The Black Sea

It Was a Million to One Shot, Doc . . . A Million to One

2009-05-24T22:06:00.001-07:00

Well, we're all capable of miracles. . . of a sort.

Two More Reasons not to Visit Atlanta

2009-05-07T09:38:00.000-07:00

Out of the many thousands of reasons not to visit Atlanta, two more emerged this week. I would particularly recommend that college students make a point of enrolling elsewhere.

My advice: if you've never been to Atlanta, don't bother. Take it from someone who spent forty years of his life there.

Update: Another day, another college student shooting, only this time, the college student shot and killed one of his would be attackers (oh, sweet justice). Would that he had killed them both. This all occurred in College Park, a suburb south of the city. For those not from Atlanta, if you must send your kids to school in "the Big A," for God's sake, don't set them up in College Park. There are no colleges in, around, or near, College Park. A misnomer, much like Peachtree Street (no peaches).

And yes, full disclosure (as the journalists so annoyingly say) I not only grew up in Atlanta, but went to college there as well (Ga Tech). But nobody ever shot me, and I never shot anybody either. Salad days.

Up Next: Exhalation Tax

2009-04-18T22:09:00.000-07:00

If you drop in here from time to time, you may have noticed that I haven't posted much recently. Part of this has been a matter of time (my wife returned to work in the fall), part the normal lethargy or apathy or whatever it is that plagues us, but part of it is also that I sort of fell into a discussion group on economic and political matters with some old friends in Atlanta, one of whom has an architectural practice, another of whom recently reached the breaking point and quit his job as a quite successful institutional stock broker (I don't think he'll have to worry about money for a while), and the third of which is a recently retired engineering professor, who also holds a PhD in physics, and who is father to the first two.

My participation in these discussions, I realized this morning, has siphoned off whatever (admittedly meager) initiative I had for posting here. So, rather than redoubling my efforts, I've decided simply to post some of my emailed comments to them here. I'll no doubt alter them editorially here and there to protect anonymity or enhance clarity. I happened to fire off to them the following this morning:

Well, this should help, since, as we all know, we're in imminent danger of drowning in rising seas.

I think something along the following lines would cut through a lot of the bullshit on this issue. I'm not an expert on global warming, nor are 99.999999999999999999999% of the people who comment with such assurance on this issue, including more than a few scientists.

Let's put it this way, if Al Gore is right, and global warming, or if you prefer the more current phraseology "climate change" (since the data suggest that the climate may now be cooling) . . . anyway, if this phenomenon is a) the near apocalyptic threat that it is made out to be, and is b) man-made (or if you prefer, "human made," although "human" is actually an adjective), and is c) most specifically the result of economic activity, then what we should all be praying for is a) a global economic collapse that b) lasts as a long as possible, and is as severe as possible, and that c) ultimately results in a winnowing of the human infestation plaguing our ecosystem.

Are our prayers being answered?

In other words, I'm still waiting for some politician to point out the "inconvenient truth" that we're lucky to be undergoing the current economic crisis, that unemployment is now a good thing, widespread business failures are an even better thing, and that the outbreak of several desperate, genocidal, large-scale wars might be just what the planet ordered. Now that's a guy I could vote for, simply on the grounds that he'd have to have balls the size of two geographically correct globes.

You might also enjoy this.

ps: I also bought a motor scooter recently, which has occupied my attention. See, I am trying to save the planet after all.

Idle Hands . .

2009-04-03T06:07:00.000-07:00

Spring Break begins today, a Saturday. A blessed relief?

Saturday took me away from the shop, away from the Scherzhauserfeld Project, and back into a state of melancholy. Even before I had left the project, silence had fallen upon it, broken only by the rattle of crockery and cutlery to be heard through the windows, a silence that meant one thing: it is Saturday, nobody is at work, people are lying around in their apartments on their sofas or their beds, not knowing what to do with their free time. The afternoon silence lasted until three, when they began to quarrel, and then some of them would rush out of their houses and into the open air, very often swearing and screaming, desperation written all over their faces. I always felt that Saturday afternoon was a dangerous time for everyone. The mood of desperation, to which most of the inhabitants fell victim to the most alarming extent, resulted from dissatisfaction with themselves and with everything and everybody, as well as from the sudden awareness that they were being exploited and that their lives were entirely pointless. Most people are used to their work, to some kind of regular occupation; and when work stops they momentarily lose their sense of purpose and succumb to a state of morbid despair. This is as true of the individual as it is of the mass. They imagine that they are recouping their energy, but in reality they find themselves in a vacuum, and this drives them half-demented. The result is that on Saturday afternoons they get the maddest ideas and everything they attempt turns out unsatisfactorily. They start moving furniture around--wardrobes and chests of drawers, tables and armchairs, even their beds. They take their clothes out on their balconies to brush them, and they clean their shoes as if they had suddenly gone mad. The women get up on the window-sills, and the men go down to the cellar and stir up the dust with their brooms. Whole families take it into their heads that they must tidy up their living quarters, and so they fall upon the contents of their apartments and try to make order, but they succeed only in creating disorder in their minds. Or else they take to their beds and nurse their ailments, taking refuge in their diseases, permanent diseases which they become aware of again on Saturday afternoons when work is over. The doctors know all about this and are more in demand on Saturday afternoons than at any other time. When work stops, the diseases start; there are sudden pains, the well-known Saturday headache, the Saturday afternoon palpitations, fainting fits, outbreaks of fury. The diseases are suppressed and assuaged during the week by working or being occupied in some way. On Saturday afternoon, they make themselves felt again, and the sufferer is at once thrown off balance. And if he has stopped work at midday and become aware soon afterwards of his true situation, which is in every case a hopeless situation, no matter who he is, what he is, or where he is, he has to admit to himself that he is unhappy, even if to others he pretends the opposite. The fact that there are a few happy people who are not thrown off balance by Saturday only proves the rule. Fundamentally Saturday is a day people fear even more than Sunday, for on Saturday they know that Sunday is still to come, and Sunday is the most terrible day of all; but Sunday is followed by Monday, a working day, and this makes it endurable. Saturday is frightful, Sunday is terrible, and Monday brings release. To pretend that this is not so is malevolent and stupid.

--Thomas Bernhard, Gathering Evidence

The Unsettling

2009-03-30T08:49:00.000-07:00

Once, long ago, very long ago, it was with a sense of joy that I sat down at my desk to write. Next, it was merely with a certain pleasure. Later, it was with indifference, out of habit and even with a sort of boredom. Later still, when I was writing dozens of pages of a journal devoted to the arguments I had with my former friends who were becoming Fascists or Nazis or Iron Guards, I would sit down at my desk despite a certain reluctance. Today, the thought that I've got to write fills me with sheer horror. Today, when I begin to write, there stirs within me an even keener and more intolerable awareness of the tragedy, the danger, the universal anguish, and I long to escape, to divert my mind, to forget it all.
--Eugene Ionesco, Fragments of a Journal

The Naked Light of Sunday

2008-12-05T03:16:00.000-08:00

As the shadows lengthen to the solstice, we take our comforts - and our excitements - where they may be found. Last Saturday, I watched one of the best college football games I've ever seen. Amid the sleet and rain of a "winter-mix" as the meteorologists term it, Missouri and Kansas went all out for a full four quarters. Kansas, the underdog, playing with a banged up roster, including their quarterback, who could barely lift his arm at the beginning of the week, took the lead early and held it through most of the game. Missouri, playing with their own share of injured starters, manging to fight their way back into the game, then take the lead on a series of gut plays. The final six and a half minutes featured four touchdowns, each of which resulted in a change of lead. Missouri lost on the last play of the game, a 53 yard field goal attempt. As the cliche-mongers have it, it was a shame that one team had to lose.

The Atlanta Falcons, who some predicted wouldn't win a game this season, are now 8 - 4 under a new coach, Mike Smith, and led by a new quarterback, Matt Ryan, who has to be the frontrunner for rookie of the year. What a difference one season makes, leaving behind the debacle of Vick, Harrington, and Pettrino.

And for those of you old enough to remember the 70s era Pittsburg Steelers, this may bring back some memories.

Volunteers of America

2008-11-07T04:41:00.000-08:00

From CHANGE.GOV.
OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT-ELECT:

"When you choose to serve -- whether it's your nation, your community or simply your neighborhood -- you are connected to that fundamental American ideal that we want life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness not just for ourselves, but for all Americans. That's why it's called the American dream."

The Obama Administration will call on Americans to serve in order to meet the nation’s challenges. President-Elect Obama will expand national service programs like AmeriCorps and Peace Corps and will create a new Classroom Corps to help teachers in underserved schools, as well as a new Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, and Veterans Corps. Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year. Obama will encourage retiring Americans to serve by improving programs available for individuals over age 55, while at the same time promoting youth programs such as Youth Build and Head Start.

1. Does it not seem ironic that voluntary service, which so embodies the "fundamental American ideal," is about to be made mandatory, evidently under the rubric of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?"

2.Do you not suppose that service in the newly-formed Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, Veterans Corps, and Classroom Corps might involve some measure of political indoctrination, along with the doing of good deeds? Is not the requirement that one serve in such organizations itself a form of political indoctrination, as it implies that one's talents, energies, and ambitions are owed to, and owned by, the state?

3. Do you not suspect that a current or future administration might channel "volunteers" into such organizations as will serve the interests and/or political priorities of that administration?

4. Do you not wonder on what grounds, constitutionally, the Federal Government may assume the power to "require" students, or anyone else, to engage in "community service?"

5. Does it not seem preferable that private citizens, rather than the Federal Government, decide which types of charitable or state organizations, if any, they shall contribute their time and effort to?

6. Are you not curious as to what may happen to skeptical or reluctant citizens wishing to opt out of such "service?" Will they then be opting out of a high school or college education as well?

7. Do you not wonder in what ways retirees will be "encouraged" to join the volunteer ranks?

8. Does it not seem significant that these "volunteer" programs are to begin with middle and high school students, who cannot vote, and college students, a demographic particularly predisposed to "faith" in the president-elect?

9. Does it not seem an irony of historical proportions that -- while involuntary servitude under private landownders is taken to be America's "original sin" -- our nation's first African-American president plans to institute a program of involuntary servitude, only this time under the authority of the state?

10. Do you not wonder if somehow, somewhere, Orwell is smiling, not with pleasure, but recognition?

"Hey now its time for you and me
Got a revolution got to revolution
Come on now were marching to the sea
Got a revolution got to revolution
Who will take it from you
We will and who are we
We are volunteers of america"
-Jefferson Airplane

Addendum: In the past twenty-four hours, Obama's website has changed the wording of this post to read, "Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by setting a goal that all middle school and high school students do 50 hours of community service a year and by developing a plan so that all college students who conduct 100 hours of community service receive a universal and fully refundable tax credit ensuring that the first $4,000 of their college education is completely free."

Here is a screenshot of the CHANGE.GOV post in its original form.

Ceza

2008-10-29T12:15:00.000-07:00

Interested in Turkish rap? Well, Turkish rap is interested in you.

Ceza, Yerli Plaka.

Woe, woe, woe.

My Fellow Americans . . .

2008-10-19T05:03:00.000-07:00

On Friday, having not enough to do, I posted a comment on TGGP's Entitled to an Opinion. It concerned the extent to which the now near-mythical "Joe the Plumber" represented the real, actual, average American.

Intrigued with the question, I set out to do some research. In a project of this type, you can to some degree make up the rules as you go along. Average income, for example. The average American has some post-secondary education -- "college" of course can mean almost anything -- but no four-year degree. If you are determined to create a composite image of the "average American," do you then look at the average income for someone with that level of education, or simply the average income for the population a a whole? The two will differ.

Anyway, for some unknown reason I got into this demographic challenge, and I thought I would expand upon, and briefly explain (in italics), my reasoning in creating a portrait of THE AVERAGE AMERICAN:

She (50.7% of the population) is a white (80% of population, non Hispanic white, 66.4%), 37 year old who lives in a three person household in Olathe, Kansas (pop. 118,000), a suburb of Kansas City.

Olathe is near the geographical center of the continental US; the positions of Alaska and Hawaii distort the US center too much. Olathe is an urban area, but not an enormous one, near to Kansas City, with a metropolitan population of 2.2 million. I've never visited Olathe, but I have visited Kansas City, and if there was ever a city that felt like the average American city . . . .

She has a high school diploma and some post-secondary education, but no Bachelors degree. She works in an office. A Protestant who believes in God, she nevertheless doesn’t attend church on a weekly basis. She will have nine sex partners over the course of her life, and will at some point in her life be divorced.

She “owns” a home worth . . . well, it used to be worth around $120,000, on which she has a monthly mortgage payment of around $1,000. Her annual household income is $55,000 per year

The average between the US average [$48,000] and the average for Olathe [$61,111]. Household income can be deceptive, since only 42% of American households include more than one income earner. If our Average American is living with a husband or boyfriend and child, her income would be in the $60s. If she is divorced -- and she probably will be at some point in her life -- her income would presumably be lower, although according to one source, "Five years after the split, the average divorcee's new household income often surpasses her original household's."

Her home looks something like this.

Ugly as shite, but functional. Yes, the listed price for this monstrosity is higher than $120,000, but one the other hand, the average American resides in a 1,700 sq, ft. home, and this one is only 1346. I'm balancing out the various averages as best I can. Again, a lot of it depends on whether she's living with another income earner and a child, or no other income earner and two children. Anyway, this house intuitively feels like a reasonable representation to me.

Her household has two cars, two to three TVs (depends on the source you look at), and at least one computer with internet access.

She will someday find her way to this blog, read this comment, realize that she is the anointed one, and reveal herself to a waiting world as the Ultimate Average American. She will then run for national office, lose, and host her own TV show.

Interested parties can learn more about the average American here. I now feel better about myself.

Red Sky at Morning

2008-09-27T04:14:00.000-07:00

"Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms."
-- Aristotle

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
-- William Pitt, speech to the House of Commons, [Nov. 18, 1783]

"A truth’s initial commotion is directly proportional to how deeply the lie was believed. It wasn’t the world being round that agitated people, but that the world wasn’t flat. When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic."
-- Dresden James

"The ideal tyranny is that which is ignorantly self-administered
by its victims. The most perfect slaves are, therefore, those
which blissfully and unawaredly enslave themselves."
-- Dresden James

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country; corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in High Places will follow, and the Money Power of the Country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the People, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed."
-- Abraham Lincoln, shortly before his assassination

"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else."
-- Theodore Roosevelt

"Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves, I intend to rout you out, and by the Eternal God I will rout you out! If the people only understood the rank injustice of our money and banking system there would be a revolution before morning."
-- Andrew Jackson, 1832

Wall Street is not the Only Thing Imploding in New York

2008-09-25T05:10:00.000-07:00

Periodically, I rise to the bait so freely proferred by my journalistic bete noire, The New York Times. However, I rarely have a go at Maureen Dowd, for much the same reason that I rarely challenge the blind to billiards or jump grandmothers in stairwells. I'm alluding to my sense of chivalry, of course, but there's also the fact to have a go a Dowd, I'd have to read Dowd, and in my current capacity I'm already exposed to far too much flailing and failing prose, though I am at least compensated here for my suffering.

However, seeing that Ms. Dowd's latest political rumination, Park Avenue Diplomacy, is today's most emailed article among The New York Times faithful, I thought I might venture off my well-worn path and take a look. Who knows, perhaps Dowd has purchased a new thesaurus or cribbed some scintillating notions from Naomi Wolf? Alas, no such luck.

I don’t agree with those muttering darkly that the picture of Gov. Sarah Palin with a perky smile and shapely gams posing with a pleased Henry Kissinger, famous for calling power the ultimate aphrodisiac, is a sign of the apocalypse.

It isn’t even a sign of the apocalipstick.

Yes, this is Dowd at the peak of her form.

Sarah was motorcading around Manhattan even as a “greed is good” Wall Street experienced an End of Days vibe while a world gone sour on America descended on the United Nations.

After losing its moral superiority abroad with phony evidence for attacking Iraq, the U.S. has now lost its moral superiority in the financial arena. Once more, W. took the ball, carried it off the cliff and went biking.

Two paragraphs, three sentences. A reference to a lousy (even by Oliver Stone standards) Oliver Stone film, Palin's barbaric theological persuasions, humanity's disenchantment with America (all in one sentence!), followed by the war in Iraq, the Wall Street crisis, George Bush carrying a ball, then carrying it off a cliff, then riding a bicycle. Don't you think she could have tossed in something about stem cell research, global warming, and the failure of the female orgasm?

Oh, and what's the deal about America losing "its moral superiority in the financial arena?" I know Bernanke and Paulson have been laying it on heavy, but they haven't been laying it on that heavy. (Yes, I realize it should be "heavily," but "there is a way of being wrong which is also sometimes necessarily right."
-E. Abbey.)

Finally, Sarah huddled with Henry in his Park Avenue office, next to pictures of Ford and Reagan. The two made an odd couple: the last impure Rockefeller Republican and the first pure Rovian Republican, grown totally in the petri dish of cultural crusaderism.

Is the odd couple composed of Palin and Kissenger, or Ford and Reagan? If the former, presumably, then why the mention of the latter, and is it not a basic error to use "the two" in reference to Palin and Kissinger, when in fact the last two people identified in the prior sentence were Ford and Reagan?

Palin was "grown totally in the petri dish of cultural crusaderism?" Couldn't that be as easily said of Barak Obama, and more tellingly, mightn't he - with a little tweaking of the phrasing here and there - like to have that said of him?

Kissinger probably explained détente and Metternich to Palin, while she explained the Iditarod and moose carving to him.

I once heard a rather well-known poet (as poets go) describe a student's effort at verse as "high grade ore." The above is not, to put it gently, high grade ore.

And Governor Palin spends so much time ostracizing reporters who might quiz her on NATO or the liquidity crunch that her press strategy is beginning to smack of Putin’s — but less lethal.

Even if she blows off the First Amendment — and lets McCain’s Rove, Steve Schmidt, demonize the press even though she disdains women politicians who whine — Bill Clinton is still a fan.

One tires of having to explain this, but criticism of anyone else's expression - valid criticism, invalid criticism, intelligent criticism, idiotic criticism, ideologically pure criticism, ideologically tainted criticism, constructive criticism, or mean, hurtful, vindictive, eye-gouging criticism is not a violation of the First Amendment; it is an exercise of the First Amendment. Therefore, "demonizing the press" (which thoroughly deserves its own circle of hell, by the way) does not constitute "blowing off the First Amendment."

To reiterate, this is today's single most emailed New York Times article, which is another way of saying that - as Sarah Palin herself might phrase it - we are upon the End Times. Or as the apparently now silent (and who came blame him?) Udolpho once put it, "This culture may not be worth saving."

A Conflict of Visions

2008-09-23T05:51:00.000-07:00

In his book of the same name, Thomas Sowell argues that all men are guided in their thoughts and actions by an underlying set of visions which explain to them how the world, in its various facets, operates. The book, in the main, goes on to examine the inescapable conflict between what he terms the "unconstrained" and the "constrained" vision. These terms are very nearly self-explanatory. The unconstrained vision takes human nature as a promising raw material which can, by relatively straightforward measures, be molded to a variety of desirable human ends. The constrained vision sees human nature as largely fixed, morally suspect, and sometimes blindly destructive, even toward its own apparent interests. The unconstrained vision promises us emotional well-being via the guidance of qualified psychological experts who seek only to help us better ourselves, and the world around us. The constrained vision sees man as a wolf to man, and hopes that his most selfish and anarchic instincts might somehow be muted by shame, or moderated by mutal affection, or at least channelled into relatively more tolerable pursuits.

The unconstrained vision is lyrical; the constrained is tragic. The unconstrained is youthful; the constrained middle-aged. The unconstrained inspires; the constrained cautions. "'Most men look at things as they are and wonder why. I dream of things that never were and ask: Why not?'" mused Bobby Kennedy. "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return," Genesis replies. The first vision is linear, spring-like, we might say, "Faustian." The second is circular, autumnal, humbling.

Both the constrained and the unconstrained vision inhabit every human psyche, in varying ways at varying times. But Sowell's apparent purpose in writing his book is to caution us against the siren song of the unconstrained vision, and to remind us of the damage that its excesses so often engender. More specifically, he sees our political and economic choices as emerging from a conflict between these two visions of the human state. For those who bother to think, aging is, in some measure, a transit from one vision to the other.

This brings us to the upcoming election. We do not now have, nor have we had, so far as I can remember during my lifetime, any sustained political conflict between the constrained and the unconstrained vision. In short, what we have, and have had, is simply a rhetorical competition between two versions of the unconstrained vision. In effect, the unconstrained vision has long since won the day. Hence, my reluctance to enter into the political process (i.e. to vote).

For the entirety of my adulthood (and I'm now well into my forties) we have evaded the constraints on our income and our consumption, both as individuals and as a society, by borrowing against our own or our children's - and grand children's - future prosperity, such as they may ever enjoy. This evasion has been engaged in enthusiastically, even optimistically, but with next to no regard as to its long-term effects. There is no point here, so far as I am concerned, in apportioning blame to a particular politician, or party, or economic class of society. We've given ourselves license to do this, and we've given others license to do this in our name.

I don't know what the ultimate outcome of the current Wall Street tribulation may be, but I suspect that, in the much broader sense, the way that we have been living, and the vision which has underpinned the choices we have made, will eventually, inevitably, and not in the too far distant future, encounter a very stiff and unyielding wall. Things will then change, as things always do. The outcome will probably be sobering, and for many, tragic. And of course, it could always be even worse.

A few points to consider, none of which require an advanced understanding of economics.

1. The era of cheap oil is over. This does not mean that we, or the world, will ruin out of oil this year, or this decade. But we will be paying more for oil now and into the future than we paid up to the recent past, and that change will be permanent. The price of oil will only decline, long term, when (if) humanity hits upon something cost-effective that operates more or less as oil does. There is currently nothing on the horizon, that I know of, that fits that description.

2. Our fueling of ever-increasing consumer spending through ever-increasing debt is about to be re-examined. We rely on people elsewhere to loan us money, and those people are currently, for good reason, somewhat wary of our ability to repay. Again, this is true on both the individual and the national level. I don't pretend to have any esoteric understanding of our capital markets, but I think I am correct in assuming that when you take on debt, every year, and neglect ever to pay down the principal, and finance the interest on the accumulating debt through taking on more debt, you eventually find yourself deep in a hole you cannot crawl out of.

3. Our economic growth over the past twenty years has not been limited to, but has been characterized by, bubbles. According to economist Thomas Palley:

"The business cycles of Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush share strong similarities and are different from pre-1980 cycles. The similarities are large trade deficits, manufacturing job loss, asset price inflation, rising debt-to-income ratios, and detachment of wages from productivity growth.

The new cycle rests on financial booms and cheap imports. Financial booms provide collateral that supports debt-financed spending. Borrowing is also supported by an easing of credit standards and new financial products that increase leverage and widen the range of assets that can be borrowed against."

When markets are on an upswing, those raking it in are hardcore free-marketeers. Even those who know that such markets are overvalued cannot resist the temptation to "make hay while the sun shines." When markets are collapsing, we discover that these same people are somehow integral to the salvaging of our financial system, and that the entities with which they are affiliated are "too big to fail." This may not have been true of the tech bubble, but it certainly characterized the S&L debacle of the 80s, and of course we hear the same rationalizations, or if you prefer, rationales, now.

4. Social Security. In about two years, the baby boomers will begin to reach retirement age. This will entitle them (and me, eventually) to Social Security. What's worse, it will entitle them to Medicare. This is like one of those satellite photographs of one of those many hurricanes sweeping through the Caribbean a few weeks ago. This storm will not be diverted. Obviously, accomodations to reality can - and will eventually have to - be made. These accomodations will not make the baby boomers richer. The necessary adjustments will be played out on the field of inter-generational, ethnic, and class rivalry.

5. The underclass in America is growing larger. It both reproduces more, and reproduces faster (children at 18 instead of 30, grand kids in one's 30s, not one's 60s). Women receiving public assistance have, on average, three times the number of children of women who aren't on the dole. The expansion of the underclass is also attributable to unbridled and unselective immigration, much of it illegal. People don't like to talk about this in polite society. Politicians who wish to remain in office don't talk about it at all. Hence, nothing will be done to curtail the rise in the numbers of young people who will struggle through school, vent their frustration in various socially destructive ways, drop out or graduate at best marginally educated, and then struggle to find an entre into the legitimate economy. Many of them won't even bother to try. The upper middle class will avail itself of gated communities and private schools, and continue to lie to itself for as long as it can. Those below will have to fend for themselves on the streets. For them, lies will not prove so consoling.

As the factors above coalesce, plus those I'm too lazy or ignorant to write about now, our political discourse will become ever more riven with jealousy and accusation, suspicion, envy, and fear. Our politicians will continue to promise us more and better, better and more, for they know that we are children who wish only to be comforted, which, as our circumstances decline, will mean only to be deceived. They will accommodate us, and we will accommodate them. And we will all fall down together. Want examples? Look to the campaign promises of McCain and Obama. Or just click on this article.

By the way. I am, as I've said, well into my forties, with a wife and two kids. But I've never in my life owned a house. I used to feel kind of bad, or guilty, or inadequate about this, like I'd neglected to do something that was expected of me.

I don't feel so bad about it now.

PS: If you,re pondering the merits of the Wall Street bailout, you might want to click here.

In Our Time

2008-09-22T04:38:00.000-07:00

Go to the "Search" feature for The New York Times website. Type in "Michael Richards+racist." You will get 318 hits.

Type in "Mel Gibson+anti-semitic" and get 1,170 hits.

Dog, the Bounty Hunter, "Duane Chapman+racist" produces 54 hits.

"Don Imus+racist" generates an impressive 2,090 hits.

Curiously, try whatever semantic combinations you may, you will be unable to produce even one hit referencing "comedienne" Sandra Bernhardt's recent performance at a Washington D.C Jewish Community Center. Bernhardt's monologue was characterized by the following political analysis:

Now you got Uncle Women, like Sarah Palin, who jumps on the s--t and points her fingers at other women. Turncoat b---h! Don’t you f--kin’ reference Old Testament, bitch! You stay with your new Goyish crappy shiksa funky bulls--t! Don’t you touch my Old Testament, you b---h! Because we have left it open for interpre-ta-tion! It is no longer taken literally! You whore in your f--kin' cheap New Vision cheap-ass plastic glasses and your [sneering voice] hair up. A Tina Fey-Megan Mullally brokedown bulls--t moment.

In a nice touch, Bernhardt also warned Sarah Palin not to visit Manhattan, lest she be gang-raped by blacks. The New York Times has yet to write about this story.

Should I Stay or Should I Go

2008-08-05T06:38:00.000-07:00

Not long ago I had asked the specialist if I could contemplate travelling. Naturally, anytime, he said, but the way he said naturally struck me as sinister. On the other hand,whatever condition we are in, we must always do what we want to do, and if we want to go on a journey, then we must do so and not worry about our condition, even if it's the worst possible condition, because if it is, we're finished anyway, whether we go on the journey or not, and it's better to die having made the journey we've been longing for than to be stifled by our longing. It was eighteen months since I'd been anywhere. The last time had been to Palma, because I always regarded it as the most perfect place. In November, when the fog so cruelly oppresses and depresses us in Austria, I had run through the streets of Palma in an open necked shirt and drunk my coffee every day in the shade of the plane trees on the famous Bourne. And in Palma I'd been able to make my definitive notes on Reger. True, I later lost them, to this day I don't know where, thus managing to destroy the fruits of two month's intellectual effort through a piece of gross carelessness. Quite unforgivable! Just to think that I might now be sitting on the terrace of the Nixe Palace, eating my olives and drinking my glass of water, not just absorbed, but utterly captivated by the sight of others on the terrace, who would be just as taken up by their fancies and fantasies as I was with mine! We often fail to realize that if we want to go on existing we need to summon up all our strength in order to wrench ourselves off the spot where we're stuck. My sister's right to keep using the word travel in my presence, wielding it over me like a whip all the time, I tell myself. She doesn't just use the word casually every moment, but with a definite aim in mind, the preservation of my very existence. Naturally the observer can see through the person he is observing more ruthlessly and realistically than the person observed, I said. There are so many wonderful towns in the world, so many landscapes and coastlines I've seen in my life, but for me none has ever been as perfect as Palma. But what if one of my dreaded attacks comes when I'm in Palma and I'm lying in bed in my hotel room with no proper medical attention and in a state of mortal fear? We have to envisage the most terrible eventualities and make the journey nonetheless, I told myself, yet at the same time I said, I can't take all my piles of notes with me; they'll hardly go in two suitcases, and to take more than two suitcases to Palma is madness. I was driven almost to distraction by the thought of having to go to the station, get on the train, go from the train to the airport, board the plane and all the rest with two or even three suitcases. But I didn't abandon the thought of Palma or the Melia--the Mediterraneo having closed for good years ago. I had taken a firm hold in the idea, and it had taken a firm hold on me. I walked about the house, to and fro, backwards and forwards, upstairs and downstairs, unable to rid myself of the thought of leaving Peiskam behind me; in fact I made not the slightest attempt to rid myself of the thought of Palma, but went on fuelling it until in the end I got so far as to take my two large suitcases out of the hall chest and place them beside it on the floor as though I really was going to leave. On the other hand, I said to myself, we mustn't give way at once to a sudden whim. Where would that land us? But the idea was there. I placed the suitcases between the chest and the door and contemplated them from a favorable angle. How long it is since I last took those cases out of the chest! I said to myself. Far too long. In fact, the cases were dusty, even though they'd been in the chest since my last trip to Palma. I got a duster and wiped them. At once I felt very sick. I hadn't even finished dusting one case when I was obliged to support myself on the chest, overcome by a sudden fit of breathlessness. And in this condition you're thinking of flying to Palma--in the midst of all the dreadful difficulties that are invariably attendant upon such a journey, a journey which would be nothing to a healthy person, but which is far too much for a sick person and could even lead to his death? After a while, however, I dusted the second case, proceeding more cautiously this time, and then I sat down in the iron chair in the hall, my favourite chair. The articles about Mendelssohn Bartholdy can go in one of the cases, I told myself, my clothes and underclothes in the other--the Mendelssohn papers in the larger one, the clothes and underclothes in the smaller one. What's the point of having such elegant luggage, I said to myself, at least sixty years old and going back to the latter years of my maternal grandmother? She had good taste, as these suitcases of hers testify. The Tuscans have good taste, I told myself, as is borne out time and again. If I go away, I said to myself, sitting in the iron chair, I shall simply be leaving a country whose absolute futility utterly depresses me every single day, whose imbecilities daily threaten to stifle me, and whose idiocies will sooner or later be the end of me, even without my illnesses. Whose political and cultural conditions have of late become so chaotic that they turn my stomach when I wake up every morning, even before I am out of bed. Whose indifference to the intellect has long since ceased to cause the likes of me to despair, but if I am to be truthful only to vomit. I shall be going away from a country, I told myself, sitting in my iron chair, in which everything which once gave pleasure to so-called thinking people, or at least made it possible for them to go on existing, has been expelled, expunged and extinguished, in which only the most primitive instinct for survival prevails and the slightest pretension to thought is stifled at birth. In which a corrupt state and a corrupt church join forces to pull at the endless rope which, with the utmost callousness and ruthlessness, they have for centuries wound round the neck of a blind and stupid people, a people imprisoned in its stupidity by its rulers. In which truth is trodden underfoot, and lies are sanctified by all official organs as the only means to any end. I shall be leaving a country, I told myself, sitting in the iron chair, in which truth is not understood or quite simply not accepted, and falsehood is the only legal tender in all transactions. I shall be leaving a country in which the church practices hypocrisy and in which socialism, having come to power, practices exploitation, and in which art says whatever is acceptable to these two. I shall be leaving a country in which a people educated to stupidity allows its ears to be stopped by the church and its mouth by the state, and in which everything I hold sacred has for centuries ended up in the slop pails of the rulers. If I go away, I told myself, sitting in the iron chair, I shall be going away from a country in which I no longer have any place and in which I have never found happiness. If I go away, I shall be going away from a country in which the towns stink and the inhabitants of the towns have become coarsened. I shall be going away from a country in which the language has become vulgar and the minds of those who speak this vulgar language have for the most part become deranged. I shall be going away from a country, I told myself, sitting in the iron chair, in which the only model for behavior is set by the so-called wild animals. I shall be going away from a country in which darkest night prevails at noonday, and in which virtually the only people in power are blustering illiterates. If I go away, I told myself, sitting in the iron chair, I shall be leaving the disgusting, depressing, and unconscionably filthy public lavatory of Europe. To go away, I told myself, sitting in the iron chair, means leaving behind me a country which for years has done nothing but afflict me with the most damaging depression and has taken every opportunity, no matter where or when, of insidiously and malignantly urinating on my head. But isn't it madness to think of going to Palma when I'm in such a state, and when my general physical condition doesn't even permit me to walk two hundred yards out of the door? I asked myself as I sat in the iron chair. As I sat there, I thought first about Taormina and the Timeo, with Christina and her Fiat, then about Palma and the Melia, with the Canellas, their three storey palace and their Mercedes. And suddenly, as I sat in the iron chair, I saw myself running through the narrow streets of Palma. Running through the streets! I cried out, sitting in the iron chair, when I'm not capable of even walking round the outside of my own house, let alone running through the streets of Palma. For a sick man like me to entertain such an idea isn't just bordering on megalomania; such an idea is well beyond the border, it's sheer madness. And I couldn't get this madness out of my head. As I sat in the iron chair I couldn't call a halt to the madness and didn't even try. On the contrary, I indulged it to such an extent that I couldn't help shouting out the word mad. The Melia or the Timeo, Christina or the Canellas, the Fiat or the Mercedes, I speculated, unable to stop myself, as I sat in the iron chair, drawing refreshment from these ridiculous speculations -- the Melia with all the hundreds and thousands of yachts outside the window -- the Timeo with its bougainvillaeas flowering at the window -- the Melia and the incredible sea breeze -- the ancient bathroom at the Timeo -- Christina or the Canellas -- the bougainvillaeas or the sea breeze -- the Cathedral or the Greek theater, I thought, sitting in the iron chair, the Mallorcans or the Sicilians -- Etna or Pollensa -- Ramon Llull and Ruben Dario or Pirandello. At present, I finally told myself, since I want to start my work on Mendelssohn Bartholdy, I need a cosmopolitan atmosphere -- more people, more activity, more excitement, I thought as I sat in the iron chair, not a place with just one street -- and on a hill at that, hence requiring exertion -- and just one cafe, but a place with many busy streets -- and squares! and many cafes, and as many people around me as possible, for at present I need nothing so much as to have people around me - not that I want any dealings with them: I don't even want to speak with them, I thought, sitting in the iron chair, but I must have them around me. And so for all these obvious reasons I decided on Palma and against Taormina, in favour of the Canellas and against Christina, and generally in favour of a climate which would be positively beneficial to me in my condition, a summery climate such as I might expect in Palma even in February, but not in Taormina, where in February it is still wintery and rains nearly all the time. And in February, I thought, sitting in the iron chair, Etna is seldom to be seen, and even then its covered in snow from top to bottom, a constant and harmful reminder of the Alps, and therefore of Austria and home, which could only sicken me again and again. But suddenly this all appeared to me as senseless fantasizing, indulged in by an over wrought invalid, sitting in his iron chair; it did little more than make me sadder than I already was, and ended in dejection.

Thomas Bernhard Concrete
trans. by David McLintock, 1984

Discipline and Hope

2008-07-31T00:42:00.000-07:00

Having no need to account for anything they have done, our politicians do not find it necessary to trouble us with with either evidence or argument, or to confess their errors, or to subtract their losses from their gains; they speak like the gods of Olympus, assured that if they say they are our servants anything they do in their own interest is right. Our public discourse has been reduced to the manipulation of uprooted symbols: good words, bad words, the names of gods and devils, emblems, slogans, flags. For some the flag no longer stands for the country, it is the country; they plant their crops and bury their dead in it.

There is no better example of this deterioration of language than in the current use of the word "freedom." Across the whole range of current politics this word is now being mouthed as if its devotees cannot decide whether it should be kissed or eaten, and this adoration has nothing to do with its meaning. The government is protecting the freedom of people by killing them or hiding microphones in their houses. The government's opponents, left and right, wish to set people free by telling them exactly what to do. All this for the sake of the political power the word has come to have. The up-to-date politician no longer pumps the hand of the prosperous constituent; he offers to set him--or her--free. And yet it seems to me that the word has no political meaning at all; the government cannot serve freedom except negatively--"by the alacrity" in Thoreau's phrase, "with which it [gets] out of the way."

. . . Free men are not set free by their government. Free men have set their government free of themselves; they have made it unnecessary. Freedom is not accomplished by a declaration. A declaration of freedom is either a futile and empty gesture, or it is the statement of a finished fact. As I understand it, freedom is a personal matter; though we may be enslaved as a group, we can be free only as persons. We can set each other free only as persons. It is a matter of discipline. A person can free himself of a bondage that has been imposed on him only by accepting a bondage that he has chosen. A man who would not be the slave of other men must be the master of himself--that is the real meaning of self-government. If we all behaved as honorably and honestly and industriously as we expect our representatives to behave, we would soon put the government out of work

-Wendell Berry "Discipline and Hope," 1971

Democratic Vistas 2008

2008-07-05T04:43:00.000-07:00

Closer yet I approach you;
What thought you have of me, I had as much of you—I laid in my stores in advance;
I consider’d long and seriously of you before you were born.

Who was to know what should come home to me?
Who knows but I am enjoying this?
Who knows but I am as good as looking at you now, for all you cannot see me?
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry -Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

Whitman

"I say we had better look our nation searchingly in the face, like a physician diagnosing some deep disease." - Democratic Vistas

"Look for me under your bootsoles."

On Long Island, they moved my clapboard house
Across a turnpike, & then felt so guilty they
Named a shopping center after me!
Teen-agers call me a fool.
Now what I sang stops breathing.

And yet
It was only when everyone stopped believing in me
That I began to live, again-
First in the thin whine of Montana fence wire
Then in the transparent, cast off garments hung
In the windows of the poorest families,
Then in the glad music of Charlie Parker.
At times now,
I even come back to watch you
From the eyes of a taciturn boy in Malibu.
Across the counter at the the beach concession stand,
I sell you hot dogs, Pepsis, cigarettes-
My blond hair long, greasy, & swept back,
In a vain old ducktail, deliciously
Out of style.
And no one notices.

Once, I even came back as me,
An aging homosexual who ran the Tilt-a-Whirl
At county fairs, the chilled paint on each gondola
Changing color as it picked up speed,
And a Mardi Gras tattoo on my left shoulder.
A few of you must have seen my photographs,
For when you looked back,
I thought you caught the meaning of my stare:
Still water,
Merciless.

A Kosmos. One of the roughs.

Leave me alone.
A father who's outlived his only child.

To find me now will cost you everything.

-Larry Levis (1946-1996)

Happy Independence Day . . . enjoy it while it lasts.

yeah, it's over (for) now . . .

2008-06-08T01:17:00.000-07:00

The Seattle grunge band, Alice in Chains, used to sing a little ditty, presumably about the hard road of addiction and the struggle to clean up, called "Over Now." I can't access Youtube here in Turkey (don't ask' it's political), but I'm sure you can locate the Unplugged version there.

On a related note, bowing to the inevitable, Senator Clinton yesterday "suspended" her presidential bid. This morning, I scrolled through a transcript of her speech, hoping for something worthy of at least riffing on, but paragraphs of Democratic boilerplate don't lend themselves much to riffing, and anyway, what's the point?

Clinton lost because, well, because she's Clinton, and her assets (as is true for most of us) are inseparable from her liabilities. She was the presumptive nominee a year and a half ago. This lent her campaign an air of inevitability, which both helped and hurt her. She's as plugged into the conduits of power as any Democratic politician, particularly a relatively new one, could ever hope to be. This, combined with Clinton's honest sense of herself, led her to run as the knowing, competent insider, but she faced a blank tableau on which the electorate could deny its anxieties and inscribe its dreams. In other words, Clinton's support was a tepid pool, about a mile wide and an inch deep, until finally, it wasn't even that. Of course, she also had Bill to contend with.

The Democrats could still lose in November. They've just passed through a primary contest in which to vote for one of the two contenders was to invite a charge of racism, whereas to vote for the other was to invite a charge of sexism. Welcome to American politics, 21st century style. We're all going to have to live with these rhetorical ploys, and a good bit more. Both the Republicans and the Democrats have self-destructive impulses rooted in their respective constituencies. Come November, I plan to keep my non-voting streak alive. I'll start voting when someone starts representing me.

Hillary Clinton may or may not be angling for the Vice Presidential nomination. But based on past behavior, she probably is. After all, old habits die hard, or not at all. Speaking of which, Layne Staley, Alice in Chains lead singer, composed not one but a string of songs, similar to "Over Now" in their oblique references to the torments of addiction. They make a sometimes strangely pretty, sometimes grim, sometimes doggedly hopeful chronicle of his attempt to wrench himself free from drugs. Then he died. Drugs, of course. Found in his apartment, partially decomposed, he weighed all of 86 pounds. No one had seen him for weeks. Staley contrived to check out on exactly the same day as Kurt Cobain had, eight years before (great career move, as somebody said of Elvis) but arguably he'd been dead for years. "Over Now" ends in the following, allusive refrain:

We pay our debt sometime
Yeah, we pay our debt sometime
We pay our debt sometime
Yeah, we pay our debt sometime

On the personal level, he was apparently right, but on the political level, let's hope he's wrong.

Lyrics to "Over Now" here.

Atlanta's a distant memory, Montgomery a recent blur . . .*

2008-04-12T18:37:00.000-07:00

Today, around lunchtime, we fly to Chicago (American Airlines, of course) and then on to Istanbul. This will be, I calculated recently, our sixth move over the past six years. Somewhere along the way, two kids appeared.

These moves haven't always meant a new job or a new city, and often they haven't even involved transporting furniture (most of the places we've lived have come furnished). Still, six moves in six years, and now with two kids. Too much moving.

Thursday afternoon, I drove up to Rome, Georgia to attend to some minor business. My father's family is from there, though my father himself grew up in a small town about 15 miles south of the city. So I've been visiting that region all my life. On the way back to Atlanta, I decided to drive through my father's hometown.

The first thing that threw me was simply the struggle to find it. I don't mean that I didn't know the way to the town, which I visited frequently as a child. What I mean is that the roads around there have been re-mapped into 4-lane highways, and there's the ubiquitous profusion of fast-food and discount stores on the outskirts, and whatever bearings and landmarks I'd used in the past to navigate into town were so lost or obscured to me that I drove around and around, knowing all the while that I was on the edge of the town, but struggling to find my way to the part still recognizable to me. I nearly gave up, but eventually I got there.

In my experience, so much has changed, and still changes, that I don't quite know what to make of it when something doesn't. It's a little disconcerting. When I was a kid, I tried to imagine what the world would look like by the time I was my parent's age, a nearly unimaginable chasm of time, and the best I could come up with was something utterly alien to everything I knew. Of course, the elementary school readers we were given, with fathers flying to work in helicopters and mother's preparing dinners in a kitchens copied from The Jetsons may have pushed me on a little in that direction.

When I finally found my way into town, and drove past the house where my father grew up, not only was it still there, it was still exactly as it was, or as I remember, from when I would visit in the summers as a child. So were all the other houses on the street, and on the next street, and the next. Years ago, my brothers and I would ride, unaccompanied, from Atlanta on the train, if you can envision this, there to be met by my grandfather at a small, white clapboard station. This was so long ago that these memories are like a few worn snapshots uncovered at the bottom of a drawer. You have to gather yourself before you even recognize what you're looking at. "Oh," you say, after a moment's pause of uneasy confusion, "there I am, standing with my brother at the beach we used to visit every summer, the one where we'd pick up sand dollars and skim them across the slough." These meager recollections swim up to you from the depths, and you realize that large chunks of your own life are mostly unrecoverable.

My grandfather disappeared forty years ago, from lung cancer. But the detached garage next to his house, where I sat in his lap while he sharpened his tools on a foot-driven grindstone, is still there. The color of the house, the gravel drive, the small screened porch, the slatted fence in the backyard, all as it was when I was young. And - so my father told me when I shared all this with him later on - just the same as when he was young, in the 1930s. He can't remember the house ever having been anything other than white with green shutters, and that's all it's ever been every time I've seen it.

I also drove out to my grandparents' cemetery plot. I didn't have any particular reason for doing this, since I wasn't going to be cleaning the headstones or leaving flowers, but it was something I wanted to do anyway. The stones looked almost new, though as I've said, my grandfather died forty years ago, and my grandmother nearly thirty. I didn't really know what to do there. I didn't have anything to offer, or to leave.

I liked looking out on the graves in the cemetery. I recognized at least half the names carved into the stones, probably more. These were names I hadn't thought about or even heard in 25 years, names remembered from when my grandmother would come to visit us, when she updated my father on all of the small doings in the lives of people he'd known growing up. Some of these names may even have belonged to distant relatives. My father's parents lived in that area long enough for third and fourth cousins to become blurred with friends my family had always known, at least in my mind. Sometimes, as a kid, I wasn't sure if the people we we drove out to visit in my grandmother's car were relatives or just someone or other she'd always known. My confusion was, in a way, understandable, because I'm not really describing the world I grew up in. I'm describing a world I knew only occasionally and intermittently, many years ago, a world my grandparents inhabited, and one my father could hardly wait to flee. He made his escape as soon as possible to Atlanta, a full fifty miles away. His parents must have admired his daring, but then again, he'd already seen Europe in the Second World War, so maybe the leap to the city came easier.

I haven't written much here lately. There seemed little reason to chronicle the mostly tedious and sometimes stressful steps involved in moving, particularly moving overseas, and what else was there for me to write about? When I'm situated in Istanbul, and have access to a computer, I'll write something new. But that'll probably be a while. In the years to come, I hope I write more and move less.

* From the song 200 More Miles by the Cowboy Junkies. You can view a sort of warbly live version here. Or maybe you'd rather just read the lyrics.

Books in Boxes

2008-03-26T18:59:00.000-07:00

Preparing to move back to Istanbul, we've been going through all the junk that we've kept in storage the past 5 years. This involves asking repeatedly, "Why did we save this?" when running across old cassette tapes, coffee mugs, and contact lens cases. Probably, we saved them because we were too lazy/disorganized to throw them away 5 years ago.

Anyway, this exercise offers the opportunity to go through boxes of books that I've been wishing I had access to those 5 years. Before we put them in storage initially, I gave a lot of books away (for better or worse), and I'm sure to give a few more away now before we pack the rest into sturdier boxes and have them shipped to Istanbul. In a couple of months, I hope to be placing them on shelves in our new home.

In the meantime, here's something I dug out, from Denis Johnson's Car Crash While Hitchhiking:

I was standing out here in the night, with the baby, for some reason, in my arms. It must have still been raining, but I remember nothing about the weather. We'd collided with another car on what I now perceived was a two-lane bridge. The water beneath us was invisible in the dark.
Moving toward the other car I began to hear rasping, metallic snores. Somebody was flung halfway out the passenger door, which was open, in the posture of one hanging from a trapeze by his ankles. The car had been broadsided, smashed so flat that there was no room inside even for this person's legs, to say nothing of a driver or any other passengers. I just walked right on past.
Headlights were coming from far off. I made for the head of the bridge, waving them to a stop with one arm and clutching the baby to my shoulder with the other.
It was a big semi, grinding its gears as it decelerated. The driver rolled down his window and I shouted up at him, "There's a wreck. Go for help."
"I can't turn around here," he said.
He let me and the baby up on the passenger side, and we just sat there in the cab, looking at the wreckage in the headlights.
"Is everybody dead?" he asked.
"I can't tell who is and who isn't," I admitted. He poured himself a cup of coffee from a thermos and switch off all put the parking lights.
"What time is it?"
"Oh, it's around quarter after three," he said.
By his manner, he seemed to endorse the idea of not doing anything about this. I was relieved and tearful. I'd thought something was required of me, but I hadn't wanted to find out what it was.
When another car showed coming in the opposite direction, I thought I should talk to them. "Can you keep the baby?" I asked the truck driver.
"You'd better hang on to him," the driver said. "It's a boy, isn't it?"
"Well, I think so," I said.
The man hanging out of the wrecked car was still alive as I passed, and I stopped, grown a little more used to the idea of how really badly broken he was, and I made sure there was nothing I could do. He was snoring loudly and rudely. His blood bubbled out of his mouth with every breath. He wouldn't be taking many more. I knew that, but he didn't, and therefore I looked down into the great pity of a person's life on this earth. I don't mean that we all end up dead, that's not the great pity. I mean that he couldn't tell me what he was dreaming, and I couldn't tell him what was real.

We'll see whether all these books make it to Istanbul.

David Mamet Renounces "Brain-Dead Liberal" Self

2008-03-12T10:57:00.000-07:00

Playwright, screenwriter, film director, novelist, essayist, children's author, theologian, social critic, drama critic, amateur sociologist, cartoonist of modest talent, and fan of con games and magic acts, David Mamet has concluded that his lifelong liberal convictions are, more or less, a pile of unexamined and highly derivative horseshit.

Better late than never.

Writing in the Village Voice, Mamet recounts his path to revelation. He used to believe that governments were corrupt, corporations evil, and militaries murderous, but people, at heart, basically good. He's now realized that governments,corporations, and militaries are actually made up of people (allegedly, at heart, good), and this has thrown a spanner into his worldview.

As a child of the '60s, I accepted as an article of faith that government is corrupt, that business is exploitative, and that people are generally good at heart.

These cherished precepts had, over the years, become ingrained as increasingly impracticable prejudices. Why do I say impracticable? Because although I still held these beliefs, I no longer applied them in my life. How do I know? My wife informed me. We were riding along and listening to NPR. I felt my facial muscles tightening, and the words beginning to form in my mind: Shut the fuck up. "?" [sic] she prompted. And her terse, elegant summation, as always, awakened me to a deeper truth: I had been listening to NPR and reading various organs of national opinion for years, wonder and rage contending for pride of place. Further: I found I had been—rather charmingly, I thought—referring to myself for years as "a brain-dead liberal," and to NPR as "National Palestinian Radio."

This is, to me, the synthesis of this worldview with which I now found myself disenchanted: that everything is always wrong.

And, I wondered, how could I have spent decades thinking that I thought everything was always wrong at the same time that I thought I thought that people were basically good at heart? Which was it? I began to question what I actually thought and found that I do not think that people are basically good at heart; indeed, that view of human nature has both prompted and informed my writing for the last 40 years. I think that people, in circumstances of stress, can behave like swine, and that this, indeed, is not only a fit subject, but the only subject, of drama.

This is fairly basic stuff, but more significantly, perhaps, he has come to realize that the liberal temperament assumes the attainability of a world - perhaps not perfect - but flawed only by minor glitches and imperfections, whereas, to the conservative mind, life always encompasses the tragic, and we'd do well not to compound tragedy in our zeal to abolish it.

The liberal - or at least, extreme liberal - vision, being profoundly optimistic, tends to induce only greater frustration and impatience over time, since it strives toward the attainment of a near Paradise, made possible if only the right people come to power and implement a few obvious and utterly benign reforms. Who could object to a better world? Hence, the tendency of millenarian revolutions and cult societies to resort to bloodshed when Paradise fails to arrive on cue.

Paradoxically, one of the difficulties of espousing a conservative vision in most Western societies is not that life, from day to day, is such an irremediable disaster, but that, it so often isn't. Things may not work perfectly, but they often enough work well enough to seduce us into believing that we can, by dint of political activism, make them work a whole lot better. In other words, things are so wrong because they could be so right. Again, who could object to a better world?

We Americans have a weakness for believing that there is no problem so intractable as to be beyond a solution. We take an almost algebraic approach to any human failing, believing only that the right combination of research, methodology, and funding will rid us of everything from childhood aggression to teen pregnancy to violent crime to middle-aged despair (old age we simply deny). As Mamet acknowledges, despite his sense that, from an overarching point of view, the world is characterized by invidious corruption and greed, on the personal level, that is, on the level of his own experience, things generally work rather well.

I rather like Mamet's plays, or at least the ones that I've seen (on video, of course), but to be honest, I don't find his prose any more lucid or compelling than that of a decent part-time blogger. I mean this not only of the piece that he's currently written, but of the essays of his that I've read as well. You may judge for yourself, but his political insights seem fairly pedestrian to me, and he talks an awful lot about the theater, as always.

Still, he seems to have realized that though from the liberal perspective life proceeds through a series of crimes and brutalities, which in fact it often does, on the personal level, where life is actually lived, it usually works better than we have any reason to expect. Mamet ultimately concludes that we're probably better off maintaining the personal latitude to figure out how to live it.

There is, of course, a more concise way of saying all of this. I used to know a guy named Wes who once observed that, "For this world to be perfect, everything would have to be different."

To both David and Wes, I say indeed.

Addendum: Here, you may read a Salon interview of the pre-conservative, "Brain-Dead Liberal" David Mamet. You can also view the Alec Baldwin motivational speech from Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross here.

Eternal Return

2008-03-04T18:56:00.000-08:00

Recently, Steve Sailer blogged about Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis, which brought to mind an encounter, or sequence of encounters, between a friend of mine, Roger, and Daniel Day-Lewis years ago, which then brought to mind a post I'd myself written in Istanbul, late the night before my family and I were due to board a plane, after four years in Turkey, and return to America.

My own post had to do with the circuitous way that lives sometimes wind round each other, and people, sometimes strangers, find their lives intersecting once, twice, even thrice, over various points in space and time. Obviously, modern technology (the airplane, primarily) makes this just slightly less miraculous.

But back to Daniel Day-Lewis. Somewhere in the early 90s, my friend Roger abandoned his pursuit of a PhD in French at Chapel Hill (he just couldn't see himself struggling to hold the wayward interests of 18 year olds for the rest of his life), and, at a loss for what to do next, retreated to his ancestral home of Columbus, Georgia, on the banks of the Chattahoochee River.

There, in something approximating bewilderment and despair, Roger located for himself a garage apartment, took up work at the Columbus Historical Society, and attempted to resign himself to the next half century of waiting in vain for something of significance, even he wasn't sure what, to occur.

One afternoon, while strolling home from work, he wandered into a card shop. His idle browsing was interrupted by the luminous presence of a woman wrapped entirely in white, an atypical clothing choice in Columbus. Intrigued, Roger gazed a half second longer, then another half second, then approached.

There was a certain . . . something. More than attraction. Familiarity. He finally summoned his nerve. "Excuse me," he said, "I know this will sound strange, but I couldn't help noticing that you bear the most remarkable resemblance to Isabelle Adjani, the French actress. Has anyone ever told you this before?"

She arched an eyebrow slightly. "That is because I am Isabelle Adjani." Immediately, Roger segued effortlessly into French. "What are you doing here?" he asked.

Adjani explained that she was staying at the local Hilton, or something, with her companion Daniel Day-Lewis, who was at that moment just across the state line in Alabama, studying with a woodsman in preparation for his role in Last of the Mohicans. Evidently, DDL was honing his skills in fire building and rabbit skinning while wearing a coonskin cap, that sort of thing. After some time, Adjani fixed my friend in a curious stare, then asked, in French naturalment, "And what are you doing here?"

Roger couldn't help but laugh. After he'd explained the sequence of events leading him back to his hometown, Adjani casually asked, "Why not join us for dinner? Daniel will be returning this evening."

Before arriving at their hotel, Roger, whose manners are well rooted in a prior century - and not the 20th - arranged for flowers to be delivered to their room. Upon his arrival, he was greeted by Isabelle, and ushered into their suite. There, in a corner, dressed in black and smoking a cigarette, sat Daniel. Despite the Euro-Hollywoodish trappings, and their color-contrasting taste in apparel, Daniel and Isabelle turned out to be warm dinner companions. Roger discussed with them his ambitions to leave Columbus behind, and, if possible to make his way to Europe. They exchanged addresses at the end of the evening, and Isabelle and Daniel promised to do anything they could to assist Roger in his bid to relocate to Europe - Paris, most particularly. The next day, Roger found himself in the stunning heat of Wet Willie's Waterslide, relating to his sister the events of the previous evening, squinting against the sunlight, enduring the kids' squeals of hydraulic joy, and pondering the wistful incongruity of it all.

Some years later, after much searching, Roger managed to secure a job interview with Nato, and fervently hoped that this might at last be his ticket out of Columbus and on to Europe. He arranged to fly into Paris, where he would stay with a friend for a week before heading on to Brussels and the interview. Arriving at the Atlanta airport, Roger checked his bags, made his way to the International Concourse, and started into space while biding his time and waiting to board the plane.

His eye eventually settled on a lone figure, dressed in black, wearing sunglasses, and slouched against a far wall. There was a certain . . . something. Could it be? It looked like it was, but how could you tell with the sunglasses, and even if it was, he wouldn't remember a dinner in a hotel suite years earlier.

A few moments later, the black-clad figure glanced from behind the shades in Roger's direction, straightened, then approached. "Roger," he said smiling, "what are you doing here?"

They were booked on the same flight to Paris. After catching up on old news, DDL invited Roger to join him in first-class for a drink once they were airborne. Once the plane was en route, however, Roger was stopped cold by the flight attendant, who informed him that - invitation or no - he wasn't allowed in the first-class section. At that point, DDL intervened, explaining that he had specifically asked Roger to join him for a drink. Nothing doing.

"Do you have a foot stool, then?" asked DDL.

"A foot stool, yes, we do."

"Would you put the stool in the aisle next to my friend's seat, and I'll join him for a drink there?" Day-Lewis asked. Which is what they, and he, did.

When the flight landed, Isabelle was at the airport, waiting to meet Daniel. The three were briefly reunited, and Isabelle and Daniel asked for the phone number of the apartment where Roger would be staying. They then agreed to meet up a few nights later for dinner.

Sadly, Roger only discovered after having been met by his host in Paris that he'd recently moved to a new apartment, and that the phone number which had been given to Daniel and Isabelle was no longer in service.

Roger had no way of contacting them, and never saw them again. After a week in Paris, he went to his Nato interview in Brussels, eventually resulting in reimbursement for the cost of his flight, and a polite letter of rejection. Some time later, Daniel and Isabelle had a son together, resulting in the quick demise of their relationship. Day-Lewis is now married to Arthur Miller's daughter, with whom he has two sons. I know nothing more about the life of Isabelle Adjani.

Roger eventually escaped Columbus, and landed on the Upper West Side, about a block from the Museum of Natural History. I visited him there in 2003, when I was in New York to obtain my residency visa for Turkey, a country I'd never before visited, and in which I was soon to live. After some slightly tense to and fro with the ladies of the Turkish consulate, I left New York with my visa. Ten days later, I was on my way. Roger, so far as I know, is still in Manhattan.

Speaking of Turkey, in April my family and I will again board a plane, this time back to Istanbul. To live. Again.

Our Moribund Political Mind

2008-01-27T07:53:00.000-08:00

In today's NY Times, Caroline Kennedy has written an endorsement of Barack Obama under the title, "A President Like My Father." Scrolling through her Op-Ed, a few observations come to mind.

First, someone should tell her that alliteration (a habit of my own) can be overdone. "My reasons are patriotic, political and personal . . . . There is a generation coming of age that is hopeful, hard-working, innovative and imaginative. But too many of them are also hopeless, defeated and disengaged."

Second, her endorsement of Obama leans overwhelmingly on his capacity, real or imagined to "inspire." Of course, most children would like think the best of their parents, but it would seem that Caroline, in praising Obama, is rather transparently attempting to breathe new life into the cult of Camelot.

"Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves, to tie that belief to our highest ideals and imagine that together we can do great things. In those rare moments, when such a person comes along, we need to put aside our plans and reach for what we know is possible."

This is a line of political thought, so common as to be pretty much the norm, which I despise. I am not interested in electing a national savior. To elect a national savior is to acknowledge that we are in need of saving, and from whom are we in need of saving, if not ourselves? If, in fact, we are in need of saving from ourselves, then I suspect that all of the current crop of candidates will be found wanting.

I am not arguing that presidential elections are of no consequence (the current president has demonstrated that they are) but rather that what Caroline Kennedy is engaged in, and what she encourages the rest of us to join her in, is something more akin to religious ecstasy than sound deliberation. It seems to me that for much of my life, voters have been "energized" in this manner, and look at where it has gotten us.

Finally, I would like to say something about the Kennedy legacy, and it's appearance in this campaign. John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. If you are old enough to remember the failures and accomplishments of the Kennedy administration with any genuine clarity, then you are probably at least 60. For most Americans, the life and death of JFK have no significance apart from the mythic tale that was being spun by his "handlers" before he'd even set foot in the White House.

JFK has become one of those Democratic touchstones, like FDR, by which current candidates, and their operatives, attempt to establish the bona fides of their political ambitions. That Caroline Kennedy's Op-Ed piece is the most emailed article in today's NY Times would indicate that we are increasingly surrendering to our atavistic impulse toward political dynasty. It is only a matter of time before Chelsea Clinton weds Jeb Bush Jr., and America can finally crown the royal family we've been craving all along.

I am not "inspired" by the legacy of JFK, nor that of FDR, nor that of Bill and Hillary, nor - for that matter - of Ronald Reagan. I do not expect a politician to transcend race, or class, or any other category of competing American interests. I don't expect, I hope, more than can be expected. Intelligence, a respect for the bounds of nature, including human nature, and a willingness, when necessary, to speak to the American people as fellow-adults, rather than confused and frightened children, might just be enough.

Frost

2008-01-24T07:12:00.001-08:00

I am currently reading Thomas Bernhard's first novel, Frost, published in 1963, and translated from the German in 2006 by Michael Hofmann. You may be unfamiliar with both the life and work of Bernhard. Born in Holland in 1931, he was the bastard son of a high-strung Austrian mother and reprobate laborer father, also Austrian, whom Bernhard never met, but whom subsequent research led him to believe may have been murdered during the Second World War.

Bernhard was only briefly in Holland during his infancy, his mother having been sent there to have her out-of-wedlock child. Mother and son soon returned to their Austrian homeland, where Bernhard came of age in difficult circumstances during and after the war. In his autobiography, Gathering Evidence, Bernhard provides a striking account of his early life, up to the age of 19. He lavishes particular attention on the torments he endured as a schoolboy, most excruciatingly during his tenure as a boarding student at the "National Socialist Home for Boys," which he attended during the war years.

Bernhard's account is precise and unsparing in every way, both of himself and of others. As a teenager, and while barely surviving with his extended family in a tenement, Bernhard deviated from his normal, and much dreaded, path to school, turning instead in the direction of the state labor office. That same day, he began a new life as a grocer's apprentice in a public housing project in Salzberg. One might expect a writer, particularly one as inclined to the shadowed vision as is Bernhard, to recount this experience as one of misery, but in fact, it constituted a tonic and liberation. No longer forced to endure the taunting sarcasm of his teachers, he was free to watch and observe, to speak his mind as did the denizens of the housing project whom he served. In a sense, Bernhard's abandonment of school in favor of the tiny grocery store tucked into the basement of a dreary apartment block initiated him into what would become his life as a writer.

Gathering Evidence is one of Bernhard's best works, more eventful and plot driven than are most of the novels he wrote. Though I am a great admirer of his work, I must admit that many of his novels suffer, at least in patches, from an absence of narrative movement. His characters ponder and ruminate, despair, and savor the ironies of their despair, their thoughts circling back upon themselves. At times, this leads the reader into a narrative cul de sac which . . . well, sometimes amuses, sometimes fascinates, and sometimes bores.

In my opinion, he pulls off this aesthetic trick to best effect in his brief novel, Concrete, the story Austrian musicologist of independent means who has, for the past several years, been attempting to write a ground-breaking study of the composer Mendelssohn Bartholdy. Though he aspires to pen only a brief article, the demands of the assignment - self-imposed, of course - rise to such towering heights that he is unable, throughout the book, ever to settle upon even the first sentence. Concrete is written in the form of a journal, in which the narrator recounts his epochal bout of writer's block, his relationship with his hard-nosed, worldly-wise sister (whose expressions of concern for his welfare move him to both anger and tender affection) as well as a host of other episodes and encounters that crowd his mind and brook him no peace. Though this hardly seems the stuff of comedy, Concrete is suffused with a self-mocking humor. Bernhard knows full well that his protagonist is an absurd creation, that writers, poets, artists and intellectuals are absurd poseurs, and that in fact, it is absurd even to be a human being. A rather Austrian observation, eh?

Anyhow, I've got some business to attend to today, so let me offer a couple of quotations from Frost, to give you a taste of Bernhard's style, or at least, his style as translated into English.

How long was I proposing to stay in Weng, he asked. I needed to get back fairly soon, to prepare for exams in the spring, I said. "As you are studying law," he said, "I'm sure you'll find a job later. There are always jobs for lawyers. I had a nephew once who was a lawyer, only he lost his mind over stacks of files and had to quit his job in the civil service. He wound up in Steinhof. Do you know what that is?" I replied that I had heard of the institution "am Steinhof." "Well then, you'll know what became of my nephew," he said.

Readers familiar with Bernhard's work will know that his friend, Paul Wittgenstein, was a frequent guest at "am Steinhof," during his bouts of periodic madness. Such knowledge of course, only enhances the ominous implication of all that is left unsaid in the passage above.

The tale of Bernhard's friendship with Paul Wittgenstein, is, in part, the story of a beloved friend's descent into madness and despair. At it's end, Bernhard reveals that he declined to attend Paul Wittgenstein's funeral, and has never been able even to visit his grave. All of this is recounted in the brief volume, Wittgenstein's Nephew., and yes, Paul was the nephew (or cousin) of the renowned philosopher Ludwig, which again, adds greater dimension to the tragedy.

One more passage from Frost:

"My time has passed as if I didn't want it. I didn't want it. Sickness is a consequence of my lack of interest in my time, lack of interest, lack of productivity, lack of pleasure. Sickness appeared where there wasn't anything else . . sometimes I jumped out of bed, and slowly I saw all thought become impossible, worthless, everything successively, logically, became pointless and meaningless . . . And I discovered that my surroundings didn't want to be explained by me."

Lovely, in its own strange way.

An interview with Bernhard is linked to here. A review of Frost here. I can't say whether the review is any good, because I didn't bother to read it.

Riding on the Metro

2008-01-15T18:46:00.000-08:00

Every workday, I drive to a train station, and take Atlanta's version of the Metro, known as MARTA (Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority). Every evening, I ride MARTA back to my car, parked securely in the deck, and make my way home.

Whatever charm this jaunt may offer as an occasional outing disappears after, oh, the fortieth or fiftieth haul. Not much is going to change out the windows of the train. And few experiences are more disheartening than bounding down (or up) the stairs as your train pulls out of the station. Time to start looking for some new graffiti to admire. Occasionally, I even find myself driven to eavesdropping.

Yesterday morning, I overheard the following exchange, between a youngish man and a younger woman sitting together. Acquaintances, I gathered, but not close friends. The young man was describing the tribulations associated with conceiving his first child. Evidently, he and his wife had "struggled" (is it really so hard?), had given up hope, and then had been blessed with a little one. "That's awesome!" the young woman said. To which the young man replied, "Yeah, it's pretty cool."

He then went on to describe some completely unexceptional aspect of parenting, something familiar to anyone who's ever had a kid, or been one, like, I don't know, reading a bedtime story. In response, the young woman exclaimed, "That's awesome!" to which the young man replied, "Yeah, it's pretty cool."

Limited lexicon, apparently.

That afternoon, I overheard two young men at Peachtree Center Station. One was recounting the weekend visit of a friend who "crashed" at his apartment. Every single sentence he uttered was structured as follows: "________ was like ...."

"He was like . . . . And I was like . . . .and then he got like . . . ., and so I was like . . . , so then he got, like, . . . and it was so like . . ."

Evidently, he's dispensed with the superabundance of verbs in the English language.

This morning, I was off for a glorious eleven hour workday (I'm teaching in the evenings, two nights a week) when, while ascending the escalator, I was overtaken by a young woman bounding up the stairs in frantic haste (of which there was no need, as the train wouldn't be arriving for another three minutes). From her anxious grasp slipped a can of Coke Zero, which landed on the edge of the escalator stair directly in front of me, ruptured, and then more or less exploded, covering me in Coke Zero (whatever the fuck that is) from my glasses to my shoes.

"Hey," I shouted to this nerve-addled basket-case who hadn't even bothered to look back while I was being showered in Coke. "I'm going to work!" (I was wearing some nice clothes, or as she might have pronounced it, "cloth-hes.")

"Oh, I'm so sorry," she said in her Spanish-inflected English (not that there's anything wrong with it), "It was an accident. I didn't mean to."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," I muttered as I wiped Coke "Zeh-roh" from my glasses with my yellow silk tie.

What a pleasure to take the train.

Night of the Living Dead

2007-12-31T18:33:00.000-08:00

It's customary at year's end to reflect upon those who won't be joining us for the evening's festivities.

Farewell to Evel Kneivel and Bill Walsh, who both applied vector analysis in most startling ways.

Godspeed to Jerry Falwell, Norman Mailer, and Tammy Faye Messner, believers all. May you find what you'd been praying for, and dodge what you'd been fearing.

Best of luck in the void (if that means anything) to Kurt Vonnegut.

May history be kind to Ian Smith, Boris Yeltsin, and, Paul Tibbets, the man who pulled the lever over Hiroshima. May history also smile upon those two smiling ladies, Benazir Bhutto, who departed in an epic "blaze of glory," and Lady Bird Johnson, who drifted out long after most of us had assumed she was already gone.

I know nothing about Bhutto, other than the usual media-generated platitudes, but I do have one tidbit on Lady Bird, who, despite her genteel demeanor and love of flowers, is reputed to have been, beyond the public eye, quite the Tyrant Demon. A third-hand story has it that while visiting a well-connected political family here in Georgia, Lady Bird was called by a member of the household to breakfast. "I'll eat my breakfast when I'm goddamn good and ready," came the booming reply from behind the door. Or so it is alleged.

But of course one drawn, smoke-stained figure is, yet again, and perhaps unsurprisingly, still among the living. I speak of Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, who doesn't so much cheat the Grim Reaper as stare him to a draw:

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, . . .

Donne may not have had The Stones in mind when he drew up these lines on Death, but then, he'd never heard "Sympathy for the Devil" or "Tumblin' Dice." "Say now, baby, I'm the rank outsider, You can be my partner in crime." Not yet, Keif. Not just yet.

Here's a 20-year-old interview from Finnish television. You'll note that Richards is even then sporting a visage that might still a Pale Horse, and chill its Rider. You might also enjoy, if that's the right word, his personal anthem. I suspect that Keif will be with us for yet some time.

And better then thy stroake . . .

The Man Who Would Be King

2007-12-20T08:07:00.001-08:00

Since Africa has been a topic of some discussion lately, I thought it might be interesting to contrast two newspaper views of Jacob Zuma, the man likely to be South Africa's next president; that is, if he can survive corruption charges.

First, we have the New York Time's Survivor is Poised to Lead South Africa. Although by no means entirely flattering, it casts Mr. Zuma in a mostly favorable light, neglecting to mention, among other things, Mr. Zuma's rousing campaign anthem, "Bring Me My Machine Gun."

For another portrait of Mr. Zuma (including "Bring Me My Machine Gun") one naturally turns to The Daily Mail, whose profile of Mr. Zuma bears the spirited title, Machine Gun Man Takes Over The ANC - God Help the Rainbow Nation. Not the sort of title ever likely to be encountered in the Times.

The Daily Mail does cast a more critical eye on Mr. Zuma's "short-skirt" rape defense, his advocacy of post-coital showers as a prophylactic to HIV transmission, and his intent to "Africanise" the country.

If nothing else, these two articles do serve to illustrate that much of what matters in journalism is related simply to the selection process: what to include, and what to omit. I am not asserting that either version is more accurate than the other; let's just say they both reflect the journalistic temperament of their respective publications.

I'm off with the family for a few days in the mountains, watching the rain fall. Well, it's a a change of scenery. As the charming couple in the photograph above might so colloquially put it, Merry fookin' Christmas!

Paging Dr. Samuel Huntington

2007-11-26T06:13:00.000-08:00

Gillian Gibbons, a 54-year old school teacher originally from Britain but now teaching seven-year-olds in Sudan, has been jailed for insulting the Prophet Mohhamed (PBUH).

From the Telegraph article:

Robert Boulos, the director of the school, told Reuters that Ms Gibbons set up the project as part of a British National Curriculum course to learn about animals. This year's animal was the bear, and Ms Gibbons asked the children to name the stuffed toy.

Mr Boulos said the children came up with eight names including Abdullah and Hassan, but Mohammed proved by far the most popular.

Each child was given a chance to take the bear home and write a diary about what they did with the toy, Mr Boulos told Reuters.

The website for the Sudanese Media Centre, which has close ties with the country's government, reported that Mrs Gibbons could be prosecuted under "faith and religions" legislation.

It states: "Khartoum attorney office opens a claim under article 125 of the criminal law (insult of faith and religions) against a British national female teacher named Julian (sic) working for unruly school in Khartoum.

"Head of the attorney offices Mutusim Abdallah told (SMC) that legal arrangements are under way to issue warrant of arrest against the suspect upon a complaint presented by the ministry of education.

"Abdallah said the suspect teacher printed the name of Prophet Mohammed PBUH on a doll in a shape of bear."

If I could offer a suggestion, the number of immigrants coming into this country from the nation of Sudan - unless it is zero - should be substantially reduced. We've got more than enough angry morons wandering the streets already.

In Memoriam: Ian Smith, 1919 - 2007

2007-11-21T04:35:00.000-08:00

Early this morning, I learned of Ian Smith's death. Soon thereafter, making my usual usual round of internet sites, I encountered a verse tribute to Smith penned (if we may use this word for lines tapped out on a keyboard) by Mencius, of Unqualified Reservations.

I was intrigued by the poem's opening:

The last great Englishman
Is dead, and fuck who disagrees.
He once said to Henry Kissinger,
"Is there no honor in the world
Any more?" This man whose face
Was half shot off in the RAF.
"No," replied good Henry, and
Went on to fuck him.

Reading these lines, I felt the quite infrequent touch of the Muse's hand upon my shoulder, and knew I would have to reply in kind.

My own tribute to Smith may be found in UR's comment section, but I'm never above quoting myself here in a cheap and easy bid to rack up another post. I have several Black Sea topics currently in mind, such as the life and work of Norman Mailer, but I'm not really sure I want to put the time into writing about the life and work of Norman Mailer.

Maybe I'll just go out on the street and head butt a stranger, then chronicle the repercussions - assuming I survive - as a form of "existential experience."

Anyway, in the meantime, my epitaph for Smith:

Ian Smith asked Henry
About the fate of Honour.
Henry smiled discreetly . . .
A sword soon fell upon her.

The White Man's Burden
On that day
Collapsed in bloody farce,
As Ian Smith told Henry
"You kiss my bloody arse."

Click here for an article about how Smith is remembered by those who worked his farm for him. Evidently, he didn't discuss politics with them, which of course is a grievous sin, but he did build for them free schools, and pay their medical bills, so perhaps he wasn't a complete monster.

Elementary, My Dear Watson

2007-11-11T03:17:00.000-08:00

At this point, there's no need to recount the details of James Watson's transgression in England, and subsequent "retirement" from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in the wake of his comments regarding intelligence in Africa. I may have little to add on this topic, but I would like to toss my own small pebble into the water and hear the splash.

First, the claim that IQs in Africa, are, on average, lower than those in the Western World, and indeed, lower than those found globally, is from a scientific and statistical standpoint, about as conclusively confirmed as anything one could claim about human populations. IQ, which of course is an abbreviation of intelligence quotient, is a numerical score on an examination of intelligence. To be precise (or if you prefer, to split hairs) the question of what is meant by "intelligence" is one at least partially removed from the score a person receives on a given exam. To say that a math student received a score of 74 on a math exam neither validates nor invalidates the exam's accuracy in gauging comprehension of the math concepts in question. The score is simply the score; the exam itself may be good, bad, or somewhere in between.

While one may argue that a given IQ test, or all IQ tests, fail to accurately measure intelligence, there is the small problem that scores on validated and accepted IQ tests correlate quite strongly with academic outcomes, and, in the more complex professions particularly, such as law, engineering, and medicine, with professional outcomes. In other words, IQ tests do genuinely evaluate something closely-related to the capacity for complex thought. If the term "intelligence" is seen as too broad or imprecise, we could simply change the name to cognition quotient, rational-analysis quotient, intellectual-reasoning quotient. Whatever we call such tests, they have a by now well established capacity to measure general mental aptitude, and of course, there is a term for this as well, g. If you are interested in pursuing this point further, Jason Malloy, who writes at Gene Expression, has a rather long and detailed analysis of the completely uncontroversial (from a scientific standpoint) nature of Watson's recent claims. If I may be allowed to cite some information from Malloy's work:

Below I am adding 65 psychometric intelligence study citations for sub-Saharan Africa, collected in IQ & Global Inequality, Race Differences in Intelligence, and IQ & the Wealth of Nations. The citations cover 47% of SS African countries or 78% of the people by national population numbers. The studies vary in quality, sample size, and representativeness, but broadly agree in their findings. Representative studies of the school age population with large sample sizes do not exhibit higher scores, much less scores that approach anything like European norms.

******************

Sub-Saharan Africa
Countries: 43
W/ data: 20 (47% coun/78% pop)
Studies: 65
IQ: 68

West Africa
Countries: 20
W/ Data: 6 (30% coun/65% pop)
Studies: 15
IQ: 67

Central Africa
Countries: 5
W/ Data: 3 (60% coun/80% pop)
Studies: 9
IQ: 64

East Africa
Countries: 8
W/ Data: 5 (63% coun/93% pop)
Studies: 16
IQ: 72

Southern Africa
Countries: 10
W/ Data: 6 (60% coun/76% pop)
Studies: 25
IQ: 69

******************

For purposes of comparison, here are, by nation (although Hong Kong is not a nation), the top 50 average scores. The averages, of course, include all population groups within the nation. In other, words the average for Australia is comprised not only of scores for white Australians, but for all racial groups found there.

1 Hong Kong 107
2 South Korea 106
3 Japan 105
4 Taiwan 104
5 Austria 102
6 Germany 102
7 Italy 102
8 Netherlands 102
9 Sweden 101
10 Switzerland 101
11 Belgium 100
12 People's Republic of China 100
13 New Zealand 100
14 Singapore 100
15 United Kingdom 100
16 Hungary 99
17 Poland 99
18 Spain 99
19 Australia 98
20 Denmark 98
21 France 98
22 Norway 98
23 United States 98
24 Canada 97
25 Czech Republic 97
26 Finland 97
27 Argentina 96
28 Russia 96
29 Slovakia 96
30 Uruguay 96
31 Portugal 95
32 Slovenia 95
33 Israel 94
34 Romania 94
35 Bulgaria 93
36 Ireland 93
37 Greece 92
38 Malaysia 92
39 Thailand 91
40 Croatia 90
41 Peru 90
42 Turkey 90
43 Indonesia 89
44 Suriname 89
45 Colombia 89
46 Brazil 87
47 Iraq 87
48 Mexico 87
49 Samoa 87
50 Tonga 87

With some exceptions, one may notice in these figures a fairly consistent correlation between a nation's IQ score and its level of social organization, accomplishment, and prosperity. Again, we could quibble about the meaning of "social organization," but one can see that those societies which are identified worldwide by such terms as "advanced" or "developed" generally have higher scores. I suppose the one figure that stands out for many people is Israel's surprisingly low score of 94. It must be born in mind that in the West, our well-justified impression of high IQs among Jews is based upon the performance of Ashkenazi Jews (the reigning champs) whose average, if I remember correctly, is 113. Jews of Middle Eastern and African origin, of which there are many in Israel, score not nearly so high, and of course, the country also has a large and growing Arab population.

To return to my original point, if we compare the IQ averages of such countries as Malaysia, Colombia, and my own dear Turkey, whose scores represent more or less the global average, to the scores in sub-Saharan Africa, we see a substantial falling off, thus giving rise to the doubts which James Watson expressed concerning the potential of African nations to organize their activities and educate their citizenry at levels approximating global standards, much less Western standards. While this was, in and of itself, enough to earn Watson pariah status, his comments have implications beyond the development of Africa itself, and it is perhaps these implications that make Watson's observations so controversial.

Throughout the the world, in nation after nation, there are sub populations (minorities, if you prefer), which either under perform or over perform relative to national averages. When I say under perform or over perform, I mean this in any category you care to name, academics, income, journalistic output, athletics, longevity. Throughout the world, both over and under performance demand societal explanations. People living in heterogeneous populations will observe and attempt to understand why these variances occur. This is both inevitable, and, as we know, potentially dangerous. I suspect that educated readers require no historical examples here. You are welcome to supply your own, but a crucial point to remember is that both under and over performance are noted by the population as a whole and will be explained in some manner, however accurate or fanciful.

For the past half century, the default explanation among the educated in Western societies for the under performance of certain groups, those of African descent in particular, has been the racism of the larger society, the whites in particular. I believe there is little point in questioning that blacks in America have suffered under a racial caste system, and that the low estimation of their talents and potential, both among whites and among blacks themselves, has limited their options for achievement in various ways. The gradual acceptance of the default explanation (racism) for low levels of black achievement has brought home to most Americans some awareness of these injustices.

The default explanation has also resulted in a campaign, now at least as old as the signing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, to rectify these injustices and grant to blacks, and all other groups, the same rights and opportunities enjoyed by the majority. This, however, has led to some new, and unanticipated problems. It is difficult enough to ensure all citizens equal rights, though such an effort is worthy of any society wishing to consider itself "civilized." In other words, hard, but worth attempting, worth striving for.

Achieving equal opportunity is considerably more problematic. First, we must distinguish between perfect equality and attainable equality. There is no conceivable social or political system which can offer perfect equality of opportunity. In searching for a job, I may know someone you don't, who can offer me a job that both you and I want. On the other hand, you may be taller, or better looking, or more gregarious than I am, and this may provide you with an edge that I lack, even if we are both equally capable of performing a given job. Inequality of opportunity, at this level, is more or less inseparable from human nature, and we shall be a long time at trying to stamp it out, though you will notice that, in many quarters, we are trying rather hard.

Finally, we come to the most unrealizable ambition, equality of outcome. According to the reigning, though admittedly, now-threatened orthodoxy, any statistical variance to be found in any population group relative to its percentage of the overall population constitutes a de facto act of favoritism or injustice. If fewer than 50% of research engineers and molecular biologists are women, this is because women have been and are now discriminated against in education and hiring. If fewer than 12% of America's nuclear physicists are black, or more than 12% of America's prison inmates are black, this constitutes damning evidence of ongoing racial inequality. And of course, these are inequalities, that is, inequalities of outcome, which differ from inequalities of opportunity, which differ from inequalities of rights.

Most Americans, I believe, still endorse equality of rights, though, even under the best achievable conditions, there will still be cases in which citizen's rights are violated. Equality of opportunity is, at best, only partly achievable, and the achievable part significantly overlaps with equality of rights. An educational institution or place of employment cannot bar you simply on the grounds of your membership in a population group. This is hardly the same thing as saying, "everybody gets a equal shot in life," because everybody doesn't get an equal shot in life, and we might as well admit it. There is only so much that we can, and should do about this, as is illustrated when we move to equality of outcomes.

To be blunt, the pursuit of equality of outcome is incompatible with freedom. You cannot uphold the freedom of people to work where and when they will, to study for eight hours a day or eight minutes a day or not at all, to spend their money as they see fit, or to hoard their money in certificates of deposit or risk their money in high-growth funds, and expect equality of outcomes. It simply can't happen, even in unusually homogeneous societies. In Japan, for example, with its near-universal ethnic background (there is a Korean sub population, but whatever) and high average IQ, some people are still smarter, or more energetic, or more curious, or more acquisitive, or more future time oriented, or more gregarious, or more attractive, or more well-connected socially, or just plain more lucky, than are others. However much the Japanese may view themselves as a collective society, and they apparently do so more than those of us in the Western world ever will, they still experience inequalities of outcome.

Here, Watson's comments are of particular relevance. The now standard explanation for the poverty and turmoil of Africa is the after-effect of European colonialism. While this explanation may have seemed sensible 50, or 40, or 30 years ago, it is less so now. If colonialism had been the cause, then as chronological distance from the cause increased, the adverse consequences should have decreased. If something is making you sick, time away from that disease agent should allow you to recover, unless you are mortally-afflicted and beyond recovery. Since within human population groups, birth and death assure that nobody experiences the direct affects of anything like slavery or colonialism forever, the effects of these influences should diminish over time. Therefore, those who maintain that European colonialism has inhibited Africa's development have been forced into increasingly tortured logic to explain how this now historical process continues to produce such disturbing, and in may cases growing, problems.

Similarly, in America, those who argue that legacy of slavery and segregation fully explains the disparities in outcome between blacks and other groups have resorted to increasingly complex, and increasingly unconvincing, explanations as to how and why these differing outcomes have occurred. Again, as the decades pass, we are confronted with a political and social doctrine which, I suspect, Americans find increasingly unbelievable. Nevertheless, to publicly question such a doctrine, even in the most tentative ways, is personally and professionally risky, as the cases of Lawrence Summers, James Watson, and others will attest.

In other words, we continue, through force of social pressure, to mouth platitudes in which we no longer believe, and are not permitted open discussion of a doctrine which a great many have reason to question. The penalty for such discussion, while no doubt less severe than in times past, is nevertheless incompatible with a free society, as demand for equality of outcome in incompatible with a free society. You cannot allow people to live life as they will, making their own choices and charting their own course, and yet secure equal outcomes for all. The two are contradictory.

There are three further points that I would like to make.

One, which I have alluded to before, is that data regarding the IQs of various populations and nationalities is volatile and potentially dangerous information, in that it does have the potential to serve as ammunition for those who advocate racial hostility and oppression, and any fair-minded person engaged in this discussion should acknowledge as much. Furthermore, it has the potential to discourage even gifted members of lower scoring population groups from developing their talents.

Whether we admit it or not, we all see ourselves not only as individuals but as members of groups, including ethnic and racial groups. If, as I am, you are a fan of the TV series Seinfeld, you may remember the episode in which George, in a bid to convince his black supervisor that he isn't racially prejudiced, goes to absurd lengths, at one point claiming that he's never noticed that his best friend Jerry is white because, "I don't see race."

This is funny because of the transparent falsity of George's claim in contrast with the utterly unattainable expectation that he "not see race" if he is to be be absolved of the charge of racism. We all see race. Within the bounds of reasonable human expectation, this is not the same thing as saying that we are all racists, though in the current climate, to admit to seeing race is enough to bring down upon one's head the suspicion of racism. It's rather like insisting that you've never noticed that a co-worker is female in order to defend yourself against a charge of sexual harassment.

The second point follows from the first. Given the volatility and potential for abuse that information about race and IQ implies, a question naturally arises: why, even if true, should we call attention to difference in IQ among populations? Why not just quietly acknowledge this reality, but conceal it as far as possible from the general consciousness (in other words, the untutored masses), so as to avoid a reversion to the Jim Crowe era of the past? This question deserves a legitimate answer. I would argue that this answer revolves around what I have termed above the "default explanation."

If you and I meet at a dinner party, and you have an advanced degree in economics and work for an investment firm and earn in excess of $500,000 per year, and I dropped out of college, work at a bookstore, and earn $20,000 per year, it is indeed crass of you to point out the intellectual demands of your training and your work, and how they are reflected in your substantial earnings. However, if, at that same dinner party, I maintain that you earn more than twenty-five times as much as I do simply because you have rigged the system in your favor, and because you are engaged in my exploitation, and because we live in a fundamentally unjust society which has pressed-ganged me into a condition of economic serfdom, then your references to the high qualifications necessary for your position take on a different hue. You either accept my default explanation, with which you probably disagree, or you present a counter-argument. The current, and increasingly unconvincing mainstream narrative on differences in racial outcomes demands a counter-explanation rooted in something other than absolute sin on the hand, and absolute self-righteousness on the other.

Furthermore, the now current mainstream narrative justifies all manner of government intrusion into the practices and lives of its citizens and institutions, and it is therefore easily understandable, though hardly desirable, that government agencies and individuals favor the institutionalization of a point of view consistent with the expansion of their powers. Again, equality of outcome as a social pursuit is utterly incompatible with freedom.

The final point is that we are frequently told that someone is to blame for the inequalities of outcome between blacks and others, and that, if we make reference to differences in IQ (by the way, the African-American IQ, at 85, is substantially higher than the African IQ) then we are, in effect, blaming blacks for their own lack of success. I disagree, in a couple of different ways. First, people want different things from life, and more importantly, are willing to make different sacrifices to pursue what they want in life. We probably really can't know how satisfied or dissatisfied a given person is with his or her "success." For example, lots of people, and I am one of them, are constitutionally incapable over the long haul of a career of sitting in a cubicle all day and interacting with a computer. I know this because I used to do this, and though I started out well enough (the intrigue of the unfamiliar) the people who eventually fired me from this job would attest to my long-term unsuitability for this work.

I was, from an intellectual standpoint, able to do the work, but I was, from a temperamental standpoint, unwilling or unable to pay the necessary price in boredom to do the work. It was best for all concerned that I drifted into something else. In other words, not everybody really wants to be a Microserf with a heavily g- loaded job. (I wasn't a Microserf, by the way, though my job had a certain meager intellectual cachet, I guess, if you'd never actually done it.)

At this same workplace, I often chatted with a black colleague who worked in the Accounting department. Though she had attained a position of considerable professional responsibility, and would have, I guess, fallen very much at the higher end of intelligence and accomplishment for African Americans, it's safe to say that she hated the place at least as much as I did.

With regard to the question of who is to blame, no one deserves credit or blame for the IQ they have. A lower-than-average IQ is not the result of laziness, and I suppose it goes without saying that we have all known people of below average intelligence who have put together admirable and satisfying lives and who contribute to the lives of others, and we've all known people of high intelligence who've manage to piss away the opportunities that this wholly-unearned biological gift has bestowed upon them. There's no reason here to go into the hows and whys of all of this, though it is interesting to speculate. Suffice it to say that an IQ score in isolation doesn't really dictate the course of one's life. Honesty, however, compels us to admit that while intelligence alone is not a sufficient condition for all that much, it is, for a great many pursuits and employments, a necessary one. This is reality.

Our attempts to grapple with this reality, particularly in the area of race, have produced outcomes both tragic and humorous. First, to the tragic, I would again encourage readers of this site to look at this article which chronicles the downfall of a University of Illinois professor of public policy, Stuart Nagel, who in class one day observed that "black businesses in Kenya were uncompetitive against Indian-run enterprises since blacks were too generous in granting credit to friends and family." Nagel had been a consultant to the government of Kenya on methods to improve business training for black Kenyans, and his comment was based upon this experience. Though he in no way touched upon the issue of intelligence among Africans, so inflamed are our sensitivities on matters of race, and so timid are our educational establishments in supporting anything approaching open inquiry and discussion, that Nagel was, rather ritualistically, I believe, sacrificed to the gods of political correctness.

Perhaps failing to see the absurdity of the whole proceeding - or seeing it all to clearly - Stuart Nagel soon thereafter committed suicide. No one who has even the slightest regard for the ostensible function of the university in our society can fail to be chilled by this episode, though evidently, a great many people working and learning in universities would simply prefer not to think about it.

For those who can - without resort to suicide - see the absurdity in such a witch hunt, and who can further see the absurd lengths to which advocates of "the default explanation" now go in elucidating differing racial outcomes, the following conversation between Garrett Morris and Julian Bond may prove entertaining, particularly if you are familiar with the relative skin tone of the two participants:

Garrett Morris: Good evening, and welcome to "Black Perspective". I'm your host, Garrett Morris. Tonight our guest is Mr. Julian Bond, and we'll be talking about the myths surrounding black I.Q. Specifically, the myth that whites are inherently more intelligent than blacks.

Julian Bond: Good evening, Garrett.

Garrett Morris: Now, Julian, perhaps you could explain something to me. In all these studies comparing black I.Q. to white I.Q., what kind of test is used to measure I.Q.'s in the first place?

Julian Bond: Well, this is the major problem with these studies. The measurements of I.Q. which form the basis of comparison come from tests composed by whites for whites. The tests are culturally biased; it's not surprising that whites would score better than blacks.

Garrett Morris: Could you give us an example of what you're talking about?

Julian Bond: Certainly. Here are some questions that have appeared on recent I.Q. tests. Number one: "You have been invited over for cocktails by the officer of your trust fund. Cocktails begin at 4:30, but you must make an appearance at a 6:00 formal dinner at the Yacht Club. What do you do about dress?
A. Wear your blue-striped seersucker suit to cocktails and change into your tuxedo in the bathroom, apologizing to your host for the inconvenience.
B. Wear your tuxedo to cocktails, apologizing to your host for wearing a dinner jacket before 6:00 PM.
C. Walk to the subway at Columbus Circle and take the "A" Train uptown."

Garrett Morris: Uh.. I guess I'd choose the last one.

Julian Bond: I'm sorry, that's incorrect.

Garrett Morris: Damn.

Julian Bond: Here's another: "When waxing your skis for a cross-country run, you should..."

Garrett Morris: [ interrupting ] Well, I think I understand the problem with the tests. But the fact is that people have been saying that white people are smarter than black for hundreds of years. We've only had I.Q. tests for 20 or 30 years. How did the idea of white intellectual superiority originate?

Julian Bond: That's an interesting point. My theory is that it's based on the fact that light-skinned blacks are smarter than dark-skinned blacks.

Garrett Morris: [ not sure he heard that right ] Say what?

Julian Bond: I said I think it might have grown out of the observation that light-skinned blacks are smarter than dark-skinned blacks.

Garrett Morris: I don't get it.

Julian Bond: It's got nothing to do with having white blood. It's just that descendants of the lighter-skinned African tribes are more intelligent than the descendants of the darker-skinned tribes. Everybody knows that.

Garrett Morris: This is the first time I've heard of it.

Julian Bond: Seriously? It was proven a long time ago.

Garrett Morris: Well, I still don't quite understand. We're out of time right now, but perhaps you could come back on the show again and explain it further.

Julian Bond: There's very little to explain - it's just like I told you.

Garrett Morris: Well, we are out of time. Good night. [ to Julian ] If you could repeat it just once more..

[ logo up: "Black Perspective ]

[ fade ]

Those interested in this topic might wish to take a look at further information and/or discussions at the following locations:

The specter of difference: what science is uncovering, we will have to come to grips with, by John Derbyshire

Gene Expression

Unqualified Reservations

Half Sigma

Steve Sailer

And my own previous posts:

The Code of Silence

No Child Left Behind: Two Views

You might also want to take a look at this piece about what now consititutes "freshman orientation" at some American universities, and why you might not want to subject your kids to life in dorm:

"Students who agreed with ResLife’s views on “diversity, homosexual rights (and more subtly, politics)” were hired as RAs, writes Dan Lenker, a former RA, on SayAnything. Then RAs were trained in how to pressure students to accept the program’s “unarguable dogma,” such as the fact that “racist” applies to all whites in the U.S. “regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality.” Over time, “ridiculous and poorly designed” programs became “more belligerent” in pushing students to accept the approved beliefs, Lenker writes. While older students realized they could skip dorm meetings, “gullible” freshman believed RAs who said they had to participate."

What I've Been Reading

2007-10-14T05:19:00.000-07:00

Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq
by Thomas E. Ricks

note: The link to the title above includes a short interview with Ricks.

Jacket Blurb:
"Drawing on the exclusive cooperation of an extraordinary number of American military personnel, including more than one hundred senior officers, and access to more than thirty thousand pages of official documents, many of them never before made public, Thomas E. Ricks has written the definitive account - explosive, shocking, and authoritative - of the American military's tragic experience in Iraq."

Verdict:
Well-written and researched, and well worth the time if you're interested in understanding something substantive about the administration's failures in Iraq. Some - but not a great deal of - information about why the US invaded. Perhaps the "whys" are currently beyond the conclusive reach of any journalist.

Despite Ricks' talents and thoroughness, about a third of a way through the book (439 pages) monotony sets in. It's difficult to read about an endless string of arrogant blunders without becoming first incredulous, then angered, then irritated, and finally bored.

Last week, I made the mistake of watching fragments of the Atlanta Falcons v. Tennessee Titans football game. Joey Harrington, after throwing an interception returned for a touchdown, was replaced by Byron Leftwich, whose play only made clear why the Falcons had been starting Harrington to begin with. At one point, the Falcons had the ball, first and goal on the Titans' one yard line, from which point they repeatedly failed to score.

Reading this book is something like watching that first-and-goal series re-run in endless variation over the entirety of a three hour game. After a while, you're frustration sort of melts into contempt and indifference, leaving aside the absurdity of the whole undertaking. It 's not easy to read about people repeatedly fucking up over 439 pages.

David Petraeus comes off quite well in Ricks' estimation, probably better than anybody else associated with the US effort in Iraq. People like Rumsfeld, Brimmer, Gen. Odierno, and Gen. Sanchez (who recently called Iraq "a nightmare with no end in sight") don't, but then again, you wouldn't expect them to. Bush is strangely absent from most of the proceedings. I guess he just set the wheels in motion and then moved on to the crafting of other disasters. After all, the guy's only got eight years.

Quotes:

"What the hearing would be most remembered for was Wolfowitz's own attack - on the American press corps in Baghdad. There was a lot of good news to report, he insisted, but the reporters were too cowardly to get out there and cover it.

Gen. Meyers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, insisted that 'great progress' was being made in Iraq. 'I think we're on the brink of success' he told the House Armed Services Committee.

Several months later, Gen Myers stepped down as chairman of the Joint Chiefs. In September, 2005, on his final day of Congressional testimony in that position, Sen John McCain questioned Myers's record of rosy assessments. 'Things have not gone as well as we planned or expected, nor as we were told by you, Gen. Myers,' the Arizona Republican said.

Myers responded that he had never been all that positive about the situation. 'I don't think that this committee or the American public has ever heard me say that things are going very well in Iraq,' he said, inexplicably."

Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush
by Robert Draper

Jacket Blurb:
"In this ambitious work of political narrative, Robert Draper takes us inside the Bush White House and delivers an intimate portrait of a tumultuous decade and a beleaguered administration. Virtually every page on this book crackles with scenes, anecdotes, and dialogue that will surprise even long-time observers of George W. Bush."

Verdict:
Lo these many years, I've developed a mild forensic curiosity as to the mind and manner of George W. Bush. My investment in this book represents an attempt to slake that curiosity, not that I believe that I'll ever fully "understand" or even wish to "understand" our president. Still, one can't help but wonder what cognitive mechanisms lie behind the dopey smile and peevish pout, which seem to be the two alternate extremes of the president's expressive range.

This book thus far has only strengthened my suspicion that Bush is pretty much the man he appears to be on TV, whatever you think that man is. Is Bush a verbal dyslexic with ADD, or a crafty politico working the system? Or is he just an unexceptional man with peerless ancestral Rolodex and a certain feral instinct for political combat?

In my opinion, watch the guy on TV, and if that's your idea of an intelligent or savvy or Machiavellian statesman, then I guess, for you, that's what he is. If he appears to be stumbling his way through endless verbal gaffes as he estranges everyone still sentient enough to realize that we're all (excluding of course the president and his circle of similarly situated worthies) going to wind up paying for these crimes and blunders someday, then for you, that's what he is. Nothing I've encountered in this book so far (I'm only on page 87) would contradict this conclusion.

There's some interesting and illuminating stuff here, but Draper's attempts at "colorful" writing are a constant distraction. He leans heavily on the adjectives, struggles with his metaphors (sometimes mixing them), and generally employs a prose style suggesting in its laborious "cleverness" that even he believes the revelations of his story, aren't - on their own - nearly enough to keep someone awake and reading on a weekday night. The book begins: "The motorcade lurched to life just after seven on the morning of Monday, June 14, 1999. Like an ungainly serpent, it negotiated its bulk through the studied quaintness of Kennebunkport, Maine, clogging the narrow artery of Route 9."

Or we might just say that the Bush motorcade made its way through the narrow streets of Kennebunkport.

Draper's "imaginatively-encumbered" prose style is a shame, because he did get Bush and his handlers to talk to him, and the portrait of the president that emerges (or is emerging, remember I'm still early into the book) is well worth the reading. I just wish Draper could have remembered that the title of his book is not, Painting Pictures with Words!

Quotes:

George W., speaking about his father:
"He knows as an ex-president, he doesn't have nearly the amount of knowledge that I've got on current things. I mean, I get briefed every day, twice a day sometimes. He knows that. And plus, once the president gets a strategy in mind - I mean, there's no need to argue about the Freedom Agenda! I'm sure he subscribes to a lot of it. Now, the rumors are that he and his people don't. But I don't necessarily think it's true. But look, you can't talk me out of thinking that freedom's a good thing!"

Draper on Bush campaigning for the New Hampshire primary in 1999, which Bush lost to John McCain:
"The local staff said he needed to do radio shows. During one call-in program, on a Keene station, a fellow grilled Bush on abortion. The governor recited his pro-life stance. The next caller grilled him further. 'I've said all I'm going to say on that,' Bush pushed back, 'my position's clear. I'd like to talk about education, some of the other things we've done in Texas . . . '
But because the press had been all over Bush about abortion and whether he would apply a Roe v. Wade litmus test to judicial nominees, the radio grilling continued, and Bush was unable to get back on message. In frustration, the governor flung the phone at a local aide. 'You got any more bright ideas, smart guy,' the governor snapped."

To which one wishes the aide had replied, "Yeah, I'm going to go work for McCain."

Draper on Bush's victory in the South Carolina primary:
"South Carolina had earned its reputation as a firewall that immolated underdogs."

Do firewalls immo- . . . ? Oh well, never mind.

Draper on Bush's spiritual anointing from his presidential predecessors:
"The White House could be a creepy place. . . On this particular evening, Poppy and Bar were away for the evening. For the first time ever in his life, Bush had the run of the White House. . . . The usher had turned out most of the lights. Bush took a few strides down the hallway and found his steps slowing. At the entryway to the Lincoln bedroom, he froze. Something? No. Nothing? No.
Ghosts. He saw ghosts - coming out of the walls!
Or were they portraits?
Or ghosts coming out of the portraits?
Rubber-legged, he retreated to his bedroom and shut the door.

When he told that story later to an acquaintance in 1992, George W. Bush had neither the ambition nor the wherewithal to be the future inhabitant of the White House. For the most part, he possessed a normal man's sensibilities and a normal man's resume. The ghosts in the Lincoln bedroom Bush took as further proof of Washington's inhospitability to normal life."

What is one to make of Bush's ghostly White House vision? That the president is:

a) the first ex-drunk in the history alcoholic recovery to have undergone D.T.s five years after laying down the bottle.
b) clinically delusional and in need of psychiatric care
c) so full of shit his eyes have turned brown
d) all of the above

The Camp of the Saints
by Jean Raspail

Jacket Blurb:
"This is an apocalyptic novel, a philosophical dissection of the erosion of Western civilization . . . . Rich and varied (and often discomforting) imagery, symbolism, and points of view amplify the theme, relating it to such 'lessons of the past' as the Book of Revelation, Paradise Lost, and the fall of the Byzantine Empire. This book will succeed in shocking the complacent, contemporary mind."

Verdict:
If you're going to write a tract, write a tract. If you're going to write a novel, write a novel.

Quotes:

"Then, after a while, there were too many poor. Altogether too many. Folk you didn't even know. Not even from here. Just nameless people. Swarming all over. And so terribly clever! Spreading through cities, and houses, and homes. Worming their way by the thousands, and in thousands of foolproof ways. Through the slits in your mailboxes, begging for help, with their frightful pictures bursting from envelopes day after day, claiming their due in the name of some organization or other. Slithering in. Through newspapers, radio, churches, through this faction or that, until they were all around you, wherever you looked. Whole countries full, bristling with poignant appeals, pleas that seemed more like threats, and not begging now for linen, but for checks to their account. And in time it got worse. Soon you saw them on television, hordes of them, churning up, dying by the thousands, and nameless butchery became a feature, a continuous show, with its masters of ceremony and its full-time hucksters. The poor had overrun the earth."

"To appreciate the West's opinion of the refugee fleet - or, for that matter, of anything new and unfamiliar - one essential fact must be borne in mind: it really couldn't give less of a damn. Incredible, but true. the more it discovers about such things, the more fathomless its ignorance, feeble its interest, and vulgar its own self-concern. The more crass and tasteless too, its sporadic outbursts, fewer and farther between. Oh yes, to be sure, it indulges in flights of sentiment now and again, but cinema style, like watching a film, or sitting in front of a TV screen, poised for the serial's weekly installment. Always those spur-of-the-moment emotions or secondhand feelings, pandered by middlemen. Real-world drama, served in the comfort of home by that whore called Mass Media, only stirs up the void where Western opinion has long been submerged. Someone drools at a current event, and mistakes his drivel for meaningful thought. Still, let's not be too quick to spit our scorn its way."

No, one wouldn't want to be hasty.

Venice, Frail Barrier: Portrait of a Disappearing City
by Richard de Combray

Jacket Blurb:
"Venice: 'The last complete artifact of a time when profit was translated into grace.' Now this beautiful and unique city is quietly disintegrating, and its poignant story is told in this remarkable volume. Cheerful, colorful, lively paintings - never before reproduced - by the previously unknown eighteenth century artist Gabriella Bella are juxtaposed against the somber and melancholy reality of the contemporary city as photographed by the author."

Verdict:
I'm not so much reading this book as reliving it. This book has been out of print for some time, but I made use of an Amazon gift certificate to acquire a secondhand copy.

When I was a kid in the 70s, I used to ride my bike up to the library, or pester my mom into giving me a lift there. Wandering the stacks, I coped as best I could with what I was then only dimly sensing would be an inescapable aspect of my looming adulthood. That is, of course, the boredom we can only sporadically evade, no matter how far we run, nor how many guises we adopt.

This is one of the books I happened across in that public library, and which I checked out so often and so frequently that I probably should have just gone ahead and stolen it. In my adolescent gloom and reverie, Venice, Frail Barrier and a tattered copy of National Geographic together supplied me with the necessary photographic and prose material to concoct a fantasy that routinely eclipsed in its insubstantial appeal everything actually going on at that moment in my real life. This fantasy was simply that my family had relocated to Venice as a result of my father having taken up architectural consulting work there (unlikely, to put it mildly), and I was thus coming of age surrounded not by stacks of books in a public library, but rather among the labyrinthine waters and mossy stones of The Most Serene Republic.

Pathetic, you may say, that a (seemingly) normal suburban lad would idle away his time spinning Venetian fantasies like some androgyne out of Thomas Mann. Yeah, well, fuck you. You had your back issues of Rolling Stone and your Aerosmith albums, and I had my Venice, Frail Barrier and my National Geographic.

My adolescence, like yours, was - if anything - too comfortable and secure. Sadly, comfort and security don't always suffice. Richard de Combray's enchanting book held out, to my uneasy, fifteen-year-old self, the possibility of something more.

Quotes:

"How slowly the gondola reaches you, with barely a sound. Another passenger appears from the shadows, steps on board, and steadies himself against your shoulder as the gondola rocks, turns, heads across the Grand Canal, across water now as black as the boat itself. The methodical slicing of the oar to tug you forward is a comfort. And there, just ahead, is Byzantium. No person, no one generation could have conceived of it; nothing matches, everything leans, the elements of accident and imperfection characterize it as they do every masterpiece."

"The men who collect the garbage go about their business cheerfully enough. So knowledgeable are they about the rudiments of the city that when there is an empty apartment available - if such a phenomenon occurs - they are the first to know. When they do their work, there is no hurl and clatter, no defiantly leftover debris as there is on the streets of New York. Theirs is a job, not a mischance of justice."

"Not long ago, during the course of a Venetian winter afternoon tea, I watched at Florian's two ex-monarchs, heavily furred, mother and daughter: the one briefly Queen of Greece and the other, the ex-Queen of Yugoslavia. They gossiped with mild animation next to beautifully dressed young French couple, either just married or its equivalent who could not cease caressing each other's hands long enough to hold their teacups. Outside, it was snowing, and across the Piazza a gaunt Christmas tree, with an archaic system of pulleys, was gradually assuming a perpendicular position. The harmony was of such perfection, so timeless, that when a newsboy came in thrusting the latest headline into the air, everyone jumped.
The waiters at Florian's do not smile. They set down their trays as efficiently as nurses, the little chit tucked discreetly underneath the crystal water carafe. It is a place that has often given me an intense, graceful pleasure."

"Gradually, the seams of how you behave in your society give way. The concern over where you have been, what you have done and what you are now doing lifts. These things are of no interest here. You think of the monologues endured at smart gatherings in other cities, the opinions aired, the inside information accumulated, the climb to the summit and the ultimate conquest, like the planting of the flag at Iwo Jima, of the most clever, the best-informed, the most stylish persons at that gathering to claim as their personal triumph. Here, you are asked to recount an excursion to Burano.
On your way home, you find yourself nodding to acquaintances, stopping to chat, wondering idly whether it would be possible to erase the tape of your life and start over again, knowing all the while that you have a return ticket to somewhere in your bureau."

I've been to Venice twice, once alone and once with my wife and daughter. I know about the hordes, and the prices, and the mediocre food, and the stage set atmosphere. I watched with mounting distaste from a restaurant booth as drunken divorcee from Texas embarrassed her teenage son into a besieged silence - much like a scene from a John Cheever story - before she absentmindedly, or perhaps intentionally, walked out on the dinner bill.

I've checked my email in an internet cafe overlooking a murky canal, and listened to the orchestras play into the chill September night at the Piazza San Marco. On my last trip there, my wife and I encountered an enormous ship tied up near the Doge's Palace, which we took to be a marine research vessel and only months later learned, while watching Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, was actually Paul Allen's 416 foot personal yacht, Octopus.

I realize that Venice is today less a city than a cross between a museum and a water park, and that it embodies in its bridges and its stones a tragic dissolution that Jean Raspail can only thinly, though apocalyptically, allude to in his "The Camp of the Saints." I know that, other than in vestigial and purely commercial terms, Venice stands nearly purposeless in the modern world. But I also know that, well after sunset, sitting near the back of the vaporetto as it follows the turnings of the Grand Canal through an improbable spectacle of darkness and water and light, you may, at that moment, recognize yourself for what you are, a transient witness to the most exquisite artifact ever fashioned by man.

"Just Trust Us"

2007-10-12T08:18:00.000-07:00

Hugh Hewitt: I’m going to be talking with Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff after the break. Just in anticipation of that, do you think they’ve turned around public distrust of their handling of Border issues yet in the Bush administration?

Mark Steyn: I think they’re in a kind of difficult mess here, because on the one hand, they’re trying to argue that we need a kind of national security, orange alert war on terror state, and at the same time, they’re saying well, there’s nothing we can do about itinerant peasants breaching our Southern Border. Essentially, those two arguments are incompatible. One may be correct. The other may be correct. But they can’t both be right, and I think that’s the problem for Homeland Security, that you can’t be on orange alert and then just say well, 30 million people can penetrate the Border, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

"I think the American people — I hope the American — I don't think, let me — I hope the American people trust me."
—George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Dec. 18, 2002

The Code of Silence

2007-09-28T03:06:00.001-07:00

A while ago, Patrick Deneen had on his blog, What I saw in America, a post contrasting the upcoming appearance of Ahmadinejad at Columbia with the retracted invitation of former Harvard president Larry Summers to speak at the University of California, Davis. Deneen's post deserves to be read in full, but the crux of his point is made here: "It's pretty evident that Summers stated the one unspeakable thing; it's evidently more acceptable on today's campuses to raise questions about the Holocaust than over the equality of the genders."

While I'm not particularly animated about the Ahmadinejad issue (I'm not sure that it much matters), I've always got something to say about Larry Summers. And so I launched forth, into a lengthy comment, and then into an even longer response to sombody else's comment. Finally, I concluded that rather than take up more and more space on Patrick Deneen's blog, I should probably write about this topic on my own. And then of course, I got lazy or distracted, and wrote about something else, such as a swastika-shaped naval barracks. But now I'm back on track!

Rather than start over on this topic from scratch (the laziness factor again), I've copied my comments from What I Saw in America, and I'll probably clean them up a bit along the way.

My first comment to Deneen's post:

The speech which originally landed Summers in such trouble, and which is available in full on the internet, was in subsequent media coverage often sloppily summarized, probably through a combination of moral outrage, sheer laziness, and journalistic incompetence (i.e. difficulty in following Summers' argument) An example of such sloppiness may be found here, in which the article concludes, "Two years ago, Lawrence Summers, the president of Harvard University, was forced to resign after suggesting that women were naturally bad at sciences."

In fact, Summers never claimed that women were "naturally bad at sciences." He cited research results which indicate that in tests of mathematical and scientific ability, men are disproportionately represented at both the high AND low extremes, whereas female test results cluster closer to the mean. The point he was trying to make is that, since math, science, and engineering professors at elite universities are drawn from a pool of individuals three or perhaps even four standard deviations above the mean, they are necessarily drawn from a very disproportionately male population.

If I may quote a crucial paragraph from Summers' speech:

"There are three broad hypotheses about the sources of the very substantial disparities that this conference's papers document and have been documented before with respect to the presence of women in high-end scientific professions. One is what I would call the . . . high-powered job hypothesis. The second is what I would call different availability of aptitude at the high end, and the third is what I would call different socialization and patterns of discrimination in a search. And in my own view, their importance probably ranks in exactly the order that I just described."

The point which I wish to make here is that Summers' observations do in fact pose a greater threat to contemporary orthodoxies than do the opinions of Ahmadinejad.

Note that of the three factors which might explain the disparity between men and women in the sciences, Summers gave greatest weight to the obstacle of family obligations. And yet this was not the point which drew fire against him.

The greater female commitment to child-rearing might of course be explained by social conditioning, and even if this is biological, it in a sense speaks to greater communal responsibility on the part of women, in other words, it points to a virtue. Thus, this wasn't really the point of contention.

It was Summers' analyses of the second and third causes that led to his downfall. In effect, he was arguing that biological differences play a greater role than patterns of discrimination in explaining this disparity. A mighty dangerous thing to say.

The most disturbing aspect of this claim - from the orthodox point of view - is the growing body of scientific evidence which supports it.

Pope Urban VIII was not pleased to hear Galileo's arguments that the Earth was in orbit around the sun. The fact that there was rational evidence to support this claim made those arguments more, not less, problematic.

Ahmadinejad only poses a threat equivalent to that of Summers if he can bring to bear persuasive evidence that the Holocaust is a Jewish or a Western fraud, and very few academics believe that he can. Summers, on the other hand, had to be silenced because his opponents knew how dangerous it was to allow this line of inquiry to continue.

Investigation into the role of brain physiology and its effect on identity, behavior, and aptitude is going to do to the 21st century what the theory of evolution did to the 20th. The results will rock a great many boats, and not everyone will handle these results humanely, wisely, or well.

The Summers affair is, more or less, our era's Scopes Monkey Trial. Only in this case, the academics are defending the biblical version of creation.

September 22, 2007 8:13 AM

Anonymous said...

Summer's fall was only peripherally related to the speech. It provided ammunition for a long list of grievances. Always helpful to keep that in mind when speculating on the implications of his defeat at Harvard. Now, the UC Board of Regents seems to be another kettle of fish entirely.

September 22, 2007 9:15 PM

Black Sea said...

From what I've read, there were people at Harvard who didn't like Summers style and were looking for reasons to take him down.

A fair enough point, but this hardly explains the vitriolic attempt, national rather than local in scope, to discredit Summers as a public intellectual. Nor does it explain why Summers comments would so quickly be taken up by his intra-Harvard opponents as effective ammunition in their battle against him.

These people understood immediately that such comments were the weapon they had been waiting for, because they understood the broader intellectual and cultural climate. Not surprising, since they're the ones who help shape it.

That Summers' comments not only undid him at Harvard but triggered more widespread condemnation says something about contemporary culture that we should not lightly dismiss.

Furthermore, the recent events at UC Davis only confirm that it is his comments, rather than his allegedly abrasive personal style, that continue to cause Summers trouble. People want to censure the guy because they are deeply disturbed by what he said. He said something that educated, right-thinking people are taught from childhood neither to think nor to say. That empirical evidence may confirm his comments only makes them that much more more disturbing.

Summers may have lacked the necessary political instincts and social graces to be a well-liked, or even an effective, university president. Maybe he's all the obnoxious things that his critics claim. But in an atmosphere of timid conformity to the intellectual pieties or our time, he presented a well-considered analysis of the disparate numbers of men and women at the highest levels of science and engineering, all the while making clear that the questions he had raised merited further research:

"Let me just conclude by saying that I've given you my best guesses after a fair amount of reading the literature and a lot of talking to people. They may be all wrong. I will have served my purpose if I have provoked thought on this question and provoked the marshalling of evidence to contradict what I have said."

Evidently, "thought on this question" was not what the attendees at NBER Conference on Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce were keen on pursuing. Rather than the marshalling of evidence to contradict Summers' admittedly provisional claims, it proved more efficacious to simply force his resignation as president of Harvard.

Finally, lest readers come away from this exchange with the idea that these issues constitute yet one more inconsequential academic dispute, I will link to an article that I first discovered on Unqualified Reservations.

For anyone concerned about the fate of open inquiry, or indeed, of any inquiry, on university campuses, it will prove chilling, though instructive, reading.

Fascism Follows Function . . .

2007-09-27T07:32:00.000-07:00

Or, further proof, as if any were needed, that we've become a nation of narcissistic brats:

I think both Woody Allen and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could get some mileage out of this one. From today's New York Times:

The Navy plans to spend $600,000 for “camouflage” landscaping and rooftop adjustments so that 1960s-era barracks at the Naval Base Coronado near San Diego will no longer look like a Nazi swastika from the air.

The resemblance went unnoticed by the public for decades until it was spotted in aerial views on Google Earth.

But Navy officials said they became aware of it shortly after the 1967 groundbreaking, and had decided not to do anything.

“There was no reason to redo the buildings because they were in use,” a spokeswoman for the base, Angelic Dolan, said. She added that the buildings were in a no-fly zone that is off limits to commercial airlines, so most people would not see them from the air.

“You have to realize back in the ’60s we did not have the Internet,” Ms. Dolan said. “We don’t want to offend anyone, and we don’t want to be associated with the symbol.”

The Anti-Defamation League in San Diego has objected to the shape of the buildings.

“We told the Navy this was an incredibly inappropriate shape for a structure on a military installation,” said Morris S. Casuto, regional director of the organization. He added, however, that his group “never ascribed evil intent to the structures’ design.”

Mr. Casuto praised the Navy for recognizing the problem and “doing the right thing.”

Actually, the right thing for the Navy to do would have been to respond to the Anti-Defamation League's complaints with the old Arab saying: "Go fuck yourself, by yourself."

If such response were deemed insensitive, then the Anti-Defamation League could alternatively have been told that, since they found the shape of the building so objectionable, they were welcome to cover the cost of any "'camouflage' landscaping and rooftop alterations" from their own budget. Although this reply might have been judged more offensive still.

While we're altering government architecture to appease everyone's rice-paper sensibilities, I've got a few more candidates:

In our nation's capital, there's this a well-known military facility in the shape of pentagon. In case you didn't know it, a pentagon is a type of pentagram, a shape long associated with Satan worship.

This loaded geometrical symbolism might well explain why this structure was attacked by a cadre of suicidal religious fanatics six years ago. Reason suggests that they found this "an incredibly inappropriate shape for a structure on a military installation," although some will argue that, to the contrary, they considered it an incredibly appropriate shape. In any event, it's provocative and needs to be changed.

We've also got, again in our nation's capital, this weird, obelisk-shaped structure honoring our first president. According to Wikipedia, "Obelisks were a prominent part of the architecture of the ancient Egyptians, who placed them in pairs at the entrance of temples. . . . The obelisk symbolized the sun god Ra and during the brief religious reformation of Akhenaten was said to be a petrified ray of the aten, the sundisk. It was also thought that the god existed within the structure."

I'm sorry, but we can't have the American people inadvertently worshipping the sun god Ra, so this thing is going to have to be torn down or converted to a more appropriate use, such as an airship mooring point or something.

Now that I think about it, Washington D.C. is veritably dotted with these Greco-Roman temple-like buildings meant to honor various presidents from our nation's history. Greek and Roman temples were bastions of pagan worship, and we are by no means a pagan people. What's worse, both the ancient Greeks and Romans practiced slavery, and surely this ignoble act of oppression seals the deal. These monuments must come down, or again, undergo conversion to more appropriate uses, such as astronomical observatories, surround-sound theaters, or grandiose fried chicken shacks.

But what really puzzles me in all of this is, what is it about the California sunshine that so infantilizes the imagination of its Jewish residents that they take offense over a naval barracks which bears an accidental resemblance to a swastika only when viewed from the air? And what does it say about the moral anxiety of a nation that it shells out $600,000 rather than simply telling them to grow up?

An American Dream

2007-09-20T03:14:00.000-07:00

Not that many foreigners "get" America in all its hog-stomping glory. I've never quite known what Tom Wolfe meant by "hog-stomping," but I suppose he meant it in the best possible sense.

They (foreigners) satirize our swagger, denigrate our caloric cuisine, and rail against our foreign policy. By "foreign policy" I mean our penchant for involving ourselves in other people's wars when it suits our interests. By "our interests" I mean the interests of people whose offspring will never run the slightest risk of being maimed, disfigured, or killed in such involvements.

But most of all, they (foreigners) dread our military policy. By "military policy" I mean our penchant for instigating wars when it suits our interests. By "our interests" I mean the interests of those who. . . .

But hey, some foreigners do get it. Sarkozy (energetically), Schwarzenegger (glandularly), John Derbyshire (indisputably), Bernard-Henri Levy (sort of, maybe) Chris Hitchens (alcoholically). Well, you can add one more luminary to the list:

“America is not only for the whites , but it is for all. Who is the America? The American is you, me and that. When we go to America we will become Americans and there is no a race or nationalism called America and the Americans are those Africans, Indians, Chinese, and Europeans and whoever goes to America will become American . . . . American is for all of us and the whole world had made and created America. All the people all over the world had made America and it shall accordingly be for all of us. I will never feel ashamed when I claim for my right in America and it will not be strange when I raise my voice in America.”

- Col. Moammar Gadhafi

I ran across this quotation in a comment made by a person called "Carter" on Daniel Larison's blog, Eunomia. My thanks to them both.

P.S. You just can't make this stuff up.

The International Language?

2007-09-18T13:34:00.000-07:00

I'm sick of reading, writing, and thinking about Iraq. Tragic sacrifice and manly grief I can handle (vicariously, of course) but this blood-splattered farce . . .?

Moving on to gentler themes, what about music? Does it really serve as an international language, or is it just another impenetrable barrier between cultures?

Years ago, I knew and occasionally socialized with a group of Eastern European students, most of whom were aficionados of classical music, and one of whom was a commercially-recorded cellist. I would listen rather disinterestedly as they lamented the superficiality of American popular music and our continent-wide ignorance of the great classical tradition. And I did, in some measure, agree. Why bother to dispute the claim that contemporary popular music, which is essentially American popular music, constitutes an uncanny mechanism for profiting from the continuous recalibration of humanity's lowest-common denominator?

I did, however, point out to these would-be elitists that not all of American music could so easily be dismissed. To which they readily agreed. There was no denying that American music, though often abysmal, occasionally attained a certain poignant grace. Who, after all, could deny the sublime fusing of lyric and melody achieved in the works of that American tour de force known as . . . Metallica?

Huh?

That's right. The one towering exception to the wasteland of musical mediocrity surrounding us was Metallica. Whose soul was so shallow that he could not feel his own torments given voice in the deep, interior longings of "The Unforgiven"? Could one ever say enough about the group that had produced such masterful albums as "Kill 'Em All" (originally titled "Metal Up You Ass"), "Ride the Lightning," and the one which my Eastern European contacts most particularly prized, "Master of Puppets"?

Well, OK, this wasn't exactly what I had in mind* as I sought to point out that American music encompasses of a good bit more than the troubled pop princess pictured above, but, let it stand. Perhaps they had heard something in James Hetfield's dark musings that escaped me. Indigenous American poetry, if you will:

They dedicate their lives
To running all of his
He tries to please them all
This bitter man he is

Throughout his life the same
He's battled constantly
This fight he cannot win
A tired man they see no longer cares
The old man then prepares
To die regretfully
That old man here is me

What I've felt
What I've known
Never shined through in what I've shown
Never be
Never see
Won't see what might have been

What I've felt
What I've known
Never shined through in what I've shown
Never free
Never me
So I dub thee “Unforgiven”

Well, if you've ever hung around Eastern Europeans, the affinity isn't a complete surprise.

But of course, there is more. I used to know some Turkish students who could for hours entertain their guests by performing soulful Turkish folk songs on the guitar and baglama. But, the singing couldn't go on forever, and as the evening wore down, we gave ourselves over to the eating of sweets and the drinking of tea, accompanied, invariably, by the dulcet tones of Whitney Houston reverberating from the CD player. I mean, these guys didn't just love Whitney Houston's music, they loved, or imagined that they loved, Houston herself.

I will ask in passing, what is there in the Islamic soul that finds itself so fatefully drawn to Whitney? Is it the chirpy, teeny-bopper innocence, or the lonely struggle with the crack pipe? I've never known. And as you may have read, Osama Bin Laden himself has quite a thing for Whitney. He's quipped to at least one of his wives that he might have to one day arrange for Bobby Brown's "removal." No word as to Mrs. Bin Laden's reaction.

While living in Turkey, I developed a fondness for certain Turkish musicians. But sadly, and despite their indigenous following, they always turned out to be the "wrong" musicians, if you know what I mean.

The first of these would have to be Ibrahim Tatlises. Oh, I hardly knew the depth of the waters I was stepping into. We have no exact equivalent to Tatlises in America. He is perhaps best described as an amalgam of Frank Sinatra, Jerry Lee Lewis, Leadbelly, and 50 Cent.

Tatlises is either venerated or despised in Turkey, with few people taking an intermediate position. He sings in the Arabesque style, which, though it sounds nothing like blues music, plays the role of blues in Turkish culture. It is, to be blunt, considered declasse, and the lyrics are, unsurprisingly, about lost love, loneliness in the big city, and being done wrong in multitudinous ways, though with a decidedly Turkish twist.

My wife and I were once listening a Tatlises concert being broadcast live on TV. (One might more accurately say that I was subjecting her to it.) I asked her to translate some of the lyrics, which went roughly as follows:

When I die,
When I die
Bring her to my grave.
When I die,
When I die,
Bring her to my grave.
When I die,
When I die,
Bring her,
Dragging her by the hair,
To my grave
And show her what she's done to me.

At the sound of "dragging her by the hair," the crowd erupted. Oh, come on. It's only a song.

Since I would like to finish this post sometime before nightfall, I won't go into all of the reasons why Tatlises is considered by many a vulgar enthusiasm, but I can relate one. Tatlises has had in his many years a long string of semi-celebrity girlfriends, frequently singers and belly dancers. If (when) one of them has had enough of his "old-fashioned" approach to romance and attempts escape, he's been known to pull some underworld strings and have her shot in the foot, a well-known mafia punishment in Turkey. This form of retaliation (think of it as a sort of love letter) was once actually filmed by the Turkish paparazzi. Tatlises' former-lover, the renowned belly dancer Asena, had stepped from a car and was on her way into a nightclub, the flashbulbs popping, when a young man appeared from out of the frame and busted one in her ankle.

Oh, come on. It was only her ankle. Tatlises dismissed the whole incident by proclaiming "it's only over when I say it's over."

Anyway, when Tatlises appears on TV, which is frequently, my Turkish father-in-law typically changes the channel in disgust. He has a long list of reasons for disliking Tatlises. But I realized this only after I'd several times concluded my channel surfing by settling on Tatlises' well-mustachioed face. That's what I mean by the "wrong" sort of music.

Sample Tatlises for yourself. You may wind up agreeing that he does exude a certain Saddam Hussein-like charm. Here is the video of Aramam, which in Turkish means I Won't Call. No, he won't call, but that's no guarantee that he won't have you shot in the lower extremities.

Having learned of my error, I avoided Ibrahim Tatlises while in my father-in-law's presence, and moved on to what I though was a Turkish musical enthusiasm more in line with his tastes. This guy, Kivircik Ali, "Curly" Ali, was on TV almost as much as Tatlises, but with a lower profile and possessing a very different sense of style. I soon acquired an appreciation for this traditional baglama player with a plaintive voice, and I felt confident that my father-in-law would endorse this evolution in my aesthetic sensibility.

I remember once listening to a particular dirge by Kivircik Ali, and asking my wife (yet again) what was being sung. Without bothering to look up from her magazine, she replied indifferently, "Oh, something about 'when the angel of death comes to take you to your grave.'"

I was sold right there.

Only later did I learn that my passion for "Curly Ali" (I'm guessing it's a joke about the thiness on top) was again not quite right, rather like a foreign visitor to the America of my youth expressing an unseemly interest in the Dolly Parton show. Why, my in-laws wanted to know, did I want to watch this sort of thing? The consensus eventually arrived at was that I was - out of sheer politeness - feigning an interest in the local culture. This interpretation seemed to reslove the problem, and my wife never bothered to explain that I am not really that polite.

Just to round out my survey of Turkish music, I am including a video by Tarkan, sometimes referred to as the Turkish George Michael, with - so some claim - all which that implies. I'll offer no opinions there. Tarkan is probably the most commercially-successful Turkish pop star, achieving the benign OK-ness to which decent pop musicians aspire. He was really awful at the beginning of his career, and he still struggles with the dancing. He's no Curly Ali, but I won't try to explain that to my in-laws.

And finally, for those whose tastes lie further on the wild side, I am closing with the sinuous gyrations and unabashed lip-synching of Fatih Urek, whom I shall not endeavor to describe. I believe that Ibrahim Tatlises' expression early in the video clip says more than I possibly could.

*What I did have in mind was sharing with my Eastern European students something genuinely, even jarringly, American, a little like the atmosphere of a half-deserted coal town, its inhabitants slowly washing out of the valleys and on toward the West.

That feeling - if it is a feeling - is perhaps captured in songs such as this stark duet by Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, "Time (The Revelator)." If you only bother to sample one song from this long-winded post, this would be the one.

No End in Sight

2007-09-11T18:03:00.000-07:00

I'm not much of a moviegoer. The last film I saw in a theater was the Tom Cruise warrior-epic, "The Last Samurai." I wasn't expecting much, and I got what I expected. There was some nice scenery.

However, today I decided to break from my own indolence and commemorate 9-11 by taking in a matinee showing of Charles Ferguson's documentary, "No End in Sight: The American Occupation of Iraq." After purchasing my ticket, I walked into a completely empty screening room. It was a matinee, after all.

The following synopsis of Ferguson's film is taken from its website:

The first film of its kind to chronicle the reasons behind Iraq’s descent into guerilla war, warlord rule, criminality and anarchy, NO END IN SIGHT is a jaw-dropping, insider’s tale of wholesale incompetence, recklessness and venality. Based on over 200 hours of footage, the film provides a candid retelling of the events following the fall of Baghdad in 2003 by high ranking officials such as former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, Ambassador Barbara Bodine (in charge of Baghdad during the Spring of 2003), Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell, and General Jay Garner (in charge of the occupation of Iraq through May 2003) as well as Iraqi civilians, American soldiers, and prominent analysts. NO END IN SIGHT examines the manner in which the principal errors of U.S. policy – the use of insufficient troop levels, allowing the looting of Baghdad, the purging of professionals from the Iraqi government, and the disbanding of the Iraqi military – largely created the insurgency and chaos that engulf Iraq today. How did a group of men with little or no military experience, knowledge of the Arab world or personal experience in Iraq come to make such flagrantly debilitating decisions? NO END IN SIGHT dissects the people, issues and facts behind the Bush Administration’s decisions and their consequences on the ground to provide a powerful look into how arrogance and ignorance turned a military victory into a seemingly endless and deepening nightmare of a war.

Most of this won't come as a shocking revelation at this point. George W. may be the last remaining person on Earth stubbornly unaware of the monumental bloodbath he has unleashed in Iraq. That he remains unaware can largely be attributed to his gift for ignoring unwelcome news, such as detailed intelligence documents that fail to buttress his "gut-instincts" on the war. Of course, I don't suppose we can call it a war, since major hostilities ceased in 2003.

A few teasers from the film:

The Chairman of the National Intelligence Council recalls that Bush dismissed his agency's Report on the State of the Insurgency in Iraq as mere guesswork. Bush's critique of the report was itself a matter of guesswork, since - according to the Chairman - Bush hadn't bothered to read the document. He hadn't bothered even to skim the report's one page Executive Summary. (see clip) Oddly, during this same period, the President found time for those endorphin-pumping mountain bike rides that seem to have so warped his judgement.

The decision to disband the Iraq Army was made from Washington in the space of about a week without any consultation of people on the ground in Iraq. As we know from the current debate, it is unclear whether or not the President was aware of this change of policy. The decision was made by people who, in the main, had never been to Iraq, and against the advice of just about everybody physically present there.

I recommend this film. It's always something of a comfort to see one's worst suspicions confirmed. I'm just sorry that there were so few of my fellow citizens there to share the experience. However, by the film's end, I was not entirely alone. When the lights came up, there was one other person in the theater. He rolled out of the room in a wheelchair. He looked to be in his late 50s or early 60s, and I couldn't help but wonder if he hadn't seen this story before.

The Levant

2007-08-27T08:29:00.001-07:00

"These countries were so small! One of the more marvelous atrocities of our time was the way in which the self-created problems of these countries, and their arrogant way of dealing with them, made them seem larger, like an angry child standing on its tiptoes. They were expensive to operate, too; they had vast armies; they indulged in loud and ridiculously long-winded denunciations of their neighbors. All this contributed to the illusion that they were massive. But no, they were tiny, irritating, shameless, and vindictive; and they occupied the world's attention way out of proportion to their size or importance. They had been magnified by lobbyists and busybody groups. Inflation was the theme here, and it was just another tactic for quarrelsome people to avoid making peace."
--Paul Theroux, The Pillars of Hercules

A Firm Grasp of the Painfully Obvious

2007-08-09T21:05:00.000-07:00

This is Michael Ignatieff.

His illustrious biography reads as follows:

Ignatieff is the son of Canadian diplomat George Ignatieff and Alison Grant, and the grandson of Count Paul Ignatieff, Minister of Education to Tsar Nicholas II and one of the few Tsarist ministers to have escaped execution by the Bolsheviks. His Canadian antecedents include his maternal great grandfather, George Monro Grant, the dynamic 19th century principal of Queen's University. His mother's younger brother was the political philosopher George Grant (1918-1988), author of Lament for a Nation. His great-grandfather was Count Nikolay Pavlovich Ignatyev, the Russian Minister of the Interior under Tsar Alexander III.

In 1976, Ignatieff completed his PhD in History at Harvard University. He was an assistant professor of history at the University of British Columbia from 1976 to 1978. In 1978 he moved to the United Kingdom, where he held a Senior Research Fellowship at King's College, Cambridge until 1984. He then left Cambridge for London, where he began to focus on his career as a writer and journalist.

In 2000, Ignatieff accepted a position as the director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He taught at Harvard until 2005, when on August 26, it was announced that Ignatieff was leaving Harvard to become the Chancellor Jackman Visiting Professor in Human Rights Policy at the University of Toronto. Ignatieff has received nine honorary doctorates.*

*Author's note: I've copied all the above from Wikipedia because I'm not going to waste a lot of time on this.

Michael Ignatieff was a keen supporter, or maybe just a prominent supporter, of the invasion of Iraq. Ignatieff has now concluded that his support was ill-conceived, but explains his misplaced enthusiasm thusly: "An Iraqi exile friend told me the night the war started, that it was the only chance the members of his generation would have to live in freedom in their own country."

That's OK, Michael. Anyone can make an honest mistake. Lots of intelligent, well-intentioned, globally aware and morally attuned human beings were suckered into the Iraq "Extreme Makeover" project, and now regret their fundamentally idealistic, though admittedly misguided, enthusiasm.

Michael is one such person, and after four years of sometimes painful, though ultimately enriching reflection, he has hit upon some hard-earned life-lessons which he would like to share with the rest of us. Thank you Michael, for opening a window onto your mind, your thoughts, and your soul.

Fifteen lessons learned from the bitter disappointment of Iraq:

1. I’ve learned that acquiring good judgment in politics starts with knowing when to admit your mistakes.

2. Politicians live by ideas just as much as professional thinkers do, but they can’t afford the luxury of entertaining ideas that are merely interesting. They have to work with the small number of ideas that happen to be true and the even smaller number that happen to be applicable to real life.

3. In academic life, false ideas are merely false and useless ones can be fun to play with. In political life, false ideas can ruin the lives of millions and useless ones can waste precious resources.

4. I’ve learned that good judgment in politics looks different from good judgment in intellectual life.

5. In politics, everything is what it is and not another thing.

6. Politicians cannot afford to cocoon themselves in the inner world of their own imaginings. They must not confuse the world as it is with the world as they wish it to be.

7. As a former denizen of Harvard, I’ve had to learn that a sense of reality doesn’t always flourish in elite institutions. . . . Bus drivers can display a shrewder grasp of what’s what than Nobel Prize winners.

8. The only way any of us can improve our grasp of reality is to confront the world every day and learn, mostly from our mistakes, what works and what doesn’t.

9. A sense of reality is not just a sense of the world as it is, but as it might be. Like great artists, great politicians see possibilities others cannot and then seek to turn them into realities.

10. Procrastination is even costlier in politics than it is in private life. The sign on Truman’s desk — “The buck stops here!” — reminds us that those who make good judgments in politics tend to be those who do not shrink from the responsibility of making them.

11. In politics, learning from failure matters as much as exploiting success.

12. Roosevelt and Churchill knew how to do wrong, yet they did not demand to be judged by different ethical standards than their fellow citizens did. They accepted that democratic leaders cannot make up their own moral rules . . . They must live and be judged by the same rules as everyone else.

13. In my political-science classes, I used to teach that exercising good judgment meant making good public policy. In the real world, bad public policy can often turn out to be very popular politics indeed.

14. Good judgment in politics is messy. It means balancing policy and politics in imperfect compromises that always leave someone unhappy — often yourself.

15. People with good judgment listen to warning bells within.

Re: The Above Observations:
No shit, Sherlock.

Note the patronizing faux humility of observation number seven, on the shrewdness of bus drivers (actually, the whole piece is patronizing). Perhaps Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government should consider recruiting at the Greyhound bus depot.

Furthermore, it would seem that lesson thirteen contradicts lesson two. Tragically, politicians do sometimes venture beyond the confines of "the small number of ideas that happen to be true and the even smaller number that happen to be applicable to real life" in order to engage in "bad public policy [which] can often turn out to be very popular politics indeed."

Isn't politics just a right old mess?

Why do I feel that I have been carried - on wings of cliche and Thorazine-induced prose - back to a sixth grade Civics class? The whole fucking article reads like something written with little thought and less effort by a clever(ish) 19 year old enrolled at Georgia Southwestern State University.

Who was Ignatieff teaching at Harvard anyway, the custodial staff?

Michale Ignatieff, no longer at Harvard, is now usefully applying these nuggets of insight in his new role as Canadian MP and deputy leader of the Liberal Party. I eagerly await Ignatieff's pearls of wisdom plucked from the inner sanctum of the Canadian Parliment.

A foretaste:

1. I've learned that Ottawa, not Toronto, is the capital of Canada.

2. I've learned that politicians sometimes promise more than they can deliver.

3. I've learned that stupidity, real or feigned, is an effective way to deflect difficult questions. It is possible to bore one's interlocutors into silence.

4. I've learned that promising more than one can deliver sometimes works (only in a crassly political sense, mind you), but it is still bad, except for when it inspires (deceives) the public into taking risks which I think are good, in which it case, maybe it is good.

5. I've learned that the road to hell really is paved with good intentions!

If they're not learning, you're not teaching*

2007-08-03T05:40:00.000-07:00

A report compiled by the Education Trust in Washington argues that the Federal bureaucracy has allowed individual states way too much latitude in setting targets for graduation rates. So long as some sort of "progress" in graduation rates is stipulated, states are apparently in compliance with this aspect of No Child Left Behind legislation, which I have written about previously. Evidently, not only must all states increase their graduation rates (now, how would they accomplish that?), but they must aspire to the same high graduation targets. Iowa, for example, is shooting for 95%.

From the NY Times article:

While the No Child Left Behind law has created a national focus on reading and math proficiencies, it has done little to raise expectations for the number of students graduating from high school, the report said.

Because the law allowed states wide latitude, the goals for graduation rates vary widely. Nevada, for example, says its goal is to graduate 50 percent of its students; Iowa sets a target of 95 percent.

Under the federal law, states must also set targets for annual improvements, but several states say that any progress at all — even just one more diploma — is good enough, according to data collected from the Department of Education.

The report found that state-set goals for raising graduation rates are “far too low to spur needed improvement.”

I suppose there are at least three ways to raise graduation rates. One would be to lower the standards required for graduation. Another would be to maintain or even raise the standards, and then fudge the results. The third would to raise levels of student performance. If you were an educational administrator, which would you choose?

New York seems to have hit upon a reasonable answer:

Several weeks into his first year of teaching math at the High School of Arts and Technology in Manhattan, Austin Lampros received a copy of the school’s grading policy. He took particular note of the stipulation that a student who attended class even once during a semester, who did absolutely nothing else, was to be given 45 points on the 100-point scale, just 20 short of a passing mark.

Mr. Lampros’s introduction to the high school’s academic standards proved a fitting preamble to a disastrous year. It reached its low point in late June, when Arts and Technology’s principal, Anne Geiger, overruled Mr. Lampros and passed a senior whom he had failed in a required math course.

That student, Indira Fernandez, had missed dozens of class sessions and failed to turn in numerous homework assignments, according to Mr. Lampros’s meticulous records, which he provided to The New York Times. She had not even shown up to take the final exam. She did, however, attend the senior prom.

Through the intercession of Ms. Geiger, Miss Fernandez was permitted to retake the final after receiving two days of personal tutoring from another math teacher. Even though her score of 66 still left her with a failing grade for the course as a whole by Mr. Lampros’s calculations, Ms. Geiger gave the student a passing mark, which allowed her to graduate.

Ms. Geiger declined to be interviewed for this column and said that federal law forbade her to speak about a specific student’s performance. But in a written reply to questions, she characterized her actions as part of a “standard procedure” of “encouraging teachers to support students’ efforts to achieve academic success.”

The article concludes with the following:

Samantha Fernandez, Indira’s mother, spoke on her behalf. “My daughter earned everything she got,” she said. Of Mr. Lampros, she said, “He needs to grow up and be a man.”

From Michigan, Mr. Lampros recalled one comment that Mrs. Fernandez made during their meeting about why it was important for Indira to graduate. She couldn’t afford to pay for her to attend another senior prom in another senior year.

Samantha Fernandez is probably more accurate than she supposes when she asserts that her daughter has "earned everything she got." And you've got to love the idea that Mr. Lampros' unwillingness to pass Indira, despite the blood-and-guts intellectual commitment she brough to his class, constitutes either immaturity or effiminacy on his part. Kudos for keeping the discussion on an intellectual plane, Sam. And these are the sorts of people (Indira and her highly-motivated mom) whom teachers and administrators are expected to shepherd along through the educational system.

The Education Trust has its own perspective on New York schools' performance and graduation rates:

The report praised New York City schools for making sizable improvements in the past three years. But while New York has raised its graduation rate by six percentage points over the last three years, it still hovers around 50 percent. For the class of 2006, just 41 percent of Latino students graduated in four years.

Ross Wiener, vice president for policy and practice at the Education Trust, a research group in Washington, said that states should aim to have 90 percent of students graduate in four years and that schools that did not meet that goal should improve their graduation rate by five percentage points over two years.

The report criticized states as not doing enough to track low-income and minority students.

And on the issue of disadvantaged, or discriminated against, or under performing, or whatever minority students, we have yet another perspective, this time from a professor of Education at the University of Georgia:

It appears it will take a Civil Rights type of movement in education to change the present academic trajectory of black children. It will take parents and educators, concerned clergy and community activists, and members of commerce and civic organizations taking to the street — and the Internet — en masse, to demand the undelivered promises of Brown.

Such a movement should be unapologetic about making sure that black children, and for that matter all children, are prepared to participate in the global economy. It must demand that parents are supported in their efforts to parent and participate actively in their children's education, and insist that educators are provided the resources and support to effectively teach. And, it has to expose how politicians are more interested in their own political expediency than making a serious commitment to developing a world-class system of public education for all children.

Of the three methods I have identified above for raising graduation rates, which one do you believe is likely to result from such a "Civil Rights type movement?" And while I'm at it, how exactly does an educational bureaucracy, or any entity, ensure that parents are "supported in their efforts to parent and participate actively in their children's education"? What, if anything, does that even mean?

Our educational establishment in America is obsessed with fads, fantasies, wish-fulfillment, and social engineering. The one reality which they will never grapple with, as applicable in the realm of learning as in any other dimension of human experience, is that limitation is the fundamental human experience. There are limits as to what schools can do, what teachers can do, and what students can do. There were limits to what Einstein could do in the field of physics (we're still waiting on that Unified Field Theory), and limits on what Bobby Knight could do with a bunch of farm boys from Indiana (hence his epic, courtside breakdowns). In the absence of any discussion of inevitable limits and reasonable expectations, education policy will continue along these current, vacuous lines.

The consequence of all of this, from my own experience, anyway, is that teaching becomes exponentially more difficult when a void is introduced between what the students, at that moment in their lives, are capable of or willing to do (much the same thing, actually) and what the curriculum expects, or pretends to expect, them to do. An odor of dishonesty and dissembling soon taints the atmosphere of the classroom, the conference room, and most damagingly, of the mind itself. Even less-than-brilliant students quickly pick up on a fraud, particularly one allegedly being perpetrated for their benefit.

Having, in my previous post, overhauled the electoral system in America, I see no reason not to move from success to success (just like our kids) and overhaul the public education system. A few modest proposals:

1. Vouchers (because the public education system has no interest in being overhauled)

2. Six years of elementary school, four years of high school. Those who can't learn the basic skills of literacy and numeracy in ten years are not going to learn them in twelve. The example of Miss Indira Fernandez, cited above, is useful here.

3. There should be three different types of high school degrees, with varying levels of academic expectation, so that most kids, at the end of the 10th grade, can graduate. Political realities have to be considered.

4. After graduating from high school, students might:

a) do nothing
b) get a job
c) take up a life of crime
d) enter an apprenticeship program through a vocational-technical school, with something like 20 hours of work per week, and 20 hours of classroom instruction. (Unlike the educational trust, I am willing to allow schools some flexibility on the specifics.)
e) enter a two or four-year college (By the way, the bias against the two-year Associate degree is probably a mistake.)
f) do two years of prep work prior to entering a university. Fewer students would incur or pass on to taxpayers the considerable cost of a university education, and university graduates would be expected to know a good bit more than they do now.
g) engage in independent study leading to credentialization, which might be called the Parapundit route.

As my correspondent, John Derbyshire, would no doubt say of the above, "Fat Chance!" But we can all dream a little.

By the way, Logical Meme has a rather amusing take on Miss Fernandez's journey through the New York High School Labyrinth.

*I am told that this is one of the latest educational mantras, repeated ad nauseum by adminstrators. Inspiring, eh?

One Man . . . Four Votes?

2007-07-28T12:30:00.000-07:00

In addition to being enticing, elusive, and intellectually provocative, the above title should, I realize, by some people's lights, read "One Person . . . Four Votes?" But since I'm going to be arguing here against the universal franchise as currently structured, I'll leave it as is. Anyway, women rarely pay visits to my little clubhouse, so I'll run the risk of offense.

There's been an intriguing discussion going on at Unqualified Reservations regarding the nature of democracy, and more specifically, whether or not it is simply an adaptive fiction. For those (like me) unfamiliar with this term, an adaptive fiction is "a misperception of reality that, unlike most such misperceptions, manages to outcompete the truth."

One UR commenter, Michael S, points out that democracy in its current, hallowed form, (universal suffrage) has hardly been practiced long enough to have proven its itself as the best and final Fukuyamian political solution.

Michael S. said...

One point worth noting in any discussion of "democracy" is that human society really has very little experience with this form of government as it is now defined - i.e., universal-franchise, one-man-one-vote, with seats in representative assemblies apportioned to populations in the districts or ridings represented.

I'd be willing to hazard that almost no historical examples can be cited that are more than perhaps 70 or 80 years old. Ancient democracies, like those of Athens or republican Rome, had highly restricted electorates. Most of their denizens, including numerous slaves, did not hold the franchise. This was also true in the United States until 1865. Property qualifications for the franchise were only slowly removed, and the franchise in the U.S. cannot be said to have been truly universal until the ratification of the Twenty-Fourth Amendment in 1964, banning the exaction of poll taxes as a qualification for voting, and the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In other words, the universal franchise in the United States dates from about the same time as the independence of most British and French colonies in Africa.

One-man-one-vote-once was the usual sequence of events in most of those places, which very quickly threw off their parliaments, prime ministers, robed and bewigged judges and barristers, and slid either into anarchy or tyranny. The decline of self-government in the United States under the universal franchise has not been as precipitate, but one would have to be a fool not to see its signs.

This got me to thinking about a John Derbyshire article I read a year or two ago, in which he argued for the disenfranchisement of non-military government employees. You know, Derbyshire's always willing to think the best of our boys in uniform. But he does have a point, and I soon found myself intrigued enough to email Derb with my proposal, really just a thought-exercise, as to the re-rigging of the American voting system. Derbyshire's reply was, in essence, "fat chance!"

Fair enough. As I've said, it's only a thought-exercise, and I expect never to see any of these provisions come to pass. Nevertheless, and simply for my own amusement, I've constructed a less egalitarian - why not just say it, an unfair - voting system intended to produce better electoral outcomes. At the same time, one of the constraints of this exercise is to make such a proposal as palatable as possible to the general citizenry.

What is that, you say? The masses would rise up in righteous rage? Yeah, maybe . . . not that any politician would ever be suicidal enough to propose it. On the other hand, the citizenry is made up of lots of people, like me, who will talk politics all evening, but can't be bothered to step into the booth. Perhaps democracy is both an adaptive and self-selecting fiction, filtering out those most likely to gum up the works.

Well, here goes. My anti-democratic, elitist, and entirely unlikely overhaul of the American voting system:

Contra Derbyshire and his desire to disenfranchise government employees, we're not going to get away with disenfranchising anybody. It's just a matter of time before convicted felons re-claim their right to vote. Bearing this in mind, my preferred strategy is subtraction by addition, adding voting power to those whom I deem worthy, and denying additional votes to those I deem unworthy. Finally, I would attempt to rationalize the whole thing in a sufficiently family-friendly, pro-education, and patriotic way, thus deceiving the American public into adopting a better elective system.

Under this system, citizens could qualify for the right to exercise between one and five votes in any federal election. These votes are as follows:

1. The Citizenship Vote: This is the vote we all currently know and love. All you have to do to get it is to be a breathing 18 year old+ citizen, not noticably retarded, and without a felony record. You also have to register, and under my plan, you would still have to register, because some people are too stupid/lazy to register.

The rationalization: Everyone has a right to vote, and everyone's vote counts.
The justification: The need to appease every citizen's belief that he or she has a right to vote.

2. The Informed Citizen Vote: All high school students will be required to take a one-year sequence of courses on American History and the US Constitution, including the Bill of Rights. At the end of this sequence of courses, students will take a federally-administered test, consisting only of multiple choice questions based upon issues of fact rather than opinion. Passage of this test, in high school or at any point in one's life, qualifies one for the Informed Citizen vote. This test has no bearing on the student's GPA.

The particular questions used in the test will be selected out of a large item bank, and all of the questions in the bank will be made available to test takers ahead of time. Thus, all test takers - and remember, you can take this test at any point in your life - will have equal access to the pool of questions from which their particular exam will be drawn. A reasonable ability to memorize, and the self-discipline to study, will be sufficient to pass the test.

The rationalization: This will encourage a politically informed populace, and will require high schools to provide students with at least one year of instruction that students might actually use in the event of their arrest.

The justification: Some people are too stupid/lazy to pass this test in high school, and such people, almost without exception, will never find the wherewith all to study this subject on their own and take the exam at a later point in their lives.

3. The Net Contributor Vote: Given to everyone who pays more in federal taxes than he or she receives in government payouts, including salaries, welfare benefits, and Social Security. This provision would also exclude employees of private contractors which derive more than 50% of their revenue from federal contracts.

The rationalization: People who make a net-positive contribution to the federal till deserve an extra vote.

The justification: See John Derbyshire's article, take a look at the prescription drug benefit legislation, drive through a public housing project, or pick up an AARP publication. People are people, after all.

4. The Military Service Vote: Current service in one of the branches of the military, including the National Guard and Reserves, entitles a citizen to this vote. Veterans of military service only keep this vote so long as they remain in the Guard or Reserves.

The rationalization: We don't want to penalize our active-duty servicemen and women simply because they draw a government paycheck in excess of their federal tax obligation. They're defending our freedom.

The justification: People who serve in the military tend to make up the better component of the American lower-middle to working class, and particularly since they bear the brunt of America's military adventures, it only seems fair. Plus, I wouldn't want to take on the military when they discover that their members are being denied the Net Contributor Vote. This vote compensates them for their disqualification in the Net Contributor category.

5. The Parental Responsibility Vote: Anyone legitimately able to claim one or more dependent children on their Federal Income Tax Return, and providing for those children through funds earned rather than federal benefits, is entitled to this vote.

The rationalization: Children are our future, and parents are in effect voting not only out of their own interests, but also in their children's interests.

The justification: The justification isn't actually that different from the rationalization, though the emphasis differs. To the extent that people ever take the long view in life, they do so when they're raising kids, if they're ever raising kids. The period of child-rearing more or less corresponds to that period during which people are carrying the greatest load in their society.

To sum up, before you have kids, you live for yourself; after they're grown, likewise. Under this provision, people who provide for their own kids will be rewarded with an extra vote, and those who - for whatever reason - don't, won't.

You will note that the title of this post is "One Man . . . Four Votes?" and yet I've listed five potential votes. Bad math? Not really. It would difficult, though not impossible, for one person to claim all five votes. The only way to do so would be to make a relatively high salary while serving in the military reserve, and to pay federal taxes in excess of one's compensation from the military. I don't know what one is paid to serve in the Guard or Reserve, but I suspect that it exceeds the amount that most Guard or Reserve members pay in taxes.

Thus, Americans of sound character and strong capabilities (patriots like you and me) would probably, at any one time, qualify for no more than four votes. Still that's better than what you've got now. But I wonder if those four votes would be enough to actually lure me into the booth. Sadly, I suspect that, even under a system of my own devising, I'm destined to remain a voting voyeur.

Bunker Buster

2007-07-10T19:50:00.000-07:00

"You don't get any feeling of somebody crouching down in the bunker. This is either extraordinary self-confidence or out of touch with reality. I can't tell you which."
--Irwin M. Stelzer, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute

"I find him serene. . . . I know President Johnson was railing against his fate. That's not the case with Bush. He feels he's doing what he needs to do, and he seems to me at peace with himself."
--Henry Kissinger

Seven years into his presidency, and as his approval ratings continue their slide toward the mid-twenties, George W. Bush has awakened to the realization that all may not be well with his historical legacy (though he's certain to be long remembered).

Thus, with all the assiduous energy of the well-connected D- minus student cramming for that big exam, Bush is racking the brains of a cadre of elite eggheads, who struggle to make clear to him the distinctions between good and evil, the "lessons of history" (as if these are going to be laid bare in a few bull sessions), and to answer that most vexing of questions, "Is it the whole of America that the rest of the world hates, or is it just George W. Bush?"

From The Washington Post article:

And yet Bush does not come across like a man lamenting his plight. In public and in private, according to intimates, he exhibits an inexorable upbeat energy that defies the political storms. Even when he convenes philosophical discussions with scholars, he avoids second-guessing his actions. He still acts as if he were master of the universe, even if the rest of Washington no longer sees him that way.

Bush is fixated on Iraq, according to friends and advisers. One former aide went to see him recently to discuss various matters, only to find Bush turning the conversation back to Iraq again and again. He recognizes that his presidency hinges on whether Iraq can be turned around in 18 months. "Nothing matters except the war," said one person close to Bush. "That's all that matters. The whole thing rides on that."

These are the questions of a president who has endured the most drastic political collapse in a generation. Not generally known for intellectual curiosity, Bush is seeking out those who are, engaging in a philosophical exploration of the currents of history that have swept up his administration. For all the setbacks, he remains unflinching, rarely expressing doubt in his direction, yet trying to understand how he got off course.

Perhaps his unflinching reluctance to entertain "doubts in his direction" might in part explain "how he got off course." Would someone remind me, exactly when was he on course?

Well, in the interest of broadening the president's historical horizons, I will provide quotations from a series of historians who were asked to complete the following statement:

George W. Bush is the worst president since . . .

HOOVER: “I would say GW is our worst president since Herbert Hoover. He is moving to bankrupt the federal government on the eve of the retirement of the baby boom generation, and he has brought America’s reputation in the world to its lowest point in the entire history of the United States.”

HARDING: “Oil, money and politics again combine in ways not flattering to the integrity of the office. Both men also have a tendency to mangle the English language yet get their points across to ordinary Americans. [Yet] the comparison does Harding something of a disservice.”

McKINLEY: “Bush is perhaps the first president [since McKinley] to be entirely in the ‘hip pocket’ of big business, engage in major external conquest for reasons other than national security, AND be the puppet of his political handler. McKinley had Mark Hanna; Bush has Karl Rove. No wonder McKinley is Rove’s favorite historical president (precedent?).”

GRANT: “He ranks with U.S. Grant as the worst. His oil interests and Cheney’s corporate Haliburton contracts smack of the same corruption found under Grant.”

“While Grant did serve in the army (more than once), Bush went AWOL from the National Guard. That means that Grant is automatically more honest than Bush, since Grant did not send people into places that he himself consciously avoided. . . . Grant did not attempt to invade another country without a declaration of war; Bush thinks that his powers in this respect are unlimited.”

NIXON: “Actually, I think [Bush’s] presidency may exceed the disaster that was Nixon. He has systematically lied to the American public about almost every policy that his administration promotes.” Bush uses “doublespeak” to “dress up policies that condone or aid attacks by polluters and exploiters of the environment . . . with names like the ‘Forest Restoration Act’ (which encourages the cutting down of forests).”

EVER: The second most common response from historians, trailing only Nixon, was that the current presidency is the worst in American history. A few examples will serve to provide the flavor of such condemnations. “Although previous presidents have led the nation into ill-advised wars, no predecessor managed to turn America into an unprovoked aggressor. No predecessor so thoroughly managed to confirm the impressions of those who already hated America. No predecessor so effectively convinced such a wide range of world opinion that America is an imperialist threat to world peace. I don 't think that you can do much worse than that.”

“Bush is horrendous; there is no comparison with previous presidents, most of whom have been bad.”

“He is blatantly a puppet for corporate interests, who care only about their own greed and have no sense of civic responsibility or community service. He lies, constantly and often, seemingly without control, and he lied about his invasion into a sovereign country, again for corporate interests; many people have died and been maimed, and that has been lied about too. He grandstands and mugs in a shameful manner, befitting a snake oil salesman, not a statesman. He does not think, process, or speak well, and is emotionally immature due to, among other things, his lack of recovery from substance abuse. The term is "dry drunk". He is an abject embarrassment/pariah overseas; the rest of the world hates him . . . . . He is, by far, the most irresponsible, unethical, inexcusable occupant of our formerly highest office in the land that there has ever been.”

“George W. Bush's presidency is the pernicious enemy of American freedom, compassion, and community; of world peace; and of life itself as it has evolved for millennia on large sections of the planet. The worst president ever? Let history judge him.”

“This president is unique in his failures.”

Unique in his failures . . . now there's a legacy for the ages.

Which is not to say that condemnation from intellectual quarters has been unanimous. William Kristol has just recently revealed that Bush's presidency is likely - through the historical lens - to be viewed a major success.

News flash! This stunning redemption will be gained through victory in Iraq.

Hey, if only I could've thought of that . . .

Dalrymple's EuroDisney

2007-06-27T09:13:00.000-07:00

Broadcasting live from somewhere in North America . . . (suburban Atlanta, actually):

In The American Conservative, Theodore Dalrymple has an excellent review of The Last Days of Europe: Epitaph for an Old Continent, by Walter Laqueurof. As Dalrymple puts it:

"He [Laqueurof] sees Europe, once the home of a dynamic civilization that energized the rest of the world, declining into a kind of genteel theme park—if it’s lucky. The future might be grimmer than this, of course: there might be a real struggle for power once the immigrants and their descendants become numerically strong enough to take on the increasingly geriatric native population."

Once again, the "demographics as destiny" theme rises to the fore. Dalrymple has always been astute on the particular difficulties posed by large-scale Islamic immigration into Europe, as well as the slow, corrupting influence of Europe's increasingly insupportable cradle-to-grave Nanny state.

"This suggests—and Laqueur has no hesitation in so saying—that there is a problem peculiar to the integration of Muslims in Western countries, at any rate, when they are in such large numbers that they are able to make whole areas their own. Imbued with a sense of their own religious superiority, which considers a Muslim way of life better than any other, they are ill-prepared to adapt constructively to Western society.

Yet adapt they do, though not necessarily in the best way. The young men of the second generation adopt many aspects of American ghetto “culture,” which in conjunction with Islamic teaching and tradition, enables them to dominate women in a way that is to them extremely gratifying. This prevents the women (who, as Laqueur tells us, and I can confirm from personal experience, are vastly superior morally and intellectually to their menfolk) from achieving all they might in an open society. In turn, the cheap and unconstructive satisfactions of domestic dictatorship discourages Muslim men from real achievement and engagement in the wider society around them."

Dalrymple goes on to say:

"The third threat comes from the existence of the welfare state and the welfare-state mentality. A system of entitlements has been created that, however economically counterproductive, is politically difficult to dismantle: once privileges are granted, they assume the metaphysical status of immemorial and fundamental rights. The right of French train drivers to retire on full pension at the age of 50 is probably more important to them than the right of free speech—especially that of those who think that retirement at such an age is preposterous. While Europe mortgages its future to pay for such extravagances—the French public debt doubled in ten years under the supposedly conservative Chirac—other areas of the world forge an unbeatable combination of high-tech and cheap labor. The European political class, more than ever dissociated from its electorate, has hardly woken up to the challenge.

If by chance you are unfamiliar with Dalrymple's writings go here, to the archive of his work published in City Journal. A Prophetic and Violent Masterpiece, and What is Poverty, are good places to start.

Paths Crossed . . . and Crossed Again

2007-06-22T01:42:00.000-07:00

“If one had but a single glance to give the world, one should gaze on Istanbul.”
Alphonse de Lamartine (French Poet, Writer and Statesman, 1790-1869)

Tomorrow morning, if all goes well, my wife and I will load our daughters into a taxi at 5:30 am, and we will begin the trek to Istanbul airport, and then to Paris, and then home.

For the past two summers, we've made this same journey, but this time will be different, because we won't be returning to Turkey, or so we believe, except for whatever brief visits we make in the future. In other words, we're going back home.

Like most journeys, it's one of mixed emotions. It sounds banal to say, but I'll miss living in Turkey, and miss Istanbul in particular. To continue with banalities (why not?) one of the strongest impressions I've gleaned over the past few years is that of the "small world." I don't mean in the cultural sense, much less in the spiritual sense. I'm, talking about the extent to which people actually keep bumping into old acquaintances from around the globe.

For example:

For the past twenty-five years, my friend Robert has followed a pattern of working and travelling, working and travelling, all over the world. He has lived in Atlanta, Seattle, Sacramento, several cities and towns in Arizona, as well as Botswana, New Guinea, Costa Rica, Switzerland, and now currently in New Zealand. He's bicycled across the US at least three times, as he has over much, if not most, of the world. So he's been a lot of places and met a lot of people, but even he was a bit weirded out when, while walking the crowded streets of Ho Chi Mihn City, he heard his name called, and turned to see an old friend he'd first met in Costa Rica. One of those things.

Robert and I met forty years ago, in Miss Shropshire's first-grade class at James L.Riley Elementary School. We lost track of each other a few years later, then became friends again in high school, and on into the present.

Since we've both lived in a variety of places, we have, since the 1980s, gotten together in Wyoming, where I worked summers as a college student, in Montana, where I was for about six months a unemployed bum, in Switzerland, where Robert was teaching at a boarding school, in Rome, where I had free use of an apartment, but mostly in Atlanta, where Robert was either working or killing time before of after one of his multi-year global jaunts.

As I mentioned, Robert now lives in New Zealand, but tomorrow, like me, he'll be arriving at the Atlanta airport. Totally unplanned, sheer coincidence. I knew he was considering a flight home sometime this summer, but we happened to book our arrival on the same day. It will be good to see Robert again.

Another example:

An Irish colleague of mine, who lived for a time in Saudi Arabia, ran across a fellow Irishman, and as people will do, they got to talking about where they'd grown up. It turned out they'd both come from the same smallish town in the west of Ireland. Having established that coincidence, they then got to talking about which neighborhood of the town, then which street of the neighborhood, then which address of the street they'd grown up at, on, or in.

As it happened, they eventually realized that, several years apart, they'd both lived in the same house, in fact occupying the same bedroom of this same house. And my colleague assured us (this story was told at a party) that the stranger he'd just met was not pulling his leg, as he was able to describe in considerable detail both the odd configuration of the room and the pattern of the paper that my friend and his mother had hung on the bedroom walls so many years before.

And again:

Our first year in Turkey, we lived in Ankara, and most mornings, as I waited for the campus service bus to take me to my office, I'd see the same cluster of people, with schedules similar to my own, waiting at the bus stop. Once or twice previously, I'd had occasion to speak with one member of this group, an American History professor. Though I liked him well enough, I tended to avoid conversation with him because his evident shyness made chatting uncomfortable for everyone involved.

So in the mornings, as I waited for the bus and observed my fellow bus patrons, I happened to notice that this same history professor, named Tim, seemed unusually at ease chatting with an older guy, also American, who taught in the College of Education.

On one particular morning, the older guy mentioned that he'd come to Turkey simply to avoid the boredom he'd felt after retiring from the university where he'd taught in the States.

"Where was that?" asked Tim.

The older guy answered that it was the University of Puget Sound, though he'd spent most of his career teaching at Florida State University.

"That's interesting," said Tim, "I grew up in Tallahassee."

Like the two Irishmen in the story above, they then began to discuss neighborhoods, streets, and so forth.

"How old are you?" asked the older guy.

"Forty-one," Tim answered.

"Hmm, maybe you went to school with my son," the older guy commented, to which, in reply, Tim asked, "What's your son's name?"

When the older guy answered Tim's question (and let me make clear that I am really truncating the conversation, which was now taking place on the bus), there was a moment of rather compelling silence.

"He's your son?" Tim asked.

"Yeah," the older guy said.

"He and I were best friends in middle school. I was at your house every day playing basketball. I remember you teaching us how to shoot the ball, and taking us to practice. I remember going fishing with you in the summer."

"My God," the older guy said, "You're Tim ******."

And then the recollections began in earnest. I'd never quite heard, or overheard, a conversation like this before. I wondered afterward if they hadn't, on some level, felt that they knew or were familiar with each other, even if they were not consciously aware of any such acquaintance. I kept thinking about it for days.

One last tale:

At the same party where my Irish colleague told his tale, Jimmy, another guest, told what is perhaps the strangest variation on this theme. He'd been doing some cabinetry work for Janice, a woman who lives here in Istanbul and whose husband teaches at my current university. (She and her husband both once worked at the university where I attended graduate school, but I didn't know either of them then, so that hardly counts.) Anyway, when Jimmy was finished working for the day, she offered to give him a ride home, but said they would first have to go, via taxi, to the shop where her car was being repaired. She'd drop him off on the way back.

While she paid for the work done on her car, Jimmy stood outside the garage, smoking a cigarette. As he gazed at the traffic, from across a busy street of several lanes, a man in greasy cover-alls slowly emerged. As Jimmy told it, he had the look of a long-time heavy drinker, a man ill-at-ease in some way, and he'd had to gather himself up before crossing the street.

When he got close to Jimmy, he said, in Turkish, "I know you."

Jimmy, who speaks little Turkish (like most of us), started casting around for someone to translate. About that time, Janice walked out of the shop, and again the man said, "I know you," from which point, Janice translated.

"Seven years ago," the man said, "Every morning, seven years ago, I saw you walking through Kings Cross Station. 8:30, every morning."

Jimmy was puzzled.

The man said,"You'd stand like this." He imitated Jimmy's posture. "You crossed your arms this way." The man crossed his arms just so. "I'd see you smoking a cigarette like this." He pointed to Jimmy's hand, which held a cigarette. "I know you, from London, seven years ago."

Jimmy hardly knew what to say.

The man then nodded to emphasize the certainty of his point, turned, and made his way alone back across the street.

Jimmy never did learn the man's name, nor why he'd once lived in London, nor why, in the year 2000, he'd been at Kings Cross Station everyday.

But Jimmy did acknowledge that every morning, seven years earlier, he would in fact arrive at Kings Cross Station at 8:30 in the morning, and the first thing he'd do, upon ascending the station's steps, was to light up a cigarette. And that in fact the man was right, Jimmy did fold his arms in just that way.

I hope to see my friends from Turkey again someday.

A Dying Way of War

2007-06-18T09:27:00.000-07:00

"It's a new kind of war, George. It's a new war for a new century."
--Breaker Morant*

A week ago today, my sister-in-law's stepfather was buried with full honors at Arlington National Cemetery. Ralph, her step-father, explained to me years ago at a family gather that he had grown up the child of immigrants in a German neighborhood of St. Louis, where he rarely spoke English until he entered school. In his teens - in the 1930s - he both played minor league baseball and acquired a pilot's license. How, during the Depression, he had access to an airplane for training, I have no idea. Like many Americans of German ancestry, Ralph was deeply troubled by the rise of the Nazis, and felt a particular need to demonstrate that his first loyalty lay with the powers of the "free world." As a trained pilot,and while still a teenager, he volunteered first with the RAF, for which he flew bombing missions, and then later with the US Army Air Force, once America had entered the war.

Given the length of his service to both Britain and the US, I realized that he must've flown a remarkable number of missions. As you may know, the US Air Force mandated that anyone in a bomber crew would be required to fly no more than sixty some-odd missions before being guaranteed a stateside posting. This guarantee was meant to boost crew morale, and sacrificed little in the way of manpower, since (as Air Force statisticians knew) most fliers would be killed in combat long before they ever made the allotted number of missions. So, when I asked Ralph how many missions he had flown, you can imagine my reaction when he answered something along the lines of "two hundred and thirty four."

"Were you ever shot down?" I asked.

"Oh yeah, five times."

My sister-in-law later confirmed that not only had Ralph been shot down five times, but he'd also been awarded six purple hearts, and in fact upon his return to St. Louis at the war's end, he was celebrated as the most highly decorated veteran from the state of Missouri. After the war, Ralph's connection with flying was maintained through service in the Air Force Reserve, from which he eventually retired with the rank of Colonel. In the civilian world, he spent the bulk of his career working for Ralston-Purina, the pet food company, which must have offered quite a "tranquil" contrast to his wartime experiences, if you know what I mean.

In my conversation with Ralph, he did mention something particularly memorable: on more than one occasion, he had bombed towns in Germany where he knew cousins of his were living.

"Wow," I said stupidly, "that must've provoked some strange emotions." (I didn't really know what to say). But it hardly mattered.

"Oh no," Ralph replied with a beaming enthusiasm, "you never see the damage you've done from the air."

Did I mention that Ralph was of German ancestry?

Anyhow, my larger point here is that not so long ago (historically speaking) it was taken for granted that when the US found itself at war, ordinary citizens, ordinary men, actually, would risk their lives to defend their country.

I realize that ethos on which the assumption is based has its dangers, which I will deal with presently. Nevertheless, a tradition of widespread military service in time of national crisis has its virtues, not least of which is that the general populace sees itself as necessarily implicated in the nation's military commitments, and is therefore that much more likely to scrutinize military undertakings.

By way of contrast to the above ethos, I find myself compelled to make reference to Jonah Goldberg, whom you may have read at the National Review, and who - after several seasons of pom pom waving for the war in Iraq - finally faced the obvious question as to why someone so ardent in his support of Operation Iraqi Freedom hadn't gotten around to actually enlisting. Goldberg, still in his thirties, was certainly young enough, was presumably bright enough, and his invaluable insights into matters of tactical if not strategic significance could certainly have proven useful on Fallujah's mean streets.

Sensing the closing of a trap, Goldberg rather ineffectually pleaded that he had a wife and two two children upon whom military service would impose severe financial hardship. He then attempted some self-deprecating joke, the punch line of which I don't remember, though I am confident that it revealed neither wit nor insight, but only a juvenile clownishness masking a well-earned sense of shame.

If I can bang the family drum a bit more, and at the same time rub Jonah's nose a little deeper in the dirt, let me briefly cite the example of my maternal grandfather, who during World War Two abandoned a fairly comfortable position with the Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington D.C. in order to cold-heartedly impose financial hardship upon his own wife and two children. My grandfather's enlistment in the US Navy led him to the Pacific, where he saw considerable action, and attained to the rank of Commander. He was at the time of this impulsive folly (i.e. his enlistment) in his mid-forties, and if one were to attempt the same today one would likely be diagnosed with a mid-life crisis, prescribed Zoloft, and presented with a mountain bike. Though I never had the chance to ask him why he left a family and a desk job to go to war, I guess he believed that this was his duty. And I think that my sister-in-law's stepfather, Ralph, and my own father, who fought in the Battle of the Bulge, and a lot of other people were, by mass indoctrination or by simple tradition, inclined to feel that way as well.

But, understandably, people don't so much these days. For one thing, our wars don't really smack of do-or-die national survival (see one of Jonah Goldberg's defenses of the war). It takes an awful lot of propagandizing to convince the comfortable American public of the gravity of whatever the current crisis is (Tonkin Gulf, Gulf War Two, World War Four, or is it Five, whatever) and then as the news reports and the soldier's angry letters (well, emails and blog posts these days) begin to filter back, those who can read are thankful they didn't totally give in to war fever. Not to the point of actually, you know, joining. And so life goes on.

Yes, I realize a well-placed nuclear device may someday make the words I've just written look more than a tad smug and complacent, and I guess I'll be guilty (if I'm still around) of not taking the current threat seriously enough, but it seems that everything we do in the Middle East only enhances the prospect of such a scenario someday becoming a reality.

One young American who did feel the call to service in the wake of 9/11, was of course Pat Tillman, the professional football player who passed up a multi-million dollar renewal contract with the Arizona Cardinals to enlist in the Army. He and his brother Kevin, a minor league baseball player, both made their way into the Rangers, where (oddly, I think) they served in the same unit in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the aftermath of Pat Tillman's death, there was a certain amount of chatter as to whether he was a hero, or a sucker, or a hyper-aggressive jerk who'd more or less gotten what he deserved. For whatever it's worth, I believe there was something admirable in Tillman's readiness to sacrifice enormous economic gain, personal comfort, and physical safety for his country's defense, and I believe it to be not only tragic but criminal that his willingness to do so was shamelessly manipulated, exploited, and ultimately betrayed by the same Army in which he served. The Tillman brothers' enlistment was excellent PR for the military, until it turned out that Pat Tillman had soured on the war in Iraq, which he condemned as "brutal, immoral, illegal, and unjust." According to the website Weazl's Revenge, "The Tillman brothers were due for a furlough, and Kevin stated in interviews that Pat had arranged to meet with an anti-war journalist while at home." Evidently, he wished to go public with his criticisms and reservations about the Iraq invasion, though I have read that he remained more committed to the Army's mission in Afghanistan.

Before Tillman's furlough date arrived, he was killed in combat. Though the military tried to soak this incident for all the PR hero-potential it was worth, eventually it became evident that Tillman's death had actually been a case of "friendly-fire," which the government had done everything in its power to conceal from both journalists and the Tillman family. This revelation went on to serve as one of the hundreds - if not thousands - of military-related scandals associated with Iraq that erupt and disappear with such somnolent regularity that we barely notice them anymore. They're simply the background noise to our abysmal national drama.

At this sad point in our Iraq saga, some bloggers are now alluding to an assassination of Tillman by the US military in order to prevent him from going public with his condemnation of the Iraq war, and while I'm not prepared to go that far (see the previous post on my aversion to conspiracy mania) I suppose it says a lot about the state of our republic that this sort of rumor so readily has its adherents, and besides, given what we already know, can we rule out anything?

I'm not sure if I would be comfortable living in a world full of Pat Tillmans (during his regular interviews a decade ago on the Jim Rome sports radio show, his overuse -by which I mean, his use - of the word "dude" quickly tried my patience) but he was young then, and he was from "So Cal," as the saying goes, and the question hardly matters, since I long ago accepted that it is my fate, as it is our common fate, to live, not in a world of Pat Tillmans, but in a world of Jonah Goldbergs. The powers-that-be wouldn't have it any other way.

*Fans of the film (based upon a true incident) will know that its eponymous Australian hero, Breaker Morant, while being marched to his execution for the commission of war crimes during the Boer War, turns to his fellow condemned solider, and says simply, "Well Peter, this is what comes of empire building."

You may be interested in this letter, written by Pat Tillman's brother and fellow Ranger, Kevin, regarding Pat's death. It's anger and sense of betrayal ring sadly true.

Derin Devlet: The Deep State

2007-06-15T07:22:00.000-07:00

“There is one deep state and one other state. The state that should be real is the spare one, the one that should be spare is the real one."--Suleyman Demirel, Turkish president from 1994 until 1999.

The somewhat dramatic, even ominous term, Deep State, refers to "an influential and informal anti-democratic coalition within the Turkish political system, composed of high-level elements within the Turkish military, security and intelligence services, the judicial branch, and important commanders of organized crime."

I first became interested in this Turkish phenomenon in the aftermath of journalist Hrandt Dink's assassination in December of 2006. However, that event, which I've written about earlier, is not the subject of this post. As I located various articles and information about the Turkish Deep State, it became clear to me that we need some term in English, equally dramatic, if not ominous, to describe those forces which seek to exercise their will through the mechanisms of the federal government, in an extra-legal, or at least starkly anti-democratic fashion.

That is the topic, the American Deep State, if you will, which I wish to explore in the near future.

I have been somewhat hesitant to raise this issue directly, though I certainly have done so obliquely in the past, out of my own aversion toward so-called "conspiracy theories," which, quite often seem to me to be the tortured constructions of the woefully confused, over causes and effects the complexity of which they can't begin to acknowledge, much less address. No, I don't envision a small circle of investment bankers, industrialists (do they still exist?), and conniving Jews unleashing global suffering for their own, ill-gotten gain. Nor do I plan to start linking to reports of alien spacecraft at Area 51.

But let's be clear. As several bloggers whose insights I admire are insistently pointing out, America is an ostensibly democratic nation, the majority of whose citizens are increasingly emphatic in their opposition to an amnesty for illegal immigrants, an amnesty which the nation's political leaders seem not to have the latitude, or perhaps the power, to permanently reject. The crux of the argument apparently comes down to the government's insistence on creating a new set of laws while flatly refusing to enforce the existing laws, in blatant disregard of the will of the American public. Something other than representative democracy is at work. I cite this as one example. Our attempts to maintain a sort of covert dominion over the Middle East, or at least over the resources extracted from its sands, would obviously be another.

In other words, the fact that I don't believe in alien spacecraft at Area 51 doesn't mean I don't believe in Area 51, despite decades of federal government denial. (In case you don't get the History Channel, the government was finally forced, in the 1990s, to admit to Area 51's existence as a result of lawsuits filed by former employees poisoned by the burning of toxic wastes at the site.)

My own skepticism ignorance, and uncertainty prevent me from linking various intriguing bits and pieces into some sweeping, tantalizing, but ultimately implausible theoretical whole. A healthy failing on my part, I suspect.

There is a great deal of blindness, blunder, stupidity, and willed self-deception in the actions of any institution, particularly one as cumbersome as the federal government. Nevertheless, the government does move, sometimes unswervingly though inexplicably, in certain directions, and it's only natural to wonder why.

Though I realize that the following opinions will come as no surprise to visitors of his site, we are not in Iraq because of Weapons of Mass Destruction or a War on Terror or to unleash a democracy or to inspire an Islamic reformation. We are not in Iraq so that George W. Bush can show up his Daddy or work through whatever Oedipal issues may be plaguing him. We are not in Iraq because all human beings crave freedom, or because George W. Bush believes all human beings crave freedom. A president, even a deluded and messianic president, isn't allowed to wander on a leash that long.

Iraq may be a disaster, but it isn't a simple blunder. It's more than a mistake. And yet, through some eyes, perhaps, it's no mistake at all. That's what I'm interested in exploring.

“The real rulers in Washington are invisible and exercise power from behind the scenes.”
--Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter

Words of War

2007-06-13T06:33:00.000-07:00

"They made a desert and called it peace."
--Tacitus

"Peace is not the absence of war; it is a virtue; a state of mind; a disposition for benevolence; confidence; and justice."
-- Spinoza

"There was never a good war or a bad peace."
--Benjamin Franklin

"I do not mean to exclude altogether the idea of patriotism. I know it exists, and I know it has done much in the present contest. But I will venture to assert, that a great and lasting war can never be supported on this principle alone. It must be aided by a prospect of interest, or some reward."
--George Washington

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
--Theodore Roosevelt

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger. It works the same in any country."
-- Hermann Goering

"The victor will never be asked if he told the truth."
-- Adolf Hitler

"Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play."
-- Joseph Goebbels

"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media."
-- William Colby, former Director of the CIA

"War is a malignant disease, an idiocy, a prison, and the pain it
causes is beyond telling or meaning; but war was our condition
and our history, the place we had to live in."
--Martha Gelhorn

"War is a catalogue of blunders."
-- Sir Winston Churchill

"Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events."
--Sir Winston Churchill

"Regardless of whether we say so publicly, we will go to war, because Saddam sits at the center of a region with more than 60 percent of all the world's oil reserves."
--Anthony H. Cordesman, Senior Analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies

“I don’t think the neocons really give a shit what happened in Iraq and the aftermath. I don’t think they thought it would be this bad. But they said: Look if it works out, let’s say we get Chalabi in, he’s our boy, great. We don’t and maybe there is some half-ass government out there, maybe a strong man emerges, it fractures, and there’s basically a loose federation and there’s really a Kurdish state. Who cares? There’s some bloodshed and it’s messy. Who cares? I mean, we’ve taken out Saddam. We’ve asserted our strength in the Middle East. We’re changing the dynamic. We’re off the peace process as the centerpiece and we’re not putting pressure on Israel.”
--Retired General Anthony Zinni

I now regret that I did not more openly challenge those who were determined to invade a country whose actions were peripheral to the real threat—al-Qaeda. … [T]he Pentagon's military leaders … with few exceptions, acted timidly when their voices urgently needed to be heard. When they knew the plan was flawed, saw intelligence distorted to justify a rationale for war, or witnessed arrogant micromanagement that at times crippled the military's effectiveness, many leaders who wore the uniform chose inaction. … It is time for senior military leaders to discard caution in expressing their views and ensure that the President hears them clearly. And that we won't be fooled again.
--Retired Lt. Gen. Greg Newbold, former operations director for the Joint Chiefs of Staff

"We've got the basic strategy right. . . . Our objective is victory, and that's the road we're walking down. . . . It may not be popular with the public. It doesn't matter, in the sense that we have to continue to do what we think is right, and that's exactly what we're doing. We're not running for office; we're doing what we think is right."
--Vice President Dick Cheney

War is not nice."
--Barbara Bush

"When I take action, I'm not going to fire a 2 million dollar missile at a 10 dollar empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It's going to be decisive."
-- George W. Bush

Hot Fun in the Summertime

2007-05-25T23:59:00.000-07:00

Blogging has been scarce of late, as I've tried to catch up on all the work I should have been but wasn't doing over the past . . . oh well, let's just say I fell behind but am now racing toward the finish line.

On Monday, I'll be leaving for a much needed (though perhaps not deserved) vacation on the Aegean. Before going, however, I wanted to link to the following article, which delves into attempts by our President (sorry, that would be Vice President) Dick Cheney to tie the President's (that would be George W. Bush's) hands on the issue of military action against Iran. In case you're wondering, Cheney is into it. Why not, after our stunning successes in Iraq?

I've long harbored suspicions that Bush was selected as a candidate by the Republican hierarchy because he was seen as a tractable, vain, and naive, in other words, easily manipulatable by the likes of Cheney and Rumsfeld. Of course, it's just a suspicion on my part, because as an American citizen, I really have no insight into the the workings of my government. I fear that this may be by design, or am I lapsing into cynicism?

Though I could be wrong, it is difficult to understand how a nation of 300 million manages to elect, not once but twice, a man manifestly unsuited to the responsibilities of his position. Perhaps there is more to this story than simply the free play of democracy. For whatever it's worth, here in Turkey, when people discuss American politics (which they quite frequently do) Cheney is generally cast as the puppeteer.

My thanks to Ken Frost for raising this issue and linking to this article on his website, Nanny Knows Best (see links to the left). While we're on the topic of interesting links, I've added a new discovery, What I Saw in America, to my list.

I'll be back in Istanbul, with more time to play, in early June.

Try not to get into any wars until then.

A Trans-Atlantic Exchange

2007-05-06T04:37:00.000-07:00

On the comments section of my previous post, Nappy-Headed Dough (no hate mail, please) an amusing exchange slowly evolved with my friend and fellow expat, Grumpy, other wise known as Grumpy Old Expat. As you will see, Grumpy is originally from the British Isles, but has managed through a clever act of self-imposed exile to escape the clutches of both Blair's Labour Government and the European Union in one lateral move, though the EU keeps threatening to absorb, or as Brussels likes to put it, "accept," Turkey.

Anyway, being too lazy or busy at the moment to post anything new, and having been rather pleased by the outcome of our exchange, I decided simply to copy and post our back-and-forth here. If you don't know what we're talking about, go back and read the previous post, or just forget the whole thing and click elsewhere.

grumpy said...

BS,

I seem to recall that, once upon a time, this site was in English.
What happened?

May 1, 2007 3:28:00 PM PDT

Black Sea said...

Dear Grumpy,

As I have noted in a previous post, the British "think tank" (boy, could we have some fun with that term) Demos, has already made clear to you tea-sipping snobs that: "the language is no longer the preserve of the English, who are just one of many shareholders in a global asset".

Stop trying to monopolize this global asset, and start sharing with your fellow shareholders!

As you may know, we are to be instructed in, and are to instruct others in, Hinglish, Chinglish, and Spanglish, with further variations to follow, including the sort found in this post.

I've no doubt that Ms. Clinton will take up this banner just as soon as she occupies the White Horse, sorry, House, and will perhaps employ your old chum T. Blair as special consultant.

May 2, 2007 4:28:00 AM PDT

grumpy said...

I would be fine with the 'sharing' idea if you Yanks could be trusted to take care of our joint linguistic heritage. As it is, it seems that you are doing to English in the US what your government is doing for democracy in Iraq. In the process you create something I would call Manglish, or Garblish.

Having said that of course, I have to admit that 'Our Tony' and his minions are doing for our home-grown version of the language what our naval personnel did for heroism in Iran recently. Surrendering it. The result in the UK is Yoblish.

So far as the redoubtable Mrs Clinton and 'Our Redeemer' Saint Tony are concerned, I would paraphrase the old Vaudeville joke: Take our Tony. Please.

May 6, 2007 12:48:00 AM PDT

grumpy said...

BS,

Sorry to take up your space, but I have just looked at the Fat Wayne/Little Joe video (with the sound off, of course). Now I have a question; Since the principals in the video demonstrate that they are totally devoid of taste in every other respect, how come they have such great taste in hoes?

May 6, 2007 1:08:00 AM PDT

Black Sea said...

Grumpy,

I take your point about the "English in America, Democracy in Iraq" argument, though I object to being referred to as a "Yank" for reasons having less to do with the British-American linguistic debate than with my archaic and no doubt pathological regional loyalties.

Anyway, "Yank" must be preferable to your now infamous "Half-educated Rednecked Bigot," soon re-coined on another website into the less cumbersome acronym "Herb." Who says we "Yanks" have no sense of humor?

But I digress. As to the point that America is doing to democracy in Iraq what it has been doing to the English language for decades (centuries?), let me suggest an alternate analogy.

Democracy in Iraq is not so much equivalent to American English, which though perhaps debased, draws on a long and glorious history, as it is a political equivalent of Esperanto, a wholly inorganic construct which no one seems to practice, though everyone admits it's "a good idea."

Evidently, we human beings are more creatures of custom and culture than of bold horizons and bright new ideas. How sad for us.

Oh, and I think you owe it to yourself to view the Fat Joe video clip with the sound on. Otherwise, you deprive yourself of its full charm. I actually like the song (don't ask me why) or at least, it has tenaciously lodged itself in my brain, perhaps due to the stunning visual impact of the hoes employed as scenery.

What's more, I think the video and lyrics together offer a pretty accurate portrait of the current American political scene:

"Yeah, I'm in this business of terror
Got a handful of stacks
Better grab an umbrella
I make it rain . . . "

More articulate than anything ever to come out of our president's mouth.

May 6, 2007 4:28:00 AM PDT

Nappy Headed Dough

2007-04-21T04:50:00.000-07:00

In a bid to bust yet another cap into the now rotting carcass of Don Imus, and to boost her run at the White House in 2008, Hillary Clinton (ridin' on twenties!) rolled into New Brunswick, NJ to commiserate with, fawn over, and leech blood from the coach and players of the Rutger's Women's Basketball Team. To the team's eternal credit, not one player showed for the conference, citing inclement weather, the need to study, and a general fatigue with the whole sordid episode.

I'm not going to delve into the Imus absurdity at any further length, because . . . well because Dennis Dale has already done it better than you, I, or anybody else is likely to.

Anyway, back at Rutgers, Hillary was - hoes or no hoes - determined to squeeze from this gathering whatever political juice she could:

Clinton addressed about 700 students and faculty on campus later in the day, praising the players and naming them one-by-one while criticizing "bigotry" against women. She never named Imus directly and made a point of saying her criticism wasn't intended to curtail free speech.

She urged the crowd to take a "Rutgers pledge," to say, "Enough is enough, when women or minorities or the powerless are marginalized or degraded."

Later, the former first lady traveled to Manhattan to address Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network Convention, where she ravaged President George W. Bush, particularly over Iraq. (article in full)

Meanwhile, down at the FLA crib of rap producer and performing phenom "Timbaland" (whoever the hell that is), a March 31st fundraiser brought in $800,000 for the Senator's Presidential campaign. Yes, that figure is correct. Both Hillary and her 'Dawg' Bill were in attendance, basking in the love (and money) so generously lavished upon them. As you may know, her husband was our nation's first African-American President.

However, the life of a Dee Cee Hustla is not without its weird twists and internal contradictions, as P. Willie can himself attest. It seems that some of "Timbaland's" compositions may not entirely adhere to the principles Senator Clinton outlined in the "Rutger's Pledge," and what is to be done about that?

Here are lyrics from Timbaland's "Come and Get Me":

"Nigga Your Time Is Up, I Aint Come To Kid You
I Knew You Niggas Was Dumb, But How Dumb Is You . . .
I'm A Ride Or Die Nigga, I Be Tearing [expletive] Up
We Aint Like Them Other Fools, Who Don't Compare To Us
All The Hoes Love A Nigga, They be Backing It Up
But Me I Love Money I Be Stacking It Up . . .
I'm Rich I Can Pay To Have You Six Feet Deep (Nigga)"

And from his track "Kill Yourself":

" . . . most of u rap niggas is hoes to me,
wherever u from
the question I ask
is do u think I give a [expletive] . . .
u mad at me? cuz im getting rich,
well put the pistol to ur head and empty the clip, pop nigga!"

And the uplifting "Considerate Brotha":

". . . Hoes coming up short? Hoes finna get cursed out!
. . . Slam the mask out of these hoes and they say, 'What is that, velvet?'
And they betta meet they quota, betta yet betta meet they deadline . . . I'm a pimp all around
A pimp of the town -- we pimpin 'em up, HOES DOWN." (article in full)

Will Hillary "Do the Right Thing" and wash her hands of the misogynistically-tainted 800 "G's"? (I realize I'm dating myself here, and I suppose the issue of my ethnicity is no longer in question, but I don't really know what the slang-of-the-day is for one thousand dollars. "Chump Change" perhaps?)

According to Ms. Clinton, Don Imus' comments "showed a disregard for basic decency and were disrespectful and degrading to African Americans and women everywhere."

How do you suppose she reconciles her concern for the rights and dignity of African American women with the revenues generated by the lyrics above, revenues in which she now shares?

Well, like Fat Joe and Lil' Wayne, I suppose she finds some solace in the notion that, "I make it rain on dem hoes . . . " (Perhaps you've seen the video.)

How will she answer questions regarding the evident contradiction in her own position on disrespectful and degrading images of African Americans and women everywhere? What the hell makes you think she'll ever have to?

We're living in a sawdust circus, we're bit players in a crumbling farce, we're witnessing the latter days. She won't have to answer to anything, and nobody cares anyway.

But what I want to know is:

How is it that the pit of American politics seems to have an ever-receding bottom?

Does the pit of American politics actually have a bottom?

How long before Hillary and Barack square off in some gangstaesque smack-down or face-off, or whatever you'd call it, reminiscent of those stirring scenes of imbecility in Eight Mile Road?

Why is it that our politicians in particular are so keen to excise this word "hoe" from the American vocabulary?

How long before we see a horse serving with distinction in the U.S. Senate, assuming we haven't already?

Man Hands on Misery to Man, It Deepens Like a Coastal Shelf . . . .*

2007-04-18T23:22:00.000-07:00

"Attackers on Wednesday slit the throats of three people, including a German citizen, at a publishing house in the eastern province of Malatya [Turkey] that distributed Bibles."

An account of this story in ZAMAN, a Turkish newspaper (English edition), may be found here. The Daily Telegraph and various other papers are also carrying this story. The victims were bound, gagged, and tortured for about three hours before having their throats slit.

I believe that Turkey's prospects of joining the EU - never very good to begin with - recede from month to month, if not day to day. There will soon be a presidential election here, which will in all likelihood result in both the President and the Prime Minister being affiliated with the Justice and Development (AK) party, though officially, the President is supposed to suspend or sever his party affiliation and represent only the nation.

The prospect of so-called "mildly Islamist" AK Party representatives gaining both of these high offices triggered last Saturday a protest of approximately 370,000 demonstrators in Ankara. The outgoing president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, said in a farewell speech, "Turkey's secular regime is facing an unprecedented threat, and domestic and external forces are cooperating to undermine that regime."

The military is also issuing statements about the need for a secular president to preserve Turkey's secular constitution, and, to add to the excitement, Turkey has declared that if the U.S.. doesn't crack down on Kurdish (PKK) cross-border operations, then Turkey will send its soldiers into Northern Iraq.

Oh, and two hundred people were killed by bombs in Bahgdad yesterday, and then then there's the possibility of US/Israeli military action against Iran.

And it's not even summer yet.

*Get out as early as you can, and don't have any kids yourself.
-Phillip Larkin

Oh, East is East and West is West

2007-03-27T22:27:00.000-07:00

We came to smite the Arab Brute
And pulled him from a rabbit hole.
Our goal achieved,
We could not leave,
Which seemed a trifle droll . . .

Now, helling 'round
These shifting sands
May taste of grand adventure.
But oh the cost,
It sets you back,
In blood, and limbs, and treasure.

The Economist has a worthy article, Mugged by Reality, on the "troubles" in Iraq. As a sidebar, there is a comparison of Iraqi survey results between 2005 and 2007 on a number of illuminating questions.

What went wrong? Well, for starters:

". . . there can be no denying that the project was bungled from the start. Western intelligence failed to discover that Saddam had destroyed all his weapons of mass destruction (WMD), the removal of which was the main rationale for the war. However, the incompetence went beyond this. The war was launched by a divided administration that had no settled notion of how to run Iraq after the conquest. The general who warned Congress that stabilising the country would require several hundred thousand troops was sacked for his prescience.

America's plans for Iraq's political transition were also rudimentary, to the extent that they existed at all. The Pentagon wanted Mr Chalabi and his fellow exiles put swiftly in charge. The State Department thought an American administration would have to be installed. State had organised a pre-invasion Future of Iraq project, but the Pentagon declined to adopt its ideas. Several knowledgeable State Department Arabists were prevented from going to Iraq because they were deemed ideologically unsound. Jay Garner, an amiable general called in from retirement to manage the transition under an understaffed ad hoc body known as the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, received no intelligible instructions from Washington, and baffled the liberated Iraqis in his turn. “You're in charge,” he told a gathering of 300 or so mystified tribal leaders and exiles who attended a conference soon after his arrival, hoping to discover what the future held under Iraq's new rulers."

I don't know why I'm quoting all of this, when I've already linked to the article. I suppose that - having spent myself in a frenzy of poetic composition - I've little left to add.

The survey results are worth touching on, though.

78% of Iraqis polled in 2007 "somewhat" or "strongly" opposed the presence of coalition forces in Iraq, as compared to 65% in 2005. (When were we ever loved for our sacrifices?)

51% saw attacks on coalition forces as "acceptable" in 2007, as compared to 17% in 2005. (A promising trend.)

The question, "Which political system do you think would be best for Iraq now?" elicited the following responses in 2007:

Strong leader: a government headed by one man for life: 34%

Islamic state: politicians rule according to religious principles: 22%

Well, there you go! 56% of Iraqis favor either a return to dictatorship, or life under a theocracy similar to Iran.

Yes, the remainder opted for "democracy," whatever the hell that means in the Iraqi context. (To be fair, I'm increasingly unclear as to what is meant by "democracy" in the American context. But that's for another day.)

In regard to the current state of Iraqi democracy, the article has this to say:

In public utterances Mr Maliki is careful to say all the right things about national reconciliation. These are encouraging pointers. The trouble is that Americans who listen in to his government's internal chatter are horrified by what they hear. Some conclude that the Shias have no real intention to share power, only to string America along while using its firepower to destroy rivals and entrench their own dominion. It is also uncertain whether the politicians who claim to speak for the Sunnis in the National Assembly are close enough to the insurgents to make them stop fighting even in the event of a political settlement. In short, time may show that the democratic structure the Americans worked so hard to install can neither run Iraq nor reconcile its warring clans.

To quote Captain Willard in Apocalypse Now:

"Oh man, the bullshit piled up so fast in Vietnam that you needed wings to stay above it."

Come to think of it, he offers another salient quote:

"The war was being run by a bunch of four-star clowns who were about to give the whole circus away."

In the case of Iraq, I blame not the clowns, but the ringmasters.

There'll always be a Germany

2007-03-22T09:08:00.000-07:00

"Animal rights activists argue that he should be given a lethal injection rather than brought up suffering the humiliation of being treated as a domestic pet."

In what amounts to a kind of four dimensional mind-fuck of which only the Germans are fully capable, animal rights activists in the "Blood and Iron" Republic, sorry, that would be the Bundesrepublik Deutschland, are demanding the execution of Knut, a cuddly little polar bear cub, on the grounds that - his existence having been tainted through human contact - he is fit now only for the Gaskammer . . . err, sorry, the executioner's needle.

According to the article:

Activists argue that it is inappropriate for a predator, known for its fierceness and ability to fend for itself in the wild, to be snuggled.

"The zoo must kill the bear," said spokesman Frank Albrecht. "Feeding by hand is not species-appropriate but a gross violation of animal protection laws."

Well, if he's been snuggled, what the hell, a quick bullet through the skull should take care of that.

When Knut and his brother cub were born, they were neglected by their mother (and how these "animal rights activists" must have swooned in admiration over her steely indifference to the mewling cries of her starving cubs). The cub brother (the weakling, natürlich) died, but the zoo's staff stepped in to feed and care for little Knut.

Mein Gott! How dare they encroach upon the will of nature in the unending battle for survival!! A gross violation!!! Most unforgivable!!!!

To carry on with our Teutonic tale:

" . . . Albrecht and other activists fret that it is inappropriate for a predator, known for its fierceness and ability to fend for itself in the wild, to be snuggled, bottle-fed and made into a commodity by zookeepers.

They argue that current treatment of the cub is inhumane and could cause him future difficulties interacting with fellow polar bears. "They cannot domesticate a wild animal," added Ruediger Schmiedel, head of the Foundation for Bears."

I guess his "fierceness" having been compromised, he can never truly earn his place in Bear Valhalla, where he might - in an eternal ecstasy of bloody triumph - rend seal flesh with his glistening fangs, as his prey shrieks and howls in horrid agony.

What glory this must be!

Just who were these cowardly interlopers who first thrust the milch bottle between those noble jaws? And how dare they claim to be the "keepers" of the bears.

Even Achen zoo director,Wolfram Ludwig, had the following to say:

"I don’t think it is right that he should grow up fixated on his keeper and reliant on him for everything. He will not be a proper Polar bear.

"But I also think it is too late to kill him now: the courage to do this should have been found sooner."

Ah, so it all comes down to "courage" in the end. Most appropriate, don't you agree, mein Kamerade? The will to do the unspeakable, isn't this ultimately the mark of the Überbear, and of all those who would defend his dignity? To the death . . . to the death.

In my previous post, I alluded to Europe's twilight and eventual demise. In light of these events, I am now reconsidering this prognosis.

Telegraph Trifecta

2007-03-15T12:00:00.000-07:00

The following three articles all appeared on a single day in the Telegraph. The first predicts that at least 2.2 million migrants will arrive in the rich world every year from now until 2050, resulting in the growth of the British population from 60 to 69 million, an increase of 15%. Virtually all of that increase will result from immigration.

The article states that, "between 1970 and 1980, the rich world took about one million migrants a year from poor countries. During the next 43 years, immigration will run at more than twice that level and approach 2.3 million every year from now until 2050."

The demographic future of Europe is decidedly mixed. According to UN projections, populations in the UK, France, and Spain will increase over the next half century while - despite widespread immigration from Asia and Africa - populations throughout much of Western Europe will fall, for example, by over 10% in Germany and 7% in Italy. The situation in Eastern Europe is even bleaker, with Poland losing 20%, Russia 24%, and Bulgaria (the champ) a whopping 35% of their populations.

The article concludes with the following statistics and observations:

"By 2050, India will have the highest population in the world, totalling almost 1.7 billion people. There will be 292 million Pakistanis, giving their country the fifth biggest population. Nigeria will have 289 million people - making it the world's sixth most populous country - and Uganda's population will rise to 93 million, comfortably exceeding the totals in both its larger neighbours, Kenya and Tanzania.

The UN's population predictions have proved largely accurate in the past. While the margin of error for these figures runs into the millions, the broad trends they disclose are undisputed."

The second article in the Telegraph concerns the cancellation of a speech at the University of Leeds by Matthias Küntzel, a German author and political scientist. The title of Dr. Kunzel's talk (with workshop scheduled to follow): Hitler's Legacy: Islamic Anti-semitism in the Middle East.

According to the article:

In a statement yesterday, two academics in the Leeds German department, which had organised the event, claimed the university had bowed "to Muslim protests". Dr Küntzel said he had given similar addresses around the world and there had been no problems.

Dr Küntzel said the contents of emails described to him did not overtly threaten violence but "they were very, very strongly worded''.

One of the protest emails, from a student who describes himself as ''of both Middle Eastern and Islamic background", complained that the title of the event was "profoundly offensive''. It added: ''To insinuate that there is a direct link between Islam and anti-semitism is not only a sweeping generalisation but also an erroneous statement that holds no essence of truth."

According to a statement by the university:

"The decision to cancel the meeting has nothing to do with academic freedom, freedom of speech, anti-semitism or Islamophobia and those claiming that is the case are making mischief.

Nor are we bowing to threats or protests from interest groups. The meeting has been cancelled on safety grounds alone and because - contrary to our rules - no assessment of risk to people or property has been carried out, no stewarding arrangements are in place and we were not given sufficient notice to ensure safety and public order."

Mightn't this also qualify as "an erroneous statement that holds no essence of truth"? I suppose that, to answer this question - or even to ask it, could be construed as "making mischief," which is of course just one small step away from "Islamophobia." Best to move on.

And the last of our three articles concerns a report published by something called "Demos," allegedly a "think tank" on the cutting edge of British culture. The report emphasizes the need to instruct new arrivals to the United Kingdom in such idioms as "Hinglish, Spanglish, and Chinglish."

According to the article:

The Demos report says the language is no longer the preserve of the English, who are "just one of many shareholders' in a global asset".

The report maintains that the British attitude to English ''is better suited to the days of the British Empire than the modern world.

"Far from being corruptions of English, new forms of the language such as 'Chinglish' have values that we must learn to accommodate and relate to," it adds. It proposes that immigrants, who are required to learn English if they want to be citizens, should be able to do so "in ways which best allow them to contribute to British culture on their own terms".

You may connect the dots as you see fit and draw whatever conclusions you deem appropriate. Personally, I'd advise anyone contemplating a trip to Europe to . . . uh, see it while you can.

This is England . . . Land of One Thousand Sunsets

2007-03-03T07:20:00.000-08:00

Kudos to the students of Oxford University in their campaign to force the dismissal of Professor David Coleman. Their "justification?" Dr. Coleman's research into the relationship between immigration and various undesirable social phenomena has led to certain conclusions not shared by the student body. Send him packing!

How inspiring to see that the spirit of vigorous inquiry is alive and well at one of Britain's more hallowed institutions. As the Daily Mail reports:

Oxford Student Action for Refugees has circulated a petition seeking the removal of Professor David Coleman, a leading expert in demographics, because of his connections with MigrationWatch.

The students believe that because MigrationWatch warns about the negative effects of present and future immigration, it is inherently racist.

If I had more energy I might analyze this controversy in greater detail, but at the moment, with my nose dripping from an endless cold, or spring allergies, or something, I simply can't be arsed. Yes, I do love those British isms, even as Britain herself recedes beneath the waves. Pity.

Eminent and troublesome British historian Norman Stone, himself the target of accusations of sexism at Oxford and now a resident of Istanbul, had the following to say regarding the self-righteous little twerps hell-bent on driving this issue forward:

"What a nuisance - it's an absurd over-reaction. The poor darlings. It just shows they've got nothing better to do. They're just striking attitudes. They're a pest."

When Professor Stone says "darlings," I think that he actually means "twats!"

What makes this campaign particularly galling is that these spiteful little cunts have the temerity to insist that their goal is not to hound out a professor with whom they disagree, but to "invite debate."

"One of the students behind the petition, Kieran Hutchinson Dean, 19, said the aim was to invite debate.

He said: "We are not expecting the professor to be sacked straight away. But we ask that he refrains from using his academic status when promoting his own views.

"If he does not refrain he is representing the university as a whole and many of us do not agree with his views."

Tosser!

I wonder if anyone's invited him to shove that petition up his arse and set it aflame?

Says another one of these whinging little poms:

"Our campaign against Coleman has been characterised as a personal attack, but it is more about opening up a wider debate.

"The main point is to raise awareness of his views and affiliations among students.

"Academic freedom is not absolute and people using their academic titles should recognise this."

Lying little wanker!

Why not just cede to the government the power from this day forward to determine what we may and may not say if we wish to remain employed and/or out of prison? That's the way these nasty little prats want it anyway, as the good Ken Frost might say.

Having exhausted my arsenal of British insults, I now invite my readers to replenish the supply.

"We that are true lovers run into strange capers . . ."

2007-02-18T01:17:00.000-08:00

I don't often find myself drawn to comment upon celebrity tabloid fodder, because of course my mind is generally occupied with matters far less pedestrian. However, even I am not entirely immune to the gross intrigues that so often titillate the common herd. Anyhow, I want to take a moment to examine this Aussie stewardess who went all "shagadelic" with Ralph Fiennes in the toilet of a jetliner, and I thought that by quoting Shakespeare, I might not entirely sully myself. I leave it up to you, gentle reader, to decide.

This morning's Daily Mail - highbrow British journalism indeed - carries a long and rather tragic profile of the "highs and lows" as it were, of one Lisa Robertson, who has now lost her position as a Qantas stewardess (yes, I am going to keep calling her that). Despite the recent turmoil, Miss Robertson exclaims,"'Ralph was a great lover. And I thought if I was going to get the sack, it would be worth it. I knew it was against the rules and wrong but I didn't care."

I think Fiennes' fee for his next film just went up by about $2 million. Unfortunately, the love-struck Robertson is, for the time being, out of her $24,000 per year job.

In case you, like me, (or is it I?) rarely dabble in the gossip pages, let me summarize this scandalous turn of events. Fiennes (British film star) was flying Business Class from Darwin (Australia) to Bombay (India). Mr. Fiennes was scheduled to tour the impoverished former British colony to educate the natives as to dangers of AIDS and the imperative to practice "safe sex." Fiennes and Robertson went, in a matter of hours, from flirting to cuddling to a rendevous in the toilet, as lovers so often do.

I suppose that to point out the various layers of irony here (engaging in random, "unprotected" sex while flying halfway around the world to promote safe sex) would be in poor form.

As a matter of curiosity, I've flown Business Class exactly twice (purely as a result of knowing an airline employee who could get me into Business Class at Economy rates), and yet on neither occasion did any member of the flight crew usher me into the toilet for complimentary intercourse. Could those of you who more frequently travel in the forward reaches of the aircraft answer me this question: Is there some special button one pushes on the Business Class armrest to request this service?

Anyway, back to the article:

Although Lisa makes no bones about having been an enthusiastic participant in the unedifying episode and is clearly still thrilled to have attracted the attention of an international film star, it is hard not to see her also as his victim.

Despite her tall, trim figure, there is sadness in her eyes, highlighted by the medication she takes for depression since she left a tough front-line job as a detective with an elite New South Wales police drugs squad.

One can't help asking whether Ralph Fiennes didn't spot a vulnerable woman, use her, and then abandon her to face the sack from her job with Qantas.

Viewed from chronological standpoint, I'm not sure Fiennes actually had time to spot her vulnerabilities before they were romantically entwined atop the vacuum-suction toilet. As Robertson remembers these events, "'I was a bit shocked that he didn't wear a condom. Looking back, I think of it as dangerous behaviour and hypocritical given that he was going to India to talk about AIDS."

Reader, are you shocked?

After their "passionate tryst", Robertson was grilled by her crew chief, who asked a series of less than romantic questions. Evidently, the toilet did not offer as much sound-proofing as the "enflamed" couple had imagined. Useful information, indeed.

Once on the ground, Robertson was soon summoned to Fiennes' hotel room in Bombay where, "they made love twice more through the evening - once in the middle of the night. But he told her, before they went back to sleep: 'I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to kick you out in the morning. I've got a lot of calls to make and things to do.'"

Gentlemen, you might want to file away this line of his and see what turn events take as you seductively whisper it to that special lady of yours.

Sadly, love is not always meant to last. In the cold light of morning, Robertson now "seems wary of men, saying she has been repeatedly exploited by them. 'So many treat you badly,' she said. 'They're just after sex. They're losers.' Ironically, she thought Fiennes was 'so sensitive, so different'."

Reader, do you share her estimation of Fiennes as "so sensitive, so different," or is she perhaps confusing him with his character from The English Patient?

After her suspension from work pending an investigation, Robertson somehow managed to track down Fiennes by telephone (I'm sure he'll correct that oversight next time). "I told him I was in a lot of trouble and that I had been suspended from work. There was silence at the other end. I told him people had seen us leaving the toilet, but all he said was, 'Nothing happened.' He kept saying, 'We weren't in the toilet.' I told him I couldn't deny it. I said I had to answer the allegation. Fiennes' reply, when it came, shocked Lisa to the core. She said: 'It was clear he was turning his back on me. He said, 'We don't know each other very well. I'm very sorry, I can't get involved. I can't help you.'"

Bounder!

"Then he said, 'Let's have no further phone contact. I'll call you in a month's time, just to show you I'm a human being.' I was stunned."

Reader, are you stunned?

"Does she feel used? 'No,' she insisted. 'We were both fantastically attracted to each other. I am sure he cared about me."

"But she pauses, twisting a ring on her finger, as if for the first time considering the more brutal alternatives. 'Then again, she said, he is a very good actor.'"

A word of advice to vulnerable young ladies worldwide (Robertson, by the way, is thirty-eight): Sexual coupling with strangers (especially celebrity strangers) in toilets only rarely leads to spiritual co-mingling and long-term devotion, despite what you may have read in certain novels.

Perhaps it is best if we allow Shakespeare the final word:

"Then must you speak of One who lov'd not wisely but too well."

This is England . . . This knife of Sheffield steel . . . This is England . . . This is how we feel . . .

2007-02-11T23:38:00.000-08:00

Those interested in preserving what remains of freedom in the US would do well to monitor events in Britain, as those interested in salvaging what's left of freedom in Britain would do well to monitor events in the US. The few lonely souls on the Continent still daring enough to show an interest in this arcane matter would, I suppose, do well to monitor events all over the place. We all seem, from our various positions, to be drifting in a similar direction, at least as regards freedom, and we can perhaps learn from each other's catastrophes before it is too late. Or not.

Today's Telegraph reports that fully one third of UK households now receive at least half of their income from the state. Government figures "also reveal the huge gulf in welfare dependency between single parent and two-parent households."

Well, who would have guessed?

Once a sense of independence and self-reliance is leeched from a population, I suspect that constitutional guarantees of freedom are easily enough amended out of existence. There is a cultural structure that under girds the Western sense of freedom; it's foundation consists of a deliberately fostered awareness of one's obligations and personal responsibilities, and an interest in the rights of others. These responses - ingrained in culture rather than DNA - are not intrinsic to human nature and are far from universal, even within our own society, as is made clear with depressing regularity whenever we turn on the TV.

In much of the world, such appeal as freedom has is based primarily on the license it grants to do whatever the hell you want, disregarding all consequences to others. Freedom, as understood in these terms, validates and unleashes what is least admirable in human nature. Hence, the understandable ambivalence toward "freedom" in cultures that do not share our curious and rapidly diminishing notion of a freedom bound by willingly assumed responsibilities. These responsibilities start with the effort to provide - to legally provide - for one's own material well-being, rather than always and inevitably turning to the state.

I don't see how a free and independent populace, in the sense that we have traditionally understood it, can sustain itself when one third of its households depend largely or exclusively on the state for their upkeep. It may be in the nature and the in interests of politicians and bureaucrats to see to it that these figures remain high, but the consequences of such dependence are easy enough to understand, and to forecast. Over centuries, we've been taught - or rather, we've taught ourselves - to value freedom, and to sacrifice security and leisure in defense of its fragile existence. Those lessons can be unlearned, or simply forgotten, and they are being unlearned, and rapidly forgotten.

Freedom, in historical terms, may simply be passing out of vogue.

Article 301

2007-01-19T06:19:00.000-08:00

Anyone, foreign or domestic, who writes or teaches in Turkey has probably been made at one time or another uncomfortably aware of the strictures laid down in the infamous Article 301 of the Turkish penal code. According to this statute:

"A person who insults Turkishness, the Republic, or the Turkish Parliament will be punished with imprisonment ranging from six months to three years."

Well, I can't imagine that the European Union Accession Committee is too thrilled about that! Now, as a non-Turk (and I hope everyone reading this is a non-Turk) you may be thinking, "Well, people living in Turkey probably have a clearer sense of just where the boundaries lie as regards this 'insulting Turkishness' business."

Uh huh.

The list of writers charged just last year with violations related to Article 301 is rather long and surprisingly varied. Article 301 was made use of last July to bring charges against Elif Şafak, a Turkish novelist living in Arizona. It wasn't so much that she "insulted Turkishness." Rather, one of her characters in the novel, The Bastard of Istanbul, uttered the words "Turkish Butchers," in fictional anger, no doubt, over the vexing "Armenian Question." (For anybody out there scrutinizing these lines through the lens of their own, less-than-fluent English, please note my use of the word "Question" in the prior sentence.) So apparently, even a fictional character may be guilty of this "crime" against Turkish identity.

You see how confusing it can be to live abroad. If only the poor girl had stayed in Turkey, rather than running off to America, where she somehow lost track of her "Turkish identity."

"Turkishness" (it's like a kind of essence) evidently doesn't travel well.

Article 301 was also used to bring charges against Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk. Pamuk gave a little interview to a Swiss newspaper in which he said some things about Turkish history that evidently are not standard fare in the Turkish high school curriculum.

Pamuk soon found himself facing the possibility of three-and-a-half years in prison. Get this, the penalties under Article 301 become more severe if you comment critically upon, sorry, "insult," Turkish identity or history outside of Turkey. "Airing dirty linen in public," I believe is the expression.

But things turned out OK for Pamuk, who was last year's Nobel Prize winner for literature. The charges were dropped on a technicality. Funny how that worked out, huh?

Except for the fact that he kept getting death threats and thus decamped to teach at Columbia University. You know you're in trouble when the northern reaches of Manhattan become your idea of a place to flee to in case of danger.

A lesser-known public figure, Hrant Dink, a Turkish-Armenian journalist and editor of Agos, a Turkish-Armenian newspaper, has had his own little brushes with Article 301.

According to an article by Cem Özdemir in the English-language edition of Der Spiegel, Dink has made several statements that were OK with the Turkish government. For example, he has supported a position of Turkish and Armenian reconciliation. In Özdemir's words, Dink has argued that, "The Armenian diaspora should surrender their hostility to the Turks, hitherto a defining element of Armenian identity."

Dink has also made some points that weren't so OK with the Turkish authorities, again, in Özdemir's words, by "confront[ing] the Turkish people with a history of which they either were ignorant, or had only learned about through distorted channels of propaganda. His arguments are persuasive, bringing to light what Turkey has irrevocably lost in their destruction and denial of Armenian life."

Let me reiterate, should anybody be scrutinizing these words through the lens of their own, less-than-fluent English, the quotation above was written by Cem Özdemir, not by me.

Cem Özdemir also comments in his Der Speigel article that Hrant Dink "is not short of adversaries. At the forefront are the Turkish Ultra-Nationalists, who would like to see him silenced sooner rather than later."

Well, apparently that is all too true, because Hrant Dink was shot to death this afternoon on the streets of Istanbul, as he exited the office of Agos, the newspaper which he edited.

Dink had repeatedly informed authorities of various threats against his life, but complained that they offered him no police protection. According to the Associated Press, "A colleague at Dink's newspaper, Aydin Engin, said Dink had attributed the threats to elements in the 'deep state,' a Turkish term that implies shadowy, deeply nationalist and powerful elements in the government."

For those who might be scrutinizing the lines above in their own, less-than-fluent English, the quotation is (let me remind you) taken from the Associated Press.

Well, at least Hrant Dink doesn't have to worry about Article 301 anymore.

Update One: Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, under whose regime Article 301 was adopted, has condemned the killing. According to the Prime Minister, "Once again, dark hands have chosen our country and spilled blood in Istanbul to achieve their dark goals.” He further vowed to track down the culprits, "no matter if they are Turkish or foreign."

A great many Turks will take comfort in the Prime Minister's words.

Source articles for the Update: The New York Times and The Telegraph UK

Update Two: A 17 year old suspect, Ogun Samast, has been arrested in this case. His image, captured on closed-circuit TV outside the Agos headquarters, had been broadcast throughout Turkey. Samast's father recognized his son from the videotape and notified the police. When captured, he is reported to have been riding on a bus back to his native Trabzon, on the Black Sea, and carrying the gun used in the murder. Authorities say he has confessed to the killing.

Samast is reported to have been involved in Turkish nationalist groups, and police say they will investigate any connections between this murder and the killing of an Italian priest in Trabzon last February. In both cases, the suspected shooters were under the age of 18, and some Turkish legal experts believe that minors are being recruited to commit such killings because, as juvenile defendants, they face less severe penalties.

The Thin Blue Line . . . in Atlanta

2007-01-14T01:07:00.000-08:00

"I like to think of myself as the ultimate anti-postmodernist post-modernist. Notwithstanding the unusual narrative or visual devices that appear in many of the films, what has kept me going for the three years of investigating for The Thin Blue Line, was the belief that there are answers to questions such as, Adams did it, didn't he? Or Harris did it, didn't he? That it's not just up for grabs. Today, I believe there's a kind of frisson of ambiguity. People think that ambiguity is somehow wonderful in its own right, an excuse for failing to investigate. What can I say? I think this view is wrong. At best, misguided. Maybe even reprehensible."
-Filmaker Errol Morris

In 1976, Dallas police officer Robert Wood was killed during a routine traffic stop. With no immediate suspect in sight, the Dallas police department soon found itself under intense and growing pressure to solve the murder. Several weeks later, Randall Dale Adams was arrested for the killing.

Adams, a construction laborer recently arrived in Dallas, had run out of gas one morning on the way to a job site. While searching on foot for a gas station, he was offered a ride by David Harris, a 16 year old runaway from Vidor Texas, with whom he ultimately spent the remainder of the day drinking beer, smoking marijuana, taking in a double feature at a drive-in theater, and aimlessly driving around. Later that night, Officer Wood pulled over a blue Mercury Comet in order to inform the driver that his rear taillight was out. Not realizing that the car was stolen, Officer Wood casually approached the car, while his partner failed to position herself correctly outside the police cruiser. When officer Wood reached the driver's window, he was shot several times by a small caliber handgun, and the car sped away.

These events were chronicled in Errol Morris' award winning 1998 documentary, The Thin Blue Line, which has been described as "the first movie mystery to actually solve a murder." This film examines, from multiple perspectives, the sequence of events leading up to the conviction and sentencing of Randall Dale Adams. On one level, The Thin Blue Line is a documentary examining the dubious procedures of the criminal justice system. More fundamentally, the film explores the construction of narratives by which we create a sense of truth.

Now, anyone unfortunate enough to have been subjected to the doctrines of post-modernism will recognize my failure in the previous sentence to put the requisite quotation marks around the word "truth." But Errol Morris is, as he puts it, no post-modernist, and maintains an admirably steadfast respect both for the difficulties inherent in unearthing the truth, and the essential human obligation to try. In short, the truth my be difficult to come by. Which is not to say that it doesn't exist.

Morris' film has inextricably woven itself into my understanding of events unfolding over the past week in my hometown of Atlanta, for it highlights the subtle shift from allegation to "fact."

On January 4, Professor Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, a distinguished British historian currently teaching at Tufts University, was attending an academic convention in Atlanta. During his attempt to cross Peachtree Street, the main thoroughfare in downtown Atlanta, he was repeatedly and vocally urged by Officer Kevin Leonpacher to use the nearest crosswalk. Dr. Fernandez-Armesto maintains that he did not realize that Leonpacher was a police officer, thought Leonpacher was simply making a suggestion, and continued across the street. There, the stories begin to diverge.

According to Fernandez-Armesto, he was "subjected to very humiliating procedure." What interests me in this apparently trivial case is the changing shape and tone of its coverage over location and time. According to the first account in Britain's The Daily Mail:

Because Officer Leonpacher was wearing a “rather louche” bomber jacket that covered his uniform, the professor said he did not realise he was from the police department. He said: “All I was aware of was a rather intrusive young man shouting at me telling me that I shouldn’t have crossed the road there.“I thanked him for his advice and went on.” When Officer Leonpacher then tried to stop him and demanded to see identification, Professor Fernandez-Armesto asked to see the policeman’s own ID, which he “didn’t take kindly to”. At this point, still not realising he had done anything wrong and wondering whether any of the identification on him would be suitable, he said the officer lost patience.“He said ‘I am going to arrest you’,” Professor Fernandez-Armesto said. “In the culture I come from this wouldn’t mean that the conversation was over.“ Nor would it mean that you were about to be subjected to terrible, terrible violence.“This young man kicked my legs from under me, wrenched me round in what I think is a sort of a judo move, pinned me to the ground, wrenched my arms behind my back, handcuffed me. I had five burly policemen pinioning me to the ground, pressing my neck with really very severe pain.”

As you might expect, Officer Leonpacher's account, published in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, was somewhat different:

Leonpacher said the professor repeatedly refused to cooperate when asked why he did not heed the officer's instructions."I told him, it's gonna be awful silly if I have to take you to jail for jaywalking . . . I used an excessive amount of discretion."

Leonpacher - who said he was wearing his Atlanta Police Department uniform - said when he asked Fernandez-Armesto why he didn't follow his instructions, the author shrugged him off and walked away."Five times I asked him to stop," the officer said. He then asked him if he was hearing impaired. Once Fernandez-Armesto confirmed he wasn't, Leonpacher said he grabbed the professor's arm. "I let him go when he turned around to face me," he said. Leonpacher then says he repeatedly asked Fernandez-Armesto for his identification, but the professor responded by asking for the officer's I.D.When the historian allegedly repeatedly refused to produce ID (Fernandez-Armesto said he left his passport in his hotel room and was flummoxed when he realized he did not have it), Leonpacher said he told him he was under arrest. As he put his hands behind his back, "he pulled away and grabbed me. He said 'leave me alone, let me go.' I told him 'you're under arrest, stop resisting.' "Leonpacher, half Fernandez-Armesto's 56 years, contends he could not handcuff the professor by himself. "He was swinging, kicking wildly," Leonpacher said. Backup was called to assist in his detainment. They arrived almost immediately, Leonpacher said. According to the incident report, the cop quoted the professor as saying, "Well now I believe that you are the police."Leonpacher insists he was a good representative for the city. He was working a part-time job that day — with police consent, his superiors confirmed— for the Hilton Hotel, trying to direct pedestrians to use crosswalks. Police describe the street as one of downtown's most dangerous for pedestrians.Fernandez-Armesto, who suffered minor cuts during the scrum, was taken into custody via a prisoner transport van. The historian said he spent the next eight hours alongside "extremely unfortunate members of the underclass."As the investigation unfolds, Leonpacher's superiors said they stand behind their charge."He is an outstanding officer," said Maj. James Sellers. "We've never had a complaint about him before."

A follow-up article in The Daily Mail later reported:

The 56-year-old academic failed to realise that a man telling him to stop crossing was a police officer and he argued with him.Kevin Leonpacher kicked the professor's legs from under him when he hesitated in showing his ID. The officer called for back-up and Professor Fernandez-Armesto was handcuffed to another suspect in a "filthy, foetid paddy wagon".

Note the change in reporting. The first Daily Mail article writes:

". . . the professor said he did not realize that he [Leonpacher] was from the police department"

which has been transformed to a statement of fact in the second article. It is now taken for granted that Fernandez-Armesto's claim not to have recognized Leonpacher as a police officer is genuine and sincere.

Further, the account in the first article of Leonpacher's violent arrest of Fernandez-Armesto is clearly a quotation of the professor's account: "This young man kicked my legs from under me . . . "

In the second article, this event is reported as, "Kevin Leonpacher kicked the professor's legs from under him when he hesitated in showing his ID."

Noting that the second article's headline claimed that Fernandez-Armesto had been jailed for "jaywalking" and that the coverage had transmogrified into something disturbingly close to the "victim's" version of his own arrest, I wrote a comment to The Daily Mail, arguing that while this incident merited a full investigation, it was not immediately apparent that the officer was at fault.

Curiously, though I was the first person to comment on this article, my perspective was never included in the Comments section.

Last Friday afternoon at work, I turned to the Internet for some relief from work-related boredom (you may know the feeling). After visiting a site or two, my boredom still unrelieved, I started looking in the links column for some new and unexplored territory. My eye landed on the name, Colby Cosh, which it seemed to me I had seen before. It has a nice, alliterative quality, and I thought to give it a try. After scrolling down to the third or fourth post, I discovered the following:

The thin blue line

Can anybody supply a remotely acceptable explanation for the way Felipe Fernandez-Armesto was treated by the Atlanta police on January 6? One hopes it will be of some general interest to newspaper editors that a best-selling historian who is 56 years old (and about as physically imposing as the Taco Bell chihuahua) was challenged on an American street by an out-of-uniform cop, knocked down when he asked to see a badge, and imprisoned with felony suspects for eight hours because he jaywalked unwittingly between two adjacent hotels.- 12:42

As we see, Leonpacher is now not only unrecognized by Fernandez-Armesto as an officer, he is "out-of-uniform" something which neither account of events in The Daily Mail, nor an article in The Telegraph, nor in the Times UK, even claims. Failure to recognize that an officer is in uniform is not the same thing as demonstrating that the officer is out of uniform. The so-called "louche" bomber jacket worn by officer Leonpacher was, according to Leonpacher, a standard, Navy blue officer's winter jacket, which, I can attest from personal familiarity, bears the City of Atlanta police department patch on the shoulder.

According to Cosh, Fernandez-Armesto was knocked down when he asked to see the officer's badge. Again, not even Fernandez-Armesto's quoted account alleges this. Fernandez-Armesto says that his legs were kicked out from under him when he (FA) failed to show his ID.

If we return to Officer Leonpacher's account, Fernandez-Armesto was thrown to the ground after struggling to resist arrest. Fernandez-Armesto was not, as several accounts suggest, arrested for "jaywalking." The Incident Report filed by Leonpacher makes clear that the arrest is for "Pedestrian Failure to Obey a Police Officer and Physical Obstruction of Police."

The Incident Report contains one more piece of pertinent information that has been reported in none of the articles I've seen covering this encounter. Two witnesses are cited as corroborating officer Leonpacher's version of events. Mr. Edward Allen, a bellman for the Hilton Hotel, is reported to have said that Fernandez-Armesto walked away from Leonpacher after the officer several times asked him to stop.

The second witness, Martin Catino, is quoted in the report as saying, " . . . the officer kept his cool. He was polite and asked him several times for his ID. The man was belligerent and refused to cooperate with him."

Those, like Colby Cosh, wishing to genuinely understand how this event unfolded might do well to take a look at the Incident Report, which is available to the public courtesy of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

As I reflected on this information, I became curious about Martin Catino's version of events and sought to contact him. It took me all of about 10 minutes to locate his email address. I explained to him my interest in this case, and that, having read the Incident Report, I was aware that he had been quoted in the manner cited above. Would, I wondered, he give me his version of events?

His response was prompt, polite, and thoroughly understandable, though slightly disappointing. Mr. Catino answered that, as this was a legal matter and still pending in the courts, he was unable to comment at this time.

So I didn't get my answer. But how, you may wonder, was I able to contact this witness so quickly? There was very little detective work involved. Like Fernandez-Armesto, Martin Catino is a a professor of history, and was on that day attending the same convention of the American Historical Association.

To reiterate, despite the public availability of this information, I've seen no mention of either Dr. Catino or Mr. Edward Allen, the other witness, in the by now seven or eight articles I've read on this incident.

In the meantime, Dr, Fernandez-Armesto has written an account of this ordeal, entitled "Atlanta Police are Barbaric," which begins with a quotation from fellow political prisoner Nelson Mandela, and concludes with a passing reference to "the era of George W. Bush." In his defense, the professor speaks quite highly of the Detention Center staff, contrasting their civility with the "barbaric, brutal, and out of control" behavior of the police.

Perhaps, between Dr. Fernandez-Armesto's account of the "insights you can only get from being assaulted by the police" and Officer Leonpacher's somewhat less lurid Incident Report, Colby Cosh may find the beginnings of an answer to his question.

Addendum: Here is a follow-up story in the AJC, touching upon British coverage of this arrest, if you find that you just can't get enough of all this. The article did provide the new photo above of Officer Leonpacher displaying his notorious, "louche bomber jacket," which seems somehow central to the ensuing confusion.

I should also add that my purpose here is neither to exonerate Kevin Leonpacher nor to condemn the arrest of Dr. Fernandez-Armesto. It may well be that Leonpacher over-reacted to the situation. It may be that Fernandez-Armesto knowingly ignored police instructions, and became belligerent and confrontational when told to stop. A third possibility is that this is a legitimate case of confusion and miscommunication, without a clear culprit. These are questions for a formal inquiry to decide.

My concern here was, and remains, the manner in which one party's version of a contested event has come to be reported as fact, often without any indication that these are the allegations of an individual protesting his arrest, not the recollections of an impartial observer. Perhaps there were no impartial observers, but a respect for the gravity of Fernandez-Armesto's allegations, and the seriousness of Kevin Leonpacher actions, demands something closer to impartiality than much of the media have thus far been willing to provide.

Six Degrees of Separation

2007-01-06T02:51:00.000-08:00

You may be familiar with the "Six Degree . . . " concept, popularized by the play of John Guare and later made into a movie of the same name. It supposes that you are separated from anyone else in the world by a chain of no more than six people. In other words, "I know someone who knows someone who . . . " Do this six times and you will find yourself distantly acquainted with an Inuit seal hunter, a Bengali cab driver, or a Mongolian veterinarian. Is it true? I doubt very seriously that I am separated by a chain of only six acquaintances from all 6.5 billion of you. But I guess it hardly matters. It doesn't take long to realize that the plausibility of the hypothesis depends, to a large extent, on what is meant by "knowing" someone. If you work in an office with 20 other people, you probably know them all.

But what about an office of 200 people? At one time or another, you've probably at least bumped into them all in the break room, or nodded while passing in the corridor. You certainly know most of their names. Is it enough to establish that first degree? How about an office of 500 people? If you've been there for a year, you've probably at least seen them all. Is that close enough? If you met someone only once, at a baby shower, for example, would that then count as a degree of separation? Let's say that it would, so that I can get on with this story.

In the summer of 2003, I attended a baby shower. Most of the guests were former Coca-Cola employees, whose conversation - while waiting for the guests of honor to arrive - revolved around enthusiastic denouncements of the company's inept management. The host of the shower, who had obviously done quite well with Coke International (lap pool on the back patio, five car garage, fully restored 60s Morris convertible in the five car garage) then said, "You want to hear a story about bad management. I'll tell you about the worst case of bad management I've ever seen."

After graduating with an MBA from the University of Chicago, our host had joined a pharmaceutical manufacturer. The company was having difficulty meeting its monthly sales targets, and the CEO repeatedly instituted price cuts at the end of each month, in order to try to meet the quotas. Our storyteller said that he and his colleagues, most of them young execs, had tried over and over again to explain to the CEO why this was a self-destructive strategy, because the drugs they sold at the end of each month only ate into the orders from the following month, which wrought havoc with their production and shipping schedules. Orders were negligible during the first three and a half weeks of the month, then skyrocketed in the final few days, particularly as customers realized that prices would be cut at the end of each month. Though the flaws in this strategy would have been readily apparent to any first year management student, the CEO was a stubborn type who didn't take well to dissent or disagreement. The pricing strategy continued, as the company hemorrhaged more and more money.

Fortunately, the company had a potential ace up its sleeve, an artificial sweetener called Aspartame, better known as NutraSweet, whose approval had thus far been denied by the Food and Drug Administration due to several health concerns related to this chemical compound. Though such a product had enormous profit-potential, the failure to win FDA approval was clearly a stumbling block.

Not to be deterred, however, the CEO made use of his political connections in Washington, and the product soon won FDA approval. This, and this alone, according to our host, saved the company from bankruptcy. The company's then CEO was - up until recently - widely regarded in the popular media as an iconoclastic, hard nosed executive who reorganized the firm and restored it to profitability. He was at the time lauded in the press as one of the
"toughest" executives in America. "But you know," our host concluded, "he was really just an idiot with political connections, and I'm surprised none of this has ever come out, because the guy's name is Donald Rumsfeld."*

He went on to say that Rumsfeld had only been made CEO of the family-held company as a result of his friendship with the Searle family, who had also financed his early political career, and that it was understood from the beginning of his tenure as CEO (Rumsfeld had no experience in the pharma industry) that he would use his political connections to push though the approval of NutraSweet. Furthermore, Rumsfeld was without doubt the most inept manager he had ever worked for or been associated with. He concluded by saying that it "terrified" him to think that America's defenses were in such hands, and that this was not a partisan matter, as he himself had voted for Bush.

This was the most interesting baby shower I've ever been to, not that I've been to many.

Is Rumsfeld really a business maverick, or the egomaniacal incompetent masquerading as an executive genius described by his former employee - and my passing acquaintance - back in 2003? How would I know? I'm simply relaying an anecdote that made a memorable summer afternoon out of what otherwise would have been one of those tedious social write-offs your wife drags you to. Was Rumsfeld really the disaster he appeared to be as Secretary of Defense? General Paul Eaton, in charge of training the Iraqi Army from 2003 to 2004, certainly thought so. In this opinion, he was hardly alone.

Another story:

Someone I know, still in the Navy, was once assigned as a junior officer to serve directly under the admiral of US fleet in the Persian Gulf. I don't remember the admiral's name, and I don't know what, specifically, the younger officer did for him. Anyway, a few years after Gulf War I (Desert Storm, you may remember) but well before our current conflict in Iraq, the subject of the first Gulf War came up with my old acquaintance. He maintained that our differences with Saddam emerged not because he invaded Kuwait, but because he invaded Kuwait and then proceeded to raise the price of oil above that agreed to by various parties in the Middle East, including the US, who had approved of or at least accepted the invasion to begin with.

Simple rumor-mongering on my friend's part, and now on my part? Sure. So what? Let me make it clear that neither of these stories "proves" anything in my book. People lie, people exaggerate, people seek to impress in cocktail-party conversation, people simply fail to remember accurately what somebody else said, or accurately remember what somebody else lied about.

But both these stories do at least give us something to consider. And only in part because they seem to fit pretty closely with a good bit of what we do know from the world of mainstream reportage. For example, the words of US Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie, when called to a meeting with Saddam in 1990 to discuss the deteriorating relationship between Iraq and Kuwait. (By the way, Saddam's main grievance against Kuwait at the time was that it was selling oil at a price that Saddam felt was starving him of the international currency that he needed to meet his debt payments emerging from the Iran-Iraq war.) The US Ambassador's reply to Saddam's intent to move into Kuwait was as follows:

"We have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait. I was in the American Embassy in Kuwait during the late ’60s. The instruction we had during this period was that we should express no opinion on this issue and that the issue is not associated with America. James Baker has directed our official spokesmen to emphasize this instruction. We hope you can solve this problem using any suitable methods via [Chadli] Klibi [then Arab League General Secretary] or via President Mubarak. All that we hope is that these issues are solved quickly."

Granted, diplomatic language is often neutral and muted, but if Saddam was looking for a signal as to what the US response to a Kuwait invasion might be, the wording certainly could have been a bit more dissuasive than this. Furthermore, the subsequent justification for Operation Desert Shield (which soon mutated into Desert Storm), that Iraq was now poised to invade Saudi Arabia, seems to have been, at the very least, inflated. Apparently, our leaders have little faith in the capacity of the American public to seize upon an unvarnished opportunity for a pleasant little war. Hence, the need for "actionable" intelligence.

One more story:

My wife's uncle, now retired, was once stationed in Baghdad as a Turkish diplomat. One fall afternoon, we visited his Ankara apartment, where, in dim, receding light, we were served cake and a thimbleful of sherry. The former ambassador asked about my family's background in America, and when I answered that it extended back many generations, he smiled approvingly and said, "You are very noble, Mr. John.** "

Our conversation eventually turned to the war in Iraq, and his memories of Baghdad. I suppose it goes without saying that during his posting there he was acquainted with Saddam, and I may now claim my one degree of separation from the "Butcher of Baghdad" himself. Anyway the ambassador's tenure there - as he recalled it - had been for the most part pleasant, but he did add a final, cautionary note. "Remember, Mr. John, you must never, ever trust the Arabs."

I take his point. But who do I trust?

* This is, of course, my recollection of the gist of what he said, not a verbatim transcription.

** "John" is not my actual first name, but will serve here as a substitute.

The Death of the Godfather: Origins Unknown

2006-12-25T01:58:00.000-08:00

Depending on where you look, James Brown was born in 1928 or in 1933. He was - again, depending on where you look - born in Barnwell, South Carolina, or in Pulaski Tennessee, or, if you put your faith in Wikipedia, both Georgia and South Carolina simultaneously. Whatever.

He grew up in Augusta, Georgia, raised in a brothel by his great-aunt. As a teenager, Brown committed a series of minor, then increasingly major crimes (car theft, armed robbery) went away to prison, got released, tried his hand as a boxer, then as a baseball pitcher, before finding his calling as "Soul Brother Number One."

People will question a few of the detours he took in life, but none will doubt that he was hell-bent on living. His fondness for booze, crack, and PCP landed him in some dangerous, embarrassing, and expensive mishaps. The late 80s were a particularly colorful era, during which Brown was arrested numerous times on illegal weapons and drug charges.

During this phase, he menaced with a shotgun a group of accountants whom he suspected of having used his private bathroom, led police on a high-speed interstate car chase, coming to a halt only after they shot out all four of his tires, and was finally convicted of attempting to murder his wife. Sentenced to six years in prison, he served two. More importantly, he got some time away from the drugs that had proven so instrumental in the escapades above.

In these "wilderness years" of his, a friend of mine from Augusta happened across the Godfather in a grocery store parking lot. His purple Caddy was parked next to her, and Brown, loading groceries into the trunk, engaged her in an unceasing, high-pitched monologue. Sensing that this "conversation" was never going to end, my friend politely bade him good bye, then climbed into her car. He was still at it, muttering and screeching as she drove away. "What did he say to you?" I asked. She laughed, shaking her head. "I couldn't understand a single word," she answered.

Admitted to an Crawford-Long hospital in Atlanta, suffering from what appeared to be a simple bout of pneumonia, James Brown died on Christmas morning. Not only is he gone, but the world that shaped him, with its hardship and brutality, its grace and laughter, its poignant striving, and its inimitable sense of style . . . that world is gone as well. James Brown was a raging torrent, no wonder he couldn't keep still. By contrast, most of what passes for "soulful" music these days is about as compelling as the spilling open of a bathtub faucet.

Middle-aged nostalgia? Maybe, but Brown brought to his craft a polish and a style, when style was still to be admired. He worked at it, refining each move, but like any other brilliant practicioner, he gave the appearance of effortless, quicksilver motion, even as the sweat poured down his cheeks. God only knows how many singers and dancers he influenced, but then again, a chasm always separates the innovator from the emulator. Take a look at Papa's Got A Brand New Bag, then you decide.

Nothing, and no one, was more American than James Brown.

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

2006-12-21T18:49:00.000-08:00

As the winter shadows lengthen and the nights grow long, those of us baptized in the name of Christ are enjoined to turn our thoughts to matters of redemption and grace. But let's not just yet. The other morning, I ran across two newspaper articles that in their symmetry led me to savor once again the hard-won blessings of secularism, as both as a social principle and a personal inclination. I fear we won't adequately appreciate it until it is gone.

The first article I read detailed the escape from the United Kingdom of one Mustafa Jama, a Somali immigrant wanted in connection with the murder of a police officer. The suspect, Mr. Jama - dutifully veiled as the Koran supposedly dictates - fled the country on his sister's passport. Though airport authorities have the power to insist that a veil be removed, or at least lifted, under suspicious circumstances, they failed to do so in this case, as can hardly be surprising since they had no way of knowing that "their man" was hidden behind the veil. He was, by the way, the most wanted man in the UK at that time, and his photograph would have been known to every airport security officer. Sadly, photos aren't of much use when faces are concealed. Undoubtedly, Mr. Jama's escape was abetted by Britain's cringing reluctance to offend religious sensibilities.

And elsewhere on our fallen globe, in the Holy Land, as fate would have it, we find an American-Israeli woman of respectable middle age severely beaten by a "modesty patrol" for her failure to relocate to the back of a bus. No, it's not what you're thinking, a pack of rabid Palestinians asserting their archaic faith on this Jewish passenger, shortly before detonating themselves. Miriam Shear, who, despite her "American-Israeli" status now lives in Canada, was on her way to pray at the Wailing Wall, when her evidently insufficient religious zeal and submission led her to conflict with her fellow Jews. According to the article:

Though not defined by Egged [the transit system, one supposes] as a sex-segregated "mehadrin" bus, women usually sit in the back, while men sit in the front, as a matter of custom.

"Every two or three days, someone would tell me to sit in the back, sometimes politely and sometimes not," she recalled this week in a telephone interview. "I was always polite and said 'No. This is not a synagogue. I am not going to sit in the back.'"

But Shear, a 50-year-old religious woman, says that on the morning of the 24th, a man got onto the bus and demanded her seat - even though there were a number of other seats available in the front of the bus.

"I said, I'm not moving and he said, 'I'm not asking you, I'm telling you.' Then he spat in my face and at that point, I was in high adrenaline mode and called him a son-of-a-bitch, which I am not proud of. Then I spat back. At that point, he pushed me down and people on the bus were screaming that I was crazy. Four men surrounded me and slapped my face, punched me in the chest, pulled at my clothes, beat me, kicked me. My snood [hair covering] came off. I was fighting back and kicked one of the men in his privates. I will never forget the look on his face."

Throughout the encounter, Shear says the bus driver "did nothing." The other passengers, she says, blamed her for not moving to the back of the bus and called her a "stupid American with no sechel [common sense.] People blamed me for not knowing my place and not going to the back of the bus where I belong."

Rather ironic, eh, given the Jewish commitment in America to abolishing this sort of "segregated seating" on public conveyance. But I suppose, when adamantine faith walks in the front door, good sense and reason fly out the window. I realize - or rather I assume - that Israel is not a secular state, though when I read this sort of thing, I wonder whether it should be. Sadly, the invocation of "God's will" is the most obvious smokescreen for all sorts of abhorrent and infantile human behavior.

Oh, and I don't mean to give Christians a free pass in honor of the season. In preparation for writing this, I saved an article from the Daily Mail about a vicar, or rather, former vicar, with an "Aladdin's Cave" of child pornography stashed in his home:

The collection, which took half a century to amass, was discovered after undercover police infiltrated the International Paedophile Child Emancipation Group and its subsidiary, Gentlemen With An Interesting Name. Both championed the legalisation of sex between adults and children.

At this point, such revelations hardly raise an eybrow. We all know about the salacious priest and the trailer park snake handler. We've seen the the televangelist entrepreneur, and learned to steer clear of the serial adulterer with the dog collar and the sympathic ear. We've laughed over Earnest Angley and Jimmy Swaggart, over Jim and Tammy Faye.

I once took a class with a guy who'd been a musician in the 700 Club orchestra, or whatever they called themselves. He described most of his bandmates as having well-established drug habits, and the 700 club itself as a den of orgies and depravity. Of course, he rather enjoyed his time there. This, by the way, was years before Jim Baker's scandal broke. So, we know. Men (I am using this in the archaic sense, to mean all of us primates), including men of the cloth, are after all, only men.

It seems to me that this season provides us with ample opportunity to reflect upon - and reinforce - some principles. If one believes that God, or Allah, or the next-door neighbor's Doberman Pincer, mandates that one keep one's face concealed from public scrutiny, one has the right to do so. In the privacy of one's home, that is, where of course, it's sort of unnecessary. This right stops at the front door. That's not to say that you can't wear a veil anywhere else. It is to say that society, not God, will decide, outside of your home, where you can and where you cannot, based on reasonable concerns about public safety. Mr. Jama has just recently demonstrated why such concerns are reasonable.

In much of the Western world, and certainly in America, we have a right, as some would phrase it, a "God-given right," to own a gun. We do not, however, have a right to brandish our guns in places like airports, bus terminals, banks, and schools. Similarly, if your religion commands the veil, fine, but if you choose to obey, you will have to forego air travel or rent your own Learjet. You will not be able to get a driver's license, and you will have to start keeping your money under the mattress, where it belongs anyway. Usury under Islam is a sin.

There is ample precedent for this position. I admire the humble Amish, who keep to themselves and drive those quaint black carriages. But they can't drive them on our Interstate Highway System, regardless of whether or not God has given them the green light. This, it seems to me, is the spirit of secularism, which is neither pro nor anti, but seeks only to establish that religious conviction carries no greater authority than do philosophical or scientific principles, and regardless of faith, conduct within a society must conform to legitimately derived legal constraint. Can our civilization (I use the word generously) long endure without it?

When confronted by the armies of God, we may all find useful Huck's memorable, "Alright then, I'll go to Hell." In other words, I'll take my chances among the flames, or better yet, in simple oblivion, rather than endure an eternity of trying to twist my mind around a set of lurid, self-contradictory doctrines that no intelligent twelve year old could easily accomodate. Twelve year old, hell! I remember my nephew, at the age of eight, giggling over some of the more obvious absurdities of faith, then concluding sarcastically with "What a fairy tale!"

And yet, given the stupidity with which we abase ourselves before God, and the horrors we inflict on each other in His name, does it then come as a surprise that belief in God seems only an archaic dream or childish wish? Or that a deity present in his absence, seems, more likely, simply absent? But then again, look around. Who wouldn't want to hide from us? A guy I used to know once said, "if there was someplace else to go, I'd be there." The place from which he sought refuge was Earth, or more broadly, existence.

As agnostic as I am by nature and by hard experience (in other words, ordinary experience), I can't get completely past the "What if . . . What then?" Many years ago, a friend of mine showed me an article written by an architectural critic he admired. My friend, an architect himself, commented that the author, though brilliant, had only recently been released from prison, having served a couple of years on a conviction for something like check fraud. Oh well, fertile minds generally suffer from an surfeit of intellectual energy, which they often dispose of in random and unsavory ways. If you doubt this, read the biography of a favorite author.

But the one thing I remember from this article - and what it had to do with architecture I have no idea - was the observation that the only thing more difficult to believe in than the existence of God was the absence of God.

The pedestrian interpretation of this would have to be that a life without faith is a more difficult life, a life more fraught with fear and despair than need be. In other words, regardless of God's existence or non-existence, why inflict hardship on yourself, even in the name of truth? But I don't think that this was what context of this article implied, nor what its author actually meant. The point, then and now, seems to me that, simply from a coldly analytical standpoint, the existence and the non-existence of God are somehow both terribly unlikely to the human mind.

It's always stayed with me, this paradox. It might be worthy of God himself. There are two options. One of them undergirds the structure of the universe, and the other is purest self-deception. Both strain credulity, and neither can be confirmed. What does it mean that both the prospect of God and the possibility of his absence rend the mind with doubt? The closest I've come to faith is turning round and round in my mind this crystal-like paradox, and pondering its improbability - either way.

God . . . no God . . . God . . . no God . . . the presence . . . the absence . . . the candle . . . the flame. This is the best justification I've stumbled across for entertaining the notion of God.

Turkish Airlines "Sacrifices" for Maintenance Efficiency

2006-12-15T05:39:00.000-08:00

In a bid to motivate his mechanics, the head of Turkish Airlines' Airplane Maintenance Facility, Mr. Sukru Can, vowed to sacrifice a camel in their honor if they met a maintenance deadline. The airline had been experiencing myriad technical difficulties with one type of aircraft, the British made RJ100, and needed to get all planes of this model ready for shipment back to the manufacturer. No stranger to motivational psychology, Mr. Can (pronounced "John"), promised to "cut a camel" right on the tarmac at Istanbul's Atatürk International Airport if all the airplanes, by a specified date, were made ready for return. The maintenance staff responded heroically, and in celebration, the camel was delivered to his fate in the back of a truck. Atatürk Airport is, effectively, Turkey's gateway to the world, and one can only hope that the slaughter and subsequent quartering were clearly visible to arriving passengers. ("Welcome to Turkey," as it were.)

To me, the strangest part of the story is that airport security were furious not because Mr. Can had engaged in animal sacrfice on the grounds of the airport, but because he had deceived them as to the type of sacrifice he intended to carry out. He had told them that he would be butchering a ram on the tarmac, when in fact, his intended victim had always been a camel:

"The police headquarters at Atatürk Airport had this to comment on the incident: "We did not realize they were sacrificing a camel. We, thinking that they were going to sacrifice a ram, didn't think it would look good to have a ram walking out the doors of the airport and to the apron, so we gave permission for it to be driven there. But in fact there had been no permission received from the Goods Management Headquarters. The head of the Airplane Maintenance Facility lied to us about this."

Well, who wouldn't be outraged? (Is it normal at Atatürk Airport to sacrifice rams on the tarmac? Why have I never noticed this before?)

According to Hurriyet (English Language edition), Mr. Can has been relieved of his position.

Speaking about the "camel sacrifice" incident with reporters yesterday, Transportation Minister Yildirim had this to say:

"It is wrong to blame an entire organization for a mistake made by one colleague whose mind is still in the past. The necessary orders have been given in the wake of this incident, and that colleague has been removed from his job. The investigation is continuing. Sacrificing a camel is not a talent. It is more important that Turkish Airlines carries out its job well, and works on addressing any complaints that citizens using it might have. Which is why it is not fair to compare this giant, well-established company with a couple of tactless mistakes that might have been made. The important thing is that the necessary measures have been taken."

In all fairness to Turkish Airlines, I have to say that it is my carrier of choice when making the interminable haul between Turkey and the States. The food is good (well, for airline food it's good), the booze is free (a big plus on an 11 hour flight), and the transcontinental aircraft are all Airbus made (one wonders about the problems with this RJ100).

Is Mr. Can being "sacrificed" to an increasingly bloodless corporate mentality?

Turning the Corner in the War on Terror

2006-12-13T12:46:00.000-08:00

"Speaking only for myself, it's hard to keep things in perspective and in the categories. . . . Hezbollah. Uh, Hezbollah. Why do you ask me these questions at 5 o'clock? Can I answer in Spanish? Do you speak Spanish?”

- Silvestre Reyes, the incoming Democratic Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, explaining his difficulty in defining what "Hezbollah" is, and his uncertainty as to whether Al Qaeda is a movement of Sunni or Shiite Muslims. (He managed to guess wrong.) Rep. Reyes has proudly served on the intelligence committee since before 9/11, so things in Washington are certainly looking up.

From the Washington Post article: "Reyes, a former Border Patrol agent and an opponent of the Iraq war, was chosen for the intelligence committee post over the panel's two top-ranking Democrats, Reps. Jane Harman (Calif.) and Alcee L. Hastings (Fla.)."

Hmm . . . makes you wonder about Pelosi's judgment, not to mention the qualifications of the other two.

By the way, Reyes' "Can I answer in Spanish? Do you speak Spanish " query was absent from the Post article. Who knows why. When told by a Congressional Quarterly reporter that he could speak in Spanish, Reyes managed, "Well, I uh . . . " (in English). I ran across this missing bit of the story this morning in the Times UK.

"The intelligence committee will keep its eye on the ball and focus on the pressing security and intelligence issues facing us," said Reyes.

Well, that's reassuring.

No Child Left Behind: Two Views

2006-12-08T11:35:00.000-08:00

There are two ways of explaining the passage of legislation such as No Child Left Behind, which has no chance of actually working. One is stupidity, on the part of the legislators, the bureaucrats, and/or the voting public. The other, more heartening possiblity, is that NCLB is intended to provide statistical evidence documenting the failure of "underperforming" schools, which will in turn fuel the push toward a school voucher system. I would love to believe that the explanation for NCLB is the latter, though I suspect it is the former.

That having been said, there are also two ways of looking at the failures of these so-called underperforming schools. One focuses on shortcomings of the schools themselves. The other focuses on the shortcomings of the students.

According to the NY Times, the fault lies squarely with the schools, or rather with the government's failure to adequately staff these schools with the cream of the teaching crop:

"Unless we improve schools — especially for minority children who will make up the work force of the future — we will fall behind our competitors abroad who are doing a better job of educating the next generation.

It’s impossible to brand No Child Left Behind as a failure, because its agenda has never been carried out. The law was supposed to remake schools that serve poor and minority students by breaking with the age-old practice of staffing those schools with poorly trained and poorly educated teachers. States were supposed to provide students with highly qualified teachers in all core courses by the beginning of the current academic year. That didn’t happen.

The battle for teacher quality is just getting under way. The country can either win that battle or watch its fortunes fade as the national work force becomes less and less competitive. Given what’s at stake, the teacher quality provision of No Child Left Behind deserves to be at the very top of the list when Congress revisits the law."

Gird yourself for battle. If we don't hire new legions of the most talented teachers to do service in the worst of our schools, we will never raise poor minority children up to the intellectual standard not only of their American counterparts, but of their international competitors. Soon, we shall all be processing fishsticks for our Asian overlords.

For a contrasting perspective on the causes of underperforming schools, however, consider the following statistics about Baltimore, in many ways a representative American city:

"Not unexpectedly we found a cognitive discontinuity at the city line. Surprising, however, was its magnitude. Whereas suburban mean IQs (86 for blacks, 99 for whites) conform more or less to national norms, city IQs are dreadfully low. With a mean IQ of 76, inner-city blacks fall about 0.6 SD below the African American average nationally. More than a third have death-penalty immunity on grounds of mental retardation. The inner-city white mean of 86 is nearly a full standard deviation below the national white average. By this measure, whites fared worse than blacks. Both groups are seriously deficient in human capital. Neither is very employable. To compound matters, we almost certainly have overstated urban IQs. City residents constitute a low-IQ group extracted from a more cognitively representative population. Their kids, whose test scores we analyzed, should have regressed toward their racial means, i.e., toward higher IQs. That is, inner city kids are smarter than their parents. Accordingly, our estimates of inner-city IQs are best regarded as upper bounds to adult values."

Quite a difference, eh? To reiterate, in Baltimore, the mean IQ among its black students is 76. The mean IQ among white students is 86. The mean IQs for black and white adults are, in all probability, even lower than are those of their children (the brighter kids tend to move away when they've grown up).

As reference points, the average IQ in America is 98, and the threshold for clinically-defined retardation is 70 (it was at one time 80). In other words, if one had to place the students in the Baltimore city schools on a continuum between intellectual retardation and normalcy, they would lie significantly closer to retardation.

Even though whites in the Baltimore test higher than blacks (as is true throughout geographical regions and economic classes in America) the white students still lie essentially at the midpoint between the American intellectual average and clinically-defined retardation.

How has this happened? IQ scores correlate positively with economic income. Ergo, poorer people in America, on average, have lower IQ scores. Baltimore city residents making enough money to relocate to the suburbs have disproportionately done so. Those left behind in Baltimore are disproportionately unintelligent. Thus, IQ tends to stratify not only by income, but by school district.

As unsettling as this may be, IQ also stratifies by race. Those eager to see improvement in minority academic performance will be pleased to note that Americans of Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry all outperform the national average on IQ tests. By pure coincidence, they also outperform the average American student in other measures of academic achievement. Finally, they outperform their American counterparts in economic income as well.

Sadly, however, these are not the minorities NCLB has in mind when it talks about raising achievement in minority schools, though clearly these groups are American minorities. Rather, in the terms of NCLB, "minority students" refers specifically to black and hispanic students, who perform below average in various measures of academic performance, including IQ, and who go on to earn lower average incomes. Obviously, for the reasons cited above, poor minority students will tend to perform worst of all. This is more a matter of statistical reality than of instructional failure, though obviously it is difficult to recruit and retain talented teachers in the chaotic, sometimes dangerous atmosphere of bad schools.

A new crop of teachers will not erase this disparity in academic outcomes. Nor will a new computer lab. Nor more audio-visual equipment, a new gymnasium, nor a fresh coat of paint and a new sign in the parking lot. In the realm of education, a student's curiosity, enthusiasm, and sheer intellectual capacity are of far greater significance than are the attributes of the teacher. They count for more, and they shape the student's intellectual development to a much greater degree. To make matters worse, people tend to be curious and enthusiastic only about information they can understand and manipulate. They evince little curiosity or enthusiasm for that which they can neither use nor understand. Therefore, weaker students tend not to thrive indefinitely on curiosity and enthusiasm alone.

The facts of life often run contrary to our wishes.

There is legitimate room for discussion as to what the term "intelligence" means and how accurately it is measured by a given test. There is also room for discussion as to why some groups score differently from others. However, I am using IQ here simply to mean a quantitative score on any of several widely-used, standardized intelligence tests. There is almost no uncertainty as to whether the scores on such tests stratify in the ways described above, and as to whether they correlate with academic success as measured by grades, graduation rates, professional degrees and qualifications, medical board exams, bar exams, and so forth.

Several factors beyond the guidance or control of any government agency increasingly drive the stratification of our society by intellect and by income. This reality, like the statistics above, raises politically and socially disturbing questions. It would be unrealistic and perhaps inhumane to expect everyone to greet this information with calm self-assurance. It is, for most people, discomforting at the very least, and it will be construed by many as troubling, if not threatening.

Anything that calls attention to the role of nature, i.e. genes, in shaping our intellectual and economic fate runs dangerously counter to a number of carefully crafted social orthodoxies. America prizes particularly the belief that anyone, given clear instruction and enthusiastic encouragment, can learn anything, do anything, become anything. This belief may suffer in the light of statistical analysis, but it persists because it answers a peculiarly American need, one more grounded in culture and psychology than in observable truth. But this should not be surprising; the identity of any society is built to a large extent on falsehood and myth. For this reason, this information will never be thoughtfully examined in the pages of the New York Times.

Marriage: The Long, Strange Twilight

2006-12-02T01:55:00.000-08:00

How does one, amidst the contemporary turmoil, affirm the importance of marriage? Evidently, by refusing, or declining, to marry. Confused? Last Sunday's New York Times makes all clear in, The Sit-In at the Altar: No ‘I Do’ Till Gays Can Do It, Too which documents the movement among heterosexual couples to defer marriage until their gay and lesbian counterparts enjoy the same right, or priviledge, or burden, depending upon your experience of marriage.

Perhaps this latest civil rights initiative has passed you by. Obviously, you don't read the New York Times carefully enough. In the October 15 issue (now archived), the same phenomenon surfaced in an article trumpeting the fact that traditional households, made up of traditional families, i.e., two parents (presumably a man and a woman), living with one or more children (presumably their offspring) are now the minority. In an attempt to understand why the traditional family has become a receding bit of Americana, the reporter noted: "A few of those couples [not marrying] said they were inspired by solidarity with gay and lesbian couples who cannot legally marry in most states."

Since the Times is now expanding its coverage of this issue, we must assume that there are indeed growing legions of "Straight - but not Narrow" gay marriage supporters across America making their sympathies known by not visiting jewelers, not investing in tuxedos and gowns, and not flocking to the chapel. Well, that should bring the walls of bigotry crashing down.

The only other plausible explanation is that the Times, in a seizure of nostalgia for the era of Howell Raines, is "flooding the zone," i.e. magnifying a peripheral social issue, incessantly editorializing about it, preferably in the news section, and then watching as it assumes the moral dimensions of the struggle against the Waffen SS. You may remember the unprecedented success this strategy enjoyed in altering the gender composition of the Augusta National Golf Club.

As it turned out, nobody cared about that issue either. But this can hardly be blamed on the Times, which fervently believes that our moral consciences can be awakened, or aroused, or simply bludgeoned into compliance through the combined blows of unshakable orthodoxy and stolid prose.

So why am I not jumping on the bandwagon? Well for one thing, it's too late for me. I'm already married, and I'm sure as hell not getting divorced in support of gay marriage. (That would be difficult to explain to the wife, eh?)

The more interesting question, it seems to me, is why abstention from marriage, rather than marriage itself, should ever have taken on the status of a noble sacrifice? I'm not alluding to "take my wife, please . . . " jokes here. What I mean is that we are so far removed from the primal origins of marriage that we have only the dimmest emotional instinct as to what led our ancestors there in the first place.

In the interests of brevity, I will take it as given that marriage is first and foremost about raising children. In the earliest days, you needed to create a next generation simply to keep the little band alive. People were dying all the time, and families no doubt increased the odds that a few lucky children would survive long enough to sustain the tribe. Once people settled into a sedentary agricultural societies, they needed field hands, support in their old age, and inheritors, though these were hardly the only benefits that family life provided. It would seem, however, that for the past two centuries, tradition has been engaged in one long and losing battle to reconcile this aboriginal or agrarian institution with a less hospitable social environment. Marriage, perhaps, is no longer fitted for survival.

Among other things, marriage doesn't work well in a society predicated upon doing whatever you want, because co-existing with another person while raising several other persons is rather emphatically not about doing whatever you want, at least, not most of the time. This doesn't mean that marriage is inevitably a form of imprisonment, though most people who have ever been married have probably felt that on occasion. It just means that marriage, as traditionally understood, was in part a form of sacrifice. One surrendered a measure of freedom and emotional independence in order to gain the satisfactions, and - let's be honest - the respect conferred upon responsible parents. Marriage may have been tricked out in fancy clothes and a day of dancing and feasting, but that was not the substance of the thing. We dress up soldiers in colorful uniforms and march them around in parades, but that's not the essence of soldiering. In both cases, the costumes and the pomp are really more about enlistment.

Abstaining from marriage in the 21st Century is about a dramatic a sacrifice as refusing the Marine Corps until Ru Paul can be your drill instructor. Admittedly, that might make boot camp a good bit more entertaining, but how well it would prepare you for the trauma of combat, I'm not sure. Of course, much of the pompous grandstanding surrounding gay marriage can be laid at the feet of our Hollywood aristocracy. For where Brad and Angelina dare to tread, multitudes will follow.

"These couples have gone mostly unnoticed (except by parents waiting to send out wedding announcements). Then Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie took up the cause. In an Esquire article in October called “(My List) 15 Things I Think Everyone Should Know,” Mr. Pitt writes, “Angie and I will consider tying the knot when everyone else in the country who wants to be married is legally able.”

Quite the noble gesture on the part of Brad and Angelina, between whom I count three and a half divorces (I'm including the engagement to Gwyneth . . . Brad's engagement to Gwyneth). But this moral highground need not be the exclusive domain of the celebrity class. There's room up there for us all. Just be sure to bring your sandwich board and megaphone.

". . . some couples see no point in resisting marriage unless they’re going to publicize it. They do so mostly by correcting people who assume they are legally married.

Sam and Fawn Livingston-Gray of Portland, Ore., have the same last name and wear matching white-gold rings engraved with Celtic designs. Still, when someone refers to Sam, 31, a computer programmer, and Fawn, 33, an administrative assistant, as husband and wife, they point out the mistake, even if it’s the guy at the car-rental counter."

“I go out of my way to say we’re not,” Ms. Livingston-Gray said. “It’s a really important dialogue with people I wouldn’t get to talk to otherwise.”

Wouldn't you love to be the harried car-rental clerk who - while tracking and shuffling incoming and outgoing keys, credit cards, and paperwork, has the pleasure of being corrected by Fawn regarding her marital status? What a fruitful dialogue that must be.

Fawn, I'm afraid, like the New York Times, suffers from a common contemporary malady. Both believe that the world is engaged in some raging moral conflict to which their existence and opinions are central. Both expect immense personal credit for advancing the line of battle. And both, while absurdly sanctimonious, remain oblivious to both their sanctimony and their absurdity.

But this delusion characterizes everyone quoted in this story.

"I usually explain that I wouldn’t go to a lunch counter that wouldn’t allow people of color to eat there, so why would I support an institution that won’t allow everyone to take part,” said Ms. White, 24, a law student at the University of California, Davis. “Sometimes people don’t buy that analogy.”

The reason why "sometimes people don't buy that analogy" is that the two situations clearly are not analogous. A lunch counter is a privately-held business, dependent on a steady flow of customers for its economic survival. Shouldn't a UC Davis law student grasp that marriage, despite its contractual obligations, is something other than a business enterprise? Who exactly, other than florists, dress designers, and caterers, will suffer financial hardship if she chooses not to wed? And aren't these the people she's claiming solidarity with anyway? It's difficult for me to square smug self-congratulation with classical virtue, particularly when both are clouded by muddy thinking.

“I didn’t have the wedding fantasies some little girls have,” said Sarah Augusto, 25, a sociology graduate student in Davis, Calif., who has been committed to Jon Bell, 26, a museum exhibit designer, since college graduation three years ago.

But some honestly wish they would walk the aisle, Mr. Bell for one. “Sarah has changed the way I thought about things a ton,” he said. “I was really excited about getting married. Going into high school that was the goal, to meet a nice girl and get married to her.”

Mr. Bell, despite your moving paean to Sarah's ability to change your thinking "a ton," she's cheating on you.

Some sacrifice their own dreams of matrimony for family members denied the right to connunbial bliss, though even their own grandmothers struggle to understand. (Jesus, it is a hard world, isn't it?):

"Mary Lunetta’s grandmother, 77, doesn’t understand why her granddaughter is putting off marriage, either. Ms. Lunetta, 24, a community studies major [a what?] at the University of California, Santa Cruz, explained to her grandmother that she is waiting to make it official with Max Hartman, her boyfriend of five years, because her aunt, who is a lesbian, can’t marry.

Ms. Lunetta said she did not expect her grandmother to get it or agree. “And she didn’t.” Her grandmother, though, did tell her about Mr. Pitt and Ms. Jolie. “They’re copying us,” Ms. Lunetta said.

Affirming your principles, yet living the dream, just like Brad and Angelina.

On the issue of gay marriage itself, as opposed to this predictably trite piece of NY Times boilerplate, I'm fairly agnostic. Yes, it probably is one more step down the long road to marital obsolence. Not that I expect marriage to disappear completely, it's just likely to become increasingly whimsical, nostalgic and pointless, rather like the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace.

To add a further twist to the downward spiral of marriage, it is amusing to note that "Civil Unions" have become the latest lifestyle option among French heterosexuals. I don't mean campaigning in favor of them; I mean entering into them. Evidently, the confines of marriage are now more suited to those who will never be encumbered with children, while breeding, or at least heterosexual coupling, is less terrifiying under the looser strictures of Le Pacte Civil de Solidarité .

Or, you could just forget the whole thing and produce a slew of bastard offspring, which is clearly becoming the default option for increasingly bewildered and indifferent couples. The effects of this little cultural lab test, however, have yet to be agreed upon by the American Anthropological Association.

Marriage used to expand the possibility of stability and permanence, because people, particularly children, needed this, and stability and permanence have always been in short supply. This may have entailed patience and sacrifice, but evidently it enriched, or simply made more feasible, people's lives in some now increasingly unfamiliar way. Perhaps this was because, as I have tried to argue, it created the necessary space in which to raise the next generation.

Apart from that function, marriage really doesn't mean much other than a symbolic recognition of the temporary intersection of two lives, and while that may matter to those two people, it doesn't matter that much to the world. So, homosexual marriage or hetero-sexual "unions," polygamous triangles or quadrilateral couplings, in-vitro conceptions, sperm-bank fathers and surrogate wives plucked from the pages of a catalogue, let the new millenium begin in earnest.

But I do have one request for those boycotting marriage in support of their same-sex brethren. Couldn't you carry your boycott just one small step further? Until and unless nature herself makes procreative sex available to all, including homosexuals, could you please abstain from that as well? It seems little enough to ask for the coming generations.

Addendum: The Voice of Humility, an excellent blog, has a most interesting post on this topic, called "Another Social Problem Not Solved," which links to an article by Jane Galt, which will provide you with some reasons to oppose gay marriage, should you wish to shore up your bigotry.

Hoş Geldiniz, Papa Benedict

2006-11-29T10:34:00.000-08:00

On the streets of Istanbul, Pope Benedict's arrival inspires Turks to spontaneous, decadent, and quite limber celebration. And you thought they only twirled like dervishes.

Been Down So Long It Looks Like Art to Me

2006-11-19T16:42:00.000-08:00

Why don't people read more, why don't they want to read more, and most specifically, why do they want to read poetry least of all?

The simple answer is that almost a century ago the celluloid image began to replace the written word as our preferred mode of cultural expression. Fair enough, but it hardly seems adequate to explain and dismiss such a sweeping cultural transformation in a single sentence. The shift from page to screen must have occurred incrementally in numerous smaller, more specific dislocations, the cumulative effect of which has been the near-collapse of written culture. By studying one particular place and moment in this long seismic shift, we can perhaps better understand why magazine layouts increasingly resemble TV screens, and why a well-received book may now be written by someone who has never read one.

One bit of forensic evidence to have been pulled from the wreckage is "Up Is Up, But So Is Down: New York’s Downtown Literary Scene, 1974-1992,” edited by Brandon Stosuy. This anthology is reviewed in this week's New York Times by Meghan O' Rourke, who, in doing so, faced a series of uneviable tasks. First, in order to write the review, she had to read the book, or at least flip through it. Stosuy's writing may be fine, but sadly, this isn't an anthology of his writing. Second, she had to cobble together a semi-interesting piece of journalism about a stillborn literary movement that somehow persisted, according to the book's subtitle, for almost 20 years. Finally, while feigning enthusiasm for this project (perhaps her editors found the first draft too caustic), O'Rourke clearly felt a duty to warn her readers as to what Stosuy had actually anthologized. Fortunately, a few choice quotations serve to sound the alarm:

"terror is released in Lower Manhattan
and the terrorists neither carry guns
nor subvert the state
but simply buy it off with ... their mastercards.”

You know, you don't actually have to be a terroristic plutocrat to own a Mastercard.

Though O'Rourke claims to find passages like the one above compelling, her own distate for the material keeps bleeding through: " 'Up Is Up' itself has a scrap-book feel. It gathers poems, excerpts and short stories as well as handmade magazine covers, pamphlets and posters that capture the collaborative, on-the-fly spirit of the period."

In other words, it's a garbage bag full of rotten writing. Here is another example of O'Rourke offering praise, then allowing the quotation to make clear what politesse forbids:

"There are surprises, too — like Holly Anderson, who writes haiku-like prose-poems of delicate lyricism trapped in crossword grids. Each letter is separated from the others as if imprisoned, evoking both the density and the loneliness of the city, and challenging the reader to make “sense” of the lapidary inscriptions. One series reads “LASt Nt ON A BLACK ROAD I tOLD tHEM MY COUSINS WOULD CAtCH FIREFLIES SMASH tHEM & SMEAR tHEIR LIGHt ON OUR FACES. But the effect is partly lost in transcription."

Apparently.

This quotation reminds me of one of those horrific, accident scene photographs you were shown in health science class to frighten you away from ever mixing fast cars and hard liquor. Lady, I'm convinced! But, if you're not yet, here is "New York: 1979," written by "cultural provocateur" Kathy Acker, who wrote under the pen name "the Black Tarantula" and who now gazes at you "transgressively" from the photo above:

“New York City is a pit-hole: Since the United States government, having decided that New York City is no longer part of the United States of America, is dumping ... all the people they don’t want (artists, poor minorities and the media in general) on the city and refusing the city federal funds; the American bourgeoisie has left. Only the poor: artists, Puerto Ricans who can’t afford to move ... and rich Europeans ... inhabit this city. Meanwhile the temperature is getting hotter and hotter so no one can think clearly. No one perceives. No one cares. Insane madness come out like life is a terrific party.”

Wait a minute, let me get my pen. OK, the government is dumping all of its wretched refuse onto the city of New York. Isn't that what the Statue of Liberty celebrates? Ah, but now the abandoned rabble consists of neglected artists, poor minorities, and "the media in general." Evidently, those condemned to exile in New York include Time Magazine, CBS News, Knopf Publishing, and Kathy Acker. Oh, and some Puerto Ricans.

Does she regret the departure of "the American bourgeoisie?" Does she regret the arrival of "rich Europeans?" Does she regret the fact that "no one can think clearly?" (A classic case of confusing oneself with one's subject.)

And look at the final line, or sentence, depending on whether this is supposed to be a work of poetry, or of prose. Does Acker not "perceive," or does she not "care," that the words "madness" and "insanity" are synonyms, and therefore, to speak of "madness" as "insane" is as crazily demented as describing "moisture" as "damp," or "eternity" as "endless?" My God, it's chaos gone out of control!

Sorry, Black Tarantula, but this sort of writing is a pile of shite. What I can't fathom is why this art action, or liberation movement, or free-form guerilla campaign, is considered by anyone to be worthy of notice, or study, or anything other than contempt. In New York, the self-proclaimed cultural capital of America (perhaps because the government keeps dumping unwanted artists and media people there), this sort of bourgeois-baiting declaration was being "emitted" a quarter century ago by a coterie of talentless adolescents pushing 40, and is now being anthologized, reviewed, and worst of all, revived.

According to Stosuy, "Though much of it is out of print and difficult to locate, Downtown writing has never been more relevant." Horrible to contemplate, but in a way, he may be right. As awful as the crayon books and "Xeroxed zines" of the downtown scene may have been, they do raise the unavoidable question. "Why?" Why would anyone want to write like this? Why would anyone want to read this? More disturbingly, why am I writing about this in 2006?

Was 1980 some pivotal moment when the visual image gained its ultimate ascendency, and the word "art" came to signify a bit of a joke to anyone with an IQ above 105? Wouldn't a quiet afternoon with a paper sack and a tube of glue prove more illuminating than subjecting oneself in the outcries of these rebel angels? Does this explain in any way the triumph of the electronic image? And finally, care to guess how many of these black-clad doomsayers are still subsisting on their parents' "terroristic" Mastercards?

Lest I create the impression that I hate everything, I should say that O'Rourke's review does mention two artists of the period whose work I have found both interesting and entertaining. The late Spaulding Gray, who committed suicide, or is believed to have committed suicide (no body was ever found) could be an amusing, witty, and gently ironic writer and performer, once described as a "WASP Woody Allen." David Wojnarowicz, a painter mostly, was a weird talent, but a real one, whose canvases incorporated images of gigantic dinosaurs, dung beetles, crumbling Mayan ruins, and graphic gay sex, all fused with anger, a kind of found-object mysticism, and an ironic sense of grandeur. Wojnarowicz died of AIDS in the early 90s.

I think it revealing that O'Rourke quotes from neither Gray nor Wojnarowicz (whose prose pieces, though not nearly as compelling as his visual art, at least occasionally offer a kind of hyper-paranoid intensity more intriguing than anything Kathy Acker ever dreamed of writing). It is this that leads me to believe O'Rourke selected her quotes with an eye toward the protection of unwary readers . By the way, "Up is Up" sells for ninety bucks hardback, and thirty paper, if you have no idea what to do with your money.

One more quotation from O'Rourke's review:

" 'Up Is Up' may not entirely convince us that this particular literary efflorescence is as remarkable as the literary movements that preceded it; plenty of the writing here is mediocre, in particular the poetry. But as one publisher-editor says: 'Yo, listen up, Cultural Elitists, wherever you’re hiding! Most of the art may have been' — insert a four-letter word here — 'but it was a g l o r i o u s time.' ”

Consider the premises of this "publisher-editor['s]" statement:

1. That there were "Cultural Elitists . . . hiding" from these Downtown Scenesters. If so, I'm sure they had their reasons. I suspect that, back in the 80s, the Cultural Elitists were in hiding, in the same way that, in high school, you avoided that isolated and perhaps dangerously unstable kid who latched onto you for six months simply because you made the mistake of speaking to him in Gym class, once.

2. That the tastes and inhibitions of this Cultural Elite stifle raw, provocative, expression. Would that it were so! This is rather like arguing that toilet training shames and suppresses the animal psyche within the human shell, when in fact, it's just a technique to avoid shitting yourself.

3. "Most of the art may have been" . . . why all the hedging? We will assume that the four letter word to be inserted is "shit" Well, this claim seems credible, though I think "may have been" is unnecessary.

4. "but it was a g l o r i o u s time." Perhaps so, if your idea of glory is slouching around in a studded leather jacket, cropping your hair in increasingly unattractive ways, and agreeing to fake an interest in your friends' scrawled musings, if they will fake an interest in yours. For others of us, however, this again brings up painful high school memories.

Walking around Manhattan in the mid 1990s, I happened across a denzien of the streets who had copiously shit in his pants, which were now gathered haphazardly about his ankles. He kept smiling and bowing to the scurrying crowd, all of whom were doing their best to pretend they hadn't seen what they quite obviously were seeing, and I can't be sure, but I think there was a hat or a styrofoam cup at his feet. This "cultural provocateur" had turned his personal humiliation into a public display, possibly even an art event. How could I have then known that I was witnessing a downtown revival?

Update: I so enjoyed my trashing of Kathy Acker (about whom I'd known nothing before) that I got curious and Googled her. The first thing I learned is that she's dead. Breast Cancer. Are any of these people still alive? I then ran across this interview with Ms. Acker, conducted by someone called "R. U. Sirius." (Clever, eh?)

If any of you believe I was overly harsh with "the Black Tarantula," especially in light of my recent discovery of her death, I suggest you sample this conversation for yourself and see just how much of it you can stand. I was able to read maybe three-fourths.