple terms, we have always believed ourselves to be "the good guys", and that grossly evil acts are invariably committed by others (a belief greatly reinforced by the Nazi atrocities of the 30's and 40's). In a testament to the ability of the human mind to construct its own reality, this vision has withstood all challenges, even in cases where Americans have perpetrated acts which, when done by others, are roundly condemned. The adoption of slavery and the extermination of the native population are only two of the most obvious examples.

American politics during this era can be seen largely as the attempt to preserve the traditional idea of American moral exceptionalism, even as the evidence accumulates that in fact Americans are people just like everyone else, and that America is - to a great extent - a nation like all others. How could it be anything but a relief at this point to once and for all throw overboard the notion that American is different, a kind of pure shining knight that hews to a higher standard than other nations, and that we are as a result not subject to the same standards as others? Are we not at last exhausted from the effort of maintaining this fiction, a fiction that at some obscure level we recognize as such?

The first of the shocks listed above that affected me personally and emotionally was the JFK assassination, an event that to me stands only with 9/11 in its total disruptive horror. Looking back now, it seems clear that America has never really come to terms with this event, with the notion that our own acts, our own policies, could have horrific unintended consequences, a phenomenon now known as "blowback". And this analysis remains true whether or not the accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was a "lone nut" or part of a conspiracy. Either way, the JFK assassination was in a very clear sense something that we did to ourselves, as were others on (and not on) the list.

We seem to have this idea, outstandingly present in the current occupant of the White House, that only intentions matter, that if our intentions are good then we remain blameless, no matter the actual outcome of our actions. Our intent in attacking Iraq was to create a peaceful, prosperous, democratic society, and it is on the basis of that intent that we wish to be judged, not on the basis of the squalid wreck that Iraq has in fact become. The same is true, to a lesser extent, of Afghanistan. And it is true of virtually all our well-intended interventions going back at least to Mossadeq in 1953.

How is it that we keep making the same mistake over and over again? Why are we always so baffled when yet another adventure turns out badly? It can only be our lack of talent for introspection, our inability to perceive ourselves and our motives as merely ordinary, not "exceptional".

Why do they hate us?

This is the question most often asked after 9/11/2001. We think of ourselves as "good", and we believe that, for the most part, we've done good in the world, so where does the hate come from? Why would anyone "hate our freedoms"?

It 's really not that complicated. Let's begin with humiliation, which according to Thomas Friedman is the most overlooked factor in international relations. People who are humiliated become angry, and angry people lash out. A study of the emergence of modernism in Western Europe, followed as it was by the emergence of colonialism, shows clearly that many parts of the Muslim world feel humiliated by their former colonizers (e.g. Great Britain, France). The ease with which these European powers rolled over various Muslim nations, and the contempt they showed for the colonized, explain a lot about Muslim resentment of the West, including the United States (even if we were never colonizers ourselves in the same sense).

The second factor is contained, almost in its entirety, in the title of Chris Hedges' book "War is a Force that Gives us Meaning". In today's mediated world, those singled out by the media for attention seem to have more value than those who are not. A life lived without media attention can be experienced as a nullity, a life without meaning. There's a quick cure for that, and that is to become a terrorist. These days no one gets more attention from the media that those who commit terrorist acts, or even those who are merely arrested on suspicion of terrorism without having committed any act.

It's often been noted that, in America's inner cities, many young males are inducted into the drug trade because, when you're a drug dealer, you're somebody. Who would want to work for "chump change" at the car wash when you can earn many times that on the corners, and have some "bling" to show for it besides? The same logic works to attract young males to terrorism as well.

The hard fact is that access to constructive work is restricted in our economy. Only those with four-year college degrees are even considered, and not all those are ultimated accepted. People who cannot get through this gate often find that the only alternatives are Wal-Mart, McDonald's, or perhaps driving a taxi. These are not careers of which one can be proud, not careers which satisfy peoples' craving for meaning and a sense of accomplishment. The millions (billions) of under-utilized people in today's world economy are a rich recruiting field for al-Qaida and other terrorist groups.

Now the first factor, the humiliation factor, will ease with time, if we conduct ourselves intelligently (which regrettably we haven't so far). As for the second, that's going to be a problem for a very long time. The way things are going, the productive global economy is going to be in need of fewer and fewer people as it evolves, which is going to leave the excluded, which could easily be a large majority, with nothing meaningful to do with their lives. Recent history shows us that people who are denied meaning through legitimate channels will find it in their own way, and that sometimes acts of nihilistic terror are the result.

Under Pressure

America and its way of life are under pressure as never before, excepting only the runup to the Civil War of 1861 and the war itself.

We are harassed by extremist Muslims like Osama bin Laden and Mahmoud Amahdinejad, who neither fear nor loathe our country, but rather have contempt for it. That's a new experience.

We're under financial and economic pressure from the Chinese, who sell us almost all the manufactured goods we consume and who want nothing in return except for dollars (so far). The Chinese frankly admit that America has nothing to offer that they would want in return for the tidal wave of manufactured goods generated by their country.

Our high-energy way of life is directly threatened by the rising price and scarcity of oil, a crisis which will one day result in either the total destruction of the American economy, or (in the alternate version) a new burst of energy and creativity resulting in a prosperous yet largely oil-free economy.

Our culture is criticized by religious fundmentalists both at home and elsewhere, people who see only sin and license where the rest of us see creativity and freedom.

And most of all America's political leadership of the so-called "Free World" is collapsing under the strain of multiple unmanageable crises, any one of which could expose once and for all the myth of America as the "world's sole superpower". We can't control Iraq, where most of our Army is tied down in a possibly endless sectarian conflict; we can't control Israel, our supposed "ally"; and we can't control Iran, which is playing a winning hand on its way to domination of the Middle East (and some of the cards Iran is holding were put there by the USA).

So clearly things are going to be very different 10, 20, 50 years from now. The landscape that most Americans think of as "normal", namely post-WWII world characterized by American prosperity at home and primacy abroad, is disappearing as we watch. The new "normal" will be less pleasant for Americans in almost every way. America will be unstable, economically strapped, and unable to stand up to assertions of sovereignty on the part of countries like China, Russia, India, Iran, and others. We will, for the most part, have to take our place in line like other countries.

Someone far more learned than I needs to do a book-length treatment of this topic.

God

Clearly disputes over religion have once again become a major factor, especially at the geopolitical level (Muslims vs. "infidels"), but a smaller scales as well (fundamentalist Christians vs. everyone else).

It seems to me that the key mistake made by all of these believers is this: they all believe that God is some kind of actually existing entity, something that exists apart from Nature. Following from this are the many arguments over the qualities and capabilities possessed by this entity, which of course can never be settled, since we don't have access to the object in question.

There are some belief systems that have a better idea, that God is not some wholly external entity, independent of Nature of of our consciousness. All that exists is Nature, and our goal should be to achieve harmony with it. Religion is basically an evolving relationship between Nature on the one hand, and ourselves (our consciousness and our behavior) on the other.

The End

Been busy. At any rate...

There's a scene in "Syriana" in which a teacher at a madrassa is giving a lesson, the gist of which is "the West has failed". The prescribed response for his students is: jihad.

While I can't support the prescription, it's becoming ever more clear that the diagnosis is correct. The West has failed, and this can be seen easily simply by acknowledging the higher and higher levels of violence being inflicted by Western nations, most obviously the USA, on both other humans and on nature itself. It seems now that our only response to any and all problems is "war", either figurative or literal. And yet is is becoming painfully obvious that if our problems are to be solved, it can only be through cooperation, not by "destroying the enemy" (which has been the American response since 1941).

Since Americans, led by George W Bush, seem as far from realizing this as ever, I am forced to conclude that there will be no solution, and that the apocalypse that awaits us will not be averted. And sickest of all is the apparent fact that many Americans will welcome it (and not just the "Rapture" adherents).

The Horror

The later 1960's were a time of considerable instability in the USA. We had the Vietnam War, and the mass protests against it, the hippies and the drug revolution, the sexual revolution, and the assassinations. All of this instability provoked a counterreaction, which we know today as neo-conservatism. The original neocons were liberals (or moderates) who recoiled in horror at the developments enumerated above, and embraced conservatism as a result.

I wonder if the current round of extremism on the right will generate a similar response on the part of moderate Republicans who look at the excesses of Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, John Boehner, and George Bush (excesses too numerous to catalog in this space) and ultimately decide that they are no longer Republicans. Not that they will become Democrats, necessarily, but that will cease voting for extreme-Right Republicans simply because they bear the GOP label.

Some kind of Rovian apotheosis may have been reached in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's Hamdan decision, which ruled among other things that the "War on Terror" must be fought within the limits prescribed by the Constitution and international law (specifically the Geneva Convention). It is the usual electoral gambit of right-wing Republicans to brand Democrats as "soft on terrorism"; consider the campaign that unseated Max Cleland (which will stand forever as a low point in the Campaign Hall of Shame). Here we have not an election but a Supreme Court decision, but this nevertheless being an election year we learn that Republican candidates for the House intend to beat their Democratic opponents over the head with the decision, claiming that Democrats favor "special rights for terrorists".

The mendacity here is so extreme, so totally over the top, that one can only wonder how long it can be sustained. I remember during the Clinton impeachment hearings, then-Rep. Charles Schumer exclamining in exasperation, "the American people are waiting for us to come to our senses". Well Mr. Schumer, the people are still waiting. And what began during that time has only gotten worse since.

Security and Decadence

I recall reading, a number of years ago, Raymond Chandler's introduction to a new edition of his short-story collection, "Trouble is My Business". That introduction, written well after the stories themselves were first published, consisted of a meditation on form and substance, content and technique.

The gist of it was this: while in his early years as a writer, Chandler felt that he was bursting with ideas, and struggled with his perceived inability to express those ideas coherently. Later, the situation was reversed: while he no longer felt constrained by matters of technique, he increasingly found it difficult to generate any ideas worth expressing.

This is perhaps an evolution that many creative artists experience during their careers.

All of which leads to today's topic, which is the hysterical outburst on the Right over the publication, by the NY Times and others, of a report describing the Bush Administration's program of monitoring international banking transactions, presumably with a view toward identifying money flows used by terrorists. In the blogosphere at least (the "official" Right media was hardly more restrained) the term "treason" was thrown around with abandon.

Of course the whole thing is absurd; Bush himself years ago stated that financing was going to be among the most closely watched aspects of terrorist activity, and no terrorist worth taking seriously could have believed that his transactions were going unscrutinized.

What all this demonstrates yet again is that, in the competition among values, for some on the Right the value that will always win is Security. Not freedom, not liberty, not democracy, not virtue, not justice, not transparency in government, not anything. The highest - the only - value is Security, and when Security comes into conflict with other values then those values will simply have to yield.

Now during this same week, we get a report showing that - a la Robert Putnam - Americans are leading increasingly isolated lives, characterized by few if any close relationships. The average American apparently leads a life of dismal loneliness.

The connection to the Chandler anecdote now comes into focus: just as we are reaching a point where more and more Americans are questioning the value of their lives, we increasingly demand that those lives be protected, no matter what the cost, no matter how much of our American heritage we must throw overboard to do so.

This to me is the very essence of Decadence.

Perhaps some of the language used by early Americans is a bit stark:

"Give me liberty of give me death" - Patrick Henry

At the same time this type of statement points to the fact that in a nation that has not yet lapsed into decadence there are values higher than security, perhaps even some of those which I enumerated above. There apparently are a sizable number of Americans who ever since September 11 have been living in a constant elevated state of fear and anger, who see the pursuit of terrorists by whatever means necessary to be the only acceptable policy for the US government. The idea that, as time moves on, security should takes its place as one among many competing values, is anathema, and those who disagree with their obsession with security are traitors.

Frankly, there are times when I fear these people more than I do the terrorists themselves.

Villains

As often happens, some of my random thoughts have had some points of contact with similar thoughts from other bloggers, in this case Publius of the (excellent) "Legal Fiction" blog. Publius was arguing that the real villains of the present civic catastrophe have been those such as David Broder and Tim Russert, who - presumably in order to preserve their "objective" credentials - continue to insist that our current atmosphere of extreme partisanship is equally the fault of both parties, when virtually every piece of actual evidence makes it plain that only one party (the GOP) bears by far the greater share of the blame.

I wasn't thinking of these pundits in my own search for villains, but while we're about the task of identifying those who have contributed to the disaster without themselves being among the core participants (e.g. Tom DeLay), we should pay some attention to the so-called "moderate" Republicans, such as Rep. Chris Shays and Sen. Lincoln Chafee. These people have watched their party, the Republican party, turn from a party of comprehensible conservatives into a mob of screaming fanatics. The party of Bob Michel (former House minority leader) is quite plainly not the party of Tom DeLay. One is tempted to invoke Ronald Reagan, who used to say that he didn't leave the Democratic party; the Democratic party left him.

Well, when are people like Chafee (and Snowe, etc.) going to stand up and say that the GOP has left them? When are these people going to withdraw and refuse to any longer be counted as part of the Republican majority? Senators like Chafee and Snowe agree with the likes of Bill Frist on practically nothing, yet they continue to allow themselves to be identified as Republicans, and thus passively contribute to travesties such as the recent gay-marriage and flag-burning debates, both of which were stage plays mounted by Frist solely in order to force Democratics to cast votes which can in future campaigns be portrayed as "un-American" or - God save us - "un-Christian".

When are the moderates going to finally say - "enough"? When will the rest of them follow the example of Jim Jeffords, who while not yet joining the Democratic party, was nevertheless able to get out of the GOP and refuse to lend his name and office to the ongoing right-wing circus?

Consumer vs. Producer

We are often told that in our "free market" economy, the "consumer is king", and that we are blessed with a fantastic (sometimes intimidating) variety of "choices", all of which leads to a significant and sometimes measurable improvement in our overall well-being.

Or does it? And if the "consumer is king", what is the producer?

Well, it's true that no one buys detergent or breakfast cereal at the point of a gun, and it's also true that up to a point the availability of a product options can improve one's quality of life (if only marginally). On the first point: while producers can't use the threat of physical violence to get people to buy their products, they can and do enlist virtually every other source of pressure, as summarized by Douglas Rushkoff in his book "Coercion". I can add little to Rushkoff's account.

The thing that concerns me now is the fact that producers are in fact "king" when it comes to the ability to influence government. I'm referring, of course, to the lobbying industry, and the seeming fact that industrial groups, and sometimes individual corporations, can use government to write (or rewrite) the rules in their favor. No way are consumer interests nearly as influential when it comes to the writing of legislation, or regulations.

The current case in point is the Bush Medicare drug plan, which, while touting all kinds of benefits for seniors, is in fact a nightmare of complexity, confusion, and in some cases disaster. The real beneficiaries of this plan are the drug manufacturers and the health insurance companies, and how could it be otherwise? Who, after all, gets to sit in the back rooms where the details of such programs are hammered out? Is is the AARP? Hardly; the Medicare drug plan was written with the approval of, and in some cases literally by, the drug and insurance industries.

So the consumer, rather than "king", is more like a "patsy", the guy who gets beat up over and over and is told that it's all for his own good, he should be loving it. The people who actually are loving it are the congresspeople who get their campaigns (and junkets) paid for, the lobbyists who get their big bonuses, and most of all the drug and insurance CEO's who take home grossly inflated pay packages worth tens (or hundreds) or millions.