One example is 49th street heading from Cliff to Bahnson. It was my jogging path (seven miles) in high school, and one section of it finds a railroad track on a slight hill. In 1976 this was a dirt road leading out of town with corn fields on either side. My friend Dan Taranik and I had a contest to see who could drive over the track the fastest. The steep incline made the car airborn, and when it landed if you had shifted the stirring wheel just a bit you could careening into the corn field. Up to 40 MPH our friends would ride with us, then we’d have to let them out and just the two of us go, to verify each others’ speed. I hit 65 MPH, barely keeping control. In a move that perhaps saved us from severe injury, Dan’s parents took away his car on an unrelated case, and by the next year we at 17 were mature enough to realize we’d been damn crazy.

That road is now paved, with parks, a church and houses on each side of the street. Moreover, there are houses and streets in each direction as far as you can see, all where fields used to stand. It goes on…49th was the very edge of town, now there developments past 70th street. Areas that were once miles outside the city are now simply part of town.

This shouldn’t surprise me. In 1977 I took a mini-course in high school called “A Week with the Mayor” (maybe in was 1978). A young city planner, Steve Metli (who I think stayed on the job through a recent retirement) drove us around town in a cool convertible and pointed to where the city would grow. I remember thinking “this guy is crazy, where will all those people come from.” As it turns out, I doubt he even realized how fast the population would take off! East, west, north and south, new schools, new malls, new homes have been built. Sioux Valley Hospital, renamed Sanford hospital thanks to a large donation, is hiring 8000 people to start a research center. The mood is reminiscent of the 1974 Sioux Falls bumper sticker “Things are Lookin’ Good, no Recession here.”

Yet as I seek out landmarks, a “Milky Way” that looks like it did back then, or the fact that “Midwest Welding” seems not to have changed, I find those constancies to be the exception rather than the rule. We went to Falls Park, which when I was in high school was rather run down. I always thought it a waste, the falls of Sioux Falls in a small, run down park near the state Penitentiary, stockyards and sewage treatment plant. Well, those other things are still there, but the park has been built up to be glorious, with an evening light show and landscaping that makes it a center attraction. And if the stockyards create an odor now and then, well, so what?

When I was growing up there was only one real “ethnic” restaurant – a Chinese place downtown, which is still there (Ming Wah). That expanded a bit by my college days, but now there is a plethora of possibilities from Ethiopian to Thai and beyond. While we had goofy golf and a few other activities, now there are waterparks, amusement parks and places to have fun. The minor League Sioux Falls Packers had to close it’s A league team when the old northern League folded, has been replaced by the very popular and successful Sioux Falls Canaries.

The Great Plans Zoo, which had old fashioned inhumane concrete cages and a cheap entrance area, has been replaced by a really well designed modern zoo, with a stuffed animal exhibit (when I was a kid these animals, collected by local hunters on trips around the world, could only be seen in part in a rather cluttered display at West Soo Hardware). In short, my hometown only exists in my mind, despite remnants I can still grab on to. Sioux Falls now is huge, expansive, and apparently still growing. The majority of houses seem brand new; only in the old part of town are the houses smaller and older. To be sure, I grew in a house built in the 1920s, 401 E. 30^th. We walked by the house I lived at when I went to Kindergarten (305 W. 29^th) on the way to a refurbished but still existent DQ on 29^th and Minnesota. The playground at old Mark Twain School was redone, but the school still looked the same.

Strange, really. Every moment is fleeting, the town that now exists will be much different again as time passes. As a kid on my bicycle I explored every street and every part of this city, making it a point to go to places I hadn’t yet seen. Now that job would be a lot more difficult. But in my mind, I can still go to old stores like Fantles and Shrivers downtown, remember that ice cream cones at the DQ were 7, 10, 15, 20 cents, and the jumbo one for a quarter. The Sioux Falls I grew up in is still stronger in my mind than this city; Village Inn Pizza is still there, not a Crystal Casino. The Barrel Restaurant drive in, A&W Rootbeer, all the places I once knew. That’s one thing about getting older, suddenly one gets a sense of how things change and how time passes.

Onetime on my bike, probably while I was in high school, I was riding on the dikes of the SIoux River, and came upon a bridge — a four lane bridge spanning the river, with no road in site. What an oddity! I crossed it on my bike, and told everyone about this ‘bridge to nowhere’ I found. Now that bridge connects 49th street behind the malls (the west side of town, my biking path on 49th was way over on the east side), and is one of the most well traveled streets in town.  Today we played with the kids at Sertoma Park, with a huge playground directly next to that very bridge — which definitely no longer looks new!  And, while being a bit nostalgic can turn into a defiant “things were better then” stance, I prefer to look at it differently. Everything changes. Every moment in time, every landscape, every experience is unique and transient. Therefore, enjoy it, savor it, and bask in it. Time will take scene away, but the experience can never be stolen.

Note: the vacation continues, but I’m finding time to post a bit about the fun we’re having. Hopefully I’ll find time to post again before returning to regular posting on August 2nd.

We enjoyed a superb weekend in southern South Dakota, visiting my sister’s family river house on the Missouri River/Lake Francis Case. As I experienced, I realized that this epitomized America at play in the early 21^st century, and I wonder if it can last.

My sister, her husband and two kids (aged 17 and 15) spend most weekends down on the river, about 100 miles from their home in Sioux Falls. Their river house is nice; three bedrooms, a nice kitchen, two bathrooms, and a comfortable living room with Direct TV. The garage is huge because it has to hold their boat, a beautiful “Moriah” boat that can hold 11. They hook their boat to the Chevy Suburban, and then haul the boat to the boat launch nearby. Their river house is part of a small development near Pickstown, South Dakota, with small lots (people are right next to each other), and a little community.

The average weekend day involves heading out on to the river, usually to find a place on a sandy spot to stop the boat, and then swim, relax, drink beer, and cool off from the summer heat. The scene is gorgeous; the wide Missouri surrounded by small hills in a very sparsely populated part of the state, one feels really at peace.

My five year old loved it. What he loved most involved vehicles. On the boat, he sat up front, and kept giving the “thumbs up” to my brother in law to go faster and faster. Even on rough water with bumps that made me think I’d injure my spine, he was laughing and enjoying it, his sunglassed face looking forward as the boat sped ahead. Every now and then we’d make eye contact (too loud for much talk) and each grin at each other. This was FUN! Speed, water, wind! Then the swimming was great, and Ryan at age 5 learned how to drive a golf cart by himself. Golf carts are the mode of transportation around that mini-development, and though we had someone with him, he became very good at driving (announcing, “I’m amazing, I’m a magic boy, I can drive a golf cart with no driving lessons!”)

In the evenings as things cooled off, music blared from various garages as little parties popped up, beer and booze flowing liberally, people stopping by and socializing with others, sharing boating and the love of the river in common. We of course had 70s hard rock playing since that’s our era. The kids could roam around within reason, not fearing traffic, and knowing things were safe. They would meet with other kids, delight in staying up past dark way past their bed time, wired and excited by all that was going on (but conking out quickly when we could finally get them to bed). The last night, despite hot weather, we even made a fire so we could make smores for the kids. Some people headed off fishing, but most simply partied into the evening.

Monday morning it was clear this was mostly a weekend thing. People were heading back to Sioux Falls or northern Nebraska, leaving their boats, ready to come back the next week. The trash collector told us of how he was recovering from a rough weekend, heading to Canton, burning tires, and drinking beer. Before we headed back to Sioux Falls, we went over the nearby Fort Randall dam, and toured the historic area where Ft. Randall stood, back when the Sioux were losing this territory quickly to the invaders from the East. The Sioux are still here, on reservations or often on the fringes of society; the offspring of the Europeans play on the river.

It was a great weekend. Yet, as I sat there Sunday night, a rum and coke in one hand, a smore in the other (they don’t really go together well, but…) I looked around and had to wonder. This is play the American way. Fast boats. Air conditioned comfort, playing “wii” as virtual tennis players or bowlers when it was too hot to actually go outdoors. Driving a long distance for a weekend escape. Enjoying good food and drink. In the past, I just enjoyed the atmosphere and socializing. Now, though, I reflect that this kind of fun is made possible by cheap energy. Gas for the boat, for the car, the trailer; power for the lifestyle. Will we be able to sustain this? Don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to criticize this way of doing things, far from it. It’s fun! But are we entering an era where economic change and more expensive energy will make this kind of weekend the stuff of memories, or scenes in movies about this era of energy abundance? Or can we find a way to keep it up?

After all, to get here we flew to Minneapolis, rented a car, then drove to Sioux Falls. The flat south western Minnesota countryside is marvelous, stopping by to look at old family cemetery plots in Madelia, Minnesota, heading by the old farm, no longer in the family, between Madelia and Laselle, stopping for a DQ meal in LeSeuer. I don’t know. But I think at some ironic level I enjoyed the experience more than I otherwise would have by recognizing that it may not be something to take for granted. It is a moment in history, one to enjoy, even as one comes face to face with the implications of the economic and political realities facing us.

Barack Obama is popular in Germany, and 200,000 people came to hear him speak in front of the Siegesäule, a monument built to honor the Prussian victory in the Franco-Prussian war, not far from the Brandenburg gate. The wide streets made it possible to allow a huge crowd to gather. And, by all accounts, it was a successful speech. However, as Der Spiegel noted, the American press rather than the German press were allowed to speak with him afterwards, and the rhetoric, especially calls for more European help in America’s foreign policy hot spots, was clearly aimed at Americans.

A bit on the location: the Siegesäule is a central point in Berlin’s yearly ecstasy laden Love Parade, and is a symbol for the Berlin gay community, for whom the neighboring park is a meeting place. It isn’t far from from the Berlin Zoo train station and is easily accessible.

Beyond a doubt, Obama is focused on winning the campaign first. He is not President yet, and may not become President. He knows that, so do the Germans. They are intrigued. Could the Americans, so smitten with tough talking cowboys like Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, or with good ol’ boy southerners like Bill Clinton, really embrace an urbane, sophisticated black man named Barack Hussein Obama? And Obama’s rhetoric speaks to the Europeans, he is a proud American but also a citizen of the world.

The fact is that Obama knows his weakness is his lack of experience. And, while foreign policy rarely wins or loses elections – Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were similarly inexperienced – anything he can do to create a sense that he has international savvy can only help. Therefore he has undertaken a risky strategy of not only traveling abroad but turning into a very high profile and highly scrutinized series of appearances. This is meant to make people comfortable with the idea of Obama representing the country and appearing Presidential. Images from this trip can be used, probably in a rapid succession of photos, to subliminally reinforce that perception.

And, of course, the crowds and buzz Obama is generated is something John McCain will be unable to match. If McCain showed up in Berlin he’d draw a crowd, but nothing close to Obama’s. Instead McCain visits a German restaurant, and makes his support of the surge the central core of his campaign. That this is his “best card” to play is telling; in an election about change for the future, McCain wants to claim that he got something right in the past. And given that most Americans think the Iraq war was a mistake, its not really going to win over those not already convinced Obama is too soft.

By the time we reach the battles of October, this trip will be old news, pre-convention and part of the ‘warm up.’ Thus charges of Obama just engaging in a photo-op trip, or of Obama trying to ‘woe the world’ rather than voters at home will fade. What the Obama camp hopes for is a subtle, psychological shift. People will feel comfortable that Obama has stature and international respect, that they can trust him with the reins of power. In that sense, his trip is almost certain to succeed.

Barber, who also wrote McWord vs. Jihad back in 1995, makes the charge that modern consumerism subverts capitalism and, in a strongly Freudian ananlysis, infantilizes society. This includes the phenomenon of “kidults,” adults whose actions and tastes are more childish than mature. Adults have become perpetual Peter Pans, wanting to look, act and stay young as long as possible, undisciplined and selfish. While I don’t disagree with Barber, I wonder if there is too stark a connection between thinking like a child and infantilization. Is there something wrong with seeing life as play? The world of mystery, magic and joy we knew as children now gets drowned out by worries about retirement, job angst, and of course consumerism. Isn’t our masochistic seriousness one of the problems facing society?

Barber labels one method of resistance “Cultural Carnivalization.” He cites the Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin who saw carnivalization as a form of liberation, one which preserves playfulness, spontaneity and innocence. Yet, citing social theorist James C. Scott, Barber notes that those embracing a Bakhtinian interpretation of capitalism as carnival ignore the power structures underlying modern consumerism. The power is in the hands of the marketers, and the “infantilist ethos” which now dominates (replacing the earlier protestant work ethic) serves the wealthy and powerful. When the carnival is not a break from reality but becomes the every day, its power to resist is minimized.

Consider the absurdity of the modern condition. About 20% of the planet not only consumes over 75% of the world’s wealth, but spends hundreds of billions to find new toys and gizmos to create and market. Wants are converted to needs by psychologically savvy marketeers, able to pull emotional chords to get one to associate artificially faded jeans that don’t fit and with a hole on the knee as justifiably expensive pieces of cool fashion. Last week, I compared such consumerism with fascism. Yet as we (or often because we) hyperconsume millions starve or lack basic necessities, and the market ethos sells young girls into slavery and sets up third world sweat shops designed to satisfy our insatiable wants.

Yet that absurdity leads to incredible cynicism, aptly summed up in a favorite line from one of my best friends, “people are stupid.” And any rational read of news stories from the serious to the mundane seems to bear out very much the reality that there is something fundamentally absurd and stupid about human existence. It was this, in fact, which motivated the fidiest thinking of Pascal I discussed last week.

That can lead to political movements, righteous rage, and even positive action to try to make known who sells sweat shop clothes, the reality of life as child sex slaves or soldiers, and the need to address basic human needs around the globe. Yet it does not really threaten hyperconsumerism because while it is a rational and serious argument, it cannot overcome the appeal to emotion that embodies consumer culture. Those who see the flaws seem condemned to feel helpless in a world of mass consumption, while those caught up in the game fare little better, living ignorantly in material comfort, while not being able to handle the anxieties and uncertainties of the modern world.

In that, a form of “carnival consumerism” could be a solution. But not the raucous sense of unity and lack of rank described by Bakhtin. With consumerism all-consuming, the carnival has eaten the host, and instead of being a social release for individual renewal, the individual is subsumed and lost in a faux carnival created by marketers and manipulators who shift and create meanings in a manner designed to keep the individual from leaving that sense of eternal carnival in favor of individual reflection. It’s more than the absurdity of the human condition noted by Pascal almost 400 years ago, this is a particular condition in our culture which, by its very pervasiveness, undercuts the capacity for the kind of carnival that can provide the Bakhtinian renewal.

The reason is that playfulness, or that connection to the innocence of childhood and the sense of magic and imagination, is subdued in both the serious analysis of the human condition, and in the infantilist condition of hyper-materialism. Just as children’s games become more organized and coordinated than ever, adult fun is marketed and consumed. We received a Disney DVD about vacations at Disneyland, all about magic, play and escape — and all neatly packaged and stacked. To enjoy magic and imagination you need neither; Disney provides it all.

So how does one have a carnival within a permanent carnival? How does one discover playfulness when modern play equals hard work and consumption? How is the magical embraced when reason tells us that magic is for the superstitious, and that rational materialism is all that is? How can one connect with the ‘inner child,’ without simply embracing childishness and selfishness? Consumerism has wedded rational enlightenment thought with the emotion of market manipulation, making it appear that letting Disney define magic is rational, while to seek magic in ones’ own life would be some kind of flakey, new age thing.

Ultimately, Theodor Adorno is probably right that this has to come from the arts, something I alluded to in ‘alienation and the arts.’ Whether music, literature, dance, paintings or maybe even blogs, the one culturally powerful and acceptable form of expression and release remains various forms of art. And with new media creating ever more outlets for artistic expression, even as globalization seeks to totalize the market place, there could still be a way to reclaim individual identity from the seduction and destruction of hyperconsumerism, and recapture the sense of play and magic from the clutches of the Walt Disneys of the world. It doesn’t have to be experimental or alternative culture; just as Bob Dylan could write songs that cut through the noise of the sixties to inspire that generation, filmmakers and artists today can resist the culture even while striking a popular chord. Shakespeare, after all, was popular because he aimed his work directly at the mass audiences of his time.

If Horkheimer and Adorno in seeing the enlightenment as unable to provide meaning, and thus providing those with power the capacity to construct meaning and manipulate people to embrace and believe their constructions, then enlightenment philosophy and rational analysis alone won’t break us out of the consumerist trap (though an economic storm might force the issue), rediscovering the creative and curious side of our lives through the arts just might.

Looking at Iran today, it’s easy to wonder how we got to where we are. Iran was a major ally of the US until 1979 when the Shah of Iran was deposed by a group of revolutionaries including everything from Muslim extremists to communists and pro-western democrats. The religious extremists gained power first, and held it by using both the taking of the US embassy in Tehran and the attack by Saddam to ignite the Iraq-Iran war to hold on to power. Many say we should have defended the Shah, but others note that the Shah’s rule had disintegrated from within, and at best we could have propped up a tyrant only a little while. Perhaps to really think about what went wrong, we need to look back further.

Back in 1949 the British made a deal with Iran’s conservative Prime Minister General Ali Razmara to renegotiate the deal between the government and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC). Opposition to the agreement with the AIOC grew, as Iranians were angered by how little they had been getting in oil royalties — the British profits had been almost three times the royalties paid, and in fact the AIOC paid more in taxes at home than to Iran. The new Majles (Iran’s parliament) had strong sentiment against the oil deal. Prime Minister Razmara was assassinated by an Islamic fundamentalist/nationalist from Fedaiyan e Islam (a group which assassinated “enemies of Islam“).

A group of parties led by Mohammad Mosaddeq started to gain support in the Majles, and though the Shah (whose powers were quite limited) chose Hosain Ala to be the new Prime Minister, the Majles pushed for and got Mosaddeq. He led a rather rag tag group of religious and nationalist parties called the National Front, and announced plans to nationalize Iran’s oil industry. This was part of a comprehensive plan to restructure Iran’s economy and end dependence on outside powers. The US had supported Iran’s refusal to go along with the AIOC at first, hoping to get more influence for American companies. But Mossadeq’s decision to nationalize went too far for the Americans.

The British were incensed and tried to take Iran to the International Court of Justice. But states can nationalize as long as they compensate, and Iran promised just compensation. The US and Great Britain launched a campaign against Mosaddeq, hyping him as a fanatic, a communist, someone who would be a tool of the Tudeh (Iran’s communist party). The US saw nationalization as socialist and contrary to our goal of maintaining control of the oil needed for the western economy.

The US and Great Britain organized a boycott of Iranian oil by major oil companies, cutting off oil revenues to the government. The boycott was effective. There were other economic actions taken against Iran as well, and soon Iran’s economy was in tatters. This led to unrest, and ultimately instability in the Mosaddeq government. The Tudeh increasingly argued that all this showed that ties to the West were unhelpful, and Iran should turn to the Soviet Union.

The Shah, the British, and the Americans decided that Mossadeq had to go. First they tried to influence the government with a mix of promises and inside deals to replace him. The Shah dismissed him in 1952 and installed Qavam as-Saltaneh. But public demonstrations and refusal of the Majles to accept the choice got Masaddeq restored. The Tudeh party gained in strength, and ultimately Mossadeq brought them in to government. Note: a few American historians cite Mossadeq‘s ties with the Tudeh as the reason for installing the Shah; Mossadeq was letting himself become aligned too closely with our Soviet enemies. BUT without the oil boycott and attempts to undermine Mossadeq‘s reforms, the Tudeh would have never reached that position.

Mossadeq was much more popular than the Shah, and tried to get the US to move away from the death grip on Iran‘s economy, but the US continued to support the oil boycott. British intelligence worked with the CIA to plan a coup to oust Mosaddeq in 1953. Despite a few difficulties it ultimately worked, and the Shah, who would turn out to be a brutally repressive dictator, came to power with American and British support. Preference was for the Shah over democracy because he would support the US and Great Britain; democratic governments might give considerable power to Islamic and nationalist parties, as well as the Tudeh, after all.

Mossadeq remains a hero to many Iranians across the religious and political spectrum due to how he stood up to the West. But what if we had worked with him rather than against him? What if Iran’s democracy had been allowed to grow on its own, using its own oil revenues, rather than having our influence protected by a thuggish dictator whose rule ultimately collapsed? What if anti-western anger after 1953, especially amongst nationalist and Islamist groups, had not been kindled? If we had resisted the urge to intervene we would likely not be facing an Iran led by an Islamic fundamentalist government, with a nascent democracy more limited in the one in the early fifties.

In fact, throughout the Mideast the British and the French engaged in similar sort of actions, including a failed attempt to overthrow Nasser in Egypt and regain the Suez canal (ironically failing because the US decided to oppose such blatant neo-colonialism). For every Arab, Persian or other ethnic group from Afghanistan to Morocco, history is a clear line of domination. West of Persia (Iran), Ottoman Turk domination became replaced by western control and chaos. For Iran, early efforts to develop a national self-identity were thwarted by European interventions and influence. For everyone in that part of the world, any effort by the West to “help” is by definition suspect; autonomy and sovereignty is guarded.

There is a lesson to be learned here, but like so many lessons of history, it tends to get ignored. This lesson about the dangers of trying to control the politics of another state is especially important now, especially as we try to figure out what to do in Iraq. We can still get out of Iraq rather soon if we don’t try to control it too much, or push the government around. With Iran, we can recognize that their desire to appear totally free and sovereign, not having to answer to force from the West, is driven by a strong historic sense that their state has been subverted and abused by the West, especially with US support for the Shah. And, though there is considerable personal warmth for Americans in Iran, even those who oppose the current government do not want it to simply bow to western demands. We need to understand how deep that sense of past exploitation and control is; we’d feel similarly if the shoe was on the other foot.

If we were to bomb Iran, the population that currently likes the US and dislikes their regime would likely move to an almost universal anti-Americanism. This would make future partnerships and reform efforts in Iran harder than ever; Iranian dissident groups working inside Iran are also those most opposed an American strike. However we move forward, we need a strong sense of history.

If you take Condoleezza Rice at her word, not much. If you read between the lines, however, a lot! Moreover, with people like former UN Ambassador and hawk John Bolton lamenting the “U-turn” in US policy, this could be a coup for Rice against the last vestiges of neo-conservative thought in the Bush Administration. Rice claims this isn’t a change but a “reaffirmation” of US policy. The US will not “negotiate,” but will respond to any changes in policy Iran takes. She notes the US has no permanent enemies, moving away from the talk about Iran as if it were the equivalent to Nazi Germany, with Ahmadinejad a modern Hitler.

The US probably will continue to insist Iran cease uranium enrichment before negotiating. But it’s clear this high level of a meeting isn’t simply to tell the Iranians “we’re sticking to our guns.” Rather, the US will likely lay out a scenario whereby Iran can gain real, tangible benefits from cooperating with the US on this, and what harm might befall the Iranian regime (probably financial rather than military) should they continue to pursue a path of isolation. This would be, in a sense, a promise to the Iranians that if they play ball, they will be rewarded. That sounds an awful lot like a negotiation, but the US will say “this has always been the policy.”

Secretary Rice deserves praise, especially if she managed to once again stymie neo-conservative plans to continue a militarist approach to the problems of the region. She no doubt had help. Secretary Gates is almost certainly a Rice ally, and the Pentagon, as noted yesterday, has no desire to see yet another war put on its plate. Moreover, Rice has been extremely effective at lining up pretty intense international pressure against Iran. I suspect there was a hidden message here: “if you pressure Iran with us now, it’ll make it more likely we can avoid war.” Perhaps unstated but understood “help me win this battle to get the President to choose diplomacy.”

This doesn’t mean this crisis still can’t explode. We don’t know what Israel’s plans are, or whether Israeli war games were part and parcel of this pressure. Israel recently released some top Hezbollah terrorists in exchange for the bodies of dead Israeli soldiers (why five live terrorists equals two corpses is beyond me), so they don’t seem to be looking for a fight either. Given how bellicose the US was on North Korea before finally giving in to the reality of the situation and making a deal, it would not be shocking to find a US deal on Iran before the election. That would also be a way to help John McCain by making it not seem that the Republicans are the party of ‘all war, all the time.’

If so, this continues the march of realism in American policy since 2006. The US moved from trying to defeat Sunni insurgents, to working with them. The US shed its ‘cowboy diplomacy’ in favor of trying to patch up relations with “old Europe.” The US made a deal on North Korea, and has reduced its efforts to control regional policies in the Mideast.

If the good news about Iran wasn’t enough, another milestone took place in Iraq today, as President Bush agreed with Prime Minister Maliki of Iraq on a ‘general time horizon’ for US troop withdrawal from Iraq.

The President has avoided a ‘timetable’ for one reason: the US has always thought that some presence in Iraq would persist for a long time. The idea was that once there was stability in Iraq, the Iraqis would agree to let the US stay — they’d need our help keeping the peace. However, the “Iraq SOFA fight” made it clear that Iraqi law makers were dubious of anything that would look like past colonialism. That and an unexpected intransigence on oil deals has signaled that the US thought of Iraq as a loyal ally needing US protection is not to be. Iraq wants us to leave, and one reason is that Iran and even radicals like al-Sadr still have a lot of influence on Iraqi policy. The US can hardly reject al-Maliki’s suggestion, nor can the US try to demonize hi the way they did is predecessor. Our influence on Iraqi politics is limited.

Again, calling it a ‘time horizon’ rather than a ‘time table,’ and insisting that there will be conditions rather than arbitrary dates is a way to save face — act as if this isn’t a major change. But the reality is that Iraqi wants the US to start planning our departure, and the US realizes that it doesn’t have the power over Iraq to say no, nor will the public at home permit it. Finally, it’s also clear that the only way to lower oil prices and limit the damage to the US economy before the election is to create the perception that the Mideast is not about to be engulfed by war, and there is no danger of Iran closing the straight of Hormuz or some other consequence of hostilities. If people think politics in that region is becoming more predictable and stable, oil prices will drop.

It’s dangerous to read too much into these positive developments. There is more uncertainty than clarity, and we don’t know how the Iranians, Israelis and others will react. But today there are least hints that perhaps the US is getting closer to extricating itself from Iraq, and moving away from crisis with Iran. If President Bush can actually make those things happen before he leaves office, then he will be doing a great favor for whoever becomes the next President.

On Tuesday Secretary Gates warned of a ‘creeping militarization’ of American foreign policy, based on the large role the US military now plays in trying to rebuild countries like Iraq. Gates cited Afghanistan as an example of failure; the US has been unable to coordinate things such as road building and reconstruction with military security. The result is that US foreign policy seems focused less on traditional diplomacy and more on the military undertaking roles it isn’t designed for. And, while some might wonder why the Secretary of Defense would make this kind of criticism of the Administration, it’s actually unsurprising.

The Pentagon is probably unhappy with American foreign policy in recent years. They have been asked not only to fight and win wars (they’ve won two since 2001), but then to try to win the peace, doing things that they are not trained to do. In Iraq, they had to stick around and support reconstruction, even as the instability unleashed by the invasion pushed Iraq slowly and surely into all out civil war in 2006. A “surge” of troops has helped create some modicum of stability — though that was bought largely by shifting the policy from trying to defeat Sunni militants to coopting them and redefining the enemy as just al qaeda. This wasn’t done before 2007 because the price was seen as too high — this allows Sunni militia to remain armed, and Sunni regions outside central government control. But by 2007 with American support for the war plummeting and Iraq increasingly out of control, the price was suddenly worth paying.

In Afghanistan the military was kept again to help reconstruction, but with attention shifted to Iraq they were left undermanned and unable to do much while the Taliban regrouped. Washington thought that NATO’s control of the mission would be enough to offset the loss of US forces heading to Iraq, but that was based on two false premises. First, it was thought that Iraq would be quick, and most of the forces used to defeat Saddam could leave Iraq within a year. Second, the Taliban and al qaeda were considered defeated, and it was believed the Pakistanis would handle them should they try to cross the border. Both assumptions were proven false. On top of that, the NATO allies, wary of the US war in Iraq, chose not to agree to dangerous Afghan missions. The governments may have been willing, but the European public did not want to be part of that conflict, especially not in terms of actively military involvement.

The result is that the military has had to send people to Iraq for three or four tours of duty, and has been too overstretched to do much about Afghanistan. This has devastated military families, lead to a sharp increase in mental illness, suicide and divorce amongst active military, and hurt recruitment. Most frustrating is that it hasn’t seemed to accomplish much. The military knows that Iraq’s gains are tenuous and mostly illusionary. Iran still has massive influence on the government and the militias, the central government doesn’t control much outside of Baghdad, and it looks like Sunni and Kurdish areas are going to remain rather autonomous. With the Taliban and al qaeda on the rise — and talk now of an Afghan surge — the military continues to be used in missions that are beyond what the military supposedly is there for — protection of the United States and US interests. Increasingly it’s used as a social engineering tool, and military power is a very poor tool to try to engineer other societies and nation build.

So Gates was giving a military assessment of the problem. Militarization of American foreign policy is bad not because the military is bad, but because it is an ineffective use of the military. If you want to build, construct and help societies develop, you need a massive influx of civilians able to work cooperatively with the people living there, convincing them of our good will. When Iraqi and Afghan civilians suffering at check points and bombing raids, good will dissipates rapidly.

But, of course, without security the civilians don’t want to go to very dangerous places. They did not sign up to go into extreme danger, they rationally don’t want to risk having their family lose a parent or move the whole family to a place of intense violence. Moreover, they often have options outside of government, and cannot be forced to serve in the same way people in the military can. Is there a solution conundrum?

Yes. The government has to learn that it is misusing, even abusing, the military. The military is there primarily for defense, not offense. We’ve being trying to spread influence and shape other parts of the world, areas very different than our own. Often, our leaders haven’t understood the cultural context they’ve gotten involved in, and base their ideas on ideology — all want to be free, so therefore all will embrace a pro-western democracy if given the chance. That ideology has failed.

The only way to shift to an effective foreign policy not defined by militarism and not sapping the military of its strength is to move back towards use of military power only in extreme circumstances, when there is an act of aggression directly against the US, and only in a way proportionate to that act. The US must give up efforts to think our power can reshape the nature of politics in places like the Mideast; the neo-conservative dream of power being used to spread democracy was a delusion, driven by ideology not reality. Thus the military should be used only to defeat direct enemies, with care given to put as few civilians as possible in danger. We should return to a time when a soldier is unlikely to see duty in a combat zone, even if he or she serves for two decades.

Since Desert Storm in 1991 the list of wars the US has been involved in is long. Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and since 2003, Iraq again. We seem to constantly be involved in a war, and when it ends there hasn’t been peace. NATO is still needed in Bosnia, Kosovo is still tense, Afghanistan and Iraq unresolved. The lesson is clear: the move to thinking that ‘what good is a big army unless you use it’ (Madeline Albright) was dangerous, wrong headed and has harmed our country and killed countless civilians. It also represents an abuse of the men, women and families of American military personnel by political leaders who should be dedicated to use them only as a means of last resort. George W. Bush and Bill Clinton will rest easy, coming up with ways to rationalize their policies. Many men and women will be tortured by PTSD and other long term consequences of being in war, and they will by and large be ignored and forgotten by society.

In other words, this creeping militarization has to stop, and it can only stop if we make a fundamental move away from seeing the military as a tool to use often, and in ways far beyond the purpose for which it was designed. Otherwise, the US may be on a path of self-destruction.

The children of Abraham are bickering. Jews, Christians and Muslims all claim their religious heritage dating back to Abraham (Ibrahim). All see Adam as the first man, though more secular folk usually look at that as a kind of symbolic story, accepting now the theory of evolution. Yet, despite this commonality, the differences now seem far more important than the similarities. Does that have to be?

From the Jewish perspective, God has made a covenant with the people of Israel. It is a kind of stormy love relationship, where the Israelis need their God, and their God loves his people. The stormy part is that the people often suffer, and stray from the law of their God. Yet God does not let go, and despite centuries of hardship, neither do the Jewish people. The book of Job is illustrative. It is a powerful story with rich, beautiful poetry. God is challenged by Satan (often called just ‘the accuser’) to prove that Job really is a good and devout man. After all, God has blessed Job. Surely, the accuser says, if God took away Job’s belongings, Job would curse him. God takes on this challenge and suddenly Job loses everything, and over time his suffering grows as the accuser convinces God to hit Job harder.

Job’s friends try to console him, and urge him to admit his sins, since God must be punishing him with just cause. Job is convinced his suffering is undeserved, and wishes to make his case to God. In a series of speeches Job debates his friends about God and his nature. Finally God intercedes and chastises Job’s friends for their arrogance, and Job for thinking God should have to answer to him. God is the King of the World, and owes no explanation for how he uses his sovereign power. Job is restored, his wealth doubled. Yet within Job’s character, his inability to just let go of God and curse him, one finds the kernel of that relationship between the people of Israel and their God. Despite suffering and hardship, they are in it together. They are not to question God’s motives or authority. This cements their commitment to tradition and community; their identity has been tested through the ages and yet has persisted. There is no similar case in human history of a traditional tribal God lasting into the modern era, except perhaps for some of the Hindu Gods. Throughout the ancient era empires like that of Babylonia, Alexander, and later Rome, destroyed the religions of tribes living alongside the Jews. The Axial age, as noted in ‘Faith, Philosophy and the Modern Age,” led to a birth of new religions. The Jews have a special history, and they know it.

These ‘people of Israel’, as noted above, trace their heritage back to Abraham. God promises Abraham that because of his worthiness, he will be the father of a great nation. Yet his wife Sarah is too old to have children, and Abraham therefore has a child with Hagar, his wife’s handmaiden, who is named Ishmael. God, however, can work miracles and Sarah later gives birth to Isaac. Afraid that Hagar’s son will lay claim to Abraham’s heritage, Sarah convinces Hagar to take Ishmael and leave. Both Jews and Muslims believe that Ishmael becomes the father of the Arab people, thus tracing the Arab heritage back to Abraham.

Isaac is seen by both Jews and Christians as the true founder of God’s people. In large part this is because Abraham was ordered to kill Isaac in sacrifice, and was prepared to do so, until the angel Gabriel interceded and told him to stop. Abraham had proven his faith, and thus worthy of a covenant with God to assure that a great nation. Also, God does promise that Sarah would be the mother of Abraham’s progeny, and that was fulfilled with Isaac. Yet Sarah’s harshness with Hagar and Ishmael also led God to promise a great progeny for Ishmael, thus meaning that two great peoples, the Jews and the Arabs, would come from Abraham’s seed.

For Muhammad, the era of darkness was one where the Arabs lost site of the fact they were part of God’s covenant with Abraham. That after awhile, the customs were forgotten and the Arabs lost their connection with God. The result was ritual and tradition, sometimes brutal, with a lack of a spiritual core. The Kaaba in Mecca were supposedly built by Abraham/Ibrahim and Ishmael, based on an original building by Adam. It would become, as noted in part four of this series, a polytheistic shrine servicing the commercial needs of the Quraysh in Mecca.

Muhammad hoped his message would unite the Arab people, give them a spiritual center, and lead to dramatic reform of backwards and inhumane customs. He thought the Jews and Christians would buy into this too — after all Jesus (Isu) is a great prophet for Islam, and in fact the one who will come at the end of times to convert the world to Islam. (One can imagine the scene if the Christian fundamentalist faithful come to great Jesus as he returns to earth, only to hear him say, “by the way, I’m a Muslim.”) Jesus/Isu was born to a virgin in the Islamic tradition as well. He simply wasn’t the ’son of God’ because God cannot have human attributes, and certainly cannot procreate. That would lead to polytheism, and to Muslims the Christian trinity is a rationalized tri-theism.

Islam spread quickly through the Arab world. Early Islam spread in part because Muhammad’s successor, Abu Bakr, would have to put down rival imitations of Muhammad across Arabia. Clearly Muhammad had tapped into a cultural and social need of the Arab people, so quickly did his ideas spread and become imitated. But the quick spread of Islam through force assured that it would be seen as an Arab faith, not one to be embraced by others. Even during Muhammad’s time he realized the Jews would not convert, and while he demanded toleration and good treatment of Christians and Jews (Muhammad counted many as his friends), he changed the direction Muslims should face at prayer time from Jerusalem to Mecca. He realized his teachings would not be embraced by the other ‘children of Abraham.’

It seems a shame that these three faiths, with so much in common, find themselves at odds. Judaism and Islam are praxis-oriented faiths, meaning community, ritual and tradition are important. Thus it’s important for Jews to have their homeland, a place where they can form a true community, something they lacked for almost two millenia. Muslims also find it hard to migrate to non-Muslim countries, as the communal and praxis oriented nature of the religion does not function well when Muslims are in isolation. Christians are a more faith-oriented people (remember the spiritualism of Augustine), meaning they can worship in small communities, and see it as important to win new converts. Such action is akin to an act of violence when used against praxis oriented religions like Judaism and Islam.

As the series continues, the impact of these differences will be explored, especially between Christianity and Islam, as Christianity came to define the cultural traditions of the West, even the secularized “new West” we now encounter. However, at base these religions share a lot, and that should at least give hope to the possibility that peace and even friendship is possible. After all, none of these faiths is going to disappear any time soon.

Other entries in this series:

Part One: Rome and Paul (May 31st)
Part Two: Plotinus and Augustine (June 6)
Part Three: Just and Unjust Wars (June 15)
Part Four: Muhammad and Arabia (June 22)
Part Five: Muhammad and Jihad (June 30)

First: how we got here. The problems started with how we got out of the last recession. The sudden drop of oil prices from nearly $40 a barrel to ultimately under $15 provided the impetus to get out of the recession, and in fact all of the western world started doing well by 1983. In the US, however, a move towards privatization and supposedly freer markets helped spur a new consumerism, and new public and private debt. We’d been paying back the high WWII debt, which was over 100% of GDP, to the point that by 1981 it was 30% of GDP. During an economic boom, the pay down should have intensified. Instead we cut taxes, refused to cut spending, and by the end of the decade debt was up to 60% of GDP. The result was an economy that appeared to be extremely vibrant — low oil prices, a growing economy plus stimulus from tax cuts and government spending put the economy into overdrive, and created the impression things were going very well.

The result was a short recession in 1991-92, as attempts to curtail the spending increases and deal with the structural problems caused by the binge of the 80s led to a sharp but surprisingly short downturn. People expected a far worse recession, and were pleasantly surprised when the economy quickly turned back around. Low oil prices fueled this rebound, as did the expansion of global trade thanks to globalization. This in turn fueled a stock market bubble that reached insane proportions by early 2000. The 90s thus became what I labeled last week the “decade of illusions.” People thought getting rich was easy, the free market was an unqualified success, and oil would remain cheap — by the late nineties it was, when adjusted for inflation, as cheap as any time in history. By the end of the decade the dollar was strong, and it looked like we’d balanced our budgets.

Then in 2000 the stock market crashed, with the tech heavy Nasdaq hit hardest. It fell from 5048 on March 10, 2000 to less than 2000 later that year. On September 10, 2001, the day before the terror attacks, it was down to 1695. The tech crash hit the DOW less hard, it fell from a high of 11,722 in early 2000 to 9600 just before the terror attacks. 9-11 caused stocks to drop further, but they rebounded from that low; the real damage, however had already been done. The bubble burst, and today (June 15) the Nasdaq is at about 2230, and the Dow hovering near the 11,000 mark.

That, plus 9-11, was feared to bring about a major recession, especially as oil prices finally started to rise. However, a new bubble, the property bubble, took over and not only did Americans buy property at inflated prices, often with mortgages they couldn’t afford (figuring they’d refinance when the value goes up), but took out home equity loans up to or beyond the value of their homes, figuring home values would only continue to go up. The result: skyrocketing consumer spending. American saving rates went into negative territory, as home liquidity reached all time lows and debt all time highs. This set up for another bubble bursting, this time in a way that has created a colossal credit crisis (witness the news this week about Freddie mac and Fannie mae), and there is nothing left to prop up consumer spending.

So now the storm comes ashore. High consumer spending helped our market ignite China and India’s growth.  American consumption, however, has created a current accounts deficit that is unsustainable, and hinted long ago that the dollar was over valued and American consumption could not continue.  China and India have diversified markets and continue to grow (though our problems will likely slow them down a bit). This has helped spark a huge increase in demand for oil in those countries. A dirty little secret of our post war prosperity is that while markets and free trade are credited with the boom the “West” has experienced, nothing as dramatic as the growth in wealth over the last 60 years would have been possible if not for insanely cheap energy, thanks to oil. But oil production is no longer increasing and may soon decrease, even as demand continues to increase. That risks future shortages and might make today’s $145 a barrel for oil seem cheap. We can’t continue our ‘oil denial.’

On top of an energy crisis, a credit crisis, a society with no savings due to hyperconsumerism and a succession of bubbles, the dollar is rapidly losing value. Relative to the Euro it’s now worth half of what it was just eight years ago. This, along with high energy and food prices, will create inflation — already we are seeing the highest levels of inflation in 27 years. However, it also will increase unemployment and bring back the dreaded stagflation. The only good news in this is that a declining dollar will bring jobs back to the US — but for most consumers it also means everything will be more expensive. The collapse of the housing bubble also will have a ripple effect through the economy, as housing affects construction work, electricians, plumbers, home furnishers, and spreads through the economy. We’ve only started to feel the impact.

Moreover, demographics are changing as the population ages. As baby boomers retire (and they just started retiring) they will cease putting money into 401 K and other retirement plans, and instead pull out. That will have a negative effect on the stock market, but government spending will have to increase dramatically to deal with expensive health care and social security for a larger number of elderly and fewer younger workers. Add to that environmental problems. Already global warming has created a year long wild fire season in California, and has led to weather that is increasingly unpredictable, as this years floods have shown. Globally the impact could be devastating. The benefits of globalization praised in the 1990s, already under pressure due to increasing transportation costs, could give way to fears of terrorism and migration as impoverished folk will do anything for a chance at a decent life.

Put all this together, and we have the makings for an economic catastrophe rivaling or even surpassing that of the great depression. Moreover, the bubbles and deficits of the last 27 years have created a hyperconsumer society, as noted in my consumerism and fascism post. This has fostered a mentality of individual entitlement and disconnection from community. One ray of good news is how quick, even briefly, New Yorkers responded to 9-11 with a strong sense of community. Perhaps that will be something this will force us to regain. Worst case scenarios involving oil shortages and prices that go over $1000 a barrel would see something akin to a civilizational breakdown, at least for awhile.

I don’t think the full impact of this confluence of economic events has been comprehended by most people, including governmental and business leaders. No one knows for sure what the future will bring; I hope I look back at this post and think ‘gee, I was horribly pessimistic that day.’ And, of course, storms pass and there is a ‘morning after.’ The contradictions of our era — American consumption alongside third world starvation, hypermaterialism alongside a sense of modern emptiness and dissatisfaction with life, ultra-convenience alongside waste and environmental degradation — cannot last. This storm could wash them away.

While he was in his 30s, not long before his untimely death, Pascal converted to a form of Roman Catholicism named Jansenism, which was a full embrace of Augustine. Pascal would give up his scientific pursuits in order to live a devout life. Some attribute this to things in his personal life — he had an ailment that left him in constant pain, many of the people around him were Jansenists, and he had a brush with death that apparently caused him to think deeply about life. In any event, Pascal confronted the full force of the age of reason that by his day was displacing the age of faith and, despite his vast intellect, chose faith.

To many, this seems odd. Of course, in the 17th century even men of reason such as Galileo and Newton remained devout; Deism and atheism were still a century away from being considered. But Pascal realized something that few at the time really comprehended: reason itself led to a path of meaningless. If this theme sounds familiar, it’s because I’ve blogged about it in my last two blog entries. I wasn’t going to continue along those lines, but Jeffrey Lees very intelligent and thoughtful comment to my last blog entry inspired me. Pascal, like his contemporary Pierre Bayle, were fidiests, meaning that they rejected the idea of faith and reason being united in religious belief in favor of faith alone. This is close to the kind of spiritualism espoused by Augustine, whose early work defined Christian theology.

For Augustine the purpose of life was to worship God, and see the symbolism of God in everything. For both Pascal and Bayle (whose momentous work “Critical and Historical Dictionary” was the most widely read work of the 17th and 18th centuries), man could and should not use reason to find God, but simply focus on faith. Bayle was even misunderstood by French enlightenment scholars for his writings that painted Christian traditions as irrational and contradictory. King David was an adulterer who even sent a man to the front to die so that he could sleep with his wife, yet God loved him? Yet Bayle’s point was not to argue against Christianity, but to say that reason can’t explain God’s ways, you simply had to have faith — trying to understand through reason would lead nowhere.

Pascal was tormented by the absurdity of the human condition. People were filled, he argued, with hatred of others and hatred of self. They secretly wanted friends to fail so they could look good by comparison. Murder was evil, yet one would be decorated for killing those “on the other side of the river” because they were different. People filled their lives with endless distractions to avoid confronting their own lives and life’s meaning. People feared that kind of self-reflection, and would instead live frenetic lives filled with efforts at short term pleasure or long term addictions, a kind of empty meaningless existence with a depth of absurdity that caused Pascal inner grief, as noted in his posthumous work Pensees, which was a serious of notes meant to be put together in a defense of fidiest Christianity. Pascal died at age 38, but the book became a best seller when it was published.

It should be clear why the comment by Jeffrey Lees would get me to think about Pascal. Jeffrey mentioned the innate need for meaning, and Pascal’s description of the emptiness of the diversions of 17th century France sound much like some of the critique of consumer society. It may not have been hyperconsumerism, but it was still a kind of quest for meaning or, at the very least, an absurd effort to distract oneself from the fact there is no meaning.

Pascal was right. You look at life and it really is absurd. Take a step back and look at what people worry about, the kinds of bizarre behavior we’re engaged in, and it looks trivial and transient. We all die, but we cling to life. We honor good deeds, but strive to get ahead of others. We justify killing in the name of politics, but hate politics. We spend more time worrying about whether an outfit will make us look fat or silly than about people starving across the globe. We get caught up in sports, reality TV, video games and other meaningless activities, all while saying we love life and want to live it to the fullest. We seek meaning, but few really take the time to try to find it. Even religion has become a kind of crutch for many — not defining how they live, but a routine that allows them to say they don’t need to think about meaning because they’ve chosen one.

People strive for money, even though after a certain level it doesn’t seem to add much. The absurdity that gripped Pascal and enthralled his readers is evident to everyone even today if we look at things with a kind of detachment. Even our burial customs and refusal to talk about things like death and religion is odd. We look at primitive tribes from Africa as strange and exotic, but our culture is in some ways more absurd, so distanced we are from nature.

Pascal decided the only way to make sense of this was through faith, and he describes Christianity as a way that suddenly gives meaning and coherence to life and this world. What appeared absurd is suddenly meaningful in the heart. The head cannot understand; with God the heart understands fully. No doubt Pascal felt this and believed it deeply. To the reasonable he offered Pascal’s wager — if there is a God and you believe you have eternal life, if you do not believe you may be punished forever. If there is no God and you believe, you’ve lost nothing. If there is no God and you don’t believe, you gain nothing. Isn’t it logical to choose to believe?

Obviously, Montesquieu and the next generation of Europeans would discover that the question is rendered more difficult by having to add “which God,” since other faiths offer similar dilemmas. But Pascal, in an odd way recognizing what the post-modernists now see as the fundamental flaw of enlightenment reason-based thinking, saw that cold, materialist reason had no power to explain the pain, absurdity, and emptiness of this world. He saw that it could not provide meaning, and thus contributed to the absurdity by driving humans to distractions and diversions — so afraid are they of confronting the true state of their being.

So I reconsider Pascal’s wager. Not from the stand point of Christianity, I’m too enlightenment shaped to be able to accept a set of myths as truth. Rather, from the stand point of whether to embrace a dogmatic materialism focused solely on reason and devoid of any consideration of something deeper, spiritual, or connected to sentiment. Should one let the head silence the heart? I think not. Thus in this post-enlightenment world where anything spiritual but not religious is dismissed as “new age,” and those who are firmly embedded in a kind of faith in materialism want to deride things that question that approach, I won’t go that route. I’ll embrace the notion that there is ‘another side of life.’ I don’t know what it is. I won’t be dogmatic about it. I’ll play with and listen to ideas. I’ll explore coincidences in life, wonder about deeper meanings of chance encounters or events or people that are in my life. I’ll reflect. I’ll think. I’ll not try to distract myself from really examining my life — and I’ll not let myself become comfortable with the absurdity of the world around me. As Pascal notes, “the heart has reasons that reason cannot understand.”

As someone who is most decidedly anti-fascist, I find that a dangerous state of mind. Fascism is not only real, but has many forms. It is not inherently anti-semitic, and in fact can appear quite benign. I won’t go into the academic debates about the meaning of the term, though wikipedia gives a good summary. They are concerned with political fascism, which is primarily a nationalist ideology which derives obedience from the masses through providing emotional outlets. It is anti-rational, anti-intellectual and anti-communist, even as it uses the tools of rationality and science to create a new form of collectivism.

In an era of globalization, when for most people the idea of war as a glorious endeavor is dead, that traditional form of fascism is currently in retreat. It shows itself at times in the fringes of anti-immigrant movements, or ultra-conservative efforts to regain ‘traditional values.’ However, the term itself doesn’t need to mean the particular manifestation as shown under Mussolini and Hitler. The term can be applied to modern politics and culture by looking at the fundamental core of fascism: control of the masses through emotion, myth making, and efforts to produce unity, a form of collectivism. Unlike Marxism, this collectivism is not based on material equality, but rather on a shared emotional devotion to something larger than the self. In politics, that has traditionally been the state or ones’ ethnic group.

At it’s core, devoid of particular political manifestations, fascism has some fundamental components:

1. People are manipulated by appealing to and in fact creating emotional reactions to various symbols and ideas. The focus is not on reason or the intellect; indeed, fascism is inherently anti-reason, but on emotion and sentiment.

2. Fascists use the tools of reason and rational thinking in order to manipulate. This includes rationalizations, propaganda, the creation of symbols with artificial and irrational forms of attachment, and strategies at studying human behavior to improve the ability to manipulate.

3. Fascists empower themselves through this manipulation, while creating a myth that all benefit from the success of the fascist movement. This again is done through myth and symbol, creating an emotional attachment of people to the system.

4. Fascists use the manipulation to mobilize people for action to benefit the system and particularly the elites. In the 20th century this meant warfare, with the symbols of the state becoming sacred (flags, anthems, etc.) and the state itself worshiped (pledges of allegiance, loyalty oaths). Military service is honored, and members of the military are revered as heroes.

One question that I have, continuing my thoughts from yesterday’s blog, is whether or not American consumerism can be seen as a form of fascism. On the one hand it isn’t overtly political, doesn’t embrace nationalism (indeed, markets are global) and isn’t supporting war (though it does led to the need for oil and other resources which does fuel wars). On the other hand, consumerism is at base emotional, and could be seen as a form of war on nature and even the developing world.

Think about it: we consume tremendous amounts of stuff, mostly based not on needs, but on wants created for us by an advertising and marketing industry that spends over $300 billion a year in the US alone (over ten times our foreign aid to third world states). This has led to pollution which threatens us with global warming, arming regimes that have oil, getting involved in wars, and allowing the developing world to persist in conditions ranging from poverty to chronic malnutrition, even as we are concerned with being to fat, or not having the newest computer software or designer suit. Moreover, it doesn’t even occur to most people to question that state of affairs, it is seen as natural.

As in fascism, this gets rationalized in the guise of market economics, though it goes far beyond the kind of capitalism envisioned by Adam Smith. And, of course, it’s contrasted with Communism, which overtly killed and abused people, making seem like we’re the good system and they were the bad. An artificial dualism cuts out alternatives that don’t fit within the ideological discourse. Moreover, this is done primarily by appealing to emotion, whether it is McDonalds commercials stressing friends and family, or efforts to create brand name loyalty through images and symbols. Mountain Dew gets imbued with the sense that it is the adventuresome drink, all because it spends millions showing teens doing daring things to “do the Dew.”

Clearly commercials and media efforts to create new “wants,” by making them seem like needs is through propaganda (advertising). Most things now deemed essential were luxuries not that long ago. In 1975 only the wealthy could buy a $1300 Betamax VCR. The tools of manipulation are very well thought out, integrating psychology, sociology, and marketing research. Yet the goal is to manipulate through emotions, and get people mobilized to consume and keep on consuming. Consume even as debt rises, even as costs soar, even as bubble after bubble inflates and pops. As a result people get caught up in the hypermaterialism of consumer society, made ignorant of culture and even world events due to a focus on consumption and news that is more entertainment than enlightenment. The gap between the rich and the poor polarizes ever farther, as this manipulation generates huge profits for corporate leaders, as well as political parties and candidates.

The parallels with fascism are disturbing, and could have severe negative consequences for the state of citizens both in terms of individual psychology and our sense of community. It could even set up the possibility of real political fascism, once the last bubble pops and the material goodies become harder to obtain. I’m intrigued by this admittedly politically incorrect comparison. Americans may be caught up in an irrational world of consumer materialism, oblivious to the damage it does to the planet, to the have nots on the planet, and even their own psychological state. In fact, I may turn this question into a major research project.

I cannot do justice to the argument or what we’ve covered in class in this blog. Suffice it to say that reason and rationality are tools with no center. They themselves contain no inherent meaning or answer about life’s values and ethics. These tools can be used to rationalize any behavior, build an ideology around any premise or assumption, and can be used by the powerful to manipulate the masses. One sees it with fascism, which uses enlightenment tools to create an anti-enlightenment mythology. One sees it with communism, which rationalizes atrocities and totalitarianism by positing an argument supposedly grounded in the objective laws of history. We also see it in capitalism, where we are manipulated to find meaning solely as consumers, our worth depends on the money we have, our value as humans is judged on the basis of our possession or status within the economic system. Or, as Benjamin Barber argues, consumerism “corrupts children, infantalizes adults and swallows citizens whole.”

In a society without any clear center of meaning, especially for those of us who are no longer able to hold to religious mythology or some kind of secular ideology for grounding, the challenge is immense. Either one finds a way to construct meaning for oneself in life, taking complete responsibility for ones’ happiness, defining success on ones’ own terms, and living an introspective and self-critical life, or one gets lost in a world of consumption and glitz. That world is one where humans are insatiable. One shops for the thrill of something new, and then finds out that once the rush wears off, the object no longer satisfies. Indeed, one may despair that the new car doesn’t have features that a friends’ has, or one can’t afford a higher end product. One works not to produce for the joy of production, but instead either to pay the bills or perhaps to get ahead. For the former its joyless drudgery, for the latter it’s finding meaning in a competition one cannot win. Small wonder that anxiety, stress and depression haunt our prosperous society.

Since nature is seen as an object to exploit, consumerism drives ever increasing use of resources that may become scarce, oil being the obvious one. Since we are disconnected from nature, the sense of wholeness one gets in communing with nature gets replaced by “isn’t that a beautiful scene, let’s take a picture of it.” But what if nature isn’t a bottomless pit of resources? What if cheap energy indeed does not last forever, and what if environmental damage such as global warming create future economic crises? Where will our society go?

Today as we shifted from background to moving towards post-war consumerism, we watched the film Triumph of Will, a Leni Riefenstahl masterpiece of propaganda. In it she chronicles the 1934 Nuremberg Nazi party convention. The film connects Hitler with all that is good about Germany, it’s traditions, the youth, and German music. Students watching admitted they had to remind themselves of what the film is about, so enticing were the emotional manipulations. Put in context, most have to admit that if they had lived in Germany at the time, it would have been hard not to support Hitler.

Hitler’s propaganda chief, Josef Goebbels, boasted that he learned everything he knew about propaganda from Madison avenue — the New York hub of the advertising business. If soap can be marketed, so can political parties and even leaders. The Nazis organized precincts (the first modern ‘get out the vote’ efforts), experimented with focus groups, and realized that the powerful can easily manipulate the masses. You appeal to emotion, fear, and hope. People need to believe they are part of something bigger than themselves. It’s the same dynamic that leads to team loyalty in sports, brand loyalty in consumption, and of course loyalty to political parties and leaders. Fans of talk radio or blogs on the left or right look not to critique their views and engage in debate, but to make arguments to support their side or take down the other side. They use reason and rationalizations to do so, but manipulate the starting assumptions in order to simply find a way to justify their conclusion.

One question that haunts me as I think about future crises, our world in transition, and the way we consumer citizens are manipulated is whether or not the stage is set for the rise of fascism here in America. Remember the knee jerk reactions after 9-11 to grab for the symbols of nationalism, to justify war, to justify not giving rights to enemy combatants, to see dissenters as unpatriotic or treasonous. In a longer, more profound crisis, I fear we could be manipulated to give up the very freedoms we hold dear. Indeed, there seems to have been a steady erosion of freedom in favor of power to the government in the years since WWII. After leaving class today, having watched those scenes from the 1934 Nazi Parteitag, I then read that Barack Obama will give his acceptance speech at a stadium in Denver which holds 75,000 people.

No, I don’t think Obama is a fascist. In fact, of all the politicians out there, he gives me more hope that we can chart a path to solve immense problems facing our country. Yet the ability of politicians to now create the larger than life aura that Hitler donned convinces me that our country is not immune from that path, and the militarism in the US since the end of the Cold War is disturbing. Americans think nothing of bombing other countries and killing other people, so long as we can keep shopping.

That, I believe, is because we are manipulated far more than we realize. And there might be answer. We are now in an information revolution that allows people to communicate, find information and organize in manners never before possible. The ability of leaders to get people to embrace one voice is giving away to fragmentation and multiple voices. Perhaps this will allow us to fight against external manipulation, overcome the meaningless era of consumption, and discover a set of post-enlightenment values that can re-establish our responsibility to create and cultivate not just material prosperity, but also spirit: creativity and meaning.

A few might privately admit it but refuse to admit publicly that it was a mistake. They don’t want to admit that the deaths were in vain, that the suffering caused to American troops and their families (let alone the Iraqis) was unnecessary. They want to hold on to the fiction that the war has been honorable. Some, especially Vietnam vets unable to make peace with the futility of that war, may think they owe it to today’s soldiers to make it seem as if the conflict had value. Yet, with Prime Minister Nouri Maliki calling for a time table on Iraq, it’s becoming clear that Iraq is unwilling to give the US the long term presence the Bush administration hoped for, and in fact Iraq is likely to be emerge close to Iran, strengthening our true rival in the region. The public clearly wants out, and is prepared to elect a President who will not want to stay in Iraq.

So the pro-war crowd can either acknowledge reality (some have, to be sure), or they can find a way to try to save face: act is if this all was a success. How can they do it?

First, try to claim that this was a war against al qaeda in Iraq, and point to the success in weakening that group. That’s a very dubious and disingenuous argument, given that al qaeda only came to Iraq after we invaded, but given the short attention span of many Americans, it might work for some. It’s also clear that al qaeda in Iraq was always very weak, a tiny portion of the insurgency. Things got better when the US gave up trying to defeat the Sunni insurgents. Instead, we gave in to them, allowed them to keep their militias and avoid penetration by the central Iraqi government. They then turned on al qaeda, which was never a true threat to take power in Iraq.

Second, claim the Sunnis are on board with the new Iraq. They aren’t; they don’t trust the central government, they control things in their own regions, and they maintain their militias. Yet in exchange for that they agree not to fight against the Shi’ites or rekindle the 2006 civil war (which was about the central government failing to extend such control). That’s a loss for the US policy goal, but because they’re not fighting, well, people might believe that little lie.

Third, claim that Shi’ite militants are weakened, and al Sadr isn’t a problem. Al Sadr is no weaker now than in 2005, he’s always been strong only in a few regions. And he is still relevant, and connected to both Iran and, ironically, Maliki. He’s playing a game designed to get the US out, and his pressure is one reason why Maliki wants a time table. Yet ridiculing al Sadr and mocking him can create the illusion he’s been defeated, and the hawks really are playing for illusions now. This also means ignoring that in Shi’ite areas women are far worse off than under Saddam, that militias still provide most security, and religious police are all over the place, inforcing a strict moral code. That also requires ignoring Iran’s penetration of both the Iraqi government and existing militia groups. But Americans aren’t paying attention.

The pro war hawks who want to save face have to avoid talking about the war in cost-benefit terms. There are few if any benefits, and immense costs. Even the CIA think al qaeda in general is stronger now than in 2001, and in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the real terrorists lurk, the US has seen conditions deteriorate over the last year. Certainly the Iraq war, which turned out to be rather meaningless if costly, diverted attention from those battles. They have to somehow focus on Saddam being gone as “good,” and ignore the price that achieving that good cost (at a much lower price we could take out Mugabe, but few people are calling for that!)

However, if Americans really want to learn from this fiasco, and avoid repeating it, these face saving lies should be rejected. Iraq is neo-imperialism gone bad. It was a desire to project US power in a way that was supposed to cause fundamental change in the region towards democracy and markets. Instead, it accomplished nothing of value for the US, and has left numerous orphans, widows and dead civilians in Iraq. In the US, there is the obscene site of “pro-military” folk defending a policy which was unnecessary, but has led to mental illness, suicide, divorce, broken families, domestic and child abuse, and long term mental illness as many soldiers were forced back for numerous tours of duty. That was to save face for an administration which did not want to admit their errors.

I am cautiously optimistic that this nightmare is almost over for Americans. We will be paying the price for decades, however. I am less optimistic about the future for Iraqis, whose children have grown up with violence all around them, and whose society remains divided and thoroughly corrupt. I don’t think most Americans truly appreciate the moral bankruptcy of our Iraq policy; I think people are so taken by the mythology of war and militarism that they don’t comprehend the scope of the horror we’ve inflicted. Even violence not done directly by us took place because of conditions we put in place.

I wrote yesterday about the 90s as a decade of illusions. The Iraq war this decade was based on the most malicious and dangerous kind of delusion: that choosing to kill and destroy without provocation can lead to better conditions. This illusion has been shattered as well. We will pay a price, but if we reject the self-serving attempts by the pro-war crowd to save face and star into reality with a cold, clear conscience, we can learn something from this to prevent us from taking that path again. And if Iraq war hawks want to engage in honest self-reflection about their motives and assumptions, perhaps they’ll realize that it’s worse to lose reason than to lose face.

As we near the end of the first decade of the 21st century it may be possible to look back and think about what the last decade of the 20th century, the 1990s, was all about.. I’m increasingly convinced that it will be remembered as the decade of illusions, starting with the apparent victory over Iraq in 1991, and defined by massive budget surpluses, cheap oil, a roaring stock market, and an illusion that American power was such that the country was invulnerable and poised for a century of growth and prosperity.  Don Henley probably captured it best with his 2000 album Inside Job and especially the cut “Workin’ It.”

The scenes we remember from the 90s seem almost trivial. Sure, there is the drama of the first Gulf War, and who can forget the Time magazine cover of the refugees fleeing Kosovo. But much of the 90s seemed to be about fluff. The OJ Simpson case, talk radio, Monica Lewinsky, and Republican attempts to take down Clinton over issues that had little to do with anything of substance. Clinton himself seemed more show than substance, talking a great talk, but unable to intervene in Rwanda or use the decade of cheap oil and balanced budgets to prepare the country for the future.

As oil prices plummeted, we had a chance to invest significant sums of money into research on alternate energy sources, and fund efforts to build more energy efficient cities and towns. Instead we bought SUVs and partied on the highways. Now we are faced with the prospect of permanent energy crises and shortages in coming years, utterly unprepared and apparently unwilling to prepare. According to some energy analysts, it could even mean civilizational collapse.

The victory over Iraq in 1991 seemed so complete and unquestioned that the idea we’d be bogged down against Iraq at some point in the future would have been laughable. Our military was powerful, and could defeat the fourth largest land army in the world with hardly any casualties — and most of the soldiers killed were killed by friendly fire. The debacle in Kosovo should have showed us that this sense of military power was an illusion — defeating armies does not create political and social realities — but Clinton was a master at papering over difficulties, and soon the country was sold on the idea that Kosovo was a victory. The Soviet Union was gone, no country was close to us in military power, we were invulnerable and many started dreaming that the judicious use of our power could reshape the Middle East and perhaps create a world that would follow western and American ideals. It was fashionable to consider us the “new Rome.”

In the 2000 election campaign candidate Bush promised tax cuts because budget surpluses were so large that all the tax cuts would do is cut down future surpluses. Economists were warning that paying down the debt too quickly would be counter productive. Who’d have thought that a few years later our deficits would again be in record territory, and debt would double? As the stock market soared throughout the decade people thought the future would be one where anyone could be rich. On the day Nasdaq hit 5011 TV pundit James Cramer predicted it would soon get to 8000 and then soar higher. Other pundits talked about Dow 60,000 or even Dow 100,000. The new economy was leading us into a world of plenty and prosperity, only those dumb enough not to invest would miss out. March 11, 2000 was the high point for the stock market, it’s collapse started long before 9-11. The Dow is currently hovering around that 2000 level; the Nasdaq remains at less than half what it was. Slowly our illusions are being shattered by reality. Even the housing market bubble, which persevered through 2005, popped in 2007, and has spawned a credit crisis whose scope we do not yet know for sure..

For me the 90’s began on January 16, 1991 with the start of the war against Iraq, and ended on September 11, 2001. I recall on the 4th of July 1991 as I observed fireworks along the Mississippi river in Minneapolis (amusingly when the first pops were heard bats flew out of the trees and scared people there in a very brief scene reminisicient of Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’), wondering if, in this post-war euphoria of having “kicked Saddam’s ass” we might not have set ourselves up for real long term problems — that we were in a world of false confidence. The illusions of the 90s made me think that those concerns were misplaced — the US seemed to be moving onward and upward. But on September 11, 2001 the first of those illusions — our invulnerability — was shattered. We are now coming face to face with reality.

This decade has been the shattering of those illusion. The stock market boom and new economy now is a distant memory. Cheap energy is gone, probably forever. The property bubble that allowed people to turn their homes into ATM cards and find a cheap way to gain wealth after the stock bubble collapsed, has also fallen. Now we stand face to face with the reality that we are not the emerging unipolar power, but a country with severe economic challenges. We rely on China for consumer goods, and Saudi Arabia for oil. Each control massive amounts of US currency and investment, and could choose to devastate our economy if they wanted. We aren’t impotent, but we have been snapped back to earth by a decade that has served as a cold wake up call, with the Iraq war especially helping lay bare our weaknesses.

The 90s saw us living in a fools’ paradise, partying in the belief that seductive illusions were obvious reality. Those illusions shattered this decade. In the next ten years, we’ll either face these issues seriously and effectively, or we’ll cling to illusions and find ourselves even worse off than before.  We definitely live in interesting times.

I live now in Maine, but I grew up on the prairie, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. North of Sioux Falls about sixty or so miles is the small town of De Smet. When I was in third grade I started saving my allowance (50 cents and later on a buck a week) to buy books by Laura Ingalls Wilder (they were less than $5 a book, hardback). I was just eight when I bought my first one (On the Banks of Plum Creek) and the people at Courtney’s Books and Things would expect me every four weeks as I had saved up enough for the next book. I completed the collection in less than two years (my favorite: The Long Winter). The wonderful true stories of the Ingalls family moving from Wisconsin to Kansas, Minnesota, and finally being part of the group that founded De Smet stimulated my imagination. Laura wrote the books as children’s books to tell her story of growing up in the 1870s and 1880s as part of one of those families who were moving west, on the frontier and ultimately homesteading. I was as a kid a true Laura Ingalls Wilder fan, those books (which still sit on my shelf, I’m glancing at them now) were perhaps one of the greatest outside influences on my thinking as I grew up. Besides coloring how I look at life, they even affected music I liked at the time (Sweet Caroline by Neil Diamond, Laura by the Newbeats), and to this day my answer to the question “what historical figure would you most like to have dinner with” is Laura Ingalls Wilder. (Oh, I hated the TV show, they veered far too far from the real story).

I still re-read those books every few years. One thing I notice now, which I didn’t at the time, is how utterly dirt poor they were, especially in the early books. They were living on less than the basics. Christmas was a few bits of candy sometimes, and even as she got older and the family was more settled, they still lived what we would consider on the edge of poverty. Mary caught scarlet fever and went blind. They barely survived the brutal winter of 1880-81. Yet in the stories her life seems magical and wonderful. Clearly they had something — a close and loving family — which added a richness that goes far beyond what material possessions can offer.

Pa, her dad, who loved to play the fiddle and one summer had to walk hundreds of miles away to work and earn enough money for the family to survive, hated to be closed in, and constantly was on the move to strike out somewhere new. First it was to leave stuffy comfortable Wisconsin for the wild plains of Kansas. When the government pushed them off their land, they came up to Minnesota, then west to Dakota. He wanted to live free of constraints, in a place where he could make his own way. He thought South Dakota was getting too crowded and wanted to move on to Montana. But ma (Caroline) said no more moving, and Charles Ingalls and family remained in De Smet.

Two of the values which stand out in these books are family and a desire for freedom. While these values are universal, they get expressed with an American flair. Family as a source of strength is something most Americans hold on to, but with divorce rates at 50%, and modern demands and materialism as it is, it becomes hard to do that. Still, one sees in the books that a caring, loving environment, where parents give support, encouragement, and time to their children, means more than all the toys, gameboy and DVDs in the world. That is a value we’re losing; the material prosperity of the last century has yielded a kind of spiritual poverty. It’s hard to describe what that means exactly, but it’s something one can’t help but be struck by in reading Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books.

I suspect that in our modern, wealthy, materialist world, a lot of children (and adults) get so caught up in the possessions game that they don’t recognize that true happiness comes not from what we have, but from within, helped by friends and family around us. Possessions can give a mild rush, but like a drug it wears off. Unfortunately, this American value is perhaps the most endangered. People are living from rush to rush buying new possessions, and that addiction is choking off the true path to happiness. Are most of today’s plugged in possession laden children happier than Laura was? I doubt it. Those who are happy are likely happy due to their family and friends, not their stuff.

Prototypically American is Charles Ingalls’ desire to live completely free, and through hard work build a life for himself and his family. The idea of a whole continent laying ahead, with dangers and challenges, spurred generations of early Americans to leave everything behind (no remaining in contact by e-mail or phone), risk it all, to try to make something new. The desire to be free. (The cynical side of me has to add that, like today, Americans saw their conquest as being good — it’s good when American power expands and it’s good for others to be forced to adopt the way of life. But in reality this lead to the destruction of numerous cultures, a low tech holocaust that most Americans still don’t recognize).

Still, inherent in this American view of freedom was: a) a willingness to risk; b) a willingness to work hard and take responsibility for your life; and c) a willingness to work with others. Towns worked together, neighbors helped each other, there was perhaps by necessity a link between the raw individualism of Pa Ingalls and the communal spirit of much of what he and others of the time were engaged in. There isn’t a contradiction here — he was freely choosing to help and allow himself to be helped, such was the culture of that time and place. America at its best represents freedom, individual responsibility, and a sense of cooperation and community. A communal form of freedom is uniquely American, and it to is under assault from the growing sense that freedom simply means being able to amass all the wealth one can and do whatever one wants without a sense of responsibility for the community at large. On the right this gets exhibited as an embracing of the free market and capitalism, on the left this gets exhibited as simply handing the problem to government. Both sides are missing something important; the issue isn’t how to deal with common problems, the issue is fostering a sense of community, a sense that people want to work together to solve problems.

I’ll wrap up by saying that I urge everyone out there to buy the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. If you have kids, it’s a necessity. But even if you don’t, you’ll learn something about our country, our values, and also what we’ve lost by reading the wonderful tales of a young girl growing up poor, but in a close knit family on the northern plains. The times have changed. Urbanization, complexity, and prosperity make the kind of wide open life style Pa Ingalls so coveted impossible. Mobility separates families; my mother and one sister is in Sioux Falls still, the other sister in Las Vegas. On my wife’s side we’d have to travel to Syktyvkar, Russia, Moscow, or Neuwied, Germany. But as my sons (ages 5 and 2 1/2) grow, with all their days, with both parents working, and a comfortable lifestyle, I know that my goal is to instill the values incorporated in the Little House books.

And when I think about America and what I value in this country, I think about how a desire for freedom, a willingness to work with community, and an emphasis on love and family define the essence of this country’s core values. I think we’ve drifted, and the modern complex superpower reality makes it hard for us to truly hold on to those values. But more than any flag, song, war or monument, they define what is great about America, and we need to find a way to express those values in a 21st century reality.