This is part 5 in the series “Islam and the West.” Click the link under pages or at the top of the page to read what the purpose of this series is. Only about one blog entry a week is dedicated to this series. There are links to the first four parts of the series at the end of this post.

As noted last time, Muhammad’s teachings challenged the very nature of Quraysh rule in Mecca. It wasn’t because he was a monotheist - the Quraysh had tolerated many of those. Rather, he was challenging the distribution of wealth, the treatment of the poor, and doing it from inside the Banu Hasim, a powerful Quraysh clan. So powerful was the clan that until Muhammad’s uncle Abu Talib died, Muhammad was protected. After his death, and that of Muhammad’s wife Khadija, the Quraysh decided to simply eliminate the Prophet.

Muhammad was smart enough to realize that if he stayed in Mecca he’d die; if his followers left en masse they’d be noticed and likely slaughtered. So instead they slowly left town, Muhammad missing death by one day, heading for the city of Yathrib, where Muhammad was to act as an Hakim to settle a dispute. It’s unclear how Muhammad rose to prominance in Yathrib, a city known for producing dates, with a large number of Jewish clans. Islamic tradition makes it appear that upon his arrival Muhammad was greeted as leader; that seems unlikely. However, over time he and his community became dominant.

Rather than go through the details of the battles between the Quraysh and the Ummah, or community of believers, I want to focus on Muhammad’s notion of Jihad, developed during this time. In my opinion many non-Muslims and some Muslims have lost sight of Muhammad’s intent. First, he made a distinction between higher and lower jihad. The higher jihad is the most important; it is the ‘fight of faith’ to stay pure and moral in a world filled with temptation. It is ones’ personal battle against ones’ own desires. The lower jihad meant to defend Islam from those who would do it harm. It was based on the need to defend the early Ummah from the Quraysh.

Thus part of the Koran is concerned with those battles. In one infamous passage Muhammad says to his followers “kill the polytheists, kill them while they sleep…” This is in preparation for the battle against the powerful Meccans, but has been interpreted by many in the West and even some Muslims as a command to kill polytheists anywhere. Christians are polytheists from the Muslim perspective, since they believe the trinity represents three Gods. Of course, Muhammad did not mean that. There is no way one can have such an interpretation alongside the special privileges given to the ‘people of the book’ (Jews and Christians), the demand that there be no compulsion in religion, and more importantly, the Quran’s command that one not fight against a foe who does not want to fight.

In another famous incident, the Ummah butchered the Banu Qurayza, a Jews tribe living in Yathrib (later renamed Medina - the city of the Prophet), killing the men and sending women and children into slavery, as per Arab custom. This is often put forth as a sign of Muhammad’s brutality and anti-Jewish bigotry. However, such an interpretation is completely ignorant of the historical context. Muhammad had been betrayed by other local tribal leaders, who bet that the Quraysh would defeat the Ummah, and thus be in a position to grant them favors. Muhammad had defied Arab custom and the law of retribution by refusing to kill the men and enslave the women and children. Instead, he allowed them to leave in peace. He did this a couple times, causing many of Muhammad’s followers to believe that this emboldened groups like the Qurayza to decide they had little to lose if they betrayed Muhammad — and a lot to gain from the Quraysh. So when they betrayed the Muslims at a crucial point in the conflict Muhammad’s people were incensed — not just at the betrayal but at how Muhammad’s apparent softness had made it seem like the worst that could happen if you failed is that you’d be sent into exile (perhaps to return once Muhammad was defeated).

Muhammad thus acquiesced, though he himself could not order the destruction of the Banu Qurayza. Instead, he left it in the hands of an Hakim, who ruled that traditional Arab custom should be followed. Looking at the story as a whole, Muhammad was clearly not anti-Jewish (some of the tribes he let go earlier were Jewish), and in fact the religion of the tribe had nothing to do with what happened — it was the betrayal to the Quraysh. These kinds of misunderstandings pepper the western comprehension of “jihad,” and give ammunition to Islamophobic propagandists who apparently want a conflict with Islam, even though they can’t quite explain how one might win such a ‘clash of civilizations.’

All that said, there remains a fundamental difference between the pacifistic other-wordliness of Jesus and Augustine, and Muhammad’s fight against the Quraysh. Jesus preached an essentially spiritual view of religion, more oriented toward faith than practice. Muhammad was a social reformer, and the Ummah would develop rituals of practice to solidify community bonds. Like Judaism, Islam is a praxis-oriented religion rather than faith-oriented. While Jesus and Augustine focused on saving ones’ soul, Muhammad focused on fighting injustice and improving society. Early Christianity was in the world but not of the world. Islam was in the world with the goal of transforming the world. Moreover, Christianity became powerful as Europe declined into the dark ages; Islam was a force by which the Arab and Persian worlds would form great empires. In politics, the leaders of both the Christian and Muslim worlds would often veer far from the ideals of their founders.

In future entries into this series we’ll delve more into what these differences mean. However the “lower jihad,” like “just war” was meant to limit acceptable acts of war and civilize Arab customs. Both want the innocents to be protected, both want warfare to be defensive, and both condemn trying to use war to spread their religion. Because Muhammad’s reforms were in the practical world of politics, and Islam defended itself through war while the early Christians suffered from the political powers, Islam more quickly moved to turn the religion into a rationalization of violence, something it would take the Christians hundreds of years to accomplish. But at base, the two faiths have more in common than not, and both are justifiably labeled religions of peace, even if political leaders have often used religion as a rationale for war.

Previous entries in the 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)

No matter what bad habits, negative behaviors, or problems people possess, they usually stick with them until reality becomes so bad that they are forced to change. Alcoholics have to hit bottom, credit card debtors with a real problem have to get the point where they can’t find more credit, gambling addicts lose their home and family. Up until reality forces change it is easier to blame others, blame the situation, or see oneself as a kind of victim. This is also a problem in politics.

In politics, people stick to the same policies, ideologies and beliefs they held in the past, no matter what the consequences. Democrats remained convinced governmental solutions are best, even though there is evidence that one should really be skeptical of government bureaucracy, while Republicans often believe that the market will solve all our ills, and seem oblivious to our weaknesses on the world stage.

An example is the issue of global warming. It’s easy to avoid confronting the problem by just chalking up tornados, floods, melting ice caps, record heat and consistently rising temperatures to something natural — as if we could dump massive amounts of CO2 in a dynamic atmosphere without it having an impact. Not only that, but there is a cottage industry of well funded deniers out there who will go to great lengths to argue their position, driven by a political or ideological agenda rather than science. Many aren’t malicious; they’ve truly convinced themselves that they are the ones who can see the situation clearly — even though they are usually like minded political types who are in contradiction from scientists across the political spectrum.

I witnessed that on one blog, Q & O, where the main blogger routinely scours the news for anything that might lean one to question any aspect of global warming research. He posts it as if it is a refutation of the entire theory, ignoring the numerous studies and the vast consensus that otherwise dominate. He comes up with wild claims about volcanoes causing the ice melt, and ridicules the scientific community as if somehow any rational person would reject the idea of humans being part of the cause of global warming. It’s so bad that some of one blog commentator, caught up in groupthink, said he thought it is irrational for one to actually believe scientific consensus. They are absolutely convinced are they that they’ve shot holes in the theory, which somehow the real scientists don’t see. They ignore the arguments and studies supporting the consensus and often make arguments that are anti-scientific (e.g., science has been wrong in the past so it’s likely wrong now) or post conspiracy theories very insulting to scientists, claiming, for instances, scientists just want government money and that requires they toe the global warming line.

A similar dynamic is seen from those denying evolution. You read the websites by creationists, and they have the same myriad of studies which, if read without regard to the real science, would make it appear that the theory of evolution is absolutely untenable. They have the same kind of alternate explanations, and hurl the same derision and scorn on the scientific community. Irony of ironies, both the global warming deniers and the evolution deniers try to claim the other side is driven by political bias not to accept the “true” science. Yet the consensus against them runs across the political and even religious spectrum, while the denier communities tend to be narrow, like minded folk talking more to each other than trying to really examine the vast array of data out there.

To be sure, it is possible that global warming is natural, just as it’s possible the world was created by intelligent design and evolution is misguided. It is worth looking at and considering the counter evidence. But to simply choose that which fits ones’ beliefs and grasp it while ignoring the rest or ridiculing it is outside the realm of clear thinking.

Yet while such groups stand out, they aren’t necessarily the majority. Blogs, a fragmented media, and an information revolution create the possibility to move beyond such ideology-driven thinking. And those who now use the new media the most — students — are becoming cynical about pat ideologies and seem to see through the community-oriented group think of people like the evolution and global warming deniers. Perhaps being part of this information revolution from the get go, the up and coming generation is discovering how to think across various perspectives and spectrums. They are emerging as a post-ideological generation, which I believe is a good thing. Perhaps this will yield a society that avoids the kind of battles of the 20th century, where groups divided up, were happy with labels like ‘left’ and ‘right,’ and defined some group as an ideological boogey man (socialists, liberals, conservatives, etc.) and put their group as the truly thoughtful and reasonable ones, more in touch with reality.

Anyone who traverses the new media and variety of perspectives can’t help but see just how silly such an ideology-based version of reality is. In the past, that was easy to maintain, and if one stays in a small blog world focused on ideological conflict with the other side, or talking to like minded folk, this can still be maintained. However, young people seem willing to talk across perspectives and think outside of ideological blocks. For them, the vast array of available information gives them tools to avoid that kind of ideological straight jacket.

Maybe I’m being idealistic, but if we’re going to solve the problems that are causing rising energy prices, strange weather, and terrorism, we need a generation to break out of the stale kind of ideology-driven thinking of the past. To do that, my generation can learn a lot from today’s youth.

UPDATE: I should point out that I have not taken a stand here on what to do about global warming; I’m not sure.  I think working for a culture shift is more effective than just regulations.  In fact, I think those who use global warming denial as the tactic for fighting against regulations do themselves a disservice, they’d be more effective if they’d actually talk about the problems with regulatory answers.

Hillary Clinton ran an excellent campaign during the primary season, and if the structure of the primaries had been different, she might have been the nominee. She has handled herself with class and grace since the defeat, quickly reading the writing on the wall, apparently having an easier time coping with reality than her husband. Yesterday she met with Barack Obama in Unity, New Hampshire — a place where they split the vote evenly during the New Hampshire primary — to reinforce the idea that they are working together to defeat Barack Obama.

What I find more interesting are the “Hillary Cultists” out there, almost psychotic in their rabid hatred of Barack Obama (and his supporters) determined to claim some kind of victimhood over their candidate’s loss. You can find their rants at “the Confluence,” which sounds like they are trying hard to convince themselves they are right, or “no quarter,” a place where the man who gave us the Michelle Obama video rumor continues to try to fly rumor whispers about Rezko, Obama’s birth certificate, or probably soon, his association with Martians. And though he has been shown to be wrong so often, the true believers who want to believe that Obama will somehow disappear keep coming back. Finally there is a truly bizarre site, “Hillary is 44,” with a photo of Hillary which appears to be from back when she was 44 years old. These folk wear their hatred of Obama on their sleeves as they whine about how they’re victims to the sexism of the Democratic party. Lastly, there is “Hillbuzz,” which seems to be obsessed with with the Chicago gay pride parade (huh?)

What drives these people? To be sure, if Hillary had won and Obama had lost I would probably be posting about Obama diehards, who would be complaining of racism, cronyism, and inside party big wig deals. They would be perhaps even more evident on the web, given that Obama’s supporters tend to be more active in the blogosphere and web discussion groups. This isn’t about Clinton or anything particular about her supporters, it’s about that subset of supporters in both campaigns who can’t let go of their emotion and instead become dogmatic, irrational, and angry.

Moreover, this does not include everyone who doesn’t switch support from Clinton to Obama. Many people aren’t driven by ideology and just go by who they identify with more. Some who liked Clinton just prefer McCain to Obama. Some have decided that they want to support Nader. That’s fine. I’m talking about that small minority who hold on to their bitterness and anger, turn it into rage against Obama and his supporters, and despite claiming to be life long Democrats or progressive/liberals have decided they prefer McCain to Obama. I mean those people who have fallen into a state that brings to mind the phrase the ‘cult of personality,’ where they are so focused on the person they identify with that the issues and larger picture becomes secondary. They truly believe the DNC conspired against Clinton, that this is unfair, and that they have been mistreated. It is not a rational belief.

The most bizarre argument they make is that Roe v. Wade doesn’t matter because the Court already has the votes to overturn it.  That’s doubtful, but if that were true that would be all the more reason to take that issue seriously, you would think they’d want a President who could change that balance, or at least prevent it from getting even worse.  But they are definitely not thinking rationally, it’s raw emotion.

Part of this is par for the course in politics. Campaigns are emotional, and people naturally become very intensely bound up in their candidate, especially if they are contributing money, time and effort on her behalf. It’s not easy to break that; it’s not easy to go from seeing the opponent and bad, someone who must be defeated, to accepting that the game is over and while close, your person lost. People want to blame the loss on nefarious elements, people in our culture embrace a victim mentality.

Most pundits believe that despite it’s close and hard fought nature, the Clinton-Obama fight was relatively mild; both held back because they knew that going negative would hurt them in the eyes of the Democratic electorate. Yet in the emotion of a campaign, supporters remember those moments when there was something offensive said, or an attack that seemed unfair. They remember process questions they lost, things that maybe should have been done differently. They fixate on these, go over them in their minds until they become so important that they construct a barrier that makes it impossible to let go. Both sides do it, but the winner can more easily let go since they have the prize; those on the losing side find it difficult.

On top of that, websites and discussion groups allow supporters who don’t want to let go of the emotion and accept that they lost to reinforce each others’ sense of victimization and unfairness. They bolster each others’ denial. And because of their bitterness, they draw angry comments from the other side, insults from Obama supporters which serve only to reinforce their sense of righteousness and victimhood. In fact, I suspect a lot of Republicans are playing this game pretending to be Hillary or Obama supporters in order to try to keep bitterness alive.

So the result is a small cadre of true believers, unable to distinguish reality from their emotional connection to an individual, driven to hate the other side and the other candidate. They feel self-righteous, believe that they see better the reality than do others, become more like cultists than activists. And if they are active on those websites, they’ll start feeling a groupthink loyalty to other like minded folk, and thus push aside any temptation to rethink their position. It becomes more jihad than political campaign.

The sad thing is that if Barack Obama wins, they will not enjoy the Democratic victory. While most Democrats would feel that this would clear away the wounds of the 2000 election, and create a chance at a real Democratic majority (since the Democrats are almost certain to gain in the House and Senate), the Hillary diehards will feel angry and impotent. They will be those few Americans who felt cheated in both 2000 and 2008, unable to join their fellow progressives and Democrats in celebration. If Obama loses, they’ll have a Pyhrric victory. It’ll be the kind of petty “I’m glad something bad happened to someone I don’t like” satisfaction, even while watching their policy preferences become less likely to be achieved.

For their sake, one hopes that the group of Hillary diehards slowly wake up to reality, and the emotion of the fall campaign starts pushing out the residual emotion of the spring campaign.

This is the final entry in a week of blog entries responding to various readings discussed at the UMF Summer experience. Today I consider “The Answer,” by Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962).

When I first taught at Summer Experience, I was researching Robinson Jeffers and found a quote from him that I really liked: “Long live freedom and damn the ideologies!” In The Answer, one gets the sense that Jeffers could see the gathering storm. He wrote it in 1937. Perhaps he was thinking of Germany when he wrote “To know that great civilizations have broken down into violence, and their tyrants come, many times before.” Perhaps as we deal with the possibility of our society in crisis due to terrorism, oil price increases and potential economic collapse we can remember his advice: “When open violence appears, to avoid it with honor or choose the least uglyl faction; these evils are essential. To keep one’s own integrity, be merciful and uncorrupted, and not wish for evil, and not get duped by dreams of universal justice or happiness.”

There is so much in that section! First, concepts such as integrity, mercy and remaining uncorrupted are outside any particular ideology or faction. They are human values that almost everyone cherishes, whatever ones’ views or perspectives. Perhaps we should focus there first. And in 1937 he no doubt saw many being duped by dreams of universal justice and happiness. Ideology provides a world view that tries to diagnose what is wrong with our society, and then offer a solution. The solution sounds wonderful — universal justice, happiness, and a better world. But it doesn’t work, and when it doesn’t work, these ideologies find villains, people whose action or ideas are blamed with preventing the attainment of that perfect society. These villains must be eliminated, their selfish interests prevent achievement of the greater good. That sounds seductively logical, but leads to horrific evil, evil seen far too often in the 20th century.

Jeffers was criticized for opposing US involvement in WWII. We’ll never know what would have happened had the US not gotten involved; the winners write the history books and it’s unquestioned conventional wisdom that WWII was a ‘good war.’ I’m not sure; perhaps if the US had not embraced going to war we could have been in a position to prevent the holocaust, perhaps neither Communism nor Fascism would have survived. But it’s a sad testament to political correctness that standing on ones’ principles can lead one to be ostracized, after his opposition to the war he was never as popular again.

He goes on: “To know this, and know that however ugly the parts appear the whole remains beautiful.” This shows another problem with ideological and utopian thought. Instead of seeing the whole and recognizing a fundamental beauty (or as Aldo Leopold says in his piece, to “think like a mountain,”) we see bits and pieces of ugliness and try to figure out a way to remedy it, often ignoring the unintended consequences of such action.

“A severed hand is an ugly thing, and man disservered from the earth and stars and his history…for contemplation or in fact…often appears atrociouusly ugly.” I’ve thought a lot about this line. We humans often like to see ourselves as completely independent and autonomous. We are not part of the earth, we dominate it. History is not a part of us, it is something that happened before us. Thus we ignore that we are a product of both nature and our past, and when we disconnect and try to simply analyze reality and come up with our answer of what to do to make things better, the result can be extremely ugly. Ideology, religious fundamentalism, dogmatism of any sort, abstract thought which dehumanizes others and sees nature as merely an object to control, all yield ugliness of the worst sort.

“Integrity is wholeness, the greatest beauty is organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty of the universe. Love that, not man apart from that, or else you will share man’s pitiful confusions or drown in despair when his days darken.” Such an appropriate statement during the depression and just before World War II! Living in times or places of injustice, poverty and despair can suck the soul out of someone. It’s easy to get depressed, or grab on to an ideology that promises some kind of salvation from these conditions. But if that salvation separates humans from other people and from nature, denies the ‘wholeness of life and things,’ and replaces the divine beauty of the universe with the faux beauty of how people imagine the universe should be, it leads to “man’s pitiful confusions,” which to me means ideology, dogmatism and extremism.

Now we are in a time of crisis and transition. It’s unclear from where the challenge will come. As the stock market continues to drop, oil prices rise, and pessimistic predictions increase, people will be tempted to embrace answers that blame others and push an extremist agenda. Leaders will demand loyalty, excuses will be made for fighting wars, imprisoning innocents, and turning people against each other. Others will look at increasing difficulties in life and despair. What kind of world are we leaving our children?! Will our jobs be here ten years from now? Twenty? Will we be able to travel and enjoy the kind of lifestyle we’ve gotten used to?

To Jeffers there is one way not to drown in either despair or delusion: keep integrity, remember that the whole is beautiful, and that reality unfolds the way it will, the ugliness is necessary, even if we can’t understand why or how at any given point in time. We need to cling to our integrity, honor and mercy, and avoid as much as possible the violence and anger that consumes so many.

Remembering that, we can consider the genocide in Rwanda, the horrors of the 20th century, the poverty we see today in the third world, and the potential disasters of the future without losing our optimism, idealism and love for life and nature. Because, after all, a life without optimism and joy is a wasted life.

As noted, this week is summer experience for first year students at UMF, so I’m commenting each day on one of the readings students are discussing. Today I’ll react to “Violence: the Double Standard” by Howard Zinn (1922 - ).

Howard Zinn notes the violent way in which our society developed; that goes along with the talk we had Tuesday by artist/peace activist Rob Shetterly on the struggle it took to move from a constitution that guaranteed rights only to part of society, leaving out women, blacks (who were slaves) and the poor. Indeed, looked at through Zinn’s analysis, the US has undergone a constant low level civil war, in which over time the privileged elite have been forced against their will to grant rights to those lacking privilege and wealth. And, given the extreme polarity in the current distribution of wealth, the elites are obviously still in control.

It occurs to me, though, that this criticism of how Americans view their own history can be extended to how we in the West view our culture and society. We see progress and enlightenment and ignore, excuse or dismiss the violence that defines it, even today in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. If you read pundits on the right, for instance, you would think that Islam and the Islamic world is a uniquely violent culture. They point out, correctly, that Islam spread by force through northern Africa, into India, Asia, and parts of Europe. They note that non-Muslims, while tolerated, had to pay a special tax which denied them equal rights. They also point to texts from the Koran, taken out of context, which suggest that Muslims should fight the ‘polytheists and idolaters’ to the end – conveniently ignoring that these passages refer specifically to the Quarysh, who were in a bitter struggle against the Ummah, or community of believers, and not to all non-Muslims. They also ignore how the Koran admonishes Muslims not be aggressors, not to fight if the enemy does not wish to fight, and to protect the lives of innocents.

If you really want to see a culture that has a violent history, look in at the West. From the reformation to WWII, from development of modern weaponry to nuclear bombs, the West has been the most violent and destructive culture on the planet. The West has spawned ideologies like communism which has lead to genocides and severe repression. Colonialism from the West destroyed political cultures across Africa, Latin America, and Asia, leading to broken systems now torn apart by corruption and poverty. It was the Belgians who divided Tutsi and Hutu and gave the former special privileges, setting up the violent ethnic clashes that would lead to the Rwandan genocide. Spain was slaughtering native American tribes with a ‘convert or die’ message. It was Germany, the home of many great western ideas, which gave us the holocaust and Nazism. Even America, built on ideals of freedom and liberty, has engaged in imperialism, destroyed numerous indigenous peoples on the continent in what now would be labeled genocide, and now spends half the world’s military budget, using violence that kills more innocents than insurgents to try to shape the political systems of other parts of the globe.

Before you get defensive, I am not saying the West is evil, nor do I think we who inherit that tradition have to live in shame or try to undo all past wrongs. Rather, I’m pointing out that it is hypocritical to attack Islam for its past while turning a blind eye to the history of the West. This is precisely the kind of thing Zinn is talking about in his article, there is a real double standard at work here. We ignore how at the time of the crusades, for instance, the Christians demanded the Muslims ‘covert or die’ when Jerusalem was taken, while the Muslims refused to avenge those acts when they took Jerusalem back. It was the Muslims that showed far greater compassion and civilization at that time.

It is hypocritical to focus on the good the West has done while ignoring the good in Islam and the Koran. The fact of the matter is that Islam and the West both have violent pasts, and both have honorable ideals. And, while political correctness on the left is wrong to say we shouldn’t talk about the dark side of Islamic history, political correctness on the right is wrong to say we shouldn’t talk about the dark side of Western history. Let’s start from an admission that neither culture can really claim virtue in its history, no matter how honorable and beautiful many of the core ideals behind each are. Right now the violence from the West I list above is cited by Muslim extremist as proof that we are a violent, evil people. Our extremists cite Muslim history as proof that Islam is a violent, even evil faith. Both sides are taken a warped a biased view on history, and this works against efforts at real reconciliation and co-existence.

For example, our leaders say that some Muslim extremists want to spread Islam and thus represent a violent aggressive political ideal which must be stopped. Then in the next sentence they say we want to spread democracy and implement regime change for the good of the people in other states. The obvious hypocrisy in those two statements cannot be overlooked – they are evil to spread what they believe to be the best way of life, we are honorable if we do the same thing.

So perhaps by refusing to embrace a double standard, we can think about the principles Zinn has at the end of his article. Official violence should have no special privileges over private violence, violence done by others should be weighed equally with violence done by ourselves (we’ve killed more innocents in Afghanistan than were killed by terrorists on 9-11, for instance), we should assume that all victims are created equal, a dead Communist or Muslim has no less value than a dead American or even UMF student. Violence with property should not be equated with violence to people. We should be wary of symbolic efforts to justify violence (nationalism, abstractions) and look at the long term implications (what kind of society will Iraqi children raised in violence create?) Just thinking in these terms can help overcome the double standard, and perhaps put us on a path towards a more peaceful world.

That doesn’t mean we can handle the challenges of globalization easily, and clearly there are extremists on each side that want to see the other as an enemy because they can’t accept anything but their own dogma. The strong will use military force, the weak will use terror, and each will point to the damage done by the other to try to inspire militarism and radicalism in their ranks. Those of us who recognize the importance of our common humanity and take the time to learn about the reality human worth, rather than self-serving myths, know that we can find a way to live peacefully and respect each others’ ideas.

As noted, this week is summer experience for first year students at UMF, so I’m commenting each day on one of the readings students are discussing. Today’s is “Channeled Whelk,” by Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906-2001).

Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s piece about her ‘channeled Whelk’ spoke to her confrontation with the demands of a modern, hectic, world of demands on ones’ time and energy. In some ways, writing in 1955, she was experiencing the beginning of a new kind of world, one created by the post-war economic boom where the ability of people to acquire ever more material wealth led to a proliferation of tasks, opportunities and changes. The generation born in the post-war world thus emerged as one immersed in a society growing, expanding and ever more materialist. Raised by parents who recalled the depression, they were motivated to succeed, working ever harder, needing something like Lindbergh’s time on a beach to recover, reflect and get ready to continue apace. There are signs, however, that the up and coming generation has had enough. Raised by parents who had never truly gone without, the idea of material success is not seen as the end all and be all. There is more to life.

NPR had an interesting report awhile backabout how this generation of professionals are unwilling to do what the last generation did in terms of working 50 to 70 hour weeks in top positions at major corporations, accounting firms and law firms. Companies are worried about filling leadership roles when the current generation retires, or to replace current management staff as they ‘move up the ladder.’ People want more of an ability to work from home, they want to work fewer hours, they want more flexibility, and they’re willing to give up pay to get it. In short, quality of life trumps raw ambition and accumulation.

One can only hope this report is accurate. While the Europeans long ago embraced the notion that it doesn’t really pay to live in a world of material prosperity and wealth if you aren’t able to enjoy it, the American work force has been working longer hours and sacrificing family time and personal time in order to compete for the best jobs and the best pay. The result has been an insane culture of hecticity. Hecticity? Yes it’s a word — and has been one now for thirty seconds. I just coined it (and added it to my spell check dictionary). Hecticity is the constant stress and hectic pace of life, where people go from task to task, getting things done, taking care of mini-crises and problems, without time to really sit back and reflect.

Hecticity is a self-imposed condition, but most people don’t recognize it as such. The culture pushes us towards hecticity. In the workplace people won’t get promoted or get raises if they don’t compete. If you don’t get a raise or get promoted, you can’t get all that cool stuff that advertisers convince us is absolutely necessary for our happiness. Worse, people fear failure, and believe staying on top of things and being constantly busy is the only way to assure failure is avoided.

That’s perhaps the worst side effect of hecticity. People don’t have time to reflect on their lives, think about what is truly important to them, and enjoy life. A person suffering from hecticity has a life defined by schedules and tasks. Exhausted at the end of the day, and perhaps afraid to truly confront the inner self that needs a change, television or maybe a book is the escape. When not engaged in the hectic and stressful pace of the modern world, one chooses to escape into a film or story. One knows “yeah, I’m too busy, I need a break,” but people don’t want to confront what it would take to do that (it would require rejecting hecticity), and seriously consider major changes in life style and values. Hecticity can be comfortable, it gives you something to do, an excuse not to reflect on whether one is leading a truly meaningful life.

For my generation, it’s probably too late. Those who are caught up in the hecticity culture will find it hard to break away, it can be addictive. But it’s heartening that the new generation of young workers recognize this problem and are rebelling against it. One only hopes that the tools that enable hecticity (cell phones, palm pilots, etc.) are kept under control, lest they control us. It is a shame that in a society where we have so much convenience, luxury and comfort — and so many toys — too many of the brightest and most successful people zip through life without enjoying the opportunities they have, too caught up in the hectic pace of the modern world.

And that brings us back to Lindbergh, writing over a half century ago when all this was starting. She was a successful woman, married to a celebrity, experiencing the early fruits of the emerging post-war world. She couldn’t know that the economic boom would continue for decades, with only brief interruptions. She couldn’t see that at some point a beach cabin with virtually no technology would be an almost impossible to find vacation site in a world wired and connected. She would probably be startled that her hectic and busy life would look rather slow paced by today’s standards. Yet she saw the threat: so many demands makes it hard to achieve what she wants: “…to be at peace with myself. I want a singleness of eye, a purity of intention, a central core to my life that will enablel me to carry out these obligations and activities as well as I can. I want, in fact — to borrow from the language of the saints — to life ‘in grace’ as much of the time as possible…By grace I mean an inner harmony, essentially spiritual, which can be translated to outward harmony.”

I would prefer to live in a state of grace rather than a state of hecticity. Grace doesn’t mean boredom, but being in control of one’s myriad of projects, not getting consumed by demands that one can’t be oneself. Working 60 to 70 hours a week in an obsession with career and material possessions means giving up ones’ soul to external demands. That’s hecticity. I hope our culture is moving away from there, towards grace.

Note: this week is Summer Experience at UMF, at which students spend the week in seminars doing some interdisciplinary reading, and putting together an academic journal. This week’s blog entries will, each day, focus on one of the readings for summer experience. The readings are all across the board, from politics to philosophy to experience…hopefully blog readers will find it an interesting change of pace. Today I choose to write about “The Banking Concept of Education” by Paolo Freire (1921- 1977).

I spent the afternoon Monday in a meeting about how the UMF website is being used to recruit students. One major focus was our ‘record of success,’ which includes the work one does in the field after graduation, as well as those students how go on to graduate, law, or medical school. People want an education because a four year college degree dramatically increases ones’ income potential, and gives access to better employment. Education is an investment, Farmington offers a “value” because we’re providing the liberal arts experience (personal attention, community support, professors not graduate students teaching, etc.) at a public university price.

For most people teaching, that’s not the primary goal of education. Many of us cringe when education is talked about as an ‘investment,’ with an emphasis on pay back in dollars and career options. Obviously if we didn’t provide that we wouldn’t have so many students and we’d be out of work, so I’m glad a college education provides that valuable outcome. But for most of us the primary goal is to help students think for themselves, take responsibility for their lives and education, and in a real way liberate themselves from simply following patterns of thought and behavior programmed into us by our culture.

For Freire that meant getting away from the ‘banking concept’ of education where the professor is the expert, instilling knowledge into a student the way one puts money in the bank. That, Freire argues, is a tool for oppressors. If they control how you think, what truth you consider valid, what knowledge you possess, then you’ll behave the way they want. If you don’t question authority, authority wins.

Consider education in Eastern Europe and the former USSR. During the Communist era few were as knowledgable about science, mathematics history and literature than those educated in the east bloc. Their level of knowledge would shame most Americans. Yet when learning criticism of a literature piece they had to regurgitate exactly the instructors’ notes or what a book stated. There was no room for independent critique, students were to learn, like a sponge being filled with facts. And, of course, those systems were the most repressive, even with a well educated citizenry.

Therefore many of us in education are worried by moves like ‘no child left behind’ with mandatory testing and funding for schools tied to performance on standardized, government tests. However, while I agree with Friere that the goal of education should be to liberate students to be able to think independently, questioning their culture, rulers and yes, their professors, achieving that goal can’t be done on the cheap. Students need to learn lots of essential knowledge before they have the tools for liberation. Otherwise, it’s easy to simply believe the most recent argument made. So how do professors and students deal with the desire for a liberating education without forgoing the need to learn facts about the world? One cannot think critically about politics, history and ethics just by the seat of ones’ pants. Opinions are a dime a dozen without thoughtful introspection and supporting arguments.

To me it means looking at issues from a variety of perspectives. So in studying the Cold War, I assign students different interpretations. People read some conservative, some revisionist, and some realist perspectives, and in class we debate, compare and contrast these arguments. The same goes for considering, say, the war in Iraq, the history of Islam and the West, or various views on ethics in world politics. By learning facts embedded in diverse perspectives, students not only learn about the world, but they have modeled for them the fact that knowledge about the world is always seen from an angle, a perspective that is shaped by assumptions, the beliefs of a discipline, and the choice of data considered. The best courses I’ve been involved in are interdisciplinary; I’ve co-taught with people from education, music history, art history and literature. Every time I am surprised by how much I gain going outside my usual set of perspectives and thinking about, say, links between music and politics.

So liberation is an ongoing process of learning, reflecting and questioning. It never ends, it’s a process, but one that makes life intriguing, fun and intellectually stimulating. There is a deep joy in crafting ones’ own identity and values, shaping and refining as we go. Everyone has choice: one can live a life just being carried by the currents of culture and trends, not truly discovering and creating the person he or she want to be. Or one can take control of ones’ life. The former is easy, you just sit back, go along for the ride and find distractions – troubled by a nagging sense that time is frittering away. The latter takes effort, but the rewards are immense.

That may not be a good argument for marketers trying to recruit students. And, of course, a good career and a rich life of the mind are not mutually exclusive things. Indeed, people who take control of their lives are more likely to succeed, and in fact have the power to define for themselves what success means. Being a part of that makes the role of teacher the most satisfying profession I can imagine.

Note: this week is Summer Experience at UMF, at which incoming first year students spend a week in seminars focused on common interdisciplinary readings. This week’s blog entries will, each day, focus on one of those readings. The readings have a variety of subjects from politics to philosophy to experience…hopefully blog readers will find it an interesting change of pace. The piece I choose to respond to today is “What Every Girl Should Know” by Robertson Davies (1913-95), written in 1977.

The title of the piece “What Every Girl Should Know” is misleading. The writer, Robertson Davies, was writing this for (I believe) his granddaughter. What he talks about here, however, is important for everyone. Here is a short quote to give blog readers not in the class a taste of the piece:

“I hope you won’t bother your heads about happiness. It is a cat like emotion; if you try to coax it, happiness will avoid you, but if you pay no attention to it it will rub against your legs and spring unbidden into your lap. Forget happiness, and pin your hopes on understanding.”

Davies is speaking to that universal desire in humans to be happy. And he notes that most people who seek it do not find it. That is because most people live shallowly, not taking the time to know themselves or why they do what they do, but instead to simply go from one activity to the next, finding gratification for at least the short term, searching desperately for some sense of satisfaction for forces outside oneself. Living this way becomes something hard to break out of because, as he notes, “Live shallowly and you will find yourself surrounded by shallow people.” Shallow people are annoyed by people who live deeply, in part because the inner contentment of the latter starkly shows the former what they lack. Shallow people cling to shallow people.

‘Living deeply’ is something one gains not by success in the external world, or even by making wise choices. These things are not the same as living a deep, satisfying life. One can have immense worldly success, making good choices in life, and still not be happy. Indeed, happiness seems disconnected from ones’ success or accomplishments; those who are unhappy seem unhappy no matter what happens, while those who are happy can find joy in a very simple life.

Davies advises taking one hour a day – one hour away from every demands from children, work, ones’ spouse, family members, television, and the internet (well, he wrote before that little distraction was invented) provides, and set it aside for oneself. Take time to think about what one is doing, to understand ones’ own motivations, thoughts, and desires. Taking this time will yield understanding and once one has that understanding happiness will happen. It becomes a part of ones’ life, not as some rush of excitement or exuberance, but simply finding life to be something worth living, with a sense of mystery and joy.

I choose Davies’ piece for today because I think he is right. I agree with him. I don’t know if that’s because he is right, or if it’s because I simply am biased towards his perspective because I share it. I’ve always been introspective, trying to dissect why I think the way I do, why I want what I want, what motivates me. I try to be self-critical as well, noting times when I do stupid things, taking responsibility for them and not trying to blame the situation or other people. I love and enjoy life, I find learning the most interesting aspect of this existence. Instead of worrying about how underpaid we are at UMF, or that teaching here isn’t as prestigious as teaching at a place like Colby, I think about how lucky I am to have this kind of lifestyle, able to reflect, keep a blog, research what I want, teach and learn with students, and how wonderful Maine is for raising family.

However, this bias might simply mean that this kind of path to happiness works for my personality type. Other people, more extroverted and experimental, may find it less important to be introspective, and more pleasurable to have numerous interests and endeavors. Still others might focus on nature as a kind of natural meditation, rather than the kind of introspection Davies describes. An hour immersed in nature may yield the same benefits as an hour of introspection for many people. Finally, many people emphasize family and friends, seeing those bonds as the key to happiness. These would be bonds built by deep relationships – talking about life, problems, and sharing meaningful moments, not just shallow pursuits.

So ultimately, I think there are many paths up the mountain. Two things doe seem clear: 1) guilt will undercut any effort to be truly honest with oneself – so learn from mistakes but don’t feel guilty about them, humans are imperfect creatures who make mistakes all the time; I define guilt as the condition which prevents us from learning from our mistakes because it leads us to hide them from ourselves.  If guilt can’t be avoided, it is best used as an impetus to change; 2) unhappiness is not a state that can be cured by just changing external conditions. The change has to come from inside, one has to take responsibility for ones’ life and not feel sorry for oneself or feel a victim. In cases like that I think Davies’ notion of ‘living shallowly’ becomes likely; people will seek a life of shallow distractions to avoid coming face to face with themselves and confronting the hard work necessary to alter that state. Perhaps in this is the biggest life lesson: take responsibility for your life, your choices, and trust that if you do, happiness will simply happen. Because, ultimately, if happiness depends upon what others do or what the world provides, one is giving immense power to people and forces acting for their own purposes. That’s almost sure to lead to failure.

December 2000 was a heady time for Republicans. After the Supreme Court ruled that Florida votes need not be recounted and the election as certified would stand, it was clear that the GOP had a majority in Congress and the held the Presidency. Despite a short loss of a Senate majority in 2001-02, it appeared the decade would belong to the Republicans.

And they had ideas. To the problems facing the United States President Bush offered a solution: the opportunity society. With the budget now in balance, he argued, the US could move towards helping Americans take control of and responsibility for their own lives. This included privatizing social security (after all, the stock market had been soaring, why not allow people to put their money there?), re-writing the tax code, altering social welfare programs to focus on getting people trained for work, and nothing short of creating an American alternative to the European social welfare state.

While I am very skeptical that all this could have worked — I think most people are glad they weren’t putting their social security money in the stock market he last eight years, for instance — give President Bush his due: He had plans for real reform. The GOP had a vision for an America with less government, more individual responsibility, and balanced budgets. All of this, they argued, would be paid for by projected budget surpluses. Having too much of a surplus or paying down the debt too fast would be dangerous, but that money could be used to create a transition to this new economy.

Eight years later few remember that President Bush was elected on this notion of individual responsibility and ‘compassionate conservatism.’ Almost none of what the Republicans set out to do was accomplished. Despite having a majority in Congress and holding the Presidency, most of their bold domestic agenda failed. Why?

Part of the reason, of course, is conditions beyond their control. The budget surplus projections were bogus, ignoring the fact that the balanced budget and the economic optimism of 2000 was build on a stock market bubble which already had burst. Even their belief they could remake the Supreme Court failed, as liberal justices refused to quit, leaving Bush with the task of only replacing two GOP appointees. The Democrats became effective at using the filibuster in the Senate to stop action on many Bush plans, and by 2006 the Republicans were on the rocks, and now the Democrats are poised to be where the GOP was in 2000 — at the head of government.

For the Democrats to succeed, they need to understand why the Republicans failed. And the reason is clear: Iraq. The most dramatic political casualty of the Iraq war was the Republican agenda. After getting early tax cuts passed, Bush could get little significant legislation through Congress afterwards. Major legislation passed would instead be things like the Patriot Act, passed in reaction to the terrorist attacks of 9-11.

9-11 and its aftermath was a pivotal point for President Bush. At the height of his popularity, with a country suddenly unified, and liberal dissent considered almost treasonous by many, he had the chance to build on a relatively easy victory in Afghanistan to bring the country around to his view of the future. With the property bubble replacing the stock market bubble, the economy actually appeared in much better shape than it was. This meant that Bush could remain popular, and the GOP could provide a coherent message about their plan for the future. If the President had handled events post-9-11 differently, we might be looking at a very different political landscape. The Democrats may not have had the will to sustain Senate filibusters if Bush had remained popular, the GOP majority may have continued to grow, and the President might now be talking openly of the new “opportunity society,” complete with private social security accounts, and major reform of the tax code and social welfare system. We’d be debating the long term consequences of these actions, and the Democrats might seem to be representing the ‘failed policies of the past,’ while the Republicans were innovative and different.

Instead, the decision to invade Iraq dashed every Republican hope. It drained hundreds of billions from possible budgetary funds, meaning the deficit would grow and any effort to create a transition to a new tax, social security or social welfare system was infeasible. The President’s lack of popularity meant he couldn’t make a convincing case to the public for change, meaning that the Democrats paid no political cost for obstructing the GOP agenda — quite the contrary! The country became fixated on Iraq to the point that the phrase ‘opportunity society’ became virtually meaningless; instead of the center point of the Bush Presidency, it was simply a forgotten political slogan.

To those in the GOP who truly believe that less government and more free markets would work, this has to be very painful. They had the chance. They had the majority, the President was popular, their ideas intrigued the American public. The Democrats were on the defensive, especially after 9-11. For better or worse, they could have made their agenda political reality. Instead, the Administration engaged in a social engineering experiment in a post-Ottoman authoritarian state, believing if it removed the dictator they could engineer a stable pro-American democracy that would pressure other states in the region towards similar reform. The seductive illusion of this vision — US power not only protecting American oil interests but reshaping the Mideast into becoming more pro-western, less friendly to terrorists, and more amenable towards accepting Israel’s right to exist — caused Bush to gamble his Presidency. He lost.

If Iraq becomes stable the pro-war side will try to claim success. They’ll say it took longer, but say that ultimately Iraq emerged better off than under Saddam. They are already claiming we’re on the road there, though I strongly suspect that once again they’re miscalculating. The cost of the war in Iraqi lives lost, destruction of that society, and of course the loss of American lives and money is so enormous that there is no way the policy could possibly be a success, especially since it’s rationale was proven wrong and the region is even more hostile to US interests: Iraq was in many ways a gift to Islamic extremists, helping them recruit and fostering increase anti-Americanism.

After the Iraqi people, the biggest loser might be President Bush and the Republican party. They had their chance to reshape the American political landscape and engage in dramatic policy reform. They had the chance to experiment with cutting government and expanding markets, privatizing and putting their vision to test in the largest economy in the world. That chance won’t come again for a long time, if ever.

June 21 - Muhammad and Arabia

This is part 4 in the series “Islam and the West.” Click the link under pages or at the top of the page to read what the purpose of this series is. Only about one blog entry a week is dedicated to this series. There are links to the first three parts of the series at the end of this post.

As Rome fell and Europe went into the dark ages, guided by a new, spiritual form of Christianity which eschewed progress in favor of stability and tradition, Arabia was a violent, volatile place. Politics involved clans and tribes vying for power, governed by one fundamental principle: the law of retribution. If you or your tribe were treated unfairly you would retaliate, violently. Custom dictated that when one tribe defeated another the men would be killed, and the women and children enslaved. Harsh stuff, but reasonably effective; if the price of trying to take advantage of another is large, people tend to play it safe.

Within this environment, Mecca emerged as a cosmopolitan city, focused on commerce and tolerance of a vast variety of religious beliefs. The tribe ruling Mecca, the Quraysh, had turned a rather out of the way city into a trading hub and a place for religious pilgrimage. They had essentially bought up many of the idols worshipped across Arabia and put them in the Kaaba, turning Mecca into not only a place to go worship ones’ particular deity (they collected about 350 of them) but also a place where trade and commerce could take place peacefully. In many ways the Quraysh were rather enlightened: trade replaced warfare, religious tolerance was absolutely necessary, and thus traders and travelers from all over converged on Mecca. This also included Christians, Jews (mostly Arab Jews), Zoroastrians, and Hanifs.

Yet the Quraysh were also guided by traditional Arab customs which, as noted, were often brutal. The customs had been developed when tribes were smaller; applied to a large prosperous city like Mecca they produced a striking maldistribution of wealth and privilege between the haves and have nots. Throughout Arabia this was causing dissent, the traditional set of customs governing Arab life were becoming obsolete; one reason Islam would spread so quickly is that Arabs were ready for a message of change.

There were some things you didn’t want to be in pre-Islamic Arabia. First, you didn’t want to be a woman. Women were considered no better than property, men could divorce at will, and women had no rights. Rare was the successful woman in the business world, sexism was endemic and severe. You also didn’t want to be an orphan. So much was based on family that orphans usually became slaves, unless some other family member of status took the orphan under his wing (emphasis on his).

So when a young boy named Muhammad (570-632) lost his parents at a very young age (his father died before his birth, his mother when he was six), the future looked bleak. Luckily for him his very influential uncle Abu Talib, head of the Banu Hashim clan, took responsibility for him. Muhammad was by all accounts an impressive individual, gaining the trust of family and associates. He also was very introspective, listening to the various religious teachings that came through Mecca, learning about Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Judaism, and the teachings of the Hanifs. He would often treat to the desert to meditate and think about these ideas, and the state of Arabian society.

Muhammad was clearly well aware that he was lucky not to have become a slave, and his later teachings will make clear that he was outraged by the differences between the wealthy few and the poor masses. No doubt as he meditated he thought about the various religious perspectives he had heard, and the material injustices all around him. His wife Khadija was a rarity in Arabia: a successful business woman. Her wealth brought her many suitors. Of course, if she had married she’d become property to the man who she chose, and he could essentially take her fortune. So at age 40 she was an unmarried woman, another rarity for that time.

The young Muhammad must have impressed her. By all accounts he had a reputation for honesty, and perhaps he was open about his disgust at the way the Quraysh ran Mecca, and Arab customs in general. Perhaps she was intrigued by this introspective, intelligent caravan leader. She hired him and then later married him. They would have a monogamous relationship until her death in 619, at the age of 64. Khadija also had a Christian cousin, and no doubt Muhammad learned a lot about Christianity from her. The orphan who escaped slavery thanks to his uncle was married to a woman who showed an independence and success that defied Arab custom.

For 14 years Muhammad continued being a business success, respected in Mecca, and gaining renown even outside Mecca as an impressive, honest, and thoughtful man. Although some traditions have him illiterate, that is unlikely given his position. One can only imagine his meditations as he reflected on all he was learning about different people and different religious traditions. He certainly had to view existing Arab customs as backwards and unjust; by all accounts he should be a slave and his wife someone’s property.

In 610 at age 40 Muhammad went to meditate at a mountain near Mecca, as he often did, sometimes for weeks at a time. Non-Muslims will speculate that he either hallucinated or made a conscious choice to try to construct a religion to radically reform Arabia, borrowing heavily from Christianity and Judaism. Muslims believe that the angel Gabriel appeared and commanded Muhammad to recite. Whatever the case, Muhammad came back and shared his story with Khadija, who became his first convert. Those first recitations marked the first passages of the Quran, the holy book of Islam, and by all accounts some of the most beautiful poetry in the Arabic language. For Muslims the beauty of the prose is proof it came from God, for non-Muslims, it shows that among his other talents, Muhammad was a brilliant poet. In any event, as Muhammad came back to Mecca from his meditation, he was about to start a new civilization. It would not be easy.  The Quraysh would be determine to eliminate Muhammad and his followers, and the Ummah — the community of believers, Muslims, would have to fight to prevent their faith from being eliminated before it could grow.

The first three parts of the Islam and the West series:
Part One: Rome and Paul (May 31st)
Part Two: Plotinus and Augustine (June 6)
Part Three: Just and Unjust Wars (June 15)

We just wrote a check for about $4000 to pay for heating oil next year. That works out to about almost $350 a month, the cost of a typical car payment. But while we can afford it, there are a lot of people next year who will be in dire straights due to the fact heating oil has more than doubled in price within a year, and is five times what it was a decade ago. While this is bad enough — the hospital, for instance, expects a huge spike in pneumonia and other cold related problems next winter — the ripple effects through the economy are only beginning, and things could get much worse.

When GM closed four of its major SUV manufacturing plants it sent a very stark message: they believe high oil prices are here to stay. This is not a repeat of the 70s, when oil spiked only to fall back down after a crisis has passed. This is demand driven, and evidence suggests that production is at a peak, or perhaps even slightly past its peak. With something as demand inelastic as oil, it takes large price increases to reach a new equilibrium if demand rises and production does not. The questions now are ‘how bad will it get?’ and ‘what can we do?’

I am convinced that most economists and pundits are underestimating the ripple effect that high energy costs will have in the economy. This is uncharted territory, past oil spikes have been relatively short lived. In 1979 a short spike caused stagflation and some of the most difficult economic conditions in recent history. Yet we recovered quickly, in part because oil price declines in the early 80s acted as an economic stimulus. Not only that, but this price increase comes at a time when credit is tight, the housing market is bad, and consumers do not have excess money to spend. Add to that the large current account deficit held by the US, contributing to the weakness of the dollar, and the economy looks especially fragile, subject to possible jolts either from further oil price increases, a new terrorist attack, or even choices by foreigners to divest from the US for either political or economic reasons. Saudi Arabia and China are two countries which could do considerable damage to the US with just a few economic choices.

In short, we could be entering a time of true economic crisis, perhaps approaching that of the 1930s. If energy costs continue to rise, if the US remains mired in costly foreign policy gambits, and if other countries decide the US is no longer a good economic bet, things could get much, much worse. An economic collapse, while unlikely, is conceivable. The US has shifted away from manufacturing, financed a continuing current accounts deficit with a capital account surplus from foreign states, and engaged in a massive increase in debt, both public and private, meaning we have little in the way of a safety net if things go bad. As vibrant, dynamic and large as the US economy is, we are also vulnerable.

So what to do? As I noted in Oil Denial, easy answers from both the left and the right can be dismissed. We can’t sue OPEC, as Senator Clinton suggested — they are already producing at capacity. We can’t blame the oil companies, they don’t set the price. We can’t just choose to drill in Alaska and off shore. Not only will it take awhile to get to that oil and build pipelines and infrastructure to exploit it, but there isn’t that much oil there. One has to ask if that kind of money is best spent on a resource we know has limited quantities, or on alternatives that may have a longer future? The answer is probably mixed — some drilling to try to provide short term relief in order to invest in a long term solution.

What is the long term solution? Senator McCain urges the building of more nuclear plants. That seems reasonable; France gets 70% of it’s electricity from nuclear energy. There are dangers, but given the economic consequences of a increasingly probable economic melt down, it may be worth risking a very improbable nuclear melt down in order to supply energy to the economy. Nuclear energy does not contribute to global warming, and is reasonably clean.

Yet nuclear enegy does produce waste, there are limited quantities of uranium (I’m not convinced we can feasibly simply mine it from the sea) and the risk of an accident or a terrorist attack are real enough to make one consider other options. Here is there is no magic bullet. Solar, geothermal, wind, tidal, and other alternatives all are useful in certain circumstances, and the investments needed to tap these sources suddenly don’t seem so expensive with oil over $130 a barrel and rising. The only alternative I dislike is biofuels — in a world where population and hunger are rising, we shouldn’t divert food production in order to satisfy our luxurious lifestyles. A shift to electric cars and new ways of providing heat and energy can be done. The question is only how fast and at what cost.

We could have a future of economic collapse, as rising oil prices simply drown the economy with stagflation and debt at a level making it impossible to come up with alternative energy sources fast enough to counter the crisis. The collapse won’t be permanent — after we recover, there could be a new boom based on new energy sources — but for those of us on the planet now, it could mean decades of difficulty. We could have a future where technological innovation fuels a mini-boom even while oil prices continue to rise, allowing a relatively smooth transition. The fact that GM closed so many plants, and all the auto manufacturers are focusing not just on small cars, but electric, hybrid and hydrogen vehicles is promising.

Nuclear power may well be necessary to provide needed electricity, but I don’t feel comfortable shifting to that as our main source of energy. Technological advancements in other, safer and cleaner alternatives are more promising and less risky in the long run. Still, I can’t help but be struck by the fact that for the first time in my life I look to the future and can really imagine a United States not only in decline, but in economic collapse. I truly wonder about my children’s future, and whether I’ll be able to enjoy the kind of lifestyle I now have for the rest of my life.

We live in interesting times.

Barack Obama’s decision to forego public financing of his campaign, the first time this has been done since Watergate, is not only rational, but indicative of a change in politics which requires people to rethink their approach to the issue of campaign financing.

The traditional view has been this: when campaigns are funded by private funds, the emphasis gets put on special interest groups, big business, and those who can afford to contribute. Whoever has the cash advantage wins, and that’s usually the person most under the spell of ‘big money.’ This also leads to such severe competition for campaign funds that candidates spend an inordinate amount of time rising money, and then spend massive amounts on campaigns in order to win. A solution — one used in many European countries — is to limit the length of the election campaign and require public funding. That creates a level playing field, and moves to make sure that candidates are less beholden to special interests.

That argument is obsolete and was very difficult to maintain in the US anyway. Despite a public financing provision, candidates needed private funds in the primary season, could use private funds up until the convention (meaning whoever had their convention last had a potential advantage — the other side had to use just public funds for a month longer), and the private money still flowed. It flowed not to the candidates, but to special interest groups with no connection to the campaigns, engaged in nefarious activity, the most vile being that of the ’swiftboaters’ against John Kerry.

The candidate, of course, could remain aloof from this. He could condemn (with a wink on the side) such tactics, and truthfully point out that he did not engage in such smears. The result of public financing wasn’t to push out the private donors, but to allow a separate private campaign where ‘anything goes,’ for which the candidate being supported carried no responsibility. Efforts to limit this kind of activity run into the first amendment. No matter how damaging this might be to having good election campaigns, we do have the right to free speech. You start messing with that and it creates a precedent that might be used to justify further limitations on speech, creating a slippery slope through which the first amendment is weakened. That argument is also valid in dealing with issues like the Patriot Act.

The Obama campaign’s ability to raise funds through the internet and from small donors shows that raising money does not require one to focus on those with deep pockets. Most people believe it was a tactical error of Hillary Clinton to go the usual route. Not every candidate will be able to do it as successfully as Obama, but he showed how the process works: organize, create a message that is persuasive (and if you go to Obama’s website, it’s got very detailed positions and plans — agree or disagree with him, it’s not just empty rhetoric) and the money will come in.

This year it benefits the Democrats because a mix of a bad economy and an extremely unpopular war (or as I prefer, an unpopular big government social engineering experiment to try to reshape Iraq’s political culture) means that Obama’s message of change has vast and profound appeal. How else could it be that a black man with a foreign sounding name is leading in all the polls, and was able to derail the most potent political machine today? Next time it could be the GOP’s turn to have the popular message.

To be sure, there are problems with this. I refuse to give to any political campaign myself (with very limited exceptions) because there are children suffering around the world who need the money far more than any political campaign. What if all the money we spend on elections was spent elsewhere? But a counter argument to that would be that if you get the right people in power, some of the hundreds of billions spent in Iraq might be used for a better purpose. If you find that convincing, then a donation to a political campaign is actually quite rational.

Moreover, the Obama campaign is setting a good precedent: don’t accept donations from lobbyists and other influence peddlers. If this can become standard practice, that might clean up the process a bit. He also has actively attempted to shift money away from the PACs that are usually doing the private sector shadow campaigns. This means that most of the money will go through his campaign, and thus he will have to take responsibility for most of the message that comes out. If this means putting a knife into the swift boat style smear jobs, that’s very good news.

The case shouldn’t be overstated. Smears and rumors have been part of American politics since our Republic began, and there is still ample opportunity for the ethically challenged to continue that ‘tradition.’ And in a country this rich and powerful, those with the most money will always have better access to power; the elites will be able to continue to assure themselves a privileged position, that fundamental weakness of modern democracy can’t be removed by simply changing how campaigns are financed.

Still, it’s time to recognize that the information revolution has made local organizing more effective, and has to some extent empowered even those who can only make small contributions. One can hope this is part of a trend, one I alluded to in Rethinking the EU, whereby new media and new technology help bring power from the center to the periphery, with profound change driven by the public rather than just the elites. After all, the Berlin wall came down not primarily because of Reagan and Gorbachev, but the East German people taking a stand. Perhaps the Obama campaign is yet another sign of a fundamental change in the nature of politics.

Parenting and all those other magazines annoy me. No, it’s not that they repeat the same stories in different guises every few months (my blog probably does likewise), but it seems everything is geared to mothers. “Something to help mom…mothers like this…what drives mothers crazy…” Now, if these kinds of references were indeed mother-specific (e.g., something to do with womens’ clothing), that would be one thing. But instead, it usually is something about putting kids to sleep, discipline, or finding activities for the kids to do. Fathers exist in a kind of netherworld where we are to be good role models, commended when involved, but generally secondary to moms when it comes to the daily routine.

That drives me crazy. My wife and I each work. Her job is more stressful than mine, so I tend to do more of the routine kid things, like baths and bedtime routines. We each do breakfasts and getting the boys dressed in the morning, we each discipline, we each play. She reads more books, I tell more stories (or help the kids develop stories). I’ll play with the kids while she works in the garden to get us delicious tomatoes, herbs and cucumbers. She’ll work with the oldest on reading and numbers while I put the youngest to bed. We are absolute co-parents, the difference between mother and father is simply the fact she as a woman gets labeled ‘mom’ and I as a man get labeled ‘dad,’ than any particular thing about what we do as parents. That seems the way it should be.

My dad suffered because of sexism. He worked while my mom stayed home. He didn’t show emotion much, was the disciplinarian, but always there for us kids when we needed him. He never changed a diaper, but he stuck up for us. He was a good father of the old generation, really loving and doing all he could for his children, but not getting as close to us as he could have because sexism defined the role of the father and the man as being secondary to that of the mother. My dad died at age 60 from pancreas cancer. On the day after his funeral, at which I gave the eulogy, I flew to Farmington, Maine for a job interview. I didn’t tell anyone that my dad had just died – that would have made the interview process a bit too creepy – but I felt he was with me. When I got the job offer my first thought was to call dad…but of course, I couldn’t. He was dead. Yet as much as I loved and respected him, I wonder what kind of relationship we could have had if he hadn’t been part of a culture that defined the man as ‘bringing home the bacon,’ and the woman as ‘taking care of the home.’

So rather than think of “fatherhood” as some kind of unique thing, I prefer to view it as “parenthood,” shared by the mother and the father. Parenthood changes your life. The first thing I noticed is that I worried more. In the past, I had a rather fatalistic and probabilistic view to risk – I’d never worry about getting on a plane because the probability of accident was very low, and if it were meant to happen, well, c’est la vie. But after having a child, the thought of not being there overwhelmed me. For awhile I worried about everything; it took awhile to re-convince myself that life was to be lived and risk just built in.

Parenthood also takes away much of ones’ own personal life. My wife and I no longer played tennis, golf or went skiing for the first years. Since we both work, we rarely had babysitters, choosing to spend our time with our kids. We stopped going to movies, and rarely ate out. Yesterday we had a babysitter for seven hours as we headed down to Brunswick to catch Jesus Christ Superstar, a production of the Maine State Music Theater. A rare break from the routine of dealing with two extroverted, exuberant and energetic boys.

One could resent that – life is diapers (or checking to make sure the older one wiped well), dealing with fights over who gets a particular car, kids splashing water out of the bathtub, watching spongebob squarepants, cleaning up messes and preparing foods the kids will eat. We could resent the inability to travel, hampered now by having to buy four tickets and realizing we can’t have much fun traveling for any length of time with two small children. One could bemoan the loss of independence, the inability to do what one wants, and the way one becomes enslaved to the routine of the children.

Parenthood to me is to reject that kind of attitude, and embrace the experience and adventure of raising kids. Parenthood is to enjoy every minute of watching them grow, to experience with them each development and discovery. Parenthood means looking at the world through their eyes, to realize how magical even the every day can appear. If one embraces parenthood, the loss of independence is more than compensated for by the re-learning of how to experience life with wide eyes. What a world! What beauty! What mystery! What imagination! And, as one experiences life with the children instead of just ‘above’ them, it becomes easier to stay patient, to understand how to discipline, to make sacrifices, and to enjoy it immensely when they smile, hug, or make some new discovery.

Their lives are dependent upon what parents do. They can be happy and content, or angry and bitter. They can feel good about themselves or learn to see themselves as somehow inadequate. They can see life as something to be embraced, full of fun and wonder, or they can learn to see life as a hardship, full of work and responsibility. Parenthood to me is a mission to assure that while my kids learn to work and be responsible, they never lose that sense that they are creative, vibrant, good beings in a world full of wonder, imagination, and opportunity. Those things are not dependent on material goods or status, but on ones’ attitude and willingness to be reflective and open. So with all do respect to Barack Obama’s superb speech on fatherhood, and the ubiquitous missives yesterday about fathers, I prefer to see the real issue to be that of parenthood, shared and enjoyed by parents, whether it is a mother and a father, or maybe two dads or two moms. And in some cases the burden of parenthood is carried by only one person. In all cases the goals and challenges are the same, and the task is the most important in the world.

Note: this is Part 3 of the Islam and the West series. Click “Islam and the West Series” under “Pages” for information about what this series is all about. At the end I’ll have links to parts 1 and 2. Only about one blog entry a week will be part of this series.

In part two I discussed how Augustine brought neo-Platonism into Christian theology, having a profound effect on early Christian thinking and western culture. This was a linking of Christianity to ancient Greek philosophy. Some Christians didn’t like it — an early Church leader Tertullion asked “What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?” Yet it took, the Catholic Church would be heavily influenced by Augustine’s theology.

While Augustine was alive, the Roman empire was still standing. But by the early 5th century, it was already in collapse. In 410 there were six emperors in one year due to assassination, war and treachery. Roman civilization was slowly perishing, and many blamed Christianity for weakening it. Augustine dealt with that and many other questions in his famous book The City of God, which developed a theory for when it is just to wage war. Later in this series, we’ll compare it with the Muslim notion of jihad which represents the Islamic equivalent to just war theory.

Christianity was at base a pacifistic religion. The teachings of the new testament are clear: this world does not matter, your soul matters. Obey God’s commandments for eternal life, don’t let the temptations of the world cause you to sin. Yet one major commandment is Thou shalt not kill and in warfare you not only kill, but you kill people you don’t even know for some kind of worldly cause. How can a Christian have any part of that? That kind of view caused many Romans to charge Christianity with weakening the Empire, and failing to confront the danger facing a Rome beseiged from all sides. To show how bad it had become, the empire had split in 286 AD, making Constantinople (now Istanbul) the capital in the East (and at times the entire eastern and western empires), while in the West the capital moved first to Milano, then in 402 to Ravenna.

Augustine wrote his City of God between 413 and 426. In it he argued against the kind of complete other worldliness he seemed to embrace in the past, even while maintaining the core of that teaching. However, he noted that perfection was not part of our world, which he called the city of man. The city of man is separate from the city of God, and while the latter is peaceful and perfect, the former is riddled with warfare, violence and sin. For Augustine the trick was to stay true to moral principles while living in this wretched city of man. To do that you can’t pretend that this is already the city of God, or that any human is capable of perfection. In one part of the book, he dealt with the question of war, and whether Christians should simply stand by while the pagan barbarians destroyed the now Christian Roman Empire.

Augustine argued that a just war essentially met three conditions (though there would be additions by later theologians over time): 1) it had to counter aggression — just war was never to increase power to bring gain to the ruler, but to counter injustice and aggression from another; 2) it had to be ordered by legal authority; and 3) Christian love had to be the ultimate motive for the war. Augustine also made it clear that truly virtuous people prefer no war to even a just war, but seemed to understand that in the city of man, that might be too much to demand from everyone.

Augustine’s impact would be profound, and probably not what he intended. First, note that these conditions would prevent most, if not all wars. No one would launch a war of aggression (and defense was not supposed to turn into aggression — meaning even WWII’s occupations of Japan and Germany defy just war theory in its pure form), the legal authority granting the right to wage war would presumably be guided by Christian ideals, and thus if love were to be the ultimate motive, violence would be limited and forgiveness embraced. Thus just war could be seen as setting an ideal that could not be achieved.

And as Rome fell and the dark ages encroached just war slowly morphed into the idea of holy war. Christian love would be the motive for brutal crusades and witchhunts — even later during the Salem witch hunts the perpetrators claimed they were burning the witches out of Christian love, to cleanse the souls of the women involved so they would escape damnation.

Here we see something we’ll notice in both Christianity and Islam: the ability of what appear on their surface to be clear teachings to be turned into whatever later political leaders want it to mean. Aggression could later mean anything threatening Christian holy sites (like Muslim control over Jerusalem) and Christian love could rationalize aggression.

Still, Augustine’s other-worldliness and general pacifistic tendencies were powerful forces that would keep Europe focused on tradition and continuity rather than progress and materialism, and while Augustine opens the door to move from the more pacifistic teachings of Jesus to one that accepts warfare, there nonetheless remains at the core of Christianity a profound sense of mystical pacifism that, as we’ll see, differs from the radical reformism of Islam. However, those Christian tendencies also have real contradictions with modern western ideologies, many of which embrace violence far more easily.

After the collapse of Rome Europe, following a mystical form of Christianity, and unable to politically re-organize the empire, drifted into the dark ages, while down in Arabia a charismatic reformer named Muhammad would start a process that would unify Arabia and create another major civilization. That will be the subject of part four of this series.

Other parts of the series:
Part One: Rome and Paul (May 31st)
Part Two: Plotinus and Augustine (June 6)

The problem of perspective is everywhere, yet often not noticed. It is a fact of life that none of us perceive the world objectively. We interpret reality through our senses and, when it comes to things like political issues, we view things through a prism of pre-existing beliefs and attitudes, causing each of us to see every issue a little differently. Yet most of the time we forget that, and are convinced that our interpretations of reality are obvious and correct, and thus others who disagree are either ignorant, dishonest, or somehow misguided.

That’s obvious if you travel the blogosphere. For example, You can find websites where Hillary Clinton supporters rail about the ‘obvious injustice’ of the DNC in “selecting” Barack Obama, and how the campaign was defined by a misogynistic media and Democratic party, all conspiring to deny Clinton her rightful spot. I’ve encountered an Ayn Rand inspired anarchist, who would treat any effort to engage about why he thinks the way he does as a kind of attack, and snap back with a barrage of insults. I’ve encountered ex-military people who are otherwise libertarian, and get very upset when challenged to explain why they don’t extend their distrust of government programs and spending to the military, and why they accept an expansive foreign policy. I also remember getting someone very angry at me back in 2000 because I suggested that people should not feel pressured to vote for Gore if they didn’t like Gore and really thought Nader was a better choice.

In reflecting on all this, I think that there are some traps out there that make people forget that they are fallible, and become unable to truly entertain other perspectives. For some, like the Hillary die hards, they’ve locked into an emotional experience of the campaign, becoming convinced they were fighting some kind of crusade for justice by trying to work to bring Hillary the nomination, and they just can’t accept defeat. It has to be a conspiracy, blatantly unfair. That emotion becomes cemented to a narrative, and if you call it in question, you are dismissed or insulted.

For others, it’s steeped in experience. One of the pro-military libertarians had fought in Vietnam, and it is clearly still a powerful part of his identity. He does not want to see the veterans in this war have the same kind of experience, he wants them to have a clear success. It’s an honorable and understandable emotion, but leads to a complete lack of understanding of those who question the war — those folk are attacked, villianized (every Democratic leader gets ridiculed, as well as those of us who would question the war), and it is never acknowledged how wrong he and others were earlier in the war. It becomes very personal.

For some it’s cognitive. The person who was angry at me for defending Nadar voters had a clear rationale: there are only two possible outcomes of the election, either Gore wins or Bush wins. Voting for Nader clearly makes the latter more likely, and that must be avoided because of the impact it could have on the Supreme Court. Since my position was based on a very different logic than looking at the consequences, he could not understand how my position could be rational. The logic was so clear cut to him that I’m sure he considered me an obstinate fool for not agreeing with him.

Finally for people like the anarchist, who has never paid federal income taxes and essentially has lived a kind of alternate life style, it’s probably a mix of a cognitive and emotional bias. He has learned to interpret reality through an ideology that he is convinced of — so much that those who disagree are obviously either stupid sheep or dishonest — and at this point in his life how could he bring into question how he’s lived until now? That would call into question sacrifices made over decades to live according to his principles, so there’s a strong motivation to defend the truth of his perspective.

But perhaps the most dangerous error is simply one of ignoring perspectives not given voice. For me the Iraq war is most tragic in the high cost of civilian life in Iraq, and the numerous stories of people killed by American military power, either as collateral damage from bombing raids, or by mistake at check points. When I first read of a three year old girl orphaned because her parents were shot by American soldiers for not following procedures at a check point, my son was also three. I suddenly could imagine if it were him orphaned. When I read of children killed, I imagine what if it were my kids. When I think of how I worry about possible dangers facing my children in every day life, I think of how horrible it would be if this were a war zone.

Americans tend not to consider that. Even anti-war arguments focus on how the Iraq war has damaged American interests, killed American soldiers, caused skyrocketing suicide and divorce rates, PTSD, and other hardships for American families. We read about the painful third and fourth tours of duty for American soldiers, and how the war has done little for the US but will cost ultimately well over a trillion dollars. But do we really comprehend the horror this has unleashed on the Iraqi people? Do we think about how our actions unleashed a civil war in 2006 that was causing over a hundred deaths a day? Do we think of the long term impact of this on Iraqi society?

No. That perspective is dismissed, either by pretending it would have been as bad under Saddam, or that we have to somehow fix what we broke — as if continued military action can somehow set things right. Once we leave Iraq, we’ll create narratives that will either justify the war for the pro-war side, or see it as a fiasco for the anti-war side, and each perspective will focus on our own experience as the template. It will be very difficult to get people to really comprehend or appreciate the full extent of what this war has meant for the Iraqis themselves.

Perhaps the most important and most difficult lesson in life to learn is to recognize bias not just in others, but also in oneself, and then seek out other perspectives, learning to understand them and not demonizing those that challenge what we hold dear. To me that’s the key for ethical living: to always try my hardest to respect and understand different perspectives, and to try not to ignore marginalized perspectives, like those of the Iraqi people. Right now, that’s something we as a society are not very good at.

Wednesday evening at 5:00 I had the privilege of appearing on “The Blog Bunker,” on Sirius radio Indie talk 110. It was hosted by Joe Salzone, who made the interview seem like a relaxed conversation and whose political insights at age 24 suggest to me that this guy may rise high in the world of political punditry in the years to come. However, the first question threw me back: “What is your reaction to Jim Johnson’s resignation?” Yikes. I’m live on satellite radio, and I don’t know who he’s asking me about. What a start!

Finally I said “I have no reaction,” explaining that I had been away from the news all day (which was true: I had prepared an Italian feast of bruschetta, spaghetti carbonara, and eggplant parmesan for some friends, and we spent three hours eating it this afternoon). He then told me it was the Obama VP vetter with questionable ties, and asked how Obama can claim to have a ‘new politics’ when the people around him seem no different than those around any campaign. My answer was a bit cynical: no President can come in and suddenly change Washington, the system itself has a kind of entrenched corruption of secret ties and connections. After talking about Iraq for some time we ended discussing the importance of new media like the internet, blogs, satellite radio, etc. As I drove home I wondered: might the new media be a force to change politics?

Lloyd Etheredge has a theory of American foreign policy decision making that is focused on how our socialization towards government creates an environment where those who crave power are drawn to government service. He calls these people “hardball politicians,” and they have a number of attributes: 1) they are extremely and obsessively ambitious; 2) they demonstrate ‘deficiencies in love,’ meaning that while they value loyalty, they tend to use others for their own ends and try to manipulate other people; 3) they have defective humor, enjoying ridicule of others, but not liking to be made fun of themselves; 4) they have weak ethics and disconnected morals, meaning they try to appear virtuous while behaving in ways opposite of their stated values; 5) they view others as being like themselves, they see the world as populated by hard ball politicians; 6) they are obsessed with power; and 7) they tend to be hyperactive. After all, if deep down you don’t really think well of yourself, times of inactivity will be painful, as one reflects on who one is. Instead they try to fill that internal void with external activity, including the exercise of power and enjoying support or adoration from others.

This is, of course, a deeply cynical social psychological theory. Because government is seen as the most powerful force in society, people with self-esteem problems are drawn to it, and they act to try to bolster their own sense of self-worth, focused on power and control rather than really serving the public. Moreover, since you can never satisfy from without an emptiness within, they continue on this course, insatiable in their lust for power. Etheredge doesn’t say everyone is like this, or that every hardball politician has all of the above traits. Rather, Washington DC draws a disproportionate number of them, and that has an influence on politics. We tend to see little real learning or reflection on goals; learning is tactical, focused on power, and ethical reflections are secondary.

If I hadn’t worked for a few years in the Senate in Washington, I’d probably think Etheredge is far too cynical, and his theory not well supported. But I did work there, and learned a lot from that experience. “Inside the beltway” power games dominate, if you don’t devote your life — sixty hour weeks was the norm, family came second — to the political game, then you’ll never climb up the ladder. Stories of scandals, observations of misbehavior, and watching young, beautiful women — power groupies — fawn over aging Senators and Congressmen struck me as just plan weird. I finally had to quit. I left a well paying high prestige job in DC to become a night manager at a Rocky Rococo Pizza place in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. My dad was horrified at my negative career trajectory — after all, how do you explain to your friends that your 25 year old son no longer is in the middle of the political scene working for a Senator in Washington, but now running night shifts at a pizza place?

Now, as we watch the candidates scramble for office, consider the economic crisis that’s emerged (with roots in decades of economic irresponsibility) and ponder things like the fall of Eliot Spitzer — he seems a classic case of a hardball politician — I wonder if perhaps Etheredge not only can explain foreign policy with his theory, but a fundamental flaw in modern politics. In The Republic Plato argues that we should keep from power those who really want power. Our system requires that people want power badly in order to be willing to do all that is necessary to come out on top. And once in power, they want to keep and expand their own power, which of course meaning expansion of governmental power. They rationalize it with ideologies, promising to give the people what they want, and appeal to nationalism and patriotism. So we end up with a disastrous war in Iraq, government bureaucracy growing out of control, and laws increasingly stifling our ability to make our own choices.

Moreover, given the consumer oriented election process, whereby candidates are marketed, and more emphasis is placed on what a candidate’s preacher says than the actual debate, all is sensationalism and emotion. I don’t think democracy works, we don’t have the politicians under our control, we’re manipulated like consumers. Some of us can get really well informed, but most of us simply don’t have time for the effort. So where am I going with this rant? I don’t know. I don’t have a solution. Etheredge ultimately argues that the press and universities are the key to trying to turn around the social structure that leads to the hardball politicians being the ones who grab power. Yet the press is as sensationalist as ever, and while I want to believe that teaching and academic research does make a difference, I’m not sure if the academic world really sees the problem. And, to be sure, I think local and state politics are less corrupted by all of this, there isn’t so much power centralized at that level, and people have access to the both elected and non-elected officials. The problem seems to be one of concentrated power and distance between the government and the governed. Unfortunately, that’s only getting worse.

One possible alternative is the new media — new forms of art, blogs, fragmented interaction and virtual communities. Perhaps in this we see something to break us away from the old consumerism of mass marketing and mass society. I mentioned on the show that I thought this new media revolution would ultimately be seen as historically significant as the rise of the printing press. For better or worse, it will change politics.

Throughout the world, wherever American forces are located, the US negotiates a status of forces agreement (SOFA) with the host country. Right now, with the UN mandate allowing American action in Iraq running out, the Bush Administration is hurrying to negotiate an agreement that, the Administration hopes, will allow the next President to continue the Bush foreign policy in Iraq. This is a risky path.

If you listen to supporters of the war, you’d think the US had won it. They point to decreased violence, al Maliki’s agreements with various militias, and claim that Iraq is calm, with the US near achieving its goals. As I noted a couple weeks ago in Iraqi myths and realities, this is far from the truth (see also Iranian endgame in Iraq). For this story line to live on they need two things: a) violence must remain low the rest of the year, and b) they need to conclude a status of forces agreement to assure Iraqi approval of continued US presence in Iraq for the foreseeable future. Having both may be all but impossible.

Although most Americans don’t know what a SOFA or a Status of Forces Agreement is, they are often very controversial in other countries. American military personnel are given special status, and there have been many headline cases abroad about Americans accused of rape and molestation, but who are whisked away so that they do not have to face charges in the country where the crime took place. This has created ill will towards the US in places like Japan and Korea, and contributes to an especially high level of anti-Americanism in South Korea.

In Iraq, the US wants to establish 50 military bases, have immunity from Iraqi law for both US military personnel and private security forces, control Iraqi air space, and have the the right “to conduct autonomous military operations” within Iraq. In short, Iraq would surrender some basic aspects of its sovereignty for this agreement. The US would be above the law, could intervene in Iraqi matters with military force any time it wanted to, and have bases peppered across the country.

Iraqi citizens and clerics are none too happy about it, and have threatened an uprising should the Maliki government agree. Yet this is important to President Bush. When Maliki balked at some of the provisions, President Bush called him personally to tell him that the US would not violate Iraqi sovereignty, but wanted certain protections in the accord. The Iranians, however, warn that US presence in Iraq is the cause of instability and unrest, and hints that it will help undercut Iraqi stability if the US signals a permanent presence. Meanwhile, in response to leaked details of the SOFA, Moqtada al-Sadr has called for Friday protests, and Iraqi law makers have signed a letter demanding a time table for US departure.

So what’s going on? The Bush Administration recognizes that the stability in Iraq now is an illusion of success. They realize Iran has penetrated Iraq’s government, military and militias. They know that if the US leaves it will leave an Iraq very much influenced by and even allied with Iran. This not only hurts American efforts to marginalize Iran, but also threatens renewed sectarian violence in Iraq, as Sunnis fear Iranian influence. Also, Iraq has more proven oil reserves than any state in the region except Saudi Arabia, and the US does not want Iran, who already trades oil in Euros and has threatened to use oil as a weapon, to have an ally in Iraq.

So the only way to really win in Iraq is to keep a long term presence, and use military force if Iran seems to be expanding its influence. The Iranians, for their part, have been willing to rachet down the violence to allow the US a face saving exit — violence down, declare victory and leave. But the SOFA threatens that, and risks the US trying to establish Iraq as a permanent base. With Senator McCain talking about 100 years in Iraq and making comparisons to Japan and South Korea, this is met in Iran with alarm — and with determination to use all their leverage to prevent it from happening.

Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki runs a government known to be corrupt and fragmented. Lacking control over the Kurdish and Sunni areas of the state, and with only partial control over Shi’ite regions, Maliki sees the US as a potential insurance policy for Iraqi government power. With the US gone, parties more friendly to Iran may get more of the goodies of an oil rich corrupt economy. The US is helping assure that those in the current government benefit — hence support by many government insiders for a deal with the US.

Watch this fight closely — it’s as close and as exciting as was the Clinton-Obama battle. The US will pressure Maliki to sign without major revisions (though certainly some symbolic nods to Iraqi sovereignty). Iran will respond by putting pressure on the Iraqi government, and Iranian backed militias will work with Iraqi nationalists to threaten the government with unrest. They will demand a timetable for withdrawal, not approval of 50 bases. The Bush administration knows the time is tight — if the negotiations drag on into August, the election campaign will overwhelm the issue, and those opposed to the US will be able to threaten to increase unrest at a time that would undercut the McCain campaign by making Iraq a major issue. Bush is hoping McCain takes over and continues his policy, and knows that this is only likely if the violence in Iraq remains low.

So watch this issue! If the US gets a favorable SOFA and there is little or no effective opposition, this means less violence and a greater chance that the next President might choose not to leave Iraq quickly. On the other extreme, massive violence in Iraq could develop in protest to SOFA giving the US most of what the Bush Administration wants. This could also increase the risk things could escalate into a conflict with Iran. If no SOFA is signed and instead a short term agreement to allow troops there until a comprehensive agreement is reached, that’s a tacit victory for Iran, and will increase the pressure on the US to withdrawal. Finally, if an extremely watered down SOFA is signed which satisfies the Iraqi opposition, that likely is also a benefit for Iran, and would likely also signal a hastened US departure.

So even though the media is only obliquely reporting this issue, and it seems buried between stories of tornadoes and the Obama-McCain match up, it’s shaping up to be a very telling indicator on the future of US military action in Iraq.  And a successful SOFA might help John McCain in the general election, while a breakdown of these negotiations may make it all but impossible for him to win.  The Iraq SOFA fight is a big deal.

Everybody’s a victim! Hillary got mistreated by the sexist press, Obama’s losing voters due to racism, and McCain is questioned and ridiculed because of ageism. Amazing that three people so victimized could have been the top contenders for the 2008 Presidential election!

Of course, these are indeed real issues. I wrote myself awhile back on Obama’s problem with racism, Hillary Clinton certainly had to endure some sexist rhetoric, and people are openly wondering about John McCain’s competence at age 72. On the other hand, Geraldine Ferraro was probably right that Obama wouldn’t be where he was if he were not black, Hillary would not have been running for President if her husband hadn’t been one first, and McCain is using his years of experience to dismiss Obama as unprepared and unqualified.

Not only that, but late in the campaign there was a surreal (and luckily short) moment where some (male) Hillary supporters seemed to like talking about her having testicles. A union leader said she had “testicular fortitude,” and James Carville even said “if she gave Obama one of her cojunes they’d each have two,” making it seem like we should elect the first woman President because she has balls. Talk about mixed messages!

However, in the way in which many each candidate’s supporters are ready to see themselves as victims of some kind of discrimination shows a rather disturbing aspect of American culture – we like to blame others for our problems. As I noted that in the Oil Denial blog a few weeks ago, that the response to high oil prices was that people went around pointing fingers at OPEC, big oil, or “speculators” as the culprits. It can’t be that we have an unsustainable lifestyle at a time when oil production is peaking, that would mean having to take responsibility and make hard choices. Blame someone!

Many of Clinton’s supporters can’t let go of their emotion and accept that she made some mistakes and Obama ran an awesome campaign. Clinton was a victim, she deserved to win. If Obama loses in the fall, many will no doubt attribute racism as a primary cause, while if McCain loses, people will say the country choose the ‘young and charismatic’ one over the competent but elderly leader, or complain that people voted for Obama because they didn’t want to be called racist.

Politics reflects life. Our culture sees to have two contradictory impulses. We value strength and victory in our sports, military endeavors, and business ventures. The New England Patriots may have been 18-1 last year, but since the lost the Superbowl, the season was a failure. On the other hand, we don’t seem to do losing gracefully well. Moreover, our culture is seeing this passed to the next generation, as parents get into brawls and arguments about childrens’ sports, sending a strong message that if you don’t win, you’re nothing. And, of course, if you don’t win, you get angry and blame someone or some injustice.

Humans are natural competitors. You can see it in children and it makes sense, given our biology. Yet we are not competing any more for survival and scarce resources. We are competing for fun, profit, and power. Some win, some lose, but rarely are the consequences of defeat dire. And, as I noted in Emotion and Politics, people often compete vicariously through others, connecting with sports teams, political leaders, or superstars. The loss thus can evoke emotions as real as those our ancestors experienced when some beast managed to hunt down the stag they were tracking.

Thus our leaders owe it to us to give us perspective. It is not healthy for our culture if people cannot accept losing, or believe that since only the weak lose, they have to blame their failures on some other person or thing. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t talk about the roles of sexism, ageism and racism in this campaign. But the candidates themselves should be warning against the blame game. Like a sports star who refuses to blame a lingering injury for poor performance, noting it’s part of the game, politicians should not be fostering a culture of victimhood where it appears victory is something one is entitled to.

To be sure, none of the candidates overtly claimed victimhood; Clinton’s speech last week found a balance between recognizing the reality of sexism without making excuses. Obama has tried to avoid running a racially charged campaign, and McCain is trying to make age an advantage. The campaigns, however, have subtly played up these issues rather than directly and unequivocally rejecting any sense of being a victim of some kind of ism. There are real victims out there; but Obama, McCain and Clinton are not among the victims; they are some of society’s most privileged.

Of all the potential match ups for this fall’s election, I’ve thought for a long time that a McCain-Obama match up would be the most fascinating. The two insurgent candidates of their own parties, with vastly different backgrounds and capacities, offering Americans a real choice. Pundits right now are all over the board on how to handicap this election. McCain has been compared to Bob Dole by those who see Obama coasting to victory, while Obama has been compared to Michael Dukakis by those who think he won’t be able to handle the spotlight given his lack of experience. So what will it be?

At this point, the smart money has to be on Obama. Not only will he get a bounce after the ringing endorsement by Hillary Clinton, which had even her detractors singing her praises, but McCain has had a rough couple of months. He’s been mostly out of the news, and when he makes the news it’s some kind of gaffe or someone on his campaign having connections to lobbyists. I thought his desire to give a speech on the night of the final Democratic primary contests was clever — make sure voters know it’s all about who will face him, and bring home a compelling message. Instead it was one of the worst speeches I’ve seen in this campaign, accentuating his age and apparent lack of mastery of detail. McCain is starting to look like a weak candidate.

While the right wing is all aflutter about Rev. Wright, rumors of a Michelle Obama video (sort of like the 1988 rumors running around that a photo could come out of Kitty Dukakis burning a US flag), and vague claims about his “associations,” pointing to a one time fundraiser (Rezko) for Obama who is now in jail, these things are minor. First they are old news; scandals from primary seasons usually diminish in import as the general election takes shape. Also they are all ‘guilt by association’ attempts, and those rarely hurt candidates — lookat all the dirt thrown at Clinton in 1992. If right wing talk radio wants to go on and on about so-called ‘black liberation theology’ as something that will poison his candidacy, for most of the electorate that’s all noise; they’ll focus on what Obama says and does. The right thinks Obama is strange and unqualified, and they assume the rest of the country will too. That’s as naive as the left thinking that the rest of the country will see Obama as the one true beckon of hope the way Obama’s strongest supporters do. Most people whose votes are still open will look at the campaign, and make judgments based on the debates and the way the media covers it.

McCain’s strengths are that he is a maverick in a year people want change, he has always appealed to independents and even Democrats, and in general people believe he says what he means. He is probably closest to the hier of the Reagan legacy, having fought alongside Reagan in the 80s, and maintaining that general ideology. He is likable, and a former war hero. Unlike the other Republicans who had been running, one can see him having real appeal. Obama on the other hand is relatively untested, was shown by Clinton to have weaknesses in the experience factor and in appealing to the working class — precisely the voters McCain seems poised to gain. On paper, this looks like a victory for McCain.

On paper, Obama didn’t stand a chance in the Democratic primary vs. Hillary Clinton. That suggests one should not underestimate Obama. The battle isn’t fought on paper.

McCain supporters should be troubled by the fact there is a lot of talk in the campaign about making this an election about foreign policy and national security. Their argument is “this is an era of terrorism and we’re at war, dare we trust this to some one as inexperienced as Barack Obama” (subtext — look at his background, Indonesia, Kenya, Kansas…weird name, he’s black…unsafe!) Yet while this seems unbeatable to those who truly put military and foreign policy issues first, rarely are those the issues which win an election. Moreover, in 2008 people are more concerned with the economy, the direction the country is going, and what the future will bring. McCain doesn’t seem to offer much there so far — and the Democrats have used that, plus his hawkish approach to foreign policy to connect him with Bush and label him “McSame.” After all, given how the Iraq war has pushed Bush’s approval ratings into the gutter, McCain would probably be smart to avoid focusing the electorate on that issue!

All Obama has to do to trump the foreign policy/security card is to be a master of details in the debates, make a compelling case, and forcefully tell McCain that he has it wrong, explaining why. McCain doesn’t seem to do as well when he’s confronted with details and a real argument, and his attack on Obama so far remains either vague, or based on things Obama claims are simply false (e.g., he wants unconditional talks with Ahmadinejad). If Obama sounds on top of foreign policy in the debates, and McCain sounds vague or too much like George W. Bush, Obama won’t win over everyone, but could satisfy the swing voters.

It also may not take much to satisfy them. If Obama makes a coherent argument for change and reform, and if the public mood remains as dour as it is (and if oil prices stay high), there will be a groundswell of people willing to even gamble on a relatively unknown for a new direction. In that case people will want to be assured Obama understands foreign and security policy, and all he’ll have to do is show that he can talk about it with confidence, coherence, and knowledge. And, given that Obama has proven a quick study on policy issues and he has some of the best foreign policy advisors out there, I suspect he can deliver.

McCain proved very resilient to go from appearing dead in the summer of 2007 to shocking everyone with his early victory in the GOP primary season, and Obama does have potential negatives which could turn this around. But right now in a country yearning for change, young voters appearing ready to actually go out and not only vote, but be active, and McCain one of the oldest candidates ever, 25 years Obama’s senior, Democrats have to be feeling pretty good now. Moreover, unless McCain can find a way to connect with voters, he might find himself as outmatched in communication skills as Carter was by Reagan.

In 1980 with a country in a similar mood, Ronald Reagan’s GOP convention in Detroit had the theme “Together A New Beginning.” Obama might be wise to coopt that theme; 2008 could be the Democrat’s 1980.

The sudden jump in oil of more than $11 to nearly $140 a barrel shocked investors and led to a stock market sell off of nearly 400 points. That, combined with an unemployment report that suggested an especially weak economy — one likely in recession — creates both a new mood of uncertainty and further pressure on the value of the dollar. What is going to happen?

While the rise in oil prices over the last year is in large part attributable to supply and demand concerns — production is stable while demand continues to increase — an $11 a barrel rise in one day can only be attributed to panic. And that panic has one clear cause: fear about Iran. Israeli Prime Minister Olmert just concluded a visit to President Bush, ostensibly to push the case against Iran. Rumors are rife that Israel is planning some kind of strike against expected Iranian nuclear sites. And though only 7% of the US public supports a strike on Iran, Democratic Presidential Nominee Barack Obama signaled at least his potential tolerance of a strike in his June 4th speech before AIPAC (American Israeli Political Action Committee) when he said as President he would do everything in his power to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. For impact he repeated everything twice. If that doesn’t hint at military force, what does?

To be sure, Obama’s comments were in the context of arguing for diplomatic efforts to deal with Iran, and certainly did not condone a strike, but given all the speculation, oil traders had to think seriously about what any conflict involving Iran might mean for world energy markets. It’s not pretty.

Almost 25% of the world’s oil flows through the strait of Hormuz, a narrow passage way (55 Kilometers wide at its narrowest) at the entrance to the Persian Gulf. Iran has repeatedly threatened to close the strait, but US military estimates are that they could only do so for a short period of time. Perhaps. But a sudden disruption of oil at that level would push prices up dramatically. And, should Iran manage to threaten or close the strait for a longer period of time, we could be seeing oil at over $300 a barrel — or more. More worrisome would be in an attack on Iran would cause the Iranians to unleash Hezbollah on Israel, and foment real chaos in the region. This would certainly risk shutting down Iraqi oil production, and could even threaten the Saudis and other Gulf states. Given the impact even rumors of war can have on oil prices, the greater the conflict in the region, the more disastrous the effect on oil prices. The fact that the markets think an Iranian crisis very possible suggests that those who analyze these things for a living are concerned.

Already we are seeing the current energy crisis have a troubling ripple effect through the economy. GM is closing a number of SUV plants, suggesting they see high oil prices as permanent. Airlines are cutting flights and laying off workers as fares increase. In the US businesses and factories are in danger of being shut down by high fuel prices, while consumers must devote thousands of dollars each year extra to pay for energy and fuel. In a time of tight credit, this has a profound impact on consumer spending and thus the economy. Even if nothing else changed, we could be looking in the face of a far deeper recession than people realize, the economy isn’t showing the resiliency of the past.

If Iran is hit, there is a real possibility that prices will go so high as to push the economy into something akin to a depression and, if the crisis lasts very long, there may be no clear way out. The danger is all too real.

So what can they be thinking at the White House? First, one cannot underestimate the power of groupthink. Groupthink occurs when a small group puts group unanimity ahead of critical reflection on the issue at hand. Symptoms of groupthink include a belief in the inherently morality of the group, an overestimateion of their own power, an underestimation of their adversary, and a belief that because their cause is just, the ends justify any means taken. They become convinced that they are certain to succeed. Voices of dissent are either silenced or they self-censor, the result is that even those who we entrust with awesome power can get caught in a kind of alternate reality. Irving Janis described this in his classic book Groupthink, in which he connected the phenomenon with foreign policy fiascos. One certainly could see some evidence of groupthink in the advisors around Hillary Clinton towards the end of her campaign, believing they still would win.

If groupthink is present, the advisors around President Bush, already smarting from the fact that Iran is winning in Iraq, having heavy influence on the government and preventing the US from establishing a pro-American regime, may be convinced that Iran is close to having a nuclear weapon and it is absolutely necessary for the US to do whatever necessary to prevent it. In groupthink the mix of over-confidence in their own capacity along with underestimation of the opponent could lead them to think they can simply smack Iran hard, setting back significantly their nuclear progress, if not to altogether halting it. The dangers described above would be seen as unlikely: Iran will not see such a response in their interest, if the attack is quick and surgical it’ll be over quickly and can be controlled, and dissidents might even use this as an excuse to rise against the regime. The risks of acting are thus seen as minimal compared the risk of not acting. With top level advisors assuring each other that they can pull this off, a plan can be developed that sounds reasonable and almost certain to succeed. President Bush, perhaps thinking he is doing a favor for his successor by removing this obstacle — or making sure that it is removed lest an ‘appeaser’ take power — may feel it’s a decision he cannot avoid.

Yet, as shown with the decision to invade Iraq, plans can go very awry and even the slightest miscalculation can lead to fiascos. In the case of Iran, this seems likely — it’s unlikely Iran would take such a strike laying down. And once they respond, a dynamic could ensue that assures economic disaster in the West. Indeed, the White House may be underestimating the fact that Iran understands how vulnerable the western economy is right now, and thus they — perhaps caught up in their own groupthink — might see this as the perfect time to try to create a major crisis. I do think that the odds are against a strike, it’s a bit scary to realize that we might be just one bad decision away from major disaster.

This is a break in the usual blog entries to bring part two of the Islam and the West series, still focusing first on the development of ‘the West.’ For part one, go to Paul and Rome, and for more info lick the “Islam and the West Series” link under “Pages" at http://scotterb.wordpress.com.

The Roman Empire was perhaps the most vibrant and successful multicultural cosmopolitan society in history. For centuries it managed to foster peaceful trade and relations between many peoples within the Empire, tolerating diversity. In the third century Plotinus (204-270), one of the most important philosophers for the Western tradition, lived and wrote, though many have never heard of him.

In the post Faith, Philosophy and the Modern Age I noted that current religious traditions emerged from what Karl Jaspers called the Axial Age, when human thought took a great leap forward in contemplating the meaning of the individual in the world. Plotinus lived just after that epoch ended, in Rome, the one place where one could learn and read of Plato, early Christian thought, Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and other philosophical traditions. In some ways he transcends what we now see as the boundaries of Eastern and Western philosophy, unifying these ‘axial age’ traditions into a brand of philosophy called neo-Platonism.

Since getting deep into his philosophy would take pages of work, and I’m not a philosopher or an expert, I’ll summarize. Plotinus believed that the transcendent essence of the universe is “the One,” from which our world emanates. The One is not a creator, and in some sense is all that is, since for Plotinus the material world is an illusion, a lower order reflection of the One. The One has no real attributes; even attributing ‘existence’ to it lessens it. It does not think, is beyond our comprehension, and represents truth, the Platonic ideal. Our goal in life is spiritual connection to The One, achieving that by recognizing that as part of the World Soul, we need to connect to the true essence of reality through virtue. The material world is illusionary and a trap – we get ensnared in it and lose ourselves, unable to find happiness because we are distancing ourselves from our true connection to the One.

The pure spiritualism of this philosophy appealed to a playboy turned Christian, Augustine of Hippo (354 – 430). Augustine’s neo-Platonist Christianity creates the basis for what the Church would become, and therefore western culture in general. Augustine’s most powerful book Confessions is, in essence, a love story. He tells of how he was lost in what Plotinus would call the world of material illusions, seeking meaning and release in alcohol, sex, power and violence, until he fell in love. His lover was none other than Jesus Christ and the Christian God. Suddenly his old life was meaningless, he saw it had been empty and futile, dooming him to despair because any pleasure and gain derived from the material world was fleeting and transient. Only the love of God could provide eternal happiness and real satisfaction. For example, Augustine would tell of how in his days of wealth and power he’d look down on the hapless drunk, feeling superior. But, he noted, the drunk was better off than he was. The drunk would wake up the next day and know alcohol had not made him happy, Augustine would keep on believing that power and wealth was the key to success in life.

The power of Augustine’s writings set up the basis for Christian theology, as his neo-Platonism would overtake the numerous other competing theological views of the early Christian world. The notion of the Trinty, for instance, is a Platonic tripartite division of reality. The One from Plotinus was replaced by “God,” and instead of us being natural emanations from The One, we are creations of God. Instead of a kind of unity with the One as our ultimate essence and that to which we aspire in experience, we are separate from God, and aspire to a true love relationship with God. Augustine maintains the other worldly idealism of Plotinus, evident in his rejection of worldly goods and honors as a means towards happiness. Only a deep and abiding love relationship with God – Augustine defines it as ‘falling in love,’ – can bring happiness, everything else fades away and offers only a short term illusion of satisfaction.

This Platonic view of Christianity created for the early Christian church the capacity to survive the fall of the Roman Empire. Followers of Augustine would leave the vulgar world of every day life for well protected monasteries high in the hills, preserving knowledge, books, and information from destruction, keeping alive in their faith and practice the essence of Roman civilization. If not for Augustine and the early Christian church the West might have been lost forever as Rome collapsed. Even though Rome fell, Christianity would survive, and the barbarian hordes who destroyed Rome would take it as their faith, allowing the early Church to define European customs and traditions.

Following Augustine, these customs and traditions were built on an other-worldly view on the meaning of life. Thus the desire for progress was put aside in favor of stability and tradition. To us in the modern world this represents the dark ages, a time where for centuries Europe was backwards and stagnant. Yet given the violence and breakdown of civilization at the time, it probably was the one way that western civilization could be saved.

One issue for the next blog in this series (probably in a week or so) is the question of war. Christians before Augustine were generally pacifists, and Augustine’s other worldliness suggests pacifism – if this world is truly meaningless, then killing to preserve life is irrational, life in this world isn’t worth breaking God’s commandment not to kill. Augustine himself would be the one to tackle that issue.

Emotion and politics mix like vodka and orange juice. A little bit can do a world of good, too much and things get out of control. Adolf Hitler played German emotions to ride to power and convince Germans to support his new order. Appeals to emotion underlie great movements, for good or for evil, throughout modern history. Great leaders know how to manage the emotions of their supporters, and recognize the danger of getting caught up in the emotion themselves.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are from all accounts ideological soulmates. Both are Democrats, activist, and liberal. Obama’s early work included registering voters for a 1992 election that elected Bill Clinton to the Presidency. Both are involved in historical campaigns. If Hillary had prevailed, she’d have been the first woman nominee; as it is Obama is the first black nominee. Both are far distant from John McCain’s very conservative perspective, and their criticisms of McCain are similar. The biggest policy difference between Obama and Clinton is in the details of their health care plans.

Yet if one watched the Clinton speech last night, or reads through commentary at political websites, it’s clear that the supporters of Clinton and Obama are at war. Obama supporters accuse Clinton of what Jeffrey Toobin at CNN called “deranged narcissism” and consider her to be acting like a spoiled two year old who can’t understand that she doesn’t always get her way. Clinton supporters believe they’ve been cheated by a news media and a process that has pushed aside what should have been the first woman President, and instead ’selected’ a new comer they consider an ‘empty suit’ or ‘tool of the misogynists.’ The supporters of each candidate have developed a caricatured image of the other, reinforced by both the length and tone of the campaign, and the name calling between supporters of each candidate.

None of this is surprising. Strong candidates inspire intense loyalty and emotional support, people find themselves living in part through the actions of their political hero or heroine, symbolically connecting their concerns about politics and community with the leader they support. Thus the emotional connection is not with the issues or ideals, but the person. It’s not rational, but it’s real, a fact of political life.

At the end of a campaign like this one, it’s up to the candidates to decide how to manage the emotions of their supporters constructively. In this, Barack Obama so far is earning an “A,” while Clinton is failing. Obama has not only refused to say anything even alluding to Hillary’s negatives, but last night devoted a long section early in his speech to praise Clinton, urging his supporters to do likewise. He is successfully managing the emotions of his supporters, calmly moving them from Hillary hatred to Hillary respect. If she had done likewise, the emotion within the Obama camp about Clinton could have dissipated rapidly. As it is, her actions undercut Obama’s efforts.

Clinton has been by all reports caught up in the emotion of support around her candidacy. She admitted as much last night, as she talked about how her supporters give her strength. Rather than trying to manage that emotion and help re-direct it in a manner that would allow her supporters to move towards Obama, she did the opposite. Her early praise of Obama was lukewarm, undercut by the fact she refused to acknowledge that every news organization was reporting that he was the presumptive nominee. She then repeated complaints about the process, made the case she was more electable, and obliquely criticized Obama. She even self-congratulated her campaign on the South Dakota win, noting that ‘South Dakota had the last word,’ even though Montana (which went for Obama) still had its polls open.

Everything she did racheted up the emotion of her supporters, did nothing to move them towards accepting the fact she lost, and angered Obama’s supporters. While for Hillary supporters this is welcome — they are experiencing an emotional high and would rather the buzz not wear off — it is a sign of bad leadership. Even if she did not want to concede last night, she could have started the process of managing the emotions of her followers by more directly congratulating Obama and praising him in less vague terms. She could have avoided the complaining and repetition of arguments that have not swayed the superdelegates for the last three weeks. Instead she did the opposite, she asked for people to tell her their thoughts, as if she needs the emotional high to continue, and she wants to lean on her supporters to avoid the pain of defeat. That is dangerous; when leaders get caught up in the emotion they create, they lose judgment and can easily become out of touch with reality.

All that said, it’s not too late. She has been in an intense, long campaign. Perhaps she didn’t have time to really process what the day meant, or to reflect on what to do next. If her goal is to be Vice President, she has to be far more gracious and needs to endorse Obama sooner rather than later. If she is negotiating for her future, she needs to show good will by starting to help heal the divisions in the party. Even if she thinks Obama will stumble and some political miracle will make the superdelegates change their mind, her tactics hurt her chances. She can suspend her campaign, acknowledge Obama’s victory, and say she wants to work on the Democratic party platform with her delegates. If Obama is caught in some scandal, she could still win in August, there’s no reason to hold out now.

It’s a heady thing to be the subject of such emotional conviction. It’s hard to give up, the temptation is to dive into it and enjoy it. But leaders are leaders because they understand the emotions they inspire, and they know how dangerous they can be if not managed. Obama is acting like a leader now, Clinton needs to show she can to.

UPDATE: Wednesday late afternoon. I hear reports that Hillary Clinton understands the dynamic, and perhaps felt last night she needed to allow her supporters an emotional high before moving in a different direction. If so, that’s promising, and my discussion above underestimates here. If she handles this well, she proves herself a real leader.   When push comes to shove, I really think she ran an admirable campaign, and I hope that that is what gets remembered.

Tonight the United States Democratic party has done something courageous. They have nominated Barack Hussein Obama to be their nominee for the Presidency. Opponents of Obama like to state his middle name believing that it’s a way to denigrate him: He has a Muslim sounding name, the same as Saddam Hussein — and his last name sounds like “Osama!” To me, this simply increases my sense that whether or not Obama wins in November, the country is changing for the better: we are not afraid to nominate someone who just 20 years ago would have been seen as too unknown and even strange to be seriously considered for the Presidency.

On top of that, Obama, as I noted a couple weeks ago is doing something profound for American politics, finally bringing in large numbers of minorities and young people previously alienated, and for the first time really using the internet and new media to build a movement. That alone makes this an historic campaign, and one that will probably overcome the racism that certainly play a role in the campaign.

To be sure, I have my doubts about some of Obama’s policies. I personally find the Democrats to be too willing to use the power of central government to try to achieve social change, and I worry that too many promises are being made which we simply can’t afford. I would love to see more of a focus on decentralizing power and an acknowledgment of the deep economic problems we face, including both the energy crisis and that of global climate change. Nonetheless, Obama represents something new, a needed break from the old tired and failed politics of the past two decades.

(An aside: Did Anderson Cooper just say he wanted to be Donna Brazille’s boob? Yikes.)

Hillary Clinton fought a great campaign, but I have to say I was disappointed with her defiant speech. The more I read, the more it seems like groupthink has descended on the Clinton camp. They think they have the best chance in November, they’ve been winning recent contests, and I suspect they really don’t comprehend why it is that the media and Democratic insiders don’t come around to their perspective. I suspect they are truly perplexed by this, and that explains the efforts to blame the media, blame moveon.org, or cling to the hope that superdelegates might change their mind. Some believe she’s just pushing for the VP spot or leveraging her strength. That could be the case, though if so the speech should have given more openings to Obama. He can’t be looked at as being forced to choose her; that would make him look weak. I don’t think she and her advisors truly comprehend the historic nature of Obama’s victory, and the utter impossibility that the insiders of the Democratic party would undo this decision to give it to her.

In that sense, it’s disappointing that the historic nature of tonight’s decision gets overshadowed by the inability of Hillary Clinton to end with more grace and less grit. Yet Hillary is human. The emotion of the campaign and the closed nature of a campaign bubble may have altered her judgment. Perhaps she should be given a few days to figure out how to navigate the end of the campaign. Still, I came in to tonight thinking she should be the VP. I deleted a short post where I imagined a scenario where she could become VP. Now, I think her inability to truly embrace the historic nature of this night means she doesn’t deserve the position. But maybe she can undo the damage — we’ll see.

Finally, Obama’s speech tonight was superb. He didn’t talk about himself, he didn’t talk about the process, his only mention of Clinton was to praise her efforts. He focused on the future and the road ahead. It was inspiring. We are living history here, this will be a fascinating five months ahead.

The local Irvings (the top gas outlet in Maine) is selling regular unleaded at $4.039 a gallon. Filling an 18 gallon tank thus costs over $70. To lock in heating oil for the winter right now is $4.89 (so I’m not locking in yet). While we can afford it by cutting back other unnecessary expenses, there are people now who are facing major life decisions because they have a long commute, they can’t afford to heat their house, or their jobs are in danger. Even options such as geothermal energy, usually seen as unviable in Maine because of cool ground temperatures, are getting renewed interest thanks to new technologies.

But what about the car? I feel lucky to have lived my life in the age of the automobile. Yes, it has polluted the planet, led to countless traffic deaths and created numerous problems we’re dealing with now, but the lifestyle it provided was fun. My first car was a 1963 Chevy Bel Aire I got when I was 16 years old from my Grandma for $100. My friend Dan and I used to drive our cars (his was a 1966 Nova) at high speeds over a raised railroad section on a gravel road outside of town. We’d get airborn and the key was to land and keep going straight. I got up to 60 MPH. He had his car taken away before he could beat that record. The next year, at age 17, we both realized how crazy we’d been the year before. But it was fun. Now that part of Sioux Falls is all built up, instead of fields and a gravel road it has schools and stores.

As children we didn’t have any car seats. The point of a station wagen was to have kids play in the back, and I recall (despite my mom’s yelling at us to sit down) standing in the back of the convertible as we headed out to the lake when I was 5 or 6. What a life! I feel a twinge of guilt when I buckle my kids into car seats. Yeah, it’s safe, but somehow they’re missing out on something.

After my transmission and engine failed on my Bel Aire (I’d love to have another light green 1963 Bel Aire!) for reasons that were pretty obvious (but which I never shared with my parents) I got to drive around with my mom’s 1973 Bonneville convertible. 455 8 cylinder engine, we’d cruise town and taunt cars full of bigger meaner kids to chase us, and we’d always lose them. We knew where the tricky curves were and I was usually the driver, adept at weaving in and out of traffic. Unbelievably, we never got pulled over. Alas, I would joke that the car’s mileage wasn’t measured in miles per gallons but gallons per mile. It was the last of the pre-oil crisis cars, and at best got 4 or 5 MPG. My mom sold it long ago, but she says it’s still around, used now for parades back in South Dakota.

Perhaps my favorite was a 1970 Olds Tornado, again an 8 cylinder 455 engine, front wheel drive, and FUN. I was 18 by that time and a bit more reserved in my driving, but heading out to Rapid City to watch the state basketball tournament, armed with a fuzz buster and CB radio, we averaged about 120 - 130 MPH on I-90 (a very straight and sparsely traveled interstate). Made record time Sioux Falls to Rapid, but my car broke down once we got there. It got fixed, but later a lady came out of the driveway and smashed into it, totaling the car. I got a check for its value ($900), but never again would have such a fun car. My next one was a Dodge from the early 60s with push button transmission and a weak engine.

I’ve also been at the other extreme. From 1990 to 1994 I was getting around 50 MPG on the highway, driving not a hybrid but a little red Geo Metro. In 1990 I purchased a brand new Geo Metro after getting a job teaching a course at St. Olaf College for a professor who was on global semester. I had been going by foot, bike and bus in Minneapolis where I was a graduate student, but to get to Northfield I needed a car. I sold that first Metro in the fall of 1991 before heading to Germany for a year, but bought a used version of the same car — red again — when I returned. From experience I know it’s possible for car makers to provide very fuel efficient cars! I wonder if GM wishes they were still churning those things out!

Are we at the end of the automobile age? On the one had, there is no alternative, so cars will be around for awhile. My son’s favorite movie is Cars and both boys have more matchbox and hot wheels cars than they know what to do with (but still each want the exact same one at the same time). I still go car by car through Consumer Reports every year when they have their ratings, looking at what is new, redesigned or dumped. The rise of hybrids and electric cars, as well as the inevitable shift in emphasis to gas mileage means that for some time the automobile industry will adapt.

Still, the automobile age seems to be slipping away. There was a kind of innocence that’s been lost. No worries about pollution or wasting gas when you went outside of town to watch a street race, or go cruising the loop downtown for hours. In those days drinking a beer while driving was common, and when pulled over often the police would simply tell you to pour it out rather than charge a serious offense like today.

To be sure, I didn’t drive until after the first energy crisis, and already things were changing. We had the 55 MPH speed limit for a while, a friends parents’ bought this interesting little car called the Honda Civic (I had thought Honda only made motorcycles). But in a world with no internet, it was still the age of the Automobile.

Back in 1980 a Styx song had the lyric “we were so cool back in ‘65, we had it made because we understood what to do to survive, I had my car and I made the scene, didn’t give a damn about no gasoline oh no, they can go to hell.” The song’s refrain “living high, living fine on borrowed time” aptly describes that age — the wild, fun, wasteful and polluting 20th century age of the automobile. It was an illusion, borrowed time until we would have to face the facts of global warming and diminishing oil supplies. But damn, it sure was fun.

Iran may still be talking tough about the US, its nuclear ambitions and Israel. But at the same time Iran seems to be offering the US a way out of a quagmire that has all but destroyed the Bush Presidency. In recent months Iran has brokered a cease fire between the Mahdi army and Iraqi government, facilitated the Badr militia merger with the Iraqi military (it’s not clear how independent they are, but it does at least give the Iraqi military a stronger force) and has essentially done all it could to stabilize the situation in Iraq.

There are competing theories as to why Iran is suddenly so agreeable, despite lack of any positive move from the US. One could be a fear that a McCain Presidency would continue the US presence in Iraq indefinitely, and that the US has to be given a chance for a graceful exit. While as I noted last week nothing can make this operation a success, most people would label it a success if they could just declare victory and leave Iraq in a stable condition. Iran may be helping make that possible, recognizing that a post-occupation Iraq would have very close allies with Iran.

Another theory, of course, is that this is an illusion, the calm before the storm. Those who see Iran in a more nefarious light believe that Iran does not want stability in Iraq, and was disappointed by the inability of the Mahdi army to really put up a fight a couple months ago. In this view, Iran is slowly arming and preparing some kind of terror offensive to be unleashed at a time during the Presidential campaign when the impact will be strongest. I find this extremely unlikely. First, despite Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric, Iranian foreign policy has been exceedingly rational and has avoided overstepping its capacity. They know how to play cat and mouse, and have been very patient. Second, Iran has a vested interest in a stable Iraq, and in avoiding a Shi’ite-Sunni conflict. Bottom line: Iran has an interest in stability in Iraq just like the US does.

So what’s the endgame? Essentially the US has two options:

A) remain hostile towards Iran, maintaining a long term presence in Iraq; or

B) change policies on Iran to open up diplomatic discussions and allow a near total withdrawal of American forces from Iraq.

“B” brings about a quick solution: troops come home, the long nightmare is over, the public is able to put the war behind them, the US can focus again on counter-terrorism and dealing with Afghanistan and the Taliban (violence continues to be up there). The pro-war side will declare victory, the anti-war side will say “what was the point of all this death and destruction,” but the real result will develop slowly, over time, as a post-occupation Iraq takes form.

Those arguing “A” believe that this is a false conclusion of the conflict. Iran, they argue, would benefit by having extensive influence in Iraq, undercuting efforts to make Iraq a stable American ally able to model democracy for the region. This will be seen to legitimize Iran’s status as a regional power, and therefore offers short term relief at a steep long term price.

Ironically, those arguing “A” are right in many of their arguments, but wrong in their prescription. Iran is becoming a regional power, diplomacy with them would ‘legitimize’ them and hurt efforts to stop them from getting nuclear weapons. This would assure that Iraq remains closer to Iran than to the US, an ironic outcome to this ill conceived conflict. However, the fact of the matter is that the US has no better option. Trying to turn Iraq into a stable pro-western democracy is a feat of social engineering that the US does not have the capacity to achieve. Neo-conservatives were right when they condemned social engineering by big government, it’s a shame they didn’t recognize that’s what they’re attempting in Iraq. Iranian influence is real, and Iran could turn up the heat at any time if the US appeared to be doing things undercutting Iranian interests. Add to that the fact the military is overstretched, the war is exceedingly unpopular at home, and there are other crises out there, as well as vulnerabilities to oil panics (and Iran could easily manufacture one of those), and the US really has little to gain and a lot to lose by continuing the Iraqi occupation with the goal of creating a stable ally to the US.

Moreover, diplomacy with Iran is not appeasement. The US knows that Iran wants the Americans to leave, and we can demand a price. One possibility would be to divide Iraq, which itself is a country with arbitrary borders. The Kurds already have autonomy, as well as good relations with both the US and Iran. The US could negotiate a continuing presence of some troops in peaceful Kurdistan, both to keep some pressure on Iran, but also to help keep peace between the Kurds and Turks. The Sunni region could get important oil field access, and have a close alliance with Jordan and Saudi Arabia, with tacit American assistance. The majority Shi’ite portion of Iraq would be closer to Iran. This could all be worked out in a very ‘balance of power’ style negotiation where no one gets all they want, but stability is created that is sustainable without requiring a massive intervention of troops.

This won’t solve the other issues between the US and Iran, but the fact is that Iran is a regional power and it’s not going away. No precision bombing can alter that, and all out war would be far too costly with consequences that could be devastating. Perhaps working together on an end game in Iraq might help open doors to solving other problems.

Today Hillary Clinton won Puerto Rico, but the decision yesterday by the DNC assures that barring an unforeseen disaster, Barack Obama will be the nominee. Also yesterday, Barack Obama left his church, Trinty, in Chicago. He did so, he says, in part to protect the church, though everyone knows that the firey content of that, like many black churches, gives opponents fodder for attack. People who don’t understand the importance of race in America want a black man who is black in skin color only, but culturally seems white. The reality of our society, however, is that it’s almost impossible for that to happen. This means racism will play a real role in the 2008 election.

John McCain is a very weak candidate. He has been committing gaffe after gaffe on his so-called signature issues: Iraq and foreign policy. He messed up the number of soldiers in Iraq, mixed up Shi’ite and Sunni, didn’t know that Ahmadinejad is not the most powerful man in Iran (it’s Supreme Leader Khamanei), didn’t realize that al qaeda is enemies with Hezbollah and Iran, and made the absurd comment that if we left Iraq, al qaeda would take over. Given a lot of Republicans are lukewarm to McCain anyway, that, combined with the strong Obama organizational efforts, suggest a huge win for the Democrats in November.

However, I suspect that McCain may pull out a squeaker. Obama has one weakness that, even in 21^st century America, trumps all his strengths: he is black. Racism in the US isn’t as overt as in the past. Whites, not truly understanding the impact of slavery and segregation on the structure of society, often whine about affirmative action and make outlandish comparisons between an emphasis on building a sense of African American identity by saying things like “what if they were talking about pride in being white” or something like that. Those with the most power – white males like myself – are too often oblivious to the privileges we have because of our status in this society.

So to be blunt: I expect this to be an ugly campaign, one where the attacks on Obama so far – mostly attempts at guilt by association – pale in comparison of what’s to come. It will be intended to play overtly to the racist aspect of American society, though the McCain campaign will be careful not to be directly involved and will in fact self-righteously criticize such tactics.

There will be two types of appeal to racism. One will simply be to try to paint Obama as somehow strange. Strange name. Look at his former church. Weird background. Lived awhile in Indonesia…subtext: is he really one of us? The Clinton campaign used this in a very subtle way, and showed the power of that approach in places like Kentucky and West Virginia. And while most of the country doesn’t have the continuing overt racism of that region or the deep south, there is enough to get people to even secretly vote for the old white guy. McCain may not be great, but we can imagine him at the dinner table.

There will also be the ‘swiftboating’ effort. Stark attacks, made if not on him then on close associates or more likely his wife. These will be meant to appeal to the hidden racist in most people, even those who try to deny any sort of racial bias, something to say “this guy really can’t be trusted to run the country.” A statement, a letter to a friend, some kind of video, who knows. The message will be that Obama is culturally strange, has hung around with strange people, have close associates who say things that sound un-American and certainly politically incorrect for a Presidential candidate. Real message: black folk are different, we can’t give them real power.

All of this will seem to be directed at Barack Obama, but make no mistake: Any strong African American contender would be subject to this, because the nature of our society means that there is still such a divide between the races that most of the time you’ll be able to find associations, statements and actions that seem to those who don’t understand the racial divisions – who would expect a black church to be just like the white Methodist church down the street, maybe with better singers – to be simply unacceptable for a President.

If anyone can overcome this, it’s Obama. He’s charismatic, intelligent, tough, and able to connect. He might just overcome the inevitable onslaught of subtle and not so subtle appeals to racism that the GOP is bound to throw out there. You’ve been warned. Get ready for it. This is a test of how far we’ve come as a society. If Obama loses because of such attacks and attitudes, this shows that the racial divide is extremely powerful, especially given how on paper Obama should be having an easy coast to victory. If Obama wins or at least keeps it very close, it will be symbolic of a country overcoming its racial divisions and moving forward. This is not to say anyone who votes against him is a racist; many people would never vote for him because they are conservative and Obama is clearly on the left. I’m talking about the impact overall, measured in how many voters who would have voted for a white Democrat this year decide to vote McCain because of hidden racism. In anyevent, whatever the outcome, 2008 will say something about what kind of nation we’ve become.