The Republic of Dissent

With prejudice

Sugary excerpt from Pankaj Mishra's critical, but fair piece on Niall Ferguson:

The banner of white supremacism has been more warily raised ever since in post-imperial Europe, and very rarely by mainstream politicians and writers. In the United States, racial anxieties have been couched either in such pseudo-scientific tracts about the inferiority of certain races as The Bell Curve, or in big alarmist theories like Samuel Huntington’s ‘clash of civilisations’. It’s not at all surprising that in his last book Huntington fretted about the destruction by Latino immigration of America’s national identity, which is apparently a construct of ‘Anglo-Protestant culture’. As power ostensibly shifts to the East, a counterpoise to dismay over the West’s loss of authority and influence is sought in a periodic ballyhooing of the ‘trans-Atlantic alliance’, as in Philip Bobbitt’s Terror and Consent (2008), which Niall Ferguson in an enthusiastic review claimed will ‘be read with pleasure by men of a certain age, class and education from Manhattan’s Upper East Side to London’s West End’.

I wish I could read Mishra's writings without reservations, but I cannot even though I like him as a writer. Oh well, it's always good to be aware of one's own prejudices.

 

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.

Obama and invisibility

Sugary excerpt from a Michael Moore's interview with the Financial Times :

“I was overcome with emotion, voting for [Barack Obama] on that day,” he says, suddenly looking down, jowls bulging under his chin’s pale stubble, arms folded as if hugging himself. “I think he’s a person of good heart and he means well, but ...” There is a long pause. “I thought he’d come in swinging ... come in like Franklin Roosevelt ... What an opportunity to go down as a great president – squandered.” He looks pained.

The Republicans “decided to treat him as the invisible president”, he adds bitterly, making sure I catch the reference to Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel about racial injustice.

What year are we again? Well, it's alarming to realize that Obama doesn't exist for too many people for they never take into account what he does since they are so certain that they know who he is or rather who he cannot be not matter what he does/says. 

I wonder if Michael Moore realizes that fo him too Obama is an invisible president.

Obama doesn't act black...

Sugary excerpt of the day from Ta-nehisi Coates:

If you paid more attention to Obama's skin color, than to his speeches, the voluminous amounts of journalism noting his moderation, his two books which are, themselves, exercises in moderation, then you have chosen to be ignorant. 

You are now being punished for that ignorance. No one should feel sorry for you. Try not being racist.

I agree with Coates except that voluntarily and disingenuously, he stops in the middle of the road in order not to drive his truck in the ditch. Obama is indeed what he does as I have always argued and the fact that he is black/says that he is black or African-American doesn't change that. However, too many are making race a part of his presidency to either objectify him by making him a victim or an intelligent little man or to  give him a pass for his failures and for the fact that he has shown that to the contrary to he argued in 2008 experience does matter and that he is afraid to lose. The point is that Obama is the POTUS and his actions or inactions speak louder than his words or his 'race.'

Acting black and being black in America and unfortunately in most of the world is about nothing more than following stereotypes and submitting to traditional and nonsensical notions about what blackness is when it is nothing more than an illusion created to soothe thoughtlessness and ideology.

In short, Coates and America are going to realize when the love/lust is really gone with the help of Obama that there is such as things as black people. Obama has so much more in common with Mitt Romney than he does with Ta-nehsi Coates!

Obama is Mitt Romney

I'm supposed to be on vacation, but nothing was going to stop from quoting this sugary excerpt from Paul Krugman:

(...)the point is that if you ask what Mitt Romney would probably be doing if he were in the White House and not trying desperately to convince his party that he shares its madness, it would look a lot like what Obama is doing.

Boy, yes we can indeed or rather yes they (liberals) did swallow another pot of manure for the sake of style, eloquence and bling bling! My guess is that they like so much the taste of Obamanian crap that they are going to keep on swallowing arguing that it can't be shit because it comes fro their chosen one and not from the evil/dumb/zeal/crazy other side.

It isn't enough to be smart to be a good president

Sugary excerpt of the weekend from Jack Balkin:

The fact that Obama is a former professor of constitutional law does not justify his scuttling practices that are designed, over long periods of time, to improve legal deliberations and help ensure that presidents conform to the law. Former professors of constitutional law, like current ones, have been known to disagree among themselves about what the law requires; they have even been known to make mistakes and engage in serious misjudgments.

The fact that Obama may think he is smarter and more learned than George W. Bush also does not justify his practice. The next President, or the one after that, may think themselves smarter than Obama. They will certainly find a group of able lawyers somewhere in their Administration to tell them so. Obama came into office promising to reform the abuses of the Bush Administration and its manipulation of the OLC. The best way to do that is not to create entirely new abuses of one's own.

What alarms me is the deepening silence of some of Bush's biggest critics on Obama's actions and those people who were convinced that the One was going to bring them change they could believe in. Oh, I forgot American politics is about identity and about voting for people who can do wrong as long as they are "one of us."

The IMF and impending gloom

Sentence of the day from Paul Krugman on the IMF and the process by which it chooses its director:

I hope for the best if it is indeed Lagarde; but things are already off to a bad start.

I agree with Krugman and believe that there is something bothersome about this whole process. My discomfort has little to do with Lagarde, but with the ways the IMF chooses its leader. On a humorous note, there ought to have been more outrage about the fact that the only 'African' candidate Stan Fischer as disqualified. Man, where are the advocates of diversity when the one they ought to be fighting for is the most competent for the j.o.b!!!!

Class and class

Sugary excerpt of the day from the always pertinent Chris Dillow:

Successful power structures persist in large part because the way in which power is exercised is hidden from us. The importance of class and the lack of discussion of it are two sides of the same fact.

For some reason, I have this unnerving feeling that we are back in the time of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (Molière) when class was determinative, what saddens/disturbs me is that that reality is true particularly in America where there is a strong and maniacal denial about the existence and the relevance of 'class.'

Class, gender, and exhibitionism

Sugary of the day from Belle Waring slamming down Megan McArdle's arguments in favor of giving rich exhibitionists in hotels the benefit of the doubt:

She elides the fact that you, as a woman, know when you’re being flashed vs. when you accidentally walk in on someone who hasn’t heard your knock. Really. Big difference. A man showing you his penis on purpose has a certain way about him, let’s just say. Do I really have to go there? He is likely (thought not certain) to be visibly sexually aroused. And sauntering around looking at you weird, with his penis in his hand as often as not. This is not the behavior of the startled guest who shouts—”wait—don’t come in!” and begins pulling the sheets around himself in a fit of embarrassment. I honestly would have thought, here is a class of rich people whom not even Megan McArdle would defend! I begin to suspect the null set is involved.

I always find it fascinating that more often than not it is women making unbelievable arguments in sexual harassment and sex crime cases. To me, that fact show how icky and hard, it is to identify with the victim of a sex act no matter how believable she is because nobody wants to believe that not only shit happens, to put it bluntly, that it can be sexual and can place in the woman in a position where she is possessed/touched/harassed without having caused the situation.

In short, women are tougher on women victimized sexually because it is both empowering and reassuring.

The trouble with anti-ideological pragmatism

I agree with this:

In practice Mr Obama's anti-ideological pragmatism amounts to little more than carrying on the policies of his more ideological and motivated predecessor. No doubt Bush administration vets are gratified to learn that Mr Obama has implicitly conceded that their foreign policy approach is in fact "what actually works". But those who supported Mr Obama over John McCain precisely because he promised to get America out of Iraq and Afghanistan will be rather less pleased.

More people are realizing that the trouble with Obamamism is that it has no odor, no taste, no color, and yet, the prevalent argument remains that it is good for Americans because it has all the required vitamins and nutrients to be healthy and because the people who know nothing about gastronomy and just love bacon hate it.

Obama as a man who loves policy and politics like a fat kid loves cake

Well, reading these words from Alex Massie makes me want to gloat, but I resist that urge because I'm not sure that Americas or at least those who ought to know better that it isn't good for Americans to have a president who loves cake:

No Obama speech is a proper Obama speech unless it contains a rejection of "false choices". Often the choices he deems "false" are actually the choices you'd think a President must make. But, again, Obama doesn't see it that way. Much of his presidency is oddly, perhaps unusually, conditional. He's for or against a public option for health care as circumstances demand or allow. He's certainly in favour of closing Guantanamo but only if it can be done without fuss or too much opposition. Like everything else, it just depends. That was then but this is now. Judge me on what I do, not what I say. Except there are times when you should judge me on what I say, not what I do. And so on.
In some respects this produces an administration that can be impressively nimble. The speed with which the Americans ditched Mubarak was impressive in its own way. But Obama's style also makes for a White House that can sometimes seem strangely passive or reactive. What does the President really believe?

I have to admit that I'm fed up with people asking questions about where Obama was born, who is he is, what he believes as if his actions in the last few years haven't answer those questions.  Obama is as American as Clinton or as George Bush for he is one of those few Americans who was able to go to Columbia and to Harvard and to get elected to high office and to believe that he could raise the money to become POTUS.  He is a centrist who masquerades a leftist who is playing the role of centrist because he is a prisonner of the system. In short, there is nothing revolutionary new about Obama because he has never been a revolutionary and was always just a 'dude' who looked different, but who was always an acceptable representative of the system he  was supposed to change.

Trivia and triviality

Sugary excerpt from Chris Dillow:

The belief that society is perfectible and fully controllable causes our rulers to fail to accept that there will always be plenty of ruin in a nation, and causes them to think they can eliminate even small costs. (...) Politics has become about the revelation of character, and trivial issues serve as dividing lines here.

I have the feeling that I'm going to love 20112 which are election years in both France and the US. I wish I could get use to mediocrity and triviality in politics. I made a bet with somebody that both Obama and Sarkozy are going to get reelected, why? Because they are the best, for now, at the politics of trivia.

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.

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, Libya and American exceptionalism

Long sugary excerpt of the day from Glenn Greenwald on Obama, Libya and American exceptionalism:

The fact remains that declaring yourself special, superior and/or exceptional -- and believing that to be true, and, especially, acting on that belief -- has serious consequences. It can (and usually does) mean that the same standards of judgment aren't applied to your acts as are applied to everyone else's (when you do X, it's justified, but when they do, it isn't). It means that you're entitled (or obligated) to do things that nobody else is entitled or obligated to do (does anyone doubt that the self-perceived superiority and self-arrogated entitlements of Wall Street tycoons is what lead them to believe they can act without constraints?). It means that no matter how many bad things you do in the world, it doesn't ever reflect on who you are, because you're inherently exceptional and thus driven by good motives. And it probably means -- at least as it expresses itself in the American form -- that you'll find yourself in a posture of endless war, because your "unique power, responsibilities, and moral obligations" will always find causes and justifications for new conflicts.
It's a nice political point on the President's behalf to insist that he has proven his belief in American exceptionalism. That insulates him from a political vulnerability (i.e., from the perception that he rejects a widely held view), which is nice if politically defending the President is an important goal for you. But the harder -- and far more important -- question is whether this American exceptionalism that you attribute to him is actually true, whether it's well-grounded, and whether it should serve as a premise for our actions in the world.

I have never had a problem with American exceptionalism, maybe that's because I believe in it almost as much as believe in the exception française or that le Cameroun c'est le Cameroun. I think that the trouble comes when one defines exceptionalism as having rights and not as many responsibilities. The question isn't about Obama's belief in American exceptionalism for all American presidents come to believe in it at some point especially when it gives them a justification to do what they want to do,. The issue is about whether American exceptionalism will ever make Obama do something that  requires something more than idealism and is expensive not only to him, but to its short term goals.   America exceptionalism becomes a problem, when it becomes  an excuse not to justify the problematic  because then it becomes about faith and not much else.

In short, the issue isn't hat Obama says or believes, but again what he does, how well he does and how he reacts to failure and to adversity.

Women and wusses

This sugary excerpt from Gideon Rachman is the best remedy to the headache I feel after a short weekend :

There has been a certain amount of sniggering about the fact that it was Obama’s female advisers who were most prominent in pressing for military intervention in Libya, while the men hung back. Amongst the interventionists were the evocatively-named pair of Power and Slaughter – that is Samantha Power on the National Security Council and Anne-Marie Slaughter, who recently stepped down as head of the Policy Planning staff at the State Department and tweeted effectively from her new perch at Princeton. And then there was Susan Rice, the US ambassador at the UN and, finally (and decisively), Hillary Clinton.
The implication of all this is that it was the women who turned out to be the real men – prepared to get tough – while the men were wusses, who hung back. In this account, Obama is cast as the hesitant king, with Hillary as Lady Macbeth, hissing – “Infirm of purpose, hand me the dagger.”

Ahhh I wish I could take all of this seriously, but I cannot because we are in 2011 and that I am over gender. That said I think the bigger point of Rachman's point is about Obama and about the fact that America needs its commander in chief to be firm and to look in command when it is 'at war.'  Obama  doesn't look in command because it is obvious that he knows that the Libyan intervention os problematic for America because it increases the  uncertainty  and the instability in a region key to its strategic interest.

 

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.

American foreign policy and the United Nations

Interesting point from Professor Kenneth Anderson on the Obama administration 's reliance on the United Nations in the 'Libyan crisis':

We’ve got lots of problems in Wisconsin and Ohio and California and New Jersey and Indiana, and just so we’re clear, here’s the deal.  If we agree that the UN is the place to deal with all your funny and hard to figure out and frankly not very relevant or interesting foreigner stuff, will you all just sod off and let us get on with figuring out our new VAT tax and our grandchildren’s interest payment schedule to China?

Since the Obama's administration has no good choices in the Libyan crisis, it is trying to let the UN take the lead to avoid having to take responsibility for the worst and to be able to take credit for the good.

In short, we are in 2011, next year is a presidential election year, that fact is having disastrous effects on the foreign policies of both America and France (the french presidential election is in also next year).

This is love calling earth

I have to admit that I love to crow when I read sugary excerpts such as this one from John Quiggin:

In the short run, and within US politics, there is little choice but to support Obama and the Dems as the lesser evil, at least as regards domestic policy.

Wow, hope is dead and the people who were drunk on it are nevertheless still in love or rather hate too much reality to accept that it is about neither good nor evil. Boy is it dangerous to fall in love in politics!  Hey Quiggin the point of waking up is to stop swollowing the kool-aid believing that it is holy water!

Simple question of probabilities

Important point from Chris Dillow on Saif al-Islam Gaddafi:

(...) how many times in history has the son of dictator succeeded his father and successfully transformed his country to a liberal democracy? Basic Bayesianism tells us that, with such a poor base rate probability, we should have not have been hopeful about al-Gaddafi.

I don't think that people really believed in what the younger Gaddafi was selling, just in the fact that he had the means to buy a lot of their needful things as Stephen King would say.

The essentiality of Freedom

I disagree strongly with Theodore Darymple when he makes the following point:

Certainly, it does not seem to me that the future necessarily belongs to freedom as we have known it, and such as it was, and that therefore China must break apart under demands for personal liberty. It is a mistake, in my view, to assume that all people want to be free, in the sense of the American pioneers.
I think they much prefer to be comfortable; as the establishment of welfare states almost everywhere as the political summun bonum has shown, the greatest of all freedoms, the one that more people want more than any other, is the freedom from responsibility and consequences. It is true that the Chinese have never had the freedoms of speech, etc., that we have enjoyed, and have taken for granted, but I am not sure how much they are missed there.
Moreover, I fleetingly, and no doubt dangerously, wonder whether freedom is as importantly a matter of the soul as of political arrangements. I cannot ever forget Arthur Koestler’s book, Spanish Testament, in which he said that the time he spent in the condemned cell in the Nationalist zone was the time in his life when he felt most free.

The trouble with Darymple's assertions is that they lead to dangerous slippery slopes, which he ignores in a attempt to be both provocative and cute (he fails at both). From now until the end of times, people have had arguments on the essentiality of freedom and whether we all we need/want it. That debate is meaningless. It is a way to avoid the question of responsibility and morality. The issue is not and has never been whether we want/need freedom, but rather what we do with our Sartrean/Existential eternal condemnation to be free and the heavyness of that burden. 

It is archaic to oppose freedom between comfort, but it is also as sterile as opposing existence and essence. In short, it isn't because some choose not to choose or choose sometimes to reduce their own their own choices, that freedom/liberty  isn't for everybody. Freedom is about what we want for after all, the world is human, but not anthropomorphic.

Truth and fluff in politics

The statement of the day or rather of the late evening is from Chris Dillow:

Politics is about power, not fluffy things like truth and trust.

Chris Dillow should have a conversation/debate with Glenn Greenwald. I don't want to agree with him, as a matter of fact, I won't but he is isn't wrong. I wonder whether Dillow would make a distinction with a difference between politics and governing. What would Hannah Arendt say?

Barack Obama, moderate republican

Insightful and almost on point analysis from Jonathan Zasloff :

Perhaps one way to explain President Obama’s inability to stake out more strongly progressive positions on — well, just about anything, from tax cuts, to health care reform, to foreign policy (think Afghanistan) — is that he essentially is not a progressive Democrat but rather that extinct breed, the Rockefeller Republican.  It is not quite the same thing as modern-day moderate Republicanism, because it is slightly to the left.  But the more I think about it, the more that I have to conclude that all those who for the last two years have been calling Obama a moderate Republican have some justice on their side.

Obama has more in common with Lincoln Chafee and Olympia Snowe than with Dennis Kucinich and even Bernie Sander. However, I think that the fact that he was elected by pretending to be something/someone else is a problem because it makes unable to stand for something rather than to stand against something or rather someone. Obama needs enemies and that's disconcerting, so Sarkozy and thus not good for America. It means that the political battles aren't going to settle anything for they will solely be about power and identity politics.

Western disaggregation

Sugary excerpt of the morning is from Professor Kenneth Anderson:

I continue to find mystifying the Western academic international law world’s infatuation with the ideals of the diminishing importance of states and membership in states.  Particularly when that mostly seems to refer not to a universal aspiration, but only to the inability of the leading Western-states-in-decline to persuade themselves to exercise the coherence that makes states socially useful - and that largely through the cultural and class predilections of the political classes of those societies.  When are we going to see proper analytic attention to the Globalized New Class as a phenomenon?  In any event, the rising new powers understand that states are about coherence, and that the constant struggle of most states, most of the time, is to remain coherent and prevent “disaggregation” of the state into internal groups of power and “public choice” struggles for primacy and the resources of politics to economic ends.

Disaggregation is attractive to many Western intellectuals, I’d suggest, however, because our species-being, so to speak, has gradually come to be purely contractual free agency.  We gave up on any kind of “fiduciary professional” model of the intellectual when we discovered that we could leverage our knowledge skills, at least until China and India caught up, across a needy global economy.  It required freeing ourselves from the strictures of local communities; but the opportunities for globally marketizing our professional expertise being very large, we have moved a long, long way from RH Tawney’s post-war British model of the professional as community leader through expertise.

I'm flustered by Professor Anderson's use of the terms "West" and "Western" for I have no idea what he means or rather I don't think that the assumptions that he makes in using those terms are relevant or even justified. That said, Professor Anderson is simply dancing around the central issue, which is as Jean-François Bayart would that the State is the product of Globalization and neither its victim or nor its enemy combatant. The issue never really is whether the State matters, but rather what it can do and ought to do. Incoherence always occurs when there is an understandable and I would argue an useful disharmony between two.

Driven and out of control

My only reaction to these sentences from Chris Dillow is ahh!:

It is common to speak of “successful” men as being “driven”. But the very word draws attention to the fact that one is not in control.
What I’m saying here is that the prominent politician and the wealthy businessman often have much in common with the homeless drug addict. None are masters of their destiny. To believe that they are is to commit an unMarxian form of the fundamental attribution error - to overweight the importance of personality and underweight the importance of impersonal structures.

Being Bob Woodward out

Daniel Drezner asks a valid and important question:

(...)with Obama's Wars, has Bob Woodward demonstrated that he's about as irrelevant as the debutante circuit? 

My answer to that question is yes, but I don't think it happened with Woodward's latest but his books on the Bush years, which made it obvious that  he was limited by his desire to being the premier insider and to keep access to all of his important sources, to the powerful people in Washington, DC and elsewhere. When a reporter becomes more worried about access than about anything else, s/he has become irrelevant because he is no longer a journalist, but a confidante. We know from history that the confidante of the King's court and were most of the times also the King's jester because people knew that he was inoffensive and that he was first and foremost a courtisan.

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.

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.

Demography and political power

Sunny's advice over at Pickled politics on the ways for minorities to have more power in a liberal democracy:

After a while the race and the religion doesn’t even matter: it comes down to numbers. If your numbers or clout is large enough then the establishment will pay lip service. Perhaps the mistake Latinos in the US made was to tilt too far towards the Democrats… removing the Republican incentive to avoid pissing them off. Although it looks like Republicans are paying the price already.
Perhaps what I’m trying to say is that the only way a minority can get over the bigotry is either by expanding in large numbers, or getting very close to the establishment. 

There are two major implications of Sunny's advice and both of them bug them. The first is of course that it is acceptable to view having children as a means to an end, especially a political end. Children, thus become little things to enlarge a group giving them limited room to acquire an individuality. The second implication is that identity politics is so supreme that women should see as their mission to expand the numbers of their group by having more children. Women who are part of the minority group thus become essentially breeders since the objective is to have little ones to make their 'people' more powerful. How disturbing !

South Africa is colonizing Zimbabwe

Provocative assertions from Innocent Madawo and unfortunately, he is more right than wrong, which shows once again that the idea of 'Africanness,' 'blackness' is superfluous for even people who have the skin colors can have different interests and will not hesitate to establish their supremacy to protect those interest, realpolitik is colorblind :

In a typical case of “he who pays the piper calls the tune,” Mr. Zuma recently “ordered” Mr. Mugabe and Mr. Tsvangirai to avoid any political drama until after the soccer World Cup, a money-spinning extravaganza from which Zimbabwe could benefit. Obviously, Mr. Zuma will dictate what course Zimbabwean politics should take afterward, but his decision will be guided by South Africa's economic needs in Zimbabwe, not what Zimbabweans want. If that's not being colonized, what is?

Hamid Karzai and Charles de Gaulle

Great analysis as always from Juan Cole on Karzai's impossible situation even though he misses the mark with his comparison of Karzai to de Gaulle:

Karzai's problems do not derive from being crazed or a drug addict. Rather, he is in an impossible situation. He knows that the Obama administration came into office last year determined to remove him as indecisive and more of a problem than a solution. He responded by rigging the presidential election to ensure his hold on power. He presented the Americans with a fait accompli, which they reluctantly acknowledged and even embraced. (...) Karzai has responded to this difficult situation by blaming the US for some of his troubles, by reaching out to negotiate with figures such as Gulbadin Hikmatyar (not Taliban but mujahid or 'freedom fighter' in Ronald Reagan's terms)-- with whom the US would probably prefer he not be talking-- and then by adopting the rhetoric of mujahid or freedom fighter himself. (...) Karzai would very much like to likewise position himself as having brought greater security to his country and as having forced the US to set a withdrawal timetable for its exit. Karzai's outbursts and his apparently erratic statements actually just mark off his peculiar, almost DeGaulle-like situation (in being in his own mind a national liberator who in fact is deeply dependent on foreign allies. That humiliation and contradiction once led DeGaulle to warn that missiles could be aimed as easily at the US from France as toward the Soviet Union.

My beef with Cole's comparison is that Karzai is an empty suit whose sole objective is to remain in power at any cost. Charles de Gaulle, whatever one thinks of him had an ideology, political principles, a sense of what he felt France was and needed to be in the world. Moreover, he would not have given up those ideals to remain in power. Karzai is just posturing to show the Americans that he is irreplaceable and in case, they don't realize it, he will become an ideologue for political survival. Charles de Gaulle would have never become Churchill no matter what the circumstances were.

America as a normally vicious country

Quote of the day from Damon Linker:

The truth is that in many ways the United States is not exceptional at all. The world is a nasty, vicious place, and we’ve contributed our share of nastiness and viciousness over the years.

Assessing Sarkozy's failures and the rise of far right

I  agree in part with Jim Wolfreys on this:

Sarkozy came to power on a promise to break with the compromises of previous governments. One apparent measure of his determination to do so was the trenchant language used on immigration. It is this combination of authoritarianism and anti-immigrant rhetoric that has contributed to Sarkozy's undoing at the expense of the FN.
This is largely due to the demagogic nature of racism in the political arena. Since it is based on the myth that immigrants (or ethnic minorities in general, or Muslims) are to blame for unemployment, crime or other aspects of social decay, it has become a self-defeating tool for the government.
Under Sarkozy, unemployment stands at its highest level for a decade, at 10%, and France has one of the worst youth unemployment rates in Europe. Here, the link between racism and authoritarianism is important. The debate over national identity engineered by Sarkozy's UMP has seen Islamophobia reach a new pitch – at one point the party spokesperson compared the burka to a "Mickey Mouse mask".
Yet however shrill the scapegoating of Muslims, it has done nothing to obscure the government's impotence in the face of serious social and economic problems. Moreover, the realisation that Sarkozy is not an enforcer but a rather insecure figure in thrall to wealth and celebrity, has strengthened the claims of Le Pen to be the real authority figure in French politics.

One of Sarkozy's biggest failures is that he has legitimated the arguments of the French far right by using its language and that by not providing results,he has lead a part of the electorate to conclude that they may as well vote for the real dea forl when they were voting for Sarkozy they thought that, contrary to the far right, he would do what he preached since he would have the power to do it.The trouble is that Sarkozy's rhetoric is likely to get tougher.  He needs the vote of his right whether it is extreme or not to get reelected. This reality explains why yesterday, in his first public intervention after the Sunday's elections, he put back the Burka/burqa in the center of the political debate, but saying that it was one of his priorities to have the parliament vote a law to ban it.

Humanitarian interventionism and maturity

Conclusion of Mark Mazower's must-read essay on humanitarian interventionism and its decline::

(...) the ending of the era of humanitarian interventionism may come to be seen as a sign of the waning of Western power, and mourned as consigning more of the world’s peoples to the mercies of the tyrants who rule them. But it is possible to view it more positively, as the belated emergence of a new maturity in international relations.

I would like to see that the fact that  humanitarian interventionism is less popular than it used to be as a sign of maturity. However, I'm convinced that it is the consequence of the slow and painful realization the people who have  to be saved/reed, more often than not, have a strong dislike for any kind of lasting intervention (which is required in most cases to be successful), within their own affairs.  They resent it and end up resisting it violently or in others ways because they perceived it as a form of imperialism and of recolonization, which are still  the most evil of ills in most parts of the world.  To say differently, Le devoir d’ingérence, the duty to intervene to help has become stop to be viewed as humanitarian to be viewed as both paternalistic and symptomatic of a complex of superiority of the interventionists. Salvation doesn't work when the ones supposed to be saved are suspicious of their purported saviors.

Islamism and Irony

TF Lane argues that Islamists are 'ironists':

Irony tends to be used in one of two ways: as an ideology or a tool. Used as a tool, it is possessive of a deeply affirmative power: that individual refusal to be coerced or to submit to tyranny – what WH Auden calls the “Ironic points of light / [that] Flash out wherever the Just / Exchange their messages”.
Islamists believe this is the way they employ irony. The car bombs and beheadings, the audiotapes and jihadist websites, the curers who kill and the vocal opponents of free speech – all of them are “points of light”. Each is a message from the Just, piercing the obscure lies of liberalism.(...)
Many secular commentators talk of Islamism as a radical ideology. But jihadists believe there is nothing idea-listic about it: to them, there is a moral map beneath their feet as ordered and patterned as a well-spun rug. It is a code written down more than a thousand years ago, the unchangeable words of God, and a glimpse into a higher realm. What we engage with as reality, they view as an elaborate fiction.

The only question that I have is whether the use of irony here isn't common to all religious fundamentalist groups, which want to merge the religious with the political and needs enemies in this militant conquest. Are Islamists a particular breed of fundamentalists? I don't think that they are, but I could be wrong.

Roads and development

Quote of the evening from Geoffrey York contrasting Congo and Rwanda:

When you cross the border from Congo to Rwanda, suddenly the roads are a dream. You discover a series of beautifully paved, smooth highways, whisking motorists all the way from the Congo border to the capital, Kigali.
Roads and other infrastructure projects have been a top priority for Rwanda’s government in recent years. This is a government with relentless attention to detail. Kigali is a spotlessly clean city, considered a model for Africa.
Is it any coincidence that Rwanda’s economy has been one of the fastest-growing in Africa, while Congo continues to be one of the poorest in Africa? Without good roads, a country is doomed to stagnation

Greed, militarism, and guerrilla warfare

I found this quote from Zakes Mda about South Africa on point :

In this brave new world, accumulation of personal wealth is dressed up in militarism, as if capitalism is the continuation of the guerrilla warfare that was fought during apartheid.

Domesticated intellectuals

Slavoj Zizek on the state o fintellectualism today :

The ordinary political policeman goes to secret organizations to arrest revolutionaries; the philosophical policeman goes to philosophical symposia to detect proponents of totality. The ordinary anti-terrorist policeman tries to detect those preparing to blow up buildings and bridges; the philosophical policeman tries to detect those about to deconstruct the religious and moral foundation of our societies...
One should thoroughly reject not only this criminalization of intellectuals, but, even more, the defensive domestication of radical intellectuals who, so the story goes, offer a provocative correction to democracy which,through his exaggeration, renders visible the inconsistencies and weaknesses of the democratic project. The idea is that radical theories are provocations which are not really “meant seriously,” but aim, through their “provocative” character, to awaken us from the democratic-dogmatic slumber and thus contribute to the revitalization of democracy itself… This is how the establishment likes “subversive” theorists to be: turned into harmless gadflies who bite us and thus awaken us to inconsistencies and imperfection of our democratic enterprise – God forbid to take their project seriously and try to live them…

Zizek is always pertinent, but I wonder whether his love affair with radicalism hasn't done to him what he believes modernity, capitalism, and democracy have done to other intellectuals, that is whether he hasn't been domesticated. To put it differently, I'm coming to the realization the sole major distinction between Zizek and BHL (Bernard-Henri Lévy)  image and other technicalities because both of them seem very domesticated to me in the sense that they sell and don't really bother the powerful, which means that they are not really gadflies, which doesn't mean that they aren't relevant and useful. I wonder how Zizek would feel, if he had enough distance and was less narcissistic, if he realized that he was the BHL or the Olivier Besancenot of a pseudo radical philosophy, which for some reason is extremely marketable in a capitalist society..

Politics and American foreign policy

Matthew Yglesias on the role that politics has played within American foreign policy in the Post-cold war era:

In the post-Cold War era where politics drives foreign policy rather than the other way around, this seems to be a fairly stable equilibrium. Presidents will pursue an activist course, with the nature of the activism determined by their own predilections, but the public must not be asked to bear any burden. The question is how long can this be sustained. During the Cold War, objective considerations of international relations constrained American options, even as relatively small oscillations around the mainstream view were the subject of contentious argument. Today, no country can even remotely match American military might, and none is likely to do so for decades.

I wonder whether Yglesias's view isn't too American-centric to see the big picture, as a matter I know that he  is for he doesn't seem to be able to realize what are the essential and international consequences of his hypothesis. The issue within American foreign policy has never been that it is driven by politics, but rather that it is made and formulated badly for the simple reason that Americans only understand foreign policy when it relates to domestic policy and is said to affect them. The distinction that I'm making here is that all foreign policy reflect domestic politics, but some of them are made more effectively and with the acknowledgment that foreign policy requires some expertise and some knowledge of foreign countries, In short, I don't think that the United States has the foreign policy that it deserves  because as Yglesias, it doesn't realize that results have as much to do with power (military, hard, soft, diplomatic or otherwise) than with knowledge and a non-ideological awareness of different realities.

Benedict XVI as the failed purificator

Attention grabbing bit from the Independent's article on the troubles of the Pope, the Vatican, and the Catholic Church:

When he was crowned Pope nearly five years ago, Benedict promised to clean up the Church. He would not be a showman Pope like John Paul II, he would not flog himself around the world addressing huge stadiums. The Church under his guidance would not have expansiveness as its goal, but purification. It might be a smaller, tighter institution but it would be clean, consistent, and true to its word.
But events of recent weeks suggest that corruption is rooted close to its heart. A wealthy Italian industrialist called Angelo Balducci had been honoured by the Vatican as a gentiluomo del Papa, a "gentleman of the Pope", but then in charges that hit the headlines in Italy last month he was put under investigation for allegedly raking in money from sleazy building tenders. Separately, a member of the Vatican choir claims he was paid to find gay partners for Balducci. Despite the Church's draconian stand on homosexuality, the Vatican has long been known as a gay hot house, and insiders believe that Benedict's elevation changed nothing.
Meanwhile scandals continue to rain down on the Church from abroad. Shortly after Benedict condemned the "heinous acts" of paedophilia among priests in Ireland, accusations of similar acts surfaced in the famous choir of Regensburg, in Bavaria, of which the Pope's brother Georg was director while Joseph Ratzinger was a professor at the university (Georg claims no knowledge of any such abuse during his time there).

History teaches that purification are never possible because more often than not they are used to maintain a code of silence about the injustices of the past to avoid having to acknowledge them and to address the serious issues that they pose. Purification is about repentance without admission or change and that's why they are about continuation with the illusion of transformation and are exposed as such at the first crack on the facade. I have always believed that the designation of Joseph Ratzinger as pope was in fact a thumb at the nose of modernity and of those within the church that believed that what was needed was pope who could have the courage to break with certain ways of the past and to provide the bind between tradition and modernity.  I have the feeling that Benedict XVI's reign is over, but that only his death will make the Vatican choose a successor. In short, the Vatican has lost its head.

Puritanism followed the sexual revolution

Tony Judt on the restrictions that came after 'the sexual revolution' and its consequences on the interactions between men and women

Since the 1970s, Americans assiduously avoid anything that might smack of harassment, even at the risk of forgoing promising friendships and the joys of flirtation. Like men of an earlier decade—though for very different reasons—they are preternaturally wary of missteps. I find this depressing. The Puritans had a sound theological basis for restricting their desires and those of others. But today’s conformists have no such story to tell.
Nevertheless, the anxieties of contemporary sexual relations offer occasional comic relief. When I was Humanities dean at NYU, a promising young professor was accused of improper advances by a graduate student in his department. He had apparently followed her into a supply closet and declared his feelings. Confronted, the professor confessed all, begging me not to tell his wife. My sympathies were divided: the young man had behaved foolishly, but there was no question of intimidation nor had he offered to trade grades for favors. All the same, he was censured. Indeed, his career was ruined—the department later denied him tenure because no women would take his courses. Meanwhile, his “victim” was offered the usual counseling.

For some reason, I don't think that there was ever a sexual revolution. America is suffering from the fact that it has religionized both sex and gender more than any country in what some call condescendingly the modern world. Sexual harassment has nothing to do with sex, but solely with that conviction that some have that they are entitled to sex because of who they are, what they represent or whatever else. Judt is missing the point, by trivializing the issue in order to address the fact that to America, good sex is an oxymoron and therefore has to be cleaned and taken away from the environment where children, young people are learning.

Volapük

I've always said that Sarkozy was as good with words as Obama, just in a different way, this proves my point:

The French president, complaining about negotiations leading up to last December's UN climate summit, said world leaders had been handed a draft text "similar to volapük."
Even native French speakers were stumped by this one, and some at first thought he said "vol a Buc", or "flight to Buc," a small and obscure town near Paris that has no airport.
Better-versed minds prevailed, and it turned out not only that Mr Sarkozy was making a nod to history and his hero. Volapük is a language invented in the late 19th century by a German Roman Catholic priest, Johann Martin Schleyer, who dreamt of creating a universal means of communication. His idea never really took flight and other international languages, such as Esperanto, emerged as more successful candidates. In French, "to speak volapük" was once used to denote gibberish or gobbledegook, but it was last used in any major context at a press conference in 1962 by General de Gaulle, who is revered by Mr Sarkozy.

Would it too condescending or too cynical of me to suggest that Sarkozy had no idea what Volapük meant until his advisers suggested that he used the word this morning to convey his mastering of the situation? It is amazing how language is important in politics especially when it is used either to elevate one self or to suggest that one is part of the common folk. Something tells me that Sarkozy is about to undergo another transformation just in time for his reelection 2012.

Missed opportunity for American-led multipolirty

I would like to agree with Nikolas Gvosdev on this:

The attacks of Sept. 11 created a second opportunity. In the wake of the collapse of the Twin Towers and the destruction at the Pentagon, governments around the world were stunned -- the fruits of globalization, which had so advanced the cause of prosperity, could also be utilized by those who would seek to bring down the state. What's more, all governments were vulnerable -- democracies and non-democracies, developed and developing states alike. The shock to supply chains around the world in the attacks' aftermath, when interruptions in air travel and new security procedures impeded the flow of goods and services, made many realize how vulnerable the international system really was. And because the rising and resurgent powers had harnessed their chariots to the horses of global economic growth, they were amenable to finding common ground.
As a result, the anti-terrorist coalition could have become the basis for a new concert of powers. But the give-and-take of the classic concert system, in which a series of quid pro quos set the basis for collective decisions, was a mindset largely alien to both the Bush administration and Congress. With a new concert not in the making, and with the U.S. making clear it would act unilaterally in order to secure its own interests, other states began to find ways not to openly challenge the United States (...)

Hum, I'm reluctant to buy Nikolas Gvosdev's arguments because I'm wondering if power can really be shared when it hasn't be earned based on feel-good principles and charity. I'm starting to believe that the biggest failure for a hegemon is to use power in circumstances when it cannot help it and will therefore weaken it. Moreover, recent developments in international affairs have led me to question the concept of multipolarity. I don't think that the world can't ever be multipolar for it is always the powerful who make the decision not really in unison, but through real political bargaining, which reflects the reality of the day. Thus, the biggest mistake of the Bush administration wasn't really unilateralism, but ideology, incompetence, and a blindness to reality. It was so inflexibly ideological that in too many cases, it never took the steps that were required to win and to achieve its objectives because it as decided that reality didn't matter and was almost never going to get in the way of its ideology.When you are a Hegemon, failed demonstrations of strength will weaken you every time.

Winnie Mandela as the Queen of Denial

Winnie Mandela is denying giving an interview in she slammed her former husband by arguing that he was a sellout:

I did not give Ms Naipaul an interview. It is therefore not necessary for me to respond in any detail to the contents of a fabricated interview.

My guess is that Mrs. Mandela just realized how costly it can be both financially and humanely when one assaults Nelson Mandela especially without making substantive arguments and  by playing with lasting resentments and identity politics. I think this denial is showing that one, not to say the principal, reason Winnie Mandela is remaining a radical is because it is the only role that she can to remain relevant and to still be invited around the world to speak, of course , for a fee. I'm starting to believe that even that role is going to be difficult to play, because Jacob exists and the real Mandela is, alas, going to die soon and then, people won't want to hear her speak because they will remember that she tried to stain him.

Divorce is necessary in politics

I'm always happy when somebody, in this case Clancy Sigal,joins me in the Republic of Dissent by divorcing Obama and his Democratic Party:

n a bad marriage, if we're lucky, a sad, angry, unwelcome realism takes over and an existential fear invades our soul. But we do not want to be alone in a loveless world. A divorce often means being cast out into psychological darkness, exile from the "mainstream", the loss of (and even abuse from) friends, a terrifying sense of isolation and inadequacy. So, stuffing our ears and blinding our eyes to our own victimisation, we recommit to the relationship. We continue to deny, deny, deny. Life goes on, diminished and undignified. Soul-suicide.
But now I want a divorce from the Democrats, the "party of the people" versus the Republicans who with a few honorable exceptions are the party of cruelty. Are there some good Democrats? You bet. Are they outnumbered by callow, fearful Democrats? You bet.
I don't care that at the moment there's nowhere to go and hardly anybody to cheer for.

The ineffectiveness of Soft Power

I agree with Charlemagne on this:

If our big bet in Europe is that speaking with one voice will make our norms-based, soft power approach work, what lessons should we draw when Mr Obama's outstretched hand of friendship is smacked away? Because even in a perfect, parallel universe, in which the EU magically falls in line behind Catherine Ashton and the new EU diplomatic service, we will struggle to become one half as united as the American government is. Our 27 countries will always find it hard to match America when it comes to identifying and defending our interests. And though there can of course be differences in the messages sent out by the White House, the State Department, Congress and so on, in general America speaks with one voice to the outside world, in a way that the EU can barely hope to match.And yet all that speaking with one voice, in defence of agreed, common interests, does not seem to shield the Obama administration from snubs.

The truth is that Soft power only works when hard power isn't contradicting it and when actions and policies demonstrate that soft power is about more than empty gestures, but about accepting that others do have their point of view and their own self-interests. Soft power hasn't worked for the Obama administration and has little chances of working for the Eu if it ever gets its act together because it is seen as bandage not confront peacefully real and substantive differences about the world. I think that even Obama realizes how American-centric and naive, it was of him to believe that soft power would fix everything and lead to changes without policy changes.

Failing sanctions and Iran

Distressing fact from James Joyner's post on the ineffectiveness of the regime of sanctions against Iran:

America's regime of sanctions on Iran are ineffective but we're likely to see more of them.

What's the point of sanctions if it's known that they don't work? Well, it is to give the appearance of action, resilience, and of strength when as the sanctions against Iraq for example showed that they always lead to the inevitable: confrontation or acceptance of the feared outcome. The US is using sanctions to gain time in the hope that the situation will either change in Iran, i.e. another revolution, or on the world stage that would force, Russia  to join the US and its allies to form a block to have Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions. My opinion is that neither possibility is likely.

Obama and Palin as Siamese twins

Mark Steel has an op-ed which purports to offer some advice to Obama, but which  ends up being about Sarah Palin. Sugary excerpt:

When you watch Barack Obama make these speeches to try and introduce healthcare to America, you have to wonder whether he might improve his ratings if he lost his temper and chucked things. Because the opponents of health reform are getting away with whatever they want, such as Sarah Palin’s claim that “My parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’.”
And somehow she and the Republicans have convinced millions of Americans that if everyone has healthcare, a panel looks at each patient and decides whether or not to kill them.
Next she’ll say, “Under Obama’s plan, patients on life support will be forced to race each other for their lives down a bobsleigh course. They’ll be pushed by a relative and the one who finishes in the slowest time will have their machine turned off by a socialist, like what happens in Britain.”
It seems extraordinary that so many people can be opposed to universal healthcare that would clearly benefit them, because it contradicts their attitude to the free market.

It is evident to me that Obama has become Palin's twin for better and for worse especially for those who are going to sacralize him no matter what happens and therefore need her to be the devil while he is a God.  Thus, Obama is the good twin, while Palin is the evil one. People seemed to have forgotten that she was only second on the Republican ticket to make her Obama's principal  opponent while at the same time arguing that she has no credibility, which is a contradiction, In any case, Mark Steel's advice to Obama to hit back at Palin and at other Republicans ignore the quintessential fact that to hit back, you need to have a spine and to know who you are politically instead of trying to be the Jesus of American politics and to believe that fighting for the people who got you where you are isn't a credible way to govern and to be reelected. Is it just me or aren't the Obamabots and Obamaniacs getting from the guy what they told the rest of us we would be getting if Hillary Clinton got to the White House and that it was just unacceptable?  I guess the truth of the matter is that most voters don't mind getting eating shit in politics to put things crudely as long as they like the guy feeding it to them and it almost always have to be a guy or a manly woman.

Obama and the Post-Western World

Quote of the day from Roger Cohen can sometimes, probably in spite of himself, be pertinent:

The Obama presidency has been a shock to Europe. At heart, Obama is not a Westerner, not an Atlanticist. He grew up partly in Indonesia and partly in Hawaii, which is about as far from the East Coast as you can get in the United States. “He’s very much a member of the post-Western world,” said Constanze Stelzenmüller of the German Marshall Fund.

I'm still wondering whether what you symbolize is more important than what you do or who you really are.