It is a good time for a break. I’ve been blogging steadily since I began over fifteen months ago, and the timing is propitious for discovering exactly how out of control the world will spin without my commentary upon it. I’ll be back in about ten or eleven days. I hope you will be too. If you’re relatively new, the horizontal menu bar and the last couple of months’ archives, not yet added to it, are the places to explore in my absence, if you care to, so as not to have missed a word of my indispensable wit and wisdom.

Now, where was I…

AJA

by Campbell McGrath

from The New Yorker, January 11, 2010

*Ink runs from the corners of my mouth
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.
~Mark Strand, “Eating Poetry,” Reasons for Moving, 1968

There, I said it. Now let me make clear what I mean.

I believe the American advent, the American idea, and the American experience are exceptional: a nation of laws, and not of men and women, a constitutional democracy founded in and devoted to the liberty of its people, a culture and nationality not of ethnicity or spiritual uniformity, but of the motley assemblage of ever broadening immigrant populations and their descendants, with the constantly renewable spirit to create and recreate their lives. No other nation is quite like this, and everyone knows it.

American exceptionalism should not mean that Americans are in anyway inherently superior to other peoples. How could they be? There is no natural American people to hold inherency: the American people are a construct of many other peoples. The United States has no inherently greater rights than any other nation. And as the American experience has often fallen far short of the American idea, so, too, do Americans, like all other people, fall short of human ideals.

Case in point: the recent Justice Department report declaring John Yoo and John Bybee guilty of exercising poor judgment, but exonerating them of professional misconduct – rejecting thereby the recommendations of the department’s own ethics investigators.

Associate Deputy Attorney General David Margolis said that Yoo’s

loyalty to his own ideology and convictions clouded his view of his obligation to his client and led him to author opinions that reflected his own extreme, albeit sincerely held, views of executive power.

According to the Washington Post, Margolis believes

…the memo authors did not intentionally violate ethics rules. Instead, he said, they were struggling to prevent another terrorist strike on U.S. soil.

Since when, one wonders, did the sincerity of one’s views excuse the extremity of one’s beliefs and actions? This can excuse anything. What a paltry excuse for reasoning. They were struggling to prevent another terrorist strike on U.S. soil? And Jaruzelski was struggling to forestall a Soviet invasion, and Pinochet and the Argentine generals were struggling to beat back the Marxist threat, and Franco was struggling to stave off the communists and the anarcho-syndicalists and the republicans, and Trotsky the counter-revolutionaries. The universal excuse for every kind of human, legal, and democratic violation is the struggle to prevent. This is not the reasoning of democrats; it is the rationalization of tyrants. As Norm Geras wrote last week

It hardly seems appropriate, either, to propose that the holding of certain ideological views, whether about executive power, civil emergency or anything else, might be a basis for exonerating a lawyer when he or she provides validation for committing a grave political crime now all but universally regarded as a crime against humanity.

Count bad argument 1 for torture

Bad argument 2

It isn’t torture! Sure their struggling, screaming, and succumbing – they’re uncooperative. If they were being tortured, they’d be dead.

Well, somewhere around 100 people did die in U.S. custody while not being tortured. I’ll repeat that: 100 people in the custody of U.S. forces or agents – not in any kind of combat, not after any kind of military or legal proceeding – have died.

If, as Oscar Wilde slyly informed us, “Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue” (and we know how most defenders of torture love to be instructed by Oscar Wilde), then Euphemism is Hypocrisy’s chief of staff. Euphemism sits on the other side of the Decider’s desk and offers, “We’ll just tell them it’s not torture. We’ll call it robust interrogation. No, better, we’ll call it – what term did the Nazis use? – we’ll call it enhanced interrogation.”

Enhanced with torture, of course. And why let the adoption of Nazi euphemism give us any kind of moral pause. We are, in these conversations, speaking of practices acknowledged – in some cases, for centuries – as forms of torture, acknowledged universally in military practice, law and convention as torture. In 1988, Ronald Reagan, the patron saint of the conservatives and neoconservatives who support torture, signed the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment [emphasis added]. He stated

The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention. It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.

Well, not just in the world, but by the United States. Not in Reagan’s time, but now. Everyone can know a rationalization when they hear one: it hems, it haws, it squirms, it cavils. It tells you why it isn’t what it appears to be. The way Clark Kent wasn’t Superman. Fooled you, didn’t he?

Bad argument 3

Quotation marks. Don’t write torture. Write “torture.”

This is the employment of quotation marks that, rather than simply uses a word, calls attention to the word as a word, in one kind of usage – this one, I’m afraid – challenging the very appropriateness or “meaning” of the word, as in the United States, was, you know, “attacked” on 9/11. By “terrorists” who hate us because of our “democracy” and “freedom.”

This is the typographical argument, long on the short of it, short on the long.
Bad argument 4

The no-reciprocity argument. Islamic terrorists cut our heads off; why have any compunction over how we treat them?

First, the various conventions prohibiting torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment are not encoded in tit-for-tat reciprocity. A signatory isn’t committed to abiding by them only if others follow the conventions. That is a sure way, obviously, to the quick dissolution in effective force of any agreement. You don’t get to run red lights or break into a house because someone else did it, even if to you. Then Ten Commandments, which I’ll wager large numbers of torture proponents hold dear as the foundation of something or other, are not “thou shalt not” unless the other does, in which case have at it.

Second, the greater reason and purpose for humanitarian principle is not to be found in treating well an adversary you might well wish not to, but in overcoming that wish, that base if righteous desire to cut him up or fry him because he done you wrong. I only abused him because he did it to me is not a foundation on which to build our own human dignity or by which to establish the superior values that separate us from such an enemy.

We do not base torture prohibitions on reciprocity. We base them on principle. Of the kind that supposedly make us different.

Bad argument 5

The emotive argument. You feel sympathy for them?

As in the counter to the no-reciprocity argument, the counter here need not be based in any specific human compassion for, let us say, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. We do not, fundamentally, refrain from torturing out of compassion for the potential victim of torture – though I’ll wager, again, that large numbers of the less tough amongst us, were they compelled to wield the torturer’s instrument, could not overcome their compassionate response to the pain and cries of even KSM.

We do not torture out of the expression and creation of, by the very act of our restraint, our own humanity, the values by which we claim to stand above our enemies.

Bad argument 6

The defense in political judgment. This is the defense, essentially, in other words, for Yoo and Bybee, and for the Bush administration, just in case you don’t buy the euphemisms. It was a tough situation. They made a judgment call. We don’t want to condemn people for, even criminalize, political judgments.

How long do we need to consider that in government and politics everything is a political judgment, and by this argument, any act would be defensible, no act would be wrong, and our political leaders would stand above the law and be answerable for their acts only at the ballot box? But, then, why rely on that latter? It might be their political judgment that we need for some unspecified period, because of the threat against us, suspend elections. It might be that they would decide that additional American citizens like Jose Padilla, perhaps thousands, need be arrested and held without charge or trial and rendered effectively senseless by years of sensory assault and deprivation. That would be our leaders’ political judgment; however, these would all be political judgments that the Constitution and law do not provide for them to make without being held to account and liable to penalty. “Political judgment” is not a legal escape clause, though it is an escape from fundamental logic for far too many who should be able to reason better.

Bad argument 7

The action in extremis argument. The first duty of any government is to protect the people. If torture, then, is necessary, so be it.

This argument is in fact two, one nested in the other. One is that the torture was necessary. We’ll deal with that next. The first is that “first duty” argument. Immediately, most people would agree with it. The social contract most of us theoretically presuppose as the foundation of our joint national projects begins in mutual self-defense. If not that first protection against the state of nature, what’s a nation and government for? Consider, though, that torture proponents like to challenge opponents with the ticking-clock scenario. This seems to opponents old hat already, and they have become too readily dismissive of the hypothetical unlikelihood as being germane to the argument. As I argued in Tortured Argument, it is not. The purpose of such hypotheticals, however unlikely – and many torture proponents think the ticking clock not as unlikely as do opponents – is to test the absolute nature of our principles and to modify them if necessary by introducing the complexity of the real. However, if one accepts the modification compelled by the ticking-clock hypothetical, as I do, then one may still distinguish extreme circumstances from standard policy prescription and practice.

The first-duty argument can be put to the same test. Does this argument entail as a further conclusion that we hold no value greater than our own lives? Will we, acting nationally out of that duty, do anything to defeat our enemies and survive? Some many answer immediately, yes, and there we are, but what are the further entailments of that answer? Will we, as a nation, but also as individuals, torture? Torture the innocent? Torture children? Serve as guards in concentration camps? Machine gun rows of naked people standing at the edges of ravines, more readily to fall in for disposal. Place heads back to back so as to kill two with one bullet. Cut off heads? Ourselves enslave and terrorize?

These apparently extreme hypotheticals are, in fact, less hypothetical than the ticking clock – nations and peoples have done them all. Answers are germane to reasoning along this line. Libertarian blog friend ShrinkWrapped raised the question a little while back, “What are you willing to die for?” Young men and women answer this question regularly in their military service and combat. There are values they hold dearer than their own lives. Champions of torture are among those who tend to wax most openly patriotic, singing the song of the American strain worth dying for. So what is that strain? Is it only American, or is it more fundamentally human? To die in active combat for values higher than life at any cost may seem more gloriously assertive than to risk all for what one will not do, but they are in the final analysis the same.

Those who make the first duty claim believe they have reached the end of an argument, when in truth they are only at its beginning. They have not yet really begun to reason.

Bad argument 7

The vital information argument. This is the necessity argument nested in the first-duty argument. It is, note, an extension of – more importantly, the relaxation of – the ticking clock argument.

In the ticking clock hypothetical, mass death is imminent. We know that. Without that knowledge the clock is not ticking, or, if I may say so, it is ticking all the time. That is the human condition. But that is not the ticking clock scenario. In the vital-information scenario there is only the threat of a ticking clock, not actual knowledge of one. By such imagining, every enemy is potentially, mysteriously, like a black box, in possession (or not) of information that holds lives in the balance. This is the constant condition of warfare: every captured combatant, every prisoner, is such a hypothetical fund of vital information. However, it has not before been U.S. policy to torture prisoners on the possibility that they might know something of value.

Yet this is what many torture proponents would now institute as policy. So far removed are we from the ticking-clock scenario into the all-purpose, always-applicable, potential vital-information scenario, that not only nationally-known torture proponents, but a majority of the American people, according to a Rasmussen poll, supported waterboarding as low-level a figure as Detroit in-flight bomber Umar Farouq Abdulmutallab. In fact, according to a GFK-AP poll, the American people have now sustained for the past nine months at least majority support for the use of torture on “suspected” terrorists more often than rarely.

That’s the consequence. And that’s not exceptional. Not exceptional at all.

AJA

For the past four months we have been living in RV parks around Los Angeles – whenever we could, right on the beach, right at the Pacific. However, the pleasures of motorhome living have been less without the daily excitement of travel and new places. The disruption to our lives became more pronounced. Most people who fulltime it – that’s what it’s called – are retired – you know, the gray-hairs everyone thinks of when they hear of motorhome travel. But those older RVers are not all fulltimers. Some are snow birds, heading south for the winter. The gray hairs are what Julia thought of when I first talked to her of motorhome travel well over a decade ago. I had some little experience, and already knew the joy.

Those older travelers are much misunderstood by the people who capture them in a cliché. On one of the countless occasions along the way that I observed some back-bent codger emerge from a forty-footer, and his maybe spryer but plumper spouse head for her own work in parking, setting up, maybe unhitching what’s called a fifth wheel, leveling it, and connecting it to the grid, I turned to Julia and said, You know they’re actually very impressive. Most people their age are rooted like plants in front of a television. These people are out there seeing the world, traveling the roads, engaging life with all they’ve got left. They’re something. And so they are.

One of the rich rewards of travel is the regular encounter with lives, kinds of lives, whole subcultures of which you would otherwise never have known. It’s like discovering new planets, populated planets, right there around the bend, over a mountain, deep in a wood. The fulltimers and the snow birds are two kinds of motorhome traveler, and there are many who are younger, younger than Julia and I, and the family vacationers with their kids. There are the people, too, old and not so old, who are not travelers, who are a different kind of fulltimer. The RV may be a twenty-year old motorhome worse for wear and time, or maybe a fifth wheel, up on its blocks, an apron around its base like a foundation to a house, a makeshift yard of chairs, tables, bird feeders crowding the site. There are many variations, but in each case, not in the resplendent motorhome resorts on lakes and oceans that are condoed and timeshared, but in the small, meager parks stuck back in the rural trees, tucked away on lots off the interstate, they may rent monthly for three or four hundred dollars, and they are not recreational or much of a vehicle, but they are a permanent home, twenty-five feet by ten or even eight, for someone old, or veteran, or attached to reality a little differently, and its better, by far, than a big-city street or some charity hotel, and you’ve got some propane for heat and maybe a pet and your own blue sky, and life is always a road to somewhere you didn’t know you were going.

So finally, for Julia and me, after sixteen months and no longer traveling, fulltiming became too much. She has this business to help guide, I have several book projects in progress and too long in coming, and life is joy if you can make it and let it be that, and if you are lucky, but it is also work, and we just need more space and to be settled again. We needed to land somewhere for awhile.

Among the oddly contradictory feelings of preparing to land, is my reluctance to give up the Allegro Bay, our motorhome, just as we prepare to sell it. (If you’re interested, by the way, the asking price is $125,000 for a 2009, with many extras and a Hydralift, hydraulic motorcycle lift, the best on the market and adaptable for an ATV, welded to the rear, an $8,000 value newly installed.) All my life, whenever talking with friends about the fantasy of wealth, I always said my definition of the kind of rich I’d like to be is the ability to travel wherever I want whenever I want. If you are intrepid and disentangled enough a person, that doesn’t have to be that monetarily rich. For me, though it doesn’t yet cross oceans, the motorhome, has been that freedom, that rich, and while I have longed these past couple of months to be landed, I feel, too, like a cowboy about to give up his horse.

Julia and I both love and embrace change. It comes to you anyway, and we make our own. Our apartment is little more than a mile from the home we own, still rented out, and which I never wanted to live in again when we left it. We expect to stay in the apartment for a couple of years, do some traveling by air and auto to continue our work in Indian country, and then see where the economy and work and circumstance have delivered us. We anticipate another year of motorhome travel in four or five years. This time around with only a very little experience driving RVs, I was reluctant to go above the 37 feet. Now I’ve driven through mountains and over narrow country roads and barreled along interstates amid crowds of trucks and trailers, and loved every second of it. Next time, I’m going 44 feet – the king size bed, the second bathroom, the kitchen island. (Some cowboy.)

We’ll see where we are in four or five years. We are all held out into our existential space, deep into the unfathomed universe. It is cold there, and dark, and in the very dead of night it is frightening. So we seek connection, in love and family and faith, in culture and tradition, in the comfort of habit and routine, as if to believe there is no wonder that anything, a tree or a walk in the park, is the way it is – even though we know our end is to separate from most or all of those connections.

In these final days before we move next week, I walk the dogs along the low bluffs of Playa del Rey, overlooking the Pacific. The ocean and the beach are my heaven, what I hope to see at my end, if not after. I grew up in several communities in New York City, but mostly in Rockaway Beach, a collection of communities, actually, along a peninsula in the Atlantic that many New Yorkers don’t even know is part of the city, or think is in Brooklyn, though it is Queens. My parents moved us there, twice, because they loved the seaside too.

My father, who was born in Ukraine, a cold and unforgiving clime – especially in the first half of the twentieth century, and before, for a Jew – loved three things in the world: his family, everything new and clean (because in his youth everything had been old and of the earth), and the sun. He worshiped the sun, and so he worshiped the beach, and on his restful Sundays, while his indolent children still slept, and when we didn’t live in Rockaway, he would make the drive to Jones Beach, farther out on Long Island, and lie for hours with a reflector, be home before we had risen yet. In the painful days after he died, and now, several years later, every time I sit on a beach, whenever I feel, simply, the heat of the sun on my skin – feel that the universe is not empty space surrounding me, but something touching me – I think of my father. In that inexplicable communion of heart and memory, I am my father.

My mother’s love of the sea was more melancholy, as she was. She loved to sit at her window beside the Atlantic on stormy days and watch a dark Caribbean mood travel up to New York’s southern shores. She swam in sorrows that were buoyed by the love of her family.

On the day before we took the apartment, I walked Homer and Penelope amid those kinds of stormy seaside colors. The ocean was steely beneath dark clouds, the wind blowing, the white caps churning, light, though not sun, cracking the clouds for contrast. On this day, thinking of beginnings and ends, and the distance in between, I was not my father but my mother. In contrast to seasides, mountains, and great plains, cities like New York are great works of imagination, architectural installations, stages of human drama, the worlds of the novel a reader enters to live on its streets and know the merchants and neighbors. But on a bluff above the ocean, one returns to the original creation. There is the sea, the sky, the land, where they all meet, and one can feel, originally, how one connects to them, to the sphere they embody, and what lies beyond.

I walked ahead of Penelope, who these days, no longer hunting in woodlands, does not forge maniacally ahead anymore, and followed behind Homer. When he was a puppy, Homer was frightened of the world itself. I had to pull him down the stairs of the three-story Venice loft we lived in then, and out the door, just to get him to do his business. He was not unlike the shy, timid, frightened child I was, who in my infancy, through a long week in the Catskills, would not go potty until my father drove up for the weekend to hold my hand.

Now Homer has seen the country and peed on it all. He was about my age when we left, our gray about the same, but is older than I am now, aging faster, though I’ll get there. On the Playa del Rey bluffs, he lumbered through the gusts ahead of me, each slow step rippling through his body to the hind haunches. He turned to look back at me, his eyes wondering.

“I’m coming,” I said.

AJA (photos from my Moto Q)

While others were doing whatever it was they did during the great Mid-Atlantic blizzard of 2010, John was out capturing how the storm beautified his home landscape. A little something for those who missed it or were not delayed returning home from Argentina because of it, and who love snow.

Early In The Storm

Everything In A Blanket

Sculptures On The Deck

Birds Stocking Up

The Next Morning

The Sun Comes Out

A Path to Feed The Birds

Music: “In the Painted Room,” by Karenn Gibson Roc, from the album Touching the Soul

Video: Phil Roc:

Label: Lemon Grass Music

And the pilots shall fly the planes, and the aeronautical engineers build them. The programmers shall program. The biomechanics shall manipulate genes. And the surfers of the sea shall not aim protons at one another in the Large Hadron Collider like bottle caps in a game of skully along the Pacific Coast Highway. For knowledge is a awesome thing. Unless it is of something soft like political science. (Science? Really, please.) Or sociology. Or history. Or government. Or – good God, man, watch out for the quicksand! – English.

We are all philosopher-kings in the realm of our own perfect wisdom. The tenants do not complain, and no court can seek to impeach us. Our rule is like a pure, sturdy blanket o’er the land, and it is without blemish. The citizens even get rebates. All hail the imaginary land.

It is a truth of human nature that what we can do at all, we will often imagine doing better than others. Familiarity breeds proverbial contempt. After all (in those societies that do), we all speak English. We’re all observers of society and political calculation, and know a tyrant is just a bully with an army. We’ve all read our Federalist Papers, our Smith and Marx and Keynes. (Oh, all right, and Friedman. So Krugman, neah.) We even know our W. Edwards Deming. And we’ve got ourselves a heap of street smarts, as Jimmy styles and praises it.

We can run a country.

It may even be that, roiled enough by the incompetence around us, we seek the mantle of leadership. We have the requisite political or networking skill (already we rise above), we achieve positions of responsibility, elected or other, and with a P an h or a D or some other alphabet soup after our names or none at all, we are become what we despise: we are elite. We are – how do you say? – anointed.

This discussion of elites confuses one concept in three attitudes. Of the first, that toward elites, Nightelf says, “Jay seems to get bogged down in ‘what is an elite?’ The problem isn’t ‘elites’, it’s elitism.” Well, yes, actually, I focused on elites because that is the subject I chose (thanks for noticing) and I chose it because that is the word Shrink and so many conservatives keep using – not elitism. Were there an actual problem with elites per se, it would, indeed, involve elitism. As I wrote

Elitism is “leadership or rule” by an elite, “consciousness of being or belonging to an elite.” These are more or less problematic notions depending on how we unpack, and again, validate them. The core problem is that of “snobbery,” entailing unearned access to elite status and expected privilege as a consequence. The offensive culmination is in a sense of social or moral superiority.

However, Nightelf, and Jimmy, and Shrink, all go on immediately to complain against the “insufferable arrogance,” the constitutional deviance, and the “statist” beliefs of, not elites, but liberals, even if styled as “liberal elites.” Which is my point exactly. Their complaints are properly lodged against liberalism, not the reality that leadership and governance will always be exercised by some kind of elite – the bus driven, for the trusting and hopeful, by someone who at least knows how to drive, maybe even, pray, by one who can drive at least somewhat better than the others, and who will probably, since it is good and responsible to regulate matters of safety and entrusted lives, have a commercial driver’s license, a kind of professional certification, an established imprimatur of elite status as a driver of commercial vehicles.

This conceptual confusion of what are perceived as liberal ideas and behaviors with the nature of elites mixes, secondarily, with the fact that the latter generally in our meritocracy (though always with exceptions), reach their professional or public state as the consequence of formal education and accrediting and certifying systems. (Imagine, please, the justifiable outcries were matters of professional guidance and public trust not in some way regularly established, reviewed, and certified – how the buses then would drive off cliffs and into walls. But perhaps some conservative, after centuries now, has conceived some better idea than the university and the professional school. Perhaps righteous dissatisfaction and outrage.)

From this mix follows the anti-intellectualism. Shrink offers a definition of “intellectual” serviceable for my purpose here:

The intellectual class is composed of that class of people who make their living, often a very good one, by manipulating language.

One manifestation of a class so represented is that it is, by definition, ubiquitous and vocal: it ratiocinates, writes, speaks, educates, broadcasts, pronounces, declares, informs, congregates and issues statements and reports. You get the idea. It is all around us – what Jimmy calls the “three legged stool (Academia, MSM, Washington DC)” – and if one feels just a little misaligned with this class and its unavoidable voice, ubiquitous can come to seem oppressive. The desire for heads can rise in the blood.

Even many of those who think themselves not of this class recognize the centrality of the idea to human history and achievement – the idea, by nature, manipulated as some form of language. Inherent in this recognition, for some, is a kind of, not class, but status envy. Economic class resentment is anathema to conservative thinking, but the substitute of status resentment is not. Even Shrink, clearly of the intellectual class as he defines it, feels obliged, and apparently comfortable, to state of “Engineers, who actually build things” and “Entrepreneurs, who actually create new products and wealth that enrich all of us” – all of which is, of course, true – that “[t]he average Engineer or Entrepreneur contributes far more to society, and far more that is lasting, than the average intellectual.” We know that the contrary statement of comparative value – the terms reversed – would strike as immediately superior and offensive, but because the acceptability of status envy and resentment, particularly against intellectuals, Shrink’s statement bats no eyes. And so, too, amongst the comments to Shrink’s rebuttal in this debate we are treated to condescending, demeaning and clearly ill-spirited stereotypes of members of the “intellectual class,” some of whom referred to are contingent workers who struggle to cobble together an income of, if they are fortunate, $20-30,000 per year (without, generally, and by the way, health insurance), but who, because shitting on the life of the mind is always in vogue in some quarters, don’t qualify as “the people.”

What Shrink flirts with here is what Massimo Pigliucci labels “a third form of anti-intellectualism, unreflective instrumentalism. This is the idea that if something is not of immediate practical value it’s not worth pursuing.” Of the rejection of intellectualism Pigliucci writes

One can be anti-intellectual also by rejecting intellectualism because it is elitist. Anti-elitism is very peculiar to the American psyche, and it is virtually unknown in the rest of the universe. Most other people recognize that in matters of the intellect, as in any other human activity, there are people who do it better and others who are not quite as good. That does not—and should not—imply anything about the intrinsic worth (or lack thereof) of such people. Astonishingly, Americans don’t have any problem with elitism per se: just watch the adoring crowds at a basketball game and the recursive tendency to set up athletes as “role models” for our youth. The underlying assumption seems to be that everybody can become an Olympic athlete, but that the way to science and letters is only reserved to the lucky few. Ironically, the truth is quite the opposite: while the chances of making it in professional sports are almost nil, a country with a large system of public education and some of the best schools in the world can give the gift of intellectual pursuit to millions of people.

MaxedoutMama (who sends me verbal flowers when she agrees with me and calls me dolt when she doesn’t – but that’s okay, I like her all the time) states

the idea that anti-intellectualism is a necessary consequence of observing that our leadership is incompetent is just plain stupid.

Well, of course, I didn’t say that because it isn’t my thought. I have not said a word about the competence of our leadership, which MoM acknowledges, in her own grievances, encompasses liberal and conservative. I have been arguing that anti-intellectualism is a factor in a misconception of the notion of elites. We can argue about competence and how we strayed from the Constitution in, like 1793, and are now virtually a Soviet republic another time. That is not the topic I chose for our fifth go around. However, MoM does state

You discuss language. The people on SW’s blog are probably looking more at data and results.

She goes on to ask, “What data can you present to show that our leadership (not just political) is mostly competent?” As I say, I am not arguing here about the competence (or lack of) of our leadership, and, anyway to meaningfully respond to her question we would need to – you should pardon the expression – define what we mean, in this context, by competent and mostly. As to the opposition set up between language and data, with – I can’t help but feel – some implied derogation of language in the comparison, even statistical studies and reports, never mind political argument, are dependent upon clearly conceived terms of analysis, consideration, and discussion. Clarity of conception is the foundation for all, and we conceive in language.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to uselessly read a poem. I’ll get back to you with the data on that later.

AJA

Although the “Ask Elouise” letters, sent to those on the litigation listserv are intended to keep the members of the litigation class informed, they provide important information about matters of importance to anyone who has taken an interest in this case. To begin, the settlement is not complete, and still in danger of being lost, until Congress ratifies the settlement agreement.

Why must the settlement approval process occur so quickly? Time is of the essence. If settlement is not approved in the short term, there is a very real possibility the settlement will fail and the parties will return to active litigation. First, Congress must ratify the settlement agreement before the Court can act to preliminarily approve it. In this election year, further delay will create a more challenging political environment for enactment of the necessary implementing legislation. Congress is a body made up of diverse and varied views and not all have an interest in a successful resolution of this case. Further delay will increase the likelihood that our allies on Capitol Hill focus their attention on other matters. Secondly, the Supreme Court has granted an extension of the time for the parties to submit briefing in connection with its review of the Court of Appeals decision that limits the accounting duty to “low hanging fruit.” It is unlikely that further extensions will be granted by the Supreme Court and further court activity is likely to kill the settlement.

Any settlement of a lawsuit involves compromise, sometimes the very painful and disappointing acceptance of terms far from true justice. Cobell, without whom there would have been no suit and no measure of justice in this matter, had to make a very difficult decision. She explains it again.

How did we get from plaintiffs’ calculation of almost $40 billion a few years ago to $1.4 billion today? The $1.4 billion settlement fund for the accounting claims was the product of negotiations between the parties and is, in my estimation, a fair resolution for plaintiffs’ accounting, restitution and damages claims after considering the risk associated with further litigation, the refusal of the Court of Appeals to order the government to provide a full accounting of all funds, and the absence of any time limit for final judgment in this case. It has long been plaintiffs’ position that more than that is due. But what matters is what is recoverable in Court. The litigation could continue another decade or more with no assurance that we will prevail on the merits. Other factors could not be quantified, including the deaths of tens of thousands of beneficiaries since the filing of this case. Those class members will never see the resolution of this case and the prospect of another ten years of litigation means that thousands more will be denied their rights too. It is important to also consider that the district court limited the award following the 2008 trial to only $455.6 million for plaintiffs’ accounting claims – significantly less than the almost $40 billion plaintiffs had requested.

AJA

Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a 42 year old political prisoner arrested by Cuban authorities in the crackdown of Spring 2003, has died after an 83 day hunger strike.

Jonathan Chait, The New Republic – A Brief Reconciliation Primer

As Mary McCarthy once said of Lillian Hellman, everything the GOP says is a lie, including “and” and “the.”

Mitchell Cohen, The Huffington Post – The Shock of Dubai (H/T Yaacov Lozowick)

I am shocked – shocked – to discover there is killing going on in war. (And spies spying?)

ChristopherHitchensWatch – We Watch the Hitchens So You Don’t Have To

There is also The Daily Dishwater leeching off Andrew Sullivan. What am I, second rate Pâté? Where is the Obscure Writer Observer making a name off my, ah…name.

Eve Garrard, Normblog – Once more on Amnesty and Gita Sahgal

The real issue – and Amnesty must know this to be the case – is whether Amnesty should be partnering with, and thereby lending credibility to, people whose own commitment to universal human rights is in doubt. No adequate defence has been offered for this, and no adequate defence has been provided for suspending the employee who has blown the whistle on this topic, and whose own long-term commitment to universal rights for women is not in doubt.

The Open Mind V: Riposte

Let me see if I can touch on the key elements of Jay’s post.  First he points out that it is not the elites that I object to but their ideas, ie, not the idea of elitism, per se:

What Shrink and other conservatives object to is not the elite nature of these elites – were it not them, it would be others – but a set of modern and liberal beliefs that over recent decades they consider to have taken hold as the prevailing cultural zeitgeist. Fair enough. But characterizing the prevailing beliefs to which they object as “elitist” does not merely mischaracterize the nature of their adversary, it stokes a malformed amalgamation of class, cultural, and social conflict that can have dangerous consequences.

That’s certainly fair enough, though incomplete.  I do object to the “statist” ideas of the liberal elites.  I also do wonder how “characterizing the prevailing beliefs to which (I) object as “elitist” … mischaracterize{s) the nature of (my) adversary” but I’ll read on.  Jay warns about the anti-intellectualism that can be a component of populism and points out that liberals do not have a monopoly on condescension:

What conservatives fail to observe in themselves – and I have had opportunity to experience this in large doses in recent months – is their own condescension toward their political adversaries, upon whom they heap an array of demeaning and otherizing labels and perceptions, including the deluded belief that they’ve got liberals’ number, while liberals don’t have a clue about them. Accordingly, they tell themselves that liberal objections to Sarah Palin arise profoundly on the level of cultural snobbery, and there is, indeed, an element of that.

As a member in good standing of the intellectual class* and a Jew, I am sensitive to the ease with which populism in the hands of unscrupulous politicians/leaders can become suffused with envy and arouse hatred toward designated scapegoats.  Jay is correct to warn of such proclivities, though to my perceptions attempts to scapegoat have been more prevalent thus far on the left than the right in recent years.

[*My definition: The intellectual class is composed of that class of people who make their living, often a very good one, by manipulating language.  This is in opposition to the masses, which include such "lesser beings", like, oh, I don't know, Engineers, who actually build things or Entrepreneurs, who actually create new products and wealth that enrich all of us.  For those who are immune to sarcasm, please note that I value the productions of Engineers, Entrepreneurs, et al, much more highly than most of what passes for intellectual ideas these days.  The average Engineer or Entrepreneur contributes far more to society, and far more that is lasting, than the average intellectual.  (My singling out of Engineers and Entrepreneurs has almost nothing to do with the fact that my beautiful and very smart daughter-in-law is an Engineer and my less beautiful but equally smart son-in-law is an Entrepreneur; occasionally these kinds of coincidences just show up; go figure.)]

I haven’t written much about Sarah Palin.  My initial reaction when she was nominated by John McCain was positive.  Here was a seemingly genuine person who had, through grit and determination, made her way to a Statehouse and apparently done a pretty good job.  During the campaign, she showed herself to be not-ready-for-prime-time, which was a concern for someone “a heartbeat away” but she didn’t seem any less prepared than Obama (who I was told repeatedly was brilliant, his comment that he visited 57 states notwithstanding), with his lack of actual accomplishments in the real world, and Sarah Palin was clearly less of a buffoon than Joe Biden. (One need only consider Biden’s comments about FDR going on TV after the 1929 stock market crash to reassure the country or his host of inane comments before or since.)

In any event Jay goes on to assure us that the liberal elite’s objection to Sarah Palin was not because she was a political threat or represented something that was anathema to prevailing liberal elite ideology but because of ”her deep and disturbing ignorance.”  Now, I am not all that interested in Sarah Palin at the moment.  I think she was treated terribly by the Media, a treatment that stood out for its contrast with the kid gloves with which they approached Barack Obama (and had the MSM done their jobs a bit more assiduously, Barack Obama might have actually been tested more on the campaign trail, which would have stood him in good stead for his current travails.)  Sarah Palin is apparently a decent speaker, seems to have decent political instincts and may, if she does her homework, be a viable candidate in the future.  I don’t think she is a viable candidate yet because, whether warranted or not, the image of her as an ignoramus has stuck; only she can change that and it will take time.  (I can’t help noticing how similar her experience has been to Dan Qualye’s experience; he never escaped his image.  We shall see if Sarah Palin can.)

The one place I might take issue with Jay’s post is his representation of “elites”; in three places Jay delineates what he means by elite:

An “elite,” by definition, is the “choice part,” of something, the “best of a class.”

Elitism is “leadership or rule” by an elite, “consciousness of being or belonging to an elite.” These are more or less problematic notions depending on how we unpack, and again, validate them. The core problem is that of “snobbery,” entailing unearned access to elite status and expected privilege as a consequence. The offensive culmination is in a sense of social or moral superiority.

It is the pride of American history, culture, and society that more than any nation ever, we live in a meritocracy.

I actually agree in part with all three statements but I do not think the “core problem is that of “snobbery,” entailing unearned access to elite status and expected privilege as a consequence.”  The core problem is that what defines our elites is only quite peripheral to what is actually importnat in our scoiety.  This is an important point that I alluded to in my humorous (well, at least the intent was to be humorous) aside about the intellectual class.  The “elites” and this includes Republican elites and Democratic elites, are defined by their belief that they know what is best for all of us (just look at the ongoing insistence by the Obama administration to jam a top down, healthcare “reform” down the throats of a resisting populace) at the very same time that they have become far removed from the lives of the people they deign to represent.  Historian Walter Russell Mead suggests the Tea Party movement is the heir of a long and honored American tradition of anti-elitism. [All emphases mine-SW]

Do Soldiers Drink Tea?

The Tea Party movement is the latest upsurge of an American populism that has sometimes sided with the left and sometimes with the right, but which over and over again has upended American elites, restructured our society and forced through the deep political, cultural and institutional changes that from time to time the country needs and which the ruling elites cannot or will not deliver.

… you don’t have to buy every line item (or even any line item) in the emerging Tea Party program to see the movement’s potential.  Its ruling passion is a belief in the ability of the ordinary citizen to make decisions for himself or herself without the guidance or ‘help’ of experts and professionals. No idea has deeper roots in American history and culture and by global standards Americans have historically distrusted doctors, lawyers, bankers, preachers and professors: everybody who presumes that their special insider knowledge gives them a special right to decide what’s best for the rest of us and historically no political force has been stronger than the determination of ordinary Americans to flatten the social and political hierarchy.

The United States has rarely been in greater need of rapid transformation than we are now. The information revolution, the rapid development of the global economy, the shift of cultural and economic power from Europe toward Asia, the enormous wave of immigration that since the 1960’s has been remaking the body politic once again, the breakdown of the progressive or blue social model as industries and financial markets rise and fall with a velocity not seen in the last 100 years: these changes are taking place all around us, but our institutions and policies are very far from keeping up.

Elites are becoming much less necessary as people become more and more empowered.  For just one example, at one time patients came to a Doctor unsure what was wrong with them and ignorant of their treatment options.  They hoped to be referred to someone competent who could offer them an appropriate treatment so that they could regain their prior functioning and good health.  Today we expect patients to come into the office armed with knowledge of their condition (or what they believe they are suffering from) and with great knowledge of their treatment options.  When patients suffer from rarer disorders, they often know more than their Doctors about their ailments.  The wise Physician sees his job as assisting his patient in finding the proper treatment and managing that treatment rather than as dictating from “on high” how the patient must behave.

Our patients are not passive recipients of treatment but active participants who must be made allies against their disorder.  No one can ever know more about your life than you can and with the increasing complexity of the modern world, this aphorism can be extended.  We are flooded with information.  Markets, even when they work poorly, remain our best tool for summing information.  Nothing so much defines our present day elites (on the left and the right) as the belief that they understand current conditions well enough to legislate solutions to social problems.  This was a fantasy even in the good old days of Progressive rule; it is nonsensical now.  Accelerating change means that top down approaches cannot possibly incorporate enough information to predict chaotic systems.  Not only can initial conditions never be adequately established, but by the time our cumbersome bureaucracy has measured conditions they are already far different than predicted (which is why so many government statistics include gigantic fudge factors, ie corrections and assumptions.)

If the Tea Party movement succeeds it will because it has been able to articulate a program designed to minimize government intrusions into markets and facilitate the return of power to the people.  Now that I think about it, “Power to the People” could be a terrific, catchy slogan for the Tea Party movement!  I wonder what Jay would think of it?

It’s all perfectly natural. I was unhappy about Tibet, so I attacked Chinese on the streets of Los Angeles.

Christian Tau, Z-Word Blog - The Anti-Jewish Riots in Oslo

Are we picking up a pattern here?

Jonathan Chait, The New Republic - Noonan And Republican Hubris

Like the good Reagan speechwriter she was, Peggy Noonan is in love with the sound of her own voice, and rarely makes sense.

Howard Kurtz, The Washington Post - Scientology Church hires reporters to investigate newspaper

As for accepting payment from the church, they said: “We were as objective in doing this job as we were in pursuing all the other assignments we’ve done for news organizations during the past 25 years.”

How do you hold reporters in contempt? I guess you hold them in contempt.

Thomas P.M. Barnett – Assasinating Al Qaeda: not a problem

[D]efinitely something to remember when you are fed that soft-on-terror crap from the GOP.

Sometimes labeled, parthenogenetically, the fallacy of bifurcation, more commonly known as the either/or fallacy, this form of thinking also sports the “black and white fallacy” moniker. You get the idea. There are only two alternatives, in all the world. Choose one. And these would be, proffers whoever is doing the proposing of alternatives – regardless of the subject and just sose you know – mine or the wrong one.

Generally, I prefer the either/or label. (From my selfish copulater’s perspective – not such a fan of parthenogenesis.) Commonly, people stumble into either/or thinking rather obviously, when they present us with an explicit two-horned choice. You remember back in the Sixties – America: love it (uncritically, was the implication) or leave it. Or, not to wax nostalgic, more recently, when it seemed the conservatively voiced dilemma over what to do about Afghanistan entailed making a quick decision (or be a witless ditherer) to go all in, for all time, or be a punk. (Of course, Democrats are punks these days, but for different reasons.)

All bifurcations are not so obviously either/or, however. Sometimes it is not a specific argument we are getting, offering us an explicit pair of Chinese menu options; sometime the fallacy is embedded in the language with which we more generally converse about a subject, language that engenders the black and white thinking of stark and undiscerning alternatives. For example, when last I was heard from among the pixels at ShrinkWrapped, I was offering a comment there regarding the use of the word “elites,” a term of far-reaching opprobrium as Shrink and some other conservatives use it. It is a simultaneously loaded and vague term that leads us directly into the night and day of black and white thinking.

An “elite,” by definition, is the “choice part,” of something, the “best of a class.” All perception focuses on the meaning of “best” and the nature of its validation. The best scientists are those who do more of the most innovative work. The best runners are the fastest or those with the greatest endurance (along with some strategic wiles). These are the elites of their class, and they are elites born of meritocracy. All things being even (which, of course, they are not always, and to the extent that they are regularly not, we have a sociological and then political problem) if you have the skill, you join the elite.

Elitism is “leadership or rule” by an elite, “consciousness of being or belonging to an elite.” These are more or less problematic notions depending on how we unpack, and again, validate them. The core problem is that of “snobbery,” entailing unearned access to elite status and expected privilege as a consequence. The offensive culmination is in a sense of social or moral superiority.

We go astray when we confuse elite class snobbery with earned elite class status. Roger Federer does a pretty good job of being inoffensive about his tennis superiority, but if you listen to him talk enough, it is clear, of course, that he knows not just that he is superior to everyone else, but quite how superior he is. When this knowledge pokes through his inherent decency, it can catch for a moment the sensibility of the mere mortal who knows not what it is to walk on such a height, but as any good tough conservative Darwinian might say, “That’s life. He is better. Deal with it.”

It is the pride of American history, culture, and society that more than any nation ever, we live in a meritocracy. To the degree that that meritocracy is not absolute, that all things are not always even, we have much significant political debate, and a lot of political preening, about which party and what philosophy really represents the interests of those segments of society that are unfairly deprived of the respect and rewards, whatever they be, of natural individual merit. An elite that would deserve the scorn, as an elite, with which Shrink, and many of his readers, use the word, would be an elite structurally embedded in society, as, for instance, England long had, with the remnant consciousness of which it stills struggles. The closest the U.S. had to such an elite was a WASP moneyed class and what still tries to pass for “society” in New York and some quarters of New England. The great immigration of 1880-1920 and the meritocratic rise of its offspring has much demolished the estate of that elite, and the immigration of recent decades will finish the job. Look at our government, our financial and research centers, our universities, and the occupants are in very large measure the children and grandchildren of a risen working and middle class. How well individuals or intellectual coteries do their jobs is one matter of consideration, but by and large, in one manner of competition or accomplishment or other, they earned their way there.

What Shrink and other conservatives object to is not the elite nature of these elites – were it not them, it would be others – but a set of modern and liberal beliefs that over recent decades they consider to have taken hold as the prevailing cultural zeitgeist. Fair enough. But characterizing the prevailing beliefs to which they object as “elitist” does not merely mischaracterize the nature of their adversary, it stokes a malformed amalgamation of class, cultural, and social conflict that can have dangerous consequences.

The contrary concept to elites, providing us our black and white, is masses. Some conservatives use that term too. Oddly, in the ongoing radicalization of American conservatism, the almost substanceless shell of the Marxist lexicon comes into vogue. At the objectionable heights of power, we have an elite; rising up in opposition, in new consciousness, we have the masses, always mystically imbued, by left or right, with a direct line to salt-of-the-earth wisdom and moral centeredness. Here is Leon Wieseltier:

“I’m never going to pretend like I know more than the next person,” [Sarah Palin] recently told Chris Wallace, which is just as well. And she added: “I’m not going to pretend to be an elitist. In fact, I’m going to fight the elitist, because for too often and for too long now, I think the elitists have tried to make people like me and people in the heartland of America feel like we just don’t get it.”

At the Tea Party convention in Nashville, Palin made a similar claim for the moral superiority of ordinariness, twangily championing “real people, not politicos, not inside-the-Beltway professionals,” and “everyday Americans,” and finally “the people.” Palin is packaging herself as the perfect image of the American mean.

The invocation of “the people” sounds inclusive, but it is a technique of exclusion….It is based upon a particular definition of “the people.” How do Palin and the partiers know who the real Americans are? The mystical certainty of her divisive intuition reminds me of what intellectual historians used to call the “epistemological privilege” of Marx’s proletariat, his reprehensible old idea that access to truth is a feature of class position. Palin, too, is idealizing the proletariat for the uniqueness of its understanding, though her economics is starkly indifferent to its tribulations. And if you throw in Palin’s views on the “social issues,” on the questions by which we measure the decency of our society, then it is clear that this is an anti-elitism that is not egalitarianism, a common touch without genuine commonality, which is quite an accomplishment.

The danger in these muddled concepts is in the anti-intellectualism that always immediately grows out of them, and this too has been a feature of many Marxisms, from Mao to Pol Pot, with those of intellectual achievement – elite in that area and sense only – pilloried, stripped of their work, even murdered. Did wonders for those societies too. Conservatives often rail against that liberal condescension, toward the “common folk,” and it does exist.

What conservatives fail to observe in themselves – and I have had opportunity to experience this in large doses in recent months – is their own condescension toward their political adversaries, upon whom they heap an array of demeaning and otherizing labels and perceptions, including the deluded belief that they’ve got liberals’ number, while liberals don’t have a clue about them. Accordingly, they tell themselves that liberal objections to Sarah Palin arise profoundly on the level of cultural snobbery, and there is, indeed, an element of that.

George will observes that Palin “has been subjected to such irrational vituperation — loathing largely born of snobbery.” He then immediately returns the favor by noting that “America, its luck exhausted, at last has a president from the academic culture, that grating blend of knowingness and unrealism.” Down with down snobbery, up with the up, and this coming with delicious irony from the bowtied Ph.D. in political science who is as established in the elite as a Doric column.

Speaking as an insider, however, (shh!), I am here to reveal that the overwhelmingly primary reason liberals so object to Palin – despite some clear skills in a number of areas – is her deep and disturbing ignorance. Conservatives are now so in the grip of anti-elite fever, with its attendant derision of intellectual accomplishment, that they will not credit the value of that accomplishment and thus will not credit the genuine reason Palin is objectionable to the left. Energized by the passion of the Tea Partiers, they lose historical perspective – it is only seventeen years since the last round of populist revolutionary fervor – and fail to place themselves in a continuum. Here is Will again, who, if he hasn’t been purged and tried yet as an independent thinker, certainly has lost his party office:

But the reaction against [Obama] must somewhat please him. That reaction is populism, a celebration of intellectual ordinariness. This is not a stance that will strengthen the Republican Party, which recently has become ruinously weak among highly educated whites. Besides, full-throated populism has not won a national election in 178 years, since Andrew Jackson was reelected in 1832.

After William Jennings Bryan’s defeat in 1908, his third as the Democrats’ presidential nominee, this prototypical populist said he felt like the man who, thrown out of a bar for a third time, dusted himself off and said, “I’m beginning to think those fellows don’t want me in there.” In 1992, Ross Perot, an only-in-America phenomenon — a billionaire populist — won 19 percent of the popular vote….

Populism has had as many incarnations as it has had provocations, but its constant ingredient has been resentment, and hence whininess. Populism does not wax in tranquil times; it is a cathartic response to serious problems. But it always wanes because it never seems serious as a solution.

Political nature abhors a vacuum, which is what often exists for a year or two in a party after it loses a presidential election. But today’s saturation journalism, mesmerized by presidential politics and ravenous for material, requires a steady stream of political novelties. In that role, Palin is united with the media in a relationship of mutual loathing. This is not her fault. But neither is it her validation.

Will is here converging with Wieseltier, but he is just another elitist, too.

There is also the rather immense hypocrisy of Palin and many other populists. Anyone who has run for the vice presidency, and has published a monster bestseller, and appears regularly on television, and will run for the presidency is a member in good standing of the American elite. Even lesser attainments of prominence and success confer the same loathed status. The anti-elitists in the Republican caucus in the House and the Senate, and in the conservative commentariat, and in the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute–they are anti-elitists in the elite….

The wisdom of a policy is not determined by its social origins. There is a distinction between populism and “the people,” though most populists do not want you to know it. The populism that bases its criticisms on a preference for one segment of the populace is merely another special interest, its denunciations of special interests notwithstanding. This does not mean that its criticisms are wrong; but when they are right, it is because their reasons are moral, not sociological.

But justice is not well-pursued by resentment. The anti-politician politicians who seek the favor of angry Americans are deceiving them, because anger is nothing more lasting than a political consultant’s contract. Emotions are stoked by elections and are spent by them. What remains after the great manipulation is the increasingly Sisyphean task of public reason, which is its own kind of insurgency.

What he said.

AJA

Here is Michaela’s account of her photos of the Umbandan seaside ritual I posted about earlier:

The pictures deal with the goddesses-offerings. There people bring flowers or something to eat, put it into small boats and send their offerings to the sea, hoping their prayers will come true. Also several enlightened people offer their straighter way to heaven. They are easily recognized by their dress code. To get these photos I followed the “boy with a flower” in the ocean as far as I could and was wandering later on.

Of course I could not resist the possibility to get my Aura cleaned and whitewashed again, because who knows what kind of dirt got caught over the years. I let it be done by and Australian woman. Despite that I could not really feel any difference. She gave me her business card secretly, whispering, if I want to know the real thing, I should call her. I really was considering that for a while. Then I saw her with several others consoling a pretty in pink. But to me it was more of an assault. So that’s how I felt being European; what must an American have thought?

To me the feast was very peaceful, despite a group of Brazilian healers, where the upper-upper-healer, looking like a white shrunken cowboy with an impressive black beard, was roughing up the believers a bit but he acted so fast that I was not able, despite all my skills I learned from Julia, to get one sharp photo. He is also one of the suspects I connect with the headless chicken I found the next day on the beach very nicely decorated. There was no blood-letting nor self-sacrifices, sorry.

AJA

During one delay in conversation, S and I both contemplated the assault on our senses. She spoke first when the sky was returned to us. What struck her, she said, was that anyone thought those jets could solve anything. What struck me was the difference in our thoughts. I had been trying to imagine the visceral experience of that ferocious speed and ascent. Somewhere in the brief elaboration that followed came the analogy of a guy coming after you. Kill him, said S, and then you have to deal with his family. Don’t kill him, I replied, and his family will be one of the worries you no longer have.

Somewhere around the time S and I are having this conversation, Shrinkwrapped is posting What Are You Willing to Die For? When I get to reading it, I begin to misread it. Misreading is an important concept in both literary studies and psychoanalysis. In the latter, mistakes of all kinds are eruptions of the unconscious to the surface. In the former, the misreading authorizes the text, separating it from the presumed intentionality of its inscriber. Of course, the reader is participating in the misreading, but the text has allowed for it and so assumes that authority, from which follows various possibilities, including claims that the meaning of a text is unstable.

Shrink’s true end in his post (as I now read it) is to inveigh against the cognitive egocentrism of Western elites as they project their expectation of rational decision making on others who may not themselves partake of it. Shrink is here thinking of Islamists, particularly Iran. The set up for this argument lies in some preliminaries about the depth of conviction in true religious belief, and the willingness to die arising from the dictates of that belief – and this is where, at the start, I misread the post.

Shrink appears – still, to me – to be making a case, at the start, against the atheistic secularism of modernity. From this condition follow the beliefs that reside too shallowly in progressive elites for those elites to be willing to die in the name, and for the propagation, of those beliefs. Thus, you see, modern progressive elites cannot comprehend the fatal – diplomatically irrational – convictions of adherents to Islam. However, this end is not clearly in sight at the beginning of the argument, and I anticipated – part of the act of reading, and of misreading – that the failures of true conviction (that to which you will commit your life, or its loss) inherent in secular modernity was Shrink’s real subject. Thinking this, I was already conceiving, as I read – and not as a good thing, you can see – all of the fraudulent and phantasmagorical beliefs and convictions for which, out of religious (and ersatz religious) faith, so many people have given their lives over the millennia. However, the presence of this impulse in the faithful to commit their very lives out of deeply held religious conviction is offered as an apparent hallmark, later in the post, of the Mullah’s irrationality, while it is identified first as a moral deficiency, for its lack, in Western progressive elites.

Curiously, one can find a similar argument in, of all places, the writing of Slavoj Zizek. I mentioned in Politics and Shame Zizek’s odious “Welcome to the Desert of the Real,” posted to the internet within days of 9/11. In it, he states that “we, in the First World countries, find it more and more difficult even to imagine a public or universal Cause for which one would be ready to sacrifice one’s life[.]” Zizek doesn’t make the distinction in this assertion between elites and ordinary folk that SW regularly pursues, so the response to Zizek’s moral blindness – the hundreds of thousands, or more, of just American soldiers who have given or risked their lives in recent decades in no selfish pursuit, but in commitment to some belief or other – needs no proffer to Shrink, whose family is fulfilling the military commitment for several.

Still, it’s an interesting convergence of perception, about the flabbiness of Western moral character, from such far-flung positions on the political spectrum. Zizek offers another fascinating insight into his moral nature elsewhere, in his preface to the Zizek Reader, where he offers, “[W]hat I find theoretically and politically engaging in the religious legacy is not the abstract messianic promise of some redemptive Otherness, but, on the contrary, religion in its properly dogmatic and institutional aspect [emphasis added].” Of course, this is exactly the element in religious faith we should most abjure, very significantly because it does lead people to commit their own, and sacrifice others’, lives.

As I headed all this, however, it is prequel. I suppose because Shrink and I are now engaged in these debates, we’ve developed some kind of Jungian collective phenomenon, because some of these are themes I had already planned to address in the Open Mind V, coming Monday.

AJA

While conservative critics are gazing in the mirror, and the others are looking elsewhere, the Obama administration is waging real war.

Adam Holland – Ron Paul website mourns anti-Semitic author

A new crack sprouts in Paul’s pot’s spout.

Barry Rubin, GLORIA Center – Why Isn’t There Peace? One Reason: Few People Know How Much is Being Offered

Of Israel’s critics

In 2010 they have no idea what Israel actually offered in the 1990s’ peace process, or at the Camp David summit in 2000, or what President Bill Clinton offered with Israel’s agreement in December 2000, or what Prime Minister Ehud Olmert proffered in 2008, or what is in the current Israeli government’s peace offer in 2010. All proposed the creation of an independent Palestinian state, the first three in close to 100 percent and the last three as equivalent to 100 percent (with some small, equal land swaps) in size to the pre-1967 West Bank and Gaza Strip….

Outside Israel, far fewer people than should do so understand this reality. And that includes journalists,academics, and politicians. If they address the issue at all, they presume that Israel is asking the Palestinians to make some huge or unreasonable concession. Often, as noted above, their understanding of Israeli views is more than 20 years out of date.

Mark Athitakis, American Fiction Notes – Rereading

Very curious. Other than the commitment in time, would we question viewing a painting again, replaying a song, attending the revival of a play?

AskPhilosophers – On Material Cause

Or, for that matter, what’s the material cause of Bullshit

]]> http://sadredearth.com/that%e2%80%99s-what-they-think-friday-2192010/feed/ 0 http://sadredearth.com/an-affirmation-of-zionism/ http://sadredearth.com/an-affirmation-of-zionism/#comments Thu, 18 Feb 2010 16:30:29 +0000 A. Jay Adler http://sadredearth.com/?p=4287 At the very core of the recent dispute between Leon Wieseltier and Andrew Sullivan, as I saw it, have seen it, and see it, is Sullivan’s imbalanced adoption – even as he professes his empathy with, and idealized admiration of, Jews – of the anti-Israeli perceptions and rhetoric that are the currency of anti-Zionists. The notion that Zionism should require any defense is abominable. The current atmosphere, in which such defenses might seem necessary, is abominable: see Robert S. Wistrich’s just published A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad. What I offer here, instead, from Ernest Sternberg, author of “Purifying the World: What the New Radical Ideology Stands For,” of which I wrote in The Convergence of the Twain, is one of the finer brief affirmations of Zionism I have read. Originally published in March 2009 in Ari, the Jewish students’ publication at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, I reproduce it here by permission of the author.

Zionism and Universal Justice

The beliefs that motivate my own Zionism originate in a specific conversation with my mother in December 1979, when she finally felt able to talk to me about her experiences in Auschwitz. I vividly recall her description of the day in the spring of 1944, when she, her brother, young sister, parents, aunt, and the three remotely related children they were caring for (their father having been taken to perform forced labor on the Eastern front) were ordered, along with other Jews, to leave the barbed-wire enclosed ghetto for the railway station.

This was in the city of Nagyvàrad (Romanian name “Oradea”) in Hungarian Fascist occupied Romania, where the population consisted of Hungarian speakers. It is there at the railway station that they were forced at gunpoint into cattle cars, squeezed in standing room only, without food or water (other accounts tell of one bucket of water per car) or ability to relieve themselves, for the three day transport to Auschwitz.

The adult male Jews of the region were largely artisans. In my extended family, very few of whom survived, tailors and cabinetmakers predominated, but there was also the odd tinsmith, baby-carriage maker, umbrella maker, orchard manager, and a tavern-keeper. In that transport, my grandfather, a tailor, prayed constantly, for as long as he could bear to.

It was in that cattle car, too, that my mother, then 21, realized-as she put it to me over three decades later-what fools her family and the other Jews had been. There had been chances to escape to Palestine and there had already been horrifying rumors about the fate of the Jews in Poland. But the local rabbinical authorities, whom my grandfather trusted, had prohibited escape to Palestine on the grounds that only the Messiah could rightly bring about the ingathering of the Jews. And it wasn’t as if nothing of the sort had previously happened-hadn’t the pogroms occurred just decades before? The Hungarian Jews had endured the hatred, the dangers of travel (from violent attacks by anti-Semites), and the forced wearing of the yellow stars, under the illusion that, despite it all, somehow, they would emerge from the nightmare and return to their quiet and pious lives, without having to take action for their own, collective protection. Squeezed in among the condemned, my mother became a Zionist, a supporter of the idea that Jews must act to protect themselves, in Palestine.

I need only mention in passing that, nowadays, by official declaration of the United Nations and the enlightened estimate of world’s progressive thinkers, that woman in the cattle car had, need I say it?, instantly become a racist imperialist.

From my mother’s realization in that dark wagon, and from those of others subjected to existential oppression, I would like to draw two conclusions. First, in most of the world’s regimes (America is the great exception), the old ideal of Jewish assimilation turned out to be a disastrous delusion. Now under the global demonization of Israel, when the world’s problems are routinely attributed to sinister Zionist forces, Israel as a place for collective self-defense is as essential as it was after World War II. The belief that Israelis can blithely abandon their self-protective movement by retreating to the pre-War hopes for world acceptance-that is truly an intellectual evasion, a gargantuan amnesia, a lunacy blind both to current events and to history.

Recall something that today’s globalized anti-Semitic rhetoric ignores. There have been many Zionisms. There is cultural Zionism, socialist Zionism, religious Zionism, Zionism of shared national heritage, liberal Zionism (based on the idea that individuals sent to their deaths by their one-time home states had the right to enter into contract among themselves to form a new state), de-facto Zionism (viewing Israel as nation that exists and deserve the rights that others have), and legalistic Zionism (drawing on histories of international agreements).

My second conclusion is that Zionism has one more meaning, perhaps its most important one: as a movement of collective self-protection and self-determination. This Zionism gains its moral legitimacy-it becomes a moral imperative-in face of a world that is much like the present: armed and viciously bigoted, with states and armed movements bent on the Jews’ annihilation. This particular Zionism is in itself morally sufficient to warrant a state. A state is essential because it is the primary political entity through which a people can have access to legitimate means of violence to defend themselves.

It follows that, not just in religious or nationalist terms, but in terms of universal justice, Zionism is a moral requisite. It is so on the moral grounds that a people, any people, targeted for collective elimination have a right to collective defense. Jews had as a cultural asset the religious yearning for the land of Israel and this heritage allowed them to achieve self-determination that other dispersed people have not; but to say so in no way undermines Zionism as a just cause.

To be sure, Jews in Palestine had obligations toward those among whom they were settling. But the obligation extends only in so far as those neighbors don’t themselves join, as they certainly did in 1948, the quest to annihilate the Jews. It is the most bizarre of positions, held even by some Israelis, that Jewish suffering cannot stand as a justification-that it is somehow an excuse-for Israel. That is tantamount to saying the following: that being faced with annihilation is no excuse for defending yourself.

Global anti-Semitic forces are one again converging. Why so? French authors, who are especially good at explaining it, include Bernard-Henri Levy, Pierre-André Taguieff, and Alain Finkielkraut, all available in English. One theme is that we’re seeing the rise of a post-communist “new barbarism,” that needs a scapegoat through which to forge alliances among the world’s supposed resistance movements.

Under the resulting world-wide ideological assault, some of the more sensitive and fearful among us have concluded that the solution is to abandon Zionism. While our diffident co-religionists smile and cringe and blame themselves for having caused it all, the Iranian mullah regime, Hizbullah, Hamas, the Jihadists, the Muslim brotherhood, neo-Nazis, and progressive Israel-haters worldwide are assiduously building and lining up 21^st century versions of the cattle-cars.

And if the Allies had violated any of what we now think of as Herman Goering’s human rights, would Amnesty International, upon his release, have stood on podiums with him to champion those rights? Evading-the-Point 101, or the downward spiral of self-interested, self-righteous rationalization – what AI is supposed to oppose.

Matthew Yglesias - Meet the tea party

In other words, well-to-do conservative white men don’t much care for Barack Obama’s policies. Which, of course, is something we already knew from the exit polls back in November 2008.

It’s historic, not since all the way back in – when did Ross Perot live?

Christina Bellantoni,  TPMDC – Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell Rolls Back Non-Discrimination Protections For Gay State Workers

From the most recent GOP poster boy. Just hit delete.

Jillian Rayfield, TPM LiveWire - Did We Say Health Care Summit? We Meant Jobs Summit

If only the President would talk openly with us in front of the American people. We want to be bipartisan. Really. We do. We want to. Did we say “really”? Look at our faces. Would we be full of it?

Leon Wieseltier, The New Republic – The Trouble with South Park

A reply to Andrew Sullivan’s reply.

What, precisely, does any of this extenuate? There will be times in which the emotion of the moment will overwhelm me, too–and those are the times in which I will choose not to write. I do not see that Sullivan’s hotheadedness absolves him of anything. He is not right because he is intemperate and he is not wrong because he is intemperate: he is merely explaining belief in terms of temperament, and mood, and identity, all of which have no bearing upon the substance of any discussion. Compose yourself, man, and think. For a deeply felt opinion may be false, and even pernicious. In intellectual life, volatility has no authority, and spontaneity is not a virtue, and neither is sincerity.

Auction Will Raise Money for Documentary Photography

-FEBRUARY 20, 2010, from 7-10 p.m. (bidding starts at 9) at THE STEPHEN COHEN GALLERY

7358 Beverly Blvd. in Los Angeles (90036)

Actor and photographer Aaron Eckhart will join Julia Dean, founder of The Julia Dean Photo Workshops, for an exhibit and silent auction of more than 100 outstanding images taken by leading photographers from around the world. Proceeds from this first of 5 auctions to raise money to complete the documentary photo project Child Labor and the Global Village.

Some of the images to be auctioned.

Jeff Jacobsen - 8 Pierre, South Dakota, 2003

Howard Buffet, Untitled

David Kennerly - Five Presidents

Andrea Passarella - Old School

David Healy, Untitled

Douglas Kirkland - Australia, 2007

Jim Hubbard, Untitled

Kathleen Mclaughlin, Untitled

Marissa Roth - Afghan Refugee Women and Children

Nevada Wier - Myanmar

Rick Loomis - White Terns

Nanine Hartzenbusch - Steamy Cold

]]> http://sadredearth.com/project-5-silent-auction-this-saturday/feed/ 0 http://sadredearth.com/that%e2%80%99s-what-they-think-tuesday-2162010/ http://sadredearth.com/that%e2%80%99s-what-they-think-tuesday-2162010/#comments Tue, 16 Feb 2010 16:22:41 +0000 A. Jay Adler http://sadredearth.com/?p=4244 Jonathan Chait, The New Republic – Democratic Dysfunction, An Update

Democrats are punks.

Bernie Becker and Jeff Zeleny, The Caucus – Bayh Decides Against Re-election Bid

He complains about the difficulty of getting anything done, yet, “[a]ccording to analysis by The Times of Mr. Bayh’s voting history, he has voted with a majority of the Democratic caucus roughly 71 percent of the time during the 111th Congress — the lowest percentage of his career. (He has also been the Senate Democrat least likely to vote with the party this Congress.)”

Well, one way to get things done if you’re a Democrat is to vote like a Democrat.

Sam Stein, Huffington Post – Rachel Maddow Stuns Rep. Aaron Schock By Calling Out His Spending Hypocrisy

Has Evan Bayh noticed that there is no Evan Bayh in the Republican party? Everyone laments the loss of bipartisanship, sort of like innocence, but if we need to locate the place we lost what we had only long enough not to “hang separately,” let’s look at Newt Gingrich and the 1983 founding of the Conservative Opportunity Society.

I think that the military analogies are pretty helpful in understanding Newt Gingrich…. In terms of the strategy that we employed, I think one of the most helpful things to think about is that he had a construct and we really developed it. We needed to develop as a party – wedge issues and magnet issues.

Buenos Aires Daily – A blog of unhome sickness

Have I mentioned that we’re home? The travel was a trip. The return has been a trip. (Later.) Our second visit to BA only heightened my attraction. It is the only other city I have found, aside from Hong Kong, with the specific intensity and energy of New York. We got off the ferry from lovely, sleepy Uruguay and the city instantly coursed up my spine like a doubleshot. Have a look.

Jeff Weintraub, Commentaries and Controversies – Pass the damn bill (#7) – Henry Aaron

Have I mentioned that Democrats are punks?

Why Do They Hate Us?

Question: who is “they” and who is “us”? And do we mean I-want-to-cut-your-head-off hate or how-do-I-get-a-green-card hate?

The Pew Research Center’s latest polling results, “Mixed Views of Hamas and Hezbollah in Largely Muslim Nations: Little Enthusiasm for Many Muslim Leaders,” supports some compelling perspectives. Despite a bare majority of favorability in Jordan and Egypt, Hamas is viewed mostly unfavorably by Palestinians, especially those actually governed by Hamas in Gaza. The popular narrative, of course, is that the various social and humanitarian services offered by Hamas blinds those it destructively governs to its flaws. Apparently not.

Turkey, subject of another recent, popular, and lengthening narrative – that its Muslim roots are reemerging in dominance over its more modern Western aspirations – shows only a 5% favorable response to Hamas, and 69% unfavorable. It does seem apparent that Turkish PM Recep Erdoğan, with his Islamist leanings, wishes to pursue a more orthodox, and, recently, anti-Israeli course, but at least in some respects, the Turkish people do not appear to be following along.

We find similar results for Hezbollah, most favored by Palestinians again, whose cause Hezbollah purports to advance by it adversarial position with Israel, but, contrary to the Hamas case, Palestinians do not live under Hezbollah rule. Lebanese, who do live under Hezbollah’s destructive influence on their nation, like most others but more so, do not favor Hezbollah. Once again, most unfavorable are the Turks. Once again, the only other favorable constituency, as with Hamas, is the Jordanians.

Hmn.  The Arab nation with the best human rights record and, since the ascension of King Abdullah, booming under the most liberal economic policies, i.e. the Arab population the daily life of which may be least affected by the strident anti-Semitic, anti-Western, and anti-Modern terrorism of Hamas, Hezbollah, and al Qaeda, is home to the population most sympathetic to those forces. Curious, no? Not truly to know religious totalitarians and terrorists, apparently, is to love them, or at least rationalize them.

Did I mention al Qaeda? I did mention al Qaeda.

As mentioned previously, ratings for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden have generally declined in recent years, and he receives little support among most Muslim publics. However, about half (51%) of Palestinians express confidence in him and in Nigeria, a 54%-majority of the country’s Muslim population say they are confident in bin Laden’s leadership. In Pakistan, where many believe bin Laden is now hiding, only 18% express confidence in him, although 35% do not offer an opinion. Very few Turks (3%) or Lebanese (2%) express support for the terrorist leader.

Again the Turks stand out. Again the Lebanese – who if only they could live free of Hezbollah and their de facto Syrian overlord. Nigeria is a nation heading nowhere fast. And Pakistan, ah Pakistan: remarkably only 18% “confidence” in Osama Bin Laden, and, maybe more interestingly, a cautious 35% with, gulp, will this be on television,? “no opinion.”

So much for Osama. What about Obama?

U.S. President Barack Obama received positive reviews, although this was less true in predominantly Muslim countries. Even so, his ratings were consistently higher than those of his predecessor, George W. Bush, and in some cases higher than for the Muslim leaders included on the survey. For example, only 33% in Turkey have confidence in Obama, but this is still more support than Abbas, Nasrallah, Abdullah, Ahmadinejad or Karzai receive. And the American president is quite popular among some largely Muslim publics, especially in Indonesia, where he spent several years as a child: 71% of Indonesians voice confidence in him. Obama is also popular among Nigerian Muslims (81%), Israeli Arabs (69%), and Lebanese Sunnis (65%).

What’s more

There is a widespread perception among Muslims that conflict between Sunnis and Shia is not limited to Iraq’s borders. In nine nations, Muslim respondents were asked whether the tensions between Sunnis and Shia are limited to Iraq or are a growing problem in the Muslim world more generally, and in seven of those nations, a majority of Muslims say it is a broader problem.

You might say, in the vernacular – and maybe to the surprise of many – that in large numbers, Muslim and Arab populations do, in fact, know what’s happen’, what’s goin’ on.

No? Still doubtful?

  Many Muslims are convinced that there is a struggle in their country between groups who want to modernize the nation and Islamic fundamentalists. More are convinced of the existence of such a struggle in Lebanon (55%), Turkey (54%) and the Palestinian territories (53%) than elsewhere.

  Muslim publics overwhelmingly support educating girls and boys equally. More than eight-in-ten in Lebanon (96%), Israel (93%), Indonesia (93%), Turkey (89%), Pakistan (87%) and the Palestinian territories (85%) say that it is equally important to educate girls and boys.

And while this is certainly discouraging

In Arab nations, attitudes toward Jews remain extremely negative. More than 90% of Egyptians, Jordanians, Lebanese and Palestinians express unfavorable views toward Jews

this is telling

Only 35% of Israeli Arabs, however, express a negative opinion.

In other words, the Arabs who actually live with Jews and who share a liberating (to choose a word) free-breathing democracy with Jews, free of anti-Semitic indoctrination, are the Arabs with the most positive opinion of them.

Wonders.

What tentative, though not timid, conclusions might be drawn?

Richard Landes has described the cognitive egocentrism that can afflict civil societies, which project their “own mentality or “way of seeing the world” onto others.” Among the

basic political principles of civil societies [are] “I’ll give up trying to dominate and trust you to give it up as well,” [and] “if I’m nice to you, you will be nice in return,” [which] assume positive-sum attitudes in their opponents (the “other”). The current situation testifies to a dangerous mis-apprehension that works to the distinct disadvantage to civil society.

From 9/12 until, I think, five minutes from now, we have heard the warnings from some quarters that American self-defense, even aggressive offense, against its enemies – those anti-modern, anti-democratic, anti-Western, anti-Semitic adherents of human submission and terror – would result in only more terror and violence against us. Oddly, FDR did not conceive of this inhibition in warding off the Japanese and German threats to the nation. Think whatever you wish of George W. Bush – and to have been a passionate and dispirited opponent of nearly all his presidency represented was an easily reasoned position at which to arrive – the aggressive policy he pursued against these terrorist forces (even with the unconscionable, systematic torture) did not produce the billion-strong Islamo-Arab army the cognitively egocentric predicted. We did not cause the terror against us, defending ourselves did not create more enemies, and overall, Muslims and Arabs seem to be deciding that all things considered they’d rather have a virgin in this world – maybe even, some generation to come, a college-educated divorcee.

And Obama? Seems his outstretched hand and empathetic expressions – joined with an expanded drone campaign in Pakistan and a surge in Afghanistan – have also done no harm. One reasonable interpretation of these poll results is that there is, long-term, not an extreme left, or neocon, or even straight-con, but a truly liberal approach to FKATWOT that might succeed. It is an approach committed, in justified self-regard, to vigorously meeting real-world requirements for national security and self-defense, even as it champions, in respect and with equally vigorous diplomatic practice, the range of human rights, human needs, and human expressions.

AJA