The Kinsey Report
As environmentalists are aware, solvable problems have limited political utility. Because of the very strenuous efforts of many people in the United States and around the world, the ozone hole seems to have been successfully addressed; but just because sheep aren’t catching fire in Argentina, the public at large is indifferent to the issue and largely ignorant of how much work it took to prevent a global disaster. Smaller but significant examples, such as the expensive and protracted clean up efforts that restored Pittsburgh to livable condition also earn no votes for future efforts to manage pollution in other places. Indeed, the relative healthiness of many North American localities is an argument against spending money on environmental problems. “Hey, Lake Erie doesn’t look that bad to me.”
Like Egyptian peasants of the Old Kingdom, the Americans live in an eternal present. In the absence of an effective recollection, the fact that everything is changing at a furious pace doesn’t make any difference. It has been written—by me, actually—that longevity is the only time machine that works; but it’s not enough to possess the device. You’ve got to pull the gadget off the shelf and use it, or you’ve drawn those 946 million breaths in vain. If you don’t bother to remember how things came to be, including the good things, you’re bound to make bad decisions about what needs to be done in the future. So much is taken for granted. You start thinking that safety of the drinking water is as inevitable as the yearly flooding of the Nile. You think it is natural for middle class kids not to die of typhoid or whooping cough or cholera.
The new biographical move Kinsey got me thinking down this line. It is so easy to focus on the problematic consequences of the sexual revolution that one forgets its overwhelming benefits. The recognition that masturbation is essentially universal, for example, alleviated a huge, if unquantifiable burden of guilt from generations of teenagers and probably prevented quite a few suicides—hysteria about masturbation was a real curse on young people. Indeed, in many places it still is. I don’t think it’s such a small thing either that the advance of sexual enlightenment increased the net pleasure of life for most of us, though it says something about the incompletion of the revolution that to this day you’re not supposed to think that’s important. It’s also pretty clear that the socially mandated sexual ignorance of women played a role in maintaining general gender inequality and that promoting rights in the bedroom promoted rights elsewhere. One can dwell on ubiquity of pornography or the threat of STDs or the prevalence illegitimate births or get upset about legal abortions, but who really wants to return to the old regime—aside, that is, from the rightists that control our government?
On my way back from seeing Kinsey, I had to wait at an intersection while a fire truck drove by. It was driven by a female fire fighter, which, of course, is utterly unremarkable. Which, of course, is utterly remarkable. Which, of course, is never remarked. Same moral.
Saturday, November 27, 2004
Friday, November 26, 2004
On the Beaches
You often hear that the two-party system is not part of the American Constitution, but this commonplace is only true if you are referring to the document of that name rather than the underlying structure of our polity. As recent history demonstrates, our vaunted system of checks and balances simply doesn’t work without warring factions. Executive is not moderated by the legislature or the judiciary when all three branches are controlled by the same interests, especially in the effective absence of a free press. Under the circumstances, now really is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party— not because the Democrats are an impressive bunch but because there is no alternative to maintaining an alternative. Or do you really want to rely on the self-restraint of ideologues who believe that the secret of political success is immoderation and that all internal as well as external dissent must be stifled?
Many people find it difficult to resist calls for bipartisanship even though in the mouth of Bush or Chaney, “bipartisanship” has a lot in common with earlier slogans such as “peaceful coexistence” or “It’s all right. You’re going to be deloused.” Like all revolutionaries, our rightists absolutely depend upon the forbearance of their enemies, who are expected to be tolerant even of those who are intolerant as a matter of principle. The heck with that. Let us deny them bread and salt.
Partisanship certainly has a cost, but having allowed things to deteriorate to the current pass, we have to accept the obligation to bear this cost. For example, in states like California and in much of the Northeast, the Republican Party still plays its normal role as one of the quarreling partners that make free government possible. From a local point of view, it is a good thing that Republicans are sometimes elected governor or senator in true blue states. Unfortunately, until the general crisis passes, any such advantage must be outweighed by national considerations; and all Republicans are the enemy, most especially the reasonable ones.
You often hear that the two-party system is not part of the American Constitution, but this commonplace is only true if you are referring to the document of that name rather than the underlying structure of our polity. As recent history demonstrates, our vaunted system of checks and balances simply doesn’t work without warring factions. Executive is not moderated by the legislature or the judiciary when all three branches are controlled by the same interests, especially in the effective absence of a free press. Under the circumstances, now really is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party— not because the Democrats are an impressive bunch but because there is no alternative to maintaining an alternative. Or do you really want to rely on the self-restraint of ideologues who believe that the secret of political success is immoderation and that all internal as well as external dissent must be stifled?
Many people find it difficult to resist calls for bipartisanship even though in the mouth of Bush or Chaney, “bipartisanship” has a lot in common with earlier slogans such as “peaceful coexistence” or “It’s all right. You’re going to be deloused.” Like all revolutionaries, our rightists absolutely depend upon the forbearance of their enemies, who are expected to be tolerant even of those who are intolerant as a matter of principle. The heck with that. Let us deny them bread and salt.
Partisanship certainly has a cost, but having allowed things to deteriorate to the current pass, we have to accept the obligation to bear this cost. For example, in states like California and in much of the Northeast, the Republican Party still plays its normal role as one of the quarreling partners that make free government possible. From a local point of view, it is a good thing that Republicans are sometimes elected governor or senator in true blue states. Unfortunately, until the general crisis passes, any such advantage must be outweighed by national considerations; and all Republicans are the enemy, most especially the reasonable ones.
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
And Now for Something Completely Different
To get my mind off the recent troubles, I’ve been reading David Hackett Fisher’s Washington’s Crossing, a superb account of the crucial year in the American Revolution when it appeared that the military might of the highly professional British army would crush the colonists. The British decided that a maximum effort would shock and awe the traitors. The military leaders of the invasion were not barbarians. Indeed, general Howe was sure that his men would be welcomed with open arms once it became apparent that the Crown was appropriately conciliatory. True, the British were somewhat isolated diplomatically; but they could count on the stalwart support of Frederich Wilhelm II, Landgraf of Hesse-Cassel, who supplied them with thousands of soldiers at reasonable rates and made up for the hostile neutrality of the French and the rest of the Europeans.
For several months things worked out as planned. Washington and the Americans, thoroughly overmatched on sea and land, were driven from Manhattan and then New Jersey. The English were in a false position, however. The 31, 625 troops that had landed on August 27, 1776 made up an enormous expeditionary force by 17th Century standards, but they were far too few to seize and occupy all the colonies. Worse, though military casualties were not high at first, mere attrition began to wear down the force; and Howe’s army could not be significantly augmented with fresh troops because George’s government was unwilling to raise taxes at home or institute a general draft. Inevitably, the overstretched occupying army resorted to more and more brutal means to subdue the rebellion; but the collateral damage of their efforts inspired more defiance—Fisher points out that the famous Christmas attack on Trenton was preceded and suggested by the success of earlier spontaneous attacks by irregular forces. Howe had hoped that he could count on the help of the local Loyalists to make up for the inadequacy of his strength. It turned out, however, that he could not even protect them from the insurgents. By the end of March 1777, the British were pretty much holed up in the safety of New York City, planning in the next year to seize the initiative by occupying Philadelphia, the sanctuary of the rebels. Back in London, the government-controlled papers explained how that would turn the tide…
To get my mind off the recent troubles, I’ve been reading David Hackett Fisher’s Washington’s Crossing, a superb account of the crucial year in the American Revolution when it appeared that the military might of the highly professional British army would crush the colonists. The British decided that a maximum effort would shock and awe the traitors. The military leaders of the invasion were not barbarians. Indeed, general Howe was sure that his men would be welcomed with open arms once it became apparent that the Crown was appropriately conciliatory. True, the British were somewhat isolated diplomatically; but they could count on the stalwart support of Frederich Wilhelm II, Landgraf of Hesse-Cassel, who supplied them with thousands of soldiers at reasonable rates and made up for the hostile neutrality of the French and the rest of the Europeans.
For several months things worked out as planned. Washington and the Americans, thoroughly overmatched on sea and land, were driven from Manhattan and then New Jersey. The English were in a false position, however. The 31, 625 troops that had landed on August 27, 1776 made up an enormous expeditionary force by 17th Century standards, but they were far too few to seize and occupy all the colonies. Worse, though military casualties were not high at first, mere attrition began to wear down the force; and Howe’s army could not be significantly augmented with fresh troops because George’s government was unwilling to raise taxes at home or institute a general draft. Inevitably, the overstretched occupying army resorted to more and more brutal means to subdue the rebellion; but the collateral damage of their efforts inspired more defiance—Fisher points out that the famous Christmas attack on Trenton was preceded and suggested by the success of earlier spontaneous attacks by irregular forces. Howe had hoped that he could count on the help of the local Loyalists to make up for the inadequacy of his strength. It turned out, however, that he could not even protect them from the insurgents. By the end of March 1777, the British were pretty much holed up in the safety of New York City, planning in the next year to seize the initiative by occupying Philadelphia, the sanctuary of the rebels. Back in London, the government-controlled papers explained how that would turn the tide…
Saturday, November 20, 2004
Another Attempt to be Fair
Sports writers discount the achievement of the latest golfer to set a new record for winnings in a single season because the relentless increase in purses means that the same level of performance will yield far more dollars in 2004 than it would have in 1994. By a similar logic, each new American president automatically becomes the most dangerous man who ever lived because technology keeps increasing his power to destroy. This sort of reasoning is as unfair to W as it is to VJ, however, because, on the one hand, the Fijian really is a heck of a golfer, and, on the other, Bush’s moral and intellectual failings multiply his net potential to do harm. Clinton or Bush’s father already had the wherewithal to blister the surface of the Earth seven times over; but if they were hearing voices in their head, at least they kept quiet about them.
Sports writers discount the achievement of the latest golfer to set a new record for winnings in a single season because the relentless increase in purses means that the same level of performance will yield far more dollars in 2004 than it would have in 1994. By a similar logic, each new American president automatically becomes the most dangerous man who ever lived because technology keeps increasing his power to destroy. This sort of reasoning is as unfair to W as it is to VJ, however, because, on the one hand, the Fijian really is a heck of a golfer, and, on the other, Bush’s moral and intellectual failings multiply his net potential to do harm. Clinton or Bush’s father already had the wherewithal to blister the surface of the Earth seven times over; but if they were hearing voices in their head, at least they kept quiet about them.
Friday, November 19, 2004
The True Armature of the Absolute
The affairs of men are much simpler than the doings of atoms. We call them complex, but what they really are is interesting. Which is why it is possible to write history across centuries or even millennia despite radical changes in how people cook, eat, farm, trade, fight, travel, write, compute, build, revel, sicken, dance, and sing that should reduce any general narrative to incoherence—epistemic breaks are the least of the problem. But whether in Babylon or Bayonne, in the Iliad or on the Sopranos, each renewal of the mammalian game of King of the Hill remains as stereotyped and inevitable as the zillionth hand of pinochle with Uncle Arthur and Aunt Jo.
The affairs of men are much simpler than the doings of atoms. We call them complex, but what they really are is interesting. Which is why it is possible to write history across centuries or even millennia despite radical changes in how people cook, eat, farm, trade, fight, travel, write, compute, build, revel, sicken, dance, and sing that should reduce any general narrative to incoherence—epistemic breaks are the least of the problem. But whether in Babylon or Bayonne, in the Iliad or on the Sopranos, each renewal of the mammalian game of King of the Hill remains as stereotyped and inevitable as the zillionth hand of pinochle with Uncle Arthur and Aunt Jo.
Displacement
Just because an issue doesn’t irritate my moral sensibilities doesn’t mean it isn’t a real question. I have a rather leathery heart, after all. But I just can’t escape the feeling that all the hand wringing and Presidential commissions about stem cells and genetic engineering are mostly an empty ritual, moral busy work that allows politicians and religious entrepreneurs to demonstrate their earnestness without confronting the irresistible changes in human life that really bother them. A clone, for example, is nothing more nor less than an artificial identical twin, so that even if there were some reason to create a lot of people in this fashion—unlikely, since human beings can already be mass produced by unskilled labor—the resulting pairs would be no more alarming than any other Terri and Toni or Mike and Nick. Meanwhile, there really is something icky about the radical franchising of our existence and the emergence of the electronic hive mind. Nobody knows what to do about Walmart, so we get excited about steroidal outfielders or designer babies instead. Something similar takes place in the hysteria about decency on television. While Janet Jackson’s boob is apparently a national security issue, the plot lines of shows like CSI are grotesquely and entertainingly perverse. I came to during one episode last year, suddenly startled by a story that revolved around semen detected in a discarded wad of chewing gum. Indeed, in their endless attempts to achieve more and more extreme effects, such shows reflect the characteristic stylistic frustration of the Marquis de Sade whose tableaux are also finally thwarted by steric hindrance and the limitations of human sexual stamina. Apparently, we have to get excited about Howard Stern’s use of the word “fuck” because we certainly don’t want to take judicial notice of the hypersexuality of the rest of the media.
Just because an issue doesn’t irritate my moral sensibilities doesn’t mean it isn’t a real question. I have a rather leathery heart, after all. But I just can’t escape the feeling that all the hand wringing and Presidential commissions about stem cells and genetic engineering are mostly an empty ritual, moral busy work that allows politicians and religious entrepreneurs to demonstrate their earnestness without confronting the irresistible changes in human life that really bother them. A clone, for example, is nothing more nor less than an artificial identical twin, so that even if there were some reason to create a lot of people in this fashion—unlikely, since human beings can already be mass produced by unskilled labor—the resulting pairs would be no more alarming than any other Terri and Toni or Mike and Nick. Meanwhile, there really is something icky about the radical franchising of our existence and the emergence of the electronic hive mind. Nobody knows what to do about Walmart, so we get excited about steroidal outfielders or designer babies instead. Something similar takes place in the hysteria about decency on television. While Janet Jackson’s boob is apparently a national security issue, the plot lines of shows like CSI are grotesquely and entertainingly perverse. I came to during one episode last year, suddenly startled by a story that revolved around semen detected in a discarded wad of chewing gum. Indeed, in their endless attempts to achieve more and more extreme effects, such shows reflect the characteristic stylistic frustration of the Marquis de Sade whose tableaux are also finally thwarted by steric hindrance and the limitations of human sexual stamina. Apparently, we have to get excited about Howard Stern’s use of the word “fuck” because we certainly don’t want to take judicial notice of the hypersexuality of the rest of the media.
Verily Lord Jesus Come Quickly (Revelation 22:20)
One way of escaping credit card debt is to drop dead before you reach your limit. I’m sure plenty of spendthrifts have found themselves contemplating that out. The financial, environmental, and international policies of the administration have a similar logic. They are perfectly prudent and reasonable assuming the Rapture occurs before 2010 or so. If not, they are criminally irresponsible. Various right-wing spokesmen explain that we need not do anything about global warming because the science is unclear, for example, and some of them may even believe their own line, but the deeper explanation of the indifference is the sense that the physical world is getting old and decrepit anyhow and doesn’t matter very much except as a suitably bleak setting for the eschatological drama. No reason to give up smoking if you’ve already got lung cancer.
As Keynes famously observed, “in the long run we’re all dead.” On the other hand, there’s something to be said for leaders whose time horizon extends to their grandchildren. At the very least, since we plain don’t know what America or, for that matter, the human race as a whole can reasonably expect or hope for in the future, it would seem prudent not to foreclose possibilities unnecessarily. Eschatological thinking, however, is not merely appealing to unscrupulous political leaders. It offers the mass of their followers the allure of the extreme. End-of-the-World fantasies aren’t just for psychotics. Indeed, Heidegger got it wrong in Being and Time. The ultimate temporal horizon of an intrinsically social being is not individual death but universal apocalypse. In this respect, Tim LaHaye not only possesses more commercial savvy than Heidegger but also demonstrates a sounder grasp of existential phenomenology.
One way of escaping credit card debt is to drop dead before you reach your limit. I’m sure plenty of spendthrifts have found themselves contemplating that out. The financial, environmental, and international policies of the administration have a similar logic. They are perfectly prudent and reasonable assuming the Rapture occurs before 2010 or so. If not, they are criminally irresponsible. Various right-wing spokesmen explain that we need not do anything about global warming because the science is unclear, for example, and some of them may even believe their own line, but the deeper explanation of the indifference is the sense that the physical world is getting old and decrepit anyhow and doesn’t matter very much except as a suitably bleak setting for the eschatological drama. No reason to give up smoking if you’ve already got lung cancer.
As Keynes famously observed, “in the long run we’re all dead.” On the other hand, there’s something to be said for leaders whose time horizon extends to their grandchildren. At the very least, since we plain don’t know what America or, for that matter, the human race as a whole can reasonably expect or hope for in the future, it would seem prudent not to foreclose possibilities unnecessarily. Eschatological thinking, however, is not merely appealing to unscrupulous political leaders. It offers the mass of their followers the allure of the extreme. End-of-the-World fantasies aren’t just for psychotics. Indeed, Heidegger got it wrong in Being and Time. The ultimate temporal horizon of an intrinsically social being is not individual death but universal apocalypse. In this respect, Tim LaHaye not only possesses more commercial savvy than Heidegger but also demonstrates a sounder grasp of existential phenomenology.
Friday, November 05, 2004
The Democratic Republic of Flugelstan
The 20th Century provides many examples of one-party states, but Americans don’t have to look abroad to see what such regimes are like. During most of our history, the southern states of our union have been effectively dominated by a combine of oligarchs who maintained a monopoly of power through demagogic appeals to racism and superstition. While the current administration has also borrowed a lot from the corrupt practices of Northern machine politics—there’s more than a slight scent of Tammany Hall about Carl Rove—the beau ideal of its political practice is Southern and the goal of the Republican revolution is to make the country into an enormous Alabama or Mississippi, poor, proud, stupid, and bellicose.
The 20th Century provides many examples of one-party states, but Americans don’t have to look abroad to see what such regimes are like. During most of our history, the southern states of our union have been effectively dominated by a combine of oligarchs who maintained a monopoly of power through demagogic appeals to racism and superstition. While the current administration has also borrowed a lot from the corrupt practices of Northern machine politics—there’s more than a slight scent of Tammany Hall about Carl Rove—the beau ideal of its political practice is Southern and the goal of the Republican revolution is to make the country into an enormous Alabama or Mississippi, poor, proud, stupid, and bellicose.
Wednesday, November 03, 2004
Tough Love
Even if Kerry had ended up winning Ohio by some miracle, the popular vote shows that the public has opted for Bush and what he stands for. It wouldn’t have taken much for things to have gone the other way; and the next election may reverse the results; but the outcome is nevertheless a significant milestone of American decline. Nirad Chaundhuri, the querulous Bengali centenarian and sometime personal secretary of Mahatma Gandhi, once wrote that a nation that has decided to go down will find the appropriate leader to show it the way. He was thinking about mediocre English parliamentarians of the interwar years, but the comment also suits this moment in time. Bush really is the right man for the job.
Democrats and other moderates will have to recognize the limits of what can be achieved. Things will get much worse before they stabilize at a lower level of equilibrium, and the most that can be reasonably hoped is that America will adjust to its new status as a second-rate power with a minimum of casualties. As it sinks in that our military preponderance will not solve all problems and that running up huge trade and budget deficits does indeed have consequences, the temptation is going to be to lash out at other nations while seeking scapegoats at home for declining incomes and increasing cultural and environmental degradation. Under the circumstances, cooperating with the administration is simply wrong, and we should avoid talk of bipartisanship. The task of the opposition is to oppose. As the unfortunate sons and daughters of an increasingly dysfunctional clan, we can’t just throw up our hands and let our relations destroy the neighborhood. It’s our family, too; and we’re responsible for what it does.
Even if Kerry had ended up winning Ohio by some miracle, the popular vote shows that the public has opted for Bush and what he stands for. It wouldn’t have taken much for things to have gone the other way; and the next election may reverse the results; but the outcome is nevertheless a significant milestone of American decline. Nirad Chaundhuri, the querulous Bengali centenarian and sometime personal secretary of Mahatma Gandhi, once wrote that a nation that has decided to go down will find the appropriate leader to show it the way. He was thinking about mediocre English parliamentarians of the interwar years, but the comment also suits this moment in time. Bush really is the right man for the job.
Democrats and other moderates will have to recognize the limits of what can be achieved. Things will get much worse before they stabilize at a lower level of equilibrium, and the most that can be reasonably hoped is that America will adjust to its new status as a second-rate power with a minimum of casualties. As it sinks in that our military preponderance will not solve all problems and that running up huge trade and budget deficits does indeed have consequences, the temptation is going to be to lash out at other nations while seeking scapegoats at home for declining incomes and increasing cultural and environmental degradation. Under the circumstances, cooperating with the administration is simply wrong, and we should avoid talk of bipartisanship. The task of the opposition is to oppose. As the unfortunate sons and daughters of an increasingly dysfunctional clan, we can’t just throw up our hands and let our relations destroy the neighborhood. It’s our family, too; and we’re responsible for what it does.
Monday, November 01, 2004
A Stray Thought
The assumption seems to be that the Republicans will make an unprecedented effort in this election to suppress voter turnout in minority areas. That may be, but I’m mindful that the Republicans, heirs to Jim Crow, have been doing a lot of that for many years now. It may even turn out that what is novel in the current cycle is not exceptional rightwing activity, but a well organized and determined effort on the part of the Democrats to counteract the customary villanies.
Just thought it was only decent to make at least one dubious prediction on election eve.
The assumption seems to be that the Republicans will make an unprecedented effort in this election to suppress voter turnout in minority areas. That may be, but I’m mindful that the Republicans, heirs to Jim Crow, have been doing a lot of that for many years now. It may even turn out that what is novel in the current cycle is not exceptional rightwing activity, but a well organized and determined effort on the part of the Democrats to counteract the customary villanies.
Just thought it was only decent to make at least one dubious prediction on election eve.
Sunday, October 31, 2004
The Third Sequel: Direct to Tape
As much as I hate to be fair, I have to admit that I’ve sometimes attributed ideas to Leo Strauss that are more properly the obsessions of his followers. Just as popularization morphed Poststructuralism into cultural relativism, neo-conservatism has made Straussian philosophy into a clumsy rightist ideology. When I first encountered Strauss—as I write I’m gazing at the spine of his History of Political Philosophy on a nearby bookshelf—he struck me as a mildly interesting but hardly earth-shattering thinker. I found his discussions of the necessity of dissimulation neither alarming nor particularly radical—like everybody else who has an idea once in a while I’ve sometimes had to adopt Descartes motto, “I go forth masked”—and Strauss’ general skepticism about the Rule of Reason didn’t set off any alarms either in somebody raised as a cultural conservative. If you’re not going to blame Marx for Stalin or even Lenin, you shouldn’t blame Strauss for Wolfowitz or even Bill Kristol. Besides, in some respects the most interesting aspect of der Fall Strauss is not the genetic principle that regressive concepts breed true but the taphonomic commonplace that corpses eventually stink.
Anybody who ever taught Philosophy 101 understands a basic pedagogical problem with the project of Enlightenment. The Socratic method is a non-starter when inflicted on kids with plenty of prejudices but no convictions. In grad school, one learns how to throw rocks at received ideas; but in the absence of any ideas at all, there’s nothing to throw at so you end up teaching the 18-year olds ancient history or English composition instead of philosophy while reserving the real stuff for conversations over lunch with a handful of serious students. Mark Lilla points out in a piece in the October 21 New York Review of Books that much of Strauss’ outlook is rooted in just this kind of teaching experience and that, at least in the U.S., Strauss the teacher was far more influential than Strauss the learned interpreter of Hobbes and Spinoza. His followers, especially the Alan Bloom of the Closing of the American Mind, think of themselves as promoting a realistic brand of the Socratic method, which is to say, a rigorous, critical philosophy for the elite, myths and fairy tales for the state college set—rum for the ratings, gin for the gentlemen.
The fact that most people are not ready to reason as adults most of the time is a boundary condition of civilization, which, like many other problems, can be managed if not cured. The history of the last 150 years, however, reveals a problem with the neoconservative approach to managing Urdummheit. It turns out to be surprisingly difficult to pull off the light irony recommended by Aristotle. The public is supposed to be mollified and edified by myths at the same time that wise counselors, operating in deep shadow, guide the decisions of the handsome but none-too-bright Prince by reason. In practice, unfortunately, four big problems mess up the scenario.
1. The religious and political myths the right promotes to the People don’t in fact make them more tractable and peaceful. All the talk about God and Evildoers stokes ethnic and sectarian passions for tactical political gain while the demonizing of the liberals both depends upon and exacerbates the dangerous resentments of lower-class whites.
2. A reasonable political philosophy recognizes the public’s limitations as rational actors, but it doesn’t try to underline its point by actively promoting irrationality. God knows I’ve got many Tory genes, but even I’ve noticed that straightforward arguments do have an effect on many voters when they address their existential concerns without cynicism. A lot of the despised Voodoo of Clinton’s rhetoric was nothing more than the magic of explanation—he gave reasons for what he thought we should do and people listened to them. A lot of rightwing propaganda is not an attack on the reasoning of liberals so much as an attack on reasoning itself.
3. The philosophers are supposed to keep two sets of books, promoting useful fictions to the multitudes while remaining hardheaded realists themselves. Even in a good cause, however, consistent hypocrisy is very difficult to pull off. The Neocons find themselves intrigued and eventually seduced by the religious and nationalistic myths they retail to the others. By now, for example, various writers in Commentary are obviously taking intelligent design seriously; and some of them have forgotten they, like Strauss, are atheists indoors.
4. As Plato himself found out in Syracuse, political leaders are dangerous allies. Lots of Conservative intellectuals dream of playing Joseph to Pharaoh, and wind up being getting manipulated themselves as the stately figureheads turns out to have purposes of their own. Over the last thirty years, the Princes fronted by the Chicago boys have turned out to be a prize bunch of opportunists and thugs.
As much as I hate to be fair, I have to admit that I’ve sometimes attributed ideas to Leo Strauss that are more properly the obsessions of his followers. Just as popularization morphed Poststructuralism into cultural relativism, neo-conservatism has made Straussian philosophy into a clumsy rightist ideology. When I first encountered Strauss—as I write I’m gazing at the spine of his History of Political Philosophy on a nearby bookshelf—he struck me as a mildly interesting but hardly earth-shattering thinker. I found his discussions of the necessity of dissimulation neither alarming nor particularly radical—like everybody else who has an idea once in a while I’ve sometimes had to adopt Descartes motto, “I go forth masked”—and Strauss’ general skepticism about the Rule of Reason didn’t set off any alarms either in somebody raised as a cultural conservative. If you’re not going to blame Marx for Stalin or even Lenin, you shouldn’t blame Strauss for Wolfowitz or even Bill Kristol. Besides, in some respects the most interesting aspect of der Fall Strauss is not the genetic principle that regressive concepts breed true but the taphonomic commonplace that corpses eventually stink.
Anybody who ever taught Philosophy 101 understands a basic pedagogical problem with the project of Enlightenment. The Socratic method is a non-starter when inflicted on kids with plenty of prejudices but no convictions. In grad school, one learns how to throw rocks at received ideas; but in the absence of any ideas at all, there’s nothing to throw at so you end up teaching the 18-year olds ancient history or English composition instead of philosophy while reserving the real stuff for conversations over lunch with a handful of serious students. Mark Lilla points out in a piece in the October 21 New York Review of Books that much of Strauss’ outlook is rooted in just this kind of teaching experience and that, at least in the U.S., Strauss the teacher was far more influential than Strauss the learned interpreter of Hobbes and Spinoza. His followers, especially the Alan Bloom of the Closing of the American Mind, think of themselves as promoting a realistic brand of the Socratic method, which is to say, a rigorous, critical philosophy for the elite, myths and fairy tales for the state college set—rum for the ratings, gin for the gentlemen.
The fact that most people are not ready to reason as adults most of the time is a boundary condition of civilization, which, like many other problems, can be managed if not cured. The history of the last 150 years, however, reveals a problem with the neoconservative approach to managing Urdummheit. It turns out to be surprisingly difficult to pull off the light irony recommended by Aristotle. The public is supposed to be mollified and edified by myths at the same time that wise counselors, operating in deep shadow, guide the decisions of the handsome but none-too-bright Prince by reason. In practice, unfortunately, four big problems mess up the scenario.
1. The religious and political myths the right promotes to the People don’t in fact make them more tractable and peaceful. All the talk about God and Evildoers stokes ethnic and sectarian passions for tactical political gain while the demonizing of the liberals both depends upon and exacerbates the dangerous resentments of lower-class whites.
2. A reasonable political philosophy recognizes the public’s limitations as rational actors, but it doesn’t try to underline its point by actively promoting irrationality. God knows I’ve got many Tory genes, but even I’ve noticed that straightforward arguments do have an effect on many voters when they address their existential concerns without cynicism. A lot of the despised Voodoo of Clinton’s rhetoric was nothing more than the magic of explanation—he gave reasons for what he thought we should do and people listened to them. A lot of rightwing propaganda is not an attack on the reasoning of liberals so much as an attack on reasoning itself.
3. The philosophers are supposed to keep two sets of books, promoting useful fictions to the multitudes while remaining hardheaded realists themselves. Even in a good cause, however, consistent hypocrisy is very difficult to pull off. The Neocons find themselves intrigued and eventually seduced by the religious and nationalistic myths they retail to the others. By now, for example, various writers in Commentary are obviously taking intelligent design seriously; and some of them have forgotten they, like Strauss, are atheists indoors.
4. As Plato himself found out in Syracuse, political leaders are dangerous allies. Lots of Conservative intellectuals dream of playing Joseph to Pharaoh, and wind up being getting manipulated themselves as the stately figureheads turns out to have purposes of their own. Over the last thirty years, the Princes fronted by the Chicago boys have turned out to be a prize bunch of opportunists and thugs.
Friday, October 29, 2004
Make It So
By now, people under 30 have heard that Social Security won’t be there for them thousands and thousands of times. It is a popular Republican theme, though one that candidates only utter sotto voce during actual campaigns. Former Senator, current television D.A. Thompson repeated the meme the other day. Don’t kid yourself, the actor/politician warned, the system is headed for inevitable catastrophe. But why is he so sure, especially since, from a strictly actuarial point of view, no such disaster is looming. Well, I figure it’s like the vows exchanged at the altar. From a purely statistical point of view, eternal love may be somewhat unlikely, but we promise it nonetheless. By the same logic, the social security system is not likely to fail on its own, but with sufficient political determination, it can be made to fail. So why are the Republicans confident that Social Security won’t be there for you? The full form of the prophecy would run, “It won’t be there for you if we have anything to say about it!”
There is surely nothing sacred about our particular version of social insurance, and there may well be ways in which the current system could be safeguarded, improved, or even replaced with a better alternative. The Republican dream of a privatized system does not address the real issues with Social Security, however, because it is misidentifies the real problem, which does not concern the financial and distributional arrangements we make to provide income for old people but the economic and demographic problem of providing goods and services for everybody when a smaller proportion of the population is at work. One can bleat like a sheep about compound interest as the solution to this problem, but what’s needed is not compound interest but compound growth, something real, not something notional. In the absence of a more productive economy, the numbers on your account statement, however grand, won’t buy you what you need. On the other hand, granted reasonable economic health, the nation surely has enough wealth to provide a decent condition of life for all its citizens, though it may be that somebody, somewhere, sometime will have to forgo a ski weekend so that old women don’t have to eat dog food.
In a rational world debate about Social Security would be exceedingly wonkish and dull because it would be a discussion about practical and mundane remedies to real but hardly overwhelming problems. Stoking paranoia about the system is hardly helpful unless, as is pretty obviously the case, the warnings about looming disaster convey political and personal benefits on the prophets and their kin. Even more than being the reflex of an ideological fixation, the call for the privatization of Social Security is all about slopping the hogs. What it is not is a response to the logic of history or the arithmetic of pension plans. If it ever occurs, it will be one of those things like the establishment of the Soviet Union that happened because a group of determined people made it happen.
By now, people under 30 have heard that Social Security won’t be there for them thousands and thousands of times. It is a popular Republican theme, though one that candidates only utter sotto voce during actual campaigns. Former Senator, current television D.A. Thompson repeated the meme the other day. Don’t kid yourself, the actor/politician warned, the system is headed for inevitable catastrophe. But why is he so sure, especially since, from a strictly actuarial point of view, no such disaster is looming. Well, I figure it’s like the vows exchanged at the altar. From a purely statistical point of view, eternal love may be somewhat unlikely, but we promise it nonetheless. By the same logic, the social security system is not likely to fail on its own, but with sufficient political determination, it can be made to fail. So why are the Republicans confident that Social Security won’t be there for you? The full form of the prophecy would run, “It won’t be there for you if we have anything to say about it!”
There is surely nothing sacred about our particular version of social insurance, and there may well be ways in which the current system could be safeguarded, improved, or even replaced with a better alternative. The Republican dream of a privatized system does not address the real issues with Social Security, however, because it is misidentifies the real problem, which does not concern the financial and distributional arrangements we make to provide income for old people but the economic and demographic problem of providing goods and services for everybody when a smaller proportion of the population is at work. One can bleat like a sheep about compound interest as the solution to this problem, but what’s needed is not compound interest but compound growth, something real, not something notional. In the absence of a more productive economy, the numbers on your account statement, however grand, won’t buy you what you need. On the other hand, granted reasonable economic health, the nation surely has enough wealth to provide a decent condition of life for all its citizens, though it may be that somebody, somewhere, sometime will have to forgo a ski weekend so that old women don’t have to eat dog food.
In a rational world debate about Social Security would be exceedingly wonkish and dull because it would be a discussion about practical and mundane remedies to real but hardly overwhelming problems. Stoking paranoia about the system is hardly helpful unless, as is pretty obviously the case, the warnings about looming disaster convey political and personal benefits on the prophets and their kin. Even more than being the reflex of an ideological fixation, the call for the privatization of Social Security is all about slopping the hogs. What it is not is a response to the logic of history or the arithmetic of pension plans. If it ever occurs, it will be one of those things like the establishment of the Soviet Union that happened because a group of determined people made it happen.
Thursday, October 28, 2004
Krokodil Rock
I’m very skeptical of the ability of satire to illuminate politics because the normal effect of ridicule is to reinforce existing prejudices. There’s a bit of a Tory in every commercial wit, even the leftish ones, if only because playing to received ideas flatters and gratifies the audience while conveying something new would require them to think. Anyhow, these days a comic who attempts to say something significant, which necessarily implies subjecting one side of an issue to more grief than the other, is subject to universal criticism. The equal time rule, which no longer applies to serious commentary, is very much in force when it comes to lampoons. Which explains, for example, why Jon Stewart, for all his intelligence, finds it necessary to deploy the same stale jokes about Gore and Kerry as a hack like Jay Leno. Meanwhile, the humor of mainstream shows such as SNL is comprehensively emasculated despite the irrelevant daring of its bad taste. So we get more fart jokes at the same time that satirical content becomes as toothless as the social critique once found in Krokodil, the Soviet humor magazine of the Stalinist era.
Speaking of Jon Stewart. I’ve worried for some time that he was in danger of a fall, and the ambiguous reaction to the Crossfire appearance shows that I may have been right. Stewart told the truth on television, and for that outrage to the cosmic order, he must atone.
I’m very skeptical of the ability of satire to illuminate politics because the normal effect of ridicule is to reinforce existing prejudices. There’s a bit of a Tory in every commercial wit, even the leftish ones, if only because playing to received ideas flatters and gratifies the audience while conveying something new would require them to think. Anyhow, these days a comic who attempts to say something significant, which necessarily implies subjecting one side of an issue to more grief than the other, is subject to universal criticism. The equal time rule, which no longer applies to serious commentary, is very much in force when it comes to lampoons. Which explains, for example, why Jon Stewart, for all his intelligence, finds it necessary to deploy the same stale jokes about Gore and Kerry as a hack like Jay Leno. Meanwhile, the humor of mainstream shows such as SNL is comprehensively emasculated despite the irrelevant daring of its bad taste. So we get more fart jokes at the same time that satirical content becomes as toothless as the social critique once found in Krokodil, the Soviet humor magazine of the Stalinist era.
Speaking of Jon Stewart. I’ve worried for some time that he was in danger of a fall, and the ambiguous reaction to the Crossfire appearance shows that I may have been right. Stewart told the truth on television, and for that outrage to the cosmic order, he must atone.
Wednesday, October 27, 2004
Forward to the Past
While I’m only knowledgeable about 18th Century English political history because as the Scrooge McDuck of cultural capital, I’m knowledgeable about everything, a great many Conservatives are buffs on the era of Old Corruption out of sheer nostalgia. They feel a deep affinity for a frankly oligarchic system in which all elections were stage managed by insiders, Parliament spent much of its time expanding the death penalty to cover the theft of silverware, and George III and his minions could control government by paying off their supporters with government contracts. Like the followers of our George, the King’s party benefited from the many rotten boroughs that returned an MP despite their tiny populations—think Wyoming or Alaska. Relatively inexpensive favors could buy a vote in those tiny constituencies just as it is fairly cheap to buy off the cattle and mining interests that dominate the empty pith and frozen rind of the American continent. Meanwhile, general public opinion was also for sale. The English system provided a good living for a large class of flacks and publicists who defended the powers that be with purchased sarcasm.
The Anglophilia of the rightists explains a lot. For example. The administration and its posse is thought to be hostile to things French because of the opposition of France to the Conquest of Iraq, but the pundits never manage a comparable level of anger for the Germans or any of the many other peoples who opposed the war. You might think that the Germans, whose government is officially socialist, would be a more obvious target than the French, who are led by a conservative. Anger at the French, however, is more rewarding to our Conservatives on the level of fantasy because these guys still think of themselves as William Pitt. Over and beyond the normal hostility of Conservatives to the Enlightenment, in denouncing Paris, they are channeling the English beefsteak patriotism of 1796. Somehow it goes with bow ties.
I advise the pundits to be careful with the historical analogies. They’d like to believe that contemporary America is in the situation of late 18th Century England, a nation that eventually triumphed over its great continental enemy despite its diplomatic isolation. It is perfectly true that England did survive the loss of its American colonies and went on to flourish economically despite the hostility of most of Europe. England, however, did several things that we are not doing. While the English were in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution, we are busily dismantling our own manufacturing economy. While the English pioneered a sound system of public finance, we are destroying our own national credit. While English patriotism made it possible to increase taxes during wartime, we’re unwilling to pay the price for our aggressive foreign policy. In fact, in our ideological posturing, national vanity, and feckless bravado, we’re acting precisely like cartoon versions of 18th Century Frenchmen. Moreover, as a declining but militarily formidable power, we’re very much in the situation of late Bourbon France. Unlike the English, we don’t have the prospect of lording it over a worldwide power vacuum where obsolete empires and helpless natives await exploitation. This time the heirs to the Moguls and Manchus are coming for us.
While I’m only knowledgeable about 18th Century English political history because as the Scrooge McDuck of cultural capital, I’m knowledgeable about everything, a great many Conservatives are buffs on the era of Old Corruption out of sheer nostalgia. They feel a deep affinity for a frankly oligarchic system in which all elections were stage managed by insiders, Parliament spent much of its time expanding the death penalty to cover the theft of silverware, and George III and his minions could control government by paying off their supporters with government contracts. Like the followers of our George, the King’s party benefited from the many rotten boroughs that returned an MP despite their tiny populations—think Wyoming or Alaska. Relatively inexpensive favors could buy a vote in those tiny constituencies just as it is fairly cheap to buy off the cattle and mining interests that dominate the empty pith and frozen rind of the American continent. Meanwhile, general public opinion was also for sale. The English system provided a good living for a large class of flacks and publicists who defended the powers that be with purchased sarcasm.
The Anglophilia of the rightists explains a lot. For example. The administration and its posse is thought to be hostile to things French because of the opposition of France to the Conquest of Iraq, but the pundits never manage a comparable level of anger for the Germans or any of the many other peoples who opposed the war. You might think that the Germans, whose government is officially socialist, would be a more obvious target than the French, who are led by a conservative. Anger at the French, however, is more rewarding to our Conservatives on the level of fantasy because these guys still think of themselves as William Pitt. Over and beyond the normal hostility of Conservatives to the Enlightenment, in denouncing Paris, they are channeling the English beefsteak patriotism of 1796. Somehow it goes with bow ties.
I advise the pundits to be careful with the historical analogies. They’d like to believe that contemporary America is in the situation of late 18th Century England, a nation that eventually triumphed over its great continental enemy despite its diplomatic isolation. It is perfectly true that England did survive the loss of its American colonies and went on to flourish economically despite the hostility of most of Europe. England, however, did several things that we are not doing. While the English were in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution, we are busily dismantling our own manufacturing economy. While the English pioneered a sound system of public finance, we are destroying our own national credit. While English patriotism made it possible to increase taxes during wartime, we’re unwilling to pay the price for our aggressive foreign policy. In fact, in our ideological posturing, national vanity, and feckless bravado, we’re acting precisely like cartoon versions of 18th Century Frenchmen. Moreover, as a declining but militarily formidable power, we’re very much in the situation of late Bourbon France. Unlike the English, we don’t have the prospect of lording it over a worldwide power vacuum where obsolete empires and helpless natives await exploitation. This time the heirs to the Moguls and Manchus are coming for us.
Monday, October 25, 2004
The Oxycontin of the Masses
According to Marx, the preoccupation of the German intellectuals of his time with religious issues was evidence of their political immaturity. How else explain why grownups were seriously debating the divinity of Christ as late as the year 1848? Similarly impatient sentiments are often enough expressed today about the growing salience of religion in American political affairs. Most outlooks on history view religion as a kind of pedagogy and separate its message, which is more or less endorsed, from the nursery story format in which it is conveyed to the people. In this narrative, the advance of education and enlightenment eventually make it possible to dispense with the crude symbolism and miracle mongering in favor of plain speaking and a respect for the truth. So why does every political candidate have to make a public confession of faith in order to get a hearing at all?
Most conservatives are not surprised by the persistence of irrational styles of faith since they don’t believe in progress of any kind, except perhaps scientific progress. Religion has no intelligible core for them. It is merely a method of crowd control whose content is irrelevant to the clear-eyed elites who in the best case run the world with virtuous cynicism. Religion and reason address different strata of the public, not different ages of history, so one should hardly be surprised that religion neither declines nor becomes more reasonable over time. Indeed, a public that reasons is a great evil so the right subscribes to the Taoist admonition to “fill their bellies and empty their minds,” or at least to the part about emptying their minds.
Although I retain enough of my Left-Hegelian upbringing to think that religion does have a cognitive significance and really does represent a way in which people understand themselves and their world, I have to admit that the Conservative take on religion does provide a useful if partial perspective. But even to the extent that the telos of religion is not truth, it does have a history. It progresses, albeit as a technology progresses, getting better and better at mobilizing the resentments and hopes of people. In my lifetime, for example, television evangelists have pioneered entirely new ways of exploiting a huge audience of vulnerable listeners just as earlier operators colonized the radio waves back in the 30s and their distant ancestors figured out how to exploit moveable type.
Even aspects of religion that appear to be thematic to particular faiths can be understood as technological breakthroughs. Religious entrepreneurship has a history—traditional religious personnel sacrificed cattle, they didn’t propagandize their followers. Once a group discovers how to establish a secret sect, the technique will be copied by other groups just as religious fanaticism, a Persian and Jewish invention, quickly escaped copyright. Indeed, the practice of religious devotion itself, like so much else, seems to have been a Hellenistic invention that got picked up by the Christians and eventually spread to the ends of Asia as bhakti. Whom one adores is less important than the practice of adoration. The original man who was proclaimed the savior (Soter) by his PR department may have been Ptolemy the First, but Christ, Rama, Kannon, Guru Nanak, and various Sufis and Saints have filled the same role since. The absence of truth in religion leaves the field wide open for the advance of technique.
Now it may be that modern man is suffering from an especially bad case of existential anguish and that the religious revivals of the time are a response to a deeply felt need. I’m skeptical. From an objective point of view, the human condition has always been pretty desperate. Perhaps something about contemporary conditions does make the resentful plankton of our kind more aware of its humiliating situation and therefore easier to manipulate. On the other hand, just as the automobile was not introduced to meet the challenge of a worldwide horse shortage, the current obsession with religion may simply be a consequence of a wave of entrepreneurial activity that is exploiting the latest developments in the technology of superstition.
According to Marx, the preoccupation of the German intellectuals of his time with religious issues was evidence of their political immaturity. How else explain why grownups were seriously debating the divinity of Christ as late as the year 1848? Similarly impatient sentiments are often enough expressed today about the growing salience of religion in American political affairs. Most outlooks on history view religion as a kind of pedagogy and separate its message, which is more or less endorsed, from the nursery story format in which it is conveyed to the people. In this narrative, the advance of education and enlightenment eventually make it possible to dispense with the crude symbolism and miracle mongering in favor of plain speaking and a respect for the truth. So why does every political candidate have to make a public confession of faith in order to get a hearing at all?
Most conservatives are not surprised by the persistence of irrational styles of faith since they don’t believe in progress of any kind, except perhaps scientific progress. Religion has no intelligible core for them. It is merely a method of crowd control whose content is irrelevant to the clear-eyed elites who in the best case run the world with virtuous cynicism. Religion and reason address different strata of the public, not different ages of history, so one should hardly be surprised that religion neither declines nor becomes more reasonable over time. Indeed, a public that reasons is a great evil so the right subscribes to the Taoist admonition to “fill their bellies and empty their minds,” or at least to the part about emptying their minds.
Although I retain enough of my Left-Hegelian upbringing to think that religion does have a cognitive significance and really does represent a way in which people understand themselves and their world, I have to admit that the Conservative take on religion does provide a useful if partial perspective. But even to the extent that the telos of religion is not truth, it does have a history. It progresses, albeit as a technology progresses, getting better and better at mobilizing the resentments and hopes of people. In my lifetime, for example, television evangelists have pioneered entirely new ways of exploiting a huge audience of vulnerable listeners just as earlier operators colonized the radio waves back in the 30s and their distant ancestors figured out how to exploit moveable type.
Even aspects of religion that appear to be thematic to particular faiths can be understood as technological breakthroughs. Religious entrepreneurship has a history—traditional religious personnel sacrificed cattle, they didn’t propagandize their followers. Once a group discovers how to establish a secret sect, the technique will be copied by other groups just as religious fanaticism, a Persian and Jewish invention, quickly escaped copyright. Indeed, the practice of religious devotion itself, like so much else, seems to have been a Hellenistic invention that got picked up by the Christians and eventually spread to the ends of Asia as bhakti. Whom one adores is less important than the practice of adoration. The original man who was proclaimed the savior (Soter) by his PR department may have been Ptolemy the First, but Christ, Rama, Kannon, Guru Nanak, and various Sufis and Saints have filled the same role since. The absence of truth in religion leaves the field wide open for the advance of technique.
Now it may be that modern man is suffering from an especially bad case of existential anguish and that the religious revivals of the time are a response to a deeply felt need. I’m skeptical. From an objective point of view, the human condition has always been pretty desperate. Perhaps something about contemporary conditions does make the resentful plankton of our kind more aware of its humiliating situation and therefore easier to manipulate. On the other hand, just as the automobile was not introduced to meet the challenge of a worldwide horse shortage, the current obsession with religion may simply be a consequence of a wave of entrepreneurial activity that is exploiting the latest developments in the technology of superstition.
Sunday, October 24, 2004
Somewhere Under the Radar
My Dad was convinced to the day he died that the Japanese and Chinese would one day get together and stab us in the back. Where he got this notion I have no idea. It wasn’t that he harbored bad feelings about Asians—he didn’t have any discernable animus towards the many Nisei who lived in our town—and his prophesy was certainly not based on any knowledge of the history of the region or the culture or languages of the peoples involved–he didn’t have any of that either. When he would pronounce on the matter, I tried to suggest that the Chinese had every reason to hate the Japanese, but he waved that off with a smile as if I were being naïve. The strangest thing about his conviction on this issue is that he never acted as if the forthcoming reversal of alliances was at all important. It was just something he absolutely, positively could foresee. What was impressive was his perfect assurance that he was right.
Maybe Beijing and Tokyo will get together one of these days, possibly inspired by old Fu Manchu novels. That’s not why I recall this bit. It’s just that I get my own premonitions from time to time and have to remind myself that they may sound—or be—as quirky and unsupported as Dad’s offhanded warnings about the Yellow Peril. For example, I’m quite sure that the Star Wars anti-missile system is a fraud; and my skepticism about it has very little to do with the widely-held opinion in the scientific community that the whole thing is a crock. I mean that’s a good reason not to think the thing will work, but it’s not my reason. After all, from that kind of reasoning one could arrive at the reasonable guess that the system is impractical but never achieve the kind of total confidence that runs in my family. On the other hand, unlike my father, who was as absolute in his oracles as a Priestess of Apollo, I do have some reason for what I think though maybe my syllogisms are only suitable for a Sibyl. Anyhow.
This is the theory that I have and the theory that is mine. If there were any real prospect of an anti-missile missile system really working, we wouldn’t have heard a word about it. Whenever practical and important weapon systems are in the works, they are treated as the darkest of state secrets as in the case of the Manhattan Project and more recently of stealth aircraft, which never appeared on the radar until they didn’t appear on the radar. The technical possibility of atom bombs and undetectable planes was indeed suggested long before the realization of either—my Dad, for example, had heard about the possibility of nuclear weapons from his physics profs at UCLA in the early 30s—but once the technology became something that could be realized in a matter of years, all mention was squelched. Indeed, I understand that the Germans gleaned some inkling of what was up when many topics in atomic physics disappeared from journal articles in the 40s. On the other hand, since we hear a very great deal about Star Wars indeed, it’s obvious that nobody in the military expects it to work. QED.
Next week: news about Knight Templars.
My Dad was convinced to the day he died that the Japanese and Chinese would one day get together and stab us in the back. Where he got this notion I have no idea. It wasn’t that he harbored bad feelings about Asians—he didn’t have any discernable animus towards the many Nisei who lived in our town—and his prophesy was certainly not based on any knowledge of the history of the region or the culture or languages of the peoples involved–he didn’t have any of that either. When he would pronounce on the matter, I tried to suggest that the Chinese had every reason to hate the Japanese, but he waved that off with a smile as if I were being naïve. The strangest thing about his conviction on this issue is that he never acted as if the forthcoming reversal of alliances was at all important. It was just something he absolutely, positively could foresee. What was impressive was his perfect assurance that he was right.
Maybe Beijing and Tokyo will get together one of these days, possibly inspired by old Fu Manchu novels. That’s not why I recall this bit. It’s just that I get my own premonitions from time to time and have to remind myself that they may sound—or be—as quirky and unsupported as Dad’s offhanded warnings about the Yellow Peril. For example, I’m quite sure that the Star Wars anti-missile system is a fraud; and my skepticism about it has very little to do with the widely-held opinion in the scientific community that the whole thing is a crock. I mean that’s a good reason not to think the thing will work, but it’s not my reason. After all, from that kind of reasoning one could arrive at the reasonable guess that the system is impractical but never achieve the kind of total confidence that runs in my family. On the other hand, unlike my father, who was as absolute in his oracles as a Priestess of Apollo, I do have some reason for what I think though maybe my syllogisms are only suitable for a Sibyl. Anyhow.
This is the theory that I have and the theory that is mine. If there were any real prospect of an anti-missile missile system really working, we wouldn’t have heard a word about it. Whenever practical and important weapon systems are in the works, they are treated as the darkest of state secrets as in the case of the Manhattan Project and more recently of stealth aircraft, which never appeared on the radar until they didn’t appear on the radar. The technical possibility of atom bombs and undetectable planes was indeed suggested long before the realization of either—my Dad, for example, had heard about the possibility of nuclear weapons from his physics profs at UCLA in the early 30s—but once the technology became something that could be realized in a matter of years, all mention was squelched. Indeed, I understand that the Germans gleaned some inkling of what was up when many topics in atomic physics disappeared from journal articles in the 40s. On the other hand, since we hear a very great deal about Star Wars indeed, it’s obvious that nobody in the military expects it to work. QED.
Next week: news about Knight Templars.
Saturday, October 23, 2004
The Fact Deficit
I’ve been unfair to many of Bush’s supporters, believing that they were being arrogant in dismissing foreign criticism of our policies. Like many others, I cited, at least in my mind, the phrase in the Declaration of Independence about “a decent respect for the opinions of mankind.” But this criticism assumes that the people are aware of what the world thinks. A recent study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) shows that the Bush base is largely unaware of the depth and breadth of anti-American feeling and even imagines that most Europeans and even Muslims support the war and have a high opinion of Mr. Bush. The Bush supporters are ill-informed in general, supposing, for example, that he is promoting a multilateral approach to global warming and other international issues and continuing to think that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and significant ties to Al Qaeda.
One should not be entirely surprised, though inevitably one is. It takes a huge investment of time and money to teach the alphabet and other basics to a reasonable proportion of the population; and at least in that enterprise the effort to inform is not opposed by a large and well-financed group circulating falsified multiplication tables. The human mind may not be a perfectly blank slate; but, to paraphrase a familiar maxim of the Scholastics, “Nothing is in the Intellect that is not first on Prime Time.” It requires real effort to create a society in which important matters of fact are generally understood by everyone—you certainly can’t expect the average person to exert even a tiny effort to find out for themselves. In this instance, however, not everything can be chalked up to the inertness of the public mind. Kerry supporters are far more aware of the state of the world and, crucially, have a much more accurate picture of the positions of their own candidate than Bush supporters. Why are they so much better at registering the facts of the case?
The authors of the PIPA study suggest that Bush’s supporters can’t hear evidence contrary to their high estimation of Bush because to do so would result in cognitive dissonance. If, as was famously proclaimed on the Daily Show, the facts are biased, so much the worse for the facts. People don’t want to accept that we invaded Iraq on false premises, and they certainly don’t want to admit that they were taken in. Bush, after all, had been made into the hero of 9/11. Indeed, if you recall the way the events were covered, he performed brilliantly in the aftermath even before he did anything at all, so strong was the imperative of the story line. Once you’ve decided that Bush is the necessary man, it’s easy to simply assume that he shares your opinions even when he obviously doesn’t because, to speak the language of physical chemistry, the default case is energetically favorable and, to speak the language of clinical psychology, you’re frightened and desperate to believe whatever Daddy says.
Snark aside, I don’t know whether the average Bush supporter is stupider than the average Kerry supporter. The more important difference may be that the greater insecurity of Bush supporters makes them easier marks for the cynical propaganda that exploits their fears and thus spreads disinformation. The deeper or rather the more important question here is how a large group of people gradually became so vulnerable to manipulation.
I’ve often written that it is the American public and not the Bush administration that will bear the responsibility for what we’re doing to ourselves and the world. In making this point, I’ve descended into prophetic denunciation from time to time. To be fair, I ought to make it clear that the relevant moral category in politics is karma, not sin. I love to dress up as Jeremiah, but what History is likely to punish is not the unrighteousness of the people but their stupidity and cowardice. While each of us has some responsibility for the kind of person we become, specifically ethical condemnation should mostly be reserved for the individuals in politics and the media who have self-consciously promoted popular ignorance and timidity for power and gain. Unfortunately, karma, a merely statistical tendency, often passes over the worst malefactors. Showered with honors, they die in their beds and wind up buried next to their libraries.
I’ve been unfair to many of Bush’s supporters, believing that they were being arrogant in dismissing foreign criticism of our policies. Like many others, I cited, at least in my mind, the phrase in the Declaration of Independence about “a decent respect for the opinions of mankind.” But this criticism assumes that the people are aware of what the world thinks. A recent study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) shows that the Bush base is largely unaware of the depth and breadth of anti-American feeling and even imagines that most Europeans and even Muslims support the war and have a high opinion of Mr. Bush. The Bush supporters are ill-informed in general, supposing, for example, that he is promoting a multilateral approach to global warming and other international issues and continuing to think that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and significant ties to Al Qaeda.
One should not be entirely surprised, though inevitably one is. It takes a huge investment of time and money to teach the alphabet and other basics to a reasonable proportion of the population; and at least in that enterprise the effort to inform is not opposed by a large and well-financed group circulating falsified multiplication tables. The human mind may not be a perfectly blank slate; but, to paraphrase a familiar maxim of the Scholastics, “Nothing is in the Intellect that is not first on Prime Time.” It requires real effort to create a society in which important matters of fact are generally understood by everyone—you certainly can’t expect the average person to exert even a tiny effort to find out for themselves. In this instance, however, not everything can be chalked up to the inertness of the public mind. Kerry supporters are far more aware of the state of the world and, crucially, have a much more accurate picture of the positions of their own candidate than Bush supporters. Why are they so much better at registering the facts of the case?
The authors of the PIPA study suggest that Bush’s supporters can’t hear evidence contrary to their high estimation of Bush because to do so would result in cognitive dissonance. If, as was famously proclaimed on the Daily Show, the facts are biased, so much the worse for the facts. People don’t want to accept that we invaded Iraq on false premises, and they certainly don’t want to admit that they were taken in. Bush, after all, had been made into the hero of 9/11. Indeed, if you recall the way the events were covered, he performed brilliantly in the aftermath even before he did anything at all, so strong was the imperative of the story line. Once you’ve decided that Bush is the necessary man, it’s easy to simply assume that he shares your opinions even when he obviously doesn’t because, to speak the language of physical chemistry, the default case is energetically favorable and, to speak the language of clinical psychology, you’re frightened and desperate to believe whatever Daddy says.
Snark aside, I don’t know whether the average Bush supporter is stupider than the average Kerry supporter. The more important difference may be that the greater insecurity of Bush supporters makes them easier marks for the cynical propaganda that exploits their fears and thus spreads disinformation. The deeper or rather the more important question here is how a large group of people gradually became so vulnerable to manipulation.
I’ve often written that it is the American public and not the Bush administration that will bear the responsibility for what we’re doing to ourselves and the world. In making this point, I’ve descended into prophetic denunciation from time to time. To be fair, I ought to make it clear that the relevant moral category in politics is karma, not sin. I love to dress up as Jeremiah, but what History is likely to punish is not the unrighteousness of the people but their stupidity and cowardice. While each of us has some responsibility for the kind of person we become, specifically ethical condemnation should mostly be reserved for the individuals in politics and the media who have self-consciously promoted popular ignorance and timidity for power and gain. Unfortunately, karma, a merely statistical tendency, often passes over the worst malefactors. Showered with honors, they die in their beds and wind up buried next to their libraries.
Wednesday, October 20, 2004
The Postmodern Condition
It’s already been ten years or so since I suggested that it was time for the local bookstore to start a Used Postmodernism section. The folks at Green Apple didn’t think that was very funny, but whatever point I had is perhaps a little less over subtle in the wake of Jacques Derrida’s death. The amorphous set of themes and assumptions formerly known as Poststructuralism and then Postmodernism is indeed long in the tooth.
Of course the philosophical interesting ideas of the French never really circulated as such. The influence of serious thought is surely indirect; what appears in public is a crude parody of the original. The parody can be significant in itself however. Postmodernism really doesn’t name a philosophy; but perhaps it identifies a historical condition; and it may be that historical condition rather than any fragments of credible philosophy that lingers on and on.
The philosophers, at least the pros among ‘em, may have decided that there is something outside the text and that no amount of sociology can dissolve the results that crystallize out of the sciences. They’ve taken notice that you can do things with words but also realized that you can’t do very much—the effectiveness of performative utterances such as the universally invoked example of the “I do” depends upon the pre-existence of an entire system of laws and customs and has no force outside of the tribe. Being married is merely a legal state, not a natural fact.
Only God Almighty is able to bring a world into existence by a WORD. “Let there be light,” works for Him. For us, “Let there be a terrible rumpus!” is more like it. To listen to the television, however, you’d think that what people wish or intend or decree is what creates all the facts, especially in politics. The talking heads endlessly rediscover that appearances are more important than realities and retail this profound truth to an audience that is supposed to be surprised by an idea that had been banal for two generations in 399 B.C. Let us not criticize this venerable sophistry, however; but ask instead the why it seems so apropos circa 2004 A.D.
If the Postmodern condition is one in which the realities that matter are cultural artifacts and what’s important is simply what people think, we must be somehow be insulated from realities that are non-human or at least alien to our own society. Under what circumstances can the physics of the atmosphere can be ignored in relationship to global warming? How can we get away with ignoring arithmetic in deciding a fiscal policy? In which universe do the opinions of the rest of the world have no relevance for American foreign policy? The presidential aide interviewed by Ron Suskind in an already celebrated article supplied the answer. “We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.” But if we’re really going to create a new reality and revalue all values by virtue of our redoubtable Will to Power, we’re going to need not merely the belief that we have the power, but the power itself.
Children can live in fantasy worlds because the adults protect them. Nobody’s protecting us, but we’ve inherited a splendid playpen. We’re able to conduct our politics by the postmodern rules of fantasy, if only temporarily, because it has fallen out that we acquired a huge advantage over the other nations. Our military preponderance, for example, though universally overestimated, is quite real and all the more formidable because we are crazy enough to use it. More importantly, we haven’t maxed out the credit cards yet, so we can go on imagining that we’re wealthy even though we’re obviously going bankrupt. We can also outrage the environment, not because we can repeal the laws of nature but because technological karma works with a time lag. A dying man can eat anything. On the other hand, as the German’s say, “Erst Kommt das Fressen, denn der Moral.” (= I can’t believe I ate the whole thing!)
It’s already been ten years or so since I suggested that it was time for the local bookstore to start a Used Postmodernism section. The folks at Green Apple didn’t think that was very funny, but whatever point I had is perhaps a little less over subtle in the wake of Jacques Derrida’s death. The amorphous set of themes and assumptions formerly known as Poststructuralism and then Postmodernism is indeed long in the tooth.
Of course the philosophical interesting ideas of the French never really circulated as such. The influence of serious thought is surely indirect; what appears in public is a crude parody of the original. The parody can be significant in itself however. Postmodernism really doesn’t name a philosophy; but perhaps it identifies a historical condition; and it may be that historical condition rather than any fragments of credible philosophy that lingers on and on.
The philosophers, at least the pros among ‘em, may have decided that there is something outside the text and that no amount of sociology can dissolve the results that crystallize out of the sciences. They’ve taken notice that you can do things with words but also realized that you can’t do very much—the effectiveness of performative utterances such as the universally invoked example of the “I do” depends upon the pre-existence of an entire system of laws and customs and has no force outside of the tribe. Being married is merely a legal state, not a natural fact.
Only God Almighty is able to bring a world into existence by a WORD. “Let there be light,” works for Him. For us, “Let there be a terrible rumpus!” is more like it. To listen to the television, however, you’d think that what people wish or intend or decree is what creates all the facts, especially in politics. The talking heads endlessly rediscover that appearances are more important than realities and retail this profound truth to an audience that is supposed to be surprised by an idea that had been banal for two generations in 399 B.C. Let us not criticize this venerable sophistry, however; but ask instead the why it seems so apropos circa 2004 A.D.
If the Postmodern condition is one in which the realities that matter are cultural artifacts and what’s important is simply what people think, we must be somehow be insulated from realities that are non-human or at least alien to our own society. Under what circumstances can the physics of the atmosphere can be ignored in relationship to global warming? How can we get away with ignoring arithmetic in deciding a fiscal policy? In which universe do the opinions of the rest of the world have no relevance for American foreign policy? The presidential aide interviewed by Ron Suskind in an already celebrated article supplied the answer. “We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.” But if we’re really going to create a new reality and revalue all values by virtue of our redoubtable Will to Power, we’re going to need not merely the belief that we have the power, but the power itself.
Children can live in fantasy worlds because the adults protect them. Nobody’s protecting us, but we’ve inherited a splendid playpen. We’re able to conduct our politics by the postmodern rules of fantasy, if only temporarily, because it has fallen out that we acquired a huge advantage over the other nations. Our military preponderance, for example, though universally overestimated, is quite real and all the more formidable because we are crazy enough to use it. More importantly, we haven’t maxed out the credit cards yet, so we can go on imagining that we’re wealthy even though we’re obviously going bankrupt. We can also outrage the environment, not because we can repeal the laws of nature but because technological karma works with a time lag. A dying man can eat anything. On the other hand, as the German’s say, “Erst Kommt das Fressen, denn der Moral.” (= I can’t believe I ate the whole thing!)
Monday, October 18, 2004
Antibiotic Resistance
Inadequate doses of antibiotics have the predictable effect of promoting resistant strains of bacteria by natural selection. Which is why all those pill bottles bear a tag encouraging the patient to finish the prescription. I think we should take this advice to heart in our military policy, but half measures seem to be the rule both in Afghanistan and Iraq where we are running what amounts to a training program for terrorists. We certainly don’t have the overwhelming presence that would be required to put down the multifaceted rebellion by main force, and it’s a good bet that our enemies will gradually figure out how to evade or defeat the military technology we are so dependent upon. Many right-wingers think of themselves as military philosophers, but they seem to have forgotten the rule of thumb they themselves formerly invoked to criticize previous administrations: only the long-term application of a considerable numerical advantage can defeat a popular insurgency. Absent that, random violence and torture merely toughens and strengthens the opposition. We are breeding a generation of superbugs.
At this point I should insert a bit of boiler plate about how the Bush strategy in Iraq is of a piece with many other policies based on a principled contempt for the lessons of experience. These folks are addicted to wishful thinking.
Inadequate doses of antibiotics have the predictable effect of promoting resistant strains of bacteria by natural selection. Which is why all those pill bottles bear a tag encouraging the patient to finish the prescription. I think we should take this advice to heart in our military policy, but half measures seem to be the rule both in Afghanistan and Iraq where we are running what amounts to a training program for terrorists. We certainly don’t have the overwhelming presence that would be required to put down the multifaceted rebellion by main force, and it’s a good bet that our enemies will gradually figure out how to evade or defeat the military technology we are so dependent upon. Many right-wingers think of themselves as military philosophers, but they seem to have forgotten the rule of thumb they themselves formerly invoked to criticize previous administrations: only the long-term application of a considerable numerical advantage can defeat a popular insurgency. Absent that, random violence and torture merely toughens and strengthens the opposition. We are breeding a generation of superbugs.
At this point I should insert a bit of boiler plate about how the Bush strategy in Iraq is of a piece with many other policies based on a principled contempt for the lessons of experience. These folks are addicted to wishful thinking.
Friday, October 15, 2004
Semi-Crow
American racial politics have modulated over the years. The segregationists who migrated to the Republican Party in the wake of the Civil Rights movements are not the stone racists of the past. I don’t think they are being disingenuous when they insist that they aren’t prejudiced against black people in general. In 2004, class probably is more salient than race as a factor in judging people, which is to say that a black guy who sounds and looks middle-class might as well be a Caucasian, just as Japanese and Chinese Americans have once again become honorary Aryans. Poor blacks are still despised, however. By the same token, although Republicans are perfectly happy that the franchise extends to Negroes so long as they vote Republican, Jim Crow policies are back in favor for those that do not. The great issue of the Florida election of 2000 had nothing to do with hanging chads, after all, but with the premeditated disenfranchisement of thousands and thousands of black voters who were likely to vote for and elect Al Gore absent the criminal behavior of Jeb Bush and other state officials. The same game is once again underway in Florida and many other places in the United States, not all of them in the South.
From my intensely cynical perspective, the most interesting thing about this issue is the indifference of the Press and the public to very credible reports of utterly unprincipled and often thoroughly illegal attempts to keep people from voting. In Oregon, for example, Republicans are registering Democrats and Republicans to vote and then throwing away the democratic applications but what we hear on the news has to do with Mr. Chaney’s gay daughter. In Florida, people erroneously removed from the voting lists because they have the same names as felons are being prevented from reregistering by various bureaucratic dodges, but the news shows have calculated, with some plausibility, that a mostly White audience won’t care. Indeed, such actions probably strike a good many Americans as desirable so long as the people who are kept from voting aren’t real Americans. Why should they get riled about civil rights violations when they obviously aren’t upset that people in Cuba and Iraq are being tortured in their name? In this respect, it’s no use blaming the degradation of American public life on Bush, Chaney, or Rove or G.E. or Fox. The fault lies with the People. The election is really a judgment about them.
American racial politics have modulated over the years. The segregationists who migrated to the Republican Party in the wake of the Civil Rights movements are not the stone racists of the past. I don’t think they are being disingenuous when they insist that they aren’t prejudiced against black people in general. In 2004, class probably is more salient than race as a factor in judging people, which is to say that a black guy who sounds and looks middle-class might as well be a Caucasian, just as Japanese and Chinese Americans have once again become honorary Aryans. Poor blacks are still despised, however. By the same token, although Republicans are perfectly happy that the franchise extends to Negroes so long as they vote Republican, Jim Crow policies are back in favor for those that do not. The great issue of the Florida election of 2000 had nothing to do with hanging chads, after all, but with the premeditated disenfranchisement of thousands and thousands of black voters who were likely to vote for and elect Al Gore absent the criminal behavior of Jeb Bush and other state officials. The same game is once again underway in Florida and many other places in the United States, not all of them in the South.
From my intensely cynical perspective, the most interesting thing about this issue is the indifference of the Press and the public to very credible reports of utterly unprincipled and often thoroughly illegal attempts to keep people from voting. In Oregon, for example, Republicans are registering Democrats and Republicans to vote and then throwing away the democratic applications but what we hear on the news has to do with Mr. Chaney’s gay daughter. In Florida, people erroneously removed from the voting lists because they have the same names as felons are being prevented from reregistering by various bureaucratic dodges, but the news shows have calculated, with some plausibility, that a mostly White audience won’t care. Indeed, such actions probably strike a good many Americans as desirable so long as the people who are kept from voting aren’t real Americans. Why should they get riled about civil rights violations when they obviously aren’t upset that people in Cuba and Iraq are being tortured in their name? In this respect, it’s no use blaming the degradation of American public life on Bush, Chaney, or Rove or G.E. or Fox. The fault lies with the People. The election is really a judgment about them.