The Republic of Dissent

Liberalisms

Quote of the day from Norman Geras:

There are, in fact, two types of liberal. One believes that liberalism is a better moral and political philosophy than its illiberal alternatives and is willing to say this upfront and follow through on the consequences. The other does not believe this, and is merely confused - not having any secure basis for saying why she is a liberal.

Spilling over

Pic pf the day from Donkeyhotey. No extensive comment necessary just to say that Obama is lucky that Americans have a bad memory and don't really care about the environment, as much as they say that they do to appear hip. He will get past this oily mess for BP is the ideal culprit.

Fashionable ennui

Just for fun, an excerpt of Roger Ebert's review of Sex and the City 2:

Some of these people make my skin crawl. The characters of "Sex and the City 2" are flyweight bubbleheads living in a world which rarely requires three sentences in a row. Their defining quality is consuming things. They gobble food, fashion, houses, husbands, children, vitamins and freebies. They must plan their wardrobes on the phone, so often do they appear in different basic colors, like the plugs you pound into a Playskool workbench.(...)Then it's back to the humdrum married life of our gal Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) and the loathsome Mr. Big (Chris Noth). Carrie, honey, how can you endure life with this purring, narcissistic, soft-velvet idiot? He speaks loudly enough to be heard mostly by himself, his most appreciative audience. And he never wants to leave the house at night, preferring to watch classic black-and-white movies on TV. This leads to a marital crisis. Carrie thinks they should talk more. But sweetheart, Mr. Big has nothing to say. At least he's provided you with a Manhattan apartment that looks like an Architectural Digest wet dream.

Relative political disasters

Peggy Noonan on Obama and 'the Oil Spill':

I wonder if the president knows what a disaster this is not only for him but for his political assumptions. His philosophy is that it is appropriate for the federal government to occupy a more burly, significant and powerful place in America—confronting its problems of need, injustice, inequality. But in a way, and inevitably, this is always boiled down to a promise: "Trust us here in Washington, we will prove worthy of your trust." Then the oil spill came and government could not do the job, could not meet need, in fact seemed faraway and incapable: "We pay so much for the government and it can't cap an undersea oil well!"

Noonan isn't wrong. However, I don't think that Obama is done politically as she asserts  for two reasons. The first is that there is no credible alternative on the left or in the Democratic Party to Obama. The second is that he still has the time and the opportunity to grown with the job and to transform himself into something/someone else for, unlike George Bush, he doesn't have a strong ideological backbone and has few unshakable political beliefs. In short, the oil spill in the Gulf is a disaster for Obama, but it isn't his Katrina. Obama is new, likable, and empty enough to change the storyline or rather to get pass it since he is the only star of this increasingly pathetic (but not irreversibly so) drama.

Journalists and the racist accusation

I agree with Lihle Tshabalala on this:

(...) there should never be a time in a journalists’ life where you need to call an interviewee a racist (not to their face anyway) and if you do, give them sufficient carte blanche to defend themselves against your accusations instead of getting your power back from seeing tears in their eyes because of you (the supposedly objective member of the Fourth Estate) and your imposed judgements on them

Romans, Americans and decadence

Quote of the morning from David Bowden :

Culturally, the Romans were the great plagiarists, freely stealing from the Greeks and plundering the best of their conquered lands. It was materially – in building those roads and viaducts – that they really left their stamp on the modern world. While the British Empire sought its legitimacy in those cultured Greeks and their smooth marbles, the consumerist US has always been much more fascinated with the Romans, with their gains of blood, orgies and land. The willingness to emulate the Romans says a lot about America’s self-image: both asserting its significance (after the fall of Rome came barbarism) while letting its opponents have their small victory (the Yanks have no culture, sniff the Europeans) and getting on with ruling the world. The West has always revelled in the decadence of the ancient world. But as Angus Kennedy has argued, what is decadent about Western civilisation today is not its sexual licentiousness or profanity, but the fact that it consumes without creativity or production. That America is looking to invoke the excess of the Romans is not because it shocks, but rather that it comforts.

The price of the European Monetary Union

I agree with Václav Klaus, the Czech president on this:

To summarize, the European monetary union is not at risk of being abolished. The price of maintaining it will, however, continue to grow

Barbie girls

Quote of the day from Lori Rotskoff:

In the early 1970s, when role models for girls in male-dominated professions were sorely lacking, proponents of gender equality successfully lobbied toy makers and educational publishers to design products depicting diverse career options for girls. They strongly believed that early play experiences would make a difference in kids’ future aspirations.  So they worked actively to shape the material culture of childhood.
Back then, Barbie was so anathema to feminists that it would never have occurred to them to collaborate with Mattel. But times have changed. Over the past three decades, commercial toymakers have perfected their absorption and co-optation of liberal feminist ideals; Barbie’s latest career makeover is just one recent example. So today, many women’s groups are apt to adopt the strategy: “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” We can interpret these Barbie dolls as “compromise formations” (to use an old grad-school phrase) because they represent an uneasy combination of traditionally feminine beauty standards with forward-thinking advocacy to enhance women’s economic and professional status.

Racial fetishism

Sugary excerpt of the day from Thea Lim:

The idea that interracial relationships are anti-racist, and having a mixed race family will fix racism is not only naive; it may even go hand in hand with racial fetish.  A few weeks ago I met a freshman college student – a good-looking black guy with a bright future – who told me that he doesn’t want to date black women because he has a thing for mixed race girls*, specifically ones that look like Alicia Keys. (So of course I emailed him CVT’s article about how mixed race people on the whole may actually *not* be that hot.)  When I suggested that his racial dating preference was messed up, he said that the bad balanced out the good, because isn’t dating outside of your race a way to end racism? The more we mix up, he reasoned, the less there will be reason for people to hate.Please! Yuck! No. Date someone because you like them inside and out, not because a) you have a racial preference or b) you think that dating out will end racism when you have little beige babies. That’s just asking for parental trouble when your beige babies have their own consciousness and their own desires, and don’t want to be poster kids for your personal crusade. And anyways, racism is not truly about racial phenotypes; it’s a social campaign to assign power based on ethnocultural group.  There will always be ways to demarcate ethnocultural group, even when people are “all mixed up.”

My reaction to this viewpoint is that the trouble with racial fetishism isn't the fetishism part of it, but the racial component of it. Lim can make all the points that she wants about race, but she cannot change the fact that the fetishism of race in the context on personal relationships exists because of its sacralization period. Fetishism always take on its most perverse and disturbing form when its object is perceived as capital, sacred or forbidden. Thus, the trouble here isn't that people involved in mixed relationships have a racial fetish for they would be having it about something other race if it wasn't such an artificially essential concept particularly in American society.

The South African World Cup and its potential unwanted guests

Predictable difficulties to the beginning of the World Cup in South Africa:

(...)at the last African Union summit Zuma declared that this was not South Africa’s World Cup but Africa’s and that all African heads of state were welcome. It now emerges that 50 out of 52 are said to be coming plus their considerable retinues. Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, may be among them, although there is a warrant out for his arrest from the International Criminal Court, and legally South Africa would be compelled to detain him. Another difficult case will be Robert Mugabe, since Biden and many others will wish to avoid having to meet the Zimbabwean president or shake his hand.

My guess is that both Mugabe and al-Bashir will act as if their most ardent desire is to participate  to what they will claim to be an 'African' party until the last minute. The goal will be to play, as usual, the role of victims, but neither of them will show up. Omar al-Bashir will be too afraid to get arrested and Mugabe won't dare to embarrass Zuma who is a key ally.

However, there is another 'colorful' character that will certainly show up and do everything he can to attract the spotlight: Gaddafi. He will wear his usual pin of Africa and act as if he is the 'African president.'

The constant announcement of the death of the welfare state

The statement of the early morning is Gavin Hewitt's commenting on the measures, which  European governments are taking to solve the euro crisis:

What is being forced on Europe is a cultural revolution. It marks an end to an ever-expanding welfare state that some defined as the European way of life.

At the beginning and in the middle of each crisis faced by a European country or by the whole continent, there is always the pronouncement made with gusto and with Fidel Castro like flashy manliness that the welfare state is either going to die or being curtailed drastically. That only lasts until governments realize that Europeans, with the possible exception of the Brits,aren't Americas and actually like their welfare state even if it is cumbersome, expansive, and expensive.

Adult obsessions damage childhood

I agree with Frank Furedi on this:

Adult obsessions with sex are recycled through the discussion of children. As a result, society tends to sexualise children through interpreting youngsters’ behaviour as if it is driven by adult motives. The adult world – including many child experts and policymakers – often see sexual motives behind normal children’s behaviour. We live in a world where six-year-old children are expelled from school for inappropriate sexual behaviour, where a 10-year-old boy is put on the Sex Offenders’ Register for touching a girl, and where playing ‘doctors and nurses’ is increasingly interpreted as the precursor to an act of sexual violence.
Sadly, ‘inappropriate sexual behaviour’ by young children has become a new policy obsession. Typically, the difference between ‘inappropriate’ and ‘appropriate’ behaviour is in the eye of the beholder.

American politics 5.0

Interesting bit from George Packer:

The fall of Arlen Specter and the rise of Rand Paul don’t make an overnight revolution in American politics. Instead, they continue trends that have been with us for a while: the decline of party establishments, the erosion of the center in Congress, the power of media (mainly conservative) to control the political agenda. We are seeing the rise of the politician as electronic loner, brought to power in a system that looks more like direct democracy than republican government.

Packer's assessment isn't on point for he is too close to the trees not only to acknowledge the existence of a different forest, but to realize its depth. My take on recent events in American politics isn't a worrisome move toward direct democracy, but rather toward identity politics. This trend is strengthened by  the central players' realization that the people are too disillusioned with politics for them to talk about issues, without giving them some red meat, which is this case is either something to love or in most cases to have  It wasn't by chance that Obamabots needed to have Sarah Palin as much as they needed to love Obama or that now fans of Rand Paul are equally Obama's haters because American politics nowadays is solely about personalization and identity, about the true red blood Americans or sophisticated and cultured Americans vs. the fakers or the American idiots.

Injustice not race

I agree with John Holbo on this:

what made Jim Crow ‘special’ was not that it had, particularly, to do with race, but that it had especially to do with injustice.

Americans have become so obsessed with race that they no longer focus on social justice or rather on injustice especially if it occurs within the racial or racially charged context.

The intolerable notion of sin in politics

Disturbing quote from Yasmin Albhai-Brown:

In international politics, too, memories roam and fuel conduct. Take the very moving film about a white farming family in Zimbabwe this week. What was the back-story, the historical decisions and power grabs that created the civil enmities? We Ugandan Asians were cruelly dispossessed by Idi Amin in Uganda, but we too must ask why so many Africans ended up hating us – our racism and economic greed consumed them and they then behaved abominably. And the British need to acknowledge their role in the making of leviathans like Mugabe and Amin.

According to Alibhai-Brown's logic,  the original sin is always more important than anything else that follows and the real culprits are never doers who fit a particular profile or share a certain history but rather those who should have stopped them or who enabled them or had the power over them once upon a time. In short, Mugabe and Amin were creatures of the Brits who don't have the right to judge them because they are the original sinners.

Scary and distressing logic, which divides the world between the powerful who are always guilty of something because the sinful past and the weak who always have an excuse for doing the unconscionable. In short, the notion of sin in politics is a limited, destructive and misguided one which just facilitates intellectual masturbation and other self-indulgences.

Experience mattered

The statement of the day is from Paul Krugman :

It’s time for President Obama to find his inner F.D.R., and do the same.

Hummm. The fact that people expects Obama to be every great president, but himself, proves that what he is, at the moment, isn't enough. It is what happens when the electorate asserts through its vote that experience doesn't matter and that expects someone, as gifted a politician that s/he is, to grow with/on the job. That said, Obama isn't in trouble precisely because people, even those as learned as Krugman, still expects him to become great or rather to join their side because he is given the benefit of intelligence, 'culture' and reason and of course in Obama's America and the one of Paul Krugman, it is impossible to have those qualities and not to share a certain political ideology. Hope springs eternal.

Religious Hitchens

Sugary excerpt from a Guardian article on Christopher Hitchens:

To say that Hitchens is stirred – even obsessed – by the question of courage would be to state the obvious. It seems therefore highly likely that his longing for the great Orwellian test – the momentous moral challenge to match the 1930s – might tempt him to overstate the threat of Islamic fundamentalism. "Do I ask myself," he replies, "do I think our civilisation is superior to theirs? Yes, I do. Do I think it's worth fighting for? Most certainly."
That wasn't really the question.
"Well, I know how to correct atavism in myself, yes, I do," he retorts. As evidence, he offers the fact that after 9/11 he voted against his Washington apartment block flying the American flag. "So I was pleased to find out I wasn't in the mob majority in that way." But then he adds, bizarrely, "The other thing is, what happens when this ebbs, and the flag gets tatty? And you start seeing cabs with flags worn to rags, making the flag look crappy."

I 'm convinced that Christopher Hitchens is going to end up becoming one of the type of people that he hates the most, that is a man who is so religious about everything that he likes that he stops thinking to descent to believe in his own grandeur just as any evangelical preacher who is convinced that he is a prophet who is always right.

The left's unrequited love for Obama

Jonathan Hiskes on Obama and the BP oil spill (via):

What happened to never letting a crisis go to waste? This mother of a crisis runs straight into our fossil-fuel addiction. It's a prime opportunity for progressives and clean-energy advocates to demonstrate the desperate need for new forms of energy. It's a prime opportunity to pressure the Senate to put a price on carbon pollution and invest in the R&D necessary to jump-start a clean energy economy. It's a prime opportunity to do all this without the corrupting influence of Big Oil, which had a hand in writing the elusive Kerry-Graham-Lieberman energy bill. Executives from BP--the company responsible for this mess--and Chevron and ConocoPhillips were planning to stand in support at the rollout of the KGL bill this week. Now's the chance to move a bill that isn't contorted by concessions to the dirty energy industries.
The president doesn't get this, according to his public actions and words so far. He's promised investigations and inspections and put new offshore drilling projects on temporary hold, until we can get more assurances of safety from the drilling industry. But on the big energy picture ... nothing.

I have to admit that I'm still stunned that some are discovering that Obama likes to take his time, that he is more practical than passionate and that he isn't a risk taker when he is unsure of the outcome or believe that an act will cost him politically. Could Obama be tougher on BP? Yes, but he doesn't have to. The people, like Hiskes, who want him to be tougher and bolder are going to stick with him no matter what he does so he doesn't have to do anything to keep to please them. They are so in love with him that they will stay committed to him like a good old fashioned wife remains saintly faithful to her cheating husband because she believes that he is the best thing that ever happened to her and she will never find any one better even though she might deserve better.

In short, Obama doesn't have to please the left or environmentalists, they are desperately in love with him. He just has remain on the center while being applauded by the press and the pundits for cheating on the people who love the most and for exhibiting fake, but flashy audacity which camouflages the fact that it is killing the puerile hope that people had in Obamamism.

Self-knowledge and lack of ambition

I agree with Chris Dillow on this even though I find this 'reality' troubling:

In most organizations, you’ll be vastly better-paid as an awful chief executive than you would be as a top-rate underling. In business, as in politics, there's little space for the excellent specialist whose self-knowledge is misunderstood as a lack of ambition.

Dangerous thoughtlessness and free speech

The statement of the day is from Juan Cole about the draw Muhammad Day:

I think when you know people have died in violence over some piece of thoughtlessness, it is the height of irresponsibility to repeat it for no good reason.

I agree with Cole's sentiment, but disagrees with his conclusion. It's always better to live i a society where thoughtlessness, even when it is bigoted and can produce violence, can be expressed because it reminds us that the civility and the education necessary to maintain a liberal and open society are never a given

Taking Cameron-Clegg seriously

Funny bit from Iain Martin:

It’s been troubling me ever since they got married, I mean ever since they forged a coalition in the national interest. Who or what does the Cameron-Clegg partnership remind me of?
But then it hit me. It’s as though Hugh Grant and Colin Firth have gotten together to make a romantic comedy about the life of a new government - a sequel to Love Actually. As though the young PM Hugh Grant has no overall majority and has to partner with Firth (leader of a small third party in this film rather than the dejected writer in Love Actually). The plot unfolds with “hilarious” results.

Is it just me, but do most people expect the marriage partnership between Nick Clegg and David Cameron to fail? I wonder if the expectations would have been the same if Clegg has expected to wed labor. My guess is it wouldn't be and that there wouldn't be this uneasiness and tendency to find mock the situation rather than to entertain the idea that it has a chance to work. In politics as in real life, people, particularly in Anglo-Saxon countries, are incredible conservative and believe that one ought to marry, to partner with one that shares the same 'identity' to avoid conflicts or even discussions that may left to productive change or to needed growth and maturation.

Nick Clegg and David Cameron had a "mixed" marriage and people are troubled by it because it opens them to new and possibly unsettling possibilities, which they many not be prepared to face.

Absolute hysteria and child-rearing

Quote of the morning from Jennifer Howze:

If ever you started to wonder that maybe your counterculture attitude toward child-rearing was just a little too laid-back - that perhaps you should spend more time worrying about sex maniacs on the school run and that your every action (whatever it  may be) ruining your child's life - along comes an announcement that reaffirms the absolute hysteria that surrounds children these days.

Germany and its parent-child relationship with the eurozone

This bit from Charlemagne about the Germans' increasing frustration with the eurozone isn't surprising:

Germany is fed up of paying more than any other country into the EU budget, and being taken for granted. Germany feels unfairly attacked in this euro crisis. Mrs Merkel's government thinks it is outrageous that it is taxed with euroscepticism for insisting on tough conditions before bailing out members of the euro who caused their own problems. Germany is just trying to defend the law, monetary stability and taxpayers across the union, we keep hearing.

The Germans' relationship with the eurozone's countries resembles the one of a parent with an adult child who is still living at home and not doing enough to help because s/he doesn't have to and believes rightly that the parent will never kick her/him to the curve. The relationship doesn't usually change until the parent gives an ultimatum and follows through if nothing happens. To put things less creatively, the trouble of the Germans is that they are persuaded that they need the euro and therefore that state of mind of believed dependence German impotent or at least limits its choices.

Contraception and fanaticism in Congo

Once in a while Nick Kristof gets things right:

In rural parts of Congo Republic, the other Congo to the north, we found that even when people had heard of contraception, they often regarded it as unaffordable.
Most appalling, all the clinics and hospitals we visited in Congo Republic said that they would sell contraceptives only to women who brought their husbands in with them to prove that the husband accepted birth control.
Condoms are somewhat easier to obtain, but many men resist them. More broadly, many men seem to feel that more children are a proud sign of more virility.
So the pill, 50 years old this month in the United States, has yet to reach parts of Africa. And condoms and other forms of birth control and AIDS prevention are still far too difficult to obtain in some areas.

One of the most appalling facts about the  limited use of contraception isn't used in Congo and other African countries is the role that American evangelism plays in strengthening old beliefs that women are breeders and not contraception isn't just bad, but evil. The point isn't here that the problem has been imported or is being created by American evangelists, thus making the issue one of identity or one of eternal victimization but rather that that imported fanaticism is making an already catastrophic situation  worst by convincing well intentioned, but limited people that ignorance, poverty, and anti-intellectualism  are not just bliss, but also close to Godliness.

Torn Thailand

Duncan McCargo on Thailand (via):

The central problem is that Thailand is torn between two rival camps, each led and directed by rich and powerful factions. Though ostensibly divided by ideological differences, in reality the anti-government Redshirts and the pro-government Yellowshirts are best characterised as competing patronage networks, bound together primarily by personal loyalties and emotional attachments. Supporters on both sides have been mobilised by intermediaries playing on local and family ties. (...)Underlying the mistrust and paranoia on both sides is a set of larger fears about the future of the country. King Bhumibol, for many a symbol of unity and stability, is 82 and in poor health. Whatever their political orientation, most Thais can hardly imagine a future without him. On one level, Thailand's political crisis is an expression of collective anxiety about the succession. If the sides cannot negotiate a settlement before then, the recent spate of protests may be dress rehearsals for an even more dramatic, and more damaging, confrontation.

The only thing I know about Thailand is that Bangkok is an underrated city, which is so rich  and surprisingly wonderful to visit. Nevertheless, I get the sense that things will not end well unless there is some form of process that gives some legitimacy to the political leadership.

Tactical and untactful political diss

The quote of the day is from Arnold Kling:

The political class does not want to take the Tea Party movement at its word. Instead, it wants to dismiss them as angry, bigoted, and ignorant. That is an obviously self-serving approach for the political class, and I think it is unfair.

The revenge of the true believers

I have to admit almost shamefully that I'm extremely happy that Arlen Specter lost in the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania. The voter turnout was low, which means, in my opinion, that only the true believers felt that the primary mattered because they wanted to send a message to the politicians, who they believe are in power to serve themselves not to serve the people. I'm happy about this result not because I dislike Arlen Specter, but because I dislike the way he switched parties when during the Bush years when it would have mattered and when it woud have been a more dangerous, but more principled choice for him to do so, he remained a party insider and was never a maverick in a way Lincoln Chafee was. This defeat is useful because it doesn't reward the petty political calculations and unconvincing overnight conversion, which force politicians to give up their ideals when they fear an humiliating loss. My hope (I'm not putting much faith into it because I have learned that hope and politics shouldn't mix) that Specter's loss will stop politicians for switching parties without gradually evolving on certain issues and showing their maturation through their actions. I would have had a lot more respect for Arlen Specter if he had decided to become an independent not at the eve of an election, but rather because he believed that his party had lost its way as Jim Jeffords did at his own peril by defying a powerful George Bush and making the courageous decision to be an independent instead of joining the Democrats.

In short, Alan Specter made his choice out of political cowardice and machiavelism and I'm happy that the voters of Pennsylvania punished him for it even though I feel uncomfortable with  the populist and futile quest for authenticity that is starting to dominate through American politics.

Most tea-partiers are women

Thought provoking fact:

HERE's something of note about the tea-party movement—it's full of skirts. Over half (55%) of the people in the movement are women, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll; many of the organisers are women; and the movement's most prominent person is, of course, Sarah Palin. 

Not Ok for Bush, Ok for Obama

Quote of the midday is from Bella Gerens:

Not that I ever expected him to be, but Obama is surely not the saviour he tried to make us all believe he was. And I absolutely do not understand why it is an outrage for Bush to read our emails but it’s fine for Obama to authorise the assassination of an American citizen. I do not understand why it is an outrage for Bush to deny foreign terrorism suspects their rights but it’s fine for Obama to do the same to American citizens on American soil. I do not understand why it was good that Obama was going to try Kalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civil court in Manhattan (where he would never get a fair trial), and now it’s also good that Obama’s not going to try American terrorism suspects in civil courts (where they might just have had a chance at a fair trial). I do not understand how American Congressmen can even propose this sort of thing during the administration of a constitutional lawyer, when the merest idiot can see that it’s plainly unconstitutional. There are no exceptions for terrorism in the Bill of Rights.

Robin Hood as an anti-tax Reaganite

Interesting take from Alex Massie on Robin Hood:

Robin really is an anti-tax warrior inspired by oppressive levels of taxation that have enslaved and impoverished the people, leaving them with barely enough for themselves.
He doesn't "steal" from the rich, he confiscates money from the state (and its officers) to return it to the taxpayers. In other words, philosophically and instinctively, he's a Reaganite and, frankly, one would not be surprised to see Robin explain, over a haunch of venison, that if only the state listened to reason it might appreciate that the levels of taxation it imposes upon the peasantry are at Laffer Curve* levels and that productivity, revenues and happiness might all increase if taxes were lowered to a more reasonable, justifiable level.

I'm willing to buy Massie's assertion. I have never thought of Robin Hood as a socialist or a fervent believer in social justice, but rather as someone who believe fanatically that government wasn't entitled to take the people's money, that is to tax them.

Thus, in a weird way, Robin Hood has more in common with Ron Paul than with Dennis Kucinich or Ralph Nader.

Freedom of speech isn't about content

I agree with Peter Tatchell on this:

Freedom of speech means accepting the right of other people to say things that we may find disagreeable and even offensive. Unless people make untrue libellous comments or incite violence, they should not be criminalised for expressing their opinions.

It is too easy to be a liberal society in the Lockean sense of the word when the context is peaceful and agreeable. Freedom of speech is a principle that is under attack in too many societies because there is this dangerous notion that dissent, outrage or vile speech is as destructive as terrorism and should be quieted because manufactured and artificial consent in a society is key to its cohesiveness. The trouble of course is in our world, there is almost nothing as attractive and as potent as the forbidden especially when it pertains to challenge an established order or political correctness.

Elena Kagan, Careerism and feminism

Another scintillating proof that it takes a Canadian or an American living in Canada (distance is essential) such as Gil Troy to make poignant and astute analysis of America and Americans:

The football great Rosey Grier sang It’s All Right to Cry, encouraging boys to show their emotions, too, because “crying gets the sad out of you.” A pre-disco Diana Ross sang When We Grow Up, reassuring youngsters, “Well, I don’t care if I’m pretty at all/And I don’t care if you never get tall/ I like what I look like and you’re nice small/ We don’t have to change at all.” Alan Alda and Marlo Thomas performed William’s Doll, with William ultimately being vindicated after being taunted by his friends: “a doll, a doll, William wants a doll.”
All this delightfully iconoclastic feminist propaganda paved the way for an unmarried 50-year-old woman to become what she dreamed of becoming.
And yet, Ms. Kagan’s résumé seems too perfect. She may have forgotten the essential message of Free to Be … You and Me’s title song: “Every boy in this land grows to be his own man. In this land, every girl grows to be her own woman.” This woman, who posed in judicial robes for her Hunter College High School yearbook, may have been too calculating in climbing to the top. She has taken remarkably few public stands, entered into surprisingly few public controversies for a woman of her prominence and power.

I have to admit that I'm starting to be troubled by the fact that I don't know anything substantive and relevant about Elena Kagan that would tell me not that she would be a competent justice, but rather one that would be in the mold of Justice Stevens and stop the US Supreme Court's worrisome tilt to the right. Vacuity here is starting to become dangerous because it means two things. The first is that being on the left on legal issues and expressing those views is a bad career move. The second is that the right has won when it comes to the Supreme Court politics for Liberals and moderates (non Conservatives) have to guess when it comes to a Supreme court nominee that is appointed by a Democratic president and to trust that the judgment of the president is infallible

Men as the best representatives of the artistic idea of women

The quote of the morning is from Ian Buruma's review of  William T. Vollman on Japanese Noh Theater, Kissng the Mask:

Adornment is everything; what leads men on in their never-ending chase after female beauty is less a matter of biology than of art and performance. And no performance of femininity is more stylized, more artificial than Noh. (...)Some believe, in defense of the great art of men playing women in Noh, Kabuki, or in pre-Communist days the Chinese opera, that men can represent the allure of female beauty better than women can. For the idea is not to mimic reality but, as in a Chinese painting, to express an idea of reality, an abstraction almost. Men can represent the idea of women better, because they can take a distance from the real thing and reinvent it as art.

To resist feminist guilt

The sugary quote of the morning is from Libby Purves on the complaint that there aren't enough women in the new British government

The phone rang: another periodical’s editor wanting a why-oh-why rant about the dearth of women in the new Cabinet. Four out of 23 gives us a female percentage one-third that of Spain, half that of France and the Netherlands; in the EU only the Portuguese Cabinet has a smaller proportion of women.
Well, a girl likes to oblige and I come of a liberated generation, fists poised to smash the glass ceiling in the conservatory of life. But after a few seconds’ thought I sadly replied: “Sorry. Just realised: I don’t care.” Feminist guilt flared and swiftly receded. There have been women in Cabinet and the great offices of state, there will be others. No law bars the door, there is no quota against us. Tokenism is anathema.

I've just realized that having women in government is less important than enacting policies that not treat them as sheep. In short, the power of symbols is always limited if their goal is to stop the conversation on real issues, by making people feel good about their own 'tolerance' and superiority.

Being a slave in Québec

The quote of the day is a joke from Samir Khullar:

I don’t mind being a slave. My ancestors were. What bothers me about being a slave in Quebec is that there’s a good chance my master will be poorer and less educated than I am.

Conditional American citizenship

I'm appalled by this line of argument from Peter Schuck:

Revoking citizenship merely for being a member of al Qaeda or giving it material support (both criminal acts) would present a harder question, as would rendering a person stateless. The Constitution rightly protects the citizenship of law-abiding and criminal citizens alike against a government that seeks to exile them. Although loyalty is basic to citizenship, we don't make native-born citizens affirm it. We do require affirmation of loyalty in the naturalization oath, but that is a different context. Requiring loyalty oaths otherwise may infringe First Amendment rights to dissent or to remain silent.
Drawing these lines will be difficult. Yet public fears of citizen-launched terrorism make this task inescapable and will test our conception of both citizenship and the Constitution.

Just suggesting that people who have acquired American citizenship can lose it if they are terrorists makes naturalized citizens second class citizens who always have to prove that they love America more than born Americans. The fact that the question of stripping the American citizens from born Americans when they do something that shames America or threatens its existence or the lives of its citizens is taken seriously by scholars as renowned as Schuck show that for too many people Americanness is not about nationality, but about some imaginary pure and stagnant identity. In short, Peter Schuck and the others who want to revoke the American citizens of Faisal Shahzad are legitimating the point of view of the birthers and the ones who believe that some people can never become real Americans despite of their citizenship or should away be looked with suspicion because they are potential threat to America.

Kenneth Anderson has another take on the issue so does Kevin Jon Heller.

Forgetting or ignoring the bloody history of communism

Quote of the morning from Claire Berlinski:

No one talks much about the victims of Communism. No one erects memorials to the throngs of people murdered by the Soviet state. (In his widely ignored book, A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia, Alexander Yakovlev, the architect of perestroika under Gorbachev, puts the number at 30 to 35 million.)
Indeed, many still subscribe to the essential tenets of Communist ideology. Politicians, academics, students, even the occasional autodidact taxi driver still stand opposed to private property. Many remain enthralled by schemes for central economic planning. Stalin, according to polls, is one of Russia’s most popular historical figures. No small number of young people in Istanbul, where I live, proudly describe themselves as Communists; I have met such people around the world, from Seattle to Calcutta.
We rightly insisted upon total denazification; we rightly excoriate those who now attempt to revive the Nazis’ ideology. But the world exhibits a perilous failure to acknowledge the monstrous history of Communism.

Consumerism and sameness

I agree with Helmut Holzapfel on this:

A “distance-intensive” lifestyle has emerged and is taken for granted, at least in modern industrialised societies; it has become a typical way of living shaping attitudes and behaviour for part of the population. A distance-intensive lifestyle means large distances covered in ever-smaller units of time, not only in personal travelling, but by the products consumed. Even in health food shops, Argentinean honey or apples from oases in the Brazilian jungle are freely available. The lifestyle means constant availability and spatial accessibility for people and products: Australian or Californian wine, strawberries at Christmas, most likely from South Africa. People fly from Hamburg to Milan for an evening at the opera, and back the next morning. And they live in the suburbs in a detached house with a double or triple garage outside (an SUV is a must); the house is in a beautiful location, yet a blot on the landscape.(...)The disadvantages of the lifestyle gradually become apparent: being everywhere, people are increasingly nowhere. The freedom they search for far and wide means more than dependence on transport systems. Since everyone wants to get everywhere else, everywhere looks the same; same products, same supermarkets. And since everyone wants to go somewhere else and consume products from all over, transport infrastructure is congested. If we consume yogurt made from milk and fruit sourced all over Europe, we shouldn’t be surprised about a lorry jam on the motorway near London or Milan.

It's striking to realize that how identical ultra-consumerists are no matter their race, religion or ethnicity. After all, if buying and stocking stuff is one's 'religion' then all other variables such as race and ethnicity are not essential. For some reasons, that reminds me of the term 'poor white trash' used in the United States, which puts the emphasis on the fact that social condition is in fact more defining than race.

Elena Kagan and self-respect

A sane point of view on the Kagan's future confirmation hearings from Sandy Levinson:

(...) my hope is that Elena Kagan, whom I deeply admire, will "just say no" (or, more fittingly, "go fuck yourself") to Rahm Emanuel when he suggests that she serve Team Obama by emulating John Roberts and Sonya Sotomayor and their utterly dismaying performances, whatever the costs to the integrity of our constitutional system or, indeed, to her own self-respect.

The trouble is that I'm not sure that you get to be a Supreme Court nominee by not be willing to serve the interests of your 'master' to the detriment of your self-respect. Kagan is going to say nothing, follow the instructions and the advice that she receives, and hope that her detractors overreached and that those who would like to know more about her views (I'm one of them) trust Obama's judgment enough to shut down their own doubts (I don't  trust judgment more than my own).

Racism is racism is racism

Quote of the afternoon from Norman Geras:

To deny that millions of Jews were done to death in Nazi-occupied Europe is an odious lie harmful to the interests and the well-being of Jews. Racism and other forms of prejudice can often be traced back to prior social or political causes; but that doesn't undo their racist character.

Cleggmania had some changing value

Interesting point from Ian Leslie:

The lasting value of Cleggmania is that it raised the profile of the Liberal Democrat leader to the extent that it became much easier for Cameron to invite him into government. Had the Lib Dem leader been anonymous after the election, or worse, actually unpopular, such a full-blooded partnership wouldn't have been possible. The debates - and Clegg's seizing of the moment - facilitated this coalition.

 I have had to wonder whether Cleggmania wasn't mainly about dissatisfaction with Labour and distrust of the unmarketable, unconvincing, and soft Thatcherism of David Cameron. In short, I'm doubting that Cleggmania was really about Nick Clegg rather than about the Brit psyche.

Germany's impotence

I almost agree completely with Henry Ferrell on this:

Germany would like to see an economic government which mostly consisted of other countries adopting harsh fiscal retrenchment combined with extensive oversight.
This isn’t going to happen, much as some German economists might like it to. Germany simply doesn’t have the bargaining power to pull it off. Its threats to expel recalcitrant countries from EMU are now very obviously non-credible. Furthermore, Germany has just demonstrated that it is willing, however reluctantly, to bail others out if the crisis hits. So Germany is left with the unenviable realization that (a) its future economic and political fortunes are linked to EMU, but (b) it doesn’t have the leverage to force others to take measures that it sees as necessary to avoid crisis. This means that it needs carrots as well as sticks to persuade other countries to become less profligate. The only policy tool that I think Germany has is more money – and more specifically, spending money along with other rich member states in countries like Italy and Greece as a quid-pro-quo for reform of taxes, revenue-raising, labour markets and educational systems, which would make these countries more economically prosperous over the longer run, and less likely to pull Germany along with them into further crises.

The one caveat here that there may come a time when it might not be worth it for the Germans to keep on bailing other eurozone's members, which may lead them to start questioning whether the euro is a plus for them if it doesn't provide their country with any economical stability and if its costs outweigh its benefits. To put it more succinctly, Germany has no choices as long as the euro doesn't become an hindrance to the growth of its economy and as long as it considers it the only alternative to its goals to be a power in Europe and elsewhere without its recent history becoming a potent obstacle.

When Karzai outsmarts Obama

Juan Cole asserts rightly that Karzai has beaten Obama:

Obama had tried and failed to dislodge Karzai by disparaging him, had opposed Karzai’s negotiations with insurgents, and had imposed on the reluctant Karzai and enormous new military occupation of his own power base in the Pashtun West.
Relations got so bad that a few weeks ago Karzai threatened to go over to to the Taliban.
This week in Washington, Obama finally backed down. He feted Karzai and made sure he felt wanted. He acquiesced in Kabul’s outreach to the insurgents. He reconfigured his troop escalation as helpful pressure on the guerrillas to force them to the negotiating table.

Obama is stuck in situation where he cannot win no matter almost no matter what he tries. It was a mistake to declare the essential nature of Afghanistan without making sure that Karzai was reliable or at the very least useful and that an escalation on the ground would further American interests.

Black and White cultures

Problematic assertion from Bill Benzon:

Through assimilation of black expressive culture, music especially, white American culture has changed and grown.

I have no idea what Benzon means by assimilation or by culture and that makes his statement problematic. He assumes that what he means is obvious when it isn't especially since assimilation has a negative connotation and culture is a political instrument, but a meaningless and misleading concept.

In short, I find both appalling and distressing the idea that there are such things as a black and a white cultures.

Tyrannical treatment of American citizens

Quote from the morning from Glenn Greenwald:

There is, of course, no moral difference between subjecting citizens and non-citizens to abusive or tyrannical treatment.  But as a practical matter, the dangers intensify when the denial of rights is aimed at a government's own population.  The ultimate check on any government is its own citizenry; vesting political leaders with oppressive domestic authority uniquely empowers them to avoid accountability and deter dissent.  It's one thing for a government to spy on other countries (as virtually every nation does); it's another thing entirely for them to direct its surveillance apparatus inward and spy on its own citizens.  Alarming assaults on basic rights become all the more alarming when the focus shifts to the domestic arena. 

America, bisexuality, and the categorization imperative

I agree wholeheartedly with Eugene Volokh on this:

Whether Elena Kagan is straight, lesbian, bisexual, or asexual doesn’t matter to me. Moreover, to the extent a number of her close friends, who are likely to know her recent love life, say that she’s straight rather than lesbian or bisexual — and that seems to be something that one of her friends quoted in the Politico article I linked to above is saying — that should be pretty reliable evidence for those who care about the subject. Among other things, if she understandably concludes that it’s beneath her dignity to discuss her love life in public, evidence from a number of friends is the most that can be provided: “[C]ontrast the ease of proving one is straight or gay in a world in which bisexuals are not acknowledged to exist with the difficulty of proving the same thing in a world in which bisexuals are recognized.”
But the sort of bisexual erasure that takes place when we say “X can’t be lesbian, she’s dated men” (or “X can’t be gay, he’s dated women”) strikes me as pretty unsound, and not fair to a group that makes up a pretty big chunk of the non-straight population.

One has to wonder why a Supreme Court nominee's sex life ought to matter in the United States in America and realize sadly that it does because America loves categories. For it, categories especially when they are sexual and racial clarify issues of identity, which are key to its politics and to its society. People are obsessed with Elena Kagan's sexuality because they assume that it will them everything that they need to know about her views for after all, America still believes that the sex that one defines who you are and informs society about one's values. More importantly, Americans get easily confused by complexity when it comes to race and sex because they are pillars of its societal establishment. This fact explains why it is difficult to be 'bisexual' or 'biracial' and not to be marginalized in the good old USA.

The union of David Cameron and Nick Clegg as a Las Vegas wedding

Nick Robinson on the Cameron and Clegg partnership:

The question that kept coming up in my mind though, reminded as I was of the couple who got married the day after meeting in Las Vegas, was whether on the morning after the night before they would wake up and wonder how they got hooked up for five years with someone they barely knew, and if their families would ever forgive them.

Robinson is as he almost always is on point, except tat Las Vegas weddings rarely involve parties who have everything to lose by getting a divorce or a quick annulment.

Drinking age and useless paternalism

Quote of the day:

Drinking-age laws aren’t designed to prevent teenagers from drinking (and thus the fact that they don’t work is immaterial); they’re designed as a fuck-you from the voting-age demographic to those younger than they, rubbing their noses in it just in case the kids start getting ideas.

Treme, New Orleans, Culture, and the authenticity fallacy

John McWhorter on the new HBO Treme and its implicit assertion of the superiority of the so-called New Orleans culture:

How, precisely, do people in Minneapolis have “less culture” than people in New Orleans? To a tribesman from New Guinea, Minnesotans would appear to have a “culture” indeed, and I’m not sure they would process New Orleans as “more cultural.” (Maybe more fun, but that’s different, isn’t it?) Why are the drinks and culinary traditions of Baltimore less “cultural” than the ones in New Orleans?

The idea here is that 'culture' is about a subtle form of primitiveness or rather to put things in more political correct fashion that it is about indigenousity untouched by modernity as if that wasn't a contradiction for the New Orleans of today isn't the one of Yesterday  and will not be the one of tomorrow and its inhabitants will change. Of course, the fact of the matter that questions of authenticity linked to 'culture' are more about politics and dogmatism than anything

French consistency

Another reason to read Charlemagne:

You have to admire French consistency. Whether the right or the left is in charge, they have been pushing for exactly the same thing for years and years: a two speed Europe, and a mechanism that would force other members of the EU to raise their taxes and social costs so they no longer undercut those of France.

Well, the reason for this consistency may be that French national interest doesn't change when it comes to Europe whether the left or the right is governing.