Second Nature
Years ago I visited a strip joint with a bunch of salesmen from my publishing company. A particularly attractive stripper propositioned one of my co-workers, who, as he explained later, refused her offer despite the reasonable price, not because he was especially scrupulous about such things—he’d just gotten a lap dance from the aforementioned girl—but because he figured that once he paid for it and had a good time, he’d soon become a regular customer of hookers. “Bad precedent.” The response to Mr. Bush’s speech reminded me of this little fragment of life wisdom because even the president’s critics obviously don’t think there was anything peculiar about imposing our will on a foreign nation, our innocence about the propriety of that sort of thing having been lost a long time ago now. While lots of commentators complain that bombing Iran or attacking Syria or murdering Sadr may be inadvisable from a cost-benefit point of view, very few, especially among the numerous tribe of the liberal hawks, evince any inhibition about the casual use of violence against non-Americans in their own countries. Of course, the novelty of this sociopathy is only relative—America has been treating the nations in its sphere of influence with contempt for well over a hundred years now—but it is new to extend the blessings of the Monroe Doctrine to any nation not strong enough to fend us off.
I’m no pacifist. If a country harbors people who have attacked the United States as Afghanistan did or if it invades a neighbor in a way that harms our interests, as Saddam did in the early 90s, I’ve got no problem with the use of military force. I also don’t endorse respect for the sovereignty of other countries on the basis of some a priori moral principle—as I once wrote, the Categorical Imperative is not a suicide pact. It is experience, not moral intuition, that teaches us why it is a dreadful idea to promote international lawlessness and how the loss of inhibitions by one great power often leads to general irresponsibility and misery. The trouble is, we’ve already traveled so far down the road, created so many dreadful precedents, that it is hard to see how we are going to recover a sense of decency in our foreign policy by simply acquiring new leaders. Our hubris has become habitual.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Sunday, January 07, 2007
The Construction of a Novel Racism
Bush is still promising victory in the Middle East, but just who it is we propose to defeat remains in doubt. To speak of Iraq alone, the enemy is sometimes the left-over Baathists, sometimes the Iranians, sometimes the radical Shia, sometimes the tribal Sunnis; and it’s a good bet that the Kurds will eventually also find themselves in the field of fire of the American blunderbuss. Small wonder, then, if the part of the public that still supports the President will be tempted to simplify things by simply hating every available raghead, including, apparently, the millions of Muslims who are neither Arab nor Persian, various Middle-Eastern groups that are completely secular, and even American converts to Islam. What’s occurring is the construction of a race, which I define as a taxon that arises from political contingencies but is retroactively understood to be a natural group unified by an unchanging essence. Traveling down the Mobius strip, the essence is then retroactively invoked to explain the political contingencies that called it into existence in the first place. No negitude without slavery. No world-wide Jihadi menace without Israel and petroleum.
In political history, age-old, intractable conflicts are often the last things to be invented. When normal institutions break down, new bases must be found for political identities, and an obvious place to look for such expedients is ancient history. We may be permitted to doubt that the Serbs were obsessing about the Field of Crows in 1950 or that Ossetian nationalism was smoldering beneath the bureaucratic crust during the Soviet era. Any stone is a weapon in a riot, including, depending on the circumstances, moldy old Eastern Orthodoxy or the long forgotten dream of the Caliphate. Which doesn’t mean, unfortunately, that a rapidly improvised Clash of Civilizations isn’t a real conflict or that it can be as easily dispelled as it was summoned into its eternal existence.
Bush is still promising victory in the Middle East, but just who it is we propose to defeat remains in doubt. To speak of Iraq alone, the enemy is sometimes the left-over Baathists, sometimes the Iranians, sometimes the radical Shia, sometimes the tribal Sunnis; and it’s a good bet that the Kurds will eventually also find themselves in the field of fire of the American blunderbuss. Small wonder, then, if the part of the public that still supports the President will be tempted to simplify things by simply hating every available raghead, including, apparently, the millions of Muslims who are neither Arab nor Persian, various Middle-Eastern groups that are completely secular, and even American converts to Islam. What’s occurring is the construction of a race, which I define as a taxon that arises from political contingencies but is retroactively understood to be a natural group unified by an unchanging essence. Traveling down the Mobius strip, the essence is then retroactively invoked to explain the political contingencies that called it into existence in the first place. No negitude without slavery. No world-wide Jihadi menace without Israel and petroleum.
In political history, age-old, intractable conflicts are often the last things to be invented. When normal institutions break down, new bases must be found for political identities, and an obvious place to look for such expedients is ancient history. We may be permitted to doubt that the Serbs were obsessing about the Field of Crows in 1950 or that Ossetian nationalism was smoldering beneath the bureaucratic crust during the Soviet era. Any stone is a weapon in a riot, including, depending on the circumstances, moldy old Eastern Orthodoxy or the long forgotten dream of the Caliphate. Which doesn’t mean, unfortunately, that a rapidly improvised Clash of Civilizations isn’t a real conflict or that it can be as easily dispelled as it was summoned into its eternal existence.
Saturday, January 06, 2007
The Dikes are Perfectly Adequate so Long as it Doesn’t Rain
Contemporary discussions of the value or irrelevance of economic equality have an 18th Century flavor. Apparently serious people speak about the issue as if it could be reasonably addressed without a dynamic historical context. Hence those who discount equality point out that poor people enjoy high levels of consumption while those who try to find a modern version of egalitarianism highlight the human costs of even relative (positional) poverty. I’m still waiting for somebody to point out that this academic debate, conducted in impeccably abstract faux-Enlightenment style, is premised on the highly dubious proposition than general wealth and, indeed, economic progress is a given. Unfortunately, real human beings are not embedded in a reliably benign eternity of peace and prosperity like cherries in a jello salad. What feels like equilibrium is more likely the motionlessness of the apogee. In bad times, the true cost of poverty will be quite apparent without complicated theoretical explications by PhD economists. What the wealthy have and the others lack is a margin of safety during emergencies. When things go wrong, it won’t be a case of having to do without plasma screen televisions or having your feelings hurt because your neighbor’s swimming pool is bigger than yours, but genuine deprivation and the stark reality of becoming déclassé. Oddly, both the rich and the poor understand this perfectly, even that part of the poor that thinks of itself as middle class. Somebody should tell the profs, though.
Contemporary discussions of the value or irrelevance of economic equality have an 18th Century flavor. Apparently serious people speak about the issue as if it could be reasonably addressed without a dynamic historical context. Hence those who discount equality point out that poor people enjoy high levels of consumption while those who try to find a modern version of egalitarianism highlight the human costs of even relative (positional) poverty. I’m still waiting for somebody to point out that this academic debate, conducted in impeccably abstract faux-Enlightenment style, is premised on the highly dubious proposition than general wealth and, indeed, economic progress is a given. Unfortunately, real human beings are not embedded in a reliably benign eternity of peace and prosperity like cherries in a jello salad. What feels like equilibrium is more likely the motionlessness of the apogee. In bad times, the true cost of poverty will be quite apparent without complicated theoretical explications by PhD economists. What the wealthy have and the others lack is a margin of safety during emergencies. When things go wrong, it won’t be a case of having to do without plasma screen televisions or having your feelings hurt because your neighbor’s swimming pool is bigger than yours, but genuine deprivation and the stark reality of becoming déclassé. Oddly, both the rich and the poor understand this perfectly, even that part of the poor that thinks of itself as middle class. Somebody should tell the profs, though.
Friday, January 05, 2007
Ifology
I had thought about writing a review of a Unmaking the West, yet another book on counterfactual history; but I find it hard to take the practice seriously enough to make the exercise worthwhile. Historians sometimes use the literary conceit of alternative histories to illustrate worthwhile ideas about what actually happened; but when they imagine that their scenarios have probative as opposed to rhetorical or illustrative value, they lose me.
Counterfactual methods are usually deployed in an attempt to underline the role of contingency in history and to discredit thereby the grand theories that claim that history has an overall logic and destiny—over the last 150 years, for example, counterfactual arguments have been a reliable bludgeon in the interminable scholarly war on Marxism. Unfortunately, counterfactual history itself depends upon the presumption of a certain level of predictability in history; for once some plausible variation is postulated—William of Orange gets shot at the Battle of the Boyne or the wind blows the wrong way in 1588—the consequences of the surprise get worked out on the assumption that nothing else surprising takes place and that the predictable consequences of events play out as scheduled. A history made out of non-stop surprises is just as useless to counterfactual history as a history that runs on rails.
In fact, if history really were an incredibly detailed geology of the surface of the earth, a natural science that treated men as mobile rock formations, I expect that we would conclude that the predictions of historical events would be no more trustworthy than weather reports, especially when the forecasts ventured to tell us what happens after next week. Which is why, by the way, the practitioners of counterfactual history routinely sneak the notion of fate back into their tales—a careful sociological analysis of the economic consequences of a lasting French superiority in Europe will not fail to include the bit about a young Corsican who becomes a successful general in Louis XVI’s triumphant armies as if Napoleon would even be born in an alternative future. They really don’t come to terms with the contingencies of the world at all as anybody who really took seriously the physics or even the biology of the issue would have to do.
If individual human beings and their particular talents and foibles are critical to the outcome of history, as many a counterfactual historian has insisted, it doesn’t much matter what historical event you imagine altering in your imaginary parallel world. The non-linearity built into human reproduction guarantees that a total different cast of characters will soon begin to appear in the sequel even if we imagine that nothing much else takes place. Natural selection has decreed that the genetic cards will be very thoroughly shuffled before and, indeed, during each deal. It may take a cannonball to take off William’s head, but it takes the distant reverberation of a gnat’s fart to result in an Albertine instead of an Albert or to turn a hero into a weakling or nothing at all. Absent some mystic law of destiny, mere mechanics pretty much guarantees that any macroscopic or even microscopic perturbation will suffice to alter the outcome of every future conception in utterly unpredictable ways and, if the premise that individuals matter is correct, result in a drastically different history. Counterfactual history proves too much.
I had thought about writing a review of a Unmaking the West, yet another book on counterfactual history; but I find it hard to take the practice seriously enough to make the exercise worthwhile. Historians sometimes use the literary conceit of alternative histories to illustrate worthwhile ideas about what actually happened; but when they imagine that their scenarios have probative as opposed to rhetorical or illustrative value, they lose me.
Counterfactual methods are usually deployed in an attempt to underline the role of contingency in history and to discredit thereby the grand theories that claim that history has an overall logic and destiny—over the last 150 years, for example, counterfactual arguments have been a reliable bludgeon in the interminable scholarly war on Marxism. Unfortunately, counterfactual history itself depends upon the presumption of a certain level of predictability in history; for once some plausible variation is postulated—William of Orange gets shot at the Battle of the Boyne or the wind blows the wrong way in 1588—the consequences of the surprise get worked out on the assumption that nothing else surprising takes place and that the predictable consequences of events play out as scheduled. A history made out of non-stop surprises is just as useless to counterfactual history as a history that runs on rails.
In fact, if history really were an incredibly detailed geology of the surface of the earth, a natural science that treated men as mobile rock formations, I expect that we would conclude that the predictions of historical events would be no more trustworthy than weather reports, especially when the forecasts ventured to tell us what happens after next week. Which is why, by the way, the practitioners of counterfactual history routinely sneak the notion of fate back into their tales—a careful sociological analysis of the economic consequences of a lasting French superiority in Europe will not fail to include the bit about a young Corsican who becomes a successful general in Louis XVI’s triumphant armies as if Napoleon would even be born in an alternative future. They really don’t come to terms with the contingencies of the world at all as anybody who really took seriously the physics or even the biology of the issue would have to do.
If individual human beings and their particular talents and foibles are critical to the outcome of history, as many a counterfactual historian has insisted, it doesn’t much matter what historical event you imagine altering in your imaginary parallel world. The non-linearity built into human reproduction guarantees that a total different cast of characters will soon begin to appear in the sequel even if we imagine that nothing much else takes place. Natural selection has decreed that the genetic cards will be very thoroughly shuffled before and, indeed, during each deal. It may take a cannonball to take off William’s head, but it takes the distant reverberation of a gnat’s fart to result in an Albertine instead of an Albert or to turn a hero into a weakling or nothing at all. Absent some mystic law of destiny, mere mechanics pretty much guarantees that any macroscopic or even microscopic perturbation will suffice to alter the outcome of every future conception in utterly unpredictable ways and, if the premise that individuals matter is correct, result in a drastically different history. Counterfactual history proves too much.
Thursday, January 04, 2007
The Necessity of Atheism
The public debate about evolution, like every battle in a culture war, is and always will be conducted by guys in clown suits bopping each other with pig bladders. That's just the way things are. Serious science and serious philosophy are and will remain the business of a tiny and largely invisible minority. The culture wars are not politically unimportant, however, and it behooves us to don our own clown suits from time to time. Sometimes the appropriate clown suit is a village atheist outfit.
Philosophically speaking, atheism is a very uninteresting position since it amounts to making a big fuss about something obvious, i.e. that traditional religious ideas are fatuous. As Diderot pointed out long ago, "It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley; but to believe or not believe in God is not important at all." Atheism, at least the sort of atheism one encounters on public access television, also promotes a version of history which is factually dubious since it endlessly recycles the same banal anthology of religious excesses (Crusades, witch hunts, inquisitions) to somehow prove that organized religion is the root of all evil, a proposition that probably gives the churches too much credit. All that admitted, however, loud and obnoxious atheism is still necessary in a country like the United States, if only to assert the right of people to dissent from the totalitarian conformism to which we are so susceptible.
The argument against public assertions of anti-religious ideas is that such language is politically unwise and will only elicit more intolerance from the religious right. In fact, however, the anguish of the believers is good evidence of the effectiveness of such polemics. It makes a huge difference that skeptical ideas are in circulation. They wouldn't be so loudly denounced if they didn't resonate—there may be more Cotton Mather than Mark Twain in the American character, but there is some Mark Twain. In any case, ideas have to be publicized in order to persist since the vast majority of mankind will never find an idea in their heads that somebody didn't go to the trouble of putting there first.
The public debate about evolution, like every battle in a culture war, is and always will be conducted by guys in clown suits bopping each other with pig bladders. That's just the way things are. Serious science and serious philosophy are and will remain the business of a tiny and largely invisible minority. The culture wars are not politically unimportant, however, and it behooves us to don our own clown suits from time to time. Sometimes the appropriate clown suit is a village atheist outfit.
Philosophically speaking, atheism is a very uninteresting position since it amounts to making a big fuss about something obvious, i.e. that traditional religious ideas are fatuous. As Diderot pointed out long ago, "It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley; but to believe or not believe in God is not important at all." Atheism, at least the sort of atheism one encounters on public access television, also promotes a version of history which is factually dubious since it endlessly recycles the same banal anthology of religious excesses (Crusades, witch hunts, inquisitions) to somehow prove that organized religion is the root of all evil, a proposition that probably gives the churches too much credit. All that admitted, however, loud and obnoxious atheism is still necessary in a country like the United States, if only to assert the right of people to dissent from the totalitarian conformism to which we are so susceptible.
The argument against public assertions of anti-religious ideas is that such language is politically unwise and will only elicit more intolerance from the religious right. In fact, however, the anguish of the believers is good evidence of the effectiveness of such polemics. It makes a huge difference that skeptical ideas are in circulation. They wouldn't be so loudly denounced if they didn't resonate—there may be more Cotton Mather than Mark Twain in the American character, but there is some Mark Twain. In any case, ideas have to be publicized in order to persist since the vast majority of mankind will never find an idea in their heads that somebody didn't go to the trouble of putting there first.
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Who the Heck is Jamil Hussein?
The obsessions of others are sometimes so alien to our own way of thinking that we aren’t even aware of the issues that have set their hair ablaze. Many evangelicals were less concerned about the activities of the U.S.S.R. than the formation of the E.U., for example, because they believed that the unity of Europe was one of the signs of the end of days foretold in the Book of Revelations. A more recent example is the attempt of the right-wing blogosphere to get everybody upset about the case of somebody named Jamil Hussein, who the AP apparently claimed as a source for a story about the burning alive of some Iraqis. The bloggers in question deny the existence of the aforementioned Hussein and insist that the AP story is a fraud. Fraud it may have been—who knows?—but the remarkable thing about the question is that anybody thinks it’s very interesting. Obviously most people’s personal understanding of conditions in Baghdad has nothing to do with an incident very few of them ever heard about. Of course, if the Hussein story were fraudulent and also symptomatic of coverage of Iraq, somebody could claim that it had some importance as a telling example. Unfortunately, however, what has really been typical about media behavior during this affair has been a tendency to act as the propaganda arm of the military: for example, the reporters who brought us the faux-iconic image of the toppling of Saddam’s statue were perfectly aware that the event was a staged photo-op but kept quiet about it since they apparently thought of themselves as part of the war effort. To this day, the newscasters treat official pronouncements as if there were somehow credible: I guess they don’t know the phrase from the Napoleonic Wars: to lie like a bulletin.
Since art is long and time is short, I’m reluctant to come up with new arguments to prove that evolution is a reality, Iraq is a mess, and anvils don’t float. I recognize, however, that a great many people actually think that anecdotes are better evidence than statistics. In that spirit, let me venture a rhetorical bomb of my own. Consider this: three years after the end of World War II, American service men were chatting up frauleins and quaffing beer in taverns all over Germany. In Japan, they were going on sightseeing trips to Mount Fuji. Even during the Vietnam War, marines could go out on the town in Saigon. Does anybody believe that an off-duty American soldier could wander around Ramadi without getting shot, beheaded, or kidnapped? Or is that just what the AP wants you to think?
The obsessions of others are sometimes so alien to our own way of thinking that we aren’t even aware of the issues that have set their hair ablaze. Many evangelicals were less concerned about the activities of the U.S.S.R. than the formation of the E.U., for example, because they believed that the unity of Europe was one of the signs of the end of days foretold in the Book of Revelations. A more recent example is the attempt of the right-wing blogosphere to get everybody upset about the case of somebody named Jamil Hussein, who the AP apparently claimed as a source for a story about the burning alive of some Iraqis. The bloggers in question deny the existence of the aforementioned Hussein and insist that the AP story is a fraud. Fraud it may have been—who knows?—but the remarkable thing about the question is that anybody thinks it’s very interesting. Obviously most people’s personal understanding of conditions in Baghdad has nothing to do with an incident very few of them ever heard about. Of course, if the Hussein story were fraudulent and also symptomatic of coverage of Iraq, somebody could claim that it had some importance as a telling example. Unfortunately, however, what has really been typical about media behavior during this affair has been a tendency to act as the propaganda arm of the military: for example, the reporters who brought us the faux-iconic image of the toppling of Saddam’s statue were perfectly aware that the event was a staged photo-op but kept quiet about it since they apparently thought of themselves as part of the war effort. To this day, the newscasters treat official pronouncements as if there were somehow credible: I guess they don’t know the phrase from the Napoleonic Wars: to lie like a bulletin.
Since art is long and time is short, I’m reluctant to come up with new arguments to prove that evolution is a reality, Iraq is a mess, and anvils don’t float. I recognize, however, that a great many people actually think that anecdotes are better evidence than statistics. In that spirit, let me venture a rhetorical bomb of my own. Consider this: three years after the end of World War II, American service men were chatting up frauleins and quaffing beer in taverns all over Germany. In Japan, they were going on sightseeing trips to Mount Fuji. Even during the Vietnam War, marines could go out on the town in Saigon. Does anybody believe that an off-duty American soldier could wander around Ramadi without getting shot, beheaded, or kidnapped? Or is that just what the AP wants you to think?
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Federalists for Jefferson
You can always tell when a minority political position is gaining ground. The scratchy voices crying out in the wilderness are supplemented and then drowned out by far more unctuous tones as the movement begins to attract supporters who smell new opportunities. Back in the 90s, those of us who publicly attacked the emerging right-wing machine may have suffered from loneliness but the company we did enjoy was very agreeable, at least by our lights. Since we had no political prospects and weren’t operators, we had little incentive to dissemble and mostly didn’t. Perhaps because nobody was offering to buy ‘em, we weren’t much tempted to sell our souls. Anyhow, since the facts were very much on our side, integrity offered a modest but more or less automatic rhetorical advantage at a time when the other rhetorical edges belonged to our enemies. Who knows if the scrupulousness of people such as Joe Conason or Duncan Black or Kos was an expression of character or the product of a situation? Maybe we shouldn’t complain about the journalistic sins of the op/ed writers until we’ve walked a mile in their wingtips. It was easy to be honest when there wasn’t a better option. Things are different now and the newly converted and perhaps some of the old hands, too, will have many new opportunities to lie, cheat, and steal in print.
I certainly don’t expect public debate to be conducted on a very high level under any circumstances and the object of the game in any case is not to preserve a prissy purity but to promote better policies. Scrupulousness is not an art form or an end in itself. Nevertheless, as I emerge from a silence enforced by the twin evils of seasonal affective disorder and full-time employment, I find myself distinctly uncomfortable with some of the new company I’m keeping, including, especially, people like Arianna Huffington, whose Huffington Post borrows so many of the propaganda techniques of the right-wing press. Her blog assembles many news items from the AP and various newspapers but presents them under headlines that drastically spin their contents, often in astonishingly misleading directions. Huffington herself engages in the kind of personal attacks based on pop psychology that the mainstream press used to sink Al Gore—as you’ll recall, that’s how they got all that blood on their hands—but her favorite target seems to be Hillary Clinton, who she portrays as a scheming harridan as if ambition were a sin in womankind. The point isn’t that Clinton shouldn’t be criticized or even that misogynists should shut up, but that Arianna uses her tactics with such obvious cynicism. She’s not an Neanderthal like Chris Matthews whose hatred of female politicians is an authentic expression of inherited prejudice and personal stupidity. She’s just an opportunist, for whom activating poisonous stereotypes is unobjectionable as long as it happens to be useful at the moment, just as not too long ago, she had no compunction about portraying the rather conservative Diana Feinstein as a raving radical leftist in order to promote the senatorial campaign of her then husband, who was running under false colors as a right-wing Republican. Arianna surely understands the bit about strange bedfellows in politics, and I do too; but I find it difficult to feel comfortable with this particular ally even though, for the time being, her very real talents are mostly being used in favor of causes dear to me.
You can always tell when a minority political position is gaining ground. The scratchy voices crying out in the wilderness are supplemented and then drowned out by far more unctuous tones as the movement begins to attract supporters who smell new opportunities. Back in the 90s, those of us who publicly attacked the emerging right-wing machine may have suffered from loneliness but the company we did enjoy was very agreeable, at least by our lights. Since we had no political prospects and weren’t operators, we had little incentive to dissemble and mostly didn’t. Perhaps because nobody was offering to buy ‘em, we weren’t much tempted to sell our souls. Anyhow, since the facts were very much on our side, integrity offered a modest but more or less automatic rhetorical advantage at a time when the other rhetorical edges belonged to our enemies. Who knows if the scrupulousness of people such as Joe Conason or Duncan Black or Kos was an expression of character or the product of a situation? Maybe we shouldn’t complain about the journalistic sins of the op/ed writers until we’ve walked a mile in their wingtips. It was easy to be honest when there wasn’t a better option. Things are different now and the newly converted and perhaps some of the old hands, too, will have many new opportunities to lie, cheat, and steal in print.
I certainly don’t expect public debate to be conducted on a very high level under any circumstances and the object of the game in any case is not to preserve a prissy purity but to promote better policies. Scrupulousness is not an art form or an end in itself. Nevertheless, as I emerge from a silence enforced by the twin evils of seasonal affective disorder and full-time employment, I find myself distinctly uncomfortable with some of the new company I’m keeping, including, especially, people like Arianna Huffington, whose Huffington Post borrows so many of the propaganda techniques of the right-wing press. Her blog assembles many news items from the AP and various newspapers but presents them under headlines that drastically spin their contents, often in astonishingly misleading directions. Huffington herself engages in the kind of personal attacks based on pop psychology that the mainstream press used to sink Al Gore—as you’ll recall, that’s how they got all that blood on their hands—but her favorite target seems to be Hillary Clinton, who she portrays as a scheming harridan as if ambition were a sin in womankind. The point isn’t that Clinton shouldn’t be criticized or even that misogynists should shut up, but that Arianna uses her tactics with such obvious cynicism. She’s not an Neanderthal like Chris Matthews whose hatred of female politicians is an authentic expression of inherited prejudice and personal stupidity. She’s just an opportunist, for whom activating poisonous stereotypes is unobjectionable as long as it happens to be useful at the moment, just as not too long ago, she had no compunction about portraying the rather conservative Diana Feinstein as a raving radical leftist in order to promote the senatorial campaign of her then husband, who was running under false colors as a right-wing Republican. Arianna surely understands the bit about strange bedfellows in politics, and I do too; but I find it difficult to feel comfortable with this particular ally even though, for the time being, her very real talents are mostly being used in favor of causes dear to me.
Saturday, September 02, 2006
Disquieting
Today’s videotape from Al Qaeda may be something more than business as usual, not because the spokesman is Adam Gadahn, AKA Azzam the American, but because the message contains a formal invitation to convert or submit: “We invite all Americans and believers to Islam, whatever their role and status in Bush and Blair’s world order. Decide today, because today could be your last day.”
I happen to be reading Wahhabi Islam by Natana J. Delong-Bas and found a footnote that informs me that not only Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, eponymous founder of the school of Islam dominant in Saudi Arabia, but a consensus of Islamic scholars insist that the enemy must be summoned to Islam before the initiation of war. In this context, the Gadahn statement strikes me as just the kind of formal nicety that zealots somehow think will have the same meaning for non-believers as it does for them. Since it is now September and two obvious days for an attack are approaching, Labor Day and 9/11, I’m waiting with some trepidation for what happens next.
By the way, just in case the world doesn’t come to an end, let me say a word about Wahhabism because so many people have been influenced by works like Stephen Schwartz’ Two Faces of Islam that trace contemporary militant Islam back to Abd al-Wahhab, a late 18th Century religious leader, even though, as Delong-Bas notes, Wahhab’s uncompromising and rather austere version of Islam does not emphasize holy war on the infidels for the unsurprising reason that the Arabia of his day wasn’t threatened by non-Muslim outsiders. Wahhabism in its later incarnations may have become identified with more fire-breathing versions of the faith—the ferocious Islam of medieval Ibn Taymiyya and the modern Siyyid Qutb, both of whom were responding to external threats—but the original movement was rather like one of the Protestant Great Awakenings, a movement of internal reform, not a call for aggressive war. That doesn’t mean that Wahhabism, even in its early form, wasn’t rather alarming. It was. It just wasn’t more alarming than the contemporary competition and, more to the point, Wahhab’s opinions don’t have very much to do with what people do in his name in 2006. As I never tire of repeating, religions don’t have any bones. They can become anything.
Today’s videotape from Al Qaeda may be something more than business as usual, not because the spokesman is Adam Gadahn, AKA Azzam the American, but because the message contains a formal invitation to convert or submit: “We invite all Americans and believers to Islam, whatever their role and status in Bush and Blair’s world order. Decide today, because today could be your last day.”
I happen to be reading Wahhabi Islam by Natana J. Delong-Bas and found a footnote that informs me that not only Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, eponymous founder of the school of Islam dominant in Saudi Arabia, but a consensus of Islamic scholars insist that the enemy must be summoned to Islam before the initiation of war. In this context, the Gadahn statement strikes me as just the kind of formal nicety that zealots somehow think will have the same meaning for non-believers as it does for them. Since it is now September and two obvious days for an attack are approaching, Labor Day and 9/11, I’m waiting with some trepidation for what happens next.
By the way, just in case the world doesn’t come to an end, let me say a word about Wahhabism because so many people have been influenced by works like Stephen Schwartz’ Two Faces of Islam that trace contemporary militant Islam back to Abd al-Wahhab, a late 18th Century religious leader, even though, as Delong-Bas notes, Wahhab’s uncompromising and rather austere version of Islam does not emphasize holy war on the infidels for the unsurprising reason that the Arabia of his day wasn’t threatened by non-Muslim outsiders. Wahhabism in its later incarnations may have become identified with more fire-breathing versions of the faith—the ferocious Islam of medieval Ibn Taymiyya and the modern Siyyid Qutb, both of whom were responding to external threats—but the original movement was rather like one of the Protestant Great Awakenings, a movement of internal reform, not a call for aggressive war. That doesn’t mean that Wahhabism, even in its early form, wasn’t rather alarming. It was. It just wasn’t more alarming than the contemporary competition and, more to the point, Wahhab’s opinions don’t have very much to do with what people do in his name in 2006. As I never tire of repeating, religions don’t have any bones. They can become anything.
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Narcissus, Unimpressed
“Know before whom you stand” is inscribed on the top of the Torah case in many synagogues. I’ve written the same message on the top of my bathroom mirror, though hardly as an exercise in megalomania.
Most of us don’t get ourselves crucified, but the path of even a more or less satisfactory life is marked off by such stations of the cross as the moment when you realize that your plans have failed and you’ll have to make do with fantasies, and the moment when you discover that you have to imagine that you still have desires in order to go on dreaming, and the moment when you recognize that dreaming is as much of a chore as doing the dishes.
I’m anything but a good person, and yet I have a certain automatic generosity. I don’t much care who enjoys something as long as somebody does. It’s as if I believed that there was only one actor behind every part in the play, the self-same crazy hunger chanting “I am the eater, I am the eater, I am the eater!” through its innumerable ravenous mouths. (Or “Feed me!” if you prefer the Little Shop of Horrors to the Upanishads.)
The sad fact that a question isn’t necessarily profound just because it doesn’t have an answer.
“Know before whom you stand” is inscribed on the top of the Torah case in many synagogues. I’ve written the same message on the top of my bathroom mirror, though hardly as an exercise in megalomania.
Most of us don’t get ourselves crucified, but the path of even a more or less satisfactory life is marked off by such stations of the cross as the moment when you realize that your plans have failed and you’ll have to make do with fantasies, and the moment when you discover that you have to imagine that you still have desires in order to go on dreaming, and the moment when you recognize that dreaming is as much of a chore as doing the dishes.
I’m anything but a good person, and yet I have a certain automatic generosity. I don’t much care who enjoys something as long as somebody does. It’s as if I believed that there was only one actor behind every part in the play, the self-same crazy hunger chanting “I am the eater, I am the eater, I am the eater!” through its innumerable ravenous mouths. (Or “Feed me!” if you prefer the Little Shop of Horrors to the Upanishads.)
The sad fact that a question isn’t necessarily profound just because it doesn’t have an answer.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
The Fifth Rerun of Wagon Train
It is gradually dawning on quite a few people that last week’s terror plot probably wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be. Indeed, since none of the villains of the piece had made any bombs or bought airline tickets and many of them didn’t even have passports, it’s not clear that they were ever ready to even rehearse, let alone pull off a massive attack. The charges against the group depend on the testimony, probably extracted under torture, of a man in Pakistani custody. Meanwhile, both Bush and Blair stood in urgent need of a renewal of public panic; and both have a long track record of exaggerating and misrepresenting facts for political gain. Now it is true that even the most relentless bluffer is sometimes dealt good cards. There may indeed have been some sort of plot. Chances are, however, that our boys are just blowing smoke again. Granted the extreme incompetence of these administrations, a real plot would have most likely have been revealed by planes plummeting to the ground. If these guys are able to thwart it, the threat can’t be too serious.
It is gradually dawning on quite a few people that last week’s terror plot probably wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be. Indeed, since none of the villains of the piece had made any bombs or bought airline tickets and many of them didn’t even have passports, it’s not clear that they were ever ready to even rehearse, let alone pull off a massive attack. The charges against the group depend on the testimony, probably extracted under torture, of a man in Pakistani custody. Meanwhile, both Bush and Blair stood in urgent need of a renewal of public panic; and both have a long track record of exaggerating and misrepresenting facts for political gain. Now it is true that even the most relentless bluffer is sometimes dealt good cards. There may indeed have been some sort of plot. Chances are, however, that our boys are just blowing smoke again. Granted the extreme incompetence of these administrations, a real plot would have most likely have been revealed by planes plummeting to the ground. If these guys are able to thwart it, the threat can’t be too serious.
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
The Murphy Bed
People who love books are advised not to open bookstores on the same reasoning that suggests that the perfect spouse is somebody you don’t hate but don’t particularly like either. I once contemplated a career in the ministry on this basis, figuring that a passionless disbeliever would make a well-nigh ideal Episcopalian priest. Besides, I rather looked the part. As a trial run, I once conducted a service at Pomona College, which went OK, although the congregation was puzzled why I had them sing the hymn about “those in peril on the sea”—I had written the wrong number down in my notes. The clerical theme crops up later in my story as well, though these days, I’ve given up impersonating a Protestant preacher in favor of being mistaken for a local Hassidic rabbi. The rumor that I’m actually Pope Benedict blogging under an assumed name is unsupported by credible evidence, however.
The point is—there must be a point around here someplace—the point is I don’t have any dislike of churches or theologies. I don’t think there is a particle of truth in the articles of anybody’s faith, but that’s not much of an argument against religion. Human life needs a ritual dimension; or, to be more accurate, we prefer not to leave dead family members out in the trash, even if we don’t believe in the prospect of recycling. It’s only humane and decent to frame the facts of our existence with due ceremony. Literal belief in Gods and spirits is unnecessary and, in any case, largely irrelevant even to most believers because modern religiosity is like a Murphy bed. It folds away when not in use.
You often encounter biologists who vigorously oppose the thesis of intelligent design on the unimpeachable grounds that it isn’t science and yet maintain their own Sunday-morning version of divine design. Nature shows no trace of the workings of an extraneous intelligence—the VIN numbers having been filed off the mitochondria—but one can certainly claim that the entire system of the world was created with just the right characteristics to produce intelligent life. Conway Morris, in his otherwise very impressive book Life’s Devices, makes this argument; and is obviously proud of it, too, even though it is very little more than a restatement of the rather basic theorem of modal logic that everything actual was formerly possible. Even the fact, if it is a fact, that the constants of physics have to be almost exactly what they are in order to make life possible, doesn’t provide any evidence of “fine tuning.” Indeed, the expression “fine tuning” is itself an instance of question begging since the whole issue is whether there ever was any tuning or any tuner in the first place. Anyhow, if it is miraculous that our emergence was, like the Battle of Waterloo, a close run thing, adding a second miracle to explain the first won’t lessen the peculiarity of the situation. But if Morris’ argument is a non-starter from a philosophical point of view, it is also a completely harmless one since it has been carefully crafted to have no consequences whatsoever for the conduct of the sciences or for our understating of nature. A perfect Murphy bed.
Incidentally, I was reminded of the Morris book recently when I encountered a somewhat similar line of reasoning in R.J.P. Williams and J.J.R. Frausto de Silva’s “the Chemistry of Evolution,” which, while carefully avoiding theological overtones, attempts to understand the evolution of living things as the more or less inevitable unfolding of the potentialities of elements under the conditions that obtained in early Earth history. Williams and de Silva speak about the emergence of general ways of processing energy and matter such as anaerobic prokaryotes or unicellular eukaryotes or animals with nervous systems and brains rather than of particular taxa while Morris argues, much less plausibly, for the inevitability of something recognizably human, down to bipedal locomotion. Even so, I expect that Williams and de Silva have overstated their case, but I’m inclined to think that the table of Mendeleev does explain rather more than the tablets of Moses. The Chemistry of Evolution book also has the virtue of underling the role of inorganic chemistry in the development and functioning of living things, something rather lost in many popular accounts of living things, reflecting as such accounts do the prejudices of the organic chemists and the journalists’ obsession with DNA.
People who love books are advised not to open bookstores on the same reasoning that suggests that the perfect spouse is somebody you don’t hate but don’t particularly like either. I once contemplated a career in the ministry on this basis, figuring that a passionless disbeliever would make a well-nigh ideal Episcopalian priest. Besides, I rather looked the part. As a trial run, I once conducted a service at Pomona College, which went OK, although the congregation was puzzled why I had them sing the hymn about “those in peril on the sea”—I had written the wrong number down in my notes. The clerical theme crops up later in my story as well, though these days, I’ve given up impersonating a Protestant preacher in favor of being mistaken for a local Hassidic rabbi. The rumor that I’m actually Pope Benedict blogging under an assumed name is unsupported by credible evidence, however.
The point is—there must be a point around here someplace—the point is I don’t have any dislike of churches or theologies. I don’t think there is a particle of truth in the articles of anybody’s faith, but that’s not much of an argument against religion. Human life needs a ritual dimension; or, to be more accurate, we prefer not to leave dead family members out in the trash, even if we don’t believe in the prospect of recycling. It’s only humane and decent to frame the facts of our existence with due ceremony. Literal belief in Gods and spirits is unnecessary and, in any case, largely irrelevant even to most believers because modern religiosity is like a Murphy bed. It folds away when not in use.
You often encounter biologists who vigorously oppose the thesis of intelligent design on the unimpeachable grounds that it isn’t science and yet maintain their own Sunday-morning version of divine design. Nature shows no trace of the workings of an extraneous intelligence—the VIN numbers having been filed off the mitochondria—but one can certainly claim that the entire system of the world was created with just the right characteristics to produce intelligent life. Conway Morris, in his otherwise very impressive book Life’s Devices, makes this argument; and is obviously proud of it, too, even though it is very little more than a restatement of the rather basic theorem of modal logic that everything actual was formerly possible. Even the fact, if it is a fact, that the constants of physics have to be almost exactly what they are in order to make life possible, doesn’t provide any evidence of “fine tuning.” Indeed, the expression “fine tuning” is itself an instance of question begging since the whole issue is whether there ever was any tuning or any tuner in the first place. Anyhow, if it is miraculous that our emergence was, like the Battle of Waterloo, a close run thing, adding a second miracle to explain the first won’t lessen the peculiarity of the situation. But if Morris’ argument is a non-starter from a philosophical point of view, it is also a completely harmless one since it has been carefully crafted to have no consequences whatsoever for the conduct of the sciences or for our understating of nature. A perfect Murphy bed.
Incidentally, I was reminded of the Morris book recently when I encountered a somewhat similar line of reasoning in R.J.P. Williams and J.J.R. Frausto de Silva’s “the Chemistry of Evolution,” which, while carefully avoiding theological overtones, attempts to understand the evolution of living things as the more or less inevitable unfolding of the potentialities of elements under the conditions that obtained in early Earth history. Williams and de Silva speak about the emergence of general ways of processing energy and matter such as anaerobic prokaryotes or unicellular eukaryotes or animals with nervous systems and brains rather than of particular taxa while Morris argues, much less plausibly, for the inevitability of something recognizably human, down to bipedal locomotion. Even so, I expect that Williams and de Silva have overstated their case, but I’m inclined to think that the table of Mendeleev does explain rather more than the tablets of Moses. The Chemistry of Evolution book also has the virtue of underling the role of inorganic chemistry in the development and functioning of living things, something rather lost in many popular accounts of living things, reflecting as such accounts do the prejudices of the organic chemists and the journalists’ obsession with DNA.
Friday, August 04, 2006
Democratic Deficits
I mostly hear the term “democratic deficit” used in relation to the situation in the European Union where the bureaucrats in Brussels are largely independent of any control by elected bodies; but the EU case, whose consequences have mostly been benign, is hardly anomalous. Worldwide, the will of the people only matters when it happens to coincide with the desires of some ruling group. Thus, most citizens of the United Kingdom didn’t support British participation in the Iraq invasion and want the troops brought home. Opinion in the United States has trended strongly in the same direction. That doesn’t seem to matter. Indeed, bringing up the disconnect between the wishes of the public and the government may be counterproductive since it is demonstrates to the operators of the system how little they have to fear from below. Every defeat of the people reinforces the arrogance of the elites. Having lost their inhibitions, the politicians and technocrats cheerfully fix elections, corrupt judicial systems, intimidate the press, and—if necessary—overturn the occasional inconvenient electoral result by simply murdering their opponents, Israeli style. I’m reminded of the Don Larson cartoon where the trained bears suddenly discover how easy it is to tear off their muzzles.
I’m not a proponent of universal populism. My political philosophy is banal indeed, a barely updated version of Aristotle’s theory of mixed government; and I believe that the will of the people is only one element in a happily constituted state. Private property and the economic inequality that goes with it require that society be maintained in a condition of perpetual tension; and science and many other cultural institutions are also anti-popular institutions that have to be maintained against the ignorance and superstition normal to our species. Nevertheless, when the level of exploitation of the many by the few becomes greater than the level at which it promotes a higher general level of welfare, it becomes morally problematic; and when it rises without moderation, it becomes practically unsustainable. Of course, it may be that advances in military technology and propaganda techniques will allow elites to maintain or increase their control; but I think it is more likely that the end of the era of economic and demographic expansion will eventually destroy the dynamic equilibrium as the haves fall out among themselves and the have-nots figure out how to get even. This set of contradictions has already resulted in at least one casualty: the word Democracy, which, like Lenin’s body, has been reeking of formaldehyde for some time now.
I mostly hear the term “democratic deficit” used in relation to the situation in the European Union where the bureaucrats in Brussels are largely independent of any control by elected bodies; but the EU case, whose consequences have mostly been benign, is hardly anomalous. Worldwide, the will of the people only matters when it happens to coincide with the desires of some ruling group. Thus, most citizens of the United Kingdom didn’t support British participation in the Iraq invasion and want the troops brought home. Opinion in the United States has trended strongly in the same direction. That doesn’t seem to matter. Indeed, bringing up the disconnect between the wishes of the public and the government may be counterproductive since it is demonstrates to the operators of the system how little they have to fear from below. Every defeat of the people reinforces the arrogance of the elites. Having lost their inhibitions, the politicians and technocrats cheerfully fix elections, corrupt judicial systems, intimidate the press, and—if necessary—overturn the occasional inconvenient electoral result by simply murdering their opponents, Israeli style. I’m reminded of the Don Larson cartoon where the trained bears suddenly discover how easy it is to tear off their muzzles.
I’m not a proponent of universal populism. My political philosophy is banal indeed, a barely updated version of Aristotle’s theory of mixed government; and I believe that the will of the people is only one element in a happily constituted state. Private property and the economic inequality that goes with it require that society be maintained in a condition of perpetual tension; and science and many other cultural institutions are also anti-popular institutions that have to be maintained against the ignorance and superstition normal to our species. Nevertheless, when the level of exploitation of the many by the few becomes greater than the level at which it promotes a higher general level of welfare, it becomes morally problematic; and when it rises without moderation, it becomes practically unsustainable. Of course, it may be that advances in military technology and propaganda techniques will allow elites to maintain or increase their control; but I think it is more likely that the end of the era of economic and demographic expansion will eventually destroy the dynamic equilibrium as the haves fall out among themselves and the have-nots figure out how to get even. This set of contradictions has already resulted in at least one casualty: the word Democracy, which, like Lenin’s body, has been reeking of formaldehyde for some time now.
Monday, July 17, 2006
Sexually Based Offenses are Considered Particularly Marketable
Television is often a victimless crime. When some cable channel talking head makes a few bucks by hosting a special on an alien autopsy or the Shroud of Turin, the willful misrepresentation of the facts is no more objectionable than the net stockings on a hooker. It’s just something the johns like; and the second-rate celebrities that host these shows probably figure that the work, inglorious as it is, still beats opening strip malls. The calculated promotion of public ignorance is far harder to excuse when real human beings are hurt in the process. I’m not just thinking of the way the corporate shills on CNBS encourages stock market speculation or Fox stokes the natural cowardice of the American people in order to justify war and torture. The entertainment shows also spread false and misleading ideas and do so far more effectively than any blond harpy on CNN.
It is the premise of countless television shows that sex offenders are impossible to rehabilitate and should be locked up forever. For Law and Order Special Victims Unit and the others, once a molester, always a molester is a genre convention like the well-known fact that you can’t see vampires in the mirror. Now it is very hard to come by reliable statistics on recidivism, but the biggest meta-statistical study I’ve encountered suggests that the recidivism rate for sex crimes is approximately 13.4%, notably lower than the 40+% recidivism rate for other crimes. Apparently the guy you really, really don’t want moving in next door isn’t Ernie the perv, but a garden-variety mugger.
Granted that it is childishly easy and highly profitable to get people hysterical about sexual offenses, don’t television producers, writers, and actors have some responsibility for riling up the lynch mob? The real justification for permanently stigmatizing sexual offenders is not that their crimes are especially harmful—a lot of these guys are hapless flashers and voyeurs, after all, and some of them are sixteen year old boys caught groping their fifteen year old girlfriends—but that the public can be made to believe that the rare cases of homicidal child-abusers are somehow typical and that people who like child pornography are very likely to feel up the next kid they meet. To speak like an anthropologist, sex crimes are sacred. One has to believe that they are qualitatively different than other crimes since they are a real but much smaller problem quantitatively.
Television is often a victimless crime. When some cable channel talking head makes a few bucks by hosting a special on an alien autopsy or the Shroud of Turin, the willful misrepresentation of the facts is no more objectionable than the net stockings on a hooker. It’s just something the johns like; and the second-rate celebrities that host these shows probably figure that the work, inglorious as it is, still beats opening strip malls. The calculated promotion of public ignorance is far harder to excuse when real human beings are hurt in the process. I’m not just thinking of the way the corporate shills on CNBS encourages stock market speculation or Fox stokes the natural cowardice of the American people in order to justify war and torture. The entertainment shows also spread false and misleading ideas and do so far more effectively than any blond harpy on CNN.
It is the premise of countless television shows that sex offenders are impossible to rehabilitate and should be locked up forever. For Law and Order Special Victims Unit and the others, once a molester, always a molester is a genre convention like the well-known fact that you can’t see vampires in the mirror. Now it is very hard to come by reliable statistics on recidivism, but the biggest meta-statistical study I’ve encountered suggests that the recidivism rate for sex crimes is approximately 13.4%, notably lower than the 40+% recidivism rate for other crimes. Apparently the guy you really, really don’t want moving in next door isn’t Ernie the perv, but a garden-variety mugger.
Granted that it is childishly easy and highly profitable to get people hysterical about sexual offenses, don’t television producers, writers, and actors have some responsibility for riling up the lynch mob? The real justification for permanently stigmatizing sexual offenders is not that their crimes are especially harmful—a lot of these guys are hapless flashers and voyeurs, after all, and some of them are sixteen year old boys caught groping their fifteen year old girlfriends—but that the public can be made to believe that the rare cases of homicidal child-abusers are somehow typical and that people who like child pornography are very likely to feel up the next kid they meet. To speak like an anthropologist, sex crimes are sacred. One has to believe that they are qualitatively different than other crimes since they are a real but much smaller problem quantitatively.
Thursday, June 29, 2006
An Iliad of Woes
In the third book of the Iliad, the Greeks and Trojans get the brilliant idea of settling their ten-year long war by a single combat between Paris, the abductor of Helen, and Menelaus, the outraged cuckold. For thousands of years now, students have been asking why this solution didn’t occur to anybody before so many warriors had already become a feast for the vultures. I have a similar question as I read about the Iraqi government’s proposal to end the civil war by trading an agreement for the withdrawal of all foreign troops for a general cessation of hostilities. After all, in the immediate aftermath of our invasion, the United States could have promised to leave at a time certain and thus preempted the main motive of the insurrection.
One knows the answer to the Homeric riddle. Troy was doomed. A reasonable composition of the quarrel would have thwarted the will of the Gods, and even a postponed duel between the aggrieved parties could not be allowed to resolve things until every drop of fated blood had been shed. Aphrodite duly intervenes to save Paris before Menelaus can finish him off. Things are much the same in Mesopotamia. In the Iraqi instance, our own Zeus can be counted on to guarantee the continued misery of all concerned, though it may be a challenge to figure out how to twist the arms of our erstwhile local allies and ensure that all five acts of the tragedy be performed before the curtain.
In the third book of the Iliad, the Greeks and Trojans get the brilliant idea of settling their ten-year long war by a single combat between Paris, the abductor of Helen, and Menelaus, the outraged cuckold. For thousands of years now, students have been asking why this solution didn’t occur to anybody before so many warriors had already become a feast for the vultures. I have a similar question as I read about the Iraqi government’s proposal to end the civil war by trading an agreement for the withdrawal of all foreign troops for a general cessation of hostilities. After all, in the immediate aftermath of our invasion, the United States could have promised to leave at a time certain and thus preempted the main motive of the insurrection.
One knows the answer to the Homeric riddle. Troy was doomed. A reasonable composition of the quarrel would have thwarted the will of the Gods, and even a postponed duel between the aggrieved parties could not be allowed to resolve things until every drop of fated blood had been shed. Aphrodite duly intervenes to save Paris before Menelaus can finish him off. Things are much the same in Mesopotamia. In the Iraqi instance, our own Zeus can be counted on to guarantee the continued misery of all concerned, though it may be a challenge to figure out how to twist the arms of our erstwhile local allies and ensure that all five acts of the tragedy be performed before the curtain.
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Gummed to Death by Gabby Hayes
One of the most persistent and mysterious myths about political blogging is the notion that the average blogger is young, poor, and badly educated. In fact, to judge by recent surveys, most bloggers and most readers of blogs are down-right long in the tooth—in a study of those whippersnapper Kos people, the most overrepresented age bracket was the over 65 set. Bloggers also tend to be both better educated than the average American, which is hardly surprising since people who are comfortable with writing are likely to more highly literate than the norm. They are also relatively well-off.
I’m skeptical of the political potential of the Blogosphere, at least as a medium for mass mobilization. Communicating in whole sentences is just too demanding for most people, especially since even people with the requisite English skills are often too busy or too distracted to relish an activity as high-energy as writing or even reading blog posts. For the common reader, the seriousness, novelty, and complexity of the arguments one finds on many sites are far more apotropaic than the often bewailed tendency of some bloggers to operate at a level of obscenity reminiscent of Deadwood. Because they are highly articulate, however, the bloggers may exert an indirect effect on future politics by working on the minds of members of political elites. And because they and their readers have considerable disposable income, they do have the wherewithal to get politicians to listen to them.
A character in one of my old science fiction stories notices that the headline on Time magazine cover reads “The Baby Boomers Turn 80 This Year!” Well, we aren’t 80 yet, but maybe the true secret meaning of the Blogging vogue is the advent of a generational geezer attack, something rather like what takes place in a zombie movie except that the web’s shambling monsters make a lot more editorial comments than the traditional brain-eaters.
One of the most persistent and mysterious myths about political blogging is the notion that the average blogger is young, poor, and badly educated. In fact, to judge by recent surveys, most bloggers and most readers of blogs are down-right long in the tooth—in a study of those whippersnapper Kos people, the most overrepresented age bracket was the over 65 set. Bloggers also tend to be both better educated than the average American, which is hardly surprising since people who are comfortable with writing are likely to more highly literate than the norm. They are also relatively well-off.
I’m skeptical of the political potential of the Blogosphere, at least as a medium for mass mobilization. Communicating in whole sentences is just too demanding for most people, especially since even people with the requisite English skills are often too busy or too distracted to relish an activity as high-energy as writing or even reading blog posts. For the common reader, the seriousness, novelty, and complexity of the arguments one finds on many sites are far more apotropaic than the often bewailed tendency of some bloggers to operate at a level of obscenity reminiscent of Deadwood. Because they are highly articulate, however, the bloggers may exert an indirect effect on future politics by working on the minds of members of political elites. And because they and their readers have considerable disposable income, they do have the wherewithal to get politicians to listen to them.
A character in one of my old science fiction stories notices that the headline on Time magazine cover reads “The Baby Boomers Turn 80 This Year!” Well, we aren’t 80 yet, but maybe the true secret meaning of the Blogging vogue is the advent of a generational geezer attack, something rather like what takes place in a zombie movie except that the web’s shambling monsters make a lot more editorial comments than the traditional brain-eaters.
Sunday, June 25, 2006
A Looming Threat
As many people have pointed out, it is more than a little ironic that so many established journalists are currently publishing attacks on the blogosphere on the theory that it is under the control of puppet masters like Marcos, the founder of the Daily Kos. After all, the pundit counter-offensive appears to be far more coordinated than the normal activities of the anarchistic net. Indeed, when the Op-ed writers aren’t calling the bloggers on their groupthink, they are complaining about net-based opinion precisely because it is uncontrollable. Nothing on the net corresponds to the editorial section of the New York Times. There is no permanent high ground. Anybody is liable to say anything, including, for example, pointing out that the defining feature of American elite journalism is its startling lack of talent.
Like most people who actually blog, I doubt if blogging is going to bring the millennium or even turn out to be politically important except at the margins. Indeed, the greatest the new modality’s most significant impact may be to accelerate the tempo of serious debate in academic and scientific disciplines. Participation in the electronic conversation is rather too strenuous to attract mass participation, which partly explains why so many bloggers are in their 50s and 60s. There just aren’t that many younger people who are willing or able to write paragraphs in the dead of night. But I doubt if the Swift Boating of the bloggers is motivated as much by the realistic political threat they represent to conservative and liberal orthodoxy as by the pundits’ anger at the recognition of their own increasing marginalization. The New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Republic, and the rest are steadily losing readers and credibility. The blogosphere—as opposed to the Internet as a whole—may have little to do with the downfall of the traditional media and the declining status of the talking heads; but it is a convenient scapegoat. As usual, the defense of privilege is more fervent than the defense of principle.
As many people have pointed out, it is more than a little ironic that so many established journalists are currently publishing attacks on the blogosphere on the theory that it is under the control of puppet masters like Marcos, the founder of the Daily Kos. After all, the pundit counter-offensive appears to be far more coordinated than the normal activities of the anarchistic net. Indeed, when the Op-ed writers aren’t calling the bloggers on their groupthink, they are complaining about net-based opinion precisely because it is uncontrollable. Nothing on the net corresponds to the editorial section of the New York Times. There is no permanent high ground. Anybody is liable to say anything, including, for example, pointing out that the defining feature of American elite journalism is its startling lack of talent.
Like most people who actually blog, I doubt if blogging is going to bring the millennium or even turn out to be politically important except at the margins. Indeed, the greatest the new modality’s most significant impact may be to accelerate the tempo of serious debate in academic and scientific disciplines. Participation in the electronic conversation is rather too strenuous to attract mass participation, which partly explains why so many bloggers are in their 50s and 60s. There just aren’t that many younger people who are willing or able to write paragraphs in the dead of night. But I doubt if the Swift Boating of the bloggers is motivated as much by the realistic political threat they represent to conservative and liberal orthodoxy as by the pundits’ anger at the recognition of their own increasing marginalization. The New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Republic, and the rest are steadily losing readers and credibility. The blogosphere—as opposed to the Internet as a whole—may have little to do with the downfall of the traditional media and the declining status of the talking heads; but it is a convenient scapegoat. As usual, the defense of privilege is more fervent than the defense of principle.
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
I’m Not Interested in Figuring Out Whether I’m Leaning Left or Right—I Have a Hard Enough Time Remaining Vertical
The notion that netroot Democrats are a radical protest group may be politically useful spin, but it is analytically inaccurate. The center of gravity of the dissident bloggers is located in the middle, not the periphery—Kos, Atrios, Brad DeLong, Marshall and many others are liberals, not leftists. The occasional old guard types that do surface in the comment sections from time to time stand out as a bit quaint, blue-dog Marxists among the irritated pragmatists. Remarkably few commentators are dreaming about nationalizing the toilet paper factories. The funny thing is that many of the bloggers think of themselves as more leftist than they actually are, perhaps unconsciously buying into the right-wing way of conceptualizing things. For the right, after all, Eisenhower was a pinko.
You also read that the Democrats on the web have no positive program. This too is spin. Precisely because the developing consensus of the netroots is anything but radical, its values and policy preferences are bound to be less dramatic than the revolutionists on the right. If you don’t want to repeal the Bill of Rights and you aren’t proposing an invasion of yet another foreign country or attempting to establish a national church, you’re bound to have more trouble making headlines than your photogenic opponents with their amusing pathologies. Even universal health care, a traditional Democratic goal sometimes featured as radical, obviously is anything but groundbreaking. It’s catch-up—Indoor plumbing! What will they think of next! Taking the energy crisis and global warming seriously isn’t daring innovation either. It’s what we obviously ought to do.
Unfortunately, a manifesto composed almost entirely of sensible proposals aimed at managing real problems is not going to make very inspiring reading. Maybe I’ll take a whack at composing one. I’m told I’m good at dull.
The notion that netroot Democrats are a radical protest group may be politically useful spin, but it is analytically inaccurate. The center of gravity of the dissident bloggers is located in the middle, not the periphery—Kos, Atrios, Brad DeLong, Marshall and many others are liberals, not leftists. The occasional old guard types that do surface in the comment sections from time to time stand out as a bit quaint, blue-dog Marxists among the irritated pragmatists. Remarkably few commentators are dreaming about nationalizing the toilet paper factories. The funny thing is that many of the bloggers think of themselves as more leftist than they actually are, perhaps unconsciously buying into the right-wing way of conceptualizing things. For the right, after all, Eisenhower was a pinko.
You also read that the Democrats on the web have no positive program. This too is spin. Precisely because the developing consensus of the netroots is anything but radical, its values and policy preferences are bound to be less dramatic than the revolutionists on the right. If you don’t want to repeal the Bill of Rights and you aren’t proposing an invasion of yet another foreign country or attempting to establish a national church, you’re bound to have more trouble making headlines than your photogenic opponents with their amusing pathologies. Even universal health care, a traditional Democratic goal sometimes featured as radical, obviously is anything but groundbreaking. It’s catch-up—Indoor plumbing! What will they think of next! Taking the energy crisis and global warming seriously isn’t daring innovation either. It’s what we obviously ought to do.
Unfortunately, a manifesto composed almost entirely of sensible proposals aimed at managing real problems is not going to make very inspiring reading. Maybe I’ll take a whack at composing one. I’m told I’m good at dull.
On the Advantages of Maintaining a Sense of Humor about Human Sexuality, a Not Exactly Pindaric Ode inspired by an Internet Debate on the Impropriety of Certain Amorous Proclivities
All our games are coarse and rude,
Unless, of course, you’re in the mood.
Besides, when you come down to it,
Both girls and boys are full of shit
As was delivered by the Saint
Commenting on the human taint
Betwixt the boudoir and the loo
And number one and number two
Where we beget and were begot
And go to get and to be got.
All our games are coarse and rude,
Unless, of course, you’re in the mood.
Besides, when you come down to it,
Both girls and boys are full of shit
As was delivered by the Saint
Commenting on the human taint
Betwixt the boudoir and the loo
And number one and number two
Where we beget and were begot
And go to get and to be got.
Monday, June 19, 2006
Academics and Politics
Profs often complain that they are ineffective politically because people resent their intellectual level. No doubt that occurs, but I think the main reason that academics have trouble reaching large audiences is not that they are smarter than their potential listeners, but that their way of speaking conforms to specialized rules of scholarly discourse. A lot of the complexity of professorial language consists of rhetorical Masonic Handshakes that verify the guild membership and status of the speaker to his colleagues; and both habit and humility guarantee that a learned person will make unreasonable assumptions about what the listener already knows about a subject. Meanwhile, academics spend their whole careers trying to come up with something new to say or at least some new way to say something old. This requirement alone guarantees that no simple truth will be uttered, even if it is news to the actual recipient, without a elaborate garnish of ifs, ands, and buts. There is always the suspicion that the plain facts plainly enunciated will not suffice either to maintain one’s own dignity or respect the capacity of the other person, even when the plain facts are already damned hard to explain and nobody knows anything without having learned about it.
Profs often complain that they are ineffective politically because people resent their intellectual level. No doubt that occurs, but I think the main reason that academics have trouble reaching large audiences is not that they are smarter than their potential listeners, but that their way of speaking conforms to specialized rules of scholarly discourse. A lot of the complexity of professorial language consists of rhetorical Masonic Handshakes that verify the guild membership and status of the speaker to his colleagues; and both habit and humility guarantee that a learned person will make unreasonable assumptions about what the listener already knows about a subject. Meanwhile, academics spend their whole careers trying to come up with something new to say or at least some new way to say something old. This requirement alone guarantees that no simple truth will be uttered, even if it is news to the actual recipient, without a elaborate garnish of ifs, ands, and buts. There is always the suspicion that the plain facts plainly enunciated will not suffice either to maintain one’s own dignity or respect the capacity of the other person, even when the plain facts are already damned hard to explain and nobody knows anything without having learned about it.
The Most Apt Analogy
Commentators consistently impute more rationality to the Bush foreign policy than the record warrants. They write as if the goal of our occupation of Iraq was to set up a stable regime and then leave, even though the administration is on the record that it plans to remain in the area and the military is constructing elaborate installations with room for 50,000 or 60,000 troops. It is hard to believe that even the fantasists that run our government imagine that the U.S. has the political will or the economic and military resources to turn Mesopotamia into a permanent entrenched camp in the midst of a hostile region. Stupidity, however, is a great enabler of optimism.
Snow and other administration spokesmen have recently taken to likening the current impasse in Iraq to the Battle of the Bulge as if the activities of the insurgents were the last, desperate counterattack of a strategically defeated enemy. The problem with the analogy is that we are not contending against a single organized power like Hitler’s Germany. With remarkably few exceptions, everybody in the neighborhood hates us, including most of our current allies in the ersatz People’s Republic of Iraq. It’s possible that we can defeat any particular group, but so long as we insist on continuing our occupation, there will always be new groups, armed and financed by public and private sources in the surrounding nations. We simply don’t have the armed forces required to pacify the entire Middle East, and we don’t have the economic resources necessary to bribe the Iraqis into willing submission.
The accurate analogy here is not the Battle of the Bulge. It’s an ingrown toenail.
Commentators consistently impute more rationality to the Bush foreign policy than the record warrants. They write as if the goal of our occupation of Iraq was to set up a stable regime and then leave, even though the administration is on the record that it plans to remain in the area and the military is constructing elaborate installations with room for 50,000 or 60,000 troops. It is hard to believe that even the fantasists that run our government imagine that the U.S. has the political will or the economic and military resources to turn Mesopotamia into a permanent entrenched camp in the midst of a hostile region. Stupidity, however, is a great enabler of optimism.
Snow and other administration spokesmen have recently taken to likening the current impasse in Iraq to the Battle of the Bulge as if the activities of the insurgents were the last, desperate counterattack of a strategically defeated enemy. The problem with the analogy is that we are not contending against a single organized power like Hitler’s Germany. With remarkably few exceptions, everybody in the neighborhood hates us, including most of our current allies in the ersatz People’s Republic of Iraq. It’s possible that we can defeat any particular group, but so long as we insist on continuing our occupation, there will always be new groups, armed and financed by public and private sources in the surrounding nations. We simply don’t have the armed forces required to pacify the entire Middle East, and we don’t have the economic resources necessary to bribe the Iraqis into willing submission.
The accurate analogy here is not the Battle of the Bulge. It’s an ingrown toenail.