Monthly Archives: December 2014

Obama’s Bad Bet on Republicans

Posted on by
Reply

Barack ObamaOver the weekend, Jane Mayer wrote, Torture and the Truth. I know that many people are thinking, “Torture! Again?! That’s so last week!” Actually, this article is not about torture. But the truth of the matter is that, for me, torture will never be so last whatever. It’s not that I ever thought that the United States was lily white, but I was appalled when Cheney started talking about the “dark side” and people began to discuss when torture might be okay. From grammar school on, I always thought that the willingness to torture was the prime thing that separated the “good guys” from the “bad guys.” So I’m never getting over this. But that’s not what I’m going to discuss here.

In Mayer’s article, she discussed how Obama blew the response to this issue. By leaving it for so long to be dealt with by the Senate, he allowed it to become just another partisan issue. She quoted political science professor Darius Rejali, “It’s becoming a lot like the death penalty.” (I find this terrifying; I really do think that the Republicans have devolved into nothing short of fascism.) But it isn’t like the issue was off the table. Mayer explained that in early 2009, pretty much all of Obama’s advisers were in favor of “the formation of an independent commission.” It wasn’t done. “Obama, however, said that he didn’t want to seem to be taking punitive measures against his predecessor, apparently because he still hoped to reach bipartisan agreement on issues such as closing Guantánamo.”

Two days ago, I quoted Garry Wills, The Problem With Obama. In it, he said that Obama is so keen to maintain continuity that he often (Usually?) does the wrong thing. I think that is at work here. But there is a political aspect here as well — one that gets to the heart of why Obama was exactly the wrong president for this period. He was so eager to placate to stop people from attacking him as a foreign radical. And what he got for that was absolutely nothing. And that will continue going forward.

Can anyone doubt that if President Cruz is elected in 2016, that he would hesitate to prosecute the previous administration for any actual scandal that turns up? The Republicans — almost twenty years ago when they were a hell of lot more reasonable than they are now — impeached a president because he lied about an affair with an intern. I’m not even convinced that if the Republicans control all of Washington in 2017 that they won’t continue on with their Benghazi and IRS fake scandal mongering.

As I mention a whole lot around here, I’m not that ideological. I’m a pragmatist. That’s why I gave the Democrats a pass on the CRomnibus. But there is a huge difference between knowing what is possible and pretending that you live in a world of fairies and elves where you can have all the candy you want. And that was certainly the world that Obama used to live in. And to a significant, but reduced, degree I think he still does.

Politics is about power. Smart power. It isn’t about rubbing your opponent’s nose in his defeat. In fact, providing face-saving concessions to your enemies is a big part of correcting wielding power. (This is something that the United States is famously bad at internationally.) But it is not about cajoling. All Obama’s efforts to entice and prove that he is a moderate (by our far-right skewing system) have only hurt his efforts to get things done. If he had called for a single-payer healthcare system, he would have been called a socialist. So he didn’t call for a single-payer healthcare system, and he was called a socialist.

Well played, Mr President!

Afterword

For the record, I know that the reason we couldn’t have a single-payer healthcare system is because of all those Blue Dog Democrats — like Obama himself! I should point out, however, that the vast majority of those conservative Democrats were swept out of office in 2010, so I don’t really know what they thought they were buying. And that was as predictable as anything in politics. Conservative Democrats get elected in nominally red districts. Outside of a wave, Democrats won’t get elected there, so they are sure to lose the next time. So they might as well stand up for liberal policy. (This is assuming that they believe in liberal policy. And I have to admit that I just don’t know anymore.)

H/T: Digby

The Bigoted “Muslims Condemn” Ritual

Posted on by
9

Haron MonisMy big takeaway from Tim Rice’s White Like Me is that the ultimate sense of white privilege is not being defined as a category. It is like when I was a child, I thought that vanilla had no flavor — just sugary deliciousness. This isn’t to say that this is all that white privilege is. Given my anti-authoritarian tendencies and the way I’ve lived my life, had I been born black, I would probably be doing 20 to life in some prison somewhere. I would not be able to refer wryly to my “colorful” past. But I think it is much more fundamental to know that anything I do — go or bad — reflects on me alone and is not “typical of those people” or “the exception that proves the rule about those people.”

This occurs to me all the time. Whenever there is murder, I hope it is a white guy. It’s not that I care about the individual case. But when it is anyone but a white guy, it becomes categorized. The issue is not the explicit bigots — they already “know” whatever it is they know. But for the rest of us, it pushes buttons that have been created by living in a racist society our entire lives. In fact, it is doubtless deeper than that — with evolutionary and pattern recognition aspects of biology.

It is in this context that I came upon Max Fisher’s fantastic article, Stop Asking Muslims to Condemn Terrorism. It’s Bigoted and Islamophobic. With a headline that great, you hardly need to read the article. I feel like getting it tattooed to my forehead. The truth is, it is everywhere in the United States (and the west, as Fisher discussed). It is more blatantly bigoted than anything Paula Deen ever said. Yet it is not only allowed on television — it is celebrated.

Imagine if the same thing were applied to African Americans. Imagine that every time a black man committed a murder, the NAACP had to issue a statement, “The African American community does not condone murder…” As racist a society as we are, no one thinks that would be reasonable because we all know that the act of one black man does not reflect the arbitrary category we place him in — at least when we manage to think about it explicitly. But somehow, requiring the same from Muslims seems just peachy. Fisher noted, “Otherwise, we wouldn’t expect Muslims to condemn [Sydney cafe gunman] Haron Monis — who is clearly a crazy person who has no affiliations with formal religious groups — any more than we would expect Christians to condemn Timothy McVeigh.”

But there’s a kicker. Every event where a Muslim does something terrible causes every mainstream Muslim group to issues statements designed to pacify the non-Muslim community, who are at that point quite dangerous. But they get no credit for it. Throughout the media, there will still be pundits calling for such statements. On conservative media, there is a genre: the Muslim Lament, “Why don’t regular Muslims stand up against horrific acts?!” Of course, they do. They just never get noticed by these people.

I know the standard reply to all of this, “But Muslims are unique in their use of terror!” I have much to say about this, because it shows a real disconnect where high-tech killing is somehow okay but low-tech killing is not. But let me leave all that aside. Muslims are not unique in their use of terror. And regardless, when the IRA bombed some place, no one went around whining that the Catholic Church didn’t stand up against those terrorists.

Fisher said what ought to be obvious, but isn’t, and bears repeating:

[W]e should treat the assumptions that compel this ritual — that Muslims bear collective responsibility, that they are presumed terrorist-sympathizers until proven otherwise — as flatly bigoted ideas with no place in our society.

This really isn’t asking very much.

Ta-Nehisi Coates on New Republic

Posted on by
Reply

Ta-Nehisi CoatesIt’s true that TNR‘s staff roundly objected to excerpting The Bell Curve, but I was never quite sure why. Sullivan was simply exposing the dark premise that lay beneath much of the magazine’s coverage of America’s ancient dilemma.

What else to make of the article that made Stephen Glass’s career possible, “Taxi Cabs and the Meaning of Work”? The piece asserted that black people in DC were distinctly lacking in the work ethic best evidenced by immigrant cab drivers. A surrealist comedy, Glass’s piece revels in the alleged exploits of a mythical Asian-American avenger — Kae Bang — who wreaks havoc on black criminals who’d rather rob taxi drivers than work. The article concludes with Glass, in the cab, while its driver is robbed by a black man. It was all lies.

What else to make of TNR sending Ruth Shalit to evaluate affirmative action at The Washington Post in 1995? “She cast Post writer Kevin Merida as some kind of poster boy for affirmative action when in fact he had risen in the business for reasons far more legitimate than her own,” David Carr wrote in 1999. Shalit’s piece wasn’t all lies. But it wasn’t all true either. Shortly after the article was published, she was revealed to be a serial plagiarist.

TNR might have been helped by having more — or merely any — black people on its staff. I spent the weekend calling around and talking to people who worked in the offices over the years. From what I can tell, in that period, TNR had a total of two black people on staff as writers or editors. When I asked former employees whether they ever looked around and wondered why the newsroom was so white, the answers ranged from “not really” to “not often enough.” This is understandable. Prioritizing diversity would have been asking TNR to not be TNR. One person recalled a meeting at the magazine’s offices when the idea of excerpting The Bell Curve was first pitched. Charles Murray came to this meeting to present his findings. The meeting was very contentious. I asked if there were any black people in the room this meeting. The person could not recall.

—Ta-Nehisi Coates
The New Republic: An Appreciation

Jane Austen

Posted on by
Reply

Jane AustenOn this day in 1775, the great novelist Jane Austen was born. She is known for her witty romance novels, but they are probably better thought of as parodies of the romances of her own day. In this way, she is rather like Cervantes, whose Don Quixote is a loving ribbing of the chivalric books of his own time. But all of that is lost on most modern readers. It is remarkable, however, that we are able to get so much out of her novels completely outside the context in which they were written.

Another aspect of her novels that isn’t as appreciated as it ought to be is their political content. Austen was clearly very concerned about one issue: the injustice of inheritance law in England at that time — most especially the way that it affected women. In Pride and Prejudice, Mrs Bennet is looking into the abyss of a future after her husband is dead when she (and her five daughters) will likely be thrown into poverty. In the book, she comes off as very silly; but it is hard not to sympathize with her razor-like focus on getting her daughters married.

In her first novel, Sense and Sensibility, poverty is not in the future — it is manifest. But there is another aspect of that novel that especially appeals to me. In it, she savages the romantic sensibilities of the time. Marianne Dashwood and John Willoughby do not come off well in the novel. Austen clearly did not think much of the early romantics. I tend to agree.

Let me quote a little bit from the beginning of Sense and Sensibility. This is a lovely (and horrible) scene where John Dashwood’s wife Fanny talks him out of the promise he made to his father to take care of the son’s stepmother after the father’s death. These are the rationalizations of real people:

“It was my father’s last request to me,” replied her husband, “that I should assist his widow and daughters.”

“He did not know what he was talking of, I dare say; ten to one but he was light-headed at the time. Had he been in his right senses, he could not have thought of such a thing as begging you to give away half your fortune from your own child.”

“He did not stipulate for any particular sum, my dear Fanny; he only requested me, in general terms, to assist them, and make their situation more comfortable than it was in his power to do. Perhaps it would have been as well if he had left it wholly to myself. He could hardly suppose I should neglect them. But as he required the promise, I could not do less than give it; at least I thought so at the time. The promise, therefore, was given, and must be performed. Something must be done for them whenever they leave Norland and settle in a new home.”

“Well, then, let something be done for them; but that something need not be three thousand pounds. Consider,” she added, “that when the money is once parted with, it never can return. Your sisters will marry, and it will be gone for ever. If, indeed, it could be restored to our poor little boy–”

“Why, to be sure,” said her husband, very gravely, “that would make great difference. The time may come when Harry will regret that so large a sum was parted with. If he should have a numerous family, for instance, it would be a very convenient addition.”

“To be sure it would.”

“Perhaps, then, it would be better for all parties, if the sum were diminished one half.– Five hundred pounds would be a prodigious increase to their fortunes!”

“Oh! beyond anything great! What brother on earth would do half so much for his sisters, even if really his sisters! And as it is — only half blood! — But you have such a generous spirit!”

“I would not wish to do any thing mean,” he replied. “One had rather, on such occasions, do too much than too little. No one, at least, can think I have not done enough for them: even themselves, they can hardly expect more.”

“There is no knowing what they may expect,” said the lady, “but we are not to think of their expectations: the question is, what you can afford to do.”

“Certainly — and I think I may afford to give them five hundred pounds a-piece. As it is, without any addition of mine, they will each have about three thousand pounds on their mother’s death — a very comfortable fortune for any young woman.”

“To be sure it is; and, indeed, it strikes me that they can want no addition at all. They will have ten thousand pounds divided amongst them. If they marry, they will be sure of doing well, and if they do not, they may all live very comfortably together on the interest of ten thousand pounds.”

“That is very true, and, therefore, I do not know whether, upon the whole, it would not be more advisable to do something for their mother while she lives, rather than for them — something of the annuity kind I mean.– My sisters would feel the good effects of it as well as herself. A hundred a year would make them all perfectly comfortable.”

His wife hesitated a little, however, in giving her consent to this plan.

“To be sure,” said she, “it is better than parting with fifteen hundred pounds at once. But, then, if Mrs. Dashwood should live fifteen years we shall be completely taken in.”

“Fifteen years! my dear Fanny; her life cannot be worth half that purchase.”

“Certainly not; but if you observe, people always live for ever when there is an annuity to be paid them; and she is very stout and healthy, and hardly forty. An annuity is a very serious business; it comes over and over every year, and there is no getting rid of it. You are not aware of what you are doing. I have known a great deal of the trouble of annuities; for my mother was clogged with the payment of three to old superannuated servants by my father’s will, and it is amazing how disagreeable she found it. Twice every year these annuities were to be paid; and then there was the trouble of getting it to them; and then one of them was said to have died, and afterwards it turned out to be no such thing. My mother was quite sick of it. Her income was not her own, she said, with such perpetual claims on it; and it was the more unkind in my father, because, otherwise, the money would have been entirely at my mother’s disposal, without any restriction whatever. It has given me such an abhorrence of annuities, that I am sure I would not pin myself down to the payment of one for all the world.”

“It is certainly an unpleasant thing,” replied Mr. Dashwood, “to have those kind of yearly drains on one’s income. One’s fortune, as your mother justly says, is not one’s own. To be tied down to the regular payment of such a sum, on every rent day, is by no means desirable: it takes away one’s independence.”

“Undoubtedly; and after all you have no thanks for it. They think themselves secure, you do no more than what is expected, and it raises no gratitude at all. If I were you, whatever I did should be done at my own discretion entirely. I would not bind myself to allow them any thing yearly. It may be very inconvenient some years to spare a hundred, or even fifty pounds from our own expenses.”

“I believe you are right, my love; it will be better that there should be no annuity in the case; whatever I may give them occasionally will be of far greater assistance than a yearly allowance, because they would only enlarge their style of living if they felt sure of a larger income, and would not be sixpence the richer for it at the end of the year. It will certainly be much the best way. A present of fifty pounds, now and then, will prevent their ever being distressed for money, and will, I think, be amply discharging my promise to my father.”

“To be sure it will. Indeed, to say the truth, I am convinced within myself that your father had no idea of your giving them any money at all. The assistance he thought of, I dare say, was only such as might be reasonably expected of you; for instance, such as looking out for a comfortable small house for them, helping them to move their things, and sending them presents of fish and game, and so forth, whenever they are in season. I’ll lay my life that he meant nothing farther; indeed, it would be very strange and unreasonable if he did. Do but consider, my dear Mr. Dashwood, how excessively comfortable your mother-in-law and her daughters may live on the interest of seven thousand pounds, besides the thousand pounds belonging to each of the girls, which brings them in fifty pounds a year a-piece, and, of course, they will pay their mother for their board out of it. Altogether, they will have five hundred a-year amongst them, and what on earth can four women want for more than that?– They will live so cheap! Their housekeeping will be nothing at all. They will have no carriage, no horses, and hardly any servants; they will keep no company, and can have no expenses of any kind! Only conceive how comfortable they will be! Five hundred a year! I am sure I cannot imagine how they will spend half of it; and as to your giving them more, it is quite absurd to think of it. They will be much more able to give you something.”

“Upon my word,” said Mr. Dashwood, “I believe you are perfectly right. My father certainly could mean nothing more by his request to me than what you say. I clearly understand it now, and I will strictly fulfil my engagement by such acts of assistance and kindness to them as you have described. When my mother removes into another house my services shall be readily given to accommodate her as far as I can. Some little present of furniture too may be acceptable then.”

“Certainly,” returned Mrs. John Dashwood. “But, however, one thing must be considered. When your father and mother moved to Norland, though the furniture of Stanhill was sold, all the china, plate, and linen was saved, and is now left to your mother. Her house will therefore be almost completely fitted up as soon as she takes it.”

“That is a material consideration undoubtedly. A valuable legacy indeed! And yet some of the plate would have been a very pleasant addition to our own stock here.”

“Yes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the world to them.”

This argument was irresistible. It gave to his intentions whatever of decision was wanting before; and he finally resolved, that it would be absolutely unnecessary, if not highly indecorous, to do more for the widow and children of his father, than such kind of neighbourly acts as his own wife pointed out.

Reading that again, it makes me angry. Austen had people nailed. Her exaggeration is only slight. I think Fanny reaching the point of turning the logic back on itself — it is sad that they will get to hold onto that fine furniture when our selfishness will require them to live in place not deserving of it — doesn’t ring true. That’s Austen’s brilliance. If the conversation had ended a couple of paragraphs before, it would leave the reader punching the wall. But it is good to that that people have not gotten notably worse in the last two centuries.

Happy birthday Jane Austen!

Two Paintings George Will Must Hate

Posted on by
Reply
Blue Poles - Jackson Pollock

More than I should, I mention that I’m not fond of Abstract Expressionism. That isn’t to say that I don’t like any of it — far from it. But on the whole, it doesn’t really work for me. This is a statement about me and not about the art. But as someone who is not that excited about the movement, I write about it a lot. I think it is a cry for help, “Open my eyes to this movement!” Of course, my eyes are hardly close. I think I’m a decent judge of what is good and what is not — even when I don’t like particular works.

One thing that really annoys me is when people claim that any kind of painting is easy. Personally, I think abstract painting is the hardest kind to do. At least if you are painting a representation of a duck, you have the duck to go by. I haven’t much of a clue as to why particular things do and don’t work in an abstract piece. Often I can note some design elements, but that’s usually a small part of what makes a piece good. Normally what really strikes me is the blending of the colors, but I don’t know why. For me, art appreciation is intuitive.

Decades ago, I read Tom Wolfe’s The Painted Word. It is basically just an attack on modern art — Abstract Expressionism in particular. When I read it, I was very impressed. But since then, I’ve learned a lot more about art history. And now I think that Wolfe embarrassed himself in that book. He is dismissive of the idea of philosophical considerations dictating art. But what was the difference between the High Renaissance and Mannerism? It was highly theoretical. I suspect that the vast majority of people walking through an art museum see not apparent difference between those movements. You can certainly make the argument that artists and art critics are a bunch of idiots making a big deal of little things. But you can’t argue that the 20th century was any worse in this regard — other than that there were a lot more movements.

This came up earlier when I was reading Henry Fairlie’s three decades old hilarious and brutal take-down of the pretentious George Will. Will, of course, doesn’t know anything about modern art, but he knows what he hates:

Again, it is not a quibble, but an essential criticism of Will’s attitude toward contemporary culture, to point out that when he roundly condemns Jackson Pollock (in 1978, and again in 1985), he says not a word about any Pollock painting, not to mention the whole body of his work, except the old-hat criticism that they are “canvases covered with drips.” On both occasions he bases his criticism on the same silly tribute to Pollock by an unidentified art critic. Blue Poles, to take but one Pollock painting, cannot be described as a canvas “covered with drips,” and only an eye uneducated not only in modern painting, but in all painting, could say so. In fact, one doubts whether he knows what paint is, or for that matter what Raphael did with his “revolutionary” use of color.

Back a few months, while discussing Fernand Leduc, I briefly mentioned Pollock, “Anyone can flick paint on a canvus. But you’ve got to know what colors to flick where and most of all when to stop.” Even that greatly underestimates what he did. But there is this thing with many people (especially pretentious conservatives) where they think that they can judge Pollock’s work based upon how he applied paint. Implicit in this is that there is a right technique for applying paint to a brush. I imagine that if George Will had lived a century earlier, he would have dismissed Georges Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. I mean all it is just a canvas covered in dots.

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte - Georges Seurat

Dean Baker Is Must Reading

Posted on by
3

Dean BakerI think I have to call it: Dean Baker is the most important writer for liberals to read. But you understand: I’m talking about real liberals — economic liberals and not those corporate posers who think liberalism consists of support for same-sex marriage, a woman’s right to choose, and the idea that people ought to be “nice” to one another. Baker is the most clear-eyed commentator on economic issues that we have. What’s more, he’s great at poking the eyes of the pretentious apologists of the oligarchs. You should start each day by read his blog, Beat the Press. To demonstrate, I will to go over what he’s posted there in the last 24 hours.

Last night, Baker took on perhaps the most pretentious apologist, George Will and Tax Reform: If Only He Were Old Enough to Remember the Sixties. One thing that I most hate about modern American conservatives is how they argue that they are just looking out for the little guy, when they have no interest in that whatsoever. Will’s column on Friday was, The Cheerfulness of Tax Reform. In it, he says that everyone would be cheerful if the economy were doing well and so therefore everyone should be cheerful about tax reform. We all know that the only thing that is holding back the economy is a more “fair” tax system, am I right?!

Will is just hocking Dave Camp’s tax “reform” proposal. But what’s interesting about it is how Will is oh so very concerned about the fact that the economy isn’t growing enough to create jobs for the unemployed or the fact that young people aren’t saving enough for retirement or that the poor “on the lower rungs of the ladder of upward mobility” are paying too much in taxes. This is pretty good! We’re supposed to believe that the Republican Party is worried that the poor are paying too much in taxes when they’ve been bitching for the last four years about the fact that 47% of Americans pay no federal income taxes (often implied or even stated as “no taxes” whatsoever).

Will made a number of mistakes in his argument. The most notable was that he claimed that we should lower tax rates because economic growth was so great in the 1960s. Dean Baker had a few choice words for Will:

While Will is right about the low bar for success (we should be seeing very rapid job growth following a steep downturn like the 2008-2009 recession), the sixties do not support his case for a need to cut tax rates. Through most of the 1960s the top individual tax rate was 70 percent, while the corporate rate was 50 percent. That compares to a top individual rate of 41 percent today, and a corporate tax rate of 35 percent. The top marginal tax rate in the first two months when we had 300k plus job gains was 90 percent. If Will wants to make the case for lower tax rates spurring job growth, he should not be citing the sixties.

Early this morning, Baker wrote, NYT Brings Adventures in Uninformative Budget Reporting to Kansas. This is another battle in his long war with journalist over the tendency to throw out large numbers without context. It’s interesting that The New York Times seemed to surrender some time ago, adopting a policy of not reporting meaningless budget numbers. But they don’t seem to follow the policy very well. In this case, The Times explained that Kansas has a $280 million shortfall in the current fiscal year. Baker noted that it is roughly 2% of the Kansas budget. He summed up, “It is understandable that the governor and his allies would prefer euphemisms to conceal their agenda. It is not clear why the NYT would share the same motivations.”

Another of Baker’s big interests is our totally messed up intellectual property system. This morning, he wrote a brief post that gets into one example of how this makes our economy work far worse, If We Didn’t Have Patents, How Would Major Companies Be Able to Harass Innovative Start-Ups? It involves the Chinese company Xiaomi. According to The New York Times, “Xiaomi does not yet have much of a patent portfolio, leaving it vulnerable to lawsuits from competitors.” Baker explained what that meant. The “patent portfolio” is an offensive weapon used by companies to attack each other companies with baseless lawsuits. In other words: it’s all bad for the regular economy — but great for the legal profession.

The most interesting of the posts is his most recent, Health Care Cost Slowdown Persists in Spite of Projections. Baker is rarely better than when he is taking on Robert Samuelson at The Washington Post. Baker has written many posts with titles like, It’s Monday and Robert Samuelson is Confused. But the great thing about Baker is that nothing is automatic — when Samuelson says something smart, Baker backs him up. I haven’t found that Samuelson says that much smart, though. Like Will, he is an apologist who is always looking for ways to justify his own ideological policies.

Last night, he wrote, Health Spending — Under Control? His main point is that the only reason that healthcare spending inflation is down is because of the poor economy. This is Samuelson’s clarion call, “Healthcare spending is out of control, we must starve old people!” But Baker noted that there is no basis for Samuelson’s contention that the better healthcare numbers are almost entirely due to the bad economy:

Robert Samuelson discusses the slowdown in health care costs in his column today and considers possible explanations. He notes a study from Kaiser Family Foundation which attributes three quarters of the slowdown to the weak economy. This study predicted that spending would accelerate in 2014.

We actually have data on this, since the Bureau of Economic Analysis reports spending through October (Table 2.4.5U, Line 168). Through the first 10 months of 2014 we are on track to see a 3.3 percent increase in spending compared to 2013, down slightly from the 3.5 percent increase last year. (This category accounts for about 70 percent of total spending.) That would suggest that 2014 is not fitting the pattern predicted by the Kaiser analysis, which should raise doubts about the extent to which a weak economy can explain a reduction in spending.

Dean Baker is must reading. And if you aren’t going to read his blog, you should read some of his free Kindle books like Getting Back to Full Employment: A Better Bargain for Working People (with the also great Jared Bernstein) or The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive. And if you haven’t read it, everything you need to know about Social Security was written by him and Mark Weisbrot 13 years ago, Social Security: The Phony Crisis.

There Is No American Right-Wing Populism

Posted on by
2

Elizabeth WarrenCould Elizabeth Warren appeal to the Tea Party because of their supposed populism? No.

In an otherwise uninspiring column, Paul Krugman made an interesting observation about the lack of right-wing rage about Citigroup raping the Dodd-Frank law, “You sometimes hear claims that the Tea Party is as opposed to bailing out bankers as it is to aiding the poor, but there’s no sign that this alleged hostility to Wall Street is having any influence at all on Republican priorities.” Yes, we do hear that. And we have been hearing it for the last five and a half years. But we have never seen it.

It has been mildly amusing to watch the Tea Party as they rant about the Constitution and bail-outs and the End of Freedom™. But if you look at who they vote for, the main thing that the Tea Party cares about is taking a hard line against abortion. They are also anti-gay and anti-immigrant. But even that is just an indication that the Tea Party movement is a group of social conservatives. As Claire Conner suggests in Wrapped in the Flag, the Tea Party is just the modern incarnation of the John Birth Society. And that’s really nothing more than a cultural movement: the good people in the Tea Party versus those takers, who just so happen to never be anyone with actual power like weapons manufacturers or bank presidents.

Over the weekend, Miles Mogulescu at Huffington Post wrote, The Speech That Could Make Elizabeth Warren the Next President of the United States. He suggested that Warren could unite people across the political spectrum, because everybody hates Wall Street, “Tea party supporters don’t like bailouts and crony capitalism any more that progressives do.” No, no, no! What is wrong with political commentators on the left? Have they been asleep the last six years?

The Tea Party did not start because a bunch of conservatives were angry about bank bailouts. They were angry — “Mad as hell!” — that a relatively small program was being created to help struggling homeowners. And they were mad that a charismatic African American president had been elected. But even that wasn’t really what was going on. They would have done nothing — Nada! Rien! Nichts! — if it hadn’t been for Fox News advertising it like it was a live Peter Pan starring Christopher Walken. And even with that, it would have died off quickly without Koch brother and other establishment conservative funding. Anyone who thinks that there is any kind of a real populist streak in the Tea Party is delusional. It was the realization of this that caused Tea Party support to go from roughly 50% in 2010 to roughly 20% now. And 20% of the population is the the ultra-conservative Republican base. There is no populism here.

This morning, Ed Kilgore called this whole thing nonsense, Elizabeth Warren’s Real and Imaginary Appeal. But even he undersells the ideological vacuousness of the Tea Party on this issue:

Yes, many “constitutional conservatives” oppose corporate bailouts. But they also typically support eliminating not just subsidies but regulation of big banks and other corporations; oppose most if not all of the social safety net (and certainly its expansion); and also oppose legalized abortion and marriage equality, for that matter.

I go along with all that, but not the elimination of subsidies. Maybe Rand Paul is against some giveaways to the military contractors. But he is still a corporate lackey who is only really interested in taking money away from the poorer classes because they need to be encouraged by want. It’s always in the best interests of the country to give tax breaks to oil companies. Conservatives are just like liberals: they don’t mind the government doing things they agree with. The difference is that conservatives are hypocrites who claim that they want to create a smaller government. They don’t. They want a very big government — one big enough to make sure two men don’t hold hands in public and no woman ever causes herself to miscarry. There is no “right-wing populism” in this country.

Three Glorious Years Without Christopher Hitchens

Posted on by
Reply

Christopher HitchensAll of this was triggered for me by the death this week of Christopher Hitchens and the remarkably undiluted, intense praise lavished on him by media discussions. Part of this is explained by the fact that Hitchens — like other long-time media figures, such as Tim Russert — had personal interactions with huge numbers of media figures who are shaping how he is remembered in death. That’s understandable: it’s difficult for any human being to ignore personal feelings, and it’s even more difficult in the face of the tragic death of a vibrant person at a much younger age than is normal.

But for the public at large, at least those who knew of him, Hitchens was an extremely controversial, polarizing figure. And particularly over the last decade, he expressed views — not ancillary to his writings but central to them — that were nothing short of repellent.

Corey Robin wrote that “on the announcement of his death, I think it’s fair to allow Christopher Hitchens to do the things he loved to do most: speak for himself,” and then assembled two representative passages from Hitchens’ post-9/11 writings. In the first, Hitchens celebrated the ability of cluster bombs to penetrate through a Koran that a Muslim may be carrying in his coat pocket (“those steel pellets will go straight through somebody and out the other side and through somebody else. So they won’t be able to say, ‘Ah, I was bearing a Koran over my heart and guess what, the missile stopped halfway through.’ No way, ’cause it’ll go straight through that as well. They’ll be dead, in other words”), and in the second, Hitchens explained that his reaction to the 9/11 attack was “exhilaration” because it would unleash an exciting, sustained war against what he came addictively to call “Islamofascism”: “I realized that if the battle went on until the last day of my life, I would never get bored in prosecuting it to the utmost.”

Hitchens, of course, never “prosecuted” the “exhilarating” war by actually fighting in it, but confined his “prosecution” to cheering for it and persuading others to support it. As one of Hitchens’ heroes, George Orwell, put it perfectly in Homage to Catalonia about the anti-fascist, tough-guy war writers of his time:

As late as October 1937 the New Statesman was treating us to tales of Fascist barricades made of the bodies of living children (a most unhandy thing to make barricades with), and Mr Arthur Bryant was declaring that ‘the sawing-off of a Conservative tradesman’s legs’ was ‘a commonplace’ in Loyalist Spain.

The people who write that kind of stuff never fight; possibly they believe that to write it is a substitute for fighting. It is the same in all wars; the soldiers do the fighting, the journalists do the shouting, and no true patriot ever gets near a front-line trench, except on the briefest of propaganda-tours. Sometimes it is a comfort to me to think that the aeroplane is altering the conditions of war. Perhaps when the next great war comes we may see that sight unprecedented in all history, a jingo with a bullet-hole in him.

I rarely wrote about Hitchens because, at least for the time that I’ve been writing about politics (since late 2005), there was nothing particularly notable about him. When it came to the defining issues of the post-9/11 era, he was largely indistinguishable from the small army of neoconservative fanatics eager to unleash ever-greater violence against Muslims: driven by a toxic mix of barbarism, self-loving provincialism, a sense of personal inadequacy, and, most of all, a pity-inducing need to find glory and purpose in cheering on military adventures and vanquishing some foe of historically unprecedented evil even if it meant manufacturing them. As Robin put it:

Hitchens had a reputation for being an internationalist. Yet someone who gets excited by mass murder — and then invokes that excitement, to a waiting audience, as an explanation of his support for mass murder — is not an internationalist. He is a narcissist, the most provincial spirit of all.

Hitchens was obviously more urbane and well-written than the average neocon faux-warrior, but he was also often more vindictive and barbaric about his war cheerleading. One of the only writers with the courage to provide the full picture of Hitchens upon his death was Gawker’s John Cook, who — in an extremely well-written and poignant obituary — detailed Hitchens’ vehement, unapologetic passion for the attack on Iraq and his dismissive indifference to the mass human suffering it caused, accompanied by petty contempt for those who objected… As Cook put it: “it must not be forgotten in mourning him that he got the single most consequential decision in his life horrifically, petulantly wrong”; indeed: “People make mistakes. What’s horrible about Hitchens’ ardor for the invasion of Iraq is that he clung to it long after it became clear that a grotesque error had been made.”

Subordinating his brave and intellectually rigorous defense of atheism, Hitchens’ glee over violence, bloodshed, and perpetual war dominated the last decade of his life. Dennis Perrin, a friend and former protégée of Hitchens, described all the way back in 2003 how Hitchens’ virtues as a writer and thinker were fully swamped by his pulsating excitement over war and the Bush/Cheney imperial agenda:

I can barely read him anymore. His pieces in the Brit tabloid The Mirror and in Slate are a mishmash of imperial justifications and plain bombast; the old elegant style is dead. His TV appearances show a smug, nasty scold with little tolerance for those who disagree with him. He looks more and more like a Ralph Steadman sketch. And in addition to all this, he’s now revising what he said during the buildup to the Iraq war.

In several pieces, including an incredibly condescending blast against Nelson Mandela, Hitch went on and on about WMD, chided readers with “Just you wait!” and other taunts, fully confident that once the US took control of Iraq, tons of bio/chem weapons and labs would be all over the cable news nets — with him dancing a victory jig in the foreground. Now he says WMD were never a real concern, and that he’d always said so. It’s amazing that he’d dare state this while his earlier pieces can be read at his website. But then, when you side with massive state power and the cynical fucks who serve it, you can say pretty much anything and the People Who Matter won’t care.

Currently, Hitch is pushing the line, in language that echoes the reactionary Paul Johnson, that the US can be a “superpower for democracy,” and that Toms Jefferson and Paine would approve. He’s also slammed the “slut” Dixie Chicks as “fucking fat slags” for their rather mild critique of our Dear Leader. He favors Bush over Kerry, and doesn’t like it that Kerry “exploits” his Vietnam combat experience (as opposed to, say, re-election campaign stunts on aircraft carriers).

Sweet Jesus. What next? I’m afraid my old mentor is not the truth-telling Orwell he fancies himself to be. He’s becoming a coarser version of Norman Podhoretz.

One of the last political essays he wrote in his life, for Slate, celebrated the virtues of Endless War.

—Glenn Greenwald
Christopher Hitchens and the Protocol for Public Figure Deaths

Gustave Eiffel

Posted on by
Reply

Gustave EiffelOn this day in 1832, the great architect Gustave Eiffel was born. He was also a civil engineer. And then after he retired, he did significant work in meteorology and fluid dynamics. Of course, we just know him because of of the tower named after him that he designed for the 1889 Universal Exposition.

Before the tower, he was best known for his bridges. And beautiful things they were. His first bridge was a small one — 22 meters — for the Saint Germaine railway. This was when he was still in his early twenties. This lead to his first major design, the half kilometer Bordeaux bridge.

In his mid-thirties, he started the company Eiffel et Cie, with fellow engineer Théophile Seyrig. Their first project together was to build the Budapest-Nyugati train station, which showed Eiffel’s fondness for exposed structure:

Budapest-Nyugati train station

And next came the exquisite Maria Pia railway bridge:

Maria Pia railway bridge

Before building his famous tower, Eiffel was very important in the building of the Statue of Liberty. The original engineer, Viollet-le-Duc, died after completing the head and arm. So it was left to Eiffel’s team to figure out how to make the whole thing fit together. Obviously, it wasn’t his design, of course. I figure you don’t need to see a picture of the Statue of Liberty or the Eiffel Tower. Although if you click over the Wikipedia, there is a nice collection of images showing the tower’s construction.

He continued to design and build major works into the late 1890s — all over the world. And then he retired and worked on some important applied science. He lived to the ripe old age of 91.

Happy birthday Gustave Eiffel!

The Pastor Who Ruined the Christmas Play

Posted on by
6

Jesus CryingI wasn’t going to say anything. I was invited to go to a Christmas play. It was at a church, but it was no big deal. It was a fundraiser, but I wasn’t paying. I figured it would be a bunch of kids in sheets like, A Charlie Brown Christmas. Instead, it was a fairly professional affair. The choir was quite good — as were a number of the featured singers. Some of the acting wasn’t bad, and one of its attempts at comedy worked pretty well. The orchestra was good at times, but the flutes, and even more, the trumpets were out of tune — especially in the first act. But overall, not a bad production at all.

But in the middle of the second act, the senior pastor of the church came up on the stage to talk about Jesus. For a good five minutes, I could pretend that it was all part of the show. But he continued on and on — for a total of twenty minutes, it seemed to me. It became nothing but proselytizing — for Jesus, but more to the point, for his own little fiefdom, the church I was sitting in. And I can see why! The church consists of at least three sizable buildings. This production was presented in the main church that holds roughly a thousand people. And it is packed with equipment — hundreds of thousands of dollars of audio equipment, as far as I could tell.

When the show was over, he stopped everyone from leaving to spend another five minutes pimping for his church. This man had destroyed any goodwill that I had acquired toward the Christian faith. In general, I push back against people who claim that religion is all about money. I truly don’t think that’s true. But in this case, the good pastor was not a fisherman of souls; he was a fisherman of cash — indirect though it may be. It was disgusting.

At one point during his main performance, he had all of us in the audience pray and ask God to come into our sinful hearts. And he said something about how if you ask Jesus to make his presence know, he will. Okay: typical evangelical nonsense. But it occurred to me at that point that it is pretty easy to stand up there on stage and talk about all the blessings of God when you are doing pretty well in a material sense. I thought of Satan in the Book of Job. Let’s take everything away from Pastor Cundall and see if his faith is as strong as Job’s. My guess: no.

It was also at this point that I really began to think about something I had noticed earlier, but put in the back of my mind. In all the cast and audience, the only non-white person I saw was a single Asian. I didn’t see any Latinos and I didn’t see any African Americans. This is a lily-white church in the middle of a country that does everything it can to bless lily-white people. And I was reminded how one of the big themes in the first act was bowing down to God — and by extension authority. And the scene right before the pastor’s talk involved shepherds being very slippery with the concepts of king and God.

For the first time in my life, I really saw a church as primarily a system of control. Its primary function is to perpetuate and empower itself. But secondarily, its function is to quiet dissent in the larger world. The church depends upon the existing secular power structure for its existence. This is quite a different way for me to think about the Abrahamic religions. Generally, I focus on their lack of theological depth — at least the way that most of them practice it. And there was lots of that on display, including the truly offensive idea that all you have to do is “believe” in Jesus and you are saved — like Christians are children watching Peter Pan trying to make Tinker Bell come back to life.

But I’m beyond that now. I can understand the need of many people to infantilize themselves in the face of death and the cosmic unknowable. But these are just the parishioners. The institutional nature of churches is evil. Garry Wills is right that the Catholic Church should get rid of priests. The Quakers have been right all these centuries. The church I found myself in tonight is more like a corporation than anything early Christians would have understood as a church.

Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life

Posted on by
1

Monty Python's The Meaning of LifeI just watched Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life — very possibly for the first time since I saw it in the theater. I wasn’t that impressed with it at the time. The main thing I liked was the Terry Gilliam short that starts it, The Crimson Permanent Assurance. There were other things that were good — especially “Every Sperm Is Sacred” and the sex education skit and the “Galaxy Song.” But this was overwhelmed by “live organ donations” and the exploding Mr Creosote. In fact, it was the memory of this latter bit that kept me away from the film for such a long time.

In a certain way, I can say that my opinion hasn’t changed. The film’s excesses are, well, excessive. And I’ll add something else: it goes overboard with its breast obsession. This starts with the lovely Patricia Quinn (Magenta in The Rocky Horror Picture Show) as the schoolmaster’s wife; continues with the execution sketch where a man is chased over a cliff by a bunch of topless women — often shot in slow motion for maximum effect; and finishes with the stage show in heaven, which looks an awful lot like the dinner show at the MGM Grand. It all seems so adolescent. But there is a difference in my perception this time: it all strikes me as very funny, even as it is mixed with disgust. (In the Creosote skit, I swear I can smell what is going on.)

The main thing that strikes me now is that the film is beautifully produced. The acting is by far the best that the Pythons ever did. The art direction and cinematography are as good as any film. And it is directed brilliantly. Terry Jones threads the needle perfectly by creating a visually stunning film that keeps cuts to a minimum so as to highlight the humor. And the musical numbers are a thing to behold. Nothing is better than “Every Sperm Is Sacred” — which is a far more elaborate sequence than I had remembered. The whole thing breaks out into the street for a truly wondrous dance number. Much the same is true of the last number, “Christmas in Heaven.” The one musical number that isn’t terribly well staged is also the best song in the film, “Galaxy Song.” I have the feeling that they were planning to do much more with the animation, but apparently Gilliam was focused on the Crimson short.

One thing that I really liked this time, which left me flat before, was the whole sequence about the stiff upper-lipped British officers in the Zulu War. Much of it is just brilliant like Cleese’s mirror getting shot while he’s shaving — he bristles at the interruption and then picks up a broken piece and finishes. But the part that killed was when Palin and Idle were in the tiger suit. It is like the best vaudeville act ever. And Idle’s business with the tiger head and whiskers is priceless.

There is also a deleted scene that is quite brilliant. After the protestants discuss how they can use condoms and how the freedom to have sex for pleasure is what the reformation was all about, there was to be a skit featuring Martin Luther (played by Terry Jones with a Jimmy Durante accent). In it, Luther is a sex-crazed nut who has just broken out of prison. The skit revolves around a friend of his hiding his daughters. It is very funny:

I also like their ultimate statement of the meaning of life, “Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.” I’m afraid that’s about as profound a statement as there is on the matter. But as obvious as it is, it still seems to be beyond the grasp of some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time.

Monty Python’s Life of Brian is still probably the most satisfying of their films. But The Meaning of Life contains their very best work. And it hangs together pretty well as a film. I think the biggest problem people have had with it is their own preconceptions of what it ought to be. It needs to be appreciated for what it is: probably the best sketch comedy-musical ever made.

The Psychology of Open-Carry

Posted on by
Reply

Veronica DunnachieVeronica Dunnachie seems to have killed her estranged husband and his adult daughter. There is nothing especially significant in the report of yet another disturbed person killing people. What makes this case notable is that Dunnachie was an outspoken advocate for open-carry laws. On the plus side, there were three small children in the house and she didn’t kill them. (Or even shoot them, bless her heart!) After performing the deed, she drove herself to a local mental hospital and checked herself in at the urging of another open-carry advocate. The police later arrested her there and she is now in jail.

According to Daniel Strauss at Talking Points Memo, “Reached by TPM on Thursday, Arlington, Texas police pointed to Dunnachie’s Facebook page and the photos on there showing her involved in Open Carry Tarrant County and pictures of Open Carry Texas.” The police said that they couldn’t comment on her affiliations “but if you go to her Facebook page, it’s pretty clear.” Indeed it is. Sadly clear. The Facebook page has been taken down. But here is an image of her exercising her Constitutional rights at what looks like a fast food restaurant, grabbed by Hunter at Daily Kos (apparently originally on Liberaland):

Veronica Dunnachie Exercising Her Constitutional Rights

I’m surprised that this story has not gotten more traction. Maybe it is just that it is so predictable. Somewhere I saw someone say something obvious but profound, “It’s amazing how quickly a ‘good guy with a gun’ can turn into a ‘bad guy with a gun.'” Or “gal” as the case may be. Of course, even with the minor coverage, the pushback has begun. Yesterday, Liberaland published, Open Carry Group Denies Double Murder Suspect Was a Member, but She Was. You really should click over to the article. It not only has a lot more details about what happened, but it has great snarky comments about the open carry groups’ pathetic attempts to distance themselves, like the following:

Open Carry Tarrant County’s leader Kory Watkins is denying any affiliation with Dunnachie. Watkins told Guns.com that Dunnachie “was not a member of the group.”

Oh look, here’s Kory with the double murder suspect…

Here is his organization on Facebook calling her “One of our members.”

I’m interested in the psychology of the open-carry advocates. Most states allow pretty much anyone (other than felons) to get concealed-carry licenses. Why is open-carry necessary? I don’t think it is about not wanting to wear a jacket. I think it is about rubbing the fact that you are armed in the faces of everyone around you. It is a power trip. It’s about saying, “Don’t mess with me!” But what kind of loser is so insecure that they need to do that?

Sadly, I think the psychology is very similar to that of Bill White, that I discussed exactly a year ago, How to Not Become a Neo-Nazi. In that article (one of my better ones), I pointed to the fact that White seemed to lack meaning in his life. He was running around from cause to cause until finally finding a home with the neo-Nazis. I see a similar need with the open-carry brigade. But just as finding his cause made White a dangerous man, open-carry made Veronica Dunnachie a dangerous woman.

I’m always reminded of this great Tom Tomorrow cartoon, “I said after you, dammit!”

Armed Society is a Polite Society

I have little doubt that Dunnachie is mentally unstable. And break-ups are very difficult. But a situation that would normally end in a slap fight ends with two people dead, because a mentally unstable, emotionally fragile person had a gun. And in Dunnachie’s case, she always had a gun. Because “freedom.” But that’s a mighty strange concept of freedom: people have to die because a bunch of rudderless people have decided that if they aren’t allowed to carry guns everywhere, the black helicopters will come.