The Republic of Dissent

Loose cannons and politics

I want to agree wit Nathalie Rothschild on this, but I cannot mostly because I believe that there is a meaningful and essential difference between being a loose cannon to refuse to pander  and being commercially authentic (which both Gingrich and Obama are) by pretending to be oneself at  the cost of political calculations:

(...) being a loose cannon should not be seen as such a problem in the world of politics. On the contrary, it would be refreshing if more political candidates were less concerned with having carefully crafted images and with watching their words. At least then the public would be in a better position to judge a candidate’s genuine character and opinions.

We are all Baudelaire

Sentences to munch on this weekend from Stefany Anne Golberg :

In a way, new technologies have made us all like Baudelaire. We are intoxicated by the multitude but cannot ignore its troubling aspects. Like Baudelaire, we are trying to find our private life in the crowd while protecting our “real” selves in a public persona. Blogs and social networking sites are like diaries with broken locks. They are confessions written for an audience. They let us feel as if we can fabricate a personal world for ourselves, a world we can control. We listen to music no one else can hear and read emails while standing on a crowded bus because we are looking for privacy. Baudelaire used poetry and fashion; we use PDAs and e-readers and the Internet. With boundless access to information, we can easily observe the crowd. But we cannot escape being observed. And we wonder if we can find the private life we’re looking for, either in the public space of the real world or in the virtual one.

Baudelaire wrote about the romance of throwing oneself alone, directionless, into the crush of public life. And it is exhilarating — spending your days wandering from shop to shop, fact to fact, video to video, stranger to stranger.

Merit and reverse racism

Words to munch on this weekend from Mitsuko Uchida:

For me, what counts is judging things on their merit. That’s why I am against positive discrimination for African-Americans. [In the US] every board has to bend over backwards to select African-Americans. It’s a fact – they really need to push it. Music schools and orchestras have to be seen to have them. If there are two people applying for a place, they take the African-American, even if the other is a little bit better. That’s reverse racism. I don’t go for colour, race or sex. I don’t give a damn. I’m not a feminist. If there is a heaven – I’m not a Christian – and if I arrive at the gate and they ask me what I am, all I will say is, ‘Musician.’”

I'm going to have to find out why Uchida's words don't offend me [even though they make me uncomfortable].

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!

Wars of choice and patriotism

I agree with Professor Bainbridge on this:

Supporting wars of choice where no vital national interests are at stake is not a very good litmus test of one's patriotism.

Even though I agree with Bainbridge, I wonder whether it is possible to be a dove even in cases of wars of necessity and to be a patriot. Does patriotism has anything or rather everything to do with wars or rather with supporting them? I have the feeling the answer is much more complicated that suggested above, but at least Professor Bainbridge begins to denounce the simplistic and vile notion that in wars,  there are only two sides the patriotic and the unpatriotic ones.

Feminism, ambition, and diversion

Another great point from Chris Dillow whose writing I find addictive (it is both a good and a bad thing):

So, far from applauding ambition we should, in most cases, oppose it.
Of course, everything I’ve said applies to men’s ambition as well as women’s. So why pick on feminism? In one big sense we shouldn’t. But there are two things that worry me.
One is that this particular form of feminism helps to legitimate ambition. And people are never more ruthless than when they believe they have right on their side.
The other is that feminism - in this sense - is a diversion. In encouraging women to climb up hierarchies, it deflects attention from the question: should our economic and political life be structured hierarchically at all?

Feminism is always a diversion because it has refused to evolve and to widen its perspectives on gender.

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.'

The strangeness of Google

Pertinent words from Ali Smith on Google:

Google is so strange. It promises everything, but everything isn’t there. You type in the words for what you need, and what you need becomes superfluous in an instant, shadowed instantaneously by the things you really need, and none of them answerable by Google.

I can't remember how I started  a relationship with Google, but what is more troubling is that I know that I'm staying not out of love, but because there is nothing out there better and that although I'm not unhappy without being neither at peace nor at ease, I fed something that fills me up some of the time.

Race men

I like John McWhorter and Glenn Loury and their conversation on race is fascinating especially for somebody like me who believes she got beyond race. That isn't to say that race doesn't matter, but rather that it does because people want it to matter in order to make the world simple and to put people within tiny and beautiful boxes.

To talk about Cornel West, I think he epitomizes of the fact that race forces people to be inauthentic and to hold on to bad faith in a pointless, vile and desperate attempt to make race matter more than anything else.

Journalistic and Puritan perversions

I agree with Glenn Greenwald on this:

This isn't a case of illegal sex activity or gross hypocrisy (i.e., David Vitter, Larry Craig, Mark Foley (who built their careers on Family Values) or Eliot Spitzer (who viciously prosecuted trivial prostitution cases)).  There's no lying under oath (Clinton) or allegedly illegal payments (Ensign, Edwards).  From what is known, none of the women claim harassment and Weiner didn't even have actual sex with any of them.  This is just pure mucking around in the private, consensual, unquestionably legal private sexual affairs of someone for partisan gain, voyeuristic fun and the soothing fulfillment of judgmental condemnation.  And in that regard, it sets a new standard: the private sexual activities of public figures -- down to the most intimate details -- are now inherently newsworthy, without the need for any pretense of other relevance.  I'd really like to know how many journalists, pundits and activist types clucking with righteous condemnation of Weiner would be comfortable having that standard applied to them.

It's astonishing to me that the media and most of America have trouble with the idea that sex can be perverted, destructive, and disturbing without being illegal and becoming a public matter. Nobody seems to be asking the question, why should the public are or rather why  is it something that should concern Weiner's constituents and that is because it is a private matter between a man who like most of the people I know lied stupidly when his private life was exposed for no reason. That's my opinion, but it may change if Anthony Weiner broke the law, but still this scandal is silly, childish and an indication that the media love sex stories because it offers it an excuse to become tabloidlike and because int the post 9/11 world  hasn't found ways to educate and to inform the American public on matters that affect the future of the US such as Afghanistan.

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.

Winning

Sugary excerpt of the day is the beginning of David Hawkes must-read article in the Times Literary Supplement :

A Martian visiting the United States early in 2011 could have been forgiven for assuming that the most momentous event taking place was the public disintegration of the actor Charlie Sheen. The nation was captivated by Sheen’s YouTube broadcasts, in which he repeatedly insisted that, despite his manifest problems, he was nonetheless “winning”. This seemed to strike a chord in the popular mind. It was as if Sheen had happened upon a fundamental, but generally unstated, truth about our current condition. Where competition is the basis of social life, “winning” is an end in itself. If the purpose of life is success, then “winning” automatically brings redemption from any kind of turpitude or disgrace. The pejorative effects of megalomania or drug addiction are negated by the simple, irrefutable fact of “winning”

For some weird reasons, those sentences takes me back to a segment on last Sunday's 60 minutes about the war in Afghanistan in which Lara Logan asked a high ranking officer whether the US was winning the war. The question was odd, because the question isn't about winning and losing, but rather about justice and means. The point is that in America and increasingly in the rest of the world the focus placed on winning shortchanges the debate and encourages short-termism.

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.

DSK conspiracy believiers and birtherism

Interesting words from Ilya Somin on l'affaire DSK with which I agree:

Like America’s “birthers” and “truthers,” many of the French reflexively bought into conspiracy theories about the DSK case, despite the absence of any proof supporting them. They did so at least in part because there is little incentive for citizens to objectively evaluate political claims. Like many Americans, the French are more likely to accept political conspiracy theories that reinforce their preexisting political views. For example, some 70% of Socialist Party supporters agree that DSK is the victim of a conspiracy, compared to a much lower percentage of French rightists who think so.
In fairness to the French DSK conspiracy believers, we don’t yet have definitive proof that DSK was not the victim of a conspiracy. The New York authorities have only just begun to investigate the case. Thus, the belief that DSK’s arrest was the result of a conspiracy is not (yet) as ridiculous as birtherism or 9/11 conspiracy-mongering. Nonetheless, many of the French are still giving conspiracy claims far more credence than they deserve. Even if such theories can’t be definitively disproved, there is no evidence to justify the belief that DSK’s arrest was “certainly” (as believed by 22% of the French poll respondents) or “probably” (35 percent) caused by a conspiracy.

 

Obsessing about making history

The sugary excerpt of the day comes from the great Stephen Smith from his must-read article on Laurent Gbagbo:

‘Gbagbo was born before shame,’ ordinary people in Abidjan used to say. It didn’t necessarily mean they disapproved of him. It was more a case of stating the obvious. The way he looked at it, history was the victors’ account of a merciless fight. ‘It’s difficult for us to make history,’ he once explained to me. ‘We have to carry out our own French Revolution with Amnesty International peering over our shoulder.’ Murder, intrigue, corruption, bare-faced lies, betrayal, ethnic cleansing: all means would be justifiable provided the end was attained. In Gbagbo’s home region, where Ivory Coast’s main cash crops are grown, the sons of the soil, the Bété, turned against migrant workers from poor Sahel states and against fellow Ivorians from other parts of the country.

It is alarming, to say the least, that so many political leaders are worried about making history rather than governing and improving the lives of their 'people.' Obsession with history is one of the reasons why there have been so many Mugabe, Gbagbo, Amin, Doe, Taylor, Gaddafi on the African continent for after all if one's only concern is history, the people become means to achieve greatness not much else, politics is religionized and political violence becomes acceptal and even normal.

Counter-overreaction

Christopher Hitchens on Noam Chomsky's reaction to the death of Osama Bin Laden:

It's no criticism of Chomsky to say that his analysis is inconsistent with that of other individuals and factions who essentially think that 9/11 was a hoax. However, it is remarkable that he should write as if the mass of evidence against Bin Laden has never been presented or could not have been brought before a court. This form of 9/11 denial doesn't trouble to conceal an unstated but self-evident premise, which is that the United States richly deserved the assault on its citizens and its civil society. After all, as Chomsky phrases it so tellingly, our habit of "naming our murder weapons after victims of our crimes: Apache, Tomahawk … [is] as if the Luftwaffe were to call its fighter planes 'Jew' and 'Gypsy.' " Perhaps this is not so true in the case of Tomahawk, which actually is the name of a weapon, but the point is at least as good as any other he makes.
In short, we do not know who organized the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, or any other related assaults, though it would be a credulous fool who swallowed the (unsupported) word of Osama Bin Laden that his group was the one responsible. An attempt to kidnap or murder an ex-president of the United States (and presumably, by extension, the sitting one) would be as legally justified as the hit on Abbottabad. And America is an incarnation of the Third Reich that doesn't even conceal its genocidal methods and aspirations. This is the sum total of what has been learned, by the guru of the left, in the last decade.

It's indicative of the despairing state of the social and political dialogue in America that Hitch and Chomsky live in two different planets and can neither communicate nor exchange ideas.

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.

The Egyptian State and legitimacy

Sugary excerpt of the day is from Juan Cole on the Egyptian revolt (I don't think the word revolution applies here, at least not yet):

The Nasserist state, for all its flaws, gained legitimacy because it was seen as a state for the mass of Egyptians, whether abroad or domestically. The present regime is widely seen in Egypt as a state for the others– for the US, Israel, France and the UK– and as a state for the few– the Neoliberal nouveau riche. Islam plays no role in this analysis because it is not an independent variable. Muslim movements have served to protest the withdrawal of the state from its responsibilities, and to provide services. But they are a symptom, not the cause. All this is why Mubarak’s appointment of military men as vice president and prime minister cannot in and of itself tamp down the crisis. They, as men of the System, do not have more legitimacy than does the president– and perhaps less.

I'm wondering whether this means that this revolt will  end with the reestablishment of the Nasserist state rather than something more democratic, in other words is it just a fight to return to what 'worked' in the past ?

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?

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.

Acceptable biases and fears

Quote of the day from Glenn Greenwald about the firing of Juan Williams from NPR for expressing his fears over 'Muslims' 'who look Muslims' in certain situations:

The principal reason the Williams firing resonated so much and provoked so much fury is that it threatens the preservation of one of the most important American mythologies:  that Muslims are a Serious Threat to America and Americans.

I have to say that the whole thing makes me more than uncomfortable. America has entered an age where free speech is about content precisely because it is no longer possible for Americans to have a dialogue about issues. The goal of political or social discussions is to shut up the opposition and to make the argument that it is either simply or solely bigoted or dumb. Where there is a prevalent notion in a society that people have to be careful about what they say, it is in general because there also exists the prevalent and uncomfortable one that people can't change, that people are their vilest thought, and that education and dialogue don't matter.

Welcome failure

I agree with Paul Sagar on this:

When Merkel declares that multiculturalism has been a “failure”, she is not only playing to a xenophobic and reactionary gallery, she is also being profoundly short-sighted. Firstly, because she mistakenly focuses only on the day-to-day tensions between different groups that multiculturalism inevitable throws up.

It's incredibly disappointing to realize that Merkel has some Sarkozy within her, which says a lot about the state of the European left for it cannot address issues such as the ones of immigration or law and order without repeating either the errors of Blairism or of Jospinism.

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.

Powerful narrative

Sugary excerpt of the day from the always pertinent Jennifer Thorpe:

One of the most powerful narratives we have of women, is of women as a victim — a victim of circumstance, a victim of violence, a victim of her own femininity. Women are distanced from their own sexual desire in public discourse, and are essentially seen as “the weaker sex”. This is one of the most disabling narratives we have. When we view a woman who has experienced sexual violence, or is a prostitute, or has experienced domestic abuse, or is poor as a victim rather than a survivor we to talk about her in an extremely limited fashion. We also only allow her access to an extremely limited way of talking about herself, or accessing public space.

I'm left wondering what makes a narrative powerful nowadays, the fact that it sounds true and touches one emotionally, or something else. The trouble with powerful narratives is that they are capable of stopping deep thought, analysis, and any kind of much needed self-introspection.

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.

Self-knowledge and lack of ambition

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

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

Absolute hysteria and child-rearing

Quote of the morning from Jennifer Howze:

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

To resist feminist guilt

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

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

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

Fanaticism works

Quote of the end of the afternoon from Neal Gabler:

The real problem with extremism as an attention-grabber isn’t that we don’t know what to do about it. The real problem is that it works. By knocking down the Twin Towers and announcing a constant stream of threats, the Islamic radicals got and continue to get publicity out of proportion to their numbers — just as the Tea Partiers have been dominating the national airwaves even though their ranks, according to survey data, constitute no more than 13 percent of the American public. Similarly, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are very well remunerated for their high-decibel hate. In other words, we may say we hate fanaticism, but we pay attention to it and may even reward it.

Surgical strikes, the new warfare and video games

I agree with Tom Engelhardt on this:

Whether in the skies or patrolling on the ground, Americans know next to nothing of the worlds they are passing above or through.  This is, of course, even more true of the “pilots” who fly our latest wonder weapons, the Predators, Reapers, and other unmanned drones over American battle zones, while sitting at consoles somewhere in the United States.  They are clearly engaged in the most literal of video-game wars, while living the most prosaic of god-like lives.  A sign at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada warns such a drone pilot to "drive carefully" on leaving the base after a work shift “in” Afghanistan or Iraq.  This, it says, is “the most dangerous part of your day."
(...)Here’s the fact of the matter: in the cities, towns, and villages of the distant lands where Americans tend to make war, civilians die regularly and repeatedly at our hands.  Each death may contain its own uniquely nightmarish details, but the overall story remains remarkably repetitious.  Such “incidents” are completely predictable. Even General McChrystal, determined to “protect the population” in Afghanistan as part of his counterinsurgency war, has proven remarkably incapable of changing the nature of our style of warfare.  Curtail air strikes, rein in Special Operations night attacks -- none of it will, in the long run, matter.  Put in a nutshell: If you arrive from the heavens, they will die.

What irks me is that this new form of American warfare can become popular and attractive not only with American presidents, but also with the American public because although it increases civilian deaths, 'collateral damage' it reduces greatly the number of American casualties. Unfortunately, the more American and modern warfare become like video games, the more likely it is that the world will experience more of them because war will become a 'clean,' effective and inexpensive solution for too many conflicts and issues instead of being used as the last resort.

Addicted to sex scandals

I agree with Judith TImson on this except that I don't believe that it is the fault of the internet if most of us love or rather are addicted to sex scandals:

Sex, sex, sex. We’re trapped in sex-scandal hell, and the story of Sandra Bullock – who has, as the cliché goes, “remained tight-lipped” about her troubles even as she’s mobbed everywhere by concerned citizens – is the latest manifestation.
The Internet has turned these private and painful tales of sexual betrayal into a multi-platform nightmare: blogs, voice mails, pictures, texts. The cycle starts with whispers and revelations, proceeds to widespread shock and outrage, and ends up with late-show jokes and op-eds in The New York Times .
We say, “No, we’re better than this,” but we don’t really mean it.

The battle of the Africa-saving egos

I agree with Nathalie Rothschild on this:

Apparently, we Westerners can’t take issues seriously unless the likes of Brad Pitt and Bono tell us to, and apparently people in Africa and elsewhere are too busy scrambling for food and swiping flies off their faces to speak up and lobby politicians. Enter do-gooding celebs, NGOs and anti-globalisation protesters to speak on behalf of the ‘voiceless’. As Bono put it at the time, ‘I represent a lot of people [in Africa] who have no voice at all…. They haven’t asked me to represent them. It’s cheeky but I hope they’re glad I do.’
(...)But what Make Poverty History really represented was an entrenchment of low ambitions for the developing world and of the division of the globe into Third World victims and Western saviours.
 (...)While celebrities strummed their guitars and tugged at our heart strings, and while aid organisations hired top ad agencies to create clever campaigns, those at the receiving end of poverty relief programmes were being condemned to a life determined by the poor ambitions of Western decision-makers and their celebrity and NGO cheerleaders.
So John Hilary has accused Bob Geldof of arrogance, of believing that ‘he alone was responsible for creating a mass movement on global poverty’. He is right. But it’s not just Geldof, but also international aid organisations, multilateral agencies, global leaders and a melange of celebrities who together have helped perpetuate the idea that people in the developing world are beggars who can’t be choosers, that they should be happy that Westerners are helping take the edge off poverty. Together, they have made sidestepping the democratic process seem acceptable, as time and again they claim the right to speak on behalf of poor people around the world who are portrayed as victims of corrupt governments, as starving, voiceless, weaklings in need of rescue.

The main problem with celebrity activism is that just as humanitarian interventionism, it assumes in a way that is often more paternalistic than humanitarian or charitable that those who need helps are powerless, unable to help them and even to know what is good for them. Thus, in too many cases, celebrity activism becomes about the activist, her/his brand, and desire to be perceived as doing good, by helping the poor and victimized Africa. I'm not a purist  and ideologist on this issue.  I believe simply that humanitarianism is a good thing, but that  it must not become about ego and forget that people are people and always want to have as much control over their lives as possible even when they are powerless and in need of a great amount of help. Celebrities such as Bob Geldof forget that essential fact. They are too willing to play god or rather to celebrate their own accomplishments by looking for the starlight and showing a disdainful and crippling contempt for the realities of the people and the countries they believe they are saving from hell and from their own shortcomings

Mums in politics

Quote of the early morning from Libby Purves decrying the role that mothers play in politics or rather in political elections.

Face it: parenthood is an extreme mind-altering drug, and those in its strongest grip should not be invited to swamp the political and economic argument any more than bankers, business leaders or trade unions. It is fatally easy to think of mothers, in particular, as saintly altruists sacrificing everything for their children, and therefore guarding all the virtues. But any honest mother (or properly involved father) knows deep down that it is not disinterested goodness or reason that fires us in the early years. It is what you might call transferred selfishness.

Laughing off sex addiction

Reading August Kleinzahler's post on his visit with Doctor Himmelfarb has me convinced that I'm right to laugh at this whole sex addiction thing. Sugary excerpt

(...) one question I asked the doctor, and whose response was most thought-provoking indeed, was why there were no women in the programme, unless they were at a separate, gender-restricited facility. The doctor assured me there was no such separate facility and that the Darkness, Be Gone program was not designed for women, only for men. ‘Why is this?’ I asked the doctor. He seemed impatient with the question, as though the answer were obvious, or should have been. ‘Because the human female has not the capacity for sexual remorse. Without this, my Darkness Be Gone 12-step program is useless.’ There followed a long silence. Finally, I asked: ‘Dr Himmelfarb, how did you arrive at the conclusion that women have not the capacity for sexual remorse.’ The doctor turned abruptly in my direction and asked sharply: ‘Are you fruit?’ By which, I gather he meant, given my acquaintance with low speech, was I homosexual. ‘No, doctor,’ I answered politely, but firmly, determined not to show dismay at the suggestion that I might be homosexual, or that my query to his assertion about women and sexual remorse suggested a lack of experience with women. The doctor turned to me and said: ‘Do you know why a dog or cat does not possess a sense of humour?’ I found that premise as bizarre as the other, but seeing the colour rising in the great man’s cheeks offered no challenge, thinking all the while of my generous honorarium. ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Because a dog or cat does not possess a soul, and without a soul you cannot possess a sense of humour.’ ’

I'm going to have to create a new addiction, just so that I can make money off of it and make people less guilty for behaving like animals. The next guy who argues that he is a sex addict, need also to castrate himself to show how guilty he feels for not being able to help himself. I hate this trend in modern societies to transform every frailty into disorders.

Curry as the positive aspect of immigration

Here is Nick Griffin's answer, the Chief of Britain far right party, the BNP the British National Party)  to put things mildly, to the question put to me by Iain Dale about the positive side of immigration:

Well, a wide range of curries is a plus. But there again, I've got the recipes.

I'm not appalled, just reassured that I'm right not to take Griffin seriously for he reminds me of Ann Coulter. He has a backbone or a little bit of political culture, he would have put things differently, Neither Geert Wilders nor Jean-Marie Le Pen, who are as far right as Nick Griffin, would have given that answer. In short, Nick Griffin is a clown.

South Africa, violence and the demons of the past

S'Thembiso Msomi on the difficulty of many South Africans including members of the majority party, the African National Congress to accept that Apartheid is over and that political violence is unacceptable in a democracy:

Just this weekend, a number of shacks and dozens of poor families were left homeless in Claremont, Durban, after a mob went on a rampage "evicting" supporters of the Congress of the People from the area.
Why ANC supporters would be so threatened by the presence of a few Cope members in the area that they feel the need to engage in violent acts escapes me.
But the problem is much bigger than political intolerance.
It has to do with the unintended consequences of the militant mass struggles of the 1980s and 1990s, which helped bring apartheid to its knees.
(...)Though the repressive political environment of the time necessitated the use of militant methods to achieve political objectives, it also had the unfortunate consequence of convincing certain sections of the disadvantaged that nothing can be achieved without violence.
Political leaders, especially those of former liberation movements such as the ANC and the PAC, have a duty to undo this damage by teaching their supporters that violence has no place in a democratic society.

One has to wonder whether South African, in spite of its strong institutions and civil society, can survive without strong and fearless political leadership exercised by people who will resist populism, but realizing that for South Africa not to become Zimbabwe, the many will have to learn to accept the few in spite of the attractiveness of identity politics.

Rehabilitating Child killers

I agree with Julian Baggini on this:

(...) when we ask how much we should try to rehabilitate child killers, for instance, it is wrong to think that forgiveness should be the key motivation. It is not for the legal system to forgive. Justice in such cases is rather about giving the right answers to four main questions. First, were the killers sufficiently responsible for their actions for us to regard retribution as of primary importance? Second, would prioritising rehabilitation threaten public safety? Third, would prioritising rehabilitation weaken deterrence against similar future crimes? And four, would rehabilitation actually work?
The best reasons we have for thinking that the Norwegians dealt with their child killers better than we did with the Bulger killers is because the answers to these questions in most such cases is no, no, no and yes. It has nothing to do with forgiveness being a superior virtue. To prioritise the rehabilitation of violent criminals who knew what they had done and posed a danger to the public just because we thought it good to forgive them would be a terrible mistake. More than that: it would be unforgiveable.

Unfortunately, most societies, most notably, the United States aren't Norway and believe less in rehabilitation even for child killers than in punishment and retribution because they were born bad and that there is nothing that society can do except protect itself from them.

Public toilets as the final battleground in the sex wars

Quote of the mid-day from Sally Feldman :

How would you fancy peeing into a shiny brass tuba – or splashing into the face of Saddam Hussein? Well, you can in America, which boasts some of the world's most inventive toilets. And Europe is catching up fast. In the UK there's a urinal in the shape of a red-lipped open mouth, while in France there's one held in place by two invitingly splayed legs. In Germany you can find a bowl with a football pitch and goal, complete with a strategically placed ball to aid accurate aiming. In Italy, your water can be made sacred by a line of Virgins awaiting your relief. And just in case you girls were feeling left out, there's a treat waiting for you in Spain – washtaps in the shape of penises with testicles for tapheads.
It's sweet to find this homage to human waste manifested so creatively all over the world. But, sadly, it's very rare. Most people in most places simply won't be able to find a toilet when they need one. And for women, the lack of decent facilities is more than a problem. It's an emergency. Public conveniences are the final battleground in the sex wars, the ultimate declaration of discrimination.

A Democratic triumph

Alex Massie takes on the Health reform bill:

Presidents have been trying to cover the uninsured since LBJ sat in the Oval Office. None have succeeded. Until now. It doesn't matter whether one approves of the bill or thinks it likely to work or not, one should be able to recognise the legislative achievement and, hence, the scale of this Democratic victory. It's probably the most significant progressive-inspired* piece of legislation in 40 years.
So how did it happen? A bit of luck, some arm-twisting, a lot of perseverance from Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the House leadership and, with the benefit of hindsight, a spot of GOP blundering. There aren't, I suspect, 216 members of the House of Representatives who actually like this bill, far less 216 who could vote for it on the merits. But, as I suggested the other day, when substance runs into politics it's politics that usually wins. And so it was on this occasion too. 

I won't disagree with Alex Massie, I'm just wondering whether a triumph for Democrats is still a triumph for Progressives. I won't ask the same about Liberals because they love candy and fairy tales and will believe in the one that Obama is telling them until...

Nannies as the cause of serial infidelity

Stupidest thing I've read this week:

Dennis Friedman, a psychiatrist, says employing a nanny can turn your little boy into a serial womaniser (as if working mothers don’t have enough to feel guilty about). According to Dr Friedman, a nanny introduces a boy to the idea of the Other Woman who will always cater to his needs.

The rise of the malbouffe

Scary sign that even the French eating habits have been Americanized:

Today, France is the most profitable market for McDonald’s outside the US. In France this travesty is called malbouffe, literally junk food. French people try their best not to follow the American model in many ways, yet still Ronald McDonald and Colonel Sanders are threatening one of the characteristics of their culture that the French are most proud of.

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.

America and sin

I don't agree with Stephen Kinzer on this:

Rather than embrace Mitt Romney's aggressively ignorant view of the world, Americans should try to accommodate themselves to history. That means accepting the reality that every nation, like every human being, has sinned. Nations have the moral authority to point fingers at others only if they also reflect on how their own policies have contributed to the suffering, rage and violence that is shaking the world. "We abominate in others those faults which are most manifestly our own," Montaigne wrote five centuries ago. Then he quoted one of his favorite Latin proverbs: Stercus cuique suum bene olet. Everyone's shit smells good to himself.

My problem is with Kinzer's use of the word "sin" which is too religious and too absolute and negates the reality that Nations, countries aren't godly. I prefer to use  the term "error" or "mistake" for one of the things that plagues our time is the religionization of history and politics, which leads too many to ask for apologies and to divide humans incessantly, cunningly, and spitefully between victims and sinners. America has never committed any sin. It has made mistakes, outrageous and reprehensible mistakes that apologies or atonement cannot erase, but which acknowledgment can enable it to uplift itself above the unnecessary guilt by enabling it to avoid to repeat them through responsibility and the acceptance of the obligation to do and to be better.

Multiculturalism and diversity

Kenan Malik on the differences between multiculturalism and diversity:

The irony of multiculturalism as a political process is that it undermines much of what is valuable about diversity as lived experience. When we talk about diversity, what we mean is that the world is a messy place, full of clashes and conflicts. That's all for the good, for such clashes and conflicts are the stuff of political and cultural engagement.
(...)Multiculturalism, on the other hand, by reposing political problems in terms of culture or faith, transforms political conflicts into a form that makes them neither useful nor resolvable. Rather than ask, for instance, "What are the social roots of racism and what structural changes are required to combat it?" it demands recognition for one's particular identity, public affirmation of one's cultural difference and respect and tolerance for one's cultural and faith beliefs.
Multicultural policies have come to be seen as a means of empowering minority communities and giving them a voice. In reality such policies have empowered not individuals but "community leaders" who owe their position and influence largely to their relationship with the state. Multicultural policies tend to treat minority communities as homogenous wholes, ignoring class, religious, gender and other differences, and leaving many within those communities feeling misrepresented and, indeed, disenfranchised.

Britain's brand of multiculturalism has failed because it placed at its center the cult of diversity and thus sacralized differences in the name of culture and of religion making moral judgments difficult and segregation/sectarianism unavoidable. I'm uncomfortable with drawing sharp distinctions between Britain's multiculturalism and diversity because  in the mind of too many those two concepts have merged. Nowadays, people who argues fanatically for diversity are in fact doing so  by categorizing people, by hierarchizing particularities, and thus deciding which ones ought to more important than others. The trouble with both multiculturalism and diversity as they are commonly understood is that they lead to desindividualization. People are forced to identity with a group of people in order to matter and to avoid marginalization because identity politics is the most potent form of politics.
To put things more simply, the only acceptable multicultural society is one, which sees that people as individuals, not as member of a group/community/whatever else and recognizes that culture and particularities are never legitimate justifications for the erosion of the social compact and the unjustifiable.

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.

'Muslim' hearts and minds

Flashy,  but problematic assertions from Roger Hardy

Much of the talk about winning Muslim "hearts and minds" is shallow and misguided. The issue is often seen, especially in the United States, as a matter of public relations – as if America has an image problem in the Muslim world, and dollars can buy it a better one. Or it is seen, in a facile way, as a matter of bolstering "good Muslims" while clobbering "bad Muslims". Without a surer grasp of Islamism and its discontents, the battle for Muslim hearts and minds will be lost.

What bugs me about Hardy's assertions is that they are full of air and not much else because he tied together awkwardly and dangerously the issue of discontent with the so-called West and its foreign policies and the one of "identity." Talking about Muslim hearts and minds is as dumb as talking about a "western" identity for we know that an American is different than a French and has different sensibilities. The point is that too many people tend to homogenize groups of people when they want to make an ideological and grand point that fits their world-view, but does not reflect the realities. In short, I'm rebelling here against the notion that "Muslims" are so different from other people that policy makers trying to appease tensions and address apprehensions while dispelling misunderstandings should forget about the simple fact that people just hate being stripped of their individuality and being told that they matter less than anybody else because of something that they haven't chosen. It seems to me that by claiming that Islamism is different and misunderstood, Roger Hardy just reinforces the old and dangerous stereotypes that values and reality are relative and that some people are allowed to be barbarian and that the rest of the world should accept it.  What bothers is that Roger Hardy would never make the same point about Christian fundamentalism and that's the problem.

Self-promotion and street tactics

Quote of the early morning from Philip J. Cunningham:

Nowadays, self-promoters hijack the paraphernalia and street tactics of the people's struggle in service of elite establishment types and militant tycoons.