This weekend I went downstate to my mother's family reunion. Since S is gone, I got to share a bed with my mom, a little bitty bed, at my aunt's house. It meant, of course, that I didn't get much sleep and the little sleep I did get was, well, less than perfect.

On Friday night I had a dream that I've had several times since S left. It comes when I've not talked to him for several days or heard from him by email. It's about the one day he comes home (and in the dream it is only one day -- he's supposed to go back the next). We're in a crowd of people and I want to be close to him so I'm snuggling up to him, resting my head on his shoulder. I'm desperate to touch him, know that he's there next to me. But instead he wants to go find his friends and sort of pushes me away. He doesn't want to spend time with me even though this is the one day out of the year when we can see each other. I leave and join my friends, distraught. One asks me if we're getting a divorce. I say he didn't say that, but probably since he doesn't want to be with me. That's when I wake up.

My anxiety over this is palpable sometimes, as real as it is irrational. I think it comes from my worry that we will grow so far apart this year that we'll have nothing to say to each other, and that he'll no longer need me and find more joy out of the military and his friends than our relationship.

I know. It doesn't make sense.

On Saturday I checked my email and I had a message from S. I told him about the dream, about how awful it was to go to a family reunion without him, to see so many kids running around when we have none of our own though we've wanted to grow our family for two years now. When I checked my messages again the next morning he'd already written me back. Turns out he has the same nightmare as me, except that I'm the one that doesn't want him. Funny; I felt relieved just knowing he's going through the same thing.

I know we'll make it through this. We have a strong relationship. But I woke up from that nightmare mad at him for putting me in this situation, for making me worry. I woke up resentful. I got over it when I got that email. He's worth this trouble, I know it. Our relationship is worth it too.

I have so much to write about and so much to catch up on, including the post about Wole Soyinka. I was gone all last weekend, which turned out to be okay because the Salon blog server was down so I wouldn't have been able to post anything anyway. So this is the first of several posts I'll put up today. As usual, they're too long, too windy. Sorry!

Michael Ignatieff's piece in yesterday's New York Times Magazine made me so angry I stayed up late on Saturday night to respond to it (it was available on the web on Saturday). If you didn't read it, maybe my post will save you the aggravation.

Since Ignatieff broke his argument into sections, I'll respond to them in his order. The article is almost laughable; it is filled with the same platitudinal nonsense the neocons spout in defense of the Iraq war since they have no facts to back up their assertions. Why bother with reality and facts when you can rely on political mantras and Karl Rove talking points? And lucky for Ignatieff, as a professor at Harvard, he's given the opportunity to share his opinions in the newspaper of record. If we were all so lucky...

I. In the first section, Ignatieff asserts that Jefferson was a believer in what I'll call "democracy imperialism," and that Jefferson believed that it is up to us, as the world's premiere democratic nation, to spread democracy and "freedom" across the world. Ignatieff backs up this assertion by quoting from Jefferson's last letter. You can read the entire letter here on the Library of Congress' website. Here's the quote from the letter that Ignatieff cites (in part -- he doesn't quote the entire sentence, though I have):


Somehow Ignatieff takes from this that Jefferson wanted America to invade sovereign countries and impose our will on them. I find this odd since clearly Jefferson says that our democracy is a "signal" that will arouse men around the world to see their own right to self-determination, therefore inspiring them to do as we had done years before and fight for their own independence. Nowhere in the letter does Jefferson say that America needed to create a democratic empire stretched across the world.

(I was a good kid in high school, so much so that S has always made fun of me. I didn't even ditch on Senior Ditch Day! I know. I got over in college, believe me! So I actually went to American History class and I don't remember Jefferson being an imperialist at all. I'm not a professor at Harvard like Ignatieff, so maybe I'm wrong. If I am, please tell me so I can spend the rest of my days free from this ignorance. Send me links to any sites that prove Jefferson was an imperialist. Please!!)

In the rest of section I Ignatieff makes the case for the Iraq war and says that if we "succeed" (I guess in making Iraq a place of "freedom and democracy," though Ignatieff doesn't define either for us) then Bush "will be remembered as a plain-speaking visionary," and if not, then Iraq will be his Vietnam (which later in the essay he says we lost only because Americans loss their appetite for seeing their sons killed -- it had nothing to do with policy. Who knew?!). He tries to make himself seem "balanced" by criticizing our use of torture and the administration's paultry democracy-promoting budget, but no worries, in the next sections he reveals himself fully and we see that those were probably paragraphs his editors insisted on so they wouldn't feel the complete wrath of the Times' readership. Onward!

II. In this section, Ignatieff asserts that Bush believes what he said in his second ignaugural address, that ''America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one," and that ''[s]ixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe -- because in the long run stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty.''

Already Ignatieff lost me. Just because Bush said this doesn't mean he believes it. Given all of the lies he and his adminsitration have told the past five years, it's easier to assert that if he says it then he definitely DOESN'T mean it or believe it. They are masters of reverse psychology. If it is more pollution you want, then you get the clean skies initiative. When a government gives medals of "freedom" to men who start wars on lies and manipulated intelligence and who advocate secret rendition and torture, we know we can't trust a thing these people say, unless we know beforehand that they mean exactly the opposite. I think of it as a Bush decoder: everything that's black is actually white. If you know this, then it all makes sense.

To Ignatieff's credit, he does admit that there is "no evidence of a sweeping tide of freedom and democracy through the Middle East," and that Iraq is "poised between democratic transition and anarchy." This little glimpse of reality doesn't stop Ignatieff from writing fantasy, though, as we see in the rest of the essay.

III. Here Ignatieff says that though there are more democracies in the world right now than ever, no one credits us for it and many of our allies, including the ones we brought democracy to through force (Germany, e.g.), don't want to join us in spreading democracy further because they think we're imperialists. Here he contradicts himself in just a few lines, which makes me think he forgot to read over his essay before submitting it. First, this:


Then, this:


So it's imperial ideology but it's not imperialism. Whaa?

He goes on to quote another Harvard man, Arthur Applbaum, an ethicist who said that "All foundings are forced." Every democracy needs outside help to get going, Ignatieff asserts, and ours was no different. Since we benefited from the help of the French, his logic goes, then we needed to invade Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein. Perhaps this logic would make sense (and maybe things would be dramatically different in Iraq right now) if there had been a large, armed resistance fighting for democracy in Iraq before we invaded. But since there wasn't, it's another example of Ignatieff's faulty logic and assertions without facts.

We can want to live in fantasy land where "democracy and freedom" are lovely abstractions that are easily spread around the world with a little "help," but it's not going to bring all of those women, men, and children back to life: over 1740 Americans killed, thousands injured, and tens of thousands of Iraqis killed and maimed, their families and social fabric torn to shreds. I know; I'm living in the "reality-based" community. Silly me. All I need is a little faith!

IV. In this section Ignatieff says that because most people want to live freely and not under tyranny, and since that is what America is spreading by making war on Iraq, then people who disagree with the administration, namely the Europeans (which you should say with a Dick Cheney snare) and liberals here at home, are "condescending" because we don't think people want to live freely. He says this by asserting American "exceptionalism," that our democracy is unlike any other. He acknowledges that there are different kinds of democracies, from Islamic democracies to the Canadian system, which he quotes Pat Buchanan as calling "Soviet Canuckistan."

As another neocon master of the obvious, Ignatieff asserts that liberals and conservatives have different ideas of what American democracy should be. He then says that there is deep disagreement among the democratic world community over what rights should be protected under democracies, and this is one of the reasons why "American liberty as a moral universal seems less and less recognizable to the very democracies once inspired by that dream." Yes, Ignatieff. That's right! But now what?

V. Ah, finally, we get to Ignatieff's point:

"The fact that many foreigners do not happen to buy into the American version of promoting democracy may not be much of a surprise. What is significant is how many American liberals don't share the vision, either."

This is a huge reversal, Ignatieff asserts, because in the past conservatives were the ones who didn't want us to spread democracy while liberals did, as a pragmatic way to fight the "Communist menace." He credits Reagan with the "realignment of American politics," and says that the "Michael Moore-style left conquered the Democratic Party's heart." (Which I found particularly funny given how not a single viable democratic candidate has been pro-gay marriage and how nearly every democrat in congress voted for the authority to invade Iraq. Again, there is the fantasy of the "created" reality of the neo-cons and the facts of the reality on the ground.) Because so many war critics, which he conveniently asserts are only liberals, believe the war in Iraq is about oil, the Democratic Party is "disconnected" from "the patriotic idealism" of the electorate. It is our "pseudo-Marxist realism" that has led us so far astray.

(Note Ignatieff's use of symbol words here: Michael Moore, Marxist, "patriotic idealism." These things let other neocons know that he is one of them and that his little forays into speaking the truth are only there to bring "balance" so the liberals don't get upset. Lucky for us, these words are symbols to us too, so we know Ignatieff's true intentions. He also fails to point out how conservatives of both parties historically, and to this day, have tried to stiffle democracy here at home through poll taxes, intimidation, and gerrymandering.)

Because Kerry thought we should involve the international community, and assess why we went into Iraq so we could find a way out, he was encumbered by too much "prudence" and wasn't a "risk-taker" like the conservatives, and demonstrated the essential difference between us: according to Ignatieff, liberals don't think that American values should be called "universal at all." We don't think that people want democracy or freedom. We think people like to be held under tyrannical rule. (Perhaps this is part of the neocons' hopeful thinking -- since they seem to want to build a capitalist version of fascism here at home, therefore subjecting all of us to a new kind of tyranny, then perhaps they're trying to convince us that we really DO want to live under a Bush-style dictatorship with monoparty rule and only the illusion of choice. But I digress...)

The 2004 election, Ignatieff tells us, proves that "a majority of Americans do not want to be told that Jefferson was wrong." Since I've already discussed how Ignatieff completely misinterprets Jefferson and his ideals, it's pretty clear how this argument is faulty and foolish. We're almost done!

VI.
"A relativist America is properly inconceivable. Leave relativism, complexity and realism to other nations. America is the last nation left whose citizens don't laugh out loud when their leader asks God to bless the country and further its mighty work of freedom. It is the last country with a mission, a mandate and a dream, as old as its founders."

Okay, I guess Ignatieff has not been living in the same America I have been the past five years. Guess what? A lot of Americans DO laugh when they hear Bush talk about God blessing America and how we're working toward "freedom." We laugh because we see the ridiculous disconnect between Bush's rhetoric and his actions. Talk about "freedom" when you have a prison that holds people for years without charging them or giving them access to attorneys? When you secret suspects away, even kidnapping them off the streets of foreign countries, and take them to our sworn enemies to be tortured? If you're not laughing then you're crying, and if you're not doing either then you've got your belly so full of kool-aid you are no longer capable of viewing the world critically.

Here is where Ignatieff gets down to the nitty gritty: "Iraqi freedom also depends on something whose measurement is equally complex: what price, in soldiers' bodies and lives, the American people are prepared to pay."

Since Ignatieff doesn't consider whether or not our intentions are actually pure, and therefore whether or not the Iraq war is justified, he thinks that the only reason why Americans are beginning to doubt the war are the number of soldiers killed. He goes on to say this is the reason why we lost in Vietnam:

"It would be a noble thing if one day 26 million Iraqis could live their lives without fear in a country of their own. But it would also have been a noble dream if the South Vietnamese had been able to resist the armored divisions of North Vietnam and to maintain such freedom as they had. Lyndon Johnson said the reason Americans were there was the ''principle for which our ancestors fought in the valleys of Pennsylvania,'' the right of people to choose their own path to change. Noble dream or not, the price turned out to be just too high."

He does not address policy at all. Is it just me, or does that seem particularly naive at best, manipulative and evasive at worst?

In fact, it is manipulative, as we see in his closing paragraph. No one wants to think their loved one died for nothing, Ignatieff tells us, so in order to make sure they died for something, we simply have to believe and have faith: "This is where Jefferson's dream must work. Its ultimate task in American life is to redeem loss, to rescue sacrifice from oblivion and futility and to give it shining purpose."

Well, Mr. Ignatieff, I don't have faith. I'm a person of reason. Give me a fact-based reason to believe this administration has noble intentions, and show me how those intentions are being realized (with FACTS!!) in a noble way, then we can discuss Bush and Jefferson's supposed dream of democracy imperialism. Until then, I'll file this one under "neocon jibberish" in the nincompoop cabinet.

If you read Robert Kennedy, Jr's piece in Salon a few weeks ago about thimerisol and autism (it was originally published in Rolling Stone), then you might be confused by this piece in the New York Times that says there is no link between the two whatsoever.

It makes sense to me that so many parents would be enraged and would refuse to believe the CDC's assertions. Governmental agencies have given us a lot of reasons not to trust them lately. The Vioxx scandal, the new mad cow case (added to the long list of others); over and over again government seems to look out for corporate interests over individual health and well being. Critics dismiss the parents as conspiracy theorists, but can you blame the parents for seeing conspiracies everywhere given that there really are conspiracies afoot?

On my more conspiratorial days, I think this is part of an overall strategy -- discrediting "fact" by turning it into political opinion and creating mistrust between citizens and governmental agencies that regulate our drugs and food, veils our whole society in uncertainty and makes us more desperate to believe in something, to have faith that there are some things that don't change. This feeds into the conservatives' world view and makes it easier for them to keep control. If it's not on purpose, then it is simply a matter of taking advantage of an auspicious situation.

Once again, 1984 shows us how this works. By creating so much uncertainty that even the presence of an actual opposition was under question, Big Brother kept complete control over the people.

The fact is we have to reclaim fact if we are to fight this administration.