Letting the market do its job

Princeton law professor Jonathan Macey writes an excellent account of responsibility and correction for the problems in the current market in an October 11, 2008 Wall Street Journal piece.

The Goverment is Contributing to the Panic

Macey argues (with my italics):

"Despite all the hard work and good intentions on the part of our public officials, when economists and historians look back on the current financial crisis they are likely to conclude that government intervention prolonged and deepened it. In particular, officials at the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Treasury Department are to blame for publicly losing confidence in the very economic system they are supposed to protect.

The Fed, the Treasury and the SEC appear to be in a state of panic. A crisis mentality led the custodians of the U.S. capital markets publicly to jettison their lifelong commitments to the capital markets in favor of a series of short-term regulatory quick fixes. Even more troubling, for the past several months the doyens of U.S. fiscal and monetary policy have ignored the most fundamental principle of central banking, which is that the primary responsibility of central bankers is to promote stability and to maintain confidence in the capital markets. Our central bankers appear to have suddenly lost confidence both in their own abilities and in the standard tools of fiscal and monetary policy.

The original Treasury plan -- which called for the transfer of virtually unlimited taxpayer dollars and unlimited spending discretion to Treasury with no judicial or congressional oversight -- sent a very bad signal to the markets. Instead of restoring confidence, this approach to the crisis instilled more fear and panic in the markets...

...On Feb. 14, just one month prior to the Bear Stearns bailout, Mr. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson testified before the Senate Banking Committee. Both officials told the senators that the Fed's interest-rate cuts and the $170 billion economic-stimulus package signed into law the previous week would prevent a recession. They also testified in February that they were not concerned about bank failures because the banks were both adequately capitalized and had ready access to additional outside capital. In just over a month these regulators had completely reversed course about the state of the economy and about their own capacity to deal with the problems facing the capital markets. The regulators also changed course by losing their confidence in the strength of the free-market system and in the ability of the nation's capital markets to self-correct if provided with sufficient liquidity by the central bankers in traditional ways.

The government also wrongly abandoned market solutions when it temporarily banned short-selling. Asserting that "unbridled short selling is contributing to the recent, sudden price declines in the securities of financial institutions unrelated to true price valuation," the SEC temporarily forbade short-selling in financial institutions. The ban lasted from Sept. 17, until 11:59 p.m. Oct. 8, and was lifted only when the Treasury bailout was passed.

By the time the bailout package was passed, market sentiment had darkened to mirror the government's own pessimism about the ability of markets to play a salutary role in repairing the fractured capital market. The notion that the government rather than the private sector can create a market for distressed bank assets seems particularly misguided.

The solutions being implemented also send the message that resources devoted to risk management are wasted. All of these plans reward the financial institutions that acted like lemmings by chasing the mortgage-related debt bubble rather than rewarding the financial institutions that exercised restraint and risk avoidance and independent thought and action. This unfortunate "heads Wall Street Wins, tails America loses" economic policy is wholly inconsistent with the principles of personal and corporate responsibility that are essential to a functional free market.

Firms like Merrill Lynch that took decisive steps to deal with their problems now look like suckers, as do banks that watched their leverage ratios and paid diligently into a deposit insurance program that offers protection on a far smaller scale than their investment banking rivals are getting for nothing.

If the SEC had done half the job in ferreting out fraud and funny accounting that short-sellers have done, our capital markets would not be imploding. Now short-sellers, like other market participants, are threatened with new restrictions on their activities as Congress begins to hold hearings on the crisis in the capital markets and politicians and regulators turn their focus to the shibboleth of market manipulation.

Of course, market manipulation does exist, but federal regulators deserve much of the blame for this form of market abuse. For years the SEC has hampered companies' ability to protect themselves from manipulation by short-sellers. The most effective way for a company to respond to an attempt to manipulate its share prices is simply to repurchase its own shares, simultaneously "squeezing" the short positions and sending a clear signal of financial health to the capital market.

However, companies have long felt vulnerable to being charged by the SEC with manipulation whenever they go into the market to make share repurchases. The SEC finally acknowledged this problem after the collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman when it stated publicly that "historically, issuers generally have been reluctant to undertake repurchases" when faced with manipulative short-sellers because of the massive amount of uncertainty about whether the SEC would sue them for trying to manipulate the market.

The Bear Stearns bailout, the restrictions on short-selling and the government's new $700 billion commitment to buy toxic mortgage-based assets all share the same fundamental flaw: They prevent the market from imposing discipline on banks guilty of massive over-leveraging and excessive risk-taking. Moreover, they punish prudent managers who invested conservatively, kept their companies' debt at reasonable levels and worked hard to raise new capital when necessary. The SEC's attack on short-selling punishes savvy traders who invested resources and effort in identifying companies with too much debt and unrealistically valued assets.

Letting markets work is messy and costly. Nevertheless, the only sensible way to deal with the current crisis is to force the companies who created the mess to bear at least some of the costs of their mistakes. Most of all, if the markets are to get back on track our regulators must put an immediate stop to their current practice of publicly demonizing the markets and work to restore confidence in the system."

There has been and is too much condifence in regulators to anticipate events that Professor Macey makes clear that they did not and, generally, cannot anticipate and correct for.

Bad things happen. It is not ideal. Neither is government always or even generally the most informed or better positioned player to resolve problems. We assume they are because we are afraid, not because they generally do a better job. There are important jobs for government to perform. But public confidence in the government to perform its essential jobs is undermined when we crow for and government responds with efforts that it is ill-equipped to tackle. We are better, generally, to allow government to do the jobs that it is best-suited to.

Correcting the market is not one of those jobs.

And Professor Macey makes a very good argument for why, in this case, that is likely true.

What created the financial meltdown?

I'm still researching the financial meltdown and all the original causes of this mess.

Lending discrimination suits by the Clinton Administration and community activists to force banks to offer loans to people who could not otherwise qualify. Securitization of mortgages my Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae with a false AAA credit rating. Credit default swaps, what may have been paper insurance not backed by real assets, for these bundled securities. Perhaps greed and confusion, given these very complicated realities, on the part of bankers.

Many people are likely responsible. Bankers must take responsibility for the debt because it was debt they assumed. I will not hold my breath for community activists and government officials who may have been responsibile for this situation to take responsibility. They just don't do responsibility. It's not their thing. That's the beauty of politics. There's always someone else to blame.

And though they don't take responsibility readily, this video and article by Ed Morrisey of Hotair does seem to make a pretty good case that discrimination lawsuits and Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae securitization may have been one of the original problems that caused this mess.

The quotes that explain the entire financial meltdown

And here's the video of Andrew Cuomo unknowlingly giving us all a peek into the beginnings of the country's financial problems.

Andrew Cuomo: Subprime Loans "Affirmative Action"



I'm still researching, so I'm not ready to point fingers, yet. But this does look like the most convincing theory to me, at this point, given what I've seen.

Unintended consequences. They are abundant in political and economic life. And we are often so quick to defend our intentions that we very often will not take responsibility for these consequences we did not anticipate.

The beauty of the market is that someone has to take responsibility. And there is a better opportunity for people to learn the lessons. The downfall of political solutions is that people are constantly shifting blame and noone wants to take it because it is so easy to escape it, given how irrationally we function in the political world.

This was exactly Terry Moe and John Chubb's point in their book Politics, Markets, and America's Schools and why they and I favor school choice and creating a non-profit and for-profit market for schools instead of the increasingly multi-layered government driven public education that you see today. People will always make mistakes. That cannot be escaped. What we must be concerned with is in what situation are they more likely to take responsibility for their mistakes and make corrections for their failures.

Markets are a better environment for people taking responsibility for those mistakes, long-term, I am convinced. And politics creates every incentive for people to avoid their mistakes and enforce them on others.

I'll keep researching this mess. In the meantime, I am deeply concerned about those who may have played a serious hand in creating this mess making economic policy for the next 4 years.

Thank goodness there are enough more thoroughly thoughtful and informed people in the market to not confuse politics with substantial knowledge about the market and the economy. We are going to need them.

No sadder fate

You know why money and fame, power and lust, and all the rest don't have any serious hold over me?

Because of this.

Hugh Hefner: Holly Left But New Girls Are Lined Up

Because I cannot possibly imagine a life any more sad and useless than one where someone would confuse any and all of those things with real love.

How incredibly sad and foolish.

Hugh Hefner needs to listen to the Magnetic Fields. And to more love songs, in general.

How sad that anyone would confuse love with any of those other options. How sad that anyone would pretend that the fact that everyone takes love for granted somehow means that love really doesn't matter.

How sad that all of us act as if love is weakness.

Instead of, as Hugh Hefner's sad life demonstrates, our greatest strength.

Understanding in lieu of fear in matters of the market and life at large

Jason Zweig, the Money magazine editor who updates and comments in the newest editions of Benjamin Graham's Intelligent Investor - the book that Warren Buffet, the richest man in the world, worth nearly $62 billion dollars, the last time I saw reports on his wealth, credits for his wealth - has the best article on current market conditions and our likely future stock market fate I have read this entire period.

What History Tells Us About the Market

I hope Jason and the Wall Street Journal do not mind me reprinting that article, here, in toto, with no financial advantage to myself and with a single concern of getting out the word on a much more thoughtful and sound assessment of the current market.

"July 9, 1932 was a day Wall Street would never wish to relive. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 41.63, down 91% from its level exactly three years earlier. Total trading volume that day was a meager 235,000 shares. "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime," was one of the top songs of the year. Investors everywhere winced with the pain of recognition at the patter of comedian Eddie Cantor, who sneered that his broker had told him "to buy this stock for my old age. It worked wonderfully. Within a week I was an old man!"

The nation was in the grip of what U.S. Treasury Secretary Ogden Mills called "the psychology of fear." Industrial production was down 52% in three years; corporate profits had fallen 49%. "Many businesses are better off than ever," Mr. Cantor wisecracked. "Take red ink, for instance: Who doesn't use it?"

Banks had become so illiquid, and depositors so terrified of losing their money, that check-writing ground to a halt. Most transactions that did occur were carried out in cash. Alexander Dana Noyes, financial columnist at the New York Times, had invested in a pool of residential mortgages. He was repeatedly accosted by the ringing of his doorbell; those homeowners who could still keep their mortgages current came to Mr. Noyes to service their debts with payments of cold hard cash.

A view of the New York Stock Exchange, taken by Berenice Abbott in 1933
Just eight days before the Dow hit rock-bottom, the brilliant investor Benjamin Graham -- who many years later would become Warren Buffett's personal mentor -- published "Should Rich but Losing Corporations Be Liquidated?" It was the last of a series of three incendiary articles in Forbes magazine in which Graham documented in stark detail the fact that many of America's great corporations were now worth more dead than alive.

More than one out of every 12 companies on the New York Stock Exchange, Graham calculated, were selling for less than the value of the cash and marketable securities on their balance sheets. "Banks no longer lend directly to big corporations," he reported, but operating companies were still flush with cash -- many of them so flush that a wealthy investor could theoretically take over, empty out the cash registers and the bank accounts, and own the remaining business for free.

Graham summarized it this way: "...stocks always sell at unduly low prices after a boom collapses. As the president of the New York Stock Exchange testified, 'in times like these frightened people give the United States of ours away.' Or stated differently, it happens because those with enterprise haven't the money, and those with money haven't the enterprise, to buy stocks when they are cheap."

After the epic bashing that stocks have taken in the past few weeks, investors can be forgiven for wondering whether they fell asleep only to emerge in the waking nightmare of July 1932 all over again. The only question worth asking seems to be: How low can it go?

Make no mistake about it; the worst-case scenario could indeed take us back to 1932 territory. But the likelihood of that scenario is very much in doubt.

Robert Shiller, professor of finance at Yale University and chief economist for MacroMarkets LLC, tracks what he calls the "Graham P/E," a measure of market valuation he adapted from an observation Graham made many years ago. The Graham P/E divides the price of major U.S. stocks by their net earnings averaged over the past 10 years, adjusted for inflation. After this week's bloodbath, the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index is priced at 15 times earnings by the Graham-Shiller measure. That is a 25% decline since Sept. 30 alone.

The Graham P/E has not been this low since January 1989; the long-term average in Prof. Shiller's database, which goes back to 1881, is 16.3 times earnings.

But when the stock market moves away from historical norms, it tends to overshoot. The modern low on the Graham P/E was 6.6 in July and August of 1982, and it has sunk below 10 for several long stretches since World War II -- most recently, from 1977 through 1984. It would take a bottom of about 600 on the S&P 500 to take the current Graham P/E down to 10. That's roughly a 30% drop from last week's levels; an equivalent drop would take the Dow below 6000.

Could the market really overshoot that far on the downside? "That's a serious possibility, because it's done it before," says Prof. Shiller. "It strikes me that it might go down a lot more" from current levels.

In order to trade at a Graham P/E as bad as the 1982 low, the S&P 500 would have to fall to roughly 400, more than a 50% slide from where it is today. A similar drop in the Dow would hit bottom somewhere around 4000.

Prof. Shiller is not actually predicting any such thing, of course. "We're dealing with fundamental and profound uncertainties," he says. "We can't quantify anything. I really don't want to make predictions, so this is nothing but an intuition." But Prof. Shiller is hardly a crank. In his book "Irrational Exuberance," published at the very crest of the Internet bubble in early 2000, he forecast the crash of Nasdaq. The second edition of the book, in 2005, insisted (at a time when few other pundits took such a view) that residential real estate was wildly overvalued.

The professor's reluctance to make a formal forecast should steer us all away from what we cannot possibly know for certain -- the future -- and toward the few things investors can be confident about at this very moment.

Strikingly, today's conditions bear quite a close resemblance to what Graham described in the abyss of the Great Depression. Regardless of how much further it might (or might not) drop, the stock market now abounds with so many bargains it's hard to avoid stepping on them. Out of 9,194 stocks tracked by Standard & Poor's Compustat research service, 3,518 are now trading at less than eight times their earnings over the past year -- or at levels less than half the long-term average valuation of the stock market as a whole. Nearly one in 10, or 876 stocks, trade below the value of their per-share holdings of cash -- an even greater proportion than Graham found in 1932. Charles Schwab Corp., to name one example, holds $27.8 billion in cash and has a total stock-market value of $21 billion.

Those numbers testify to the wholesale destruction of the stock market's faith in the future. And, as Graham wrote in 1932, "In all probability [the stock market] is wrong, as it always has been wrong in its major judgments of the future."

In fact, the market is probably wrong again in its obsession over whether this decline will turn into a cataclysmic collapse. Eugene White, an economics professor at Rutgers University who is an expert on the crash of 1929 and its aftermath, thinks that the only real similarity between today's climate and the Great Depression is that, once again, "the market is moving on fear, not facts." As bumbling as its response so far may seem, the government's actions in 2008 are "way different" from the hands-off mentality of the Hoover administration and the rigid detachment of the Federal Reserve in 1929 through 1932. "Policymakers are making much wiser decisions," says Prof. White, "and we are moving in the right direction."

Investors seem, above all, to be in a state of shock, bludgeoned into paralysis by the market's astonishing volatility. How is Theodore Aronson, partner at Aronson + Johnson + Ortiz LP, a Philadelphia money manager overseeing some $15 billion, holding up in the bear market? "We have 101 clients and almost as many consultants representing them," he says, "and we've had virtually no calls, only a handful." Most of the financial planners I have spoken with around the country have told me much the same thing: Their phones are not ringing, and very few of their clients have even asked for reassurance. The entire nation, it seems, is in the grip of what psychologists call "the disposition effect," or an inability to confront financial losses. The natural way to palliate the pain of losing money is by refusing to recognize exactly how badly your portfolio has been damaged. A few weeks ago, investors were gasping; now, en masse, they seem to have gone numb.

The market's latest frame of mind seems reminiscent of a passage from Emily Dickinson's poem "After Great Pain a Formal Feeling Comes":

This is the Hour of Lead --
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons recollect the Snow --
First -- Chill -- then Stupor -- then the letting go.

This collective stupor may very likely be the last stage before many investors finally let go -- the phase of market psychology that veteran traders call "capitulation." Stupor prevents rash action, keeping many long-term investors from bailing out near the bottom. When, however, it breaks and many investors finally do let go, the market will finally be ready to rise again. No one can spot capitulation before it sets in. But it may not be far off now. Investors who have, as Graham put it, either the enterprise or the money to invest now, somewhere near the bottom, are likely to prevail over those who wait for the bottom and miss it."

You'll have to go to the Wall Street Journal link to get the numbers, graphics and other goodies that they offer with this article.

But it is nice to see a sober and thoughtful assessment of the current financial situation without the shrill cries of those who might substitute panic for understanding.

We owe much more to people like Jason Zweig, Benjamin Graham, and his most famous student, Warren Buffet, than to any of the well-intentioned but ultimately poorly conceived efforts by Henry Paulson, President Bush, John McCain, Barack Obama or any of our political leaders making good faith but failing and poorly considered efforts to fix the credit crisis at this point.

If you want a better understanding of why the market is likely to correct itself and how that process operates, I would highly recommend reading any of Jason's commentaries in any of the most recent editions of Benjamin Graham's Intelligent Investor, and to benefit your own understanding of the market and your own ability to be profitable even in these very uncertain times.

Much thanks to Benjamin Graham, Jason Zweig and all of those who would offer us understanding rather than fear in this time of market uncertainty.

It is such understanding that serves all of us better, in all matters. And thank goodness that people like Benjamin Graham dedicated their lives to making that stronger understanding available to us. We would be, literally and figuratively, much poorer without their contributions.

What Americans need to hear

Rod Dreher has an excellent article in Thurday's Dallas Morning News that captures well what Americans and the world most needs to hear this election season that has been so desperately missing in our national and international democratic conversation.

The speech John McCain should give

From that speech:

"My friends, I am neither young nor eloquent, handsome nor smooth. But I have lived a long life, much of it in service to America in war and in peace. And I have always stood for straight talk. There has been no time in our nation’s recent history when the American people more needed to hear the plain truth from their leaders. A fundamental reason our country faces economic catastrophe is that we have built our lives around running from truths about the American way of life.

Washington has run from the truth. Wall Street has run from the truth. And if we’re honest with ourselves, all of us have, in one way or another, run from the truth.

We have accepted the lie that we can live exactly as we want to live, with no concern for the consequences. We have taken the blessings of liberty and prosperity and turned them into a curse of debt slavery - bondage that will be visited on our children, and our children’s children, if we don’t change.

Everybody has a theory about how we got into this mess, and it’s usually one that absolves them and their party from blame. My friends, I’m here to tell you that this crisis is the Republicans’ fault. It’s the Democrats’ fault. It’s the fault of every one of us who believed in the fairy tale of a free lunch.

It’s time for all Americans to take responsibility for what we’ve done. It’s time for all Americans to pull together to help our families, our neighbors and our country through hard times.

I will not lie to you and tell you that the road ahead will be easy. I will not insult you by giving you simple villains, simple heroes or simplistic solutions. As the song says, everybody wants to get to heaven, but nobody wants to die. My fellow Americans, all of us must sacrifice to endure the trials that history sends our way and to rebuild our nation on a solid foundation of honor, truth and plainspoken virtue.

I know something about sacrifice. And I know something about the way life can break your pride. I was a cocky Navy aviator who thought he was invulnerable. Then I was shot out of the sky and spent five years in prison. That experience did not kill me. It made me stronger. It taught me how much I loved my God, my family and my country - and what trials I could endure for the sake of that love.

I am a patriot. I believe we are a nation of patriots, of men and women who are ready and willing to put country first. But over the years, our leaders, Republican and Democratic, have asked us to do little more than to go shopping, to vote for them and to blame other people for what’s wrong with America. Anything to keep us from facing the truth and changing our ways.

As your president, I will ask you to do hard things. I, too, will do hard things for the good of this great nation. Serious times call for serious leadership. In his first speech as prime minister, with his free nation facing the might of Nazi Germany, Winston Churchill refused to mislead the British people about the gravity of their situation. We remember today his words to them: 'I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.'

Churchill did not give cheap optimism. He, too, had fought and suffered for his nation, both on the battlefield and in Parliament. He had known the joy of victory and the humiliation of defeat. What Churchill, from his incomparable experience, could offer his people was the gold standard of hope. Hope is the conviction that whatever suffering we must go through, goodness and right shall prevail.

Today, when I survey the gathering storm, I am certain that if we, the people, stand together without fear or favor, victory will be ours. I ask you to give me the privilege of leading this great nation in a time when heroes will be made, and all good men and women must come to the aid of their country.

Thank you, and God bless America."

When the world gets a little overwhelming

Force as a governing philosophy as a logical fallacy

Aside from the limited circumstances in which force is necessary to intervene when harm is imminent from the aggression of others, force is not just counterproductive, often challenging others and leading to the very kind of behavior that one is trying to avoid, but as a general governing philosophy it is a logical fallacy.

The notion that force, or in modern parlance, regulation, can be used to avoid even very serious mistakes is not a logical possibility. Mistakes are made as a regular matter of judgment, as and until our judgment improves, often by our mistakes.

The notion that even very serious mistakes can be avoided by the use of force is not only contradicted by a long human history of often unparalleled and tragic mistakes, often with and around the use of force, it is not even a logical possibility given the nature of choices by human beings made always and without end with limited understanding and certainty. Mistakes are an important part of our learning process. And the notion that we can force them away assumes that we can learn without them. Which is not possible as a matter of fact of human existence.

Regulators, themselves, lawmakers, themselves, rule-makers, themselves, are subject to this often very serious mistake. In fact, many if not the most serious mistakes made over the course of human history have been made by those in power and around the use of power and the ways that it is wielded over people.

None of this can be eliminated by regulation or the use of force. The one and only source of our choices, our mistakes, our good judgment, our successes and our failures over the course of humanity has been independent conscience and judgment, informed, of course, by the independent consciences and judgments and other signals for behavior of others. This is and always has been and always will be the sole source of our choices, good and bad.

What force has often done is made much human decision-making that does not involve the immediate physical safety of others much, much more complicated and difficult to sort out, especially the way that it distorts communication and understanding by encouraging dishonest communication and understanding to cover for mistakes that might otherwise be punished or lead to harm to individuals.

Force is a tool that is only useful in very limited circumstances in the relationships we have with one another. It can prevent immediate physical harm. Otherwise, it very much complicates and often undermines our relationships and the goals we seek. And one of the most important ways that it does so is in undermining the honest communication and learning curve that people need to learn from mistakes, which are inevitable, and make better choices, with experience and understanding over time.

We are not just romanticizing a governing philosophy that has been the source of the bulk of the most serious tragedy over the course of human history and the 20th century, from which we are emerging, we are romanticizing a governing philosophy that is not literally possible as a means of preventing the kinds of mistakes and problems that we seek for it to prevent. It is not a possibility as a matter of fact, not as a matter of ideology, politics, religion, philosophy, or any other source of governing ideas.

It is not possible to force away even our most serious mistakes. We must learn from our mistakes and make better choices in the future. Learning, facilitated primarily by debate and discussion and other similar sources of serious engagement, can help us understand choices to avoid. But, ultimately, we learn from our choices and such learning and no amount of force can replace that development of independent conscience and judgment by learning, experience and understanding.

We are the most mature liberal democracy in the world. And we are governing by a logical fallacy, at this point. It is a fallacy that is reinforcing the ugliest impulses of the ugliest, most repressive regimes around the world, right now, who are looking to our debates and discussions as justification and reinforcement of their own repression and use of force for their own ugly ends.

And there is most definitely someone who is responsible for this mess. It is me. It is you. It is each of us who, in whatever way we are responsible, have reinforced this fallacious and ugly governing philosophy that has plagued humanity as likely its most serious and repeated tragedy since the dawn of humanity as an aggressive and predatory animal, who evolved into a more intelligent and civilized version of this predator, but carried with us the same aggressive instincts that undermined our most important ability and advantage in nature: our intelligence and the understanding it yields.

The kids and I talk all the time about how homo sapien's most serious predator, outside of bacteria and disease, has always been other homo sapiens. And it is the use of force and the failures of our reasoning and honest responsibility around our more predatory and aggresive instincts that is responsible for this failure more than any other.

The idea that we would romanticize this instinct as the solution for all of our most serious problems is comedy and tragedy embodied.

Our only hope is that we can learn despite ourselves on this matter.

That is how we have always make genuine progress.

Perhaps we are capable of the same today.

Force as a governing philosophy, for real

This guy, this Egyptian Islamist Tal'at Rmeih, is right. The West are such pussies. We don't understand what force as a governing philosophy really looks like. Al Queda does. We're fuckin' amateurs.

Arab-American Psychiatrist Wafa Sultan Clashes with Egyptian Islamist Tal'at Rmeih

We're such morons. We have all this freedom. It's the basis for all of the most serious contributions to our quality of life. And we still romanticize this nonsense.

We're not hopeless. It's not a biological disorder. We are just some serious dumbasses. And this guy makes it clear why.

At some level, we need to choose: are we going to be more like this guy? Or are we going to be more like ourselves and our own liberal democratic values?

I know my choice. If we weren't all rationalizing like this asshole, we all would, I think.

Listening to this guy should make our choice clearer.

Bullshit doesn't make the mare go

The real challenge in human affairs now and always is cutting through the bullshit. It's the biggest challenge for kids, too, as they're growing up.

We lie. A lot. To ourselves. To one another. We're constantly lying. It helps us save face. It helps us look better to ourselves and to one another. It keeps us out of trouble. It defends us when we're in trouble. It helps us preserve one anothers' feelings. It helps us get along.

We lie. A lot.

And the biggest challenge for people is cutting through their own bullshit and the bullshit of other people. To be able to see the truth through the lies.

It is the single biggest challenge in politics, because the lies are so fast and furious and so dominate substantive discussion as long as people pretend in the biggest lie of all: that substantive understanding and working in good faith to share it and use it for good doesn't matter.

And then we tell our chidlren: don't worry kids, we've got it all under control.

It's kind of stupid and funny, all at once.

The single biggest challenge in human affairs is telling the difference between lies and truth, stuff that matters from stuff that doesn't, honest and dishonest, good and bad.

It's not just in politics. What Benjamin Graham does really well in Intelligent Investor, the book that Warren Buffet credits with his wealth, is to distinguish foolish notions of the market and more honest and substantial notions of the market and investing in it. It's the biggest problem for people in the money world. Keeping themselves and one another honest. And it is the single biggest problem in the political world, too.

And, in both worlds, you have these major assholes going through and lying their asses off to themselves and to one another about how honest or not they are or how much or not they should be trusted.

And the hard part is recognizing, "When this guy or gal says that he or she should be trusted, should he or she really be trusted?"

Often, the answer is no, in both worlds.

And, hence, the heart of why human affairs are so complicated to understand.

And, also, hence, why people need some understanding and compassion as they try to navigate all of our and their own lies and truthes and make some sense of the world.

The brilliance of someone like Mark Twain is helping us to see that better.

But the truth is that our challenge is seeing that better for ourselves with or without Mark Twain at our side. That is the essence of integrity. And we can only do it with some genuine understanding and forgiveness for what lying assholes we often are in the meantime.

If there is a fundamental fact of humanity that might center all of our theological, ideological, philosophical, and other outlooks on the world, this is the one, I think.

We're kind of shitheads, much of the time. But without us being better, that's all we got. Until we learn how to be better, that is.

And we're gonna need some space and some understanding to make that happen. In fact, it is the only thing that makes that happen.

Everything else is so much more bullshit.

And, at some point, bullshit just doesn't make the mare go. It doesn't get the job done. It never does. No matter how much we indulge in it.

The whole lot of us

I teach juvenile delinquents.

There are days when I could care less if these kids I teach go to jail or not. And this was one of them.

When you're an asshole, noone gives a shit if bad shit comes your way. It's a hard and valuable lesson of life that I'm becoming convinced that my kids need to learn. Some of them need to take some really hard falls before they are going to figure out just how lucky they were to have such decent people looking after them in this school. And, until then, I will not be crying when they take the lumps they deserve in life.

My experience is that punishment does not generally teach lessons to anyone except those who want to learn. Those who don't want to learn the lesson learn about as well as before. They learn to behave themselves in the face of immediate harm. But they go back to their old ways as soon as they can get out of the gaze of their keepers.

The most reliable way for such people to learn their lessons is to fall on their faces. In school. In life. Anywhere they might get the chance to learn that being a jackass has one most serious consequence: noone gives much of shit about you when you take a fall.

Sometimes taking a fall is a good thing. There are some investment banks who need such falls, right now, to learn their lessons. And the kids I teach very badly need to take some falls and learn some hard lessons in life that their jackass adolescent minds have not figured out yet.

In some cases, I look forward to that moment. Not because I want them to be hurt. But because it's the only thing that's going to teach some of them the lessons they need to learn.

If you can't learn things the easy way, which is what school offers, then there is no option but to learn your lessons the hard way.

A lot of ignorant dumbasses still blame their teachers for that fact.

But the only people we have to blame, honestly, is ourselves.

The whole lot of us.

Assholes and liars

I am becoming convinced that we are, and, to some degree, every generation always will be, a species of unrepentant assholes and liars. At least for awhile. Until we face up.

And I don't mean that in a "Humanity is irredeemable and doomed," kind of way.

What I mean is that we are all so obsessed with our uglier impulses, that we can't even admit we have them or that they are behind much of our uglier rationalizations for how we live life.

We keep using the excuse that the world is full of assholes to rationalize what assholes we are.

But here's the secret on that one: when you do that, you're still an asshole, asshole.

And the person you should be worried about being an asshole is you.

Most of the assholes we need to worry about today are us. They are not found in some boogeyman notion of humanity we have. It is numero uno. Moi. Me, myself, and I. Not some asshole lurking in another political party or under the darkness of night.

The asshole we should all be concerned with, as my man Jesus used to say, is the one in our own beds. The one who sleeps on our pillows. The one whose words keep being used to justify what fuckin' assholes we are.

You know the one, right? I'll give you a clue. It ain't George Bush. It isn't even Osama Bin Laden. Although I will grant you that both of these guys are grade A asswipes, the second more than the first, obviously.

It's you. It's me. It's all of us. Until we face up.

And no amount of lying makes up for the truth on that one, no matter how you spin it.

You don't want people to think you're an asshole?

Stop being a fuckin' asshole, asshole.

That goes for all of us. Me too.

You doubt that I'm an asshole. Ask my kids.

I've got work to do. To be a better man, that is.

You reap what you sow

It's a pretty simple fact of life. And it is a fact of life in politics as much as in the rest of life.

Rod Dreher offers some really poignant observations on this fact of life, today, in his column, And It Was Written, Our Blame.

"Complex financial instruments come and go, but the hearts of men remain the same. Greed, vanity and hubris we always have with us, as well as a weakness for the soft sophisticated lie over the hard plain truth. About human nature, tradition – the accumulated wisdom of mankind – is never wrong. True conservatives – as opposed to those who confuse mammon-worship with moral and intellectual principle – know that a tolerable order can only exist when most people live by the moral laws articulated in time-worn banalities.

So, send the tumbrels into the streets to carry off the heads of sophisticates who believed that we had repealed the laws of economics and human nature by our cleverness. The Gods of the Copybook Headings demand propitiation. We shall offer them scapegoats and try to forget our own complicity in the coming catastrophe.

After all, these scoundrels did not elect themselves, nor was there an outcry heard in the land against Wall Street rapacity and recklessness when our 401(k)s were rising, and all but the lowliest plebeian was moving into his very own McMansion.

Along those lines, there's one proverb that we will all become painfully acquainted with in the years to come: You reap what you sow."

I try to take a lighter view on things that Ron does here. But I have to say that I'm a little disgusted, today, watching Wall Street folks who fucked up getting a handout while the average folks who lost in this most recent round of the the hot-then-cold housing market get to eat their mistakes themselves.

It's kind of bullshit, really. Whole fuckin' political world is kind of bullshit, really. And then they all go pat themselves on the back on avoiding the Depression that was sure to come one quarter following 3.3% growth. And while liberals are scaring us all with Depression talk, conservatives are out scaring us with talk about how Hitler is around every corner.

It's all so bullshit and dishonest I can hardly stand it. I'm sure these morons honestly believe their bullshit. But they do so avoiding debates with one another and with those who could distinguish Depressions and Hitlers from stuff that they don't even closely resemble.

And then they tell themselves, "See. Those smarty-pants professors didn't know what they were talking about. You don't have to be a genius to make a fortune or build a power base. You just need to believe in your own bullshit enough that you never have to even question it, you're so goddamn sure of how right you are."

The only solace I have watching this load of shit unfold is exactly what Rod Dreher concludes with:

We reap what we sow.

There is no law that human beings always follow. But there are some facts of life that always show up.

And this is one of them.

It will not be the last. No matter how much we try to bullshit ourselves otherwise.

The Debate

It was a strong debate. At least relative to the mindless election we have been subjected to this season.

The irony, for me, is, contrary to the babbling of pundits, the Democrat is the stronger foreign policy choice, this season - save for his talk about withdrawal from Iraq - and the Republican is the, by far, better economic candidate, this election.

McCain had a much stronger handle on economic issues than I expected and understands the fundamentals of the economy better than Obama, who is, otherwise, I believe, the smarter candidate. Obama's understanding of foreign policy issues - including his much stronger understanding of the situation between Russia and Georgia - and the value of diplomacy, generally, as a sign of strength rather than weakness - were highlighted tonight.

I think the foreign policy challenges we face are a higher priority than our economic challenges, where, as McCain rightly argued, our fundamentals are, indeed, strong. Consequently, I, very marginally, give Obama an edge for my vote, at this point. Though his promises to withdraw troops seriously concern me and could lose him my vote if I continue to hear such threats and I have reason to think he will carry them out, neither of which I take seriously today.

But this debate did exacly what it needed to do, tonight. It highlighted strengths. It challenged candidates to defend positions. And, most importantly, for me, given the arrogance and lack of substance of this election, this debate highlighted weaknesses for each candidate to face both during the election and while in whichever office each candidate wins (one of these men will, presumably, still be a Senator after they have lost the Presidential race, unless I am completely out of the electoral loop, which is very likely).

These candidates need to face a much more fundamental fact of this election: they do not know enough about the world to lead it, yet. And the only way that they will know more is if they must engage in substantive debate and discussion that is not distracted by the mindless drivel that passes for Presidential campaigns in America.

We can correct for that. We can expect more.

And, tonight, these two candidates did a better job of delivering more substance. They should be acknowledged for that. And they have a long way to go before they are ready to lead America. And Americans should make that clear by talking about the substance of this campaign, and by ignoring and being openly critical of the senseless and generally baseless personal attacks.

America and the world should expect an American leader who does not insult our intelligence, who expects as much out of us as we expect out of him or her, and who is willing and able to debate and discuss honestly and substantively with those who can identify his weaknesses as well as support his strengths.

Candidates who expect anything else are not worthy of the office. And we should no longer accept anything less than leaders who expect the best from themselves and from the American people.

"Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country."

It is a spirit that America has lost in the early 21st century in our contemporary politics. And the loss of that spirit is reflected in the bulk of our most serious challenges.

And it will take leadership that asks Americans to expect more of themselves and their leaders that will get us back on track.

May the best man win.

The American way

Preach on, Brother Ross. Preach on.

An Election About Nothing

This is why politics and people involved in it are so endlessly stupid. Why, again, are we looking to such morons to tell us which directions to take with our lives and with the country? Why should I trust such idiots to know how to handle the most serious problems America and the world has to face? I shouldn't, is the obvious answer to that really pretty self-evident question.

And if the goal is to convince me that the folks in Washington - politicians, activists, the press - are unworthy of that trust, this election is quite the validation of that notion.

The more you talk about nothing, the more people realize you really have nothing to say or offer. And, over time, the less they trust you and the more they seek out their own answers.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how progress takes place in a democracy.

Despite us

The more life I live, the more I begin to wonder, "Is it possible, sometimes, that maybe people just won't make the really important changes in their thinking and their lives that will move us forward?"

It's not that we can't. It's that people resist every effort that challenges them to think different and bigger than their current thinking and circumstances.

And, obviously, at some level, that is because some people have to think of more serious and honest ways out of problems before other people can, slowly, get things figured out, better.

But I am beginning to believe that, perhaps, old people, in particular, are doomed to stick to whatever foolish, stubborn habits of thought they have picked up, over the years, and then pretend like those habits of thought are the only ones that younger people could possibly imagine adopting themselves.

The arrogance of older folks of all stripes is often matched by the stupidity and arrogance of younger people.

But the big question is that with so many stupid, arrogant, and fallible folks, what business do any of us have thinking that if we just exert our will over one another then and only then will the world be right?

It's goddamned foolish, is what it is. And the fact is that I have far fewer younger people, in my life, trying to "take charge" with me, in such ways, as I do older people. And those who do often look very, very foolish to me. Which makes me all the more wary of why I am being asked to follow their leads.

The two Presidential candidates, Congress, and most of the political class in Washington could not be a better illustration, right now, of such arrogance as it becomes increasingly clear that they are tilting in the winds hoping that they have better answers which they impose with certitude that they just cannot have honest warrant to assert other than because they said so.

And most Americans who follow this lead do so because they don't know any better.

It would be funny if it weren't so foolish.

We definitely can have more honest reasoning at the core of our politics and our lives. But we often choose, stubbornly, to ignore such reason because doing so, honestly, means admitting so many things that only such honesty would allow as to acknowledge that we just could not possibly know. But that kind of humility would involve a challenge to our egos that most of us just don't think we can handle. Because it might mean admitting shortcomings that we just cannot bring ourselves to admit that we might have. And round and round and round that bit of infuriating circular logic.

We definitely can wind our way out of this circular nonsense. The question is will we. And if we won't, what consequences will this world have to continue to deal with until we can face up to our stupidity.

Much nonsense, if history is any guide.

Most of history's most serious tragedies are bound up in such stubborn stupidity. Perhaps it is stupidity that we will refuse to escape.

In which case, maybe our children will make progress despite us rather than because of us.

Maybe this is how progress has always worked.

Grown-up music

My music tastes have definitely mellowed as a grown-up. That's a good thing, I think. More beauty. Less pop and shock value.

This song has particularly stood out as a favorite, these days.



Harry Connick is quite the catch. Beautiful voice, rich, and not bad on the eyes for the ladies. And he makes music that touches the soul.

I don't always want to listen to grown-up music. But I do prefer it, more and more, these days. Lots of jazz in my musical interests, these days. Anything beautiful and classic.

And anything that reminds me of nice things in life when I'm being treated shitty all day.

Love is my favorite, I must admit.

What we need in the world is more of it, not less, even as we romanticize otherwise.

Be nice if people finally grew up and took it seriously.

As another jazz great, Louis Armstrong, once said:

"Love baby, love. That's the secret, yeah. If lots more of us loved each other, we'd solve lots more problems. And then this world would be better. That's wha' ol' Pops keeps saying."

It's really not more immensely complicated than all that. And, in the meantime, I wouldn't settle for any other kind of life.

So sad that so many people choose otherwise.

My new favorite band

With all the shit on commercial radio aspiring for nothing, these days, its refreshing to see kids who sing because they love it and not out of greed or other base purposes for commercial music, these days.

Hence, my new favorite band. DeCadence, out of University of California, Berkeley. It has zero to do with politics. It's just nice to see kids sing because they love it and sing songs that I love too.

This is my favorite DeCadence tune. Their cover of Ben Folds' cover of Dr. Dre's Bitches Ain't Shit.



But Pop Nightmare is pretty fun, too.



And a medley of one of my favorite bands from high school and college, The Cranberries.



Be nice to be able to trust that more of the music I heard, these days, was being made because people loved the music more than the music business, and the bullshit that comes with it.

Nothing wrong with business. Nothing particularly noble about it, either.

It's nice to know when some people have their priorities straight.

Democratic politics, 21st century-style

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

It's not just Sara Palin. It's the whole fuckin' lot of us.

Me get power. Me solve all world's problem with power. Power good. Me smash what makes me and you afraid. And threatens my power.

Lord Acton pussy no understand power solve all. Me smash Lord Acton and pussy liberty-loving hippy friends. World safe for good.

If only human beings could reason more like gorillas and bears, only then would we all finally be safe. Or something like that.

Why didn't we think of this before? Oh wait. We did. It's the whole fuckin' dumbass history of humanity.

Only, this time, the gorillas mean business. We should be so proud of ourselves.

Power and responsibility

This is what I love about power. All the weaseling.



Tony Blair used to be a democratically-elected leader I could really respect. But watching this interview, I think I realize, now, that power now and forever means never having to admit when you are wrong or even that you might be wrong. I have no more faith in this process or these people, except to look after their own asses every single time. I am seriously considering not voting this election, I am so disgusted with how dishonest this process is, at this point.

The only saving grace is that all of these folks eventually fall. And until they give up the obsession with power to solve all of our problems, they will fall hard.

Little bit of justice in that thought.

We could do better. But we'd have to stop being such pricks.

Until then, instant karma's gonna get you.

No matter how much power you grab.

A good man

I'm grading and watching Jerry Maguire, tonight.

And as I watch the lovemaking scene - which is so incredibly sexy, by the way; I know, I'm such a chick - and as I reflect on the movie and the big fall that Jerry takes and a similar big fall that I've taken in my life - and also been similarly and strangely blessed, as a consequence - I'm reflecting some on my own ego and what I've needed to face, in my own life, to be a good man, and the only kind of man I would ever settle for.

I aspire for greatness. But it's taken this time alone and taking some falls in life to recognize that who I am and who I aspire to be are not the same. It takes time to be what we aspire to be. And, in the meantime, I've had an enormous ego to let go of to be something more.

I aspire for greatness. And, by definition, I've been mediocre and a big lump of ego, in the meantime. I'm not proud of that. And it's part of the learning curve and the process, in the meantime, I'm convinced.

But I'm tired of my ego overwhelming my potential.

I want to be a great dad. I want to be a great lover and husband to my wife. I want to be a great teacher. A great thinker and writer. And maybe, amidst all of that, I want to be a great guy.

But I got work to do. I've got an ego to let go of. I've got effort to make. I've got love to give. I hope I have some wisdom and other strengths to offer.

But, mostly, I've got an ego to let go of as well as a notion that my life is about anything other than loving and caring for my family, my friends, my students, my colleagues, my neighbors, my friends from the old neighborhood and every kid who has ever grown up afraid that they won't be able to make something of their lives, and generally my fellow man, and woman, and kids, and everyone who I can offer something of my heart and mind. I aspire to do great things. And I don't forget where I came from. And I want to offer something that everyone can benefit from, not just myself.

And, one day, perhaps, when I might be a good man, and maybe a great man, I can look back at all of this ego and immaturity, foolishness and frailty, maybe then I can feel some satisfaction that my life has not been in vain or only to serve my own selfish ends.

In our hearts, we all know that is who we need to be, when we are not stoking the flames of our own egos. I forget. Often. I need reminding. Often. I aspire. Often. I fail. Often. I'm proud, at times. I'm disappointed, often.

But that, I am convinced, is the only true route to being a good man, even a great man. Or woman. Or even being a great kid, for those kids who care enough to aspire.

Everything else is, and always has been, ego, I am convinced, at this point. No matter the protestations to the contrary.

And I want to live a life that is honest, as well as aspiring for greatness, and to be a good man. Humanity has had quite enough of the lies of men and women of ego conspiring for their own petty and self-centered purposes.

It is time for humanity to walk on its own two feet. And, to do that, we will, each of us, need to give up our search for perfect men and women, whom do not and never have existed, or worse, brutal men, people who use aggression to somehow compensate for their own and all of our own failings. It is time that we gave up this foolish and destructive tendency.

It is time that we each aspired for goodness and greatness of our own choosing and on our own merits and stopped relying on the flattery of those who would stroke our egos for their own self-centered purposes.

And, to do that, each of us must face ourselves honestly. Our strengths and our failings. I have not enough of the first and too many of the latter. And recognizing that is the only path to doing and being good in the world. Anything else is a lie, to ourselves and to others.

I have lived that lie enough in my life. I need something better. So does everyone else in my life. And that is the only honest path to being and doing good in the world.

In a world where there is and always has been much to flatter the ego and deceive ourselves and others about our truest natures, to be a good person necessitates that kind of honesty and effort. It is available to us. It is available to all of us, no matter the worst lie that too many of us tell ourselves and one another - that there is no such thing as such goodness and greatness, for real, because of our own failure to face our own failings and frailties - if only we will do the work of facing ourselves honestly and correcting what needs correction to do well by our fellow man, woman, and child that every life offers.

Some people never seriously aspire. But everyone, generally, aspires, better, in my experience, the better those around them aspire. Each of us have a role in setting that standard for ourselves and for one another. And each of us does better the better each of us take that responsibility seriously.

Tonight, I reflect on my own efforts and failings. I find myself falling short too often to ignore. But my efforts are honest, even as I fail.

And letting go of my ego, one choice at a time, offers me the most honest route to doing and being good, in this world, for real, and being the kind of father, lover and husband, son, brother, uncle, friend, coworker, teacher, thinker and writer, and neighbor to my fellow man that I can possibly be.

When I think about my own family - my wife and children - and the kind of example that I set and love I have and need to offer for them, I remember what that kind of man looks like more clearly.

And I'm proud of that man. If I ever learn to live the kind of love, decency and greatness I think he might have to offer.

I keep working. And I hope I'll have that to offer to a woman and children, one day. And perhaps to the rest of my family, my students and colleagues, my friends and neighbors, and all of the people I love in my life.

And it is the fact of that long and winding journey to being a good man, a good woman, and good and decent human being, that makes love the highest priority in a world that too often takes ego more seriously. Thoughtfulness and being worthy of others' trust also matter. But love makes it all possible, given our inevitable failures and disappointments on that path.

That is my reflection on being a good man and giving up the vanities of ego, tonight, on a night of, perhaps, too little grading and too much reflection, and plenty of Jerry Maguire, the Muppet Movie, and other various cheesiness on a refreshingly grounded and wholesome Saturday night for a single guy looking for love.

Now I have work to do. And to find someone to share that life with who has similar love to offer.

It's the only life worth living, as far as I am concerned. Everything else would be an enormous waste. For myself and for everyone in my life.

I only hope that I honestly make the best of it.

Love,
Ben

Gronk crush mindless election cycle

This is what our politics has been reduced to.

Me Crush Middle-Class Tax Hike

Gronk smash vapid political discourse. Gronk conquer senseless breast-beating as inane substitute for honest reasoning. Gronk very angry.

Gronk host caged Ultimate Fighting Championship match between Barack Obama and John McCain to decide who tough and dumb enough to lead free world.

Gronk eat chicken wings and drink cheap domestic beer. Gronk happy.

Gronk no need be genius know beer and fighting morons make for high-dollar entertainment. And undeniable political progress.

Plus nasty hangover come November 5.

Mark Spitz is a winner

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Perhaps it might offer perspective to the candidates in this election that winning is not its cracked up to be, even in the highest stakes races.

If you doubt that, you have a friend in Mark Spitz.

Presidential

Obama to the left of me. McCain to the right. Here I am, stuck in the middle...

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

How incredibly sad that political candidates would behave like this and call it Presidential.

Do we really want people leading us who behave in this way?

Not unless we're an irredeemable lot of scared, hyperaggressive morons.

Perhaps I spoke too soon.

Certainty

"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd."
- Voltaire - French author, humanist, rationalist, & satirist (1694 - 1778)

Life would work out so much better if more people could figure this out.

Sometimes you gotta wonder

Sometimes you gotta wonder. When things get so bad in the world, is it possible that noone really gives a shit if things get worse or better?

I wouldn't have thought that as a kid.

But if people give a shit, they could have fooled me.

Because for me, if things get worse, I start to wonder, "Am I maybe doing something wrong?"

That, apparently, is too difficult a question for most people to ask themselves.

And hence flows most of our problems.

Overwhelmed

I'm kind of overwhelmed by the world, right now.

The needs of the kids I work with can be a bit much. Their behavior, their judgment, their often very low reading and reasoning abilities, their need for adults who stick by them even as it means a lot of energy on my part and confusion and frustration on their part, not to mention sacraficing other more respected and lucrative opportunities for my life. It's hard to keep up, sometimes.

And the world I am preparing them for is seriously fucked up in so many ways. And it misunderstands them and we misunderstand one another as often as we understand.

The world is a mess, is the truth. And kids look out into it and see that, no matter our protestations. And they get overwhelmed with it, generally with much less understanding than me or most adults. And they often screw up. And we often treat them like we treat everyone. Like shit.

And sometimes it gets a little overwhelming.

After awhile, it is so overwhelming, it very much feels like the efforts are useless. I am so often cleaning up after the messes of other adults - in the kids' lives, in school, in the political and legal world, - and it never seems possible to keep up with all of it.

The bottom line around most of it is that people are often assholes who just can't find it in themselves to take responsibility for their asshole behavior. And so that fact of existence, from the beginning of human history, has been used to rationalize people being bigger assholes to somehow compensate for the asshole behavior of their neighbors.

It's a dizzying cycle of stupidity and ugliness.

And I'm basically a janitor for humanity's refusal to face up to the bullshit and the failures that come with this outlook on life.

But, sometimes, the messes are just much bigger than anything I can keep up with. And when people are busy making bigger messes and pretending that those messes are not their fault, it sometimes outstrips my capacity to do fix the situation.

Sometimes I just want to have a quiet life with a wife and children and with friends and family and just stop looking out for others, all the time, and have a life to myself that is not consumed with the overwhelming needs of others, especially kids who have no clue how difficult it is likely to get once they leave school.

Sometimes its too much. And I need a life where I'm not constantly facing a barage of needs that I cannot always keep up with.

We could fix that situation for teachers. We could fund enough teachers and schools who could care for the needs of students. But to do so would necessitate us moving away from the self-righteous and intrusive grandstanding of politics and to seek funding and opportunities outside of the perhaps, but not quite, irredeemably dysfunctional world of power and politics. It would necessitate people of good faith thinking far outside the very narrow and nasty box of contemporary politics and building schools that attend to the judgments of teachers and parents who are more intimately knowledgable of kids and their needs and much less attention to politicians who have very little direct understanding of kids and schools.

But to do so will need for people to give up on the false faith that we can ask Congress to simply mandate improvements and that they will come. They won't. And that false faith comes at far too enormous a cost for kids, teachers, schools, and liberal education.

It is our most dangerous tendency and it is, appropriately, the most deadly sin.

Pride.

And the pride that our repressive and regressive impulses to force the world to shape up do more good than they really do, which is often not much, in the short term, and, worse, that they make matters worse, in the long term, is the most serious problem that humanity faces at this moment.

And, sometimes, all that pride and its consequences are a bit much for me.

It is in moments, like these, when I could use a friend and a partner who I could seek out a little comfort and understanding from.

Because God knows I could use it, right now.

I want to leave this whole mess and do something less demanding.

But doing so, I know, involves leaving these kids to their own devices in a world that treats them and everyone like cattle, too often, rather than like human beings, with consciences and judgment and a need to cultivate both with a rigorous and liberal education.

Most people denigrate the need for education and deeper understanding of the world, right now, when other more base desires seem so easily and abundantly satisfied.

And perhaps the world just needs teachers as a reminder of a commitment that is more honest when baser concerns dominate peoples' attention for all of the reasons that baser concerns have always dominated peoples' attention.

That's what I value in my teachers, anyway. In a world that would seem much less honest and grounded were it not for them and their more honest, if less lucrative and self-centered, commitments.

I just wish they and I could and would live up to those liberal and democratic ideals more honestly than we do or allow ourselves or are allowed. I just wish the hypocrisies and compromises of liberal democratic peoples was not constantly a source of excuse for the abuses of less liberally and democratically commmitted peoples everywhere.

All I know is that it overwhelms me, at times, and that I cannot always know what is the best means of living those values.

Maybe I just need a break. Maybe we all do. Maybe we all just need to cut each other more slack than we forever seem to fail to do for fear of appearing weak when we offer up compassion and understanding. Maybe we all just need a lot more slack. Because how we are handling things now is definitely not doing the trick, unless we are forever going to lie to ourselves about the success or not of our efforts.

Surely honest, decent, free peoples can do better than that.

Because, if not, the doomsayers are given the self-fulfilling prophecy that they so desperately covet to try to prove the one thing they value more than anything else: being right, even when they are so clearly wrong.

And that fact of life will never change as long as honest, decent, and free peoples are constantly trying to prove what thugs they can be if only given the chance.

Surely we can do better than that. Surely our better angels are not found in the clothing of gangsters, terrorists, and despots. Surely we have something better to offer.

All I know is that hope is better placed than any assurance that it is not possible. Because that assurance is not honesty. It is us giving up and resigning ourselves. And no amount of resignation and cynicism will ever make life better, for us and our children.

No matter how overwhelmed I might feel at the moment.

Lying sacks of shit (all of 'em)

Hypocrisy knows no limits when it comes to politics. It is the the political class saying, "We deserve this so much more than you do."



James Carville, Harold Wolfson, and appropriately named Harold Ickes deserve their own half-hour show dedicated to this topic.

But this will do for now.



Hypocrisy isn't a sign of dishonesty with ourselves about our failings. Lying and hypocrisy are the way that we show we care.

Can't you just feel the love?

Thank you, Karl Rove, Dick Morris, and Bill O'Reilly - and you too, Harold Ickes, James Carville, and Harold Wolfson - all for being such lying sacks of shit.

Where would our democracy be without you? Shutter the thought.

You like all this progress? I thought so.

Just in case you needed proof that punishment and force as a governing philosophy really work.

Married at 9, slain by parents at 17

Kind of hard to do anything once your dead. That'll teach her.

Thank god they went easy on her. They could have raped, tortured, and burned her alive her before they killed her. These guys must be liberals.

I have really learned to appreciate the generosity of repressive forces in the last few years. Just think how ugly the world would be if they really punished someone.

Thank goodness repressive countries have eradicated all that sinning and ugliness with their repression. Now there'll be no more bad things in the world. We have finally forced badness from our midst. And thank goodness for that.

When will all of the soft-hearted fools finally figure out that we are kicking ass and there's not a goddamn thing they can do about it.

Repression is the only real route to progress. We don't take responsibility because we never do anything wrong. And when we beat the shit out of one another, it shows that we really care.

So when we kill you, it's because we really love you.

You still doubt force as a governing philosophy you, fuckin' pussy? Maybe someone needs to kill you in broad daylight and see if that is effective in shutting your fuckin' mouth.

And once we kill and imprison all these motherfuckers, we can finally get some goddamn progress up in this place. Once all the pussies who doubt our wisdom are out of our way, that is.

You like all this progress? I thought so.

Noone really ever questions me when I put it like that.

Leadership

This campaign has become quite the sorry little joke. And not the funny kind. It's kind of pathetic and sad, really.

And the same people who have brought this to you - each of the respective Presidential campaigns, the press, the activists, and too many citizens who have gone right along - have the gaul to say, "This is why I deserve to be able to run your life."

What remarkable bullshit.

There is nothing real being said, right now, during this election. This election could have been staged by my students. In fact, it is everyday.

And how incredibly sad that adults would act like this and pretend that it is some kind of example for mine or anyone's children. How sad that we would act like this at all.

What this election has taught me is that I will have to teach my own children that there is no way on God's green earth that they can ever look to such people for examples of what it means to be good or responsible or anything of the sort. Because what a remarkably low standard those in and who aspire to be a part of the political class set.

They will look to their father and their mother, which reaffirms for me the enormous responsibility of parenthood. They will look to their teachers. They will look to the most responsible people they encounter. And, all too often and sadly, they will look to less responsible people.

But, ultimately, they will look to themselves.

And my children, at least, will learn to look to themselves to take responsibility for their lives long before they look to anyone in political circles.

Because what a sad and sorry standard the political world offers, right now. Perhaps it always has. In which case, perhaps all of us should have always looked elsewhere for guidance.

I looked to my family and my teachers.

Thank goodness, this election season, my children have a better alternative. Because those who are supposed to offer the kind of example that children and citizens are supposed to be able to trust, as their most fundamental responsibility, have badly fallen down on the job.

How sad that this is what political folks call leadership.

How lucky for each of us that politics is not where real leadership takes place in life.

He Completes Us

Given the comparative strength of the Democratic ticket, this Presidential election, now, more than ever, we need the Daily Show.



The one really clear and obvious advantage that Barack Obama and Joe Biden have over John McCain and Sarah Palin is that the Democratic contenders are far smarter than their Republican counterparts. I don't agree with many of Barack Obama's policy positions. But this advantage should not be underestimated, for good or for ill. And if John McCain and the Republican party are going to fall down on the job honestly debating and engaging The One, as they so clearly have this election season, then maybe John Stewart can give it a shot.

Smart people have one tendency more than any other that is concerning: they think they know it all.

Takes an arrogant know-it-all to know one. John Stewart knows that feeling. I do too. We all need someone to check our inner know-it-all.

Smart people are also just as likely, if not more likely, to abuse power and to avoid responsibility when their use of power is ineffective or badly used. Hitler and Stalin were pretty smart cookies, remember. And both of their entire careers were spent acquiring power at the expense of anyone who challenged them.

Thank goodness that there are some smart people out there who have neither animus nor hero worship to blind their vision.

We're going to need a lot more liberals, conservatives, and anyone who is everyone who can fill that criteria if we are going to have a more honest democracy.

Smart people are going to need to learn to face their inner arrogant prick. And not-so-smart folks are going to need to nerd up.

We gotta democracy to operate here. And we're gonna need folks who can open up some honest space for engagement.

And if the rest of the country is going to engage in stupid, self-righteous posturing, John Stewart is a good person to get us started.

Feel the honesty.

Power and freedom

Joe Nye posted on his blog about China and soft power. His post gave me an opportunity to reflect on the value, and lack thereof, of that concern.

The Olympics and China's Soft Power

"As the flags are lowered over the 2008 Olympic games, China is basking in the achievement of a major objective -- an increase of its soft power. Not only in terms of gold medals won by Chinese athletes, but by the successful staging of the games, China hopes to have advanced its prestige and attraction to other countries.

Power is the ability to affect others to obtain the outcomes you want. One can affect their behavior in three main ways: threats of coercion ('sticks'); inducements or payments ('carrots') and attraction that makes others want what you want. A country may obtain the outcomes it wants in world politics because other countries want to follow it, admiring its values, emulating its example, aspiring to its level of prosperity and openness. 'Soft power' has now entered China's official language. In his keynote speech to the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) on October 15, 2007, Hu Jintao stated that the CPC must 'enhance culture as part of the soft power of our country to better guarantee the people's basic cultural rights and interests.'

China has always had an attractive traditional culture, but now it is entering the realm of global popular culture as well. Yao Ming, the Chinese star of the National Basketball Association's Houston Rockets, could become another Michael Jordan, and while China lost to the U.S. in basketball, Yao was one of the stars of the Beijing Olympics. The enrollment of foreign students in China has tripled from 36,000 to 110,000 over the past decade, and the number of foreign tourists has also increased dramatically to 17 million per year even before the Olympics. In addition, China has created some 200 Confucius Institutes around the world to teach its language and culture, and while the Voice of America's was cutting its Chinese broadcasts from 19 to 14 hours a day, China Radio International was increasing its broadcasts in English to 24 hours a day.

But just as China's economic and military power does not yet match that of the United States, China's soft power still has a long way to go. China does not have cultural industries like Hollywood, and its universities are not yet the equal of America's. It lacks the many non-governmental organizations that generate much of America's soft power. Politically, China suffers from corruption, inequality, and a lack of democracy, human rights and the rule of law. While that may make Beijing attractive in authoritarian and semi-authoritarian developing countries, it undercuts China's soft power in the West. Given the domestic problems that China must still overcome, there are limits to China's ability to attract others, but one would be foolish to ignore the gains it is making. The Beijing Olympics were an important part of China's strategy to increase its soft power."

This is the line that stuck with me:

"Politically, China suffers from corruption, inequality, and a lack of democracy, human rights and the rule of law."

I keep reading that assertion - that China lacks the rule of law - over and over again, and I have to say that it is something that I find kind of amusing.

Last time I checked, China has a Byzantine array of laws and a pretty powerful commitment to enforcement of the rule of law, as evidenced by their enforcement of bans on political protest and free expression.

The truth is that China has laws that, for good reason, we do not like because they trample on the freedoms of Chinese citizens and foreigners within their jurisdiction. It is the lack of freedom that we are concerned about, when we are honest, not the lack of the rule of law, the latter be quite abundant since it has been a necessary requisite to limit freedoms in repressive countries and cultures since the beginning of civilization and earlier. The rule of law has been present in likely every repressive and authoritarian government in the history of humanity. It was one of the most powerful weapons of the Nazi and Communist regimes. Which is why its presence is hardly any assurance of honest, decent, or good government. Our confusion on the matter has not only romanticized law and led to a fairly bankrupt notion of progress for liberal democracies in the 21st century, it has rationalized the repression of authoritarian regimes around the world, from Beijing to Harare, all of whom can look to their own application of the rule of law to justify their power.

China's lack of democracy is the most concerning fact we and the Chinese people face, largely because its absence also limits those freedoms that Joe mentions and many, many more that Chinese citizens, not to mention Taiwanese, Tibetan, and Hong Kong's citizens, deserve to enjoy. I very highly doubt that you would find Chinese, Taiwanese, Tibetan, or Hong Kong's citizens telling us that they want more application of Chinese rule of law. I very seriously bet that they would tell us that they yearn for freedom and independence, or, if they are attempting to be more modest in their claims for the sake of political expediency, more freedom and autonomy. Somehow I very seriously doubt that we would be reassured by a Chinese commitment to enforce the rule of law anymore than the Chinese would. They enforce their laws regularly now. That's the problem.

What China needs is more of the values that liberal democratic citizens take more seriously than the rule of law: freedom and democracy. These two principles are valued most in liberal democracies for good reason, illustrated well by the case of Chinese law. People, like nations, need freedom and self-determination to lead better lives and to make independent judgments about what such better lives entail. The entire history of liberal democracy and Western civilization is based on this commitment as the basis for progress, not the rule of law which has been with us throughout our more repressive, authoritarian, and brutal past. The rule of law is a neutral code which is either used to advance causes like freedom and democracy or causes like totalitarian or authoritarian rule. It is not a value in and of itself. Except to those who covet power. And it is those characters that those more honestly committed to freedom and democracy have always and should always be wary of.

What China should be concerned with is the welfare of Chinese citizens, not its soft power. And that welfare is advanced with freedom and democracy not soft, hard, or any other form of power. Power can be used in the course of advancing these clearly more important priorities and principles or it can be used to undermine them. But it these values, and not China's soft power, which should be China's and the world's concern. I, nor the Chinese people, have any inherent interest in China's soft power except insofar as it advances freedom and democracy for the Chinese people, and honest commitment to to those principles in the form of independence for the peoples of Taiwan, Tibet, and Hong Kong. Everything else is power gambles by those whom neither I nor the Chinese people have any real interest in supporting.

And the first commenter is right. America's soft power and, therefore, our capacity for engaging credibly our hard power, is eroding quickly, also for good reason. Insofar as Americans make such gambles in the name of their own power and not genuinely in the interests of their fellow Americans or people who their policies impact, the more their power is undermined. It is a hard lesson that American leaders of all ideological stripes will have to learn during this political period. And they will learn it - or someone else will - because to not learn it is to undermine their capacity for leadership and their credible use of power, altogether.

The Chinese will face the same dilemma as long as the people of China, Taiwan, Tibet, and Hong Kong yearn for freedom and the right to determine their own lives. Which will be till the end of time. It is a necessary requisite for modern life and for a life of dignity and mature independence in any period of human history.

The power of the American government and the Chinese government will forever be a function of that kind of power - the power of citizens to determine and improve their own lives - from now until the end of human existence. And no amount of soft power will ever be able to compensate for that more fundamental fact of humanity.

Power

I was just thinking, today, about all of the foolish ways in my life that fighting undermined important relationships and goals in my life, either lording over others or being lorded over or just fighting that goes nowhere.

The most important losses in my life - other than the deaths of others that I had no control over - have occurred because of this fact of life. And it just so sad to me that I and everyone have to repeat this mistake over and over again until we learn the lesson.

I lost the closest friendship I've ever had in my life as a consequence of this kind of fighting. And most of my mistakes in relationships with others have happened similarly. Still do.

I've gotten tons better. I'm a better teacher, today, as a consequence. And a better friend. And son and brother. And student. And just a better person, today, as a consequence, I think.

I've watched all of the power-mongering over the last 7-8 years or so, the whole time I've thought exactly what I said to a friend of mine this weekend, "How in the world could people behave in such snarky, dishonest, ugly, mean-spirited, power-obsessed ways and think that other people should take their example or judgments about the world seriously?"

They shouldn't, is the answer. And less and less people do, these days. We're in kind of a crisis of confidence, these days. Liberal democracies. Our confidence in our political leaders and our important institutions, like the press and universities, is at a serious low. And yet they keep moving in the same ugly, dishonesty, power-obsessed directions until they can finally learn the lesson.

They will. We will. We always do. It just takes time.

Imperialism did not unravel in a day. It took most of the 20th century post-World War I and post-World War II for us to finally give up its ugly logic.

And commitments to freedom, similarly, have taken many, many years to take root. America was only committed as the first nation to sustainably predicate itself on the principles of freedom and democracy 232 years ago. Liberalism, as we know it today, dedicated to freedom and independence of conscience and choices of individuals, was a serious coherent philosophy for less than that. And democracy and liberalism as presumptions for how the world should organize itself and as the clearly stronger means of doing so has only been plain and clear within the 20th century, or the last 100 years or so.

It will take time for freedom to take more unshakable root and for power to be limited in the imaginations of free peoples, nevertheless unfree peoples, and, thus, in its use and justification, in the 21st century and forever beyond that time.

And, today, as I reflected on my own failures when it comes to power and aggression and way I've treated others and the ways that I've been treated, it was just reinforced for me what a small, petty, and ignoble aspiration it is to have power over others rather than caring about their own free and self-determined aspirations for themselves.

That was Twain's big problem with the world, I think. That we could never give up the pettiness. And, in the face of that, what are you going to do but laugh? And maybe help us laugh at ourselves.

Same shit. Different era.

Until we learn to give it up, that is.