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"The stream of Time, irresistible, ever moving, carries off and bears away all things that come to birth and plunges them into utter darkness, both deeds of no account and deeds which are mighty and worthy of commemoration. . .Nevertheless, the science of History is a great bulwark against the stream of Time; in a way it checks this irresistible flood, it holds in a tight grasp whatever it can seize floating on the surface and will not allow it to slip away into the depths of Oblivion. "
- Anna Comnena (1083-1153), The Alexiad
"I have taken all knowledge to be my province."
- Francis Bacon, 1592
Friday, August 15, 2003
UN Resolution Passed - All Problems Solved
Now that we have a(nother) UN Resolution passed sanctioning things in Iraq, we won't have to hear anymore about what a shame it is that Bush hasn't gone through the UN and gotten UN legitimization of everything, and now that the UN has passed a(nother) UN Resolution that sanctions Coalition activities in Iraq, then of course we won't be hearing from people in Europe and Leftists in the U.S. about how if only we had a UN Resolution on these things, we would get active support from the French, Germans, Russians et al.
Indeed, I expect that those countries that have been waiting for a UN Resolution authorizing coalition activity in Iraq before they would send their soldiers to help in Iraq.
As if - none of this was ever about a simple UN Resolution, so the complaints from the usual suspects - couched in disingenuous language - will continue.
conservative critics insist Mr. Bush is no Ronald Reagan--and they're right. Mr. Reagan was the leader of the conservative movement before he entered the White House. In his initial years as president, he cut taxes as boldly as Mr. Bush and curbed domestic spending. But Mr. Reagan was a small government conservative who declared in his inauguration address that government was the problem, not the solution. There, Mr. Bush begs to differ.
The essence of Mr. Bush's big government conservatism is a trade-off. To gain free-market reforms and expand individual choice, he's willing to broaden programs and increase spending.
We'll have to see how that works. I'd like to see a more market oriented approach to trade than we've seen so far - so far Bush's trade policies make a mockery of the claim that he's supporting free-market reforms.
Meanwhile, the Eurozone's economy is moribund at best; Japan is still mired in slow-go. Certainly our economy is better than theirs - it has consistently out-performed them and will continue to do so. However, if we think we're going to have a rip-roaring economic recovery when the economies of our major trading partners are in such a state, we're fooling ourselves. We're going to grow, as we are currently doing, but we're not going to grow fast. We'll grow faster than they are, but if they aren't growing at all then it's hard to see our "faster" growth breaking the 3% mark - which isn't very fast for an economic recovery.
In not unrelated news, and particularly apt today, more power to ya. And read the entire Fred Barnes piece.
Any interesting posts I put up will probably be later than normal today.
I'll take this as an opportunity to mention a couple things that I wanted to but never got around to, which are unrelated to anything of substance.
First, in the "Tempermentally Conservative" post I mentioned I was going to see the new Tomb Raider movie. I did, and it rocked! If I had known that Lara's butler-dude was Arnold Rimmer (Chris Barrie), I'd have gone much sooner! I donno how I missed that, he was in the first film, too.
If you've never seen Red Dwarf all I can say is you're a smeghead.
Now for something completely different: The other day - Wednesday - I was listening to the radio and the news guy came on at the top of the hour and one of the things he reported on was Lovesan (by the way, you didcheck this out when I recommended it to you on Sunday, didn't you? You didn't? Smeghead!); he said that over 250,000 people had been infected by Lovsan so far (this was on Wednesday).
What are they, cyborgs? How'd these people get lovesan? Unprotected cybersex?
Ok, ok; I don't want to insult my readers. You're not a smeghead. Unless you're one of the quarter of a million people infected with Lovesan as a result of unprotected cybersex.
What follows is most of a letter forwarded to me by my Uncle. The only parts I've taken out are a few personal things and the author's name (I will say he's a West Point grad, retired, over in Iraq on civilian contract):
Its Friday, the Sabbath for Muslims, so we are not working today. I wanted to catch up on some letters or at least email some letters so thought Id start with you three litter mates.
Hope all is well on your end and with your families.
Not sure what you all are hearing back in the states about the happenings over here, but from the little bit of news we get from on line sources (CNN and MSNBC) bad news always seems to sell better than good news.
The bad news is of course, that military personnel are still being shot at and as of last week one civilian contractor was killed when a bomb went off under his vehicle. Needless to say there is still a small portion of the population who were Saddam loyalist who have nothing to gain with a new government and everything to loose if a democratic Iraq can somehow take root. But just as the soldiers were able to find Saddam?s two sons a couple of weeks ago and kill them, the feeling is around here that it wont be to long before the dad meets the same fate. Once that happens, it would make sense that the loyalists who have been harassing the American troops over here will either go else where or change hobbies. There isn't any future in their lives if they continue fighting the inevitable. Literally.
The news that doesn't get reported in the main papers of media organizations is all the good that is going on over here. For the first time in decades, public executions, the torture of children in front of their parents and the killing of people who might disagree with the Iraqi government are no longer taking place. The rape of school girls as young as thirteen are no longer conducted in the son's palace and the oil for food program is actually going for food for the population, rather then the palaces for a select few. I can tell you from being in one of Sadism's reported 70 palaces, (seventeen just in Baghdad) that the amount of money spent just in marble for the floors would have fed and clothed hundreds if not thousands.
For the first time in decades as well, clean drinking water is being supplied to the larger cities in the south and the electricity and power grid left largely undamaged by coalition bombs but neglected by the Iraqi government is starting up again and supplying power to areas that have not had any in years.
Medical supplies, food aid, employment, free press, representative government and schools opening back up are things that are going on over here but for what ever the reason those very good things are under reported in Western news papers. I guess, ?Thousands getting clean drinking water? which happens to be a frequent occurrence, doesn't sell as many newspapers as ?soldier being killed? which is a much less frequent happening.
You will find under reported as well the celebration that occurred in Baghdad by the Iraqi population, when it was confirmed that Uday and Qusay (the two sons) were laid out on slabs at the Baghdad International Airport. And even among the local civilians that work on our base, when news reached them, they were so excited they could hardly contain them selves.
The debate about whether President Bush lied to the American public and the world or whether the British Prime Minister lied and there were never any weapons of mass destruction isn't debated over here. To the soldiers or Marines, or the civilians like me and probably to the majority of the local Iraqi population, it doesn't really matter. What matters now is that we are over here and we are going to be here for a while helping the country rebuild and getting the population back on its feet. And hopefully almost everybody that you all may talk with, will keep in mind, that it wasn't the American or coalition forces that put the population on its knees, they were already there thanks to their own repressive government that was in power for over three decades.
The reason that I and most of the retired or former military personnel came over here as far as I can articulate goes something like this. Number one and probably foremost, is that a sense of duty is still resident in all of us whether we have been retired for two years or twenty years. Standing up and retraining a New Iraqi Army will do two things. First it will allow the Iraqis to take up the security for Iraq that is presently being accomplished by American and coalition forces. This New Iraqi Army (NIA) will be accountable to the civilian leadership and will not be a group of political appointees and thugs as the last Army was. The last Army was used mainly to ensure the survivability of the Hussein regime.
The second most important thing that standing up a New Iraqi Army will do (and the most important as far as small town America is concerned) is it will allow the US troops to get the hell out of this place and go home. Although the vast majority of soldiers and Marines and military personnel I have spoke with dislike it here, the same vast majority continue to serve without complaint, lives in the sand with the sand fleas and other biting insects, craps in an outdoor privy with the flies and the nasty smell, drinks warm water (heavily chlorinated), eats pre- packaged food at least twice a day, endures the 115 to 120 degree heat, goes for long periods of time without news from home, and knows that in all likely hood they will be here for the next year or so or at least until their unit rotates out.
The second reason that most of the civilians came over here was simply to help out and to attempt to stabilize and maybe change a part of the world that needs drastically to change. The Muslims that I have met our peaceful, work hard, enjoy life and love their families as much as you and I love ours. But many people (and I do mean many people, millions in fact) in this part of the world, literally, unequivocally, and positively hate our f- ing guts. Destroying the United States and the people of the United States is a life long religious commitment that they take more seriously then love of family, love of nation, or love of their own life. There is an underlying religious hate that is bred over here in the Islamic fanatical circles that we do not encounter nor see anywhere else. If you think about it, I'm sure that other nations have issues with America and other nations certainly do wish us harm.
However, you don't hear of Mexicans or Cubans or any other religious group or nationality, strapping on a suicide belt full of C4 and nails and detonating it on a bus. Or drive a suicide car bomb in to the lobby of a hotel, or hijack an airline with the sole purpose of killing yourself and as many innocent men, women and children as ?inhumanly? possible. Only in this part of the world and in the Islamic fanaticism that is taught and nurtured, do you find that depth of hate for me and you and your kids and my kids. For our own parents and for your spouses? parents as well. Hate for people that have done nothing what so ever to disparage or disgrace the Islamic religion or any Muslim for that matter. That quite simply and which is difficult if not impossible for us to understand, is that they hate all of us and have taken vows to kills us for nothing more grievous then because we are Americans and live in a free society.
It seems to be as simple as that and as complicated as that.
I hate being away from my wife and the girls. My little house in [removed by Porphy] was pretty comfortable and being home with the kids after they got off the school bus was very enjoyable to me, as well as them. Having to tell my wife good bye at the security checkpoint because she was unable to go with me to the departure gate (due to the September 11th attacks and the change in security procedures) was tough. I, just like you, love my spouse and children and want what's best for them.
But if I, and the rest of the civilians over here on this project and the military personnel who continue to provide security for us, can train and stand up a credible Army, an Army that can do the security mission and be answerable to a democratic model of government. And further, because a representative style of government has the means to enable it to diffuse a portion of the negative, hostile, hysteria that is generated over here towards the United States, then the year away from my family will be (almost) worth it.
Well I hope none of you think I have written this email to lecture or even complain.
Most places wait till late in the race when most people have already made up their minds, and make their Endorsements the day or weekend before the voters go to the polls. Well, we're not gonna wait.
Vote No on Recall
Yah, you don't agree. I've probably received more critical (but civil) reaction to my position on the Recall than anything else. See here and here. I haven't been convinced by the counter-arguments, while completely understanding why people might want to Dump Davis. I'll offer an additional reason to vote against the Recall below.
Vote Bustamante for Governor
Have I lost my marbles? Vote for this guy? Perhaps I've lost my mind, but you should vote for Bustamante in Question #2. Why?
If the Recall succeeds, as I expect it will because though I'm against it, the majority of Californians are in favor, voting for Bustamante is a vote for accountability. Yes - now you're definitely convinced: I have lost my mind.
No, I haven't. Here's why.
Removing Davis may seem on the surface like holding them accountable - but it isn't. Not if he's replaced by, say, Arnold Schwarzenegger . All this does is let the other Sacramento pols escape accountability. This is another reason why Recalling Davis, rather than defeating him - and them - in a General Election is not what it seems to be.
I'm sure the people in California who disagreed with me in part because I don't live in California understand more than I do that Davis is not the sole source of the problem. The radical California legislature is the source of all the legislation that Davis has signed and even a couple measures that were too much for Davis and were vetoed - at first.
California residents also understand more than I that from now till the Recall Election, Davis and the legislature will be passing everything they can, as fast as they can. By the time any new Governor is sworn in, Davis and the legislature will have presented that person, whomever he (or she) might be, with a fait accompli that will tie their hands. The legislature will then have an incentive to insure that any non-Democratic Governor fails rather than succeeds in cleaning up the mess in California and will point the finger of blame squarely at that person for the negative results of all the bills that are being rushed to Davis for his signature now.
Lets be completely honest: replacing Davis with Bustamante means effectively no change in Sacramento. Nil. Except that Davis will have been booted (which one could argue is worth it). However, the legislature will insure that any other Governor - Schwarzenegger for example - will not be able to change much. The only thing that will result from a replacement of Davis with anyone except Bustamante is that California legislators, who are responsible for as much of the problem as Davis is, will be able to muddy the picture and wiggle off the hook of accountability when they next face the voters. They "tried", you see, but just "couldn't go along with the radical plans of a Governor who was elected with X% of the vote".
These people need to be held accountable as well. Unified government has the benefit of clarifying who is responsible for whatever goes wrong - it reduces the effectiveness of partisan finger-pointing. Bustamante will almost certainly not be an improvement over Davis, but right now Davis and the legislature are working to insure that no one will be able to alter what they will have firmly entrenched: they will just have the blame shifted from Davis and his co-conspirators in the legislature to the new guy. Bustamante is the only candidate on the ballot who deserves the share of the blame he will get if and when he becomes Governor.
It may seem like giving Davis the hook and replacing him with Arnold is holding them accountable, but it isn't - it's giving most of them a escape route from accountability. This is another reason to prefer General Elections to Recalls of one officeholder in cases like this. If California voters are sick of the goings on in the Sacramento State House, they need to hold all of those responsible accountable - not just select one scapegoat that allows the rest to avoid their responsibility for the situation they contributed to.
I don't care what the rest of you think anymore, because I've been invited to join the prestigious "Quiche Group" by the Quiche Moderator:
Quiche started in the United Kingdom and has grown throughout English speaking nations to becoming a top source for conspiracy theme news and views. Quiche writers get access to our 800 some readers and our readers receive current alternative/fringe/conspiracy related material.
Quiche! ? we never said you should eat it.
Alternative/fringe/conspiracy related material! Where else on the web could I get that? Suchadeal!
But I was really looking forward to exchanging recipes. I'm kinda bummed. I guess I'll stick with blogging. And singing the Spam song (which also started in the United Kingdom and spread throughout English speaking nations. Coincidence, or conspiracy? Hmmmn. . .)
Update: Even better! I just got spammed by "Dean for America". Somehow they have the impression that I'm a good target for their fundraising efforts.
I knew coming out against the California Recall would put me in unsavory company, but I didn't know it would lead to this. Here's part of his pitch:
I stood against this President when too many Democrats in Congress were voting to give the Bush administration a blank check to wage pre-emptive war on Iraq.
Yah, that's the kinda stance that's gonna get me to send him my $$$ and XXX OOO.
I thought they said this Dean guy was running a sophistimikated, intelergent internet operation? This is just another random mass-spamming effort, obviously not targeted at all. At least there is this, which gives me hope:
We are going to win this nomination and defeat George W. Bush in 2004, but we need your help.
Goodie! *cackle* Can't win without my help? *Glee* Then it's Bush to victory!
Tom writes, via e-mail regarding this post to make some reading suggestions:
I had read Strauss & Howe's _The Fourth Turning_ before, and that week decided that if the theory was correct, then September 11 was clearly the catalyst for the turning. Since we share this first touch-stone, let me mention two others. In response to September 11, I had three book suggestions for people:
The Fourth Turning, by William Strauss, Neil Howe--To warn about a likely shift in our culture.
I've got that one & it's very good. Let me add Generations in which they outline their theory in depth and take a look at past American generations. Millennials Rising may be worth checking out, but I haven't read it yet. "Millennials" is a designation that will be comprehensible to those familiar with their work - the Millennials are mostly in their teens now, though the leading edge of the Millennial Generation are the young soldiers in their late teens and early twenties who fought in Iraq. About half of this generation is still in their pre-teens, though; they are the children Sandra was talking about, and the people whose futures depend upon our decisions and capacity to lead. By the by, if you think we're facing tough decisions now, just wait: we're hardly into the beginning of a crisis. The situation we're in may just be where we get the experience Sandra pointed out we are lacking, because there is more to come. . .
The Transparent Society, by David Brin--Ideas for how to best implement the increase surveillance we will likely need [to stop future terrorists]
Gates of Fire, by Steven Pressfield--What it takes to get ready to fight a war [if, as was not certain to me at the time, we had to go to war]
These two I haven't read yet, but I figured I'd share all these recommendations with my readers.
Cultural products could be produced to appeal to the middle class sensibility, and to the upper classes this was low brow, unsophisticated, something to be scorned.
Here I have to correct him, but in a way that supports his larger point.
Cultural products that appeal to middle class sensibilities are termed middlebrow by the arbitrars of culture.
Lowbrow culture is actually considered to have merit; one can revel in its tawdriness and enjoy its kitsch by "slumming". Because it is the culture of the "downtrodden" and "dispossessed", it also has political merit. The appeal of "the traditional culture of native peoples" culture is related to this - that is, the culture of impoverished peasants before it is influenced by "mass culture". (Speaking of which, anyone wanna buy a katsina or medicine mask? We got weavings, too. You can display them in your Manhattan apartment and feel closer to the earth and your "spiritual side".) Lowbrow and native culture is "authentic", unlike middlebrow, and thus to be valued and preserved as the epitome of multicultural diversity - which essentially means preventing the people that are supposedly being championed from adopting the "inauthentic", non-native, alien, extra-terrestrial "middlebrow" culture being spread by America, whether those being "protected" from its spread want said protection or not.
Highbrow culture which appeals to the refined tastes of the aesthetically sophisticated mind but isn't understood by the masses is, naturally, to be respected - in no small part because the masses cannot fathom its (supposed) depths. Whether this Cultural Emperor wears any cloths is less important than its utility in distinguishing the cultural elect, who get it, from the booboisie boors who do not.
Middlebrow culture, the culture of the middle classes and suburbia, is to be scorned as a vast wasteland. It lacks the political merit of the other two types of culture. It is therefore to be despised, except where it can be scorned (American Beauty) or humorously mocked (the films of Michael Moore typically use the people Moore is supposedly concerned for as comic relief).
The elect understand that both highbrow and lowbrow culture have their merits, but middlebrow culture, the culture of the Babbits, is suitable only for distain.
Aside: In Part V of "America's 21st Century Foreign Policy" I'm going to return to something Joffe said in the piece that Steven wrote his posts around.
Update: Charles writes, via e-mail:
I don't know about middlebrow. It seems as if it's one of those things
that is re-defined to encompass any part of high or low culture that has
been successfully co-opted by the general culture or popularized within
the masses. Smartass New Yorkers are prone to refer to anything that appeals
to the upper middle class as "middlebrow". A writer I otherwise respect
on a pop-culture site, writing about a scene from the Sopranos, referred to
Berber's "Adagio for Strings" derisively as "middlebrow". I suppose that
"middlebrow" is the sort of culture that ill-bred pretenders prefer -
culture for the uncultured, undereducated, and ignorant. This sort of
mentality seems to operate with my local NPR station, which neglects the
sort of classical music I prefer - middlebrow stuff like Mussorgsky,
Holst, Bach, Beethoven - for obscure 19th century French and Eastern European composers I'd never heard of, and whom leave me nostalgic for my lost, happy state of ignorance.
I don't think I've ever heard middlebrow used to describe folk or low
culture co-opted by the middle classes. More often, I think, that's
called "kitsch".
I think he misunderstood my point. I was making the same point he made in his mail; I wasn't describing folk or lower-class culture as being adopted by the middle-class and then considered middlebrow: I was making three distinctions, such as you identify, where IMO SDB had confused the distinctions in his post. For the sort of smartass NPR New Yorker types you mention, folk culture, lower class culture (as in the films of Ken Loach, or "real" bluegrass music, which is big on one of the NPR stations here where I live) and native culture ("authentic" Guatemalan peasant garb!) is fine - that's clearly distinct from middle-class culture, which is the culture developed by and for the American middle class that emerged from the lower class immigrants that SDB was referring to, but is no longer to be considered "authentic" by the cognoscenti.
It is also to be distinguished from avant garde culture, of course - and the main purpose of avant garde culture now is precisely to preserve such a distinction (aesthetic merit is negligable, it's essentially a political statement made by the types of folks you mention to distinguish themselves from the Babbits of the Boobiosie). That American middlebrow culture appeals to the common people around the world in no small part because it was developed by and for common-folk-made-good and has certain characteristics that cause people to like it.
The distinction is important and shows up in cultural debates fairly often - (American) "middlebrow" culture is appealing to the lower classes, as Steven describes; it isn't that the middle-class is going to adopt low culture or "authentic native" culture that the cultural elects find troubling. It's that the "native peoples", the lower classes in various countries, are adopting (American) "middlebrow" culture, thus "threatening" to extinguish other cultures ("cultural genocide"), which is damaging to the "multicultural mosaic" and also, not coincidentally, to elite control.
Oh, and our NPR station that plays classical music also only plays stuff no one has ever heard of. I think it may be the same craptacular program Charles mentions, syndicated to NPR stations around the country.
Additional: Tom writes, via e-mail, to recommend this article (in pdf) as worth reading.
The most important difference between the U.S. Constitution and the proposed EU constitution, however, is the concept of rights. The U.S. Bill of Rights is a list of individual rights against the state. In contrast, the Charter of Fundamental Rights, which constitutes Part II of the proposed EU constitution, includes a long list of rights to services provided by the state.
Basically that insures that there is a Constitutional mandate that member-countries must be Socialist. As Mark Steyn once put it in describing the EU, "you have to be a free market Democracy to join, but you're not allowed to stay one."
The article concludes with the following warning:
Even those who favor the major provisions of the proposed constitution should be careful to ensure that the constitution limits the authority of the EU to define its own powers, because all governments seek broader powers than first authorized.
Entirely absent from the EU's draft Constitution is any sense of a principle of limited government - quite the contrary, the Constitution defines things as expansively as possible and overtly champions further expansions over time. This fits precisely with the different attitude towards what constitutes a right between the U.S. and EU Constitutions. As Reagan said in his farewell speech, "Man is not free unless government is limited". Though there is little enough understanding of that here, there seems to be none in Europe.
Over time, an imperfect Europe of national states — bloodied but hopefully wiser — may be a better protection of liberty than approving the proposed constitution in the hope for a more perfect European Union.
Last week Steven Den Beste wrote a second post criticizing the Bush Administration for covering up for the House of Saud. Certainly the decision to redact out of the 9/11 report details of the Saudi linkages to the 9/11 terrorists is troubling and possibly shady. It lends credence to those who assert that Bush and Cheney have such close ties to the Saudi oil barons that they're going to turn a blind eye to the behavior of the House of Saud and thus not deal with the heart of the problem, the motherland of the ideology and financing behind Islamist terror networks.
If it's a cover up, it's been a rather ineffectual one, considering how much talk there has been about the Saudi terror ties (un)revealed in the 9/11 Commission's investigation. It would seem rather that Bush is getting the worst of both worlds - a cover-up that fails to conceal (if everyone is talking about it, it's not that big of a secret), but which exposes Bush to charges that he's covering up on behalf of his Saudi friends.
The Bush Administration has also been accused of lacking diplomatic proficiency. There is a definition of diplomacy, though, that may apply here: diplomacy is the fine art of saying "nice doggie" while you get a stick. Trent Telenko has written a post collecting information that may be evidence that the Bush Administration is putting things together to cut off the House of Saud and set it up for a fall.
The Bush Administration has, as Steven Den Beste has pointed out on other occasions, shown a remarkable level of patience that is impervious to criticism of going either to fast or too slow. They have, thus far, proceeded step by step, building up for the next campaign and not taking anything on precipitously. Certainly with Afghanistan, Iraq, and North Korea currently on the table, and much political capital spent - both nationally and internationally - on those matters, there may be valid reasons for not precipitating a confrontation with Saudi Arabia just yet. "In due time" is also a concept to keep in mind.
I don't know what they're up to. I'm inclined to give Bush the benefit of the doubt and be patient, just as I'm willing to be patient regarding a report on Saddam's WMDs. But that may be my partisan heart speaking, not my head, and I can certainly see why people might worry about their ultimate intentions towards the Saudis. Check out Trent's post, though.
B. Varenius reminds me of this site, which is really kewl.
I had been to it before and I linked to it once, but as with so many sites that are out there, I lost track of it. He's back up and running after a hiatus. Well worth checking out if you like reading thoughtful posts.
Sandra responds to this post with some observations of her own:
be "The Jones" Generation? We are the everyman, average Joe.
I read that a few years ago to describe tail-end boomers.
Lots of names have been tried over the years but few have been sticky. We'll probably end up getting one in retrospect depending on how things turn out, rather than having one stick "during" as with Boomers and the Silent &tc. Which means that how we'll be described will depend on how we do.
It is my generation's responsibility to fix the excesses of the 60s generation.
Unfortunately, my generation is a hump generation. Too young for Viet Nam, the "wars" of the 80s were skirmishes, we have no experience. We were not forged by the Depression, or by circumstance. We were handed the world on a silver platter compared to all who came before us, even w/the Cold War. I really never thought about it, too busy having a good time. It ends, it ends.
Not to minimize experience, I'd say sound judgement counts for more and it's harder to acquire. Also, well - a generation that enjoyed itself of "party on" and "party hard" types, who have had their intellects compared unfavorably to others throughout our lives, grow to responsible sobriety and then have to face challenges that no one thinks we're prepared for - it could describe the current President. IMO, there's little wonder that many people of our generation, even if they don't share his politics, empathize with Bush (now, again as with generalizations, this isn't true of everyone).
And we must lead our children into battle, for the alternative is not only unacceptable, it is unthinkable.
I weep; it's a terrible thing, but you're right - the alternative is unacceptably worse.
Anyhow, I'll end on that thought, more later perhaps: I have to log off now, computer-related problems.
Update: I fixed 'em (the problems).
We're going to spend a lot of time facing crises, both at home (who's gonna roll up their sleeves and fix entitlements and tell the old people that no, they can't get everything they want declared a "need" and paid for by others?) and abroad (more on that later) and being faced with "damned if we do, double-damned if we don't" choices. No one said life would be fair. Ok, yah, the hippie boomers said it should be fair and then threw a pet when it wasn't, but we tend to have more realistic expectations. I also think we do have a some experience derived through our lives, of being the ones with the dirty end of the plunger, facing problems created by what Sandra rightly calls "excesses". The experience is just usually from a smaller, more personal scale. I don't think that's bad - it'll be needed, and be something that we're suited to providing.
The Miracle on Ice was one of the events marking a turning point that brought America out of one of the most humiliating periods of our history (the '70s) and revived our spirit and our belief in ourselves and what we can accomplish. Ave atque Vale Herb Brooks.
What's Good for the Goose is Good for the Goosestepper
As everyone knows, there is a major candidate in the race for California Governor who has been getting a lot of attention lately and has refused to repudiate bonds with questionable racial superiority groups that are in his background. That candidate of course is Republican Arnold Sch - oh, wait, it's Democrat Cruz Bustamante:
Bustamante began attending Fresno State University, where he also failed to graduate but immersed himself in local and student politics, including the racial activism of MEChA, a group whose name is an acronym for “Moviemiento Estudiantil Chicano de AZTLAN,” the Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan.
“I wasn’t the most radical Mechista,” says Bustamante nowadays.
So what does that mean? He wasn't in favor of Serb-style ethnic cleansing of the "Anglos" in the area? Just expulsion?
Like Nazism, MEChA has acquired more than a tinge of racism. In their tactics to advance Latinos and “La Raza,” many of its activists have directed racist attacks against not only white-skinned Anglos but also against blacks, Asian-Americans and Jews – in fact, against every non-Latino group. . .
Bustamante has refused to distance himself in any way from MEChA and its desire to return Aztlan to Mexico. Does he see himself running to become governor of one of the United States – or of the regained Mexican state of Alta California, as the Spanish called the upper counterpart to Baja California in Mexico? This is something he should be asked about by voters and the press at every public appearance.
I wonder when folks like Tim Noah will hold Cruz Bustamante to the same standard they're holding Arnold Schwarzenegger to, and demand that Bustamante face up to his questionable past.
Not wanting to cause an international incident (or at least minor spat), Peter Beinart blames Clinton, not Canada, for Howard Dean's success so far:
The mystery of the 2004 Democratic campaign isn't that a governor has caught on--that happens in most presidential years. The mystery is that there is only one governor in the field, and that he comes from such a tiny state. Usually, presidential fields are roughly split between governors and senators. And usually, the governors hail from large states (Bush, Reagan) or at least midsize ones (Carter, Dukakis). Even Mr. Clinton's Arkansas is four times the size of Vermont. Were there another governor in this year's Democratic pack, particularly one from a larger state, he would likely have exploited the same institutional advantages Mr. Dean has, and therefore detracted at least somewhat from the Vermonter's allure.
To understand why there is not, look at Bill Clinton's stewardship of the national Democratic Party. Any governor running for president in 2004 would have come of political age in the 1990s. And when Mr. Clinton took office in 1993, the states looked like a fertile source of eventual Democratic presidential contenders. Democrats controlled the governors' mansions in 28 states, including six of the 10 largest.
But the liberal taint of Mr. Clinton's first two years--on gays in the military, guns, and health care--decimated Democratic governors across the country. By 1995, there were only 19, and only one in the nine largest states. Gone were heavyweights like Mario Cuomo, Ann Richards and Jim Florio, and numerous others who saw promising careers cut short. Several weeks after the 1994 disaster, Mr. Clinton invited a handful of Democratic governors to a private dinner and received an earful for having abandoned the center. Among the participants was Howard Dean, who told the Associated Press, "I can assure you there was no one at the table arguing the president should go to the left."
One of Clinton's legacies was that he cut a swath through the ranks of Democratic officers that even eight years of Reagan and four of Bush (sr) couldn't - and yet the Clintons remain lauded as world-historical heroes by most Democrats.
So the 1990s, a productive decade for the Democratic Party in Washington.
It was just as productive in Washington DC as it was in the States, culling the ranks of Democratic office holders: they lost the House and the Senate.
When pundits began speculating about 2004, talk naturally turned to Gray Davis, the only Democrat who led a large state. But just as he might have geared up for a presidential run, an energy crisis and a budget crisis mashed California's governor into political pulp.
Actually, monumental bungling and a personality as grating as a Jackovasaur's mashed Gray-out Davis to a pulp, but this kind of misinterpretation of what happened to them is one reason why Democrats and those who want to see them do well are still in search of that missing clue of theirs. . .Lets see, perhaps a new character could be added to Wizard of Oz: the Duck-billed Platypus, who could sing "if I only had a clue". That character would represent the Democratic Party (you readers do all know that in the original book, each of the characters was an archetype representing a segment of society, right?)
This also means that Clinton is Damien, because he turned the Democratic Party into a Duck-billed Platypus. (Yah, I know, the analogies are gettin a little strained here. . .work with me, childrens, its Monday, and, anyhow, Jimbo - the gun-totin hunter - is a good analog for what "killed" the Democratic Party in the last couple elections: the defection of Jimbo-type voters in places like West Virginia. Yah, I'm trying to hard to save the analogy, aint I? "It's dead, Jim. . .bo").
Update: Oh! Oooohh! I need to find a role for Lemmiwinks in the New, Revised, Bigger Longer and Uncut Wizard of Oz. I figure he can be representative of strong-defense, pro-war Liberals.
This continues a train of posts that began here, continued with this post, and left us hanging here, though there have been tie ins and related posts.
Part IV may not seem to pertain directly to foreign policy. It has to do with what it will take for us to be successful in international affairs. It has been a theme of this blog that it will take involves attitude adjustments and institutional repair, outlined in posts such as this one and alluded to in earlier parts of this series. There will also be a Part V that ties various threads together and looks to the future.
Because it seems like a detour or divergence, it's been hard for me to get it to "click" into place. Then something seemed to fit, and I went into the boxes of books I call a library and dug up something I read ten years ago.
Make Simple Things Work Again
We're not trying to change things.
we're trying to fix things.
We are the generation that
is going to renovate America.
We are going to be its carpenters and janitors
- Anne McCord, p.219, "13th Gen"
I would guess that most of the people reading this blog fall into an age group roughly ten years to either side of me or so. Well, like every generation of Americans, ours has a rendezvous with destiny.
There are things that need to be done, but in many cases the institutions that were built over previous generations to make pursuing the well-being of our society do not seem to be working. Lavishly funded and huge though they are, with complex bureaucratic boxes for all possible tasks and much duplication, they often seem irrelevant where they are not a positive obstacle and hindrance. Reshuffling the boxes, as in the creation of the Homeland Security Department, seems to make little difference. The problem seems to be less one of out-and-out incompetence but rather institutional inertia and misguided or misdirected priorities on the part of the people who staff these bodies, who have taken survival - both the survival of their institutional rice-bowl and of the society whose interests those institutions are supposed to advance - for granted.
For a variety of reasons, our generation does not take that for granted. The airy, idealistic slogans about how things can be solved peacefully with goodwill and mutual understanding and the like that so beguiled the generation prior to ours - the Boomers - cut no mustard with most of us, because so many of us have seen how badly these bromides have worked in our personal lives when foisted on us by our elders. Where they tended to concentrate on idealistic-seeming but impractical causes ("world peace via unilateral American disarmament" and the like) to be solved holistically through the application of a unified field theory political ideology, we have tended to be more practical. Many older Americans are willing to tolerate policies implemented by institutions that don't work, as long as those policies are ideologically (or "politically") correct, and value process (as in "peace process") over results - effectiveness and effect on people's lives are not the priority for them.
Whether or not the war should have been carried to Iraq often seems less important to them than whether a procedure fitting an abstract and generally vaguely defined "multilateralism was followed regardless of results or whether or not doing so would achieve our goals. The debate in the aftermath among primarily "Boomer" politicians is the same - revolving around whether we have gotten "legitimization" from the UN or other international bodies of kleptocrats and thugogracies where Libya and Syria preside over legitimizing what is and isn't a Human Rights violation - and arguing we should involve them further because this would fit their ideological vision. Concern over how involving those who oppose our goals and seek to achieve ends at cross-purposes with ours would affect our ability to achieve what we need to, not only for ourselves but for the people of Iraq for example, is secondary - where it is something they consider at all. This is why the same people can complain about how things are going in Afghanistan, where their "international community" is in charge and the UN is overseeing everything, and demand that the same model be applied in Iraq. The disconnect that we notice is invisible to them.
The connection to earlier posts is evident in this regard: for some the ideal vision of having the "international community" voting on where and how we can fight the war that was thrust upon us, having them determine where we cannot (Iraq) and where we must (Liberia) send our young men is more important than whether this is an effective method, and the question of how those they want to involve in these processes might abuse the "say" they want to give them is unimportant and uninteresting. They will let others deal with the consequences and complications of implementing their vision, and they will accept none of the responsibility for the difficulties that result. For them, idealism (of a certain sort) is combined not with accountability, but with inaccountability. Theory, as usual for them, trumps practicality and empirical reality - if the world doesn't fit the theory, it is the world that is flawed, not the theory, and we must change to fit their vision, consequences be damned - or, rather, left for others to clean up.
America feels like it’s unraveling.
Though we live in an era of relative peace and comfort, we have settled into a mood of pessimism about the long-term future, fearful that our superpower nation is somehow rotting from within.
Neither an epic victory over Communism nor an extended upswing of the business cycle can buoy our public spirit. The Cold War and New Deal struggles are plainly over, but we are of no mind to bask in their successes. The America of today feels worse, in its fundamentals, than the one many of us remember from youth, a society presided over by those of supposedly lesser consciousness. Wherever we look, from L.A. to D.C., from Oklahoma City to Sun City, we see paths to a foreboding future. We yearn for civic character but satisfy ourselves with symbolic gestures and celebrity circuses. We perceive no greatness in our leaders, a new meanness in ourselves. Small wonder that each new election brings a new jolt, its aftermath a new disappointment.
Quoted from here, written six years ago. There's an old movie, beloved by some, hated by others, and completely unknown to more, called Alice's Restaurant, in which there is a scene where a bunch of hippies dump garbage down a beautiful hillside to express their contempt for a society that doesn't live up to their standards of perfection. As if that helps anything. We're following in the wake of a generation that has contemptuously trashed everything because they took the virtues of those institutions for granted but condemned them for their vices, real or imagined. While they have been satisfied with their "achievement", we have experienced the voids. (Btw, don't let them claim Civil Rights as their achievement - that movement was advanced by the Generation that came before them, the Silents; the Boomers contributed hypertrophy to it).
Effective institutions and cultural self-confidence are preconditions to a successful American foreign policy - if we don't believe in ourselves, why should others, either our enemies or our potential allies in the regions we seek to persuade and sway? If those who articulate things in our civilization doubt, disparage, or condemn the things we embody or continually see malevolence in our intentions and put them in the worst light, how can we promote them abroad?
Winter is Here
The nineties were a decade of dream palaces. It was a halcyon interlude when form over function could be indulged in with little apparent risk or cost. The stakes for us were small enough that dithering through, stroking ideological correctness as opposed to effectiveness. It was an opportunity, a breathing space within which transformation could have been effected, but one that was missed. Talking big was more important than delivering, but that indifference to results and effects is a luxury we can no longer afford.
They acted out their noble-seeming ideals, but the consequences are something that we will have to clean up, just as the hippies who trashed the hillside left the garbage behind for someone else to deal with. We need to restore a sense of value in sound judgement - slighted globally as "judgementalism" by our elders - over ideology. People who understand what it takes to get things done are to be preferred over those who talk a good game. Simple, as in "simplistic", may be an epithet to some, but we need to understand that simple may be effective. Their is, indeed, a military acronym to that effect - KISS: keep it simple, stupid. Institutions grown overweening and top-heavy but do not do the job may need to be streamlined - stripped down and simplified, not have another half-dozen departmental boxes added to perform functions that other boxes are already duplicative supposedly meant to accomplish. And those who don't perform - who think the schools are about serving the theories of the educational establishment rather than the students, or those NGOs whose ideological predispositions (hostility to the West or America or preconceptions regarding how to handle, say, AIDS) get in the way of actually helping people, need to get out of the way. Leaving them out of the loop conflicts with the procedural "trump" embraced by some, but effectiveness matters more.
Putting a priority on obeying institutions and procedures doesn't make sense if the institutions are dysfunctional in coping with grave dangers. If the UN has become the Society For the Preservation of Third-World Dictatorships and French Commercial Interests, then getting its stamp of approval may not be valuable. Wilsonian processes that are twisted by people so that Making the World Safe for Dictatorship is the outcome, dittoes. "Peace Processes" that hamstring the ability of people to be safe from attack by people with bombs boarding school buses are an obstacle to peace, not a guarantor of it. It's our job to make clear distinctions - and to make simple things work again.
Every American generation has a rendezvous with destiny, and that includes the one which comes after ours. Those little dudes and dudessas have a destiny both grand and terrible of their own, and we're the ones who are responsible for leading the way. If we screw up, they're screwed. But if we succeed, it would be something. We'll:
have reason to take pride in what [we] see happening down the age ladder. Pride in having pulled America back together and in having restored ballast to the ship of state. Pride in having rebuilt the social foundations that will by then be supporting a renaissance in public confidence and cultural optimism, pride in having produced more than [we] consumed, in having made simple things work again, in having done more for others than others ever did for[us]
(13th Gen, p.225). And it would be something.
To everything there is a season
And a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break down, and a time to build up
- Ecclesiastes 3
Now, this is not true of everyone; this is a generational generalization. There are some in the "Boomer" Generation that recognize these things (George Bush recognizes at least some, though clearly not all. Same with Tony Blair), and there are some people in our age group that hold views similar to the "Boomer" outline. If it helps you personally to not look at it through a generational lens, then that's fine. Being me, I'm interested in what works - if the theory is getting in the way for you, dump the theory. But I think that this divergence broadly applies. There are always exceptions, but overall, I think this is what we see around us, and even people in our generation whose politics differ from mine tend to have low confidence in our institutions.
