Midnight on the Forecastle

The Power of Nightmares

It's an old BBC documentary that you've probably already watched, but I'm posting it again because I've found that there are many, many people who haven't seen it. Over the years, I've thought about this film a great deal. There are some points herein that are possibly dead wrong, or that fail to assimilate countervailing influences or misdiagnose the causal effects of others... however, the film is an important and provocative contribution. I hope you watch it: The Power of Nightmares.

Health Care Reform as Radical Political Bellwether

So they're going to pass some version of health care reform.  Like any big legislative initiative, nobody really knows how it will interact with reality once it takes effect.  Most political partisans seem pretty unimpressed with it; which is weird, since the final bill will be very impressive... politically speaking.  I haven't seen this kind of belief in the power of government to make positive change in the lives of average Americans in my lifetime.  In recent decades, Americans have voted for (and seemingly preferred) a government that has not only abdicated its charge to work in the interests of civic good, but has actively set about dismantling every institution of collective betterment.  I wouldn't go so far as to declare the era of Laissez-faire governance over, but I do think that we're moving in the right direction for the first time in a long, long time.

This is the real reason that the Republicans have united in opposition to the health care bill: it represents an ideological shift away from official neglect and towards participatory activism.  The specifics of the bill never really mattered to those that opposed it.  The "public option," abortion provisions, "death panels," Medicare buy-ins... all of these contentious provisions were resolved with deference to the preferred solutions of hardline conservatives, and they still opposed the bill unanimously.  The truth is that they simply don't believe that the government can play a useful regulatory role... in anything.  The defeat of congressional conservatives herein represents a defeat of that worldview; this may not be the next "New Deal," but it's a great deal more hopeful and progressive than anything we've seen make it's way through the legislative process since the days of LBJ.

Contrary to the incessant whine from committed leftist ideologues, this really is the change we voted for.  It's not fast, it's not pretty, it's not perfect, and it's far from being done... but if we keep at it we can, over time, become a more equitable and a more just country.  Yes we can.

Iran and American Sabre Rattlers

Some thoughts that popped up today regarding the American Right and the uprisings in Iran piqued my interest.  First, Yglesias makes this point:

It’s worth keeping in mind that the people trying to loudly position themselves as the Iranian people’s greatest friends are the exact same people who wanted to drop bombs on Iranians just a couple of weeks ago.

Now we have Sullivan chiming in with a similar point:

The key point is that many neocons actively want war with Iran and they are doing all they can in this crisis to precipitate one. Whether it be hoping for an Ahmadinejad win, or trying to goad Obama into making this critical uprising into a US vs Iran showdown, their goal is conflict. Everything they say needs to be filtered through that prism.

I’m not convinced that everyone wants conflict right now, but there’s certainly no question that it has been advocated in the months and years leading up to the latest election.  What have been the positions taken up by prominent American conservatives toward Iran?

• They are meddling with fatal result in Iraq and such meddling must not go unanswered.  We should initiate military operations in Iran.
  
  
• Ahmadinejad is batshit crazy and therefore cannot be negotiated with or allowed to speak at the U.N.  Open hostility and a policy of regime change are the only legitimate Realpolitik responses to Iran.
  
  
• Although Israel is a nuclear power with the strongest military in the region, Iran
  poses an existential threat because Ahmadinejad is batshit crazy.  Therefore, we should fully support Israeli military action against Iran.
  

• Iran supports terror and is part of the Axis of Evil that justified the Global War on Terror (GWOT).  This is a war with real enemies that need to be defeated, not tolerated or coddled or negotiated with.

Remember how John Kerry was ridiculed for advocating that terrorism should be reduced to the level of a nuisance? Indeed, the conservative stance of late has been interventionist, pathologically militant, and decidedly anti-everything else.  While there is little disagreement in America about praising the uprising in Iran, there are still deep and abiding differences of opinion about what American foreign policy should be with respect to that country.

Many who voted for Obama were well aware of the disastrous role that the CIA played in creating the enmity that has come to define US/Iran relations.  Foreign meddling has a price, and it’s never one that can be accurately predicted.  What concerns me now is that the factions of American public opinion that have been such staunch advocates for war will be in no ways enlightened by the ungovernable caprices of national movements or the revealed impermanence of our national enemies.

§ Racism: Sotomayor v. White Males

The Republican Establishment response to Obama’s nomination of The Hon. Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court is awesome.  It was also predicted.  (For the record, please note Matt Yglesias’ excellent posts about racism and modern Republicanism: here, here, here, etc.)  I’ve long maintained that the Republican Party will eventually purify itself of its idiotic adherence to Caucasoid hegemony, if for no other reason than the inevitable ascendance of gigantic and untapped reserves of conservative political capital in minority communities.  Certain pundits, however, hell-bent on preserving their own positions via firebrand invective, have gleefully sabotaged the interests of their party.  It’s hysterical.  Witness my favorite (beloved, really) red-meat Republican, Pat Buchanan (via Think Progress):

Spectacular.  There’s nothing more welcome to liberal politicians than an opposition fully committed to reinforcing the most damning conservative stereotypes imaginable.

ADDENDUM: Pat's Back!

Coriolanus & Conservatism

In anticipation of seeing The Old Globe production of Coriolanus this summer, I’ve been doing some research on the play and familiarizing myself with its particulars.  It’s not a play that I’ve ever seen performed live (although I have seen the 1984 BBC production on DVD).  As one of Shakespeare’s most political plays – perhaps the most political – it has a history of being produced with an eye toward whatever contemporary political viewpoint happens to be in vogue at the moment.  Which isn’t a bad thing – if anything, it vindicates Shakespeare’s understanding of certain timeless aspects of man as a political animal.  My own take on the play is that of Coriolanus as a kind of Conservative Überhero; in him I see shades of Sen. John McCain, Gen. Odierno, President Eisenhower, and even Dick Cheney.  Just as Dick Cheney famously said, “So?” (with respect to public opinion), so Coriolanus is equally contemptuous of the “voices” of the common people.  A recent post on RedState.com echoed this deeply felt conservative notion that the ideal state of man is a kind of lofty detachment from the petty concerns of mere humans: 

…concede nothing (you can always agree, but you do not concede); you keep going back to a disputed point over and over again until they get tired of trying to sneak one past you; 

[snip] 

…you don’t accept the other side’s presumptuous bluff that they speak for the American people.  Because they don’t. 

And you don’t give a tinker’s dam if they like you afterward. To quote Truman: if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog. 

This is pure Coriolanus: a powerful and successful military man who is a god-awful politician, a man of principle who won’t suffer fools even at the price of his life, a patrician colossus who acts as though civility, humility and humanity were mortal weaknesses.  In her excellent essay on Coriolanus in her book, Shakespeare After All, Marjorie Garber makes the following points: 

Coriolanus, though married and a father, regards himself, with wounded and defensive pride, as alone.  More than almost any other Shakespearean hero, he aims at a status that is less like that of a man and more like that of a dragon, a god, or a machine – someone, or something, in other words, that does not feel.

[snip] 

This propensity to reject or displace family and personal ties, in favor of the presumed larger purposes and less fraught emotional commitments to warfare and heroism, produces in Coriolanus the play a striking and persistent line of imagery that allies its martial heroes with what has been called “male bonding” or “homosocial” behavior – in this case the identification of the love object with the military commander or military rival. 

[snip]

Coriolanus is a complicated dramatic character, the more so because he seems to have uncanny ahistorical similarities with embedded social types of a much later era, like the products of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century British public schools: he is repressed; devoted to authority; committed to male bonding, fellowship, risk, and danger; slightly overpunctilious; impatient or condescending toward perceived social inferiors; awkward and even unhappy in situations that require small talk, gracious manners, accommodation, compromise, and a show of feeling.

[snip]

The play ends in death and in victory, in the ambush and murder of a man whose final flaw was his first yielding to human feeling, who was safe so long as he regarded himself as a monster without kin or a lonely dragon in his fen.  Shockingly, yet somehow fittingly, it is only at the moment when Coriolanus acknowledges himself as a member of the human race, as a man with human ties – mother, wife, child, friend – that he becomes really vulnerable.  For this act of simple human recognition he is murdered. 

Unlike many modern conservatives, Coriolanus is not necessarily a figure to be mocked... but his story and theirs eerily mirror each other.

Faces of Politics

Scientific American, January 2008:

How we react to faces could be linked to our political affiliations. Psychologist Jacob M. Vigil of the University of North Florida had 740 college students look at 12 photographs of faces digitally blurred to not display any clear emotion. The volunteers were then asked if these faces expressed sadness, joy, disgust, surprise, fear or anger. The students who identified themselves as Republicans were more likely than those who identified themselves as Democrats to interpret these vague faces as more threatening, as measured by anger or disgust, and less submissive, as conveyed by fear or surprise. These findings, which appeared online October 21 in Nature Precedings, are consistent with research linking conservative political views on military spending and capital punishment and heightened reactions to disturbing images and sounds. Vigil conjectures that the political ideologies we advocate could be linked with the way that we respond to ambiguous details.

ADDENDUM: An Abstract of The Irony of Satire: Political Ideology and the Motivation to See What You Want to See in The Colbert Report (via HuffPo):

This study investigated biased message processing of political satire in The Colbert Report and the influence of political ideology on perceptions of Stephen Colbert. Results indicate that political ideology influences biased processing of ambiguous political messages and source in late-night comedy. Using data from an experiment (N = 332), we found that individual-level political ideology significantly predicted perceptions of Colbert's political ideology. Additionally, there was no significant difference between the groups in thinking Colbert was funny, but conservatives were more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely meant what he said while liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not serious when offering political statements. Conservatism also significantly predicted perceptions that Colbert disliked liberalism. Finally, a post hoc analysis revealed that perceptions of Colbert's political opinions fully mediated the relationship between political ideology and individual-level opinion.

The Unlikely Ascendance of Bible Spice

There are a number of reasons that no posts have appeared here in two months.  The most salient two are as follows: (a) my employer’s firewall now blocks TypePad (see below), and (b) John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate flung me into a psychologically overwhelming fantod of political ennui.  I shall now address the latter.

There is something unnerving about an opponent who broadcasts their utter disdain for the contest in which they are engaged.  I recall a tennis match I played when I was a member of my high school tennis team.  I was a terrible player, as was my doubles partner.  We were soundly defeated straight away.  The pair that beat us quickly deduced that we were unfit for competitive sport.  Instead of simply defeating us in a gentlemanly manner and moving on, they decided to abuse us for their pleasure.  They began to mock us mercilessly and lob easy balls over the net while laughing hysterically.  It was a revelatory display of unsportsmanlike conduct.

John McCain reminds me of those two bastards on that tennis court years ago.  Not, of course, because he’s a sore winner – he was (and is) behind in the polls – but because his behavior revealed a grotesque disregard for the electoral process, and, by extension, all Americans.  It was, frankly, as if he had chosen fitness guru Richard Simmons to be his Vice President.  The message couldn’t be clearer: “This whole election is an enormous farce, and I’m going to rub it in America’s face by locking arms with a snowbilly clown to prove it.”

Contrary to what some pundits believe, I don’t think the selection of Sarah Palin is exclusively a gimmicky move or a stunt on the part of John McCain (although it undoubtedly is those things).  What bothers me is that it’s the move of a bully who only dares his sycophants (as well as his opponents and referees) to defy him because he’s arrogantly confident that they won’t.  He was right, hence my ennui.

We’ve had eight years of this, so I ought to be inured.  However, George W. Bush has been acting under the imprimatur of the neoconservative brain trust.  As distasteful as this has been, at least there’s been a clearly defined ideological standard under which his inept bullying has operated.  Even in his most egregious transgressions, Bush has enlisted the OLC, John Woo, David Addington, Dick Cheney, Presidential Signing Statements, et al. to give intellectual luster to his bullying.  Maybe I’m just comfortable with the enemy I know, but McCain seems intent upon taking this rot to a whole new level.  And the polls seem to indicate that America doesn’t really care.

Here are some links: one, two, three, four.

Medieval America

I've been spending the last few days reading Jane Mayer's new book, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals.  (Here's a brief interview with the author).  It's yet another fantastically well written exposé of executive and bureaucratic malfeasance that will undoubtedly go unread by those who need to read it most; namely, anyone who ever gazed admiringly at the words, "take the gloves off."

 

The writing itself is terse, clear, unrelenting and supremely confident.  As a result, it stimulates an intellectual and emotional outrage which is wholly warranted, entirely justified, and (at least in this reader) unforgivably anesthetized by years of media and governmental complicity.  

 Here's a quote that got me thinking:

At this point, a remarkable internal rebellion broke out on the island.  It was led not by political opponents of the Bush Administration, nor by human rights activists, but rather by seasoned professional law-enforcement and military men who were appalled at the direction the government was taking.

I understand why she phrased this the way she did.  However, it says something about how deaf our collective ears have become to "political opponents of the Bush Administration" and "human rights activists," as if it is understood, prima facie, that these are categories which are mutually exclusive from "seasoned professional law-enforcement and military men."  The more I read about CIA "black sites", the infamous "torture memos", and other ghastly blights on our national character, the more convinced I become that the great political error of the Bush Administration is shared in equal parts with its surrogates, advocates, and sympathizers in the Republican Party: they all viewed "liberals" as anti-American enemies of their own particular brand of patriotism, rather than as the only committed defenders of certain bedrock principles of American history and law.  In other words, they misunderestimated (and misunderstood) their principle domestic political rivals.

Savvy observers of politics understand why Barack Obama is seen as a restorative candidate.  It's not all about a botched war or a sick economy; it's also about an administration which has done more harm to our country's character and ideals than any bomb-wielding terrorists ever has.

UPDATE: NYT Book Review.

Live Free or Die

One of the great attributes of Barack Obama is his relative independence. During his campaign for the U.S. Senate in 2004, his principle Republican rival, Jack Ryan, was scandalized out of the race late in the campaign by sexy court documents relating to his divorce; which, in turn, resulted in a discernable lack of interest by other legitimate would-be GOP contenders. Alan Keyes came to Illinois, made a spectacle of himself, and essentially guaranteed Obama an easy victory. Those of us who voted for him quickly realized that he had achieved a remarkable feat – he had become a U.S. Senator from Illinois without being a product of, or beholden to, the traditional (and corrupt) Democratic political machine that has dominated the state for decades.

In the course of that campaign, and because Kerry presciently picked him to deliver the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention, Obama became an appealing national figure. He immediately set about doing a string of favors for other members of congress; assisting re-election campaigns, motivating fundraising events, and so forth. When it was all over, people owed him debts. Powerful people.

Add to all this his relatively insubstantial voting record in the Senate, and you have a politician who can (and does) eschew lobbyists, espouse an authentic brand of Midwestern populism, kowtow to interest groups at his discretion (rather then theirs), and generally conduct a campaign unencumbered by the kinds of promises and obligations that most politicians accrue during the course of their careers.

Viewed from this perspective, Hillary Clinton's current power-grab in the name of those who voted for her would, if effective, deprive Obama of this hard-won freedom. Right now Hillary is behaving like a lobbyist. She is setting conditions for her endorsement (or, at minimum, the tone of said endorsement). She is attempting to have her views reflected in the party platform. Her surrogates are still telling us about how she "won the popular vote" and how "passionate" her supporters are.

While her ideas may be good, any promises Obama makes to her now will only serve to inhibit his ability to win over independents and Republicans in the months ahead. He should offer her nothing. It's a move he can afford to make.

The New American Order

Over the years, I've heard many anecdotal and formal arguments launched by conservatives that have been aimed at liberals of a previous generation. Who could blame them? There were plenty of pejorative archetypes readily available and the temptation to reference hippies and communists was simply too great to pass up. Still, having come of age during the Reagan years, I always recognized that these arguments never addressed my own generation's liberalism; let alone that of the next. Here's Rick Perlstein:

The left has changed and matured; and our adversaries on the right haven't even begun to reckon with that change. They still think we're all John Lindsay and Abbie Hoffman (who is, truth be told, probably treated as harshly in my pages as Richard Nixon). When I say Americans are still stuck in the categories of "Nixonland" even as the objective reality those categories seek to describe have largely slipped away, my most forceful possible argument is the prose of George Will. His "liberals are condescending" trope is the only way a conservative like him knows how to talk about liberals. Even as an entire new generation of American voters probably has absolutely no idea what he's talking about.

While Perlstein's historical take on this is both relevant and true, it's also true that the same thing can easily happen with respect to the contemporary liberal view of conservatism. For example, for the last eight years the public image of conservatism has been inextricably linked to that of fanatical evangelicals (a byproduct of Karl Rove's political machinations in consort with the quiet acquiescence of mainstream conservatives). Having been repeatedly embarrassed by this association (i.e., Intelligent Design; Christian Zionism; Dominionism), many conservatives are actively working to disassociate themselves from this poisonous alliance. With this in mind, McCain's recent repudiations of Hagee and Parsley are rightly seen as components in the development of a new narrative for American conservatism. Likewise, the slow coming around of conservatives on environmental issues is also a repudiation of the embarrassing legacy of the past eight years. Nobody in their right mind, it turns out, wants to be forever defined as being inherently hostile to reason, science, progress or public health – all of which issues have been abnegated by conservatism in deference to Bush.

Modern conservatism is, of course, still clinging desperately to the failed ideology of its standard bearer. However, if political history teaches us anything it's that nothing is static. In the coming months, it would behoove liberals to recognize this. Pointing out McCain's chumminess with religious whack-a-doodles serves only to warm the hearts of other liberals; while simultaneously irritating mainstream conservatives and galvanizing evangelicals on the verge (hopefully) of a great unraveling.

ADDENDUM: Speaking of " chumminess with religious whack-a-doodles," Senator Joseph I. Lieberman is behaving in a very un-American manner. This makes him a bad American. He really shouldn't be a U.S. Senator. To be frank, Lieberman is a wank. What other conclusion can be drawn from someone within the United States government who exhibits such "blind devotion to the Israeli government"?