Threat or Menace?

Still a charmer

2011-05-29T10:58:00.002-05:00

In today's New York Times Magazine, David Mamet officially marks the end of his transition from talented jerk to talented douchebag prick motherfucker. If he's capable of giving an honest answer to a serious question, you'd never guess from this interview.

The interviewer, David Goldman, does a decent job of trying to coax Mamet into saying something worth paying attention to, but to no avail. He also refers to Marx's Capital as "Das Kapital," which puzzles me. Do people routinely refer to Dostoyevsky's Преступление и наказание, or the great collection of stories كتاب ألف ليلة وليلة?

Mea Culpa

2011-03-30T13:22:00.002-05:00

I really shouldn't speak ill of the dead.

If I make this post about Elizabeth Taylor's public persona, and my reaction to it, is that okay?

I think Elizabeth Taylor was not a bad person, if for no reason other than her work on publicizing the AIDS crisis when so few other famous people would say anything.

I hear that she was a pretty good actress, too, though I'll confess that I haven't seen any of her work.

But one can't really say anything about her without commenting on Elizabeth Taylor the celebrity, Elizabeth Taylor the media sensation. And that part of her life leaves me cold.

For all that one hears about her being a great beauty, I must confess that when I first became aware of her existence, she seemed chubby, average-looking, middle-aged, and ridiculously haughty. Of course, in retrospect, haughtiness comes naturally when you know that you'll turn heads wherever you go. But I didn't know that then.

And as the premier Famous Person for decades, one of the first to be famous for being famous, Taylor represented a cult of celebrity that is a pestilence on our consciousness. Religion may have been the opiate of the masses in the nineteenth century, but in the twenty-first it's the obsession with fame. I'd rather pay attention to my own life than my fantasies of someone else's, but unfortunately I seem to be in the minority as far as that goes.

50 Books in 50 Years: Book #10

2010-12-12T12:24:00.002-06:00

Book #10: The End of Biblical Studies, by Hector Avalos.

Hector Avalos is a professor in the department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Iowa State University. This book is a critique of the profession of Biblical Studies as it currently manifests itself in academic departments, scholarly research and publication, professional societies, and so on. It comes highly recommended by John W. Loftus at Debunking Christianity.

The End of Biblical Studies is certainly an interesting read, and it makes a few good points — and also a few about which I am dubious. Because of its focus on the current state of his discipline, it seems aimed primarily at people already familiar with the field, its academic standards, and its basic canon. Since I am not in the field, I occasionally had the feeling that I was entering a very long conversation midway through. With that caveat in mind, in the remainder of this post I will do my best to detail both my agreements with and my reservations about his views.

Follow this link for the full post

First, our areas of agreement. I'll mention three central ones: a) the maintenance of a sizable profession of scholars whose work produces little or no measurable benefit to society; b) overemphasis on the Bible, to the exclusion of other worthy texts (Avalos uses the familiar jargon of "privileging" the Bible); and c) the failure of Biblical Studies to communicate the complexity, obscurity, and "otherness" of much of the Bible.

Point a) is one that I've addressed in an earlier post in this blog. As I said earlier, I am not in the field of Biblical Studies, so I'll have to take Avalos's word for it that this situation prevails, but I'm inclined to believe him. It would be no surprise to me to find that Biblical Studies suffers from the same ills that plague so many academic disciplines: scholarship that is trivial, insular, incomprehensible, or otherwise a waste of time and energy. Avalos provides a couple of examples, but I expect that the real force of his point is best understood by people who spend their precious hours reading journal articles or attending conferences whose real utility is as examples of scholarly busywork and goldbricking (if not less polite terms).

Point b) I'll accept with some reservations. As before, I can't verify this from personal experience, but it would not surprise me to learn that Biblical Studies absorbs money, or attention, or scholarly time to the detriment of other worthy pursuits. Whatever the field (history, archaeology, literary criticism), there are doubtless many topics that suffer from lack of attention or money, which presumably are in oversupply in Biblical Studies. I can certainly agree with this point, though not quite as far as Avalos wishes to pursue it (see below).

Point c) is essential. It has also been made, in varying forms, by scholars such as Loftus, Bart D. Ehrman, and Jacques Berlinerblau. Avalos does not go into the same level of detail as those other authors, but it bears making repeatedly: the Bible is enormous, complex, internally inconsistent, of uncertain authorship, very different from modern modes of thought, and frequently obscure. (Avalos makes this last point very well in his chapter on translation.) These facts are familiar to virtually anyone with a respectable seminary education, and they should be familiar to anyone who is interested enough to pick up a Bible or attend church services. (They aren't familiar to most of the lay public, though of course popularizations such as Ehrman's have already done a great deal to remedy that situation.) If Biblical Studies isn't getting those facts across, but is contributing to the illusion of Biblical unity and inerrancy, then it is doing the public a great disservice.

If that were as far as the book went, I would be quite enthusiastic about The End of Biblical Studies. Unfortunately, Avalos consistently overstates his case. He declares in the introduction that

Biblical studies as we know it should end. We should now treat the Bible as the alien document it is, with no more importance than the other works of literature we ignore every day. Biblical studies should be geared toward helping humanity wean itself off of the Bible and toward terminating its authority completely in the modern world. (p. 29)

It's nice to have a clear, unambiguous statement of intent; but Avalos does not do nearly enough to support this thesis. Instead, he spends a great deal of the book pointing out that these aims are not, in fact, currently being carried out by the scholars in Biblical Studies.

A case in point is his frequently repeated assertions that Biblical Studies is "dominated by religionist and theological agendas." (p. 28) I am inclined to believe that a neutral observer would confirm that religious and theological interests lie behind a great deal of what goes in Biblical Studies departments. I am also inclined to believe that this is not really a Dark Secret of the discipline, but entirely normal and to be expected. There are tens of thousands of academically-inclined students in college, and many of them, perhaps the majority, have some religious commitment. If they decide to continue to graduate school, they don't decide which discipline to pursue by random chance; and many will bring their pre-existing interests and concerns into their studies. Avalos notes with some consternation that during his time at Harvard Divinity School, he was one of the very few agnostic students — but is this the fault of Harvard, or the discipline of Biblical Studies? I think that it is more a matter of self-selection among applicants. By the same token, one is unlikely to find many tone-deaf students in musicology departments.

Of course, I should not overstate my own case. If there are instances of Biblical Studies scholars abandoning academic rigor to promote religious belief, that would be a serious problem for the profession. But Avalos does not present many examples of that sort of thing. Mostly, the specific examples he discusses are scholars who evidently do not agree with his thesis that Biblical Studies should conduct itself so as to guide the Bible into cultural irrelevance — granted! And so what? Perhaps their beliefs are wrong and their arguments are faulty; but Avalos's argument does not have much bite unless he can show that those scholars are flagrantly wrong, or dishonest, or writing in bad faith. Refusal to sign on to his program of disciplinary self-annihilation is not, by itself, sufficient to damn them.

We can find similar examples of faulty argument in his chapter on Biblical theology. He asserts that

When considering the meaning of a biblical text for faith communities, two positions can be identified for those who believe there is even such a thing as authorial intent:
A. Authorial intent is the only one that matters
B. Authorial intent is not the only one that matters
If one chooses A, then biblical studies has been highly unsuccessful. We often do not possess enough information to determine what an author meant... If one chooses B, then the only result is chaos and relativism that renders scholarly biblical studies moot and superfluous.

The only result is chaos and relativism? This seems like a blatant false dichotomy: authorial intent as sole criterion, or chaos and relativism. I suspect that many of Avalos's colleagues would argue that if authorial intent is not the only one that matters (and it almost certainly is not), then that's where discussion begins on what else matters. Absence of rock-solid certainty is not the same thing as chaos.

Avalos enlarges on this point immediately afterward, in a way that is even more mystifying:

Faith communities do not need academic biblical scholars to inform them about any original context in order to keep the Bible alive for themselves. So what is the purpose of academic biblical studies in such a case? The answer is that there is no purpose, except perhaps to preserve the employment and status of biblical scholars.

I should remark parenthetically that many faith communities think they need (or want) the assistance of biblical scholars, even if the scholars are not always able to provide definitive, unassailable answers to questions. More to the point, however, is the conflict with Avalos's earlier (and convincing) arguments regarding the Bible's instability, obscurity, complexity, and so on. If the Bible is such a difficult document to come to grips with, then why is Avalos so sanguine here about faith communities' ability to understand it, or interpret it, or put it to use? It almost seems as if he is saying that faith communities will believe whatever they want to believe, about whatever text they decide is the "real" Bible, and scholarly input is pointless. This position, if I'm interpreting it accurately, is not particularly complimentary toward faith communities' openness to education and reason.

Finally there is the matter of Biblical literary criticism, or "aesthetics as apologetics" as Avalos describes it. Most of it is dedicated to refuting arguments that present the Bible as uniquely great writing because of its alleged creativity, or symmetry, or beauty, or what have you. If those arguments do actually claim that the Bible is head-and-shoulders above other ancient writings in these ways, then Avalos's criticisms are on the mark. (I haven't read the original sources, so I can't say whether Avalos presents them accurately.) An unbiased assessment of the Bible will not find that it is uniformly more beautiful, or symmetrically phrased, or creative than any number of other ancient texts. If some other collection of ancient myths had dominated the ancient Near East, probably today's faithful would be trying to prove that those myths were uniquely great in comparison to the obscure Hebrew myths (many of which would probably lie untranslated, like the Mesopotamian texts that are ignored in our actual world).

But, for whatever reason, other myths did not prevail. The myths that played the biggest part in shaping so much of Western culture were Biblical ones. This is our actual history, for better or for worse. Avalos's attitude toward that history reminds me of Paul Fussell's mention of E. E. Cummings in The Great War and Modern Memory:

[A] well-known rumor imputing unique vileness to the Germans is that of the Crucified Canadian. The usual version relates that the Germans captured a Canadian soldier and in full view of his mates exhibited him in the open spread-eagled on a cross, his hands and feet pierced by bayonets. He is said to have died slowly. ...The Crucified Canadian is an especially interesting fiction both because of its original context in the insistent visual realities of the front and because of its special symbolic suggestiveness. (pp. 117-18)

Fussell then discusses Cummings's treatment of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress in The Enormous Room:

His refusal or affected inability to come to grips with traditional meanings can be seen blatantly in his encounter with a roadside crucifix, which he elaborately professes not to be able to identify with or understand. All it looks like is "a little wooden man hanging all by himself . . .":
The wooden body clumsy with pain burst into fragile legs with absurdly large feet and funny writhing toes; its little stiff arms made abrupt, cruel, equal angles with the road. About its stunted loins clung a ponderous and jocular fragment of drapery. . . .
Who was this wooden man?
This is Positivism with a vengeance. From the stance he has chosen, Cummings would have to pretend not to be interested in the rumor of the Crucified Canadian or not to know what it was about. (pp. 160-61)

"Positivism with a vengeance": is this where Avalos seeks to lead us? We need not believe that the Bible is uniquely great or beautiful to acknowledge its profound, inescapable influence on so many aspects of our culture. It is difficult to imagine real Western cultural literacy without some degree of Biblical literacy. If Biblical Studies can play an important role in keeping Biblical literacy alive, then it may have an ongoing role in our culture even for those of us who do not regard it as inspired.

50 Books in 50 Years: Book #9

2010-12-03T16:28:00.000-06:00

Book #9: I'm a Stranger Here Myself, by Bill Bryson.

This is a collection of brief columns first published in Night & Day magazine from 1996-1998. They mostly cover Bryson's mild culture shock upon returning to his native United States after two decades in the UK.

This is a quick, pleasant read. It's not Bryson at his absolute peak of performance, but it wasn't intended to be. I recommend it, but probably most readers will want to borrow it from the library rather than buy a copy.

Sea Kittens!

2009-01-14T10:51:00.004-06:00

Apparently People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals wants to rename fish "sea kittens." The new name will make fish seem cuddly and lovable, and discourage people from treating them like food.

Here are some ideas for renaming other animals which have image problems:

rats	alley gerbils
deer ticks	Lyme-Aids
pigeons	Brooklyn condors
cockroaches	kitchen scarabs
lice	crotch butterflies

See how easy that is? The right PR campaign could do wonders.

See? I Told You

2008-09-25T12:45:00.002-05:00

The panic that had gripped lefty blogs a couple of weeks ago has, mercifully, subsided. Sarah Palin's popularity among swing voters, i.e. the ones who matter, has plunged. The economy has tanked, and McCain's poll numbers have tanked with it. While McCain might pull it out, it seems unlikely.

I told you to calm down, and that McCain's convention bounce couldn't last. This time, I was right.

And now McCain has "suspended" his campaign, though what that actually amounts to in practical terms is unclear. If anyone's panicking now, it's the Republicans. And who can blame them? They had an uphill battle from the start, and they've made mistake after mistake. I'm actually a little surprised by the "suspension" decision; McCain isn't that far behind in the polls. But I suppose they'd rather go down in flames; it's more entertaining that way.

Everybody Calm Down, Please

2008-09-08T18:44:00.002-05:00

McCain is getting his post-convention bump. This is normal and expected and no cause for panic.

If Palin were really a strong candidate, McCain's campaign managers would be letting her get out in public. Her shortcomings are obvious to most people already (most sane people, I mean), and will become increasingly obvious as the weeks go by.

Obama is ahead or tied in most national polls and has a strong position in the Electoral College.

Calm down.

Veeeeeeeeeeeeeep!

2008-08-23T12:19:00.003-05:00

So apparently Biden will be Obama's running mate. Is this good for the Democrats? Is it bad for the Democrats? What will he bring to the ticket? Does anyone care?

My assessment is that Obama picked Biden mostly to impress the media, and rightly so. Hardly anyone decides on their presidential vote based on the running mate; both Bushes had dreadful running mates in 1988 and 2000 and won anyway. (Well, not in 2000, but that's a long story...)

The only bad pick for Obama would have been someone who made people nervous, and Biden doesn't do that. So good for you, Barack.

Why Is This Skank Different From All Other Skanks?

2008-08-15T22:52:00.003-05:00

Apparently Lindsay Lohan plans to convert to Judaism. Good luck learning all the laws of kashrut, Lindsay. What? Oh, Reform Judaism. Good luck anyway.

Wow! Did I Really Write That?

2008-06-03T10:13:00.002-05:00

The sentiments in my last post may have been a little, uh, overstated. I've been sick lately. No, really.

A more considered view: apparently "Sex and the City" functions as "clothes porn" for a lot of women. (That phrase is also from the weekend New York Times, but not Pennebaker's column.) Nothing wrong with that, but if clothes aren't your fetish, then the series and movie aren't going to do much for you, are they?

We Wanted to See the Clothes

2008-06-01T23:27:00.003-05:00

Ruth Pennebaker, in yesterday's New York Times:

...We went to a sneak preview of the movie version of "Sex and the City," which ran for six seasons on HBO, because it was a benefit for Austin's Breast Cancer Resource Center — and four of the five of us are breast cancer survivors. ... But I should tell you: We were also there because we wanted to see the clothes. The stilettos, the gossamer dresses, the floral splashes, the tight jackets, the outré hats, the clutch purses, the hair, the makeup, the dazzling jewelry. If half of “Sex and the City” is about sex, the other half is about what you’re wearing before and after you have sex and when you’re walking around the streets, heartbroken, certain you’ll never have sex again. Men come and men go, they die, they disappoint, they’re unavailable, they’re too available. But at least you’ve still got your three female sidekicks and a killer wardrobe to remind you life is worth living.

The "Sex and the City" movie or a slow death from cancer: which is worse?

This passage reminds me of a woman whom I dated in college: an intelligent, deep woman who longed to have been born stupid and shallow. If all you're living for is a killer wardrobe, why not just go ahead and pack it in?

50 Books in 50 Years: Book #8

2007-05-21T23:34:00.000-05:00

Book #8: Challenging the Verdict, by Earl Doherty

This book covers much of the same ground as The Jesus Puzzle, but is written as a rejoinder to Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ. Doherty wrote the book as a fictional "cross-examination" of Strobel and his expert witnesses. This format is not as distracting as I expected it to be, which was a relief. It also spared me the tedium of actually having to read Strobel.

50 Books in 50 Years: Book #7

2007-05-21T23:31:00.000-05:00

Book #7: The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity begin with a mythical Christ?, by Earl Doherty.

Even for nonbelievers, the figure of Jesus fascinates. Plenty of people have started new religions, but few of them have taken on divine status. Who was Jesus? Why did his early followers believe that he was God in the flesh?

I sometimes imagine having a machine that would let me look into the past. If I could dial it back to the early first century, what sort of person would Jesus turn out to have been? Perhaps he was like Socrates, a figure of such intellect and magnetism that his followers spent the rest of their lives mulling over his teachings and their significance. Or he may have been a charlatan like Sun Myung Moon or L. Ron Hubbard. But what if I searched Palestine in the first century and found that he wasn't like anything? What if I found no historical Jesus at all? This is the thesis proposed by Earl Doherty in The Jesus Puzzle: that there was no such person as Jesus of Nazareth. All the purported details of his life — his ministry, travels, trial, crucifixion — were invented long after they supposedly happened, by whoever wrote the gospel of Mark.

At first, this may sound ridiculous. It's true that there is no credible mention of Jesus of Nazareth in the non-Christian historical record before the start of the second century CE, but we find similar historical lacunae for people like Muhammad, whose existence is not seriously in doubt. It's also true that much of the gospel accounts is obvious myth-making, but this is also true of Sakyamuni Buddha, whose mundane activities can be extracted from the wild stories of miracles in the Mahayana canon. Finally, there is the obvious question of how the religion originated if there was no Jesus to found it.

But Doherty's case turns out to be quite strong — shockingly so, in fact. Part of the shock is in realizing how much of the evidence has been sitting out in the open all along, in the New Testament epistles. I always found these to be rather dull going compared to the gospel stories, and Doherty calls attention to the main reason why: they contain virtually no historical detail about their savior figure. This is noticeable to the casual reader, and very familiar to any scholar worth the name. But Doherty delineates it extensively, and adds the crucial (and less familiar) information that the same is true not only of Paul's letters, but of every Christian document (other than the gospels) that can credibly be dated to the first century CE. Not until 107 do we find an extra-gospel account that mentions any of the purportedly historical details of Jesus's life. (And that early mention is very sparse, including only the name of Jesus's mother and the claim that he was tried and executed under Pontius Pilate.)

It is worth pausing for a moment and thinking about what this implies for the traditional understanding of the emergence of Christianity. According to that view of things, an itinerant preacher named Jesus was baptized, taught large crowds in Galilee, traveled with a group of disciples, and was eventually tried and crucified. This ministry, and a subsequent belief in his resurrection, had such an impact on his initial followers that they proclaimed him to be divine — and not just one divinity among many, but an eternal aspect of the God that the Jews believed in, an omnipotent deity, sole creator of the universe and everything in it. But as we have just seen (and as Doherty explains in considerable detail), the specific aspects of that ministry left behind no trace in written or oral tradition (other than in the gospels), even among his most fervent adherents, for seventy-five years. No trace at all: no mention of his teachings, his travels, his miracles, or the circumstances of his trial or his burial.

This demands an explanation. One traditional approach is to claim that Paul mythologized Jesus, and never mentioned historical details because he simply wasn't interested in them. Doherty spends a great deal of time demolishing this line of reasoning. I can't summarize all of his rebuttals here, but I can say that this explanation is barely plausible in regards to Paul, and not at all plausible in discussing the many other Christians of the time, who had many concerns that would have been easily answered by details from the life of a historical Jesus. But these details somehow never surface outside the gospels.

C.S. Lewis takes a similar approach in The Screwtape Letters:

The earliest converts were converted by a single historical fact (the Resurrection) and a single theological doctrine (the Redemption) operating on a sense of sin which they already had... the "Gospels" come later, and were written, not to make Christians, but to edify Christians already made. (Chapter XXIII)

This accords well with Lewis's disdain for attempts to enlighten modern Christianity by appealing to historical facts about the life of Jesus. But it is question-begging: it provides no real evidence that the resurrection actually happened. One could as easily claim that the earliest converts were converted by a non-historical myth of resurrection, not a historical fact.

And this is what Doherty believes. He argues that what actually happened is that some time early in the first century, a new religion arose devoted to the worship of a crucified savior figure. This religion relied heavily on the Jewish scriptures, but also had many parallels to the mystery cults that were common at the time. The savior figure was "real" to his worshipers, but not identified with any historical person. His life and sacrifice were in the realm of the divine and mythical, much as were those of Herakles or Osiris or Mithras or other ancient savior deities. Some decades after the new cult had been established, some anonymous author produced a fictional biography, derived largely by the use of midrash. This is now known as the gospel of Mark, and it served as the basis for the other "synoptic" gospels of Matthew and Luke. (The gospel of John is a different matter, but Doherty argues that much of its biographical material must also have been derived from some synoptic source.) The original Christians never referred to historical details of their savior's life because those details had not yet been invented.

This explanation clears up many of the puzzles that occur to most people who read and teach Christian documents without having a prior commitment to the religion. I have already raised the familiar question of how any human being, however noble and wise, could have convinced his followers that he was not merely a great teacher, or a prophet, or even the Messiah, but God himself walking around in human form. And not just any god: the Jewish god, the only God. But if Doherty is right, there is no mystery because there was no such man. The divine redeemer figure came first, with a putative biography added later.

Other questions are cleared up as well. Paul seems to have converted to Christianity in the early to mid-30s, when Christianity had already gained a substantial number of adherents. (Paul writes that he had been engaged in persecuting Christians before his conversion; there must have been quite a few of them to warrant active persecution.) If the religion had started after the supposed historical crucifixion, it would have needed to spread at an absolutely astonishing pace. But if it started with devotion to a mythical figure, it could have begun some time earlier and spread at a believable rate. And there are highly questionable details about the trial before Pilate which no longer pose a problem: no trial, no problem.

One fact about the story of Jesus which particularly captivated me is that 'Jesus' (Yeshua) translates as 'Yahveh saves'; the name essentially means "Savior." In other words, the gospel accounts present us with the story of a man named Savior who is betrayed to his death by someone named Jew. (Yes, that's what 'Judas' means.) This is so blatantly mythology that one wonders if the author of Mark even intended anyone to treat it as historical fact. (Doherty argues that readers of the time probably would have understood it as allegory.)

For nonbelievers like me, this may be a matter of great interest, but ultimately it is just academic interest. For Christians, though, it would pose a serious problem. Most modern people are simply not capable of worshiping purely mythical beings, overtly understood as mythical. ("Neo-pagans," or at least some of them, may be an exception.) Doherty is not the first to propose a Christ-myth theory, but his book is very well argued and is gaining a fairly wide readership in part because of its mention in the recent movie The God Who Wasn't There. If the Christ-myth theory begins to get serious traction in popular culture, one wonders what its ultimate impact will be.

I recommend the book quite highly. It can be ordered from Amazon.com or directly from Doherty at his website.

Google Bomb!

2006-10-24T18:39:00.000-05:00

Want to learn more about some of the Republican congressional candidates this year? --AZ-Sen: Jon Kyl
--AZ-01: Rick Renzi
--AZ-05: J.D. Hayworth
--CA-04: John Doolittle
--CA-11: Richard Pombo
--CA-50: Brian Bilbray
--CO-04: Marilyn Musgrave
--CO-05: Doug Lamborn
--CO-07: Rick O'Donnell
--CT-04: Christopher Shays
--FL-13: Vernon Buchanan
--FL-16: Joe Negron
--FL-22: Clay Shaw
--ID-01: Bill Sali
--IL-06: Peter Roskam
--IL-10: Mark Kirk
--IL-14: Dennis Hastert
--IN-02: Chris Chocola
--IN-08: John Hostettler
--IA-01: Mike Whalen
--KS-02: Jim Ryun
--KY-03: Anne Northup
--KY-04: Geoff Davis
--MD-Sen: Michael Steele
--MN-01: Gil Gutknecht
--MN-06: Michele Bachmann
--MO-Sen: Jim Talent
--MT-Sen: Conrad Burns
--NV-03: Jon Porter
--NH-02: Charlie Bass
--NJ-07: Mike Ferguson
--NM-01: Heather Wilson
--NY-03: Peter King
--NY-20: John Sweeney
--NY-26: Tom Reynolds
--NY-29: Randy Kuhl
--NC-08: Robin Hayes
--NC-11: Charles Taylor
--OH-01: Steve Chabot
--OH-02: Jean Schmidt
--OH-15: Deborah Pryce
--OH-18: Joy Padgett
--PA-04: Melissa Hart
--PA-07: Curt Weldon
--PA-08: Mike Fitzpatrick
--PA-10: Don Sherwood
--RI-Sen: Lincoln Chafee
--TN-Sen: Bob Corker
--VA-Sen: George Allen
--VA-10: Frank Wolf
--WA-Sen: Mike McGavick
--WA-08: Dave Reichert

50 Books in 50 Years: Book #6

2006-03-25T23:53:00.000-06:00

Book #6: A Wild Sheep Chase, by Harumi Murakami.

I borrowed this book from the library without knowing much about the author other than his book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was a big favorite of some friends of mine. A little way into it, I realized that it belonged to the special modern subcategory of novels known as the Pynchonesque.

A well written Pynchonesque novel is a delight. A poorly written Pynchonesque novel inspires nothing but the old wanking gesture. Luckily, this is a well written novel.

I'm not sure if there's any point in describing the plot, is there? Suffice it to say that the characters are well worth getting to know, particularly the Sheep Man, who made me laugh out loud (and inspired the author to provide a little sketch).

Impeachment? No, But...

2006-03-25T23:52:00.000-06:00

I'm not usually enamored of the way people distinguish between "the theoretical" and "the practical." A theory that's deeply divergent from real, lived experience is often a theory that needs to be radically revised or discarded. (Or, in some cases, is a theory that doesn't have any real purpose other than intellectual diversion: a glorified crossword puzzle.)

But there's some room for this distinction in the case of calls for Bush's impeachment. There's been a fair amount of talk about this lately, most prominently the piece by Lewis Lapham in the March issue of Harper's. Most of the best-known liberal bloggers (such as Matthew Yglesias and Josh Marshall) have cocked an eyebrow at this sort of talk, and rightly so: as a matter of politics, of practical action, impeachment is a non-starter. Gestures toward impeachment (such as that by Michigan Rep. John Conyers) are just that, gestures, as long as the Republicans are in charge. And there are some good reasons why it might be wise to avoid impeachment even if the Democrats were to take overwhelming control of Congress this November. So I agree that it's probably a good idea to set aside this talk, at least for the time being. (Lapham himself apparently understands this; indeed, he starts out his piece by pointing out how unlikely it is that Conyers's resolution will go anywhere.)

But let's not fool ourselves: even if impeachment turns out to be practically infeasible, or politically unwise, it is absolutely warranted as a matter of morality when one considers the way Bush's administration has behaved. The multiple lies and misleading statements used to promote the Iraq war are one obvious grounds for removing Bush from office; the recent spying scandal is another. The Iraq war is more serious in terms of its cost in money and lives; the warrantless spying is more serious in terms of the damage done to the rule of law.

In a healthy political culture, impeachment would indeed be a viable option. But in a healthy political culture, Bush wouldn't have received a major-party nomination for the presidency, in the first place, much less been judicially appointed & re-elected. We need to focus not on the short-term political theater of impeachment, but on the much longer-term task of returning American civic culture to something approximating sanity.

50 Books in 50 Years: Book #5

2006-03-06T00:30:00.000-06:00

Book #5: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Le petit prince

I'm not sure I ever read this book as a child, though I'm pretty sure I'd seen a stage adaptation of some sort. In any case, I wanted to read it before my children are old enough to have a copy. And since I can read French, I figured I might as well read it in the original language.

It's very French. It's whimsical and melancholy — a good deal more melancholy than I expected, to tell you the truth. The end is really more for parents than children.

That isn't to say that I didn't like it. It's a classic for a reason.

50 Books in 50 Years: Book #4

2006-03-06T00:27:00.000-06:00

Book #4: David Kemp with Lawrence Levi, The Film Snob*s Dictionary.

This is a sequel, or a companion volume, to The Music Snob*s Dictionary, and it does for film snobbery what the earlier volume did for music snobbery. That is to say, it provides useful background information for aspiring film snobs, or for anyone who has friends or loved ones who are film snobs. It doesn't pretend to be a comprehensive dictionary of film (God forbid), but provides capsule summaries of many of the current obsessions of movie geeks — Hong Kong martial arts films, John Cassavetes, the Hammer Film studio, and so on.

I suppose that the book would have limited appeal to people who don't socialize with film snobs, but for those who do it's both useful and amusing. I was particularly taken by their neat list of differences between MOVIES and FILMS, to wit:

It's a MOVIE if it's preceded by a trailer for the latest Jerry Bruckheimer epic.
It's a FILM if it's preceded by an announcement from a pear-shaped, balding man down in front who identifies himself as "Michael, the programming director."

Tom Waits will never, ever star in a MOVIE.
Tom Hanks will never, ever star in a FILM.

If you commune with film (or music) obsessives, by all means pick up a copy of the appropriate book.

50 Books in 50 Years: Book #3

2006-02-22T00:24:00.000-06:00

Book #3: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.

This is a fine novel, worth reading. It casts an odd spell, as it starts out seeming fairly straightforward and its underlying questions develop slowly as the book progresses.

To say much more about it would be to ruin the experience of reading it. I'll provide a bit more commentary after the jump for anyone who already has read it, or for those who don't care about being spoiled. (Also for those who don't care about being spoiled, here is commentary from my friend Hayden.)

It takes quite a while to figure out that the book's narrator is not simply looking back nostalgically on her school days; she is looking back nostalgically on her days in a compound for the raising of human organ farms. She and her friends are clones, and their place in society is to provide three or four organ donations and then die, typically before reaching middle age. One doesn't have to be fantastically alert to know that something odd is afoot (for example, no one at her beloved Hailsham seems to have a family), but the full discovery comes as a bit of a shock.

None of the clones seem to have last names, either, though some have initials. This has been described by some reviewers as "Kafkaesque," and I think that this is an appropriate way to describe it. One very salient point of similarity between this novel and, say, The Trial is the subjects' passivity, even complicity, in their own fate. Josef K. protests his innocence and tries to win his action in The Trial, but never seems to realize that he needn't accept the court at all. He could just walk away, but this doesn't occur to him as an option. Similarly, in Never Let Me Go, the cloned children don't conceive of rebellion — it's not even a possibility. The most they hope for is a "deferment," a short reprieve from their fate. And when even that is denied them, they accept this as if it were a natural phenomenon — a hurricane or an earthquake — rather than a human, and revocable, fact.

Another of my friends was less impressed by this book; apparently the theme of a person discovering that others regard him or her as less than human has already been well mined by science fiction writers. Perhaps; but I still think that Ishiguro does an outstanding job of developing the plot in unexpected directions; and his style is impeccable. Highly recommended.

50 Books in 50 Years: Book #2

2006-02-16T00:15:00.000-06:00

Book #2: C.S. Lewis: A Biography, by A.N. Wilson.

This is a carefully researched, very detailed biography of Lewis. Wilson spends a great deal of time on each of Lewis's major books, as well as on the day-to-day events of his life. He takes a very even-handed approach, giving full credit for Lewis's great scholarly talents and literary ability without trying to hide the man's many character flaws. Lewis was intellectually pugnacious, something of a bully; he made enemies easily; and his wise admonitions about the sins of pride and self-centeredness didn't seem to have much effect on his own behavior. He often comes across as rather churlish. Wilson seems a bit sheepish about having to report this, but he doesn't flinch from it.

This has greatly offended many Lewis's most devoted admirers. Some of this anger is evident in the customer reviews at Amazon: it's especially pronounced among the reviewers who didn't bother to read the book before reviewing it.

One of Wilson's greatest sins, in the eyes of Lewis's fans, is to explode what Wilson calls the cult of the Perpetual Virginity of C.S. Lewis. Apparently a few devotees are convinced that over the course of his sixty-odd years, Lewis never once had sexual relations, not even with his wife Joy. That this bit of pious dogma is contradicted by some quite frank textual evidence in Lewis's writings doesn't seem to bother its adherents. I suppose that it won't do much good to point out that this is a standard that doesn't apply to many literal saints (Augustine comes to mind immediately, but there are many other examples). Indeed, assuming lifelong virginity (contrary to the available evidence) is a standard usually reserved to Jesus and Mary; applying it to Lewis is not just ridiculous but borderline blasphemous.

One remarkable story casts some light on Lewis's intellectual predilections. He had invited a colleague (and fellow Christian), Helen Gardner, to dinner at his home.

Conversation at the table turned on the interesting question of whom, after death, those present should most look forward to meeting. ...'Oh, I have no difficulty in deciding,' said Lewis. 'I want to meet Adam.' H went on to explain why, very much in the terms outlined in A Preface to 'Paradise Lost', where he wrote:
Adam was, from the first, a man in knowledge as well as in stature. He alone of all men 'had been in Eden, in the garden of God, he had walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.' ...He was ... accustomed to converse with God 'face to face'.
Be that as it may, Adam is not likely, if she has anything to do with it, to converse with Helen Gardner. She ventured to say so. Even, she told Lewis, if there really were, historically, someone whom we could name as 'the first man,' he would be a Neanderthal ape-like figure, whose conversation she could not conceive of finding interesting.

A stony silence fell on the dinner table. Then Lewis said gruffly, 'I see we have a Darwinian in our midst.'

Helen Gardner was never invited again.

This attitude seems more apt to an American Bible college graduate than an Oxford don, but Lewis's life was full of surprises.

And not just Lewis's life. It's well known that Lewis was a close friend of the fantasy writer J.R.R. Tolkien (long a colleague at Oxford). Wilson comes up with a quotation from Tolkien's collected letters that's a real eye-opener, not to mention jaw-dropper:

Lewis always took the line that Communism and Fascism were equally evil, and this was something which Tolkien and [poet Roy] Campbell could not understand. 'Nothing is a greater tribute to Red Propaganda,' Tolkien wrote, 'than the fact that Lewis (who knows they are in all other subjects liars and traducers) believes all that is said against Franco, and nothing that is said for him ... But Hatred of our Church is after all the only real foundation of the C of E.'

I knew Tolkien was a Catholic, and a conservative, but I hadn't quite put it together that he was — gack — a Catholic Conservative. It's not entirely clear when this letter was written (I haven't been able to consult the original source yet), but its placement in the book suggests some time in the early 1940s, which is still more disheartening. I would have hoped that the brutal experience of fighting the Nazis might have cast their Spanish ideological allies in a more appropriate light.

I shouldn't give the impression that this biography is simply an attempt to smear Lewis and his circle. Wilson is never less than fair-minded, and his careful research, clear writing, and sympathy for his subject make the book well worth seeking out.

[Update: Tolkien's letter discussing Franco was written on 6 October 1944. It can be found in the 1981 volume of his letters.]

50 Books in 50 Years: Book #1

2006-02-15T00:49:00.000-06:00

I read a book! Seven children's books, actually, which I'll count as one adult book.

All the fuss about the Narnia movie inspired me to check out the Narnia books from the library and re-read them. I hadn't looked at them since I was in college, though they'd been great favorites of mine as a child. I read them in order of publication, not in the Narnia-chronological order that the publisher has, for whatever misguided reason, declared canonical.

Some recent discussion of these books (in the New Yorker and at Salon) has pointed out that they tend to be thinly plotted. This is, I think, true only of the first two (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian). Lion moves amazingly quickly; to borrow Fitzgerald's phrase, it has no second act. It's all introduction and climax, with hardly any development in the middle. Caspian's plot is more engaging, but the title character hardly has a chance to develop as a person. And he's not much of a hero: all his problems get solved by someone else, either by Aslan (the series' lion Jesus) or by the Pevensie children from England.

Still, these first two books do a lovely job of introducing the land of Narnia itself, and that's an accomplishment worth praising. I have the feeling that a lot of children would love to live in Narnia, or at least visit it like the human characters. Lewis was very good at mingling the fantastic with the ordinary: it's funny that he spends so much time describing homey meals of bacon and potatoes and mushrooms that are cooked by dwarves and talking badgers.

The third and fourth books, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Silver Chair, are my favorites (plus the sixth, The Magician's Nephew). Dawn Treader takes the characters to places that are outlandish and magical even for Narnians, and it introduces Eustace Scrubb, who seems to have had special significance for Lewis — he's the most interesting human character in this book, and also in The Silver Chair and the final one, The Last Battle. In his adult Christian writing, Lewis put great emphasis on human self-loathing as the path to salvation through Christ; and that's certainly the story he's telling in the case of Eustace, who is magically transformed into a dragon and has to be returned to human form by the series's God character, Aslan.

Eustace is also one of only two characters who are depicted at school. He and his friend Jill Pole are students at "Experiment House," which is Lewis's attempt in The Silver Chair to mock modern educational environments. But Lewis himself was deeply traumatized by his time at a thoroughly traditional public school (he later called it 'Belsen', which in the English context is like calling it 'Auschwitz'), and his jabs at "Experiment House" are mild compared to his depiction of school bullies (who can, of course, be found at any school). The rest of The Silver Chair takes Eustace and Jill to the far north in search of a lost prince; they are accompanied by a large, depressive frog-like character named Puddleglum, whose perpetual gloom is quite funny (to me, anyway). This is one of the best books in the series, provided you skip over the poor attempts at apologetic argument once the prince is freed from his enchantment.

The Horse and His Boy is a great yarn, except that Lewis is at his weakest in depicting the Calormenes, recently described (by Adam Gopnik) as "oily cartoon Muslims who live in the south, wear pointed shoes, and talk funny."

The Last Battle is probably the weakest of the series simply because it's overloaded with theological allegory in place of magic and adventure. Most of the last third (or so) of the book is Lewis wrapping up the series with thinly veiled religious explanations. Nonetheless, the first two-thirds are still quite effective, particularly as Lewis depicts the dreadful events of Narnia's conquest.

The Magician's Nephew is, by contrast, one of the best books in the group. Some of the scenes in this book stuck quite deep in my imagination when I first read them: the creation of Narnia, for example, and Digory's quest for the magic apple, and especially the children's visit to the dead city of Charn.

The overall spirit of this book is optimistic and loving, as befits a creation story; and Lewis gets some little details just right. (For example, when Aslan creates vegetation, the new grass spreads out from his feet as he walks. And the "toffee tree" in a later chapter is a charming idea, and nicely described.)

Reading it as an adult, I also had a much better conception of just how nasty and manipulative Digory's uncle was — as a child, I just took for granted that the main characters weren't going into mortal danger. But as an adult, and a parent, well —! To send children into another world, into who knows what danger! Unthinkable.

The series as a whole holds up pretty well, though I'm much more conscious of (and less patient with) the theological elements than I was as a child. It's nice to see how seriously Lewis took it, for example taking the trouble to make sure that the children's means of getting to Narnia are different in each book. And almost all of the books have elements that should excite the imagination of almost any reader: the rediscovery of the palace treasury in Prince Caspian, for example, or the entry into Narnia in Dawn Treader, or the underground world in The Silver Chair, or the dead city of Charn that I mentioned earlier. I'm glad I took the time to look at these books again.

Sorry To Nag, But...

2005-08-29T16:13:00.000-05:00

It makes sense to be upset by the immense damage (if not complete destruction) that Hurricane Katrina is inflicting on New Orleans, but it also makes sense to recognize that much of it could have been avoided. It's not as if we haven't known about the risks for quite some time. Half-assed preparation was bound to result in problems eventually.

Of course, in the long run, the city is probably doomed. That's also been obvious for a while. The city is next to an enormous, shallow lake; it's right in the middle of a region that is periodically hit by hurricanes and much of its territory (including the most historically important neighborhoods) is below sea level, for Christ's sake.

But there are still steps we can take to try to keep some of the city alive. Not that I think any of those steps actually will be taken. I predict a couple of months of activity followed by years of convenient amnesia, until the next Category Five hurricane hits, and hits more precisely than Katrina has.

Liberals Totally Rule

2005-08-22T14:22:00.000-05:00

I have to agree with Jesse at Pandagon that liberals rule, but I think he doesn't go far enough. I humbly propose that liberals totally rule. I see that there's a fair amount of agreement on this matter. See, for instance, Thou Shall Not Suck. But the real final word on the matter, the ultimate proof that Liberals Totally Rule, is at Political Strategy. Check it out, won't you?

Court Misreports

2005-03-29T23:53:00.000-06:00

A few months ago, the New York Times Magazine ran an article the possible link between taking antidepressant drugs and higher rates of suicide in teenagers. As is their wont, they focused on a particular case: a Kansan family whose son had killed himself after a couple of weeks on an antidepressant medication. Their story served as a useful introduction to a larger concern, but it also portrayed the case as potentially one of malfeasance by the pharmaceutical industry. The drug manufacturer had fought quite hard against the lawsuit the boy's parents filed, and in fact had won their case. The parents were left grief-stricken and a bit poorer, too, after paying their lawyers.

Any sympathetic reader would wonder why things turned out this way, and perhaps feel a bit of righteous indignation at the heartless pharmaceutical giant. What legal chicanery had they pulled off to evade responsibility for that young man's death? It turns out that one of the teen's friends testified at the trial that he had spoken at great length, on repeated occasions, about his suicidal impulses and his plans to kill himself. (This was before he went on the medication, of course.) This highly significant information was mentioned briefly, buried deep in the story, and might easily have been missed by an inattentive reader. But of course it is essential to understanding how the case came to be decided as it was.

I don't mean to pass final judgment on that particular legal outcome; perhaps the parents had a stronger case than I recall, and perhaps antidepressant drugs do increase the risk of teen suicide. What interests me is the common link between that article and the vast majority of the coverage of the Theresa Schiavo case, namely how lazy, sloppy journalism produces a bizarrely distorted impression of the judicial system. The principles and evidence that really matter in legal proceedings are ignored, blurred over, or selectively covered so as to make the courts' decisions seem incomprehensible, when in fact they make a great deal of sense.

To judge from much of the media coverage of the Schiavo case, one would think something like the following: Michael Schiavo has decided to pull the plug on his mentally impaired but still conscious wife. Her parents (the Schindlers) have sought to prevent this, thereby saving her life, but are prevented from doing so by a court system that focuses only on legal technicalities and is perfectly willing to forcibly starve a woman to death if her husband, i.e. her legal guardian, says he wants to do so. His decision to opt for death is opposed to her parents' desire for life.

This is, of course, the picture that the Schindlers would like to portray. It is the picture painted (in more vitriolic terms) by the people who are demonstrating and praying outside Mrs. Schiavo's hospice, and by the people who have been arrested for trying to bring her bread (which would choke her) and water (which would drown her). And it is false in almost every detail.

For a start, it's not as if Michael Schiavo could simply decide on his own to terminate treatment — that decision also involved his wife's doctors, the administrators of her hospice, and ultimately the courts. His input is important, but it is not definitive. (A husband who wanted to terminate life support for a wife who was expected to make a full recovery would, of course, not be obeyed. He'd probably be arrested.)

Even more importantly, the decision to terminate treatment is supposed to be the court's best assessment of what Terri Schiavo herself would have wanted. There has been conflicting testimony about her attitude toward having her life artificially prolonged, but the courts have determined that her most recent statements as an adult (corroborated by multiple witnesses, mind you, not just her husband) indicated that she did not want to have her life prolonged under circumstances very like the ones she is in now. Michael Schiavo's stubbornness in this case, as he has said all along, is based on his conviction that he is obeying his wife's wishes, regardless of what her parents and siblings might believe.

And one would think that the most important fact of the case would be announced repeatedly by anyone interested in the truth: namely, that Terri Schiavo's brain has been destroyed, that she is in a permanent vegetative state, and that she has absolutely no chance of recovery, ever. The "controversy" over this basically consists of the opinions of people who are unable to face the truth (her parents and siblings), or of people who have no expertise to judge (her parents and siblings again, and the utterly contemptible Bill Frist).

The Schindlers are well aware of all this (or at least the parts that don't conflict with their great capacity for wishful thinking), but their supporters mostly seem to have no inkling of it. It does not speak well of the Schindlers or their handlers (including the odious Randall Terry) that they have managed to produce such a misunderstanding of the facts of the case among so many people. It speaks even more poorly of the press that they haven't worked harder to get these absolutely elementary facts of the case into every story they print about it. If the press doesn't report so as to clarify matters, how will matters ever be properly understood?

Update: Theresa Schiavo has died. I hope that she rests in peace, and that her relatives can find some measure of peace as well. As regards the topic of my post, I was pleasantly surprised to find a Yahoo story that described some elements of the case in accurate detail:

Courts had long sided with her husband and legal guardian, Michael Schiavo, in ruling she would not have wanted to live like this and should be allowed to die.

But the Schindlers fought in courts to prolong their daughter's life...

Correct. This was the courts' best judgment of what she would have wanted. And the Schindlers weren't trying to "save" their daughter's life, as so many recent headlines have proclaimed, they were trying to prolong it.

Schiavo Dies 13 Days After Feeding Tube Removed

The Big Time

2005-03-02T00:13:00.000-06:00

A reader! An actual reader! Other than my very patient friends from the music forum, I mean. This is the big time now. It's only a matter of time before I have two readers, then three, and then... who knows? Maybe I can support myself on the ad income, like Josh Marshall. Oh yeah!

It's Not That Bad

2005-02-28T18:27:00.000-06:00

Here's one more response to Ted H., this time regarding his criticism of Juan Cole's "chicken hawk" argument. Here's his objection to Cole, quoted at length:

...[E]ach one of us had to take a position on the Iraq War. ...imagine you considered the case on its merits (of course, unlike Jonah, reading lots of books!) and came to the conclusion that war was justified. ...But now imagine you've realized that you're not disposed to change your life and join the military. What should you do? Well, maybe you should try harder to convince yourself to join. But say that doesn't work: you're just not going to do it.

Do your dispositions really give you an intellectual obligation to change your opinion of the war?

Two different things are being conflated in Cole's maneuver. Yes, someone who supported the war does thereby have a reason to actively fight it. And such a person can be criticized for not acting on this reason. But someone who is not willing to act on the reason does not have an obligation to withdraw support for the war.

As philosophers put it, Cole's maneuver — the 'chicken hawk' maneuver — conflates practical and epistemic reasons. Yes, supporting the war gives you a practical reason to fight it. But the fact that you're not fighting the war does not give you an epistemic reason to withdraw your support for it.

It's worth stating right up front that Cole's argument is "fallacious," both in the sense that Ted argues for and in a sense implied by the Latin root of the term "fallacy": it is a rhetorical stratagem, rather than a purely rational argument. The stratagem has an obvious practical value: it can be used to confront and embarrass people who are cheerleading for the war from the safety and comfort of their homes. In the context of Cole's use of the argument, we needn't assume that Cole intended to do anything more than that.

Cole did seem to be overreaching a bit when he said that any young man who supported the war had an obligation to go fight in it. But Ted disposes of that business pretty straightforwardly. Why bother making the argument at all, then? Why does it have the power to embarrass? (It certainly did seem to embarrass Jonah Goldberg sufficiently that he made excuses for his non-combatant status. These excuses should have shamed him even further, if he were capable of recognizing just how pathetic and self-serving they were; or indeed if he were capable of shame in the first place.)

The "chicken hawk" stratagem embarrasses because it calls attention to two important aspects of the current war (and most other wars). One aspect is social/political, the other epistemological.

The social/political point is simply that members of the "chattering classes," whatever their opinions of the war, are unlikely to bear the serious burden of actual service. "Pundits" like Jonah Goldberg do not run much risk of having to give up months (years?) of their lives, or their family members' lives, in order to fight the war. By and large, they do not face the danger of death or mutilation on the battlefield; nor do their loved ones face that danger. Surely Ted has heard the Civil War phrase "Rich man's war; poor man's fight." The chicken hawk argument brings out rather starkly that it is easy to whip up enthusiasm for a war in which the costs will be borne by others. The situation is a moral hazard, of sorts.

More important, though, is the epistemological concern. It's one that Paul Fussell has made in a different context (in his essay "Thank God for the Atom Bomb"). The concern here is that someone who has no first-hand knowledge of the human costs of war, no likelihood of getting that knowledge, and no loved ones who can provide vivid second-hand knowledge, runs the risk of systematically undervaluing those costs.

So while Ted would like to consider the case of someone who has made up his mind about the war and then discovers himself unwilling to fight, the "chicken hawk" questions whether the decision that war is justified is epistemologically proper, whether or not it has been made with full information. And I suspect that this underlies the social/political point, as well. Someone who will not bear the most serious costs of the war may be tempted to give those costs insufficient weight when trying to decide whether or not war is justified. (There's more to the social/political point, of course; someone could fully understand those costs and still be gung-ho for the war simply because he doesn't care about his fellow citizens' suffering. I'm not sure if that would count as moral justification; it sounds like the realpolitik that Ted rightly condemns.)

The epistemological content of the chicken hawk stratagem gives it even more resonance in the context of Cole's use of it, namely questioning Goldberg's competence to render judgment on any aspect of the Iraq war. Given that Cole smacked Goldberg around like a red-headed stepchild in this exchange, perhaps Ted's critique is misdirected.

One final note. Ted remarks at the outset that he disagrees with Jonah Goldberg "about almost everything," and agrees with Juan Cole about much. But rather than talk about the many ways in which he disagrees with Goldberg, or the many ways in which he agrees with Cole, he spends his time explaining just what Cole has done wrong. This is a long-standing habit in Ted's blog, and may explain why he got such a lot of unpleasant responses from his readers. What, exactly, is the point of nitpicking over Cole's tiny divergences from a Platonic ideal of rational debate, while lumping over Goldberg's daily idiocies? Whether or not Ted intends it, this has the effect of holding the intelligent, well-informed Cole to a much higher standard than Goldberg. Is it that surprising that commentators regard him as hostile to the sensible and well-informed liberal view, and friendly to the ideologically hidebound and ignorant right-wing view?

Please do not make this argument any more. It is bad.

A Response to Ted H.

2005-02-25T10:02:00.000-06:00

I see that Diachronic Agency has moved, and that its author has abandoned his former semi-anonymity. But for old times' sake, I'll keep referring to him as Ted H. If you want to know his real name, just visit his blog and follow the link to his academic page.

His blog has just undergone another major revision, occasioned by Ted's discovery that he lacks political allies. I'll let him explain:

In politics you lose if no one agrees with you. And no one has agreed with me over the past two years. As one fellow blogger put it in an elegiac email, my political position was "really original." I didn't think it was. I thought it was what we all used to think -- all of us left-liberals who grew up in the 1980s and hated coldwar realpolitik. I thought I was merely applying the principles that the liberal left has always applied. Why did no left-liberal agree with me then? I didn't need many to agree, merely a few. I wanted to see signs that others were thinking along similar lines. And some are -- in the UK. But not in the States. Stateside you either went over to Bush or you viewed everything Bush has done with absolute horror. That I searched for an alternative to these over-personalized reactions pushed me off the political map.

I hope it's not unkind of me to say that this strikes me as a bit exaggerated and melodramatic. Here's why.

The political position that Ted is talking about is his initial, and somewhat equivocal, support for the Iraq war. Speaking very broadly, he supported the war because he believed that Saddam Hussein was a horrible dictator, a mass murderer and torturer, in violation of UN resolutions, and a threat to regional peace and stability. What's more, the United States was complicit in Hussein's actions, having once supported him (and armed him) in pursuit of cynical realpolitik. Ted believed that a moral and just US foreign policy would seek to remove Hussein from power by the most effective means possible, which term did not refer to the economic sanctions in place since the first Gulf war. Ted believed that this was a perfectly reasonable position for a left-liberal to adopt, given leftists' and liberals' presumptive devotion to human rights, defense of the helpless and weak, and the preservation of the United Nations as an international peacekeeping organization. (In the unlikely event that Ted ever reads this, I invite him to use the comments section to correct any mistakes in my description of his views.)

To Ted's shock, he found that virtually all leftists and liberals he met, and particularly those working around him in academia, were dead set against the Iraq war, and uninterested in engaging seriously with his arguments or even granting them the minimum respect of a fair hearing. He worried about keeping his job. He worried about maintaining amicable relations with his family. And his feelings of alienation from his erstwhile political allies continued even after his position changed to a subsequent, and somewhat equivocal, opposition to the war, largely because of Bush's incompetent management of the war and its aftermath.

I think that Ted has overstated his case, particularly his isolation from the rest of the country. Recall that he says "Why did no left-liberal agree with me then? I didn't need many to agree, merely a few." Is this true? Did no left-liberal agree with him? It's not hard to think of quite a few left-liberals who argued along similar lines. Christopher Hitchens is probably the most obvious example, but one shouldn't neglect someone like Paul Berman. And stepping outside the realm of academics and journalists, consider the case of John Kerry. He cast his vote in favor of the war, then later changed his mind about it, largely because of the appallingly bad execution by Bush and Rumsfeld. He seems to have put a great deal of thought into these decisions, no doubt considering many of the same arguments that made sense to Ted. How isolated is Ted's position, really, when it bears that much similarity to the position of last election's Democratic presidential candidate?

I suspect that Ted is reacting, overreacting, to his own particular circumstances, by which I mean working in academia. Humanities professors very well may be a solid bloc of opposition to the war, hegemonic and intolerant of dissent. Is there any other major professional class for which this is true? (Yoga instructors, perhaps?) I suspect that if Ted was a doctor, or a lawyer, or a dentist, or a mid-level business executive, or what have you, he'd have a very different perspective on the breadth and variety of public opinion on the war. Many voters took positions similar to his, in outcome if not in argumentative detail: they accepted the president's word that Saddam Hussein was a very bad man, that his government was a threat to the United States, and that this justified the US in taking action. I'd wager that a majority of voters still believe this, whatever their feelings about the way the war was carried out.

There's also an air of unreality to Ted's arguments, though less so than in earlier versions of his blog. In the new version, he has largely excised the substantive posts from 2002 and early 2003 that sought to justify his position on the war. Those posts were remarkable in that they rarely grappled with the way the actual war was actually being promoted. Relatively little, if any, attention was given to the Bush administration's constantly shifting and mendacious rationales for the war; to the lies and distortions that were advanced, repeatedly and shamelessly, by the war's chief proponents; to the faulty intelligence that was used, and the damage to the integrity of the country's intelligence services; to the blinkered optimism of the Pentagon civilians who planned the war; or to the vitriol that was hurled at anyone with misgivings. Ted's primary worry was that no one was taking his arguments seriously.

He may have been right. Left-liberals may not have agreed with Ted's views, but I doubt that most of the war's supporters agreed with them either. The real hard core of support for the war was not on the basis of Ted's humanitarian ideals. In the real world, most of the Republican right wing supported the war because of a general enthusiasm for using American military power to control and intimidate other countries; because they wanted to take revenge for September 11; because the war was presumably good for Israel; and (in large part) simply because Bush wanted it, and they were eager to fall in line and do rhetorical battle against anyone who opposed it.

In this context, Ted's complaints are academic ones, and not in a particularly complimentary sense of that word. Perhaps in some Empyrean realm of pure reason, there were good arguments for the war, arguments that left-liberals would have adopted in time. Perhaps a future Democratic administration might have seen the virtues of high-minded confrontation with Saddam Hussein. But what relation does this have to the headlong rush to war that took place in 2002-3? We weren't faced with a choice between craven appeasement and a carefully justified and executed war of liberation. Rather, we were being asked to abandon an established policy of containment (that could have extended for at least another decade) in order to undertake a war originating in bad motives, promoted with lies and incendiary political attacks, and executed in great haste by incompetents. In those circumstances, it is perhaps excusable that left-liberals were not terribly interested in Ted's well-argued justifications of something else entirely.

One of the recurring themes of my blog is that bipartisanship is a lost cause as long as the Republican party continues in its current state of ideological rigidity and partisan fervor. So it's not surprising that I'm not terribly sympathetic to Ted's bewilderment. He was hoping for a calm, rational, morally grounded debate, and instead he got partisan shrieking and posturing. I agree with him that this is a bad situation; I just think he ought to consider more carefully what brought us to this pass, and what needs to be done about it.

Diachronic Agency 3.0

Nicely Put

2005-02-17T23:06:00.000-06:00

Matthew Yglesias writes:

Most notably, Arab suspicion of American efforts at democracy-promotion are [sic] largely focused on the idea that this is exactly what we're doing. Saying "democracy" but mean[ing], "the free election of political parties that like the United States, will be nice to Israel, friendly to foreign direct investment, and generally cooperative with our security policies."

Nicely put, Matthew. I'm a little puzzled by your phrasing, though. What do you mean by saying that "Arab suspicion ... is largely focused on the idea" that that's what we really mean by "democracy"?

That is what the neocons really mean by "democracy." Surely you don't think that they give a damn about actual rule by the people, do you?

Temptation, Temptation. I Can't Resist

2005-02-17T22:50:00.000-06:00

I haven't posted since last November, since Election Day, in fact, and I thought that all you reader out there might be wondering why. It's straightforward enough: I didn't see the point. Bloggers occasionally win one or two battles — at least some of the widely-read bloggers do — but I didn't really see much point in continuing to write or argue in the face of an win, an actual election win, by the worst president, perhaps the worst major-party candidate, in American history. Argument and nuance seemed futile in the face of a massive propaganda machine, a collection of mainstream media too lazy and/or co-opted to tell the truth, and an American public too deluded or ignorant to recognize the danger that this adminstration poses.

But such are the counsels of despair, and we're told that despair is a worse sin than any of the others that might have led to it. Not to mention that the passage of time has restored the need to get some of my thoughts written down and (self-) published. So I will start blogging again. I'm sure that's a great relief to all my avid reader — by the way, keep those card and letter coming!

I was particularly inspired to start again by the current campaign to revamp Social Security. I'm not going to present evidence or arguments about why this is a bad idea; they've already been presented in abundance by people better qualified than I to do so. What primarily interests me is the fact that there are still a few Congressional Democrats who are waffling about whether or not to oppose Bush's plan.

Consider the political, rather than economic, realities of the situation. Social Security is at the core of the New Deal. It was a model for many subsequent Democratic social programs, and it is in some ways paradigmatic of Democratic ideals: a progressively funded program that distributes risk across (more or less) the entire society. What's more, it's one of the most successful New Deal programs. It has helped create massive changes in the way Americans think about retirement, about caring for aged parents, and about domestic social programs generally. And it's not just a success: it's an efficient success. 99% of the money taken in by the Social Security Administration gets disbursed to recipients. Only 1% goes to administering the program.

Social Security is something that Democrats can look upon with great pride. It is one of their great accomplishments — not a bipartisan accomplishment, mind you, a Democratic accomplishment. The Republicans of Roosevelt's day hated it, and have passed on that hatred to succeeding generations of Republicans.

And now one of those new generations of Republicans is trying to dismantle it. It's not hard to see why. By getting rid of Social Security, they'd take away one of the key Democratic accmplishments, and give them one less major government success story to point to. The Republicans would like to replace it with a system that increases risk for working people and greatly enriches the investment industry. And if there were ever a time to try to do this, it's now, while they control Congress and the White House, and with the right-wing propaganda machine oiled up and ready to try to sell the idea.

I hope the effort fails. I think it will fail (though I probably shouldn't make predictions, given my recent track record). But as I said, what primarily interests me is what possible motivation any Democrat might have to cooperate with the dismantling of Social Security. If any proposal ever promised to undermine Democratic ideals, as well as the prestige and credibility of the Democratic party, this one does. If any proposal needed to be opposed by a united front, so as to deny the Republicans any conceivable political cover, this one does. The leadership of the party realizes this, and so do the vast majority of the rank and file. What, then, is motivating the few remaining holdouts?

Frankly, having raised the question, I must admit that I am not sure how to answer it. I'm sure that some of the Democratic wafflers (the "Fainthearted Faction") are from conservative districts and don't want to be seen opposing Bush on a proposal he's put front and center in his new term. But is that enough of a reason? Is it really worth selling out their own party's core program, their own party's core ideals, in order to cover their asses in the short term?

If that is their motivation, I think that it is delusional. As I have argued in an earlier post, cooperating with the Republicans is a losing proposition. They have shown repeatedly in the last couple of decades that they are not mollified by goodwill gestures from the Democrats, but will continue to use every conceivable underhanded, vicious, sleazy tactic to discredit Democrats — and these tactics work especially well against moderates from mixed districts, which is why there are so few moderates left. Traditional bipartisanship is dead.

It took the Democratic party the better part of a decade to realize in their guts that they were no longer the natural majority party and would not be able to waltz back into control of Congress as they'd done under Eisenhower and Reagan. It is taking more time, an agonizingly long time, for them to come up with ways to start fighting back against the Republican onslaught. It's not always easy to know how to do this, but it should be clear that in most cases the effective strategy is not to compromise, play nice, and hope that the Republicans will play nice in their turn. They won't. They didn't get control of all three branches of the Federal government by playing nice. Nor will the Democrats regain power by playing nice, whatever temptations the Republicans may dangle in front of individual members of Congress.

On that note, I'll finish up with a couple of thoughts on temptation. One is an aphorism I've seen attributed to Adolf Hitler, though I'm currently unable to confirm its source. Whoever said it, it's a good insight:

Every man has his price — and you'd be surprised in most cases how low that price is.

I don't know what's tempting the Democratic wafflers, but the leadership need to do their best to make sure that the wafflers understand the real price of caving in, namely crippling the Democratic party for generations to come. And the payment for this is unlikely to be as pleasing as it seems now. We can rely on the words of another master tempter here:

All the healthy and outgoing activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return, so that at last he may say... "I now see that I spent most of my life doing neither what I ought nor what I liked."

The Fainthearted Faction

The Screwtape Letters

Speculate On This

2004-11-02T09:30:00.000-06:00

According to today's New York Times, William Rehnquist may be ailing even more than was already reported.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist disclosed Monday that his thyroid cancer was being treated with both chemotherapy and radiation, and he did not return to work despite his previously announced plan to do so.

A carefully worded statement released by his office shortly before the other eight justices began hearing arguments gave no indication when, or whether, the 80-year-old chief justice might return to the bench.

That silence invited immediate speculation that he would soon retire.

Assuming that Rehnquist is actually taking time off because of illness, instead of going to Ohio to help with the suppression of black votes (just like old times! what a nostalgic idea), here's my speculation. I'm going to try to put this as diplomatically as possible: If John Kerry wins today, which I expect and hope, perhaps it's not such a bad thing that the Chief Justice retire. After all, he has had a good long life, and one in which he has accomplished his major life goal, which is apparently to cause as much damage as possible, in both gross and subtle ways, to the United States and its people. The judicial appointment of George Dubya was certainly one of the most impressive steps toward that end, and one for which Rehnquist will long be remembered, if not fondly.

So go ahead, Bill; it's okay to retire. The country is in miserable shape, misled (in every possible meaning of the word) by the man you installed. You can rest easy.

Rehnquist Fails to Return, and Speculation Increases

Odds and Ends

2004-10-30T22:17:00.000-05:00

Seeing bin Laden's face on the television did inspire fear, but not of more terrorism. Terrorists can be thwarted, and terrorists can't destroy the basic social and political framework of this country. Only we can do that, and electing Bush would be a big step further toward the destruction of American democracy. That's what I was afraid of.

Incidentally, it appears that supporters at Bush rallies are taking some sort of pledge of loyalty to him. This is unpleasantly reminiscent of the Nazis forcing new Wehrmacht soldiers to take an oath of loyalty not to the German nation, or the government, but to Adolf Hitler. Historians now regard this as the final step in the reduction of the Wehrmacht to a tool of the Nazi party. (Of course, I'm not saying that Bush is equivalent to Hitler. Not yet, anyway.)

Finally: I made a curmudgeonly remark a few posts ago about unusual names for children. I still believe that parents who give their children "creative" names are just asking for trouble. On the other hand, I must admit that the world is a better place for including someone named Bunnatine Greenhouse.

Bin Laden Determined to Fuck with U.S. Election

2004-10-29T21:31:00.000-05:00

Bin Laden's video was clearly timed for release just before the election, to throw a little thrill of fear into the electorate. Gee, I wonder which candidate would benefit from a heightened state of fear?

So our old nemesis is still out there, and still trying to mess with our heads. But he can only do that if we let him. As far as I am concerned, letting the fanatic change things in any way means, literally, that the terrorists have already won.

Anyway, I don't think this will have much impact on the election. Anyone who would be susceptible to a stunt like this is probably already in Bush's camp. A new terror attack — that might have changed things. But this just indicates that Osama's not up to pulling off another terror attack (yet).

Predictions and Remarks

2004-10-29T10:20:00.000-05:00

For what it's worth, here are some thoughts on next week.

I expect a Kerry victory in both the Electoral College and the popular vote. I also predict that his margin of victory will not be small. I don't expect a landslide, but I also don't expect a frighteningly close election. Most of the polls are showing Kerry nudging ahead already as he picks up most of the undecided voters, and that's even before adjusting our expectations based on the built-in pro-Republican assumptions in most of these polls' methods of collecting data.

I'm not going to make any predictions about Congress, as I don't have a clear sense of how things might go. I hope Kerry has long coattails; he'll need a reasonably compliant Congressto have any hope of correcting the disastrous course we've been on for the last four years. (Wait: I do have one prediction: Obama in Illinois. I know I'm going out on a limb here, but I think he can pull it off.)

Regardless of who wins Congress, Kerry will face an uphill battle with the right-wing propaganda machine. Expect attacks to begin almost immediately. The traditional media used to lay off the President-Elect and even give him a "honeymoon" at the start of his term, but those rules no longer apply. This became clear in 1992, after President Clinton was elected. I've seen remarks about how Clinton had had trouble with the right wing "from the start of his term," but the trouble actually started before he even took office. In the months before his inauguration, "Gays In The Military" had taken the front-and-center position in the national political debate. Clinton found himself having to deal with this divisive issue right away after taking office, denied the chance to set the agenda for his new presidency.

Clinton bobbed and weaved; he tried to conciliate and compromise in order to get these issues settled so that he could take up his own issues, but the attacks continued. I vividly recall the sense of glee on the right and dismay on the left in the early months of Clinton's first term, as he compromised his policy positions and abandoned his prospective appointees such as Lani Guinier. I remember thinking, at the time, that he simply wasn't prepared for the move from Arkansas politics to the national scene. But in retrospect it's clear that he was facing something that earlier Presidents had not had to deal with. He was dealing with an early version of today's right-wing techniques of media manipulation and opinion creation. (Who originated the term "Mighty Wurlitzer," by the way? Was it Digby?)

The big innovation in those days was talk radio. Rush Limbaugh was expanding his influence in 1992, though his full power was only evident in the midterm elections of 1994. The potential of the Internet became clear during the Lewinsky fiasco, when Drudge served as a conduit for rumor and lies. right-wing in its early stages. But regardless of the technology involved, the strategy was well-planned from the beginning and has just been polished over the years.

The strategy: Attack unexpectedly, including in cases where traditionally the target has been given leeway (such as the traditional honeymoon at the beginning of a presidential term). If possible, choose a wedge issue that will help you push public opinion rightward (such as "partial birth abortion"). Coordinate talking points with the RNC, talk radio, Drudge, and (now) right-wing blogs; hammer on it until the mainstream media pick it up. If necessary, lie outrageously, because the mainstream media will never, never use the words "lie" or "lying," especially with reference to a politician. Always keep the target off-balance and on the defensive. Never let them set the agenda; make them respond to you, and try not to give them a chance to make attacks of their own. Milk the current topic for all it's worth. Then, as soon as the mainstream media spin cycle has started to wind down, choose another topic, however bogus, and start up on that one.

This strategy has worked extraordinarily well for the Republicans, to the point that large majorities of the population disagree with them on virtually all major political issues, and yet they still maintain control of all three branches of the Federal government, as well as a majority of state governorships. It's a winning strategy, regardless of the occasional tactical setback (such as Trent Lott). Expect it to continue starting on November 3.

And if I may offer one final recommendation to the Democrats and anyone else on the left: keep fighting back. Don't let up for a minute. Treat calls for "bipartisanship" as the joke they've become in the last four years. The right wing is not interested in compromise or cooperation. They cannot be reasoned with. They do not care about the well-being of the majority of the people of the United States, or anyone else outside their narrow ranks. All they want is power. Fight with every means at your disposal to deny them that power, as they have used it to the detriment of everyone except the rich and malevolent.

All in the Family

2004-10-24T13:18:00.000-05:00

I'm trying to figure out what I found so irritating about the cover story in today's New York Times Magazine. The topic is growing up with gay parents, as experienced by one family, and particularly the younger daughter, Ry Russo-Young.

For a little while, I was at a loss. What was annoying me? It certainly wasn't the politics of gay families. I think family is a great thing, and support gay families, gay rights, gay marriage, and practically any other gay issues one might mention. Nor was it the article's treatment of the topic; in fact, I thought the broader social discussion was especially enlightening.

No, it seemed to be the family in question that was annoying. But what could I possibly have against them? Was it this?

Sitting behind a projector last April in the front row of a small theater in the East Village, Ry was looking apprehensive. Although her work has been shown at venues like the Turin Film Festival, she was now about to show a short film at a comparatively humble event called Avant-Garde-Arama. The festival's hosts, dressed in a look somewhere between bridal and bondage, were calling on audience members -- straight, gay, strangers, whatever -- to volunteer to be married onstage. It might have been great theater if anyone had, but no one did, and eventually the hosts introduced Ry, who started the projector rolling.

She had mounted three separate screens, and on each a different variant of the shower scene from ''Psycho,'' recreated in stark black-and-white flatness, played itself out: on one, the stabbing of the doomed Janet Leigh figure happened on cue, while in another, a second actress playing Janet Leigh turned the knife on her attacker and left him bloody at her feet. That vengeful Janet Leigh figure then seemed to step, naked and dripping, into the third screen, where she took her knife to Janet Leigh figure No. 3. The film was visually interesting and unexpected, a slasher film with a brain, and the audience responded with enthusiastic applause.

After a few more acts -- a nude dance, a rapper named Mint T. -- Ry's parents, Robin Young, 49, and Sandy Russo, 64, left their seats to meet Ry by the stage. Ry was dressed in vintage femme fatale, a black checked dress with fish nets and heels; her mothers wore jeans and glasses. Ry still looked uncomfortable, and Young and Russo (whom everyone calls by her surname) seemed less than enthusiastic, with shrugs passing for commentary. ''I don't think they liked it,'' Ry reported later. ''They're not into the violence-against-women thing, I guess.'' She'd been trying to comment on the hackneyed image of woman as victim, she said, but ''Moms,'' as she and Cade sometimes call their parents, apparently saw only the same old thing. She sighed heavily: ''Do you ever stop caring what they think?''

Yes, this seemed to be getting closer to the nub. For a self-consciously queer and creative family, they sure seemed to be hitting their stereotypical marks: the daughter who is a filmmaker and "performer," whatever that means; the pretentious arts festival whose hosts were "dressed in a look somewhere between bridal and bondage" (cue eye-roll); the predictably and tediously P.C. parents from the West Village (cue second eye-roll).

But what could I have against these people, as long as I am never forced to sit through a meeting with the parents, or watch the daughter's films? —I'll take the author's word for it that the film was interesting; I think I'll pass on finding out for myself. They seem like pretty nice people, on the whole, setting aside the business of the daughter's name. (When people give their children weird, made-up names, I think the idea is to celebrate their children's individuality. Unfortunately, the result is that for the rest of their lives, whenever they meet anyone new, regardless of context, the first conversation they'll have is about their special name and why it's so special and how they are so, so special because of it. It takes a very, very special kind of parent not to realize this, or, worse, not to see how there could be anything bad about it.)

No, finally my complaint was with the article itself. Two things stand out. One is the article's standard upper-middle-class New York provincialism. I have the very strong suspicion that the author met up with her subjects through the usual journalistic means, namely by telling her friends she was going to write an article on families with gay parents and asking if they knew anybody interesting who might want to be interviewed. This technique usually works, and it's very easy, but it means that a huge percentage of articles end up being about the same general cast of characters. The Times does write articles about people who live outside the New York metropolitan area, and/or outside the well-off, well-educated classes. But by and large, these articles might as well be written about space aliens — at least that's the tone that usually crops up. This article fits the more comfortable mode, written by and for members of the upper-middle-class New York family. Maybe some of the aliens out in flyover country might read it and learn something — good for you, rubes!

The other thing can be stated more simply. Ry, our tall, striking, flamboyant, Oberlin-educated filmmaker and "performer," is the focus of the piece and the cover photo. She also has an older sister named Cade, a pudgy, unflamboyant woman who works as an AIDS educator. A New York Times reporter might have interviewed her for an article, and the article might even have been published. But never in a hundred thousand years would Cade have been the center of the article and photographed by Robert Maxwell to be splashed across the cover of the magazine. Even in our self-declared transgressive age, some standards will never be transgressed, or questioned, or probably even consciously recognized.

Growing Up With Mom and Mom

The SUV Candidate

2004-09-22T23:34:00.000-05:00

There's been a lot of talk lately about "security moms," this election's version of the "soccer mom." They're the demographic that's supposedly going to hand the election to Bush. For the last few presidential elections, women have voted heavily in favor of Democrats, and (white) men heavily in favor of Republicans. But "security moms" allegedly favor Bush because he's perceived as strong on national security, while Kerry is perceived as waffling and indecisive. Such an erosion of Kerry's female base would have a big effect on the election.

I'm skeptical about this picture of things. No doubt it would be easy to find some women who fit this profile. But the polling evidence does not really provide any robust support for the notion that "security moms" are a significant percentage of the electorate, or that they necessarily find Bush any stronger a candidate than Kerry. I suspect that "security moms" are largely an invention. Remember the "cocooning" trend a few years back? It turns out that was just the creation of some pop-culture maven with the idiotic name of Faith Popcorn. She said that couples would start "cocooning," and a bunch of women's magazines popularized the idea. Presto: a gen-u-ine social trend! I wouldn't be at all surprised if "security moms" were just some political consultants' attempt to create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If there actually are a lot of "security moms" out there, I would hope that they'd look carefully at the candidates' actual positions and actions. Bush talks a good game, but he gave us the royal screw-up at Tora Bora, in which Osama bin Laden got away. Why? Because at that point in the Afghan war, the Bush administration was already saving their big punch for the planned Iraq war. In other words, Bush perpetuated a major known threat so that he could devote American lives and money to attacking a country that was no threat at all.

There are plenty of other examples one could use to illustrate this comparison, but I suspect that anyone who might fall into the "security mom" category doesn't think that clearly. "Security" seems to be shorthand for "protecting my children from terrorism"; and the odds that any particular American child will be hurt or killed by a terrorist are ridiculously small, much smaller than the risk of food poisoning, or a slip-and-fall accident, or being in a car smashup.

A "security mom for Bush" is most likely the sort of mother who is very, very worried that her kids might get bombed by wild-eyed Muslims, and who also smokes in the same room with her kids, feeds them at McDonalds several times a week, and drives a big-ass SUV without making sure the kids wear their seat belts. It doesn't matter that any of these things puts her children at much greater risk than terrorists ever could. She likes to smoke "— don't smokers have rights too?" The kids like to eat at Mickey D's. And the SUV makes her feel safe. In actuality, the SUV is more dangerous than a sedan or mini-van would be — more dangerous for her, for her children, and for the other people on the road. Not using seat belts makes it even more dangerous, of course. But that doesn't cross her mind. The SUV feels safe, which is what matters. (That, and having lots of cupholders. Those make her feel comfortable and nurtured.)

I made an SUV analogy a few posts back; here's another one. George Bush is the SUV candidate. He makes us more dependent on foreign oil. He provides huge cash infusions to big business. He makes (white) men feel macho and tough, even though they're the same men they always were. And he makes "security moms" feel safe, even though he has actually made the world a much more dangerous place.

Unfortunately, SUVs are also very popular. Here's hoping that's the point where the analogy fails.

...And Don't Freak Out Either

2004-09-06T01:09:00.000-05:00

A lot of Democrats are getting overwrought about the current poll numbers. Please, folks, stop pulling out your hair and calm down. It is not unusual for the Republican candidate to be ahead in the polls at this point — immediately after his party's convention and after a lot of media attention. What, you were expecting to be ahead in the polls all the way to Election Day?

There are still eight weeks to go. A lot can happen in that time, and indeed a lot is supposed to happen in that time. Kerry is not suddenly, magically, unelectable. And the basics underlying this campaign have not mysteriously changed. The economy is still in the tank; gas prices are still high; the environment is still threatened; our civil liberties are still being eroded; and, most importantly, almost a thousand American soldiers have died in a war that Bush lied to get us into. Four days of fawning coverage of the Incompetent Liar-in-Chief haven't changed any of that.

As long as we can get the basic Democratic message out in the next two months, there is still an excellent chance of winning. For once, let's resist the urge toward the familiar circular firing squad.

No Complacency, Please

2004-08-18T23:46:00.000-05:00

There's been some hopeful discussion lately, based on recent polling, about how the election might be "Kerry's to lose." I agree that there's reason for hope and cheer; the polls do look promising. But let's not be hasty: a lot can happen between now and the election. If there's a major al-Qaeda attack, or a serious stumble by the Kerry campaign, Bush might well pull it off. Now is the time to redouble our efforts to make sure that the public is properly informed, and that the Democratic base turns out for Election Day.

Nick Confessore, at TAPPED, argues here that Karl Rove's reputation might be a bit oversold. I do think that Rove's abilities are probably less than his opponents' fear makes them out to be. But, as in the case of the polling, Rove's recent failures should not lead to complacency on our part. The current Republican weakness is not because of flaws inherent to the Republican propaganda campaign; it's because the public has had sufficient time to see the widening gap between what the Republicans promised in 2000 and 2002 and what they've delivered since then. The understandable sense of disappointment and disillusionment has weakened Bush's image. But this does not guarantee that they can't pull off a similar smoke-and-mirrors act for this election. Remember: Rove has based his career, with great success, on the notion that you can polish a turd. He may be able to do it again, if the public is confused enough.

Is Karl Rove Brilliant?

Why I'm Not an Advice Columnist

2004-07-18T23:55:00.000-05:00

Dear Cary,

The problem is baseball. Well, baseball and this terrific new woman I have been seeing. Here's the thing: I love Major League Baseball. It is one of my consuming passions. ...But there's this woman. She is funny and smart and beautiful... There's just one problem: She roots for my team's biggest rival. ...So recently, these two teams, her team and my team, went head to head, and my team lost. And badly. And repeatedly. Which would make me kind of miserable under the best of circumstances. But I feel even worse because I know that, not so deep down, she is happy. She is unhappy for me, because she is wonderful and kind and I think she may love me a little. But she is happy for herself. And I can't stand it. My knowledge of her happiness is eating away at me. It feels like disloyalty -- I care so much about my team, and how can she take pleasure in something that is causing me so much pain?

Dear Baseball Fan,

You should break up with her immediately. Since this is the kind of problem that would only really matter to a ten-year-old, I infer that you are way too young to be dating. This can only end with a prison term for her.

Stay in school, keep away from drugs, and maybe in ten or fifteen years you'll be ready for a mature, adult relationship, the kind in which this sort of "dilemma" would seem like a silly joke.

Jesus H. Christ.

Salon.com: Inside baseball

I'm a Believer

2004-07-14T00:03:00.000-05:00

The comments on this Crooked Timber post are entertaining, in a depressing way. Note the sneering, oh-so-superior tone in most of them, especially the one that called the Believer article's author "ignorant." (This means, I think, "not an insider, hence not worth taking seriously.")

The article in question, whatever its flaws, does make some criticisms that seem pretty accurate to me:

There is a huge flood of scholarly publication in English and other literary disciplines, most of it inconsequential, fated to be read only by its author, a couple of journal editors, a few referees, and possibly the author's colleagues.

A great deal of this publication is written in a rarefied, self-consciously obscure dialect that is incomprehensible to people who lack a graduate education in English.

Many scholars of English literature don't see anything wrong with this.

Perhaps there is nothing wrong with it. But of course that conclusion is hard to swallow for a lot of outsiders, given that the subject matter of this scholarship — literature — is arguably meant to be read and enjoyed and learned from by a larger group of people than the small number of professionals who get paid to study it.

The question that Crooked Timber's commentators (with a few welcome exceptions) want to avoid addressing is the social utility of the current situation. Most literary scholarship goes unread by most of the profession, and even more so by ordinary readers. So if current literary scholarship has social utility, it must be indirect, by providing an atmosphere of continued scholarly inquiry for teachers that will, in some ways, filter down to students both while they are in college and in later life. (This is true for scholarship in other academic disciplines as well; there are few practical applications of number theory, for example, but it is still an indispensable subject in mathematics departments.)

What concerns me is whether this indirect utility justifies the large expenditures that are currently being lavished on it. In most colleges, literature departments are the largest of the humanities departments. There are hundreds of journals of literary scholarship, and thousands of literature professors cranking out more articles to fill those journals. Is the money that goes to pay for the production and distribution and cataloguing and storage of this scholarship well spent?

At a time when this question is being raised more and more urgently — by college financial officers and especially by students and their parents facing skyrocketing tuition — it might be advisable for the discipline to encourage the production of less scholarship of higher quality. It might be advisable in any case for literary scholars to focus on studying literature, instead of producing pastiches of scholarship in areas in which they have no real expertise — sociology, history, political theory, philosophy. And it is definitely advisable for journal editors and conference committee members to start exercising some good judgment by actively discouraging the meaningless jargon, radical-chic posturing, and adolescent obsession with bodily fluids and orifices that have become objects of ridicule both inside and outside the profession.

But I see little chance of this happening inside the academic echo chamber. Right now, most English departments are like SUVs: they're comfortable and fashionable and they make the people inside feel important and powerful. But they're too damned expensive for the results we get. The money well hasn't dried up yet, but it will, and I feel for the people who have to make hiring decisions when it does.

Crooked Timber: What for are English professors?

The Believer: In the Penthouse of the Ivory Tower

Babysitting Iraq

2004-07-03T23:10:00.000-05:00

Ted H. calls attention to a frequently overlooked fact about motivation, namely that people's interests can overlap.

"X did it for Y's sake" is not, I repeat not, incompatible with "X did it for X's own sake." Perhaps X views Y's interests as including his own. Or perhaps X thinks that promoting Y's interests will cause his own separate interests to be promoted as well.

We recognize instances of this all the time. If I offer to take my nephew to the park so he can play, I may very well expect to enjoy watching him, and spending time with him. I am doing this for his sake, and also for my own, since in this case furthering his interests also furthers mine.

Ted applies this principle to the Iraq war:

It is thus possible that the Bush Administration went to war in Iraq with the aim of promoting its interests by promoting the interests of the Iraqi people. That's been my reading of the situation all along[...]

I think Ted is right to reject the notion that the Bush administration must have had some ulterior motive that was really responsible for the drive to war. Like him, I'm not quite to the point of believing that the decision-makers in this administration are so irredeemably evil that they couldn't possibly have been serious about helping the Iraqis.

Ted goes on to say:

To show that there's something unsavory about the Administration's motives, you'd need to show that prominent members of the Administration don't believe the unifying theory.

Here's where I have my reservations. I do think there was something unsavory about the administration's motives, or at the very least questionable about them. For another salient fact about interests is that they can coincide, or fail to coincide, in complex ways. To return to the example of my young nephew: it's easy enough for me to conclude that my interests (in enjoying his company) are furthered by accompanying my nephew to the park, or to story time at the library, or to a petting zoo. Suppose I were to offer to babysit my nephew for a week, in even greater furtherance of those interests. Might it be rational for my sister-in-law to be a little reluctant to accept that offer?

I think so, and here's why: while in some cases I might further my interests by furthering those of my nephew, there are bound to be other cases in which I do not. People's interests are complex. I might decide, after a day or two, that the law of diminishing returns renders my nephew's company considerably less entertaining than at first. Perhaps I'm now more interested in reading a novel, despite my nephew's vigorous entreaties to take him back to the park. If I intended to further both our interests, but now furthering his does not further mine, whose interests will win out? And if I'm torn over the question of whether or not to take him to the park again today, how will I react if he wakes up at 3:00 AM, badly in need of a diaper change? How robustly am I motivated to pursue his interests when they are directly opposed to mine? If my sister-in-law has any doubts on the matter, she'd be well advised to decline my offer.

Back to the Iraq case: no doubt many of the top members of the administration believed that they would further their interests, and the interests of the United States, by invading Iraq. Once that belief is exploded (and by this point it has been thoroughly exploded), what motives will dominate? To put it another way, does anyone think that the administration would have invaded Iraq if they believed that it would ultimately damage them politically? A commitment to help others only when I can profit from helping them is not a very deep commitment to their welfare. First and foremost, it's a commitment to my own. Their good figures only accidentally.

Unfortunately, the history of the occupation suggests that many of the military's and CPA's decisions in Iraq have been primarily about furthering the administration's ideology and making political capital, from Bremer's obsession with Polish-style privatization, to staffing the CPA with politically reliable Republicans, to the famous statue-toppling. In these cases, the likely benefit to the Iraqis has been of distinctly secondary importance.