The Republic of Dissent

A miscarriage may become a murder.... in Utah

Just one comment comes to me when I read this "Only in America":

A proposed Utah law that would open women who suffer a miscarriage to possible criminal prosecution and life imprisonment has enraged feminists and civil rights activists across the United States.
Adopted overwhelmingly by both sides of the state legislature in Salt Lake City earlier this month, the draft bill is now awaiting the signature of the state's Republican Governor, Gary Herbert. It is not clear if the growing national controversy surrounding the proposed law will slow or even stay his pen.
While the main thrust of the law is to enable prosecutors in the majority-Mormon state to pursue women who seek illegal, unsupervised forms of abortion, it includes a provision that could trigger murder charges against women found guilty of an "intentional, knowing or reckless act" that leads to a miscarriage. Some say this could include drinking one glass of wine too many, walking on an icy pavement or skiing.

Globalization and exploitative racism

Interesting stuff from Lenin's Tomb (hat tip: Chris Dillow):

Occasionally, if you open the Economist or the FT, you'll read an argument that runs something like this: people shouldn't be bigoted toward immigrants, because by they do jobs that British workers won't do for pay that British workers won't accept. In a similar way, you often hear members of the Institute of Directors or the CBI explain that 'globalisation' and international outsourcing is an excellent thing because it gives jobs to hard-working people in Third World countries who work much harder, and are much less demanding, than spoilt, recalcitrant Western workers. This is the zenith of ruling class anti-racism, and it's just another argument for exploitation. And it is, of course, deeply racist toward the recipients of its supposed benediction.

I have to say that I know longer know what racism is and what being a racist means. I feel like the Supreme Court Justices when they were trying to rule on pornography and had to define obscenity. I'm puzzled and stuck in the middle of an intellectual Sahara on this issue.

Bush is still here

Well, I know that it won't be a surprise but I agree with Alex Massi's conclusion, but not necessarily all of his sentiments when he writes this:

Increasingly I suspect that George HW Bush may be one of the most under-rated American presidents since the Second World War. Politically, sure, he wasn't the smartest, sharpest or smoothest and some of his greatest achievements - most notably the management of post-Soviet eastern europe - owed something to a policy of what was, in some senses and to some extent, benign neglect. But there's a certain old-fashioned, perhaps patrician, wisdom in that too. The first Bushies got some things wrong and they got some kinds of lucky too but their reserve also helped them avoid too many self-inflicted mistakes.
It wouldn't be quite right to say that the Obama administration is Pappy's heir but its approach to foreign and security policy certainly borrows from the GHWB playbook.

I'm wondering what people would be saying if Hillary Clinton were in the White House and following the same course? I believe that Andrew Sullivan (who once said that she was Dick Cheney in pantsuit) and others would already be Sarah Palining her and saying that she is pure evil and that she killed the poor "Black" guy to become president and yet, cannot even bring real change to America. Well, I guess that foolish and thoughtless toughness only works for dudes.

Afghanistan, the Dutch, and the last illusions

Julian Lindley-French and Kurt Volker on the Dutch's scheduled withdrawal from Afghanistan and its consequences:

The departure of the Dutch will doubtless reinforce a belief both in the Afghan Government and key elements of the international community, such as the United Nations and leading non-governmental organizations (NGOs), that only the Americans (and to some extent the British) are reliable partners. This will likely affect the willingness of the Kabul government to work with Europeans and further undermine the influence of Europeans over the government and mission.
The departure of the Dutch will take place just as the EU’s Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP) is being inaugurated, further undermining what is a very fragile process towards European security self-determination.
However, the greatest impact will be on NATO and with it the wider transatlantic relationship. The Dutch departure is scheduled for the eve of NATO’s new strategic concept, in effect NATO’s ten year plan for dealing with a dangerous and complex world in which stabilization and reconstruction missions will be front and center. Should the Americans and British be forced to fill the Uruzghan space with little or no help from allies in the north and west of Afghanistan, then to the heavily-burdened Americans and British the message will be clear: the solidarity implicit in the strategic concept will be as empty as the Helmand desert.

The biggest consequence of the Dutch's withdrawal is that it eradicates the illusion in Europe, at the very least, that Afghanistan is a war that can be fought endlessly without popular support and more importantly without concise and time sensible objectives.

Sisterhood

Quote of the early morning from Henning Mankell:

There are many things you can say about the need of assistance in Africa. But one thing is absolutely sure, that we have to see to that the women of Africa who have such enormous responsibilities and no influence at all, have much more influence. Sometimes I get a little angry asking myself where are all the feminists in the West who should really help their sisters out in Africa. But it is not only a feminist question; it’s a question of humanity.

Racializing Abortion

Just another proof that in America, despite the election of our lord and savior Obama, it is possible to racialize anything especially polarizing issues :

A new documentary, written and directed by Mark Crutcher, a white abortion opponent in Denton, Tex., meticulously traces what it says are connections among slavery, Nazi-style eugenics, birth control and abortion, and is being regularly screened by black organizations.
Black abortion opponents, who sometimes refer to abortions as “womb lynchings,” have mounted a sustained attack on the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, spurred by a sting operation by young white conservatives who taped Planned Parenthood employees welcoming donations specifically for aborting black children.
“What’s giving it momentum is blacks are finally figuring out what’s going down,” said Johnny M. Hunter, a black pastor and longtime abortion opponent in Fayetteville, N.C. “The game changes when blacks get involved. And in the pro-life movement, a lot of the groups that have been ignored for years, they’re now getting galvanized.”
The factors fueling the focus on black women — an abortion rate far higher than that of other races and the ties between the effort to legalize and popularize birth control and eugenics — are, at heart, old news. But they have been given exaggerated new life by the Internet, slick repackaging, high production values and money, like the more than $20,000 that Georgia Right to Life invested in the billboards.

We are truly in Postracial America. Is too dumb or malicious of me to believe that Obama ought to say something? Oh yeah, that's right he loses his eloquence and the desire to take risks when there is no personal/political rewards for them . But in any case, it is too easy, too self-righteous, and willfully blind (fanatical) to cry racism when it comes to abortion instead of addressing the main issues, which are the ones of poverty and gender when it comes to "African-Americans." It seems to me that it is too easy to make grand speeches or issue religious condemnations from the podium of a church, when it might be more productive to use social activism to address the underlying causes of the problem. This is one of the reasons why I argue that religion is a delusion that particularly the poor and the underprivileged don't need because it becomes, as Marx would say, an opiate, I would use the phrase crack cocaine because it is too pejorative and would distract from my main point.

China, Mugabe, and Africa

No comments necessary to the news that China threw at its embassy in Harare a birthday-bash  for Robert Mugabe except to wonder whether the Chinese have any standards to their African policies and whether there is anything that they won't do (but again that something one can wonder about many world powers in Africa):

Mugabe celebrated his 86th birthday on Sunday and made time to attend a party held in his honour at the Chinese embassy in Harare, China's Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Hailed as a saviour by fanatical supporters and praised throughout Africa for standing up to what many see as bullying by the West, Mugabe is hated in equal measure by opponents who accuse him of being a dictator.
Mugabe "thanked the Chinese embassy for its painstaking preparations for the birthday celebration and ... hoped to further expand friendly cooperative relations in every field between the two nations", the Foreign Ministry said.
The ministry's website showed pictures of Mugabe cutting a birthday cake in front of a large sign wishing him "Happy 86th birthday" and addressing almost 100 guests.

Trouver Derrida

Sugary excerpt from David Kaufmann's review of the latest biography of Jacques Derrida, Who was Derrida: an Intellectual Biography by David Mikics.

Derrida constantly took contrarian, if not outright rebellious, stances. He did not like assuming the protective coloring of his surroundings. When he arrived in the early 1950s at the most elite of French universities, the École Normale Supérieure, he chafed against the Marxist orthodoxy of his professors and refused to join the cult of Jean-Paul Sartre—a philosopher whose influence he called “nefarious” and “catastrophic.” Derrida did not follow the path of political engagement favored by his colleagues. Rather, by close and often inventive readings of major texts from the philosophical and literary traditions, he sought to blow up philosophical certainty.
But there were limits to his subversion. Mikics locates one of the major fault lines in Derrida’s thought in the philosopher’s prophetic tones, his “fondness for apocalyptic drama,” which works against his reluctance to imagine the apocalypse itself. According to Mikics, Derrida might have aspired to the end of Western metaphysics and he might have adopted the language and some of the practices of the avant-garde, but he could not run full-out at the future. He wrote like a radical in favor of the moderate.
Derrida’s split persona—revolutionary and ultimately conservative at the same time—goes a long way toward explaining his influence in the American academy. His insistence on close reading made him congenial for literature departments, and his pronouncements made close readings appear consequential. What is more, Derrida’s timing was perfect. His reputation in the United States grew at that point when being a hippie was not a political statement but a “lifestyle choice” and when many of the energies of the late ’60s had become merchandised or bogged down in economic stagnation. At a time of retrenchment, Derrida promised a kind of liberation that did not depend on ethnic or gender identity, a freeing of thought that was intellectually disruptive and could, if need be, serve politically progressive ends.

I have to admit that I have never know what to make of Derrida and Deconstruction because they never got to me. Reading Derrida's felt to me like watching Ingmar Bergman's movies, LI know that I'm watching something that is artistic and philosophical, but I'm unsure about the reasons why it should matter and therefore the question of relevance becomes both an obsession and a distraction. That said, I have always like watching Derrida's speak especially when he isn't given a lecture, because then one gets the sense of somebody who is totally caught up in his work and that must have been a great teacher. 

The best of all possible worlds and calculated cynicism

Quote of the day:

We have had a century of continuity in which the basic operating assumptions of the economic system have been hegemonic. In fact this version of “modernity” was to have closed the book on history: We have reached the best of all possible worlds; there are no alternatives. Proclaiming the end of history intimates that our desires have been satiated and that there is nothing further to strive for. To think that our desires could be fulfilled under this system is certainly beyond cynical. But that nihilistic cynicism complements the vision of progress associated with the modernist dream.
This spectacular rationality has been thoroughly cynical. The idea of progress we have held out is couched in exclusion, stacked “competition” and destruction of the natural environment. The idea that this could ever be “the best of all possible worlds” is nothing but calculated cynicism.

Sarkozy is whipped

After reading Sarkozy's semi-excuses to Rwanda, I believe that there are two explanations for the changes in Sarkozy who used to be against repentance. The cutest and less plausible one is that he discovered Jesus. The most credible one is that he got whipped by the realization that France will not remain a player in some parts of Africa and elsewhere where it has a long and sorted histoiry unless it softens its image and seems at least to be aware that it made mistakes before.
I believe hat the Sarkozy's apology tour is less about redemption or a real change in policy, but about realpolitik and competing with the Americans and the Chinese for the attention of countries who love apologies because they believe that their past is one of the few commodities that they have to bargain their future.

Criminalizing psychological abuse

Lizzy Davies on the new French law designed to criminalize psychological abuse:

French MPs have voted unanimously to make "psychological violence" within a couple an offence punishable by up to three years in prison as part of new measures aimed at improving protection for victims of domestic abuse.
Politicians from the left and right supported the passing of a law which singles out "repeated" verbal actions intended to hurt the victim's rights and dignity or their physical or mental health. As well as a jail sentence, offenders could be ordered to pay a fine of up to €75,000 (£66,600).
Supporters of the law claim an estimated 8% of women in France are psychologically abused by their partner. Chantal Brunel, a member of Nicolas Sarkozy's majority Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party, described it as "a preventative measure as psychological violence always precedes [physical] blows".

This measure is not only stupid but potentially dangerous for two simple reasons.The first reason is that the law doesn't exist to punish every single appalling behavior, but rather to control and to eradicate explicit behaviors that are clearly definable. We live in an age where politicians when they are out of the idea write up laws to please categories of people in order to have the whole society nod in agreement without thinking about the consequences of their actions and about the burden that they put on the judicial system to deal with societal problems when it isn't its role to do so. One just has to look at the way judicial systems deal with rape for example to realize that the problem isn't never really the law, but social attitude toward sex, gender, and sexual violence.
The second reason is the most obvious one and it is that psychological abuse here is defined by its consequences  (for there isn't any other possible way to define it). Those consequences when they are atrocious,  are usually already punishable by laws. In other words, this law is dumb, opportunistic and more importantly dangerous. Experience shows that in cases where there is psychological abuse in a relationship, there are also other visible signs of trouble, which society can use to intervene if it is serious not about protecting women,  the victims and emphasizing the fact that violence is never a private matter.
Lastly, there s another element here that bothers and it is the strong implication that this problem is a women issue. I find that reprehensible because it is part of the problem for it is always easier to dismiss or to shut down necessary conversations in a society on  critical and defining issues with dumb and inapplicable laws when they are characterized as "women issues" because then, the tacit assertion is that they are on the fringe of society and that the focus needs to be on visibility, flashy solutions and not practical ones.

The Chicago political culture and Washington, DC

Michael Gecan on Obama, his Chicago Team, and the culture clash happening in Washington, DC:

Many people were puzzled when they heard wailing from the White House over the loss of the 60th Senate vote, but the administration’s despair was logical in the context of the Chicago political culture. In the Windy City, if you don’t have total control and the ability to dominate, you have no control and are check-mated. The art of using an overwhelming majority of 59 to 41 has not been practiced for generations in Chicago. Faced with anything other than uncontestable clout, the Chicagoans who went to Washington might as well have been asked to speak Greek.
Elections Mean Everything. The one thing that the political machine excels at is managing the electoral process from start to finish. Selecting and grooming candidates. Buying or scaring off reformers. Marshaling election lawyers to knock out other candidates’ petitions. Using only paid public employees to work (illegally, but with almost no chance of being caught and prosecuted because of the care taken to avoid detection) in campaigns and on election day. Filling vacancies produced by indictments and convictions of insiders with even tighter insiders. Nobody does it better. This is why the presidential campaign did so well in caucus states and less well in those with open elections: the machine thrives on narrow or limited voting situations. But it founders on the kind of fluid and shifting series of skirmishes that, say, the health care struggle became. The president’s decision to bring his Chicago team into the White House may, therefore, have been his worst. Axelrod, Jarrett, and even Emanuel are much more suited to electoral than legislative campaigns.

Well, what is Gecan is describing is neither unexpected nor surprising for every president has, soon or later, to confront the fact that the political culture of his inner circle may be clashing with the one of Washington, DC. The only interesting question is how long it is going to take Obama to make changes if ever for I don't think that DC is ever going to become Chicago no matter how much it loves Obama. However, it may be possible that governing is less important to Obama than winning elections meaning that being a two-term president is the point of it all instead of having Congress pass important and transformative legislation on key issues such as health care.

To attract Zealots

After reading this sugary excerpt from an article in the Daily Telegraph on Haïti , I wonder how people can be surprised when Zealots and other religious fundamentalists such as Laura Silsby go to Port-au-Prince believing that God has sent them on a mission to save Haitians from themselves or from their country, which is portrayed as the heart of darkness:

Port-au-Prince seems not like a city at all now, but a waking nightmare where even the most ordinary morning walk can turn distinctly lurid. There is a car in one of the streets behind the national palace that has been flattened by falling masonry. The driver’s body is still at the wheel.

There have been other catastrophic earthquakes in recent years – Iran (2003), Pakistan (2005), China (2008). But Haiti, all agree, represents a unique level of awfulness.

'It really is one of the worst earthquake situations I ever saw,’ says Dr Richard Munz, 56, an expert on international humanitarian aid, writer, surgeon, academic and veteran of 38 disasters over the past 20 years. 'It hit a very vulnerable population, it hit the capital city, and it hit a place without any pre-existing local response systems – all the systems that might have been there on the ground were just destroyed.’

Since independence in 1804 Haiti has endured a pattern of poverty and exploitation: crippling debts, US occupation, revolts, coups, dictatorships and 28 years of brutal repression under François 'Papa Doc’ Duvalier and his son, Jean-Claude ('Baby Doc’). Since the latter fled into exile in 1986, the country’s move to democracy has been accompanied by further coups and instability.

Some 80 per cent of the population live below the poverty line. The unemployment rate is 75 per cent; foreign aid accounts for 30-40 per cent of the government budget. Even in the good times, Haiti was short on infrastructure; there are only two fire stations in the entire country. Not only did the earthquake severely dent the services you turn to in a disaster – hospitals, airport, roads, port – but it also loosed inequalities and frustrations that were only provisionally contained.

Ridicule doesn't kill, but...

Kadhafi is taking himself for Ben Laden again surely because he misses the days when he was the  enemy number one of the US and of the West:

The masses of Muslims must go to all airports in the Islamic world and prevent any Swiss plane landing, to all harbours and prevent any Swiss ships docking (...)There is a big difference between terrorism and jihad.

I guess that all one can do here is to regret that Libya has enough oil to make its dictator able to buy anything including respectability and more importantly to have the World forget that he is a dangerous Putz with delusions of grandeur.

Camus, Sartre and Moral fetishism

In his indispensable article in the Philosophers Magazine  on the fetishism of morality, Jonathan Rée has a section on the quarrel that ended Camus and Sartre's friendship:

Exactly a hundred years after Mill’s attack on Whewell, Jean-Paul Sartre launched a similar assault on his old friend Albert Camus. His target was Camus’s book L’homme révolté (The Rebel, published in 1951), which argued that the “prophetic dream of Marx” had led directly to the creation of a “terrorist state”. As editor of the magazine Les Temps modernes, Sartre assigned the book to his colleague Francis Jeanson, who denounced Camus as a self-hating liberal “humanist” who wanted to substitute a lachrymose “red-cross morality” for serious political analysis. Camus wrote a feeble response which appeared alongside Jeanson’s hatchetry in August 1952, and Sartre weighed in by accusing Camus of a monstrous form of racism – the “racism of moral beauty”. Sartre was prepared, up to a point, to acknowledge the horror of the Soviet concentration camps – they were, he said, “a challenge for us all” – but unlike Camus he was not prepared to make common cause with bourgeois Commentators who were seizing on them with glee in order to “give themselves a good conscience”. Sartre was horrified by “the ease with which you handle your indignation,” he told Camus. “Is it my fault if these procedures remind me of the criminal court?” he inquired. “Perhaps you should have been appointed as Chief Prosecutor of the Republic of Beautiful Souls.”
Sartre’s belligerence is appalling; but when he talks about the temptation of casting oneself as “Chief Prosecutor for the Republic of Beautiful Souls” he surely has a point. And Camus, though deeply hurt by the attack, tacitly acknowledged that there was some truth in it. His late book La Chute is a first-person story of a drifter in an Amsterdam bar, who tells us how he fled in disgust from his former existence as a fashionable Parisian lawyer who specialised in the defence of widows, orphans, refugees and anyone else who gave off the sweet odour of victimhood. He had been offered public honours, but turned them down, he recalls, “with a quiet dignity in which I found my true reward”. He began each working day by giving alms to a beggar or two; then he would earn the gratitude of another fragrant victim with a heart-stopping speech in court, and in the evenings he would relax with his elegant literary friends, complacently denouncing “the heartlessness of the ruling class and the hypocrisy of our politicians”.
Gradually he came to be revolted by his own precious sanctity. (“Just think how many crimes have been committed because the perpetrator could not bear to be in the wrong.”) He gave up the glamour of human rights activism in favour of a chastened practice of forgiveness, describing himself as a juge-pénitent, a penitent judge or perhaps a recovering morality-fetishist. “I favour every theory that denies human innocence, and every practice based on the presumption of guilt,” he says: “I am, dear boy, a disenchanted partisan of slavery.” And when he gets to the end he turns to us, his listeners, and enters a gentle plea: “I hope at least,” he says, “that you are a little less pleased with yourself than you were.”
It was of course leftism that provided the context of this famous quarrel; and it seems to me that leftism, together with politics, has been a casualty of the fetishism of morality.

 I have been more of a Camusian than a Sartrian because that I have always admired the fact that although Camus agreed mostly with Sartre that Marxism was "l'horizon indépassable de notre temps" (the inescapable philosophy of our time), he was unwilling to get blood on his pen to defend it. He was also reluctant to forgive the left's moral contradictions by using the pretext that the end justifies the means and that since the ends of the left were just, it was free to use unjust means to achieve them. I believe that the reason that pushed Sartre to pick a fight with Camus after the publication of L' Homme Révolté was simply because it was his most moral work. In that masterful essay, Camus affirms that existence doesn't absolutely precede essence for some human tendencies exist before the beginning of one's existence that make the obligation to make moral decisions even greater and more fundamentally that makes it necessary to human being to refuse to be a God, to fetishize morality, to transcend it in order to accept to be people. Sartre wanted to be a God because he needed to be right absolutely.

Europe and Nation-building

Christopher Chivvis argues that Europeans are bad at Nation-building when it ought to do its best to be good at it to make a necessary contribute to wars which America is fighting most alone in the name of the "West" since it is so unwilling to fight in them:

Civilian work is now widely recognized as an essential ingredient in addressing security challenges around the world. Weak states need people who know how to investigate a murder, run a prison system, collect customs and other taxes, and generally keep a state bureaucracy up and running. There is little point in pacifying a country militarily if its infrastructure, courts, fiscal controls, and health systems are so feeble that chaos returns the moment the troops leave.
Europe seems particularly well-suited for this kind of work. Not only is the European Union the gravitational center of Europe's foreign economic power, Europe is home to some of the most skilled legal, administrative, and law enforcement experts in the world.
Unfortunately, the European Union is failing to live up to its potential. Unless it expands its efforts by taking on more ambitious projects, with larger staff and bigger budgets, the age-old dream of transforming the EU into a civilian power will falter, just as its military prowess continues to decline. NATO -- and the mission in Afghanistan -- will suffer along with it. In its first five years of existence, the EU sent civilian experts to 13 war-torn countries. This sounds impressive, but the vast majority of these missions had fewer than 80 staff members, and most lasted less than a year. Some had little or no impact on the ground.

Is it just me or does Europe seem like the perfect scapegoat for the lack of a viable military strategy in Afghanistan and elsewhere that would lead to victory? What Chivvis does is too easy and in a way cheap because it blames Europeans for been bad at something that it is hard to be good at especially when their countries have an history of being colonizers. I guess one gets historical amnesia when one is looking for culprits.

The wonderful South Africa of Jacob Zuma

Africa Intelligence has a must-read article on what it calls "the state of Jacob Zuma." Reading it forces one to wonder how long can South Africa and more importantly South Africans can afford to have a Berlusconi as their head of state especially when they are dealing with so many existential issues.  Sugary excerpt:

Reports of President Jacob Zuma’s political demise are exaggerated. Yet what should have been a moment of triumph for him during the 20th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s release from prison proved to be yet another tribulation in his worst week yet as President. The usually unflappable Zuma looked rattled as he arrived at Parliament in Cape Town to give the State of the Nation address on 11 February. His speech was a damp squib – too plodding to fire up his political base and too short on specifics to impress the markets.
Just days before, Zuma had been pushed into making a public apology over revelations that he had fathered another child out of wedlock, this time with the daughter of football mogul and owner of the Kaiser Chiefs club Irvin Khoza. For once, the commentariat’s talk of ‘floodgates opening’ and ‘circling hyenas’ did not seem overblown as African National Congress insiders briefed journalists that Zuma’s promiscuity was a liability to the ANC.
It was Zuma’s third public apology – the first two were about having unprotected sex with another friend’s daughter and making belligerent remarks about gay people – which raises doubts about his sincerity and his own standing. More so because, we hear, the pressure on him to apologise came from some of his most senior allies, such as KwaZulu-Natal Premier Zweli Mkhize, leader of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) Zwelinzima Vavi, and South African Communist Party (SACP) Secretary General Blade Nzimande.Despite the efforts of Zuma’s spin doctors to downplay the political importance of the affair, it was clear that many ANC supporters – and not just the middle class ones – were deeply critical of his behaviour. Many senior ANC people see that voters link Zuma’s lifestyle and tough economic conditions in the townships. Some poorer ANC supporters complained that Zuma’s wives, concubines and extended family get state subsidies while others must wait for government services, jobs and houses

I'm coming to the conclusion after reading a lot of South Africa that one of its problems is that it has one dominant party, the African National Congress (ANC) that will probably continue to rule for the foreseeable future. The ANC has no real incentives, no political threats to its power to do what's right to the country when those acts might be bad for the part and starts to believe that the ANC is South-Africa.

The dead ends of history

The Economist has a great article on the ex-Communist Europeans countries and the fact that they are leaving their History behind as they move forward:

For the past 20 years, the countries of this region have been involved in what might be called "therapeutic historiography": tearing up old communist propaganda versions of history, and writing new ones. That has been an exhilarating, messy and sometimes disconcerting process. For Estonians and Latvians, for example, it meant the chance to honour those (heroes or victims, but not villains) who fought against the impending Soviet occupation in 1944-45. Yet many outsiders see these men as no more than Nazi collaborators: they wore uniforms of the SS, the epitome of wartime evil, and served alongside some war criminals. Context and comparison (far more Russians than Balts fought on Hitler's side) become irrelevant.
Slovaks and Croats want to de-demonise their wartime republics (Nazi puppet states from one viewpoint, a snatched breath of national regeneration from another). Germans and Jews, once seemingly vanished from the region, have emerged from the shadows (and from abroad), with their own unhappy memories that undermine the self-righteousness of both Communist and ethno-nationalist versions of history.
(...) Now central and eastern Europe may be joining the club of the ahistorical and apathetic. Historical rows are already the exception, not the rule. Poland is the signal example.

Usually, when the past is a source of shame or rather cannot be one of pride, it dies for those whose memory is too fresh to reinvent it. It is a lot easier to become ahistorical and even apathetic when you believe that the present is better than the past and than the future will be even better. The point is that former Communist countries for the most part feel that they are a lot to look forward to and that they may even be the future of Europe to make an indirect reference to Rumsfeld's provocative statement that there was an old and a new Europe.

The need for liberal anger

Clancy Sigal wonders why American liberals aren't more angry and more importantly why there cannot be a public manifestation of this anger in the way some Conservatives are expressing theirs through the tea parties:

The last time I remember collective anger as legitimate was in the now-much-derided 1960s with its protest marches and brazen hippie-style slogans. Ever since there's been a gradual slide – I would argue descent – into sterile politeness. Recently, I attended a meeting of my local school board where a mild, hardly-above-a-whisper grumble from a parent prompted his expulsion enforced by armed police. Who knows what might have happened if any of us in the audience had stood up and actually spoken out as in that famous Norman Rockwell painting of a town hall meeting?
Why should full-throated emotion be the monopoly of the so-called "populists" who seem to be the only people around unafraid to shout, yell, stomp and scream?

I grew up in a boisterous, immigrant, loud neighborhood where everyone had an opinion and voiced it full throttle. Somewhere along the line, maybe when I shifted from working class to middle class, I lost my rough, grating, empowered, assertive voice – and maybe the anger that had fuelled it. If so, that's a pity.
We need liberal anger now more than ever.

I would like to agree, but I think that the problem is that Liberals don't have a backbone and have content  being in power than with changing America for the better. The Healthcare reform bill is the perfect example of that fact for liberals are willing to accept less even though for once they are on the right side of an issue and have the power to  pass real reforms. Instead, they are timid because they are afraid to lose. This unwillingness to fight for the change they asserted through their vote, time, energy and money they believe in passionately less than two years ago is an acknowledgment  of their conviction that their kind of change isn't worth taking the risk to lose power in Washington, DC for power is the more potent than true reforms. Thus, the problem here isn't a lack of liberal anger, but rather the sterilization of liberalism which is solely about the glitz and the swagger. 

Technology and the immigrant

Aleksandar Hemon's pertinent words on the effects that technology has on immigration and more specifically on the immigrants:

I think technology has a neutral value at best; it could be used for good things or bad things. I think it fundamentally changes the situation of assimilation or participation in society. Because you can stay in touch daily with wherever you came from and you can listen to live broadcasts of radio stations or the prayers from the mosques or read daily newspapers, complete with obituaries online. I met a guy in St. Louis, a city that has the largest Bosnian population [in America], who, when he got nostalgic would get on the Web and watch snow fall in Sarajevo.
Ellis Island immigrants, on the other hand, would come in, work hard, be exploited, make it or not make it but even those who made it would go back thirty to forty years later to the village of their origin and they would find that one or two people remembered them. So it was easy to sever connections, and in some ways it was natural: your life was here, your old life was there. But I know a large number of Bosnians in Chicago who send their kids to Bosnia over the summer—school’s over, they send them to Grandma. These kids are bilingual, bicultural. Displacement is not necessarily political. You can go back and forth. Transportation has become relatively cheap. Masses of people are moving around the world: immigrants, refugees, labor migrants. It’s an entirely different world.

I'm wondering whether technology isn't just a tool that is reflecting that the fact that immigration has changed because the world has gotten smaller and also that at the same time, it has become more fragmented. Immigrants when they move to a new country no longer leave everything behind; to the contrary, they are able more often than not to live within  a community of their compatriots that has recreated its home environment a best as it could. Globalization may have compressed both time and space, it has made people less willing to change their identities or adapt their culture for those have become too sacred to touch.

The modern and pitiful age of the public apology

Gerald Warner mocks, rightly so in my opinion, Gordon Brown's self-important and self-righteous apology for the past shameful acts of Britain and the fact that our time has become the one of the public apology:

The public will be unsurprised by this latest piece of hypocrisy. The Prime Minister has every reason to apologise, and there are plenty of ways he could do so with dignity – even without adopting the parodic Maoist dictum that "Suicide is the sincerest form of self-criticism."
Instead, Mr Brown has succumbed to a very modern tendency. In the old days, the maxim of politicians was "Never apologise, never explain", variously attributed to the Duke of Wellington, Disraeli and a number of other possible contenders. (Some purists insist it was uttered by Admiral Fisher in the variant form: "Never explain. Never apologise.") Now, the vogue is for pointless apologies for events in the remote past, made by people who were not the perpetrators. When the heat is on, the conventional wisdom now holds, divert attention from your own blunders with an apology for the Norman Conquest, or whatever. Nobody did this kind of pseudo-apology better than Tony Blair: his glistening, Bambi-eyed sincerity as he apologised for the Irish potato famine, or Britain's role in the slave trade, was the stuff of which Oscar nominations are made. But he defiantly refused, at the Chilcot Inquiry, to apologise for the Iraq War, which actually was his responsibility.
Blair belonged to the Clinton school of feeling other people's pain, while evading responsibility for one's own conduct. Outside of politics, one of the worst offenders has been the Catholic Church: Pope John Paul II issued more than 100 apologies for events in which he had no conceivable involvement, including the Crusades and the trial of Galileo.
Then there is the other form of modern apology: one that expresses contrition not for the original action, but for the reactions of those who were offended. It seems that the only people who make genuine expressions of personal sorrow are those with money at stake: witness Tiger Woods's recent grovelling to his wife and sponsors, or that of Akio Toyoda, the head of Toyota, to those harmed by his company's faulty cars.

I may be too cynical, but I have come to the conclusion that public and noisy apologies are less about morality or the need for redemption than about the superiority complex of the ones doing the apology. For if one really thinks about it, the message sent is "I'm such a great person that I will apologize to people who aren't as good as I am to reclaim my greatness and to make it painfully clear, through a public shaming, that anything less than perfection is sinful."

Georges Frêche and the need to create a socialist Le Pen

John Lichfield has an article in the Independent, which proclaims solemnly Geoges Frêche, the sulfurous President of the Languedoc-Roussillon region, the Jean-Marie Le Pen of the Left:

Originally, the Socialist Party, at national level, had agreed reluctantly to back Mr Frêche's centre-left coalition, or "list". Last month, Mr Frêche once again outraged the leadership of the national party – and many other people in France – by making what appeared to be an anti-Semitic remark about the former Socialist prime minister, Laurent Fabius.
Mr Fabius is from a Catholic family of Jewish origin. After he had criticised Mr Frêche during a radio interview, the president of Languedoc-Roussillon retaliated by saying that the former prime minister had a "tronche pas très Catholique" – literally a "not very Catholic mug or hooter".
This may seem a trivial insult. Mr Frêche says that it was a version of a well-known phrase in the French south, "pas très Catholique", meaning not entirely straightforward. This is disingenuous. By referring to the "tronche", the face or nose, of Mr Fabius, Mr Frêche was indulging in just the kind of insidious, nudge-nudge anti-Semitism which still thrives in bourgeois, Catholic France, north and south.
This was far from Mr Frêche's first lapse. He has been accused of making anti-Semitic remarks before, despite being a strong supporter of Israel. He once referred to two ex-"Harkis" – Algerians who fought on the French side in the colonial civil war – as "sub-humans". In 2007, he repeated a complaint once voiced by the far-right leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, that there were too many black players on the France football team.

The trouble with Lichfield 's article is that it remains purposely on the periphery of the Frêche's issue. It does so in order to create a new monster and  then to make the case with ease simply one of an anti-Semitic and racist socialist who shows that Le Pen is not an anomaly within the French political system. This is, in my opinion, a voluntary misreading of the situation for the Frêche's issue is neither about anti-Semitism and racism, but rather about the fracture of the French left between those who consider that politics is about management (the modernists) and the others who believe that it has to be  also about values and the nation (the traditionalists). The French socialist are excluding Frêche and his supporters not because they believe they are racist but solely because there is a witch hunt that has begun in the party ahead of the next presidential election whose goal is to make sure that only a modern (Martine Aubry or Dominique Strauss-Kahn) is the socialist presidential candidate. It is a shame that John Lichfield because it is more flashy and more politically correct.  to sell the story that French is Le Pen didn't dig deep enough to give his readers the whole context by pointing out for example that the most important French Jewish organization supported Frêche and that many influential socialists  (Gérad Collomb, the mayor of Lyon and François Rebsamen, the one of Dijon) who can hardly be called racist or anti-Semitic have campaigned for him.

Haïti and cultural imperialism

Timothy Egan on the case of Laura Silsby and the other Christian missionaries who went to Haïti to save Haitian children who didn't need saving::

At the least, the curious case of Laura Silsby raises questions about cultural imperialism: what makes a scofflaw from nearly all-white Idaho with no experience in adoption or rescue services think she has a right to bring religion and relief to a country with its own cultural, racial and spiritual heritage?
Imagine if a voodoo minister from Haiti had shown up in Boise after an earthquake, looking for children in poor neighborhoods and offering “opportunities for adoption” back to Haiti. He could say, as those who followed Silsby explained on a Web site, that “the unsaved world needs to hear” from the saved.
Who says they are “unsaved?” And who says the world needs to hear from them? Haiti is a predominantly Roman Catholic country, and a nation full of passionate believers at that.
As it turns out, there was no orphanage for the Silsby children, just plans, many, many plans. And some of the young Haitians were not even orphans. As to what qualified Laura Silsby to jump into international relief work with a side of adoption services, well, she had once run something called Personal Shopper. And she was a charismatic Christian, with a golden tongue.

It is too easy and convenient to describe Laura Silsby and the others who are trying to "save" Haitians by any means necessary  as extremists and to put the blame and the responsibility for it all on cultural imperialism, whatever it is. However, the real problem is that religion, the media, politicians, and celebrities have transformed what used to be known as the White Men's burden into the Civilized People's burden, which perpetuates the idea that there exists dark places in the world where people needs to be saved from the burden of history, curses and  other forms of damnation and where modern people needs to do anything that they can to save those poor people. All one has to do is to analyse some of the commercials on television with an elderly man asking people to send money to see some poor child that will die if they are not charitable.  I really believe that Laura Silsby thought that it didn't matter whether the Haitians children that she was kidnapping had parents or not for she believed that salvation meant getting them out of the forsaken and cursed pursed that Haïti is to bring to the land of the free where God is present and where the light shines on anybody who believes.The point that it is that we live in a world where humanitarianism is mostly done by Zealots, true believers who feel in their gut that they are either doing the "lord's job" or simply saving people who needs charity and not much else.

Afghanistan and the concept of just war

I agree in part with this, however I believe that it is impossible not only for Afghanistan to remain a just war, but also to be simply a winnable one because the losses will always outnumber the victories:

Every time civilians die in the conflict, the Taleban win a propaganda victory, which they exploit with some skill. General McChrystal’s strategy is to protect the Afghan people, to help to build a functioning Afghan state and to make as many friends as possible in order to isolate the extremists. That is why airstrikes have been drastically cut back — because indiscriminate, uncontrollable strikes on civilians destroy not only the lives of those victims and their families; they destroy the justice of the whole cause.
The cause in Afghanistan is one that we continue to support. But when mistakes are made, it is vital to acknowledge them and to shoulder responsibility for them. In order to defeat our enemies we must be seen to be better than them.

The Wire and Ideology

For some reason, I missed The Wire while is on Television, I ike to believe that law school is the sole culprit of that outrageous omission. However, I have started watching it recently and I have been surprised about how addictive it is and how it manages to use stereotypes without being offensive. Thus, it is also because I'm both a new and late fan of the Wire that I enjoyed reading Andrew Seal's post on The Wire comparing it to the Hurt Locker (which was a good movie) and offering some explanations for the reason of its popularity, Sugary excerpt:

But I also think we can view The Wire as a multi-protagonist version of this genre, although it is certainly more canny about the possibilities of truly sinking beneath ideology. It has also been seen as a sort of “post-” or “non-ideological” text, and one of the remarkable things about it is how readily anyone can find their own ideology validated in it—conservatives see indictments of welfare policies as surely as liberals see indictments of the drug war. (Liberals are more right, but that’s not the point.) To return full-circle, I think it is very possible to read The Wire as the survival story par excellence of our time, and to see fraternity as its greatest ideal—again, a broken ideal, but nevertheless, the ideal and central theme of the show. And it too features a very extreme distinction between foot-soldiers and commanders, and some of its central plots are about the impossibility of moving from one position to the other. And, although, as I said, it is never innocent of the pervasiveness of ideology, one of its most straightforward points is that the “higher-ups” in the police force, the government, or the newspaper are more ideological, more given to justifying their actions through abstractions. Bullshit, in words more appropriate to the subject, always rises.
Obviously it is no great scandal to talk about the unparalleled success of The Wire in achieving its vision; I think it is also very reasonable to suggest that its success is part of a broader turn toward this particular strategy of using survival as a figure for a sub-ideological space in narrative, a margin between a non-resistance to ideology and an ultimate refusal of nihilism. I see this particular paradigm as culturally dominant in contemporary depictions of conflict and violence, and likely to become more so.

France, Rwanda, and the weight of History

This sugary excerpt from the New York Times's article on Sarkozy's upcoming visit to Kigali bugs me:

“We will recognize the errors of judgment that France and the international community made,” said the palace spokesman, adding that the purpose of Mr. Sarkozy’s visit was not to ask pardon but to open a new chapter in relations.
Rwanda has taken steps to move past its French-speaking past. In November, it was admitted to the Commonwealth of Nations, only the second former colony without links to Britain to join.
At the same time, Rwanda also restored relations with France and each country decided to halt its genocide-related lawsuits against the other.
In an interview last week, with the weekly newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche, France’s foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, suggested the creation of a commission of historians on Rwanda, “to find out what happened then.”
“It will take months, years but we will do it,” Mr. Kouchner said.
Mr. Sarkozy, he said, “is not opposed to having France look at its history.”

I have the unsettling feeling that history is been used as both a bargaining and a political tool and that is despicable. That doesn't mean that France's hands are clean when it comes to the Rwandan Genocide, but rather it is too serious of an issue to be trivialized by short-term political gains. It's probably a naïve view to hold, but I don't like it when history becomes solely about present day politics and when politicians are trying to write history to either alleviate what they perceived as past, but severe mistakes or to place the emphasis of what they believe to be essential elements to justify their present conduct. Sarkozy's visit to Rwanda can only a positive if he doesn't try to blind Rwandans with history by forgetting to talk to its present's day political leaders about the present and some of their own mistakes in places like the Congo (Democratic republic of Congo).

The destruction of Mogadishu and the Somalization of the world

Tristan McConnell on Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia and its permanent state of war away from the camera and thus from the gaze of the world that is destroying what used to be a beautiful city:

The current round of fighting is just the latest in Somalia's decades-old war. Al-Shabaab, an Islamist militia that recently confirmed its allegiance to al-Qaeda, is battling the Transitional Federal Government for control of the country. The TFG gets diplomatic support and money from the UN, soldiers from the African Union and military hardware from the US; take any one of these away and it would collapse like every other administration in the past 19 years. In 1991, the country's last functioning government - itself a venal dictatorship - was defeated by an alliance of clan militias. The warlords then turned on each other, fighting for economic and political control. Somalia has been a maelstrom of violence ever since.
There have been moments of respite. In 2006, the militias were defeated by the Islamic Courts Union - a political group of which al-Shabaab was the armed wing. But within months the union had been chased from power by a US-backed Ethiopian invasion.Now, al-Shabaab is back - stronger and more radical - and holds sway over much of Somalia. Mogadishu is a city of ruins, bearing testimony to the years of destruction. Roads are broken; buildings are shattered, concertinaed to the ground or lacking outer walls, like giant honeycombs.

When reading McConnell's description of the chaos in Mogadishu, I'm reminded of André Glucksmann's prediction that the world is going to be somalized, meaning that we would be seen more cities been destroyed and torn apart without much international concern and especially without any coverage in the media.Unfortunately, I fear that most of those dark holes will happen on the African continent for we know that it is easier to succumb to fatality, resignation and to  the grotesque idea that Africa is cursed  when the inconceivable and the unacceptable is happening within its countries.

The coming of age of revenge porn

I have to admit that I didn't know what revenge porn was until I read this:

The first recorded use of the word revenge occurred in 1375, and porn came into common parlance in 1962, as shorthand for pornography. But the combination of the words is very much of the moment. Indeed, revenge porn popped up on Urban Dictionary as recently as October 2007, defined as "homemade porn uploaded by an ex-girlfriend or (usually) ex-boyfriend after particularly vicious breakup as a means of humiliating the ex."
While the act can lead to criminal charges, there's some debate over whether revenge porn, per se, ought to be codified as a crime. What's clear, however, is that it is part of the digital-age Zeitgeist. The ease of recording and transmitting sexually explicit images, the rise of Internet exhibitionism, and the ubiquity of a Girls Gone Wild mentality have created the contemporary version of writing "Jenny gives good head" on the bathroom wall.
The celebrity sex tape also factors into the revenge-porn equation. The release of salacious footage of two well-known figures—or even a rumor that such footage exists—qualifies not only as fodder for the weeklies but also as an acceptable form of self-promotion.

My view on the question is that revenge porn essentially shows that sex has been both infantilized and commercialized. Revenge porn exists and has had to become a crime because sex isn't even about pleasure anymore, but solely about consumption and possession. This fact means that the loss of the sex partner or his/her betrayal is equivocated with the loss of a piece of bling bling that has to be destroyed so that nobody else can have it. In our age, porn is to sexuality what fastfood is to nutrition and revenge porn is solely a proof that the flesh has become junk food.

The Madonna-whore combination and the moralization of sexuality

Sarah Boyes on the legacy of the feminist movement and on what I believe to be its contradictions:

These aims weren’t revolutionary and often unabashedly so (many women came to feminism through explicit disenfranchisement with labour movement sexism), but they could have a piercing core. There was, importantly, a canny rejection of a whole array of expectations about how women should be, which have today (more the act of the rejection than the expectation) become part and parcel of cultural discourse. For instance, feminists rejected:

‘The Unbeatable Madonna-Whore Combination. Miss America and Playboy’s centerfold are sisters over the skin. To win approval, we must be both sexy and wholesome, delicate but able to cope, demure yet titillatingly bitchy. Deviation of any sort brings, we are told, disaster: “You won’t get a man!!“‘ (3)

This was often followed by a more subversive attempt to challenge to the underlying assumptions of a society that pitted people against one another in a bid to succeed, and put one, man, at the top. Such aims were limited, and perhaps in some ways were always meant to be.

(...)Indeed, it’s this ambiguous legacy, seen most clearly in the superficial tension between choice and moral prescription, especially around the family, which points towards a deeper lack of direction that comes through in the present day – where it seems there’s been a return to more conservative gender roles albeit updated - the ‘yummy mummy’, the WAG, even Michelle Obama is considered a sort of fashion icon. Complaints about ‘ladettes’ letting it hang loose, even imitating the boorish behaviour of blokes, is on the rise; dismay or disgust at big-breasted celebrities and attendant ‘raunch culture’ seems to be gaining ground; stories of women not reaching the glass ceiling due to the prevalence of ‘male bonding’ in the workplace pepper the press; concern over the ‘negative body image’ of young girls has become popular; older women aren’t getting enough time on telly, females have only recently been allowed onto Navy submarines, there aren’t ‘enough’ women in the cabinet – or as Engle gently finds, women of a certain class still tend to shoulder the domestic burden, even when they earn as much as their husbands. Even though we’ve got past the point where we know a porn star can have a PhD, one of the most perplexing moments of the films is the wry little smile given by a number of wives as Engle asks their husbands how much share of the washing they do, whether they clean the bath after getting out, are they a feminist? Is this any different from the working wife who doesn’t know her children’s shoe sizes or think she should have to? Does it matter?

I have always wondered why sexuality is tied up to morality especially when it comes to women and that any attempt to use it or to gain control of it make one a whore? It seems to me that beyond all the feminist mambo jumbo, the real issue remains whether sexuality ought to be used to define a woman or to make a judgment about her moral compass. The trouble seems to be that nowadays, complexity is out the window, there is the overwhelming accepted principles that women cannot be certain things, and there are certain combination that are not possible for a member of the second sex to have, it isn't possible to a sexual being and to be smart and cultured, it isn't possible to be Madonnalike and conservative and moreover, it isn't possible not to be a feminist and not to be confused or solely  under the domination of the patriarchy. In other words, the fact that feminism still comes down essentially to straightening women out and separating the good from the feeble explains in part why it is as relevant and as alive a movement as socialism.

The amorality of the nanny state

I disagree strongly with Alain de Botton when he writes this:

A terror of old-fashioned moralism has driven all talk of morality out of the public sphere. Who would now dare to suggest how our neighbours should be judged in the vast domain we term private life? In flight from dogmatism, we stand transfixed by the dangers of moral convictions. A democratic spirit has served to generate scepticism about authority and hierarchy in every sphere. Judgments about values tremble before the incensed question of who one person could ever be to tell another how to live. Those who profess to have answers are ridiculed in a tone adopted by furious adolescents when probing at the assumptions of their parents. In the political arena, there is no faster way to insult opponents than to accuse them of trying to undertake the impossible task of improving the ethical basis of society. They can reliably be charged with believing in that most odious concept of modern secular politics, a nanny state.

Is Alain de Botton serious ? It seems to me that we live in a time when there are few nanny states in the world and that the problem of our time isn't the world has embraced the over-expansiveness of liberty. The problem of our time is "we" are still stuck with the moral system of the dark ages, which gives the privileged class (of which Alain de Botton is a member) limitless liberties while imposing  a rigid moral structure, on the masses under the name of morality, traditions, religion, and decency. It seems to me that only a man who is at the top of the food chain would say that the modern world is too free and too secular when the contrary is true. 

The pompous sterility of state apologies

I agree with Paul Sagar when he makes this point about apologies done in the name of the state to argue that Gordon Brown should not apologized his country's past actions, that is its role in the child resettlement programs in Australia and elsewhere :

The idea that the government of the day merely represents – and speaks and acts for – a more powerful entity existing behind it, possessed of ultimate sovereignty which the Prime Minister of the day happens to wield but does not ultimately possess, comes from Hobbes. When Brown apologises to the deportees today, he apologises not for his own actions, but for that of the Mortal God, the Leviathan, which Brown presently speaks for.
That the apology will be widely welcomed, and that its bizarre logic will go largely unremarked, indicates the extent to which that artificial man called Commonwealth, or State (in Latin, Civitas) is now an integral part of all our lives. Again, how ironic that the central ideas of history’s greatest proponent of absolutism should come to have shaped the intellectual framework that we who call ourselves democrats, liberals, republicans or libertarians think within.

I agree with Sagar for two main reasons. The first is that I think that it is a religious idea that we are all guilty for the actions of those who came before us, that is the inhumane idea behind the one of the original sin and it can make people guilty and have to apologize for generations if it remains prevalent. The second is that apologies are worthless and simply propaganda tools that change neither the past, the present and the future because they simply feed a certain crowd's appetite for public shaming without addressing real issues and new realities. At some point, we mus accept that the past no matter how painful it is to do so is dead and that guilt isn't transferable although responsibility might be. That difference is critical for accepting responsibility doesn't mean having to apologize, it means acknowledging and taking some fruitful acts when it is necessary.

Black Children as an endangered species

Shani Hilton on An Atlanta Billboard campaign declaring that "black children (what does that mean?" are an endangered species:

The campaign is part of a new push by anti-choice advocates to exploit unequal access for reproductive-health services and black-genocide conspiracy theories (including the problematic history of Sanger) to further their agenda. As a quote displayed prominently on another anti-choice Web site, BlackGenocide.org, reads, "The most dangerous place for an African American to be is in the womb of their African American mother."
Poor women have four times as many unintended pregnancies as women who live above the federal poverty line. Among black women -- who are more than twice as likely to be poor than white women -- the numbers are even more dramatic. Sixty-nine percent of their pregnancies are unintended, and they have 37 percent of all abortions, a number wildly disproportionate to their representation in the population.
Black women may be having more abortions, but that doesn't prove that they're being coerced into having them. The only thing it proves is that black women are disproportionately having pregnancies they didn't intend.

The first thought that came to my mind is "Only to America" then after some reflection, I wa forced to realized that America has imposed its views on race on the rest of the world and that  it seems that nowadays, everything needs to be categorized to find  its niche. To go back to the central issue, I wonder why the billboard focuses on the children, the fetuses and their race, the color of their skin instead of focusing on the mothers and their social condition. It is so easier and demagogic to argue that "Black Children" are an endangered species rather than to make the point that too many women whether they are black or not find themselves too easily alone and in poverty and therefore have to make difficult decisions. Is the message here really that "Black mothers" ought to be thinking about race first when they are pregnant instead of thinking about whether they would be able to provide for a child, who nobody else not even their government or their "racial community" will raise in their place?

Europeanizing Nato

Andrew Bacevich argues boldly that the United States should let Nato become a European organization:

If NATO has a future, it will find that future back where the alliance began: in Europe. NATO's founding mission of guaranteeing the security of European democracies has lost none of its relevance. Although the Soviet threat has vanished, Russia remains. And Russia, even if no longer a military superpower, does not exactly qualify as a status quo country. The Kremlin nurses grudges and complaints, not least of them stemming from NATO's own steady expansion eastward.
So let NATO attend to this new (or residual) Russian problem. Present-day Europeans -- even Europeans with a pronounced aversion to war -- are fully capable of mounting the defenses necessary to deflect a much reduced Eastern threat. So why not have the citizens of France and Germany guarantee the territorial integrity of Poland and Lithuania, instead of fruitlessly demanding that Europeans take on responsibilities on the other side of the world that they can't and won't?
Like Nixon setting out for Beijing, like Sadat flying to Jerusalem, like Reagan deciding that Gorbachev was cut from a different cloth, the United States should dare to do the unthinkable: allow NATO to devolve into a European organization, directed by Europeans to serve European needs, upholding the safety and well-being of a Europe that is whole and free -- and more than able to manage its own affairs.

The trouble with bold ideas is that they remain utopias if the odds of their realization are slim to none. No American president is even going to take the chance/risk to europeanize Nato for immediately the argument will be that s/he is a coward who lost Europe. What is probably going to end up happening is that as Europe finds a way to provide for its own security by having a common security, Nato will become irrelevant and will fade without much noise or protest in the background.

Satanic sex education

I agree with Mark Steel on this, which can only lead to the logical and reasonable conclusion that sex education should not be influenced by religion :

So we're left with differing methods of approaching sex education. One might be to acknowledge that we get desires, that can be lethal at times, so it's probably for the best if we find ways of managing them safely and respectfully. Or there's the more traditional method, which is more along the lines of "You know those natural feelings you get – well they're unnatural so stop having them."
They might as well teach that God wants everyone to be cold, and if we feel a desire to shut the door in winter we must fight the temptation, and we must go to the park in January in our swimming trunks to and, if we shiver or reach for a coat, that's Satan at work and we should discuss it with the priest.

Precarious states and instability

I agree with Lauren Gelfand on this:

The situation in Niger is a sobering reminder of the precarious state of democracy and good governance in a region all-too-familiar with the replacement of an ostensibly elected president by a military regime. Next month brings with it the one-year anniversary of the assassinations of the president and the head of the army in Guinea-Bissau, which has deteriorated into the world's first genuine narco-state. Guinea is only barely back on track towards civilian leadership with a transitional government comprised of both political and military figures, while Mauritania has struggled to regain its legitimacy after two coups in three years executed by the same military officers.
Add the ongoing leadership crisis in powerhouse Nigeria, the rising tensions in Ivory Coast ahead of elections now five-times postponed, and the slow and unsteady progress towards post-conflict reconciliation in Sierra Leone and Liberia, and there is no mistaking the fact that good governance and strong civilian institutions are needed more acutely than ever in West Africa.

Attacking American exceptionalism

Sugary excerpt from Richard Lowry's and Ramesh Ponnuru's essay which argues that Obama is attacking American identity by not embracing/repudiating American exceptionalism:

There have always been those who take exception to American exceptionalism. Europeans developed a cottage industry in travel writing about America, most of it — although not all, with Tocqueville the most important ex­ception — scandalized by the riotous freedoms of these restless, stubborn, commerce-crazy, God-soaked barbarians. The Amer­ica of these portraits was simultaneously primitive and decadent: “grotesque, obscene, monstrous, stultifying, stunted, leveling, deadening, deracinating, roofless, uncultured,” as James Ceaser summarizes the critique in Reconstructing America. Many of America’s European critics hoped that, over time, America would lose its distinctiveness. It would become just another developed Western country: more centralized, more elitist, more secular, less warlike, and less free. In short, a quieter, more civilized place.
The American Left has shared this maddened perplexity at its country’s character and this hope for its effacement. Marxists at home and abroad were always mystified by the failure of socialism in the U.S. They thought that, as the most advanced capitalist society, we would have had the most restive proletariat. Instead we have had a broad and largely satisfied middle class. Even our unions, in their early history, were anti-statist, their radicalism anarchistic rather than socialist.
(...) President Obama’s first year in office should be seen in the context of contemporary liberalism’s discomfort with American exceptionalism.
The president has signaled again and again his unease with traditional American patriotism. As a senator he notoriously made a virtue of not wearing a flag pin. As president he has been unusually detached from American history: When a foreign critic brought up the Bay of Pigs, rather than defend the country’s honor he noted that he was a toddler at the time. And while acknowledging that America has been a force for good, he has all but denied the idea that America is an exceptional nation. Asked whether he believed in American exceptionalism during a European trip last spring, Obama said, “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exception­alism.” (Is it just a coincidence that he reached for examples of former hegemons?)
In this respect the president reflects the mainstream sentiment of American liberals. We do not question the sincerity of his, or their, desire to better the lot of his countrymen. But modern liberal intellectuals have had a notoriously difficult time coming up with a decent account of patriotism even when they have felt it. From Richard Rorty to Todd Gitlin, they have proclaimed their allegiance to a hypothetical, pure country that is coming into being rather than to the one they inhabit.

Given the liberal gestalt, it is perhaps unsurprising that every important aspect of American exceptionalism has been under threat from President Obama and his allies in Washington. Obama has frankly and correctly described their project as to change the country fundamentally.

To be blunt, I think that the reason why Lowry and Ponnury is so long is that they spent their time running away from or around their own arguments simply to express their differences with what they believe to be Obama's view of America and his foreign policy. Those differences are legitimate, but the fact that they exist doesn't mean that Obama is attacking America's identity by not embracing American exceptionalism as Lowry and Ponnury define it. All presidents when they come to power have to decide what message they want to give to the world and whether putting humility and soft power can provide accomplish faster policy goal than hard power. Lowry and Ponnury seem to forget that it was George Bush when he was running against Gore who talked about America's need to be humble and to believe that it can nation build any country. The point is that Obama isn't out of the mainstream of American politics or a leftist who want to Europeanize America for he doesn't know much about Europe and its different societies and ways of living (I suspect that this ignorance is shared by both Lowry and Ponnuru). My suspicion that Obama is simply struggling to find the right balance between assertive and soft power especially after the bellicose years of George Bush. Professor Anderson made this point better by quoting Raymond Aron and putting the emphasis on the idea that Hegemon cannot behave as though it isn't a Hegemon and expect to receive some accolades and thanks for its multilateral approach to power and its renunciation of the obligations of its status. Thus, American exceptionalism isn't really an issue, but a distraction from the fact that America is a Hegemon in a world with up  and coming hegemons and is dealing with issues which Obama believes it cannot resolve alone. Thus, the key question is whether America gains more by embracing its dominance, than by accepting the view that it will more by agreeable and multilateral. Cela se discute.

The Others

No comment necessary to discuss this "it is US against Them" mindset illustrated by Marty Peretz's comments except a brief one to wonder about its policy implications and its usefulness, well maybe those are just foolish/wimpish considerations:

Why are so many liberal Democrats reluctant to concede that there is an intricate international network of ideological gangsters who recognize each other as ikhwan? These brothers do not define themselves by nation. They define themselves by religion, although there are many hundreds of millions of Muslims who are defined out--and define themselves out--of the bloody fraternity of the faithful. Sometimes, they too are stigmatized as enemies, which means they are also targets. And, of course, there are the boundaries of sect, in which Sunnis commit mass murder of Shi’a at prayer (and vice versa).
Then there are the other designated victims: outsiders … us. Not just Westerners and certainly not just Americans. Or Jews, for that matter, although they have a very special place in the demonology of Islam, and particularly in the armed demonology of Islam. Jihad.

What happens when BHL slips

Norman Geras gives Bernard-Henri Lévy a beat down for his contention that the burqa should be banned because it is at best an example of voluntary servitude, which of course cannot be tolerated because it justifies all forms of slavery:

What Bernard-Henri Lévy does in the passage quoted above, however, is a disgrace to anyone who purports to be a serious philosopher. It is intellectual trickery, pure sleight of hand. On the grounds that slavery - the institution in which one human being owns another, and has despotic power over them, so that their will counts for nothing - is an infamy, and not to be countenanced in any enlightened society, Lévy is happy to forbid women to wear what they want if what they want to wear is symbolic of some wider oppression. But the symbol in question - however odious you may find it if you do - is what it is; it isn't the institution of slavery. To pretend otherwise is to indulge in a philosophically fraudulent type of metonymy. By the same method you could legally prohibit men from opening doors for women and women from saying 'thank you' and accepting the courtesy - on the grounds that these practices are (just are, note) the oppression of women by men, and consequently servitude. You could legally prohibit people, once they have reached the age of majority, from using parental nomenclature ('Mom', 'Dad', 'Mama', 'Father', etc) to address their parents. You could legally outlaw more or less anything by a chain of incriminating substitutions that link the thing in question with something generally acknowledged to be morally pernicious. Lévy's argument here is a bad joke perpetrated on the profession of philosophy.

Just one short comment: as much as I like and respect BHL, I have to admit that he has stopped to be philosopher to become solely and simply a political/societal commentator as  David Brooks, Alain Duhamel or Melanie Phillips. Thus, the contrary to Geras, I'm not surprised when he defends his viewpoint at all costs even at the one of philosophical reflection and analysis. BHL is too much a product of our time to be a philosopher in the Sartrean sense of the word.

The revenge of the Euro critics

Der Spiegel on Greece, the Eurozone's troubles, and the revenge of the "Euro critics":

The euro has been a success story until now. During the recent financial crisis, the common currency proved to be a blessing at first, particularly for the smaller countries. But as debt levels increased, the problems, previously suppressed, became more and more evident, including the debt-based economy in the Club Med and the imbalances in terms of competitiveness.
Even before the common currency was introduced in 1999, Nobel economics laureate Milton Friedman was warning that the euro would not survive its first economic crisis. He predicted that the euro zone could break apart after just 10 years.
Ever since the Greeks were forced to admit that their national debt was much higher than originally claimed, the critics of a common European currency have felt vindicated. They had always warned that the northern countries would eventually have to vouch for the debts of the south, that the differences in economic development within the euro zone were too great and that a common currency could not function without a common economic policy.
At the time, politicians ignored the concerns of many economists. Now they realize that this may have been a mistake. The European agreements that define the legal framework of the currency union do not include any provisions to account for the kind of crisis the euro is currently experiencing. For that reason, there are no instruments available to combat such a crisis.

One factor that is always going to be key to the continuing relevance of the Euro is the Dollar and the value that the US places on its supremacy (I don't think that there is going an American administration that is going to make a strong Dollar a priority anytime soon). If I had to make a bold bet, I would say that the current crisis is going to last a few months until the Euro stabilizes and at last stops to be overvalued. However, I think that the Euro will always be saved from the structural problems of the Eurozone and its political problems by the fact that it has become the main rival of the Dollar, that is the currency of those who don't trust the Dollar or rather America's economical policies and believe in the upcoming end of the empire.

The age of me and personality disorders

Chris Dillow has some pertinent general comments on Gordon Brown's so-called "Bullying" problem and the pop talk around it:

The overwhelming majority of cases of bullying arise from inequalities of power. It is bosses who bully underlings - rarely vice versa. Quite simply, as Phil says, class matters.
However, this answer is missing from the pop talk of bullying. Instead of attributing bullying to inequalities in power, it’s blamed upon personal traits. This is exacerbated by what Frank Furedi called “therapy culture” - the tendency to regard increasing numbers of behaviours as the result of (perhaps mythic) personality disorders.
What we have here, then, is an example of how ideology** - the fundamental attribution error - distracts us from the realities of unequal power relationships.
This has a pernicious effect. It leads us to regard bullying not as an intrinsic aspect of class relationships, but rather as an accidental by-product which could be eliminated by better therapies or human resources policies. In this way, we fail to appreciate the true costs of hierarchies - that they contain inherent tendencies to being dehumanizing and demoralizing.

Since we are living in the Me era, it is easier to believe that everything that somebody does whether good or bad is solely due to his personality and that society, its structure, and its norms have no role, no affect on personal behaviors. The fact that sex can be regarded as an addiction is a better illustration of both Dillow's and Furedi 's point about the therapy culture and the rise of the personality disorders. After all, it is easier to believe that Tiger Woods is sick rather than to admit in most societies, a man who is considered to be a semi-God is allowed to do almost anything; he can have a many women as he wants and that it only becomes an issue if his indiscretions and their multiplicity are known and give the impression that he has no impulse control. In short, in our times, everything is a sickness, a personality disorder because the individual is at the center of our age.

Obamacare

The Guardian's editorial on Obama's health care proposal:

The president's proposal was presented as an opening bid of a bipartisan debate, part of which will take place on television tomorrow. In reality, all thoughts of getting Republicans onside have been abandoned. So a public debate is a way of turning the populist tables on the Republicans, of challenging them to produce their counter-proposals or appear obstructionist to a nation calling for answers in an election year. Mr Obama's problems lie not just with an opposition whose mere threat of a filibuster is enough to stop a vote. They lie also with his own party, which comprises such a variety of wildlife, from the radical reformer to the rabbit transfixed in headlights, as to make the very words "healthcare reform" optimistic.
Mr Obama now has a policy, but it remains to be seen whether he has a process that would survive the centre ground of his own party. In any event, there is no way back for him and no obvious tactical retreat. If this attempt fails, his presidency will be bogged down.

I have to admit that I'm dizzy by all the manoeuvrings on this issue who is so essential to many Americans and needs simplicity rather than players willing to play chicken or worst three dimensional chess. My conviction is that if Obama isn't willing to make health care reform Obamacare then he should the courageous thing and move to something that he cares about for what is needed right now is both clarity and to use a vulgar term, cojones. Candidate Obama gave a speech in Iowa just before its caucus in which he said boldly to the audience that Democrats shouldn't be afraid to lose, he should follow his own advice and enunciate his vision in simpler terms by giving a speech (yes another one) that will for once have to be more concrete than poetic about what healthcare system he believes Americans deserve. Thus, my contention here is that Obama has always been reluctant to make the health care reform his because even during his campaign, it was never one, which moved him or would could lead him to move the crowd. This reluctance explains why his Congress, for it is his, is stuttering on the issue. Members of Congress from his own party know that the POTUS doesn't care enough to hold a grudge if they don't follow his lead. I'm waiting to see how much Obama is willing to lose to own the healthcare reform bill by making it his for that is the only it will be worth something. America needs Obamacare, but does Obama care?

The depth of a trap

I agree with Patrick Cockburn on this:

In Afghanistan incidents like the bombing of civilians in Uruzgan will inevitably be highly publicised, not least because the government of President Hamid Karzai is seeking to burnish its nationalist credentials by protesting volubly against the loss of civilian lives. This is in sharp contrast with Iraq where, at the height of the fighting between 2004 and 2007, the Iraqi government would happily confirm that civilian dead were insurgent fighters.
The fact that these airstrikes took place in Uruzgan, from which the 2,000-strong Dutch contingent is being withdrawn, shows that no Nato power contributing forces can keep itself politically and militarily on the margins of the escalating conflict.

The impossibility to avoid "collateral damage" who are killed in a violent and indecent manner shows that the Afghan war is unwinnable for both the US and its allies. The crux of the problem is that they need to fight the war ruthlessly for a long period while seeking to win the hearts and the minds of the Afghans. The not too far past shows that occupation forces cannot be welcomes in a country where it kills a large number of civilians even if its excuse is that it is fighting a greater evil and that in those cases, excuse my French, shit is bound to happen.

Euro-American tensions

Kurt Volker explains why some tensions remain between Europe and the United States in spite of the "Obama" effect and the end of the Bush administration:

(...) both European and American complaints reflect long-term underlying challenges, and that these have come into sharper focus because it is no longer possible to blame them on the Bush Administration. For one of the major effects of the Obama presidency is that by taking the Bush Administration out of the equation, some uncomfortable truths have been exposed.(....)The “Obama effect” has thus lifted the veil on a host of deep-rooted problems; just because the United States has a different president, global and transatlantic challenges have not gotten any easier – only more visible. And while overcoming these problems should be the task that Europeans and Americans set for themselves, the natural tendency of both will likely be to exacerbate them. The EU will be drawn toward an extended period of inward-looking institution-building now the Lisbon treaty is in force and a new EU leadership is settling in. The U.S. will be inclined to focus its energies elsewhere – regional crises and rising powers – rather than investing further effort in Europe. Atlanticists on both sides need to work to reverse these trends.

In my view, there is nothing new under the sun. Europe is still answering existential questions and the United States is solely only interested in Europeans when it needs allies for its other projects (such as more troops in Afghanistan). The simple truth is that Obama feels that he has nothing to gain by making Europe his priority for it will bring him more headaches than anything else. Moreover,  he already has what American presidents work hard for and almost never get: both credibility and popularity in Europe. Thus, Obama can afford to put Europe in the back-burner unless the Euro becomes a greater problem for America, but if it doesn't, he can  wait and see and to let Europeans leaders discuss their future among themselves and agree on a few things before he rings the bell.

Frightening stats

Just reading this scares me:

There are 41 million girls around the world who should be in primary school all week, but aren't, the Department for International Development says. At least 20 million of them are, like Abigail, in sub-Saharan Africa.
In Ghana, 91% of boys, but only 79% of girls finish primary school. By the time they complete junior high school – for 12- to 15-year-olds – 65% of boys and just 54% of girls are still in lessons, says the lobby group the Ghana National Education Campaign Coalition.

This reality is going to be very difficult to change as long as people keep using traditions and the so-called absolute divinity of "ancestral" norms to justify the unjustifiable and the inexcusable.

God and marriage

Quote of the evening from Reverend Mark Oden:

Whatever we do, it [modern marriage] is not working. (...)The Bible’s claim is that God invented marriage. Marriage was God’s idea. God knows how it works.

That explains why marriage is such a horrific institution for people. It was created by something/something that is inhumane and dead. Divorce is the human invention.

The radicalization of Paul Krugman

Sugary excerpt from Larissa MacFarquhar's portrait of  Paul Krugman in the New Yorker (interestingly, the most important thing that I learned is that his pets are named Doris Lessing and Albert Einstein):

For the first twenty years of Krugman’s adult life, his world was divided not into left and right but into smart and stupid. “The great lesson was the low level of discussion,” he says of his time in Washington. “The then Secretary of the Treasury”—Donald Regan—“was not that bright, and you could have angry exchanges where neither side understood the policy.” Krugman was buoyed and protected in his youth by an intellectual snobbery so robust that distractions or snobberies of other sorts didn’t stand a chance. “When I was twenty-eight, I wouldn’t have had the time of day for some senator or other,” he says.
Krugman’s tribe was academic economists, and insofar as he paid any attention to people outside that tribe, his enemy was stupid pseudo-economists who didn’t understand what they were talking about but who, with attention-grabbing titles and simplistic ideas, persuaded lots of powerful people to listen to them.
(...) It was the 2000 election campaign that finally radicalized him. He’d begun writing his column the year before, and although his mandate at the outset was economic and business matters, he began paying more attention to the world in general. During the campaign, he perceived the Bush people telling outright lies, and this shocked him. Reagan’s people had at least tried to justify their policies with economic models and rationalizations. Krugman hadn’t believed the models would work, but at least they were there.

I like Paul Krugman, but again that's because I agree with him most of the times, but sometimes I wonder if his politics don't obscure the fact that he is a great economist. What I'm tacitly asking is whether nowadays it is possible to be as political as Paul Krugman without backlash, which delegitimizes his work; I wonder whether I would take Krugman seriously if he had the opposite political views of the ones he has now and were defending them the same ferocious zeal. I don't have an answer  or rather reluctantly, I suspect that the answer to the last part of the question is no.

Dangerous African Colonels

Elizabeth Dickinson's thought-provoking answer to the question of why African coups are usually by colonels, but not generals or any other lower rank officers:

Why not the generals? At least in the countries I know in West Africa, this makes perfect sense. Generals are often close to the leadership; their appointments are usually somewhat political and come with the benefit of a bit of patronage and a lot of pomp and circumstance.  I met Generals in Nigeria who led more comfortable lifestyles than some Lagos bankers. They're educated, often cosmopolitan, and know that they have more to lose through a coup than by simply staying put. They have no reason to upset the  status quo. And at least in countries where there is a history of coups, politicians are also equally wary of annoying their military upper ranks for a similar reason.
So why not the little guys? Well, because they could never do it. The usual ranking soldier is underpaid, if paid at all. They're often undertrained, and couldn't mobilize the resources or strategy to get the job done. (Having said this, the little guys do often go along with a coup once it's happening ... nothing like the sense that your paycheck or next meal is moving to make you want to follow it.)
So the middle guy is the one left. They're paid better than some, but not good enough for most.

Ayn Rand's demons

Cathy Young in the Globe and Mail on what she calls the darker sides of Ayn Rand:

(...) Ms. Rand's work also has a darker, more disturbing aspect – one that, unfortunately, is all too good a fit for this moment in America's political life. That is her intellectual intolerance and her tendency to demonize her opponents. Speaking through her hero John Galt, Ms. Rand declared, “There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.” She lambasted free-market theorists such as Friedrich A. Hayek for their lack of purity in allowing the government a legitimate role in alleviating poverty and its effects. In her novels, supporters of various forms of collectivism – moochers and looters – are shown as acting by stealth to take over and corrupt society and culture.
Ms. Rand's detractors have often branded her a fascist. The label is unfair, but her work does have shades of a totalitarian or dictatorial mentality. To refute this charge, Ms. Rand's defenders point to her explicit statements that force is acceptable only in self-defence. Yet her fiction sometimes seems to contradict this principle.
Particularly troubling is a passage in Atlas Shrugged in which bureaucratic incompetence and arrogance lead to a deadly train wreck. Ms. Rand sarcastically notes that many people would regard the dead passengers as innocent victims of a tragedy and then, in a series of brief character sketches, endeavours to show that they were far from innocent: All had benefited from evil government programs, promoted evil political or philosophical ideas, or both. Especially chilling is Ms. Rand's casual mention of the fact that one of these evildoers, a bureaucrat's wife, is travelling with her three young children.
Ayn Rand does not advocate these people's murder, yet she clearly suggests they had it coming. Both in Atlas Shrugged and in her nonfiction essays, political and ideological debates are treated as wars with no innocent bystanders.

Americans almost always have trouble accepting that the people they idealized can be complex figures instead of just being people whose purity would force the Vatican should offer them  up for sainthood. That said, I think that Young's point about war and innocence is both poignant and relevant because it may explain the reason why so many Rand's true believers are never troubled by the violent inequalities of liberal capitalism whitewashing them with the assertion that life is Hobbesian and there is nothing that even politics can do or should attempt to do. In any case, the point is that Ayn Rand's work is relevant, but also limited because she was such a defender for the market that she was unwilling to even acknowledge that its imperfections were great enough that it had to be addressed by society not just through charity, but politics and yes, Government. For after, having a Government who actually focuses on what it can fix instead of managing people's lives and making them happy cannot be proof of the beginning of the Apocalypse.

The sterile American political debate

Interesting and thus relevant tiny bit from Mary Beard's post on Roman elections and the way to lose them:

All in all, it's hard not to feel a bit envious of Roman face to face politics -- when compared with what we shall get in May or whenever.
It's not just the trained monkey, American style spectacle of the televised debate that looks set to remove yet more real argument out of the electoral process.

I, of course, agree with Beard. I don't remember the last American debate when after watching,  I thought that I learned something important about policy instead of the fluff and when I didn't feel that everything was so rehearsed that only the mundane, such a whether a candidate looked at his watch, walked to the other when he was supposed to maintain an agreed upon distance between them, talked about the homosexuality of his rival's homosexuality forgetting that to too many in America that it is an object of shame, winked or simply failed to remain to sign autographs for the audience afterward, became the focus of everyone's attention.

The negatives of positive thinking

I agree with this:

(...) positive thinking has duped America into a collective delusion and is now spreading its pernicious tentacles around the world.