The silver lining in this very dark cloud

The one silver lining in this very dark cloud of hositility and aggression in the political and market and cultural environment, right now, is that it could not be any more obvious, at this point, I don't think, just how useless all this aggression is and has been. It could not be any clearer, I don't think, just how blind this alley is and that there is no genuine progress in this direction.

At the end of all of this, we must ask ourselves, "Why?"

I'm sure we'll have answers. Lots of self-righteous, self-glorifying answers that make us look like we had more real answers than we really did. And all of this hostility and ugly treatment of people, in the meantime. And, sadly, all for naught.

People, like governments, do all the wrong things before they get to the right ones. Freedom, including the freedom to be hostile and aggressive and intimidate the freedoms of others from any useful enjoyment, and experience gives us an opportunity to learn. And, in this case, it means learning just how big of dicks we can really be. The answer is that our potential as dicks truly is endless. Hitler, Stalin, Mao. That is why that rationalization is so ugly. Because we can always point to someone, somewhere who has been more ugly, more extreme than we are being to justify our own ugliness. I wonder how far we will have to go down this road of hostility and aggression before we face ourselves.

But the one really serious silver lining is that we can't keep doing it forever. Eventually we will have to face up. Because the consequences just get more and more obvious from here on out.

Love,
Ben

Learning and education are what you make of them, always

I take it back. When I was still feeling really hurt about being fired from Eisenhower I said that it is was school of last resort and that I wouldn't send my own kids there. I take that back. I was just feeling hurt. I love Eisenhower and everyone there. I love all of my friends, no matter how much they've hurt me. When they've ignored me when I've been clear that they were hurting me, that has been the most serious rupture in our relationship. Trust, as it turns out, is a two way street. It's about being trustworthy with people we care about. But it's also about having plenty of room to screw up and to learn about how to be more of what each of us needs. And that goes for everyone, including those who hurt and intimidate others intentionally as a strategy for compelling some behavior that we want.

What I thought as a kid is still true, I'm convinced. You can get a great education anywhere, depending on where you set your sights. Learning and education are what you make of them. The greatest in every field have come from a wide variety of backgrounds, even as they fruitlessly fight over which background does it better. That's what a lot of debates about education are about. There is substance in those debates, as well, as we raise our expecations of what we think all students might be capable of, and as we hope to let go the legacies of both pity and privilege that too often pollute education and American society.

I'm really concerned about how the country is talking, right now, about all of the issues we face. Education, war, wealth, inequity, terrorism, health care, all of it.

We keep escalating the rhetoric and the political fight and it keeps crowding out the more substantial debates and discussions. And we pretending both that it doesn't matter. And that none of it is connected with so many of the poor consequences that we are facing, right now - a 2-year rising violent crime rate, two quarters of slow economic growth, and a spike in the number of deaths of Iraqis and American soldiers in Iraq, right now. I have no doubt in my mind that these outcomes are connected to the escalating aggression and romanticism and fetish with aggression in America and the world, right now. It is perfectly clear to me, at this point. My only question is when will we figure it out and learn the lesson.

We learn from all kinds of sources. From teachers. From parents. From friends and family. From bosses and jobs. From books. From watching the examples and mistakes of others. From colleagues and co-workers. From lovers. From a million different experiences.

We learn and get our broader educations in this world from all over. And it is that broader education that really fills out who we are.

We learn in cities and suburbs and small towns. We learn in schools and in workplaces and in churches and in homes. We learn because it is our grappling with how to understand a world that perpetually seems beyond our reach.

A liberal education prepares us to learn in the deepest, wisest, most profound ways around the most important themes, as much as more narrow technical educations in our specified fields.

We learn everywhere.

I'm about to be head out for a theater group, EMU Theater here in Lawrence, I belong to where I learn quite a bit, really. And it reminds me that all of us have the opportunity to learn all of the most important and profound themes that we need given an openness and active reflection on a life that often is and seems beyond our grasp.

Education never ends that grasp. It just perpetually extends it.

Love,
Ben

The absurdity of the Iraq war debate

Michael Kinsley writes an very good column in today's Washington Post about the absurdity of the political manuevering in the debate over the war in Iraq overwhelming a substantive debate and discussion about the war.

The Troop Funding Trap

Michael essentially argues that conservative arguments about funding and defunding the war for liberals to vote their consciences is disingenuous since they are also arguing, rightly, that any attempt to do so would undercut support for the troops.

I sympathize with that argument because the substantial debate and discussion over the war has so taken a back seat to the political maneuvering that it crowds out much room for those who might oppose the war except to do something that they, too, fear might cost lives of American soldiers.

It also makes it much clearer to me that everyone involved in this debate are in good faith, whether I agree with them or not.

Our problem, right now, is that we have so escalated the aggression, intimidation, propaganda, political maneuvering, ideological polarization and other forms of manipulation and isolation to find a decent end to this war that we have lost touch with the more substantial discussion and debate about what should be done and why.

I, personally, share the concern by conservatives that insurgent and terrorist groups have learned the means of manipulating media reporting on war activities to undermine confidence in a war effort. I also share their belief that though this war was very poorly engaged up front - especially in the debate and discussion that preceded and, too often, did not precede it; I do not share the pretension that more muscle rather than more thought was needed to be more successful up front - that we are responsible for this situation, now, given an American public that overwhelmingly supported an invasion that Iraqis did not vote for. I also agree with the arguments that Frederick Kagan has made that what is needed is adequate security for Iraqis to arrive at a political solution until it is clear that the Iraqi government responsible for that security - and not just a politically manipulated vote by Moqtada Al Sadr's political and militia forces - want Americans to leave because they believe they are adequately prepared to resolve the security nightmare that exists there now.

Michael is right that many conservatives have put liberals into a double bind on this argument. And liberals who are concerned that it is the American presence and not the absence of that presence that most provokes violence in Iraq have a good faith and stronger argument for withdrawal that needs to be engaged.

But conservatives are not engaging it, right now. Because they have gotten tired of being bullied by liberal activists and journalists. And liberals are not engaging the argument for supporting the Iraqi security forces until they are ready for us to leave because they are tired of being bullied by conservative activists and journalists and because they were drug into a war that they didn't want in the first place.

And that conflict between American conservatives and liberals is escalating, right now, at just the time when it needs to be deescalating and a more thoughtful, engaged discussion needs to take place.

No matter what escalated levels of polarization are dividing the country, right now, we must face the very serious reality that we are all in the same boat in this war. We all care. We all know people or care about people whose lives are on the line in this war. We all care about Iraqis who, along with American servicepeople, are losing their lives in the highest numbers, this month, since the surge.

Our problem, right now, is that we have so escalated the political conflict over the war - in government, in the media, in nongovernmental institutions, in activist circles, everywhere - that we have muted and undermined a more serious and needed substantial discussion about the future course of this war on its merits and not based on bullying and intimidation and manipulation.

The irony for someone like me is that this is exactly why political science and the social sciences, generally, were developed as a field. Because of this tendency to manipulate discussion, information, perception, engagement, and judgment to accomplish predetermined political or other ends. And that is why, for all of the cynicism that so many people carry about the capacity of universities and more thoughtful folks to think through such difficult issues, those folks do the very important work that they do. Because the alternative is a world where debates and discussions are perpetually manipulated for predetermined ends. And intellectually honest debate and discussion does not take place.

The answer to Michael's conumdrum is that we cannot resolve the debate over this war with political maneuvering or intimidation. We can only resolve the debate over this war with substantial, engaged discussion, debate, reflection, and understanding.

It has taken this most recent turn by conservatives in a more offensive, intimidating direction for me to see that this persistent escalation of the pressure and heat to will out on difficult issues where intimidation is romanticized over honest, engaged discussion is exactly why so many cultures have gone down ugly, aggressive pathes. Why religions have warred on one another. Why ethnic groups have "cleansed" one another. Why ideological groups have killed, imprisoned, oppressed and long since destroyed millions of lives in the 20th century and for the entirety of human history.

Because the aggression escalates and escalates and escalates until, finally, our consciences face the reality of our behavior and its consequences.

Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Mohatma Ghandi each gave their lives over the course of the 20th century to see this legacy end.

As Bobby Kennedy spoke so eloquently:

"To often we honor swagger and bluster and the wielders of force. Too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of other human beings. But this much is clear. Violence breeds violence. Repression breeds retaliation. And only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our souls. But when you teach a man to hate and to fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color, or his beliefs, or the policies that he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your home 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 to be mastered. We learn at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens. Alien men with whom we share a city, but not a community. Men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in a 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.

Our lives on this planet are too short, the work to be done is too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in this land of ours. Of course we cannot banish 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 that they can. Surely this bond of common faith, surely this bond of common goals can begin to teach us something. Surely we can learn, at the least, to look around at those of us of our fellow men. And surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our hearts brothers and countrymen once again."

And as he said at Martin Luther King's death:

Even in our sleep,
pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
until, in our own despair,
against our will,
comes wisdom
through the awful grace of God.

Here is to the wisdom that the country so desperately needs, right now, to move in the direction of more genuine progress and the intellectually honest engagement and thought that animate it.

Love,
Ben

Pretending our way to progress

When you read headlines like these:

Violent Crime Up for Second Year

Weakest U.S. Growth in 4 years

Or with figures like these:

Civilian death toll in Iraq spikes in May

"The number of civilians killed in Iraq jumped to nearly 2,000 in May, the highest monthly toll since the start of a U.S.-backed security crackdown in February, according to figures released on Saturday."

Doubts cast on U.S. Iraq surge strategy

"May has been one of the deadliest months on record in Iraq - 10 American soldiers were killed on Memorial Day alone bringing US deaths to a total of 120, the highest since November 2004."

It is hard to imagine that so many people look at the current political and cultural climate and call it: progress.

Psychologists call it denial. I think it's largely ignorance and pride. And I am beginning to understand, better, just how the ugliest periods in humanity's history occur.

People are, by nature, aggressive animals. We are predators. And when we feel threatened, we very often turn to aggression to solve our problems. Sometimes aggression is needed to deal with a dangerous and immediate threat. But very often our aggressive instincts betray us, because the undermine the fundamental quality of homo sapiens that has made them such a successful species - thought and communication.

And when aggression and threats of aggression becoming escalated and heated, and when aggression becomes a popular strategy for resolving a social concern or conflict, many people get afraid to deescalate aggression and to engage thoughtfully and with common cause for fear of appearing weak, and inviting the aggression of those who are threatening.

And, sadly, this is how the worst abuses of power and worst forms of aggression take hold of a culture. Genocide occurs because a group becomes convinced by its ability to threaten and intimidate others with its power, numbers, and might that it can, often finally, resolve its problems and disputes with increasingly escalated levels of aggression. The failures of the current period are almost assuredly because of increasingly escalated levels of aggression. And the sad fact of this trend is that since aggression does not solve these problems, it just continues to escalate and be rationalized (rationalized often after deescalation as well, sadly) until it is engaged more honestly and only confronted with the least necessary possible aggression when aggression is more clearly necessary because thoughtful engagement is not an option, and until the consciences of the population finally face the consequences of such aggression.

And the saddest fact of human history is that more aggressive, less thoughtful peoples perpetually turn to intimidation to resolve their conflicts and solve their problems. And yet it so consistently fails them. And they fail to face that failure, out of pride and defensiveness about their choice of aggression and intimidation to resolve their conflicts and problems and all of the tragic consequences it creates.

We persistently try to pretend and pose and intimdate our way to progress, rather than thoughtfully consider the needs of progress and our needs as people with common goals and values. And the most fundamental need that we have for progress and addressing all of our other needs is freedom.

The trick is that we cannot pretend to make realities go away that have resulted from the unintended consequences of even our best intentioned efforts. Intimidation is not the same thing as thought. In fact, brute force is the most clearly distinguished behavior from thoughtful reflection and engagement that we likely have. It is an illusion. A parlour trick. But the realities remain long after the illusion is over whether we engage those realities with reason or not.

Pretending that things are going better than they are when we are perpetually bullying and intimidating our way through difficult issues does not make those realities go away. It just pretends while the realities get worse.

There is no way to pretend your way to progress. The Nazis discovered that. The Soviets discovered that. We will all discover that in the 21st century. Or be doomed to repeat these and so many tragic consequences from a world rationalized around force as our governing philosophy.

It's so sad that so many so many people will rationalize so many awful ways that we treat one another all in the name of pride and an unwillingness to face our mistakes.

It is also very much human nature. And our nature that makes it possible for us to move forward is forgiveness.

The most important check that we have in democratic countries on our more aggressive, brute, intimidating tendencies is not our democratic institutions with their checks and balances, their separated powers, their federalist and decentralizing structure, their political parties with different coalitions and philosophies, or protections for freedom of speech, religion, assembly, and the press.

The most important check we have in democratic countries on our more aggressive, intimidating tendencies is our own consciences, thought, engagement, and liberal values.

Our most important and, ultimately, only realistic check on our aggressive and bad behavior, is not the aggression of others in authoritative situations. That is and should be a last resort.

Our most important and only realistic check on our aggressive and bad behavior is ourselves, our consciences, and the thought and liberal democratic values which animate those consciences.

Love,
Ben