REFLECTIONS ON THE EVOLUTION IN AMERICA

2011-02-25T10:00:00.000-05:00

Ouch.

2011-02-22T16:55:00.002-05:00

PODCAST: The Egypt crisis and American exceptionalism

2011-02-10T11:27:00.001-05:00

The crisis in Egypt presents a troubling dilemma for the US, setting our immediate practical interests squarely at odds with our founding principles. Mubarak - and Suleiman - represent stability at the cost of liberty, while the protest movement represents liberty at the potential cost of a staus quo that has favored our economic and national security interests for decades. What is the right call?

Click here to listen to the podcast.

2011-02-05T08:40:00.001-05:00

(cartoon by Mr. Fish at Harper's)

Rhetoric and the Tuscon killings

2011-01-12T13:10:00.009-05:00

The critical issue is not the question of whether our polarized and often violent political rhetoric causes violent incidents; it is, rather, the fact that this rhetoric makes it almost impossible for us to respond to them as we should - as a community, as a polity bound together by a common set of principles and values that are far more important to us, both individually and collectively, than the principles and values that divide us into parties and factions.

If incendiary political rhetoric - or, for that matter, violent movies and video games - are causes of actual violence, then they are extremely inefficient. As shocking and horrible as mass shootings are, they are actually rare in our country of more than 300 million people - the great majority of us are exposed to violent words and images everyday, and yet will never be personally involved in a violent incident.

The problem - and the great sadness - is that our politically polarized climate deprives us of a way to come together in the wake of tragedies such as the shootings in Tuscon. In a healthy culture, the shock of catastrophe can be consoled by the collective experience of mourning - the community is in fact strengthened by such experiences (horrible as they are), since it calls upon the eternal and universal values that bind the society together. E pluribus unum.

One of the hallmarks of leadership is the ability to find the perspective and the language to transcend the usual divisions of everyday politics, to calm the anger or fear or confusion of the moment, and to recall the people to their sense of shared values and common purpose. Here is one of our history's great examples - from a moment and an era which seem, strangely, both much darker and much brighter than our own:

Bullet Tax

2011-01-11T10:47:00.001-05:00

This is my gun-control thought for the day: a 5 cent tax on every bullet. If we can't control guns, maybe we can control bullets - and raise a little revenue to boot.

US gun owners purchased an estimated 12 billion rounds of ammunition in 2009. At 5 cents per bullet, that's 600 million dollars of revenue - if every state were to levy such a tax, which is, of course, unlikely.

2011-01-07T09:32:00.000-05:00

via Sullivan

Should the media abandon the pretense of impartiality?

2011-01-05T12:14:00.000-05:00

NPR's David Folkenflik explores the question.

My two cents: yes!

The Enemies of Truth

2010-11-23T13:49:00.001-05:00

"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."

- Nietzsche, Aphorism 483 from 'Human, All Too Human'

Adam Smith: actually not fuch a fan of felfifhneff

2010-11-22T18:27:00.005-05:00

Hey, Republicans - listen up:

And hence it is, that to feel much for others and little for ourselves, that to restrain our selfish, and to indulge our benevolent affections, constitutes the perfection of human nature; and can alone produce among mankind that harmony of sentiments and passions in which consists their whole grace and propriety. As to love our neighbour as we love ourselves is the great law of Christianity, so it is the great precept of nature to love ourselves only as we love our neighbour, or what comes to the same thing, as our neighbour is capable of loving us.

- Adam Smith, from 'The Theory of Moral Sentiments' (1759) Part I, Chapter V

(via the estimable Scott Horton's No Comment blog)

America: where tawny is blue and pale, pale yellow is deep, deep red

2010-11-19T10:09:00.001-05:00

"Human Development Index" map from The Human Development Project

This eye opening interactive map measures levels of education, health, and income throughout the United States. It also includes demographic information and details about political representation for each state.

The fifteen most developed states (including the District of Columbia) are all deeply 'Blue' states, with the exception of Virginia (#12), which is marginally more blue than red.

Some interesting findings, in no particular order

2010-11-15T16:24:00.000-05:00

Gerbils in Israel are more cautious than those in Jordan. People tend to believe that God believes what they believe. California has too many Chihuahuas.

more here

source: Harper's magazine (where else?)

One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms.

2010-11-10T16:20:00.000-05:00

Such is H.L. Mencken's math.

"The liberation of the human mind has best been furthered by gay fellows who heaved dead cats into sanctuaries and then went roistering down the highways of the world, proving to all men that doubt, after all, was safe - that the god in the sanctuary was a fraud. One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms."

Dick Cheney, visionary

2010-10-25T17:28:00.002-04:00

This one never fails to blow me away.

Words are cheap - unless they happen to be euphemisms.

2010-10-19T20:31:00.004-04:00

Once again, I find myself in agreement with Larison, who encourages us to make the critical distinction between "defense" spending and "military" spending.

The constituencies that strongly support reductions in military spending are progressives, libertarians and deficit hawks, which also happen to be three constituencies with the least influence in their respective parties when it comes to national security policies. Obama’s military budgets are huge because there are no significant political obstacles to making them that way and there are no political incentives to make them smaller. A first, small step in changing the way we talk about military spending involves referring to military spending as just that. If military spending is ever going to be reduced, most Americans will need to acknowledge that the vast majority of military spending has a tenuous or non-existent relationship to the defense of the United States. At the very least, critics of that spending should avoid casually referring to it as defense spending, when that is not the purpose of most of these expenditures.

(h/t Sullivan)

This goes back to 1949 when the Department of War was renamed the Department of Defense. I'm not sure what the reasons behind this change were at the time, but one consequence, intended or not, is that it makes it easier to justify military spending.

It's hard to argue with spending on defense - after all, isn't it only prudent to do everything possible to keep our country safe from foreign menaces?

War spending is a different matter.

How many billions does this euphemism cost us annually? Our annual "Defense" budget now exceeds $700 billion, and accounts for 54% of all military expenditures globally. That's worth repeating: the US accounts for more than half of all military expenditures on planet Earth each year.

The combined military budgets of every single nation on Earth amount to less than what we spend on "defense".

Through the looking glass, darkly (again)

2010-10-18T16:29:00.015-04:00

A couple of years ago I wrote a post about how certain conservatives had a point of view so bizarre and out of accord with reality that it was baffling to me. Of course, I had no idea at the time that the right-wing chatter, which I compared to the Mad Hatter's tea party, would soon coalesce into a bone fide movement that actually calls itself the Tea Party. In the words of someone in a silly movie (I believe it was William Shatner in 'Airplane 2'): "I guess Irony can be pretty ironic sometimes."

And so, the inanity abides. And crazy has come to feel, more or less, normal.

On Real Time with Bill Maher last Friday (October 15th) somebody said something wrong and dumb and it flew by more or less unnoticed. This was hardly unprecedented or surprising, but it grabbed me by the throat anyway, because it so vividly demonstrates the degree to which right-wing politics and political opinion in this country are so alienated from reality these days.

One of Maher's guests was the conservative commentator and St. Louis Tea Party co-founder Dana Loesch. Her major example of why Obama is a horribly fiscally irresponsible president was that the federal budget deficit tripled from 2008 to 2009. She adduced this as conclusive evidence of his profligacy - this was her rhetorical trump card.

For charity's sake, I will assume that this person simply doesn't know what she's talking about, rather than that she is deliberately lying on national television. But in either case, she's wrong and her criticism is misplaced, to say the least.

The budget deficit did indeed triple from 2008 to 2009, but the 2009 budget is Bush's, not Obama's - a new president inherits his predecessor's last budget. It was George W. Bush who increased the deficit from $460 billion in 2008 to $1,410 billion in 2009, not Barack Obama. This is simply an inarguable fact.

The biggest reasons for this increase were reduced tax revenues owing to the financial crisis and the TARP (signed into law by president Bush in October 2008).

Another major reason the 2009 deficit was so enormous compared to previous years? Obama decided to make the government's accounting practices more accurate and more transparent, thus including in the announced budget expenditures that had been there all along, but which the Bush administration had concealed from public view - such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the full cost of Medicare reimbursements. In other words, Obama decided to act according to the principle that in a democratic republic, the government should be open and accountable to the people.

Of course, Karl Rove could have told him that he'd get no credit for this - people just aren't interested in the arcana of the budget process. And they don't know when the fiscal year begins and ends. And context doesn't matter. And the facts don't matter. And reality doesn't matter. Anyone who thinks otherwise is probably fooling themselves, while the savvy pols and pundits get away with fooling everybody else.

But what troubles me is not the cynicism of Rove and his ilk, who know exactly what they're doing, but the apparently sincere delusion of people like Ms. Loesch, who seem to have no idea that some of their most cherished views are based on entirely - entirely! - false premises and drastic misreadings of the facts.

The villainy of Rove is fathomable - it is deliberate, rational, strategic. There is method in the mendacity. Like that of Professor Moriarty or Hannibal Lecter, it's not so terrifying because, despite the wickedness and evil intents, it at least makes some kind of sense.

But what is behind the Tea Party? What do the Tea Partiers think they're doing? Many of them are apparently sincere, but they make no sense - no sense at all. That's what really scares me.

Just in case you hadn't noticed...

2010-10-09T08:53:00.002-04:00

"Pot smoking radicals are using the internet to turn America into a socialist sex utopia."

So, be on your guard. Keep calm and carry on.

(h/t Sullivan)

Well, duh.

2010-10-09T08:47:00.002-04:00

PPP releases a new poll that confirms the rather obvious fact that Republicans are failing - and failing drastically - to appeal to moderate voters.

Still, it's nice to see it confirmed.

The GOP's approach to spending cuts

2010-09-24T09:14:00.002-04:00

Slate's James Ledbetter puts it nicely (and accurately):

They are whacking weeds at the edge of a large field where they let sacred cows get fatter.

The only sane approach to climate change.

2010-09-23T11:52:00.004-04:00

Pascal wrote that it only makes sense to live as though God exists, since you have nothing to lose by doing so, even if God turns out not exist; whereas to live without faith carries immense risks if God actually does exist - i.e. eternal damnation.

Be that as it may, a similar (identical, in fact) logic applies to climate change.

To develop renewable and sustainable energy sources carries no downside, yet increases energy independence, is good for the environment, enhances national security and economic stability, and will ultimately save people money. It also opens up a new set of industries in which American ingenuity and diligence can lead the world (whereas now we are letting China dominate these industries unchallenged).

All these benefits accrue even if there turns out to be no man-made impact on global climate.

And if climate change is real, then we gain the enormous additional benefit of slowing it down, possibly reversing it, and certainly ceasing to aggravate it.

On the other hand, failing to modify behavior and develop renewable and sustainable energies aggravates the problem, provides no alternatives to switch to before it becomes too late, and may actually cause - CAUSE, mind you - a global catastrophe.

This should be a no brainer. Making the wrong wager on climate change may not risk eternal damnation, but it is certainly the act of a damned fool.

2010-09-13T09:58:00.000-04:00

(via Sullivan)

Bombing Iran - Goliath vs. David, not the other way around

2010-09-06T10:34:00.003-04:00

I'm with Larison:

As it was in the year before the invasion of Iraq, we continue to treat the significantly weaker state as the irrational aggressor that must be stopped. Meanwhile, we calmly ponder how the U.S. or Israel will launch aerial sneak attacks...

Preventive war is nothing other than wanton aggression, and the governments that wage such wars are committing grave crimes. What is worse is that, in the case of Iran, it would be aggression that does not even achieve its intended goal. If Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons now, an aggressive war against Iran would give hard-liners the justification they need to start pursuing them. If Iran is actually pursuing them, an attack merely delays the inevitable while making rapprochement in the future virtually impossible.

The inability to see any point of view but one's own is deeply unfortunate in personal life, but potentially catastrophic in geo-politics.

Disproportional representation

2010-09-04T17:31:00.016-04:00

My research for a project I'm working on has led me to this remarkable statistic:

The 37 million citizens of California are currently represented by 2 Democratic senators.

The combined 36 million citizens of Wyoming, Alaska, Idaho, Nebraska, Utah, Kansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Alabama and Georgia are currently represented by 22 Republican senators.

2010-09-04T09:57:00.001-04:00

"A system cannot understand itself. The transformation requires a view from outside."

- Edwards Deming

On Certitude

2010-08-25T08:09:00.000-04:00

Certitude is usually a sign of ignorance.

Failure to Communicate

2010-05-31T09:19:00.006-04:00

"What we've got here is failure to communicate." - Captain, in Cool Hand Luke

Both to its credit and to its detriment, the Obama administration does not seem to recognize that in today's America the appearance of competence, engagement, decisiveness, etc. is more important than the actuality.

Take the current BP oil spill as an example (the months-long management of the health care reform debate is another).

The President could have done little more than he actually has done. As he stated in his press conference last week, the White House has been engaged from "day one" and has been directing not only government's actions but BP's as well. The president seemed somewhat exasperated that he needed to make this point as part of a damage-control effort. Exasperation is understandable - he has enough on his plate without having to be excessively concerned with appearances.

The problem is that appearances are all that anybody outside the White House sees. Appearances are all we have to go on. In the absence of information, the media and the public naturally infer inaction, which they will interpret as obliviousness, lack of concern, indecisiveness or secrecy.

People crave a sense of urgency. Note the phrase carefully: "sense of urgency." Not actual urgency. A sense of urgency.

It might be argued - it should be argued - that the president of the United States of America has better things to do than worry about play-acting. What matters, after all, is results. The problem, though, is that results aren't always visible, and even when they are, they often need to be emphasized.

On the other hand, the inverse is also true - appearances tend to be taken at face value until a great deal of contrary evidence emerges. The widely incompetent and unengaged George W. Bush administration enjoyed a strong reputation for engagement and competence for years, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary, until the catastrophe of Katrina broke the illusion decisively. That unearned reputation had a lot to do with Bush's reelection.

In the case of this oil spill, as in numerous cases since he took office, the White House has failed to demonstrate engagement even as it was fully engaged. The result has been a series of distracting and unnecessary communication crises of varying severity which have had the cumulative effect of eroding some of the public's confidence in President Obama's leadership.

Ultimately, a full engagement with "message" is far from a mere concern with appearances - it is critical to creating a long-term environment in which the president can be left relatively free to focus on actual governance without the ever-increasing need to engage in damage-control exercises.

If the White House is serious about governing competently - which it surely is - then it should be much more serious about communicating competently. A failure to do so could lead to an irreversible deterioration of the public's faith in the president and, by November 2012, to a singularly unhappy - and decisive - result.

Please to explain?

2010-05-20T11:27:00.017-04:00

As I write these words, thousands of barrels of oil are spilling into the Gulf of Mexico from a well dug and operated by a major global private enterprise, BP. Right wing commentators are taking President Obama to task for his alleged lack of intervention - or, as they put it failure to "take charge of the situation."

Leaving aside the question of what he could actually do, given that the government has neither the specialized equipment nor the specialized knowledge to do more than BP itself can do, one wonders what these self-described "small-government conservatives" really believe about the limits of government intervention, the evils of regulation and the freedom of the marketplace.

Dick Cheney wants you to keep talking about waterboarding

2010-02-20T11:52:00.002-05:00

That sounds counter-intuitive, I know. But think about it.

When considering the crimes committed by the Bush administration, waterboarding is actually the LEAST of it - they did far worse on more occasions.

A technique that 'induces the sensation of drowning', terrifying as it may in fact be, does not actually sound that terrible. What's more, it can be easily characterized as 'pouring water over somebody's face', without actually distorting or misrepresenting the facts.

As long as the 'torture debate' focuses on waterboarding, the Bush-Cheneyites win, because the real horrors they committed in our names go unremarked.

They WANT the discussion to focus on waterboarding.

Anyone who seriously wishes to hold them accountable for their actions should work to reframe this 'debate' (and how absurd and horrifying is it that we've come to a pass where there can actually be a debate about such things) to focus on human dignity - not just that of the prisoners, but that of the perpetrators who are literally ordered to defile themselves by committing inhuman acts against prisoners who, however lethal their intentions may have been, are defenseless.

Thiessen et al. can justify waterboarding in terms that are unlikely to seem outrageous to most people. But they can't as easily defend treatment of detainees that is 'cruel, inhuman or degrading'.

"Absolute and apocalyptic"

2009-10-19T05:02:00.004-04:00

Nothing you didn't already know, but this recent study (by Democracy Corps) of Conservative attitudes towards Obama makes for a fascinating read - firmly in the tradition of Southern Gothic.

A selection:

"Ideologically, these voters possess a deeply engrained conservatism. In our favorability exercise, they give the National Rifle Association a 74.3 mean rating on a 100-point scale, and pro-life, anti abortion groups a mean score of 61.8. They have extremely low feelings toward gay marriage, rating it even lower than they rate the state of the economy, and almost all – 90 percent – oppose health care reform out of hand.

These views are more than matched by their views of President Obama: only 12 percent approve of his performance, 75 percent do not like him and 91 percent say the country is off on the wrong track. That is not out of line with how liberal Democrats viewed George W. Bush at a comparable time. But liberal Democrats are outnumbered by moderate Democrats (36 to 61 percent of all Democrats) and their reactions lacked the absolute and apocalyptic character of judgments about Obama."

I hope he's wrong

2009-09-19T15:58:00.000-04:00

"When the fool supports the knave the good man may fold his hands. The fool in league with the knave against himself is a combination none may withstand."

- Sam Beckett (Murphy)

Our fiendish president

2009-09-17T16:26:00.001-04:00

Just like being in love, except...

2009-09-15T04:25:00.006-04:00

For those who are reluctant to accept the projection theory of right-wing rage, it may help to compare it to being in love - or, more precisely, being infatuated.

Think about yourself and others you've known who have been in the grip of a passion for another person. It's not based on reason, or evidence, or facts - all too often, it's not even based on the actual person! We all know from our own experience that the object of desire can be a trigger for something within ourselves, something that cannot be reasoned with or argued out of. It just has to run its course.

Much of what's going on with the extreme right wingers and Obama is analogous, except that it's about fear and hatred rather than love. Think of the total irrationality, the imperviousness to logic and evidence, the refusal to engage in reasonable argument. Something about Obama (his race, his name, his appearance, his attitude) triggers something in them which is a sort of dark, negative infatuation - he has become the focus and repository of all their fears and hatreds. There is something bizarrely ecstatic about it.

Usually, the 'cure' for infatuation is time and familiarity - as the real person behind the magical façade is revealed, infatuation wanes; and that's when real love begins.

Let's hope that as time passes and more and more people become more and more familiar with the president, it will become increasingly difficult for them to sustain the nefarious illusion. Of course, I don't expect (or even hope) that something like real love will emerge - only that this mass negative infatuation can run its course before someone does something stupid.

he is geg

2009-08-08T18:01:00.002-04:00

On the afternoon of August 10th, 1995 I was riding a bus in Sophia, Bulgaria when I saw something that surprised me a lot: an upside down photograph of Jerry Garcia.

This photo appeared in a newspaper that one of the locals was reading. The photo, of course, was not printed upside down - it just appeared that way from my point of view. Nevertheless it was surprising to see a picture of Jerry Garcia in a Bulgarian newspaper, and my first reaction was to think "funny - that upside down bearded slavic guy looks rather like Jerry Garcia."

I tilted my head to get an upright view of the photo and saw that it was indeed Jerry Garcia. Then I used my rudimentary cyrillic to decipher the two first words of of the three-word headline: "Jerry Garcia" (more or less). The other word, I did not understand. It looked like "geg".

I asked my Bulgarian companion what it meant. "He is dead."

The Palin Announcement, redux

2009-07-09T10:49:00.006-04:00

In the midst of the latest Palin kerfuffle, we should not forget John McCain, who bears sole and full responsibility for loosing this ridiculous plague upon the land. His choice of Palin as a running mate is a negative verdict on his claim to have been a serious candidate who always put "country first."

Below is what I wrote (and posted as the first entry on this blog) a few hours after McCain's selection of Palin last August 29th - the colossal irony being that, knowing nothing of Palin at the time, I nevertheless believed the pick to be cynical and irresponsible (not to mention politically foolish) even if she had turned out to be a stellar public servant. That she turned out to be what she is compounds the enormity of McCain's errors exponentially.

John McCain's has chosen his running mate and he has not chosen wisely.

It may create a stir and dominate the headlines for a day or two, but it is not a serious decision for an important election. It is 100% political and about 85% cynical - woman; social conservative; youthful; maverick(ish); outside (waaaaaaaay outside) the beltway...

But she is drastically less experienced than Obama - 44 years old; less than 2 years as governor of Alaska; no foreign policy experience of any kind...

McCain cannot seriously argue that Governor Palin is prepared to step into the presidency. The choice sends hopelessly mixed messages - on the one hand he's been running the typical republican scare-the-pants-off-the-electorate type of campaign about how these times are too fraught with peril to roll the dice on a neophyte; yet he chooses a total neophyte as his running mate.

What's more, whatever case one makes about Obama, he has earned his place in the sun - he won the nomination after an 18 month battle in which millions of voters cast ballots; Palin has been picked out of obscurity by a small committee of "vetters" and thrust into the national consciousness. Everyone's first reaction - even the most unambivalent republican - will be "huh?"

The McCain campaign has wanted the central issue of the campaign to be experience; the Obama campaign has wanted it to be, rather, judgment. The choice of Palin neutralizes McCain's capacity to attack Obama's inexperience. What's more, as the most significant executive decision that a general election candidate makes, it contrasts glaringly with Obama's choice of Biden.

Which candidate is making serious decisions about serious matters? Say what you will about Biden, does anyone doubt that he is prepared to step into the presidency? Does anyone doubt that he will bring valuable experience and perspective to the White House? That he will be an effective and independent counsellor to the President? Can anyone credibly assert that Palin will bring any of these qualities to the office?

This is just my first read - upon reflection, or upon learning more about Governor Palin, I may come to modify my view. But for the moment, I am actually shocked by the callowness, desperation, and (ironically enough) childishness of this selection. It is all politics and no principle. And, what's more, it seems so obviously calculated that I find it hard to believe that anyone's going to be fooled. It smacks of desperation - a desire to cause a stir, steal Obama's thunder and dominate a few news cycles, placate a few interest groups, and compensate for a few of McCain's weaknesses by lurching clumsily in the other direction (McCain's an old guy, so we'll pick a young woman; McCain's social conservative credentials are suspect so we'll choose a pistol-packin' holy-rollin' pro-drilling frontier gal).

This is simply not a serious, grown up choice. I think it shows not only how addled the McCain campaign is, but also the usual republican contempt for their own voters. And if they honestly believe that this is the way to "reach out" to that dwindling cadre of disaffected democratic women, I'm pretty sure they are in for a rude surprise.

As I say, this selection has actually shocked me - i didn't think anything in american politics could at this point - precisely because of it's sheer stupidity on so many levels. Sarah Palin may be a fine and impressive person and an admirable public servant - I have no idea, and neither does anyone else. Indeed, I am not denying that she may even turn out to be a potentially excellent president. But what I am more certain of now than ever before is that of the four individuals who will appear on the major party tickets on November 4th, one is manifestly UNqualified for the Presidency - John McCain. This decision proves it.

The best sentence I've read on the internet in a long while

2009-07-09T10:44:00.003-04:00

Just discovered (via Steve Coll at NYer.com) a great blog about Africa, and Chad in particular. The very engaging blogger is the BBC's local correspondent, Celeste Hicks.

The best sentence I've read on the internet in a long while:

When I find myself in times of trouble, I just think of my crazy middle-aged bespectacled housemate, completely drunk, sharing his ipod of Finnish tango music with a slightly bemused Chadian toilet attendant in Piccolo nightclub.

What is Ranfsanjani up to?

2009-06-23T05:37:00.003-04:00

Persiankiwi outlines his strategy in tweets:

Sullivan leading the way

2009-06-21T11:56:00.003-04:00

Here's what I love about Andrew Sullivan and his blog, the Daily Dish (one of the two or three the leading providers of breaking news and analysis during this extraordinary post-election upheaval in Iran): last night he had a post entitled "Tick Tock, Motherfuckers", about the fact that the Khamenei/Ahmadinejad regime in Iran is doomed, regardless of how the current crisis ends; and today he posts a lengthy quote from Immanuel Kant on the inherently and necessarily regressive nature of theocracies.

In Sullivan's world, there is no inconsistency or friction between these very different kinds of post - the range, engagement, passion and wit of The Daily Dish are expansive and consistently thrilling.

I love Sullivan for his generous, alert and catholic sensibility.

"Don't be afraid, don't be afraid, we are all together!"

2009-06-21T11:41:00.000-04:00

Today in Tehran.

Allaho Akbar

2009-06-17T23:17:00.001-04:00

Crowds keep getting bigger and bigger

2009-06-17T21:20:00.003-04:00

And gentler and gentler. What's happening is just extraordinary - and it's just the beginning.

"Policeman's lot is oft a happy one"

2009-06-16T17:04:00.005-04:00

In other news... today is Bloomsday.

Here's a fine description of some Dublin police in 1904 - from the Lestrygonians episode of Ulysses.

"A squad of constables debouched from College street, marching in Indian file. Goosestep. Foodheated faces, sweating helmets, patting their truncheons. After their feed with a good load of fat soup under their belts. Policeman's lot is oft a happy one. They split up in groups and scattered, saluting, towards their beats. Let out to graze. Best moment to attack one in pudding time. A punch in his dinner. A squad of others, marching irregularly, rounded Trinity railings making for the station. Bound for their troughs. Prepare to receive cavalry. Prepare to receive soup." -James Joyce

Statement from Grand Ayatollah Montazeri

2009-06-16T13:13:00.002-04:00

In the name of God

People of Iran

These last days, we have witnessed the lively efforts of you brothers and sisters, old and young alike, from any social category, for the 10th presidential elections.

Our youth, hoping to see their rightful will fulfilled, came on the scene and waited patiently. This was the greatest occasion for the government’s officials to bond with their people.

But unfortunately, they used it in the worst way possible. Declaring results that no one in their right mind can believe, and despite all the evidence of crafted results, and to counter people protestations, in front of the eyes of the same nation who carried the weight of a revolution and 8 years of war, in front of the eyes of local and foreign reporters, attacked the children of the people with astonishing violence. And now they are attempting a purge, arresting intellectuals, political opponents and Scientifics.

Now, based on my religious duties, I will remind you :

1- A legitimate state must respect all points of view. It may not oppress all critical views. I fear that this lead to the lost of people’s faith in Islam.

2- Given the current circumstances, I expect the government to take all measures to restore people’s confidence. Otherwise, as I have already said, a government not respecting people’s vote has no religious or political legitimacy.

3- I invite everyone, specially the youth, to continue reclaiming their dues in calm, and not let those who want to associate this movement with chaos succeed.

4- I ask the police and army personals not to “sell their religion”, and beware that receiving orders will not excuse them before god. Recognize the protesting youth as your children. Today censor and cutting telecommunication lines can not hide the truth.

I pray for the greatness of the Iranian people.

"Egregiously, in-your-face false"

2009-06-15T16:44:00.002-04:00

Valuable perspective from Laura Secor:

"...given the demographics, the figures released by the Interior Ministry just do not add up... and no government that has conducted a fair election follows it with communications blackouts and a form of martial law. But that is not the main reason that the announced results resound as not only false, but as egregiously in-your-face false."

More here.

Photos from Tehran

2009-06-15T15:57:00.004-04:00

This and other
superb photos
from the scene here.

Photo credit: (OLIVIER LABAN-MATTEI/AFP/Getty Images)

Prague '68 or Berlin '89?

2009-06-15T15:29:00.005-04:00

Whatever the final outcome, something momentous and irrevocable is happening right now in Iran.

These are the links I've been glued to for the past 48 hours:

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/13/iran-demonstrations-viole_n_215189.html

http://search.twitter.com/search?geocode=35.7061%2C51.4358%2C10mi&q=+near%3ATehran+within%3A10mi

Don't panic!

2009-05-17T13:08:00.002-04:00

Realism and relief re. one of the moment's scariest issues - Pakistan.

This week, Bill Moyers presented a reassuringly reasonable discussion involving some very smart and experienced grown-ups who happen to be both more realistic and more optimistic than most of the politicians and mediaticians out there.

Click on this if you'd like to sleep a little better tonight.

Juan Cole and Shahan Mufti, who know whereof they speak, assure Moyers that the nukes are safe and we can all just chill about the Taliban irregulars, who may be a bunch of bad guys, but who are a relatively small, unpopular, and not especially powerful bunch of bad guys.

"History is on our side"

2009-05-09T19:27:00.007-04:00

A blast from the past: 9 November 2004

I just came across this email I wrote in response to a friend's despair in the aftermath of the reelection of GW Bush. I shared his disappointment, but, apparently, not his despair.

"... their (Gore's and Kerry's) defeats should not be taken as a repudiation of the Democratic view of things. After all, we on the left labor -- and will always labor -- with this important inherent disadvantage: we are open, non-ideological, and reasonable; our very identity as a party is bound up in that; our message is naturally less amenable to simplification. I happen to really like and admire Kerry and have been surprised at how so many -- even among his supporters -- found him annoying and weak as a candidate. But the irony is that the weaker Kerry was as a candidate, the stronger is the case for the Democratic way, since it was far from being repudiated. I mean, it could have been a landslide for Clinton.

This is all not to say that I'm not scared about what the next four years will bring. But I think it's going to be difficult for this administration to sustain its prevarications (to use the nicest word that comes to mind) and wool-pulling for another four years, and I do still believe that when the reality is exposed most Americans will reject the policies and world view of the extreme right wing of the Republican party.

The fanatic forty percent may be with us for a long time to come, but I don't believe they are or will become a majority. Let's hope (and pray) that the Democrats don't start trying to win them over with conspicuous public displays of worship and other forms of pandering to the ignorant or willfully blind. We have our own civic articles of faith; we have our own values; we have an agenda that still represents the needs and desires of most Americans -- we need to stay faithful to who we are. This defeat has been hard, and I do fear that there will be disasters to come (Iraq, the Supreme Court, the environment, our relations with other nations, etc...) but I really do believe that not only are we right, but that history is on our side."

The Greatest

2009-04-23T06:17:00.006-04:00

"There is a very loud amusement park right in front of my present lodgings."

Happy Birthday, Vladimir Nabokov.

Incident in the antipodes

2009-04-20T15:33:00.007-04:00

Here's a link to something I wrote a few years back about a dramatic encounter I had with a kangaroo, when I was eighteen (I'm afraid it didn't occur to me to ask the kangaroo his age).

The editor made a few changes that still annoy me (including the title!). Most significantly, there is a character (or, rather, a person, since he's real) named Sam whose age was changed from fourteen to eighteen, presumably because the editor found it shocking for a fourteen-year-old to be playing around with a rifle. But he was fourteen - this isn't fiction. Whether changing his age makes him, or me, more 'sympathetic' (whatever that means) is rather beside the point.

Nevertheless, take full responsibility.

Of Bears, Bulls and Buffoons

2009-04-10T12:53:00.000-04:00

Here's a link to a piece about Nouriel Roubini calling Jim Cramer a buffoon, which would seem to be an unremarkable statement of fact.

Roubini predicted the financial crisis and has been generally accurate in his bearish pronouncements. Cramer's follies have been well documented over the past few months - most brilliantly by Jon Stewart; he seems to be trying to will and coax the stock market into reinflating itself - or perhaps he is trying to will and coax investors into inflating the stock market for him.

What do I mean by that last point?

Cramer and his ilk seem to confuse the stock-market with the economy in general, as though the two are the same thing. Thus, they confuse the health of the market with the health of the economy. But this is surely wrong.

On October 9, 2007 the Dow reached an all-time high of 14,164.53 - one year later, to the day, it closed at 8579.19, having lost 40% of its value during the intervening period. In other words, the Dow had registered its all-time high on the very eve of an economic catastrophe. Bubbles can be wonderful generators of wealth for investors who know when to cash in. But for the rest of us, not so much.

Eid-eh Shoma Mobarak

2009-03-20T01:07:00.001-04:00

So do I.

2009-03-10T13:45:00.000-04:00

"I wonder how much of the shift toward atheism and agnosticism in America has been occasioned by the combination of Islamist violence, Christianist intolerance and Catholic hierarchy hypocrisy."

- Sullivan

The monster in the mirror

2009-03-03T06:34:00.005-05:00

Re. the Limbaugh thing.

Who is the enemy? In Limbaugh's view, it's the liberals - the Democrats.

DeLay also said something to this effect at CPAC.

This is the issue: they think that the battle between Republicans and Democrats is a battle to the death between irreconcilable and mutually exclusive causes. Manichaean. Good vs. Evil.

One can point out that we share a reverence for the constitution. As Americans, we actually share fundamental values and most of our political battles involve disagreements over how we define those values, and how we achieve them. But for most of us, politics is in essence a battle about the means of achieving those ends that we as a nation have agreed upon from the beginning - prosperity, liberty, security, justice.

For Limbaugh and his ilk (which includes some, but far fewer, equally strident but much less prominent manichaeans on the left), the opposition is not merely political, but existential. They believe that the political opposition is evilly motivated and bent on the destruction of everything they hold dear.

There's no solution to this - some people love to have a villain to hate and revile; they need one. The manichaean temperament requires an evil opposite. It is a matter of psycholigical necessity.

For a while, the Soviet Union and, more generally, Communism served the purpose. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the manichaeans have been looking for a suitable replacement.

"Liberalism" filled the vacuum.

what change looks like

2009-02-15T12:04:00.003-05:00

A new web application from zefrank allows you to draw images by using your voice at different volumes.

This is what the first half of Barack Obama's inaugural address looks like.

Pretty cool - if pointless - stuff. And a boon to procrastinators and insomniacs everywhere.

Towards a more perfect union

2009-02-13T05:34:00.030-05:00

Some thoughts on America in the age of Obama, on the occasion of Lincoln's 200th birthday.

America poses a great and constant challenge to its citizens. We were born out of a set of ideals - ideals which can never be perfectly realized. In a sense, this is the engine of our greatness as a nation.

Liberty, equality, justice, opportunity, fairness... these are the perennial qualities and values that define America. They were written into our founding documents - woven into the genetic code of our nation at its inception. But they are ideals, not accomplishments; they are the America to which we aspire, not the one we actually inhabit. They are the omega as much as the alpha of America.

In a particular time, or a particular place, or, for that matter, in a particular individual, these ideals will be imperfectly realized. We can only know so much; we can only see so clearly. We think we are being fair when in fact we are not. We see through a glass darkly.

And so, in the era of slavery, many honest citizens could believe sincerely that there was no conflict between their founding ideals and the reality of forced bondage and servitude for millions in their midst. Over time, the intolerable paradox (not to speak of the intolerable cruelty) became obvious to enough Americans that change came about. Painful, bloody change. But change nonetheless.

That is how America works. We strive to live according to our ideals, and, although we fall far short, we believe - whether out of heedlessness or complacency or outright denial - that we are actually succeeding. But it is very hard to live up to our ideals.

Over time, it becomes apparent to more and more or our fellow citizens (or the citizens of other countries) that we are living and acting at odds with our ideals. When they speak out, we resent the implication and resist their arguments. There is a struggle.

Over time, more and more people realize that one cannot enslave a human being while calling oneself a champion of liberty; one cannot deny women the right to vote while calling oneself a champion of equality; one cannot support the financial interests of millionaires at the expense of the middle classes while calling oneself a champion of opportunity. One cannot subject a prisoner to torture and deprive him of all due process of law while calling oneself a champion of justice. The struggle continues.

Over time, enough people come to recognize the evident hypocrisy - and the laws or the customs or the convictions of society change. Even so, the struggle continues.

Happily for us, most of our internal conflicts have stopped short of civil war. But they have all been painful. Most progress has been gradual, a long slow battle against the resistance of many. Change has always come at the cost of struggle and sacrifice, inspired by hope and faith (not necessarily in a religious sense, but in the virtue and rightness of the ideals that define us).

But, for all the difficulty, change has ever been the rule in America. Evolution (Darwin was born in the same year as Lincoln) is a fact, not a choice.

And in America, however painful, contentious, even bloody, the convulsions of social and political change, the forces of progress have always prevailed and those of stasis have always failed. We have never slid backwards. At each juncture, we have taken a decisive step towards those essential ideals. This is the rule in America. This imperfect, painful, but constant progress is the essence of what America is.

Our ideals drive us to evolve over time, as growing awareness reveals how our current convictions and actions fall short of our most fundamental values. This is the engine of American renewal.

We believe that we are working together to build a more perfect union. That phrase itself - 'more perfect union' - contains the sense of an unfolding process stretching into the future. Most Americans have always believed that the future will be better than the present; that the lives of our children and their children will be freer, happier, more prosperous and more just.

That is not a universal conviction. Although perhaps not uniquely American, it is certainly typically American. That is because our ideals are in the future, not in the past. As long as they remain in our future, hope and change will not be empty words - they will be as pragmatic as the hammer that drives the nail, the piston that drives the crankshaft that moves the car forward.

Our ideals define us; they do not describe us. When we confuse the two, we are at our worst - inflated with national pride and blinded by self-love. At our best, our ideals keep us humble, in the best and most constructive sense of that word. We understand that we still have far to go in realizing the national dream, but that we have come far already and accomplished extraordinary things along the way.

"Breathing space"

2009-02-08T13:34:00.005-05:00

Earlier today, on Meet the Press, Thomas Ricks - the Washington Post's Pentagon correspondent and author of two books about the war in Iraq - said: "the surge succeeded militarily and failed politically."

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

This is tantamount to saying that the surge failed, and for reasons similar to the overall failure of the Iraq war. Nobody ever denied that the US could achieve military successes in Iraq. The problem has always been a matter of managing the aftermath of military success.

The whole rationale for the surge was political - the idea was to mount a military operation that would provide a certain degree of stability and order, so that political reconciliation and progress emerge and take hold.

The so-called surge did indeed achieve its military objectives. A certain degree of stability and order were in fact created. And yet, Ricks quotes General Odierno as stating that the Iraqis used the "breathing space" created by the surge in order "to step backwards, to become more sectarian, to become more divided."

To say that the surge succeeded militarily is to say, more or less, nothing. In the absence of political progress, the surge cannot be argued to be anything other than a failure.

The camera, not lying

2009-01-23T09:54:00.002-05:00

Here's an uncanny photograph of two presidents.

They are walking side by side and yet in opposite directions. One - in shadow - walks into the past as the other - in bright sunlight - walks into the future.

And who is that anonymous figure in the background?

I think it's actually Obama's shadow - he's making some gesture with his right arm, hidden from the camera's view. But the effect is uncanny - the anonymous figure could be a stand-in for all of us waving good bye to Bush - for good (in every sense of the word).

Some other things Bush/Cheney have kept us safe from since September 11th 2001

2009-01-19T14:49:00.006-05:00

Giant sloths
A mass epidemic of mumps
Tainted spam
S.P.E.C.T.R.E.
Random outbreaks of St. Vitus's Dance
The sky falling on our heads
Godzilla

Coming through the storm

2008-11-16T16:00:00.010-05:00

A little while ago - this afternoon, in fact - I was asked to describe my feelings about the Obama victory for a magazine article. I struggled a bit and came up with this:

"After almost two weeks, I still find it difficult to put the feeling of this victory into words. The first thing I’d say is that it didn’t feel like a victory – it was not a feeling of triumph over an adversary. It was more a feeling of immense joy combined with relief."

Relief is an underrated feeling. When one feels it, it means that things have reverted to how they are supposed to be, or how one hopes they will be. Relief is a type of happiness, in effect. But it's a type of happiness that is easy to overlook and easy to take for granted.

Relief can only be measured in terms of some type of distress that has lately vanished, but whose impression is still strong. Relief is as much an absence as a presence. It is the sudden absence of fear or worry or perplexity or pain.

As I muddle through the aftermath of my immense relief at the outcome of this election, I am coming to realize something new - namely, that this election was actually about the past as much as about the present and the future.

Here's what I mean: our nation has always been about hope and change (I wrote this on election day without fully recognizing all the implications). Our nation has always been about optimism and toleration and ingenuity and courage and exuberance and generosity. Barack Obama is so new a figure on the American scene, and yet he is typical and traditional in his appeal to these essential qualities.

Obama's campaign and election represent a return to perennial American themes as much as the progress towards some great and promising future. At least for me. When I say it's a relief, I am not saying something trivial or light.

I think we had lost our way as a nation. And now I think we have come back to our proper course, like a ship that has come through a typhoon. The ship is battered, the sails are shredded, the main mast has snapped in two. But the seas today are calm and the sun is glorious. And we are alive. Alive!

Our Hussein

2008-11-10T05:35:00.003-05:00

In the current New Yorker, the great and good Hertzberg has something important to say:

"Barack Hussein Obama: last week, sixty-five million Americans turned a liability—a moniker so politically inflammatory that the full recitation of it was considered foul play—into a global diplomatic asset, a symbol of the resurgence of America’s ability to astonish and inspire."

1-44

2008-11-07T16:58:00.004-05:00

by Patrick Moberg (h/t Sullivan)

Palin's future

2008-11-06T07:51:00.006-05:00

from an email I just wrote to a friend and colleague:

Palin's going to make it easy for the GOP to make her the scapegoat - she really is a bit nuts, I think. She's very careless about the lies and inconsistency, so there is already quite a "video trail" - she will be pursued by an ever expanding video montage of contradictions and inanities from her own mouth.

Those who believe that she will continue to be a force to be reckoned with in American politics are surely right about her charisma and natural on-camera talent. No doubt about these. But the American people have proven that they're not idiots - they rejected Palin because they saw that behind these qualities there is no substance. She is a Potemkin figure-head who has nothing to offer except her own hollow ambition, and maybe an occasional wink.

As I've argued before on this blog, ideological politics have been displaced by a more pragmatic approach - this will continue on both sides of the aisle, I believe. A person such as Palin is only viable in an ideological movement, because in such a movement leaders are not called upon to think for themselves or set the terms of the debate - they are called upon to be emblems of the existing ideology and then, once they're in power, to make decisions according to the pre-existing ideological template.

In a more pragmatic era, leaders have to actually know something and make decisions based on their own readings of situations - a set of capabilities that Palin neither possesses nor respects. She has no future in politics except as the leader of an ideological movement that is currently on its way to definite minority status. That's not to say she won't be with us for a long time to come, but president of the USA? Nope.

"President Elect"

2008-11-05T10:24:00.003-05:00

George Bush just made a very gracious statement of congratulation. When he spoke the words "President-Elect", this all became suddenly real to me in a whole new way.

It's sinking in... (!)

The moment

2008-11-05T08:21:00.001-05:00

When CNN called Virginia, I knew it was really, well and truly over. At that moment, I was sitting next to my friend and colleague Kevin in the bar of a Marriott hotel in Brussels. We were being interviewed by a radio journalist. Kevin was speaking. I suddenly saw Virginia called for Obama on the tv and let out some sort of animal shout. Then Kevin joined in. The whole bar was cheering, but not yet aware of the significance of victory in that particular state. Having been optimistic all night, it was only at that moment that I was suddenly able to give vent to a real sense of joy. A little while later - minutes, I think, but it's a bit of a blur - we saw they called the race for Obama . At that point it was pandemonium. I was standing on a seat pounding the ceiling. The whole time, the radio guy had his mic live, and other tv and radio crews were recording the jubilation, which went on for a good fifteen minutes before abating. There were quite a few Americans there, but many Europeans and some Africans as well - a group of Congolese girls were singing.

Morning in America

2008-11-04T08:21:00.015-05:00

I woke up this election-day in another country, thinking of my great-grand-parents, all of whom emigrated from Europe to the United States a little over a century ago. They came variously from Russia, Italy, Ireland, England and Sweden - all common people of no particular status who came to America, as millions of others before and since, in search of an opportunity to create new and better lives for themselves and their families.

For them, "Hope" and "Change" were not vague and airy terms. These words represented possibilities that were entirely real to them, and worth risking a great deal to pursue.

For four hundred years, the particularly American promise of hope and change has moved millions of people the world over - moved them not just in their hearts, but in their wills, in their bodies. "Hope" and "Change" moved them to uproot their families and cross the oceans to take their chances in a new and unfamiliar country.

Barack Obama's campaign, from its inception to this day of decision, has been an act of faith in America and its people - "faith" not in the sense of a desperate and irrational hope, but rather in the sense of a serene and absolute confidence.

In his words and actions, as well as in the overall spirit of his campaign, he has demonstrated a faith in the American people that many of us had come to lack. He has been not just a symbol, but a catalyst - an engine of renewal in our country.

Whatever the result of today's election, Barack Obama's message of "Hope" and "Change" has recalled us to the best of what we are as a nation, and what we always have been.

That is leadership.

Note to Republicans:

2008-11-04T03:46:00.001-05:00

"Republicans are for both the man and the dollar, but in case of conflict the man before the dollar."

Abraham Lincoln's words, not mine.

Are we done yet?

2008-11-03T07:25:00.001-05:00

Speaks for itself:

http://thisfuckingelection.com/

Closing time

2008-11-01T13:34:00.002-04:00

This map (from the Swing State Project) shows the closing times for polls throughout the USA (click on the map to view large version).

Keep an eye on Indiana, a traditionally deep red state where the race is now more or less tied. When the polls close there - at 6pm eastern - we may have the first solid indication of how the race will turn out. If McCain wins handily, the race will probably be quite close. If McCain wins in a squeaker, it's a good sign for Obama. If Obama ekes out a victory here, it looks very bad for McCain.

Three Kinds of Fox

2008-11-01T12:49:00.013-04:00

McCain has a fox's temperament and instinct - he frequently changes his mind about things; he has shown himself to be open to other points of view; he's willing to make things up as he goes along; he is uncomfortable toeing the party line or even sticking with a particular position.

At the same time, he is obsessed with honor, and whenever matters of honor arise, he becomes rigidly moralistic. He has a habit of impugning the motives and character of his opponents, accusing them of cowardice (a sin according to his martial code of honor) or dishonesty or corruption. And on the occasions when he realizes that he himself has transgressed one of his principles, he makes a big show (apparently sincere) of contrition. This kind of moralism is very hedgehog.

My hunch - and it is only a hunch - is that something in McCain considers his inconsistent, improvisatory, fox-nature to be somehow unacceptable. He has an idea of what an honorable man should be - probably something having to do with consistently upholding certain standards of honesty, loyalty, fairness, courage - "doing the right thing" even when it's to your disadvantage. He sees himself as failing to live up to that standard - which would be accurate, because, on many important occasions (abandoning his first wife; the Keating Five scandal; making nice with Jerry Falwell; the tactical choice of Sarah Palin; the current scurrilous campaign), he has not lived up to these standards. That makes him angry and frustrated because he is at odds - at war, in fact - with himself.

Obama is a fox of a different color - and he seems perfectly happy to be one. He seems fully at ease with his own temperament, which inclines him to an essentially pragmatic, non-ideological approach to life. One gets no sense of inner conflict with him. Indeed, this is one of the sharpest contrasts between him and McCain - Obama comes across as very comfortable in his own skin and very temperamentally consistent, whereas McCain seems edgy and frustrated. No doubt McCain's demeanor owes much to the fact that he's losing to a candidate whom he considers his inferior, but even so, his temperamental dissonance is a bit weird in a man of his age.

And then there's the fascinating case of Sarah Palin. She is no doubt an unambivalent hedgehog - indeed, she's a paragon of the type. But she also happens to be quite a fox.

Of Hedgehogs and Foxes - a footnote

2008-11-01T11:13:00.008-04:00

"The Hedgehog and the Fox" is an essay by Isaiah Berlin, which takes its title from the following fragment of a poem by the ancient Greek poet Archilochus:

The fox knows many things,
But the hedgehog knows one big thing.

That's it. That's the fragment in its entirety - all that remains of the original poem.

Although nobody can tell exactly what Archilochus meant, Berlin uses the fox/hedgehog distinction to describe two types of personality, or, more accurately, two types of mentality.

Hedgehogs tend to see things in terms of one overarching idea or set of principles, whereas foxes tend to experience the world in multifarious terms.

This distinction loosely corresponds to some of the dichotomies we use everyday to divide the world into "two kinds of people" - e.g. idealists (hedgehogs) and realists (foxes).

In Berlin's words:

"For there exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single central vision, one system less or more coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel-a single, universal, organizing principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance-and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way, for some psychological or physiological cause, related by no moral or aesthetic principle; these last lead lives, perform acts, and entertain ideas that are centrifugal rather than centripetal, their thought is scattered or diffused, moving on many levels, seizing upon the essence of a vast variety of experiences and objects for what they are in themselves, without consciously or unconsciously, seeking to fit them into, or exclude them from, any one unchanging, all-embracing, sometimes self-contradictory and incomplete, at times fanatical, unitary inner vision."

Berlin goes on to list a number of celebrated hedgehogs and foxes to illustrate the distinction, for instance: Plato (hedgehog) and Aristotle (fox), Dante (hedgehog) and Shakespeare (fox).

"The Hedgehog and the Fox" is actually an essay about Tolstoy (specifically, it is about Tolstoy's view of history) and the discussion of hedgehogs and foxes is preliminary to Berlin's thesis that Tolstoy is one thinker who cannot easily be categorized in these terms because he is a fox who wanted to be, and tried hard to be, a hedgehog. He thus tried to develop ideas that were at odds with his own nature.

It has struck me that John McCain suffers from an analogous inner division. I would not compare him to Tolstoy in any other way, of course.

Of Hedgehogs and Foxes

2008-10-31T05:52:00.019-04:00

In the midst of our quadrennial conflict between Left and Right, we are also engaged in a less obvious but perhaps equally important conflict between Ideology and Pragmatism.

Obama is clearly a pragmatist, both in his thinking and his temperament. He looks at situations and tries to get as much information as possible from as many points of view as possible, then seeks to move forward in the most effective way to accomplish a realistic goal. This is not to say that he is not a man of the Left, by and large. But I would argue that he is not first and foremost a man of the Left.

George W. Bush is an ideologue, as have been most of the powers in the Republican party and commentariat over the past generation. They are committed to the Party and to some core principles which are easily and clearly articulated : low taxes, American exceptionalism in foreign affairs, anti-choice on abortion, and so forth.

Ideologues find it easy to articulate their principles in binary terms - yes/no; pro/con; right/wrong; good/evil.

This is as much a mental style as it is a matter of political convictions.

There have been times in our history and in the history of other countries when the Left was predominantly ideological - Russia in 1917 comes to mind - and the Right more pragmatic.

The foreign policy of the first Bush administration was eminently pragmatic and non-ideological. "Realpolitik" - the archetype of pragmatism in foreign affairs - is indeed more a phenomenon of the Right in America than of the left.

Ideologues tend to view pragmatists as unprincipled and even immoral. Pragmatists tend to view Ideologues as fanatics (which they are! [hey - it's my blog]).

To put it another way: Ideologues are hedgehogs and Pragmatists are foxes.

All this is obvious enough.

Here's my point:

In this election we are not only seeing a Leftward swing of the pendulum. We are seeing a realignment of the political culture, away from Ideology and towards Pragmatism.

Where does this leave John McCain?

Interesting question! The answer: hopelessly conflicted. He can't decide whether he is one or the other. He seems to have the instincts of a pragmatist - but his sense of honor seems to conflict with his own temperament. He seems to think that an ideological approach is more pure, consistent and therefore honorable, whereas the pragmatic approach is less so.

Just as Tolstoy was (according to Isaiah Berlin in his great essay) a fox who wanted to be a hedgehog, so in his way is McCain.

And so, he swings (rather wildly at times) between the two dispositions.

(If he were a clock, he'd keep crazy time. Time would lurch forward a day or two, then get freaked out and back up, then it would drag for a while until it got bored and then lurch again. At 4pm on Tuesday it would suddenly become 6am on Thursday, then back up to Wednesday afternoon... all would proceed normally for a while - sixty seconds to a minute, sixty minutes to an hour, twenty-four-hours to a day... not so fast Buster - now, suddenly, it's last week!)

These are developing ideas - I hope to expand on them in the coming days.

Happy Halloween!

Note to Republicans:

2008-10-29T13:17:00.001-04:00

Some things are more important than your tax bill.

Through the looking glass, darkly

2008-10-26T07:39:00.016-04:00

This morning (for my sins, no doubt - it is, after all, Sunday) I followed a little link, which led me down a dark hole, at the bottom of which I discovered an online article, which included the following quote:

"I honestly never thought we'd see such a thing in our country - not yet anyway - but I sense what's occurring in this election is a recklessness and abandonment of rationality that has preceded the voluntary surrender of liberty and security in other places."

These apocalyptic words were written by Mark Levin, at the National Review Online. If you're feeling masochistic, you can read the whole piece here.

What struck me about these particular words was that they mirrored - almost perfectly - my own sentiments, and those of many people I know, in the aftermath of George Bush's reelection in 2004.

Today, four years later, I have the sense that America has come to its senses, corrected its moral course, redeemed itself, vindicated the wisdom of its founders, and chastened me for having doubted its essential decency and common sense.

And all Mr. Levin can sense is doom.

To dip into the NRO these days is to sojourn in a bizarroland, where all normal values have been reversed - the perspective is so utterly weird it is disorienting.

Mr. Levin thinks that anyone who supports Obama - indeed, anyone who fails to despise and fear Obama - must be either a villain or a damned fool.

The fact that increasing numbers of reputable conservatives have endorsed Obama can only be explained by their own opportunism, or by Obama's capacity to deceive and bewitch.

Levin writes, "my greatest concern is whether this election will show a majority of the voters susceptible to the appeal of a charismatic demagogue."

This breathtaking bit of (unintended) irony comes to you straight from an enthusiastic supporter of Sarah Palin.

Mr. Levin is not alone - far from it. "The Corner" (as NRO's collective blog is called) is a veritable Mad Hatter's tea party of unhinged paranoid chatter that seems to make perfect sense to them and to them alone.

For a moment, I couldn't help but wonder whether I was being similarly paranoid four years ago when I worried that Dick Cheney was on the verge of turning the US into a crypto-fascist state. Perhaps we just have a bad habit in this country of getting hysterical whenever the opposition is in the ascendant.

But that was momentary. Then I remembered that the Bush administration actually did lie us into war. They did spy on their own citizens. They did question the patriotism of dissenters and try to silence them. They did seek - at every level of government, in every branch of government - to elevate and reward fealty to the administration over every other quality, including competence, experience and probity. They did try to make habeas corpus a matter of executive discretion. They did torture both the guilty and the innocent in our names.

It's no wonder that the apologists for this regime would see Obama, and all he represents, as a threat. To acknowledge his virtues would require them to reject what they have consented to and, indeed, gloried in for the last eight years.

And so, as many of their fellows come to their senses, and slip away one by one, the chatter gets louder and ever more inane, and the party dwindles to something very strange and very sad and very, very small.

What was that all about?

2008-10-25T06:04:00.002-04:00

The conservative case for Obama

2008-10-23T11:17:00.003-04:00

In recent days and weeks we have observed a striking number of high-profile Republican endorsements of Barack Obama. Colin Powell's was only the most notable - and the most seriously, thoughtfully, cogently expressed - among many.

But the most powerful and eloquent expression I have yet seen of the Republican case for Obama is this video from, conservativesforchange.com:

Grover Norquist is FUNNY!

2008-10-21T20:13:00.003-04:00

Who knew? I always thought he was just a dour, humorless a-hole.

"McCain's choice of Palin brought his polling numbers above Obama's--until McCain endorsed the Bush bailout. Palin draws large crowds and has energized Reagan Republicans, gun owners, women and people of faith. Obama knows this and has his surrogates trashing Palin with a "sack the quarterback" strategy most recently joined in by Colin Powell. She is an asset and the most consequential VP candidate in a generation," - Grover Norquist.

(h/t Sullivan)

The Agony of Montana

2008-10-21T15:34:00.004-04:00

Mensch

2008-10-19T14:38:00.003-04:00

Some plain truth spoken by a grown-up:

Imagine how different things would be if this man had run in 2000.

Asymptote?

2008-10-19T11:31:00.001-04:00

Powell Endorses Obama

2008-10-19T09:46:00.002-04:00

This is a very big deal - in and of itself, this is the most valuable endorsement available to Obama.

But when you add to that the thoughtfulness and eloquence of Powell's statement, it is all the more powerful.

As I say, this is a very big deal.

"In this economy, racism is officially a luxury."

2008-10-18T06:14:00.002-04:00

An anecdote from Sean Quinn, at Fivethirtyeight.com, puts the "Bradley Effect" into a whole new context:

So a canvasser goes to a woman's door in Washington, Pennsylvania. Knocks. Woman answers. Knocker asks who she's planning to vote for. She isn't sure, has to ask her husband who she's voting for. Husband is off in another room watching some game. Canvasser hears him yell back, "We're votin' for the n***er!"

Woman turns back to canvasser, and says brightly and matter of factly: "We're voting for the n***er."

read the whole post

"Barack" is actually Swahili for "That one"

2008-10-17T14:47:00.007-04:00

Barack Obama and John McCain put aside their rancor last night as they both attended the Al Smith dinner - an election year charity event named after a three-term governor of New York, who was the first Catholic candidate for President back in 1928.

I'm proud that this admirable and salubrious tradition takes place in my home town of New York City. The occasion is typical of New York - in the midst of a ferocious and high-stakes contest, the rivals dress up in goofy outfits, break bread together and poke a little fun at each other and themselves.

As Obama put it:

"The fact that each October, in the closing weeks of a hard fought campaign, people of all political persuasions can come together and share a meal in honor of this foundation underscores the reality that no matter what differences or divisions or arguments we're having right now, we ultimately belong to something bigger and more lasting that a political party. We belong to a community, we share a country, we are all children of God. "

And this year, they were both genuinely funny. Seriously - it was a riot.

Obama:

Part 2

McCain:

Part 2

Say what??

2008-10-17T09:39:00.003-04:00

New York, October 15, 2008

2008-10-16T12:26:00.003-04:00

Credit: Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty

Hat Trick

2008-10-15T22:38:00.005-04:00

4:38 AM Here in Brussels - I am EXHAUSTED.

Just finished watching the third debate online. No drama, no surprises, except perhaps that McCain was just as cranky as in the first two - I would have thought he'd kind of let it all hang out and try to be more genial and at ease.

The Ayers thing did come up - Obama handled it more or less as I figured he would. Zero points for McCain. The issue is dead, except for the true believers.

Obama continued to confirm that he is the man for the job. Temperament, command of issues, concern for middle class, knowing his own policies, even to a rather wonkish degree... all of this assures voters that the presidency will be in safe hands with Obama.

Weirdly, McCain seems less mature - Obama is the grown up. McCain can hardly bring himself to give Obama ANY credit for anything - except some sarcastic praise of his "eloquence", by which he means, more or less, "slick jive talking".

Obama, on the other hand, once again was measured in giving McCain credit for some things and frankly disagreeing with him on others. This is critical, since it demonstrates thoughtfulness, principle, fairness and, above all, confidence.

As I've been saying for weeks, these debates should not be judged as isolated events in themselves, but rather in the context of the whole campaign. The object for the candidates should not necessarily be to "win" the encounter, but rather to present themselves in the manner that will position them most effectively with voters. It is therefore possible for both candidates to succeed in this respect or for both candidates to fail, or for one to succeed and the other fail.

McCain failed three times. Obama succeeded three times.

Absent some "October surprise", Obama is our next president.

Halleluia and sweet dreams...

Powell to endorse Obama (?)

2008-10-15T10:11:00.002-04:00

Lawrence O'Donnell reports at the Huffington Post:

"It now seems beyond doubt that Colin Powell will endorse Barack Obama and thereby hammer the final nail in the coffin of the Republican campaign to hold onto the White House."

If it happens, it will be the most potent endorsement Obama could receive.

Smile when you say that - again

2008-10-15T08:01:00.011-04:00

Look, folks - this is a trap. McCain can't win by bringing Ayers up.

Obama/Biden have already won this battle twice: first, because McCain/Palin's use of the Ayers connection to attack Obama has been perceived as negative and beside the point; second, because Obama/Biden have been able to make McCain look squirrely for not saying it to Obama's face.

Obama and Biden have been goading McCain into making an issue of Ayers in the debate. McCain, with his prickly sense of "honor", seems to be taking the bait.

If McCain mentions Ayers tonight, Obama will have a ready answer - Ayers was recruited to advise the organization whose board Obama headed not by Obama himself, but by its benefactor, Walter Annenberg, a Republican friend of Ronald Reagan, a former ambassador under Nixon, whose wife has donated $1500 to McCain's campaign this year.

Obama will point out that the board was filled with civic and business leaders, many Republican, and that the focus of his own participation was to improve education for Chicago's children in the present, not to fight obscure ideological battles in the past. Obama, along with his Republican colleagues on the board, were trying to do some actual good in the here and now.

McCain will not "score any points". He will look like a fool.

My, my, my

2008-10-14T18:32:00.002-04:00

Andy Griffith IS Sarah Palin IN...

2008-10-14T03:11:00.005-04:00

The Sarah Palin Story.

Actually, it's Elia Kazan's "A Face in the Crowd" from 1957 - the most chilling and accurate portrait of pseudo-populist cynicism as a corrosive force in American culture. That is, until the current Palin road-show started wending its way through our neighborhoods and across our screens.

Take a look at this - it's pretty uncanny.

It's not just the economy, smart guy

2008-10-13T19:14:00.009-04:00

At the risk of flogging a long-dead horse, let me say that I think Obama's strength in the polls has to do with his performance in the debates and on the campaign trail, rather than with the financial crisis per se.

I keep going on about this because it annoys me to hear pundits attribute Obama's recent success to the financial crisis alone - as though Obama is passively benefitting from the fact that voters are generically penalizing Republicans, as though it has nothing to do with Obama's qualities and deeds.

The first debate was decisive - it was the turning point. And every public appearance since then has served to confirm Obama's stature in the minds of voters.

The more people see of Obama, the more they get to know him, the more comfortable they become with him as President. His demeanor and his words reassure people, and tend to confirm the best assumptions about him (he's hyper-intelligent; he has excellent judgment; he's cool under pressure) and contradict the worst (he's inexperienced; he's an empty suit, all charisma and no substance).

The financial crisis has brought out these qualities, and has brought out some of the opposite qualities in McCain, whose behavior has tended to contradict the best assumptions about him (he's experienced; he knows how to react to crisis) and confirm the worst (he's clueless about the economy, out of touch, out of control, a gambler...).

Yesterday in Toledo, Obama addressed the issues head on and offered some new proposals. He also demonstrated the qualities of calm, reasonableness and (perhaps above all) sure-handedness that have made increasing numbers of Americans feel confident in his leadership.

Note to Sam

2008-10-13T17:46:00.002-04:00

A delicious bit of irony, courtesy of Mr. Sullivan:

"It must be depressing to be Paul Krugman. No matter how well the economy performs, Krugman's bitter vendetta against the Bush administration requires him to hunt for the black lining in a sky full of silvery clouds. With the economy now booming, what can Krugman possibly have to complain about? In today's column, titled That Hissing Sound, Krugman says there is a housing bubble, and it's about to burst... Krugman will have to come up with something much better, I think, to cause many others to share his pessimism." - John Hinderaker, Powerline blog, August 8, 2005.

Paul Krugman Wins Economics Nobel

2008-10-13T09:04:00.001-04:00

Paul Krugman, a professor at Princeton University and an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times, was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science on Monday.

more...

Yowza

2008-10-13T08:01:00.004-04:00

Packer is on the ball

2008-10-12T11:49:00.004-04:00

The New Yorker's George Packer nails it - as usual:

"Palin is too shallow to understand the weapon she’s playing with; she’s just thrilled to be the birthday girl and the object of so much semi-erotic devotion. But McCain knows better…"

Read the rest.

Mindless journalistic "balance"

2008-10-12T11:24:00.003-04:00

This sort of nonsense (from a Newsweek article by Holly Bailey) makes my blood boil:

McCain and Obama have now settled into a mean-spirited and depressingly familiar tit-for-tat. The McCain camp implicitly questions Obama's patriotism and honesty because of his association with former Weatherman Bill Ayers. Meanwhile, Obama's campaign is making McCain out as confused, erratic and angry.

What!?!?

Sorry, but McCain IS confused, erratic and angry. How is pointing that out "mean spirited"? And how is it equivalent to McCain/Palin's accusations that Obama wants to teach your five-year-old child about sex and "pals around with terrorists"?

It is not "tit-for-tat".

And the only thing that's "depressingly familiar" is the feckless "balance" fetish in contemporary hack journalism. God forbid you should report the reality if there's a chance that some Republican might call you a Liberal.

Cui bono?

2008-10-12T06:28:00.006-04:00

Leaving aside the vileness of their incendiary rhetoric over the past couple of weeks, which McCain/Palin probably don't acknowledge, even to themselves, it should be pointed out that inciting - on video, no less! - your supporters to fear and despise your opponent is probably not an effective strategy for getting yourself elected President and Vice President of these here United States of America.

Some 'patriot' out there is watching the polls drift irrevocably in Obama's direction. He sees America on the verge of electing a terrorist, a traitor, a Muslim, a socialist, a baby-killer, a person who hates America and wants to destroy her and everything she stands for.

How does he know this? Because John McCain and Sarah Palin told him so.

How can the terrorist be stopped? Who will save America from imminent catastrophe?

What's a patriot to do?

What's a gun-toting patriot to do?

I mean, this is what the 2nd Amendment is FOR in the end, isn't it? Isn't that why they put it right there in the Constitution?

Someone should let McCain/Palin know that if Obama is assassinated, Biden will win in a landslide. Maybe that will shut them up.

Wow.

2008-10-11T09:21:00.003-04:00

Perspective from an old-time conservative

2008-10-11T05:54:00.019-04:00

Aristotle has some advice for John McCain.

"In the arena of human life the honors and rewards fall to those who show their good qualities in action."

"The least deviation from truth will be multiplied later"

"Dignity consists not in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them"

"I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who overcomes his enemies."

"Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way...you become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions."

"We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit."

And a little something for Sarah:

"It is simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences."

Finally, some advice for me:

"It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims."

Worser and worser

2008-10-10T04:26:00.006-04:00

In an interview with Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell says that the McCain/Palin campaign's ugly turn in recent days suggests that their own polling is showing an erosion of support, even among their own base.

"This is a campaign right now that is playing entirely to its base, it's playing to the rally. When you, at this stage of the campaign, are playing entirely to the rally audience, that means you're in tremendous trouble."

The whole segment is interesting; the relevant part starts at 6:48.

What the hell is McCain doing in Wisconsin?

2008-10-10T03:23:00.005-04:00

Seriously. He's on the verge of losing half-a-dozen red states - even North Carolina is swinging to Obama. What's he doing in a blue state that he has virtually no chance of winning?