June 2009

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June 29 - Education, Children and Parents

Reading CNN’s money page I ran across a column by the father of a four year old who “wigged out” when his child didn’t pass the exam to be part of New York City’s gifted child program.   He, like many parents, are very concerned about the education their child will receive, and what that might mean down the line.  He ultimately makes a good point that the background of the parents are a good predictor of how a child will do, and raises legitimate concerns about whether there is equal opportunity for a quality education.  But what are parents thinking!?

I was not a good student through 10th or 11th grade.  Even as I finished high school I was inconsistent.  In classes I liked I could pull A’s, but in classes I hated I was usually in the C or B range.   I think in my class of  589 students I was number 187 (I’ve always been good with remembering numbers — one claim to fame I have is I could tell time at age 4).    I also rarely studied.  I could cram during study hall and pass the test thanks to a good short term memory.  In junior high I had real problems.  I dropped out of one class without telling anyone.  I simply stopped showing up, telling the teacher I had switched to a study hall.  Instead I went to the library or roamed the school.   I failed photography because I didn’t do the work (that was not an easy class to fail).  I didn’t really care, and I hated the structure.

In short, if my parents were the kind of helicopter parent that are prevalent today, they’d have been panicking over me, sending me to some kind of learning assistance program, or blaming the teachers for not engaging me.   It wasn’t until high school debate, which I found fun and engaging, that I actually decided to take my work seriously.  Still, in college my first two exams were returned on the same day — an “F” on a philosophy test, and a “D” on a biology test.   At that point I decided to start taking it seriously.  I ultimately graduated summa cum laude, fifth in my class, and went to Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies for my MA.  I now have a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and teach.

I’m not stating that to brag, only to point out that getting an education is not something you miss out on if you don’t get the best teachers and schooling at an early age.   For most of us (not including those who have real learning disabilities and need special care), it’s OK (to be sure, not optimal) to spin our wheels through some of our school years.    I recall in grad school running across fellow students who were really stressed out because they were used to being at the top and didn’t like being “average,” even if it was in a top notch graduate program.    Since I was used to not being at the top, I avoided that stress.

All of this reflecting leads me to a few points about education that I think parents should consider:

1.  For most kids, it’s not about finding a method to get them to learn or improve their performance, it’s about motivating them to want to learn.   Parents can do that regardless of what’s happening in school; summer and weekends can be fun education.   Make it fun, the learning will follow!

2.  We parents need to augment what goes on in the schools, and not be jerks who complain to the teacher if we think our precious child is getting unfair treatment.   That’s life, and every child will spin a story to make it appear they are the victim.   Just watch siblings have very different descriptions of the  same fight over a toy!   That doesn’t mean not to ever ask questions or express concerns — quite the contrary, we should be engaged and communicate.   But be respectful of the teacher and recognize that in almost all cases the teacher is trying their hardest.  (Yes, grammar nazis, I’m using third person plural instead of he/she, or his/hers, and I’m proud of it!)

3.  Childhood is for play.   Learning need not be competitive.   Kids don’t need to shine as the best in their class, especially not on every subject.  This part of life is for fun, and if kids learn to have fun as children, they will be more likely to have fun adult lives.  If they take on tasks with stress and pressure as children, that’s how they’ll experience adulthood.   What would you rather have your child be, a stressed out business leader earning $150,000 whose life is full of anxiety and pressure, or someone earning $40,000, but who loves life and has a good circle of friends?   My parents let me experience childhood as magical, and I still look at life that way.

4.  Children who are very difficult when young — headstrong and stubborn — probably will end up having the strength to avoid peer pressure and chart their own course when they are older.   Yes, children have to learn to behave, but better to have a little rebel than a Stepford child.  (At least, I hope I’m right here, given Ryan and Dana’s personalities.   Oh any students reading who don’t get the “Stepford” reference, click here.)

5.  Don’t give up!  Even when I was a poor to average student, my mom and dad talked about it as a certainty that I’d go to college, and that I could do anything.  They’d try to get me to work harder, but they didn’t do anything to make me fear I’d become a failure or that I was risking my life if I didn’t do better in eighth grade.  Keep a positive attitude and positive visions of the future — that will stick with them, and help kids have the attitude needed to succeed.  Negativity breeds failure, after all.

6.   Don’t overprogram!   Yeah, there’s soccer camp, theater camp, baseball, dancing and the like.   I wrote last February how great a local ski program, Alpine Snow Kids, was for Ryan (then age 5).  But keep enough free time to have fun together, and have times during the day to relax and reflect.   We don’t want kids to grow up addicted to having their lives scheduled — it’s OK to just go out in the woods, relax by a lake, or sit down with a book.   Time stress shouldn’t start early!

7.   It’s OK if kids watch TV, even things that aren’t PBS, or that have violence.   Kids have imaginations, but they also aren’t fragile little vessels ready to become serial killers if they happen to wake up and catch you watching some kind of action movie.   I mean, we should have common sense, but the more control we try to exercise over kids, the less they’ll learn to control their own decisions.

And ultimately, don’t we want our children to grow up to be able to autonomously make good choices on their own, rather than relying on rules and authority figures to set boundaries for them?

June 28 - Pop Culture Icons

On Thursday both Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson died.   Each were major figures in the pop culture scene, though Jackson clearly played a more profound role.   The reaction of the public to Jackson’s death was reminsicient of when another major pop icon, Elvis Presley.   Like Jackson, Presley had not handled the fame and wealth well, delved into drugs and general weirdness.  Presley didn’t fall as far from grace as Jackson did, but in each case we’re left with a sour taste in our mouths.   These greats who did so much to shape a generation of music could not shoulder the pressure of fame.

But first, the one being forgotten in much of the coverage: Farrah Fawcett.   She came to prominence in 1976 with both the TV show “Charlie’s Angels” and a poster that came in Life magazine that is still the best selling pin-up in history.   She became synonomous with glamor and sex appeal for the late seventies, a beautiful smile, slender, with long curly blonde hair.   Later she starred in a movie based on a true story, The Burning Bed about spousal abuse.  Finally, after years of refusing to be photographed or act in the nude, she appeared in Playboy when she was near 50, still in demand.   She married the “$6 million man” Lee Majors, though they were together only six years (known during that time as Farrah Fawcett Majors), and for the last 27 years was in a relationship with actor Ryan O’Neill.

I was 16 when Charlie’s Angels started, and I actively disliked Farrah Fawcett.  I did not consider her attractive.  Kate Jackson was my favorite “Angel,” and I found myself disliking the way in which Fawcett became the symbol of beauty in the late seventies (rivaled by Bo Derek when the movie “10″ came out in 1979).   Yet for a few years, she was the one.   This was the era when cable was relatively new, and had not yet spawned MTV, CNN, or massive television offerings.   You had ABC, CBS and NBC, and this was ABC’s big hit.  So nearly everyone watched it at least sometimes, and the show became a very integral part of the pop culture life of late seventies America.

At the same time, Michael Jackson had already been on the scene for years.   When I was nine years old I started buying 45s and listening to music.   That was the same year 11 year old Michael Jackson started recording with the already touring family quintet, the Jackson 5.  His style, voice, dance and ability to connect with the audience soon made him the star, as their first singles, “I Want You Back,” “ABC,” and “I’ll Be There” were major hits.  Despite more hits like “Ben” (about a rat), the Jackson 5 never regained that level of success.  Renamed “the Jacksons” they continued without much fanfare.

Then Jackson emerged with the right stuff at the right time.   After writing a grammy winning song for the film “ET,” he put together his second solo album, Thriller just as MTV was taking off.  MTV had started in 1980, and had become a pop culture phenomenon as music started to appear in video as well as audio form.   This quickly became a new art form, as bands and directors tried to figure out the best way to wed sound and image.  It spawned quick new stars — David Lee Roth’s humor, Steve Perry’s beautiful hair, and Madonna’s sassy rebellion.

Of all of them, only Madonna rivals Jackson in early influence.  Jackson’s thriller became an event.  MTV hyped it, more money and time was spent constructing the sets, choreographing the dances, and fine tuning the production.  Jackson’s dance skills had set him apart when he was a boy, he now was taking dance in new directions, and merging the fading disco genre with a new sophisticated eighties style.  Yet music was still pop, there was still only minimal fragmentation into multiple genres and types (pop, country, easy listening, and R&B/Soul).   Record albums still ruled (though CDs were now available), and it took a lot of money to produce and market an album.   Jackson was still in an era where if something hit big, it had universal rather than niche success.   If he had been born five years later or earlier, he would not have been able to hit the pop culture scene with this kind of impact.

For the rest of the eighties Jackson (along with Madonna and Prince) were the unrivaled pop trend setters.   There were other big acts, but Jackson was the undisputed King of Pop, a role rivaling the Beatles in the 60s and Elvis in the 50s.  Seven hits from Thriller made Billboard’s Hot 100, and success continued.  Though by the 90s as music fragmented, eighties pop faded, and Jackson seemed to engage in ever more bizarre behavior, the child star became a caricature.  Still admired and loved by millions, but for a variety of reasons, seen by others as strange and even perverted.

Those of us who do not dwell on Jackson’s scandals and remember his contribution to pop aren’t really remembering Jackson the man, just as Elvis fans aren’t thinking of a pill popping banana peanut butter fatty when they mourn the (alleged) death of Elvis.   It is less  the person than the moment when each were in the right place at the right time.  Elvis, the Beatles and Jackson would all have been non-descript acts if they had come a bit later or sooner; they came right when the pop world was ready for something new.   There are many talented and even brilliant artists, but success requires more than that — it requires timing and opportunity.

We remember the early eighties, the reaction to Thriller, and the take off of MTV.  We recall an earlier time when MTV was the music scene, and pop dominated.  This was before grunge, before fragmentation, before downloads and MP3.  You still took the album art seriously and debated the song order on the album (and what was on side 1 vs side 2).  It was a different world, and Jackson epitomized an era within it.

Farrah Fawcett’s standard of beauty in the late seventies, and Jackson’s standard of pop music and MTV style in the early eighties, helped define an era.  Those of us who were young during that era cannot help but feel some sense of loss when these aging icons pass away.

Alas, like Elvis, Jackson couldn’t process what his cultural status meant for his personal life.   It was worse for Jackson; he had never had a normal life, he had always been a star, always in a kind of fantasy life.  As such, he drifted further from reality.   He seemed to lose himself in all of that, honored as an artist, pitied and even reviled as a person.   Yet I refuse to judge him; the challenge of early wealth and fame is perhaps a greater personal burden than the challenge of poverty and prejudice.  He never had to develop personal traits of honor and courage, his “advantages” left him ill prepared for life.

June 26 - Realist melancholy

(Note: this week is “Summer Experience” at UMF, where incoming first year students have an intense week of discussion oriented work, with each class reading the same material — an ecclectic interdisciplinary set of works designed to stimulate thought and discussion.  This week I will blog about one of the writings each day.   Last year for day five I wrote about Robinson Jeffer’s piece The Answer.)

I always have trouble with poems.  I’ve written poetry, but I don’t analyze it well.  Luckily, my student assistant this year, Jade Forester, is a poetry expert and has taken over the class when we discuss poems.  I become one of the students (which is good modeling to students of how we’re all teachers and learners).  But today I’ll attempt a blog entry about a poem, this one Emily Dickinson’s “I heard a Fly Buzz.”

The poem is short, the first stanza is:

“I heard a Fly buzz — when I died
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air
Between the Heaves of Storm

Here I picture a serene room, with a woman on a bed, white drapes on a window at either twilight or dawn.  No one is with her, the room is silent, and then the focus turns towards one of the window drapes upon which a fly sits, and then takes off buzzing.   The woman, eyes closed, breaths one loud, last breath, and then everything is still.   Yet the sense from the last line is that this stillness is a moment of piece, with chaos and uncertainty both preceding and following it.   Next section:

The eyes around — had wrung them dry –
And Breaths were gathering firm
For the last Onset — when the King
Be witnessed — in the room —

This takes me back in time to before the fly enters.  The eyes around were family and friends, but somehow cold.  They had accepted the coming death, they had dry eyes and firm breaths…but her eyes were now dry as she faces death, no remorse, and a sense of firm acceptance of the inevitable.   The King is death, and is the fly, entering the room.  Next:

I willed my keepsakes — Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable — and then it was
There interposed a Fly

With Blue — uncertain stumbling Buzz
Between the light — and me –
And then the Windows failed — and then
I could not see to see

She had let go of not only her hope for life, but all her possessions, assigning them away both literally and figuratively, they mattered to her no more.  She was at the moment of total surrender as the fly appeared.  The blue is a mix of the light from outside (probably twilight, maybe dawn) and the drape, a literal blue from the literal window, and a figurative blue inside her soul.   The fly now stands between the world of the real, and the world of her soul.  Its buzz connects the material world with the spiritual, the buzz exists in both.  She is in transition.  Then the windows failed.  The literal window, the windows that are her eyes, and the window of her soul.  Death came.  And then…mystery.   Whatever is next cannot be expressed.

To me this poem is one of realist melancholy.   Death is not posited as a transition to some other place, be it heaven, hell or a spiritual door to another life.   It isn’t a revelation of a greater reality.   The end doesn’t turn grief to joy, or pain to pleasure.   Yet it also isn’t a snuffing out of existence completely, or the absolute end.  It is a mystery.  There is a sense of fear that it could be an absolute end.   The blue is a color of melancholy and coldness, and the windows failing shows no sense of what is to come.

Yet, despite the fear, the buzz is uncertain and stumbling.   Perhaps, just perhaps, there is something more, something yet to come.   Perhaps the buzz is a gateway.   That “perhaps” seems to be half-hearted, the melancholy chokes off any hope.  But yet, it is a mystery.

This poem to me shows me a take on reality that I do not normally feel.  I know that the end is a mystery as well.   Yet mine is a spiritual optimism.  Despite the mystery, I believe that death cannot be the real end, and that it must only be a transition.  I do not believe the soul can truly perish, I suspect we live other lives, either here or on other planes, I suspect that the world we experience is only a shadow of a greater reality.   Like flies unaware that they are either buzzing around the White House or destroyed death filled Sudanese villages, we are only dimly aware of the greater reality.

If I were writing the poem, the fly and its buzz would represent our ignorance, and death would be an expansion of the mind and soul to comprehend at least in part the limits of this world.  But I do not get that sense of spiritual optimism from Dickinson.  Her fly seems colder, less certain, and melancholy.   Death is not feared, she expresses no anger or even a desire to hold on.   Where my optimism is a kind of idealism, a willingness to trust my feeling that there is something more, her melancholy is a realist one, recognition that there is no grounds for optimism other than hope and faith — and one gets the sense that she can arouse neither.  Or, perhaps, as soon as she feels a sense of hope, her realism dashes it.   The best hope that there is something more is from the fourth line of the poem — if she is between the heaves of storm, then perhaps there storm will continue.

She’s left with a thread of hope, battered and frayed, barely noticable, symbolized only by the buzz of a fly.

June 25 - Democracy Requires Listening

(Note: this week is “Summer Experience” at UMF, where incoming first year students have an intense week of discussion oriented work, with each class reading the same material — an ecclectic interdisciplinary set of works designed to stimulate thought and discussion.  This week I will blog about one of the writings each day.   Last year for day four I wrote about Howard Zinn’s piece “Violence: the Double Standard.“)   Today I write about Walter Lippmann’s “The Indispensable Opposition.”

On Tuesday night investigative reporters Lance Tapley and Luann Yetter spoke to the summer experience students  about the importance of journalism in the functioning of a democracy.   They noted how the media has become more corporate and sensationalized, while most blogs and commentary sites tend to be read by people wanting to simply reinforce their own opinion rather than to be challenged by different perspectives.    Investigative reporting has become rare.   Seymour Hirsch is still around — and effective — but most papers and TV stations have fallen into the ‘he said she said’ trap, believing that instead of truth, there is only opinion.  Each opinion needs moreover to be “balanced” by another opinion, creating an artificial bifurcation of political opinion.

Lippmann’s piece was written back in 1939, literally right before the breakout of WWII.   He could draw stark comparisons between a democratic polity and totalitarian systems.  German fascism and Soviet Communism appeared to be growing, powerful movements, while the remaining democratic states were mired in a lingering depression.  Many saw fascism and communism as the waves of the future, as democracies seemed divided and ineffective.  Lippmann recognized that there was something about a democracy that totalitarian states could never have: a vibrant opposition.

Lippmann begins by disputing a basic claim made by many of those who respect free speech:  that the goal is to tolerate speech we disagree with.  Toleration of the right of others to dissent is not enough.    It’s not enough just to allow dissent, one has to truly listen and take other perspectives seriously.

Listening is more than hearing.   Lippmann notes that in a totalitarian state there is little that will stop a government if the leader has chosen the wrong course of action, and in fact the bureaucracy will be tempted to tell their leaders what they want to hear.    Leaders will also likely lose touch with the people, believing their own propaganda.   Lippmann saw in 1939 that the rising fascist and Communist regimes were built on sand, while despite struggling, democracy had a sturdier foundation.   Fascism and Communism fell to their own internal contradictions and weaknesses; democracy has thrived.  Lippmann was right.

One could argue that most of the mistakes made by policy makers in recent years have been due to the deterioration of American political discourse and the dearth of real listening that is taking place.    In Congress, the level of animosity and partisanship has been increasing over the last twenty years.   If this is happening in Congress, it’s a reflection of what’s going on in public political discourse.

As newspapers disappear, people turn to sensationalistic forms of media — talk radio, blogs, and the like.  Television news, running 24 hours a day, has learned that you can’t survive without sensationalism.  Fox made the choice to be biased towards the right, while MSNBC seems to have chosen to occupy the left of center.   CNN, in the middle and trying to maintain some semblance of balance, sees its ratings drop dramatically.  Yet even it has fallen victim to the idea that the news is about “he said she said,” with a need to balance every opinion with another opinion.

The problem with all of this is that it decreases the amount of listening that takes place.   Rather than trying to understand the other perspective, consider it, and reflect on whether or not the opposition has a point, the opposition becomes something to defeat.   On the right, “liberal” becomes a bad word, and people on the left are caricatured.  This is more obvious from the right thanks to talk radio, but the same happens on the left, with conservatives being dismissed as bigoted war mongers and the like.   And, with Congress  political games rather than coming together to try to solve problems, the political process makes this a self-fulfilling prophecy — it does become sport, one side vs. the other.

So problems don’t get solved.   This has now continued for decades, and we’ve seen the country unwilling to deal with major problems facing our economy, or to question the nature of our foreign policy.    Short term political games trump the idea that together we need to deal with serious issues facing our polity.   Yet perhaps all is not lost.

An article the other day at Politico noted that Republicans were giving up their opposition to Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court because she “didn’t become the kind of lightning rod” they expected.  They were going to oppose her if it helped them rile up opposition to Obama, but when that didn’t pan out, they decided they may as well not make a fight out of it.   None of this had anything to do with her qualifications or whether or not she deserved to be on the Court, it was all political show.

Why did they back down?   The public decided not to play the political game.  Despite some bloggers and pundits ratcheting up the anti-Sotomayor rhetoric, it didn’t catch on.   Consider: In last year’s election a Democratic outsider who promised to change the tone in Washington defeated the partisan insider to win the primaries (and ultimately the Presidency).   The Republican nominee was the man who many on the right decried as too willing to compromise and make nice with the Democrats.   The public, it seems, wants their politicians to listen, and despite the noise from the partisans of each side (and their impact on their respective parties), most of the so-called “silent majority” follow no set ideology or party, and would prefer to have the politicians stop playing games and start working together to solve problems.

And that gives me hope.  In a democracy, you don’t leave it up to the elites, after all — they’ll always be prone to political power games.  Democracy only works if the public demands listening, and listens itself.   President Obama was elected on that premise, and while it’s still too early to see if he can really change the tone, it’s needed now more than ever.

However, we also need the media to play a critical constructive role.    With newspapers disappearing and the internet taking over, there is hope that the capacity of people to explore diverse perspectives will trump the mode of simply looking for opinions one already agrees with.   Perhaps good investigative journalism, willing to try for integrity and to pursue the truth rather than just giving different “sides” of an argument, will give citizens better information moving forward.   But ultimately it is up to us; we need to as individuals want to listen and take seriously points of view other than our own, and be willing to change our mind if the evidence and argument merits.  We need to demand that from our politicians; we need to respect that (and reward it) from our media.   The future of our democracy is at stake.

Democracy requires listening, listening is facilitated by a vibrant and engaged media that is concerned with finding out the truth, and not simply taking sides or displaying competing talking heads.   The challenge is here for the generation now coming of age to reshape the media, and the political discourse, to something better than it has been.

June 24 - Destroying our Environment

(Note: this week is “Summer Experience” at UMF, where incoming first year students have an intense week of discussion oriented work, with each class reading the same material — an ecclectic interdisciplinary set of works designed to stimulate thought and discussion.  This week I will blog about one of the writings each day.   Last year for day three I wrote about Anne Murrow Lindbergh’s Channeled Whelk.)

Aldo Leopold’s “Thinking Like a Mountain” a short essay about how one man came to appreciate the complexity of nature.  Leopold remembers how as a young boy they loved to kill wolves.  Wolves were an enemy of humans, and if there were fewer wolves, there would be more deer.  Then one day he saw a wolf die, and that changed his view.  As he puts it, just as the deer live in mortal fear of the wolves, the mountain lives in mortal fear of deer.   The mountain understands the complexity of nature; the mountain appreciates the whole, and does not get lost in disconnected detail.

He has a point.  Deer will eat all the vegetation on the mountain, and ultimately destroy its ecosystem.  Deer are more destructive than wolves, they are a force that not only can destroy an ecosystem, but in so doing they will destroy themselves through starvation.

Looking at it that way, it seems that wolves are benevolent rather than malevolent.  They do not destroy the environment, they simply kill a small number of deer or other animals in order to survive.  As such, they keep the ecosystem in balance, preventing the deer’s destructive capacity from coming to fruition.   The deer is the dangerous creature, the wolf is nature’s hero.

Few see it that way though.  Deer are the gentle, harmless creatures who tromp through the woods, and are scared at a slight sound.  We might curse them if they attack our gardens (that happens here in the Maine woods a lot), and they certainly can do damage if they cross the highway in front of a car, but in general we don’t put them in the same category as wolves or bears.   A deer in the backyard is cool – a wolf or a bear is scary!

It’s not that deer are by nature evil.  They simply like to eat and procreate.  Without being kept in balance, their natural tendencies will become one of the most destructive forces in nature; one can see them almost akin to a virus attacking the planet.  The wolves are the anti-bodies, protecting the ecosystem.

Humans are like deer, except we’ve managed to overcome our predators.  Following our nature, we consume the planet.   Our numbers constantly increase; the UN said in a recent report that a billion people are chronically hungry on the planet.  Moreover, our desire to consume goes beyond just food.  Our attempt to get energy to allow us to have a luxurious life style has meant not only creating an unsustainable appetite for a non-renewable resource (oil) but has led to such intense pollution that the planet’s climate is in danger of radical transformation thanks to human activity.  While the politicians try to downplay the threat, the reality is clear: in fifty years climate change is likely be more damaging to human life and our quality of life than all the wars and economic crises of the past.

Like deer, we are not doing this out of any malicious intent.  Though we may fight each other over resources, driving cars does no one any harm, beyond the risk of accidents.  Flying through the air does little harm, save a few birds that get caught up in the engines.  Even smoke stacks spewing filth into the air do little direct damage.   We may not like the smell, but it’s just smoke.   And for decades, even centuries, the pollution went unquestioned.  Jobs matter more than how the air smells, after all.

Not until about fifty years ago did the environmental movement, begun by pioneering environmentalists like Leopold in the early 20th century, take root.  Perhaps most important in popularizing the cause was marine biologist Rachel Carson, whose book Silent Spring (1962) not only showed the harm done by pesticides, leading to a ban on DDT, but called into question the whole paradigm of scientific control over nature.   Although she died of cancer in 1964 at only age 56, Carson was instrumental in bringing environmentalism into the mainstream.

People started to wonder what the impact of all this pollution would be on the ecosystem.  When Lake Eerie caught fire, when rivers stank, when smog in LA led to severe health hazards, people started to make changes.  Yet it turns out that those problems were small potatoes, and not that hard to fix.   Our rivers, air, and cities are much better now than thirty years ago, thanks to legislation limiting pollution.   There have been successful efforts made to fight the unrestrained development that activists like Carson opposed.   Yet it turns out, those weren’t the worst dangers.

By the eighties acid rain, soil erosion, global warming, and threats to the ozone layer created the specter of major dangers ahead.  Even then, as long as some scientists express skepticism (often paid by industry to do so), humans will choose to engage in wishful thinking that bad things can’t happen, and we shouldn’t sacrifice our ability to get more stuff to try to keep the environment healthy.  Like the deer, we are driven to keep consuming, unable to stop ourselves from destroying our environment.

We put our faith in technology – scientists will solve all the problems, alternative energy sources will allow us to consume without sacrifice, even if oil runs low.  Yet damage to the climate takes 50 years to be felt; even if we improved things dramatically now, it would be 50 years before that improvement would yield positive consequences.   The prognosis is that parts of Africa may become uninhabitable, severe crises may hit coastal regions due to rising sea levels and severe weather, and the biggest threat to human kind to be not war nor economic collapse, but environmental crisis.

We cannot “think like a mountain” as Leopold puts it.  Like the deer, we are driven to consume.  Yet that shouldn’t be the case.  Unlike deer, we’re not simply feeding ourselves, we’re trying to expand our material possessions.  Unlike the deer, we do have the capacity to reflect and take action to protect our world from ourselves.  If we do not start “thinking like a mountain” – understanding the complexity and interconnectedness of nature – then the current crisis may seem small in comparison to what we’ll face in perhaps as few as ten or twenty years.

Because, while the deer can make a mountain barren and cause mass starvation, the mountain still stands and sooner or later vegetation reappears.  We don’t threaten the planet with our actions, we threaten ourselves.

June 23 - Martin Luther King and Iran

(Note: this week is “Summer Experience” at UMF, where incoming first year students have an intense week of discussion oriented work, with each class reading the same material — an ecclectic interdisciplinary set of works designed to stimulate thought and discussion.  This week I will blog about one of the writings each day.   Last year for day two I wrote about Paolo Friere’s piece on the Banking Concept of Education.)

As we watch the protests grow in Iran, as average people try to stand up to a government that has not been open or honest with their citizenry, an appropriate piece to discuss is Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”  King was jailed for civil disobedience, and was responding to others in the clergy who criticized King for being too confrontational, using demonstrations, sit ins, and marches to try to push forward their demand for equality.   They believed that dialogue and slow progress would be a better path to change, and that King’s approach was overly contentious.

King’s patient response nonetheless had a strong accusation: it is easy for people not feeling the pressure of injustice to call for moderation and avoidance of confrontation.  If the injustice has been going on for a long time, those who don’t suffer see no problem with a gradual correction of that injustice.  Those experiencing it, however, recognize that it must end as soon as possible.

King noted that direct action came only after collecting the facts, negotiating, and self-purification.   As he put it: “You are exactly right in your call for negotiation.  Indeed, this is the purpose of direct action.  Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.  It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.”

This is what is happening in Iran, as the world watches to see whether or not the religious leaders in Iran will respond to the protests with negotiation and change, or will clamp down with ferocity.   King notes that freedom is not given up by an oppressor but must be demanded by the oppressed.   The Iranian people have been patient.  They have a partial democracy, a modicum of political and social freedom, and they certainly do not live in a totalitarian state.   The level of democracy and freedom in Iranian life is high enough that most citizens have been willing to tolerate the regime’s desire to maintain control.    Now, however, many have had enough and are trying to force the Guardian Council and Supreme Leader to negotiate away from their attempt to maintain conservative control at all costs.

Are they justified?   King’s answer back in 1963 was to ask whether or not the laws being enforced are just.   As King put it: “A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God.  An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.  To put it in the terms of Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law.  Any law that uplifts human personality is just.   Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.”

In Iran, the leaders claim that the protests are unjust.  While they admit some vote fraud, they do not believe that the amount of fraud could overcome the difference between the candidates.   In that they may be right — we have no way to know for sure if Mousavi is even close to Ahmadinejad in the final tally, many pollsters doubt it.  But that’s not the point.   The protests are not just about the election or about Ahmadinejad.   Rather, it is about trying to change an unjust system.

Another argument Iran’s leaders make is that they do provide just rule; they are clerics making sure that God’s laws are being properly followed in the Islamic Republic.   Yet when one looks more closely at Iranian politics, it appears less about religious purity than rivalries between various clerics, oil revenue, and corruption.    Moreover, the Koran does not condone a leadership lying to its people, promising one thing and then working behind the scenes to make sure it doesn’t happen.  A true Islamic Republic would govern in an open, just manner.  Claims of religious justice are contradicted by reality — the leadership in Iran is not true to basic values of the Koran.

Some might object to using King as an example for Iran because he was a Christian, and his values are therefore western and foreign to Iran and Islam.  Yet King’s inspiration was Gandhi, a Hindu, who himself was inspired by Thoreau.  King and Gandhi would argue that timeless universal laws are valid across faiths, and not the sole propriety of one particular religion.  Iran’s leaders would no doubt disagree, yet within the Koran itself the values King holds dear — freedom, accountability, justice and equality — are fundamental.   Muhammad’s core message was to end oppression, especially of women and the poor, and Iran’s regime often seems far distant from those basic Koranic values.

What can we in the US do?   As citizens, we can show as much solidarity as possible with the Iranian people who are trying to have control over their own destinies.   I still think Obama’s approach makes sense.   There is nothing we can do to force change onto Iran, and an effort to meddle might make it less likely that the regime will negotiate fairly with the protesters.  But the clerics in the Guardian Council and the Supreme Leader would be wise to take seriously another statement by Martin Luther King in his letter from a Birmingham Jail:

“Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever.   The urge for freedom will eventually come.”

June 22 - The Individual and Society

(Note: this week is “Summer Experience” at UMF, where incoming first year students have an intense week of discussion oriented work, with each class reading the same material — an ecclectic interdisciplinary set of works designed to stimulate thought and discussion.  This week I will blog about one of the writings each day.   Last year for day one I wrote about Robertson Davies “What Every Girl Should Know.)

Today I’m going to write about two pieces juxaposed with each other in the heavy reading for the first day.   One is “I owe nothing to my brothers,” by Ayn Rand, and the other is “Meditation XVII,” by John Donne.

Donne and Rand offer complete opposite perspectives on the nature of the individual in society.   Rand (1905-1982) is the ultimate individualist, arguing for “ethical egoism,” which involves laissez faire capitalism, anti-statism, and a condemnation of altruism.  The individual is what matters, the individual is responsible for his or her own happiness.  No one should either use others to try to satisfy his or her own wants or needs, and no one should let himself or herself be used by others to satisfy their needs.

Donne (1572-1631) is most famous for his quote that “no man is an island,” and “for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee,” each from this Meditation.  Donne sees all of humankind, or at least the Christian world, as part of a larger organic whole, where the dignity or suffering of each individual has an impact on everyone else.   We are all connected in a web of mutually shared experiences and destinies, and it is folly to think that an individual can exist, strive for good, or live a quality life without recognizing that our identity is by necessity part of a collective.

Taken on their own, each position is persuasive.  Rand, who immigrated to the US from Russia in 1926 at the age of 21, speaks to the traditional American notion of the ‘rugged individual.’   Having experienced the Communist revolution and its aftermath, she hated the collectivism and abuse of individual rights by a powerful state.  And though democracies are not quite so heavy handed, she believed that states constantly limit freedom, and through taxes and warfare both enslave and murder.    Humans should be as free as possible to form their own associations, building not a collective, where identity comes from the mass, but to form individual friendships where any grouping is one based on individual choice and consent.

Rand’s writing is also much more persuasive than Donne’s.   Donne’s poetry is equisite, but he wrote in the early 17th century, in language that is hard for students today to fathom and access.  Rand started out as a playwright and screen writer, moving on to novels (her first was The Fountainhead, and her most famous the 1100 page long 1957 behemoth Atlas Shrugged.)   She was a superb writer, able to inspire the mind and soul with her ideas and style.  Yet the appeal of her ideas is due less to their actual logical validity (she is not widely regarded as top notch philosopher — Objectivism as a philosophy is full of holes) but rather to her ability to inspire and touch readers with her fiction.

Donne had the same ability with poetry in his day.   Like Rand, he wrote in a time of tumult.   A century earlier the reformation had started in Europe, leading to wars and bloodshed which continued all through Donne’s life.   He was British (though spent considerable time on the war torn continent), and started out as a Roman Catholic.  Catholics were often persecuted in England.  Henry VIII used the reformation to break away from the church in 1538, and though Queen Mary tried to return to Catholicism (earning the nickname ‘bloody Mary’ for her executions of those who did not want to go back), by 1570 Elizabeth I made the reform complete.  Yet for reasons unclear, in the early 17th century Donne left the Catholic church and became an Anglican.

Rand, on the other hand, was an atheist.  Belief in a diety is, in her view, a need for a crutch, and a sign of weakness.   (The Simpsons spoofed this when at the “Ayn Rand Daycare” Maggie and the other babies had their pacifiers taken away as being crutches…in a nice ironic satire, the babies come together — in a collective — and launch a plot, led by Maggie, to retrieve their pacifiers.)   The material world may not be all that is, but it’s all we can measure and manipulate, and thus it is here where we (not the word she’d use) must create our own individual paths to happiness.

Donne, on the other hand, despite having a somewhat scandalous life, spending money on parties and women, and marrying a very young bride (causing a rift with her father which took some time to heal), was extremely religious.   One gets the sense that he sees how the community of believers were killing each other in the wars of reformation, and the persecutions that took place in England, and finds it troubling.   Every death is a tragedy because we are all part of society, which in his case meant the Christian world.  Only by recognizing our ethical obligation to look at for the betterment of society as a whole, sacrificing of ourselves for the greater good, can we find real happiness.

Rand sees such a view as a sacrifice of our essential human uniqueness, giving up who we are for some imagined fantasy of a collective, allowing others to manipulate and use individuals for ways that limit the individual spirit.  Donne would see Rand’s view as hopelessly naive and out of touch with a human nature that is fundamentally collectivist.   He would likely find her style of laissez-faire capitalism to be narcisstic and prone to exploitation.

Yet in trying to understand each, it’s possible to see that both Donne and Rand had a real insight to different aspects of the human experience.   Moreover, each extreme, when simplified into an ideology, leads to a world view that ultimately elevates one aspect of human existence and denies another.   Somehow we have to hold both Donne and Rand’s beliefs and all the tension they form, resisting the temptation to choose one as right and the other wrong.

That tension, embracing our individualism and desire for a life based on consent and not force, while recognizing that things outside our ability to choose are an essential part of our identities and ability to find meaning in the world.  This tension cannot be bridged through logic or philosophy alone.  It is a tension that survives because human logic so simplifies the world that it creates artificial paradoxes, dualisms that seem on their own terms contradictory, but are actually part of the symphony of human existence.  At some level, this cannot be worked out intellectually, but must be understood — a Platonic moment of understanding ideals as a spiritual reality above our material existence.

Is that a satisfying conclusion?   At one level, no.  We humans want black and white answers, and something clear to believe in.   Such tension and attempts to hold apparently contradictory beliefs leads to dissonance (both cognitive and philosophical) and our order seeking minds rebel.  Yet our minds simplify the world at every level, and its that simplification that makes it appear that these tensions are contradictory, rather than aspects of a reality we are yet unable to truly comprehend.

In that sense, the tension between Donne and Rand reflects an essential aspect of the agony and joy of education.   We seek clear answers, but as we develop insight, ambiguity rather than clarity emerges.   Such paradoxes have a beauty that is easy to overlook — but are key in trying to make sense of this world in which we find ourselves.

June 21 - Obama right on Iran

Barack Obama is passing his first real foreign policy challenge with high marks, resisting the pressure to grandstand on the Iranian protests, even while the Republicans take pot shots at his alleged “weakness.”   A weaker President would be unable to resist the cheap temptation to talk hyper tough on Iran, scoring political points at home, but actually hurting the protest movement in Iran and giving nationalist cover to the hardline regime.   A strong President puts effective policy ahead of politics.

In 2004 and 2005 Iranian moderates complained about President Bush’s tough anti-Iranian talk.   It had the effect of arousing anti-Americanism, given our past history of interfering in Iranian politics, and gave the hardliners cover to crack down.  Up until the US invasion of Iraq, the hardliners had not won a single Iranian election.  Their democracy isn’t perfect, but it’s evolving.

Now they face a pivotal moment.  It’s not clear that the protesters have the majority on their side.  Some pollsters believe that Ahmadinejad had a large lead going into the election.  The protests, like those in China in 1989, are primarily in urban areas and from the educated.   It’s massive, but given the support Ahmadinejad has from the conservative countryside (which has benefited from government largesse), it could well be that the election results are close to accurate.

Beyond that, what could Obama do to effectively help bring change to Iran?   Lambasting with tough rhetoric is a sign of impotence.  Bush talked loudly, but it turned out that when it came to Iran, he had a small stick.    Obama could lash out at the Iranian Guardian Council, but that in and of itself packs no punch.  Indeed, it plays into the hands of the hardliners.

Direct support in terms of aid and assistance to protest movements in Iran would not only be ineffective (they can gather resources themselves), but awaken the specter of past US efforts to shape Iranian society.  It would quickly turn the “silent majority” against the reformers, giving cover to the hardliners.

Back in 1989 as change swept Eastern Europe, President Bush the elder wisely realized that it would be foolish to, as he put it, “dance on the wall and stick a finger in their eye…who knows how they would have had to respond.”  Bush the Elder understood that dramatic change like that at the end of the Cold War has to be done by the people there, and can’t be forced on states by the US.   The reason is clear: the US does not have the capacity to shape political results, and efforts to intervene would be doomed to fail.

Bush’s approach was literally to talk softly and carry a big stick.   The Soviets knew we had the capacity to undercut their regime and economy, and if we tried to do so in 1989 a more successful coup against Gorbachev would have been possible.  Bush’s approach helped assure that the Cold War would end peacefully.   After Tiananmen Square in China, Bush’s approach was similar, though unlike in Eastern Europe, the protesters did not win out and the government crackdown worked.  Few, however, would argue that the US should have been harsher in its response.   There is little we could have done to alter the outcome, and change in China has continued at a slow, but real pace since then.

Bush the Younger talked tough and got political points for that.  We’ll get Bin Laden dead or alive.  Regime change needs to come to North Korea and Iran as well as Iraq.   The axis of evil.  The war on terror.   All heady tough sounding stuff that the country ate up after 9-11.   Yet the debacle in Iraq showed that the US could not follow through on that talk — our talk came back to hurt us on numerous levels, and make painfully obvious how impotent we are to truly change the region.

Will Iran change?   Yes, but it may be slow, and the process may be only beginning.   Iran might be best served by continued evolutionary change, not a revolution.   That’s a question none of us can answer with certainty.   But unless someone can come up with some kind of concrete action the US can take which would be effective, truly help the people of Iran, and not severely risk our prestige and national interest, any criticism of Obama as being too “soft” is cheap political garbage.  Talk is cheap.  Being rhetorically tough is cheap and easy.   The pundits, dealing as they do with words and rhetoric, may think rhetoric is the most powerful force in politics.  It’s not.

June 19 - Ignorance

Tomorrow is a lot of travel — to Portland and back (1.5 hours each way) to bring my mom and niece to the airport as their stay ends, and then a few hours later to Boston and back (3.5 hours each way) to get Natasha’s brother and his son, who are flying in from Russia.

This week we spent two glorious days on Mt. Desert Island, staying in Bar Harbor and doing a quick tour of Acadia National Park.  The highlight was the lobster “tour” cruise.   It was perfect for Ryan and Dana, as they could see lobster traps being hauled in, the lobsters (and crabs) that had been caught, and could hold lobsters, star fish, sea cucumbers and other ocean life.  Ryan even got to drive the boat for awhile.   We swam at Sand Beach, hiked down Cadillac Mountain (Ryan’s first “real” hike — even if it was all down hill!), had a picnic, collected sea shells, and stayed in a hotel.   When the others were shopping at gift shops (not a favorite activity of mine), the boys and I played at a playground near the Bar Harbor YMCA, meeting some interesting people, including a woman from Russia (now living in Kazahkstan) who is vacationing with her husband, mother in law and two children (ages 3 and 6 mo.)

Alas, nerd that I am, I was thinking constantly about my next research project, and about a grant application I’m working on with others.  At one point of time to reflect while overlooking typical Acadia beauty, I realized that my research project is coalescing around the question that has hounded me since I was a child: why is the world the way it is?   What is the good life — how should I live?   Why do I seem to have a natural faith in the world, that all is somehow as it must be, and in all it’s good?

That natural faith is not something everyone shares; indeed, many people mock it, or have a strong natural pessimism.   Yet it is a part of me — I’m not sure why.

In some ways, we are like the ancient Greeks.  Myths and tradition formed their identity, but soon they discovered rational thought, and freed their minds from simply following past behavior.  They were the first known humanists, questioning their mythology and developing what at first was a liberal/critical relativism — sophism.   The sophists argued that there is no knowable truth, only human interpretations and perspectives on truth.  This form of skeptical relativism is both liberating and debasing.   It breaks one out of the hold of past traditions and religious beliefs, but cultivates a sense that all that matters is the self, and ones’ own fortunes.  The Sophists moved from a kind of liberal open mindedness to a base drive for individual success and opportunism.   Greek society became corrupt, and ultimately fell.

Socrates attacked Sophism and its moral relativism, giving an interesting take on the skepticism that drove sophist relativism.  He was skeptical too, but also skeptical of skepticism.   He (mostly through Plato and his writings) professed pure ignorance, tore apart every convention, and like the sophists seemed to show that there is no knowable truth — except one.  Unlike the sophists, he embraced the truth of our ignorance.

The Sophists took skepticism to a kind of selfish pragmatism.  If truth can’t be known, then anything goes — there is nothing holding you back.  Do what you want, as you want — as long as you can get away with it (and the Sophists will show you how), then it doesn’t matter.  Socrates took it to a different place.  If this skepticism leads one to recognize that we are truly ignorant (true wisdom), then one doesn’t assume that since we can’t figure out the truth then there isn’t one.

Have we really progressed since then?  Isn’t modern enlightenment thought up through post-modernism simply a replay of the Greek enlightenment through Sophism?   Isn’t modern humanism falling to the same pitfalls into which Greek humanism, and later Roman humanism fell?   And isn’t Socrates’ answer still valid — we can either cling to a faith (religious or secular — secular faith is ideology), say that nothing matters and anything goes, or admit ignorance?

And if we take the path of admitting ignorance, doesn’t that open up the possibility of the spiritual, the intuitional/emotional, the empathetic, and the artistic?  Doesn’t that suggest, in fact, that the rational might need to be balanced by sentiment?   Doesn’t analysis need to be balanced by art?   Does not the scientist need the poet?

Yet how do we find this balance?  How has the lack of balance led to our wars and economic crises?  Can we go somewhere other than blind faith (whether to religion or ideology) or secular humanism (nothing matters and what if it did, as John Cougar Mellencamp asked)?

Obviously, that’s a big question — far too big for a political scientist at a small rural Maine college to tackle in a research project.  Yet it’s the question that’s driven me in my life, and I must pursue it.

And speaking of  “driven,” given the amount of driving I need to do tomorrow, I’d best end this post now.

June 16 - Detainee Rights

An odd debate is taking place which I find hard to understand.  In America we believe all people are created equal and have rights.   We do not limit this belief to only Americans.  ALL humans should have these rights.  We only have the power to guarantee them to Americans, but in theory we believe and hope that other cultures and societies will come around to what most of us believe to be a universal truth: humans have dignity and should not have rights violated by the government, or by those stronger than themselves.

Yet when it comes to detainees, a lot of people seem to forget the idea that innocence is presumed, and guilt has to be proven before the state can use its power to punish people.   Apparently to some people if an accused is not American, and if the accusation is aiding terrorism, then it’s OK to simply presume guilt and lock them away forever, effectively destroying their lives.  Never mind that mistakes have been made in arrests already, or that many of these people were simply fighting to defend a government they believed in.  In the mind of some “Americans” it’s OK to deny these people rights.  They are different.

When we want to give them human rights, these folk cry out “you want to give terrorists rights!”  Not only do they presume guilt, but they create a category (’terrorist’) where they put undesirables as a rationalization to deny them any sort of humanity.   Yeah, the human race has “been there, done that.”  Remember Nazi Germany and the Jews?   Are all these people terrorists?  Certainly not.   That definitely can’t be proven and almost certainly is not true.  But that’s OK.   Cover your eyes, give the government power, fear monger.

It’s a sad day when people sacrifice so much of their core beliefs out of fear.  And the irony is you have some claiming that health care reform or saving the car industry is “socialism” that “threatens America,” even as they throw our values down the stream because those “others” are “strange.”  It would be amusing, if it were not so pathetically sad.

June 14 - Kids and Caffeine

This next week will probably see little blogging action from me, as my mom is in town along with my 16 year old neice.  Last night we had a cook out party, yesterday we went kayaking, and later this week we head to Acadia National Park, which I believe is the one of the best spots in the US.   Cadiallac Mountain, a rocky coast, the ocean, seafood, whale watching, hiking, rock climbing and unbelievable scenery.   Not as awe inspiring as the Grand Canyon, but a little piece of coastal paradise.

Of course despite my complaints about consumerism, no trip to Maine is complete without heading to Freeport and the LL Bean store.  Kara (my niece) wants to get some good hikes in, of which there are plenty in this region, and so the time to follow the wild events in Iran, the tensions over health care reform, or the weird media show about Sarah Palin (I’m sorry Palin fans, but I can’t take her seriously) is lacking.   Maybe I’ll manage a post now and then this week, but it’ll be a summer slow down.

One thing my mom likes is diet Coke.  She bought about 36 cans of it yesterday to have on hand.  The kids rarely have soda with caffeine (usually they drink diet root beer or fresca — the classics — when they have soda).  Well, they took a shine to diet coke and due to the guests and the chaos of the party last night, we didn’t notice how much they drank until it was too late.  The caffeine from the soda, and the sugar from the desserts, created a wild two hour adventure from 8:30 to 10:30 as Ryan and Dana popped out of bed, afraid to be alone, afraid of the ‘ghost in the mirror,’ or upset that their temporary beds were bumpy (they are giving up their ‘normal’ beds for the guests).

I left to say goodbye to some guests after lying with Dana awhile, and he started crying.  “Daddy,” the three year old protested, “You didn’t ask permission.”  I asked what he meant and he told me firmly, “You need to ask permission to say goodbye to the guests, if I say no, you can’t.”  Later he complained to his confused Grandma, “daddy didn’t ask permission to leave.”

Whew.  By 10:30 they were both sleeping soundly.  So today I finished the diet wild cherry Pepsi (we only drink diet both to avoid sugar and calories, and because I prefer the taste — though good cold tap water is my drink of choice, followed by carbonated water, both flavored and unflavored), we put up the diet coke, and my mom agreed we’d buy caffeine free for the rest of  the trip.  The kids did sleep in until almost 8:00 t0day, which is good (especially now that school’s out).

So, on a rainy day we’ll neither kayak nor hike today, and probably head to Freeport, and maybe grab dinner at Sarah’s in Wiscasset (best restaurant in Maine — if you’re anywhere between Kennebunk and Belfast, make a point to head to Wiscasset for a meal at Sarah’s — from Augusta it’s south on route 27). Ciao!

June 12 - Poisoning the Discourse

A racist “birther” opens hire at the Holocaust Museum, denying the legitimacy of President Obama and decrying the influence of the “Jews.” A radical anti-abortion activist guns down a doctor in church — and declares more violence is on the way.  Fox News’s Shepard Smith reports that he gets hundreds of very scary e-mails daily.   The extreme right wing is frothing mad, saying that Obama is a Muslim bent on destruction of the country, a movement socialist who wants to bring Soviet style government to the US.  Smith said he’s never seen this kind of anger before, it’s irrational and a frightening shift in the political discourse of the country.   When people are convinced there are conspiracies and evil doers betraying the country and it’s ideals, violence is easy to turn to.

Of course, the left can’t pretend they don’t have their share of kooks as well, foremost among them being Obama’s former Pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who complains that “them Jews” won’t let him see the President, and that the “Jewish vote” controls Obama.   So far the radical left, angry during the Bush Administration — though not as rabid and hateful as the radical right is now — is  subdued by the fact Obama is not right wing.  However, it takes only one nut case from any side of the spectrum to create a national tragedy, and traditionally the radical left has been more violent than the right.

Now and then I turn on talk radio en route to work or while running errands.   The only one tolerable is Glenn Beck, since he doesn’t seem to take himself too seriously and he’s actually quite funny.   His criticisms are also more honest, he doesn’t play the obvious rhetorical games that Rush Limbaugh or Shawn Hannity do.   Jon Stewart outed Hannity’s strategy at a particularly dishonest moment when he showed Hannity rip Obama for giving voice to the terrorists by showing a line in a speech when Obama says “I know some would rationalize or even justify violence…” but not showing the next part of the sentence when Obama condemns and refudiates that position.   That’s why I call Hannity an American Goebbels — such an obvious lie is meant to anger and provoke, with a clear wilful intent to mislead.    Hannity isn’t a Nazi, he’s just a disingenuous propagandist.

Limbaugh and others on the right are rabid with their attacks on Obama, Sotomayor, and claims that America is being led to destruction by this Administration.   Perhaps a massive offensive against Obama is one way to try to distract from the question “why is Obama having to deal with this kind of mess?”   Or perhaps they can’t believe that the “left,” a perspective they’ve attacked, dismissed and felt was subdued suddenly is guiding the country.  Whatever the case, this is dangerous.

The stability of a country is based on its civil society.   Civil society refers to the shared norms, behaviors and understandings that bind a polity.  If you lack a strong civil society, democracy won’t work, and a country will drift to chaos or authoritarianism.  The main problems in Iraq since 2003 have not been caused primarily by US actions, but by the lack of an Iraqi civil society — underestimating the importance of civil society is one way the US erred in Iraq.

The stability of the United States democratic system rests on a strongly held shared belief that competition is good, the other side is not evil, and we can peacefully and reasonably work through differences.   Yes, the rhetoric at times is heated, there are scandals, and there are accusations and over the top rhetoric on the fringes.  But over all Americans generally believe in the system and accept that if they don’t like the government now, there will be another election in a couple years.

That civil society, based on shared values and a sense of tolerance of diverse opinions and a belief in democracy is by no means dead.   Most Republicans are not part of the “enraged right,” and most conservatives are appalled by the rhetoric the extremists are using.   Yet it’s murkier than it used to be.    When the Department of Homeland Security warned precisely about this kind of danger, there was an uproar from the right, claiming that the DHS was saying conservatives were dangerous.  That isn’t what they were saying at all — extremists left and right are dangerous, and there has been a rise, now proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, of radical right wing extremism.   By not condemning that and instead complaining about the report, many on the right give cover to the radicals, and risk further deteriorating American civil society.

There are real reasons to oppose Obama.  The massive amount of deficit spending is dangerous and deserves serious concern.   It is the duty of the opposition to bring this forth.  There are real differences in foreign policy, health care, and taxation.   The Republicans are right to criticize Obama’s plans, and try to put forth alternatives.  I may not agree with all or even much of what the GOP says, but without a counter to Obama and the Democrat’s plans, there is no check on or sober critique of actions being taken by the government — actions that in some cases are very expensive and will have a tremendous social impact.

But the right and left need to come together and stop poisoning the discourse.  Just as Republicans like Margaret Chase Smith stood up to McCarthy, there needs to be a stronger counter voice to Limbaugh and Hannity, saying the pundits do not speak for the right.  Talk radio is all about riling up the emotions of listeners to feed ratings, it is not based on reasoned discourse, evidence or logic.   Those emotions can be powerful, and many Republicans fear a backlash if they stand up and say “OK, let’s oppose these policies, but with reason and good will, not anger and emotion.”

All other things being equal, I’d chalk this up to a sudden shock at losing power, and fear of the future.  It happened during the McCarthy era after all.   But as we risk heading into depression and terrorism concerns remain real, the danger that civil society could break down and the country go to a very dark place is real.  If oil costs rise, energy shortages ensue, dangers from global warming become real, and the economy does not rebound, we’ll be in unexplored territory as a country, our very values could be put to the test.   Violent radicalism could bring down this stable and long running democracy.   It’s important  that everyone, left and right, recognize that despite our differences, almost all of us want what is best for the country and our fellow citizens, and hateful, angry radicalism is un-American.   We can be intense and at times angry in our debates, but we need to oppose those who would poison the discourse completely.

June 11 - Democracy in Iran

The scenes from Iran are exciting, and quite unlike anything we’d see come from the capitals of our allies Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan or Kuwait.  There is a heated election campaign taking place, with young people out on the street trying to bring about change.    People are openly stating their opinions, parading campaign posters and slogans, and even using youtube clips to catch current President Ahmadinejad in a lie.   Just a couple months ago people expected Ahmadinejad to win an easy first round victory.  He’s still the favorite, but it’s no longer a sure thing.

Ahmadinejad’s main rival (four are running in the first round) is Hossein Mousavi.   Mousavi is an unlikely agent of change.   He is 67 years old, 15 years senior to President Ahmadinejad, and is a former Prime Minister of the Majles.   Like all candidates, he had to be vetted by the Guardian Council and allowed to run.    But especially women and young Iranians are gathering to support Mousavi out of a belief that Iran has been going the wrong direction, and unnecessarily alienating the West.

Regardless of the outcome, it’s clear that Iran does have vibrant and real political competition, and that the people of Iran have the capacity to work within the system to try to bring change.   None of the Arab states in the region even come close, unless you count Iraq’s US supported elections.    Yet, while the US maintains alliances with Arab authoritarians, including countries like Saudi Arabia whose secret police keep a tight grip on opposition, Iran is viewed as our enemy, a pariah state that could be seeking nuclear weapons.    Cognitive dissonance, anyone — our “enemy” is the region’s only emerging democracy outside Israel?

Iran is in transition.  The clerics who guided the revolution and set up an Islamic Republic are aging, and less in control of the culture and politics.  They still have complete power to limit the ability of the Majles and President to act if they deem it in contradiction to Islamic law, they routinely disallow hundreds of candidates for President or to the Majles every election, ostensibly for not being good enough Muslims.   Mosque and state are unified, not separate, and even if Mousavi surprises everyone and wins, his room to create fundamental change is limited.   Moreover, Ahmadinejad is very popular in the provinces, where the population is not only more conservative, but which have received considerable government money in the last four years.   That most likely will be enough to counter Mousavi’s popularity in the cities.

Yet even if Ahmadinejad is re-elected, the discontent of the youth and women cannot be ignored.   When the Ayatollah Khomeini took over in 1979 there were many rivals for power, and it was not guaranteed that the Shi’ia clerics would dominate.   The hostage crisis against the US, followed by an attack from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq helped them consolidate power, but from the start elections were most often won by moderates.   Over the years the Guardian Council had to be careful how much to influence politics, recognizing that if the public turned on them, their dominance could be in jeopardy.

They’ve played the balancing act with skill, and learned that tension with the West often works in their favor.   Even though glad to be rid of Saddam, the bellicose language used by the Bush Administration against Iran, and threat to expand ‘regime change,’ caused the Iranian people to embrace conservatives in elections to the Majles in 2004, and then to elect Ahmadinejad in 2005.   Until then, the moderates had won every national election. The election of Obama in the US has created a new perspective about America, and the anti-western backlash has ceased.    One reason Iran’s leaders continue belligerent language against the West and Israel is to provoke a reaction which might be useful to their domestic audience.   In the run up to this election, however, the Obama administration has been very careful not to say much.

Iran’s democracy is likely strong enough to withstand any effort by the clerics to move towards more authoritarianism, and vibrant enough to continue to provide steady pressure for change.   As the clerical class of the revolution die out, Iran may prove to be the model democracy for the Muslim world that the US hoped Iraq would be.   To be sure, Iran is neither Arab nor was it part of the Ottoman Empire.   Culturally, it has traditions much better suited towards democratic development than do most Arab states.

The last thing the US should do is allow fear of Iranian nuclear weapons cause us to undertake efforts, or support Israeli efforts, to punish or attack Iran.   That could not only significantly set back the cause of Iranian democracy, but also lead to counter measures by Shi’ite militias in Iraq, and Hezbollah in Lebanon.  Hezbollah fared very poorly in recent Lebanese elections (pundit Thomas Friedman said about those elections that Obama defeated Ahmadinejad); extremists thrive when the West is bellicose and arrogant, but whither when tensions are reduced.

Moreover, the threat to Israel by any potential Iranian nuclear weapons is virtually nil.   Iran’s Guardian Council has been very rational and conservative in their approach to foreign policy, with a goal of enhancing Iran’s regional power.   They know that Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons, and that Israel would retaliate against any Iranian attack.  The clerics will not risk their country and revolution out of some mad anger at Israel.   Beyond that, the fact Iran is not Arab means that the Israeli-Palestinian issue has less emotional impact there than in the Arab world.

In the unlikely but possible event of a Mousavi victory, the US should be ready for a real change in the nature of the relationship, even if Mousavi himself will not be able to control the nuclear program or make radical changes in Iranian government.   Countries develop on their own; democracy is rarely imposed from the outside, it grows slowly from below.  That is happening in Iran.  It’s impossible to watch the rallies and peaceful demonstrations in Iran and not be impressed.

June 9 - Afghanistan: Go Big or Get Out

First, let’s dispense with the worst case scenario: the Taliban can’t take Pakistan.  Despite the bombing today of a luxury hotel in Peshawar, and significant Taliban gains, the Pakistani military is a large, well armed force, and the Taliban is relativley small.   The idea that the Taliban will control Pakistani nuclear weapons is not credible.

Yet the Taliban has succeeded in doing something major empires have not: controlling the Pashtun tribal areas of northwest Pakistan, as well as significant territory usually within Pakistani control.  They brutally murdered tribal leaders, imposed strict Islamic law, and have created a real sanctuary for Taliban and al qaeda fighters in Afghanistan.  In some ways this ‘base of operations’ for al qaeda is as real and protected as pre-9-11 Afghanistan.

Across the border in Afghanistan the Taliban has been growing in strength for years.   Having left the job unfinished in 2002, the small NATO force has been unable to stem the tide of arms smuggling and Taliban movement in Northeastern Afghanistan.   The government of President Hamid Karzai controls an ever smaller section of the country as war lords, drug dealers, and Taliban insurgents make Afghanistan a virtual anarchy; power goes to those with weapons and the ruthlessness to use them.

The 35,000 troops the US had in Afghanistan at the end of 2008 were only enough to slow down the growth of Taliban strength.  President Obama ordered 17,000 more to the country, meaning that soon over 50,000 American troops will be there.   Other NATO countries have contingents in the country, but the US represents the primary force in the areas of combat with the Taliban.

Frankly, this will not be enough.  First, the tactics used when the military has to make due with what’s available are contrary to effective counter-insurgency.   They rely on bombing and air power, which usually means more civilian deaths.  This only pushes people away from support of the US — it’s hard to embrace a country whose bombs have killed friends or relatives.  Second, it is impersonal.  The Taliban kills too, but they do so in a way which instills fear: if you don’t do what they want and give them all the information they require, they’ll kill you.   The US cannot protect people from such threats.

Afghanistan is bigger than Iraq, has rugged terrain, and Waziristan (the tribal regions of Pakistan) remains a sancturary and home base to the Taliban and al qaeda.  The US can’t invade or cut off access; Pakistan won’t allow it, and the human cost of invading would be immense.    Even a more effective US Afghan presence might just push Taliban fighters back to Pakistan.

To turn this around, the US would need to implement an effective counter-insurgency, and work to have a stronger and less corrupt central government.  The odds aren’t good.  A counter insurgency requires that troops are in close proximity to the population (in this case, numerous villages) and are able to protect them.    Average Afghans have to have the capacity to choose to support the US and not the Taliban.   That isn’t an impossible task — experts estimate that as much as 98% of the Taliban fighters could be flipped — only a small portion are hard core leaders or extremists.  They think the Taliban will prevail and find it in their interest now to support them.  Unless the US changes the calculation, the situation could get worse rather than better.

In Iraq the “surge” required 180,000 soldiers, and that was in very specifically targetted population centers.   To work in Afghanistan at least that many soldiers might be needed, along with an influx of equipment and support.   Given that President Obama was elected on the basis of extricating the US from an unpopular foreign policy, jumping big into Afghanistan certainly is not something he’s itching to do.   Moreover, it could end up requiring 200,000 to 300,000 to really handle the kind of threat the Taliban presents, and even then the Waziristan mess means that unless Pakistan can effectively cooperate (with both the will and capacity), the US might not be able to control the outcome.   That’s risky.

Yet leaving carries its own risks.  If the Taliban continues to grow, they could threaten to retake the country, and we’d be back to the situation before 9-11 — a radical Islamic Afghan government closely allied with al qaeda, still wanting to hit the US.   How would President Obama’s promise to keep Americans safe look if al qaeda and the Taliban regained their pre-9-11 position on his watch?

Other options might include engaging NATO more actively in the battle (early efforts by the President to do so have been rebuffed), expand regional diplomacy, or give Pakistan more security by using diplomacy to try to create a breakthrough in Indian-Pakistani relations.  The Taliban, however, is resistant to almost all outside pressure; like North Korea, it is as much an organized criminal gain as a government.   Yet the Islamic fundamentalism is real, and adds to their zeal.

Afghanistan could be Obama’s undoing if he chooses wrong.  The US could leave, and hope that internal fighting in Afghanistan keeps the Taliban at bay, intervening selectively to try to prevent them from gaining power, or giving support to their opponents.  But that could be an on going slog, with average Afghans suffering.   He could go big, like he did with the economic crisis — he’s shown a propensity to avoid half way measures.   Unlike Iraq, most Americans do think fighting the Taliban was necessary.  Perhaps he has the political capital to get the country behind such a move.   But the country is fickle – if he goes big and fails, his Presidency fails.

Finally, to go big in Afghanistan would require leaving Iraq with only a token force, and no guarantees that stability will be maintained.   Afghanistan is more important to US security than Iraq, so that gamble may be necessary.  It might also require the US cut deals with Syria and Iran to free up the force necessary to do the job in Afghanistan.   All of this occurs with the specter of continued economic weakness at home, and rising oil prices.

President Obama will be one of the most consequential Presidents in American history.   He has no choice, he is faced with dilemmas that cannot be ignored, and how he decides will shape the future.   And, at least in Afghanistan, there are no good half way solutions — it’s either go big or leave.

June 6 - Moral Courage

Last night I watched the film “The Last Days of Sophie Scholl,” a German movie about the interrogation and execution of Sophie Scholl.    Her brother Hans and a colleague Christoph Probst were also executed, but the movie was built around her experience in prison, her interrogation, and her refusal to take a path offered her to freedom.

In the past films and stories about the “White Rose” student resistance in Munich during the Third Reich tended to end at Sophie’s arrest.  The documents of the process against her, including the interrogation by Inspector Morr, were sealed in the East German archives until the end of the Cold War.  The film focused on her dilemma and experience of going from a relatively well off student activist to a victim of Nazi repression, and her intense and moving moral courage.

A few things struck me about the film.  First, it’s one of the few films about inside the third Reich that doesn’t go overboard with Nazi symbols and rhetoric.   The scenes outside the prison and interrogation chamber, while few, show a realistic sense of every day life.  Even the officials in the film, while mouthing the rhetoric of National Socialism, seem driven as much by a sense of patriotic duty during war time than adherence to ideology.   Sophie had committed treason during war, was accused of demoralizing the troops who were sacrificing on the front for the country, and of abusing the fact that the state was giving her an education and quality standard of living.   The emotions and ideals of the people involved are similar to those of people in the US or any other country.   Put average Americans into that context, and they would have behaved much the same way.

Yet, of course, no one had to.   To all of those who point to the propaganda, the sense of duty and patriotism that overrode questions about the legitimacy of the war or fascist repression, and the lack of knowledge of the full crimes of the Third Reich as excusing support for the state, Sophie Scholl and her compatriots stand in refutation.   No one had to support the National Socialists and Adolf Hitler.

To be sure, she was killed at a young age for her actions.   On the other hand, her actions and ideals continue to touch all who learn about the White Rose.   Most of those who survived by going along with the flow are also dead by now.   They may have had more days on this planet, but did they make the same positive impact?

The sources of her courage are clear.  First, it was her conscience.  She followed what she knew inside to be right and true, regardless of the propganda, the rationalizations, and the myriad of ways leaders and elites try to blur reality and make the wrong seem right.   Think about how our leaders at times defend seemingly indefensible acts or policies, with supporters clinging to those rationalizations to justify misdeeds.  To be honest about our own actions is rejected as ‘moral equivalency,’ when it’s really moral honesty.

We let our conscience get clouded and deluded.  It’s easier.  We want to do it, we learn how to do it from the first time someone convinces us it’s OK to cheat on an exam or keep the extra change the cashier mistakenly gave.   Deep down we know we’re wrong, but we can hide it from our conscious mind, at least a bit.  Once we get used to being able to do that, it’s not too far to the point that we’ll go along with things that otherwise might be seen as evil or unjust, especially if everyone else is buying the rationalization and it would be inconvenient or even detrimental to swim against the stream.

Conscience.  It’s real.  We all have it.  Some, like Sophie, can cut through the BS and make it the most powerful force behind her choices.   Most do not.

She also was a Lutheran with a strong belief in God and the Christian values of human dignity and worth.   Her faith told her the difference between good and evil, and give her an alternative perspective through which to judge National Socialism and the actions of the Third Reich.   She believed that standing for what is right and moral was more important than what happened to her body or material existence — the soul is eternal, bodies are not.   Those two factors give her a powerful capacity to resist the propaganda and world view of the Nazis.   At one point, when she mentions God, inspector Mohr spits back, “there is no God.”   His faith was in the ideology of the state, National Socialism.

As readers of this blog know, I have an odd relationship with organized religion.  I refuse to follow any particular one, but I try to show respect to all of them.  My own values and ideals are very much in line with New Testament Christianity, though my theological perspective has more in common with eastern religions, Sufism, or neo-Platonic philosophy (such as Plotinus).   One reason for the respect is I have seen throughout history the power to resist evil that faith provides.   This can be seen in Christians, Jews, Muslims, and people of a wide range of beliefs.   All religions have been abused by extremists as well; the history of the West is if anything more violent than that of the Muslim world.

I do believe that one has to have a strong sense of faith in the idea of the soul — in love, or a sense that the spiritual is more important than the material — if one can really avoid being manipulated and lost in this world.  This world is full of confusion, temptation, and alienation.   Without something to believe in, without meaning, life becomes unbearable.

Ultimately, that brings me back to conscience.  Perhaps there is a natural religion that transcends the human constructed faiths there in our sense of right and wrong.  Call it a Rousseauean instinct for compassion, an evolved each of human community, or a spiritual connection with the oneness of life, but I believe it exists.  And in its most pure and beautiful form, it comes out in the moral courage shown by someone like Sophie Scholl.  She stares Inspector Mohr in the eyes and says starkly that the system he’s defending is evil, has caused a massive European war, and will be judged in history.  She tells the Judge who tries to belittle and mock her that he is wrong, the war will be lost, and that he is defended the indefensible.

One gets the sense that the ability to stand for truth and conscience, fully accepting the consequences, gave her a sense of liberation — she was being fully human and fully honest, something most people aspire to, but do not truly achieve.   Moreover, she did this in the most extreme of circumstances, setting an example for generations to come.

To be sure, others were just as profoundly courageous.   The fact the movie was about her does not mean others, most notably her brother Hans, were not just as virtuous.   The example she set is valid in any event.   Look inside, follow your conscience, find the faith it provides and live by it.  If someone like Sophie Scholl can do that in the darkest days of the Third Reich facing certain execution, we should be able to do that in our day to day life, even in little things.  Leave a generous tip at the restaurant.   Don’t accept being given too much change.  Treat others well, with life with love, grace, and kindness.  Hopefully we won’t be called upon to make a stand and put our moral courage to the test like Sophie.   But wouldn’t it be nice to think that we could, if called upon?

June 4 - It was 20 Years Ago Today

On every 20th anniversary of a major world event the old line from the Beatles goes through my head.   Twenty years is a long time.   People born in 1989 are now sophomores and juniors in college.   It also is long enough to start to develop an historical perspective on events.

Twenty years ago today the world awoke to news that China had cracked down on the protests at Tiananmen Square, the main square in Beijing, which for weeks had seen a growing protest movement demanding democracy and freedom .

In China economic restructuring had started a decade earlier, and had been extremely successful.  Ten years of growth and modernization was about to give way to (at least) a two decade span of near 10% a year economic growth and increasing internal prosperity.

China’s leaders did this in a very carefully planned manner.   Unlike old bureaucratic communism, they didn’t attempt to control markets or micro-manage.   They worked with markets, guiding the economy on a path towards export led growth, mimicking what Japan, South Korea and even Taiwan had done earlier.

Many Chinese believed that growing prosperity should be complimented by political openness, freedom and democracy.  Some leaders in the Chinese Communist Party agreed.  They knew they were no longer Marxists in their economic philosophy — “communism” was now used as a rationalizing principle for keeping the elites in power.  In fact, by 1989  the new entrepreneur class was earning more and living better than the average bureaucrat or party leader.

Others, however, were afraid of the change.   They knew their country was soon to be well over a billion people.  Their fear was not ideological, but historical.  China has a history defined by periods of stability, associated with stable but strict imperial rule, and periods of instability and chaos caused by regional rivalries and incompetent central government.  If they allowed the nascent democracy movement to gain support, could it destroy the country?  After all, over 700 million Chinese live in poverty.   The educated middle class were (and still are) a minority.   Could some radical movement mobilize the poor against both the Communist party and the economic reforms?    Would the regions start fighting amongst themselves?

Leaders decided that 1989 was not the time for democracy.   The crack down at Tiananmen was brutal, bloody, and efficient.   They knew they risked reprisals — they relied on external investments and external markets to keep their economic reforms moving.   But despite outrage and initial threats, the world response was mild and temporary.  US President George H.W. Bush had been ambassador to China and understood how the leaders were thinking, and thought their fears were legitimate.   China might not be ready for the kind of change being demanded.   Investment from abroad and purchases of Chinese goods, on an ever upward ride since 1979, paused a little, but continued their climb.  By 1990 the US needed China to support the American led expulsion of Iraq from Kuwait, and in exchange for that support, reprisals over Tiananmen became virtually nil.  By the mid-nineties, it was all but forgotten as Chinese economic growth went into overdrive.

China’s 1989 movement was not very broad.  Intellectuals and students made up the lions’ share of its supporters.   The growing middle class simply wanted to get rich, and the government was allowing them to do just that.  They did not want to jeopardize their new found wealth.   China could crush the protesters and most of the population, even if disappointed, weren’t willing to do anything against the government.

Yet China’s middle class has continued to grow.   As more Chinese move into prosperity, they will start questioning why the party and its bureaucracy remain in control of the country.   Meanwhile, the children of the first generation of middle class Chinese are coming of age.    They are less likely to be as satisfied with simple prosperity; they will be more likely to cast a critical eye on government policy, especially as problems caused by the world economic crisis intensify.

China in 2009 is therefore in a different place than in 1989.   There is no major protest movement, but the potential support base for reform is far broader now than it was twenty years ago.

The danger is that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will be unwilling to adapt to these changes.  To the extent they try to hold on to power, they risk alienating the middle class, and causing rifts between different parts of the country.   Moreover, corruption in China has become intense.   The government’s ability to control economic development has created opportunities for bureaucrats to make out big on graft and “favors.”  This not only lines their pockets but makes them feel important: the big shot who can stop a project with a stroke of a pen.   Such folk balk at reform efforts and cling to their positions — parasites don’t let go of the host without a struggle.

A western style democracy was not viable for China in 1989.  That would have been a risky experiment that might have sent China in the wrong direction.   Communist control, however, is unsustainable.

The longer they wait before beginning a power sharing process with the middle class through nascent democratic institutions, the more difficult change will become.   The protesters in 1989 overreached, but it would have been better for China if both they and the government had recognized the need for gradual reform, and had been able to compromise and work together on that path.

The US, of course, has an interest in all of this.   We should not expect an American style democracy in China — their culture and history is very different from ours, their political system will reflect who they are.   Too often we’ve made the false assumption that what works for us should work for everyone; we cannot make that same mistake with China.    We need to avoid being seen as a threat (the Chinese military tends to be far more keen to view the US as a potential enemy, often butting heads with the political leaders who focus on economics), and respect the fact China will have to control their own process of reform.

China, it has been said, looks at history different than the West.   Where we see history behind us, with our eyes and focus forward, Chinese are said to back into the future, keeping their eyes on the past.  Most people have forgotten the events of 20 years ago.  In China, however, these events are not only remembered, but are recognized as part of a dilemma China has yet to solve.

June 3 - Peace with Honor?

The United States has had troops in Iraq now for over six years.   The heady early goals of creating a stable model democracy, with Sunni, Shi’ite and Kurd side by side, has given way to hope that somehow we can get out of there without Iraq ready to implode.    A mixture of internal exhaustion and the efficacy of the counter-insurgency campaign led by Gen. David Petraeus has moved Iraq away from the chaos of 2006, when the country was in what can only be described as civil war.     But where is it now, and where is Iraq going?

The Iraqi government recently announced that it had given up trying to reconcile with the Saudis.   While this story has flown under the radar, given American distaste for even thinking more about Iraq, it is telling.   To the Saudis, Iraq remains a proxy for Iran, a Shi’ite state that is more dangerous than helpful for the region.  Iraq has also had tensions with Kuwait, going back to disputes about the 1991 war.    Meanwhile Prime Minister Maliki’s anti-graft campaign seems to be going nowhere, the Kurds cling to their autonomy in the north, and the central government has yet to really penetrate into Sunni regions.

Telling is the change taking place with Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi army.  Officially the army disbanded, and al-Sadr went to Qom, in Iran, to continue his theological studies.   His long term plan is to become an Ayatollah, and have claim to a more powerful role in Iraqi politics and society.    His old army, however, is not really gone.  It has become an underground militia, capable of acting again if called upon, but also very involved in protection rackets and other aspects of corrupt Iraqi life.   This works against real rule of law, or reconciliation with the Sunnis.

If you read news reports from Iraq, Sunni areas are relatively peaceful, but protected by American forces.  There is a real fear that the Shi’ite dominated government will clamp down hard against the Sunnis once the Americans leave, and hatred between the two groups remain.  The long sought after and promised “reconciliation” remains elusive, perhaps unachievable.   The Sunnis, the original anti-American insurgents, now hope the US stays longer, realizing that they are a minority and vulnerable to the Shi’ites.   And as the US tries to counter an Iran with nuclear aspirations, the Iraqi government remains uncomfortably close to, and perhaps infiltrated by, Iran.

Iraq is not that much different than in 2006, except that the violence is down (though there has been a recent uptick).   That is important, but raises questions about just what the US can accomplish or should accomplish before finally departing.    Will US departure simply allow a renewed Shi’ite-Sunni civil war and blood bath?  Will internal Shi’ite disputes boil over and create instability?   Or will Maliki, or some other Iraqi figure, emerge as a new “strong man,” a Saddam without the regional military ambitions.

In Egypt, Hosni Mubarak continues to rule with an iron fist, rejecting American calls for more democracy.  He has to.  A democratic Egypt could tear apart at the seams, and risk the rise of increased extremism, endangering the peace with Israel.  Mubarak believes Iraq needs a similar sort of leadership.

Meanwhile, with the Taliban on the rise in Afghanistan, and the US devoting more troops to that “first front” on the once called war on terror, the US cannot afford to stay too long in Iraq, or risked being pulled into a deeper conflict.   President Obama knows that the Iraq war made it possible for him to win his job; it could also be his undoing.

I remain convinced that a tripartite solution is the most viable future for Iraq.   Kurdistan is never going to truly integrate into Iraq; their support for the government is contingent on their autonomy.  They are already defacto independent.  With the Shi’ites overwhelming the Sunnis in the rest of Iraq by a 3 to 1 margin, it’s unlikely there will be any true effort at reconciliation.  The Shi’ites don’t have to, and in a state with intense corruption and a recent civil war, radicals can sabotage any attempt to unite the two sides.   A consociational solution would require the Shi’ites to be more united than they are.

One possibility is that the US negotiate a Dayton like accord for Iraq, dividing the country into three autonomous zones, with deals on oil, territory, and scope of rule.   The US could also negotiate a long term presence for a stabilization force, perhaps multilateral.   The idea is that this force could be stationed at bases in Sunni and Kurdish regions, be relatively small, and there only to keep the agreement in force.   But if the Shi’ia don’t go along with such a plan, do we still have leverage?   Or will we simply end up having to go, and hope that things don’t fall apart completely?

The “surge” did not end the conflict in Iraq, or bring success.  It did help stop a civil war, and it creates the possibility of a Nixonian “peace with honor.”  We’re not cutting and running, when we leave, we can claim we helped stabilize things.   But, of course, Nixon’s peace with honor lasted only two years.  In 1975 the North took over South Vietnam completely, and in short order Cambodia fell to the Khmer Rouge.

Starting a war is easy; getting out of one when the locals are engaged in corruption, ethnic conflict, and governmental instability is a different story.   Although relegated to “yesterday’s news” in today’s short attention span media, Iraq remains one of the most important tests of Barack Obama’s foreign policy.

June 2 - The Abortion Post

Abortion is not something I write about often.   It is not an issue about which I have strong feelings.  I understand and respect the perspective of those who think that the unborn entity is a true human, with abortion being akin to murder.   (Though to be consistent, they must also just as stridently oppose the use of IUDs for birth control).  I also understand and respect the view that the woman controls her body and if the unborn entity is wholly dependent on the woman’s body, she has the right to eradicate her body of this entity.    I also respect that there are differing views of how deep into the pregnancy this goes.

But I am not a woman, I will never have to make that choice, and if I were ever in a position (e.g., father of an unborn ‘child’, grandfather of an unborn ‘child’) I would try to empathize with the woman, support whatever she decided, and make sure she thinks all things through.   If I were asked to really think through this and decide what I believe she should do, I would make the attempt.  But if I were told to butt out, I would.   The woman has to make the moral and personal call, hopefully in consultation with her doctor and any spiritual or psychological counselors she has.

Yet the shooting of an abortion doctor in Kansas brings home the stark reality that some people want to impose their perspectives on others to the point of killing those they consider immoral.   Now, politics is always at some level about the possibility of imposing ones’ own ideals on others.   In totalitarian systems an individual or small cadre of people can impose their views on others, with the threat of force to back them up.   This anti-abortion shooter was clearly of an authoritarian personality — so certain was he of his moral rectitude, he felt capable of simply taking vengeance out on those he saw as guilty.   Never mind that this would do nothing to decrease abortion and would probably even help the pro-choice movement.

My view on abortion comes from my view of how a Democratic Republic should work.  Laws and infringements on liberty are by definition dubious endeavors.  They are always choices by some to impose their will on others, a pretentious act.  Yet even without governments, people impose their will on others; the strong on the weak, the rich on the poor.  Humans are never truly free but are only free within their circumstances, which includes dealing with the choices of others.

So governments emerge as a flawed but at this point in history necessary way to try to assure social order, progress, and stability.   Places with no government or where government breaks down almost always have anarchy, organized crime and chaos overtake the polity.   People yearn for security and stability, and if it comes, it often comes in the form of some kind of tyranny.   That’s simply the way the world is.   I don’t think that is human nature so much as human habit — the cultural realities humans have created at this early time in our history.

Democratic republicanism is the form of government in the West, and it fits our secular, individualistic culture.  It allows multiple perspectives to co-exist, communicate, compromise and interact.  At its best it protects the right of people of a wide variety of views to make the choices they wish to make, without having the state or other individuals unfairly impede or block their actions.   At worst it can devolve into a kind of tyranny.  The founders warned of tyranny of the majority, but the well funded corporate elite who manipulate media and government can also tyrannize.   Lobbyists, well intentioned activists, and others often seek to impose their will, saying they know better than average citizens.  I heard one colleague argue passionately for a ban on campus smoking because ’science says it is dangerous.’    That scares me a bit, science can also prove driving a car is dangerous.   The euphemism “nanny state” is used by conservatives to describe this kind of mentality.   Sometimes it fits, sometimes it doesn’t, but clearly the state interferes in our lives quite intensely.

Yet ultimately we decide how far and to what extent.  If out of apathy or ignorance we allow too much imposition on our lives, we have only ourselves to blame.   Ideally, however, government would only intervene if: a) there was a domestic consensus that such intervention was morally justified by a greater good (that is, denying the liberty of some is worth while because it serves a higher moral purpose); and b) the process is transparent, reversible, and open to public participation.

This leads me to a pro-choice position because I do not believe there is a public consensus that abortion is murder, or that keeping it safe and legal does more harm than good.  There is no consensus that a greater moral good would be served by banning it.   However, having a Supreme Court decision make this call is troubling.   In part it’s because I’m uncomfortable with the legal reasoning of Roe v. Wade.  The interpretation of the constitution should not be manipulated to bring about a desired outcome.   I do not find a right to abortion in the constitution, and I find the argument of this as an extension of the right to privacy to be weak.

If that decision had not been made, and if therefore states would make their own choices, there might be a more vibrant debate on the issue, and not a one sided one where the anti-abortion/pro-life group has the most energy and volunteers, while pro-choice folk simply feel that the Supreme Court protects them.   Abortions would probably remain illegal in much of the deep south and plains states, but would be legal in the majority of the country.  Moreover, if the argument had been made over time at the state level, who knows where the debate would have gone?

That said, Roe v. Wade has been settled law for three decades, and legally that means it should be not overthrown simply because justices disagree with the earlier interpretation.  Settled law should be maintained unless there is a profound change in conditions; I do not think there is enough to warrant rejection of stare decisis in this case.

Given all the pregnancies that are prevented by birth control, and all the people who die very young in the third world, I have a hard time seeing abortion as a major tragedy.  These entities are not yet born, do not feel pain or understand their condition.  It strikes me as bizarre that people can see such things as tragedies, but still support war and the death penalty, where born people are killed — and in war 80% of the deaths now are innocents, not military personnel.   Such folk are often immune to the vast suffering on the planet, where alive, feeling, thinking humans undergo real pain and suffering. Yet none of that means abortion is right.    I have a hard time seeing vegetarianism as logical, given that vegetables are living entities too, why is slashing down wheat any worse than killing a cow?   But that doesn’t mean vegetarian arguments are wrong; maybe meat is murder.

If I’m not convinced, I’ll not change how I approach this — I have to make my own call.   If there is no societal consensus on such issues, then I think people have to be allowed make their own moral call.   Those opposed who believe they represent God, should not be so presumptuous as to think they have the wisdom to try to impose God’s will on others.   Now, perhaps they can build a consensus for their position, and someday amend the constitution.   More likely technology will make abortions so rare and unnecessary that the debate will go away.   But for me, this is the case where individual freedom has to trump the sincere and respectable beliefs of those are certain abortion is evil.

May 31 - Conservatives vs. Sotomayor

A lot of conservatives are itching for a fight over the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor.   Pat Robertson says that the Republicans will lose all chance of regaining power if they don’t put up a strong battle, and talk radio hosts like Limbaugh and Hannity seem to see this as a defining issue.

Yet the problem is that there is really nothing to fight about.

The case against Sotomayor is weak.   Most people fixate on two cherry picked quotes — one where she says ‘policy’ is made from the bench, and another where she compares the abilities of a ‘wise Latina’ to a ‘white male.’   From this the opponents say she is racist, or wants intense activism.  The trouble is, if that’s the best they can do in looking for embarrassing quotes examining a public career that has spanned decades, it’s pretty meager.

That’s the old game of ‘gotcha’ politics — find some quote and then magnify it to the point that it drowns out all rational discussion.   Yet in this case the quotes are old, relatively benign and can easily be dismissed as ‘poor wording’ designed for a specific context (a speech about her background, judicial policy, etc.)   After all, how many of us would have every quote  of ours withstand the scrutiny of those who want to give it the worst interpretation possible.

At first the abortion foes were upset with her, but under more scrutiny, many pro-choice groups are suspicious of her belief in their cause.   If both sides distrust her, that’s an argument for her.   Conservatives end up with disagreements about particular decisions (she didn’t see reverse discrimination where the right wing does), but that’s hardly acceptable for a Senator to vote against a nominee.

Then, of course, the political suicide of a fight.  The GOP angrily beat back Democratic attempts to filibuster the nomination of  Justice Alito a few years ago, arguing correctly that Supreme Court appointments should be voted on a straight up or down vote.   It would take every Republican to ditch this principle for the sake of partisan politics to have a chance for a filibuster to work.   And, though some partisans on the Left might say that Republicans have no principles, they do — and most truly believe that she deserves a straight up-down vote.   Already Senator Snowe has signaled her general approval of the pick, and who knows — by the time the vote comes Senator Franken might be seated giving the Democrats a full 60 votes to defeat an attempted filibuster.

What politician would sacrifice the stated principle — something that would be thrown back in his or her face — knowing that the personally dangerous act is in vain?

Beyond that, this pick is popular with the fastest growing demographic in the US: hispanics and Latinos.   The Republicans are losing big time in this group, something that has caught them by surprise.  They had hoped that the fact most hispanics are Roman Catholic and morally conservative would give the GOP a claim to at least a large chunk of their vote — all they need is a decent split.   Instead, thanks to the anti-immigration crusade of folk like Tancredo (who threatened to bomb Mecca if the US were hit by al qaeda again, something that would put him on a moral par with Adolf Hitler), and the vocal anti-immigration rhetoric from the right, the Democrats are winning that group over by a large margin.

Most Republican strategists believe this can be turned around, but not if the GOP fights against the history making first Latina Supreme Court Justice!   In fact, hispanic GOP strategists are already appalled at the attacks on Sotomayor, believing this is only making it less likely that their attempt to win hispanic voters will succeed.    They fear a long term Democratic majority, based on demographics.   Whites are soon to be a minority in the US (though will remain a plurality), and the GOP cannot be seen as the party of whites or, increasingly, white males.

So why do conservatives want this fight so badly?   For some like Limbaugh, they make money on pushing emotional buttons of about 14 million people.  They don’t need to win elections to keep their ratings, they need to satisfy their core audience.  That’s fine, but for some freakish reason Limbaugh has become seen as the face of the GOP — in large part because he makes headlines, and the Republicans have no one else representing them.   McCain is damaged by defeat, Cheney is, well, unpopular and spends his time defending torture and war, and Romney is boring and uninspiring.  Limbaugh inspires the base, who are as vocal and angry as ever, and the rest of the party doesn’t want to anger the base.

And this base wants to fight.  To them, Obama is “the clown” the “usurper” who is threatening all that is American by bringing socialism, debt, and big government to the fore.  He represents everything they have been fighting against, and he’s winning.  This is happening as gay marriage spreads, abortion recedes as an issue, and the Christian right becomes as weak as any time since the pre-Falwell era.   They sense they are losing and feel a need to fight back.  So they are itching for battle — any battle.

But to fight over Sotomayor will dig their hole deeper, and though they are losing to Obama, he’s not the demon their propagandists paint him as.  Yes, he is doing some risky government spending, but it’s with the partnership of capitalist Wall Street (something the left doesn’t like) and in response to a  major crisis.   He’s not the force behind the growth of gay marriage, he’s not going to bring socialism to the US, but he does have different policy goals than the Republicans.  They are traditional democratic positions.  If the Republicans fight smart, they’ll have their day again, and they can play the role of any opposition party in a two party system — to moderate the other side.

Understandably it’s tough for them to take having fallen so far so fast.  They felt on top of the world in 2002, perhaps near a permanent majority.   Now that talk has flipped around.  And therein is the lesson — it can flip around again.  That’s politics.   But to fight for the sake of fighting, especially in a battle they are sure to lose, is to engage in a self-defeating strategy.

May 29 - Strip North Korea of Statehood

Teaching about the Cold War in my American Foreign policy class has been interesting.  Students have a hard time grasping the fact that people feared nuclear annihilation, or that so much effort, money and time was spent in what seems to them an abstract ideological conflict.  Given that most students these days were born after the end of the Cold War, the dangers it entailed seem unreal and strange.

Yet the Cold War has one remnant, and that’s North Korea.   Back in 1950 North Korea tried to take over South Korea, believing the US would not intervene to hold it, and then the US tried to take over North Korea, believing China would not intervene to protect it.   Both beliefs were wrong, and in 1953 an uneasy truce was put in place along the 38th parallel, though no peace agreement was reached.   The two sides stared each other down for the rest of the Cold War, and even after the USSR collapsed and China embraced markets, North Korea remains defiant and dangerous.

North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Il, is presiding over a country that cannot sustain itself economically, relying on help from China to continue to exist.   The dilemma of the ruling Communist party is clear: if they were to reform and embrace even a Chinese still of market capitalism, their existence would be at risk.  Like East Germany twenty years ago, North Korea exists only because it is the Communist Korean state.  Any retreat from a hard core totalitarian ideology would create a wave towards unification with the South that would grow stronger each day.  Yet if they do not reform, they remain weak, impoverished, and in danger of collapse.

Yet they have found their niche.  They can be an arms merchant, purveyor of weapons of mass destruction, and a thorn in the side of the world community.  Unlike Afghanistan’s Taliban, they have some protection.  First, China doesn’t want North Korea to collapse and either unify with the South or send streams of refugees into China.  Second and more importantly, they believe there is little the world can do to stop them.  They border South Korea, an important US ally.   Any effort to break up their game could lead to all out war on the Korean peninsula which easily could go nuclear and expand.  Besides the Koreas themselves, the one place most imperiled by the threat of nuclear war in Korea is Japan — the one country which has already suffered nuclear attacks.

North Korea’s recent bombast threatening war as they test nuclear devices and missiles is designed to assure that the rest of the world takes seriously the possibility that any action against North Korea could escalate out of control.  For Kim Jong Il it is helpful to be perceived as a meglomaniacal dictator — the crazier he is perceived to be, the less likely the world will act against him.   It probably is a bluff, but it’s not one that the US can afford to call.

The threat that North Korea could sell missiles or nuclear weapons to terrorist organizations or small, radical states is real.  That also means that the US can’t sit idly by as North Korea continues to play its racket.  Yet Presidents Clinton and Bush each have ultimately done just that — there seems to be no other options.   The same brinksmanship game gets played — crisis begets sanctions, which leads to negotiations; North Korea makes promises in exchange for assistance, and then the whole cycle starts over again.

I believe a fundamental error that gets made by those dealing with the North Koreans is to see North Korea as a Communist state, or a Cold War remnant.  Bull.  Kim Jong Il is a committed Communist as much as Pope Benedict XVI is a closet Muslim.    North Korea is no more a true state than was the territory controlled by Al Capone in the 1920s.  Kim is a leader of an organized criminal operation, and North Korea is his turf.   Just as the mafia doesn’t care about the crack addicts its drug trade creates, the North Korean thugs don’t care about their people — it’s all about power and money.

The only way to deal with North Korea is to treat it like a criminal operation it is.  Strip away its sovereignty.   Declare Kim Jong Il to be a wanted criminal, a leader of an organized crime syndicate.  Take away North Korean statehood.  The UN would get de jure sovereignty over North Korean territory until such time as the mafia “boss” is brought down.  The Korean Communist party is really just a mafia gang.

This won’t be enough to take Kim down, but without the veneer of sovereignty or the claim to be “head of State,” North Korea and its leaders would lack the protection international law gives sovereign entities.  Its territory, air space, and waters would not be inviolate.   Their diplomats would not get protection.  Their embassies could not operate above the laws of the countries in which they are present.  They would lose their voice and seat at the UN.

This kind of action would open up a new level of potential ways to pressure the regime, and to make its criminal operations harder to protect and engage in.   It could in fact be a precedent for dealing with other rogue regimes whose leaders worry less about their people and state than their bank accounts and personal supporters.   Statehood should not be a given, but something that requires certain minimum conditions be met.   Anything else would revert to UN control, perhaps through regional agencies (e.g., the African Union in Africa) to avoid appearances of colonialism.

Sovereignty and statehood has always been given to any leader of a territory, with a host of international rights and privileges handed to whomever controls that land.    The leaders in turn create political parties and other structures that can be made to appear ‘governmental’ to the West or other international agencies.    In North Korea this involves maintaining a claim to Communist ideology and Cold War traditions.

To be sure, statehood and sovereignty are always just a step away from being an organized protection racket.   The difference between organized criminal operations and governments is less practical than legal — governments are allowed to get away with what individuals cannot.   Yet by the 21st century the system has evolved to a point where enough states should be able to create a distinction between legitimate government and clear criminal activity — gangs of leaders with no goal but personal enrichment at the expense of anyone, including their own citizens.   North Korea clearly fits that category.

We don’t know what the full impact stripping North Korea of statehood and sovereignty would be.   I suspect that lack of sovereignty would so hinder their operations as to undermine Kim’s rule and bring the regime down.   However, even if we can’t be sure of that, isn’t it time to stop just allowing any thug or criminal capture the benefits, protections and rights of sovereignty just because he or she and a gang of co-conspirators happen to have taken control of a chunk of land?   Maybe if we start calling criminals what they are, rather than getting lost in the rhetoric of sovereignty and state hood, we’d find new means for handling rogue regimes.   Sanctions don’t work, and war seems to do more harm than good.  Perhaps we need to change the rules of the game.

May 27 - Captured by the Dream

Time for a post veering away from politics and economics.  Last night I had my first lucid dream in a long time and it got me thinking.  Is life akin to a dream?

Sometimes when I dream I become aware I’m dreaming.  I realize that the landscape around me is my own mental sleep-creation, and by exploring it I can explore my mind, or even the nature of this “reality” I experience in the dream world.  At one point I kept journals on all my dream experiences.  I called it being “dream aware” for a long time, and then learned that the proper term was lucid dreaming.   I taught myself how to manipulate the dream world, experimented in that reality, and applied lessons learned there to life.

One thing that would irk me is that in the deepest lucid dreams (i.e., not those dreams just upon waking or drifting off to sleep, but those from the prime dream time) the complexity and excitement of the dream would overwhelm me and I’d lose lucidity.   Sometimes I’d regain it, sometimes it would fade in and out.  Often upon waking I’d recall that at one point I was lucid, but then got captured by the dream, and caught up in the plot, action and emotions.

In times when I get pre-occupied by the news, the economic conditions, the political theater, or even the human drama around me I recall that sense — am I being ‘captured by the dream’ in waking reality?   Am I getting so caught up in the dramas of the day that I lose sight of my true self, and what I deep down know about reality?

The danger of that view, of course, is that it might lead one not to take the suffering of others seriously.  But most people already abstract away the pain of others and disengage. I throw myself into such experiences, try to understand the actors on all sides, teach about the human side of world events in my classes, and feel the meaning of these things with a strong sense of empathy.  I am shocked at how people can dismiss Iraqi casualties by abstracting that ‘they are Muslims’ or ‘different’ or ‘that’s war.’  Yet people do.   As I noted awhile back, abstraction can be the root of all evil.

I believe all world events are symbolic of the human condition, both socially and individually.   Does the anger I might feel in a moment of weakness — an anger that might cause me to fantasize about strangling someone, something I would never really do — differ fundamentally from that of the psychotic killer who can’t prevent himself from turning those momentary emotional bursts into real world action?   As I explore jealousies, loves, angers, weaknesses and strengths in my own self, I see the entire pathos and divinity of humanity reflected.  Under the right conditions or experiences I could be a Gandhi or a Nazi, perhaps even a Hitler.    Shut out a stream of empathy, unleash a river of anger, build a dam of indifference and abstraction, and any human is capable of the worst of human behavior; reverse those, and any human is capable of the best.  The distance from Hitler to Mother Theresa may not be as vast as people imagine.

I have a strong sense of faith.   The faith is not in a religion or a God, but in the belief that the universe reflects a deeper spiritual reality, that our material condition is a manifestation of our beliefs, ideals, and history.   I do not mean this in the sense that Voltaire mocked with Pangloss, the character in Candide who supposedly reflected Rousseau’s Deist faith that nature always gave the proper and best result.   Indeed, being in a material world it seems that this world is, in a sense, our work book.  The problems we perceive are here for us to solve, both personal and global.

When I internalize this view, I feel balanced and centered.  The world is as it should be, so that we can learn what we need to learn.  Our actions have consequences, but the consequences are also there as learning opportunities.  We can’t truly comprehend why or how, but there is a deeper meaning to all that we experience.  In that sense, waking reality is like a dream.  We get caught up in the dramas and dilemmas, they often overwhelm us or drag us down, but it’s not real.  The emotions, connections, pain, joy and ideas are real, the material world is a stage upon which such things are worked out, much like a dream.

To be sure, this waking reality has some attributes in common with dream reality, but some are very different.  This reality “feels” real, as does the dream reality.  So many times I’d wake from a lucid dream not sure which reality truly seemed more genuine.  On the other hand, this reality is not as easily shaped by my own thoughts — I can’t teach myself to fly, swim in dirt, create landscapes and do all the things I can in my dream realities.   Still, in my dream world I do not have complete conscious control over the dream — things happen I don’t expect, including those things which cause me to be captured by the dream.

In one dream I was diseased and disfigured.  I was walking around trying to make sense of that condition, and feeling depressed.   Why me?   I was captured by the dream, and when I woke realized that by the end of my dream I was truly despondent — my life had been good, but I’d lost everything.  Of course, that wasn’t the case.  The dream disappeared with waking.  Could that be the same with our ‘waking’ reality?   Genocides, mass murder, the horror of human behavior all simply vanishing upon waking (in this case death) to a reality that sees such things as not truly real — even if at times disturbing?

When I think in those terms, my focus shifts.  What matters to me in my life becomes focused on family, friends, and dealing with every day life in a way that accepts what cannot be changed, and works with what can.  It brings contentment.  In dealing with the “big issues” that perspective helps me not get weighed down by the enormous amount of pain in the world.   I also have a sense that just as every possible pathos and joy of human experience can be found in each person, each person is a part of a humanity linked in ways we can’t comprehend.   Every bit of suffering affects everyone of us; as does every bit of joy.  We’re linked, when we spread love and joy, we make a difference in the whole.   This gives me a drive to learn about the world and do my part to try to help others.

Being ‘captured by the dream’ can be overwhelming, depressing, and breed cynicism.    Most of humanity seems to live caught up in the daily material existence, not seeing beyond it.  Becoming lucid in life is difficult, but rewarding.  To be sure, maybe material reality is all that there is, with no spirit, soul or transcendental meaning.  But that would make for a really absurd situation — if that’s true, why is there even a world.  How could there be a world?   So I’ll endeavor to live as if what I claim above is real, following the ethics that come from a belief that we are at some level linked and connected; that may be the best moral guide one can have.

May 25 - Stagflation and the Dollar

I’ve been surprised — in a way pleasantly surprised — by the resilience of the dollar in the face of record deficits and debt.   Still, these policies combine the federal reserve’s decision to pump money into the system to threaten to undercut the value of the greenback.   Ill advised over-extension of American military forces in the Mideast have already caused people to doubt US military capacity; these budgetary moves could do the same with economic policies.  The result could be a worsening of the economic crisis, with no clear path out.

I noted last year that the dollar was defying expectations and staying strong, something I considered a short term phenomenon.   At that time (late November) the dollar was  at $1.28 per Euro, now it’s at $1.40.  That’s not a major change, but it could be the start of a slipping of the dollar’s value.   The dollar remained stable through March, when its value was about $1.25 per Euro at the beginning of the month.   By the end of April the dollar was slipping to $1.33 per Euro, with a sharper decline last week.   The dollar is still better than it’s historic low, around $1.60 per Euro hit last summer as oil prices skyrocketed.   Moreover, while the dollar has been losing value, it has been a stable, slow decline – there is no panic selling.

There are a lot of reasons to consider the dollar overvalued.  Last summer the driving force was fears about a possible recession due to high oil prices, and ongoing concern over the large current accounts deficit the US had been running for years.  It grew steadily until it hit a peak of 6% of GDP in 2006.   This almost always leads to pressure on a country’s currency, something the US had avoided by becoming a haven for international investors, most of whom felt that investments in the US were likely to yield good returns.

The dollar’s weakness really started to show in late 2007, as the subprime crisis and the bursting of the housing bubble caused speculators to start to bet against the dollar.   High oil prices, recession fears, and reaction to the collapse of Bear Stearns (and fears that other such financial firms, such as Lehmann Brothers, could be next) kept up the pressure.  On September 15, the day that the current economic crisis became public knowledge as the economic tsunami hit, the dollar stood at $1.43 — off it’s lows, but at a value lower than it stands today.

It’s not hard to see why.  For about a week after the concerns about American financial markets became public, the dollar dropped — by September 23rd it was at $1.48.   Then suddenly it turned around, and by mid-October was around $1.35 per Euro, then in November got down to $1.25 per Euro and until recently stayed around a pretty narrow range.   The first week of the September 2008 crisis saw the Europeans and others believe they were relatively immune.  In fact my blog entry on September 23rd was “Schadenfreude in Europe,” commenting on that sense that this was an American financial problem.   Quickly it was clear that was not the case — the next week the news from Europe turned sour, and by October the crisis was recognized as truly global.   Only then did people flock to the dollar — not because America’s economy was seen as strong, only because the US was the dominant world power, both militarily and economically, and there was no place else to turn, at least in currency markets.   The value of gold, of course, rose even faster.

Since then the Obama administration has tackled the recession aggressively.  Recognizing that the collapse of credit markets could easily spiral into a depression as deep and broad as that of the early 30s, they felt quick action injecting money into the economy, the financial system and credit markets (to keep interest rates low so that home sales would hopefully become lucrative) the White House and the Federal Reserve Board each worked to prevent economic collapse.

This was criticized by many on the Left and Right as being too cozy with big money — bailing out the people who caused the problem.   Many on the right believe we should just let the banks fail and trust the market to adjust.  But there is no guarantee the markets will adjust — it’s more likely the collapse would have continued as it had in the early thirties.   People on the left tended to believe that the focus should be more on aid to the poor and help to people losing jobs and homes.  To them the model should be FDR, and his programs to get people to work.  The compare Obama’s plan helping big money to FDR’s public works program, and conclude that Obama is helping the wrong people.

To Obama, Geithner and Barnacke, the difference between Obama and FDR is three years.   FDR got started in early 1933, as the depression had already gripped the US with the Hoover Administration having done little but hope that the markets would simply correct and adjust.   Acting earlier to try to fix root of the problem — credit and financial markets  — the hope is that this will avoid a fall into depression and allow the world economy to avoid another Great Depression.   In theory it could work — fire up the economy, avoid total collapse, and then manage the recession.

The two big problems with this theory are: a) the risk of inflation due to large deficits and injections into the money supply; and b) the fact that the economy needs restructuring — the practices before last year were unsustainable.  While a depression can overshoot the adjustment and spiral in on itself, efforts to prevent necessary corrections are doomed to fail.   The Obama administration is trying a balancing act to restructure adequately while preventing collapse.

So eyes on the dollar — if the decline continues, or if panic selling starts, then we may be in for a very rough ride.  Stagflation would bring a second and more brutal round to the current crisis, with no clear path except to ride the storm out.   If the dollar can stay relatively strong and the economy turn around, then maybe Obama will pull this off.   But even if he does, the heady days of the bubble economy are gone — like the roaring 20s, they were built on sand.  That doesn’t mean a restructured economy can’t boom again, like we did after WWII.   But for that we’ll need a new international economic order (a “Bretton Woods II”), environmental sustainability, fiscal responsibility (cut debt and deficits), and a better balance of production and consumption.

May 23 - Real People

So far the economic recession has only affected me and my family indirectly.  Budget cuts at work caused an overload course to be canceled, losing that income, and out of concern for the future we’re trying to change our economic habits.   But our income has remained steady, so far our jobs are not in peril, and everyday life is pretty normal.

However, I have seen the impact of the recession, and it’s not been fun.  Being President of the local chapter of AFUM, the faculty union (associated with the NEA), I experienced the first major faculty job cuts since the 80s.  Five people were cut, including a 30 year ground breaking and beloved Dance Professor.  Of those cut, some have found new opportunities, and in one case our university was hurt more by the cut than the person cut.  But still I got the phone calls on the day the cuts were announced, I met with most of those involved, and felt the emotion of the job loses.  Even though it was indirect, I noticed how everyone, even those who ultimately ended up arguably better off, was put through the emotional ringer by these cuts.  Moreover, faculty across campus feared they were on the block before the cuts were announced, and are worried moving forward.  We face a $1 – $2 million deficit for FY11, so next year might see even deeper cuts.

On Thursday, there was another jolt.  Our day care center is closing.  For us personally, it’s a mere inconvenience.  Our son Dana, age 3, will have to get used to a new place, but he’s a happy adaptable young guy, he’ll do fine.  Ryan, age 6, is already in Kindergarten and has after school and summer activities galore to explore.  But when I picked up the boys today, just hours after Donna, the director of the center found out, I felt the same sense of pain.  She has been with this child care center since it opened, and has seen children ‘grow up’ here, from infancy to first grade.  She gave herself to building this facility, it was her joy and mission in life, and so many children benefited from what she built.  Options for people thrown out of jobs at this point are limited — for them, it’s a life changer.

When we moved here from Augusta in 2007, Ryan was having problems.  With a new brother, he felt jealous and was acting up.  The YMCA day care in Augusta couldn’t really handle him.   The “Y” was the premiere Augusta day care center, with brand new top notch facilities.  Franklin Child Care in Farmington was small and the facilities were unimpressive.   Yet Ryan showed quick improvement — Donna’s teachers and system helped guide him to better behavior.  The teachers (and the Director) matter more than the building or the facilities.    (He’s lucky to have found a similarly engaged and caring Kindergarten teacher here in Farmington with Ms. Kenney.)

Donna worked hard on maintaining the day care center, even adding to her work load as budget cuts in the past caused positions to be lost.  Then suddenly on a day in May she found out it was ending.  Besides her own personal situation (and that of the staff), the facility she built with her love and hard work was going away — cut from the budget as the hospital, which subsidized the center, had to cut non-clinical budget items due to increasing financial pressures.

You can’t blame the hospital or its administration — cuts are hard, but budgets need to be balanced.  It’s simply another affect of the recession, another story of pain and loss as money grows tight.

In October Michael Moore will release his documentary about the financial meltdown, making the argument that this was a result of a swindle of the American people by the very wealthy.   When you think about it, that’s what it was.   Massive fortunes were made in the last ten years, increasingly centralized to those who are the most wealthy.    Companies cheated on mortgages, created wild new financial products, and the goal of CEOs and the Wall Street elite was to make money fast.   It seems they were so caught up in the game that they didn’t realize the devastation they were about to unleash.

The “schemers who cheat all the rules” ran the show.  Vast profits were made simply through trades and speculation.  Little was produced, and as long as the wealth was entered into a book and existed in virtual form, the imbalances could grow.    Inevitably something was going to cause the house of cards to fall apart; the winds that did so were the collapse of the housing market alongside a spike in oil prices.

And so across America real people suffer the consequences, losing jobs, losing benefits, and watching these effects ripple through the economy.  I’d like to say that Obama’s administration is bringing real change, but that’s not yet clear.   The programs initiated are major, but they tend to help the very people who got us into this mess.   It’s tough — they believe we have to revitalize the financial sector and credit markets, and the only way to do that inevitably helps those who created the problem.

Still, the economy we had was unsustainable — a rebalancing like this was inevitable.  Yet it’s not an abstract bit of economic adjustment, it’s a blow to the lives of real people now coping with situations they wouldn’t have imagined possible a couple short years ago.

Yet, as I try to figure out how to end this post, nothing comes to mind.  Only that for all the words, arguments and theories out there, the pain and distress caused by this recession is intense and growing.   I guess all we can do is help each other out, build community, and remember that family and friendship are ultimately far more powerful than anything the economic storms can produce.

May 21 - Republican Time Warp

After their loss to Ronald Reagan in 1980 the Democrats were stuck.  Even Clinton’s 1992 victory was less about the Democrats than anger at the economy.  He was only re-elected in 1996 after shifting right and relying on his political popularity.  Utnil 2006, the Democrats remained on the defensive.

To many, it looked like they were still protesting the Vietnam war.  They were caught by surprise when the Berlin Wall came down, and their pro-labor rhetoric seemed out of place in an era where unions were seen as overly large and corrupt.  The building of coalitions across interest groups was less effective as America became less defined by coalitional politics, and it appeared to many that the Democrats simply wanted to promise more government goodies to special interests, almost as if they were buying votes.   Americans started to rebel against increasing regulations on every day life, and the Republicans appealled to the desire for freedom.

Moreover, the Republicans were able to bring together the economic libertarians, foreign policy hawks, and Christian conservatives with a multifaceted message that allowed these groups to feel a part of the new Republican vision.  They had intense internal differences, but each thought their perspective benefited from Republicans being in power.   The Democrats were dismissed as tax and spend socialists, their policies connected to an ideology that was failing.

The Democrats in the 80s and 90s, despite some successes, were all too often caught in a time warp.  They were fighting the battles of Vietnam and the Great Society in an era where those things no longer inspired voters, and were not part of the consciousness of younger voters.    The Democrats started to look like a party of special interests, could be accused by the Republicans of lacking ideas and having no core principles.    They were caught up in an obsolete discourse.

That was then.  This is now. 

One sees the change with the RNC effort to brand the Democrats as “Democratic Socialists,” and the way the “socialist” label gets thrown around.  Just as Reagan’s foreign policy seemed self-evidently aggressive and misguided to the generation that opposed the war in Vietnam, Obama’s approach to the economy appears self-evidently wrong to the Reagan generation.  He is expanding governmental control, with the government and big labor actually running part of the auto industryy.   The government is micromanaging some big banks, putting restrictions on the credit card industry, tightening environmental rules and automobile mileage requirements, and pushing for a major overhaul of the health care system.

To the eyes of Republicans aged forty and upward, this is clearly socialism, and that attack should stick and be damning.  But like the Democrats of the 80s, the Republicans of today are caught in a time warp, making arguments that would have been devastating twenty years ago, but are meant with a shrug today. 

Rush Limbaugh is for older folk.   Talk radio is passe, even blogs are starting to fade as people turn to social networking sites and twitter.  Blogs that are relevant are short and pithy (meaning, of course, this blog with its 1100 word posts is out of touch).    People, especially younger folk, tend to be more pragmatic, concerned with problem solving, and focused on the real fact that there are severe problems facing not only the country, but their own future.  What jobs will be out there?   Will they be able to afford health care?   What careers are viable?

In answering those questions, ideology isn’t relevant.  Ideology is the stuff of the Cold War, that weird and dangerous nuclear arms race that frightened people back in the 20th century.  That ended a full two decades ago.   Getting upset about government control of the car companies is legitimate in that it may not be a smart thing to do — but it’s clear it’s being done because the companies are in collapse, not as part of some grand socialist conspiracy.

So the GOP continues to hurl 20th century insults at the Democrats.   But since the demographic for which such language is relevant is older, and probably already set in their political ways, the opportunity to gain support with these tactics is limited.   Without a true Republican alternative people are left with a Democratic set of ideas that the GOP says will fail vs. the GOP whose ideas are widely seen to have already failed.

The only hope for the GOP is to leave this time warp and actually confront the issues a new.  Focus not on “ism” labels or wild claims that ‘tyranny is coming.’   Even if they believe that to be the case, it’s a loser in terms of political persuasion.   Instead they need a vision of the future, combined with practical (not ideological) critiques of Obama’s policies.

Time warps are hard to break out of.   Republicans are loathe to give up the identity they’ve gotten used to for a generation, and they can recall all too clearly how well it worked in the past.  They’ll have to, to regain traction.  That doesn’t mean they need to give up theiir principles though.  The right is quick to point out that while the rhetoric of Obama is centrist and pragmatic, many of his principles and actions are very liberal.  The right is frustrated that even though they point this out, the public doesn’t have the same reaction to “liberalism” that it used to.  Obama has used the current crisis and his own political charisma to shift the discourse.   The economic failures and the difficulties in Iraq and Afghanistan have undermined the ‘politics of fear’ still promulgated by people like former Vice President Cheney.  GOP rhetoric is anachronistic.

The Republicans need to first disconnect their principles from their rhetoric.  Rhetoric is not the principles themselves.  Rhetoric is simply a device used to persuade.   Then Republicans have to think long and hard about whether or not the rhetoric they use has at times undermined their core principles  and they need to make sure that rhetorical habit isn’t creating extra baggage.     And finally, they have to make their principles relevant to the 21st century — not just regurgitate old rhetorical devices but retool their message to take into account the economic crisis, the real failures of recent years, and the changes in American culture, and the issues we face.   They need to update their application of principles to fit new realities, and then describe and promote them in a way that fits the times.

So far, they are off to a bad start.  But that’s to be expected — discursive and rhetorical habits are hard to break, especially when they worked in the past.   But until the Republicans break out of their time warp, the playing field will be dominated by the Democrats and President Obama.

May 20 - Good Night and Good Luck

Monday was the first day of “May term,” and I’m teaching American Foreign Policy.  Since each day of class is three hours long, on the first day we watched the film Good Night and Good Luck, starring David Strathairn as Edward R. Murrow and George Clooney as Fred Friendly.    It details the way in which Murrow helped start the downfall of Joe McCarthy and his witch hunts by using the power of the media to make clear to the public what was going on.  It’s fascinating both how many of the issues concerning the media and foreign policy still exist, and how much has changed.

At that time (early 50s) there were three big television networks, and they relied completely on corporate sponsors.   There were also a plethora of newspapers, as the print media thrived.    Newspapers and especially TV news self-censored, and as Murrow’s 1958 speech to the Radio and Television News Directors Association (reproduced in part in the film) made clear, concern about the media focusing only on entertainment at the neglect of serious issues was as real then as it is today.

It is hard to imagine the government having the power to terrorize now at a McCarthy level.   Sure, there was a lot of self-censorship and various forms of pressure — the Dixie Chicks not getting played by some stations after they criticized President Bush, Attorney General Ashcroft saying people should ‘watch what they say,’ Chris Hedges being heckled at a 2003 commencement address, and the weird and brief renaming of French fries as ‘freedom fries.

Yet if you didn’t care about public pressure, you could blog to your heart’s content, read news from around the world, and join protests against US policy.   Although the paranoia level post 9-11 was similar to the red scare days of McCarthy, there was more freedom, and abundant media outlets.  While CNN may be overly sensationalized, FOX leans to the right and MSNBC apparently a bit to the left, they still provide more variety than the half hour nightly news shows of the “big 3″ in an earlier era.

I admit I have a strong pro-journalism bias.  I am convinced that the freedom of a country, as well as its ability to avoid corruption, relies on a free and open media.    Those who join the legions of reporters to bring us the news play just as important of a role, if not more important, than soldiers who defend the country or government officials who run the bureaucracies.   It is up to them to keep us informed, to take seriously the importance of public discourse on the issues of the day, and to recognize multiple perspectives and the fact that it is impossible to completely avoid bias.

However, by its nature the news media is independent of government and thus has to support itself and pay for the resources it uses.   Even public radio and television increasingly rely on grants and donations.   This also means they are beholden to the market — a market that exists on the basis of what sells, not what is important to know.

Emotion sells.   Glenn Beck scaring people about ‘coming tyranny’ sells, or Rush Limbaugh ranting about the ‘evil liberals,’ cherry picking outlandish statements to make it seem like all on the left are kookie extremists gets noticed.   Sean Hannity takes quotes and statements out of context to weave an utterly dishonest storyline designed to get his listeners mad, or to mock the left.  On the left, Keith Olbermann lists the “world’s worst person,” choosing a ill chosen statement or action to focus upon — riling up his viewers.   Jon Stewart uses humor, and left-wing talk radio demonizes Bush and the Republicans.   We’ve had yellow journalism for over a century, so this is nothing new (remember the Hurst legacy), and slanted humor is no big deal (Stewart admits his is ‘fake news.’)

But the Becks, Olbermanns, and Hannitys blur the line between pundit and journalist, and the general growth of emotion-laden media sources bleeds over into ’serious’ news, which feels an increasing need to entertain in order to maintain ratings.   Moreover, following the lead of the ‘left vs. right’ politics from the gut, the media starts to paint it as simply ‘two different perspectives,’ with the idea you need to show ‘both sides’ to be fair.  In this kind of bipolar relativism the result is to silence views that don’t easy fit into ‘left vs. right,’ and magnify the importance of the extremes.    Instead of trying to dig for truth, explore multiple perspectives, or work things out through discussion, you’re given two sides, and it’s hinted that you have to choose which to believe.   Truth is pre-packaged into different interpretive vessels, you don’t have to do any work, it’s either A or B.

Of course, the choice of “left” or “right” as defined by political junkies is a false choice  requiring citizens to sacrifice logic and go with whatever side sells its product more effectively.

Great journalists like Murrow or Walter Cronkite were not without bias — but they also had a sense of wanting to tell things as they are, and cut through the BS.  That’s what we need from journalists — to decipher the political rhetoric and explain what is really being said, rather than just giving us the words of the different participants.   We need them to dig out the facts of the story, explain reasonable interpretations of those facts, and fairly assess the meaning.   They will have bias; total objectivity is impossible.  But if they put their duty to our democratic republic ahead of any political bias or personal whim, they can play a positive role.   Murrow was accused of bias in going after McCarthy — but it was a bias that reflected his honest assessment that McCarthy was acting against all that this country stands for, and that being silent on that would be to be complicate in the crime.

Ultimately, the media will do this for us if we reward it with higher ratings and more support than we reward the ‘discourse from the gut’ – the emotion talk radio and partisan rhetoric.   At this point we as a culture aren’t yet able to do this as well as we should.  But yet our media is free, we are able to access sources we never could before, and somehow I find myself optimistic.  Compared to the ideal we have a long way to go, and the prominence of manipulative emotional appeals in the media creates real dangers.  Compared to where we’ve been, however, there has been progress.   And that’s what democracy is all about — improvements over time.

May 18 - Secular Faith vs. Pragmatism

Barack Obama gave the commencement address at Notre Dame University, causing protests from many Catholics (though very few students) who thought Obama’s pro-choice stance, as well as his support for embryonic stem cell research, should make him off limits to the Catholic university.

Pause for a moment to think about that mentality.  It is one thing to be pro-life, it is another to think that it is inappropriate for the President of the United States should speak at a graduation event because he is pro-choice.  In a country where open debate and discourse is the norm, it seems odd that some would want to ostracize and reject a person simply due to their view point on one issue.

The reason, of course, is religion.  Obama for the aradent conservative Catholics (a vocal, yet quite small minority at Notre Dame) is anti-God.  He stands for something they think their faith is fundamentally opposed to, and therefore he should not be allowed to speak at an event that culminates the educational experience at a Catholic university.

Yet before one simply looks at religion as somehow less tolerant or rational, the same can be said for those believers in secular religions — ideologies.   The age of reason brought about a frontal assault on religion, one which I think most organized religions will not ultimately survive.   But people still need something to believe.  Ideologies filled that role.

Read pundits or blogs from the right, and they are so certain in their ideology that they are convinced Obama is bringing about a socialist tyranny and destroying the country.  Blogs from the left think that Bush and the GOP already brought us half way there and Obama is trying to pull us back from the abyss (or, when Obama is pragmatic, they see him as selling out).   They all have a litany of core assumptions and interpretations that get applied to virtually any situation.   They also don’t realize how absurd they can sound.

Once I was debating an anarchist — an economist who is convinced that society would run best with no government or regulation.   It was a belief based on pure theory — how the world should be if his core assumptions played out perfectly.  Yet the way that on line debate (probably about seven years ago) went showed how hard it is to convince a true believer.  First, when I gave numerous examples of government breakdown where anarchy lead to horrid conditions, solved only by a rebirth of government and rule of law, the response was that I should look at Iceland in the 11th century.

Huh?   If you have to that far back to that specific of a location to try to find any example of anarchy ‘working,’ that proves my point that it isn’t economic laws but culture and tradition that shape stability.  A small pre-modern closed society might indeed function with custom and tradition providing order, with no overt government needed.   But he was dead serious in claiming this was proof of his position, so strong was his faith.  Moreover, such folk debate in a manner designed to avoid dealing the content of opponents, and instead to go after them personally — and woe to you if you make an error.

I made one error – in a reply I talked about comparative advantage but described absolute advantage.   That’s a common error, in political science I’ve seen that done in text books.    Yet he pounced on it, proclaiming that I was clearly ignorant of economics, and any time my argument got really good he’d go back to that point and say “but how can anyone take seriously someone so ignorant of economics.”   A careless mistake is magnified in order to avoid confronting something that can challenge ones’ faith.

They do it on the left too.  The attacks on Obama for not being stronger about the torture accusations, for continuing military tribunals, or naming moderates and Republicans to high level positions are immense.   A world view that sees business and elites as colluding in a way to create war, oppress the masses, and shape society to serve their interests is just as powerful as the one that says the free market is the path to total freedom.   These contradictory ideologies — or faiths — are supported by strong arguments from pundits and intellectuals.   You can’t chose between them by using reason, each constructs arguments that make perfect sense and have strong evidence.  You have to choose some assumptions or beliefs to start with, and then go with that.

One reason I’m hopeful that Obama will be a good President is that he’s different, he’s a pragmatist.   The key aspect of pragmatism is to recognize that one may be wrong.   Some say pragmatism means having no principles — to them, faith in one set of beliefs is a virtue, doubt in ones’ beliefs is weakness.  But that kind of perspective is irrational and based on fear — fear of not being right.  Pragmatists have principles and should be overt in stating them and being guided by them, but the fact that they recognize they may be wrong leads to a few important differences:

a) They can change their mind about the importance of various things in context.   That means they listen to other arguments, and decide if perchance their initial interpretation was wrong.   This will get them attacked as being a ‘flip flopper,’ but to a pragmatist, the key is making the best decision, and refusing to change ones’ opinion in the light of new evidence and arguments would not be strength, but irrationality.;

b) They can compromise, even when core principles are at stake.  Recognizing that they may be wrong, they realize that in real world situations compromises are necessary and possible.   To the ‘faithful’ compromise is a dirty word, they imagine that compromise means giving in (and the true believers are convinced that compromises are all one sided — rhetoric on the far left and far right show that each is convinced that when they compromise the other side simply takes it as a victory and doesn’t reciprocate); and

c) They are problem solvers, more likely to connect with real people and their situations.   Ideologues abstract situations into principles and values, often putting the intellectual exercise of abstraction ahead of consideration of the life conditions of people involved.   As true believers they think any consideration of sympathy or empathy is weakness, causing people to compromise core values because of emotion.  Pragmatists, who tend to see the world in shades of grey — or better yet, a rainbow of shades — realize that real world experiences are far more important than abstract logic or ideological principles.   Life is what its’ all about, not intellectual games.

Luckily, our system tends to reward pragmatists, since that represents the majority of American culture.  These are people who don’t see themselves on a left-right scale, don’t have a secular ideological faith, and who respect other points of view.  Pragmatists can make very wrong decisions, to be sure, but in times of crisis their ability to recognize they may be wrong and look for compromise is important.  The abstract thinking true believer who puts his or her personal principles above all else is very dangerous.  If that person is in error in any part of his or her belief system, the ramifications for a society can be devastating.

Obama going to Notre Dame is showing his pragmatist credentials; listening and interacting with those who think differently, looking to build common ground.  The true believers who want culture war and ‘our way or no way’ don’t like it, but it might save the country.

May 16 - They Cheated

SPOILER ALERT:  this blog post makes no attempt to avoid giving away information about the movie “Star Trek.”  Do not read further if you do not want to know how it goes.

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My first thought upon leaving the movie “Star Trek” tonight was that they cheated.  I was excited to learn about the early days of Kirk, Spock and the gang, perhaps how they came together to be on the Enterprise, and other interesting bits about their history.   I hoped the movie would be character driven (it was) and mix action and a change to really get to know the main characters (it did).  But we didn’t see anything about the history of the cast of the original series.  This wasn’t their history at all.  Instead, it was an alternate history, from an alternate universe where Vulcan was destroyed, Kirk lost his father at birth, and the crew is brought together early as the Federation is in peril.

It’s not that I don’t like the idea.   Earlier this week I took a walk with my friend Steve Pane, who had already seen the film with his family.  He gave away nothing of the story, just noting that his wife enjoyed it even without knowing the original series, and his sons wanted to watch some of the original episodes after seeing it.   We started talking about episodes, and both agreed that “City on the Edge of Forever” was one of the finest, where Kirk stops McCoy from saving Edith Kieler (Joan Collins) in 1930s New York because it would change history allowing the Nazis to win WWII.  Changing history was a big no-no in the original Star Trek, it made time travel dangerous (the later Trek series did, to be sure, move away from that stance.)

I told Steve I thought the fear of changing the future was stupid.   If you got to the past and you changed something, it would just create a new timeline — the old timeline would have to still exist (otherwise there could not have been the creation of a new one) and you’d just have different realities.  So if time travel backwards is possible, so would be alternate time lines.   Steve smiled and said, “I agree and will say no more.”  I looked him quizzically — it seemed an odd response.  “We’ll talk Monday,” he concluded.  I knew then that timelines would be a part of the show; I didn’t realize it would be the device they’d build it around!

Still, I couldn’t help but feel cheated.  I still didn’t know about the past of the original series’ cast of characters, these were people of a different timeline creating different experiences.  That meant they weren’t precisely the same people.

Then it hit me: the film was overt about the fact it was cheating.  It featured Kirk cheating on the Kobayashi Maru, a Starfleet test designed to be unwinnable (mentioned in the original series, as well as the second Star Trek movie).  Spock was the designer of the test, and presses charges against Kirk.  It then features an elderly Spock coming back from the future (having gotten accidently caught in a black hole).   Before he can do anything he is captured by the bad guy (the Romulan Nero) and sent on a planet to watch Vulcan be destroyed.   There he meets Kirk, and, in Kirk’s word, “cheats.”  He tells Kirk what’s happening, and how he has to stop it.

In other words, cheating was a theme of the film, and I think the producer knew it was what he was doing too.   Doing it this way they can now reinvent the original Roddenberry cast, younger and gritier, without being tied down by all the ‘facts’ of the first series.   They aren’t condemned to be just younger versions of Kirk, Spock, et al., setting up a series that began 43 years ago.  They have their own uncharted universe, already profoundly different than the one of the original series.

That can be forgiven.  The original series played by ear early on, not quite realizing that every throw away line, reference to the past, or technological trick would become a holy grail to which all future Star Trek series and movies would have to be faithful.    Star Trek’s strength was not its science fiction, nor even its plot (by year three the scripts were often really bad).  The strength was its characters — likable, flawed, and working as a team.   Without cheating, there’d be no way to really recapture that.    A pre-quel that had to stay loyal to everything that came before (ie, after) would be too limited.   A new series with characters like the original would be seen as simple mimickry of the old.   This gives them a chance for a 21st century redo of a formula that worked.

To be sure, I don’t know if they’re going to make this into a TV series — or perhaps simple have a sequel or two.   But they have that option.

It’s also got some pretty cool philosophical implications.  What if there can be different realities, where even whole civilizations are wiped out in one timeline, but dominate another?   Is there an Earth history where Carthage defeated Rome and altered the entire civilizational history of the planet?  Where Rome took the next step and developed technology that allowed it to expand further, developing things like automobiles around 600 AD?   Where Jesus died as an infant, Muhammad was killed early by the Quraysh, and the main world religion became Zorastrianism?

Or to take it a step farther, if old Spock can meet young Spock (old Spock entered a new time line, and met that timeline’s Spock), is it possible that there could be multiples of each of us, living very different lives.  Or a step further, could all our different aspects populate even a single timeline, meaning that all the conflicts, love, and hate we have for each other in this world is really just different aspects of ourself interacting?

In any event, it was a good movie and hopefully a good take off to a new set of Star Trek adventures.    I’ve been a Star Trek fan as long as I can remember (probably back when I was very little and the originals were still on weekly), and have seen every movie that came out, many on their opening night.  So this was a treat.  But next week I’ll have another treat, a movie I’ve been waiting over a year for is out, and I’ll see it soon: Angels and Demons. But tonight was Star Trek night.   And, by cheating, the film’s producers and writers scored a true victory.

May 13 - Darth Cheney

Back in 1991 it was ‘treasonous’ for Jimmy Carter to work to prevent a war with Iraq, and in 2002 Al Gore and others were lambasted by the right for trying to slow the process of going to war with Iraq.  You don’t act in a way that undercuts a President’s foreign policy, you certainly aren’t supposed to suggest that a President’s actions are making the country less safe.   Apparently Dick “Darth” Cheney believes that only applies to attempts to “undercut” war efforts.  Working to undercut diplomacy is another matter.  I suspect that in the view from the Dark Side undercutting diplomacy is good because it makes war more likely.

As I’ve noted before, I’m not one of those who believes George W. Bush to be bad; I’ve praised his ability in his second administration to recognize that initial policies in Iraq had failed and adjust.   He also, according to numerous reports, soured on Vice President Cheney’s foreign policy perspective, realizing that he was impervious to the possibility that events were proving him wrong.   Bush displayed the capacity to recognize error and change direction.   By the end of his administration I found myself having sympathy for the President.   He had sacrificed everything for the war in Iraq, believing it would spread democracy and make America safer, and even though he realized he was wrong and changed directions, that one error in judgment — goaded on by the Sith warriors around him — would haunt his legacy forever.   Who knows what he might have accomplished if not for the way in which Iraq swallowed his Presidency and destroyed his domestic agenda.

Cheney, however, is another story.  Reading Bob Woodward’s account of the 1991 Iraq war, operation Desert Storm, it becomes clear that then Defense Secretary Cheney was not only the hawk’s hawk, but also someone with a disdain for Congress and the democratic process.   Having been Chief of Staff to President Ford in the wake of Watergate and Nixon’s resignation, Cheney had experienced the White House at its least powerful.  The Democrats had a huge majority in Congress, and President Ford was leading a wounded administration.  At that point, it seems, Cheney embraced the dark side.  Congress came to be not the tool of democracy, but the enemy of the Executive Branch.   The goal was power in a zero sum game and if he was part of the Executive Branch, he wanted to make sure the power was there.

When President Bush announced that Cheney would serve as Chair of his Vice Presidential search committee, I was relieved.  I had heard his name mentioned at a possible VP, and that made me nervous.  But Chair of VP Search committees never get themselves named as the Vice Presidential candidate.   Somehow, Cheney managed the process not only in a way that got him the position, but he was praised as adding ‘gravitas’ to the Bush candidacy.  Bush was inexperienced at foreign policy and national policy, but Cheney had been Secretary of Defense for the first President Bush.

Cheney also helped assure that so-called neo-conservatives like John Bolton got high positions in government, and after 9-11 he knew how to appeal to the fearful mood of the nation and President Bush’s idealist notion of spreading democracy to push for an aggressive foreign policy.  Gen. Wesley Clark reported seeing plans to invade seven countries in five years in order to reshape the Mideast.  Bolton and Cheney rejected CIA intelligence and created their own pseudo-intelligence office.   Cheney’s Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby, would ultimately be the one victim of the Palme affair, convicted of perjury and being forced from his position.

With Cheney still extremely influential, the most fatal and damaging decisions of the Bush Administration were made, as the young and still inexperienced President relied on his Vice President for advice and motivation.   As Bush learned more about the war and how government works Cheney’s influence waned.   But the damage had been done, even as the President turned to Robert Gates and Condoleezza Rice to try to find a way to minimize the impact and find a way out of the quagmires.

During this time Cheney was mostly silent.  He was the most secretive member of the administration, getting his house wiped off google earth, refusing to release numerous documents, and even being secretive about the nature of his job.   Cheney made the phrase ‘undisclosed location’ famous.  Now, however, he has found his voice and uses it to attack the policies of the Obama administration.

Perhaps the most disturbed about this are Republicans.  Cheney has become the least popular and least trusted politician in America.  If he is the face of opposition to Obama, it has to help Obama.   And Cheney isn’t sticking to Republican talking points like fiscal discipline, taxes, and liberty.  He’s making his stand defending methods that are considered torture by many.  He’s trying to recapture the mode of fear that existed in 2002 — fear feeds the dark side after all!

Perhaps he’s hoping for a new terror attack to put his kind of fearful aggression back in vogue.  Perhaps he simply hasn’t come to grips with the fact his approach to post 9-11 policy has been shown wrong headed and he is widely seen as a failure.   Maybe he’s hitting Obama because nobody else is, and he has nothing left to lose.   His punches have no sting, however, they just provide more material for comedians like Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert.

When one looks at the rhetoric of the far right — talk radio and right wing blogs — it is often angry and vehemently anti-Obama.    It is common to hear about the ‘downfall of America’ and ‘death of American values,’ something only the most extremes of the left said about Bush.   Maybe our Sith Warrior Darth Cheney hopes for a rebirth of the fear and anger that might lead the country to embrace aggression and efforts to silence opposition.   It’s possible.

Yet I suspect most Republicans as well as Democrats would prefer to focus on the important issues facing the country.   That includes serious opposition to Obama — his deficits are huge, there are concerns about the nature of government intervention in the auto industry and the nature of the financial bailouts.  There are real questions to ask about policies towards Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as how to contain or engage Iran.   Because, Darth Cheney’s fear mongering not withstanding, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans represent the “dark side.”   It isn’t good vs. evil as far as American politics is concerned, but overwhelming good intended folk of different perspectives and beliefs trying to work out what’s best for the country.   That’s what works.

UPDATE:  I’ve been informed that I have my Star War references wrong, that when someone else compared Cheney to Darth Vader, George Lucas replied that the correct comparison is to the Emperor.

May 11 - It’s Not Over Yet

Lately people have seemed a bit less pessimistic about the economy.  The pundits report that things seem to be bottoming out.   To be sure, when it is reported that there were fewer new jobless claims last week, or that job loses in April were less than in March, it can create a false impression that things are getting better.  Ongoing jobless claims are at record highs; things aren’t getting better, they are just getting worse at a slower pace.  The hope is that this slower pace of worsening means we’re closer to a point where things will turn around and start to go in the other direction.  That would be recovery, and I’ve not seen anyone claim we’re in recovery mode yet.

The story line for the recession nearing an end seems compelling.  Faced with conditions similar to 1929 and 1930 the US avoided the mistakes made by Hoover and Roosevelt (neither of whom really figured out what was going on) and instead worked hard to rejuvinate the life blood of capitalism: credit.   Credit even trumps hard work and innovation as a necessity for a capitalist economy — you can have a great idea but without credit it doesn’t get far off the ground.   Money was injected into the finance market, banks were given unprecedented assistance and the risk of global financial markets collapsing into stagnation and failure seems to have been avoided.

The other part of the story line is less compelling, though popular.    The so-called stimulus, the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA), was not really about a direct stimulation of the economy — only a small portion of that bill was focused on getting money in consumers hands.   Most of the money will go to address other structural faults in the economy such as a lack of investment in infrastructure (think of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis for a dramatic example) and helping states handle a crisis in education and health care spending.   Education is seen as a key to economic growth, necessary to maintain a well educated and innovative work force.  Health care costs have been dramatically rising, harming both states and business, dragging the economy down.    In that sense the ARRA is a first step in addressing long term problems — a step, not a solution.  But there are dangers on the horizon.

The first and most obvious danger is inflation.  Already bonds to finance the deficit are selling poorly (the US has to offer higher interest rates than expected to find buyers) and the influx of money into the system has people worried that the dollar may be overvalued.  At this point there has not been a run on the dollar, in part because no other currency is trusted as much, and in part because the increase in the money supply has not led to much of an increase in demand.   Still, the danger is real.   Once inflation begins, it’s hard to control, sometimes requiring putting breaks on economic activity in a way that could nip any recovery in the bud.   That’s a real gamble of Obama’s strategy — can he pull his off and avoid inflation?

Second, and even more difficult, is how to deal with the economic restructuring that must take place in any event.    We cannot simply recover and go back to the life style of 2006.   We cannot return to current accounts deficits of 6% of GDP, and an unholy arrangement of China buying US currency and bonds with the knowledge that this will finance a trade deficit benefiting China.  That’s not a sustainable situation, and China realizes that if the money they invest in the US simply finances consumption it’s not really a safe investment.  If you invest in a company and the company uses your money to buy company cars and cool office furniture, rather than to improve its performance, you’ll likely lose in that investment.

Long term the US will have to get used to higher structural unemployment rates, a permanent loss of service sector jobs, a need to reindustrialize parts of the country, lower tax revenues, and lower rates of economic growth.  The US will have to improve its savings rate and make some hard choices about government spending.   Can we keep entitlements as they are?   Should we maintain a massive military spending half the world’s military budget?   How much can we invest in education, infrastructure and health care without increasing debt and deficits in the long run?

Moreover, what happens if the credit card industry goes the way of the mortgage industry?  New rules on credit card companies, increased bad credit card debt, and a decreased public will to go into debt could be a perfect storm for the credit card industry.    The mortgage crisis could be followed by a credit card  crisis. This could cause a further erosion before recovery begins, and we might look back at early 2009 as being defined by unwarranted optimism; we might be seeing a false bottom.

Perhaps we’re out of the spiraling vortex of doom.   But if I’m right that the great boom of 1945 to 2008 is over, then we need to think about how to handle a new era in the global political economy, one where we enter a  phase of rebalancing and restructuring.  This requires not just a change in policy, but a cultural shift away from consumerism towards a sustainable economy.  Government and business cannot do this for us, we as citizens have to change our behaviors.

So, sure, feel a bit hopeful.  But be wary, stay frugal, and recognize that it’s definitely not over yet!

May 9 - Manipulated

We are all constantly manipulated.

Advertisers make us think we need products to feel better about ourselves, do things we’d like to do, or look sharp.   Politicians manipulate us by appealling to our emotions, be it fear or hope, making promises and projecting images that hit us at subliminal levels.

Sometimes its overt.  You go into a car dealership and you know that when they innocently ask “what other cars are you looking at” they are judging your price range.   If you’re looking at a Camry and you say you’ve been eyeing a Honda Accord or a VW Passat they know they can offer a higher price than if you’ve been looking at a Kia or Chevy.  You know that they are doing their best to get you to drive off with their car that day, and that the ‘negotiation’ with the ‘manager’ is staged.  But most of us still fall for it, and often later realize they controlled the process.  If manipulation can succeed when its so overt and we know about it, think about how effective it can be when it’s ubitquitous, subtle, and we think we’re simply making free choices.

Dr. David Kessler, in his book The End of Overeating describes how the food industry programs us to overeat, and manipulates their products in ways that get us addicted to food.    Indeed, the food industry hits us everywhere from psychology (adds that make it seem good and normal to indulge — usually connected with images of family, friendship or maybe adventure) to physiology (manipulating our tastebuds and making it easier to eat).  Kessler notes that with modern foods we don’t have to chew as often — our food comes already partially pre-digested.

Marketing is everywhere, mixing appeals to make us want something with claims that make it seem easy to purchase — get credit, don’t worry about the cost, the omnipresent ‘I deserve it’ rationalization, or simply that ‘everyone is doing it.’  We end up buying things we don’t need, and really don’t want.

It is most evident with children.  The marketing to children starts when they are two and can identify products by logo or name.  By the time Ryan was four, he wanted everything he saw a commercial for.  Whether it was roll out flower beds, some new gadget, or any toy they advertised, he was enthused and enthralled.  He caused his day care teacher to laugh when he ran through a commercial for one of those convenience products and ended, in dead seriousness, with “and the best thing of all — you don’t have to lift a finger.“   We are a little better at avoiding the glitz and excitement built into commercials — but not much.

We are manipulated in the political realm.  Like him or not, one has to admit that Barack Obama ran a superb marketing campaign.   His people were overt about the methods they used — gathering e-mail addresses in order to send messages for fund raising, projecting the proper image, and selling their candidate.  Of coure, Karl Rove marketed George W. Bush, the ‘compassionate conservative,’ and one Bush aide asked why suddenly in September 2002 there was such a push for war in Iraq answered “you don’t market a new product in August.”

Whether it’s Obama’s appeal to youth, hope and hippness to talk radio’s more base appeal to fear, nationalism and anger, manipulation takes place all over the political spectrum.   To be sure, it’s been worse.  In Rwanda Hutus were manipulated to slaughter Tutsis, in Cambodia the Khmer Rouge manipulated peasants to start a mass genocide, in Stalinist Russia Communist ideology was used to manipulate an entire society.   And, of course, I’ve noted earlier how the Nazi Goebbels once claimed he learned all he needed to know from the advertisers on Madison Avenue in Manhattan.

We are manipulated into thinking life is about certain things.  Why do we want to be a material success, why do we put job ahead of friends and family, why do we see some careers as more acceptable than others, why do we think free market capitalism is choice?   The manipulation concerning these issues involve something akin to modern myths.  Even though the wealthy corporations can manipulate us in ways we don’t even recognize, we believe that they are just giving us choices, and we get to autonomously decide what we want.   They also provide the rationale for justifying our choices, making us feel empowered, even as we’re manipulated.

Just as the Catholic church created a view of reality in the Middle Ages where the real world was irrelevant and all that mattered was to prepare for the afterlife — hence the lack of material progress for centuries — we now have a secular materialist world view where the meaning of life is defined by material wealth or condition.  It’s a new kind of myth:  the free market means freedom and choice (we don’t notice the manipulation, and in fact feel empowered by our choices), success in life is defined by material conditions (house, family, good job, financial security), but we are manipulated to think it’s never quite enough.

Moreover, while the myth is secular, the source of power here, as with other manipulations, is appeal to our emotions.   Disneyland overtly connections consumption with the notion of family, a happy childhood, and a sense of ‘magic.’   The yearning for psychological contentment leads to a host of consumable products from electronics (I’ll be happy with a flat screen TV and stereo surround sound) to drugs (this pill will wash away the feelings of depression).  And, of course, psychological contentment is always kept at arms length.

I’ve posted numerous posts about consumerism.  But rarely do even the most astute social critics truly recognize the scope of just how manipulated we are.   We know advertisers are trying to manipulate our behavior, but most people have no clue just how extensive that manipulation is — or how much it shapes our experience of life.   That yearning dissatisfaction with ones’ current situation, even though one might have a good family, a comfortable home and a well paying job, comes directly from such manipulation.  The economic crisis, our wars, our dependence on oil (and the crises it may cause in the future), and the way we’re destroying our planet are all results of manipulation.

The manipulation is not centralized.  It comes from government, from advertisers, and it has been become part of the fabric of our culture.  We are hypontised by the world, in a way, taking a rather strange culture defined by a particular kind of secular materialism as “normal” and even “best.”   Reason/rational thought is elevated as the primary value, even though reason itself cannot uncover values and provides the capacity for the elite to manipulate emotions.   The biggest limit on our freedoms comes not from religion, government, or foreign threats, but from the waves of manipulation that shape and push us every day.

There’s no clear way to overcome this, except to learn about the manipulation (reading books like Kessler’s noted above, or perhaps Bejamin Barber’s Consumed), and try to notice it in our own lives.  And then to recognize that for all our wants, desires, and discontents, the best way to avoid manipulation is to grap the moment, bask in the now, appreciate the beauty and the people around us, and realize that our experience of the moment is real — not the strange social scenerey of the world in which we find ourselves.

May 7 - Same Sex Marriage in Maine

Maine made history yesterday as the fifth state to legalize gay marriage.  It’s certain to face a vote by the full electorate since Maine has a “people’s veto” option.   And, if the vote comes this fall, when no other major elections are taking place, the anti-gay marriage group could probably muster the support necessary to overturn the legislation, since they would be the ones most motivated to show up at the polls.   Still, that almost certainly would only be a bump in the path towards legal gay marriage down the line — and it might even survive a people’s veto.

What amazes me is how quickly this issue has evolved.  Less than a decade ago it seemed only people considered ‘radical’ were actively pushing for gay marriage.   That was seen as a bit too much.  Civil unions were the liberal catch phrase of the day.  Politicians could be in favor of civil unions, noting that gays could be married in church ceremonies, that state civil unions would function like marriages and grant all the same rights, but it just wouldn’t be marriage.

That seemed a perfect compromise.  Tell the moderates that ‘we aren’t messing with the institution of marriage’ but tell the progressives that ‘we are allowing the functional equivalent of marriage.’   The hard core right wouldn’t even accept civil unions, but their votes are pretty set in stone anyway.

In fact, Governor Baldacci had said he supported civil unions and would veto a gay marriage bill, but yet signed it yesterday.  Apparently the changing political winds around this issue caught him off guard, he was uncommitted until the end as to whether he would sign.

So what happened?   Why did gay marraige suddenly not only become ‘mainstream,’ but with New Hampshire set to vote to legalize it, something gaining steam?

One explanation is the ‘tipping point’ notion — support builds and suddenly you reach a ‘tipping point’ where everything turns around.  You can find tipping points in looking at public opinion on civil rights for blacks, the Vietnam war, the Iraq war, and some think we may be nearing one concerning legalization of marijuana.  To an extent that’s true.  But it’s sort of a non-explanation — the question is why did this suddenly ‘tip.’

A major reason could be that it suddenly became less strange to think of same sex marriages.   When the Vermont court first mandated that they be recognized, it was seen as bizarre, weird, and almost unthinkable to a lot of people.  But gays got married.  The first marriage my two sons attended was two women getting married.    The kids were too young to really understand marriage (Dana was only six months at the time), but across the country more people were invited to, and attended, gay weddings.   It wasn’t just in Vermont either.  This marriage took place in Maine, and was conducted by a member of the Christian clergy (I forget which denomination).   It wasn’t “legal” — I’m sure the legal niceties were taken care of over in Vermont — but it was a real ceremony.

As people witnessed such events, and as gays increasingly decided to undertake marriage vows, suddenly it wasn’t so weird any more.  To the generation coming of age at this time it will always seem normal — they’re used to it, and even many conservatives see opposition to same sex marriages as reflecting the thinking of a previous era.   In twenty years the idea that gays were so recently not be allowed to marry will probably seem as strange as the recognition now that not that long ago blacks could not marry whites.

Second, there is no rational reason to oppose same sex marriage.   Does the fact a gay couple down the road have a state endorsed marriage change anything?   Up to now they could have a religious marriage ceremony, exchange rings, live together, be protected by domestic partner laws, and call each other a spouse.  None of that behavior will change, there will just be a piece of paper on file at the court house making it state-certified.

There are basically two reasons to oppose same sex marriage.  The first is bigotry, which usually entails an authoritarian personality.  Someone doesn’t like the idea of people being homosexual, and wants to try to make sure it never gets accepted.  Bigotry could also be caused by fear — will gays corrupt their children, change society, or somehow undo American culture.   That so-called homophobia drives a lot of the opposition.  Most opponents of gay marriage are neither bigots nor homophobes.  Some are gay themselves.  They make a more reasonable argument that marriage has been a time honored union of a man and a woman, and that giving state sanction to this practice represents an attempt to socially engineer culture, which they consider misguided and dubious.

I do not doubt the sincerity of that argument, and respect it.  I think, though, that it’s wrong.  What we are seeing is quite literally a culture shift, homosexuality is considered acceptable by more than just a ‘liberal fringe’ or counter culture types.   Average folk, many religious, working class, and moderate to conservative in their views, are starting to think that it makes sense to allow gays to marry.    There is a growing consensus that homosexuality is not chosen, but part of ones’ genetic make up (or tendencies may be in the genes).  Denying rights to people on that basis is much like denying them on the basis of skin color.

Beyond that, the religious right, or social conservative movement in America is weakening rapidly.   Many evangelicals are taking more moderate stances on social issues, and emphasizing love, charity, and good works more than a stern index finger pointed at society’s supposed moral flaws.   While the 80s saw Jerry Falwell and the ‘moral majority’ condemning society’s sexual deviation and decadence, with Pat Robertson accusing lesbians of being akin to witches, the current religious leaders — much less well known — underplay such rhetoric.   The times have changed.

Finally, liberalism is back.   It’s OK to be liberal or progressive now, Barack Obama has made the left cool once again.  Rush Limbaugh’s audience has aged, and the right lacks a hip, cool, or popular focus of attention.   Part of that comes from the debacle in Iraq and the economic crisis that came from the policies of the last quarter century (bipartisan policies, quite often).   People want change.  Part of that is generational culture shift, as the people born in the post-Cold War era start coming of age.

What happens in Maine as the process moves forward is still unknown.  And I doubt same sex marriage is going to come to Alabama or Georgia any time soon.   But even compared to the reaction to same sex marriage in California last year, which I blogged about almost exactly a year ago, changes  in public attitudes have been swift — it does feel like a tipping point has been reached.  Don’t be surprised if within a few short years same sex marriage isn’t approved over much of the country.  If a tipping point is crossed, things change fast.

May 5 - Empathy, Wisdom, and the Supreme Court

If you read some of the commentary about the retirement of Justice David Souter, you’d think that Barack Obama committed an atrocity by simply saying he wants a judge with empathy.   EMPATHY?  The far right hates the term, perhaps because it means you try to understand the situation and circumstances of others, different from yourself.   They claim this is code for “activist judge” or even “pro-choice.”

They also claim that the law is somehow not to be read with any consideration of the human side of a legal action.  It’s purely “constitutional” meaning you use reason to determine the proper meaning of the law, and then apply it regardless of the consequences to the people involved.  The law is the law, after all.

The problem with that argument is that it seems to suggest that justices do not need wisdom, just knowledge.  Laws are made by people to deal with human situations.   The people making the laws, and the situations they entail, become relevant in large part because of how people react to situations emotionally.    To pretend that once the law is put in the books it then becomes something to which emotion is absent is ridiculous — emotion and human experience are part and parcel of every law and every human activity.

Moreover, the reason some people distrust emotion is that it can be misleading.   Let’s say you get an e-mail from a friend that seems to accuse you of something.   Rather than analyze the claim and consider the motives, you might suddenly get emotional and angry at the friend.  You then shoot back an angry e-mail which causes him or her to get upset, especially if the original e-mail wasn’t meant maliciously.  Pretty soon mutual emotions can cause animosity and unnecessary anger.   Whether in personal relationships, business deals, or foreign policy, misguided emotion can create dangerous errors of judgement.

Empathy, though, doesn’t do that.  Empathy in fact is an emotion which provides wisdom.    It allows one to better understand the true nature of a situation by not only categorizing it intellectually, but assessing the emotional state of those involved.   Empathy also doesn’t mean surrender.  When I put my six year old in time out I often empathize with his frustration at not being able to do what he wants.  To him many rules make no sense, he doesn’t understand how dangerous some things are, or the kind of damage certain actions can cause.   I empathize.  I realize that it seems unfair to him, I understand the voice saying “dadddyyy” as he looks at me wondering why his loving daddy is punishing him.

But, as supernanny would note, the “naughty chair” doesn’t work if not implemented with consistency and rules such as not talking after explaining why the child is there, and not giving in to feelings of guilt for causing emotional distress to the child.   Still, empathy helps keep anger in check.  I think that parents who don’t empathize have a harder time not exploding when their child yells, screams, or gets off the naughty chair for the tenth time.  Empathy provides understanding and actually makes it easier for me to provide effective discipline without losing my cool or giving up.

Empathy may be good for dealing with children, but on the court?   I’d argue yes.  If the exercise of making legal judgements only involves an intellectual activity, whereby the facts of the case and the law inexorably drive towards one conclusion, we don’t need judges, we need robots.  We need computers into which we can feed releavant data, and which will give us the proper verdict or ruling.   After all, no matter how learned a justice is, you can put a lot more information in a computer data base!

Or could it be that the law is not merely an intellectual exercise, or a formula to determine what the facts are.  Perhaps the facts themselves are a mix of objective phenomena and human situations.    After all, the makers of a law may have had one thing in mind, never intending the law to have an inadvertant side effect of harming people in an unexpected condition.   Perhaps the unexpected condition is such where a breach of the law was unavoidable or unintended.  Perhaps the breach is in fact no harm to society and there is no risk in letting it go unpunished.  Perhaps strict adherence to pure legality would itself be irrational, not taking into account the complexity and uncertainties of social structures.

If that is the case — if the law is not purely intellectual and formulaic, then what more do we need then a computer?   It can’t be simple emotion — anger for vengence, disgust at violations of ones’ own moral code, and other sorts of reactions may do more harm than good — it may replace the formula with raw subjective bias, rendering a result that is even worse.   If however the emotion is empathy, combining with reason, and not getting lost in anger or despair, the result is wisdom.

Wisdom is more than intellectual application of rules.  It is more than just knowledge.  Wisdom is knowledge plus empathy, it’s understanding the reality of a situation, and responding in ways that take the people’s state of mind and emotion into account.

This is clear in the account of King Solomon, who in the Bible has a dispute brought to him.   Two women claim to be the mother of a baby, each has a compelling case.  Solomon then orders the baby to be cut in half, with each mother getting a half of the child.   One of the women suddenly gives in, and says that it’s better for the other woman to have the child then to have it killed.  Solomon then awarded the child to that woman — she cared more about the child’s life than her claim on the child.   That wasn’t application of an intellectual formula, that was empathy of the human condition, and wisdom.

So yes, I want empathy.   I don’t want judicial activism or a litmus test on abortion, if the word “empathy” is a code, I don’t want the code.   I want the real thing, a justice with knowledge of the law, empathy and wisdom.

May 4 - Flu paranoia?

Ever have a “You-tube moment?”  That’s when you inadvertently say something really stupid, and though you may catch yourself right away and take it back, if someone had caught it on video it could be very embarrassing.   The first day in class last week, after spring break, I was joking about Swine flu and whether anyone went to Mexico for break.   What came out essentially made it sound like I was calling Mexicans “pigs,” which of course was not at all what I meant to say!  Quickly I caught myself, and so far nothing’s appeared on you-tube, so as long as no one blogs about the incident, it will be forever unknown.

That said, I have great sympathy for Joe Biden who has had a lifetime of you-tube moments, otherwise known as “gaffes.”  Biden’s latest, of course, was his claim people should avoid flying, taking subways, or being in any enclosed spot due to fears of swine flu.  (With all due respects to the pork industry, the name sticks).   I can sympathize with Biden.   In e-mails and public speaking I often talk without thinking things through, and later feel bad or embarrassed by what I said.   I therefore sympathize with those public figures picked on by the ‘gotcha’ press or political operatives who grab on to one word or speech and hang it over a politician as long as it will stick.   Humans are fallable, the you tube generation is demanding people stick to message and not enage in real give and take.  In that, Biden’s refusal to play by those rules is a welcome respite.

Still, this doesn’t look like a slip of the tongue.  Biden is giving voice to concerns a lot of people have, even if the government is officially trying to downplay the danger.  Are we on the verge of a pandemic?  Should we be scared?  Does my child have a normal flu, or could this be (queue scary music) the swine flu.

In this, I beg to differ with the Vice President.  There is no reason to avoid planes, subways or ‘confined places,’ or to be afraid.   There is reason to take precautions, but that’s only common sense.   More people die of traffic accidents each day that swine flu has killed so far.  Does that mean we should be paranoid of driving?  If we really measured the risk of getting in the car and heading out on a trip compared to risks inherent in everything else in life, we’d approach our cars with trepedation and fear of death.   Compared to tainted peanuts, bad lettuce, Chinese toys, and all those other things we shun, the risks from an afternoon drive are immense!

So the prudent thing to do is to take precautions.  Drive defensively.  Obey traffic laws (OK, everyone speeds a bit — but please, within reason given conditions).  Don’t drink, stay off the cell phones, and buckle up.  Make sure the kids are in car seats (as much as I hate the laws forcing us to do some of these, they make sense).  Then, accept the risk.  Life is risky, just ask the ghost of Natasha Richardson.   But you have to live — otherwise it’s not worth the risk.   And for those of us who don’t think one mortal material life is all we ahve, well, that provides some comfort as well.

But why do we view those exotic risks, or the danger of swine flu, as something terrifying, even while taking in stride the risk of the drive to work?  Mostly, it’s psychological.   None of us have died driving (unless ghosts read blogs), most of us haven’t been severely injured.  We see driving as something reasonably safe.  Yet we read about these other things and imagine they could happen to us.   Our imagination combines with our capacity to conflate probability and possibility, and soon every one who coughs in our face is a potential carrier of swine flu.  It isn’t rational.

OK, one might say, at this point the risk isn’t great.  But swine flu might become a pandemic.  It could kill tens of millions!  Yes, that’s true.  So we should take precautions.  But otherwise it’s pretty much out of our control.  We’re not going to stop the global economy or travel, and we certainly aren’t able to intervene in the microscopic world of genetic flu strain mutations — influenza is evolution at the speed of light.  So fear makes no sense.  There is no reason to fixate on a possibility that may rank below the chance of an asteroid hitting the earth in 2029, or catastrophe wiping out the world on December 21, 2012 (when the ancient  Mayan calendar stops).

But the media provides scary swine flu theme music and headline  stories of new or suspected cases.  It grabs readers, sells papers, and is fodder for the anti-Mexican (and no, I did not call them ‘pigs’!) xenophobia rampant in parts of the country.   It is another example of how the media manipulates our fears for their gain, and politicians jump on the bandwagen.  Michelle Bachman (R- Minnesota), for instance, pointed out that the last two swine flu scares happened under Democratic Presidents.  When it was pointed out that the 1976 outbreak  was under President Gerald Ford, a Republican, she went mum.   Oops another gotcha Youtube moment!

Whenever these things arise people overreact — the problems of bad food like tainted peanuts actually showed just how good our oversight system is, something that kills just a few people in a country of over 300 million causes intense scrutiny.  The reaction to swine flu by the government should be heartening — they are ready, and globally connected (OK, the Egyptians got a little bizarre by killing pigs — but they don’t like pigs there anyway.)

Might it become a pandemic rivaling the Spanish flu of the era right after WWI?   That’s very, very unlikely.  It is possible — sooner or later some kind of pandemic will hit — but at this point it warrants only prudent precautions and maybe checking the news now and then.  It’s actually a boring story right now; the deaths are tragic, but so are the other 36,000 deaths that come from “normal” flus each year (not to mention the traffic deaths, children killed in war, adults killed in war, rapes, and a whole host of other things that go wrong in the world).

So, with all due respects to Joe Biden, he was sending the wrong message. Obama was right: cover your mouth when you cough, stay home if you’re sick, take precautions when you travel, but otherwise live your life.   While you’re distracted by the talk show jock ranting about the Mexicans sending swine flu across the border, you may miss noticing that the guy in the other lane fell asleep at the wheel and is careening towards you.

May 1 - Shi’ia and Sunni

This post is part 7 in the series “Islam and the West,” the first post to be part of the series since July 17, 2008.   Click the link under “pages” to read what the purpose of this series is. There are links to the first six parts of the series at the end of this post.  Additions to this series appear occasionally on this blog, hopefully every week or two moving forward.
 

In his book “The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End” Peter Galbraith, the son of famed economist John Kenneth Galbraith makes the claim that President Bush  and people high in the Bush administration did not know of the difference between Shi’ia and Sunni forms of Islam.  If true, the title of Galbraith’s book is spot on — anyone even thinking of a major foreign policy initiative in Iraq (especially starting a war) should have analyzed carefully the religious and cultural dynamics of the Sunni-Shi’ite split.   It is also important for people in the West to at least have a passing acquaintance with differences within Islam.

Muhammad died in 632 leaving no clear successor.    Most expected one of his first converts, Ali, to be made Caliph (leader of the Muslim world).  But Abu Bakr was chosen instead (Ali was not even invited to the decision making session), and Abu Bakr made strict rules to prevent familial succession.  This led to bitter feuds between Ali’s wife Fatima (Muhammad’s daughter), and an early political division between the “Party of Ali” (Shi’a) and the majority Sunni (from Sunna, meaning the customary practices of Islam following the ways of the Prophet Muhammad).    Even one of Muhammad’s wives, Aisha, opposed Fatima and Ali.   Ali did become the 4th Caliph late in his life, but was assassinated, as the divisions remained.

After the assassination Muawiyah became Caliph, stationing the capital of the Muslim world in Damascus.  His armies had fought Ali’s troops, and Muawiyah arguably did not take the religion of Islam as seriously as he did power — Shi’ites still doubt his conversion.  He governed more as a true Arab King, expanding power, and conquering most of the rest of the region.  To the followers of Ali, who had been very devout and committed to the faith, not just power, Muawiyah’s rule was contrary to the spirit of Muhammad.

Ali’s son Hasan had been chosen to be Caliph by the supporters of Ali, who were based in Kufa (located in modern Iraq), where had Ali moved the center of the Caliphate.  He was unable to assume the position because of Muawiyah’s power. Hasan and Muawiyah reached a deal whereby Hasan recognized Muawiyah’s rule, but was promised that the Muslim community will reach a consensus on the next Caliph.  Yet when Muawiyah died, he was replaced by his son, Yazid.   Needless to say, this angered the followers of Ali, who believed the Caliphate was no longer true to the letter and spirit of the Koran.  Hasan had died, however and now Hussein, Ali’s second son, was leading the Shi’a.

Hussein decided to go to Kufa from Medina to support an uprising against Yazid.   En route, in the city of Karbala (in modern Iraq), Yazid’s forces caught up with Hussein and his followers, and laid seige.  They trapped them, cut off water and supplies, and as his people were dying, Hussein made a final, futile attack alone into the heart of the Syrian army. He was killed, of course, but his martyrdom would change Islam.

In 684, four years after Hussein’s death, his followers gathered in Karbala to mourn his martyrdom, and started rituals which would define Shi’ite Islam.  The most famous of these is the ritual of Arbaeen, which still draws tens of millions of pilgrams to Karbala annually (though it was banned during Saddam’s rule).  Men would cut themselves with small chains, designed less to create pain than draw blood to show their devotion to Hussein. Hussein was a hero and a martyr, but originally the theological differences were minor.   In fact, Yazid, who paraded Hussein’s head through the streets in Kufa to warn Ali’s followers of what could happen, quickly developed a bad reputation among the Sunni — this was the head of the Grandson of the Prophet, after all!

The majority Sunni saw the Caliph as a political but not a religious authority, while the Shi’ia believed it should combine both — sort of like a Muslim Pope.   Over time, however, significant theological differences would develop. First Hussein became a mystical figure through which one can gain salvation.    Shi’ites also came to believe that after Muhammad men called Imams (not to be confused with how the term often gets used to just describe teachers) emerged as infallible leaders, blessed with implicit as well as explicit knowledge of the Koran.   The Shi’ite profession of faith expanded on the Sunni profession, adding a bit about Hussein:  “There is no god but God, Muhammad is God’s Messenger, and Ali is God’s Executor.”  (Execute as in executing Allah’s will).

These changes also meant the development of Shi’ite sects. The Imams were Ali, Hasan, Hussein, Ali (son of Hussein),  and Muhammad al-Baqir. They followed familial lines, with the father chosing which son would be the next Imam.  When one chose a son who died before he could take power, some decided that since the Imam is infallible, that son was the final Imam, currently in occultation (a kind of divine hiding).  This group is called the 7-ers.  The most common group (and the current dominant group in Iran) is the 12-ers who followed the family line until it ran out (no sons) with the 12th Imam.  They believe the 12th and final Imam is in occultation, to return at the end of the times when the world converts to Islam.  Interestingly Isa (Jesus) will also return to help the conversion.  What an amusing scene that would be — Jesus returns and as the faithful praise him he says “psst – by the way, I’m Muslim.”

The differences between the two have political implications.  Because the Shi’ia believed the leader to combine both religious and political power, they are more open to a theocratic state.  After the 1979 revolution many hinted that Khomeini (who was the first leader) might be the 12th Imam, and some have suggested that about the current President Ahmadinejad. However, unlike the Sunnis, who (as will be described in future blog entries later in this series) rejected ijtihad, or the ability to use reason to interpret the Koran into different times, the Shi’ites allow their clerics to engage in ijtihad.  That potentially opens the door for a rationalist movement in Shi’ite Islam (and, of course, they could pressure the Sunnis to bring back ijtihad, which was rejected for political reasons).

Why is it important for us to know this history?   After all, how many Americans, even Christians, really understand the reformation that split the Christian world?  I think it is important to understand both, if we’re going to handle the difficulties of forging a partnership between cultures in an era of globalization.   It makes a difference, for instance, that the Taliban is made up of Sunni extremists, while Iran is Shi’ite.  We need to realize that the extremists of each distrust the other, often considering the others to be not true Muslims.  On the other hand, throughout history most Muslims have accepted the split without major conflict (later the Sufis would emerge as another group).

Most importantly — and a goal in this blog series — is that Islam and the West are two cultures shaped by long, complex histories, and we need to understand both our own culture in the West (something most people fall short on these days) and the culture of the Islamic world.  Ultimately reconciliation and partnership will only be possible if we know and understand each other, otherwise it’ll be fraught with misunderstandings and caricatured thinking.   I’ve heard of people watching coverage of the Karabala rituals and thinking them barbaric due to the drawing of blood, not understanding what is really happening.  The challenge of globalization is not just political, economic or even environmental.  All of these are part of a challenge to understand and respect each other’s cultures.

Earlier Posts in the Islam and the West Series:

Part One: Rome and Paul (May 31st)
Part Two: Plotinus and Augustine (June 6, 2008)
Part Three: Just and Unjust Wars (June 15, 2008)
Part Four: Muhammad and Arabia (June 22, 2008)
Part Five: Muhammad and Jihad (June 30, 2008)
Part Six: Jews, Christians and Muslims (July 17, 2008)

Our house in the woods

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