The Republic of Dissent

Exception Américaine

Back from my long hiatus with this sugary excerpt from Julian Baggini's article on Atheism in America:

America is the well-known exception to the rule that the wealthier and better-educated a country is, the less religious its population.

One word comes to my mind: laïcité for I think secularism is too impotent for America.

The Wall Street protests and the Man

The Economist's Democracy in America blog on the Wall Street protests  :

HERE's my two cents on the Occupy Wall Street protests: Woo!

Maybe that's one cent. Anyway, I am not by disposition a joiner, but I'm nevertheless inclined to smile upon attempts to stick it to the man, even if the attempt is quixotic or confused and the man in the end remains unstuck. The Burkean horror of social upheaval is fine in its place, but there is no apparent danger of upheaval. And who among us doubts that the man deserves a good sticking to? So why not try?

I don't find the whole Occupy Wall Street stick compelling for the simple reason that it seems to me that the idealists willing to come to New York to protest against corporate greed are the same who fell in love with Obama in 2008 and who, instead of holding him responsible for his actions, are looking elsewhere to  blame for the state of the American economy and society.

In short, the Occupy Wall Street movement represents a unsettling manifestation of identity politics for as in the Salem Witch Trials, the priority is to stick it to certain people while refusing to acknowledging the responsibility of the others who look/think/feel as the 'occupiers' but never take a definite stand by acting and fighting back.

Against constitutional originalism

I agree with this:

The Europe and America we live in are powerful and prosperous confederations built out of a series of successive legislative and institutional compromises that don't always make obvious textual sense, but that did what political leaders needed to do at the time. We should have arguments about whether or not expansions of centralised authorities are bad for the polity. But they should be argued on their own terms, not in terms of what was in the hearts of the people who signed the original treaty a long time ago.

Conservatism and amour propre

Interesting stuff from John Holbo:

(...)I persist in thinking there’s a strong, quite stable, and really quite distinctive cognitive dissonance that has characterized American conservative thought since at least the 1960’s. I don’t think anyone – including me – has ever really pinned down it’s distinctive characteristics. It’s not right to say it’s just hypocrisy, or lying. (There is that, of course. But it’s not just that.) It’s self-serving double-think, to be sure, but its double nature is of a fairly high philosophical order. The self that is consistently served illegitimate double-portions is not just the electoral self, that wants to win or get paid, but the philosophical self, that wants to be right, in principle. It’s a status thing. An amour propre thing, in Rousseau’s sense.

Holbo's point is well taken except that it can be said about American liberalism for after all, what else than amour propre can characterized an ideology that cares more about knowing the good than doing the good?

Americanizing international law

I 'm going to munch on this assertion from Kevin Jon Heller all weekend, but that's because I agree with him even when I'm trying desperately not to:

Indeed, for too many American international-law scholars, particularly conservative ones, it is meaningless to distinguish between the lex lata and the lex ferenda — international law is simply whatever the U.S. says it is.

I can't wait to see what Professor Anderson has to say (he has said something, but not on this point). I have a feeling that he will say that an American interpretation of international law isn't in itself wrong, because it is American, and may indeed be right. However is that the issue?

Horror is horror

Sugary excerpt of the day from Glenn Greenwald:

Yes, the 9/11 attack was an atrocious act of slaughter; so were many of the violent, horrendous crimes which executed convicts unquestionably (sometimes by their own confession) committed.  In all cases, performing giddy dances over state-produced corpses is odious and wrong.

Stout simplicities

The conclusion of Christopher Hitchens's article on the upcoming anniversary of 9/11:

The battle against casuistry and bad faith has also been worth fighting. So have many other struggles to assert the obvious. Contrary to the peddlers of shallow anti-Western self-hatred, the Muslim world did not adopt Bin-Ladenism as its shield against reality. Very much to the contrary, there turned out to be many millions of Arabs who have heretically and robustly preferred life over death. In many societies, al-Qaida defeated itself as well as underwent defeat.

In these cases, then, the problems did turn out to be more complicated than any "simple" solution the theocratic fanatics could propose. But, and against the tendencies of euphemism and evasion, some stout simplicities deservedly remain. Among them: Holocaust denial is in fact a surreptitious form of Holocaust affirmation. The fatwa against Salman Rushdie was a direct and lethal challenge to free expression, not a clash between traditional faith and "free speech fundamentalism." The mass murder in Bosnia-Herzegovina was not the random product of "ancient hatreds" but a deliberate plan to erase the Muslim population. The regimes of Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fully deserve to be called "evil." And, 10 years ago in Manhattan and Washington and Shanksville, Pa., there was a direct confrontation with the totalitarian idea, expressed in its most vicious and unvarnished form. Let this and other struggles temper and strengthen us for future battles where it will be necessary to repudiate the big lie.

Hitchens states the obvious (which may be virtuous, but more often than not unproductive when the goal is to refuse that even stout simplicities lead to uneasy complexities) in an ideological manner. He does it to avoid posing the tough questions, and be on his high horse when he refuses to acknowledge that in life, politics or in any aspect of life being on the right side, fighting 'evil' doesn't make things simpler, but more complicated because it means that there is a duty to act as if  only the final result matters for the other side is evil.

Hitchens fails to understand the question is never in the characterization of evil as evil, but in the uncomfortable notion that stating it doesn't solve anything and does make things simple. 

In short, 9/11 did make life, the world easier, it make it more complex because the 'evil' of the act was so obvious that reflexion and the morality of political acts mattered more tha ever before.

Of press tycoons and American presidents

The sugary excerpt of the day is from Alex Massie who has the imagination to come up with great similes even though they are not always on point:

Owning a newspaper is rather like running for the Presidency of the United States of America: the desire to do so is usually enough to demonstrate that the candidate or would-be tycoon should not be allowed anywhere near their dreams.

Shoot the Slut

I agree almost completely and for different reasons with Amanda Marcotte on this:

We’re in the throes of a cultural bout of misogyny, and its focus is on sex. And the people who pay the highest price are women whose access to abortion and contraception is threatened by this national game of “Shoot the Slut”. 

The word 'slut' is in need of a re/definition and an explanation of why being a slut is the worst thing that a woman can be.

'Europe' failed the Libyan test

On point analysis from Charlemagne:

It is not just the fate of Libyans that is in the balance in the war against Muammar Qaddafi, but the commitment of Europeans to maintain - and, when necessary, deploy - serious military forces. Responsibility to protect requires, first and foremost, the means to protect.

The Europeans failed the Libyan test because they didn't give themselves the means to succeed; they were obsessed with the fear that Libya might become their 'Iraq' or 'Afghanistan.' In short, one of the EU's major problems is that it knows that it has a parent, the US, who may have many children and who may sometimes be irritated by it, but who feels closest to it, most of the time(that closeness will change with time).

Grow up, America sex isn't always political!

I have to admit that I don't care about the Anthony Weiner's story. I don't even find it titillating and having to see clips of another public apology by an American politician succumbing to the child-like need that Americans have to believe that their leaders are cleaner/purer than them is creepy. I'm happy that Weiner didn't resign. He shouldn't have to for that would be enabling an American public that doesn't vote, that is apathetic to real politics and make it feel good about its ability to have the political class it wants without working for it, without getting involved.

In short, America should grow up, hopefully not into France when it comes to politics and sex, but into a mature country where lying about sex isn't the worst thing that a politician can do and where what matters isn't purity, but rather political deeds and principles.  Anthony Weiner lied about sex and honestly, I don't have the energy to care about that. As long as his conduct wasn't illegal and that the two adjectives to describe his behavior are stupid and destructive, he should remain a congressman. Jerks and flawyed people have the right to be politician as long as they do their job effectively and don't break the law.

The personal isn't always political and the fact that it is int the US gives America a poltical class that isn't up to par with its greatness.

Réflichissez-vous!

Paul Berman needs to revise his French, but that said he makes a decent point on the impact of the DSK affair on the French-American relationship when he says this:

The more he is defended, the thicker and chillier will be the trans-Atlantic fogs, in the future. Dear champions of DSK, réflichissez-vous! But no one is going to reflect. Anyway, a bit more caution on the part of his loyalists would scarcely help, at this point. The ocean-liner of American justice and the ice floes of French conspiracy theories are already bobbing in one another’s direction, and nothing is to be done about it, and, oh dear, has anyone figured out what to do next, post-collision?

Since my bet is that DSK is going to be acquitted , I think that it will become only more obvious how different France is from America, even from Obama's America and there is as Jean Daniel of the Nouvel Obs would say a 'civilization gap' between America and France, which is essentially created by both countries's fanatical beliefs that their way is not only the best, but the only way to civilization. I'm still wondering why being part of an older county makes one more civilized or less barbaric.

Left and critical thinking

Quote of the week from Noam Chomsky:

We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic. Uncontroversially, his crimes vastly exceed bin Laden’s, and he is not a “suspect” but uncontroversially the “decider” who gave the orders to commit the “supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole” (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal) for which Nazi criminals were hanged: the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much of the country, the bitter sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region.

There are times when I wonder whether Chomsky isn't too smart for his own good to understand that the world isn't a MIT classroom. That's said what he affirms isn't irrelevant, he just went again too far.

NATO's identity crisis

 I agree with Mick Hume on this:

Today, over Libya, NATO stands exposed as an empty shell, an alliance in name alone. The US no longer exercises global leadership through NATO. Instead it has effectively withdrawn from the Libyan conflict and pushed NATO forwards in its stead. Yet no other NATO member has the wherewithal or the will to take the lead. For all their pretensions to playing an independent role, even the French government is now reduced to complaining that the Americans should do more.
When the US, French and British leaders published their joint call to arms on Libya earlier this month, it looked less like a collective show of strength than an exercise in buck-passing, each trying to hide behind one another and the paper shield of NATO. It was striking that no NATO members responded to the request to send more warplanes to bomb the Gaddafi regime – not even US president Barack Obama. Lacking leadership and direction, the NATO states are now like longstanding members of a club who still begrudgingly pay their dues, but take little active part in its activities, while grumbling about one another’s habits and especially about the self-aggrandising committee members.

Just one question, no two : why does NATO still exist? And why did Sarkozy thought it was a brilliant idea for France to reintegrate NATO''s military command? The answer to one of these questions is pretty obvious.

The vision gap

Sugary excerpt of the weekend from Ervin Staub:

In difficult times like today, people need a vision or ideology that gives them hope for the future. Unfortunately, groups often adopt destructive visions, which identify other groups as enemies who supposedly stand in the way of creating a better future. A constructive, shared vision, which joins groups, reduces the chance of hostility and violence in a society.
A serious failure of the Obama administration has been not to offer, and help people embrace, such a vision. Policies by themselves, such as health care and limited regulation of the financial system, even if beneficial, don’t necessarily do this. A constructive vision or ideology must combine an inspiring vision of social arrangements, of the relations between individuals and groups and the nature of society, and actions that aim to fulfill the vision. A community that includes all groups, recreating a moral America, and rebuilding connections to the rest of the world could be elements of such a vision.

I'm not sure that I agree with Staub. I don't that America is suffering from a lack of constructive vision by its political leaders, but from the fact that they believe that vision, which is nowadays another for express ideology is everything.

Firing and being fired

Interesting point from Roger Ebert:

In America there is an ingrained populist suspicion of fats cats and robber barons. This feeling rises up from time to time. Theodore Roosevelt, who was elected as a Trust Buster, would be appalled by the excesses of our current economy. Many of the rich have a conscience. Andrew Carnegie built libraries all over America. The Rockefeller and Ford Foundations do great good. Bill Gates lists his occupation as "philanthropist."
Yet the most visible plutocrat in America is Donald Trump, a man who has made a fetish of his power. What kind of sick mind conceives of a television show built on suspense about which "contestant" he will "fire" next? What sort of masochism builds his viewership? Sadly, I suspect it is based on viewers who identify with Trump, and envy his power over his victims. Don't viewers understand they are the ones being fired in today's America?

I don't think that Americans care about being fired as much as they care about the possibility to still have the faith conviction that one today they will be the one doing the firing and being in the top one percent of Americans "now taking in nearly a quarter of the nation's income every year."

The dangers of loyalty in politics

I agree with Glenn Greenwald on this:

One thing is for certain: right now, the Democratic Party is absolutely correct in its assessment that kicking its base is good politics. Why is that? Because they know that they have inculcated their base with sufficient levels of fear and hatred of the GOP, so that no matter how often the Party kicks its base, no matter how often Party leaders break their promises and betray their ostensible values, the base will loyally and dutifully support the Party and its leaders (at least in presidential elections; there is a good case that the Democrats got crushed in 2010 in large part because their base was so unenthusiastic).
In light of that fact, ask yourself this:  if you were a Democratic Party official, wouldn't you also ignore -- and, when desirable, step on -- the people who you know will support you no matter what you do to them?

Well to paraphrase David Mamet, that is in part the reason I am no longer a brain-dead liberal and I have decided to be an independent. Politics should never be about loyalty or to be more accurate partisanship but about thought and action.

John Quiggin has a take on Greenwald's post that makes me wonder why politics has become about good and evil and about saying that the others are scarier and therefore should be kicked to the curve. More people should fight the talibanisation of American politics by refusing to make it about good and evil and solely about actions and no empty words such as hope and exceptionalism.

Obama, the Imperial president

I agree mostly with Eric Posner on this:

Thanks to Bush, Obama enjoys the legal authorities he needs to conduct the conflict with Al Qaida—and so, until our next crisis, we don’t know how Obama would have acted under similar circumstances. The Obama lawyers are certainly less inclined to bloviate than the Bush lawyers were but again where it counts—have Obama’s lawyers ever stopped him from going beyond the edge of legality?—we have little information and some reason for skepticism. Obama has vigorously expanded the drone program, taken the war into Pakistan, robustly defended his right to kill American citizens abroad, and opposed litigation that could expose secrets about the treatment of detainees. What is most interesting is that there is currently little comment on the left about Obama’s extensive uses of executive power. There are some outliers who were celebrated during the Bush administration for their attacks on the presidency and who have persisted in their views now that Obama is in office, but who today are ignored. The only public apology from the left for the Obama administration’s executive branch jurisprudence that I am familiar with is this one by David Cole, who starts off vigorously enough but ultimately falls back on legalisms and ends up undercutting his defense in the second half of the article, where he laments Obama’s dependence on secrecy, which raises the question how we know what to make of Obama’s actions as an executive if we don’t know what they are. And that was before the Libya intervention.(...) On Congress’ tomb should be inscribed this epitaph, courtesy of a democratic congressman: “They consulted the Arab League. They consulted the United Nations. They did not consult the United States Congress.” As for the Republicans, with some trivial exceptions, they range from complaining that Obama did not communicate with them (nothing about consultation let alone a vote of some sort) to complaining that he did not act aggressively enough!

Isn't comforting to realize that Obama is as American as  George W. Bush in his exercise and consolidation of executive power? Somebody should tell Charlie Rose and others that spending a few years in Indonesia as a child and having a Kenyan father who was never around don't necessarily make a 'full blooded American male' (he spent most his life in America) so different that he gets foreigners intuitively without the need of knowledge and give him peculiar views of America and of power.

In short, as I like to say often with smugness, Obama is what he does and he is for all intents and purposes an Imperial American president.

Military might, egocentrism, and greatness

Interesting, but worrisome:

Back in the days when the cause of humanitarian intervention was on the rise, during the argument over Bosnia policy, Madeleine Albright (in Colin Powell's telling) encapsulated the thinking in a pithy phrase: "What's the point of having this superb military you're always talking about if we can't use it?" Mr Powell wrote in his memoirs that he "almost had an aneurysm"; the military was not a toy to be used because we had it sitting around. But basically, Ms Albright was right: the United States inherited the world's strongest military because of the Cold War, and if in the post-Cold War world there were no longer any plausible uses for that military, there really was no point in having it. Mr Powell, in fact, presided over dramatic cuts in the size of the defence establishment. It was the embrace of humanitarian intervention in the cause of promoting democracy, first in Kosovo, then (after the September 11 attacks) in Afghanistan and finally Iraq, that provided the new justification for a military buildup.

The fact that the debate on Libya in America and elsewhere has become about intervening and not doing alarming. It simplifies a complex issue. Few seem to  have learned the lessons of the past, which isn't that humanitarian interventions are futile, but rather that they can't be done in a vacuum and motivated solely by noble, and self-indulgent sentiments. The point isn't that the US, France, and others are powerless, but that what is happening shouldn't become about them. The Obama administration's position irks me because it is timid and the fear of failure has crippled its imagination in the time when decisiveness is needed. Military might means nothing without vision and the audacity not of hope, but of originality and action.

Outgrowing Black history month

One comment: I don't think that enough Americans want to 'overcome;' (my point here isn't just  abou 'race') too many want to hang on and to never let go because their past defines them. I'm still waiting for John McWhorter to define what he means by postracial because when he was supporting Obama, it seemed to mean something elses that it means now.

Remains of orientalism

Quote of the day from Glenn Greenwald:

Any foreign story that interests the American media for more than a day requires clear villains and heroes.   What made the Egypt story so rare is that the designated foreign villains are usually first separated from the U.S. before being turned into demons; it's fine to vilify those whom we have steadfastly supported provided the support is a matter of the past and can thus be safely ignored.  Thus were Saddam Hussein, the former Mujahideen (now known as The Terrorists) and any number of Latin American and Asian tyrants seamlessly turned into Horrible, Evil Monsters despite our once-great alliances with them; the fact that it happened in the past (albeit the very recent past) permitted those facts to be excluded.  But so intertwined are the U.S. and Mubarak -- still -- that such narrative separation was impossible.

Complexity doesn't sell in American media because it requires time and depth, which are the enemies usually of entertainment. What has struck me watching the Egyptian revolt on American TV especially is that it is like a hollywood movie and requires constant movement, action, and climaxes to keep the audience and I suspect the journalists interested. I'm willing to bet that the longer the story lasts or rather the longer Mubarak is able to hang on, the less likely it is that the story will remain interesting to US media.

Reaganmania

I agree with Alex Massie on this:

The gushing nonsense that has accompanied the centennial of Ronald Wilson Reagan's birth can be no surprise to anyone even if, no especially if, you consider it mildly unseemly. "A Republic, if you can keep it" said Benjamin Franklin and Reagan's beatification is another reminder that the United States long ago became a republic in name only.

Still, I'm wondering if the fact that the US has stopped being a republican is its biggest problem? To talk about Reaganmania, I have to admit that I don't get it and it puzzles me. I feel exactly the same about it that I feel about Obamania, it makes me incredibly sad for Americans and America.

Good sense starts at home

The sugary excerpt is from Juan Cole's interesting post on Mubarak and his humiliation of Obama and America, I don't agree with a lot of Cole's assertion, but he is onto something and his main point ihat foreign policy has domestic repercussions and vice versa is valid:

As long as the president and the Congress are willing to lie down and serve as doormats for America’s supposed allies in the Middle East– out of a conviction of the usefulness of their clients and the inexpensiveness of putting them on retainer– there will be anti-Americanism and security threats that force us to subject ourselves to humiliating patdowns and scans at the airport and an erosion of our civil liberties every day. We are only one step away of being treated, with “protest zones” and “Patriot Acts” just as badly as the peaceful Egyptian protesters have been.

The N word and cleanliness

I agree with Roger Ebert on this:

Anyone offended by the use of that word the way it is used in Huckleberry Finn cannot read and possibly cannot think.
The word is spoken by an illiterate 11-year-old runaway on the Mississippi River of the mid-19th Century. He has been schooled by his society to regard the runaway slave Jim as a Nigger and a thief. Jim's crime: Stealing himself from his owner. Huck reasons his way out of ignorant racism and into enlightenment and grace. He makes that journey far in advance of many of his "educated" contemporaries. Part of reading the novel is learning to be alert about how the N-Word is used in that process.

In an outbreak of mealy-minded Political Correctness, an edition of Huckleberry Finn has now been published which meticulously replaces the word nigger with the word slave. The argument is often put forward that a young reader might be traumatized by finding a word in a 19th century novel that he hears a hundred times a day. If I were that young reader, I would be more disturbed by the notion that I was incapable of learning how and why it was used.

One of my favorite Eluard's quotes is, 'les mots ne mentent pas' (words don't lie). Nowadays, people have this childish notion that words are the problem when it is quite obvious that they are not. I'm wondering how did the apparent consensus that cleaning up language was the way to cleansing a society started and why too many believe that cleanliness is the surest way to Godliness as if people had to stop being imperfect. Is accepting that people are bad and can have disgusting thoughts and beliefs about one another really that unacceptable nowadays ? The answer seems to be yes, and it is a further proof of intelligence or rather common sense as Thomas Paine would say has lost a lot of ground .

The death of the debate on terrorism

I almost totally agree with Greenwald when he makes the folloing assertion:

Obama has single-handedly eliminated virtually all mainstream debate over these War on Terror policies.  At least during the Bush years, we had one party which steadfastly supported them but one party which claimed (albeit not very persuasively) to vehemently oppose them.  At least there was a pretense of vigorous debate over their legality, morality, efficacy, and compatibility with our national values. Those debates are no more.

It isn't just Obama who eliminated all mainstream debate, the Democrats and the America public are at fault too for the focus has been on the rresults and thus the consensus is that America can be protected at nay cost even the one of its Americanness. That said Greenwald is right, Obama has completed on the terror side the Cheneyisation of America.

A divided and uncivil country

I agree with Paul Krugman on this:

(...) the truth is that we are a deeply divided nation and are likely to remain one for a long time. By all means, let’s listen to each other more carefully; but what we’ll discover, I fear, is how far apart we are. For the great divide in our politics isn’t really about pragmatic issues, about which policies work best; it’s about differences in those very moral imaginations Mr. Obama urges us to expand, about divergent beliefs over what constitutes justice.

And the real challenge we face is not how to resolve our differences — something that won’t happen any time soon — but how to keep the expression of those differences within bounds.

The problem in America and elsewhere is that people no longer know how to debate and to discuss issues because everything has been religionized.  When everything is sacred, there can only be blasphemy and blasphemers, true believers and faith looking to obliterate people who disagree. Will things change? No or at least not yet for the simple fact that change when it is more than Obamastic (symbolic) takes time and having a civilized society requires a committed belief in education and in intelligence rather than in faith and churches.

The Sarah Palin fantasy

Alex Massie affirms with too much satisfaction and guile for his statement to be true that Sarah Palin is done:

Palin is tarnished goods at the moment. More than any other would-be candidate in the prospective field she needs to build an inevitability strategy. She lacks the chops to win a policy battle (or even the appearance of one) and needs instead the kind of whirlwind operation that whips up a storm in state after state. That requires massive enthusiasm and persuading people to ignore their suspicion that she cannot win a general election. Unfortunately that also creates a collective action problem for Palin: people might vote for her if they think other people will too. But they don't think other people will and so they won't either.

I have to admit that I don't understand the rationale of Massie's assertions for Sarah Palin never begun. She has always only been the witch that liberals needed to convince themselves that they were good and that Obama was the best s*it !

To the contrary of many, I have never thought that Palin was stupid or that she was an abomination, I thought that she was likable enough as Obama once said arrogantly and with spite of Hillary Clinton, but that the problem was that she was never as good as her defenders thought that she was and more importantly as bad and evil her detractors believed. Palin is a legitimate political figure, but saying that doesn't mean much for she has yet too become real rather than a fantasy in the mind of her friends and her foes. 

Is Sarah Palin done ? Of course, she isn't. She just isn't real, that's the problem. Sarah Palin doesn't exist. Elle n'existe pas !

The Obama administration is so tough

David Bernstein's witty point on Wikileaks's latest:

I’m glad Koh is sending Julian Assange of Wikileaks a stern letter of reprimand, that will show him! Who said the Obama Administration wasn’t tough enough to protect American interests?

Bernstein's point is fair except that the problem here is that the Obama administration is  both a victim and  a prisoner of its image and of the fact that Americans or at the very least the Obamabots and Obamaniacs and the world assume and expected that it was going to live up to its own hype and be different. Obama's biggest problem is that people assume that he is what they believe he represents or that he is a symbol, when he is what he does in spite of what his grand, preachy, and often beautiful speeches say. When I think back of Obama's Berlin Speech during his campaign when he asserted his citizenry to the world with as much sincerity as Sarkozy when he claims that he is changing or rather growing up, I chuckle and wonder how people bought that farce.

The impossibility of moving forward without looking back

I agree with David Cole on this:

It turns out that looking forward, not back, will never resolve the torture legacy. Until we own up to and provide a reckoning for the moral and criminal wrongs committed by officials at the very highest levels of the former administration, the fact that we tortured will continue to fester—and cause problems for its successor. The prevailing view in Washington seems to be that we should move on, but such wrongs cannot be forgotten. Try as we might to ignore it, the fact that we tortured and did nothing about it will periodically raise its head—in a failed prosecution, a foreign court judgment, or a terrorist incident inspired by images from Abu Ghraib. And even when it does not manifest itself so dramatically, the fact that the president of the United States was able to order torture, boast about it in a best-selling book, and walk way scot-free will fuel a deep vein of worldwide resentment. Torture and its after-effects will be with us until we are willing to confront them head-on.

In short, even the 'One' or rather especially the 'One' cannot redeem America's moral failings without doing more than simply saying that a page has been turned and that the past has passed. Obama has more than a torture problem, he has a moral one for he was elected to save America, to cleanse its soul; it is thus more difficult for him than for anyone else to argue that he is change if his point because that his sole election put Humpty Dumpty together again and makes clear that a lot was happened before him happened before him and therefore no longer matters.

Jesus cannot be Pontius Pilate.

The evolution of the charge of racism

John McWhorter on Kanye West,  George W. Bush, and the evolution of the charge of racism in America:

Prototypically, we associate a person charging racism with powerlessness. This is what is behind the good-thinking idea that black people can’t be racist by definition – they are only responding to what is dumped on them; they are the subalterns, as a certain terminology has it.

But West’s charge came from a position of, actually, rather awesome power. To call someone a racist today is only a notch or two less potent than calling them a pedophile. Racism may still be “out there,” but it is socially incorrect. It is whispered, hedged, released unintentionally amidst frustration. It is an embarrassment, disavowed even by racists.

Note, for example, that whatever you think of West’s antics, the natural response to his calling Bush a racist is a loaded kind of “Ooooooh,” with a downward intonational contour, signalling, roughly, “It’s on!” That means that we consider a charge like West’s potent, at least at first – it is a deft play. The accused now must defend himself – and probably cannot. “I’m not a racist” works generally about as well as saying some of your best friends are black.

Therefore, West had the power, and Bush being President lent him no complimentary power whatsoever.  It’s late summer, 2005. Which person had more moral power in America? You have two choices. A: A white, swivel-tongued Republican fifty-something widely assumed to have been instated illegitimately, who had led the country into a deeply unpopular war going extremely badly. B: A charismatic twenty-something black rapper just recently risen to superstardom, cherished for rapping about serious issues. There is no contest.

The naked power of the racism charge makes something understandable that may have seemed a little off when it was announced – that Bush would call the West episode, of all things, the most disgusting point of his Presidency. Despite all of the stingingly awful revelations we endured during those eight years and all of the hideous things that were said about Bush daily during them, it does not surprise me in the least that the one that would actually hit home the most would be someone calling him a racist – and specifically, someone with the moral authority of a young black rap artist.

John McWhorter begs the essential question for he doesn't tell his readers whether the punishment for the conviction of or even simply the charge of racism in America ought to be a death sentence and therefore something that dooms one for life. I have always wondered where society was supposed to put its suspected and convicted racists. America is a country who believes so religiously in good and evil, in the notion that people are either good or bad cannot change their nature and therefore cannot be rehabilitated. This belief and its spiritual and moralist naturalism are hindering America's ability to become something more than a leviathan nation stuck in its past and whose archaic views on race, human nature and crime and punishment are infecting its society.

I stopped believing that racism was the worst of all its ills when I was forced, through the power of experience, to realize that people aren't the sum of their fears and their shortcomings and are actually able to overcome them. It is for that reason that I always feel unease with the orgasmic delectation that the American public takes in public shaming especially when the person shamed has no possibility for redemption and must her/his crucifixion. In short, I find it fascinating and not too surprising that the puritan nation is one, which enjoys crucifixions and believes in nonredeemable sins.

America is a nation that is waiting for Jesus Godot even though its history and a refined common sense ought to tell it that Godot is never going to come.

 



The consequences of symbolic indulgence

I agree with David Bromwich on this:

The truth is that Obama exposed himself to the worst the Republicans can do by his conciliatory tone from the first days of his administration. He gave assurance when he entered office that he would not look exactingly into the conduct of the last administration. Bush and Cheney received from him a legal indulgence for any conceivable transgression, on the theory that after the bombings of September 2001, anything that public servants did was a hasty but honourable response to a dreadful emergency by well-meaning persons. To Obama at the time, this must have seemed a magnanimous deed as well as a signal of non-aggression to tamp down the savagery of the Cheney circle. Yet his decision to make justice begin today achieved a different end. It made sure that none of the people from whom Obama had most to fear would ever fear him. It also robbed of reality all his talk of a profound commitment to justice – a justice which he had suggested went beyond considerations of bridge-building for the sake of domestic policy or national expedience. By broadening the claim of state secrets to prevent the disclosure of evidence of torture and extraordinary rendition, the Obama administration has lent credence to the original claim of Bush and Cheney that their actions were dictated by necessities of state. In doing so it has foregone the only assurance the law affords against the repetition of such acts.

I believe that in a way Obama gave himself very little choice but to support the statu quo ante when he became president because of the fact that he ran as the change candidate and that he never had it in him to die, politically that is, for what he ran on, which I don't think is what he believes.  To become Potus, Obama made himself more exotic than he really is, but because he is a great politician and a typical American, he realized that Americans only really likes the appearance and the symbols of change. Those symbols give American the complaisant impression that they don't have to pay and to work hard to improve/change their country.  In short, because Obama was never different than the people he riled against, he was always going to govern as most of presidents did before him by doing everything not to rock the boat and not appear to un-Americanize America by governing as the Change President.

It is sad to admit but out of all of the credible people who ran for president in 2008, the one who was always going to be the least able to 'change' America was Barack Obama. That fact is ironically one of the reasons he won because people thought that he was change.

New York City as the Babylon of Libertarian paternalists

Sugary excerpt from Brendan O'Neill's attack on my village, New York City:

New York is now run by officials who conceive of themselves as morally superior to the city’s everyday inhabitants precisely because they’re healthier. On Marathon weekend in early November, a bone-chillingly cold couple of days, the New York Times published an interview with Bloomberg’s health commissioner and the author of many of NYC’s nudge policies, Dr Thomas A Farley. The most shocking thing about the interview is that nobody seemed shocked by it, at least not in the Starbucks at Columbus Circle, where I saw many a macchiato-quaffer look over it without a flicker of concern crossing their faces. The NYT presents Farley as a ‘superman’ (it actually uses that word) because he is healthy; even better, he’s thin. He has ‘grasshopper-like legs’, we’re told (thanks, but I’m trying to keep my coffee down), a result of the fact that ‘he exercises seven days a week, loves his vegetables and has never smoked a cigarette’. Also, he has ‘barely a ripple of fat’. To show how fantastically fat-free he is, the NYT published a photo of him leading a workout with a group of black people, none of whom had grasshopper-like legs.

The saddest thing is that I have nothing to say to defend my village because I believe that O'Neill is right. New York is becoming a city where people believe that they can nudge people in becoming healthier and better people by showing them the way to goodness and encouraging the way Pavlov did with his dog to make certain decisions. It wouldn't be a bad thing if that meant that people would still be free to choose what is bad for them without being ostracized for that decision. After all,  if the freedom to choice means solely the freedom to make only good or appropriate choices,  it becomes even more than a nudge, paternal order given to a child who doesn't know what is good for her/his or how dangerous the world can be.

Gender as a nonnegotiable gift

Sugary excerpt from the New York Times' portrait of Priscilla Shirer, a female woman evangelist in Baton Rouge:

Shirer and many conservative Christians believe that the Bible defines gender as a divinely ordained set of desires and duties inherent in each man and woman since the Garden of Eden. Gender is not an act or a choice, but a nonnegotiable gift. To these Christians, the story of Adam and Eve’s creation granted man authority over woman, and they understand the New Testament teachings of Paul and his comrades — in particular, that wives should submit to their husbands — not as cultural relics of the first century but as universal teachings that Christians apply today.

In an era when sexual liberation has saturated American culture, when women are climbing the corporate ladder and bearing fewer children, and mainline churches are ordaining women and homosexuals, conservative evangelicals are escalating their counteroffensive. Many call themselves complementarians, signaling their belief that God ordained complementary — not identical or flexible — roles for men and women.

Well, my reaction is only in America ! That isn't quite accurate only in America, Afghanistan, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. I know that  many Americans don't like to believe their fundamentalists can be identical or as disturbing and dangerous to the ones of other countries as if they were more sophisticated and superior because they were Americans and  America is after all a great nation (an opinion that I share), but that reluctance is solely based on foolish pride and snobbish chauvinism. In fact, one could make the argument that because America is as great as it is, its fundamentalists are worst, scarier than those of say a nation like Afghanistan (I'm not yet willing to go that far). What will happen to the US when/if its government and more importantly, its judiciary cannot ensure that there is an unconditional separation between church and state? The future doesn't look good.

On the use of the word 'Tribal'

Thoughtless and aggravating quote of the day from Max Rodenbeck :

Yemen is a messy place, with a fearsomely well-armed, fiercely tribal society of immense complexity.

So Yemen is America!

The point of my purposeful (I hope) provocation is to put an emphasis of the fact that too many use the world 'tribal' when their underlying assumption is that what they are describing is foreign, 'non-western (that doesn't mean anything),' barbaric, backwards, illegitimate, or just uncivilized. In short. tribal is  a pejorative term, melting pot, countries filled with communities isn't.  It occurs rarely to people to criticize the fact that America accepts to be divided into communities without ever questioning the fact that it might be hindering its progress. The assumption is that the difference between tribal and 'communitarism' is solely a matter of civilization,' of the level of a society sophistication.' Barbarians are tribal, modern men are cultured and civilized enough to acknowledge that race, religion, sexual orientation and other particularities matter more than commonness or an artificial universality.

Reality is no longer a tough dude

Sunday's sugary excerpt is from Scott McLemee:

In the 1970s, conservatives liked to say that their ranks were filling up with “liberals who had been mugged by reality.” That phrase suggested that reality is one tough dude -- totally indifferent to anybody’s mere opinion.

It was quite another matter when a leading Bush administration official (unnamed but often assumed to be Karl Rove) told a reporter for The New York Times Magazine in 2004: “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.” Nor was this merely the judgment of a solitary solipsist. In his chapter "Creating Their Own Reality,” David Greenberg -- an associate professor of history, journalism, and media studies at Rutgers University -- maintains “the Right under Bush found itself promoting a view of knowledge in which any political claim, no matter how objectively verifiable or falsifiable, was treated as simply one of two competing descriptions of reality, with power and ideology, not science or disciplined inquiry, as the arbiters.” (Or deciders, if you will.)

There was no reality, only interpretations of reality -- and the existence of weapons of mass destruction was a function of who controlled the narrative. Little surprise that there were jokes about the rise of conservative postmodernism during the ‘00s. If Fox denied that climate change was taking place, who had the right to insist otherwise? Not some elitist, anyway.

Is Left the south of Nowhere?

The sole question that I'm asking myself concerning Obama, the One, is where will he go ideologically after Tuesday.  I don't think that he is in the same position as Clinton (Bill) in 1994 because he has governed from the center and cannot move further to the right without losing some of his most loyal worshipers (that said, it is possible to argue that the Left is so passionately in love with Obama that it wouldn't mind be a cuckold if it means saving Obama's marriage to America). In short, to the contrary of many pundits, my view isn't that Obama is in a tough situation because he gave too much to the Left, which has been incredibly generous and patient with him to the point of becoming of losing itself in its marriage and becoming masochistic. Obama cannot move to the right without becoming even more flavorless and fluffy than he is already. How long can soufflé with flashy garnishes but pumped mostly with air rather than succulent ingredients be eatable? 

My advice to Obama would be to find some backbone and to embrace a political identity or be who he is by giving his base, those who thought that he would give America more than Clintonism with a multiracial face (Clintonism was good in the Nineties, America needs something else), some red meat and to stop being solely a masterful tactician. However, I don't think that Obama has it in him to take the risk not to get reelected. Thus, he will wait patiently for the Republicans to overreach and will run against their method of governing in 2012 by making arguments against rather than for some things. My fear is that the 2012 presidential election will be similar to the Nevada Senate Race between Harry Reid and Sharon Angle, which means that the race will be negative and about picturing the other side as extreme or unAmerican (I believe that Obama is going to win in 2012 because I don't think that there is a republican out there that can be the finesse necessary not to look like an extremist or a buffoon, but it is possible that one will out of nowhere). It's going to be a pitiful spectacle to observe and one, which will not be good for America. That what's a country gets when it believes that governing isn't helped by experience and substance, but is solely about the identity of its leader.

Uneasy fusion

Pertinent:

If the contemporary right is an uneasy fusion of conservative and libertarian articles of faith, the contemporary left is an uneasy fusion of technocratic progressive and liberal-democratic conviction. One sees progressive managerial elitism most clearly in the left's public-health and environmental paternalism. The rarely uttered idea is that the people who know best need to force the rest of us to do what's good for us. Whatever you think of this sort of state paternalism, it isn't liberal or liberty-enhancing in any non-tortured sense. The progressive technocrat's attitude toward liberty is: "Trust us. You're better off without so much of it." The more the left is inclined to stick up for this sort of "activist government" as a progressive, humanitarian force, the less it is inclined to couch its arguments in terms of liberty.

It is the fact that I value too much my liberty and that I hate to be told what to think that I am more than uneasy about the American left; it is too self-righteous and increasingly shallow because it wants to be fashionable, which makes it too complacent for it is convinced of its grandeur.  So what will 'change' (ah the magic word, America is discovering doesn't mean anything) after the left gets a spanking tonight? Not much, it will just wait for Republicans to overreach and Obama will remain at the center right of the political spectrum and get reelected if he doesn't get in his own way.

The eternally Puritan nation

Suary excerpt of the early morning from Roger Ebert:

America has a historical Puritan streak, and is currently in the midst of another upheaval of zeal from radical religionists. They know what is bad for us. They would prefer to burn us at a metaphorical stake, but make do with bizarre imprecations about the dire consequences of our sin. Let me be clear: I am not speaking of sexual behavior that is obviously evil and deserves legal attention. But definitions differ. Much of their wrath is aimed at gays. I consider homosexuality an ancient, universal and irrefutable fact of human nature. Some radicals actually blamed it for 9/11. For them the ideal society must be Saudi Arabia's, which I consider pathologically sick.

I don't disagree with Ebert, I just believe that people like him (I am more like him than not) also want to tell peope whom they disagree with what kind of persons they ought to be (good people thinking good thoughts) and what what they ought to believe. It seems to me that the more you moralize your politics and your beliefs, the more likely you are to believe that they have to be absolute and that people  have to believe what you believe to be acceptable.  That's my reason for loving Eluard's quote Le bien et le mal doivent leur existence à l'abus de quelques erreurs.

Christian America and the red scare

Fascinating stuff from the Economist's Democracy in America's blog:

In 1942, before Americans came to see the Soviets as their mortal enemy, the ideas of "Strong, immediate limitations on national sovereignty" and "International control of all armies and navies" could seem an enlightened path to the abolition of war. But by the war's end, it quickly became apparent that this sort of thing would amount to an impracticable power-sharing agreement with communist regimes. And as Americans became more and more likely to believe that only a more thoroughly Christian nation could save the world from godless communist tyranny, the principled, cosmopolitan globalism of the Federal Council of Churches swiftly came to seem a dangerous absurdity and practically communist itself. Anyway, that's what I think happened to the Federal Council of Churches' 1942 platform. Of course, it's now been a good while since we were haunted by the spectre of communism. Yet America's oddly religion-soaked politics remains in many ways the creature of its mid-century anti-communist reaction. Isn't it a bit depressing to think that American national political and religious life has yet to recover from the red scare?

I'm wondering whether we aren't in a similar period in American history where the Islamist scare this time is increasing the religionization of American politics with potentially more dire consequences.

American racism

Salman Rushdie says the darnest things:

It's very strange being somebody of Indian or south Asian ethnicity in the US, because in some way we are excused American racism, which is mostly whites against African Americans … American racism is not aimed at people from India and Pakistan, you feel almost guilty about it.

I wonder what being 'African American'  and 'racism' mean to Rushdie.

Populism and liberalism

Fascinating stuff from William Hogeland:

(...) history suggests that American populists’ rejection of liberalism is a matter of principle, not of interest. Liberalism has long defined itself from a position of expertise and wisdom that it justifies as meritocracy, and for which it keeps reflexively congratulating itself. Whether lampooning populist farmers as rank yokels, or giving way to a thrilling panic about coast-to-coast violence, or patronizing millions of people’s supposed misguided tropisms, or even, like Lepore, subjecting right-wing enthusiasms to the reflective, nuanced consideration identical with today’s high-quality journalism, liberal claims to a monopoly on knowledge may be even more undemocratic than conservatives’ policies for distributing wealth upward. In America the deadlock between liberalism and populism may be unbreakable.

Wars are not effective ways to fight terrorism

I agree with Juan Cole on this with one essential caveat, there is a huge difference between gullibility and faith-based or narrow-minded based blindness:

The point of 9/11 for Bin Laden was to drag the US into Middle Eastern quagmires. Not everyone is as gullible as George W. Bush and fringe terrorist groups should be dealt with quietly and effectively, not with big multi-trillion dollar wars.

Dissatisfaction and Tea

I agree with this:

When you have such dissatisfaction in American politics, is it so surprising that some look to alternatives like the Tea Party? Furthermore, given that Democrats control the White House and Congress, it is surely no shocker to find that an emerging protest movement is close to the Republicans and explicitly anti-Obama. While the Tea Partiers tell everyone how angry they are about the current political situation, liberals express none of that passion. They’ve been let down by Obama, but their criticisms are more in sorrow than anger. They can’t fathom that people would really be seriously opposed to Obama and the Democrats. It is their unwavering support for their favourite members of the political class that makes them blind to what lies behind populist opposition.
If you think the Tea Party’s politics are bad, just remember, it is only an index of how dissatisfied people are with the mainstream parties, especially the Democrats.

Rebelling against the smart guys

Quote from Russel Kirk via Professor Bainbridge:

A Populist, whose basic conviction is that the cure for democracy is more democracy, conserves nothing - even though he may wish to do so. Populism, in effect, is what Walter Bagehot called the "ignorant democratic conservatism of the masses." It is the tendency later called Populism that Tocqueville dreaded when he wrote that the triumph of democracy might lead to the stagnation of the society of the future, all change being resisted by the conservatism of mediocrity and complacency. ...

Populism is a revolt against the Smart Guys. I am very ready to confess that the present Smart Guys, as represented by the dominant mentality of the Academy and of what the Bergers call the Knowledge Class today, are insufficiently endowed with right reason and moral imagination. But it would not be an improvement to supplant them by persons of thoroughgoing ignorance and incompetence.

Hummmm... For some reason, although I agree with Kirk and with Bainbridge, I found myself increasingly wondering whether the smart guys should escape responsibility, sanctions because their opposition is 'stupid,' 'scary' or simply inadequate. It seems to me that the fact that one is a smart guy means indeed that one has greater responsibilities and obligations than those who don't know better or don't even try to know better because they assume that normalcy and ordinariness mean stupidity and inculture. People would be and should be harsher on Einstein for asserting that 2+2=3  or for not having good results than on Forrest Gump especially if Einstein asserted that he was better, smarter and his opposition was just dumb. I have to say that I no longer believes that being smart makes one the best possible leader especially in an America where being cultured can be a burden or simply give the false sense that one knows better than anybody else. I used to like Blair for that reason because he sounded and was smart until I realized that his total certitude on his own smartness and sense of superiority led him to the darkness. Smartness shouldn't be a religion.

I woke up (I had a long Sunday) to headlines of Christine O'Donnell and the I dabbled into Witchcraft quote. I have to say that it made me laugh and then regret with a sadness that is vain that there is such a contempt for O'Donnell and whatever she represents that the other side doesn't even feel that it has to rise up and to make the case for reason or simply for their own ideals. Is the most troubling thing about O'Donnell really the fact that she believes in witchcraft? What does it say about the Left, the smart guys that they focus on side and wedge issues instead of offering an alternative view and defending their 'America?"

Politics in America and France is now about being against something, someone that has to be demonized. I guess most politicians like O'Donnell do believe in the Devil.

Cultural imperialism within America

I agree with Pankaj Mishra on this:

Edmund Wilson once warned against "the sometimes all too conscious American literary self-glorification which is a part of our American imperialism". But there is more reason to be wary of the cultural imperialism within America that, ignoring the country's lively diversity of artists and genres, erects singular monuments to American "greatness".

I only wonder the dictatorship of taste in America and elsewhere isn't due to the fact that the term culture has lost its meaning. My point isn't yet another one deploring elitism, but rather that elitism precisely is as intolerant of different and of peculiarities as what it despises the most, that is the commercial and the popular.

Aggressiveness and extremism

I don't agree totally agree with Mehdi Hasan on this, but the fact that I can't say he is just wrong, shows that he has a point:

On Thursday the US president said Pastor Jones's plans to burn the Qur'an would be a "recruiting bonanza" for al-Qaida. Yet he fails to recognise how the west's war in Afghanistan provides a similar boost to extremists – on both sides. The "enemy" in Afghanistan, concluded the IISS report released on Tuesday, is "incentivised by the presence of foreign forces". And inside the US the likes of Jones and rightwing Republican bigots, frothing at the mouth over the "Ground Zero mosque" take their cue from aggressive leaders like Blair, Bush and Obama – who send more and more troops to fight and die abroad, in faraway Muslim countries, while denying any link between Islamic militancy and western foreign policies.

Omnipresence

While watching Obama's news-conference, I kept asking myself what makes a good or even a decent American president in our time, an age when it seems to be impossible for politicians to stay away from the cameras and to do just  their j.o.b or rather to communicate their way (I would like to use fake, but I won't) out of  difficult times.

We seem to be living in times when image is everything meaning that what matters is the picture that one can create, what one can convey  rather than results. The presidencies of Bush and Obama show that Americans would be willing to vote for Forest Gump because he made them feel good about themselves, but creating heartwarming images and makes them believe that they are wonderful while they vote for him. Obama is playing to the crowd and the sad thing is that it seems to be all that matters not winning the game.

In short, reality in politics matters less and less.

American parents and Sex ed

Thought-provoking:

American parents approach their children’s sexual initiation with fear and loathing; while Dutch parents treat sexuality like any other realm of life that a child must learn to manage.  Accordingly, most American teenagers hide their virginity loss from their parents, furtively popping the cherry in risky situations, often without protection against pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections (STIs).  In contrast, most Dutch teenagers lose their virginity in their own bedrooms with their parents approval… and condoms.

Unjustified offense and the “Ground Zero Mosque”

Brilliant stuff from Ilya Somin on the "Ground Zero" mosque:

I lost half a dozen relatives in the Holocaust. But I don’t see any inherent problem with having a German cultural center near the site of a former Nazi death camp. So long as the center does not interfere with the operations of the memorial established at the camp, does not promote anti-Semitism, and doesn’t advocate the sort of virulent nationalism that helped cause the Holocaust, it should be unobjectionable. As Krauthammer notes, Germans as a group are not to blame for the Holocaust. And German culture is not reducible to Nazism and anti-Semitism. A center promoting elements of German culture that are not implicated in those phenomena does not somehow offend against the memory of Holocaust victims. A German cultural center that actually condemns Nazism and extreme nationalism while celebrating positive elements of German culture could actually make a useful contribution to reducing prejudice and honoring the victims. 
I recognize, of course, that some Jews might still be offended, and avoiding such offense might be a pragmatic justification for not building the center. But the issue is whether the offense-taking would be justified. No one has a moral obligation to change their plans merely because others take unjustified offense. 
The same points apply to the proposed Islamic Cultural Center near Ground Zero. Islam is not reducible to terrorism and oppression. A Muslim center near Ground Zero that promotes positive aspects of the Muslim tradition is unobjectionable. One that also denounces terrorism and radical Islamism would be a positive good.

It is difficult to say, but this controversy is just another proof that in America, it is increasingly becoming difficult to have serious conversations because too many are persuaded to have either "god" or "the truth" on their side and those who oppose them are just stupid or simply evil. The alarming thing is that the POTUS, the decider chose to avoid the debate even though he has always described himself as a man who isn't afraid of doing the right thing even if it means losing. Bush used to talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations, in Obama's case, I think we should talk about the flashy arrogance of great expectations.

Believing unbelievable things

Quote of the day from Stanley Fish:

The thing about people who hold beliefs you find unbelievable (in two senses) is that they are in most other respects just like you and your friends.

I agree with Fish. However, I must say that I have realized that 'normalcy' is less disturbed by unbelievable "beliefs" than by unsavory and well-thought ones. For example, in 2008 in my little world, it was easier to be a truther, to express the belief that 911 was an inside job than to express the one that Obama would make a bad president. Comme quoi...