The most bizarre political period I have ever lived through

This has been the most bizarre and the most disillusioning political and historical period that I've ever lived through.

It's been a period where bullying has regularly overwhelmed more thoughtful engagement, and where, simultaneously, the adults who have advocated it and engaged in it proclaim at the top of their lungs that all that bullying on the schoolyard and in the world needs to stop.

If I was a young person, right now, there is no way that I could take seriously people over 18 or 30 or 65 or whatever age that people believe that their age offers them more wisdom than it does.

In the last 6 or 7 years, out of our perpetually overwrought and self-righteous political feelings, we have created a culture - in politics, in pop culture, and in everyday life - that glamorizes and celebrates aggression, force, and bullying and acts as if that is the quite natural and best way of doing things with one another. As if that really is the functional end state of human affairs that people have been reaching for throughout their long history.

As long as George Bush can be scapegoated for the failure of this thinking in his prosecution of the Iraq war, noone else has to face up to the failure of this logic, many people must reason. George Bush was using force for a wrong cause, they must reason. His critics, on the other hand, use it for right causes. And, as always, bullying can be justified for any right cause.

It makes no goddamned sense, is the truth. And it means that I and everyone else has to perpetually face and, at times, engage fights from a million self-righteous activists, professionals, authority figures, and every other millionth bully that has decided that their cause is more important than respect for the conscience of their neighbors.

Love thy neighbor is foolish, antiquated mushiness, these folks reason. Respecting your neighbor's conscience is all fine and dandy as long as you want to allow evil and stupidity and George Bush to rule the world. Thinking and engagement are well and good, but they don't save the world from its millionth everpresent boogeymen. That is done by the strong arm of force.

It's the rationalization of every ideologue, every strong man, every repressive leader, every power-monger that has ever roamed this earth. And it would be the long march of humanity if it weren't for the enormous load of tragedy that follows in its wake. But that tragedy, finally, overwhelms the defenses of its advocates and either strong men learn the errors of their ways or are removed from their posts. And, as in the case of Burma or China or Cuba or Iran, there can be a very, very long wait before such a change of heart or change of the guard takes place.

My only hope is that, in liberal democracies, at least, it is in its last throes. It will never earn my respect or the respect of those whom it asserts its will over but does not persuade. Ever. There is no real respect out of fear or force. It is a false means of leadership. Because it doesn't lead. It just asserts its will.

And I've never seen a period that more bottoms out our expectations for power and leadership and so pretends that such bottoming out is something better than it is.

At this point, I am tired of all of the fighting of the last 6 or 7 years. I am tired of the ever polarizing fight that constantly overwhelms reason and more engaged thought in contemporary politics and I am tired of the aggression I have absorbed in my own personal and professional life as a function of all that fighting.

I've never really been more disappointed and had more reason to be disappointed with most of my elders and with the the political and cultural landscape.

It's this one huge mess of grievance and conflict and aggression for whatever purposes we decide in the moment are worthy. It's drama, as people of my generation would say. One long series of drama and conflict forever into eternity. As long as its participants want to fight.

I am tired of the fighting. And I am especially tired of the meaninglessness of it all and all of the senseless tragedy it produces.

It will only end when enough failure and tragedy is produced to overwhelm the defenses of its proponents. How much is enough? I wish I knew.

I just know we can't go on like this.

Love,
Ben

Why power corrupts

H.L. Mencken, much like Lord Acton, was convinced that those in government were irredeemably corrupt. As someone who studies and understands the necessity of governing power (and is more sympathetic to its necessity than Mencken, even as I share most of his concerns about its perpetual abuse), I have always thought of Mencken's position as cynical and unfair to government and the officials who are responsible for it.

I'm beginning to understand why he thought the way he did.

Michael Green and Derrick Mitchell write this somewhat bizarre and far too simplistic lead article on Myanmar for the upcoming November/December issue of Foreign Affairs.

Asia's Forgotten Crisis

Even the title is strange. Burma is a forgotten crisis? Apparently these two policy scholars have been avoiding the press in the lead up to writing their article about this very serious international policy issue leading the coverage of most major newspapers and news organizations.

Green and Mitchell articulate the thought that I am perpetually perplexed can be argued without even a tinge of skepticism, self-reflection, or even an attempted accounting for its failures in Iran, North Korea, Iraq, not to mention at least two decades of policy towards Myanmar.

They argue that what is wrong in dealing with Burma is that the international community has just not gained enough control over the situation and can do so with adequate and consistent sanctions and incentives. Now, ignoring the fact that such a simplistic notion of power is the notion that has animated almost all governing regimes and virtually all notions of power since the beginning of humanity, for all of the cases of failed power as much as for power that has sustained itself, the real problem with this argument is that it assumes that what is missing in Burma is enough external control of Burmese affairs by benevolent democracy promoters. It's a similar theory to President Bush's notion that if those who favor democracy in Iraq could only gain substantial control over the situation with enough military power, then democracy would be easily ushered in.

In both cases, there is undoubtedly bad and dictatorial regimes in need of being removed in some fashion. And, in both cases, there is substantial need for democratic reform.

But what is escaping most international political players, right now, is that genuine democratic reform must be nurtured internally and only supported externally insofar as either leaders can be removed (as in the case of Saddam Hussein) and with the consent of its citizens (the substantial split of support for which in Iraq is responsible for the chaos that reigns there) or insofar as they can be persuaded to disengage from power or to provide for more democratic norms (elections, democratic instititutions, free speech, free press, etc.)

There is this foolish and unworkable assumption by too many international observers and players, especially in the U.S., that somehow perpetually greater assertions of power will remove or undermine those who abuse power.

It's an interesting theory.

It is exactly the kind of behavior that Lord Acton and H.L. Mencken were concerned with: the propensity of powerful people to assert their need for more and more more threatening and overwhelming power for the sake of whatever cause they favor.

And my concern as I read yet another tiresome article making the same arguments, no matter how much they have failed to resolve the situation in Iran, how they perpetually undermined the situation in North Korea, until a combination of diplomacy and incentives created breakthroughs, no matter how such a theory is fundamentally undermined by the realities in Iraq today, and no matter how long international crises go unresolved amidst the fetish with greater assertions of power...

Noone ever wants to admit the failures.

That is why power corrupts. Because people who fetishize its use begin to assert its necessity no matter how much it fails. And they chase the tails of its circular logic without end, because it has just never occurred to them, apparently, that perhaps ever accelerating assertions of power, just as they did at the beginning of the 20th century, and just as they have since the beginning of civilization and humanity, really, rationalize ever escalating counter-assertions that leave the world less safe, not more so, and without resolution of any of the serious issues that democratic or undemocratic nations face.

Peace between Israel and Palestine. The nuclear ambitions of Iran. The chaos that has enveloped Iraq. The worsening situation in Afghanistan. The brutal response of the Burmese government to calls for democratic reform. The frenzy of repression that has animated the democratic and non-democratic world in the last 6 or 7 years. The spike in crime rates, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and so many important indicators of presence or absence of international security.

No matter how bad things get, all of the proponents of the very policies that are responsible for the escalation of aggression and insecurity just stick to the same message - with almost literally no open questioning or consideration that their's might be a flawed approach or that alternatives might be taken seriously - and do so without second thoughts and without end.

Maybe Mencken was right. Maybe it's not just absolute power that is the problem. Maybe it's all power. Maybe human beings are just too subject to the temptations of power - namely to its every rationalized acquisition and acceleration of its assertion no matter its consequences - to ever really be trusted with it.

Sadly, for all of us, there is still need for someone to wield power. It's just clear that humanity will forever have to fail until the load of tragedy is so great and serious that they cannot avoid facing the consequences of their failed policies.

Over 90 million people died in both World Wars of the 20th century before imperialist nations could face the consequences of their unquenchable thirst for power and dominance in a world left more insecure for their pursuit of power rather than safer, even though every imperial effort was engaged for the presumable purpose of greater security for the countries engaging in such efforts.

And, at the beginning of the 21st century, we are left with a power-hungry democratic world whose major players and students have convinced themselves that what was missing at the beginning of the 20th century was not a commitment to limiting the use of power, as much as possible, and engaging others to do the same, and only using force when all other options are expended, but rather the lack of commitment to maximum democratic power being brought to bear on a recalcitrant world unaware of the wisdom and benevolence of those who seek to wield it in the world's major democracies. It's an almost identical rationalization to imperial powers who argued that their benevolence excused their exertions of control, except that democracy rather than imperialism is used, today, to excuse the exertions.

Such assertions listen to no dissent. They ignore any argument that does not support their original conclusions. They entertain no other thoughts or ideas. They are single-minded in their pursuit of sufficient power to achieve their ends.

And that is why and how power corrupts.

And I think I understand, today, Mencken's pessimism that it might be otherwise. Because its proponents, much like the leaders of Myanmar's brutal military junta, are so convinced of the right-mindedness of their assertions of power. In their minds, it could not possibly be otherwise. And to question otherwise is to be a threat to that power.

I know that Mencken's cynicism could never animate the unavoidable workings of government power that is needed even as those who seek to wield it perpetually abuse it and get lost in their own ego-driven rationalizations of their benevolence and right-mindedness in its use.

But every time I read an newspaper column or listen to a radio or TV interview or read a blog post or, most disappointing, read a scholarly journal article, like this article, where political folks reason this way, I share Mencken's despair that perhaps the only thing that can be done is to allow those who think this way to impose so much tragedy that their failures become inescapable.

It took 70 years for the people of Russia and Eastern Europe to face up to the similar failures of the Soviet Union.

I can only hope that democratic peoples can do slightly better.

In the meantime, the arrogance of the power-hungry in democratic nations, today, is a bit overwhelming for me, some days, and I cannot ever fathom being so sure of my own good intentions or right-mindedness to ever assert with such unqualified certainty the clear and unquestionable application of as much power as is necessary to achieve whatever ends I seek, especially when my efforts consistently fail.

I would think twice about those kinds of assertions.

But, then again, I do not hold any similar fetish for power. I am rightly, and appropriate for any democratic citizen, skeptical of power and its assertion and use. It is a humility that is far too infrequent, these days.

And, as with the two Great Wars, the question is not whether we will finally face our failures. The question is how much tragedy and failure must accumulate before we will face them.

And for all of the talk about forgiveness as a luxury that so many people claim that they cannot afford, these days, how much forgiveness will we all need for the aggressive foolishness that masquerades as serious policy thought and leadership decisions, these days.

Power corrupts because its stubborn proponents hold onto its failed and tragic logic long after its failures become clear.

And that is why history, as Mencken assures us, tends to move in a liberalizing direction. Because the failures of power become clearer to those it is wielded over long before it becomes clear enough to those who wield it. And the insecure world that the obsession with ever increasing assertions of power creates must be made more secure by someone. Citizens pave the path to freedom long before governments allow for it. And that is true, today, as much as it has ever been true in the long and liberalizing history of free and democratic societies.

My faith has been seriously weakened that those who wield power can ever be persuaded to look honestly at their own failures. I suppose they will all have to abuse their power or advocate its overreach long before either they will be removed from office or we will learn the lessons we need to learn. We do seem to learn, over time. But only after long periods of advocating and being responsible for its abuse and failures. Which is why I and most people should be skeptical of its use, not fetishizing it and escalating it to a point where it is uncertain when again greater security and not less might become our more likely future.

I think most people care. I just don't think they care enough to consider if they might be wrong about how to address our common concerns. I think, as many advocates would tell you, they are more interested in action than any serious and rigorous questioning of their assumptions.

And that is how power corrupts. And, sadly, as it turns out, that means all of us.

Like Mencken, it makes me want to laugh if it wasn't so goddamn tragic.

And my only faith that it gets better is that things continue getting pretty goddamn bad until we face up.

Ninety million deaths is a lot of tragedy.

Perhaps we can do better, this time around.

Love,
Ben

Observing politics and pretending it's honest

An interesting side-effect of the fallout of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's resignation in Japan.

The law's a joke, but nobody's laughing

It is interesting how much confidence we invest in people who make the rules but are clearly are not playing straight.

Love,
Ben

Doing the right thing

In a million years, I'd rather be wrong and do the right thing than be right and do the wrong thing. That's a lesson I've learned from experience, not any deep source of genius. The longer I live, the more I recognize just how wrong I can be. I only wish I could know it before the fact.

I think that's the history of humanity as much as the story of my life. But it doesn't make either of us more noble than we are.

Myanmar to the West: "This is how you use force you cryin' little babies"

Soldiers hunt Myanmar dissidents

Given the logic of the current era, this is who we look up to. This is how a government forces itself on a population. And listening to too many political players and thinkers, today, this is what progress looks like.

How tragic and laughable all at once.

Love,
Ben

More freedom

Most people are insufferable hypocrits is the truth. But they're generally decent insufferable hypocrits. Or, at least they're not psychopaths. And the great thing about liberal democracy is that at least that's an open secret rather than a dirty little bit of repression. Plenty of repression in democracies. But very little place to hide forever.

The question is whether we face our biggest secret - that we're all packing them. And that the world is worse for our being such pricks in the name of uncovering them rather than living up to our liberal democratic ideals and treating people with more decency and humanity.

And the greatest thing of all about liberal democracies is that we always come to our senses, eventually. Because there really is only one way forward. And liberal democracies more than any other culture more honestly and reliably move in that direction: more freedom.

Love,
Ben

Talking sense on Iraq

Joe Biden, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Democratic Presidential Candidate, and Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, write the most sensible thinking I have heard come from liberals in a very long time in the Washington Post, today, on a political resolution in Iraq.

Federalism, Not Partition

It's refreshing to read something that finally comes to terms with the failure of force as a governing philosophy on the left, these days, I must say. And in the context of the one central situation that America face today which should bring home that lesson, if nothing else will: the failure of force, militarily and politically, in controlling the situation in Iraq.

Biden and Gelb are right. A federal solution would likely be a more peaceful and politically sustainable situation than a partition created through civil war or a peaceful partition that does not resolve disputes between Shias, Sunnis, and Kurds. Politics is the means of resolving those disputes without warfare. And without a workable political solution that precludes military conflict, armed clashes are likely to arise again.

It is possible that a soft partition that involves either a confederation, or, more likely and workable, three separately governed regions, might avoid a civil war or the on-going military conflict and bloodshed. But federalism does seem like a likely path for resolving many of the different disputes that Shias, Sunnis, and Kurds have with one another, that Iraqis have generally within the country, and to resolve, better, issues like the border problems with Turkey, Iran, and Syria.

I could very well be wrong about that. It is very possible that three, peacefully-associating self-governing regions may better resolve the issues Iraqis face, today, than would one central government with autonomous regions built on principles of federalism. But Joe and Leslie's plan does look like one that offers an opportunity for resolving the many overlapping issues that Iraqis face, right now.

But, more importantly, it is nice to read that some folks on the left are coming to terms with the failures of any imposed solution on the Iraqi people and with some of the failures of force as a governing philosophy.

Perhaps there is hope after all.

Love,
Ben

What I want and what others want

It's just occurred to me, tonight, after a ride home with my favorite tow truck driver, Kevin, at University Towing, here in Lawrence, Kansas, who I love having conversation with every time he helps me out, that the one really serious mistake that I have made in my life and the lives of people in my life is never really paying enough attention to what I want and what others want.

I'm a teacher. I'm someone who has consciously chosen to subordinate my wants, for at least 40 hours a week - and more, when you count the 60-70 hour total work weeks I generally put in for this job - to the needs (and wants; and whines, bellyaching, brattiness, and otherwise maltreatment) of folks roughly between the ages of 11 and 21 (I teach grades 7-12).

And when I think about what my money won't buy relative to my peers or others who make way more money working my hours and with my ambition, I just often don't even want to think about what I might want because I can't have it anyway and I figure it would just make me miserable thinking about it too much.

Well, tonight, I realized that this can be kind of shitty attitude, sometimes. Because the truth is that it leads me to believe that my priorities of education and ambition and purpose and high-mindedness (and social studies, my subject area) are all something that other people value just as much as I do. When the reality is that most people like what they like, want what they want, and, often enough, I suppose, do what's best, at least after fucking it up some. Myself included. Myself included, that is, except for the fact that I don't necessarily think about what I want to buy or what I want to have or what kind of life I would want, per se, because I spend so much fuckin' time thinking about what everybody else wants and needs.

And I realized after Kevin's and my talk that, though I've given up any martyr complex about this fact of life, I still assume that people want my help, want my guidance, trust my priorities, want what I have to say, think, or offer way more than they really do and that everyone wants in life the things that I want in life. Which is not the case about 90% of the time once you exclude the obvious common aspirations.

Anyway. I'm giving that bullshit up. Including my inclination not to go get the things I want. I'm committed to teaching for a portion of my life (3 more years in Kansas, according to my scholarship obligation). I value the work. I value the kids. Some days I enjoy it. Some days I like the kids. But it's definitely worthy work and then, after my obligation is up, I can go do anything I want. I can go get my Ph.D. I can sign up for military service. And maybe then go sign up for a Ph.D., given the new G.I. Bill provisions, that G.I. Bill being the most important and most clearly purposeful and valuable legislation that has passed I think, in a very, very long time. I'm not someone who likes a lot of government or laws or tax-payer supported largess, as a rule, but that G.I. Bill sounds like a hell of an idea to me, not least of which because I might take advantage of it, if I take that direction in my life, a direction I've talked about for quite awhile, now, and keep getting dissuaded by friends and family. I can go write scripts, or do some acting, or direct or produce some movies. I can start up that singing career that I never took up. I can go write children's books or witty and insightful novels or maybe a newspaper column or whatever my heart may desire, in that regard. I can go get my M.B.A. and make a lot of money, somewhere (I'd probably do investments and try to figure out a strategy to beat Warren Buffet's brilliant investment strategy).

There's a lot of things I could do.

But, for now, I'll teach. And contribute back to every one of those amazing, generous, thoughtful, intelligent, and decent folks who taught me when I was a kid, no matter how much me or Mark Twain or H.L. Mencken or any of the intellectually lazy slobs who forgets and takes for granted everything that their teachers did for them.

I owe a lot of teachers a lot of time and energy that they put into me all these years with not nearly enough thanks and with too much grief and hardship. And so teaching's not a bad way to live my life for the next few years or so.

Anyway, as I was saying, I realized, today, that out of my frustration that I haven't really chosen a life where I can get what I want the way that other similarly ambitious and intelligent friends can, I think I've been imposing myself on kids and friends and family in a way that I know better than to do, haven't really meant to do, truth be told, and which is certainly not my best self.

The best part about this job at Cap City, where frustrations and conflict run high and academic learning can be slow and too often drudgerous, is that I have spent more time with folks who have told me why school really isn't so important to their lives - and not been half-wrong much of the time - than any time in a school setting in my entire life.

It's cured me of my myopia. My tunnel-vision that school and education means more than it does. School means a lot. Don't get me wrong. But this experience and my conversations with folks like Kevin and like a million of my friends - Carson, John, Sara, Melissa, my principal, Dr. Wurtz, our Dean of Students, Ken Brancachio, my cluster advisor and immediate supervisor, Jackie, and a million of my friends, family, colleagues, and people on the street that I meet and talk with - have taught me that there though most people will tell you that school matters and education is important, there are limits to how much it makes any final difference in their lives. They make the final difference in their own lives, is the message I hear from almost everyone I talk with. And I think they're right.

And, in school, my experience as a teacher tells me that each person in the room makes all the difference in the world. And they're all different. And they all matter and make a difference. No bullshit. No narry-phary teacher phony-baloney. The direction that a conversation takes or a class takes is completely dependent on the people involved in the class or discussion, teachers and students alike. If they're shitheads, the class or discussion will take a shithead direction. If they're decent and thoughtful people, the class or discussion will take a decent and thoughtful direction. There are plenty of both in schools and in life. And I like talking with all of them, at least for awhile.

That's the part I love about education. The part where we make contributions that make a difference and improve the lives of ourselves and someone else. What sucks about being a teacher, obviously, is dealing all kinds of sordid bullshit for not nearly enough money.

I don't care how many people say that the pay doesn't matter, it's a crock of shit. Of course teachers think it's bullshit that Bill Gates or Carlos Slim makes so much and they, no matter how good they are, get stuck with a pittance, in comparison. But there's nothing they can do about it and it matters more to them that kids get taught and their needs get met than it does to get all that shit and all those toys that they want just as bad as anyone else, of course. Teachers just get so used to saying they don't care because it really does matter more to them that the kids get taken care of. For most of them, at least. And that's why I admire this crowd, for all their faults. Them, and soldiers, and cops, and firefighters, and all sorts of modestly paid public servants who make our lives safer, more thoughtful, and better, no matter how much we may take that for granted. And until we find a better way to make sure they get paid better, teachers and all those other folks have to live with what we decide to give them. Half of my thinking on education policy comes from a commitment to teachers getting paid and treated as well as possible, for real and not out of some union or district propaganda line.

Anyway. I need to get to bed. I'm exhausted, and I have to wake up early tomorrow.

But what I realized, tonight, is that life and my life, in particular, would make much more sense and would be a lot better experience for me and for everyone else if I would pay more attention, and not less, to what I want and what other people want too. We're all better off that way, I think. All the repressed selfless bullshit aside.

What I could use, right now, is a girlfriend. And a trip to Europe. And a decent new car. And maybe a little house and some kids and a nice, quiet little life. And maybe direct a little film that's close to my heart. And maybe the Dixie Chicks singing at my wedding. Alright, maybe that's going a little far. But if Natalie Maines ever divorces that Adrian Pasdar fellow, she knows where to find me.

Love,
Ben

Self-righteous fools

Most people in politics are self-righteous fools. I'm sure it's curable. But I'm not sure most folks care how badly infected they are. But I'll bet they'd have a law to rid the rest of us of the ailment.

Goes to show...

...that most people are kind of dumb.

The key to falling in love: men seek beauty, women seek cash

Love,
Ben

Learning from our mistakes and making reasonable choices

The heart of liberal - meaning free - democracies and liberal - meaning free - markets as better means of organizing people is not found in an ideology or a party or an institution even one single idea or value. All of these play important parts of democratic life (though ideas, values, and institutions play a far more important role than ideologies or parties, which are generally byproducts of peoples' dysfunctional and foolish propensity for polarization and schism).

The heart of liberal democracies and liberal markets is in the space that they create - through their compassion, their understanding, and their thought and engagement - a stronger propensity than any other form of culture or government or society for self-correction and for making reasonable choices.

That is true for committed liberal peoples as individuals and as cultures. And it is in people - in individuals and cultures - where the heart of democracy and markets are found.

No person or people or society or government is or ever has attained perfection. That illusion and our fetish with it has bedeviled humanity since its inception. And it is the source of much of our hubris, as we perpetually think that we have out-thought or outmaneuvered or controlled for our now and forever limitations of thought and integrity.

Every person or people or society or government is only and can only make progress. We can improve and make choices we think are reasonable. We can learn from our mistakes, benefit or suffer with our choices, and move forward.

We never do any of these things by some uninterrupted march ahead. We do these things by the most important strength of free markets and free democracies and the people that make them up: our ability to self-correct and make new choices.

Self-correction - our forever limited and growing ability to note and correct our mistakes - and our ability to make choices and live with their consequences are the source of our individual, cultural, economic, spiritual, institutional, governmental and all other forms of growth - is the sole source of our genuine progress, as individuals and as cultures, and the most important form of progress in our relationships with one another in any society, nevertheless a democratic or market society.

And the heart of liberal democracies and liberal markets - meaning democracies and markets centered around liberty - is our ability to engage one another, discuss and debate and think with one another, to learn from one another, and to make choices out of our individuals consciences that experiment with and identify better options and which self-correct for our mistakes. The fact of life that advocates of repression never come to terms with is not just their own fallibility, their own weaknesses of integrity and thought, their own pettiness and cruelty, their own failures and cowardice to acknowledge their failures. The fact of life that advocates of repression never come to terms with is the inability of any of us to correct others, at all, without their consciences making the final corrections, making the final choices, for whatever path might need to be taken or avoided, including the discussion about what path that might be.

Self-correction and making choices that have consequences we can live with is the only way we make any real progress.

This is why Communism was such an enormous lie of the 20th century (it is a particularly nefarious lie since liberals of the 20th and 21st century have perpetually rationalized it in the name of their own power). Because it not only undermined the real capacity for self-correction and for choosing our lives that a freer and free democracy and freer and free markets offer, it pretended like government could ever be a substitute for that self-correction or self-direction. Nazism, Fascism, and theocracies were all similar lies on the right. And conservatives similarly defended dictatorships that promised markets or which they believed served their countries' interests or which promoted theocratic or similarly reppressive compromises to free democracies and market.

And what all of these more serious and ugly compromises and mistakes did was to undermine the ability of individuals and cultures to self-correct and to develop stronger and better ideas and a more honest culture to tackle their problems.

They were all based on the more serious mistake and manipulation that power - and the forces of repression - could somehow replace the ability of individuals and democratic peoples to self-correct and to explore newer and better ideas for self-organizing and self-determining their lives, independently and interdependently.

The heart of liberal democracies and markets - meaning societies centered in freedom of thought and conscience and choices - is the space that its people create for themselves and for one another to make mistakes and learn from them, not in some impossible notion they have or can or will ever avoid them.

At its heart, that is what it means to be liberal. Not being a Democrat or to have radical or socialist leanings or even to favor democratic elections.

At its heart, what is means to be liberal is to favor the freedom that people, individuals, cultures, governments, etc., need to make choices and live with them and to make mistakes and learn from them.

And the correction that others might offer can never and will never replace where real progress happens in a liberal democracy - in the corrections that we finally make out of our own consciences.

Everything else is bullshit. And, as much as anything else, what liberal democracies and free markets allow us to do is to keep from stepping in the bullshit. And there is plenty out there.

And when we do, the freest democracies and markets allow us to clean off our boots more readily and reliably than any government or group or individual could ever do for us.

Freedom doesn't guarantee that we make all the right choices. But it offers us the surest paths to make choices for lives that we can love and to learn from the mistakes we make along the way.

Love,
Ben

The logic of repression

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defends the right to question and deny the Holocaust - a freedom I support even as I obviously do not share Ahmadinejad's denial and agnosticism about the fact of the Holocaust - and then articulates the logic of repression.



It is a logic that is shared by most of the West, today, tragically, even as we would not take it to the extreme of the Iranian President. Like President Ahmadinejad, our pride will not allow us to acknowledge that we share far too much of this logic of repression because, like President Ahmadinejad, to acknowledge this fact confronts our pride that we take freedom and free will and its virtues and its better capacity to deal with our vices more seriously than we really do.

Liberal democracies, today, are less repressive, by far, than the dictatorship of Iran. But they, like me, like all of us, still have much to look at in our own hearts before we can say that we have more genuinely lived up to our liberal democratic ideals.

President Ahmadinejad's words just make the logic of repression plain. Too many of the peoples of liberal democracies agree, in part. They just don't take it to this extreme. And what a sad standard that is to hold ourselves to.

This is why we have ideals. And this is why we must take those ideals more seriously.

Love,
Ben

Impecable logic

The Washington Post cracks me up, sometimes.

Violent Crime, a Sticky Issue for White House, Shows Steeper Rise

Their reasoning in this lead article about the violent crime rate increasing two years in a row is the same as their reasoning in recognition of the failure of a policy of increased sanctions for Iran: do more of the same.

In both cases, the Post acknowledges that a policy of increasing punitive efforts has failed. And so, they reason with all the logic they can summon up, we should, of course, continue doing what we are doing.

You gotta love that kind of reasoning. If what I'm doing isn't working, is counterproductive, and is likely contributing to a worsening of my problem, the logical response, of course, is to do more of the same.

Oh, and by the way, it's the Bush Administration's fault. Isn't everything?.

It must be nice being a liberal journalist or liberal activist or, too often, a liberal academic, these days, when every thought that comes out of your head is the right one.

And thank goodness for that. Because the worst thing I can imagine anyone doing in their lives is admitting when they might be wrong. Makes people think you might not have all the answers. And there's nothing worse than people thinking that you don't have all the right answers.

But the beauty of democratic politics is that when your policies fail, you can always blame the other guy.

Until people want things to get better, that is. In which case, we'll have to actually find the policy that works better.

It's amazing how much humanity fucks up and it's always the other guy's fault, isn't it? How often we look back on our past and shake our heads at our foolishness and cruelty and yet noone is ever wrong in their own time. Interesting how that happens, isn't it? In a culture that preaches responsibility, on the issues that matter to us most, noone ever really takes it. Sad. And predictable. When everyone is scared that taking responsibility means taking it on the chin.

We'll keep doing it, of course. And we'll keep getting the same results. Until some day when we start to wisen up and stop pretending that it's all going better than it is. Some people never wisen up. But most people do. And that - our capacity to admit our mistakes and to be forgiven for our bluster and arrogance - is the source of our progress. Not an ideology or a party. What moves us forward is our capacity to own up, to say "I"m sorry," and to forgive ourselves and be forgiven. Progress is not and cannot be when others twist our arms to take responsibility. Progress is when we take responsibility genuinely in our own hearts.

Everything else is bullshit.

Love,
Ben

Finally. Goddamnit.

I finally figured it out. Finally. Goddamnit.

I have these two papers. I was supposed to turn these things in over a year ago. Once I turn these papers in, I submit some paperwork and I'll get my provisional special ed license while I finish up my Master's at Washburn. The school gets reimbursed for my salary and everyone's behind gets covered.

These papers aren't the worst things in the world. In fact, I'm kind of interested in them, when I'm not more interested in a million other more important issues both for my job and for my policy thought and work and just life, generally.

But I have to do them to finish up the provisional license.

And I finally figured out today why I've been avoiding them like the fuckin' plague even though my job depends on them.

Because I fuckin' hate doing things I have to do is the truth. I mean I fuckin' hate to be forced to do things. With the most fevered, angry, passionate hate that you can imagine someone having about anything. Why? Because I love my work. And I want to love my work and my life. And this just fucks all of that up. It's seems like such a stupid and small thing, in retrospect. But I fuckin' hate being made to do things that I'm not convinced are worthwhile (though, like I said, I love my professors and there is much to learn in these papers; they just aren't the most interesting or important thing that I could be doing with my time. And I hate having to do stuff that I'm not sold on. And so I've dragged my feet).

So what's so complicated? Nothing, much, except that I've been trying to pretend all this time that I like the rules or that I like being made or forced to do things that I don't want to do more than I actually do so that I can have and keep a job and so I can get less hassle in my life.

But the truth, down deep, is that no matter how much I pretend, on the surface, that I like the rules or being responsible for things I have to do, I don't. Ever. I like being responsible. But not when I'm forced. It fuckin' drives me crazy, is the truth.

This is how repression fucks everything up. Because people start pretending that they feel a certain way but, underneath it all, they really don't. So they end up lying to themselves and others about wanting something that they don't really want or being something that they really are not. And what they really think or feel or are shows up in their behavior.

And all of the places in my life where I have been frustrated with myself, lately, have centered around this one inescapable reality: I hate following rules just because I have to and not based on some understanding of what the best course of action might be, when it's associated with the rules and when it's not.

And my serious and extreme procrastination has been because of this inescapable reality in my own thoughts and feelings that I haven't openly or more honestly acknowledged to myself and, hence, I have been acting out in my life.

That is how repression works. And that is why it makes us a constant mess of aspirations and realities that are perpetually falling short of our aspirations. Because who we really are sits underneath the surface, no matter how much we pretend to be something else for everyone else or to avoid sanction or to get something we want or any of the millionth ways that everyone - without expception; if you think you are an exception, you are lying to me and to yourself - manipulates and lies in the world, to themselves and to one another, in an attempt to pretend to be something they are not rather than committing themselves, more genuinely, to be the better person or have the better quality they seek.

And, tonight, I have shaken free this demon, it appears. By just acknowledging, openly, to myself and to others, my feelings, so that I can put them behind me and get to work and do what we all have to learn to do: to do those things that we do not want to do but which we have to do, out of circumstance, or that we are made to do, by someone forcing our hands. The latter is what I have been resisting. I'm getting over it, I think. And I have work to do.

But I just wanted to take a moment to celebrate overcoming an issue that has stood in my way for as long as I can remember (that I hope I've overcome, I must qualify).

Finally. Goddamnit.

Thank God for Jamie Cullum and Youtube for broadcasting his live performance. When you see someone love what they do as much as Jamie, you want to know what you have to do to have that kind of feeling in your own life. And I feel inspired, today, to love what I do as much as Jamie clearly loves his really outstanding musical abilities.

Thanks, Jamie.

Love,
Ben

This kid's got talent

Jamie Cullum. Hot damn.



Love,
Ben

The ugliness that America has become

This is an ugly time in America.

All the hate and the self-righteousness and the bullying and the thoughtlessness. It's on the left. And on the right. Liberals who hate conservatives. Conservatives who hate liberals. So they strong-arm and they leverage and they bully and they force each others' hands.

It is the same rationalization used by Al Queda and Hamas and Hezbollah and the Taliban. It's the same rationalization used by Kim Jong Il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Fidel Castro and Hu Jintao.

And, at this political moment, America and the world are using that rationalization to leverage in political disagreements that need more understanding and, instead, create more hate and enmity.

What is so ugly about it is that it is taken so seriously as some kind of substitute for more engaged, substantial debate, discussion, and understanding.

We know we should be behaving better. It's just easier and more momentarily convenient for us to behave with more swagger and bluster than it is to think and engage and understand more.

Bobby Kennedy's words the day after the assassination of Martin Luther King are as appropriate during this period of polarization and political struggle over a difficult and unpopular war as they were during a similar period when he offerred us these words.

"When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation but with conquest; to be subjugated and mastered.

We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community; men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear, only a common desire to retreat from each other, only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this, there are no final answers.

Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is not what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of humane purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.

We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others. We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.

Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanquish it with a program, nor with a resolution.

But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again."

Al Queda to the West: We know how to use force, you fuckin' pussies

Al Quaida: Bounty on Swedish Cartoonist

"'We are calling for the assassination of cartoonist Lars Vilks who dared insult our Prophet, peace be upon him, and we announce a reward during this generous month of Ramadan of $100,000 for the one who kills this criminal,' the transcript on the Web site said.

The al-Qaida leader upped the reward for Vilks' death to $150,000 if he was 'slaughtered like a lamb' and offered $50,000 for the killing of the editor of Nerikes Allehanda, the Swedish paper that printed Vilks' cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad with a dog's body on Aug. 19."

"Al-Baghdadi added in his message that if the 'crusader state of Sweden' didn't apologize, his organization would also attack major companies.

'We know how to force you to retreat and apologize and if you don't, wait for us to strike the economy of your giant companies including Ericsson, Scania, Volvo, Ikea, and Electrolux,' he said."

One thing you gotta say for Al Queda. At least when they say that they believe in a governing philosophy of force, they mean it.

The West needs to shit or get off the pot. Do you believe in force as a governing philosophy or not?

Because this is what it looks like. We should all be proud of ourselves.

Love,
Ben

Some welcome humility

David Ignatius has some welcome humility in today's Washington Post, which is the stance that everyone should be taking, right now, if arrogance wasn't such a popular position, right now.

How This Ends

I have to say, right now, that if Hillary Clinton wins this election on a platform of political cowardice and self-righteous grandstanding, I will lose faith in this system, for awhile.

I've already lost faith, is the truth. Politics is the refuge of the coward. It is the hiding place for every impulse we have to abdicate responsibility. And no matter how much policies and ideologies fail, there are always apologists to keep them in place, no matter how much damage they do.

You know how much I want to vomit every time I hear someone try to vault the totalitarian government of China to superpower status out of their cowardice toward aggressive leftist political impulses, right now? You know who says shit like "China is the most serious challenger to American power"?

Cowards. People who don't know what it's like to lose their lives or their freedom challenging a totalitarian dictatorship.

And on behalf of every democracy activist in China who has lost their lives or freedom and every Iraqi who has lost their lives in the name of freedom from their totalitarian leader, I just want to offer a big "fuck you" to every liberal activist taking up for those dictators in the name of their own domestic hegemony.

People like these Iraqis:

"Petraeus and his team understand, too, that this war is about people -- and helping them one by one to break the cycle of intimidation. When I asked Col. H.R. McMaster, a key Petraeus adviser, to name a turning point in Anbar, he cited the day in February when al-Qaeda deposited at a Ramadi hospital an ice chest containing the severed heads of the children of several sheiks who had been cooperating with the United States. Rather than submitting to this barbarous act, the enraged sheiks deepened their alliance with the U.S. military."

And on behalf of those Iraqis, who have suffered unspeakable tragedy in the name of having some sort of democratic alternative to the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and the barbarous violence of Al Queda, I say to those liberal activists and the Democratic Party, right now, who are in overdrive in their efforts to undermine the defense of such people, congratulations on your domestic political victories you selfish, cynical fuckheads.

Too much cock-sure and bullying ideologists in the world, today. Some of them brutal and deadly.

It's nice to read a little humility every now and then.

Love,
Ben

A touch of sanity

Every once in a blue moon, I read some sanity on criminal justice policy.

The Economist, this week, has one those of those moments.

Lock up your sons and daughters

"The figures on the under-tens, unearthed by the BBC, have led some to call for the age of criminal responsibility to be lowered in order to let the little monsters feel the force of the law. In fact this age is already near the bottom in Britain. Most of Europe does not prosecute offenders younger than 14 to 16, and elsewhere in the world the watershed comes as late as 18. Scotland's limit is just eight years old, but its system means that few under-16s face court anyway.

For those whose houses have been daubed with graffiti, the age for prosecution cannot be too low. But hawks should beware. 'A court appearance can, in certain cases, confirm an adolescent's deviant identity both in their own eyes and those of others,' argues Rob Allen, a former member of the Youth Justice Board (YJB). Research from Edinburgh University found that children who had contact with a Children's Hearing—Scotland's version of a youth court—were three times more likely to be convicted as adults than young offenders who had not. 'The deeper you get pulled into the system, the worse the outcome,' says Lesley McAra, one of the study's directors. Solving problems informally is more effective, she says."

Makes me think that, perhaps, the world has not gone completely around the bend.

Love,
Ben

Who me? Couldn't be.

I have to say, the more Hillary and Obama pressure for withdrawal, the better Rudy looks as a candidate. When you run to your left during an election year, you better hope the electorate is running with you. But the most recent poll I just saw on the war - with stronger support for sticking it out - indicates that perhaps the Democrats are overreaching.

Either way, they don't deserve the power.

And I'd rather deserve the power and not get it then not deserve it and somehow get your grimy, power-hungry little hands on it anyway.

I am just going on record to say that once this poor, pathetic, small-minded, power-hungry little political period is over with - and I would be willing to put up a substantial amount of money with a 50-years-out D-Day on such a bet, for anyone willing to take me up on it, that this period will be looked back upon with wonder at what foolish and stupid ideas can animate our lives - that we will look back very much like imperialist nations of the West look back at their activities before and after World War I and before and after World War II and wonder how much senseless and destructive tragedy we must suffer before we face our failures, all of us, with no scapegoats or exceptions on that one, as political leaders and as people.

In the meantime, I have zero respect for the Democratic party, at this point. Anytime you bully on an important issue where you are wrong or where you cannot put up the arguments to convince others that you are right, you lose my respect and my vote. And, more importantly, you lose any reason to trust your ability to hold power.

This incredible race to the bottom of reasonable democratic discussion that has gone on in the last 6-7 years will:

1) Backfire on everyone who engages in it. Mark my words. Already happened to the President. Democrats are just waiting to fuck this one up to learn the lesson, apparently.

2) Regardless, it means that you don't deserve the power. And there is nothing more stomach-turning in the world, as far as I am concerned, than the arrogance attached to winning power at all costs when you have not earned it.

Democrats need a major humbling, right now. And I will do everything in my power to offer it to them.

In the meantime, my country's political leadership has gone horribly wrong. I can only hope that the tragedy will be as minimal as possible for our hubris.

When all those people die in Iraq once we pull out precipitously, I assume Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton will be taking responsibility. Just like Democrats have taken responsibility for failed public schools, failed poverty policy, failed policies of protectionism and government intervention in the economy, and every other failed liberal political, economic, and social policy of the 20th century that so many are now pretending still form the core of a coherent ideology.

It's the era of responsibility. Which literally translates, "Who me? Couldn't be."

Why would we ever imagine that our children would follow any other footsteps but our own?

Love,
Ben

Exactly

The Bottom-Up Partition

"All of this is good news for Sen. Joseph Biden and other Democrats who have been proposing a "soft partition" of Iraq for some time. But the problem with Biden's strategy is that it calls for the United States to join with an international coalition in essentially forcing the scheme on Iraqis. The events of the past year have demonstrated, again, that Iraqis won't respond to guidelines and timetables drawn up in Washington or at the United Nations. Slowly and very painfully, they are moving toward a new political order. But they will do it -- they have to do it -- on their own time."

And so will be the emerging political order in Iraq, in the United States, and in the international community. The foolish agents of forced order be damned.

Love,
Ben

Integrity

The last 2-3 weekends have involved me working on getting more work done and facing up to the fact that the consequences I have dealt with in my life are my own doing and that I have an integrity problem that needs addressing.

I don't care about what I think or say, anymore. I only care about what I do.

And I have a lot to do to get my life in order.

Love,
Ben

Taking responsibility for my mistakes of integrity

I've been facing some really difficult truths about my failures and failures of integrity over the last 5 years and, really, the last 18 years. I am a smart kid who has been unreliable about turning in work and avoided finishing it and turning it in on time. I have avoided work when I felt overwhelmed with work, when it seemed boring or inconsequential, and for all kinds of reasons that have left me unreliable to others. I've had some serious matters of integrity that I have fallen short on in the last 10 years or so that I have failed to take full responsibility for and their consequences in my life.

I lost a relationship and then a friendship that really mattered to me enormously. I left a graduate program and lost my place in that program and that department. I lost my first teaching job over this. And now I am facing up more fully to my responsibility in all of this.

Losing the relationship was the most painful and difficult. And I owe apologies to Brandi, to my professors, to my administrators at my last teaching job, and to everyone that I have let down during this period and whom I have talked badly of while I avoided facing my responsibility. I have worked very hard to face up to my failures and to be more reliable and bring more integrity to my work and my life. But I have fallen short in some very serious ways, at times, that I am responsible for and that I am working to account for.

It is very painful to face that the failures you have experienced in your life are your own. I hope and have faith that it is cleansing as well.

I'm really disappointed with myself, tonight. And if I could go back to that 15, 16, 17, 18 year old kid as he started down this road of making excuses for why he wasn't reliable in getting work turned in, I would tell him, "Stop. Leave the excuses elsewhere. Just face up and learn the lessons."

I've always feared that I was inferior to others or that I had an inferior upbringing or inferior background for being successful in school and in life. There is probably truth to all of that, in retrospect. That's a hard thing to face. That, as much as it is hard to admit, I probably do come from inferior stock, in many ways. But my expectations are high, no matter where I come from. And all I can do is take responsibility for it and keep working to build more integrity into my life.

At some point, I had to face up to the fact that in the lives of most people, in free societies, at least, we usually get what we deserve, is the truth. Or at least we get what we earn. I've just been defensive about facing that fact and making amends.

I have a father of a student I am responsible for who is not really letting his son be responsible for his own behavior. The kid is acting terribly and dad just can't let him take responsibility for it and is always trying to get his son off the hook. It looks foolish to me. And, now, I completely understand what that feels like from the other side of that. How hard and painful it is to face up when you are acting foolish and you just don't see it. And why it is still so important to take responsibility.

I have looked enormously foolish to people in my life in the last 6 years, at least, as I've dealt with the most serious consequences of my behavior and for the last 16 years, for those who have known my tendency to avoid turning work in.

I have a long road ahead of me to make good.

And it starts with me taking this responsibility.

Love,
Ben

You know what the biggest casualty of this period is?

Trust.

I don't trust anyone, anymore, during this period.

Anyone, really. Anyone at all, completely.

How exactly do you inspire people to be teachers or cops or firefighters or political leaders when noone trusts anyone else?

How exactly is that a better society? How exactly is that progress? How exactly is that the best that we all have to offer?

It's not, clearly, is the truth. We are bullshitting ourselves and one another when we pretend it is.

It's so sad to have so many relationships with adults that are one long matter of bullshitting one another that we are better than we are. And there is not a single person that I have met, read, or have any familiarity with who could possibly be excluded from that description of so many of the relationships between people that all pretend to be something more real or honest or trusting or trustworthy than they really are.

That's why, when push comes to shove, I trust, more, my younger friends, around my age, than my older friends, around my parents' age. Because, when push comes to shove, I can be more honest, more myself, and I can trust, more, people of my own age than all of the lying and bullshitting of people older than us.

Hillary Clinton represents everything that is wrong with that era of liberal. Rudy Giuliani is a somewhat better conservative (and at least I know he'll stick with the war). Barak Obama isn't heaven on earth, that's for sure. But his openness about his drug use is an important step forward.

And I could never really ever trust anyone who I can't be myself with ever.

I wouldn't trust any of those folks, for real, by that standard, is the truth. I wouldn't trust most people, for real, by that standard, is the truth. And Barak's candidacy, as much as I am leaning towards Rudy Giuliani, represents a direction that young people will be taking whether Hillary Clinton or Rudy Giuliani or Joe Nye or Francis Fukuyama like it or not. I'm growing up, enough, to understand why Francis Fukuyama and Joe Nye don't understand this trend, well enough, and why they both foolishly think that their generation somehow hit upon that one final period of liberalization among liberal democracies (Hubris, the Greeks whisper to us, hubris). Because they and older people of all stripes want young people my age and younger to learn our limits. But what our parents' generation is still unclear about, at their advanced age, is their own limits. And, specifically, the limits to their own power to teach that lesson. And my generation will learn those limits with greater freedom, as a rule, whether my parents' generation likes that fact of life or not.

We appreciate the shoulders we stand on.

But if we want a world where people trust their government and one another, better, we will need to do so because we have earned that trust, not because we've tried and failed to bully our way to a destination that bullying cannot take us.

Love,
Ben

Why I can't identify as a political liberal anymore

For most of my young and adult life, I have identified as a political liberal. My family were peace activists and poverty lobbyists, and we attended a loving little liberal church, Unity Church, in Wichita, Kansas for most of my childhood. I helped lead protests of the B-2 bomber when I was a kid. We attended yearly peace rallies, World Instant of Cooperation, every New Years' Day, when I was growing up. I developed much of my interest in politics by our lobbying activities in grassroots groups like RESULTS International, by far the best and highest purpose political group I have ever belonged to.

But, today, sadly, I cannot identify as a political liberal, anymore, as they currently stand. Because that kind of liberal - a Democrat, someone who might sympathize with radicals, someone who might be a closet socialist or an open socialist - is not only wrong on so many important policy matters - believing that people are not or should not be responsible for more in their lives as they are or should or that government responsibility for such matters would be just as good or better than people being responsible for such issues on their own or with the help of family or non-profits or more decentralized routes to equity or care - they are not only subject to the temptations of power and pride, like any person or group or member of any ideology, but they are now synonymous in my mind with "bully".

Liberals are bullies.

Or at least they have become bullies during this political period. They will make excuses for it. They will rationalize the hypocrisy of both being a bully and trying to face up to bullying in the schoolyard and the rest of the world. They will pretend that it is all for the greater good. Or whatever millionth jaded excuse they have for being such pricks.

But the bottom-line is that they have become bullies.

And I just could never ever identify with such bullshit. It's dishonest. It's wrong. It's ugly. And it has convinced me that, at bottom, their ideas have become stagnant and bankrupt.

Because people with better ideas don't have to bully.

The degree to which we don't rely on ideas, generally, is the degree to which we are manipulative pricks in the world.

And I just could never, ever, in a million years, look up to or be inspired by such complete bullshit. It's one long lie. And I want nothing to do with it anymore.

Conservativism and liberalism both have stronger, more coherent, more internally consistent and more realistic strains to them. They both involve more freedom, more decency, more humanity, more compassion and other liberal democratic virtues. The last 7 years has been one long regression and backwards movement on those virtues - in government, in much of the media, in the business world, and even in too much of academia, sadly, in all the places where pressure, manipulation, propaganda, strong-arming, and other forms of aggression are rationalized for any and every purpose - as we sink lower and lower into the bullshit pretending like our lies and illusions are really more truth or wisdom than they really are, while being progressive in other ways - in academia, largely, in Hollywood and in the entertainment industry, of course (John Stewart and Stephen Colbert have done more to influence a younger generation, politically, that Congress and the President could never touch) and among media and political and everyday people and all those places in the culture where freedom has been expanded, broadly. But it's the bullshit and the lying that holds us back.

That's why the Nazis and Communists were able to do what they were able to do for so long. Because they enforced measures that kept people mired in the bullshit for long enough for them to make the bullshit look more like honest governance and honest life than it really was. They were masters at making the lies look more honest than they were because people were so confused, all the time, about what a more honest reality looked like because there was little room to be honest about that reality.

And that is the direction that democratic countries, including the United States, have taken in the last 7 years or so.

Democratic cultures have always had this more dishonest fact of their existence. But they have been more honest because there has been more freedom and room for them to be honest than other cultures, including about what shitheads they were and are to one another.

And that's why I'm so sure that this period will pass. Because liberal democratic cultures have, and America, specifically, has always transcended such periods after a time - the era of Prohibition in America and in most liberal democratic countries stands out prominently in my mind, on this count, right now, as the issues of drug prohibition so parallel that period and its ills - and because such periods constantly have people mired in the bullshit. And eventually people want something more honest. And they must become more honest if they are going to avoid the mistakes they make when they are not so honest.

Well, I can't honestly say that I could call myself a political liberal anymore - I am a "small l", "small d" liberal democrat, meaning someone who values both the institutions and the values that make up a culture that is free and democratic, even as those institutions are now and perpetually flawed and in need of improvement and correction, even as they perpetually resist such improvement and correction - because to be politically liberal in 21st century America, like too often to be conservative in 21st century America, means to be a bully. And I just can't be a bully and pretend otherwise.

Most people have joined this crowd.

And I want nothing to do with it. And I don't give a shit what ideology it comes from. And I don't care if it crosses ideology. And I don't care if it crosses culture. And I could give two shits about whether the whole fuckin' world decided that being bullies was ok or killing Jews was ok or enslaving Africans was ok or whatever the fuck bullshit rationalizations that people have perpetually had for what fuckin' pricks they are.

I don't give a shit.

I want nothing to do with it.

And the whole lot of folks who have chosen bullying over thinking can go to hell, as far as I'm concerned. And once the gas runs out on this bullshit - which it will, mark my words, because people eventually get tired of the bullshit - then people can either say they are sorry or they can find some genuine remorse in their own heart. But there will never be a time when either I will treat it like it's ok or it will ever really be ok. It will always be bullshit, it doesn't matter how people try to paint it.

Nazism and the Holocaust were ugly and bullshit no matter how many people they tried to bully into going along.

And this works the same way, and I don't give a shit how people might pretend otherwise.

Eventually, no matter how intimidating someone or something might seem, if it's bullshit - if it's premised on lies, as this period is - it will fall apart. The veneer always comes down. Always. It cannot maintain itself. Because anything based on lies cannot sustain a culture or a people. People need honest answers and solutions to their problems. No amount of bullshit could ever substitute. I don't care how much people try to bullshit on that one.

So political liberalism and political conservativism, as far as I'm concerned, are ideologies with some decent ideas but which will mean nothing the more they get lost in their own bullshit and the more detached they become from the honest realities of peoples' lives. Despite all the propaganda to the contrary - George Orwell would have a fuckin' field day with this godforesaken, propaganda-soaked, bullshit political period - neither party or ideology either has a monopoly nor even a really strong grip on the everyday realities of peoples' lives in America, in liberal democracies, or anywhere in the world.

Luckily liberal democracy offers us the tools to dig ourselves out of this mess.

But it's a mess. That's for sure. And liberals and conservatives and everyone in between have a lot to answer for honestly about what bullshit they have enforced on the peoples of liberal democracies. And we will account for it. If we care at all about being more honest.

Love,
Ben

Why being a prick doesn't pay

Tonight, after a long week of soul searching, I've finally found my bottom-line for why I'm sure I'm right about my work and why most people, today, are just fuckin' pricks.

The bet that the pricks amongst us are making is that future generations will look back and thank them for being such fuckin' pricks because otherwise the world would be "in a right bloody mess," as Monty Python would say.

And here's the bottom line on this one:

Do you really believe that future generations will define the progress of our culture by how "tough" we got with one another?

Really?

Think about that one again.

Really?

There is definitely a pretension in our culture and in liberal democratic cultures, generally, that tough means more than it does. It's the same pride that leads Iran to execute homosexuals and China to kill political protesters.

But, no matter what happens, say, in the next 50 years in those countries...

Do you really believe that any of those cultures or our own will define their progress by all these brutal realities?

Do you really think they could lie to themselves and one another into perpetuity with such ugliness and really ever honestly define it as progress?

No. Obviously not. The only people who believe that bullshit are people who have lost touch with more obvious human realities, so lost are they in their rationalizations for what pricks they are.

And those cultures do not progress. Not for real. The Soviet Union could call whatever they were doing whatever they wanted to, but it was perfectly obvious to anyone who had experienced real progress that theirs was not a progressive society and that became perfectly obvious to Russian citizens once they could see the outside world.

And our society and every society works the same way.

People will only be pricks for so long until it becomes obvious that it's fucking up their lives.

And when they don't face up, the reality of their prickishness follows them until they do.

That's a law of nature, not a law of man.

Do you really believe, knowing what we know about the history of humanity, that future generations will define their progress by what pricks they are?

Give me a fuckin' break. You have to be deluded to think that and keep thinking it despite all of the failure of the last decade.

Eventually, being a prick catches up to you. It just does. It's catching up with America, right now, that's for sure.

The question is not whether America or the world will face this. The question is when.

Do you really think that history will take any other direction?

Go look your mother in the eye and tell her that.

Or better yet, don't, and see what a fuckin' mess you make of your life and probably the lives of everyone you know until you figure out different.

But you can bet comfortably that people get more decent, over time. It's the one guarantee I can make about people. They may be dicks for a time. But they get better over the long haul. You can take that to the bank.

You really think that future generations will define progress by being a prick?

Good fuckin' luck, dick. You're gonna need it.

Love,
Ben

Sobriety

This weekend has been a good, but tough weekend. I've been facing flaws in my integrity this weekend, particularly my failures around follow-through on work and goals. I've gotten infinitely better in the last year or so. But I also have a lot of work to do to offer the kind of integrity to my efforts and to others that they deserve.

Warren Buffet's comments in the video discussion I watched, today, that he had with MBA students at the University of Florida struck a nerve. He's right. Integrity matters more than intelligence. Intelligence has been my strength. So my pride has been that intelligence mattered more than integrity or anything else. I'm wrong about that.

I realized, today, that Buffet didn't make his money because he was the smartest man in the business (though he is brilliant, if you ever get a chance to read him or hear him speak). What Buffet has that the business world values and rewards is integrity. He's honest. He's a man of his word. He's someone you can trust. He's brilliant too. But it's his integrity that people value. I want that for myself. I don't have it like Warren Buffet. And want it like he has it and then some.

So I'll be working on that. I got clear about my need to be more organized and I am an organized fool, this year, after a year of working on it. And I assume the same will work for my dependability and follow-through within a year. We'll see where I'm at within a week.

But, today, something I can be very proud of myself for that I carry with me that has become a strength that has kind of snuck up on me has been sobriety.

I was watching some Fox News panel clips on Youtube, today (I see almost nothing live, anymore, these days), with some commentators that I respect - Bill Kristol, Juan Williams, Marra Liasson, Brit Hume, and (more reluctantly) Fred Barnes - and I was just noticing that I react to political conversations without really almost any recognizable partisan impulse anymore (I'm fairly independent, these days; I really don't identify ideologically, anymore, at this point).

I just operate in my life, including in my political outlook, with more substantial sobriety than I have in the past, much more than I conventionally see among partisans, which is most participants in politics, sadly and foolishly. The failure of more genuine sobriety in political discussions and debates, right now, in the political arena, proper, is its most serious failure, I think. It means a lot of passion, even amongst the most intelligent observers, obstructing more honest and empirical evaluations of public policy. I bring a lot of passion and intensity to my work. But somehow that has resulted in a more sober outlook on politics and life for me, these days, I assume because more rigorous empirical accounting for life brings more sobriety to one's outlook, even if much intensity is originally involved with bringing such rigor.

Anyway, I'm proud of this fact of my maturity, at this point in my life. I have many flaws and shortcomings. And it is nice to have sobriety amongst my strengths, these days. It gives me more confidence in my own outlook.

And it is nice to reconcile a sober outlook with the passion that I bring to all of my work and my life and that I just couldn't live without in my life, especially as I leave myself open to a soul-mate. I'm kind of a romantic, really. And the idea that someone had to be a cold-hearted, cold-blooded observer to be a decent scholar or have a more realistic outlook on the world has just never appealed to me. It has always seemed kind of pretensious, and snotty, and cold.

I'm none of those things. And have no interest in being any of those things.

And it soothes my heart to think that decent people like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates top the markets in the U.S. with their own sober and yet warm, caring outlooks on the world. Sober doesn't mean being a dick. It just means being honest. And the truth is that being a dick, in honest terms, means not giving enough of a shit about your neighbor. It's nice to know that people who do give a shit about their neighbor are rewarded for it in the market and in life, I think.

I better get to bed. A new day and a new integrity awaits me tomorrow. I have work to do to earn peoples' confidence, especially my own.

Love,
Ben

I feel fuckin' stupid

I watched this Warren Buffet MBA discussion on Youtube, today, and it was really good for me, largely because Warren is really good at reminding people that most of the important things in life and investing are not really that complicated. And it speaks well to my pride in my intellect and what it can and cannot do for me.

And after I was done listening to a brilliant presentation, I felt really stupid. Not because Warren is so much more brilliant at allocating capital and other financial matters, which he clearly is. I felt stupid because him talking about investing and life in such down to earth terms reminded me that I have this huge flaw that is really simple but which for much of my adult life I have made more complicated than it really is. I can hardly believe that I'm about to admit it in public, because it really does go to my integrity and it's not positive.

I've spent the last year or so getting on top of being much more organized. And I am happy to say that I have done very well in that department. Much better than many of my colleagues and light-years ahead of last year.

But my still remaining most important integrity flaw (I'm sure I have many, but this is the one that is most glaring, right now) that I am embarrassed to admit is follow-through. I have so many good intentions. But often because I try to do too much, I end up falling through a lot. It got really bad at the end of the summer as I noticed it but was still pretty sensitive and defensive about it. And every new habit that I've ever wanted to learn, I found it easier to allow myself to indulge the bad habit, for awhile, before I took on the good habit and it seemed to help me let my defenses down. Today, I decided that I am tired of learning everything by hard knocks, which is what such a strategy offered me. But it worked better than anything I had tried before, so I've gone with it.

But the truth is that follow-through is not really that complicated. It does involve paring down your commitments to what you can actually do in a limited period of time. But after that, it's just doing the work. And I've often resisted and procrastinated and otherwise been kind of your average or below average fool on this count.

And tonight I feel stupid about it. Because it's kind of fucked up my life. I lost a lot of important stuff in my life over this. A relationship. A stipend. A job. The confidence of some friends and family, too, I imagine. I haven't meant to be a dick. I've just been kind of defensive about it and I'm always looking for my intellect to provide some deep, important insight to get me out of any problem, because my pride tells me that intellect matters most.

But Warren was right, today. Intellect doesn't matter most. Integrity matters most. I've just been proud about this because it's a weakness of mine and intellect is a strength. But Warren is right. Intellect is probably less important. It doesn't have to be a self-righteous commitment to integrity any more than it has to be a self-righteous commitment to intellect. That's why Warren's a good teacher on this. Because he has full confidence that anyone can take up whatever positive quality they might need to and let go of any negative quality they might need to and it doesn't have to involve a life full of worry and regret.

But regret I still have. I lost the stuff that mattered most to me over this. My relationship with Brandi and my relationship with some professors that I learned a lot from and cared a lot about. And I don't like letting people down.

I don't know. I just feel kind of stupid over it.

I probably lost Brandi to a better guy, is the truth. I've just been so defensive about my own faults. And that makes me feel stupidest of all.

Anyway. I guess it's a way that I can relate with my kids. But, really, I just want to get over it and be a better man without all of the self-righteous or defensive hubbub that goes with that.

I'm tired of learning all my lessons the hard way. I don't know why I get so defensive, but I do. I imagine because the defenses have been some kind of poor substitute for the real thing.

All I know is that I want more than anything to be the best I can be and the best, if possible, at what I do, and be the best man I can possibly be. And I'm know I'm tired of this shit clogging all that up.

And I feel really fuckin' stupid about this. I've spent all weekend on this flaw. It's an important flaw to face. I'm proud that I'm beginning to face it soberly. I'm disappointed that it has taken so long to do so. But such is life.

You always know a flaw of integrity, but you never feel good as long as it's there. I've had many in my life. Too many. And the only answer is to just note it, accept it, correct it, and move on. Because the defense will never substitute for the real deal. Ever.

Here's to facing our flaws honestly. And here's to a little human kindness and confidence in our ability to overcome our flaws being the surest route to helping us to face up.

Thanks, Warren.

Love,
Ben

Learning lessons the hard way

It is occurring to me, today, that I have been foolishly learning so many of my lessons the hard way, these days.

So many things that I have known to do but which I have stubbornly chose to learn by trial and error rather than trust received wisdom. It's so foolish, when I've thought about it, today. It is also the way that elders told me I would learn lessons when I was much younger. They were right.

And I am tired of learning lessons the hard way. Now, as a teacher, I watch so many kids live life this way. It is a sad and foolish way to live that sometimes has serious and accumulated consequences, over time (and undoubtedly will for me, as well).

Jesus was right. It is so easy to see that tendency in kids or others. It is much more difficult to see it in ourselves.

Up until I was 29 and in the 4th year of my Ph.D. program in special education policy, I trusted teachers and adults to guide me, better. But then they started to strong-arm me, more, and their clear flaws and shortcomings and failures and blindspots became all the more magnified for me. And I stopped trusting adults I had trusted fairly readily, up until that point.

And for 5 years since I left that program, I have had my defenses up, waiting for yet one more older person to try to strong-arm me and for me to resist their efforts in any way I could.

And as a teacher, I watch my students do it with me, even when they clearly need the discipline or self-discipline. And I understand it, better, from the other side of that table.

I guess we all have to foolishly learn many of our lessons the hard way before we learn them at all. George Bush and Hillary Clinton being no exceptions to that rule.

I am just tired of learning lessons the hard way. I want to learn the easy way, which is to accept received wisdom that I know to be genuinely wise.

For me, that means making choices I know are better choices and cutting out the bullshit optioning for what I know are bad choices.

And as a teacher, that means letting my students make choices and to stop giving them reasons to have their defenses up to keep adults at bay.

I guess we all have to learn lessons the hard way. But it sure it nicer when we learn lessons the easier way.

Love,
Ben

Putting leadership into perspective

This has been a really cowardly period for leadership.

Political or otherwise, leadership in America, and in the world at-large, as well, these last 7 years or so has been pretty shitty.

It's not George Bush. It's all of us. Our most cowardly and fearful and insecure instincts have led us this period. And those who might lead otherwise have been too scared to take us in a better direction. We have had much cynical politics and very little genuine political leadership during this period. Hillary Clinton represents every worst instinct, in this regard, which is why I am so unenamoured with her. She's avoided the toughest calls, like the war in Iraq, then played victim - "George Bush misled me and the American public about WMD's"; any politician who believes a sitting President that blithely should not hold office - and still, today, panders to public reaction - a speedy withdrawal - with very little vision or leadership offered. She is not alone. And George Bush has been the poster child for this same pandering on the right (What was the last free trade or balanced budget cause that George Bush took up during either of his terms? I bet you could name the last anti-gay rights cause he took up).

In the face of all that cowardice and the cowardice of most people as they have faced very scary issues like terrorism, the greater visibility and occurrence of more shocking crimes like child sex crimes and the spike in violent and other crimes, generally, and a war in Iraq that has taken the lives of many of their family members and neighbors, more genuine and confident leadership has been difficult, but that is also when it is most needed.

And all of the indicators point in bad directions, right now, no matter how much we might try to bullshit otherwise.

The war in Iraq and our military efforts in Afghanistan are both going badly, even as I believe that we owe a commitment to security for Iraqis and Afghanis until they are able to take charge of that responsibility themselves and make clear to us that they are ready for us to leave (which we should do as soon as we have a clear indication that this is what their populations genuinely want and need, I believe). A recent Foreign Policy index of the view of a broad collection of American foreign policy experts reinforces my view that terrorism, generally, has likely been strengthened since 9/11, largely because of the missteps of Americans and more powerful, democratic countries have made in dealing with the Arab and Muslim world which nurtures so much international terrorism and, in my estimation, the more repressive directions that liberal and illiberal countries alike have taken in the last few years which have, generally, both prompted greater resolve amongst terrorist groups and given more public grievances for terrorists to draw upon to rationalize their bloody practices. And crime and violent crime have seen spikes in the last 2 years in the United States, despite tougher and more exacting law enforcement measures.

In the face of all of that, it is really difficult to be honest with people in a way that more honestly faces such failures and mistakes and leads us in a better direction.

People are easily scared, generally. And they have a hard time distinguishing between their fears and their more aggressive reactions to those fears and more realistic accounts of the world and reasonable responses.

That has always been the case. That is the long history of humanity and its foolishness in dealing with almost literally every important moral or political or social issue it has faced. People get afraid. They react aggressively and repressively. Their efforts fail and hurt many people, tragically. And only much later do they face that persistent failure.

And what has always blocked up our ability to discuss and think about and reassess those failures and mistakes that we make as societies is the fear and aggression and repression shutting down the conversation and more reasonable assessments of the threats we face.

It also makes cowards of us and of our political and community leaders. And sadly, in the case of Nazism and Fascism and Soviet or Chinese or Cuban Communism, it makes cowards of a population, so much so that tragedy becomes the norm and courage is all too easily rebutted with force.

Democracies are forever subject to this tendency, as well, sadly. But they allow more space, freedom, choice, and opportunity for criticism, engagement, learning, and correction. That is their saving grace. There is no perfect world. There is only this all-too-real world with its all-too-real failings.

That is why I identify with H.L. Mencken's bitterness with average people, even as I do not share it (or at least I share it for as little time as I possibly can as I work to let it go). And the fact that people eventually come around and the fact that it is a function of their ignorance and their need to learn the important lessons the hard way as much as by their intellect is why I identify more with Mark Twain.

Average people are cowards, is the truth. Even most extraordinary people are cowards, generally, in some respect, I think, given my observations of my own instincts as much as the instincts of those who I have generally admired in a more unqualified way before this political period.

But the truth is that amidst all that fear and aggression and our rallying to cheerlead our more repressive instincts, it is very difficult to offer greater leadership. It is always difficult to offer people leadership that they need but do not want. It is the most difficult fact of being a teacher or a parent. And it involves big stakes for politicians and public servants and civic-minded people alike. Because people are manipulative and coldhearted pricks, much of the time, is the truth. Another name for that tendency is political pressure.

It is always much easier to follow the crowd than it is to think independently. And sometimes it can be somewhat dangerous, or at least offer harsh and often unfair consequences, to do so out loud.

Genuine leadership is difficult to offer when aggression is romanticized and has captured the imagination of people, especially as it has done so for the greatest length of human history, much more than intelligence, by far, even as intelligence has always offered the substantial light out of humanity's troubles for the entirety of its history. More people identify as tough than intelligent, sadly. And thus our romance with our basest and most destructive and self-destructive impulse.

Somehow, we need more room for us to learn how to handle that instinct. It cannot be effectively repressed. And trying to do so only leads to more dishonesty - with ourselves as much as with one another - and more confusion and misunderstanding. We end up constantly exacting our aggression in other ways - like persistently trying to coerce or strong-arm one another, for instance - instead of facing, honestly, its consequences in our lives.

And the fact that we do so in every institution - in schools and universities, in churches, in legislatures, in courtrooms, in museums and libraries; everywhere where respectable people congregate - means that we both try and fail to repress those more honest and innocuous qualities about us that express our truer selves as much as our uglier but more honest qualities and that we alienate the very people that we need to touch with those institutions to effect the kinds of changes we would like to see those institutions effect, namely ourselves. All of us end up lying about who we really are, hiding our truer selves so that we can cover what is unattractive about us and look better than we really are.

And we make so difficult that ability and willingness by people to bring a more honest accounting of life to light because we are constantly reacting and threatening to react in ways that are ugly and mean-spirited.

And no matter how much it ruins things, noone ever takes responsibility for that persistent fact of life.

Ever.

Because the cowards who keep it in place are too cowardly to face its failure. And those who disagree with more repressive measures are too afraid to challenge it openly, for fear of having aggression meted out to them.

So it fails and fails and fails. And noone ever takes responsibility.

And the whole thing, remember, is premised on the idea of people needing to take more responsibility.

And it fails and it fails and it fails. And noone ever takes responsibility.

And then its proponents remind us that they are trying to promote responsibility.

And then it fails and it fails and it fails. And noone takes responsibility.

And I guess that this is the future of humanity, is what I'm told. This is where progress lies. In all that lying and failure and noone taking responsibility. That's the lie that captured the imagination of so much of the world during the 20th century and lead to the deaths and imprisonment and misery for much of the world's population for much of that century.

I don't know why George Orwell and I didn't go into banking. It's more lucrative. And most people don't listen to or read the warnings, anyway. And we certainly never seem to learn the lessons.

Because we're kind of dumb. And cowardly. And we would rather believe a lie that sounds convenient than a truth that is hard to face.

All of us. Great and small.

And, right now, in this particular moment, most of us are small.

Here's to greatness. It's within all of us. Even as most of us choose to be small.

Love,
Ben