I never idolized either of the remaining two Democratic contenders for president. I have said to friends and may as well say to any who read the drivel I put up here that I would be happy to have either of them in the White House next January rather that John McBush. I'd be ecstatic to have Pelosi in there by, say, July if the stupid congress suddenly woke from its slumber and forthwith impeached the stupidest lying president and most evil destructive vice president in US history.
I have up until now accounted for my slight preference for Obama by pointing to his moral courage and independence in voting against the Iraq invasion from the get-go while Hillary joined the stampede and sang the Bush/Cheney fight song. Whether you reckon Obama has greater principles and sticks to them or you assume he is just shrewd and could see better how the country would feel about the war five years down the road and positioned himself accordingly ... it does not matter. We have had a most harmful lack of both shrewdness and moral courage in our presidents of late.
But other than that, I confess, I had not made much study of either candidate and am only now getting through Dreams from my Father [which if nothing else shows the presence of a great intelligence, power of expression and knack for empathy].
But now, in one of those forgettable actions that pile on one another like dead leaves and losing lottery tickets until the pile of them is called a campaign, Clinton finally tips the balance with some campaigning I do notice:
I guess she wanted to make damn sure I understood that she is a politician as usual doing politics as usual, trying for an advantage by claiming she supports a handout her opponent does not. OK, she doesn't call it a hand out but by prolonging our ability to waste gas and further unbalancing the federal budget she addresses the rising price of gas in the most harmful way. Wake up lady! McCain can play that game better than you can: he studied under Bush. And guess what? When that game is over, as it now nearly is, we are all broke. I want a candidate who is not afraid of asking voters to grow up. I guess I should be grateful for attacks on candidates by other candidates based on some claim of difference...such attacks tell me more about what the attacking candidate thinks of ME, my level of understanding and my acceptance of responsibility for repairing the world than about the target of the attack.
Do we get the politics we deserve? Neither candidate is my idol but one is showing feet of clay.
Monday, April 28, 2008
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Comments, comments everywhere and not a thought to think
This opinion from New York Times editorial board that trade is NOT the problem behind the war on the middle class asks for a "fact based" treatment from the candidates.
I think their analysis is helpful but incomplete.
In the US any job that can hurt the environment has become harder for employers to invest in both for health, remediation and prevention costs that the "cheap labor" countries ignore. Those countries then suffer environmental degradation and toxicity at rates that even a republican run EPA could not tolerate. The US [and Europe for the most part] are not wrong in bringing the environmental costs of industry onto the books. The evil lies in exploitation of both workers and ecologies far enough away from our Wal-Mart experience that we can ignore them and pocket the change. A better deal for all would be to condition "free" trade on the insistence that wherever we get our goods, they must be produced with the same worker benefits and environmental protections we have in the US. That is , we should export our standard of living rather than importing the third world's standard of living. Neither NAFTA nor US corporate regulation support that direction of wealth transfer because they do not properly define wealth.
There are really two sets of questions to be addressed when a nation's economy gets sick.
1. where is our wealth going
2. where does our wealth come from
The Times opinion rightly points out that a major part of the answer to the first question is that owners and executives and perhaps a few holders of college degrees who provide the vital brain power that generates new products and processes are taking an increasing share of the paycheck while people who do work that can be done without an education are getting a shrinking paycheck. That is true enough and aggravated by the reduction of high bracket taxation that might have made the Boards of Directors think twice before assuming their CEO was worth 1000 to 10000 times as much as their truck drivers and assembly line workers. It gets easier to make such a lopsided decision when [a] no tax penalty goes to the company for such inequity and [b] that CEO sits across the table from you while half of the assembly line workers are not even in the same country. Paying someone tens of millions per year to lead a company might make sense if there were any downside or risk to the position. Its a weak argument to say someone who has some magic "rain maker" genes that rescue companies from dumb strategies and insure a profit in most quarters could be worth his millions. But they are getting the millions whether the company does well or not. That fact puts the general executive paycheck in the category of money down a rat hole. And when executives make 10 million, a few spend it but more bank it. If instead, the company's gains went more to the workers who carry the company to the finish line on their backs, that money would go immediately and directly back into the economy. All many executives seem to have on their backs is a golden parachute in case they screw up. Don't get me wrong: Jealousy of the boss is as old as employment and many companies probably could not continue to plan product and market strategies that would get them through the next year if they did not have dedicated and talented management. But the pay scales have become divorced from the consequences. And worse yet, the only consequences for which management seems even slightly liable in the US is this quarters earnings. Long term health of the company, its workers or its environment are either fungible or forgotten. Who is being rewarded for investing cash this quarter that will see no tangible return for, say, ten years? The only people I can point to in that situation are private investors of the buy-and-hold sort who follow Peter Lynch or Motley Fool. Certainly not any executives of those companies whose stock is purchased. The investors are even more removed from the plight of workers and environmental resources used up in the profiting than are the executives. Socially responsible investing has been a growing segment of the investing world but is still insignificant. And like the carbon offset credits market, I wonder if there is really as much net benefit as there is hype. The investor can instantly punish and abandon the errant executive by clicking the SELL AT MARKET PRICE button on his trading screen. That bullet tends to miss the executive who can walk away with millions when let go by the Board. As our trade agreements and corporate tax laws are presently operated, the quickest fix to any industrial bottom line would be to reduce wages and to take environmental and social costs off the books. So this same executive who wins a little more if the company has a good quarter and a little less if not must see the opportunities to produce in hungry less developed countries as extremely tempting.
There are of course other places our money goes without stopping along the way to do us any good. The current administration and the three Republican administrations before it have multiplied the national debt about 6-fold. Last year Congress let Bush have his way by borrowing another $1500 for each man woman and child in the nation. You may be having trouble paying your mortgage. Certainly you know some people are having awful trouble with personal debt. Banks are being bailed out with public money to deal with those unpayable debts. As of today roughly $30000 dollars is owed by the US government, much of it to foreign investors, and the interest on that is being paid how? Out of your taxes. Michael Hodges puts up a very informative website on the whole national debt situation. He is not a liberal by any means and would be happy to bring balance by cutting services rather than cutting out the war or raising taxes...but he is fiscally responsible and wishes his country were. So do I. His numbers are honest and just a lot handier than the treasury department's obfuscating information. My point in all this is just to support the contention that there are many reasons beside our trade, outsourcing and globalization to account for the dim prospects of American job seekers. The Times mentions that government expenditures for infrastructure would aid our competitiveness as an exporter and this is true. My own guess of about 5% interest on the debt , and ignoring payments against principle [are there any? the debt GROWS!] agree closely with Mr. Hodges about how much money the government takes in which it must turn over to creditors rather than help with university tuition, run job retraining programs or build ports, roads and canals: about 450 billion per year [it varies with the Fed's setting of the prime interest rate]. On the eve of George Bush the first taking office that number had grown to about $220billion and has doubled despite a drop during Clinton's term. That is way more than the GNP of most nations, it would pay for a lot of college tuition. It would retrain a lot of workers. That money is just gone.
All of those considerations affect where the money goes and they seem largely out of whack to me.
As for where wealth comes from. Inventiveness is just a seed and money the fertilizer. But day in and day out labor and ultimately something ripped from the earth are constant ingredients of what we finally put in our shopping carts. And with out the raw ingredients, we have nothing, not even the opportunity to perform the transformative labor. Management is primarily the art of seeing businesses as a whole and tweaking all the little human parts and arts that make the whole perform, knowing well what each part is worth and what it is contributing. Management then is responsible for keeping the engine humming but is itself neither the engine nor the fuel. The increase in value of finished goods over raw materials is often viewed as a kind of golden egg of capitalism's goose ...the fount of wealth. Raw materials themselves provide income to those who wrest them out of the earth but seldom does the ultimate source ever get paid or compensated in a way that would support restoration of what was taken. Sustainable agriculture, more a theory at this time than a practice, comes closest. Mineral wealth and the poorly quantized economic value of a benign climate are treated like god's endless gift, burnt as if they were a candle of infinite length. Have you checked the price of paraffin lately? Its made from oil and the Chinese are in the market for candles too This citation of physical resources as the ultimate source of wealth may seem to some as relevant as saying that someday the sun will burn out. From here on out, "someday" is right now. The price spikes we have begun to experience are the harbingers of wide and spreading dearth. Our globalized industries make the nations work rather like cars in a freight train: so coupled that one hitting an obstacle makes all shudder to a halt. Trade, as the Times points out is not that obstacle, it is only the coupling.
Update 28 April:
Mr Yarrow at HuffPo has picked up on the presence of the republican elephant taking a dump in the middle of our living room. I find it odd that no candidate will address this issue.
thongish metablogging
I have been struggling for time and for the will to hit the publish button lately but not for words to say. The whole "bitterness" thing and the petty playing on what self appointed media opinion shapers and campaign strategists consider the dominant fears of undecided voters is beginning to sicken me. Jude puts it well. My notion that a blog devoted to complete examination of comment threads in more or less neutral media might be a way to discover [though perhaps to my horror] just where the heads of the electorate are at ... well that is a tougher assignment in some ways than I had imagined. It obviously will take time and less obviously a way to assess divergent views without my usual "liberal bias", not by the impossibility of becoming neutral but by the possibility of making my interpretation a sidebar or otherwise separable input. One last problem is which places to look for representative threads. NY Times accepts comments without editorial assessment on its blogs. For some OP-ED and editorial pieces it takes comments and rates them. Those are fun and I recommend reading the comments but they disallow certain comments I consider fair and they are managed haphazardly. For example Frank Rich pieces can have comments [sometimes 400] that are subsequently withdrawn from the server. I need permalinks to do real blogging and I don't know what is stable. The editorial I am commenting on here is not accepting reader feedback. That is a shame as I am sure there would be a ton of it.
I think their analysis is helpful but incomplete.
In the US any job that can hurt the environment has become harder for employers to invest in both for health, remediation and prevention costs that the "cheap labor" countries ignore. Those countries then suffer environmental degradation and toxicity at rates that even a republican run EPA could not tolerate. The US [and Europe for the most part] are not wrong in bringing the environmental costs of industry onto the books. The evil lies in exploitation of both workers and ecologies far enough away from our Wal-Mart experience that we can ignore them and pocket the change. A better deal for all would be to condition "free" trade on the insistence that wherever we get our goods, they must be produced with the same worker benefits and environmental protections we have in the US. That is , we should export our standard of living rather than importing the third world's standard of living. Neither NAFTA nor US corporate regulation support that direction of wealth transfer because they do not properly define wealth.
There are really two sets of questions to be addressed when a nation's economy gets sick.
1. where is our wealth going
2. where does our wealth come from
The Times opinion rightly points out that a major part of the answer to the first question is that owners and executives and perhaps a few holders of college degrees who provide the vital brain power that generates new products and processes are taking an increasing share of the paycheck while people who do work that can be done without an education are getting a shrinking paycheck. That is true enough and aggravated by the reduction of high bracket taxation that might have made the Boards of Directors think twice before assuming their CEO was worth 1000 to 10000 times as much as their truck drivers and assembly line workers. It gets easier to make such a lopsided decision when [a] no tax penalty goes to the company for such inequity and [b] that CEO sits across the table from you while half of the assembly line workers are not even in the same country. Paying someone tens of millions per year to lead a company might make sense if there were any downside or risk to the position. Its a weak argument to say someone who has some magic "rain maker" genes that rescue companies from dumb strategies and insure a profit in most quarters could be worth his millions. But they are getting the millions whether the company does well or not. That fact puts the general executive paycheck in the category of money down a rat hole. And when executives make 10 million, a few spend it but more bank it. If instead, the company's gains went more to the workers who carry the company to the finish line on their backs, that money would go immediately and directly back into the economy. All many executives seem to have on their backs is a golden parachute in case they screw up. Don't get me wrong: Jealousy of the boss is as old as employment and many companies probably could not continue to plan product and market strategies that would get them through the next year if they did not have dedicated and talented management. But the pay scales have become divorced from the consequences. And worse yet, the only consequences for which management seems even slightly liable in the US is this quarters earnings. Long term health of the company, its workers or its environment are either fungible or forgotten. Who is being rewarded for investing cash this quarter that will see no tangible return for, say, ten years? The only people I can point to in that situation are private investors of the buy-and-hold sort who follow Peter Lynch or Motley Fool. Certainly not any executives of those companies whose stock is purchased. The investors are even more removed from the plight of workers and environmental resources used up in the profiting than are the executives. Socially responsible investing has been a growing segment of the investing world but is still insignificant. And like the carbon offset credits market, I wonder if there is really as much net benefit as there is hype. The investor can instantly punish and abandon the errant executive by clicking the SELL AT MARKET PRICE button on his trading screen. That bullet tends to miss the executive who can walk away with millions when let go by the Board. As our trade agreements and corporate tax laws are presently operated, the quickest fix to any industrial bottom line would be to reduce wages and to take environmental and social costs off the books. So this same executive who wins a little more if the company has a good quarter and a little less if not must see the opportunities to produce in hungry less developed countries as extremely tempting.
There are of course other places our money goes without stopping along the way to do us any good. The current administration and the three Republican administrations before it have multiplied the national debt about 6-fold. Last year Congress let Bush have his way by borrowing another $1500 for each man woman and child in the nation. You may be having trouble paying your mortgage. Certainly you know some people are having awful trouble with personal debt. Banks are being bailed out with public money to deal with those unpayable debts. As of today roughly $30000 dollars is owed by the US government, much of it to foreign investors, and the interest on that is being paid how? Out of your taxes. Michael Hodges puts up a very informative website on the whole national debt situation. He is not a liberal by any means and would be happy to bring balance by cutting services rather than cutting out the war or raising taxes...but he is fiscally responsible and wishes his country were. So do I. His numbers are honest and just a lot handier than the treasury department's obfuscating information. My point in all this is just to support the contention that there are many reasons beside our trade, outsourcing and globalization to account for the dim prospects of American job seekers. The Times mentions that government expenditures for infrastructure would aid our competitiveness as an exporter and this is true. My own guess of about 5% interest on the debt , and ignoring payments against principle [are there any? the debt GROWS!] agree closely with Mr. Hodges about how much money the government takes in which it must turn over to creditors rather than help with university tuition, run job retraining programs or build ports, roads and canals: about 450 billion per year [it varies with the Fed's setting of the prime interest rate]. On the eve of George Bush the first taking office that number had grown to about $220billion and has doubled despite a drop during Clinton's term. That is way more than the GNP of most nations, it would pay for a lot of college tuition. It would retrain a lot of workers. That money is just gone.
All of those considerations affect where the money goes and they seem largely out of whack to me.
As for where wealth comes from. Inventiveness is just a seed and money the fertilizer. But day in and day out labor and ultimately something ripped from the earth are constant ingredients of what we finally put in our shopping carts. And with out the raw ingredients, we have nothing, not even the opportunity to perform the transformative labor. Management is primarily the art of seeing businesses as a whole and tweaking all the little human parts and arts that make the whole perform, knowing well what each part is worth and what it is contributing. Management then is responsible for keeping the engine humming but is itself neither the engine nor the fuel. The increase in value of finished goods over raw materials is often viewed as a kind of golden egg of capitalism's goose ...the fount of wealth. Raw materials themselves provide income to those who wrest them out of the earth but seldom does the ultimate source ever get paid or compensated in a way that would support restoration of what was taken. Sustainable agriculture, more a theory at this time than a practice, comes closest. Mineral wealth and the poorly quantized economic value of a benign climate are treated like god's endless gift, burnt as if they were a candle of infinite length. Have you checked the price of paraffin lately? Its made from oil and the Chinese are in the market for candles too This citation of physical resources as the ultimate source of wealth may seem to some as relevant as saying that someday the sun will burn out. From here on out, "someday" is right now. The price spikes we have begun to experience are the harbingers of wide and spreading dearth. Our globalized industries make the nations work rather like cars in a freight train: so coupled that one hitting an obstacle makes all shudder to a halt. Trade, as the Times points out is not that obstacle, it is only the coupling.
Update 28 April:
Mr Yarrow at HuffPo has picked up on the presence of the republican elephant taking a dump in the middle of our living room. I find it odd that no candidate will address this issue.
I have been struggling for time and for the will to hit the publish button lately but not for words to say. The whole "bitterness" thing and the petty playing on what self appointed media opinion shapers and campaign strategists consider the dominant fears of undecided voters is beginning to sicken me. Jude puts it well. My notion that a blog devoted to complete examination of comment threads in more or less neutral media might be a way to discover [though perhaps to my horror] just where the heads of the electorate are at ... well that is a tougher assignment in some ways than I had imagined. It obviously will take time and less obviously a way to assess divergent views without my usual "liberal bias", not by the impossibility of becoming neutral but by the possibility of making my interpretation a sidebar or otherwise separable input. One last problem is which places to look for representative threads. NY Times accepts comments without editorial assessment on its blogs. For some OP-ED and editorial pieces it takes comments and rates them. Those are fun and I recommend reading the comments but they disallow certain comments I consider fair and they are managed haphazardly. For example Frank Rich pieces can have comments [sometimes 400] that are subsequently withdrawn from the server. I need permalinks to do real blogging and I don't know what is stable. The editorial I am commenting on here is not accepting reader feedback. That is a shame as I am sure there would be a ton of it.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
This is so darn cool
In 2003, some guy in Montana digs up a T-rex, one of the last of the thunder lizards to go extinct. In 2007, a gal in North Carolina makes an amazing discovery: recognizable protien fragments are preserved deep within these massive 68 million year old bones. This week Science will publish the report of a medical genetics team at Beth Israel-Deaconess hospital in Boston, directed by a Harvard evolutionary genetics researcher who got strong evidence from protein sequence data obtained in the frail specimens that overlaps sequences in several modern bird species.
Rough and speculative analogies between avian and dinosaur skeletons, pelvis in particular, led to the earliest birds-are-from-dinosaur theories. A few Archaeopteryx fossils were found in 1862 but did not fit perfectly...a lot of missing links had to be postulated. But the last decade has seen a steady flow of fossil discoveries in China that provide virtually all the fossil links paleontologist could want. Fossils are only one chain of evidence.
Genetics are quite another kind of evidence and nothing is sweeter than having more than one completely distinct chain of observations that equally support an hypothesis. But the luck of finding usable protein of that antiquity is amazing. The only way this could not be cool and amazing is if you live in the world manufactured by the god who was manufactured by the creationists. They are left to their ideal worship and the rest of us can concentrate on how frikkin cool this is.
Well, I might be a little biased. Until about the 6th grade, I was positive I wanted to be a paleontologist when I grew up. I am not a paleontologist yet but maybe I am not grown up yet either...its just such neat confirmation. That "guy" from Montana is a scientist named John Horner and I bought one of his books when my kids were in the 6th grade [oh I s'pose I bought it for nostalgic reasons too]. Think I will go re-read the chapter on birds.
By the way, this development does not mean "Jurassic Park" scenarios are immanent. That idea was concocted by a smug fool who only knows enough to be dangerous to people who know even less. [Horner's consulting on that movie must have paid well]
CORRECTIONS HAVE BEEN APPLIED TO ORIGINAL VERSION OF POST, THANKS TO WINDY.
Update: Zinio just delivered my online copy of Science and that linked me to the online materials :
They used collagen...that was the protein remnants found in the fossil bones.
Several statistical methods were applied to detect commonalities among amino acid sequences of collagen samples among about 20 living and two extinct species.
The resulting tree properly determines known relationship of species AND locates Tyrannosaurus with birds.:
Rough and speculative analogies between avian and dinosaur skeletons, pelvis in particular, led to the earliest birds-are-from-dinosaur theories. A few Archaeopteryx fossils were found in 1862 but did not fit perfectly...a lot of missing links had to be postulated. But the last decade has seen a steady flow of fossil discoveries in China that provide virtually all the fossil links paleontologist could want. Fossils are only one chain of evidence.
Genetics are quite another kind of evidence and nothing is sweeter than having more than one completely distinct chain of observations that equally support an hypothesis. But the luck of finding usable protein of that antiquity is amazing. The only way this could not be cool and amazing is if you live in the world manufactured by the god who was manufactured by the creationists. They are left to their ideal worship and the rest of us can concentrate on how frikkin cool this is.
Well, I might be a little biased. Until about the 6th grade, I was positive I wanted to be a paleontologist when I grew up. I am not a paleontologist yet but maybe I am not grown up yet either...its just such neat confirmation. That "guy" from Montana is a scientist named John Horner and I bought one of his books when my kids were in the 6th grade [oh I s'pose I bought it for nostalgic reasons too]. Think I will go re-read the chapter on birds.
By the way, this development does not mean "Jurassic Park" scenarios are immanent. That idea was concocted by a smug fool who only knows enough to be dangerous to people who know even less. [Horner's consulting on that movie must have paid well]
CORRECTIONS HAVE BEEN APPLIED TO ORIGINAL VERSION OF POST, THANKS TO WINDY.
Update: Zinio just delivered my online copy of Science and that linked me to the online materials :
| Supporting Online Material for Molecular Phylogenetics of Mastodon and Tyrannosaurus rex Chris L. Organ, Mary H. Schweitzer, Wenxia Zheng, Lisa M. Freimark, Lewis C. Cantley, John M. Asara Published 25 April 2008, Science 320, 499 (2008) DOI: 10.1126/science.1154284 |
They used collagen...that was the protein remnants found in the fossil bones.
Several statistical methods were applied to detect commonalities among amino acid sequences of collagen samples among about 20 living and two extinct species.
MrBayes v3.1.2 (Huelsenbeck and Ronquist 2001) was used for Bayesian inference of phylogenetic relationships. The prior for the amino acid model set to mixed, in which the MCMC chain explores 10 fixed-rate amino acid matrices (Poisson, Jones, Dayhoff, Mtrev, Mtmam, Wag, Rtrev, Cprev, Vt, and Blosum)....The Bayesian tree is identical to the likelihood tree and highly similar to the parsimony tree as well (see below). An additional tree (not shown) was inferred in which all sites (for all taxa) were removed that contained gaps (missing data) in the Tyrannosaurus sequence, resulting in a dramatically smaller dataset. The resulting tree was poorly resolved in multiple areas due to the lack of informative sites for all taxa, though the Tyrannosaurus still grouped with other amniotes. Another tree (not shown) was inferred in which regions containing gaps (missing data) in the alligator, ostrich, and T. rex sequences were removed. This reduced the amount of missing data in the set and produced the same topology, but it did not appreciably change the support for archosaurian nodes. Phylogenetic trees were generated using Maximum likelihood (Sup. Fig. 1A and B) in PhyML v2.4.5 (Guindon and Gascuel 2003). |
The resulting tree properly determines known relationship of species AND locates Tyrannosaurus with birds.:
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Identifying Obama, Finding America and political emotion
The phrase "The American Story", if offered as the title on a blank sheet each of us was to fill with a story might produce a decidedly motley collection. The myth that somehow there is one even vaguely unified American story is apt to find uncritical expression in some glowing pean penned over at Townhall.com. The grit, disappointment and glints of glory would more likely mingle in individual works cobbled up in a diary at Daily Kos.
You see, America, you never had one story. Or even one America. [Yes, I was for Edwards, *sigh*] You have had and enforced race, gender, class, religious and ethnic distinctions all through the history of your "one nation". The greatest political excitement, the buzz that lasts for decades, seems to occur when actual blends of the formerly segregated traits emerge in one candidate who can elicit an emotional connection with some portion of the main political stream. We did not get excited about Kennedy in spite of his Catholicism but because he enlarged our sense of what was tolerated and who could succeed in this nation. How deep and heartfelt that need for inclusiveness is among the non-bigots!
Obama is closer to an embodiment of "The American Story" if one is ever to be written, than any national candidate I am aware of.
The tenuous illusion of superiority based on no merit but accidents of birth in to one identity, be it racial or some other pretext for categorical thinking, is so frail it must be protected by instant ferocity and guarded by constant suspicion. You hardly have to read between the lines at Townhall.com to see that ignorance and fear at work. We are still the same creatures we have always been. That season when our nation, scarred by its civil rights struggles fixed so much hope on Jack Kennedy was as well the season when truly vile race and religious hatreds and anti-communist hysteria all surfaced and slunk around trying to swift-boat JFK.
So, America, you finally get a real American story, a candidate embodying the true and complete opposite of that illusion that purity of identity equals superiority and what do you do? You start looking, looking everywhere for stones to toss, for labels like "elitist" under which to hide raw ugly hatreds you dare not own up to.
I write this post as if there were one America to be addressed and do so out of profound hope. Having to pick ONE president definitely forces the issue and exposes the fallacies of our glib notions of national unity...but also challenges us to strive for that unity. The work is not easy and it is for conservatives, be they Democrats or Republicans, rather unfamiliar effort.
In spite of all the verbal gears you know are turning out there in your cortex, down in your limbic system politics is very much linked to and run by identity:" who am i, who are they, are they with me or against me"...that brutally simple and unexamined kind of thinking. I wish I could specify some meditation, some passage to be read or anything that would give the fearful among our voters [most of whom do not read blogs like mine] a glimpse of the irrationality that passes for political thinking. I should by now tire of saying this and you of reading it but just for emphasis: Emotion blends with reason largely outside our awareness. Reason is the tool and emotion the user. Emotion fires in ancient circuits laid out when dwell-times to reach a decision that exceeded a fraction of a second were punished with extinction. At the cost of nuance and deliberation, we have gross amplifiers of small discriminations built in to speed up decision. We work this way an know it not.
I offer two illustrations of the emotions at work in our political processing, for whatever they are worth.
Via casual but long standing acquaintance, I know several educated and successful persons who generally vote for Democrats and have mostly well targeted criticism for the failures of the Bush administration. Formative experiences for this particular set of people include religious persecution and being driven out of or unable to return to assorted middle eastern countries. Back when I was still wondering if Edwards was the candidate who best represented my values, emails were circulating among these expatriates repeating the false but mesmerizing rumors that Obama was a Muslim. Even now, in polite conversation with these people, they will offer some immovable doubt about whether Obama would sell Israel down the river. And that fear is followed by the speculation that McCain would be preferable to Obama. Hillary playing the Clingon-in-chief clearly speaks to these fears. Facts simply can't stand in the way of fears. In those very same conversations I hear reference to Obama being too long associated with Rev. Wright to credibly distance himself from Wright's inflammatory positions. Go figure.
I will confess now my own exercises that reveal to me my preferences among the choice of projected personalities of our candidates. My little meditation involves imagining having a conversation with or imagining what I would say to each candidate. I find myself trying to respectfully pose harsh questions to McCain, alternately enthused and annoyed and exploring certain inconsistencies with Clinton and most relaxed and fascinated with Obama. Its all just projection and mental exercise but if you relax and let your mind go, you can learn something about yourself. [By the way, with Dubya, I find the exercise of projecting engagement in conversation stalls when I need to explain the meanings of much of my vocabulary;-]
I suspect that exercise of mine is not so much a way to make a decision about feelings of allegiance as it is a way to find out via comfort level what decision your unconscious has already made. That doesn't really matter from an operational perspective since either would allow you to become more engaged in politics.
You see, America, you never had one story. Or even one America. [Yes, I was for Edwards, *sigh*] You have had and enforced race, gender, class, religious and ethnic distinctions all through the history of your "one nation". The greatest political excitement, the buzz that lasts for decades, seems to occur when actual blends of the formerly segregated traits emerge in one candidate who can elicit an emotional connection with some portion of the main political stream. We did not get excited about Kennedy in spite of his Catholicism but because he enlarged our sense of what was tolerated and who could succeed in this nation. How deep and heartfelt that need for inclusiveness is among the non-bigots!
Obama is closer to an embodiment of "The American Story" if one is ever to be written, than any national candidate I am aware of.
The tenuous illusion of superiority based on no merit but accidents of birth in to one identity, be it racial or some other pretext for categorical thinking, is so frail it must be protected by instant ferocity and guarded by constant suspicion. You hardly have to read between the lines at Townhall.com to see that ignorance and fear at work. We are still the same creatures we have always been. That season when our nation, scarred by its civil rights struggles fixed so much hope on Jack Kennedy was as well the season when truly vile race and religious hatreds and anti-communist hysteria all surfaced and slunk around trying to swift-boat JFK.
So, America, you finally get a real American story, a candidate embodying the true and complete opposite of that illusion that purity of identity equals superiority and what do you do? You start looking, looking everywhere for stones to toss, for labels like "elitist" under which to hide raw ugly hatreds you dare not own up to.
I write this post as if there were one America to be addressed and do so out of profound hope. Having to pick ONE president definitely forces the issue and exposes the fallacies of our glib notions of national unity...but also challenges us to strive for that unity. The work is not easy and it is for conservatives, be they Democrats or Republicans, rather unfamiliar effort.
In spite of all the verbal gears you know are turning out there in your cortex, down in your limbic system politics is very much linked to and run by identity:" who am i, who are they, are they with me or against me"...that brutally simple and unexamined kind of thinking. I wish I could specify some meditation, some passage to be read or anything that would give the fearful among our voters [most of whom do not read blogs like mine] a glimpse of the irrationality that passes for political thinking. I should by now tire of saying this and you of reading it but just for emphasis: Emotion blends with reason largely outside our awareness. Reason is the tool and emotion the user. Emotion fires in ancient circuits laid out when dwell-times to reach a decision that exceeded a fraction of a second were punished with extinction. At the cost of nuance and deliberation, we have gross amplifiers of small discriminations built in to speed up decision. We work this way an know it not.
I offer two illustrations of the emotions at work in our political processing, for whatever they are worth.
Via casual but long standing acquaintance, I know several educated and successful persons who generally vote for Democrats and have mostly well targeted criticism for the failures of the Bush administration. Formative experiences for this particular set of people include religious persecution and being driven out of or unable to return to assorted middle eastern countries. Back when I was still wondering if Edwards was the candidate who best represented my values, emails were circulating among these expatriates repeating the false but mesmerizing rumors that Obama was a Muslim. Even now, in polite conversation with these people, they will offer some immovable doubt about whether Obama would sell Israel down the river. And that fear is followed by the speculation that McCain would be preferable to Obama. Hillary playing the Clingon-in-chief clearly speaks to these fears. Facts simply can't stand in the way of fears. In those very same conversations I hear reference to Obama being too long associated with Rev. Wright to credibly distance himself from Wright's inflammatory positions. Go figure.
I will confess now my own exercises that reveal to me my preferences among the choice of projected personalities of our candidates. My little meditation involves imagining having a conversation with or imagining what I would say to each candidate. I find myself trying to respectfully pose harsh questions to McCain, alternately enthused and annoyed and exploring certain inconsistencies with Clinton and most relaxed and fascinated with Obama. Its all just projection and mental exercise but if you relax and let your mind go, you can learn something about yourself. [By the way, with Dubya, I find the exercise of projecting engagement in conversation stalls when I need to explain the meanings of much of my vocabulary;-]
I suspect that exercise of mine is not so much a way to make a decision about feelings of allegiance as it is a way to find out via comfort level what decision your unconscious has already made. That doesn't really matter from an operational perspective since either would allow you to become more engaged in politics.
Foundering on the fathers: someone put Jonah Goldberg out of my misery
The lead sentence of this Jonah Goldberg opinion piece in the LA Times reads thus:
Whether the other things Goldberg dismisses as thoughtless slurs against necons are true or not, one thing is clear, and Goldberg is the poster boy for it: Neocons are ignorant imperialists. The clearest guidance from the most respected leader of the early days of the republic would arguably be George Washington's farewell address. In that parting advice he warned against the temptations of an overdeveloped military
I also did negative searching of the farewell address. The term democracy is absent. The word promote was used once: for institutions of education. I feel like I am unlocking the old guy from a musty dungeon where conservatives held him lest we see how broadminded and radical he really was. If some other document of that era differs with GW and agrees with JG, well, my reference is a pretty heavy contender.
I am not the only one who notices that neoconservatives abuse the memory of the nation's founders. Skipping forward to the Monroe doctrine, the point of that is not so much the liberty of South Americans as enlarging the security perimeter of the fledgling republic against the predations of colonial Europe. I think Goldberg dreamed his contention up and it is as fictional as the principles and the rest of the history and class structure he pretends to represent.
Admit where your ideas really come from Jonah, and open your eyes to see where they have gotten you...or just go on screwing the pooch in front of everyone. I for one will stand by the charge that "neocons are open imperialists". But to be strictly correct make only this modification: you never use the words imperialism or fascism...you just exemplify them, thus making yourselves crypto imperialists. Except you are only hiding from yourselves...the rest of us can see you.
[I need a puppy to kick but a cretin will do]
Promoting democracy throughout the world has been a driving force in U.S. politics since the country's earliest days.
Whether the other things Goldberg dismisses as thoughtless slurs against necons are true or not, one thing is clear, and Goldberg is the poster boy for it: Neocons are ignorant imperialists. The clearest guidance from the most respected leader of the early days of the republic would arguably be George Washington's farewell address. In that parting advice he warned against the temptations of an overdeveloped military
Hence, likewise, they will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty. In this sense it is that your union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the other.and [are you paying attention, Jonah?] he strongly advised us to butt out of other country's political lives:
The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible.Nor, by the way, would Washington be pleased with the Bush administration's neoconservative disdain for the constitution:
It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another.and he would be horrified at borrowing to raise expeditionary armies:
As a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit. One method of preserving it is to use it as sparingly as possible, avoiding occasions of expense by cultivating peace, but remembering also that timely disbursements to prepare for danger frequently prevent much greater disbursements to repel it, avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertion in time of peace to discharge the debts which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear.I would urge the pathetic babbling Goldberg to read a few words of those of whom he claims to speak. In fact now is a good season for all of us to consider George Washington's words, particularly on the hazards of party politics. And I will enjoy your arguments to me if you question the paragraph in which Washington offers
And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.There is much admonition in that address that could underpin right action two centuries later. I particularly like this succinct expression of the American version of the social contract:
To the efficacy and permanency of your Union, a government for the whole is indispensable. No alliance, however strict, between the parts can be an adequate substitute; they must inevitably experience the infractions and interruptions which all alliances in all times have experienced. Sensible of this momentous truth, you have improved upon your first essay, by the adoption of a constitution of government better calculated than your former for an intimate union, and for the efficacious management of your common concerns. This government, the offspring of our own choice, uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your support. Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true liberty. The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government. But the Constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government.In the current administration, by the hands of Alberto Gonzales, Dick Cheney and John Yoo to name a few, we find scribbled onto the end of that paragraph the neoconservatives exeception to all social contracts: "unless you are the government".
I also did negative searching of the farewell address. The term democracy is absent. The word promote was used once: for institutions of education. I feel like I am unlocking the old guy from a musty dungeon where conservatives held him lest we see how broadminded and radical he really was. If some other document of that era differs with GW and agrees with JG, well, my reference is a pretty heavy contender.
I am not the only one who notices that neoconservatives abuse the memory of the nation's founders. Skipping forward to the Monroe doctrine, the point of that is not so much the liberty of South Americans as enlarging the security perimeter of the fledgling republic against the predations of colonial Europe. I think Goldberg dreamed his contention up and it is as fictional as the principles and the rest of the history and class structure he pretends to represent.
Admit where your ideas really come from Jonah, and open your eyes to see where they have gotten you...or just go on screwing the pooch in front of everyone. I for one will stand by the charge that "neocons are open imperialists". But to be strictly correct make only this modification: you never use the words imperialism or fascism...you just exemplify them, thus making yourselves crypto imperialists. Except you are only hiding from yourselves...the rest of us can see you.
[I need a puppy to kick but a cretin will do]
Monday, April 21, 2008
What is stopping us
When otherwise liberal friends of mine discuss how to proceed in Iraq, quite a few are aware that one of the most significant political shifts Bush, and his Cheney gang have worked is the transfer, by default, of decisive political clout in the region into the hands of the Iranian theocracy. And knowing that, these friends are stuck, saying "we can't just pull out. The country will go to pieces and the pieces will fall under Iran's control".
But can't people see? We are already at that point.
If our imaginations have become so blunted that the prospect of peace can only be equated with defeat and the prospect of war, for all the good war has thus far done us, is alluring to liberal and conservative alike with its illusion of predictability, then we are lost in the darkness that swallows dying empires.
Let me offer my own imagination, which you may fault but not for want of the hope we need.
What other scenarios might unfold if we just pulled that tap out of our jugular, quit bleeding lives and trillions? Yes, just stop as fast as we started: leaving only the troops needed to guard that poor concrete mausoleum of an embassy to mark and mock our imperial hopes?
WHAT IS STOPPING US?
If the money now spent in Iraq were instead spent on the reconstruction and education that it would take to pacify and give hope to the Palestinians, rebuilding what has been bulldozed and creating a viable Palestinian state where physical security of both states was possible and the questions of ownership defused by swaps and purchases of land...
The US already spends heavily in loans, foreign aid and material including to Palestinian leaders in order to patch together frail volatile truces that are all a generation of middle easterners have known. The Iranians are not stupid, they need to sell their oil, they can not afford the steel shod massive presence that has backfired so badly for the US. Chaos in Iraq threatens Iranian power though not as much as does the US military presence there. Being a reasonably smart person, Condi should ask herself if she has really given her bosses any more likely or hopeful options.
Pride, stupid and stubborn, is so obvious a fault in individuals...why is it so hard to see when it rules a nation?
But can't people see? We are already at that point.
If our imaginations have become so blunted that the prospect of peace can only be equated with defeat and the prospect of war, for all the good war has thus far done us, is alluring to liberal and conservative alike with its illusion of predictability, then we are lost in the darkness that swallows dying empires.
Let me offer my own imagination, which you may fault but not for want of the hope we need.
What other scenarios might unfold if we just pulled that tap out of our jugular, quit bleeding lives and trillions? Yes, just stop as fast as we started: leaving only the troops needed to guard that poor concrete mausoleum of an embassy to mark and mock our imperial hopes?
WHAT IS STOPPING US?
If the money now spent in Iraq were instead spent on the reconstruction and education that it would take to pacify and give hope to the Palestinians, rebuilding what has been bulldozed and creating a viable Palestinian state where physical security of both states was possible and the questions of ownership defused by swaps and purchases of land...
- We would only be borrowing a page from the Iranians who buy favor and make trouble by funneling their money through Hezbollah [we can surely outspend Iran]
- There would be no war in Iraq and the excuse that the factions would fall upon each other in a chaotic blood bath [1] describes present conditions well and [2] would quickly become Iran's problem if they actually failed to quell violence...because we all now know they can when they want to.
- Iran would have its hands full trying to exercise control of Iraq and start getting the political black eye that the US possessed exclusively and it would stop having the spare change and the need to distract its population or seek favor with proxies by threatening Israel.
- There would be universal condemnation of Iran's threats to Israel once they had no long suffering client/proxy in the person of the Palestinians. We would buy away that client because our money would be spent to give them some justice, hope and respect, not some victory.
- It could hardly make oil any more expensive than bush has already made it.
- And what really pisses me: it would cost us less than the war on Iraqis and earn us back the respect of the worlds people
- This move would unsettle the Saudis. It is time we got rid of US administrations that suck the stopcock on Saudi oil wells. Some of the money we would cease spending on wasted munitions and boondoggle mercenary contractors could go into engineering a crash program in energy independence rather than the gelded efforts oil companies have allowed since Reagan's administration. I strongly suspect that spending that money here instead of sending it to our enemies with oilfields would have a wonderful effect on our employment figures.
The US already spends heavily in loans, foreign aid and material including to Palestinian leaders in order to patch together frail volatile truces that are all a generation of middle easterners have known. The Iranians are not stupid, they need to sell their oil, they can not afford the steel shod massive presence that has backfired so badly for the US. Chaos in Iraq threatens Iranian power though not as much as does the US military presence there. Being a reasonably smart person, Condi should ask herself if she has really given her bosses any more likely or hopeful options.
Pride, stupid and stubborn, is so obvious a fault in individuals...why is it so hard to see when it rules a nation?
Friday, April 18, 2008
the partisans
History got revised and simpler at least a little each time they sat to chat over a cup of tea.
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