According to the ONION, President Obama has made a major announcement, This May Not Be The Ideal Moment Politically, But It’s Time To Talk Reparations.

It’s a funny OpEd. The President does not bring the issue up lightly, but he isn’t going to lie, either:

This brings up an obvious question: how many conservatives will tweet and email this articles to friends and family. “Can you believe what Obama is doing!?” We may even get some blog posts. Like the ONION‘s Obama, I am serious about this. The problem is that the ONION has too perfectly created the Obama that conservatives think is real.

It’s sad, but it could be damn amusing!

I first heard this line applied to Doctor Faustus: “It has a beginning, a muddle, and an end.” The truth is that this could describe most of drama, but it does seem very fitting for Christopher Marlowe’s play. It has a fundamental problem that is nonetheless repeated constantly: there aren’t a lot of third acts to follow a first act when the protagonist sells his soul to the devil.

Ever since Goethe, writers have tried to find a clever way to get the hero out of his deal. In Goethe’s case, it turned out to be a syntactic trick and no one that I’m aware of has much improved on this. Marlowe at least has the good taste to treat Faustus as a tragic character with no way out. But even in this case, Doctor Faustus seems more like an essay than a play: tell the audience what you’re going to tell them, tell them, and tell them what you told them. Boring.

For the past year, I’ve been working on my own Faustian play, but at least I have the good sense to make Mephistopheles the star, rather than Faustus. He’s the interesting character, because he’s the guy who gets to watch Faustus make the same mistake that he has observed (and probably also committed). This is explicitly in the original play:

In other words, Faustus is an idiot. And thus the play is about an idiot who makes a choice, delays the choice for the second act, and then suffers for the choice in the third act. This, more than anything, is why the play is so rarely done. People love the idea and the dialog, yet it is always and forever unfulfilling.

And yet, I do love it. It is clearly the play of a very smart and erudite man. And it is hard for any intellectually inclined person to no see it as a metaphor for his own search for knowledge. The only filmed version of it is the tedious Richard Burton production. It does have one shining aspect: Andreas Teuber’s performance as Mephistopheles. It somehow makes sense that Teuber went on to be a professor of philosophy at Brandeis University. Unfortunately, all I can find of the film online is the most famous scene, “Is this the face that launched a thousand ships”:

If you are interested, here is the whole play (as much as these things ever are) that was filmed. It is directed by Jeremy Cole.

How can you resist?

Britain launched their first recorded invasion at the end of second century as part of a Roman campaign against what is today France. This was the start of a pattern: Britain has invaded France more than any other country. This is all the more impressive when you consider that Britain has invaded more countries than any other. According to Stuart Laycock in his book, All the Countries We’ve Ever Invaded: And the Few We Never Got Round To, at one time or another, Britain has invaded every country but 22.

An article on this little factoid appears in this morning’s The Telegraph in a cheekily titled article, British have invaded nine out of ten countries—so look out Luxembourg. Some of the other countries who have avoided British incursions are Guatemala, Tajikistan and the Marshall Islands. There are other countries where Laycock has given Britain the benefit of the doubt. For example, Mongolia may have been invaded. The British definitely got within 50 miles of the country, but he couldn’t confirm that they actually went into it.

Britain isn’t the only country with such a record. France has also invaded a great many countries. Part of this is just history. When Rome had their empire, much of the world was unknown. It is hard to invade Costa Rica (as has Britain) if you don’t know it exists. And other countries are too young to have racked up too long a list. But they try:

Of course, we don’t use the term “invade”; we prefer “spread democracy.”

But if England invades Luxembourg, you’ll know what’s going on. People should finish what they start.

I know that Thomas Friedman doesn’t exist just to piss me off, because he pisses a lot of other people off too. But at the moment, I’m feeling persecuted, because I was tricked into reading his most recent column. It is all Matt Yglesias’ fault. He tweeted, “Everyone is going to hate this Tom Friedman column, but once again he’s basically right.” Yglesias is a smart guy, so I thought I’d check out the column to see if Friedman is “basically right.” No, he isn’t. In fact, he is just giving us the same line that he always does.

Thomas Friedman, like most Serious Centrists, is above ideology. He just wants to fix problems. Sure, he can see that the Republicans have gone on tilt. But that doesn’t mean the Democrats don’t have their own problems. This always reminds me of someone in 1969 watching the Cuyahoga River on fire and saying, “This is bad, but the nitrogen levels are elevated in the American River; let’s not forget that!” Balance!

Today, Friedman tells us that if Obama wins re-election, this will cause the Republican Party to reevaluate and move to the center. Okay. That’s fine. Friedman is a naive man with no understanding of psychology or sociology, but that doesn’t make him evil. If the Republicans lose the presidencies, they will (1) blame it on Mitt Romney being a moderate; and (2) become even more extreme.

In the longer term, there may be something to what Friedman says. If the Republicans do not do very well in the 2014 midterms, then the party will likely start to moderate to some degree. But even then, it is not going to be a sudden lurch to the middle. It will be a slow process that will work from the more liberal areas out. Eventually, we may see a more reasonable center right party. But to think that this will happen in the next couple of years is ridiculous.

But it isn’t when talking about the Republican Party that Friedman is most off the mark. He can’t talk about this stuff without blasting the Democratic Party over supposed entitlement reform. For Friedman, this means screwing the poor and middle classes. He seems never to have heard of the idea of eliminating the Social Security cap. Mustn’t harm the rich! Instead it is: cut and delay benefits. Friedman is like a personal trainer who only thinks you are exercising if you are in great pain.

What is most annoying about Friedman and what is very much on display today is his hubris. Somehow, because he talks to taxi drivers, he thinks he has his fingers on the pulse of America. And this causes him to make ridiculous, untrue proclamations about what the common man wants:

I like the idea that Obama has never tested his base. The truth is that the liberal base of the Democratic Party has been constantly tested. Labor unions, for example, has continued to be loyal partisans even while the Obama administration has done nothing for them. Liberals got Republican healthcare “reform” that they hate. On immigration, drug policy, and taxes, liberals have gotten nothing or worse. A man delusional enough to think that “moderate” means pro-gay marriage economic extremism is certainly delusional enough to think that liberals have gotten everything (Or anything!) they wanted. But few others would.

The real belly laughing aspect of that quote is that America wants and needs a Grand Bargain. Americans don’t care about the debt. Unless they are specifically asked about it, they rarely mention it as a concern. As for what we need: it is more deficit spending. We need to stimulate the economy. What we don’t need is more rich idiot blowhards like Thomas Friedman explaining to us what we really want.

Update (4 November 2012 8:43)

After writing this article yesterday, I wrote to Dean Baker who has been very gracious about responding to my questions:

He doesn’t pull any punches in his responses:

This morning, Dean Baker wrote about the Friedman column:

I think everyone would agree with this young woman that the first time should be with someone special:

I am no expert on wine. I just enjoy it. Unlike most things in my life, I have never tried to learn about wine and what makes it good. But I’ve drunk enough of the stuff to form some opinions. And my newest opinion is that Hahn Winery‘s 2011 Pinot Noir is a really good wine and a great price.

What I know about wine is that there are a lot of different flavors in it—in a good one anyway. Often times (and this seems to be the case with wines that are supposed to be rather good), these tastes are very distinct. In my introverted, not all that in touch with my body way, I think of the flavors as occurring in different parts of my head. I don’t really like this. I find it upsetting.

A wine can also have all of those flavors mix together. This doesn’t mean that they make a kind of mush—like a bunch of colors mixed together to make brown. The flavors are instead linked together: they overlap like tropical fish in a small tank. This is find exhilarating. And this describes the Hahn 2011 Pinot Noir.

I wish I could tell you that it has a hint of this and an underlying that. But I can’t. When I cook, I often have to smell each of the spices before I can figure out what I need. It is “fruity” but then that’s kind of what defines a pinto noir, and is the main reason I like the grape. But there are at least 5 other distinct flavors—all linked together, swimming around in my head. So there you go.

I got this bottle on sale for $10. This is the price I normally pay from very drinkable Castle Rock Pinto Noirs of the last few years. But Hahn’s 2011 Pinto Noir is far better. I must see if I can get more.

“When President Obama took office in January 2009 the US was plunging downward into the worst recession since World War II. By summer 2009, the US had begun a weak but real recovery, which at last seems to be accelerating into an expansion that more and more Americans can feel.

“President Obama gave the order that killed Osama bin Laden. He ended the war in Iraq on acceptable terms. He is enforcing tightening sanctions against Iran, inspiring hopes of a peaceful end to that country’s nuclear program.

“Meanwhile, his opponents in Congress have behaved about as badly and irresponsibly as any opposition group…”

That’s how the liberal’s favorite conservative David Frum starts his endorse of… Mitt Romney! So why, after all of the good Obama has done and all the bad the Republicans have done is Frum voting for Mitt Romney? If we don’t, his party members in Congress will destroy the United States:

Jonathan Chait notes that David Frum joked about this less than a year ago:

Frum isn’t alone in this. Pretty much every Romney endorsement from a “reasonable” source was the same. This is exactly what Paul Krugman wrote about on Friday. It is a very dangerous idea that we should elect a Republican President because that is the only way to make the Republicans in Congress behave. And this kind of logic is all the worse when it comes to supposedly reasonable conservatives like David Frum.

Update (3 November 2012 1:03 pm)

Jonathan Chait also talks about how the same thing was said when Bush Jr was running. It turned out to be sort of truth: Republicans did stop blocking legislation. But what was that legislation?