The Republic of Dissent

Scary things

The only scary thing about Halloween this year is how unscary it is because after a long and dreadful election year, which thankfully is ending, it is impossible not to realize that there is something rotten not only in American's kingdom, but also in the world. It is extremely difficult to make a difference between fact and fiction and more importantly to convince others that that difference matters or that it exists.

Crisis of Masculinity

William Sutcliffe on the increasing number of books on the so-called “masculinity crisis”:

These books ultimately lead to the conclusion that if there is a pernicious narcissism at the heart of contemporary masculinity, it surely lies not in the new-found taste for skincare products that horrifies Besley, or a fondness for video games that shocks Cross, but in a desire to believe that our “crises” are somehow more profound and painful than those previous generations faced. The belief that the generation who had to come to terms with David Beckam’s enjoyment of shopping are somehow having a harder time than those who were conscripted into the army and sent abroad to kill people is simply preposterous. It is offensive and vain to suggest that the reward of feeling like a “real man” is an adequate compensation for the trauma of being sent to war.

The men who fought in the two world wars of the last century had to deal with a level of physical and psychological trauma that is simply inconceivable to men of my generation.

If masculinity has ever really faced any genuine crises, it was surely during and after those wars – those men returned home to find gender roles radically and irreversibly altered by their absence. Society may appear to be changing fast now but, by comparison to those two upheavals, contemporary man has it easy. Ever since the industrial revolution, men – and women – have had to change, generation by generation, to keep up with new demands made on them by a society in flux. The key difference between how the two sexes deal with this is that men, unlike women, are fixated on the chimera of some genuine version of masculinity that has always receded just out of reach into the past. Wherever we are, a chorus of voices seems to tell us that the generation just before us had it right – and we’ve now got it all wrong.

Nowadays, we have such a longing for easy answers and for stability that we view everything that is puzzling, out of the norm, or even just contradictory as a crisis. I mean if there is a masculinity crisis, what should we called what femininity is going through especially when America has been through an presidential cycle where two women had their gender, their appearance, and even their humanity questioned particularly by other women? Reading books on masculinity crisis is a little bit like watching kids on shows like 90210 or the OC complain bitterly and egocentrically about the dangers, the rigors and the poverty of their adolescence.  

The futility of racial identity

As almost always, I agree with Glenn Loury when he argues pertinently and in my opinion convincingly that a life defined by racial identity is one poorly lived. I think that a society where racial identity is more important than any other factor to define one's politics and one's life choices is an unhealthy one. I'm trying to convince myself that the United States is so much better off than South Africa when it comes to the issue of race and I have to admit that there are times that I have to question my need to believe that that affirmation is true.

In a week...

In a week, according to some (too many in my opinion), the world is going to change as it does in science fiction television series. I don't believe, but what disturbs me is that people do believe that life is as it is in Heroes. In other times, I would have found this belief cute or simply childlike, but I'm starting to realize that it is as dangerous as nihilist cynicism.

Simple questions of bias and of competence

Alarming, but on point analysis from Michael Malone on the shameful inability of journalists do their jobs during this election cycle (hat tip: Jonathan Adler). The sad thing is that this American disease is spreading everywhere, which will cause in my opinion journalists to become irrelevant and journalism to become passé because it will no longer be they will no longer be able not only to provide the context, but also to analyze and explain it without falling in love with concepts. Sugary excerpt:

[…] for the last couple weeks, I've begun -- for the first time in my adult life -- to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a living. A few days ago, when asked by a new acquaintance what I did for a living, I replied that I was "a writer," because I couldn't bring myself to admit to a stranger that I'm a journalist.

[…] Republicans are justifiably foaming at the mouth over the sheer one-sidedness of the press coverage of the two candidates and their running mates. But in the last few days, even Democrats, who have been gloating over the pass -- no, make that shameless support -- they've gotten from the press, are starting to get uncomfortable as they realize that no one wins in the long run when we don't have a free and fair press.

I was one of the first people in the traditional media to call for the firing of Dan Rather -- not because of his phony story, but because he refused to admit his mistake -- but, bless him, even Gunga Dan thinks the media is one-sided in this election.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not one of those people who think the media has been too hard on, say, Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin, by rushing reportorial SWAT teams to her home state of Alaska to rifle through her garbage. This is the big leagues, and if she wants to suit up and take the field, then Gov. Palin better be ready to play.

The few instances where I think the press has gone too far -- such as the Times reporter talking to prospective first lady Cindy McCain's daughter's MySpace friends -- can easily be solved with a few newsroom smackdowns and temporary repostings to the Omaha bureau.

No, what I object to (and I think most other Americans do as well) is the lack of equivalent hardball coverage of the other side -- or worse, actively serving as attack dogs for the presidential ticket of Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Joe Biden, D-Del.

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Empty weekend

I've spent my Sunday wondering if an empty weekend is a good thing and I'm forced to accept that it is a good thing because I don't have to use my imagination to think about what could be going wrong.

Morbid fascination

I just saw W, Oliver Stone's movie about George W. Bush and I thought that it was a waste of time for two reasons. The first reason is that Oliver Stone doesn't have any distance from the main character, Bush, to make a credible movie whose goal isn't simply to justify its contempt for him and his policies. The second is that one gets the feeling that the goal of Stone isn't to be a filmmaker, but an historian by getting there first, that is by making his views of Bush part of history. For those of us who believe that Bush was a bad president for reasons more complicated than his conservatism and his alleged simple mindedness (which I never believed in ), W is a movie that is both depressing and alarming because it dumbs down the political discourse by making the people believe that the sole differences between a JFK (the greatest president in a Hollywoodized world, but not necessarily in real life) and a Bush are intelligence and righteousness.

Cold and Blue

It's cold outside and the only thing that's warming up is the fact that the long international nightmare that is the American presidential election is almost over. I would have never thought that the American presidential election wouldn't have been able to live up to the level of excitement, which was already pretty alarming, of last year's French presidential election. We would have saved a lot of energy and of money by making a Hollywood blockbuster with two flawed super-sized characters and then letting Americans choose, which one of them they want to have in their house for dinner for the next four years.  It's frightening to realize that I live in an age where Elections are about nothing more than dizzying stunts and eye/ear candy.

Distance and literature

Gerry Feehily offersthe following explanation as to why Bernard-Henri Lévy (Bhl) and Michel Houellebecq are disliked since they have written a book on the same subject:

Contemporary society does not have a strong taste for the proper measure of things though. Now that it's possible to talk with a straight face about giving banks our money so they can lend us our money back, it might be useful to consider that in literature unreal economies also flourish. Trading off bright beginnings, Houellebecq and BHL have generated fame and wealth for themselves far beyond and above their artistic and intellectual stock. While one might have no time for the Parisian sport of deriding Houellebecq's attempts at infamy, or gloating as BHL squares up to custard pies throwers, they are unpopular, I think, because most people have an instinctive, if not atavistic, respect for the arts and philosophy as a form of husbandry. To quote Connolly again: "The artist has roots that run a hundred feet underground in search of tea leaves, cinders and old boots."

Solitude and modesty are key words. No-one, as far as I know, begrudges the retiring Leclezio his Nobel, while busy BHL and Houellebecq are two public enemies who not only make the hype, they believe it too.

The key issue here is the one of distance. Neither Bhl nor Houellebecq have enough distance from either their work or their persona as writers to be something other than tormented and sometimes irritating public figures. They care so much about image that it has become an obsession, which has given a literary persona and although that isn’t a tragedy, it is something that they should accept and even enjoy because it mightmake them better writers.

Conventional Wisdom and Pop intellectualism

Bill McKibben reviews Tom Friedman’s latest in the New York Review of Books:

Thomas Friedman is the prime leading indicator of the conventional wisdom, always positioned just far enough ahead of the curve to give readers the sense that they're in-the-know, but never far enough to cause deep mental unease. He performs a useful service as a kind of political GPS unit, telling us where the country is, and could reasonably be expected to go. And this is his best book, more nuanced than his last, the best-selling The Earth Is Flat. But it needs to be viewed as a snapshot of the current dilemmas of policy, not as the oracle that it often aspires to be.

By this point, even casual readers of t he New York Times Op-Ed page are familiar with the arguments in his book, because he's rehearsed most of them several times. Post–September 11 America, he writes, is in danger for a pair of overarching reasons: fear of terrorism has caused the country to throw up walls even as the rest of the planet becomes more open—thus we don't get to take full advantage of the new "flatness" that technologies like the Web are yielding. And a hangover of triumphalism from our cold war success has left us unfocused—our politics have slipped into rancorous and petty division that prevents Washington from going to work to fix very real problems like Social Security's huge deficits or our strained and overpriced health care system. "We've become a subprime nation that thinks it can just borrow its way to prosperity—putting nothing down and making no payments...." He calls this "dumb as we wanna be" politics, and says nothing better exemplifies it than the demand last spring, from both Hillary Clinton and John McCain, for a "gas tax holiday" in the face of rising fuel prices. (Barack Obama opposed it.)

I stopped reading and taking Tom Friedman seriously after attempting to read The World is Flat. I realized then that Friedman is too obsessed with his ability to explain plainly and cutely what he believes to be our present and our future. This obsession makes him forget that sometimes that complexity is well complex and that most of the times you cannot transform gastronomy into fast food without making it cheap even though you make it accessible. The point that I’m making is that Friedman likes too much to be cute and to be popular that he can no longer go against conventional wisdom, because he creates it by loving his status as pop intellectual.

Intelligent political candidates

Orin Kerr has a worth reading poston intelligence, political candidates, and voters’ perceptions of it. He makes the following point about Sarah Palin, which hits the mark:

If you agree with Palin's views, you're likely to figure she is obviously reasonably sharp (smart enough to get the issues) and has good judgment (she gets then right). Further, her political success proves that she has charisma (popular Governor, beat the incumbent). And if she isn't the most articulate person, well then she's just not glib. On the other hand, if you disagree with Palin's views, you're likely to think she isn't intelligent (no impressive academic degrees), she lacks judgment (she's wrong on the issues), and she's inarticulate (see Couric interviews). And if she's a charismatic person, well then it's just an empty and misleading charisma.

America (Alas! it is becoming true almost anywhere) is so fragmented ideologically that most Americans believe that the true political divide is between the intelligent and the imbecile, the reflective adults, and the infantile warriors. It is for this reason that there is no longer political discourse in America, just political warfare where the winner takes it all.

 

The dangerous and aphrodisiac highs of the self-imposed and self-obsessed task to save the world

Gideon Rachman has tempered some of his high praise of Sarkozy due to his grand design to save the world, which in fact may not solve the current financial crisis. One of the problems with Sarkozy is that he has trouble focusing not only one task, but on little tasks because he has a super hero complex in the sense that he wants to mark his time and therefore is looking for anything that would enable him to last. I have the feeling that the next American president, whoever he is, isn’t going to be Sarkozy’s best friend. American presidents, in general, don’t like it when other leaders try to be what they believe they already are. Superheroes can’t get along with each other especially if they are all young, energetic, and persuaded that they were elected to change/save the world. Sugary excerpt:

Mr Sarkozy’s energetic confidence has been bolstered by the conventional wisdom that Europe has had a good crisis. After a period of disorder, EU leaders pulled things together and came up with a plan that rescued the banks and restored a modicum of confidence.

But the Europeans should not believe their own publicity – and nor should a credulous and shell-shocked US president. For while the EU regards itself as the global leader in the fine art of international governance, it has dealt with this crisis partly by ignoring some of its own most cherished principles.

[…] The French government – and much of the European left – have long believed that the European commission has been hijacked by doctrinaire market liberals. Mr Sarkozy argues that the crisis has proved the madness of believing that the market is always right. So the financial crisis may have prepared the intellectual ground for an assault on the commission’s powers to police Europe’s internal market. Who needs all those fussy and unrealistic laws, when super-Sarko has companies and entire economies to save?

So...

As I predicted the Red Sox lost, but it still hurt. I try to soothe my wounds by reminding myself that I have the chance to live in an era when the Sox actually expect to win the World series every year, but it doesn't work, I'm hurting. What else is new? Oh yeah, I watched Colin Powell and all I could think about is how much things have changed in such a short period of time. Six years ago, I believed and respected Colin Powell a lot more than Dominique de Villepin. Today, I respect Colin Powell, but can no longer believe what he says even though I'm still wondering what kind of president he would have made. I like Villepin a lot more because I have realized that there is something there and that his eloquence doesn't hide a lack of substance and of political courage (in that sense, he is in a way the sober person's anti-Obama). Words matter, but they are not a substitute for the beef. It isn't what God says or writes that is important, it is what s/he does or doesn't do and that proves that s/he doesn't exist. So the fall, so far, is looking  frighteningly promising. I have trouble living the realization that good times are coming. Oh, les beaux jours!

Silence on Sunday

To help the Red Sox win tonight, I'm going to remain silent (almost silent) on my english blog this Sunday. Nevertheless, I have the feeling that they are going to lose because at some point, the spell is going to break. I hope that I'm wrong.

It's always some other woman's fault

Another proof via Janice Turner’s article in the Times of London, which shows that that women don’t like each other and have trouble admiring other women, who they perceived as having it all or as too successful or too ambitious to really be simply good women as well:

I need someone to blame for raising the bar, and I'm going to choose American parents. In fact, as she's probably selling up her cockney boozer and packing up her patronising children's books with their self-serving homilies neither to bully the beautiful (English Roses), nor gossip about the rich (Mr Peabody's Apples) I might pin it on Madonna, apparently too busy with her Sticky & Sweet tour to comply with her British husband's request for “an ordinary family life”.

Bottom of Form

[…] Since then we've all sucked up the American way of parenting. It is no coincidence that Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow began breeding in London around this time, transfixing us with their glamorous maternity wardrobes, fast-returning figures and macrobiotic packed lunches. [...]What is so vital about America, what makes it so thrilling as a nation, is the deep-rooted belief that everything can be improved, transformed and - with enough ingenuity and effort - perfected. Having the American A-list in our midst - and the disposable income of an economic boom - turned British women from a nation of stubbly legged home-permers and gym-avoiders into waxed, manicured, extreme-yoga devotees.

Defending the use of the "N" word

I don't agree with Goldberg's reasoning, but it's interesting to hear a different point of view.

The job of a novelist

Via The Millions, Haruki Murakami in Berkeley on the job of a novelist:

I don't dream. I use my dreams when I write. I dream when I'm awake. That's the job of a novelist. You can dream a dream intentionally. When you're sleeping and you have a nice dream, you're eating or with a woman, you might wake up at the best part. I get to keep dreaming. It's great.

A beauty pageant

I skimmed through the debate and I have to say that it failed even to meet my low expectations. The problem was that the candidates didn't entertained me (I'm not asking to be entertained), but simply because the debate didn't tell me anything valuable about them and about how they would govern the United States. I had the uncomfortable feeling that I was watching contestants in beauty pageant who knew that their task was to give prepared and conventional answers because they weren't going to be judged on their ability to think on their feet and to answer the questions in a way that is helpful to voters. The point is that American elections are increasingly becoming beauty pageants where what matters is looking the part and being sexy. A French columnist today wrote that Obama has brought back Sex into politics. It made me laughed because I remembered last year when they were precisely tearing Ségolène Royal apart savagely by accusing her to do the same thing. I guess manly sex appeal is less shallow, less olé olé, and less manipulative than the one of women.

How to watch a presidential debate

The only way for me to watch a presidential debate this election is to watch it with the mute button on while watching episodes of Lost or Heroes on my computer or while simply writing. When it is over, I read the French press's reactions to it to see how enthusiastic it is about the performance of Obama. If its reactions are mixed then I watch the debate because the French press is so pro-Obama that if it manages to be something other than passionate about its praises for its candidate then I know that the debate was worth watching because something, not necessarily to Obama's disadvantage, happened. Why I am reading the French press's coverage instead of the American one? The French press, although it is biased, still has enough distance from this election that enables it to see what it is happening even though it is shamefully rooting for a particular outcome and has become a cheerleader for the candidate it believes will redeem the sins and the faults of America.

The shit and the glitz

When you see Christopher Hitchens become dull and conventional, you know that something is out of whack. Is it just me or are those two, Hitchens and Alterman stuck in 2002? I think that the trouble with liberalism is that it is a lot like love in the sense that few liberals dare to question it because it is both intoxicating and addictive. Baudelaire was lamenting in two centuries ago that he was bored in France because everybody resembled Voltaire, I am bored right now because everybody resemble these two thoughtful people who are stuck, passez moi l'expression, in their own shit, which wouldn't be too be bad if they still had an imagination.

When speed and relentlessness become reassuring

Gideon Rachman gives Nicolas Sarkozy, who is also President of the EU, high marks for his leadership during the financial crisis:

By contrast, Nicolas Sarkozy has done well. “Reassuring” is not a word that generally applies to the hyperactive French president. But Mr Sarkozy has looked energetic and determined. Since France currently holds the presidency of the European Union, he has had the usually nightmarish task of trying to manufacture a joint European response. In the event, Sunday night’s summit in Paris was a much more decorous and successful occasion than many an EU crisis summit. By avoiding farce and presenting a united façade to the world, Mr Sarkozy saved the EU from further embarrassment.

I would like to agree with him, but I have some reservations not because I disagree with Sarkozy politically, but because I have the sense that what is being done will simply and temporarily contain the flames of the fire because doing more and being for once and when it is needed, revolutionary would mean to increase uncertainty and to cause more panic. I have this sinking feeling that the toughest decisions aren’t make and that the political lessons of this crisis aren’t learned because they would necessitate Sarkozy to change ideologically. However, we know that politicians, especially when they are relentless and obsessed with speed as Sarkozy is, don’t change ideologically. They remain cats or dogs while from time to time pretending to metamorphose into something else to speed things along.  

The beauty of Condescension

It is amazing that how easy to realize that a great deal of politics is about personality, fluff, and appearance when the politicians are female. Chris Dillow takes the efforts of comparing Ruth Kelly (the former British Transport Secretary who resigned to spend more time with her family) to Sarah Palin and of course his conclusion is that Palin has no skill and Kelley is slightly better (that must be because in Britain there can never be a politicians as incompetent, clueless, as Palin). Is it just me or are the few women who ever dared to admit that they want power and who weren’t considered“normal” by being either too mean, too unlikable, too dumb or too pretty, are always the dumbest politicians ever? What is the female equivalent in the western world of leader who can bewitched much of the people by who he is and what he says without being accused to be without skills and obviously farcical? What I never understand is the need for people who are so sure that Palin is a female clown to take upon themselves the task of undressing her as if they were the smartest people in the world and especially as if the point that they are making isn’t really as smartness, skills, and the desire for substance and reflection in politics, but about what they considered to be “acceptable dumbness” in politics. Bush was able and allowed to be president of the United of America for 8 years, but I guess Palin is worse even though everything is telling us that she isn’t and that if she had the “acceptable” political views even without “perceived” reflectiveness, she would be adored and beatified as the best thing since Mother Theresa. Why can't we have female messiahs, you know those people who supposedly meant to save us because they were chosen and because they are "special"? Why can't the One be a woman? Idiotic sugary excerpt:

There was a time when it was thought that politics required the sort of characteristics that only come to must of us with maturity: judgment and cool-headedness.
Today, though, these skills matter less. Instead, what matters is simply who one is. Which is where Sarah Palin comes in. It’s increasingly obvious that she has no obvious ability. Instead, she was picked to be vice-presidential candidate simply for who she is  (or appears to be) - because it was thought that she would appeal to the right demographic.
Politicians are selected in the same way that manufactured pop bands are - for their media-friendliness, and ability to recite others' words,  more than any great skill they have.

Recognizing fluff

Apparently, it is possible to be smart, cultured and not to be in love with the One and to not believe that he is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Scintillating stuff

The best posts I read during my time-off came from Kenneth Anderson who was one of my professors when I was in law school and whom I have to say always writes things, which forces me to think and usually gives me a better understanding of what is happening around me. The only shortcoming of Professor Anderson is that his understanding of French society is marred by his unwillingness to look at France through other prism that the ones of Mark Steyn. It is a shame, but hey, nobody is perfect. In August and September, Professor Anderson wrote two great posts on Barack Obama and Sarah Palin, which I think are required reading for those who want to understand American politics and in the stakes of the current presidential politics. Here are two sugary excerpts.

The first comes from a post titled “The New Class, Palin and Obama (Note to Peter Berkowitz).”

Obama is a classic New Class elitist, by education, outlook, everything. So is his wife. Their professional lives have consisted in - community organizing? please - the elite management of the poor and, of even greater importance today, management of, but also production of, communalist tensions through multiculturalism and identity politics. That’s what the New Class does; that’s what it exists to do. Along with, to be sure, extracting rents for managing social conflicts that it also has much interest in creating.
Palin represents not just another sort of America, but another sort of American elite. Not very elite, in her case, let’s be clear. She is not an intellectual, obviously: so what? It’s overrated, I can tell you. She doesn’t have an Ivy League education, or even a degree from one of the great public universities.

[…] But Palin obviously is not Fred Flintstone, either - as though Fred Flintstone were chosen by lot from the masses to lead the masses; she has political skills and smarts and a view on large issues that affect many lives. Let’s face it, I don’t think any of my intellectual colleagues in academia or me, for that matter, could get elected governor of anywhere, or dogcatcher, or anything else. We don’t dream of being elected; we dream of being appointed, and when we dream of ‘appointed what?’, it is usually Czar or maybe Grand Inquisitor.
But unlike me or my confreres in the academy, Palin has an organic, extra-political connection to the people she proposes to govern, whether in Alaska or the United States as a whole. Everything about her says, I’m one of you. Not the whole citizen of the planet thing that Obama’s New Class persona uses as a way to elide the question of his relationship to America and Americans, except as Redeemer, but a representative of the people of whom she is indeed representative, but among whom she must be, in virtue of the office she seeks, also an unapologetic elite. The question for contemporary elites is no longer whether they have, but instead whether they believe they actually need, a rootedness in and among the people whose lives they intend so thoroughly to govern.

The second from one titled “The line between feminist path-breaker and white trash ...”

Honestly, I never thought I’d see the day when pious leftwing women would start lecturing the world about the inappropriateness of a female politician breastfeeding an infant. I realize it’s an infant who, they believe (mostly on grounds of aesthetic and etiquette, grounds of good taste, class, and breeding, so far as I can tell), should have been aborted. If it was bad taste to bear Trig, it would be worse taste to feed him. If, on the other hand, Palin were a female Democrat, would we be hearing any of this? Please.
[…] The issue is finally about class, yes? But class defined in a peculiarly elastic way. If the Palins were Democrats, it would be pathbreaking stuff. Of course, it would have required at least one, preferably two, abortions along the way to prove themselves worthy of their social betters and show that they, like the Obamas, understand what Proper People do when their Daughters Make Mistakes. Could one imagine my daughter’s elite private schools, bastions of upper middle class progressivism - and what will be, certainly, the Obama’s schools if they come to DC - Sidwell Friends or National Cathedral School, making accommodations for a pregnant girl: all anyone would be asking, openly or not, is why are you putting us in this embarrassing position, why didn’t you do the decent thing and quietly have an abortion, Schools Like This don’t have Girls Like That. Anyway, doesn’t she have some brothers or male cousins to supervise her honor and haul her off to the abortionist? We’re feminists, after all, and while we don’t care about virginity, and are especially in favor of Unconventional Families and all, by golly we sure do care about inappropriate pregnancy.
But, that bits-of-tissue-down-the-memory-hole done, a Democrat version of the Palins would be great for the party, a bit of genuine working stiff, union family, small town - all good.

Professor Anderson is so cool, to use an old and passé hip word, that he makes conservatism scintillating.

Back for good

I'm finally back from my long hiatus from this blog. So many things have happened since I left that I'm just going to start by making a few short statements that will let you know how I feel about the major events, which have happened since I took a pause from blogging.

First, I have to say that I like Sarah Palin. I don't agree with anything she stands for, but I respect her because I believe that women have the right to be social conservatives and that no opinion nor beliefs which they may have can make them deserve to be insulted, belittled, despised, and treated as airheads because they don't fit the conventional mold of what women should believe and stand for. I also have to say that seeing what Palin is going through makes me realize why Hillary Clinton and Ségolène Royal couldn't win. Both the left and the right (especially women ) view women as vessels that cannot be good in themselves. In any case, the fact that I like Sarah Palin doesn't mean that I would vote for her and her running mate. I wouldn't vote for Obama either. This is the first American election in my lifetime where I believe strongly that both major candidates are terrible. Their shortcomings make it impossible to accept their mediocrity because they have absolutely no awareness of what within themselves and in their environment that would make them not just bad presidents, but dangerously ineffective leaders of the free world. Thus, I'm watching this election with despair because I realize that four years from now, America may realize that being Bushlike is not the only character trait that makes an awful president.

On the financial crisis, my opinion isn't that a form of capitalism is dying, but simply that people are realizing that we are not in 1929 and that we may not have any other choice that to feel the pain of the bad and risky decisions of a few egocentric people who had no awareness (here is that word again) of the fact that no man is an island.

So there are a few thoughts on my first day back. I am rested and I will enjoy writing this fall.