Saturday, May 03, 2008

Introduction:     This is a series of essays, comments etc. on history, politics et al. I would appreciate feedback via the comment bar at the end of a given piece or via e-mail (also enabled). I will try to reply and will post feedback from time to time in an attempt to conduct a dialog. I don’t ask for agreement, but rather encourage disagreement. Hopefully we can learn from one another.   I would have liked to post in reverse chronological order, but this software does not allow it. I wanted to start off with a sequence of pieces setting out a general perspective from which much of my commentary will arise. Those pieces can be found, therefore, at the bottom of the weblog rather than the top. Sorry about that! The “root” piece is an essay entitled Science and Modernity. The link below will take you to it. http://blogs.salon.com/0001185/2002/08/13.html#a4   I have now decided to lead the site with an updated version of Science and Modernity. It was slightly modified and conflated with ‘The Link’ and can be found immediately below. 10:00:35 PM    comment []

Science and Modernity         The modern world is born of the nexus between human creativity and the discoveries of modern science and technology.  That nexus has created, and is creating, a world that prospers no longer by the sweat of our brow and the strength of our backs, but by the educated creativity of people. (By educated I mean read, write and do basic arithmetic. That opens the door)   Societies achieving a strong flow of educated creativity will prosper; those failing, will not, and will fall into eclipse. That flow will not come from people systematically repressed, suppressed, and exploited. It will come from populations secure in self-governance, rich in opportunity for innovation and its implementation, and able to project a rewarding life for all.   The societal, institutional and conceptual structures of all previous human history have been, and are under, assault by a new reality whose birth travail has vexed the last three hundred years. The sheer prodigality of outcomes becomes defining: such potentials are released for both creative and destructive outcomes that we must be keenly aware of the power and responsibility that devolve upon us.   Modernity is about our increasing mastery of material reality. It is not wisdom (except of a particular sort), and it is not spiritual elevation, or moral accomplishment. It remains for us to inform the modern world with those achievements.     The above attempts to distill a message from the long arc of the human story. It seeks to define where we are now. Before laying out the particular understanding of history which leads to it, I want to make it clear that I do not comprehend some steadily winnowing dialectic working its will through history. A Grand Narrative of sorts, perhaps, but nothing like a relentlessly evolving storyline. Rather think of change under the aegis of some great transformative pulse, followed by a period of adjustment, and a rich elaboration of consequences.     We are social creatures. We live in mutually interactive, mutually supportive societies. Our first model for social organization was the tribe, structured around the wisdom of the ancestors and the laws and customs of the tribe. For tens of thousands of years we survived by inhabiting this planet as tribes. Between five and ten thousand years ago, to seize the advantages inherent in large-scale domesticated agriculture, we transitioned into far larger, far more extensively and intensively organized societies. What was required was enduring control of fertile land, and people constantly on that land to work it. What emerged were division of labor constructs, ruled from a narrow base of military, governmental and religious elites via a severely hierarchical top down authoritarianism. Coercive force could, and largely did, suffice. The vast majority of people could be assured of the necessities of life, but their grasp upon them was tenuous. Most of the human beings in these new societal constructs were “division of labored” into some form of peasantry, peonage, serfdom, or slavery; that is to say, an efficient organization of the sweat of our brow and the strength of our backs. But we got an unintended consequence: Civilization.   It was no easy time for tribal societies as they came up against these new Civilizational ones. The strengths of the new constructs proved to be both wide and deep. Tribal territory was seized through the disciplined application of force by a professional military, and tribes were variously disrupted, displaced, and (or) dispersed. Not infrequently they were enslaved. On occasion, tribes would take their revenge by assaulting and overthrowing a (usually) declining Civilizational society. More often than not, however, a newly triumphant tribe would, in a generation or two, became more Catholic than the Pope with respect to what they had overwhelmed. They would be conquered by their conquest! So powerful and persuasive were the possibilities which opened to this new societal paradigm.   For the next several thousand years we circled within this paradigm, elaborating upon it in many ways. Many distinct civilizations, rich in culture and accomplishment, arose and prospered. But the bedrock minimum remained the same: an efficient organization over time of simple human physical tasks - any ten peasants could tend the fields and mind the herds as well as any other ten peasants. Coercive power was decisive.   Eventually, the unintended consequence – Civilization – got around to a new idea. A second pulse. It was Newton’s idea. It may not have been entirely original with him, and aspects of it are certainly apparent in thought, and trends of thought leading far back into recorded history, but it is incontestably Newton’s formulation of the idea (in the Principia of 1687) that leads to its implantation in the fertile soil of post Renaissance Europe. Its subsequent rooting and exfoliation leads directly to modern science and technology, and on to the modern world.    Newton does not simply set forth that there is a gravitational attraction between bodies, but formulates it as a precise mathematical relationship. The force is directly proportional to the product of masses of the attracting bodies, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance separating them. The force is calculable! Precisely and exactly calculable! And a like conceptualism might be thought to extend to all of physical reality. The natural world is encompassed by a regime of mathematical rigor. Material reality can be described by universal, discoverable, mathematically exact expressions of causality.   After Newton, the Physicist Bernoulli, observing that the flow of air over a surface curved on top and flat on the bottom produces an uplift, can calculate what flow of air, over what surface of wing, will produce exactly what lift per unit area of wing. You can build a plane and know that it will fly! A child can observe steam displace a heavy iron lid from a pot. The grown James Watt can, after Newton, calculate precisely what pressure of steam against what piston head can, when translated through the mechanical apparatus of the piston, produce exactly what turning force on a wheel or crankshaft: the steam engine.   With Newton, science transforms from a cottage industry of inspired eccentrics into an ever broadening, ever deepening, universal human endeavor. Over the next three hundred years, the constant and rigorous pursuit of scientific knowledge has yielded up a cornucopia of opportunity for human creativity as both invention and enterprise to feast upon. And feast it has.   A new age comes upon us and everything changes – as it did with the Agricultural Revolution and the birth of Civilization. The first great consequence of the Scientific Revolution was the Industrial Revolution. That, and the continuing advances flooding in its wake, so dominate us with their dazzling transformation of our material circumstances, that we generally fail to be aware of the changes in human societies that have accompanied the process. Consider, three hundred years ago there were no democracies (Pace Switzerland). Today a great portion of the world’s people live in democracies, and those societies are incontestably the most vital and prosperous we have. Three hundred years ago, if you had proposed that you had to educate all of a society’s children, you would have been laughed at. Today, throughout the developed world, it is the accepted commonplace. There is more to the modern world than a plane in the skies, and the channel changer in your hand.   The work by which the world prospers has changed. Slowly and inexorably, a world has been emerging that prospers by the educated creativity of its people. People with only a basic education - read, write, and do simple arithmetic –encounter a vast range of opportunities to make a life for themselves and their families – a level of possibilities unprecedented in all previous human history. The success of enterprises and societies becomes driven by efforts that can no longer be usefully obtained by main force, by standing over people with a whip. It is a new reality that has reshaped the world – an emergent process that has created wealth on an altogether staggering scale.   Societies have been, and are, transforming themselves in accommodation. As noted above, a strong flow of educated creativity will arise from populations secure in self governance, rich in opportunity for innovation and its implementation, and able to realize a satisfactory life for all: The New Paradigm.     Historically, that’s our story! The Grand Narrative (of sorts). Two pulses and two periods of adjustment, the first seemingly so far distant that we are generally only vaguely aware of it; until, of course, we reflect on the fate of Native Americans. The second pulse comes only three hundred years ago, with the rooting and exfoliation of Newton’s idea. The putative Man from Mars, looking back on the human story, would see - I believe well above all  - these two things: our transition to Civilizational societies, and the advent of modern science and technology. In between: periods of adjustment, and an exploration of possibilities within a general given, gradually enriching a matrix from which the next pulse might come.   From this it becomes apparent that we are currently in the midst of a period of profound worldwide re-adjustment - a perilous passage. Critically, it suggests a stance with which to approach things: Mutually undergoing a change as vast and sweeping as any we have ever encountered, we need less to confront one another as to work together to meet the common difficulties of the passage. We are all in it together, and such intelligence as we can muster, and such wisdom as we can achieve become our greatest necessities.   Top down, authoritarian, governance becomes progressively less and less viable because it does not foster, and cannot secure over time the work by which the modern world prospers. Savagely exploitative economic relationships cannot be supported over time because they will alienate, even cripple, those whose genuine creative engagement is required by the very nature of the work to be accomplished.   Twin intertwining threads: the active committed intelligence of individuals engaged in a technologically advancing marketplace, and the commitment of individuals secure in self governance to their society, define the basis for prosperity in this “second phase” of Civilizational societies.   The traditional military/police coercive powers are rendered helpless against even the first, industrial enterprise/assembly line, phases of this. Coercive power can assert control over modern industrial enterprises, but cannot run them day to day. The critical labor which runs a modern economy lies with its entrepreneurial elite. Entrepreneurs are skilled in unique ways, and are not infinitely replaceable. They are a new presence which can neither be compelled nor readily co-opted by the old elites.  But the entrepreneurs themselves cannot hold power indefinitely against their need for increasingly educated and motivated employees. This does not mean that power inevitably devolves such that the individual realizes the benefits of his or her real position in the scheme. Indeed, grave, often explosive, instabilities result from exactly that failure. In the end, however, those benefits must be realized, or the enterprise will break down, or fail competitively against those in which benefits and power are reasonably aligned, and which reap the continuing rewards of effective commitment.     Realize that we confront something new. The history we might search for insight remains largely the history of a now dying paradigm; one in which coercive power alone could be, and most often was, decisive – a paradigm attuned to, and successful in, an earlier reality.    Lincoln: “the dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. We must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves.”   A world that prospers by the educated creativity of its people may sound quite promising, and, in the main, it has proven so; but the story of the past three hundred years has hardly been a walk to the paradise garden. The West, the first beneficiary of modernity, was also its first victim: the “satanic mills”, wars, revolutions and turmoil of the past two hundred plus years testify to enormous disruptions. All around the world societies coming to modernity experience a revolutionary change in their material circumstances, and, at the same time, feel a gravitational pull towards a radically new societal paradigm. It is all an invitation to upheaval and uncertainty, and we have had it: the period adjustment to a great transformative pulse.   The steadily increasing dependence of modern societies on the freely given talents and abilities of their people is inexorable, and yet the benefits native to that dependence are only fitfully realized. Turmoil ensues. And it is not simply a matter of resistance by the elites being displaced. For the people themselves, it is a new world, and they have to learn how to be comfortable in it, to feel secure in it. The possibilities for exploitation by narrow and particular interests within societies, and for dangerous and widely held misunderstandings by the broad base towards which power is moving, are great. The whole of the dark history of the 20th century might be understood to lie beneath the dark wing of that last sentence.   Our primary task becomes managing the passage to a new paradigm - for to make the passage seems inevitable, barring such catastrophe as, unfortunately, modernity itself makes it all too easy to envision. Tribal societies could not, did not, and perhaps their people ultimately did not wish to, decline the transit to a new reality. Today’s people face a similar problem with regard a transition they can clearly see possesses great capacities for a better life, but which also immerses them in a new and profoundly different world, with which they have had, at best, limited experience. With the best will in the world, whatever those who have substantially made the passage, America, Western Europe, Japan and the Pacific Rim, may attempt (and we must make the attempt) will be inseparable from the power of the modern world to both enthrall and disrupt. A volatile blend of envy, frustration and resentment is both inevitable and understandable. Our universal charge becomes finding mutually constructive outcomes.   The very nature of modernity opens vast possibilities for improvement in the material well-being of all peoples everywhere, but it also enables conflict no longer with sticks and stones and blades, but with nuclear tipped missiles and vials of contagion. This prodigality of outcomes, both constructive and destructive, becomes possibly the essential point. Recourse to violence begins to take on the aspect of striking matches in a dynamite factory, and peace becomes mutually beneficial for all, including parties to previously intractable conflicts.  Make peace and you can move on, prospering by the educated creativity of your people.   It seems obvious, to me at least, that over the next one hundred years or so the human race will make such choices as will define our future for the next several hundred years, or perhaps even our entire fate as a species - in so far as that is ours to determine. We can either chose a path of comity and cooperation, of peaceful resolutions to tensions, opening the way to a full flowering of our (now demonstrably) enormous constructive and creative powers. Or we may choose a path of persistent and pervasive contention, lashed to the wheel of conflict, trapped in the exchange of murderous stroke and counterstroke, and opening ourselves to all the impending disasters.   I believe in people, in both their ability and desire to make wise and constructive choices. But this is rendered likely only in a world at peace. Threatened, we too easily become creatures of our fears and not our hopes.   This transformation can work to beneficent ends, but the passage is hazardous. It is for us, now, rather to facilitate that passage, to seek its realization with ever diminishing pain. To do all we may to assure emergence of what can be a far richer and more hopeful world than any we have known. It would be my hope that, from the perspective herein, we come to engage this process consistently, creatively, compassionately.  We have seldom had a greater or more urgent task, or more golden an opportunity. 11:00:56 AM    comment []

The Cognitive Age   I came  upon a line of thinking about ten years ago.[See above 'Science and Moderity' (and below, at the bottom of this site)].     The following is a passage from a David Brooks New York Times Op-Ed ‘The Cognitive Age’ which appeared May 2, 2008: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/02/opinion/02brooks.html?ei=5087&;em=&en=1628bc39165590dc&ex=1209960000&pagewanted=print     “The chief force reshaping manufacturing is technological change (hastened by competition with other companies in Canada, Germany or down the street). . . . The central process driving this is not globalization. It’s the skills revolution. We’re moving into a more demanding cognitive age. In order to thrive, people are compelled to become better at absorbing, processing and combining information. This is happening in localized and globalized sectors, and it would be happening even if you tore up every free trade deal ever inked. . . . . The globalization paradigm emphasizes the fact that information can now travel 15,000 miles in an instant. But the most important part of information’s journey is the last few inches — the space between a person’s eyes or ears and the various regions of the brain. Does the individual have the capacity to understand the information? Does he or she have the training to exploit it? Are there cultural assumptions that distort the way it is perceived? . . . The globalization paradigm leads people to see economic development as a form of foreign policy, as a grand competition between nations and civilizations. . . . .  But the cognitive age paradigm emphasizes psychology, culture and pedagogy — the specific processes that foster learning. It emphasizes that different societies are being stressed in similar ways by increased demands on human capital. If you understand that you are living at the beginning of a cognitive age, you’re focusing on the real source of prosperity and understand that your anxiety is not being caused by a foreigner.”   The Cognitive Age    IN OTHER WORDS: A world that prospers by the educated creativity of its people.   Its taken ten years, but people are getting there. I saw a Charlie Rose interview last  night with  Fareed Zakaria on his new book: 'The Post-American World' which seems to enfold the same consciousness.   I have never taken to my particular formulation of the idea. But calling it the Cognitive Age doesn't quite hack it for me either. . . A little too remote. How about a world that prospers by Cognitive Creativity, (or the Cognitive Creativity of its people.)?   A world that prospers no longer by the strength of our backs and sweat of our brow, but by the Cognitive Creativity of its people.   Kind of like it!       10:58:28 AM    comment []

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Has Jacob Weisberg Discovered the Rosetta Stone for the Iraq War? In ‘The Bush Tragedy’ Weisberg propounds a logically coherent, if altogether chilling, unfolding of the Iraq War story. At its center is a literally paranoid Dick Cheney and a coterie of acolytes drunk on the same Kool Aid. They believed all that WMD, operational Al Qaeda contacts, we will be greeted as liberators stuff, and, sealed away in their own world, would entertain only confirmatory evidence, dismissing anything else pretty nearly apriori. Consideration of alternative courses of action were likewise dismissed in cavalier fashion. Add to that, with an America threatened by Acts of War, Cheney’s well documented fixation with the ‘Unitary Executive’, wherein the Constitution is understood to devolve all power and prerogatives relating to the President’s war authority upon the executive branch without exception, up to and including control of any and all flows of information. Finally, into the mix falls a psychologically flawed President, without a capacity to critically reflect upon either himself or the world around him, and a Dick Cheney who understands just how to exploit the situation.   It is almost as if three hermetic seals fall into place. The Unitary Executive, which seals the White House from all examination - let alone the normal checks and balances; an undying Hobbesian Cold War ideological intoxication holding sway inside the bubble, and a critically limited President, rendered psychologically susceptible to certain possibilities which open in the post 9/11 world, folded under the wing of a man who understands the situation and is willing and able to exploit it. 9:00:40 PM    comment []

Change Election in Danger of Being Hijacked For a long time, more or less two thirds of the American people have indicated they believe the country is on the wrong course and needs to change direction. Nearly every poll has highlighted change as the electorate's principle concern. For the matter to now begin to turn on the question of whether or not we might elect a woman or a black man President betrays this well expressed concern, and the country's interests. No one proposes that electing a black man will solve the problems of the economy, the Iraq War, and the leadership role America should pursue in the world after 9/11 - let alone the finding the right direction for the country. Nor is anyone proposing electing a woman President would accomplish those ends. Electing some particular woman, or some particular black man, perhaps, but that is another question. So who is skewing the matter in the direction of race and gender? Who would benefit? Clearly the Republicans. A choice between a woman and John McCain, or between a black man and John McCain drains attention away from the real issues of concern. You can bet, in many and various ways, the right wing machine will echo with increasing force these attempts to reorient the debate. And of course our Main Stream Media will be all too easily suckered into aiding and abetting this ‘game’, not least because it fits in so readily with their flogging of the horse race aspect of elections. In 1960 Kennedy famously offered: I am not the Catholic candidate for President, I am a candidate for President who happens to be Catholic. So now Hillary Clinton is not the woman candidate for President of the United States, but a candidate for President of the United States who happens to be a woman, and Barack Obama is not the black candidate for President, but a candidate for President who happens to be black To turn the debate on the point of race or gender turns it away from the question of the where the country is going and how it is to get there. The REAL concern of the electorate at this moment.   8:57:34 PM    comment []

The Numbers     For those opposed to Bush et al Tom Oliphant has written a wonderful book: Utter Incompetents. Hardly a rhetorical flamer, it is far more full of light than heat. Page after page after page Oliphant just lays out the ‘record’, and allows the evidence to accumulate. For the anti-Bushie, dabble in it as you will [and you will!], it is like catnip.   Be that as it may, at the books conclusion, Oliphant lays out a series of simple numbers that devastate. I will return to these in a moment, but, as the book – of necessity - ends with the status of things in 2007, consider the interview with Chuck Hagel conducted by Charlie Rose March 28, 2008:   http://www.charlierose.com/shows/2008/03/28/2/a-conversation-with-senator-chuck-hagel   It is as ‘up to date’ as possible, but not yet available as either video or transcript – one assumes it will be shortly. Hagel clearly seconds many of Oliphant’s points and makes reference to a new poll that shows 81%[!!!] of the country believes we are on the wrong course.   And so back to those numbers.   [It would be nice if I could ‘cut and paste’, but I will have to enter text by hand, and apologize for any ‘typos’ in advance – note that Oliphant’s numbers are matter of public record, being nothing more than poll data, which, in the aggregate, define a truly stunning reality]   From pages 271 – 272 ‘Utter Incompetents’ 2007 by Thomas Oliphant, Thomas Dunne Books, St Martins Press 2007:   "President Bush’s Polls did more than just go poof.   As his days dwindle down to precious few, his handling of  the presidency has cost him what once were his most appealing qualities – and, in a way the foundations of his standing as president.   In the Washington Post/ABC News surveys early in his administration most people (including most people who disagreed with him)on major issues) considered Bush honest and trustworthy, by 63 to 34 per cent in the last survey before the 9/11 attacks. In January of 2007 the result was 57 – 40 percent negative.   Another part of his foundation was a once wide spread felling that the outwardly affable Bush understands ordinary Americans and their problems. That was the view by 61 – 37 percent margin in survey in early 2003, shortly after the terrorist attacks. By 2007, the result was67 to 32 percent negative.   Americans also once saw strength in him. Just before the 9/11 atttacks sent those ratings into the stratosphere, Bush was seen as strong national leader by a 55 – 43 percent margin. In early 2007, the result was negative by almost the reverse margin, 54 to 45 percent.   Above all Americans had long considered Bush the kind of person to be trusts in a crisis. That was the view by 60 to 37 percent in the late summer of 2001.  Nearly six years later, the verdict was 56 to 43 per cent negative. One important reason for the harsh judgment was an overwhelming view of Bush as stubborn and unresponsive. By 63 to 36 percent, the American public declared him  unwilling to listen to different points of view."   Now just THINK about this, in an era of great and grave consequence, by significant and consistent margins,  the American people believe the President of the United States is untrustworthy, does not understand them, is stubborn, unresponsive and unwilling to listen to different points of view, is NOT a strong leader, and NOT to be trusted in a crisis.   What conceivably could be more damning! Or Chilling! And not least as it defines the trashing of possibly the greatest Presidential asset of them all: the bully pulpit.   81%[!!!] of the country believes we are on the wrong course. 8:52:52 PM    comment []

Matrices     Matrix mathematics is one of the most powerful tools employed in modern science. A matrix is envisioned as an array of elements to be brought to bear (more of less simultaneously) on phenomena.  If the elements of the matrix are well chosen and weighted, the ‘operation’ of the matrix on the phenomena in question will produce a prediction which matches experimental observation. The virtue of the conceptualism is that it opens a way to assessment of complex interacting systems in which factors can in act  simultaneously – or nearly so - in various directions.   The possible usefulness of such an approach to historical and geopolitical matters is pretty nearly intuitive, since such matters are all too often understood to be complex realities in which competing elements, inclining one way and another, act more or less simultaneously to influence the evolution of events. OF COURSE no predictions made in tangled human and societal matters can, or should be proposed to, approach anything like mathematical rigor.   Nevertheless, I will try to take the approach ‘out for a spin’ with reference to the Iraq War. (The ‘test’ will be does application of the matrix lead logically to the historical observation.)   To begin with, there were too many ways the war could go too far wrong, and too few it could go as right as we would need have it go once we began it. Specifically we would need to have a stable, democratic, pluralistic, prosperous Iraq within a time frame effective in challenging the appeal of radical Islam within the Arab/Muslim world. This was more than a little like saying we were going to run the table five straight times in Vegas. While the all too many elements which might act against success  could stand alone, as well as operate  in concert, the brighter possibilities, which clearly appeared less probable, needed to come off in concert, lowering the probability for success still further. In short the ‘matrix’ out of which the Iraq War would evolve was heavily dominated by elements arguing against its success. The one positive element in the matrix that seemed like a ‘sure thing’, was a quick and easy victory by the American military.- and that indeed happened.  For about 10 minutes  we were, in fact, greeted as liberators – and 10 minutes was all it was ever likely to be – after that it became: ‘When are you leaving?   In prospect: It was a dumb war!   You might consult ‘Choices’ posted to my blog site in October 2002    Now let us consider the ‘purple finger’ elections of January 2005. An immense success, the Bushies proclaimed them, and worked them assiduously for every rose colored glasses, count our chickens before they are hatched advantage they could yield. Yet it was apparent from the beginning that those elections were set up to produce an avatar of secular division: Vote for me, I’m Shia! Vote for me, I’m Sunni! Vote for me I’m Kurd! In the event the Sunnis declined to participate, exacerbating the rigorously sectarian outcome. Add to this the bed rock reality that a government with, of necessity, no record, would in a short time, need to find enough young men willing to fight for die for a unified Iraq which the government itself in no way embodied. The body of young men from whom such force might be fashioned, would be counter posing what was a vision of  an Iraq little more that a faint glimmer on a far too distant horizon, with their far more immediate – and ‘purple finger’ affirmed - loyalties to family, tribe, and above all, their identities as Sunni, Shia and Kurd. Here we had a matrix crushingly dominated by elements whose operation predicted EXACTLY the reality which evolved from January 2005 forward. [Laid out in three pieces posted to my blog site January 30, 2005.]   Finally, let’s consider The Surge.   I proposed recently in a post to OpenDemocracy: 'The Surge is Working': Flip Side on March 1, 2008, that there were likely aspects (elements in a matrix) to be added to the simplistic ones the administration was carefully (as ever) singling out to its advantage. My principle citation in the post was an article by a one Chris Hedges, some of whose assertions were not ‘common knowledge’ at the time, but which have been widely acknowledged since. Listening to the administration, you would not have gleaned, for example, that we had been systematically paying the Sunnis fighting to suppress their former foreign Jihadi allies. Hedges said we had  . . . . and we had. It appears to be emerging that the more complex matrix I supposed is, in fact, responsible for how things are evolving now.  That matrix inclines rather strongly towards increased trouble, not ‘success’, let alone ‘winning’  For a broader consideration of elements in play you might consult ‘The Insurgency’ at my blog site: http://blogs.salon.com/0001185/   FINALLY,  I emphasize this is a conceptual approach. It can only yield useful results if the matrix devised is as intellectually rigorous as the one who proposes it can manage. It will be of no use to put together elements after one’s own desires, ignoring other possibilities, or short changing or over emphasizing the weight of some elements as opposed to others. Perhaps the best ‘rule of thumb’ would be that suggested by Malcolm Gladwell’s ‘Blink’. Gather as much evidence and experience as you can, let it stew, and wait for the moment when things snap into focus. In the end, given the complexities involved in human societies, there is no substitute for informed intuition. We can strive to cultivate that, and, in so doing, witness well for democracy in our own time – perhaps the most any generation of Americans can count on the opportunity to contribute.   “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” 8:48:59 PM    comment []

‘The Surge Is Working’: Flip Side   ‘The surge is working’ appears to be one more ‘rose colored glasses', ‘count your chickens before they’re hatched’ huckstered to us by the administration, its right wing coterie and John McCain(!) and is all too likely to be naïve, and dangerously so.   In this light, please consider:   http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080225_the_calm_before_the_conflagration from Chris Hedges.   It sets out exactly what I suspect - and have sketched below in 'The Insurgency', to be the nature of a likely and significant reality lurking beneath the blue skies, pretty balloons, straight on to morning, we’re winning in Iraq screed the right wing echo chamber, and John McCain(!) have been urging so insistently upon us.   Now I don’t propose this confirms I have been right, but it strongly suggests my caution on the dangerous naïveté we may be courting WAS correct.   I do not endorse all that Hedges proposes, but if his numbers are anywhere near correct, and Petraeus is unaware of them, it would betoken a failure of epic proportions. If he is aware of them – and he has not, and neither he nor the administration has as yet – communicated to the American people the danger they portend, it would be an almost equal failure [there IS another word I could select].   One number Hedges cites is:   "The Sunni Arabs, who make up about 40 percent of Iraq’s population, held most positions of power under Saddam Hussein."   This flies in the face of the almost universal understanding that the breakdown is 20 % Sunni, 20%  Kurd, and 60% Shia. However, it of real consequence that the Sunnis (or more particularly the broad mass of the Sunni population) believed they constituted better than 50% of the population of Iraq. The import being that the armies of young men they are amassing will believe that ,and will be further encouraged to fight thereby. Trouble!   Another place where I would take exception to Hedges:   "The U.S. doled out funds and weapons to tribal groups in Afghanistan to buy their loyalty, but when the payments and weapons shipments ceased, the tribal groups headed back into the embrace of the Taliban."   No, they went back to their ages old internecine struggle for power and pelf, whose dysfunctions initially opened the door to the Taliban.   In closing, it should be noted how this definitively undercuts John McCain’s utterly simplistic and oft repeated, idea that Iraq will fall into the hands of Al Qaeda if we ‘fail’ in Iraq. How does anyone, observing armies of well armed Sunni, Shia and Kurd propose they will give up their country and its oil wealth to a small foreign collection of fanatics who are of no use to any of them. It is lunacy!     8:43:17 PM    comment []

Saturday, March 01, 2008

Change      This has been called a ‘Change’ election.   One problem with calling for change is crystallized in Hillary’s sarcastic moment:   www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/02/24/hillary-clinton-mocks-bar_n_88194.html - 147k -   Any reply to this should encompass:   Change, and especially great change, is difficult because it will almost certainly be opposed, and vigorously opposed.   We all understand this.   But change is difficult not only because it will be opposed, but because change itself is difficult. Even for those who believe passionately in it. For it requires us to think new thoughts, and to break new ground, and to place ourselves in unfamiliar places.   In this moment the American people appear to believe deeply that we need change, and someone who calls us to this moment by reminding us that we have done this before, by encouraging in us the confidence we can succeed, by calling us to once again become creatures of our hopes and not our fears is performing an inestimable service.   But, in a democracy, it is not the ‘leader’ alone who is critical; it is, it must be, ultimately, we ourselves who matter. It will almost certainly be from the wealth of our thoughts and talents and abilities that we will discover what is needed, and then find the will and the wisdom to implement it.   That is Obama’s message in this moment.   In the whole of his writing, indeed in the whole of the American cannon, Lincoln’s message to Congress 1862 is perhaps the single document most pregnant with meaning for the American Experiment. Its conclusion specifically addresses change and its difficulties:  . .The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. . . . ‘we must think anew and act  anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country  . . . .  We - even we here - hold the power and bear the responsibility. 8:53:15 PM    comment []

Irrationality/Passion Digby is a well known, and justly celebrated, blogger. Her take off point for ‘ressentimental-journey-part-one  specifically cites a Washington Post  Op-Ed by Rick Pearlstein. In order to place in context what I write here as Irrationality/Passion the links are provided.   http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/01/AR2008020102827_pf.html   http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/ressentimental-journey-part-one   http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/ressentimental-journey-part-deux What is the basis for the PASSION of today’s right? The passions that preceded the Civil War, were, and are, all too understandable. A whole way of life was based on keeping one race of human beings as chattel slaves to another. To the force of an overwhelming and defining economic interest were added the ancient division of tribe and, in turn, an effectively a more elemental division of race. (1) The Civil War was hardly an unexpected response to a wrackingly difficult situation. Your point here, however, is a descent into sheer irrationality as a component of the slide towards war.  _________________________________________________________________ (1)Understand both those latter divisions are artificial, essentially phantoms. But it doesn’t matter. Ethnicity and race are fundamental identifiers, and we NEED to identify. We are social creatures and cooperate together in the business of life.  Some basis for identification will be sought, and race (although a later genetic artifact) is literally an all too obvious one. Our first identifier, however, was ethnicity – the tribe - and cooperativity was organized around the ‘wisdom of the ancestors’, and the laws and customs of the tribe. An injunction to be part of a ‘tribe’ must be understood to lie very, very deep. _________________________________________________________________   The Americans of the antebellum south were in denial over the simple reality that the logic of the Declaration, which they (rightly) reverenced, was in direct contradiction to a harsh reality they could not separate themselves from - separate emotionally psychologically, economically or practically. At the same time, their opponents in the north were driving forward with little or no acknowledgement of the difficulties redress of what was a monstrous injustice would certainly entail for the both the white and black populations of the south. That the situation held great difficulty was the reason it was side stepped by our founders. As things evolved (THE COTTON GIN!) the matter grew steadily more intractable, and eventually broke beyond what has, otherwise, proven to be great powers of political reconciliation. One sign, and in the event, one driver of the process, was the passion of a group that came to be known as the ‘fire eaters’. In the instance of the American Civil War, it is all too understandable. I must confess to some bemusement with Perlstein’s characterization of the Great Depression as a period of great polarization. “Tens of millions of Americans hated tens of millions of other Americans, sometimes murderously so.” Huh? I will concede the Veteran’s March on Washington fairly early on, but as the misery become pervasive we were ‘all in this together’, ‘there but for the grace of God go I’. No, later in the Great Depression the ‘other tribe’ were the Banker Potters of this world; the rest of us were Jimmy Stewart. Let’s step back for a moment. I hold the essential factor behind that particular complex of things to which we apply the label ‘fascist’ to be protection of the ‘sacred tradition’, i.e. what holds us together against the world, what under girds the cooperativity trough we function and survive. The fundamental impulse behind that complex of things one might term ‘revolutionary’ (Political Liberal/Libertarian), socio-economic(Marxist) is a simple truth that no society that requires a broad consensus can function indefinitely against the perception that it is substantially unfair. The crisis of the modern world lies in the fact that by far the most economically productive societies do indeed require exactly that broad consensus. Curiously, in the modern world to fail to be at least open to change fails what is an essentially (even profoundly) communitarian need, a NEED for a fair society. Nevertheless, REVOLUTION is in air.  Revolution is in the air, while most of the world is still enmeshed in traditional tribal or top down authoritarian structures of governance. Structures with little, if any, history of venting, let alone accommodating, revolutionary pressures.  We got Trouble right here in River City! Change is coming; it is even understood to be needed, either because it represents a reassertion of fairness, of simple justice, or  because it is seen as a practical necessity, but change will disrupt the fabric of stability that ‘holds us together against the world’, it threatens what ‘under girds the cooperativity through which we function and survive’. The Conservative case is that Liberals will smash everything to produce change, with too little attention the consequences that change may entail, and with little or no regard for who gets hurt.  The Liberal case is that Conservatism stands in the way of NEEDED change, helping to perpetuate injustice and inequity. Are those sufficient causes for passion either way? I think so! It is the passion of today’s right that is a puzzle. Consider, nearly anyone in the history of this planet would have given their eye teeth to have been a part of the American reality over the past 75  years. Yet incontestably there is a significant portion of Americans who seem to believe they are on the verge of being engulfed by a liberal hell hole. Might irrationality (on either the liberal or conservative side) emerge from some unacknowledged dissonance in the minds of the parties to that irrationality. As observed above, the Americans of the antebellum south were in denial over the  fundamental contradiction of our founding - caught ever more deeply in a reality they could not separate themselves from, and could not, would not, resolve. The thesis would be that strains were generated leading to the irrational extremes and attendant passions of the ‘fire eaters’ – which Lincoln remarked  - and eventually gave way to a commitment to Civil War. Conversely, the irrationality of the ‘fire eaters’ had a precedent incarnation in the Abolitionist movement. Although morally right, all too often, and all too insistently, abolitionists appeared to think they had only to pronounce their anathema, and all would, and should fall before them. The irrationality of this position was brushed aside by the abolitionists, but noted by large majorities of Americans in the north.  ‘Bloody Kansas’ and, ultimately, John Brown, became  passionate irrationality incarnate. We struggled though a long confrontation with this matter from the Compromise of 1820, to the Compromise of 1850, and the Kansas/Nebraska Act of 1854. The center piece of the latter was the doctrine of popular sovereignty, the cognitive dissonances of which aroused Lincoln, and led to his increasing emergence on the national scene. Ultimately we failed the test of finding useful resolutions, and the bloodiest war in our history was the result.. So then, what are the mind sets of today’s Americans that can give rise to unacknowledged contradictions?  I have proposed there is one built into the liberal agenda by the rapidity of change in the modern world, a consistent need for a broad societal consensus, and a concomitant need for, at least, peaceful revolutions. But historically, barring the real excesses of Vietnam era emotional flights, peaceful resolutions are what American liberals have sought, and largely proven willing to work through, for last the last 75 years. The lineaments of today’s Conservative agenda are: (1) Get the government out of the economy – indeed out of as much of the economic aspects of our lives as can be accomplished. In theory, this maximizes the ‘freedom’ to innovate, and the creation of new enterprises.); and (2) Protect (Champion!) the ‘sacred traditions’ that promote stability and order in all other things. The modern Conservative movement is, arguably, schizophrenic. Conservatives exalt the freedom of the individual to innovate (economically!), and the traditions of stability that are threatened by innovation, and they do not address that contradiction. They want to ‘buccaneer’ economically, overturning or ignoring all sorts of social bonds, and then enact fits of allegiance over ‘other’ bases for social cohesion in defense the ‘sacred tradition’  One can, of course, be far more cynical. Propose it is all a pose on the part of the ‘buccaneers’ in which they exploit the need of all people to defend the ‘sacred tradition’, while selectively (and effectively!) pursuing their ‘buccaneering’. But a substantial component of self delusion is all that would be needed to explain PASSION.  Do we believe Grover Norquist really buys into it all? While the Grover Norquists of this world may not be truly convinced zealots, the rank and file Conservatives, the Rush Limbaugh crowd, have been enthusiastically lobbied to value ‘freedom’ in economic matters, and to resist the destabilizations of ‘freedom’, of change, in all other matters. Liberals are cast as feckless enemies of the principles and traditions we hold most deeply, and which define and keep us together as working societies: in the name of ‘justice’ and ‘fairness’ they would overturn it all, and the consequences be damned. With respect to today’s conservatives, the thesis would be that the strain of exalting destabilizing ‘economic’ freedom, while being persuaded to a fierce defense of all other bases of stabilization, ignites the irrationalities cited by Pearlstein, and by Digby in Ressentiment. Closed to resolution, matters are open all to readily to passion.   One more reflection: Ultimately, a consideration of the history of the last few hundred years sees all too many examples of near colossal irrationality. Most of these can be associated with such cognitive dissonances as are proposed above, acting at least as accelerants toward upheaval. The depth and extent of difficulty to which these cognitive dissonances incline, the extremes such irrationalities contribute to, MUST not be ignored. The liberal inclination towards revolution provides an active, participatory basis for being in the world. From Lenin and Mao to Pol Pot, we all know the worst to which that can lead. The quintessential conservative mind set ‘preserve the sacred tradition’ leads to a kind of semi-permanent defensive crouch. Is it all too surprising to find that, from time to time, there appears an urge to stand up and strike back? When, as in the 1930’s, it extended to an aggressive ‘defense’ beyond the boarders of the sacred traditions’ polity, we were visited by the Fascist nightmare. The following considers one irrationality we are confronted with at the moment: For the moment, the threat of ‘terrorism’ lies with its most immediate and pressing incarnation through radical Islam. Ultimately this can only be dealt with by a great, continuing cooperative effort on the part of the whole world, but most especially the developed world. Its resources, moral, intellectual, economic, and military are overwhelming. There is no way radical Islam can hope bring these societies down. Only the developed world itself can bestow such power upon a mere faction, by making repeated poor, foolish, and even catastrophic choices. That faction is lethal to the very people they seek to enlist and enflame – and those people know it. Radical Islam has nothing to offer but pyrotechnic nihilism and stagnation in life closed to all of the opportunities that open to people in the modern world. The societies of the developed world enjoy the free and deep commitment of the vast majority of their people, people of enormous cultivated talents and abilities. Does any one propose that such societies, with such vast resources, both human and material, will simply fold their tents and go away when challenged? Anyone who does propose it – and it is a core Neocon propaganda fixation - should be made to defend it.   8:49:04 PM    comment []

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Right On Day 1     Twice on Iraq Barack Obama has summed up things with a simple precise phrase.   Before the war he said he was not opposed all wars, he was opposed to dumb wars. It drew our attention to the core of the matter. What made this war, at this time, in this way THE way to proceed after 9/11, and against Islamic Radicalism.   The wisdom to act is not wisdom in the actions chosen.   With respect to where we are now, Obama has said we need to be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in. Again right to the heart of the matter. We cannot leave Iraq spiral down into a catastrophic failed state.   Success in leaving behind an even tenuously stable state is the only ‘victory’ we can achieve now. Osama bin Laden has already won the Iraq round in our confrontation with Radical Islam The relative appeal of the jihadist agenda has grown in the Arab/Muslim world since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.   The debate isn’t over whether to achieve a stable Iraq, it is over how best to do it.   Framing the debate around the level of American troops in Iraq at some given time is something the administration’s supporters are all too eager to do. The administration’s critics understand we have long needed to significantly widen an essentially military commitment to meaningfully include political, economic and diplomatic initiatives. Senator Obama has indicated he means to do just that. In the process, applying pressure on Iraq’s factions to politically reconcile by drawing down our troop levels is one legitimate avenue to be explored.   But the bottom line remains as Obama has framed it: we need to be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in.   Two ‘spot on’ insights,  ‘spot on’ in their placing in time as well.   And we can elect this guy President!   Do we want to go with someone who has been so sharply and unerringly right, or someone who saw less clearly (Hillary Clinton), or with little clarity at all, who has more or less been in the corner of an administration that has been virtually without any clarity at all: John McCain.   Why should we now have confidence in the judgment going forward of a John McCain? Why should we apriori accord him credibility, and deny it to Barack Obama (on the basis of  ‘experience’ no less!), when Obama’s clear and timely insights have been so pointedly right? If Obama has chosen (and he is far from alone in this) to champion a far broader and encompassing  reconstruction of our effort in the confrontation with Radical Islam, why should we not accord what he proposes respect and careful consideration.   Most (all?) of what we have heard from McCain emphasizes an essentially military engagement – albeit one which now encompasses a broad counter insurgency strategy – as opposed to merely more troops on the ground, or what McCain seemed to be proposing for most of  time he was fitfully in opposition to Bush’s course in Iraq.   In 2004, McCain had a real opportunity to change the administration’s course. Instead he backed Bush wholeheartedly while still entertaining, he would have us believe, a conviction things were seriously wrong with Bush’s efforts. Does anyone really propose McCain believed his Senate colleague, John Kerry, who had elected to go to war for his country in Vietnam, served, was wounded, and decorated for his service, would ‘cut and run’ in a matter so clearly of great consequence? Does anyone believe McCain could have seen so great a gulf between the two, that he had no choice but to uncritically support, and not substantively challenge, Bush on policies McCain believed were so very wrong? He might have had a real effect, but chose not to act. Wisdom? Judgment?  Experience?   Right on Day 1?   With Barack Obama, we have substantive evidence that, in the moment itself, there is reason to have confidence that he will be: Right on Day 1. 5:36:27 PM    comment []