It's hard to think of a more stupid, despicable, ignorant remark she could have made. Comparing criticism of her violent rhetoric to the suffering of European and Russian Jewry is unacceptable, and should be unacceptable to anyone regardless of ideology.
Charitably, she's merely ignorant of its historical meaning, and, once apprised of it, will apologise. Less charitably, she knew exactly what she was saying, which is not merely ignorant but reprehensible. In the context of Beck's nakedly anti-Semitic extended attack on George Soros, after which Murdoch defended him, worse yet.
In either case, she has forfeited any right to any sort of public platform at all, much less a potential candidacy for the presidency. It would be precious were one or two Republicans to take her to task for this ugliness.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Fear Is The Key
Robert Wright, in this morning's NY Times, writes with coherence and sanity on the political tug of war over the Tucson shootings:
To be sure, at this political moment there is — by my left-wing lights, at least — more crazy fear-mongering and demonization on the right than on the left. But that asymmetry is transient.
What’s not transient, unfortunately, is the technological trend that drives much of this. It isn’t just that people can now build a cocoon of cable channels and Web sites that insulates them from inconvenient facts. It’s also that this cocoon insulates them from other Americans — including the groups of Americans who, inside the cocoon, are being depicted as evil aliens. It’s easy to buy into the demonization of people you never communicate with, and whose views you never see depicted by anyone other than their adversaries.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/before-hatred-comes-fear/?hp
--He, I think properly, says elsewhere that there's more of a problem on the Beckoid right than on the Olbermannish left these days, as I've said in previous posts. But he also touches on something less specific to these times, less confined to one side of the ideological spectrum over time, that I also rant about regularly: the separation of virtuous Self from demonized, dehumanized Other, made worse by the echo chambers of the Internet. My postings on the mostly righty docs' blog are more temperate than those I post here, though in terms of arguments consistent, because i want to make room for them rather than have them entirely dismissed, and the possibility that a lefty might be a reasonable human being as well. Were I in a really public media venue, I'd only rarely speak as such as Olbermann, with whom I often agree, speaks, for the same reason. We all need to vent, and I'm passionate about what i write here. I loathe Beck, Limbaugh, Palin et al. for the reasons I've stated. But i, too, see a need to empathise, assert a common humanity, and if at all possible reach out rather than demonize, even to those well to my right.
I recall a time when the left indulged in violent, eliminationist rhetoric, calling for revolution, 'off(ing) the pigs), damning those who disagreed with them as racist, imperialist mass murderers in a system corrupt beyond repair that needed to be destroyed. A few of us went from such rhetoric to building bombs and committing armed robbery, killing sometimes innocent people in the process. All this was deeply wrong, as well as politically wildly counterproductive. I've talked in other posts about such things, and recognize the context, the violence of the right and the government at the time and so on: make no mistake that i held/hold only the left responsible. But we, too, were capable of such things. Today, we aren't nearly as vociferously speaking of our foes' evil as once we were. But we must, in discussing the current environment, find a way to reach out to others than ourselves, or nothing will change. Nothing may change anyway; i don't expect Beck et al. to respond in the slightest. But let us be on the side of change for the better, rather than ossification or even worsening of the entirely unsatisfactory current situation.
I do not for a moment suggest that we fall into the trap set for the left in the 1950s, where we accepted the rules set by the right: either renounce a larger political vision for broad social change in this country, accept the national security state and military-industrial complex, or be branded a Communist, a fellow-traveler, a 'comsymp' and so on. Such a trap is again being set, in that one must accept destructive righty macroeconomic nonsense to be credible all too often. We should resist that.
But consider, for instance, the Arab-Israeli situation. At this point, I feel that Israel, by far the greater economic and military power, is exacting from more from the Palestinians than conversely, has far greater freedom to change things. But Palestinians shouting 'Gunships in Gaza! Walls and checkpoints! Sabra/Shatila! Zionist apartheid!' and so on, and Israelis shouting 'Munich! Ma'alot! Sbarro! Suicide bombers! Katyushas!' at each other will continue to kill each others' children. If they don't find a way to transcend the weighing of grievances, nothing will change. There are those on both sides who profit mightily from the current situation, just as here there are those whose prominence, riches and power derive from their embrace of dehumanization of their enemies and delegitimazation of views other than their own. Such people must be resisted, but in a context recognizing that such behavior hasn't historically been limited to the right, that they and their followers, too, are human, and that change must come out of that recognition. It will not come as a 'victory', but, if at all, it will come out of attempts in a middle ground to solve problems together, through messy compromise rather than purity of ideology.
To be sure, at this political moment there is — by my left-wing lights, at least — more crazy fear-mongering and demonization on the right than on the left. But that asymmetry is transient.
What’s not transient, unfortunately, is the technological trend that drives much of this. It isn’t just that people can now build a cocoon of cable channels and Web sites that insulates them from inconvenient facts. It’s also that this cocoon insulates them from other Americans — including the groups of Americans who, inside the cocoon, are being depicted as evil aliens. It’s easy to buy into the demonization of people you never communicate with, and whose views you never see depicted by anyone other than their adversaries.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/before-hatred-comes-fear/?hp
--He, I think properly, says elsewhere that there's more of a problem on the Beckoid right than on the Olbermannish left these days, as I've said in previous posts. But he also touches on something less specific to these times, less confined to one side of the ideological spectrum over time, that I also rant about regularly: the separation of virtuous Self from demonized, dehumanized Other, made worse by the echo chambers of the Internet. My postings on the mostly righty docs' blog are more temperate than those I post here, though in terms of arguments consistent, because i want to make room for them rather than have them entirely dismissed, and the possibility that a lefty might be a reasonable human being as well. Were I in a really public media venue, I'd only rarely speak as such as Olbermann, with whom I often agree, speaks, for the same reason. We all need to vent, and I'm passionate about what i write here. I loathe Beck, Limbaugh, Palin et al. for the reasons I've stated. But i, too, see a need to empathise, assert a common humanity, and if at all possible reach out rather than demonize, even to those well to my right.
I recall a time when the left indulged in violent, eliminationist rhetoric, calling for revolution, 'off(ing) the pigs), damning those who disagreed with them as racist, imperialist mass murderers in a system corrupt beyond repair that needed to be destroyed. A few of us went from such rhetoric to building bombs and committing armed robbery, killing sometimes innocent people in the process. All this was deeply wrong, as well as politically wildly counterproductive. I've talked in other posts about such things, and recognize the context, the violence of the right and the government at the time and so on: make no mistake that i held/hold only the left responsible. But we, too, were capable of such things. Today, we aren't nearly as vociferously speaking of our foes' evil as once we were. But we must, in discussing the current environment, find a way to reach out to others than ourselves, or nothing will change. Nothing may change anyway; i don't expect Beck et al. to respond in the slightest. But let us be on the side of change for the better, rather than ossification or even worsening of the entirely unsatisfactory current situation.
I do not for a moment suggest that we fall into the trap set for the left in the 1950s, where we accepted the rules set by the right: either renounce a larger political vision for broad social change in this country, accept the national security state and military-industrial complex, or be branded a Communist, a fellow-traveler, a 'comsymp' and so on. Such a trap is again being set, in that one must accept destructive righty macroeconomic nonsense to be credible all too often. We should resist that.
But consider, for instance, the Arab-Israeli situation. At this point, I feel that Israel, by far the greater economic and military power, is exacting from more from the Palestinians than conversely, has far greater freedom to change things. But Palestinians shouting 'Gunships in Gaza! Walls and checkpoints! Sabra/Shatila! Zionist apartheid!' and so on, and Israelis shouting 'Munich! Ma'alot! Sbarro! Suicide bombers! Katyushas!' at each other will continue to kill each others' children. If they don't find a way to transcend the weighing of grievances, nothing will change. There are those on both sides who profit mightily from the current situation, just as here there are those whose prominence, riches and power derive from their embrace of dehumanization of their enemies and delegitimazation of views other than their own. Such people must be resisted, but in a context recognizing that such behavior hasn't historically been limited to the right, that they and their followers, too, are human, and that change must come out of that recognition. It will not come as a 'victory', but, if at all, it will come out of attempts in a middle ground to solve problems together, through messy compromise rather than purity of ideology.
Monday, January 10, 2011
'Moi? You do it, too!!' Isn't What Jesus Would Have Said
Let's exclude for a minute the gross disparity between left and right with respect to elinimationist rhetoric, which Dave Neiwart's been tracking for years on Orcinus. Let's exclude, too, the fact that there's been no leftie political violence to speak of for decades, and the wild extent to which righties embrace the Second Amendment and have been buying guns and ammo. Let's, for the sake of argument, accept the idea that both sides have been immoderate in their rhetoric, reacting against each other's excesses in a vicious circle. Consider how few of those good Christian souls can't react to the murders by mourning the dead, caring for the living, and looking to themselves, reaching out, trying to understand, see that there's a problem out there and be part of solving it, out of empathy and love and a larger vision than us v them, trying to help.
But that isn't what they do. They don't just accept bitter partisanship; they revel in it. It defines them. A day without dehumanizing others is like a day without sunshine. Coming together? That smacks of reknitting a social contract, of weakness and appeasement and moral relativism. And it would threaten their movement to its core.
A few of us on the docs' blog have tried to cast the matter in the terms I outlined in the first paragraph, trying to keep a dialogue going. A gratifying number of righties there, who have seemed decent guys/gals anyway and with whom I get along pretty well despite our different politics, have joined and extended the idea, even to the extent of saying, essentially, what Keith Olbermann said: that there's been too much crap out there, that we shouldn't add to it ourselves or accept it from others, that we can be better than that. Amongst them was perhaps the most politically active and most widely respected guy in the group. Many of the docs there, even the righties and Randers and libertarian types, have actually moved, on this issue, more in a positive direction than I've seen elsewhere. One of them, to my astonishment and admiration, even authored a post citing moderate Muslims acting generously and courageously against extremists, reconsidering a former position he'd held equating Islam with terror, abuse of women and medieval Shar'ia. Then there were others (like the guy who playfully associated Michelle Obama with the Tontons Macoutes) whose pathetic bloviations could be reduced entirely to 'Moi? They do it too!', in a manner that'd be entirely unacceptable in a second grader.
The docs there have done better as a group than I've seen the right do in general. I've been upset by this one, and have taken to responding to the trolls with 'Mourn the dead, hope for the living and shut the fuck up.' The very least you can do. Put down the shit for a minute, stop flinging it, and wonder about how we can stop killing nine-year-old girls in this country. And, if you can't do that, I'll personally rip that fucking 'What would Jesus do?' bumper sticker off your car.
But that isn't what they do. They don't just accept bitter partisanship; they revel in it. It defines them. A day without dehumanizing others is like a day without sunshine. Coming together? That smacks of reknitting a social contract, of weakness and appeasement and moral relativism. And it would threaten their movement to its core.
A few of us on the docs' blog have tried to cast the matter in the terms I outlined in the first paragraph, trying to keep a dialogue going. A gratifying number of righties there, who have seemed decent guys/gals anyway and with whom I get along pretty well despite our different politics, have joined and extended the idea, even to the extent of saying, essentially, what Keith Olbermann said: that there's been too much crap out there, that we shouldn't add to it ourselves or accept it from others, that we can be better than that. Amongst them was perhaps the most politically active and most widely respected guy in the group. Many of the docs there, even the righties and Randers and libertarian types, have actually moved, on this issue, more in a positive direction than I've seen elsewhere. One of them, to my astonishment and admiration, even authored a post citing moderate Muslims acting generously and courageously against extremists, reconsidering a former position he'd held equating Islam with terror, abuse of women and medieval Shar'ia. Then there were others (like the guy who playfully associated Michelle Obama with the Tontons Macoutes) whose pathetic bloviations could be reduced entirely to 'Moi? They do it too!', in a manner that'd be entirely unacceptable in a second grader.
The docs there have done better as a group than I've seen the right do in general. I've been upset by this one, and have taken to responding to the trolls with 'Mourn the dead, hope for the living and shut the fuck up.' The very least you can do. Put down the shit for a minute, stop flinging it, and wonder about how we can stop killing nine-year-old girls in this country. And, if you can't do that, I'll personally rip that fucking 'What would Jesus do?' bumper sticker off your car.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Re: Congresswoman Giffords and the Others
I spent this morning on the doctors' blog, where a thread was started mocking Michelle Obama on broccoli. Fine; they hate Obama. One poster moved on to denounce the 'cult of Obama', and likened her to Elena Ceausescu. I objected. The reply was that Obama deserved it.
The thread went on to an unfavorable comparison of Michelle's physiognomy to that of Carla Bruni, whose nude picture one poster cited; appalling sexist posts rained down. I held my tongue; if they didn't get why Ceausescu was unacceptable, I didn't think it worth it. I apologise for that.
Next, one clever fellow humorously suggested that Michelle Obama would enforce a 'broccoli mandate' using Tontons Macoutes. I posted that this was despicable, racist and entirely unacceptable, opinions about Obama be damned. Maybe 10 or 20 posts later, nobody finds this crap even mildly objectionable. How much further the fuck need one go to meet disapproval from anybody but me?
I have no doubt that some of these highly paid, highly educated professionals will have little if any problem with Giffords' wounds, and will accuse liberals of a typical hysterical overreaction to the act of a single, isolated madman.
And, too, the Tea Partiers/Republicans say something along the lines of, well, he shouldn't have shot her, but we understand why a defender of the Constitution and the fucking Second Amendment would be outraged by her liberal subversion of all this country holds dear. Just as they said, well, they shouldn't have killed Dr Slepian as he was eating breakfast at home with his family, or Dr Tiller as he was leaving church, but abortion is murder. Just like they said McVeigh shouldn't have leveled the Murrah building, but the government is too big. Just like they said they shouldn't have shot those ATF agents, but those jackbooted thugs want to tell us how to live and take our guns. Just like they said he shouldn't have flown that plane into an IRS building, but taxation is theft.
They have much to answer for, and they won't do it, and far too few people in this country will call them to account for what they've said and done. They were all on the grassy knoll today. Bastards.
The thread went on to an unfavorable comparison of Michelle's physiognomy to that of Carla Bruni, whose nude picture one poster cited; appalling sexist posts rained down. I held my tongue; if they didn't get why Ceausescu was unacceptable, I didn't think it worth it. I apologise for that.
Next, one clever fellow humorously suggested that Michelle Obama would enforce a 'broccoli mandate' using Tontons Macoutes. I posted that this was despicable, racist and entirely unacceptable, opinions about Obama be damned. Maybe 10 or 20 posts later, nobody finds this crap even mildly objectionable. How much further the fuck need one go to meet disapproval from anybody but me?
I have no doubt that some of these highly paid, highly educated professionals will have little if any problem with Giffords' wounds, and will accuse liberals of a typical hysterical overreaction to the act of a single, isolated madman.
And, too, the Tea Partiers/Republicans say something along the lines of, well, he shouldn't have shot her, but we understand why a defender of the Constitution and the fucking Second Amendment would be outraged by her liberal subversion of all this country holds dear. Just as they said, well, they shouldn't have killed Dr Slepian as he was eating breakfast at home with his family, or Dr Tiller as he was leaving church, but abortion is murder. Just like they said McVeigh shouldn't have leveled the Murrah building, but the government is too big. Just like they said they shouldn't have shot those ATF agents, but those jackbooted thugs want to tell us how to live and take our guns. Just like they said he shouldn't have flown that plane into an IRS building, but taxation is theft.
They have much to answer for, and they won't do it, and far too few people in this country will call them to account for what they've said and done. They were all on the grassy knoll today. Bastards.
Friday, January 7, 2011
Betcha His Appendage is Less Noodly Than Yours
I found this in the Times yesterday, a small pleasure to make you laugh a bit: Dwight Garner demolishing a self-help book in a hilarious review:
He can use without irony, as he does in “The 4-Hour Body,” lines like: “I was enjoying French food and a bottle of Bordeaux with a 25-year-old female yoga instructor new to San Francisco, fresh from the Midwest.” This poor woman lets slip that she’s unable to have an orgasm. Mr. Ferriss, as any humanitarian would, makes it a point to fix this problem for her. “I was able to facilitate orgasms,” he writes, “in every woman who acted as a test subject.”
Everything about Mr. Ferriss’s book declares: This is not your auntie’s self-help book. No muffled “I’m OK — You’re OK” tone here. The vibe is: I’m Superbad, bro, and I have dimples. You’re a mole person who, if you become an angel investor in my books, might someday touch the hem of my Speedo.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/books/07book.html?hp
--I smiled at the review, rather than allow myself to be appalled that this guy is getting rich on this crap and that he isn't laughed at wherever he goes. And i'd venture a guess that the author is likely to find Limbaugh and Beck more sympatico than, say, Andrew Bacevich or Rachel Maddow. Could be wrong, though...
He can use without irony, as he does in “The 4-Hour Body,” lines like: “I was enjoying French food and a bottle of Bordeaux with a 25-year-old female yoga instructor new to San Francisco, fresh from the Midwest.” This poor woman lets slip that she’s unable to have an orgasm. Mr. Ferriss, as any humanitarian would, makes it a point to fix this problem for her. “I was able to facilitate orgasms,” he writes, “in every woman who acted as a test subject.”
Everything about Mr. Ferriss’s book declares: This is not your auntie’s self-help book. No muffled “I’m OK — You’re OK” tone here. The vibe is: I’m Superbad, bro, and I have dimples. You’re a mole person who, if you become an angel investor in my books, might someday touch the hem of my Speedo.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/books/07book.html?hp
--I smiled at the review, rather than allow myself to be appalled that this guy is getting rich on this crap and that he isn't laughed at wherever he goes. And i'd venture a guess that the author is likely to find Limbaugh and Beck more sympatico than, say, Andrew Bacevich or Rachel Maddow. Could be wrong, though...
Thursday, January 6, 2011
I Should Have Seen This Coming
The NY Times reports today on an eminent and well-respected psychologist's paper, about to be released in a peer-reviewed journal, supporting a finding of extrasensory perception:
The paper describes nine unusual lab experiments performed over the past decade by its author, Daryl J. Bem, an emeritus professor at Cornell, testing the ability of college students to accurately sense random events, like whether a computer program will flash a photograph on the left or right side of its screen. The studies include more than 1,000 subjects.
Some scientists say the report deserves to be published, in the name of open inquiry; others insist that its acceptance only accentuates fundamental flaws in the evaluation and peer review of research in the social sciences.
“It’s craziness, pure craziness. I can’t believe a major journal is allowing this work in,” Ray Hyman, an emeritus professor of psychology at the University Oregon and longtime critic of ESP research, said. “I think it’s just an embarrassment for the entire field.”
The editor of the journal, Charles Judd, a psychologist at the University of Colorado, said the paper went through the journal’s regular review process. “Four reviewers made comments on the manuscript,” he said, “and these are very trusted people.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/06/science/06esp.html?hp
The article notes the respect Bem commands. They even cite Ray Hyman, a critic, who wonders whether he didn't mean it as a joke. Hyman's a mainstay of the Skeptical Inquirer, whose raison d'etre is debunking paranormal claims. I'd say the mass of evidence mostly favors the debunkers, but it's also obvious that they, too, have an agenda, and themselves can't entirely avoid biases of social construction.
Out of my field enough, this, so all I can bring to the table is skepticism, tempered with the odd, lingering hope and belief that sooner or later, someplace, there'll be something brand new, from an utterly unexpected source, that'll shake us out of our complacency as much as Riemann, Lobachevsky, Becquerel, Planck, Einstein and Godel shook 'em up back then.
Now, I'll admit that part of my bias is that the phenomena hypothesized, if actually present, should manifest themselves in far less ambiguous terms. Were telepathy or precognition possible, one might leap to the perhaps erroneous conclusion that they should be manifest in the sort of abilities routinely displayed in pop fiction, rather than culled from subtle statistics. Meanwhile, we daily get offers from wall Street types selling prognostications we should act upon which, were they as accurate as is implied, would offer the prognosticator opportunities far greater than those of magazine marketing, and, at that, best kept secret.
So, one is, too, offered the bemused thought that if the Gifted Ones exist out there, They don't want us to know about Them. Maybe Hyman is one of 'em. That'd explain it all. The next step, clearly, is to study in meticulous detail the funding of the Skeptical Inquirer. But, then, you saw that coming, didn't you?
The paper describes nine unusual lab experiments performed over the past decade by its author, Daryl J. Bem, an emeritus professor at Cornell, testing the ability of college students to accurately sense random events, like whether a computer program will flash a photograph on the left or right side of its screen. The studies include more than 1,000 subjects.
Some scientists say the report deserves to be published, in the name of open inquiry; others insist that its acceptance only accentuates fundamental flaws in the evaluation and peer review of research in the social sciences.
“It’s craziness, pure craziness. I can’t believe a major journal is allowing this work in,” Ray Hyman, an emeritus professor of psychology at the University Oregon and longtime critic of ESP research, said. “I think it’s just an embarrassment for the entire field.”
The editor of the journal, Charles Judd, a psychologist at the University of Colorado, said the paper went through the journal’s regular review process. “Four reviewers made comments on the manuscript,” he said, “and these are very trusted people.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/06/science/06esp.html?hp
The article notes the respect Bem commands. They even cite Ray Hyman, a critic, who wonders whether he didn't mean it as a joke. Hyman's a mainstay of the Skeptical Inquirer, whose raison d'etre is debunking paranormal claims. I'd say the mass of evidence mostly favors the debunkers, but it's also obvious that they, too, have an agenda, and themselves can't entirely avoid biases of social construction.
Out of my field enough, this, so all I can bring to the table is skepticism, tempered with the odd, lingering hope and belief that sooner or later, someplace, there'll be something brand new, from an utterly unexpected source, that'll shake us out of our complacency as much as Riemann, Lobachevsky, Becquerel, Planck, Einstein and Godel shook 'em up back then.
Now, I'll admit that part of my bias is that the phenomena hypothesized, if actually present, should manifest themselves in far less ambiguous terms. Were telepathy or precognition possible, one might leap to the perhaps erroneous conclusion that they should be manifest in the sort of abilities routinely displayed in pop fiction, rather than culled from subtle statistics. Meanwhile, we daily get offers from wall Street types selling prognostications we should act upon which, were they as accurate as is implied, would offer the prognosticator opportunities far greater than those of magazine marketing, and, at that, best kept secret.
So, one is, too, offered the bemused thought that if the Gifted Ones exist out there, They don't want us to know about Them. Maybe Hyman is one of 'em. That'd explain it all. The next step, clearly, is to study in meticulous detail the funding of the Skeptical Inquirer. But, then, you saw that coming, didn't you?
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Poetry Corner: 'A Satire Against Mankind'
Were I (who to my cost already am
One of those strange, prodigious creatures, man)
A spirit free to choose, for my own share,
What case of flesh and blood I pleased to wear,
I'd be a dog, a monkey or a bear,
Or anything but that vain animal
Who is so proud of being rational.
The senses are too gross, and he'll contrive
A sixth, to contradict the other five,
And before certain instinct, will prefer
Reason, which fifty times for one does err;
Reason, an ignis fatuus in the mind,
Which, leaving light of nature, sense, behind,
Pathless and dangerous wandering ways it takes
Through error's fenny bogs and thorny brakes;
Whilst the misguided follower climbs with pain
Mountains of whimseys, heaped in his own brain;
Stumbling from thought to thought, falls headlong down
Into doubt's boundless sea, where, like to drown,
Books bear him up a while, and make him try
To swim with bladders of philosophy;
In hopes still to o'ertake th' escaping light,
The vapor dances in his dazzling sight
Till, spent, it leaves him to eternal night.
Then old age and experience, hand in hand,
Lead him to death, and make him understand,
After a search so painful and so long,
That all his life he has been in the wrong.
Huddled in dirt the reasoning engine lies,
Who was proud, so witty, and so wise.
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester
One of those strange, prodigious creatures, man)
A spirit free to choose, for my own share,
What case of flesh and blood I pleased to wear,
I'd be a dog, a monkey or a bear,
Or anything but that vain animal
Who is so proud of being rational.
The senses are too gross, and he'll contrive
A sixth, to contradict the other five,
And before certain instinct, will prefer
Reason, which fifty times for one does err;
Reason, an ignis fatuus in the mind,
Which, leaving light of nature, sense, behind,
Pathless and dangerous wandering ways it takes
Through error's fenny bogs and thorny brakes;
Whilst the misguided follower climbs with pain
Mountains of whimseys, heaped in his own brain;
Stumbling from thought to thought, falls headlong down
Into doubt's boundless sea, where, like to drown,
Books bear him up a while, and make him try
To swim with bladders of philosophy;
In hopes still to o'ertake th' escaping light,
The vapor dances in his dazzling sight
Till, spent, it leaves him to eternal night.
Then old age and experience, hand in hand,
Lead him to death, and make him understand,
After a search so painful and so long,
That all his life he has been in the wrong.
Huddled in dirt the reasoning engine lies,
Who was proud, so witty, and so wise.
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester
Financial Musical Chairs
This morning's NY Times offers William Cohan on Goldman Sachs and Facebook:
Last August, Facebook was valued at $27 billion and now it’s $50 billion — for a company with a reported $2 billion in revenue and negligible profits. If General Electric, with 2010 revenue of around $150 billion, traded at a similar multiple of revenue, it would be worth $3.75 trillion instead of $200 billion. Facebook is now considered to be worth more than Time Warner, DuPont and Goldman’s rival Morgan Stanley.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/04/friends-with-benefits/?hp
--He goes on to explain in detail the coming next round of high-finance musical chairs, in which Facebook is worth that much as long as the music's playing, Goldman plays IBGYBG and finds a seat when the music stops, and billions of dollars of asset value vanish into thin air, leaving not a rack behind. Read the whole thing; it's well worth it.
Yet again, we're offered an illustration of the difference between speculation and investment. One sets up an unstable situation destined to crash and burn; one builds lasting wealth and adds value to the economy. To the extent that resources and ingenuity find quicker and larger returns in the former than the latter, the, er, unbillionaire class will always be worse off. That's because the rich guys get their marks to trade trillions worth of dubiously valued assets at their nominal value, but, each trade, take real money off the top. That abstracts money out of the productive economy into their pockets, as surely as even the most punitive tax would.
One of my small, but real, glimmers of hope for the future is if the marks realize that they're being gamed, and wise up. Meanwhile, radar continues to sweep the skies over Schloss Wombat; no pigs yet detected...
Last August, Facebook was valued at $27 billion and now it’s $50 billion — for a company with a reported $2 billion in revenue and negligible profits. If General Electric, with 2010 revenue of around $150 billion, traded at a similar multiple of revenue, it would be worth $3.75 trillion instead of $200 billion. Facebook is now considered to be worth more than Time Warner, DuPont and Goldman’s rival Morgan Stanley.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/04/friends-with-benefits/?hp
--He goes on to explain in detail the coming next round of high-finance musical chairs, in which Facebook is worth that much as long as the music's playing, Goldman plays IBGYBG and finds a seat when the music stops, and billions of dollars of asset value vanish into thin air, leaving not a rack behind. Read the whole thing; it's well worth it.
Yet again, we're offered an illustration of the difference between speculation and investment. One sets up an unstable situation destined to crash and burn; one builds lasting wealth and adds value to the economy. To the extent that resources and ingenuity find quicker and larger returns in the former than the latter, the, er, unbillionaire class will always be worse off. That's because the rich guys get their marks to trade trillions worth of dubiously valued assets at their nominal value, but, each trade, take real money off the top. That abstracts money out of the productive economy into their pockets, as surely as even the most punitive tax would.
One of my small, but real, glimmers of hope for the future is if the marks realize that they're being gamed, and wise up. Meanwhile, radar continues to sweep the skies over Schloss Wombat; no pigs yet detected...
Monday, January 3, 2011
Love Me, I'm A Liberal
In the context of discussing Obama's not unmixed record, my friend Karin on the eschaton blog recalled Phil Ochs' great 1966 or so song 'Love Me, I'm a Liberal'. I remember every word of it. Nor did I vote for Humphrey in the 1968 election after the disgrace in Chicago.
The key lines of Ochs' song close it:
But now, I am older and wiser
And so, I am turning you in...
That gets complicated, like, wicked quick. A lot of old lefties casually embraced the Soviet Union, apologized for Stalin; later, others would embrace Mao, of the Great Leap Forward and the cultural Revolution. A good part of the 1950s was about forcing the left into a pusillanimous liberalism endorsing the military-industrial national security paradigm of the Cold War. The equation of a broader left version of societal change with outright treason was all too casually accepted. Getting older and wiser sometimes meant reconsideration of such things, at a time when the left was swept away with the romance of the defeat of colonialism by national liberation movements, viewed with utter lack of skepticism both in themselves and as models for domestic politics. Just as one could easily oppose the war in Vietnam without mistaking Gen. Giap for a Jeffersonian Democrat, one could, too, have supported the Johnson who passed Medicare, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act--all substantial gains to the country, on a scale equaled only by FD Roosevelt--without mistaking the Gulf of Tonkin incident as described for reality. One could have, perhaps even should have, gotten older and wiser, and still never have turned anyone in. Ochs, whom I love dearly, equated those two, just as serious old lefties casually viewed reformers, who subverted class hatred and delayed the Revolution by legitimizing the current system, as worse in some ways than outright fascists. He was wrong to do so.
Equating Humphrey-style liberalism with complicity with McCarthy, Vietnam and domestic racism can't be justified in retrospect. And I would vote for Humphrey in a heartbeat today, were he running against Nixon, who, to my astonishment, can no longer be considered the most despicable, stupid, incompetent, ruthless, evil human being ever to be president of this country.
The key lines of Ochs' song close it:
But now, I am older and wiser
And so, I am turning you in...
That gets complicated, like, wicked quick. A lot of old lefties casually embraced the Soviet Union, apologized for Stalin; later, others would embrace Mao, of the Great Leap Forward and the cultural Revolution. A good part of the 1950s was about forcing the left into a pusillanimous liberalism endorsing the military-industrial national security paradigm of the Cold War. The equation of a broader left version of societal change with outright treason was all too casually accepted. Getting older and wiser sometimes meant reconsideration of such things, at a time when the left was swept away with the romance of the defeat of colonialism by national liberation movements, viewed with utter lack of skepticism both in themselves and as models for domestic politics. Just as one could easily oppose the war in Vietnam without mistaking Gen. Giap for a Jeffersonian Democrat, one could, too, have supported the Johnson who passed Medicare, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act--all substantial gains to the country, on a scale equaled only by FD Roosevelt--without mistaking the Gulf of Tonkin incident as described for reality. One could have, perhaps even should have, gotten older and wiser, and still never have turned anyone in. Ochs, whom I love dearly, equated those two, just as serious old lefties casually viewed reformers, who subverted class hatred and delayed the Revolution by legitimizing the current system, as worse in some ways than outright fascists. He was wrong to do so.
Equating Humphrey-style liberalism with complicity with McCarthy, Vietnam and domestic racism can't be justified in retrospect. And I would vote for Humphrey in a heartbeat today, were he running against Nixon, who, to my astonishment, can no longer be considered the most despicable, stupid, incompetent, ruthless, evil human being ever to be president of this country.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Pseudo-Religious Pseudoscience
Another thought on Brooks's column re my last post: consider the reliably potty way such things as cosmology, relativity and, especially, quantum mechanics are viewed by many, if not most, who actually read and think about them. Even scientists well acquainted with them aid and abet this sometimes, making wild claims distant from their fields. So, the strangenesses and philosophical difficulties of quantum mechanics are contrasted with earlier certainties, as if there have never been such things. Meanwhile, the astonishing precision and power of general relativity and quantum mechanics, their confirmation by experiment, their theoretical predictions of the universe's beginning and future in far more detail and testability than any prior religious tales, the extraordinary advances in biology and physiology, all far less a part of how most view them. Even evolution, ever more confirmed as science, is ever more wildly applied to such things as psychology and gender socialization. Part of all this, of course, is the sheer difficulty of the math and concepts. But part, too, is the search in science for a substitute for religion, and, at that, an inadequate one, rather than an illumination of the universe in different terms, and, at that, oft denying that any such thing is happening.
Even Brooks notes the primary role of communal, social institutions, and the threat to them. Everybody does, even on the right: their take on religion, immigration, the nuclear family and its vicissitudes, demand for social change all bespeak their perception of a threat to their group identity and institutions. The reconstruction of those institutions--desperately needed--can arise from a realistic grasp of their origins, which would allow a new appreciation of a common humanity, or a retreat into an artificial tribalism, extending only to Self and denying the common humanity of the Other.
One of these is likely to have a better result than the other, but is less likely, in that it will be opposed by those most enabled in the deeply unsatisfactory current reality, whose interests lie elsewhere.
Even Brooks notes the primary role of communal, social institutions, and the threat to them. Everybody does, even on the right: their take on religion, immigration, the nuclear family and its vicissitudes, demand for social change all bespeak their perception of a threat to their group identity and institutions. The reconstruction of those institutions--desperately needed--can arise from a realistic grasp of their origins, which would allow a new appreciation of a common humanity, or a retreat into an artificial tribalism, extending only to Self and denying the common humanity of the Other.
One of these is likely to have a better result than the other, but is less likely, in that it will be opposed by those most enabled in the deeply unsatisfactory current reality, whose interests lie elsewhere.
Alienation: We Need More God And More Sports
Back to David Brooks, who I read this morning so you don't have to. He's been reading philosophy again. It seems that modern man's anomie is best explained by a substitution of the uncertainties of science for the pieties of religion, and that we poor souls take delight in sport and other things in search of what we've lost:
For the past hundred years or so, we have lived in a secular age. That does not mean that people aren’t religious. It means there is no shared set of values we all absorb as preconscious assumptions. In our world, individuals have to find or create their own meaning.
This, Dreyfus and Kelly argue, has led to a pervasive sadness. Individuals are usually not capable of creating their own lives from the ground up. So modern life is marked by frequent feelings of indecision and anxiety. People often lack the foundations upon which to make the most important choices...
We have official stories we tell about our culture: each individual is the captain of his own ship; we are all children of God. But in practice, willy-nilly, the way we actually live is at odds with the official story. Our most vibrant institutions are collective, not individual or religious. They are there to create that group whoosh: the sports stadium, the concert hall, the political rally, the theater, the museum and the gourmet restaurant. Even church is often more about the ecstatic whoosh than the theology.
The activities often dismissed as mere diversions are actually central. Real life is more about serial whooshes than coherent meaning.
We can either rebel against this superficial drift, or like Dreyfus and Kelly, go with the flow, acknowledging that the autonomous life is impossible...
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/31/opinion/31brooks.html?hp
---So, the notion that vastly more horrible wars, ecological destruction, medical care ever less personal and more invasive, alienation from work, economic insecurity and inequality, the systematic destruction of the social contract, the exaltation of selfishness, consumption and the 'free market', the centrality of profit in marketing, advertising and entertainment all pursued with billions of dollars, the distractions and lack of commitment undermining education--you know, those things--aren't all that important compared to the social deterioration consequent to an abandonment of the primacy of God in favor of, y'know, actual knowledge of the universe. And the remedy is MORE SPORT, MORE EMBRACE OF SPORT--things not now in evidence--to reconstitute the social contract.
You can't make this shit up...
For the past hundred years or so, we have lived in a secular age. That does not mean that people aren’t religious. It means there is no shared set of values we all absorb as preconscious assumptions. In our world, individuals have to find or create their own meaning.
This, Dreyfus and Kelly argue, has led to a pervasive sadness. Individuals are usually not capable of creating their own lives from the ground up. So modern life is marked by frequent feelings of indecision and anxiety. People often lack the foundations upon which to make the most important choices...
We have official stories we tell about our culture: each individual is the captain of his own ship; we are all children of God. But in practice, willy-nilly, the way we actually live is at odds with the official story. Our most vibrant institutions are collective, not individual or religious. They are there to create that group whoosh: the sports stadium, the concert hall, the political rally, the theater, the museum and the gourmet restaurant. Even church is often more about the ecstatic whoosh than the theology.
The activities often dismissed as mere diversions are actually central. Real life is more about serial whooshes than coherent meaning.
We can either rebel against this superficial drift, or like Dreyfus and Kelly, go with the flow, acknowledging that the autonomous life is impossible...
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/31/opinion/31brooks.html?hp
---So, the notion that vastly more horrible wars, ecological destruction, medical care ever less personal and more invasive, alienation from work, economic insecurity and inequality, the systematic destruction of the social contract, the exaltation of selfishness, consumption and the 'free market', the centrality of profit in marketing, advertising and entertainment all pursued with billions of dollars, the distractions and lack of commitment undermining education--you know, those things--aren't all that important compared to the social deterioration consequent to an abandonment of the primacy of God in favor of, y'know, actual knowledge of the universe. And the remedy is MORE SPORT, MORE EMBRACE OF SPORT--things not now in evidence--to reconstitute the social contract.
You can't make this shit up...
Monday, December 27, 2010
Utopias and Villains
Thinking more about Harry Potter: Voldemort, now he's an obvious villain type, potted Nietzschean, power for its own sake, and knowledge in service of power. We know him well, his type all over pop culture, one of its guilty pleasures: old Westerns' Black Barts, Krauts and Japs, James Bond's sneering opponents, Islamic terrorists, ruthless drug lords, serial killers, all of the same ilk. He's instantly identifiable as a villain: the face, the manner, the way he treats even his allies. And far more Nazi than Communist, and by design--Nazis dream of exerting unrestrained power as a member of the Master Race over others, rather than of working together in a universal brotherhood of the proletariat--so the wizards over the Muggles, the oppression and exploitation of such as goblins and elves, fits far better. But Umbridge is a masterpiece: a roundish, pink-wearing cat lady, never raises her voice or even has an unpleasant edge to it, an everyday Englishwoman to her core, and utterly sinister, a living, breathing reminder that we, all of us, have to choose Gryffindor over Slytherin, not despite our humanity but because of it, and that the right choice isn't always the default position.
Norman Davies, a historian of Europe with a special interest in and sympathy for Poland, in his history of Europe, stopped to consider the question, more common in earlier generations, of whether Naziism or Communism is the greater evil. The actual numbers of dead were greater in Stalin's Soviet Union and Mao's China. And Davies writes with merciless clarity about Soviet evil. But he, too, notes that the Communist Utopia, though dependent for its achievement on a human nature we don't see much of, would be a good place, and the Nazi Utopia, all too realizable in a world of human beings subject to the temptations of privilege, power and tribalism, would, even if achieved, be a nightmare.
The libertarian/Ayn Rand Utopias, like the Communists' and in contrast to the Nazis', wouldn't be bad places, either: all those people picking themselves up by their bootstraps, actualizing themselves, free at last of constraint and perverse incentives, innovating, building, their labors rewarded, the cornucopia of free markets overflowing, individuals' right conduct, in charity and restraint, arising from themselves rather than imposed from without. And just as impossible to achieve as the Communist Utopia, and for the same reasons: humans aren't wired that way, and human rights and desires are incommensurable, cannot all simultaneously be achieved, and require inevitably imperfect reconciliation and judgment when they conflict. The Communists and the libertarians both, oddly, dream of a withering away of the state, when humanity is free of, well, humanity, and are both too damned willing to break eggs by the millions in service of their Utopian omelets. The Nazis dream of an unrestrained, all powerful, racist state in service of their own ego/ids, acknowledging human conflicts and resolving them with gun and gas. Umbridge would have been a good German; the Nazis would have applauded the Mudblood Registry. More compatible, alas, with human nature, and all too possible on earth. Not, strictly, a Utopia (literally nowhere): it has happened, and will again, in small as well as large. We must not be seduced by Utopias offered by ideologues. But, more important, we must reject, and actively resist, that which gives rise to Naziism, and that arises, above all, within ourselves.
Norman Davies, a historian of Europe with a special interest in and sympathy for Poland, in his history of Europe, stopped to consider the question, more common in earlier generations, of whether Naziism or Communism is the greater evil. The actual numbers of dead were greater in Stalin's Soviet Union and Mao's China. And Davies writes with merciless clarity about Soviet evil. But he, too, notes that the Communist Utopia, though dependent for its achievement on a human nature we don't see much of, would be a good place, and the Nazi Utopia, all too realizable in a world of human beings subject to the temptations of privilege, power and tribalism, would, even if achieved, be a nightmare.
The libertarian/Ayn Rand Utopias, like the Communists' and in contrast to the Nazis', wouldn't be bad places, either: all those people picking themselves up by their bootstraps, actualizing themselves, free at last of constraint and perverse incentives, innovating, building, their labors rewarded, the cornucopia of free markets overflowing, individuals' right conduct, in charity and restraint, arising from themselves rather than imposed from without. And just as impossible to achieve as the Communist Utopia, and for the same reasons: humans aren't wired that way, and human rights and desires are incommensurable, cannot all simultaneously be achieved, and require inevitably imperfect reconciliation and judgment when they conflict. The Communists and the libertarians both, oddly, dream of a withering away of the state, when humanity is free of, well, humanity, and are both too damned willing to break eggs by the millions in service of their Utopian omelets. The Nazis dream of an unrestrained, all powerful, racist state in service of their own ego/ids, acknowledging human conflicts and resolving them with gun and gas. Umbridge would have been a good German; the Nazis would have applauded the Mudblood Registry. More compatible, alas, with human nature, and all too possible on earth. Not, strictly, a Utopia (literally nowhere): it has happened, and will again, in small as well as large. We must not be seduced by Utopias offered by ideologues. But, more important, we must reject, and actively resist, that which gives rise to Naziism, and that arises, above all, within ourselves.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
One, Two, Many Mario Savios
I was criticised by a poster on eschaton for reconsidering the 'New Left' of the 1960s as at best a mixed blessing, after he cited Mario Savio (Berkeley Free Speech Movement), who found the system so odious that only withdrawal sufficed, and further participation in it acquiescence. I responded thusly:
I watched Mario Savio, Mark Rudd, Ted Kaptchuk and too many others fade into solipsistic irrelevance, as they wildly misunderstood the United States as ripe for progressive revolution rather than reactionary repression. By the time they were finished, having withdrawn from participation in an admittedly deeply flawed, odious system, they were, on the one hand, Weatherpeople and Symbionese, embracing and committing violence, even fatal violence, in potted emulation of third-world anticolonialist movements and the Cultural Revolution credulously viewed, or Progressive Labor people who, seeking sufficient purity, eschewing all music save Beethoven's and, in seeking actual role models amongst the world's nation states, embraced Mao's China, even, in one group I sat in on, Hoxha's Albania. And let's not forget the left's rampant sexism of the times: the classic remark was Stokely Carmichael's 'The position of women in the movement is prone.'
The SDS started out with a principal belief in participatory democracy. Their stance in the Johnson-Goldwater campaign was 'Part Of The way With LBJ'. They could have evolved, as Johnson sank into Vietnam, into more participation, more outreach. They didn't. They did quite the opposite, and played into the hands of the right. I'm entirely aware that this didn't occur in a vacuum: they were opposed with every weapon of propaganda and force the right, the corporatists, the racists, the national security priesthood, all of them could muster. I know that. But in the end, they were complicit in their demise as a viable political force in this country. And, while their opposition to racism, and later (too much later) sexism, racism and homophobia, was enormously positive, many of their other positions and tactics wound up more diversionary than effective, splitting and isolating the left. It needn't have been so. The withdrawal Savio, and others, not only advocated, but demanded as the only admissible moral response, was, and is, wrong.
Only those viewing the past through the rosiest of glasses deny the egotism, ineffectiveness and descent into political irrelevance of much of the 'New Left'. Been there done that. One need concede nothing in hatred and opposition to the right to fault their analyses, their tactics, their blindness to how the vast majority of the country saw them. The right used every fair and foul means in opposition. Some, like the Berrigans and Zinn, avoided the trap. Many did not. I was there, i put myself on the line, I thought long and hard about such things then and now. I'm skeptical of Obama, for all the reasons commonly cited on the left, more than accepting of him in toto. But the suggestion that he isn't completely, irredeemably evil either is far from acquiescence in his every move. I reject entirely the notion that sullen, cynical withdrawal, out of a hopeless view that real change is impossible, is the only correct moral, ethical, political, strategic and tactical response to the ample perfidy we see out there. It isn't true, it doesn't work, it never worked, it plays into our opponents' hands. The New Left never, not once, added members and political strength by shouting 'Up Against The Wall, Motherfucker', watching 'The Battle of Algiers' for the 103rd time, or applauding the Cultural Revolution. Not once.
I watched Mario Savio, Mark Rudd, Ted Kaptchuk and too many others fade into solipsistic irrelevance, as they wildly misunderstood the United States as ripe for progressive revolution rather than reactionary repression. By the time they were finished, having withdrawn from participation in an admittedly deeply flawed, odious system, they were, on the one hand, Weatherpeople and Symbionese, embracing and committing violence, even fatal violence, in potted emulation of third-world anticolonialist movements and the Cultural Revolution credulously viewed, or Progressive Labor people who, seeking sufficient purity, eschewing all music save Beethoven's and, in seeking actual role models amongst the world's nation states, embraced Mao's China, even, in one group I sat in on, Hoxha's Albania. And let's not forget the left's rampant sexism of the times: the classic remark was Stokely Carmichael's 'The position of women in the movement is prone.'
The SDS started out with a principal belief in participatory democracy. Their stance in the Johnson-Goldwater campaign was 'Part Of The way With LBJ'. They could have evolved, as Johnson sank into Vietnam, into more participation, more outreach. They didn't. They did quite the opposite, and played into the hands of the right. I'm entirely aware that this didn't occur in a vacuum: they were opposed with every weapon of propaganda and force the right, the corporatists, the racists, the national security priesthood, all of them could muster. I know that. But in the end, they were complicit in their demise as a viable political force in this country. And, while their opposition to racism, and later (too much later) sexism, racism and homophobia, was enormously positive, many of their other positions and tactics wound up more diversionary than effective, splitting and isolating the left. It needn't have been so. The withdrawal Savio, and others, not only advocated, but demanded as the only admissible moral response, was, and is, wrong.
Only those viewing the past through the rosiest of glasses deny the egotism, ineffectiveness and descent into political irrelevance of much of the 'New Left'. Been there done that. One need concede nothing in hatred and opposition to the right to fault their analyses, their tactics, their blindness to how the vast majority of the country saw them. The right used every fair and foul means in opposition. Some, like the Berrigans and Zinn, avoided the trap. Many did not. I was there, i put myself on the line, I thought long and hard about such things then and now. I'm skeptical of Obama, for all the reasons commonly cited on the left, more than accepting of him in toto. But the suggestion that he isn't completely, irredeemably evil either is far from acquiescence in his every move. I reject entirely the notion that sullen, cynical withdrawal, out of a hopeless view that real change is impossible, is the only correct moral, ethical, political, strategic and tactical response to the ample perfidy we see out there. It isn't true, it doesn't work, it never worked, it plays into our opponents' hands. The New Left never, not once, added members and political strength by shouting 'Up Against The Wall, Motherfucker', watching 'The Battle of Algiers' for the 103rd time, or applauding the Cultural Revolution. Not once.
If It Walks Like A Lame Duck, Talks Like A Lame Duck...
Now that the lame-duck session is over, and a few decent things got done amidst the plethora of unsolved, ignored or exacerbated problems of the country and the world, i can go back to my cup being 90% empty, resenting the lesser-of-two-evils business, and resuming the mistrust, cynicism, anger and despair that always has been my lot as a lefty. I'm only partially snarking here: the world, the nation, power and politics really are largely in a sad state, and what's been accomplished, while real, and suggesting an actual, though minuscule, possibility of further positive change, hasn't been nearly enough.
There was a Bugs Bunny cartoon in which Elmer Fudd and Bugs switched roles; both found it uncomfortable, and resumed business as usual at the end...
Gail Collins, on the lame-duck session, finds her cup half full this morning:
Good work, White House! Thank heavens we got rid of our former president, Barack Obama, who couldn’t even get the trade agreement he went all the way to South Korea to sign. Our current president, Barack Obama, would never let that happen, and, in fact, came up with a really excellent trade agreement with the South Koreans just the other day.
“Administration officials have bent over backwards to try to solve every problem that’s come up,” said Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, one of the Republicans who reached across the aisle ...
...let’s admit it. Nothing would have gotten done if Obama hadn’t swallowed that loathsome compromise on tax cuts for the wealthy.
If he’d taken the high road, Congress would be in a holiday war. The long-term unemployed would be staggering into the new year without benefits. The rest of the world would look upon the United States as a country so dysfunctional that it can’t even ratify a treaty to help keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists. The people who worked at ground zero would still be uncertain about their future, and our gay and lesbian soldiers would still be living in fear.
It’s depressing to think that there was no way to win that would not have involved giving away billions of dollars to people who don’t need it. But it’s kind of cheery to think we have a president who actually does know what he’s doing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/23/opinion/23collins.html?hp
---I'm not sure I'd concede that accepting the tax cut is the 'high road'. I'd feel marginally better about it had he been more forthright and persistent in opposing it, had it come in isolation rather than as part of a pattern of one-sided 'compromise' characteristic of the Obama administration, and had he not gone out of his way to disparage the doubts of those 'supercilious, overly pure' members of the base who elected him. But I've struggled, throughout the campaign and since inauguration, with being unhappy with Obama's acceptance of the limitations of the politically possible, while recognising that he's accomplished some things--again, not enough--that move the goal posts just a bit, and had eluded his predecessors. And I'll doubtless continue to do so...
There was a Bugs Bunny cartoon in which Elmer Fudd and Bugs switched roles; both found it uncomfortable, and resumed business as usual at the end...
Gail Collins, on the lame-duck session, finds her cup half full this morning:
Good work, White House! Thank heavens we got rid of our former president, Barack Obama, who couldn’t even get the trade agreement he went all the way to South Korea to sign. Our current president, Barack Obama, would never let that happen, and, in fact, came up with a really excellent trade agreement with the South Koreans just the other day.
“Administration officials have bent over backwards to try to solve every problem that’s come up,” said Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, one of the Republicans who reached across the aisle ...
...let’s admit it. Nothing would have gotten done if Obama hadn’t swallowed that loathsome compromise on tax cuts for the wealthy.
If he’d taken the high road, Congress would be in a holiday war. The long-term unemployed would be staggering into the new year without benefits. The rest of the world would look upon the United States as a country so dysfunctional that it can’t even ratify a treaty to help keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists. The people who worked at ground zero would still be uncertain about their future, and our gay and lesbian soldiers would still be living in fear.
It’s depressing to think that there was no way to win that would not have involved giving away billions of dollars to people who don’t need it. But it’s kind of cheery to think we have a president who actually does know what he’s doing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/23/opinion/23collins.html?hp
---I'm not sure I'd concede that accepting the tax cut is the 'high road'. I'd feel marginally better about it had he been more forthright and persistent in opposing it, had it come in isolation rather than as part of a pattern of one-sided 'compromise' characteristic of the Obama administration, and had he not gone out of his way to disparage the doubts of those 'supercilious, overly pure' members of the base who elected him. But I've struggled, throughout the campaign and since inauguration, with being unhappy with Obama's acceptance of the limitations of the politically possible, while recognising that he's accomplished some things--again, not enough--that move the goal posts just a bit, and had eluded his predecessors. And I'll doubtless continue to do so...
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
The Right on Cruise Control
The Tea Party right's conspiracy theories, methinks, can be explained (absent frank psychosis) as can their trivialization of fact. They divert and dominate the discussion. The moral panic, the existential threat, is thereby excluded from the discussion, just as those advancing facts contradicting their narrative thereby identify themselves as pointy-headed, out of touch, elitist liberals, lacking entirely in virtue or legitimacy, who--wait for it--want to impose their sense of reality on everybody else.
They deny evolution in large measure because accepting it results in loss of control of the narrative. 'God said it, I believe it, that settles it.' If they're wrong about any one thing, they can be wrong about anything and everything. Looking outside themselves or their group, according others' take on reality respect at the cost of bringing their own into question, introducing ambiguity, that's a non-starter. Not everyone is strong enough to be uncertain.
They deny evolution in large measure because accepting it results in loss of control of the narrative. 'God said it, I believe it, that settles it.' If they're wrong about any one thing, they can be wrong about anything and everything. Looking outside themselves or their group, according others' take on reality respect at the cost of bringing their own into question, introducing ambiguity, that's a non-starter. Not everyone is strong enough to be uncertain.
Treaty Confirmation: What will Be The Next Obama Failure?
The Times is careful today to place the apparent imminent passage of the arms treaty in proper perspective, as but a minor victory in what will be seen, eventually, as yet another arena of failure of the Democrats and Obama before the principles and puissance of their opponents:
WASHINGTON — The new arms control treaty with Russia, whose ratification now seems assured, was initially envisioned as a speed bump on President Obama’s nuclear agenda, a modest reduction in nuclear forces that would enable him to tackle much harder issues on the way to his dream of eventually eliminating nuclear weapons altogether.
It turned out to be a mountain. And while Mr. Obama is savoring another major victory, just days after he won repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” rules that dominated the lives of gay and lesbian members of the military, his own aides acknowledge that the lesson of the battle over the treaty is that the political divide on national security is widening. The next steps on Mr. Obama’s nuclear agenda now appear harder than ever.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/22/us/politics/22assess.html?hp
---I agree that far more needs to be done, about nuclear weapons and their proliferation, and that it'll be difficult. I agree that the pattern has been to settle for a definition of what's politically possible rather than try to change it, and to dismiss, even ridicule us supercilious, overly pure types who want more. But it's utterly predictable that any success of Obama, any at all, no matter how small, and, for that matter, even any action which asserts the legitimacy of his presidency, is to be dismissed entirely, or even characterized as further evidence of failure. That's especially egregiously on display here. A way of countering it would be to marshal a political base with a different perspective in support. But, then, you knew that...
WASHINGTON — The new arms control treaty with Russia, whose ratification now seems assured, was initially envisioned as a speed bump on President Obama’s nuclear agenda, a modest reduction in nuclear forces that would enable him to tackle much harder issues on the way to his dream of eventually eliminating nuclear weapons altogether.
It turned out to be a mountain. And while Mr. Obama is savoring another major victory, just days after he won repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” rules that dominated the lives of gay and lesbian members of the military, his own aides acknowledge that the lesson of the battle over the treaty is that the political divide on national security is widening. The next steps on Mr. Obama’s nuclear agenda now appear harder than ever.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/22/us/politics/22assess.html?hp
---I agree that far more needs to be done, about nuclear weapons and their proliferation, and that it'll be difficult. I agree that the pattern has been to settle for a definition of what's politically possible rather than try to change it, and to dismiss, even ridicule us supercilious, overly pure types who want more. But it's utterly predictable that any success of Obama, any at all, no matter how small, and, for that matter, even any action which asserts the legitimacy of his presidency, is to be dismissed entirely, or even characterized as further evidence of failure. That's especially egregiously on display here. A way of countering it would be to marshal a political base with a different perspective in support. But, then, you knew that...
RIP: sarah deere
A former regular on the eschaton board, sarah deere, died yesterday. A lovely and loving soul, she never quite recovered from the loss of her dearly loved grandchild in her middle school years to embryonal cell rhabdomyosarcoma, a cancer we know neither origin nor how to treat. Sometimes I wish I believed in heaven; if I did, I'd be comforted that she's up there with mended heart, reunited with her Warrior Princess, cruelly struck down in this vale of wrath and tears during a blameless childhood by one of those far too numerous things that for me exclude the presence of an omnipotent, omniscient, just and loving God. I join the rest of the eschaton community in wishing we could have helped her cope with that with which it is nearly impossible to cope. I join most of us in being both glad and sorry I'm human. Her death makes my humanity, for all its limitations, all its opportunities to encounter beauty and horror, the picayune and the infinite, more poignant and harder to feel grateful for, even as I read of a life well lived.
Some deaths seem the natural end of a long life, even timely. Most of us, perhaps--certainly just about every health professional--hopes for a graceful exit with little pain, quick progression, maintenance of faculties and a chance to say goodbye, rather than a prolonged flogging of what little life is left in an obscene festival of tubes, lines, machines, dependence and pain. We don't always get what we want, but at least there's the possibility. I fear my own death not at all. But childhood cancer, especially, violates every last one of our coping mechanisms for dealing with death, and our sense of justice, striking the innocent unexpectedly and all too often mercilessly. Me, I think looking for justice down here is nothing more than denial of the appalling contingency of our lives, something so troubling that, for many, it becomes unacceptable, to the extent that it requires mitigation with simplistic religion, or the Kubler-Ross sort of dream of making death a natural part of life to be embraced, rather than the cause of fear and anger. Her steps for coping with death/loss are valid; I observed them and used them every day in practice. But a good part of her work suggests that one can always cope with death; the dark side of it is that if you can't, it's out of personal failing. And, with respect to another's death, rather than one's own, as often as it's an accepted part of life, it's something to be fought, out of anger, love and lost opportunity:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas
(I always found the strict form of the poem, a villanelle, not only high artistry, but, too, a poignant assertion of control of the uncontrollable...)
Some deaths seem the natural end of a long life, even timely. Most of us, perhaps--certainly just about every health professional--hopes for a graceful exit with little pain, quick progression, maintenance of faculties and a chance to say goodbye, rather than a prolonged flogging of what little life is left in an obscene festival of tubes, lines, machines, dependence and pain. We don't always get what we want, but at least there's the possibility. I fear my own death not at all. But childhood cancer, especially, violates every last one of our coping mechanisms for dealing with death, and our sense of justice, striking the innocent unexpectedly and all too often mercilessly. Me, I think looking for justice down here is nothing more than denial of the appalling contingency of our lives, something so troubling that, for many, it becomes unacceptable, to the extent that it requires mitigation with simplistic religion, or the Kubler-Ross sort of dream of making death a natural part of life to be embraced, rather than the cause of fear and anger. Her steps for coping with death/loss are valid; I observed them and used them every day in practice. But a good part of her work suggests that one can always cope with death; the dark side of it is that if you can't, it's out of personal failing. And, with respect to another's death, rather than one's own, as often as it's an accepted part of life, it's something to be fought, out of anger, love and lost opportunity:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas
(I always found the strict form of the poem, a villanelle, not only high artistry, but, too, a poignant assertion of control of the uncontrollable...)
Property Rights For the Foreclosed Upon
The Times reports that in some cases, not only do banks/lenders foreclose erroneously, making procedural errors based on sloppy or non-existent documentation, but their contractors break, enter and steal personal property.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/22/business/22lockout.html?hp
The mortgage allows foreclosure under certain circumstances for delinquent payments. Court action is required. Even assuming proper foreclosure, personal property isn't at all included in the secured property. Taking it out of the home might be permissible. Taking possession of it without possession or compensation, making it unavailable to the owner on demand, is conversion (theft) and entirely actionable.
--Even assuming the article is correct in asserting that this crap is rare, it's more common than, say, terrorist attacks, which have engendered massive, costly responses throughout the country. Were I a legislator, I'd propose a law which makes break-in and theft of personal property under the direction of a mortgagee (the holder of the loan) punishable by immediate voiding of the foreclosure and unraveling of the mortgage, reducing its outstanding principal to zero, in addition to holding any contractor acting thus for the mortgagee (the bank/lender) liable for triple damages. That'd solve the problem instantly. I'd expect right wingers, who hold property rights perhaps the most sanctified of all rights other than to carry firearms, to be in the forefront of those outraged by such behavior. How come they aren't? Anyone?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/22/business/22lockout.html?hp
The mortgage allows foreclosure under certain circumstances for delinquent payments. Court action is required. Even assuming proper foreclosure, personal property isn't at all included in the secured property. Taking it out of the home might be permissible. Taking possession of it without possession or compensation, making it unavailable to the owner on demand, is conversion (theft) and entirely actionable.
--Even assuming the article is correct in asserting that this crap is rare, it's more common than, say, terrorist attacks, which have engendered massive, costly responses throughout the country. Were I a legislator, I'd propose a law which makes break-in and theft of personal property under the direction of a mortgagee (the holder of the loan) punishable by immediate voiding of the foreclosure and unraveling of the mortgage, reducing its outstanding principal to zero, in addition to holding any contractor acting thus for the mortgagee (the bank/lender) liable for triple damages. That'd solve the problem instantly. I'd expect right wingers, who hold property rights perhaps the most sanctified of all rights other than to carry firearms, to be in the forefront of those outraged by such behavior. How come they aren't? Anyone?
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Word-Processing: They Don't Want You To Know
Autocorrect and Spellcheck are the Devil's work. The former, a jackbooted, thuggish program's compromise of your individual freedom of expression, the Black Helicopter of Code. The latter, a nanny-program's misguided, altruistic theft of incentives to individual excellence...
The Gurus Just Keep On Coming
David Brooks reports this morning that he has found love, in one Ericka Brown, who teaches her notion of Judaism in Washington. She's tough, but empathetic. Makes latecomers to her class sit in a chair in the corner. Gaawrsch:
I concluded that Brown’s impact stems from her ability to undermine the egos of the successful at the same time that she lovingly helps them build better lives. She offers a path out of the tyranny of the perpetually open mind by presenting authoritative traditions and teachings. Most educational institutions emphasize individual advancement. Brown nurtures the community and the group.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/21/opinion/21brooks.html?hp
--Let me repeat that: 'the tyranny of the perpetually open mind'. Amongst the world's pressing problems, surely that isn't the worst. And Brooks' implication that toughness and an open mind are incompatible is utter nonsense. Meanwhile, the community and group, while necessary and, today, placed far lower than individuals in political rhetoric, can themselves be 'tyranny'. Yet another facile manipulator of weak people, this Brown, no different from those arising in countless other traditions.
Community and group can tyrannize as well. A perfect example is Brown's assertion that one's obligated to expose adultery, even at the cost of friendship. Some marriages complicated by adultery (and a myriad other secrets and transgressions) are worth saving; some aren't; the decision should obviously be up to the married couple rather than an external observer. Brown advocates the destruction of all adulterous marriages in the name of group values, while, rather incredibly, dismissing friendship as a group value. This, too, is tyranny, as well as incoherent.
Yet another manipulator, seems to me, turning gold or dross into hogwash for those yearning for authority.
Not to mention that, hearing Brooks describe Brown, Freud smiles from his grave. I quote Tom Lehrer on the subject:
From the Bible to the popular song, there's one thing we've heard right along:
Of all the things we hail as good, the most sublime is motherhood.
There was a man, though, who, it seems, once carried this ideal to extremes.
He loved his mother, and she loved him, and yet his story is rather grim...
I concluded that Brown’s impact stems from her ability to undermine the egos of the successful at the same time that she lovingly helps them build better lives. She offers a path out of the tyranny of the perpetually open mind by presenting authoritative traditions and teachings. Most educational institutions emphasize individual advancement. Brown nurtures the community and the group.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/21/opinion/21brooks.html?hp
--Let me repeat that: 'the tyranny of the perpetually open mind'. Amongst the world's pressing problems, surely that isn't the worst. And Brooks' implication that toughness and an open mind are incompatible is utter nonsense. Meanwhile, the community and group, while necessary and, today, placed far lower than individuals in political rhetoric, can themselves be 'tyranny'. Yet another facile manipulator of weak people, this Brown, no different from those arising in countless other traditions.
Community and group can tyrannize as well. A perfect example is Brown's assertion that one's obligated to expose adultery, even at the cost of friendship. Some marriages complicated by adultery (and a myriad other secrets and transgressions) are worth saving; some aren't; the decision should obviously be up to the married couple rather than an external observer. Brown advocates the destruction of all adulterous marriages in the name of group values, while, rather incredibly, dismissing friendship as a group value. This, too, is tyranny, as well as incoherent.
Yet another manipulator, seems to me, turning gold or dross into hogwash for those yearning for authority.
Not to mention that, hearing Brooks describe Brown, Freud smiles from his grave. I quote Tom Lehrer on the subject:
From the Bible to the popular song, there's one thing we've heard right along:
Of all the things we hail as good, the most sublime is motherhood.
There was a man, though, who, it seems, once carried this ideal to extremes.
He loved his mother, and she loved him, and yet his story is rather grim...
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